It is a goad, to prick sleeping human consciences awake and drive
them into the battle for humanity.
But no story is told, nothing is finished, some one will object.
Surely, when Sasha leaped overboard and swam to Foma, something
happened. It was pregnant with possibilities. Yet it was not
finished, was not decisive. She left him to go with the son of a
rich vodka-maker. And all that was best in Sofya Medynsky was
quickened when she looked upon Foma with the look of the Mother-
Woman. She might have been a power for good in his life, she might
have shed light into it and lifted him up to safety and honour and
understanding. Yet she went away next day, and he never saw her
again. No story is told, nothing is finished.
Ah, but surely the story of Foma Gordyeeff is told; his life is
finished, as lives are being finished each day around us. Besides,
it is the way of life, and the art of Gorky is the art of realism.
But it is a less tedious realism than that of Tolstoy or Turgenev.
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