Twenty-six Men and a Girl a short story by Maxim Gorky

Twenty-six Men and a Girl                        a short story by Maxim Gorky                      (translated by J. M. Shirazi)

**sigh** Such a sad, sweet story. 

It is the tale of 26 poor laborers, nearly slaves, working in deplorable conditions, long hours, little pay, making and baking kringels. The unnamed narrator speaks for the collective, though they seldom speak among themselves.

But silence is only terrible and fearful for those who have said everything and have nothing more to say to each other; for men, on the contrary, who have never begun to communicate with one another, it is easy and simple.

Though they do from time to time sing.

While in other men’s words we sing out our dumb grief, the weary burden of live men robbed of the sunlight, the burden of slaves.

But it does little to relieve the drudgery.

Painful and terrible it is when a man goes on living, while nothing changes around him; and when such as existence does not finally kill his soul, then the monotony becomes with time even more and more painful.

They have but one bright spot in their day, when sweet and innocent Tanya, from an adjoining seamstress shop stops by for kringels. Tanya is pleasant without being coquettish – indeed, she wouldn’t know how to be; she is a picture of innocent beauty.

Better than her we had none, and none but her took any notice of us…

But about our Tanya we never let fall an evil word; none of us ever ventured so much as to lay a hand on her, even too free a jest she never heard from us. Maybe this was so because she never remained for long with us; she flashed on our eyes like a star falling from the sky, and vanished; and maybe because she was little and very beautiful, and everything beautiful calls forth respect, even in coarse people.

We loved her – all is said in that.

But I've already hinted, it's The previous excerpt is the sweet.

The bitter – I haven’t the heart, and I’ll spare the spoiler.

Still, Gorky’s words are lovely. I’ve never read him before, and I will be sure to read more. He was a pioneer of social realism. I’ll expect more painfully sweet stories.

I don’t usually review a single short story. Sometime soon, I hope to get to a collection by Gorky. Have you read Maxim Gorky? What did you think?

 

This satisfies, N-4, Classic Short Story, from the 2020 Classic BINGO Challenge.

Christmas Tales - 2019

The Magi honored the Christ child with three gifts.

and in honor of the magi, I read three Christmas tales each December. My Christmas reads are also part of A Literary Christmas – sponsored by In the Bookcase.

At Christmas Time by Anton Chekhov is an extremely short short story – six pages. It is divided neatly into two parts – two separate settings. In the first, an illiterate peasant woman hires someone to write a letter to her only child, a daughter who married and moved away four years earlier. The woman is heartbroken that she hasn’t heard from her daughter. The second setting is the daughter overjoyed to receive her mother’s letter, but then plunged into despair at her plight – married, three small children, in a small apartment, very nearly trapped by her husband, a heartless brute who carelessly forgets to post the letters his wife writes to her parents. 

It’s a pretty depressing tale, but quite poignant. Mother and daughter each feel forsaken by the other, but the foibles of human communication hide the truth – that they are loved, remembered, and missed, which would surely be of some comfort in the midst of their dismal lives. 

And although I liked At Christmas Time, it left me longing for something a bit cheerier.

Fortunately, next up was Dickens’ The Trial of Life, the fourth of Dickens’ five Christmas tales: A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain. It is the least popular, least known, and barely qualifies as a Christmas Tale – there is only one scene at Christmas that could have just as affectively been at any time of the year. It is the only one of Dickens’ Christmas tales with no element of supernatural.

It is about Doctor Jeddler who was a great philosopher, 

...and the heart and mystery of his philosophy was. To look upon the world as a gigantic practical joke;

But the good Doctor’s philosophy is challenged by the fates and fortunes of his two daughters – beautiful and virtuous as you would expect from Dickens heroines. 

And after all, Doctor Jeddler is compelled to change his philosophy…

“It is a world full of hearts,” said the Doctor, hugging his youngest daughter, and bending across her to hug Grace – for he couldn’t separate the sisters; “and a serious world, with all its folly – even with mine, which was enough to have swamped the whole globe; and it is a world on which the sun never rises, but it looks upon a thousand bloodless battles that are some setoff against the miseries and wickedness of Battle-Fields; and it is a world we need be careful how we libel, Heaven forgive us, for it is a world of sacred mysteries, and its Creator only knows what lies beneath the surface of His lightest image!”

I found it to be a marvelous little tale about love and sacrifice, and in true Dickensian fashion, sublimely happy in the end, but yet…

There was an unexpected development. I’ve read quite a bit of Dickens, and thought I knew where he was going, but in the end, he “Wowed” me. Everything was NOT as it seemed. It’s a bit like David Copperfield meets A Tale of Two Cities, much shorter of course, which is high praise since those are two of my favorites by Dickens.

And finally, the best known of the three, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King by E. T. Hoffman.

You probably know something of the story, of a marvelous nutcracker who comes to life to battle the evil mouse king. It is a fairy tale in the truest sense – there is a mysterious portal between our world and another, that opens at infrequent times and to select few, usually it seems, the innocent and unspoiled.

In this tale, young Marie is the privileged traveler, whom no one believes, except perhaps with a wink and a whisper her eccentric Godfather Drosselmeyer, the clockmaker, toymaker, and almost it seems the director of this drama.

It’s an excellent tale. If you’ve only experienced the ballet based upon this fairy tale, I’d recommend reading the story. There is much more going on than the ballet can reveal.

Merry Christmas

          ~ The Wanderer

May you be blessed with

the spirit of the season, which is Peace,

the gladness of the season, which is Hope, 

and the heart of the season, which is Love

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Christmas Tales - 2018

The Magi honored the Christ child with three gifts.

and in honor of the magi, I read three Christmas tales each December. My Christmas reads are also part of A Literary Christmas – sponsored by In The Bookcase.

First, a tale by Russian Author Dostoevsky. The Beggar Boy at Christ’s Christmas Tree – also sometimes titled The Heavenly Christmas Tree.

In the opening lines, Dostoevsky relates…

I am a novelist, and I suppose I have made up this story. I write “I suppose,” though I know for a fact that I have made it up, but yet I keep fancying that it must have happened somewhere at some time, that it must have happened on Christmas Eve in some great town in a time of terrible frost.

What follows is a bittersweet tale of an orphaned boy – though he does not know he is an orphan. His mother died only some few hours before the story opens. The boy, about six, is cold, and hungry, and lost, and alone on Christmas Eve in a large city where he finds no compassion. His misery is compounded by the glorious visions of warmth and plenty that he views through windows of shops and homes of the great city – but there is no room for the unwanted beggar. Cruel mercy – cold and hunger – usher the boy into the presence of one who understands what it is to find no welcome on a winter night.

Next, a short story by British author Charles Dickens. You are expecting maybe A Christmas Carol? – nope. Certainly then, The Cricket on the Hearth or The Chimes? – nope, and nope. Ever heard of The Signal Man? Me neither. Well, it isn’t truly a Christmas story. Christmas, the Holidays, nor winter are ever mentioned in the story. The only connection to Christmas is the story was first published in the Christmas Edition of Dickens’ weekly magazine All the Year Round. It is the story of a content and humble railroad signalman, who recently received visitations by a specter – an omen of doom. On two occasions the specter, a signalman himself, appears to give warning, and shortly thereafter tragedy strikes. The mortal signalman is at a loss as to what to do. He cannot telegraph WARNING down the line without details or explanation. He is further unsettled when the specter appears a third time.

His pain of mind was most pitiable to see. It was the mental torture of a conscientious man, oppressed beyond endurance by an unintelligible responsibility involving life.

As you can imagine, the third visitation is not without purpose – but I’ll spare the spoiler and let you enjoy The Signalman when you are in the mood for what Andy Williams called scary ghost stories of Christmases long long ago.

And finally, A Christmas Memory by American author Truman Capote. Surprisingly, this was my favorite of the three. It is a sweet and tender tale of friendship. The narrator recalls his best friend, his only friend, from childhood – a distant cousin more than half-a-century his senior. The two are somehow, second class residents in the home where they live.

Other people inhabit the house, relatives; and though they have power over us, and frequently make us cry, we are not, on the whole, too much aware of them.

The two make fruitcake every Christmas, scrimping all year to save for the ingredients. They send the fruitcakes to near strangers who have been kind to them, like the giant Indian bootlegger from whom they buy whiskey – a key ingredient.

“Tell you what,” he proposes, pouring the money back into our bead purse, “just send me one of them fruitcakes instead.”

The poor souls, they barely knew they were poor.

May you be blessed with

the spirit of the season, which is Peace,

the gladness of the season, which is Hope, 

and the heart of the season, which is Love

                                 ~ The Wanderer

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The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky (novel #113)

(translation by Eva Martin)

I made up my mind to be honest, and steadfast in accomplishing my task. Perhaps I shall meet with troubles and many disappointments, but I have made up my mind to be polite and sincere to everyone; more cannot be asked of me. People may consider me a child if they like. I am often called an idiot, and at one time I was certainly so ill that I was nearly as bad as an idiot; but I am not an idiot now. How can I possibly be so when I know myself that I am considered one? ~ Prince Muishkin

This is the first time I’ve read The Idiot and the third novel I’ve read by Dostoevsky. Due to my previous experiences and a peek at a synopsis, I was anticipating a very enjoyable read.

But no! I was quite disappointed. I really wanted to love this for both my admiration of the author and my interest in the premise: the story of a man so sincere, so kind, so artless, that he was thought an idiot by his acquaintances. The title character is Dostoevsky’s

…positively good and beautiful man

Characters in the novel said of him:

You are more honest than all, and better, nobler, kinder, wiser than all. There are some here who are unworthy to bend and pick up the handkerchief you have just dropped. ~ Aglaya Ivanovna

 

I ought to tell you that I never in my life met a man anything like him for noble simplicity of mind and for boundless trustfulness. I guessed that anyone who lied could deceive him, and that he would immediately forgive anyone who did deceive him… ~ Nastasia Philipovna

To be astonished by nothing is a sign, they say, of a great intellect. ~ Hippolyte commenting on the Prince’s unflappable character

Besides wanting to love the novel, I also wanted to love the protagonist, Prince Muishkin, and I did – at first. But as the novel wears on, I confess I began to think him rather absurd myself, though not quite an idiot.

But most of the characters were absurd. Aglaya Ivanovna – the fickle and flighty love interest of the Prince; Nastasia Philipovna – her beautiful and bitter rival; Rogojin the vicious and vain antithesis to the Prince; Hippolyte the tedious and tubercular nihilist; Elizabetha Prokofievna the proper and passionate mother of Aglaya; and on and on.

Perhaps it suffered in translation, translation not of words, but translation of 19^thcentury Russian society vs 21^stcentury Western society – perhaps, but that can’t really explain it fully. I loved The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment after all.

Perhaps I’m the idiot, but this just didn’t work for me. I’m sorry brother D, but I feel I’m being generous to even give this…

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Dostoevsky said himself:

I do not stand behind the novel, but I do stand behind the idea.

I agree with that.

This novel satisfies – Back to the Classics Challenge 2018 – Category: a classic in translation.

Other excerpts:

In a word, the world spoke well of the girls; [Aglaya and her sisters] but they were not without their enemies, and occasionally, people talked with horror of the number of books they had read.

A fool with a heart and no brains is just as unhappy as a fool with brains and no heart. ~ Elizabetha Prokofievna

Exactly as is a mother’s joy when her baby smiles for the first time into her eyes, so is God’s joy when one of his children turns and prays to Him for the first time, with all his heart. ~ Prince Muishkin

Things are hidden from the wise and prudent, and revealed unto babes. ~ Lebedeff

References to Classic Literature

Don Quixote

Gogol

Hamlet

Moliere

Madame Bovary

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Christmas Tales - 2017

The Chimes by Charles Dickens

The Chimes, is seldom referred to with its subtitle: The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In. It was published in 1844, a year after A Christmas Carol, and a year before The Cricket on the Hearth.

I loved it. It is a bit reminiscent of A Christmas Carol as it involves some specters who nudge a poor lost soul onto the path of joy. However, in this case the soul is a kind and loveable chap, vs a Scrooge. The Chap is Toby (Trotty) Veck, nicknamed Trotty as he is a porter for hire, and often seen trotting here and there on his errands. Work is scarce though and Toby is down on his luck.

Toby waits for work adjacent to the church where when the chimes ring. He hears messages in their music – usually of hope for better days. Hence, Toby is a poor, but generally cheerful chap – until some wealthy and ungracious employers cause him to doubt his very right to exist – him being such a burden on society.

But then the chimes sing a new song to Toby one haunted night – most likely just a dream – they bring him neither riches or comfort, just his hopeful disposition.

I read The Chimes for Dickens in December (hosted by Fanda Classiclit) and A Literary Christmas (hosted by In The Bookcase).

For A Literary Christmas, I also read The Night Before Christmas by Nikolai Gogol. This is the first time I’ve read Gogol – and now I know I must read more. What a hoot! It is about a pious young blacksmith, Vakula who is love with the village beauty Oksana.

But Vakula is not very popular with a neighborhood devil – like ya know, a devil, horns and tail, all that – because Vakula, who is also a talented artist, made a painting for the church that was not at all flattering to the devil.

So, the devil decides to steal the moon, in attempt to foil Vakula’s dreams. It’s a bit complicated how that was supposed to work. I recommend you read the tale. The dark of the moonless night unleashes a series mishaps that finds, the devil, Oksana’s father (who didn’t approve of Vakula), the village deacon, and a village official all tied in coal sacks. Each one in succession, devil included, was paying a not very honorable visit to Vakula’s mother – who was also, unknown to anyone a witch – a real no-kidding witch which flies about on a broomstick. They each had to hide, when the next one came to call.

It’s a farcical comedy of errors.

Do you know the Christmas Song, The Most Wonderful Time of the Year? I remember it sung by Andy Williams, but I’m sure there have been others. There is a line that goes…there’ll be scary ghost stories of Christmases long long ago.

I used to think that line a bit absurd – There was after all, only ONE scary ghost story about Christmas. I was wrong. There are actually quite a few. So far, most are pretty fun, but I think, in the right setting, they could be a bit scary.

For A Literary Christmas, I also read Twelfth Night; or What You Will by William Shakespeare. It is a comedy written and performed around 1601-02. The setting is early 17^th Century Illyeria (Western Balkans).

I am including this play in the Literary Christmas Challenge, because even though it is not a Christmas story, Shakespeare wrote it as a Twelfth Night celebration to close the Christmas season – hence the title.

It is indeed a comedy. I have not read many of Shakespeare’s comedies yet, but this was by far the most comical I have read. As with any play, something is lost in reading. I’d love to see it in its proper form – a stage play. My full review of Twelfth Night.

Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas!

2015 Christmas Short Stories
2016 Christmas Short Stories

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