I previously only posted a screenshot of this article, now the full text has been OCRed. This article is selected from “Gorky’s Collection of Political Essays,” retaining some original book annotations.
“The Master of Life” is an essay written by Gorky in 1906, included in the author’s collection “My Interviews.” In this collection, Gorky uses the perspective of “I” and the form of “interviews” to meet “Wilhelm II,” an American trust magnate, and “free” France, among others, sharply satirizing the bourgeoisie of various countries and exposing their oppression of the people and the true face of European countries suppressing the Russian revolution.
In the article “The Master of Life,” the author creates the image of the “Devil.” “I” follow the Devil to visit a cemetery and meet one skeleton after another. Buried here are various reactionary figures of the bourgeoisie, some supporting white supremacy, others supporting Spencerian social organic theory. The Devil mercilessly lashes and mocks these dead skeletons, while ruthlessly exposing the bourgeoisie’s various viewpoints.
He says humanitarianism is the bourgeoisie’s “stillborn baby… they want to hang this beautiful curtain on the stage of life to cover up the sinister terror of human abuse…”
At the same time, he harshly criticizes two bourgeois views on the oppression and discrimination of women: “Some people only need women to be wives and slaves, so they strongly advocate that women are not human!.. Others, unwilling to give up exploiting women as women, want to widely exploit their labor power, so they strongly advocate that women are fully suitable to work equally with men everywhere, that is, to work for men.”
The Devil points out that although the people in the cemetery are dead, the living are still dominated by the thoughts of these dead people, the “masters of life” bourgeoisie. “Your true masters of life are always the dead, although they manage your affairs or people, they are inspired by the dead.”
At the end of the article, as dawn breaks in the East, the Devil envisions the revolutionary society to come, believing that then “life will become a flower bed… thoughts will struggle, but people will become comrades.” With the rooster’s crow signaling the dawn, the Devil leaves with hope for the new life. Meanwhile, the bones of the reactionary bourgeois scholars still rot in the grave.
“Come with me to the source of truth!” the devil said with a smile, leading me to the cemetery.
As we slowly walked along the narrow path winding between the ancient stone slabs and wrought iron grave markers, his words carried a weary tone, like an old professor tired of his own useless wisdom.
“Beneath your feet,” he said to me, “lie those who govern your lawmakers. Your boots tread upon the ashes of the carpenters and blacksmiths who built the cages for the beasts in your heart.”
He laughed, a sharp sneer of contempt for humanity, his melancholic and cold eyes glowing green, casting their light over the overgrown grass and mold on the tombstones. The heavy clods of earth stuck to my feet as I struggled along the narrow path between the grave markers that bore the secrets of the world.
“Man, why do you not bow and give thanks to the ashes of those who created your soul?” the devil asked, his voice like the blowing of a damp autumn wind, making my melancholy and excited body tremble. The desolate branches gently swayed above the ancient graves, cold and moist brushing my face.
“Pay homage to the counterfeiters! It is they who have bred the countless insignificant gray thoughts—your small coins of wisdom. They have created your habits, prejudices, and everything by which you live. Thank them— the dead have left you a great inheritance!”
Withered yellow leaves slowly drifted down upon my head and at my feet. The soil of the cemetery swallowed fresh food—the autumn leaves, greedily rustling.
“Here lies a tailor who once clothed people’s souls in the heavy gray cassock of prejudice—do you want to see him?”
I silently nodded. The devil kicked an old, rusted tombstone, saying:
“Hey, bookworm! Rise up…”
The tombstone rose, the startled earth sighed deeply, revealing a shallow grave like a rotten little wallet. In the damp darkness, a complaining voice sounded:
“Who wakes the dead after twelve o’clock?” “See?” the devil asked, sneering coldly, “Even after decay, the lawmakers of life remain unchanged.”
“Ah, it’s you, master!” the skeleton sitting by the grave said, its empty skull nodding alone to the devil.
“Yes, it’s me!” the devil replied. “I brought a friend to see you… Among those you taught wisdom to, he became foolish, and now he comes to the source of wisdom to clear away those influences…”
I looked respectfully at this philosopher. His skull was bare of flesh, but the smug expression on his face had not decayed. Each bone dimly revealed a thought, believing itself to belong to a particularly perfect and unique skeletal system…
“What did you do in the world? Tell us!” the devil asked. The dead man solemnly and arrogantly adjusted the blackened fragments of his burial shroud and the decayed flesh hanging on his ribs with his arm bones. Then he proudly raised the bones of his right arm to shoulder height, pointing with the smooth joints of his fingers toward the dark corners of the cemetery, calmly saying:
“I wrote ten great books that gave people a grand idea: that white people are superior to colored races…”
“Translated into the language of truth,” the devil said, “this means: I, an infertile old virgin, spent my whole life with my dull needle of wisdom, knitting with worn-out yarn of old ideas, making quirky pointed hats for those who like to keep their skulls quiet and warm…”
“Aren’t you afraid to offend him?” I asked the devil softly.
“Ah!” he sighed. “Philosophers rarely hear the truth while alive!”
“Only white people,” the philosopher continued, “can create such a complex civilization and formulate such strict moral principles, thanks to their skin color and the chemical composition of their blood, as I have proven…”
“He has proven it!” the devil repeated, nodding affirmatively. “No savage is more convinced than a European that cruelty is his right…”
“Christianity and humanitarianism were founded by white people,” the dead man continued.
“The whole earth should belong to the race of angels,” the devil interrupted. “Their zeal to dye the earth their favorite color—blood red—is the reason…”
“They created the richest literature and astonishing technology,” the dead man counted, moving the joints of his fingers…
“Thirty good books and countless weapons of murder…” the devil explained with a smile. “Where else is life so shattered as among this race? Where else are people so degraded as among white people?”
“Perhaps, the devil is not entirely right?” I asked.
“European art has reached unparalleled heights,” the skeleton droned.
“Perhaps the devil is willing to err!” my companion said loudly. "You must know, always being right is boring. But people live only to supply the materials I despise… The seeds of vulgarity and hypocrisy have borne rich fruit in the world. Here before you is he, a sower. Like all sowers, he produced nothing new; he only resurrected the corpses of old prejudices, dressing them in new words… What has been made on earth? Palaces for the few, churches and factories for the many. In churches, souls are killed; in factories, bodies are killed, so palaces may stand firm… People are sent deep underground to mine coal and gold, and their shameful wages are but a piece of bread flavored with lead and iron.
“Are you a socialist?” I asked the devil.
“I want harmony!” he answered. "Man is born a whole being but is divided into small pieces to be made tools for others’ greed; this disgusts me… I want no slaves; servility disgusts me… For this, I was cast out of heaven. Where there is authority, there is inevitably spiritual servility; the mold of hypocrisy always flourishes there… Let the earth—let all life—burn all day, even if only ashes remain at night. All must love once… Love, like a beautiful dream, dreamed only once, but the entire meaning of life lies in that one time…
The skeleton leaned against a black stone, the wind softly moaning through his empty ribcage.
“He must feel cold and uncomfortable!” I said to the devil.
“Seeing a scholar shed all useless things makes me glad. His skull is the skull of his thoughts… I see how novel his thoughts are… Beside him lies the body of another sower of truth. Let us awaken him too. They loved quiet in life, laboring to establish principles of thought, feeling, and life—they distorted newborn thoughts, making comfortable little coffins for them. But after death, they wish not to be forgotten… Child trafficker, rise! I have brought a man to see you; he needs a coffin for his thoughts.”
A bare, toothless yellow skull, still shining with smug light, emerged again from the earth before me. He had probably lain in the soil for a long time—his bones bare of flesh. He stood beside his tombstone, his ribs appearing on the black stone like epaulets on a courtier’s uniform.
“Where does he hide his thoughts?” I asked.
“In the bones, my friend, in the bones! Their thoughts, like rheumatism and gout, deeply penetrate the ribs.”
“How are my book sales, master?” the skull croaked.
“They remain there, professor!” the devil answered.
“What? Have people forgotten to read?” the professor pondered.
“No, they still gladly read nonsense as before… but dull nonsense sometimes takes a long time to get their attention… This professor,” the devil turned to me, “measured hundreds of women’s skulls to prove women are not human. He measured skulls, counted teeth, measured ears, weighed dead brains. Studying dead brains was his favorite work. All his writings prove this. Have you read his books?”
“I did not enter the temple through a tavern,” I replied. “I do not know how to study people from books—people in books are always fractions, and I do not understand arithmetic well. But I think a beardless person in a skirt is neither better nor worse than a bearded person in pants with a mustache…”
“Exactly,” said the devil, “vulgarity and stupidity still invade the brain marrow, no matter what clothes you wear or how much hair you have. However, the woman question is quite interesting.”
The devil laughed as usual. He always laughed, so talking with him was pleasant. Whoever can laugh in a cemetery surely loves life and humanity…
“Some only want women as wives and slaves, thus insist women are not human!” he continued. “Others exploit women as women, wanting to widely exploit their labor, insisting they are fully fit to work equally with men—that is, for him. Of course, both groups rape girls and do not let them enter their society—they believe once touched, she is forever dirty… No, the woman question is interesting! I love people’s naive lies; then they are like children, with hope that they will grow up…”
From the devil’s face, it was clear he did not want to praise future people. But I could say many things not praising today’s people; I did not want to compete with the devil in this pleasant and easy matter—I interrupted him:
“It is said the devil himself is too busy to go anywhere, so he sends a woman instead, is that true?”
He shrugged and answered, “There will be one… if there is no man smart and vile enough nearby…”
“For some reason, I always feel you no longer love evil?” I asked.
“There is no evil anymore!” he answered, sighing. “Only vulgarity!”
“There was a time when evil was a beautiful force. Now… even killing is done very meanly, first tying the hands. No villains remain, only executioners. Executioners are always slaves. Always driven by terror and fear… Know this, cowards are killed…”
Two skeletons stood side by side on a grave, autumn leaves gently falling on their bones. The wind sadly plucked their rib strings, whistling through the gaps in their skulls. In the damp, pungent darkness, they looked out from deep eye sockets. They shivered. I pitied them.
“Let them return to their place!” I said to the devil.
“Even in the cemetery, you are a humanitarian!” he shouted. “Yes. Humanitarianism is more appropriate among corpses—it offends no one here. In factories, city squares and streets, prisons and mines, among the living, humanitarianism provokes ridicule and even anger. Here, no one mocks it— the dead are always serious. But I am sure they like to hear people talk about humanitarianism—because it is their stillborn baby… And those people are not fools; they want to hang this pretty curtain on the stage of life to cover the sinister terror of abuse, to cover a small group of cruel people who attribute their power to people’s stupidity…”
The devil laughed loudly, full of sharp sarcasm at ominous truth. Stars twinkled in the dark sky; the black tombstones stood motionless over the graves. Their rotten smell seeped through the earth, the wind carrying the breath of the dead to the sleeping city cloaked in nighttime silence.
“Here lie many humanitarians,” the devil continued, scanning the surrounding graves. “Some are sincere… Life is full of ridiculous misunderstandings; perhaps this is not the most ridiculous… Nearby, calmly and gently lies another type of life teacher—these people try to lay a solid foundation for the false ancient edifice built by thousands of dead working hard…”
From afar came singing… two or three joyful shouts echoed above the cemetery, rippling. Probably a dissolute man carelessly walking to his grave in the dark.
“Beneath these heavy stones, the ashes of a philosopher proudly decay, who taught that society is an organism, like… a monkey or a pig, I now forget. This is good for those who wish to consider themselves organisms! Almost all politicians and gang leaders support this theory. If I were a brain, I could act freely; I always suppress the instinctive rebellion of muscles against my royal power—ah, yes! Here lie the ashes of a man who called people back to crawling on all fours and devouring insects (note: referring to Nietzsche). He zealously proved: 'These are the happiest days of life. Walking on two legs, wearing fine suits, and advising people to grow hair all over—isn’t that novel? Reciting poetry, listening to music, visiting museums, traveling hundreds of miles a day, and preaching simple forest life, crawling on all fours—indeed, not bad! This man reassured people, defending their lives by saying: criminals are not normal people; criminals are pathological wills, a special, antisocial type (note: referring to Italian psychiatrist and criminologist Cesare Lombroso, who biologically explained criminal “intent” determinism). They are natural enemies of law and morality, so no courtesy is due them. Only death cures criminals. What a clever idea! Blaming all evil on one person, preemptively admitting he is a natural storehouse of evil and the organic bearer of evil will—is that stupid? In life, there is often such a person who defends the ugly, distorted structure of the soul. Smart people blowing their noses is not without reason. Yes, the cemetery is full of ideas to improve urban life…” The devil looked around. A white church, like giant skeletal fingers, rose silently from the fertile fields of the dead, pointing to the dark sky, standing in the starry silent fields. The dense tombstones above the source of wisdom, draped in moldy cassocks, surrounded the chimney that spreads humanity’s complaints and prayers’ smoky irritants into the cosmic desert. The wind, thick with decay, gently shook branches, blowing down leaves. These leaves silently drifted onto the homes of life’s creators…
“Now let’s hold a small-scale review of the dead, a rehearsal of the Last Judgment!” the devil said, walking ahead of me along the narrow path between mounds and stones. “You must know, the Last Judgment will come! It will descend upon the earth, and that day will be the best day for humanity! When people realize the crimes committed by these life teachers and lawmakers who tear people into pieces, that day of Last Judgment will come. Everything living in the name of man now is only a part of man; the complete man has not yet been created. He will arise from the ashes of worldly experience, absorbing the world’s experience like the ocean absorbs sunlight; he will shine on earth like another sun. I will see it! Because I am creating such a man; I will create him!”
The old man was somewhat boastful, lost in sentimental mood, far unlike the devil’s nature. I forgave him. What could be done? Life even makes the devil lose his nature, corroding the devil’s well-trained soul with its poison. Besides, all people have round heads, and thoughts are rigid; when everyone looks in a mirror, they see a handsome person.
The devil stopped in the middle of the cemetery and shouted in a monarch’s voice,
“Who here is smart and honest?”
A moment of silence, then suddenly the ground beneath my feet trembled, as if a dirty snowdrift covered the cemetery mound. As if thousands of lightning bolts dug it out from inside, or a huge monster convulsed and turned over in the earth’s center. Everything around surged with dirty yellow; skulls swayed like withered grass stems in the wind; the sound of bones rubbing, joints knocking, and joints striking tombstones echoed in the silence. The skeletons pushed each other, climbed tombstones, skulls flashing like dandelions everywhere; the dense rib cage net surrounded me like a narrow cage; the skeletons’ calves trembled under the pressure of ugly cracked bones; everything around boiled in silent turmoil…
The devil’s cold sneer covered all the voiceless sounds. “See? They all crawl out, not one left!” he said. “Among them are fools of the city! The earth vomited, it spat out the wisdom of the dead from inside the earth…”
The dull noise quickly grew louder, as if an invisible hand greedily rummaged through a pile of damp garbage, garbage swept into the corner of a yard.
“There have been many smart and honest people in reality!” the devil sighed, spreading his wings wide over the thousands of fragments rushing toward him from all sides.
“Who among you has done the most good for people?” he asked loudly. Everything around hissed like mushrooms frying in cream in a big pot.
“Let me go first!” someone shouted gloomily.
“It’s me, master, here I am! I proved the individual is zero in the sum of society!”
“I go further!” a voice retorted from afar. “I taught that society is the sum of zeros; therefore, the masses should obey the will of the group.”
“But the group is led by individuals, led by me!” someone proudly shouted.
“Why you?” several frightened voices asked.
“My uncle was a king!”
“Aha, so the one beheaded too early was your uncle?”
“Kings always lose their heads on time!” some proud bones of former throne holders answered.
“Oh!” came a satisfied whisper. “We have a king here! Not every cemetery has one…”
The dull whispers and bone rubbing sounds merged into a noisy, muddled river.
“I heard the king’s bones are pale blue, is that true?” a small crooked spine skeleton hurriedly asked.
“Let me tell you…” a skeleton solemnly said, straddling a tombstone.
“I invented the best corn plaster!” someone shouted behind him.
“I am an architect…”
But a short, fat skeleton pushed others aside with short arm bones, shouting, his voice lowering the rustling of the dead:
“Brothers in Christianity! Am I not your spiritual doctor? Am I not the one who uses gentle comforting plasters to heal the spiritual corns worn by your life’s worries?”
“No suffering!” someone angrily said. “Everything exists only in imagination.”
“That architect invented low doors…”
“I invented flypaper!”
“…to make people involuntarily bow their heads before the homeowner when entering…” an impatient voice said.
“Isn’t the first mine mine, comrades? I gave your soul longing to forget sorrow my milk and honey of seeing through the world!”
“Now there is—there will always be!” a hoarse voice said. A one-legged skeleton sat on a gray stone, raised his lower leg, stretched it, and somehow shouted sharply:
“This is beyond doubt!”
The cemetery became a marketplace where everyone praised their own goods. The muddy river of varied shouts, vile boasting, and the rapid flow of gloomy pride poured into the silent wilderness of the night. Like a swarm of mosquitoes hovering over a stinking swamp, singing, moaning, buzzing, filling the air with all the poisons of the grave. Everyone gathered around the devil, gritting their teeth, their black eye sockets staring at his face as if he were a buyer of secondhand goods. Dead thoughts revived one after another, drifting in the air like poor autumn leaves.
The devil looked at this boiling noise with green eyes, his gaze shooting cold sparks like phosphorescence at a pile of bones.
The skeleton sitting at his feet raised an arm bone, waving it rhythmically in the air, saying:
“Every woman should belong to a man…”
But another voice blended into his whisper; his words mixed oddly with others’.
“Only the dead understand the truth…”
Some more words slowly rippled:
“I said, a father is like a spider…”
“Our earthly life is a mess, pitch black!”
“I married three times, all legal…” “He wove the web of family happiness tirelessly all his life…” “And each time only took one wife…”
Suddenly a skeleton appeared from somewhere, its yellow porous bones creaking harshly. It raised its half-rotted face to the devil’s eye level and said: “I died of syphilis, yes! But I still respect morality! When my wife was unfaithful, I personally brought her misdeeds to the courts of law and society…”
But he was pushed aside, crowded by bones, making mixed sounds like the low whistle of a chimney wind. “I invented the electric chair! It kills painlessly.” (Note: The electric chair was first used in the US in 1889, proposed by Senator Gerry as “the most humane and simplest death penalty”) “I comfort people by saying eternal happiness awaits after death…” “A father gives life and food to children… A man is only complete after becoming a father; before that, he is only a member of a family…”
An egg-shaped skull with patches of flesh on its face rose above other heads and said:
“I proved that art must obey the synthesis of society’s opinions, views, customs, and demands…”
Another skeleton straddling a tombstone like a broken branch retorted:
“Freedom can only exist like anarchy!” (Note: Probably referring to Max Stirner (1806-1856), whose philosophy in “The Ego and Its Own” (1845) advocated extreme individualism. Marx and Engels severely criticized Stirner’s philosophy in “The German Ideology”)
“Art is a delicious medicine for hearts tired by life and labor…”
“Life is labor! That is my claim,” a voice came from afar.
“Make a book as beautiful as the pillboxes sold in pharmacies…”
“Everyone must work; some must supervise work… Anyone virtuous and meritorious can enjoy the fruits of labor…”
“Art must be harmonious and loving… When I am tired, it sings me lullabies…”
“I love free art,” the devil said, “it serves no god but the beautiful goddess. I especially love free art when, like a pure youth, it dreams of immortal beauty, longing to enjoy beauty, tearing off the colorful clothes from the body of life… And life before it is like an old harlot, her ravaged skin full of wrinkles and ulcers. Fury, mourning for beauty, hatred of the stagnant pool of life—this is what I love in art… A good poet’s friends are women and devils…”
From the bell tower came a brass moaning call, rippling over the dead city, drifting elusive and unhurriedly in the dark like a large bird with transparent wings… The drowsy watchman must have lazily pulled the bell rope with shaking, withered hands. The sound of brass melted into the air and vanished. But before its final tremor disappeared, the awakening night bell sounded sharply again. The sultry air gently flowed, the rustling of bones and hoarse voices spread through the trembling melancholy roar of brass.
I heard again those annoying, stupid, dull speeches, the lifeless vulgar and extremely unpleasant words, the arrogant, shameless voices, and the resentful complaints. All the thoughts by which city people live revived, but none were worthy of pride. All the rusty iron chains binding souls to life clanged but gave no proud dark flash illuminating the soul.
“Where are the heroes?” I asked the devil.
“They are humble; their graves are forgotten. In life, they were oppressed; in the cemetery, crushed by dead bones!” he answered, flapping his wings, dispersing the cloud of our rotten oily stench, in which the monotonous voices of the dead dug like maggots.
The shoemaker said he was the first among his peers to have the right to accept thanks from descendants—he invented pointed boots. A scholar who described a thousand different kinds of spiders in his works insisted he was the greatest scholar. An inventor of artificial milk sobbed angrily, pushing away a man who invented a rapid-fire cannon because the latter was endlessly explaining to those around him the usefulness of his invention to the world. Thousands of slender, moist cords tightly bound the brain, biting it like snakes. All the dead, no matter what they talked about, spoke like serious moralists, like jailers of life devoted to their own cause.
“Enough!” said the demon. “I’m tired… I hate the cemeteries of the dead and the living—the whole city… You, guardians of truth! Go to the grave!..”
He shouted with the iron-like voice of a monarch who despised his own power.
At that moment, a pile of light gray and yellow ashes suddenly hissed, spun around, boiled like dust caught in a whirlwind. The earth opened thousands of black mouths, lazily smacking like a well-fed pig, swallowing the food it spat out, digesting it again… Suddenly everything disappeared, the stones shook, then stood firm in their original place. Only a suffocating smell remained, like a heavy, moist hand choking the throat.
The demon sat on a grave, resting his elbows on his knees, his long black fingers holding his head. His eyes stared into the dark distance, piles of stones and graves… Stars twinkled above his head, the brass bell’s gentle ringing rippled through the clear sky, awakening the night.
“Did you see?” he said to me. “On this moldy, stupid, naive hypocrisy and entangled, slippery, poisonous soil, a narrow and dark house of life’s laws has been built, and you, like sheep, have all been driven into this cage by the dead… Mental laziness and cowardice are like flexible hoops, binding you into your prison. Your true masters of life are always the dead, although you are governed by the living, they are inspired by the dead. The grave is the source of worldly secrets. Let me tell you: your rational views are flowers cultivated by the liquid of corpses. Corpses rot quickly in the soil, but they hope to live forever in the hearts of the living. The delicate and dry ashes of dead thoughts easily seep into the brains of the living, which is why your wise preachers are always preachers of spiritual death!”
The demon raised his head, his green eyes staring at my face like two cold stars.
“What do people proclaim most loudly on earth, what do they hope to firmly establish on earth? To divide life into parts. The legitimacy of differences in people’s living conditions, the necessity of spiritual unity. The monotonous, square-like uniformity of all souls, conveniently placing people like bricks in geometric shapes, comfortable for a few masters of life. This hypocritical preaching harmonizes the suffering feelings of the enslaved and the cruel cunning of the enslavers; it is caused by the despicable desire to suppress the creative spirit of rebellion. This preaching is nothing but a despicable attempt to build a tomb for spiritual freedom with false stones…”
Dawn had broken. The stars quietly faded. The sky whitened, waiting for the sun. The demon’s eyes grew redder.
“What should be preached for a beautiful and complete life? The equality of everyone’s living conditions, the difference of souls. Then life will become a flower bed, its foundation in everyone’s respect for each person’s freedom; then it will become a prairie fire, burning because of mutual love and joint efforts to improve…; then thoughts will struggle, but people will become comrades. Is that impossible? It is possible, because it has never happened before!”
“It’s dawn!” the demon continued, looking east. “But to whom does the sun bring joy if the night still sleeps in people’s hearts? People have no time to enjoy the sun; most only want bread, some busy themselves trying to give less bread, others run alone in the hustle of life, all seeking freedom, but they find no freedom amid the constant struggle for bread. They despair, suffer, resent loneliness, and try to reconcile the irreconcilable. The excellent fall into the mire of vulgar lies, initially sincerely unaware of their disloyalty to themselves, later intentionally betraying their own beliefs and aspirations…”
He stood up, powerfully spreading his wings.
“I’m off, along the road I expect, to greet glorious opportunities…” With a desolate bell—the dying sound of brass—he flew west…
I told this dream to an American who seemed more human than others; he pondered for a moment, then smiled and shouted loudly:
“Ah, I understand! The demon is an agent for a crematorium! It must be! Everything he said proves the necessity of cremating corpses… But, you know, what an outstanding agent! To serve his company, he even appears in people’s dreams…”