Gorky. His Literary Development and Influence on Soviet Intellectual Life by Irwin Weil (review)

1967 BOOK REVIEWS 323 works (so far unpublished) will have become accessible. However, there is enough now at hand to direct new attention to one of the early urban prose writers and stage practitioners of depth psychology who intuitively probed what his fellow Viennese, Freud, researched analytically. Professor Allen's bibliography will be a welcome tool. Clearly and practically organized, it lists all of Schnitzler's writings and the major secondary literature about him through 1965 in German, English, and French. It is as complete as can be expected with the resources of American library facilities and the assistance of European correspondents. It is not fully annotated but, whenever Allen makes capsule judgments, they are helpful and to the point. The major value of this admirable bibliography lies in its intelligent organization. It should be a boost to future Schnitzler research. CLAUDE HILL Rutgers University GORKY. HIS LITERARY DEVELOPMENT AND INFLUENCE ON SOVIET INTELLECTUAL LIFE, by Irwin Weil, Random House, New York, 1966, 238 pp. Price $2.25. Many Western Slavists are disinclined to take Gorky too seriously as an artist. Hitherto they have tended to concentrate on two aspects of the writer: his eventful life and the socio-political import of his fiction. Professor Weil attempts to remedy this situation by making it his central concern to pass a balanced esthetic judgment. In addition, he attempts the no less difficult task of assessing Gorky's influence on Soviet literature and intellectual life. There are many perceptive observations. While noting, for example, Gorky's discomfort in the Marxist straitjacket, Weil rightly emphasizes that his artistic failings are to be explained primarily by factors other than his deep political engagement. Particularly impressive is his treatment of Gorky's relations with the Symbolists and of the attitude to women which he displays in his fiction, though the reference to a "Turgenev-like note" (p. 42) seems hardly appropriate. I would not entirely agree with the view of Gorky's literary development as a process of gradual improvement leading to the production of his best work during the second and third decades of the twentieth century (p. 32). Few would contest the pre-eminent position given to the autobiographical trilogy and portraits of contemporaries, but the early stories, I feel, are undervalued. Conversely, there seems to be a certain reluctance to concede that Gorky never really succeeded in overcoming the difficulties of integration and unity which he experienced in the novel. Throughout he failed to discover an adequate fictional substitute for his own persona, which in the trilogy enabled him to weld an immense diversity of material into an esthetically successful whole. The Lower Depths is the only play analysed in detail. Here Wei! wisely sidesteps almost as an irrelevance the vexed question of Gorky's position vis-a-vis Luka and Satin (which, as is well known, changed considerably over the years). When summarising Stanislavsky's attitude to the play, however, he appears to misconstrue his statement that art and "tendency" (tendentiousness) are incompatible . "Tendency" is synonymous here not with "socio-political material," as Weil seems to suggest, but with an absence of genuine sympathy with or feeling for that material on the part of the actor. For Stanislavsky the whole problem was one of correct psychological preparation and adjustment. Wei! is probably right in arguing that Gorky's influence on Soviet intellectual life was, on the whole, beneficial, though one wonders whether Soviet writers would not eventually have discovered the classic without his assistance. More- 324 MODERN DRAMA December over, was Gorky really so naive that with all his knowledge of Stalin he failed to perceive the inevitable consequences of establishing the Union of·Soviet Writers and formulating a single binding literary method? Apart from such details as the reference to Chekhov as "the old doctor" (p. go), I would also quibble at the occasional violence which Wei! commits on the English language, e.g. "autodidact" (p. 21, etc.), "simplistic" (p. 55), "memoiristic" (p. 74, etc.), "defigurement" (p. 151). This critical jargon is an unfortunate blemish on what is the best book available on Gorky's literary development in either English or Russian. JAMES B. WOODWARJ) University College of Swansea THE...