Part of Mother’s Day Week on Vulpes: a week of items on the themes of mothers and motherhood
The mother understood that the socialists had killed the Tsar. It had happened in the days of her youth; and people had then said that the landlords, wishing to revenge themselves on the Tsar for liberating the peasant serfs, had vowed not to cut their hair until the Tsar should be killed. These were the persons who had been called socialists. And now she could not understand why it was that her son and his friends were socialists. – Maksim Gorky, Mother, Chapter IV
At first, I put this down to a flawed English translation; for some reason Gorky suffers from this more than anyone else in the Russian canon. Then, as my Russian improved, I realised that it really was just that bad. The translation was closer to the original than I wanted to believe.
Oh, how I wanted to like Mother. The first and by far the best thing I ever read of Gorky’s was My Childhood, the first volume in his trilogy of memoirs. My Childhood is terrible in an entirely different way from Mother, or any of Gorky’s other mundanely terrible works. It is terrible in the sense of impressive. It’s a story of violence, sadness and degradation – not an uncommon story for the time and place – told in simple, beautiful language. It’s also atypical for Gorky, as I found out subsequently. Not the violence, sadness or degradation (all favourite themes of his), but the beauty.
From My Childhood I progressed to reading the short stories, which were fairly bad; then I tried and failed to enjoy Klim Samgin; and then I got to Mother, and that was the end of my travels with Gorky. I couldn’t bear it anymore.
What’s so bad about Mother? On first sight, it ought to be a thoroughly interesting work. Pelageya Nilovna Vlasova, the mother of the title, is a widow who was physically abused by her late husband. She and her son, Pavel, live in a town where life is dominated by the factory and its demands. Pavel becomes a socialist and gets involved in the wave of strikes leading up to the revolution of 1905; his mother, after her initial qualms, supports and even helps her son and his comrades, at great risk to herself. A novel like this, published only two years after the events of 1905, ought to be read. Unfortunately it isn’t very readable, or at least not anymore.
Poor Pelageya Nilovna emerges no better than one of Tolstoi’s peasants. So good and pure is she that she becomes an anti-character; a soft, malleable, colourless entity with no feelings other than love and fear. If Gorky intends to show us his understanding of women, he fails. This mother, held up to us as an example of Russian womanhood, is nothing more than the sum of her sufferings; it seems that her entire being depends on her menfolk. When she finally suffers the consequences for helping the socialists, her end seems inevitable rather than tragic. In a certain kind of bad novel the saintly always have to perish, and Mother is just that kind of bad novel.
As for Pavel, he’s merely rather bland and nothingy until he discovers socialism, at which point he becomes a complete prig.
The scheme of the novel as a whole is entirely simplistic. There are Good Men (almost always men) who are socialists, and who never drink or curse or play the accordion; and there are Bad Men, who do all of those things and are accordingly not socialists. Political novels are usually not very complex in terms of moral schemes, it’s true. After all, it’s art with a message to convey. But some politicised authors – Makayovsky, Borges, Zola – can be enjoyed regardless of the message and whether you agree with it. Mother is not one of those works. It’s all zeal and no beauty. Its impact – and at the time it made a considerable impact – is agitational and not artistic.
If you are by some chance interested in the forms and structures of political novels in the early twentieth century, Mother could be an interesting study for you. Otherwise, you’d be best advised to pick up Trotsky’s The Year 1905, which although it claims to be a work of history is in fact a very enjoyable novelistic account. Leave Mother on the shelf. And certainly don’t buy it for your own mother; she won’t thank you.
Mother is available in translation from the Echo Library, 288 pp. paperback, ISBN 1406833266
Splendid review. Thank you.
That’s one I won’t be hot-footing it to Amazon for. What a pleasant change. We need a few more hatchet jobs. They’re much easier on the old bank balance.
Of course, if you do want to look at “Mother”, you can find it on Project Gutenberg!
I really would recommend “My Childhood” though….
Great review – refreshingly frank!
Kirsty, this was excellent. Really interesting what you say about the characterisation and Gorky’s supposed ‘understanding of women’. Or, err, not.
But just to prove that bad reviews aren’t necessarily bad for sales, I now REALLY want to read this, just to see…
Looking forward to your brand new Russian Literature Tuesday on Vulpes!
And P.S This really made me laugh:
“There are Good Men (almost always men) who are socialists, and who never drink or curse or play the accordian; and there are Bad Men, who do all of those things and are accordingly not socialists. Political novels are usually not very complex in terms of moral schemes, it’s true. “
Really enjoyed reading the review. Never even heard of the author, and I always thought I was good on my Russian writers of yore.
Generally, can I say that it’d be good for reviewers to include in their reviews – good or bad, but perhaps especially so in negative reviews – quotes or evidence from the book? Just so that the redear of the review can decide for themselves whether or not they are being convinced by the argument.
Yes, I agree that ideally there should be citations, but unfortunately the scope of a blog review often doesn’t allow for it. This is why I tried to compromise by giving a little sample of Gorky’s deathless prose at the top of the piece!
Not sure why the scope of a blog review shouldn’t allow for snippets/quotes.
I didn’t think that example at the top was that bad! Perhaps it’s worse in context.
Well, I was trying to provide a concise response to “Mother” rather than an essay – of course, if I wrote an academic piece on Gorky I would back up every point with a reference or references. However, I’d be interested to know if other readers feel the lack of citations.
Never let it be said that Vulpes Libris cannot do negative reviews. This one was great! Very entertaining and I like the amused style.
People who complain about the lack of citations are just nit-picking. It’s fine the way it is.
LOLOL Kirsty – loved this. And a much better-backed up review that the piece I’m planning on my all-time hated classic….more anon.
“It’s all zeal and no beauty. Its impact – and at the time it made a considerable impact – is agitational and not artistic.”
This is interesting though, isn’t it? When you study a period it often seems to be the case the the lesser stuff can be more important or effective at the time. I wonder if this is sometime partly because – looking back – we confidently read all sorts of things about the time into a work – but at the time, the point really has to be rammed home for people to really get it.
Like agit-prop theatre.
I don’t think it’s nit-picking, Jackie (and, yanno, it’s generally considered polite to refer to someone by their name rather than as ‘people’). Aren’t quotes and citations or just little snippets appropriated into the flow of the review all a critic really has to back up their argument (something several of the bookfoxes do a lot), and then the reader can say, ‘Yes. You’ve convinced me,’ or otherwise. It’s a way of seeing whether you’re on the same wavelengh as the critic. Obviously there’s no hard and fast rules, and anyone can review a book however they please (and any reader of that review can review the review however they please without needing to be accused of nit-picking).
But, whatever.
All best, foxes!
LOL! Great stuff. we really should do a series on ‘crap books’…
Aha! Watch this space!
:)
Re. citations – I spotted Sam’s little comment on the Almost Moon piece – I am an academic myself and believe in citing in academic work. In my reviews, I believe in citing where it adds significantly to the review and will bring some interest to the reader. However, “Mother” is 288 pages of precisely what you see in that quotation at the top, interspersed with dialogue, like this:
“Yes, I’ll go to bed at once,” he assented. “Did you understand me?”
“I did,” she said, drawing a deep breath. Tears rolled down from
her eyes again, and breaking into sobs she added: “You will perish,
my son!”
Pavel walked up and down the room.
“Well, now you know what I am doing and where I am going. I told
you all. I beg of you, mother, if you love me, do not hinder me!”
“My darling, my beloved!” she cried, “maybe it would be better for
me not to have known anything!”
He took her hand and pressed it firmly in his. The word “mother,”
pronounced by him with feverish emphasis, and that clasp of the hand
so new and strange, moved her.
(Bless Gorky, he tries so hard…)
I think part of my brain may have died after reading that lot …
Hey Kirsty – just out of interest – how much of the stiltedness do you reckon is down to the translation? I know you said it was bad in the original. Does the datedness make sense viewed next to other stuff at the time or do you think it would always be creaking…?
I suppose it’s a stilted translation of genuinely bad Russian. Unfortunately I don’t have my Russian copy on hand, but I certainly remember not being much more impressed by the original… It is true that translations tend to date badly though, and if Gorky were as of much interest as other authors he might have other, smoother translations by now (in fact, perhaps he does, I tend to stick with the Russian).
Just spotted Kirsty’s little comment.
‘[t]hat clasp of the hand so new and strange…’
Lovely phrase! And clearly influenced by Shakespeare’s lines in The Tempest
Full fathom five thy father lies:
Of his bones are coral made:
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
As we all know, Shakespeare is saying that the sea changed Ferdinand’s body into something ‘rich and strange’. And here Gorky uses Shakespeare’s lines to show how a son’s touch – a touch as deep and as old as the sea, in its way – can also alter a mother’s soul into something ‘new and strange’. Well done, Gorky!
That’s reading a lot into one turn of phrase, Sam. For one thing, it’s “novoe i strannoe” – new and strange, not rich and strange. For another, I’m not sure whether the pre-Pasternak Russian translations of Shakespeare which Gorky may or may not have read translated that phrase exactly. I would look it up, but have no time for now. It’s lovely that you like Gorky, and I encourage you to read more of his. For all his flaws you don’t get much more canonical in Soviet literature.
Rosy, having just gone and read through some of the original online, the translation is dated but pretty close to the original. If anything, too literal. That’s the downfall of many translations from Russian – Nabokov’s translation of A Hero of our Time springs to mind, although at least he did it deliberately so as to highlight (according to him) Lermontov’s own bad writing.