Makars Dream And Other Stories

Author : Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 251 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (932 download)

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Download or read book Makar's Dream and Other Stories written by Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko and published by . This book was released on 2020-10-03 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE writings of Vladimir Korolenko have been likened to "a fresh breeze blowing through the heavy air of a hospital." The hospital is the pessimistic literature of the modern Russian intellectuals; the fresh breeze is the voice of the simple-hearted children of "Mother Russia." These are for the most part tillers of the soil and conquerors of waste places; peasants, pioneers, and Siberian exiles; they often belong to the great class of "the insulted and the injured": they suffer untold hardships, but their heads are unbowed and their hearts are full of courage and the desire for justice. Among them the great writer's early life was spent.Korolenko was released from exile in 1885, and immediately on his return to Russia published his beautiful "Makar's Dream."The success of the story was immediate, the fame of the author was at once assured. No politics, no social doctrines were here; the appeal of Makar's plea was universal; liberal and conservative critics alike united in a chorus of praise. The Russian reading public was charmed by the originality of the subject, the radiant conciseness of the author's style, and the lyric beauty of the story's end which illuminates with deep significance every detail that has gone before. Poor Makar, most lonely dweller in the Siberian forest, leading a life of incredible labour and hardship, finally dies, and for his sins is condemned at the Judgment of the Great Toyon, or Chief, to suffer in the life hereafter sorrows and toil more grievous than any he has known on earth. Here is the type of "the insulted and the injured" beloved of Dostoievsky and Tolstoi, but with one supreme difference: Makar does not suffer misfortune in passive dejection, he protests. He protests indignantly against the injustice of the judgment of the Great Toyon. Life for him has been desperately hard; it is unjust to judge him by the standards set for the righteous whom the Toyon loves, "whose faces are bathed in perfume and whose garments are sewn by other hands than their own." This protest, combined with a warm love for all humanity, was to become the keynote of Korolenko's writings.The Russian heart is essentially charitable and full of human kindness. Thoroughly democratic in their relations with one another, the Russian people have the misfortune to labour under the harshest political régime in Europe. Like many of his countrymen, Korolenko now devotes his life to the cause of the suffering and the downtrodden, and to helping those who are the victims of social and political injustice.