„Kochajcie pracę! Żadna siła nie czyni człowieka ani wielkim, ani mądrym tak, jak czyni to właśnie praca.“
Źródło: Nic, co ludzkie… Aforyzmy, sentencje i przysłowia, oprac. Henryk Jurand, LSW, 1982, s. 64.
Data urodzenia: 16. Marzec 1868
Data zgonu: 18. Czerwiec 1936
Maksim Gorki, ros. Максим Горький; właściwie Aleksiej Maksimowicz Pieszkow, ros. Алексей Максимович Пешков – rosyjski pisarz i publicysta. Wybitna postać rosyjskiego modernizmu okresu srebrnego wieku. Uważany za inicjatora socrealizmu w literaturze. Pierwszy przewodniczący Związku Pisarzy ZSRR w latach 1934–1936.
Źródło: Nic, co ludzkie… Aforyzmy, sentencje i przysłowia, oprac. Henryk Jurand, LSW, 1982, s. 64.
Bywszyje ludi. (ros.)
Znaczenie: lumpenproletariat.
Źródło: tytuł opowiadania z 1897
Źródło: Księga toastów i humoru biesiadnego, wybór i oprac. Leszek Bubel, wyd. Zamek, Warszawa 1995, s. 150.
Źródło: Proletariacki humanizm, cyt. za: Slavoj Žižek, Rewolucja u bram, s. 439.
Czudaki ukraszajut mir. (ros.)
Źródło: Opowieść o nieodwzajemnionej miłości (1923)
Czełowiek – eto zwuczit gordo. (ros.)
słowa Satina.
Źródło: Na dnie (1902), akt 4
Untimely Thoughts (1917-18) (original: Наиболее успешно и могуче будит в нашей душе ее добрые начала сила искусства. Как наука является разумом мира, так искусство — сердце его.)
Kontekst: The good qualities in our soul are most successfully and forcefully awakened by the power of art. Just as science is the intellect of the world, art is its soul.
The character "Luka" in The Lower Depths (1902) English translation by Laurence Irving (1912)
Kontekst: Some one has to be kind, girl — some one has to pity people! Christ pitied everybody — and he said to us: "Go and do likewise!" I tell you — if you pity a man when he most needs it, good comes of it. Why — I used to be a watchman on the estate of an engineer near Tomsk — all right — the house was right in the middle of a forest — lonely place — winter came — and I remained all by myself. Well — one night I heard a noise — thieves creeping in! I took my gun — I went out. I looked and saw two of them opening a window — and so busy that they didn't even see me. I yell: "Hey there — get out of here!" And they turn on me with their axes — I warn them to stand back, or I'd shoot — and as I speak, I keep on covering them with my gun, first on the one, then the other — they go down on their knees, as if to implore me for mercy. And by that time I was furious — because of those axes, you see — and so I say to them: "I was chasing you, you scoundrels — and you didn't go. Now you go and break off some stout branches!" — and they did so — and I say: "Now — one of you lie down and let the other one flog him!" So they obey me and flog each other — and then they began to implore me again. "Grandfather," they say, "for God's sake give us some bread! We're hungry!" There's thieves for you, my dear! [Laughs. ] And with an ax, too! Yes — honest peasants, both of them! And I say to them, "You should have asked for bread straight away!" And they say: "We got tired of asking — you beg and beg — and nobody gives you a crumb — it hurts!" So they stayed with me all that winter — one of them, Stepan, would take my gun and go shooting in the forest — and the other, Yakoff, was ill most of the time — he coughed a lot... and so the three of us together looked after the house... then spring came... "Good-bye, grandfather," they said — and they went away — back home to Russia... escaped convicts — from a Siberian prison camp... honest peasants! If I hadn't felt sorry for them — they might have killed me — or maybe worse — and then there would have been a trial and prison and afterwards Siberia — what's the sense of it? Prison teaches no good — and Siberia doesn't either — but another human being can... yes, a human being can teach another one kindness — very simply!