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PREFACE
cure work for himself for a season. He had the true soul of a peasant.
Later he falls, like the others, under the spell of this easy, free life, and one feels that Iakov will never more return to the village.
In Gorky's eyes, his work is tainted by a capital vice. It is unsuited to producing the joy that quickens. Humanity has forgotten joy; what has he done beyond pitying or rallying suffering? . . . These reflections haunt him, and this doubt of his beneficent efficacy imparts extreme sadness to his genius.
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