Except for the close student of Russian literature the chief interest of Maxim Gorky's notes and reminiscences of Tolstoy lies not in their biographical value but in their vivid and moving account of the effect made upon one great intellect by another. The short volume makes no pretense of introducing the newcomer to the life and character of Tolstoy; it is an intimate collection of personal experiences, conversations and impressions intended only to throw a little further light upon the somewhat obscure genius of a man whose works have already won him his place among the world's immortals of literature and thought.

For the most part the book is composed of fragments dealing with a wide variety of subjects, stray bits of Tolstoy an philosophy and opinion, little anecdotes, and casual impressions a gathered together with no attempt to make a unified whole. But through it all there runs the ever recurring effort of Gorky to classify Tolstoy and to determine if possible what manner of man he was. With the simplicity and unselfconsciousness of the Russian, Gorky bares his own soul in the hope that the world may see the effect that the great man made upon him. At times he believes that Tolstoy is actually not man but god, and it is this belief which he seems most anxious to have verified. And so it is that he closes his volume of reminiscences: "And I, who doe not believe in God, looked at him for some time very cautiously, and a little timidly. I looked and thought: This man is god-like."

Yet at other times Gorky cannot reconcile this god-like side with his coarse peasant brutality or his willingness to lower himself to the level of other men. "Sometimes he seems conceited and intolerant like a Volga preacher, and this is terrible in a man who is the sounding bell of the world." If Tolstoy had let him, Gorky would have worshipped him; as it was he feared, despised, worshipped all at once, but fundamentally he was ever somewhat overawed by the realization that Tolstoy was a genius and a superman. "I saw him once as perhaps no one has ever seen him. He was sitting with his head on his hands, the wind blowing the silvery hairs of his beard through his fingers; he was looking into the distance out to sea. . . . In the musing motionless of the old man I felt something fateful, magical, something which went down into the darkness beneath him and stretched up like a search light into the blue emptiness above the earth."

Gorky in his few pages gives a master ful picture of the man Tolstoy as he saw him and knew him. It is always honest and sincere, a revelation, straight from the heart of the impression left by the overwhelming genius of Tolstoy upon a write and thinker of his own time and country. R. E.