Klim samghin story. Gorky "Klim Samghin"

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“The Life of Klim Samgin (Forty Years)”- a chronicle novel, the largest, final work of Maxim Gorky. Comprises four parts. The fourth part is a little unfinished and not edited by the author. The novel was written from 1925 until Gorky's death in 1936 (the first part - 1926, the second - 1928, the third - 1930, the fourth - 1936).

The idea of the novel

M. Gorky spoke about the concept of the work “The Life of Klim Samgin” in 1931 at a meeting of the editorial board of the publishing house of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions:

I started this book a long time ago, after the first revolution of the fifth-sixth year, when the intelligentsia, who considered themselves revolutionary - they actually took some actual part in organizing the first revolution - in the seventh-eighth years began to sharply go to the right. Then a cadet collection appeared “Vekhi” and a whole series of other works that pointed out and proved that the intelligentsia and the working class and the revolution in general are not on the same road. I had a desire to give a figure of what, in my opinion, is a typical intellectual. I knew them personally and quite large quantities, but, in addition, I knew this intellectual historically, literary, I knew him as a type not only of our country, but also of France and England. This type of individualist, a person of necessarily average intellectual abilities, devoid of any bright qualities, is found in literature throughout the 19th century. We had this guy too. The man was a member of a revolutionary circle, then entered the bourgeois statehood as its defender. You probably don’t need to be reminded that the intelligentsia who live in exile abroad, slander the Union of Soviets, organize conspiracies and generally engage in villainy, this intelligentsia in the majority consists of the Samgins. Many of the people who are now slandering us in the most cynical way were people whom I was not the only one who considered very respectable... You never know there were people who turned around and for whom social revolution was organically unacceptable. They considered themselves a supra-class group. This turned out to be wrong, because as soon as what happened happened, they immediately turned their backs to one class and their faces to the other. What else can I say? I wanted to portray such an intellectual in the person of Samgin average cost, which goes through a whole range of moods, looking for the most independent place in life, where he would be comfortable both materially and internally.

Plot

For the foreign press, M. Gorky wrote the following note about “The Life of Klim Samgin” in the form of an editorial preface:

In his new novel, M. Gorky set himself the task of depicting as fully as possible the forty years of Russian life, from the 80s to 1918. The novel should have the character of a chronicle that will mark all the most major events these years, especially the years of the reign of Nicholas II. The action of the novel is in Moscow, St. Petersburg and the provinces; representatives of all classes act in the novel. The author intends to give a series of characters of Russian revolutionaries, sectarians, declassed people, etc.

At the center of the novel is the figure of a “reluctant revolutionary”, out of fear of the inevitable revolution - the figure of a man who feels like a “victim of history.” The author considers this figure to be typical. There are many women in the novel, a number of small personal dramas, pictures of the Khodynka disaster, January 9, 1905 in St. Petersburg, the Moscow uprising, etc. until the attack on St. Petersburg by General. Yudenich. The author introduces episodically characters: Tsar Nicholas II, Savva Morozov, some artists, writers, which, in his opinion, gives the novel partly the character of a chronicle.

3.074. Maxim Gorky, “The Life of Klim Samgin”

Maxim Gorky (Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov)
(1868-1936)

Russian writer and public figure Maxim Gorky (real name Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov) (1868-1936) became famous for his many plays, essays, stories, fairy tales, autobiographical trilogy, novels “Foma Gordeev”, “Mother”, etc.

The writer considered his main work to be the novel “The Life of Klim Samgin” (1925-36, unfinished), which was repeatedly included in the 20th century. in the 100 most significant books in the world.

In 1902, M. Gorky was elected an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences, but at the request of Nicholas II, the elections were declared invalid, after which A.P. Chekhov and V.G. Korolenko left the Academy in protest.

IN Soviet Russia, and then in the USSR Gorky founded the publishing houses “Academia” and “ World literature", magazines "Chronicle", "Our Achievements", "Abroad", "Literary Study", book series "Life wonderful people", "Poet's Library", "History of factories and factories", "History civil war", established the Institute of World Literature and Literary Institute, organized and headed the Union of Writers of the USSR (1934).

"The Life of Klim Samgin"
(1925-1936, unfinished)

Experts call M. Gorky’s largest, “farewell” work a multifaceted epic novel, philosophical story, « ideological novel in the highest sense of the word, revealing the thoroughly ideological life of society in the twentieth century,” a hidden autobiography of the writer (far from reality), a modernist work, etc.

Original title The book in which Gorky intended to depict “thirty years of the life of the Russian intelligentsia” was “The History of an Empty Soul.”

Later the novel received the name “40 Years” with the subtitle: “Trilogy. The life of Klim Samgin. About the “testament”, on which he worked for twelve years (1925-36), Gorky said: “I cannot help but write “The Life of Klim Samgin”... I do not have the right to die until I do this.”

The novel was published in parts and separate publications in 1927-1937 in the publishing house "Book", as well as in central, republican and regional newspapers and magazines.

The work aroused the most controversial assessments and gave rise to many heated and lengthy debates, which is not surprising - one can find confirmation of any point of view in it, because he absorbed all their conceivable multitude.

The setting of the novel is Russia (St. Petersburg, Moscow, province) and Europe (Geneva, Paris, London); time - from 1877 to 1917. The main characters are revolutionaries of all stripes (including those with the prefix “pseudo”), atheist philosophers and women of every taste.

Central character, who perceives and interprets all events in his own way, is Klim Samgin.

The action begins with the fact that the Samgin liberals gave birth to a second son, who, after going through a dozen names, incl. and the heroic Samson and Leonid, called “peasant” - Klim.

Poor in health, the child grew up in an intelligentsia atmosphere, in a family whose members suffered for their beliefs - they were arrested, imprisoned, and exiled. The boy’s social circle included the children of Varavka’s lodger, Lydia and Boris, and several other children. A noticeable mark on the soul of the young contemplator of life was left by home teacher Tomilin, who uttered aphorisms like “for the cause of freedom, the vices of a despot are much less dangerous than his virtues.” The words of the teacher “a person is free only when he is alone” became Samghin’s credo.

Having instilled in Klim from a young age the conviction of the extraordinary nature of his mind, his family had no idea that by instilling in him the desire to be original and “invent” himself, they had doomed Samghin to loneliness and spiritual emptiness. Klim did not have enough original intelligence to enter the gymnasium - his grandfather, the Real Old Man, helped him get a job at the school. Boris Varavka went to study in Moscow, military school.

Accustomed to observing adults, Klim learned early that they were not living in truth, being hypocrites and deceiving each other. He saw how his mother was “confused” either with Tomilin or with Varavka, which is why Klim’s father left the family and went to Vyborg.

The breakup of the family evoked only one consoling thought in the boy, addressed to his mother: “She is still ashamed.” The boy saw a fierce quarrel in the family of Doctor Somov, as a result of which the doctor’s wife went crazy and committed suicide, and the doctor shot himself at her grave.

Klim survived the death of his grandmother, who “didn’t upset anyone, and even turned out to be useful for him: his mother gave him his grandmother’s cozy room with a window into the garden and a fine white tiled stove in the corner.”

In short, Samghin saw around him only idle talk, seasoned with beautiful words about the good of the people, animal fear of these people, boredom, dullness, drunkenness and debauchery. All this fed him and “charged” him for the rest of his life.

In the class, Klim saw himself much smarter than his peers, especially since he saw only shortcomings in them. When Boris Varavka was expelled from the school for refusing to hand over his guilty comrades, and he returned home, Samghin’s pride was extremely wounded by the fact that his childhood friend was capable of such an act.

One Sunday, the teenagers went to the skating rink that had just been cleared near the city riverbank. While skating, Boris and his girlfriend fell through thin ice. Klim threw the belt to his friend, but when the ice began to crumble, he fearfully let go of his end, and Boris drowned.

It was then that someone asked a question that had tormented Samghin all his life: “Yes - was there a boy, maybe there wasn’t a boy?”

For seven weeks Klim lay in bed in the heat. With this, the first chapter, occupying one twentieth of the novel, in which out of three dozen characters, five died or committed suicide by the end of it, ended, and ahead of the hero there was a meeting with at least 770 more characters.

In the third and fourth parts of the novel, the action was transformed into Samghin’s continuous internal monologue, “a stream of thoughts and memories.”

We deliberately stopped at the first chapter, because... in it, Gorky laid down the collisions of the novel and the character of Samghin, which can be exhausted in two words - indifference and conformism, pointed out the wormhole that would sharpen his mind and will, soul and heart.

Accustomed to looking at himself as a unique being, destined for “higher” activities, Klim was forced to look for a position that would provide him with both “visibility” and “independence.”

Being an outside, cold observer of life, Samghin became a sliver in the whirlpool of history. His words, actions, and even more so his thoughts, which are cramped in the novel, did not change anything in life. No matter what theories Klim came up with, no matter what parties he adhered to, everything went regardless of his choice, although he made this choice like a chameleon without fail, all the time staying “afloat”.

What did our hero face next? After high school, first loves and disappointments, Samghin fell into the circle of capital students. “Umnik” had to move among revolutionaries and decadents, among merchants and musicians, anarchists and aristocrats, to participate in disputes about Slavophiles and Westerners, Russia and Europe - about everything and nothing. Samghin sensitively captured and remembered other people's thoughts, quotes, aphorisms, from which, like bricks, he built a worldview convenient for communicating with other people, which, however, never became his own.

Once in Moscow, Klim encountered the same talking shop and drunkenness, the same people only under different names. The tragedy on Khodynka, in which his friends died, diversified his existence, but it did not touch the depths of his soul. Klim was also cold in love.

IN Nizhny Novgorod Samghin got a job at the newspaper, his contacts with revolutionaries caused a search of his apartment, an arrest, conversations with gendarmes, an offer to become a spy, which he, tormented by doubts, refused. Trips to Moscow, Astrakhan, Georgia, to the village where the robberies of landowners began, to Staraya Russa, St. Petersburg filled his life with impressions as gray as dust, and the reader was presented with a wide panorama of pre-revolutionary Russia.

After Bloody Sunday on January 9, 1905 in St. Petersburg, Samghin found himself in prison on suspicion of revolutionary activities, then, unwillingly, participated in revolutionary events, towards whom he soon began to experience panic fear. The duality of existence led to split consciousness, monstrous nightmares, dreams and visions, and the appearance of numerous “doubles.”

Having experienced the death of his father, wife, many acquaintances, having experienced hobbies and disappointments, positioning himself above others, but also realizing his own inferiority (“essentially, I am mediocre”), not joining anyone and pushing everyone away from himself, Klim has not changed anything in my life, which was only a shadow of the real one.

Every time Samghin’s encounter with life ended with the feeling that “reality was humiliating him and trying to crush him.” Paying tribute to decadence, Klim became an apologist for the dictatorship of the leader, an aristocrat of spirit, which once again confirmed his own bias.

Abroad, Samghin also did not find anything new. Everywhere he was fatally alone. First World War exacerbated his hypochondria and isolation. February Revolution brought an end to his searches and doubts.

Gorky was going to put an end to Samgin (drafts have been preserved), but did not do so - and not because he did not have time, but most likely because Samghin was like social type turned out to be surprisingly tenacious and would have fit well into the next one - Soviet life.

Roman became beautiful illustration theses by F.M. Dostoevsky - “there is nothing more offensive to a person of our time and tribe than to tell him that he is not original, weak in character, without special talents and an ordinary person.” Gorky dedicated his entire book to this.

“I wanted to portray Samghin as an intellectual of average value who goes through a whole series of moods, looking for the most independent place in life, where he would be comfortable both financially and internally,” said the author.

As for the antithesis “hero - people” - it is fully revealed by the answer of the Real Old Man. To the question of a grandson who saw at the fair “an abundance of half-drunk, very cheerful and good-natured people.

And where is real people who groans through the fields, along the roads, through prisons, through prisons, spending the night under a cart in the steppe?

The old man laughed and said, waving his stick at the people:

That’s what he is, you fool!”

ABOUT key phrase- “Was there a boy?” - it’s worth saying especially. Although many researchers of the writer’s work thread their reasoning onto it like a skewer, these words are nothing more than a refrain of the internal monologue of the hero, tormented by remorse since childhood. It is unlikely that irrational and metaphysical depths are hidden behind it, from the bottom of which a thousand and one critics make their way to the top.

The main theme of the book was the search for the reasons for the collapse great country Russian Empire. The writer named, among others, two that are still relevant today: liberal fermentation in the educated strata of society and the entry into the political arena of a whole layer of “educated people” who are very concerned about satisfying their own ambitions.

M. Gorky argued that hidden meaning Only his descendants can comprehend his novel. Having the habit of reading, descendants need only read one and a half thousand pages to understand the meaning of this book. And although, in the words of one of the heroines of the novel, “it’s a strange habit to read; it’s like living at someone else’s expense,” this habit, thank God, has not yet been listed as harmful by the latest “culture legislators.”

In 1987, a 14-episode television film of the same name directed by V. Titov was released, which adequately conveyed the atmosphere of the novel.

Original published: Translator: