Is Maxim Gorky outdated? Essay topics and thesis plans on the works of MGorky
Composition
Maxim Gorky admitted: “Before I start writing, I ask myself three questions: what I want to write, how to write and why to write. The words are beautiful, but was the writer always sincere in his choice? I recently learned that Gorky contributed large amounts into the Bolshevik party treasury and was one of the main ones, to put it modern language, their sponsors. I think that the proletarian origin of the writer, his wandering life from a young age and early acquaintance with revolutionaries contributed to the fact that Alexey Maksimovich became close friends with people who set out to completely change the world through violence. But these connections had a very strong impact on his work. There may be some things you like about any writer’s legacy and some things you don’t like. One will leave you indifferent, while the other will delight you. And this is even more true for the huge and varied creativity of M. Gorky. His early works - romantic songs and legends - are manifestations of real talent.
This is real art - the fabulous metaphorical nature of songs about the Falcon and the Petrel. Many expressions from them have entered our lexicon. “The madness of the brave is the wisdom of life!”, “He who is born to crawl cannot fly!” And others. The legends of Larry and Danko, taken separately, are excellent examples romantic fairy tale. Great master managed to combine them in one work - “Old Woman Izergil”, the heroine of which also seems to be taken from the legend. Central book M. Gorky for a long time The novel "Mother" was considered. The main evidence for this judgment was Lenin’s words about the timeliness of the novel, since many workers participated in the revolution unknowingly. But if artistic value literature can only be measured political orientation, it will die out, degenerate. And in this novel one feels that Gorky - outstanding writer. The pages devoted to Nilovna’s experiences, for example, are left very strong impression. The image of Paul seems quite popular. Thinking about the hatred of revolutionaries for the government, one is surprised at the mildness of the corresponding reaction. In a “cramped” prison they sit in cells of only three or four, read books, talk freely, receive broadcasts without restrictions. Immediately remembered scary pictures Stalin's camps, drawn in the works of Shalimov, Solzhenitsyn, Dombrovsky and others. We can compare it with what is happening now in our places of detention. And how do you think that such irreconcilable revolutionaries as Pavel Vlasov led the country to this... But the most important thing that makes the novel “Mother” unacceptable for us is its justification of the idea of violence, the need for revolutionary dictatorship. Poverty, illiteracy, and injustice had to be fought, but not with bloody terror. And not such representatives of the people as Gorky’s Satin (the play “At the Lower Depths”) or Chelkash (The Story “Chelkash”) should have been replaced by Gorky’s Artamonovs or Gordeevs (“The Artamonov Case”, “Foma Gordeev”). And this is exactly what happened. After the novel “Mother” the writer created many more outstanding works, for example, a trilogy about his life. But cooperation with the new government greatly harmed him. And I sometimes wonder how Gorky answered his three questions when he wrote about the work of prisoners on the White Sea-Baltic Canal? I am interested in reading books by Alexei Maksimovich. Those who say that it should be discarded as unnecessary are wrong. They see one bad thing in his work. His work was indeed controversial. However, as the Indian writer R. Tagore said, if you close the door to a lie, how will the truth enter it? Therefore, let's not close the doors, let time be the judge. But I think Gorky - great writer and earned the right to remain in people's memory forever.
ERA
To the 140th anniversary of his birth
In the essay “The Greatest in the World,” M. Osorgin wrote: “We have three world names in literature: Tolstoy (our pride), Dostoevsky (our misfortune) and Gorky (our topicality).” V. Rozanov echoes him, who in 1904 remarked: “Maxim Gorky is all modernity, and, moreover, only modernity.” These assessments, made during the heyday of the writer’s talent and after his death, actually coincide. Does this mean that Gorky in the 21st century will be perceived as a writer who was topical for his era and outdated today? Let us turn to another statement by M. Osorgin from the article “Maxim Gorky”: “Gorky was immeasurably broader and more independent in his views than political figure", therefore, "it is more correct to consider him not the last in a number of classics of the old type, but the first in the new literary period, the nature of which is not yet entirely definable.”
Gorky is a complex and contradictory figure, who cannot be known and assessed based on narrow personal preferences and political bias. The role of the writer in the literary process of the late nineteenth - first third of the twentieth centuries. and its significance today has only come to be viewed in a new way in the last twenty years. The second series has been published since 1995 Full meeting works of the writer (Letters in 25 volumes), published collective works“Unknown Gorky” (M., 1995), “M. Bitter. Unpublished correspondence" (Moscow, 1998, second ed., 2000), "Around the death of Gorky. Documents, facts, versions" (M., 2001), "Gorky and his correspondents" (M., 2005), "Publicism of M. Gorky in the context of history" (M., 2007), two volumes of the "Archive of A.M. Gorky”, dedicated to correspondence with R. Rolland and M.I. Budberg, six issues of “Gorky Readings”. The documentary materials published in them make it possible to recognize the new Gorky, without the textbook gloss and unjustified denigration.
Behind last years everything in Russia and abroad larger number scientists and writers turn to a complex, in many ways unique phenomenon called Maxim Gorky. We can say that his work is actually being studied anew. As a result, the understanding came that Gorky is one of the key figures in world literature of the twentieth century, without studying whose work it is impossible to understand the history, ideological and philosophical struggle and socio-cultural life of this period. The writer was concerned about questions about driving forces history, the purpose of man and the meaning of life, the relationship between the individual and the collective, faith and religion, freedom and necessity, humanism and cruelty continue to occupy the minds of people of the 21st century, because the world is once again on the verge of crisis and global change.
The feeling of the inexorability of impending cataclysms at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries led to a global reassessment of values. In philosophy and sociology, this was expressed in the development of Marxism, on the one hand, Nietzscheanism, on the other, and on the third, in an attempt to combine both. Hegel's prophecy of the end of history, Nietzsche's assertion that God was dead, and the Marxist "specter of communism" created an explosive mixture that exploded traditional views.
Characteristic feature early creativity Gorky is a synthesis of romanticism and realism. But not only. N. Mikhailovsky discovered “thin and sharp needles of decadence” in his stories; modern researcher M. Nike believes that Gorky “with his Nietzschean neo-romanticism” is close to his contemporaries - the modernists. True, he notes, “unlike Gorky, Nietzsche did not create new gods.” No matter what you call Gorky’s creative method, it is clear that he was innovative and laid the foundation literary direction, which in the 1930s. will be called socialist realism. By the way, they will name it without the participation of the writer, since he himself more often used the term “socialist romanticism.” Today the question arises again whether this method was the fruit of the “senile insanity” of M. Gorky (A. Sinyavsky), an invention of Stalinist officials or a new stage of evolution literary process in Russia of the twentieth century.
The revival of romanticism at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. observed not only in Russia, but also in the literature Western Europe. Speaking about the change in method that replaced the aristocratic cloak of Childe Harold with the democratic shirt of a peasant, the critic Vogüe wrote that “the revival of romanticism is taking place throughout Europe: Gorky, D’Annunzio, Rudyard Kipling, Hauptmann, Sienkiewicz - these are all brothers of one spiritual father- Nietzsche." A premonition of impending changes, the disintegration of stable social and family connections gave rise to the problem of “gathering the world” around a person and the search for a romantic ideal. In Russian literature of the early twentieth century, in connection with the global “revaluation of values,” the problem of personality became particularly acute. Some writers were attracted by the Nietzschean idea of a “true man”, living according to his own laws, free from all norms public life, others - I. Taine’s idea of an active personality overcoming the power of the environment, in conjunction with the teachings of K. Marx about man’s dependence on economic factors.
Gorky belonged to those writers who glorified an active person who devoted himself to the struggle for social justice and the reconstruction of life on more reasonable principles. However, he was undoubtedly attracted by the ideas of self-improvement, liberation of a person from the moral and ethical standards that constrained him, and most importantly - the idea of re-education of the individual or the birth of a “new man.” In other words, philosophically, the writer’s thought wandered between two extremes, trying to connect them together and find a synthesis. Gorky's concept of personality is formulated in his letters at the turn of the century. On November 24, 1899 he wrote to I.E. Repin: “I don’t know anything better, more complicated, more interesting than a person. He is everything. He even created God /…/ I am sure that man is capable of endless improvement, and all his activities will also develop with him, with him from century to century. I believe in the infinity of life, and I understand life as a movement towards the improvement of the spirit.” Note, not to improve the social system, but to improve the spirit and the person himself. This alone indicates that Gorky was not a devout Marxist. He directly admitted in a letter to A.M. Skabichevsky: “I am not a Marxist and will never be one.” True faith Gorky became a man with capital letters.
The Gorky program in the poem “Man,” with all its declarative rhetoric, does not at all resemble the slogans of socialists or the commandments of Zarathustra, but the universals of Reason, understood in the traditions of the philosophy of the Enlightenment. Considering history to be an evolutionary process, Gorky sincerely believed that human mind and will can change a lot in the development of life. Completely rejecting Gorky’s concept of the world and man, critics of the liberal camp declared the “end” of the writer, because the truth, in their opinion, is the knowledge of Divine Providence, and not the preaching of man-theism. D. Filosofov reproached Gorky for the fact that, “denying the immortal absolute personality,” he replaced the thirst for immortality with “a surrogate for faith in the future superman,” and advised him to turn to the Orthodox religion. However, the writer believed that a person of the future should have a different religion. The idea of religious renewal, popular among philosophers and writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was interpreted in its own way by Gorky. In the same 1906, when S. Bulgakov’s article “Karl Marx as religious type", he began writing in America the story "Mother", conceived as a new gospel for the proletariat. Speaking about Christianity, S. Bulgakov admitted that he had to “rethink this question as applied to such a complex, contradictory and at the same time significant current in the spiritual life of modern times as socialism, understood precisely as a manifestation of spiritual life.”
Gorky understood socialism as new religion, i.e. as a manifestation of spiritual life. Having become close to the Bolsheviks and since 1902 helping them in every possible way, he nevertheless did not become an orthodox Marxist. Gorky's "Mother" aroused criticism from V. Lenin precisely because the labor movement was portrayed in the story as the path to a new faith, and the characters resembled gospel saints. The stories “Mother” and “Confession” became a reflection of Gorky’s god-building views, which he became interested in after reading the works of A. Lunacharsky “Religion and Socialism” and “The Future of Religion.” Reflecting on the results of 1905, having become acquainted with various social democratic movements and the latest philosophical theories in Europe and America, Gorky comes to the conclusion that the very concept of “revolution” should be deepened and expanded, including the idea of spiritual renewal of man through a new religion. In the summer of 1906, Gorky listened to lectures in America by the famous pragmatist philosopher W. James, author of the book “The Variety of Religious Experience”, met Professor D. Dewey, physicist E. Rutherford, President Harvard University C. Eliot. Interest in the latter scientific discoveries and the newest religious movements intensified in Italy, where he became close to the so-called left Bolsheviks. Following A. Bogdanov, V. Bazarov, A. Lunacharsky and their like-minded people, Gorky is trying to master the new philosophical trends of the early twentieth century and connect socialism with God-building. He is fascinated by the idea of “gathering” the proletarians into a single powerful Man, becoming the “God of the people.”
Gorky's correspondence with A. Bogdanov and V. Bazarov, which became known at the very Lately, allows us to understand the deep origins of his disagreements with Lenin, which would become especially acute in the turbulent days of 1917-1918. Captivated by the theories of “empiriomonism,” Gorky was confident that the working masses would support Bogdanov and not Lenin. This explains his harsh assessments of the leader’s behavior and his book “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.” However, the workers sided with Lenin: the “Forward” group was declared anti-party, Bogdanov was expelled from the party’s Central Committee. Not having much understanding of the reasons for philosophical disagreements among Social Democrats, Gorky for a long time disliked various kinds of party “squabbles” and until his death he preferred to remain a “non-party Bolshevik.” Nevertheless, he did not abandon the ideas of socialism and proletarian collectivism.
In the years Soviet power Gorky’s concept of the world and man has changed, but its main components have remained the same: socialism as a condition for the spiritual flourishing of the individual, collectivism as the basis for success in work, the education of a new person and the dream of a harmonious structure of the world: the fight against nature, the “reforging” of criminals, the achievement of longevity. One of the themes of Gorky’s journalism was the justification of “proletarian humanism.” His reaction to A. Blok’s report “Heine in Russia” and the article “The Collapse of Humanism” is known, which spoke about the inevitable change in humanism in an era of whirlwinds and storms, when people enter the arena of history masses. Speaking at a discussion of the report on March 25, 1918 in World Literature, Gorky rethought Blok’s ideas, arguing that during the years of the revolution the traditional Christian idea would recede for a while. It was assumed that it would be replaced by a “new humanism”, which would later be called proletarian. Making sense of it in your own way philosophical theories XIX-XX centuries, Gorky, even before the October Revolution, thought about the collapse of humanism in the era of wars and revolutions.
In 1929, he wrote: “I am not a supporter of terror, but I cannot deny the human right to self-defense,” and in the 1934 article “Proletarian Humanism” (author’s title “Humanism of the Proletariat”) he argued: “Humanity cannot perish because that a certain insignificant minority of it has become creatively decrepit and is decaying from fear of life and from a painful incurable thirst for profit.” In the face of the growing threat of fascism, when Orthodox Church announced in the West crusade against the USSR, the defense of universal human values required severe ruthlessness towards enemies. Gorky’s statement “If the enemy does not surrender, he is destroyed” applied specifically to enemies, and not to innocently injured people. The cruel logic of “proletarian hatred” seemed to the writer the only possible one when the very principle of the existence of the USSR was threatened. However, theoretically recognizing the right to cruelty, Gorky nevertheless tried to contain the growing terror, saved many people from persecution and death, tried to reconcile Stalin with members of the opposition, and opposed the excesses of collectivization.
Search for synthesis, problem of renewal of man and his consciousness, idea religious revival characteristic not only of the end of the nineteenth century, but also of the beginning of the twenty-first century. Let us quote the statement of the Archbishop of Volokolamsk, Metropolitan Pitirim: “Russia seems to me to be an experimental field of the Creator. She's destined historical path synthesis. We synthesize all the time. In the 10th century we adopted Christianity and Byzantine culture V highest point its development. The first synthesis took place - our Slavic identity and Christianity. A state arose Kievan Rus. In the 13th century, Rus' was conquered by hordes of Mongol-Tatars. It was a disaster, but nevertheless she went through this test, having achieved some kind of new synthesis - she overcame fragmentation and learned to appreciate the powerful centralized state that became the beginning great empire. Then, under Peter the Great, we adopted European, Renaissance culture, again at the highest point of its development - and, as a result of the synthesis, Russian culture of the 19th-20th centuries arose. Finally, the years of Soviet power provided a certain synthesis of Marxism, European economic teachings with the original Russian ideal of community. Now Russia is on the threshold of some kind of new synthesis. That’s why it’s so important for us to know ourselves, to define our identity.”
Gorky truly became the first classic of a new direction in Russian literature. He tried to create a fundamentally different model of the world, which combined modern scientific theories with the eternal folk dream of happiness and a new life. Having gone through several stages of mastering traditional and avant-garde artistic systems, he came to approve a method based on a vision of reality from the heights of the ideals of the future. The writer's social romanticism, the synthesis of realism and modernism determined his innovation. The mythical Man with a capital “M” eventually turned into a real “ little man“Countries of the Soviets, and the “god-people” - into the people building socialism.
Nowadays, Gorky has begun to be recognized as a harbinger of the coming Russia, not only Soviet Russia. Congratulating him on his fiftieth birthday, R. Rolland wrote: “You were born at the end of winter and on the threshold of spring, at the time spring equinox. And this coincidence is quite symbolic, because your whole life is connected with the end of the old world and the emergence of a new world amid the storms. You were like a giant arch between these two worlds, between the past and the future, and to this day you serve as an arch between Russia and the West. I bow before the arch. It rises above the road. And those who come after us will see her for a long time, even when she remains far behind.”
Lydia SPIRIDONOVA, doctor philological sciences, manager Department for the Study and Publication of Gorky's Works at the IMLI RAS
Unknown letter from Gorky to an American correspondent
Mr. D.H. Holmes1.
Dear sir John Holmes, thank you, I received your book. This good gift both to me and to all people; The world rarely hears the voice of a man who thinks honestly.
Yes, of course, people could live by raping each other less cruelly and cynically than they do. It's time for all of us to be more intelligent, but the amount of intelligence in Europe does not seem to be increasing.
And when you remember that violence against a person causes in him a natural - for the purpose of self-defense - desire to rape his neighbors, life seems to be an ironic game of the Devil.
It's so strange that Messrs. politicians take so little account of the fact of growing cultural needs among the masses of the people and the fact of the ever-growing spontaneous desire of the masses for power.
It is absolutely clear that socialism is not a utopia, but a completely natural and inevitable result of all development European civilization, which has already developed to anti-cultural forms, to the complete subordination of the individual to the interests of the state, class, society, group.
After all, the basis of the “class struggle” is nothing more than the legitimate desire of a person, an individual, for freedom of cultural - spiritual - development, and socialism comes to the world in order to give a person more time and freedom for the development of his - human individuality.
It seems to me that European politicians do not understand at all the meaning of the visual lesson of history that was given to humanity by peasant Russia.
Once again, thank you for the book. When will it be released on English language mine, new2, I won’t fail to send it to you.
My warm regards.
4.VI.24. Sorrento
M. Gorky
1 John Haynes Holmes (1879-1964) - American romantic writer and religious leader, author of Marriage and Divorce (1913), Religion Today (1917), Churches New and Old (1922).
2 Book by M. Gorky “Stories of 1922-1924” published in English translated by M.I. Budberg in New York in April 1925
Estimate:
March 28 marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Maxim Gorky - a romantic, modernist, creator of the school of socialist realism and new faith, headed not by God, but by Man. On the meaning of the “proletarian writer” and his influence on modern culture Izvestia was told by the author of his biography, writer, literary critic Pavel Basinsky.
On the eve of the anniversary, a reissue of your book “Gorky. Passion according to Maxim." Do you think they haven’t died down yet?
- Gorky is one of the most complex personalities late XIX- first third of the twentieth century. Some people think that Alexey Maksimovich is underrated. Others argue that the name is overblown. Symbolist Dmitry Merezhkovsky wrote: “As a phenomenon artistic creativity Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are immeasurably more significant than Gorky. You can judge them by what they say; you can’t talk about Gorky: the most important thing is not what he says, but what he is.”
Not just a writer - a creator of a cultural and social situation. The one around whom time was seething. He found mutual language with Lenin and Rozanov, Tolstoy and Gapon. He was at the origins of the creation of leading literary organizations - the Writers' Union, the Literary Institute, the publishing houses "Znanie", "Parus", " World literature"... Through his efforts, writing became one of the main affairs of the country.
After all, first of all, whether you are Chekhov or Dostoevsky, bow to the publisher. Then they laughed at this, saying that the structures of the Writers' Union were a “writer's collective farm.” Nonsense: for the first time in the world, writers received government support. He returned to the USSR because he was allowed to develop himself as a cultural builder.
Alexei Maksimovich's active nature was cramped in emigration. As Vladislav Khodasevich, who lived in his house in Sorrento, correctly noted, Gorky “sold himself, but not for money.” It was not luxury that attracted him, but cultural trade. He was like this even before he left: opposition Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries, members of the imperial family, disgraced writers and artists visited his apartment on Kronverkskaya. They asked for everything: protection, patronage, housing, almost new pants...
Shklovsky joked that during the revolution we ate a great Russian writer: from 1917 to 1921, Alexei Maksimovich did not have time to work at all, he arranged some kind of salary, pulled him out of stories. Lenin, as a man of power, was irritated by this. By the way, he contributed to the writer’s departure to emigrate in 1921.
But Stalin correctly calculated that it would be more profitable to have a world-famous writer as a mouthpiece for the Soviet government?
Gorky was a huge celebrity: he had five nominations for Nobel Prize, on the occasion of the anniversary received congratulations from Stefan Zweig, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, John Galsworthy, H.G. Wells, Selma Lagerlöf... They did not skimp on privileges: the Ryabushinsky mansion, dachas in Gorki and Tesseli, son Maxim received racing car the latest brand, and went to Sorrento on a motorcycle. Of course, now Alexey Maksimovich was forced to fulfill some orders.
- Is this why they labeled him a “regime songwriter”?
Certainly, a trip to Solovki and the White Sea Canal are shameful pages of his biography. The writer understood everything perfectly: there is nothing good in keeping people in custody. Although mass executions on Mount Sekirka began later. And at the time of Gorky’s visit, the camp was exemplary: they held a theater there, published magazines and newspapers. But this did not stop Solovki from being a concentration camp.
Yes, Gorky wrote many articles glorifying power. But there is also a point here: we judge people of the past from today’s positions, already knowing what will happen. But they lived in their time. For example, he wrote about employees of punitive agencies. Now it seems - how could he?! But after the revolution and even in the first half of the 1930s, they were perceived as knights without fear or reproach. A man in a GPU-NKVD uniform with a mustache like Yagoda seemed like a hero. Such a “falcon” came into a restaurant, the women did not take their eyes off.
Political and social activism seems to have done a lot of harm to Gorky. Fyodor Sologub wrote about him: they say, talent is like an axe, you read and get annoyed... Or is this a compliment?
Of course, Gorky - great master, philosophical, precise, diverse. Great books - “The Life of Klim Samgin”, “Childhood”, “In People”, “My Universities”. “Chelkash” is wonderful. “Makar Chudra,” his first story, is an absolute masterpiece.
In my opinion, he is also excellent as a playwright. The play “At the Lower Depths,” which played out three hundred sold-out houses and 500 performances in a row at the Berlin Theater, was a breakthrough event in the history of the theater. But not because of the zipuns and rags: they appeared on stage already during the production of Leo Tolstoy’s “The Power of Darkness.” In fact, this is an existentialist thing, a game of social masks that are destroyed right before the viewer's eyes.
Baron, Kleshch, Tatar, Actor - they all find themselves in a situation where they social roles mean nothing, everyone is doomed. Gorky prophetically signs the verdict not only Tsarist Russia, but also the entire collapsing world civilization - and soon old world collapses, a new one appears.
The playwright poses a tough question: what is more important - compassion for a person or the truth about him? Luka, the hero of the “old formation,” tries to console, feeds him fairy tales, and tells the dying Anya that she will be fine in the next world. The actor writes about a hospital where they will cope with his illness. But it doesn't work! The appearance of the demonic Satin, a hostage in the mask of a sharper and a drunkard, who suddenly told the “truth”, was inspired by Luke. After all, it is Satin who pronounces the famous monologue: “Man, that sounds proud.” The actor can't stand it and hangs himself...
In general, Gorky is not an easy author; he requires some preparation as a reader. Some may be annoyed by his exaggerated modernist metaphors. As Korney Chukovsky wittily noted, he “reifies the spirit” and “spiritualizes matter.” “Song is like dirt”, “thoughts are like cockroaches” - this is exactly what Tolstoy and Bunin did not like. At the same time, both recognized that Gorky was a great master.
Bunin suspected Gorky of being pretentious: he was posing as a man from the crowd, and he also deliberately cast his face like a barge hauler.
Writers often don't like each other. But if the “barge hauler” had not published “ Antonov apples“, we would not have learned about the aristocrat Ivan Alekseevich for a long time. Of course, Gorky is a masked figure; this is generally characteristic of modernity. He wore a blouse and pretended to be “simple.” And at the same time, he was superbly educated: among the students of the Kazan Theological Seminary, the guy from the populist Derenkov’s bakery was a legend: he delivers buns in the morning and talks about Marx, Schopenhauer, Lavrov. For Alyosha Peshkov, breaking away from the crowd, not blending in with the masses, was a matter of principle; this is exactly what his story “In People” is about.
In the book, you present Alexei Maksimovich as the creator of a new, revolutionary religion, where the cornerstone was not God, but Man. What is this religion about? It is known that he was a Nietzschean.
- Gorky’s “Nietzscheanism” begins much earlier than he becomes acquainted with the works of the “Basel professor.” “Makar Chudra,” written in 1892, is one in the same “Untimely Reflections,” which were not translated into Russian at that time. The old gypsy says: “Go - and that’s all.” Don't stand in one place for a long time - what's in it? Just as they run day and night, chasing each other, around the earth, so you run away from thoughts about life, so as not to stop loving it.”
And Nietzsche writes about Hamlet: he thought about life, and life became disgusting. And only later Alexey Maksimovich read “The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music” and “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, and after the philosopher’s death he visited Germany and received a letter from Nietzsche’s sister Elisabeth with an invitation to visit her brother’s archive.
For Gorky, the important theme is not the superman, but superhumanity. The world, as God created it, seemed unfair to him: why do people suffer and die in it? And since the Creator abandoned us, we must become equal to him, take the reins of power into our own hands, and build heaven on earth. And not metaphorically, but quite practically.
He, for example, believed that death is meaningless, and people need to be made eternal, just as the Universe is eternal. Then it seemed achievable - faith in the power of science was strong. Philosopher and doctor Alexander Bogdanov conducted experiments with blood transfusions, believing that by constantly rejuvenating a person, one can make him eternal.
Thanks to Gorky’s initiative, the Institute of Experimental Medicine was created in the USSR, one of whose tasks was, if not the achievement of earthly immortality, then the maximum extension of human life. They wanted to create new people at a fundamentally different stage of development.
- More like witchcraft, mysticism than atheism.
It is difficult to say what Gorky himself believed in. In any case, he was not an atheist in the literal sense - if only because he was terribly worried about the question of God. “We came into the world to disagree,” a line from the lost early poem “The Song of the Old Oak.” But we can say without a shadow of a doubt: Peshkov-Gorky had some special intimate relationships with the devil. Memoirists testify: throughout his life, Gorky constantly cursed.
The concept of “devil” had many shades for him. But more often it was a term of endearment. “Bald devils”, “drape devils”, “you are such devils”, “the devil knows how great it is”. Of course, he was not a pagan in the exact meaning of the word; It’s just that everything twilight and mysterious invariably attracted his attention. However, this is typical for the turn of the century in general.
- Pagan, Nietzschean, proletarian writer, singer of the regime - who did he think he was?
- “Passing.” It is his own existential invention. Past the "people". Past the world. Past yourself. Not just passers-by, for whom everything flashing before their eyes is a familiar landscape; and not a wanderer seeking to retire after receiving food and lodging for the night. “Passing” is Miklouho-Maclay among his people. Its intelligentsia. Their priests. And their “masters of life”. He not only lives among people, including his compatriots, he continuously studies them as mysterious phenomenon. And here it is not so important who you are: the tramp and thief Chelkash or the writer and genius Tolstoy, the conservative Rozanov or the revolutionary Lenin, the defender of the people Korolenko or bloody dictator Stalin.
As Luke says in “At the Bottom”: “Not a single flea is bad: all are black, all jump...” But here is Satin’s objection: “Everything is in man, everything is for man!.. Man.” -century! It's great! It sounds... proud! Human! We must respect the person!” Gorky’s view of man lies roughly between these two poles...
Izvestia Help
Writer, literary critic and critic Pavel Basinsky graduated from the Gorky Literary Institute in 1986.
Member of the Union Russian writers. Member of the permanent jury of the Alexander Solzhenitsyn Prize. Author of a biography of Maxim Gorky, published in 2005. Laureate national award"Big Book".
Gorky is a writer far from being as clear-cut as literary historians imagined him to be for a long time. At all stages of his creative path, two tendencies were combined in him, sometimes opposing, sometimes forming unity - philanthropy and open ideology. The predominance of a concrete social, proletariat-oriented view in a certain period of time (after the revolution of 1905) was extended to all creativity, and Gorky entered the consciousness of many generations mainly as a writer socialist realism. Creative path Gorky begins in 1892 with the story “Makar Chudra”. The works of the 90s are characterized by a romantic attitude, the image of a hero striving for freedom. True, during this period freedom was understood by Gorky as independence from society. But romantic hero was supposed to “strengthen a person’s will to live, arouse in him a rebellion against reality, against all its oppression.” At the turn of the century comes new period in the works of Gorky. In 1899, the novel “Foma Gordeev” was published, which implemented the principles critical realism. Gorky turns to drama ("Philistines", "At the Lower Depths", "Summer Residents", "Children of the Sun", "Barbarians"). He is interested in the topic of the intelligentsia. After the revolution of 1905, Gorky wrote the novel “Mother” and the play “Enemies”, in which the features of the new creative method- socialist realism. From 1906 to 1913, Gorky lived in Capri, where he became interested in the theory of god-building, in which socialism turned into a new religion based on faith in the inevitable triumph of socialist ideas, and the people became god-builders. The creativity of this period is very fruitful - the story “The Town of Okurov”, the novel “The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin”, the plays “The Last” and “Vassa Zheleznova”, the satirical “Russian Fairy Tales”. Returning to Russia in 1913, Gorky, until 1921, experienced, together with the country, the cataclysms of the First World War, revolution, civil war. “Tales of Italy”, “Across Rus'”, “Childhood”, “In People” were written before the revolution. From October 1917 to June 1918 in the newspaper " New life» articles are published under common name « Untimely thoughts" In them, Gorky criticizes the negative phenomena that the revolution brought with it. From the perspective of a humanist writer, he evaluates the terrible facts of violence against human life created by “anarcho-communists”. From 1921 to 1929, Gorky lived in Italy, where “My Universities”, “The Artamonov Case” were written, and the epic “The Life of Klim Samgin” began. During the same period, the writer worked on literary portraits L. Tolstoy, Chekhov, Korolenko and others. In 1931, Gorky returned to the USSR, spent a very great job on the preparation of the First All-Union Congress Soviet writers, which marked the beginning of the unification of literature, its reduction stylistic diversity to socialist realism.
Is Gorky outdated? essays, urgently needed and strongly
Answers:
Gorky is a writer far from being as clear-cut as literary historians imagined him to be for a long time. At all stages of his creative path, two tendencies were combined in him, sometimes opposing, sometimes forming unity - philanthropy and open ideology. The predominance of a concrete social, proletariat-oriented view in a certain period of time (after the revolution of 1905) was extended to all creativity, and Gorky entered the consciousness of many generations mainly as a writer of socialist realism. Gorky's creative path begins in 1892 with the story "Makar Chudra". The works of the 90s are characterized by a romantic attitude, the image of a hero striving for freedom. True, during this period freedom was understood by Gorky as independence from society. But the romantic hero had to “strengthen a person’s will to live, arouse in him a rebellion against reality, against all its oppression.” At the turn of the century, a new period begins in Gorky’s work. In 1899, the novel “Foma Gordeev” was published, implementing the principles of critical realism. Gorky turns to drama ("Philistines", "At the Lower Depths", "Summer Residents", "Children of the Sun", "Barbarians"). He is interested in the topic of the intelligentsia. After the revolution of 1905, Gorky wrote the novel “Mother” and the play “Enemies”, in which the features of a new creative method - socialist realism - appeared. From 1906 to 1913, Gorky lived in Capri, where he became interested in the theory of god-building, in which socialism turned into a new religion based on faith in the inevitable triumph of socialist ideas, and the people became god-builders. The creativity of this period is very fruitful - the story “The Town of Okurov”, the novel “The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin”, the plays “The Last” and “Vassa Zheleznova”, the satirical “Russian Fairy Tales”. Returning to Russia in 1913, Gorky, until 1921, experienced, together with the country, the cataclysms of the First World War, revolution, and civil war. “Tales of Italy”, “Across Rus'”, “Childhood”, “In People” were written before the revolution. From October 1917 to June 1918, the newspaper “New Life” published articles under the general title “Untimely Thoughts.” In them, Gorky criticizes the negative phenomena that the revolution brought with it. From the position of a humanist writer, he evaluates the terrible facts of violence against human life committed by “anarcho-communists.” From 1921 to 1929, Gorky lived in Italy, where “My Universities”, “The Artamonov Case” were written, and the epic “The Life of Klim Samgin” began. During the same period, the writer worked on literary portraits of L. Tolstoy, Chekhov, Korolenko, etc. In 1931, Gorky returned to the USSR and did a lot of work preparing the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, which marked the beginning of the unification of literature, reducing its stylistic diversity to socialist realism.
