Early romantic work of M. Gorky. Gorky's early romantic works Gorky's return to the USSR

Early work of M. Gorky

M. Gorky entered literature on the verge of two historical eras; he seemed to combine these two eras in himself. The time of moral turmoil and disappointment, general discontent, mental fatigue - on the one hand, and the maturation of future events that have not yet been openly manifested - on the other, found its bright and passionate artist in early Gorky.

At the age of twenty, Gorky saw the world in such terrifying diversity that his bright faith in man, in his spiritual nobility, in his strength and capabilities seems incredible. But the young writer was inherent in the desire for the ideal, for the beautiful - here he was a worthy successor to the best traditions of Russian literature of the past.

In the story “Chelkash” (1894) there is a romantic image of a tramp and thief who broke with his environment (his father was one of richest people in the countryside), is not at all idealized by the writer. Although in comparison with the spiritually wretched, greedy and pitiful Gavrila, Chelkash turns out to be the winner. But the opposition goes along the line of relation to property, to the essence that enslaves it. Gavrila's dream turns out to be a dream leading to slavery. “The power of darkness”, the power of money Chelkash denies. “Chelkash listened to his joyful cries, looked at his shining face, distorted by the delight of greed, and felt that he - a thief, a reveler, cut off from everything dear to him - would never be like that!”

For his stories, Gorky took earthly and real people, with all their contradictions and shortcomings.

He considered activity, the ability to act in the name of man, to be a measure of the value of the human personality. This motif is already heard in the writer’s first story, “Makar Chudra” (1892). The story of the amazing, proud love of Loiko Zobar and Radda is a hymn to freedom. “Well, falcon,” says Makar, “do you want me to tell you a true story? And you remember it and, as you remember it, you will be a free bird throughout your life.”

Gorky's romanticism is no stranger to drama. He assumes it. The fates of the heroes of his first stories are always dramatic. But this is dramatic, giving rise to a protest against the slave position in society. Makar Chudra says at the beginning of the story to the author-narrator: “They are funny, those people of yours. They huddled together and crushed each other, and there is so much space on earth... Well, he was born then, perhaps, to dig up the earth, and even die... Does he know his will? Is the expanse of the steppe clear? Talk sea ​​wave does his heart rejoice? He is a slave - as soon as he was born, he is a slave all his life, and that’s it!”

This is what worries the artist, what becomes the central idea of ​​many of his stories early period. Everything was unusual in this story: the fate of the characters, their speech, their appearance, and the author’s speech. “I didn’t want to sleep. I looked into the darkness of the steppe, and the royally beautiful and proud figure of Radda floated in the air before my eyes. She pressed her hand with a strand of black hair to the wound on her chest, and through her dark, thin fingers blood oozed drop by drop, falling to the ground in fiery red stars...” Already here a contrast is outlined between free and slave existence, which will be in different versions be present in all the early romantic stories of the writer. It will change and deepen. Already - Falcon, Siskin - Woodpecker, Girl - Death, Larra - Danko. The fairy tale in verse “The Girl and Death” (published in 1917) is also imbued with faith in the power of man, in the power of action, in the power of love. The all-conquering hymn of “the joy of love and the happiness of life” - love without fear and doubt - is a vivid manifestation of that peculiarity of Gorky’s talent and his life position, which characterizes the writer’s creative path.

In the work of young Gorky, “unsolvable” questions began to sound with renewed vigor: how to live? what to do? what is happiness? Questions that are eternal, if only because not a single generation has yet managed to avoid them.

In the fairy tale “About the Siskin Who Lied, and About the Woodpecker - Lover of Truth,” in which the writer tells a “very true story” about how “among the songbirds of that grove,” where pessimistic songs were sung and crows were considered “very wise birds” , suddenly other, “free, bold songs” began to sound, reminiscent of a hymn to reason:

...Let us ignite our hearts with the fire of our minds,

And light will reign everywhere!..

... Who honestly accepted death in battle,

Has he fallen and been defeated?

...Follow me, who dares!

Let the darkness disappear!

For the writer, the important idea here is that a “spark” can be planted, faith and hope can be awakened. In this tale, the artist noted the awakening of consciousness only for a moment. In “Song of the Falcon” (1895), the death of a proud and brave bird already confirms the victory of that outlook on life, the bearer of which was the beautiful Falcon. “Earthly” is already defeated by the fact that he does not understand what flying into the sky, freedom means, and is sure that “there is only empty space there.” His “real” view of life excludes the spirituality of human existence on earth.

The idea of ​​self-sacrifice arises naturally in “Song of the Falcon” and becomes a hymn to action in the name of freedom and light. “The madness of the brave is the wisdom of life!” - does not contain only a statement of self-awareness, although this is also important for the writer. One would think so if not for the words: “... and drops of your hot blood, like sparks, will flare up in the darkness of life and many brave hearts will be ignited with an insane thirst for freedom and light!”

The story “The Old Woman Izergil” (1894) can be called a programmatic story for the young Gorky. All the favorite and dear themes and thoughts of the young writer converge here. Everything here is fundamentally important for him. The composition of the story is strictly subordinated to the idea - affirmation of the correctness of the feat in the name of life. Three independent episodes are united by the images of the author and the old woman Izergil. The image of Izergil is contradictory. It is realistic at its core. In Izergil’s life, unusual and bright, there was a lot that can be assessed ambiguously. Good and evil - everything is mixed up here, just like in life. And yet there is something that seems to unite her with Danko. “There is always a place for exploits in life” - this is the main idea, although the events in the life of the old gypsy cannot be regarded only as heroic, she often acted in the name of personal freedom.

Danko's spiritual beauty is contrasted with the wretchedness of Larra's existence. Individualism, contempt for people, egocentrism of Larra, who is sure that freedom is independence from people, from responsibilities to society, are debunked by the artist with such strength and energy that it seems that Larra’s shadow, “restless and unforgiven,” still wanders around the world. “... And he keeps searching, walking, walking... and death does not smile at him. And there is no place for him among people...”

Punishment by loneliness is a theme in many modern and, I think, future works. Two different “I”s, opposed with such force, Danko and Larra, are two radically opposite attitudes to life that live and oppose even now. It is precisely because of the latter that Danko is interesting today. “What will I do for people?!” - Danko shouted louder than thunder.” The death of Danko, who illuminates the path of his tired and distrustful people with the torch of his heart, is his immortality. This question was the main one for Danko, because without asking yourself such a question, you cannot live meaningfully, you cannot believe in anything and act consciously in life.

That is why today the early work of the writer is so interesting, who openly declared at the end of the last century about his faith in man, in his mind, in his creative, transformative capabilities.

Gorky's early work amazes, first of all, with its artistic diversity, unusual for a young writer, and the bold confidence with which he creates works of different colors and poetic intonation. The enormous talent of the artist of the rising class - the proletariat, drawing powerful strength from the “movement of the masses themselves”, was revealed already in the early stages of Maxim Gorky’s literary work.
By acting as a herald of the coming storm, Gorky fell in line with the public mood. In 1920, he wrote: “I began my work as a stirrer of revolutionary sentiment with glory to the madness of the brave.” Exam questions and answers. Literature. 9th and 11th grades. Tutorial. - M.: AST-PRESS, 2000. - P.214. This applies, first of all, to Gorky’s early romantic works. In the 1890s. he wrote the stories “Makar Chudra”, “Old Woman Izergil”, “Khan and His Son”, “Mute”, “Return of the Normans from England”, “Blindness of Love”, fairy tales “The Girl and Death”, “About the Little Fairy and the Young Shepherd” ”, “Song of the Falcon”, “Song of the Petrel”, “Legend of Marco”, etc. All of them are distinguished by one feature, which can be defined in the words of L. Andreev: “the taste of freedom, something free, broad, bold.” Gorky M. Prose. Dramaturgy. Journalism. - M.: Olimp; LLC "AST Publishing House", 1999. - P.614. In all of them there is a motif of rejection of reality, confrontation with fate, and a daring challenge to the elements. In the center of these works is the figure of a strong, proud, courageous person, not submitting to anyone, unbending. And all these works, like living gems, shimmer with unprecedented colors, spreading a romantic glow around.

The story “Makar Chudra” is a statement of the ideal of personal freedom
The early works of Maxim Gorky center on exceptional characters, strong-willed and proud people who, in the author’s words, have “the sun in their blood.” This metaphor gives rise to a number of images close to it, associated with the motif of fire, sparks, flame, and torch. These heroes have burning hearts. This feature is characteristic not only of Danko, but also of the characters in Gorky’s first story, “Makar Chudra.” Rogover E.S. Russian literature of the twentieth century. To help school graduates and applicants: Study guide. - St. Petersburg: “Paritet”, 2002. - P.131.
The old gypsy Makar Chudra begins his story to the brooding melody of the splashing of the oncoming waves. From the very first lines, the reader is overwhelmed by a feeling of the unusual: the boundless steppe on the left and the endless sea on the right, the old gypsy lying in a beautiful strong pose, the rustling of coastal bushes - all this sets the mood for a conversation about something intimate, the most important. Makar Chudra slowly talks about man’s calling and his role on earth. “A person is a slave as soon as he is born, a slave all his life and that’s it,” argues Makar. Gorky M. Prose. Dramaturgy. Journalism. - M.: Olimp; LLC "AST Publishing House", 1999. - P.18. And he contrasts this with his own: “A man will be born to know what freedom is, the expanse of the steppe, to hear the voice of the sea wave”; “If you live, then you become kings over the whole earth.”
This idea is illustrated by the legend of the love of Loiko Zobar and Rada, who did not become slaves to their feelings. Their images are exceptional and romanticized. Loiko Zobar has “eyes like clear stars, and a smile like the whole sun.” Ibid., p.21. When he sits on a horse, it seems as if he was forged from one piece of iron along with the horse. Zobar's strength and beauty are not inferior to his kindness. “You need his heart, he himself would tear it out of his chest and give it to you, if only it would make you feel good.” Ibid., p.20. The beautiful Rada matches. Makar Chudra calls her an eagle. “You can’t say anything about her in words. Perhaps its beauty could be played on a violin, and even those who know this violin like their soul.”
The proud Rada for a long time rejected the feelings of Loiko Zobar, because will was more valuable to her than love. When she decided to become his wife, she set a condition that Loiko could not fulfill without humiliating himself. An insoluble conflict leads to a tragic ending: the heroes die, but remain free, love and even life are sacrificed to the will. In this story, for the first time, a romantic image of a loving human heart appears: Loiko Zobar, who could tear the heart out of his chest for the happiness of his neighbor, checks whether his beloved has a strong heart and plunges a knife into it. And the same knife, but in the hands of soldier Danila, strikes Zobar’s heart. Love and the thirst for freedom turn out to be evil demons that destroy people's happiness. Together with Makar Chudra, the narrator admires the strength of character of the heroes. And together with him, he cannot answer the question that runs like a leitmotif through the entire story: how to make people happy and what happiness is.
The story “Makar Chudra” formulates two different understandings of happiness. The first is in the words of the “strict man”: “Submit to God, and he will give you everything you ask.” Ibid., p.18. This thesis is immediately debunked: it turns out that God did not even give the “strict man” clothes to cover his naked body. The second thesis is proven by the fate of Loiko Zobar and the Rada: will more valuable than life, happiness is in freedom. The romantic worldview of the young Gorky goes back to the famous Pushkin words: “There is no happiness in the world, but there is peace and will...”

The story “Old Woman Izergil” - awareness of a person’s personality
On the seashore near Akkerman in Bessarabia, the author of the old woman’s legend, Izergil, listens. Everything here is full of atmospheric love: the men are “bronze, with lush black mustaches and thick shoulder-length curls,” the women are “cheerful, flexible, with dark blue eyes, also bronze.” The author's imagination and the night make them irresistibly beautiful. Nature harmonizes with the author’s romantic mood: the foliage sighs and whispers, the wind plays with the silky hair of women.
The old woman Izergil is depicted in contrast: time has bent her in half, a bony body, dull eyes, a creaky voice. Ruthless time takes away beauty and with it love. The old woman Izergil talks about her life, about her lovers: “Her voice crunched, as if the old woman was speaking with bones.” Gorky leads the reader to the idea that love is not eternal, just as man is not eternal. What remains in life for centuries? Gorky put two legends into the mouth of the old woman Izergil: about the eagle’s son Lara, who considered himself the first on earth and wanted happiness only for himself, and about Danko, who gave his heart to people.
The images of Lara and Danko are sharply contrasting, although both of them are brave, strong and proud people. Lara lives according to the laws of the strong, to whom “everything is permitted.” He kills the girl because she did not submit to his will, and steps on her chest with his foot. Lara's cruelty is based on a sense of superiority of a strong individual over the crowd. Gorky debunks popular late XIX V. ideas of the German philosopher Nietzsche. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche argued that people are divided into strong (eagles) and weak (lambs) who are destined to be slaves. Nietzsche's apology for inequality, the idea of ​​the aristocratic superiority of the chosen over all others were subsequently used in the ideology and practice of fascism. Spiridonova L.A. “I came into the world to disagree.”
In the legend of Lara, Gorky shows that a Nietzschean who professes the morality “everything is permitted to the strong” awaits loneliness, which is worse than death. “His punishment is in himself,” says the wisest of people after Lara commits a crime. And Lara, doomed to eternal life and eternal wandering, turns into a black shadow, dried up by the sun and winds. Condemning an egoist who only takes from people without giving anything in return, the old woman Izergil says: “For everything that a person takes, he pays with himself, with his mind and strength, sometimes with his life.”
Danko pays with his life, performing a feat in the name of people's happiness. The blue sparks that flare up at night in the steppe are the sparks of his burning heart, which illuminated the path to freedom. The impenetrable forest, where the giant trees stood like a stone wall, the greedy mouth of the swamp, strong and evil enemies gave birth to fear among people. Then Danko appeared: “What will I do for people,” Danko shouted louder than thunder. And suddenly he tore his chest with his hands and tore out his heart from it and raised it high above his head. It burned as brightly as the sun, and brighter than the sun, and the whole forest fell silent, illuminated by this torch of great love for people, and the darkness scattered from its light...”
As we have seen, the poetic metaphor of “giving your heart to your loved one” arose both in the story “Makar Chudra” and in the fairy tale about the little fairy. But here it turns into an expanded poetic image, interpreted literally. Gorky puts a new, high meaning into the erased banal phrase that has accompanied declarations of love for centuries: “to give your hand and heart.” Danko's living human heart became a torch illuminating the path to a new life for humanity. And although the “cautious man” nevertheless stepped on him, the blue sparks in the steppe always remind people of Danko’s feat.
The meaning of the story “Old Woman Izergil” is determined by the phrase “In life there is always a place for exploits.” The daredevil Danko, who “burned his heart for people and died without asking them for anything as a reward for himself,” expresses Gorky’s innermost thought: the happiness and will of one person are unthinkable without the happiness and liberation of the people.

“Song of the Falcon” - a hymn to action in the name of freedom and light
“The madness of the brave is the wisdom of life,” Gorky states in “Song of the Falcon.” The main technique by which this thesis is affirmed is a dialogue between two different “truths”, two worldviews, two contrasting images - the Falcon and the Snake. The writer used the same technique in other stories. The free shepherd is the antipode of the blind Mole, the egoist Lara is opposed to the altruist Danko. In “The Song of the Falcon,” a hero and a tradesman appear before the reader. Smug Already convinced of the inviolability of the old order. He feels great in the dark gorge: “warm and damp.” The sky for him is an empty place, and the Falcon, dreaming of flying into the sky, is a real madman. With poisonous irony, Already claims that the beauty of flying is in the fall.
In the soul of the Falcon lives an insane thirst for freedom and light. By his death, he confirms the rightness of the feat in the name of freedom.
The death of the Falcon is at the same time a complete debunking of the “wise” Snake. In “Song of the Falcon” there is a direct echo with the legend of Danko: blue sparks of a burning heart flash in the darkness of the night, forever reminding people of Danko. The death of the Falcon also brings him immortality: “And drops of your hot blood, like sparks, will flare up in the darkness of life and will ignite many brave hearts with an insane thirst for freedom and light!”
From work to work in Gorky’s early work, the theme of heroism grows and crystallizes. Loiko Zobar, Rada, the little fairy commit crazy things in the name of love. Their actions are extraordinary, but this is not yet a feat. The girl, who comes into conflict with the king, boldly defeats Fear, Fate and Death (“The Girl and Death”). Her courage is also the madness of the brave, although it is aimed at protecting personal happiness. Lara's courage and audacity lead to a crime, for he, like Pushkin's Aleko, “only wants freedom for himself.” And only Danko and Sokol, by their death, affirm the immortality of the feat. So the problem of the will and happiness of an individual person fades into the background, replaced by the problem of happiness for all humanity. “The Madness of the Brave” brings moral satisfaction to the daredevils themselves: “I go to burn as brightly as possible and to illuminate the darkness of life more deeply. And death for me is my reward! - declares Gorky's Man. Spiridonova L.A. “I came into the world to disagree.” Gorky's early romantic works awakened the consciousness of the inferiority of life, unfair and ugly, and gave birth to the dream of heroes rebelling against the orders established over centuries.
The revolutionary romantic idea also determined the artistic originality of Gorky's works: a pathetic sublime style, a romantic plot, the genre of fairy tales, legends, songs, allegories, a conventionally symbolic background of action. In Gorky's stories it is easy to detect the exceptional character, setting, and language characteristic of romanticism. But at the same time, they contain features characteristic only of Gorky: a contrasting comparison of the hero and the tradesman, the Man and the slave. The action of the work, as a rule, is organized around a dialogue of ideas; the romantic frame of the story creates a background against which the author’s thought appears prominently. Sometimes such a frame is a landscape - a romantic description of the sea, steppe, thunderstorm. Sometimes - a harmonious harmony of the sounds of a song. The importance of sound images in Gorky’s romantic works is difficult to overestimate: the melody of the violin sounds in the story of the love of Loiko Zobar and Rada, the whistle of the free wind and the breath of a thunderstorm - in the tale of the little fairy, “wonderful music of revelation” - in the “Song of the Falcon”, a menacing roar storms - in “Song of the Petrel”. The harmony of sounds complements the harmony of allegorical images. The image of an eagle as a symbol of a strong personality arises when characterizing heroes who have Nietzschean traits: the eagle Rada, free as an eagle, the shepherd, the son of the eagle Lara. The image of the Falcon is associated with the idea of ​​an altruistic hero. Makar Chudra calls a falcon a storyteller who dreams of making all people happy. Finally, the Petrel symbolizes the movement of the masses themselves, the image of future retribution.
Gorky generously uses folklore motifs and images, adapts Moldavian, Wallachian, and Hutsul legends that he overheard while wandering around Rus'. The language of Gorky's romantic works is flowery and patterned, melodiously sonorous.

Conclusion
The early work of Maxim Gorky is notable for its different styles, noted by L. Tolstoy, A.P. Chekhov and V.G. Korolenko. The work of young Gorky was influenced by many writers: A.S. Pushkin, Pomyalovsky, G. Uspensky, N.S. Leskova, M.Yu. Lermontov, Byron, Schiller.
The writer turned to both the realistic and romantic movements of art, which in some cases existed independently, but were often whimsically mixed. However, at first, Gorky’s works were dominated by the romantic style, standing out sharply for their brightness.
Indeed, features of romanticism predominate in Gorky's early stories. First of all, because they depict a romantic situation of confrontation between a strong man (Danko, Lara, Sokol) and the world around him, as well as the problem of man as an individual in general. The action of the stories and legends is transferred to fantastic conditions (“He stood between the boundless steppe and the endless sea”). The world of the works is sharply divided into light and darkness, and these differences are important when assessing the characters: after Lara there remains a shadow, after Danko - sparks.
The gap between the heroic past and the pitiful, colorless life in the present, between the “should” and the “existent”, between the great “dream” and the “gray era” was the soil on which the romanticism of early Gorky was born.
All the heroes of Gorky's early works are morally emotional and experience mental trauma, choosing between love and freedom, but they still choose the latter, bypassing love and preferring only freedom.
People of this type, as the writer foresaw, can turn out to be great in extreme situations, in days of disasters, wars, revolutions, but they are most often unviable in the normal course of human life. Today, the problems posed by the writer M. Gorky in his early work are perceived as relevant and pressing for solving the issues of our time.
Gorky, who openly declared at the end of the 19th century his faith in man, in his mind, in his creative, transformative capabilities, continues to arouse interest among readers to this day.

Features of the creativity of M. M. Gorky.

It was as if two people lived in Gorky: an artist and a publicist. And if the publicist called on his brothers to write about Stalin’s camps and did not notice the tragedy of what was happening, then the artist wrote about the fate of the individual in the terrible reality of the twentieth century, which deprives a person of his natural social and creative freedom.

The problem of human freedom or lack of freedom is the central theme of Gorky’s entire work. In the writer’s first stories, it sounded like a hymn to the romantically interpreted complete freedom of the individual from all the shackles of the external social world, but even then it contained doubts about the value of such freedom for a person. Gorky's last work - "The Life of Klim Samgin" - leads the reader to the conclusion about the impossibility of gaining personal freedom in the tragic conditions of Russian reality of the twentieth century.

The question of freedom is a philosophical question, and each era, including literary times, interprets it in its own way, based on the prevailing philosophical principles.

In the new type of realism, the emergence of which is associated with the name of Gorky, new concept personality - a person not simply reacting to the life around him, but creating, realizing himself not in the sphere of private intrigue, but in the public arena. In addition, in a new type of realism, historical time is established as typical circumstances affecting personality, and man, the hero of new literature, is entrusted with being the father of history.

The writer outlines two possible types of relationships between the individual and historical time: contact with it and alienation from it. A person alienated and not alienated from historical time are two poles, two giant differently charged magnets, between which Gorky’s concept of the human personality is formed.

By placing private human destiny in the context of historical time, insisting on the indispensability of this connection, the writer changed the entire system of values ​​​​proposed by the romantic tradition of the last century. The most important, the most valuable is no longer the individual, not his right to inner life and secret freedom, as Pushkin insisted, but social life, and the value of the individual is placed in direct dependence on participation in this life.

The traditional proportions of the relationship between man and time in Gorky's works are shifted. Now a person is no longer confined to the narrow confines of his environment, but comes face to face with his era, whether he wants it or not.

Gorky interpreted the relationship between character and history as fatal and saw in it the beginning that elevates a person capable of contact with the leading historical pattern. He perceived a person’s reluctance or inability to make such contact as negative and denied such a hero the right to sympathy and respect.

Thus, in Gorky’s epic there are two objects of depiction: objective reality and the consciousness of the hero, who perceives this reality. The interaction of these two objects forms the conflict between reality and its perception and, ultimately, the problematic of the work.

Romantic stories of Gorky

In his early works, Gorky appears to the reader as a romantic writer. For the romantic consciousness, the correlation of character with circumstances is unthinkable - hence the main feature of the romantic artistic world - dual worlds. The confrontation between romance and reality, romance and the surrounding world is the main feature of this literary movement.

This is how the heroes of the early romantic stories Gorky. Their consciousness and characters, with sometimes mysterious contradictions, become the main subject of the image. An insoluble contradiction between two principles in a romantic character - love and pride

- is thought of as completely natural, and it can only be resolved by death.

The composition of the narrative in romantic stories is subordinated to one goal - to most fully show the image of the main character, and a romantic legend is the most important means for creating his image. With its help, the author presents a system of values, shows which personality traits, from the point of view of his heroes, are worthy of respect or contempt. In other words, the heroes thus seem to set a coordinate system, based on which they themselves can be judged.

A very important compositional feature of Gorky’s early romantic stories is the presence of the image of the narrator, who is an autobiographical hero.

It is the close, interested gaze of the autobiographical hero that snatches from the meetings given to him by fate the most interesting and ambiguous characters, which turn out to be the main subject of depiction and research. In them the author sees a manifestation of the folk character of the turn of the century and tries to explore its strengths and weaknesses. Autobiographical view. The hero is realistic, he can understand the limitations of a purely romantic worldview.

Early romantic work of M. Gorky

The beginning of the 90s of the 19th century was a difficult and uncertain time. Chekhov and Bunin, Gorky's senior contemporaries, depict this period in their works with utmost realistic truthfulness. Gorky himself declares the need to search for new paths in literature. In a letter to Pyatnitsky dated July 25, 1900, he writes: “The task of literature is to capture in colors, words, sounds, and forms what is best, beautiful, honest, noble in a person. In particular, my task is to awaken a person’s pride in himself, to tell him that he is the best, the most sacred thing in life and that besides him there is nothing worthy of attention. The world is the fruit of his creativity, God is a particle of his mind and heart,..” The writer understands that in reality modern life a person is oppressed and powerless, and therefore says: “The time has come for a romantic...”

Indeed, features of romanticism predominate in Gorky's early stories. First of all, because they depict a romantic situation of confrontation between a strong man (Danko, Larra, Sokol) and the world around him, as well as the problem of man as an individual in general* The action of stories and legends is transferred to fantastic conditions (“He stood between the boundless steppe and the endless by sea"). The world of the works is sharply divided into light and darkness, and these differences are important when assessing the characters: after Larra there remains a shadow, after Danko there are sparks.

Gorky uses elements of folklore. He animates nature (“The darkness of the autumn night shuddered and looked around fearfully, revealing the steppe and the sea...”). Man and nature are often identified and can even talk (Rahim's conversation with the wave). Animals and birds acting in the stories become symbols (Uzh and Falcon). Using the genre of legend allows the writer to most clearly express his thoughts and ideas in allegorical form.

Gorky clearly gives preference to people free from the laws of society. His favorite heroes are gypsies, beggars, and thieves. It cannot be said that the writer idealizes thieves, but the same Chelkash, from the point of view of moral qualities, stands disproportionately higher than the peasant. A man obsessed with a dream, a Man with a capital M, is much more interesting for a writer. The central figure of Gorky's early romantic work is introduced in the poem “Man”. Man is called upon to illuminate the whole world, to unravel the knots of all delusions, he is “tragically beautiful.” Danko is depicted in the same way: “I’m going to burn as brightly as possible and to illuminate the darkness of life more deeply. And death for me is my reward.” Gorky’s concepts of “people” and “man” are directly opposed: “I want each of the people to be a “Man”!”

The question of human freedom is also fundamental for Gorky. The theme of a free man is the main theme of his first story “Makar Chudra”, as well as many other works, including “Song of the Falcon”. The concept of “freedom” for the writer is associated with the concepts of “truth” and “feat”. If in the story “Makar Chudra” Gorky is interested in freedom “from something,” then in “Old Woman Izergil” he is interested in freedom “in the name of.” Larra, the son of an eagle and a woman, is not human enough to be with people, but also not an eagle enough to do without people. His lack of freedom lies in his selfishness, and therefore he is punished by loneliness and immortality, and after him only a shadow remains. Danko, on the contrary, turns out to be a freer person, because he is free from himself and lives for the sake of others. Danko's act can be called a feat, because a feat for Gorky is the highest degree of freedom from self-love.

Bibliography

To prepare this work, materials were used from the site http://www.coolsoch.ru/

1. Gorky's childhood and youth
2. The beginning of Gorky's work
3. Gorky’s works “Makar Chudra”, “Old Woman Izergil”, “Girl and Death”, “Song of the Falcon”, etc.
4. Novel "Foma Gordeev". Summary
5. The play "At the Bottom". Analysis
6. Novel "Mother". Analysis
7. Cycle of stories “Across Rus'”
8. Gorky's attitude to the revolution
9. Gorky in exile
10. Return of Gorky to the USSR
11. Gorky's illness and death

Maxim GORKY (1868-1936)

M. Gorky appears in our minds as the personification of the powerful creative forces of the nation, as the real embodiment of the bright talent, intelligence and hard work of the Russian people. The son of a craftsman, a self-taught writer who did not even finish primary school, with a tremendous effort of will and intellect, he escaped from the very bottom of life and in a short time made a rapid ascent to the heights of writing.

A lot is being written about Gorky now. Some unconditionally defend him, others overthrow him from his pedestal, blaming him for justifying Stalin’s methods of building a new society and even direct incitement to terror, violence, and repression. They are trying to push the writer to the margins of the history of Russian literature and social thought, to weaken or completely eliminate his influence on the literary process of the 20th century. But still, our literary criticism is difficult, but consistently making its way to the living, non-textbook Gorky, freeing itself from past legends and myths, and from excessive categoricalness in assessing his work.

Let us also try to understand the complex fate of the great man, remembering the words of his friend Fyodor Chaliapin: “I know for sure that this was the voice of love for Russia. Gorky spoke of a deep consciousness that we all belong to our country, our people, and that we must be with them not only morally, as I sometimes console myself, but also physically, with all the scars, all the hardening, all the humps.”

1. Gorky’s childhood and youth

Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov (Gorky) was born on March 16 (28), 1868 in Nizhny Novgorod, in a family of cabinet makers. After the sudden death of his father on June 8, 1871, the boy and his mother settled in his grandfather’s house. Alyosha was raised by his grandmother, who introduced him to a motley, colorful world folk tales, epics, songs, developed imagination, understanding of the beauty and power of the Russian word.

At the beginning of 1876, the boy entered the parish school, but after studying for a month, he left classes due to smallpox. A year later he was admitted to the second grade of primary school. However, having completed two classes, he was forced to leave school forever in 1878. By this time, my grandfather had gone bankrupt, and in the summer of 1879, my mother died of transient consumption.

At the suggestion of his grandfather, a 14-year-old teenager goes “to the people” - he begins working life, full of hardships, exhausting work, homeless wandering. Whatever he was: a boy in a shoe store, a student in an icon painting shop, a nanny, a dishwasher on a ship, a builder-foreman, a loader at the pier, a baker, etc. He visited the Volga region and Ukraine, Bessarabia and Crimea, Kuban and the Caucasus.

“My walking around Rus' was not caused by the desire for vagrancy,” Gorky later explained, “but by the desire to see where I live, what kind of people are around me?” The wanderings enriched the future writer with a wide knowledge of folk life and people. This was also facilitated by the “passion for reading” that awoke in him early and continuous self-education. “I owe everything that’s best in me to books,” he would later remark.

2. The beginning of Gorky’s work

By the age of twenty, A. Peshkov had an excellent knowledge of domestic and world art classics, as well as the philosophical works of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freud, V. Solovyov.

Life observations and impressions, a stock of knowledge required an outlet. The young man began to try himself in literature. His creative biography starts with poetry. It is believed that A. Peshkov’s first printed speech was “Poems on the grave of D. A. Latysheva”, published at the beginning of 1885 in the Kazan newspaper “Volzhsky Vestnik”. In 1888-1889, he created the poems “Only I got rid of troubles”, “You’re out of luck, Alyosha”, “It’s a shame to whine at my age”, “I’m swimming...”, “Don’t scold my muse...” etc. For all their imitation and rhetoric, they clearly convey the pathos of expectations for the future:

In this life, sick and unhappy,

I sing hymns to the future, -

This is how the poem “Do not scold my muse” ends.

From poetry, the aspiring writer gradually moved to prose: in 1892, his first story, “Makar Chudra,” signed under the pseudonym “Maxim Gorky,” was published in the Tiflis newspaper “Caucasus.”

V. Korolenko played a big role in Gorky’s fate, who helped him understand many of the secrets of literary mastery. On Korolenko's advice, Gorky moves to Samara and works as a journalist. His stories, essays, feuilletons are published in Samara Gazeta, Nizhegorodsky Listok, Odessa News, and then in the thick central magazines New Word, Russian Thought, etc. In 1898, Gorky published the two-volume Essays and stories" that made him famous.

Later, summing up his 25-year creative activity, M. Gorky wrote: “The meaning of my 25-year work, as I understand it, boils down to my passionate desire to arouse in people an effective attitude towards life”2. These words can be used as an epigraph to the entire work of the writer. To arouse in people an effective, active attitude towards life, to overcome their passivity, to activate the best, strong-willed, moral qualities of the individual - this was the task that Gorky solved from the first steps of his work.

This trait manifested itself very clearly in his early stories, in which he acted, according to V. Korolenko’s correct definition, at the same time as both a realist and a romantic. In the same year, 1892, the writer created the stories “Makar Chudra” and “Emelyan Pilyai”. The first of them is romantic in its method and style, while the second is dominated by the features of realistic writing.

In the fall of 1893, he published the romantic allegory “About Chizhe, who lied...” and the realistic story “The Beggar Woman,” a year later the realistic story “Poor Pavel” and the romantic works “Old Woman Izergil,” “Song of the Falcon” and “One Night” appeared. These parallels, which can easily be continued, indicate that Gorky did not have two special periods of creativity - romantic and realistic.

The division of early Gorky’s works into romantic and realistic, established in our literary criticism since the 40s, is somewhat arbitrary: the writer’s romantic works have a solid real basis, and realistic ones carry a charge of romanticism, representingthe embryo of a renewed realistic type of creativity - neorealism.

3. Gorky’s works “Makar Chudra”, “Old Woman Izergil”, “Girl and Death”, “Song of the Falcon”

Gorky’s works “Makar Chudra”, “Old Woman Izergil”, “The Girl and Death”, “Song of the Falcon” and others, in which the romantic element predominates, are connected by a single problematic. They sound a hymn to the free and to a strong man. A distinctive feature of all heroes is proud disobedience to fate and daring love of freedom, integrity of nature and heroic character. This is the gypsy Radda, the heroine of the story."Makar Chudra".

Two strongest feelings control her: love and Thirst for freedom. Radda loves the handsome Loiko Zobar, but does not want to submit to him, because above all else she values ​​her freedom. The heroine rejects the age-old custom according to which a woman, having become a wife, becomes a slave of a man. The fate of a slave is worse than death for her. It is easier for her to die with the proud consciousness that her personal freedom is preserved than to submit herself to the power of another, even if this other is passionately loved by her.

In turn, Zobar also values ​​his independence and is ready to do anything to preserve it. He cannot subjugate Radda, but he never wants to submit to her, and he is not able to refuse her. In front of the entire camp, he kills his beloved, but he himself dies. The author’s words that complete the legend are significant: “The sea sang a gloomy and solemn hymn to the proud pair of handsome gypsies.”

The allegorical poem “The Girl and Death” (1892), not only in its fairy-tale character, but also in its main themes, is very indicative of Gorky’s entire early work. This work clearly conveys the idea of ​​the all-conquering power of human love, which is stronger than death. The girl, punished by the king for laughing when he returns from the battlefield after defeat in the war in deep sorrow, boldly looks death in the face. And she retreats, because she does not know what to oppose to the great power of love, the enormous feeling of love for life.

The theme of love for a person, rising to the point of sacrifice in the name of preserving people’s lives, reaches a broad social and moral resonance in Gorky’s story “The Old Woman Izergil.” The composition of this work itself is original, representing a kind of triptych: the legend of Larra, the life story of the narrator - the old gypsy Izergil and the legend of Danko. The plot and themes of the story are based on a clear contrast between heroism and altruism and individualism and selfishness.

Larra, the character of the first legend, the son of an eagle and a woman, is depicted by the author as a bearer of individualistic, inhumane ideas and principles. For him there are no moral laws of kindness and respect for people. He deals with the girl who rejected him cruelly and inhumanly. The writer strikes at the philosophy of extreme individualism, which claims that a strong personality is allowed to do everything, even any crime.

The moral laws of humanity, the author claims, are unshakable, they cannot be violated for the sake of an individual who opposes himself to the human community. And the personality itself cannot exist outside of people. Freedom, as the writer understands it, is the conscious need to respect moral norms, traditions and rules. Otherwise, it turns into a destructive, destructive force, directed not only against one’s neighbor, but also against the adherent of such “freedom” himself.

Larra, who is expelled from the tribe by the elders for the murder of a girl and is given immortality, should, it would seem, triumph, “Which, however, he does at first. But time passes, and life for Larra, who finds himself alone, turns into hopeless torment: “He has no life, and death does not smile at him. And there is no place for him among people... This is how a person was punished for his pride,” that is, for self-centeredness. This is how old woman Izergil ends her story about Larra.

The hero of the second legend is the young man Danko - the complete opposite of the arrogant selfish Larra. This is a humanist, ready to sacrifice himself in the name of saving people. Out of the darkness"impassable swampy forests he leads his people to the Light. But this path is difficult, distant and dangerous, and Danko, in order to save people, without hesitation, tore his heart out of his chest. Lighting the way with this “torch of love for people,” the young man led his people to the sun, to life, and died, without asking people for anything as a reward for himself.” In the image of Danko, the writer embodied his humanistic ideal - the ideal of selfless love for people, heroic self-sacrifice in the name of their life and happiness. Izergil’s realistic story about herself is, as it were, a connecting link between these two legends.

The individualistic killer Larra believed that happiness was in splendid isolation and permissiveness, for which he was punished with a terrible punishment. Izergil lived her life among people, a life that was bright and rich in its own way. She admires courageous, freedom-loving people with a strong will. Her rich life experience led her to a significant conclusion: “When a person loves feats, he always knows how to do them and will find where it is possible. In life... there is always room for exploits.” Izergil herself knew both passionate love and exploits. But she lived mainly for herself. Only Danko embodied the highest understanding of the spiritual beauty and greatness of man, giving his life for the lives of people. So in the very composition of the story its idea is revealed. Danko's altruistic feat gains sacred meaning. The Gospel of John says that Christ at the Last Supper addressed the apostles with the following words: “Greater love has no one than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” It is this kind of love that the writer poetizes with Danko’s feat.

Using the example of the destinies of his two antipodean characters, Gorky poses the problem of death and immortality. The proud individualist Larra turned out to be immortal, but only a dark shadow runs from him across the steppe, which is difficult to even see. And the memory of Danko’s feat is preserved in the hearts of people and is passed on from generation to generation. And this is his immortality.

The action of these and many other Gorky stories takes place in the south, where the sea and the steppe coexist - symbols of boundless and eternal cosmic life. The writer is drawn to the vast expanses, where a person especially strongly feels the power of nature and his closeness to it, where no one and nothing restricts the free expression of human feelings.

The writer’s bright, emotionally charged and lyrically soulful pictures of nature never turn into an end in themselves. They play an active role in the narrative, being one of the main elements of content. In “The Old Woman Izergil” he describes the Moldovans as follows: “They walked, sang, laughed, the men were bronze, with lush, black mustaches and thick shoulder-length curls. Women and girls are cheerful, flexible, with dark blue eyes, also bronze... They moved further and further from us, and night and fantasy dressed them in everything beautiful.” These Moldavian peasants are not much different in appearance from Loiko Zobar, Radda and Danko.

In the story “Makar Chudra” both the narrator himself and the real-life way of gypsy life are presented in a romantic light. Thus, in reality itself the same romantic features are emphasized. They are also revealed in Izergil’s biography. This was done by the author in order to highlight an important idea: the fabulous, romantic does not oppose life, but only expresses in a more vivid, emotionally sublime form what is present in reality to one degree or another.

The composition of many of Gorky's early stories contains two elements: a romantic plot and its realistic frame. They are a story within a story. The figure of the hero-storyteller (Chudra, Izergil) also gives the narration the character of reality and plausibility. The same features of reality are conveyed to the works by the image of the narrator - a young man named Maxim, who listens to the stories being told.

The themes of Gorky's early realistic stories are even more multifaceted. Particularly notable in this regard is the writer’s cycle of stories about tramps. Gorky's tramps are a reflection of spontaneous protest. These are not passive sufferers thrown out of life. Their withdrawal into tramping is one of the forms of unwillingness to come to terms with the lot of a slave. The writer emphasizes in his characters what elevates them above the inert middle-class environment. Such is the tramp and thief Chelkash from the story of the same name in 1895, contrasted with the farm laborer Gavrila.

The writer does not idealize his character at all. It is no coincidence that he often uses the epithet “predatory” to characterize Chelkash: Chelkash has a “predatory look”, “predatory nose”, etc. But contempt for the omnipotent power of money makes this lumpen and renegade more humane than Gavrila. And on the contrary, slavish dependence on the ruble turns the village boy Gavrila, essentially a good person, into a criminal. In the psychological drama that played out between them on a deserted seashore. Chelkash turns out to be more humane than Gavrila.

Among tramps, Gorky especially singles out people in whom the love of work and intense thought about the meaning of life and the purpose of man has not faded. This is how it is depicted Konovalov from the story of the same name (1897). A good person, a dreamer with a soft soul, Alexander Konovalov constantly feels dissatisfied with life and with himself. This pushes him onto the path of vagrancy and drunkenness. One of the valuable qualities of his nature was his love of work. Having found himself in a bakery after long wanderings, he experiences the joy of work, showing artistry in his work.

The writer emphasizes the aesthetic emotions of his hero, his subtle sense of nature, respect for women. Konovalov becomes infected with a passion for reading, he sincerely admires the audacity and courage of Stepan Razin, loves the heroes of Gogol’s “Taras Bulba” for their fearlessness and fortitude, and takes to heart the grave adversities of the men from F. Reshetnikov’s “Podlipovtsy.” The high humanity of this tramp and the presence of good moral inclinations in him are obvious.

However, everything in it is impermanent, everything is changeable and does not last long. The contagious passion for his favorite work disappeared, giving way to melancholy, he somehow suddenly lost interest in it and gave up everything, either indulging in binge drinking, or going on the “run”, on yet another vagrancy. He does not have a strong inner core, solid moral support, strong attachment, or constancy. Konovalov’s extraordinary, talented nature dies because he does not find the will to take action. The popular definition of “knight for an hour” is fully applicable to him.

However, almost all of Gorky’s tramps are like this: Malva from the story of the same name, Semaga (“How Semaga was Caught”), the carpenter (“In the Steppe”), Zazubrina and Vanka Mazin from the works of the same name, and others. Konovalov has the advantage over his fellow wanderers that he is not inclined to blame others for his failed life. To the question: “Who is to blame for us?” - he answers with conviction: “We ourselves are to blame... That’s why we have no desire for life and we have no feelings for ourselves.”

Gorky’s close attention to people at the “bottom of life” gave rise to a number of critics to declare him a singer of tramping, an adept of an individualistic personality of the Nietzschean kind. This is wrong. Of course, in comparison with the world of inert, spiritually limited philistines, Gorky’s tramps have that “zest” that the writer strives to depict as clearly as possible. The same Chelkash, in his contempt for money and in his love for the mighty and free element of the sea, in the breadth of his nature, looks nobler than Gavrila. But this nobility is very relative. For both he and Emelyan Pilyay and other tramps, having freed themselves from petty-bourgeois greed, also lost their working skills. Gorky's tramps like Chelkash are beautiful when they stand up to cowards and self-interested people. But their power is disgusting when it is aimed at harming people. The writer showed this superbly in the stories “Artem and Cain”, “My Companion”, “Former People”, “Rogue” and others. Selfish, predatory, filled with arrogance and contempt for everyone except themselves, the characters in these works are drawn in sharply negative tones. Anti-humanistic, cruel, immoral philosophy of this type " former people“Gorky later called it fraudulent, emphasizing that it is a manifestation of “a dangerous national disease, which can be called passive anarchism” or “anarchism of the vanquished.”

4. The novel “Foma Gordeev”. Summary.

The late 90s - early 900s were marked in Gorky's work by the appearance of works of great epic form - the novel "Foma Gordeev" (1899) and the story "Three" (1900).

Novel "Foma Gordeev" opens a series of Gorky’s works about the “masters of life.” It recreates the artistic history of the formation and development of the Russian bourgeoisie, shows the ways and means of the initial accumulation of capital, as well as the process of “breaking out” a person from his class due to disagreement with his morals and standards of life.

The history of early accumulation is depicted by the writer as a chain of crimes, predation and deception. Almost all the merchants of the Volga city, where the action of “Foma Gordeev” takes place, made their millions “through robberies, murders... and the sale of counterfeit money.” Thus, commercial adviser Reznikov, who began his career by opening a brothel, quickly became rich after “strangling one of his guests, a rich Siberian.”

The large steamship owner Kononov was in the past brought to trial for arson, and increased his wealth at the expense of his mistress, whom he put in prison on false charges of theft. The merchant Gushchin, who once cleverly robbed his own nephews, is thriving. The rich Robists and Bobrovs are guilty of all sorts of crimes. A group portrait of the Volga merchants serves as an everyday and social background against which the detailed types of pioneers appear: Ananiy Shurov, Ignat Gordeev and Yakov Mayakin. Being clearly individualized, they embody the typical features of the Russian bourgeoisie of the period of primitive accumulation of capital.

The old, pre-reform merchant class is represented by the image of Anania Shurov. This merchant is wild, dark, straightforward and rude. He is in many ways related to the well-known figures of A. Ostrovsky, M. Saltykov-Shchedrin, G. Uspensky. The basis of his wealth is a criminal offense. Formerly a serf, Shurov became rich after he sheltered a counterfeiter who had escaped from hard labor in his bathhouse, then killed him, and set the bathhouse on fire to conceal the crime.

Shurov became a major timber merchant, drove rafts along the Volga, built a huge sawmill and several barges. He is already old, but even now, as in his younger years, he looks at people “hardly, mercilessly.” According to Shurov, all his life “except for God, he was not afraid of anyone.” However, he builds his relationship with God on considerations of profit, sanctimoniously covering his dishonest actions with His name. Calling Shurov a “manufacturer of sins,” Yakov Mayakin notes, not without venom: “They have been crying about him for a long time both in hard labor and in hell - they are sad, they are waiting - they can’t wait.”

Another version of the “knight of primitive accumulation” is Ignat Gordeev. He is also a former peasant, then a barge hauler, who became a major Volga steamship owner. But he gained wealth not through criminal offenses, but through his own labor, energy, extraordinary perseverance and enterprise. “In his entire powerful figure,” the author notes, “there was a lot of Russian healthy and rough beauty.”

He is not pettyly stingy and not as servilely greedy as other merchants; he has Russian daring and breadth of soul. The pursuit of the ruble sometimes bored Ignat, and then he gave full rein to his passions, uncontrollably indulging in drunkenness and debauchery. But a period of riots and revelry passed, and he again became quiet and meek. In such sharp transitions from one mood to another is the originality of Ignat’s character, who was not without reason called “naughty.” These are personality traits. Ignat was then reflected in the individual appearance of his son Thomas.

The central figure of the merchants in the novel is Yakov Mayakin, the owner of a rope factory and trading shops, the godfather of Foma Gordeev. Mayakin is close in spirit to the patriarchal part of the merchant class. But at the same time, he is also drawn to the new, industrial bourgeoisie, which is confidently replacing the nobility. Mayakin is not just a representative of the economically growing bourgeoisie. He strives to find a historical and socio-philosophical justification for the activities of the merchants as one of the most important classes of Russian society. He confidently asserts that it was the trading people who “carried Russia on their shoulders for centuries”, with their diligence and labor “they laid the foundation of life - they laid themselves in the ground instead of bricks.”

Mayakin speaks confidently, enthusiastically and beautifully about the great historical mission and merits of his class, with pathetic eloquence. A talented lawyer for the merchant class, intelligent and energetic, Mayakin persistently returns to the idea that the weight and importance of the Russian merchant class are clearly underestimated, that this class is excluded from the political life of Russia. The time has come, in his conviction, to oust the nobles and allow the merchants and bourgeoisie to the helm of state power: “Give us room to work! Include us in the construction of this very life!”

The Russian bourgeoisie, which by the end of the century realized itself as a great economic force in the state and was dissatisfied with its removal from the leading role in the political life of the country, speaks through the mouth of Mayakin.

But Mayakin combines correct thoughts and views with cynicism and immorality towards people. In his opinion, one should achieve wealth and power by any means, without disdaining anything. Teaching the peasant Thomas the “politics of life,” Mayakin elevates hypocrisy and cruelty to an immutable law. “Life, brother, Thomas,” he teaches the young man, “is very simple: either gnaw everyone, or lie in the dirt... When approaching a person, hold honey in your left hand, and a knife in your right...”

Mayakin's reliable successor is his son Taras. During his student years, he was arrested and deported to Siberia. His father was ready to disown him. However, Taras turned out to be just like his father. After serving his exile, he entered the office of the manager of the gold mines, married his daughter and deftly beat his rich father-in-law. Soon Taras began managing a soda production plant. Returning home, he energetically enters into business and conducts it on a greater scale than his father. He does not have his father’s inclination to philosophize, he only talks about business, extremely briefly and dryly. He is a pragmatist, convinced that every person “must choose a job within his strength and do it as best as possible.” Looking at his son, even Yakov Mayakin, a very businesslike man himself, admiring his son’s efficiency, is somewhat puzzled by the callous coldness and pragmatism of the “children”: “Everything is good, everything is pleasant, only you, our heirs, are deprived of any living feeling!”

Afrikan Smolin is similar in many ways to the younger Mayakin. He more organically than Taras absorbed the way of acting of the European bourgeois, spending four years abroad. This is a Europeanized bourgeois businessman and industrialist, thinking broadly and acting cunningly and resourcefully. “Adriasha is a liberal,” the journalist Yezhov says about him, “a liberal merchant is a cross between a wolf and a pig...” From a historical perspective, this Gorky character, who well understands the benefits of technical knowledge and the importance of cultural progress, is perceived as an all-powerful bourgeois tycoon and politician, resourceful and dexterous.

But Gorky was interested not only in the problem of the formation and growth of the Russian bourgeoisie, but also in the process of its internal disintegration, the conflict between a morally healthy person and environment. This is the fate of the main character of the novel, Foma Gordeev. Compositionally and plot-wise, the novel is structured as a chronicle description of the life of a young man who rebelled against the morality and laws of bourgeois society and ultimately suffered the collapse of his ideals.

The novel traces in detail the history of the formation of Thomas's personality and character, the formation of his moral world. The starting point in this process was many natural inclinations and properties inherited by Thomas from his parents: spiritual kindness, a tendency towards isolation and solitude - from his mother, and dissatisfaction with the monotony of life, the desire to break the shackles of acquisitiveness that bind a person - from his father.

The fairy tales that Aunt Anfisa, who replaced his early deceased mother, introduced Thomas to as a child, painted his childhood imagination with vivid pictures of life, completely different from the monotonous, gray existence in his father’s house.

The father and godfather sought to instill in Thomas their understanding of the purpose and meaning of life, and an interest in the practical side of merchant activity. But these teachings were of no use to Thomas; they only increased the feeling of apathy and boredom in his soul. Having reached adulthood, Foma retained in his character and behavior “something childish, naive, which distinguished him from his peers.” He still showed no serious interest in the business in which his father had invested his entire life.

The sudden death of Ignat stunned Thomas. The only heir to a huge fortune, he was supposed to become the master. But, deprived of his father’s grasp, he turned out to be impractical and lacking initiative in everything. Foma feels neither happiness nor joy from owning millions. “...I feel sick! - he complains to his kept woman Sasha Savelyeva. “Just think - is it really possible to have a party so that all the veins ring?” He does just that: he periodically indulges in revelry, sometimes causing scandalous brawls.

Foma's drunken stupor gave way to oppressive melancholy. And more and more Thomas is inclined to think that life is arrangedit is unfair that people of his class enjoy undeserved benefits. More and more often he gets into quarrels with his godfather, who for Thomas is the personification of this unfair life. Wealth and the position of “master” become a heavy burden for him. All this results in a public revolt and denunciation of the merchants.

During the celebrations at Kononov's, Foma accuses the merchants of crimes against people, accusing them of not building life, but a prison, turning a common man into a forced slave. But his solitary, spontaneous rebellion is fruitless and doomed to defeat. Foma more than once remembers an episode from his childhood when he scared an owl in a ravine. Blinded by the sun, she rushed helplessly along the ravine. This episode is projected by the author onto the hero’s behavior. Thomas too, blind as an owl. Blind mentally, spiritually. He passionately protests against the laws and morality of a society that is based on injustice and selfishness, but at the heart of his protest there are no clearly conscious aspirations. The merchants easily deal with their renegade, imprisoning him in a madhouse and taking away his inheritance.

The novel “Foma Gordeev” evoked numerous reviews from readers and critics. The opinion of many readers was expressed by Jack London, who wrote in 1901: “You close the book with a feeling of aching melancholy, with disgust for a life full of “lies and depravity.” But this is a healing book. Social ills are shown in it with such fearlessness... that its purpose is beyond doubt - it affirms the good.” Since the beginning of the 20th century, Gorky, without giving up work on prose works, has been actively and successfully trying himself in drama. From 1900 to 1906, he created six plays that were included in the golden fund of the Russian theater: “The Bourgeois”, “At the Lower Depths”, “Summer Residents”, “Children of the Sun”, “Enemies”, “Barbarians”. Differing in theme and artistic level, they, in essence, also solve the main author’s ultimate task - “to arouse in people an effective attitude towards life.”

5. The play “At the Bottom”. Analysis.

One of the most significant plays of this unique dramatic cycle is undoubtedly the drama"At the bottom" (1902). The play was a stunning success. Following the production of the Moscow Art Theater in 1902, it toured many theaters in Russia and foreign countries. “At the Bottom” is a stunning picture of a kind of cemetery where extraordinary people are buried alive. We see the intelligence of Satin, the spiritual purity of Natasha, the hard work of Kleshch, the desire for an honest life in Ash, the honesty of the Tatar Asan, the unquenched thirst for pure, sublime love in the prostitute Nastya, etc.

The people living in the Kostylevs' wretched basement shelter are placed in extremely inhumane conditions: their honor, human dignity, the possibility of love, motherhood, honest, conscientious work are taken away from them. World drama has never known such a harsh truth about the life of the lower social classes.

But the social and everyday problems of the play are organically combined here with philosophical ones. Gorky’s work is a philosophical debate about the meaning and purpose of human life, about a person’s ability to “break the chain” of destructive circumstances, about the attitude towards a person. In the dialogues and remarks of the characters in the play, the word “truth” is heard most often. Of the characters who willingly use this word, Bubnov, Luka and Satin stand out.

At one pole of the debate about truth and man stands the former furrier Bubnov,” who, as he assures, always tells only the truth to everyone: “But I don’t know how to lie. For what? In my opinion, leave the whole truth as it is. Why be ashamed? But his “truth” is cynicism and indifference towards the people around him.

Let us remember how cruelly and indifferently cynically he comments on the main events of the play. When Anna asks not to make noise and let her die in peace, Bubnov declares: “Noise is not a hindrance to death.” Nastya wants to break out of the basement and declares: “I’m superfluous here.” Bubnov immediately sums up ruthlessly: “You are superfluous everywhere.” And he concludes: “And all the people on earth are superfluous.”

In the third act, the mechanic Kleshch pronounces a monologue about his own hopeless existence, about how a person who has “golden hands” and who is eager to work is doomed to hunger and deprivation. The monologue is deeply sincere. This is the cry of despair of a person whom society throws out of life as unnecessary slag. And Bubnov declares: “It’s a great start! Just like he acted it out in the theater.” A distrustful skeptic and cynic in relation to people, Bubnov is dead in soul and therefore brings to people disbelief in life and in a person’s ability to “break the chain” of unfavorable circumstances. The Baron, another “living corpse”, a man without faith, without hope, was not far away from him.

The antipode of Bubnov in his view of man is the wanderer Luke. Long years Around this Gorky “character” critical spears are crossed, which was greatly facilitated by the contradictory assessments of the image of Luke on the part of the author himself. Some critics and literary scholars literally destroyed Luke, calling him... a liar, a preacher of harmful consolation and “even an unwitting accomplice to the masters of life. Others, while partially recognizing Luke’s kindness, nevertheless considered it harmful and even derived the character’s name from the word “evil.” Meanwhile, Gorky’s Luke bears the name of a Christian evangelist. And this says a lot, if we keep in mind the presence of “significant” names and surnames of characters in the writer’s works.

Luke means “light” in Latin. This semantic meaning of the character’s image also echoes Gorky’s idea at the time he created the play: “I really want to write well, I want to write with joy... to let the sun on the stage, the cheerful Russian sun, not very bright, but loving everything, embracing everything.” The wanderer Luke appears in the play as such a “sun.” It is called upon to dispel the darkness of hopelessness among the inhabitants of the shelter, to fill it with kindness, warmth and light.

“In the middle of the night you can’t see the road,” Luka sings meaningfully, clearly hinting at the night shelters’ loss of meaning and purpose in life. And he adds: “Ehe-he... gentlemen! And what will happen to you? Well, at least I’ll leave a litter here.”

Religion plays a significant role in Luke’s worldview and character. The image of Luke is a kenotic type of a wandering folk sage and philosopher. In his wandering way of life, in the fact that he sought the city of God, the “righteous land,” the eschatologism of the people’s soul, the hunger for the coming transformation, was deeply expressed. The Russian religious thinker of the Silver Age G. Fedotov, who thought a lot about the typology of Russian spirituality, wrote that in the type of wanderer “there lives a predominantly kenotic and Christocentric type of Russian religiosity, eternally opposed to everyday liturgical ritualism.” This is exactly what Gorky’s character is like.

A deep and integral nature, Luke fills Christian dogmas with living meaning. Religion for him is the embodiment of high morality, kindness and help to people. His practical advice- This is a kind of minimum program for the inhabitants of the shelter. He calms Anna down by talking about the blissful existence of the soul after death (as a Christian, he firmly believes in this). Ashes and Natasha - pictures of free and happy family life in Siberia. The actor strives to instill hope for recovery from alcohol. Luke is often accused of lying. But he never lied.

Indeed, at that time in Russia there were several hospitals for alcoholics (in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg), and in some of them the poor were treated for free. Siberia is the place where it was easiest for Ash to start a new life. Ash himself admits that he started stealing because no one called him anything other than “thief” and “son of a thief” since childhood. Siberia, where no one knows him and where hundreds of people were sent in accordance with Stolypin’s reforms, is an ideal place for Ash.

Luke calls the people of the “bottom” not to reconciliation with circumstances, but to action. He appeals to the internal, potential capabilities of a person, calling on people to overcome passivity and despair. Luke's compassion and attention to people is effective. He is driven by nothing more than a conscious desire to “arouse in people an effective attitude towards life.” “Whoever really wants it will find it,” says Luka with conviction. And it’s not his fault that things didn’t work out for Actor and Ashes the way he advised them.

The image of Satin, who also became the subject of conflicting opinions, is also ambiguous. The first, traditional point of view: Satin, unlike Luke, calls for an active struggle for man. The second, diametrically opposed to the first, claims that Satin is Satan, who “corrupts the night shelters, hinders their attempts to escape from the bottom of life”5. It is easy to see that both of these views on the personality and role of Satin in the play suffer from excessive categoricalness.

Satin and Luka are not opponents, but like-minded people in their views on man. It is no coincidence that after Luke leaves, Satin protects him from the Baron’s attacks. Satin defines Luke’s role on himself as follows: “He... acted on me like acid on an old and dirty coin.” Luke stirred Satin's soul and forced him to determine his position in relation to man.

Luka and Satin agree on the main thing: they are both confident that a person is able to break the chain of unfavorable circumstances if he strains his will and overcomes passivity. “A person can do anything, as long as he wants to,” assures Luka. “Only man exists, everything else is the work of his hands and his brain,” Satin supports him. There are also differences between them in their views on man. _ Satin takes a maximalist approach to the problem of pity. “Pity humiliates a person,” he believes.

Christian Luke calls first of all to understand a person, and having managed to understand, one must have pity on him. “I’ll tell you,” says Luka, “it’s good to feel sorry for a person in time.” To regret in time means to save sometimes from death, from an irreparable step. Luke is more flexible and merciful than Satin in this matter. Saying that “we must have pity on people,” Luke appeals to the highest moral authority: “Christ had pity on everyone and commanded us to.”

Under the influence of Luke, some of the shelters softened and became kinder. First of all, this applies to Satin. In the fourth act, he jokes a lot and warns the inhabitants of the basement against rude behavior. He stops the Baron’s attempt to teach Nastya a lesson for her insolence with the advice: “Stop it! Don’t touch... don’t offend the person.” Satin also does not share the Baron’s proposal to have fun with the Tatar praying: “Leave me alone!” He’s a good guy, don’t bother him!” Remembering Luke and his views on man, Satin confidently declares: “The old man was right!” Both Luke’s kindness and pity are not passive, but effective - that’s what Satin understood. “Whoever has not done good to someone has done something bad,” says Luke. Through the lips of this character, the author affirms the idea of ​​active goodness, the position of active attention and helping people. This is the most important moral and philosophical result of Gorky’s play-dispute.

During the revolution of 1905, Gorky actively helped the Bolsheviks. He meets Lenin and contributes to the publication of the newspaper “New Life”.

6. Novel “Mother”. Analysis.

After the suppression of the December armed uprising, Gorky, fearing arrest, moved to Finland, and then, in order to raise money for the Bolshevik Party, to America. Here he writes a number of journalistic articles, the play “Enemies” and the novel"Mother" (1906), which requires a different understanding, not according to the canons of “the first work of socialist realism,” as we have been accustomed to doing for decades. Lenin’s assessment of this novel is widely known: “...The book is necessary, many workers participated in the revolutionary movement unconsciously, spontaneously, and now they will read “Mother” with great benefit for themselves. A very timely book."

This assessment significantly influenced the interpretation of the novel, which began to be viewed as a kind of manual for organizing a revolutionary movement. The writer himself was dissatisfied with this assessment of his work. “I, of course, thanked Lenin for such a compliment,” he said, “only, I confess, it became somewhat annoying... Reducing my work (...) to something like a committee proclamation is still not suitable. In my piece, I tried to approach several big, very big problems.”

Indeed, the novel “Mother” contains a large and important idea - the idea of ​​motherhood as a life-giving, creative force, although the plot of the work is directly attached to the events of the first Russian revolution, and the prototypes of the central characters are the Sormovo worker - revolutionary P. Zalomov and his mother.

The nature and results of the revolution struck Gorky with its cruelty on both sides. As a humanist writer, he could not help but see the certain rigidity of the Marxist doctrine, in which man was considered only as an object of social, class relations. Gorky, in his own way, tried to combine socialism with Christianity. This idea was used by the writer as the basis for the story “Confession” (1908), where his God-seeking sentiments were clearly manifested. The origins of these sentiments are already contained in the novel “Mother”, in which the writer seeks to overcome the confrontation between atheism and. Christianity, to give their synthesis, our own version of Christian socialism.

The scene at the beginning of the novel is symbolic: Pavel Vlasov brings home and hangs on the wall a painting depicting Christ going to Emmaus. The parallels here are obvious: the gospel story about Christ, who joins two travelers going to Jerusalem, was needed by the author to emphasize the resurrection of Paul to a new life, his way of the cross for the sake of the happiness of people.

The novel “Mother,” like the play “At the Lower Depths,” is a two-level work. Its first level is social and everyday, revealing the process of growth of the revolutionary consciousness of the young worker Pavel Vlasov and his friends. The second is a parable, which is a modification of the gospel story about the Mother of God blessing her Son on the cross for the sake of saving people. This is clearly demonstrated by the ending of the first part of the novel, when Nilovna, addressing the people during the May Day demonstration, speaks of the way of the cross for children in the name of holy truth: “Children are walking in the world, our blood, they are following the truth... for everyone! And for all of you, for your babies, they condemned themselves to the way of the cross... Our Lord Jesus Christ would not have existed if people had not died for his glory...” And the crowd “excitedly and deafly” responds to her: “God speaks! God, good people! Listen!" Christ, dooming himself to suffering in the name of people, is associated in Nilovna’s mind with the path of his son.

The mother, who saw the truth of the son of Christ in the case, became for Gorky a measure of moral height, he placed her image at the center of the story, connecting through the feelings and actions of the mother the political definition of “socialism” with moral and ethical concepts: “soul”, “faith”, "Love".

The evolution of the image of Pelageya Nilovna, rising to the symbol of the Mother of God, reveals the author’s thought about the spiritual insight and sacrifice of the people, who give their most precious thing - their children - to achieve a great goal.

In the chapter that opens the 2nd part of the novel, the author describes Nilovna’s dream, in which the impressions of the past day - the May Day demonstration and the arrest of her son - are intertwined with religious symbolism. Against the blue sky, she sees her son singing the revolutionary anthem “Rise, rise, working people.” And, merging with this hymn, the chant “Christ is risen from the dead” solemnly sounds. And in a dream, Nilovna sees herself in the guise of a Mother with babies in her arms and in her womb - a symbol of motherhood. After waking up and talking with Nikolai Ivanovich, Nilovna “wanted to go somewhere along the roads, past forests and villages, with a knapsack over her shoulders, a stick in her hand.” This impulse combined a real desire to fulfill the instructions of Paul’s friends related to revolutionary propaganda in the village, and. at the same time the desire to repeat the difficult path of the Mother of God’s walk in the footsteps of the Son.

So the real social and everyday plan of the story is translated by the author into a religious-symbolic, evangelical one. The ending of the work is also noteworthy in this regard, when the mother, captured by the gendarmes, transforms her son’s revolutionary confidence (“We, the workers, will win”) into a gospel prophecy about the inevitable triumph of Christ’s truth: “They will not kill the resurrected soul.”

The humanistic nature of Gorky’s talent was also reflected in his depiction of three types of revolutionaries who played an active role in the political life of Russia. The first of them is Pavel Vlasov. The novel shows in detail his evolution, the transformation of a simple working guy into a conscious revolutionary, leader of the masses. Deep devotion to the common cause, courage and unbending will become distinctive features of Paul’s character and behavior. At the same time, Pavel Vlasov is stern and ascetic. He is convinced that “only reason will free man.”

His behavior lacks the harmony of thoughts and feelings, reason and emotions necessary for a true leader of the masses. Wise with great life experience Rybin explains to Pavel his failure in the matter with the “swamp penny” in the following way: “You speak well, but not your heart - lo! You need to throw a spark into your heart, into the very depths.”

It is no coincidence that Pavel’s friend Andrei Nakhodka calls him “the iron man.” In many cases, Pavel Vlasov’s asceticism prevents his spiritual beauty and even thoughts from revealing themselves; it is no coincidence that the mother feels her son is “closed.” Let us remember how harshly he cuts off Nilovna on the eve of the demonstration, whose maternal heart feels the misfortune looming over her son: “When will there be mothers who will send their children to death with joy?” Paul's selfishness and arrogance are even more clearly visible in his sharp attack against mother's love. “There is love that prevents a person from living...” His relationship with Sasha is also very ambiguous. Pavel loves a girl and is loved by her. His plans do not include marrying her, since family happiness, in his opinion, will interfere with his participation in the revolutionary struggle.

In the image of Pavel Vlasov, Gorky embodied the character and behavior of a fairly large category of revolutionaries. These are strong-willed, purposeful people, completely devoted to their idea. But they lack a broad outlook on life, a combination of unbending integrity with attention to people, harmony of thoughts and feelings.

Andrey Nakhodka is more flexible and richer in this regard. Natasha, kind and sweet Yegor Ivanovich. It is with them, and not with Pavel, that Nilovna feels more confident, opens her soul safely, knowing that these sensitive people will not offend her heartfelt impulses with a rude, careless word or deed. The third type of revolutionary is Nikolai Vesovshchikov. This is a revolutionary maximalist. “Having barely gone through the basics of the revolutionary struggle, he demands weapons in order to immediately settle accounts with the “class enemies.” The answer given to Vesovshchikov by Andrei Nakhodka is typical: “First, you see, you need to arm your head, and then your hands...” Nakhodka is right: emotions that are not based on a solid foundation of knowledge are no less dangerous than dryly rationalistic decisions that do not take into account the accumulated debts of experience and centuries-tested moral commandments.

The image of Nikolai Vesovshchikov contains a great author’s generalization and warning. The same Nakhodka tells Pavel about Vesovshchikov: “When people like Nikolai feel their resentment and break out of patience, what will it happen? The sky will be splattered with blood. And the earth in it will foam like soap...” Life confirmed this forecast. When such people seized power in October 1917, they flooded the earth and sky with Russian blood. The prophetic warnings of the “Gospel of Maxim,” as critic G. Mitin called the novel “Mother,” were, alas, not heeded.

Since the beginning of the 1910s, Gorky’s work has been developing, as before, in two main directions: exposing petty-bourgeois philosophy and psychology as an inert, spiritually wretched force and affirming the inexhaustibility of the spiritual and creative powers of the people.

A broad, generalizing canvas of the life of district Russia was painted by Gorky in his stories"Okurov Town" (1909) and “The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin” (1911), where there are “humiliated and insulted”, victims of petty-bourgeois savagery (Sima Devushkin), where various kinds of militant hooligans and anarchists feel at ease (Va-vila Burmistrov), and also there are their philosophers and lovers of truth, intelligent observers of life (Tiunov, Kozhemyakin), convinced that “our body is broken, but our soul is strong. Spiritually, we are all still teenagers, and we have a lot of life ahead of us. Rus' will rise, just believe in it.”

7. Cycle of stories “Across Rus'”.

The writer expressed this faith in Russia, in the Russian people, in a series of stories"Across Rus'" (1912-1917). The author, according to him, turned here to depicting the past in order to illuminate the paths to the future. The cycle is built in the travel genre. Together with the narrator - the “passer”, we seem to be traveling around the country. We see central Russia, the freedom of the southern steppes, Cossack villages, we are present at the spring awakening of nature, we sail along leisurely rivers, we admire the nature of the northern Caucasus, we breathe in the salty wind of the Caspian Sea. And everywhere we meet a mass of diverse people. Based on extensive life material

Gorky shows how the gifted nature of the Russian person makes its way through the centuries-old layers of lack of culture, inertia and poverty of existence.

The cycle opens with the story “The Birth of a Man,” which tells about the birth of a child along the way to a random companion of the author-narrator. Its action takes place against the backdrop of beautiful Caucasian nature. Thanks to this, the event described acquires a sublimely symbolic meaning under the writer’s pen: he was born new person, who may be destined to live in a more happy time. Hence, the words of the “passing one”, full of optimism, illuminating the appearance of a new person on earth: “Make some noise, Orlovsky, establish yourself, brother, stronger...” The very image of the child’s mother, a young Oryol peasant woman, rises to the heights of a symbol of motherhood. The story sets the major tone for the entire cycle. “It is an excellent position to be a human being on earth,” these words of the narrator resound with Gorky’s optimistic faith in the triumph of the bright beginnings of life.

Many features of Russian national character embodied by the writer in the image of the head of the carpentry artel Osipe from the story “Ice drift”. Sedate, somewhat melancholy, even lazy Osip, in moments of danger, fills with energy, burns with youthful enthusiasm, becomes a true leader of the workers who risked crossing the ice floes to the other side of the Volga during the onset of the flood. In the image of Osip, Gorky affirms the active, strong-willed principle of the Russian national character, expresses confidence in the creative forces of the people, which have not yet truly come into motion.

The picture of folk life and especially folk types depicted by Gorky appears complex, sometimes contradictory, and motley. In the complexity and diversity of the national character, the writer saw the originality of the Russian people, determined by its history. In 1912, in a letter to the writer O. Runova, he noted: “The natural state of man is diversity. Russians are especially colorful, which is why they differ significantly from other nations.” Showing the inconsistency of popular consciousness, resolutely opposing passivity, Gorky created an impressive gallery of types and characters.

Here is the story "Woman". For his heroine Tatyana, the search for personal happiness is combined with the search for happiness for all people, with the desire to see them kinder and better. “Look, you go to a person with kindness, you are ready to give him your freedom, your strength, but he doesn’t understand this, and how can you blame him? Who showed him good?” - she thinks.

People abused the young prostitute Tanya from the story “Light Gray and Blue” and “consoled”, as if with alms, simple wisdom: “Will you punish everyone who is guilty?” But they did not kill her kindness and bright outlook on the world.

The telegraph operator Yudin, who was prone to pessimism (the story “The Book”), somewhere in the depths of his soul, had a longing for better life and “tender compassion for people.” Even in a lost person, such as the drunken milkweed Mashka, the instinct of maternal love awakens a feeling of kindness and self-sacrifice (“Passion-face”).

The story “The Light Man” is very important, if not fundamental, for the entire book - about a 19-year-old typesetter Sashka, passionately in love with life. “Eh, brother Maksimych,” he admits to the narrator, “my heart is growing and growing endlessly, as if all of me is just one heart.” This young man is drawn to books, to knowledge, and tries to write poetry.

All the stories in the cycle are united by the image of the author-narrator, who is not just an observer of events, but a participant in them. He deeply believes in the renewal of life, in the spiritual potential and creative powers of the Russian person.

The positive, life-affirming principle in Gorky’s work of this period was embodied in “Tales of Italy” - twenty-seven romanticized artistic essays about Italian life, which are preceded by an epigraph from Andersen: “There are no fairy tales better than those that life itself creates,” testifying to reality, and not at all about the fabulousness of what is being described. They poetize the “little man” - a man of a broad soul and an active creative deed, whose work transforms reality. The author’s view of such a “little great man” is expressed through the lips of one of the builders of the Simplon Tunnel: “Oh, sir, a little man, when he wants to work, is an invincible force. And believe me: in the end this little man will do whatever he wants.”

In the last pre-revolutionary years, Gorky worked hard on autobiographical stories"Childhood" (1913-1914) and "In People" (1916). In 1923, he completed these memoirs with the book My Universities.

Starting from the rich traditions of Russian autobiographical prose, Gorky supplemented this genre with a depiction of the simplicity of a man from the people, showing the process of his spiritual formation. There are many dark scenes and paintings in the works. But the writer is not limited to depicting only the “leaden abominations of life.” He shows how, through “a layer of all sorts of bestial rubbish... the bright, healthy and creative... victoriously grows, arousing an indestructible hope for our rebirth to a bright, human life.”

This conviction, meetings with numerous people strengthen the strength and shape the character of Alyosha Peshkov, his active attitude to the surrounding reality. At the end of the story “In People,” a meaningful image of a “half-asleep land” appears, which Alyosha passionately wants to wake up, to give “a kick to it and to himself,” so that everything “spun in a joyful whirlwind, a festive dance of people in love with each other, in this life, started for the sake of a different life - beautiful, cheerful, honest ... "

8. Gorky’s attitude to the revolution.

Gorky's attitude to the events of the February and especially the October revolutions was complex. Unconditionally condemning the old system, Gorky associated with the revolution hopes for genuine social and spiritual emancipation of the individual, for the construction of a new culture. However, all this turned out to be an illusion, which forced him to come out with a series of protesting and warning articles, which he called “Untimely Thoughts.” They were published by Gorky from April 1917 to June 1918 in the newspaper Novaya Zhizn, which he published. They reflected both Gorky’s love for Russia and his pain for it. And the writer himself appears here as a tragic figure.

These sentiments especially intensified in Gorky after the victory of the October Revolution, for, as L. Spiridonova, the author of a detailed and deep monograph on Gorky, based on the richest archival documents, rightly writes, the writer was “for democracy, but against extreme forms of manifestation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, for socialism as an idea, but against violent measures for its implementation associated with violation of human rights and freedom of conscience.”

The rampant red terror and the indifference of the revolutionary authorities to the fate of people caused Gorky to desperately protest against murders, arrests, lynchings, pogroms and robberies, against the very idea that hundreds of thousands of people could be destroyed in order for justice to prevail. “The great happiness of freedom should not be overshadowed by crimes against the individual, otherwise we will kill freedom with our own hands,” the writer warned.

He wrote with indignation that “class hatred overwhelmed the mind, and the conscience died.” Gorky watched with alarm as the Russian life people come out and gain power, far from the true ideals of freedom, happiness and justice, clinging to the revolution. The writer defends the people from this kind of “unscrupulous adventurers” - the inter-Bolsheviks, who, in his conviction, look at Russia as an experimental field, as “material for social experiments.” One of them, G. Zinoviev, was portrayed by Gorky in the play “The Hard Worker of Slovotekov.”

Gorky was the first to ring the bells, seeing that the plunder of national cultural treasures had begun and their sale abroad. He opposed the call to “Rob the loot,” because this led to the impoverishment of the country’s economic and cultural treasures. Gorky protested especially vehemently against the disdainful attitude towards figures of science and culture, towards the Russian intelligentsia, the “brain of the nation”, seeing in all this a threat to culture and civilization.

The consequences of this position were not long in coming. By order of Zinoviev, a search was carried out at the writer’s apartment, articles began to appear in the newspapers “Pravda” and “Petrogradskaya Pravda” accusing Gorky of having “sold out to the imperialists, landowners and bankers” in the newspaper he published.

In response to this, Gorky wrote on June 3, 1918 in Novaya Zhizn: “Nothing else could have been expected from a government that is afraid of light and publicity, cowardly and anti-democratic, trampling on elementary civil rights, persecuting workers, sending punitive expeditions to the peasants.” . A month after this publication, the newspaper “New Life” was closed.

9. Gorky in exile.

At the urgent suggestion of Lenin, Gorky left his homeland in October 1921. For the first three years of forced emigration he lived in Berlin, then in Sorrento.

Abroad, Gorky, as if making up for lost time, begins to write greedily and feverishly. He creates the story “My Universities”, a series of autobiographical stories, several memoir essays, the novel “The Artamonov Case”, begins work on the epic “The Life of Klim Samgin” - a monumental artistic study of the spiritual life of Russia at the turn of the century, where against the grandiose backdrop of historical events the writer depicts “ the story of an empty soul,” “an intellectual of average value” Klim Samgin, who with his twilight consciousness, the type of split soul, echoes Dostoevsky’s “underground” characters.

10. Return of Gorky to the USSR

In 1928, the writer returned to his homeland. I returned with a firm conviction to accept Active participation in the construction of a new life, as it seemed to him, that was returning to normal after the revolutionary cataclysms. It was precisely this, and not material considerations, as some modern publicists are trying to assure us, that dictated his return. One of the proofs of this is the memoirs of F. Chaliapin: “Gorky sympathized with me, he himself said: “Here brother, there is no place for you.” When we met this time in 1928 in Rome... he told me sternly: “And now you, Fedor, need to go to Russia...”.

However, despite the obvious sympathy for Gorky of Stalin and his inner circle, despite the intense literary, organizational and creative activity writer, life was not easy for him in the 30s. Ryabushinsky's mansion on M. Nikitskaya, where the writer was settled with a whole staff of staff, rather looked like a prison: a high fence, security. Since 1933, the head of the NKVD G. Yagoda was invisibly present here, introducing his agent P. Kryuchkov to Gorky as his secretary.

All the writer’s correspondence was carefully reviewed, suspicious letters were confiscated, Yagoda watched his every move. “I’m very tired... How many times have I wanted to visit the village, even live like in the old days... I can’t. It’s as if they were surrounded by a fence - you can’t step over it,” he complains to his close friend I. Shkape.

In May 1934, the writer’s son, Maxim, an excellent athlete and promising physicist, suddenly died. There is evidence that Yagoda poisoned him. A few months later, on December 1, the murder of S. M. Kirov, whom Gorky knew well and deeply respected, was committed. The “ninth wave” of repressions that began in the country literally shocked Gorky.

R. Rolland, who visited Moscow in 1935, after meeting Gorky, sensitively noticed that the “secrets of Gorky’s consciousness” were “full of pain and pessimism”12. French journalist Pierre Herbar, who worked in Moscow in 1935-1936 as editor of the magazine “La literature internationale,” writes in his memoirs, published in Paris in 1980, that Gorky “bombarded Stalin with sharp protests” and that “his patience was exhausted.” There is evidence that Gorky wanted to tell the intelligentsia everything Western Europe, to draw her attention to the Russian tragedy. He urges his French friends and colleagues L. Aragon and A. Gide to come to Moscow. They came. But the writer was no longer able to meet them: on June 1, 1936, he fell ill with the flu, which then turned into pneumonia.

11. Illness and death of Gorky.

From June 6, the central press begins to publish daily official bulletins on the state of his health.

On June 8, the writer was visited by Stalin, Molotov, and Voroshilov. This visit was tantamount to a final farewell. Two days before his death, the writer felt some relief. There was a deceptive hope that this time his body would cope with the disease. Gorky said to the doctors gathered for the next consultation: “Apparently, I’ll jump out.” This, alas, did not happen. On June 18, 1936 at 11:10 a.m. Gorky died. His last words were: “The end of the novel - the end of the hero - the end of the author.”

According to the official version of those years, Gorky was deliberately killed by his treating doctors L. Levin and D. Pletnev, who were repressed for this. Later, materials were published that refuted the violent death of the writer. IN Lately Disputes once again flared up about whether Gorky was killed or died as a result of illness. And if killed, then by whom and how. A special chapter of Spiridonova’s already mentioned monograph, as well as V. Baranov’s book “Gorky, without makeup,” is devoted to a detailed consideration of this issue.

It is unlikely that we will fully know the secret of Gorky’s death: the history of his illness was destroyed. One thing is certain: Gorky prevented the deployment of mass terror against the creative intelligentsia. With his death this obstacle was removed. R. Rolland wrote in his diary: “Terror in the USSR began not with the murder of Kirov, but with the death of Gorky” and explained: “...The mere presence of his blue eyes served as a rein and protection. Eyes closed."

Gorky's tragedy recent years his life is further evidence that he was neither a court writer nor a thoughtless apologist for socialist realism. Creative path M. Gorky was different - filled with the eternal dream of happiness and beauty of human life and soul. This path is the main one for Russian classical literature.

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