Maxim Gorky's early work briefly. Early work of A. M. Gorky. Romanticism and Nietzschean motifs in Gorky. Drama of Gorky. The main conflict of the play “At the Bottom. Return of Gorky to the USSR

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, he, through a tremendous effort of will and intellect, 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 the family of a cabinetmaker. After sudden death 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 “into the people” - he begins a working life full of hardships, exhausting work, and 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 begins 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 was freed from 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 like a hymn to a free and strong person. 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 issues is very indicative of everything early creativity Gorky. 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. IN otherwise it turns into 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 on 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 takes on a 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). Good man, 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. Gorky later called the anti-humanistic, cruel, immoral philosophy of this type of “former people” 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 recreated art history 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 is clearly underestimated, that this class is excluded from political life 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 gets into business and leads 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 decay, the conflict of a morally healthy individual with the 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 its production by 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. For many years, critical spears have been crossed around this Gorky “character,” 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 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). Ash 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 Christ’s son in the case, became for Gorky a measure of moral height, he placed her image at the center of the story, connecting through the mother’s feelings and actions 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 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 extensive life experience, Rybin explains to Pavel his failure in the matter of the “swamp penny” in the following way: “You speak well, but - not to the 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 maternal 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 happier times. 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 convey 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 their history. In 1912, in a letter to the writer O. Runova, he noted: “ Natural state man - 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 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 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 people, far from the true ideals of freedom, happiness and justice, crawled to the surface of Russian life and gained power, 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 cycle 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 a grandiose backdrop historical events the writer depicts “the story of an empty soul”, “an intellectual average cost» Klim Samgin, whose twilight consciousness, type of split soul, echoes Dostoevsky’s “underground” characters.

10. Return of Gorky to the USSR

In 1928, the writer returned to his homeland. He returned with the firm conviction to take an active part in the construction of a new, as it seemed to him, life 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: “... His mere presence 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. M. Gorky's creative path 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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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 theories at the end of the 19th century. 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. An impenetrable forest, where giant trees stood like a stone wall, the greedy mouth of a swamp, strong and evil enemies gave birth to fear in 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, and 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.

Famous Russian philosopher of the 20th century N.A. Berdyaev spoke about the beginning of M. Gorky’s creative career in the following way: “Gorky appeared in literature with his refreshing words and in his first stories he was strong, original and talented. It was necessary to tell the world about the tramps and their rebellion. This new force of tramps had a dazzling effect on modern society and was successful in the most bourgeois circles... Everyone recognized that Gorky’s tramps were a rebellious and revolutionary force” (“Revolution and Culture”).
Gorky's early work (the nineties of the 19th century) represents two streams, creative and realistic principles, merging into a single artistic whole. The writer strives to escape from the gray, everyday life into a dream and a fairy tale. He was sure that “the time has come for the need for the heroic: everyone wants something exciting, bright... that is not similar to life, but is higher than it, better, more beautiful. It is imperative that modern literature begins to embellish life a little, and as soon as it begins to do so, life will become more beautiful, that is, people will begin to live faster, brighter” (From a letter to Chekhov, 1900).
This attitude leads to the creation of a whole cycle of romantic works: “Makar Chudra”, “The Girl and Death”, “About the Little Fairy and the Young Shepherd”, “Khan and His Son”, “Old Woman Izergil”, “Song of the Falcon”.
The most important feature of Gorky’s romantic creativity is the researcher V.V. Mikhailovsky considered the image of the “beautiful world”, whose representatives are exclusively integral, bright, strong, bold natures, outlined sharply, without halftones: Loiko Zobar, Radda, the old Khan, Danko, Sokol... The writer openly admires them, it is no coincidence that the emphasis their outer beauty. Here, for example, is how the young gypsy Loiko Zobar introduces himself: “The mustache lay on his shoulders and mixed with his curls, his eyes glow like clear stars, and his smile is the whole sun, by God! It was as if he had been forged from one piece of iron along with the horse. He stands covered in blood, in the fire of a fire, and his teeth sparkle, laughing! I’ll be damned if I didn’t already love him as myself, before he said a word to me or simply noticed that I, too, live in this world.”
And here is the description of the gypsy Radda: “Do you know my Nonka? Queen-girl! Well, Radda cannot be compared with her - a lot of honor to Nonke! You can’t say anything about her, this Radda, in words. Maybe its beauty could be played on a violin, and even then to someone who knows this violin like his own soul” (“Makar Chudra”),
And here is a general portrait of Moldovans, young grape pickers: “They walked, sang and laughed; men - bronze, with lush, black mustaches and thick shoulder-length curls, in short jackets and wide trousers; the women are cheerful, flexible, with dark blue eyes, also bronze. Their hair, silky and black, was loose, the wind, warm and light, played with it, and tinkled the coins woven into it. The wind flowed in a wide, even wave, but sometimes it seemed to jump over something invisible and, giving rise to a strong gust, blew the women’s hair into fantastic manes that billowed around their heads. This made women strange and fabulous. They moved further and further from us, and night and fantasy dressed them more and more beautifully” (“Old Woman Izergil”).
The main thing in the heroes of Gorky's early romantic works is an active attitude towards life, the ability to fight for their moral ideals and defend them even at the cost of their lives. And it’s not even about the death of the hero, although the motive for death in such situations is stable (Radda and Zobar die, Danko dies, Sokol dies), but about the ideas that they defend. Loiko Zobar cannot lose his honor and humiliate himself even in front of his beloved girl; dying, the Falcon dreams only of once again rising into the free space of the sky and finally fighting the enemy; At the cost of his life, Danko, tearing out a flaming heart from his chest and illuminating the way with it, leads people out of the ruined forest. But the memory of them does not die. The beautiful love story of Zobar and Radda lives in the stories of Makar Chudra; the sea composes a solemn song about the death of the proud Falcon and, roaring and hitting the coastal rocks with waves, sings it; sparks from Danko's burning heart with love for people still appear in the steppe before a thunderstorm...
The writer finds the origins of romantic art in the international folklore of the peoples of the Volga region, Crimea, Caucasus, Gypsies, Moldavians...
Nature is an indispensable part of the “beautiful world”. Nature appears as a character in a number of stories: “Makar Chudra”, “Old Woman Izergil”, “Song of the Falcon”... And the story itself usually sounds in the open, merging with the freedom of the elements of the sea, steppe, wind, sky.
Here, for example, is how the story “Makar Chudra” opens: “A damp, cold wind blew from the sea, carrying across the steppe the pensive melody of the splash of a wave running onto the shore and the rustling of coastal bushes. Occasionally his gusts brought with them wrinkled, yellow leaves and threw them into the fire, fanning the flames; the darkness of the autumn night that surrounded us trembled and timidly moved away, revealing for a moment to the left - a limitless degree, to the right - an endless sea and directly opposite me - the figure of Makar Chudra, an old gypsy ... "
And the legend about Danko ends with the following description: “And so the forest parted before them, parted and remained behind, dense and silent, and Danko and all those people immediately plunged into a sea of ​​sunlight and clean air, washed by rain. The thunderstorm was there, behind them, above the forest, and here the sun was shining, the steppe was sighing, the grass was shining in the diamonds of the rain and the river was sparkling golden... It was evening, and from the rays of the sunset the river seemed red, like the blood that flowed in a hot stream from Danko's torn chest..."
And many similar examples can be given.
A.V. Lunacharsky noted that no one before Gorky had created such a background; he “almost cannot walk to a person, begin a story or chapter of a novel without looking at the sky, without seeing what the sun, moon and stars and the whole untold palette of the heavenly are doing.” vault with the changing magic of the clouds."

(1868–1936) By the beginning of the century, Gorky had knowledge in many areas of culture and showed great erudition. The idea that Gorky was primarily a publicist, and not an artist, was picked up in the 1980s and 1990s by modern criticism, which “in the bustle of changing ideas” lost the objectivity of assessments.. For some, he was a “singer of tramping” and a Nietzschean, for for others - a “talented nugget from the people”, for others - a “petrel of the revolution”. After the publication of the novel "Mother" Symbolist criticism announced the final decline of Gorky’s talent, the “end” of him as an artist. In the 1930s, Gorky - founder of the literature of socialist realism. First literary experiences Maxim Gorky(Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov) date back to the 80s. Peshkov’s first acquaintance with populists and Marxists dates back to this time. The writer's name appeared in print in 1892; his story was published in the Tiflis newspaper "Caucasus" "Makar Chudra". A struggle between various ideological and artistic movements flared up around Gorky’s work. In 1889, Gorky brought Korolenko the poem “ Song of the Old Oak" The poem was unsuccessful, weak. After Korolenko’s criticism, Gorky destroyed it, but in his memory a line was preserved that expressed the main idea of ​​the poem: “I came into the world to disagree.” The pathos of “disagreement” and “denial” will permeate his work of the 90s. N the aspiring writer called for active “disagreement” with existing reality. In the early period of his creativity, Gorky wrote several works in which the traditions of the revolutionary-democratic satire of Saltykov-Shchedrin are even palpable (“Conversation from the heart”, 1893; “The Wise Radish”; stories about the “masters of life”). Exposing the “leaden abominations” of life, the artist contrasted them with his ideal of moral and social relations between people. In the mind of a young writer literature should be a “scourge” and a “noble bell” calling for action. The pathos of protest and the desire to awaken in the reader an active attitude towards life and influence his social psychology were expressed primarily in Gorky’s heroic-romantic works, built on a legendary-fantastic plot basis. This was clearly expressed in the legends about Danko and Larra, included in the story "Old Isergil" (1895). The Legend of Larra directed against the false heroics of individualism, which was poeticized by the symbolists, the legend of Danko contrasted the heroism of collectivism with individualistic ethics. Gorky’s faith in the ability of the human spirit to create the beauty of the world determined the social and moral optimism of his works. In Gorky’s early work, the writer’s thought about the hero of life was not yet based on the established worldview and was filled with many contradictions. Later, when he finally frees himself from the influence of populist ideology and begins to reflect on the ideals of socialism, as a social and moral teaching close to him, he will refute Nietzsche. An original understanding of the traditions of Russian literature is also revealed by Gorky’s stories, dedicated to the peasant theme. The Russian village at the end of the century as depicted by Gorky is full of internal contradictions. Gorky destroys the populists’ illusions about the harmony of the village “world” (“Conclusion”, 1895; “Shabry”, 1896). The pictures of rural life in these works are reminiscent of sketches of rural life in the works of writers of the sixties. But the pathos of Gorky's stories was different. Gorky wrote primarily about the spiritual health of the Russian peasant, about his social and moral quests, while hidden, but real creative forces. A unique programmatic work on this topic was the story “ Kirilka" ( 1899). Gorky talks about awakening public consciousness Russian peasant, predicting the inevitability of an explosion of contradictions in Russian life. Gorky's heroes are not people of average dignity, but they have extraordinary natures; they are united by the rarest qualities of character and unusual actions. Gorky strives to put his heroes in extremely sharp situations, to show a person at turning points of his fate, self-determination in difficult turns of life. Gorky’s landscape usually had a general meaning, philosophical content. Landscape symbolism expressed the author's forebodings of a social storm, a social explosion. Such is the scene of the approaching thunderstorm in "Former People" (1897), pictures of the storm in “Song of the Petrel” (1901), thunderstorms in "Chelkashe" (1895). In stories "For their sake" « Bell", "Obsession", Gorky painted a gallery of entrepreneurs - from small pioneers to the latest type of bourgeois. In these stories, for the first time in the writer’s work, the theme of generations appears: the very successes of the “masters of the modern situation” push them to death: the more they “triumph”, the faster it will come. Gorky tried to show Russian life in its historical movement . (“Foma Gordeev", 1899; " Three", 1900) and dramaturgy (" Bourgeois", 1901; " At the bottom", 1902; " Summer residents", 1904).In the novel “Foma Gordeev”, published in 1899 in the magazine “Life”, a theme was set that would resound in full force in Gorky’s work in subsequent years - the internal decay of the bourgeois class, the historical doom of the existing world order . "Foma Gordeev" became the writer's first novel about the fate of generations. Gorky himself defined work on the novel as “a transition to new form literary existence." In the novel, the reader passes a line of pioneers who have become “masters of life.” But it is not these people who are brought to the fore, but the bourgeoisie of the new formation, who inherited their fathers’ money and adopted new methods of handling capital. The central character of this circle is Yakov Mayakin, an “ideologist” and leader of the new merchant class, not only interested in the fate of the altyn that was put into circulation, but also striving for power and social influence. He glorifies bourgeois progress, the merchant class, which he views as the only life-giving force of Russian economic and cultural life. Therefore, Mayakin demands “space in life” for the merchants, a share in the government of the country. Gorky wrote that he gave Mayakin the features of Nietzscheanism. As for the attitude of the writer himself to the hero, Gorky’s polemic with the philosophy of Nietzsche is already heard here, which the writer considered the philosophy of the “masters”, justifying their power over people. The tragedy of Thomas is that he cannot oppose anything to the immoral power of this world. He rebels, but his rebellion is doomed, it is the rebellion of a weak loner. In the early 1900s, Gorky turned to drama, seeing in the theater a platform from which he could directly address the mass democratic reader. The first work of Gorky the playwright was the play "Bourgeois" ( Scenes in the Bessemenovs' house) (1901) The main conflict of Gorky's play is the collision of the world of the philistine owners with the opposing Nile camp, bourgeois ideology and ethics with new views on the world and man, emerging among the advanced democratic intelligentsia. The play is based on ideological disputes, clashes of different ideological platforms. At one pole are Nile and Polya, democratically minded intellectuals are drawn to them, at the other are the Bessemenovs (both older and younger generations). The play “Philistines” is usually compared with “Three Sisters.” The theme of philistinism and tense anticipation of the future is at the center of both plays. But if in Chekhov’s play the philistinism sets in, then in Gorky’s play a different situation develops: a new force is actively attacking the entire way of life - new people, whose dream of the future is based on real foundations in the present. The main conflict of "The Bourgeois" is clearly expressed in the ideological struggle. Gorky's second play "At the bottom", written during the winter and summer of 1902, brought him worldwide fame. It was the writer’s response to the most pressing social, philosophical and moral problems of the time. The ideological topicality immediately attracted the attention of the Russian public to the play. Unfolded around her intense struggle various ideological movements. Critics of the reactionary-monarchist trend saw in it a revolutionary sermon that undermined social foundations. Liberal criticism presented the writer as a preacher of Christian morality. Narodnik critics questioned the realistic content of Gorky's work, and regarded his humanism as a proud contempt for little man. The history of the struggle around the play emphasized its ideological relevance. Thematically, the play completed the cycle of Gorky’s works about “tramps.” It reflects the facts and events of our time that actually took place. In this sense, it was a verdict on the social system, which threw many people endowed with intelligence, feeling, and talent to the “bottom” of life, leading them to tragic death. Gorky argued that a society that has distorted the humanity in a person cannot exist. The heroes of the play - Actor, Ash, Nastya, Natasha, Kleshch - strive to break free from the “bottom” of life, but they feel their own powerlessness in front of this “prison”. They have a feeling of hopelessness of their fate and a craving for a dream, an illusion that gives at least some hope for the future. When the illusory nature of their hopes becomes obvious, these people die. The loss of hope caused the death of his soul, Gorky said about the fate of the Actor. Klesch works hard and passionately wants to return to working life. Luke appears as the bearer of the idea of ​​consoling deception in the play. The principle of his attitude towards man is the idea of ​​compassion. Throughout the course of the play, Gorky shows the inhumanity of passive, compassionate humanism. Subjectively, Luka, the bearer of the idea of ​​such humanism, is honest, arouses the sympathy of even the gloomy Tick; he wants to help people by instilling in them, albeit illusory, hope for the future. For Luke, a person is weak and insignificant before the circumstances of life, which, in his opinion, cannot be changed. And if so, it is necessary to reconcile the person with life by instilling a comforting “truth” that is convenient for him. And there are as many such truths as there are those who are eager to find it: truth and the truth of life become relative concepts. And it turns out that even in this world, where compassion would be a natural expression of a humane attitude towards a person, a comforting lie leads to a tragic outcome. And it comes in the fourth act of the play. The illusions have dissipated. The Actor dies, Nastya rushes about. The shelter is a picture of complete destruction. The so-called “heroless” composition dramas. If in the play “At the Lower Depths” Gorky summed up the theme of the “tramp” in his work, then in other plays a new stage in the development of the theme of the intelligentsia was outlined. In 1904–1905. Gorky writes plays “Summer Residents” (1904), “Children of the Sun” (1905), “Barbarians” (1905). The central problem of the plays is the intelligentsia and the people, the intelligentsia and the revolution. The cycle of these plays opened “ Summer residents" Gorky himself determined the main theme of the play in a letter to the director. : “I wanted to portray that part of the Russian intelligentsia that came out of the democratic strata and, having reached a certain height of social position, lost contact with the people - their blood relatives, forgot about their interests and the need to expand life for them...” This Gorky judgment reveals the meaning of the images of Ryumin and Kaleria. These intellectuals, presenting themselves as the antipodes of the philistines, are in fact people of the same life and ideological direction, a product of the same environment as the Basovs and Suslovs, who, without hiding their life credo, declare the “right to rest” after the unrest of the social movement. All these people have isolated themselves from life and its demands. Gorky tears off the philistine's mask of spiritual sophistication and complexity. Here again the writer’s thought about decadence as a spiritual mask of the bourgeois sounds. Gorky contrasts the renegade intellectuals, the “dacha residents,” with the democratic intelligentsia. This is doctor Marya Lvovna, Vlas, Sonya. Marya Lvovna's monologue about the purpose of the intelligentsia in modern Russian life, as Gorky himself pointed out, was the “key” to the play. “We all must be different, gentlemen! Children of laundresses, cooks, Children of healthy working people - we must be different! After all, there has never been in our country educated people, connected with the mass of the people by blood kinship... This blood kinship should feed us with an ardent desire to expand, rebuild, illuminate the lives of our dear people, who all their days only work, suffocating in darkness and dirt... They sent us ahead of them, so that we can find a way for them to a better life.”“Summer Residents” is Gorky’s most “Chekhovian” play. But the conflict of the play acquired a socio-ideological character in Gorky. The problem of relations between the intelligentsia and the people, the intelligentsia and the revolution became the leading one in another play by Gorky in this cycle - "Children of the Sun". The stratum of the Russian intelligentsia is depicted - these are people of science and art, sincerely devoted to their work and sincerely mistaken in the social issues of life. Therefore, the theme of the intelligentsia sounds in this play in a different key. The central character of the play, Protasov, a scientist, dreams of man's victory over death, he is filled with faith in man, in the possibilities of his creative thought, and stands on the threshold of some great scientific discovery. Protasov's monologue about Man directly echoes the thoughts expressed by Gorky in the poem "Human". In the summer of the same 1905, Gorky wrote the third play of this cycle - "Barbarians" in which the playwright, using new material, developed the theme outlined in “Foma Gordeev” - the theme of the contradictions of bourgeois progress and civilization. Gorky contrasted the existing social world order, its ideology and ethics in the play “ Enemies" and the novel “Mother” a world of new human relationships, new people with a new social psychology emerging in the revolutionary struggle. The idea of ​​writing a play about the labor movement arose from Gorky in the early 1900s, but the plan was realized only after 1905. The plot is based on – real revolutionary events in Russia in the 1900s. This is a plot of a new type, it is determined by the clash of classes and political trends. “Enemies” is the first work in Russian drama that shows an open political clash of social camps, political views, moral concepts. The play seemed to sum up the creative quest of Gorky the playwright and marked a new stage in the development of his dramatic style. Previously, in Gorky's dramas, conflicts were expressed primarily in the clash of ideological views and philosophical concepts. This also determined the type of their plot movement. The ideological and ethical ideals of the heroes collided with reality and were tested by it. In "Enemies" the basis of all conflicts is the unfolding political struggle. Socio-political circumstances test everything: political and ethical views, and a person’s attitude towards art.

Introduction

1. A word about the writer.

2Features of Gorky’s early work.

3. The story “Old Woman Izergil” - awareness of a person’s personality:

a) “ethereal cloud” of human life;

b) burning heart;

c) the origins of fame and infamy;

d) Izergil is a romantic ideal of freedom.

Conclusion

Introduction

Maxim Gorky entered literature during a period of spiritual crisis that struck Russian society at the turn of the century. The dreams of harmony between man and society that inspired nineteenth-century writers remained unrealized; Social and interstate contradictions are aggravated to the limit, threatening to be resolved by world war and a revolutionary explosion. Lack of faith, despondency, and apathy have become the norm for some, while for others it has become an impetus to search for a way out. Gorky noted that he began to write “due to the force of pressure... from a painfully poor life,” to which he sought to contrast his idea of ​​a person, his ideal.

The early work of M. Gorky (90s of the 19th century - the first half of the 1900s) goes under the sign of “collecting” the truly human: “I recognized people very early and even in my youth began to invent Man in order to satiate my thirst for beauty. Wise people... convinced me that I had invented a bad consolation for myself. Then I went to people again and - it’s so clear! “I am returning from them to Man again,” Gorky wrote at that time. Gorky's stories of the 90s can be divided into two groups. Some of them are based on fiction: the author uses legends or invents them himself. Others draw characters and scenes from real life tramps (“Chelkash”, “Emelyan Pilyai”, “Once Upon a Time in Autumn”, “Twenty Six and One”, etc.). The heroes of all these stories have a romantic attitude.

The hero of Gorky’s first story, “Makar Chudra,” reproaches people for their slave psychology. In this romantic narrative, slave people are contrasted with the freedom-loving natures of Loiko Zobar and the beautiful Rada. The thirst for personal freedom is so strong for them that they even look at love as a chain that fetters their independence. Loiko and Rada surpass everyone around them with their spiritual beauty and power of passion, which leads to a tense conflict that ends in the death of the heroes. The story “Makar Chudra” affirms the ideal of personal freedom.

The story “Old Woman Izergil” is one of the masterpieces of M. Gorky’s early work. The writer here is not interested in the manifestation of the individual character of the hero, but in the generalized concept of humanity in the individual.

In Gorky's early romantic works, a concept of personality is formed, which will be developed in the writer's later works.

1. A word about the writer

Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov (M. Gorky - pseudonym) was born in Nizhny Novgorod on March 16 (28), 1868. His father, a cabinetmaker who became the manager of a shipping office in Astrakhan, died early of cholera (1871). Mother, daughter of the owner of the dyeing workshop V.I. Kashirina, remarried, but soon died of consumption (1879). The boy lived in his grandfather’s house, where there were quarrels and litigation over the division of property between his mother’s brothers. It was very difficult for a child to be among them. He was saved by his active, gifted spirit and the love of his grandmother. At the age of six, Alyosha, under the guidance of his grandfather, mastered Church Slavonic literacy, then the civil seal. He studied for two years at a suburban school, passed the 3rd grade as an external student, and received a certificate of merit. By that time, the grandfather had gone bankrupt and gave his grandson “to the people.” Peshkov worked as a delivery boy in a fashion store, as a servant for a draftsman-contractor and Sergeev, as a cook on ships, as a student in a foreign-painting workshop, as a foreman at fair buildings, and as an extra in the theater. And I read a lot with greed, at first “everything that came to hand,” later I discovered the rich world of Russian literary classics, books on art and philosophy.

In the summer of 1884 he went to Kazan, dreaming of studying at the university. But he was forced to earn a living as a day laborer, laborer, loader, and baker's assistant. In Kazan, he met students, attended their meetings, became close to the populist-minded intelligentsia, read forbidden literature, and attended self-education circles. The hardships of life, the perception of repression against students, and a personal love drama led to a mental crisis and a suicide attempt. In the summer of 1888, Peshkov left with the populist M.A. Romas to the village of Krasnovidovo to promote revolutionary ideas among the peasantry. After the destruction of Romasya's bookstore, the young man went to the Caspian Sea and worked there in the fishing industry.

The experience over all these years later gave rise to the autobiographical prose of M. Gorky; He named the stories about the first three periods of his life according to their content: “Childhood”, “In People”, “My Universities” (1913–1923).

After staying in the Caspian Sea, “walking around Rus'” began. Peshkov traveled on foot, earning his living from the middle and southern regions of Russia. In between his travels, he lived in Nizhny Novgorod (1889–1891), doing various menial jobs, then was a clerk for a lawyer; participated in revolutionary conspiracy activities, for which he was first arrested (1889). In Nizhny I met V. G. Korolenko, who supported the creative endeavors of “this nugget with undoubted literary talent.”

2. Romantic ideas in the early works of M. Gorky

A special group in the writer’s work of the 1890s consists of romantic works (“Makar Chudra”, “Old Woman Izergil”, “About the Little Fairy and the Young Shepherd”, “Song of the Falcon”, “Mute”, “Khan and His Son”, etc. .). The writer gives a new breath to this literary direction(romanticism), which had lost its influence by the middle of the 19th century.

What made Gorky turn to romanticism? Already in the writer’s early, creatively immature poem, the words sound: “I came into the world to disagree.” These words can serve as an epigraph to Gorky’s entire work. The motive of disagreement with reality, in which “lead abominations” reign, there is social injustice, the oppression of some people by others, cruelty, violence, poverty, is the leading one. Gorky dreams of a strong, independent, free person, “with the sun in his blood.” But in real life and even in the writer’s contemporary literature, there were no such people, so the writer directly stated, “... that for some reason the luxurious mirror of Russian literature did not reflect the outbursts of popular anger...”, and accused literature of did not look for “heroes, she loved to talk about people who were strong only in patience, meek, soft, dreaming of paradise in heaven, silently suffering on earth.” This position was unacceptable for a maximalist writer. Therefore, Gorky turned to romanticism, which allowed him to portray a hero-activist. Gorky's romantic works are imbued with the pathos of life affirmation and faith in man.

The following features are characteristic of Gorky’s romantic works:

hero type- the hero stands out sharply from environment(remember formula of romanticism : "an exceptional hero in exceptional circumstances") he is rejected, lonely, opposed to the world of everyday reality (cf. Falcon - Already), abstractly beautiful (Gorky’s heroes are not endowed with detailed portrait and psychological characteristics), proud, independent; this hero is ready to argue with fate itself, defending his right to freedom (and this is the main value for which it is worth going to death);

Traditional choice themes of love of freedom(personal freedom), poeticization of freedom (the conflict “mind-feeling” is transformed in Gorky’s works into the conflict “feeling-freedom” (“Makar Chudra”); the author uses images-symbols, traditional in the works of romantics - sea, steppe, sky, wind, falcon (petrel));

The heroes do not act in the real world, but in a fictional world(the writer refers to a legend, a fairy tale, were - folklore material);

Plays a special role scenery, acting simultaneously as both the background and the hero of the story (the legend of Danko, “Old Woman Izergil”);

Use of special figurative means: hyperbole(in the description of feelings, thoughts, actions, portrait), epithets, metaphors, comparisons, personifications, highly solemn vocabulary(which makes prose similar to poetry);

Often meets framing composition(story within a story). This narrative composition is subordinated to one goal: to recreate the image of the main character as completely as possible.

In addition to the narrator (old woman Izergil, Makar Chudra), image of a “passer”, a listener(image of the narrator). This image does not manifest itself directly, but is necessary to express the author’s position.

The romantic hero is conceived as a destroyer of the sleepy existence of the majority. It is said about the gypsy Loiko Zobar (“Makar Chudra”): “With such a person you yourself become better...” In the bloody drama that unfolded between him and Radda, there is also a rejection of the ordinary human destiny. In the Wallachian fairy tale “About the Little Fairy and the Young Shepherd” (1892), the young shepherd dreams of “going somewhere far, far away, where there would be nothing that he knew...”, and the fairy Maya can only live in her native forest. The heroine of “The Girl and Death” (early 90s, published in 1917) carries in her heart “unearthly power” and “unearthly light.” Everywhere, boring everyday life is countered by rare energy of spiritual impulses. Chudra concludes his tale this way: “...go your own way, without turning to the side. Straight ahead and go. Maybe you won’t lose your life in vain.”

Having glorified a bright personality following his own path, Gorky turned to the acute spiritual conflicts of the legendary heroes. In a number of romantic stories “Old Woman Izergil”, “Song of the Falcon” » (1895–1899), "Khan and His Son" (1896), "Mute » (1896) reflects a heterogeneous clash, often tragic, between a dream, spiritualized feeling, attraction to the Beautiful and fear of life, dull indifference to beauty.

3 The story “Old Woman Izergil” - awareness of a person’s personality

The story was published in 1894 in the Samara Gazeta, where Gorky received a position as a permanent employee. Ideologically and thematically, this work is close to the story “Makar Chudra”. Firstly, the writer here complicated the composition. He used double frame. The first “frame” is traditionally a seascape, mysterious and fantastic. The image stands out against its background main character- the old gypsy Izergil, who tells a random listener (the image of the narrator) the story of her life. The image of the old woman is endowed with the same qualities as the image of Makar Chudra in the story of the same name. She is characterized by uncompromisingness, the desire for personal freedom, admiration strong personalities. And the legends inserted into her story (the first is about the proud Larra, the second about Danko), in addition to serving as a second “frame,” also allow us to better understand and comprehend the life position of the main character. These legends tell about events of bygone days, and the heroes are exponents of two opposing points of view (antithesis) on the problem of the meaning of life.

Condemnation of individualism and affirmation of heroic deeds in the name of freedom and happiness of the people - this is the idea of ​​​​the story “Old Woman Izergil”.

The story is structured in a unique way: with an internal unity of idea and tone, it consists of three, as it were independent parts. The first part is the legend of Larra, the second is Izergil’s story about his youth, the third is the legend of Danko. At the same time, the first and third parts - the legends of Larra and Danko - are opposite to each other. Characteristic The story lies in the fact that it has two narrators and, accordingly, two narrative plans. The general narration is conducted on behalf of the author, who speaks with his thoughts, reflections, and assessments. In conclusion, he emphasizes the beauty of the tale of Danko. And the second narrator is the old woman Izergil, who keeps in her memory folk legends about heroism, about evil and good in human life.

The people surrounding the old woman Izergil are also depicted as mighty, strong and almost fabulous heroes.

Gorky writes about the Moldovans:

“They walked, sang and laughed; men - bronze, with lush, black mustaches and thick shoulder-length curls, in short jackets and wide trousers; women and girls - cheerful, flexible, with dark blue eyes, also bronze...

These people are not much different in appearance from Loiko Zobar, Radda and Danko. In this way, romantic and heroic features were emphasized in life. They are also given in Izergil’s biography. This was done in order to highlight an important idea: heroic romance is not opposed to life, it only expresses in a stronger and more vivid form what is inherent in reality itself.

The first legend tells about "antihero"- the selfish and proud Larre, who, being the son of an eagle and a mortal woman, is filled with contempt for people, their laws, their way of life.

Larra is the embodiment of extreme individualism. He considers himself the first on earth. He does not consider it necessary for himself to obey the laws of the human community, so he easily commits a crime - the murder of the girl who refused him. For this he is rejected by human society, expelled from among people. At first he does not feel punished, but living alone makes him ask for death. People refuse him this, and even the earth does not want to accept him into its bosom. So he turns into an eternal wanderer, into a shadow, and he has no shelter or peace anywhere. And the greatest good - life - becomes hopeless torment for him.

The second legend introduces a different hero, Danko. He, just like Larra, is handsome and proud, and also stands out from the crowd of people. But Danko, unlike Larra, heroic personality. His entire short life was given to people. Danko leads his people to freedom from a slave life: from the darkness of swampy swamps and dark forests, he leads his desperate fellow tribesmen to the light (read, to another life). There were extraordinary difficulties and insurmountable obstacles along the way. And when, tired of the difficult path, people lost heart, when they began to reproach Danko for his inability to manage them, they hesitated and were ready to turn back, the hero’s heart flared up with the fire of desire to save them. And in order to illuminate the difficult and long path and support the doubting and tired, he tore out of his chest his heart, which, like a torch, was burning with great love and compassion for people, and raised it high above his head.

“It burned so brightly; like 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 and there, deep in the forest, trembling, fell into the rotten mouth of the swamp. The people, amazed, became like stones.

- Let's go! - Danko shouted and rushed forward to his place, holding his burning heart high and illuminating the path for people with it.”

The idea of ​​selfless love for people, heroic self-sacrifice in the name of the happiness of the people is affirmed by Gorky in the legend of Danko.

So, Larra's freedom – this is an individualistic, egoistic freedom that turns into punishment by loneliness. Freedom Danko – This is altruistic freedom, necessary in the name of selfless service to people.

The legends about Larra and Danko are conditional; they are needed in order to clarify the worldview of the main character and the point of view of the author.

Really, The central place in the work is still occupied by Izergil’s own story about her life. This is a story of meetings and partings, short-lived romances that do not leave a noticeable mark on the heroine’s soul. Talking about her hobbies, the heroine focuses the listener’s attention on herself, on her indomitable thirst for life and love. But none of her lovers are described in detail, even the names of some have already been erased from her memory. They, like shadows, pass in front of the listener: a black-moustached fisherman from the Prut, a fiery red-haired Hutsul, an important Turk, his son, a “little Pole.” But only for the sake of his last lover, Arcadek, Izergil risks his life. Arcadek is a heroic person. He fought for the freedom of the Greeks and was ready to accomplish a feat, “he was ready to go to the ends of the world to do something.” To save him from captivity, Izergil, disguised as a beggar woman, enters the village where her lover and his comrades are languishing in prison. She has to kill the sentry. But having heard false gratitude, Izergil herself rejects her lover. As a result, the rebellious and proud Izergil becomes like all people: she starts a family, raises children, and when she grows old, she tells legends and fairy tales to the young, recalling past, heroic times.

Izergil herself lived a significant and colorful life in her own way. She loved helping good people.

But she lacked what we call ideal. And only Danko embodied the highest understanding of the beauty and greatness of man, sacrificing his life for the happiness of the people. So in the very composition of the story its idea is revealed.

What type of personality is represented in the image of the old woman Izergil? The old woman herself brings her life closer to Danko’s life; it is this hero who is an example for her. Indeed, one can find similar features in her life: the ability to achieve feats in the name of love, life among people. It is she who owns the aphoristic statements: “Beautiful people are always brave”, “In life there is always a place for feat.”

But anyway The image of the old woman is devoid of integrity; one can notice some contradictions: her feelings are sometimes shallow, superficial, her actions are unpredictable, spontaneous, selfish. These traits bring her closer to Larra. Thus, Izergil’s character is ambiguous and contradictory.

But in addition to the point of view of the heroine herself, the story also expresses point of view of the author-narrator. The narrator occasionally asks questions to the old woman, inquiring about the fate of her lovers. And it is from her answers that it becomes clear that Izergil is not very concerned about their fate. She explains this indifference to people in her own way: “I was happy about it: I never met again with those whom I once loved. These are not good meetings, it’s still as if they were with the dead...” The author does not accept this explanation, and we feel that he is still inclined to consider Izergil’s personality type to be close to Larra’s personality type. The portrait description of Izergil given by the author-narrator once again emphasizes this similarity: “Time bent her in half, her once black eyes were dull and watery. Her dry voice sounded strange, it crunched, as if the old woman was speaking with bones... Where her cheeks were, there were black pits, and in one of them lay a strand of ash-gray hair... The skin on her face, neck and arms was all cut up with wrinkles... “Such a portrait gives a resemblance to Larra, who “has now become like a shadow.”

So, the central image of the story is not ideal at all, but rather contradictory. This indicates that the consciousness of the individualist hero is anarchic; his love of freedom can be directed both for good and for evil of people.

In the story “Old Woman Izergil,” Larra, who considered himself “the first on earth,” is likened to a mighty beast: “He was dexterous, predatory, strong, cruel and did not meet people face to face”; “He had no tribe, no mother, no cattle, no wife, and he didn’t want any of this.” And as the years pass, it turns out that this “son of an eagle and a woman” is devoid of a heart: Larra wanted to stab himself with a knife, but “the knife broke - it was as if someone had hit a stone with it.” The punishment that befell him is terrible and natural - to be a shadow: “He understands neither the speech of people, nor their actions - nothing.” The anti-human essence is recreated in the image of Larra.

Danko cultivated in himself an inexhaustible love for those who “were like animals,” “like wolves,” who surrounded him, “to make it easier for them to capture and kill Danko.” And only one desire possessed him - to displace from their consciousness the darkness, cruelty, fear of the dark forest, from where “something terrible, dark and cold was looking at those walking.” Danko’s bright feeling was born of deep melancholy at the sight of his fellow tribesmen who had lost their human appearance. And the hero’s heart caught fire and burned to dispel the darkness not only of the forest, but above all of the soul. The final emphasis is sad: the rescued did not notice the “proud heart” that had fallen nearby, and one of them, “afraid of something,” stepped on it with his foot. The gift of selfless compassion seemed not to have been achieved; its highest goal.

The story “Old Woman Izergil” in two legendary parts and the woman’s memories of the lovers of her youth conveys the bitter truth about the dual human race. For centuries, he has united in himself antipodes: handsome men who love, and “old men from birth.” Therefore, the story is permeated with symbolic parallels: light and darkness, sun and swamp cold, fiery heart and stone flesh. The desire to completely overcome base experience remains unfulfilled; people continue to live in two ways.

Conclusion

The legend of Larra, the story of Izergil and the legend of Danko at first glance seem independent, existing independently of each other. Actually this is not true. Each of the three parts of the story expresses a general idea and answers the question of what makes a person happy.

People decide to punish the selfish Larra with eternal loneliness. And the greatest good - life - becomes hopeless torment for him.

The old woman Izergil plays a significant role in the story. While completely preserving the realistic character of the image, Gorky at the same time depicts a man of “rebellious life.” Of course, Izergil’s “rebellious life” and Danko’s feat are different phenomena, and Gorky does not identify them. But the image of the narrator enhances the overall romantic flavor of the work.

Izergil speaks with delight about people with a strong will, with powerful and bright characters, capable of feats. She remembers her lover: “...he loved exploits. And when a person loves feats, he always knows how to do them and will find where it is possible. In life, you know, there is always room for exploits.”

Gorky’s very manner of writing in “Old Woman Izergil” also has a romantic character. The writer emphasizes mainly the unusual, sublime and beautiful in both people and nature. When Izergil talks about Larra and Danko, fragments of clouds of “lush, strange shapes and colors” wander across the sky, the sky is decorated with golden specks of stars. “All this - sounds and smells, clouds and people - was strangely beautiful and sad, it seemed like the beginning of a wonderful fairy tale.”

Here, all means of expression are subordinated not so much to the desire to accurately depict an object or phenomenon, but to create a certain high mood. This is served by the abundantly used hyperbole, lyrically colored epithets, and comparisons.

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