The beginning of the creative path of Maxim Gorky
The creative debut of the famous Russian writer Maxim Gorky began in 1892 with the publication of the story “Makar Chudra”.
The work was published in the newspaper "Caucasus". At the same time, A. M. Peshkov’s literary pseudonym, Maxim Gorky, also appeared. Three years later, in 1895, the next story by M. Gorky, “Old Woman Izergil,” was published. This work was published in three April issues of the Samara Gazeta publication.
Success came to Gorky from the very beginning of his literary activity. Both readers and critics liked the debut works. The stories received many rave reviews. Thus a new name appeared in literature.
In 1899, Maxim Gorky’s novel “Foma Gordeev” was published in the magazine “Life”. This work brought the writer worldwide fame and recognition. A year later, Gorky created his next novel, “Three,” and then wrote his first plays:
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- in 1901 the play “Philistines” was written
- in 1902 - “At the Depths”
- in 1904 - “Summer Residents”
- in 1905 - “Barbarians” and “Children of the Sun”.
Gorky's work in exile
In 1905, Maxim Gorky met V.I. Lenin. In 1906, Gorky, in order to avoid reprisals for supporting the revolutionary movement, was forced to emigrate abroad. First, the writer leaves for the USA, and then moves to Italy, to Capri. During his stay in Capri, Gorky became close to the prominent revolutionary and philosopher A. A. Bogdanov. In 1909, Maxim Gorky, together with Bogdanov and Lunacharsky, created a party school in Capri, where the writer gave lectures on the history of Russian literature. The main task of the party school was to combine Russian god-building and revolutionary ideas.
These ideas are reflected in M. Gorky's homage "Confession", written in 1908. The idea of a new world, socialism, became a new religion, which was based on faith in their triumph. In accordance with the naive idealistic views of the Russian intelligentsia, formed in the last years of the 19th century, the people in this new concept act simultaneously as both a god-builder and a deity. That is, Bogdanov and Gorky gathered to present the people as a deity after the 1905 revolution took place, which showed the true face of the people. At the same time, the collection “Vekhi” appeared, in which the authors, horrified by Pugachevism and Razinism, proposed to take a different look at the idea of serving the God-bearing people.
Finished works on a similar topic
Coursework Maxim Gorky 490 ₽ Abstract Maxim Gorky 260 ₽ Examination Maxim Gorky 210 ₽
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The idea of Bogdanov and Gorky was not liked by Lenin, who believed that combining socialist ideas and divine faith in these ideas was impossible.
The period of life in Capri became very fruitful for the work of Maxim Gorky. The following works were written during this period:
- play "The Last"
- first edition of “Vassa Zheleznova”
- story "Town of Okurov"
- story "Summer"
- novel "The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin".
Gorky considered the novel “The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin” a nationally significant work. The writer reflected the negative traits of the national character, such as passivity in relation to reality, the inability to independently manage one’s own life, which result in the tragedy of a meaninglessly lived life, in the image of the main character of the novel.
After the amnesty of 1913, Gorky returned to St. Petersburg, where he wrote the cycle “Tales of Italy”, the first two parts of the autobiographical trilogy “Childhood” and “In People”.
The writer perceived the revolution of 1917 ambiguously. Gorky believed in the need for revolution, in the need for social reforms, but at the same time he feared that these ideals would be distorted and believed that the peasantry was not capable of development and movement, and could not be revolutionary.
Gorky reflected his doubts in a series of articles “Untimely Thoughts,” which he published in the newspaper “New Life in 1917-1918.” Gorky was amazed by the lynchings, the looting of cultural property by people who despise culture, and drunken pogroms. The writer came to the pessimistic conclusion that revolution is a total destruction of culture, life and state.
The newspaper “New Life” was closed in 1918, and Gorky’s relations with the Bolsheviks worsened even more. Friendship with Lenin grew into conflict, and Gorky, at Lenin’s insistence, was forced to emigrate again.
Until the spring of 1924, the writer lived in Germany and Czechoslovakia, and then moved to Italy. While in Italy, Gorky completed work on his autobiographical trilogy, writing the third part, “My Universities.” During the same period, he wrote the novel “The Artamonov Case” and began working on the work “The Life of Klim Samgin.” This book was never completed.
It is noteworthy that Gorky did not write a single work about foreign countries or about post-revolutionary life in Russia.
Report on the topic “The Life and Work of Maxim Gorky”
GORKY Maxim (real name Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov) [March 16 (28), 1868, Nizhny Novgorod June 18, 1936, Gorki near Moscow], Russian writer, publicist, public figure. One of the key figures of the literary turn of the 19th-20th centuries (the so-called “Silver Age”) and Soviet literature. Origin, education, worldview Father, Maxim Savvatievich Peshkov (1840-71) son of a soldier, demoted from the officers, cabinetmaker. In recent years he worked as a manager of a shipping office, but died of cholera. Mother, Varvara Vasilyevna Kashirina (1842-79) from a bourgeois family; Having become a widow at an early age, she remarried and died of consumption. The writer spent his childhood in the house of his grandfather Vasily Vasilyevich Kashirin, who in his youth was a barracks worker, then became rich, became the owner of a dyeing establishment, and went bankrupt in his old age. The grandfather taught the boy from church books, the grandmother Akulina Ivanovna introduced her grandson to folk songs and fairy tales, but most importantly she replaced the mother, “saturating,” in the words of Gorky himself, “with strong strength for a difficult life” (“Childhood”). Gorky did not receive a real education, graduating only from a vocational school. His thirst for knowledge was quenched independently; he grew up “self-taught.” Hard work (a boatman on a ship, a “boy” in a store, a student in an icon-painting workshop, a foreman at fair buildings, etc.) and early hardships taught him a good knowledge of life and inspired dreams of reorganizing the world. “We came into the world to disagree…” a surviving fragment of the destroyed poem by the young Peshkov “The Song of the Old Oak.” Hatred of evil and ethical maximalism were a source of moral torment. In 1887 he tried to commit suicide. He took part in revolutionary propaganda, “went among the people,” wandered around Rus', and communicated with tramps. He experienced complex philosophical influences: from the ideas of the French Enlightenment and the materialism of J. W. Goethe to the positivism of J. M. Guyot, the romanticism of J. Ruskin and the pessimism of A. Schopenhauer. The rudeness and ignorance of provincial life poisoned his soul, but also paradoxically gave rise to faith in Man and his potential. From the collision of contradictory principles, a romantic philosophy was born, in which Man (the ideal essence) did not coincide with man (the real being) and even entered into a tragic conflict with him. Gorky's humanism carried rebellious and atheistic features. His favorite reading was the biblical Book of Job, where “God teaches man how to be equal to God and how to calmly stand next to God” (Gorky’s letter to V.V. Rozanov, 1912). Early Gorky (1892-1905) Gorky began as a provincial newspaperman (published under the name Yehudiel Chlamida). The pseudonym M. Gorky (letters and documents were signed by A. Peshkov’s real name; the designations “A. M. Gorky” and “Alexey Maksimovich Gorky” contaminate the pseudonym with the real name) appeared in 1892 in the Tiflis newspaper “Caucasus”, where the first story was published "Makar Chudra". In 1895, thanks to the help of V.G. Korolenko, he was published in the popular magazine “Russian Wealth” (the story “Chelkash”). In 1898, the book “Essays and Stories” was published in St. Petersburg, which had a sensational success. In 1899, the prose poem “Twenty Six and One” and the first long story “Foma Gordeev” appeared. Gorky's fame grew with incredible speed and soon became equal to the popularity of A.P. Chekhov and L.N. Tolstoy. Critics in connection with his texts did not solve social issues and problems of their literary reflection, but directly the “question of Gorky” and the collective lyrical image he created, which began to be perceived as typical for Russia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. and which critics compared to Nietzsche’s “superman”. Gorky's social position was radical. He was arrested more than once; in 1902, Nicholas II ordered the annulment of his election as an honorary academician in the category of fine literature (in protest, Chekhov and Korolenko left the Academy). In 1905 he joined the ranks of the RSDLP (Bolshevik wing) and met V.I. Lenin. They received serious financial support for the revolution of 1905-07. Gorky quickly showed himself as a talented organizer of the literary process. In 1901 he became the head of the publishing house of the Knowledge Partnership and soon began publishing Collections of the Knowledge Partnership. The pinnacle of early creativity, the play “At the Lower Depths,” owes its fame to a great extent to the production by K. S. Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theater. Gorky's other plays, “The Bourgeois” (1901), “Summer Residents” (1904), “Children of the Sun,” “Barbarians” (both 1905), and “Enemies” (1906) did not have such sensational success in Russia and Europe. Between two revolutions (1905-1917) After the defeat of the revolution of 1905-07, Gorky emigrated to the island of Capri (Italy). The “Capri” period of creativity forced us to reconsider the idea that had developed in criticism about the “end of Gorky” (D. V. Filosofov), which was caused by his passion for political struggle and the ideas of socialism, reflected in the story “Mother” (1906; second edition 1907). He creates the stories “The Town of Okurov” (1909), “Childhood” (1913-14), “In People” (1915-16), and the cycle of stories “Across Rus'” (1912-17). The story “Confession” (1908), highly appreciated by A. A. Blok, caused controversy in criticism. The First World War had a hard impact on Gorky's state of mind. The war became for him a blatant example of collective madness, when Man was reduced to a “trench lice”, “cannon fodder”, when people went wild before our eyes and the human mind was powerless before the logic of historical events. The October Revolution confirmed Gorky's fears. Unlike Blok, he heard in it not “music,” but the terrible roar of a hundred million peasant element, breaking through all social prohibitions and threatening to drown the remaining islands of culture. In “Untimely Thoughts” (a series of articles in the newspaper “Novaya Zhizn”; 1917-18; published as a separate publication in 1918), he accused Lenin of seizing power and unleashing terror in the country. But in the same place he called the Russian people organically cruel, “beastly” and thereby, if not justified, then explained the brutal treatment of these people by the Bolsheviks. The inconsistency of his position was also reflected in his book “On the Russian Peasantry” (1922). Gorky's undoubted merit was his energetic work to save the scientific and artistic intelligentsia from starvation and execution. It is almost for this reason that such cultural events were conceived as the organization of the publishing house “World Literature”, the opening of the “House of Scientists” and the “House of Arts” (communes for the creative intelligentsia, described in the novel “The Crazy Ship” by O. D. Forsh and the book by K. A. Fedina “Gorky among us”). However, many writers (including Blok, N.S. Gumilyov) could not be saved, which became one of the main reasons for Gorky’s final break with the Bolsheviks. From 1921 to 1928, Gorky lived in exile, where he went after Lenin’s too persistent advice. He settled in Sorrento (Italy), without breaking ties with young Soviet literature. He wrote the cycle “Stories of 1922-24”, “Notes from the Diary” (1924), the novel “The Artamonov Case” (1925), and began working on the epic novel “The Life of Klim Samgin” (1925-36).
See also: Report on the topic “Alexander Moiseevich Volodin (Livshits)”
In 1928, Gorky made a “test” trip to the Soviet Union (in connection with the celebration organized on the occasion of his 60th birthday), having previously entered into cautious negotiations with the Stalinist leadership. The apotheosis of the meeting at the Belorussky station decided the matter; Gorky returned to his homeland. As an artist, he completely immersed himself in creating “The Life of Klim Samgin,” a panoramic picture of Russia over forty years. He organized and supported many enterprises: the publishing house “Academia”, the book series “History of Factories”, the magazine “Literary Study”, as well as the Literary Institute, then named after him. In 1934 he headed the Union of Writers of the USSR, created on his initiative. Circumstances of death Gorky's death was surrounded by an atmosphere of mystery, as was the death of his son Maxim Peshkov. However, versions of the violent death of both have still not found documentary confirmation. The urn with Gorky's ashes is placed in the Kremlin wall in Moscow.
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