/ / / What is the meaning of Maxim Gorky's play "At the Bottom"?
Maxim Gorky's play "" can be safely attributed to works of a philosophical orientation, because it raises problems that are inherent both in society as a whole and in a single person. With this work, Gorky tried to convey to us his position in life, which was reflected in the main characters of the play.
One of the main, backbone images of the play was the old man. With his arrival, everything “spun” in a new way. The inhabitants of the rooming house received a ghostly hope to rise from the bottom. Luke gave them compassion, pity, the words that everyone wanted to hear. But as subsequent events showed, this "sweet lie" became fatal for many.
I believe that only the dying Anna needed all this untruth. In all her short life she knew neither joy nor peace. The girl dies at the age of thirty, crushed by her hard fate. The inhabitants of the rooming house have turned away from her and do not want to interfere in the affairs of death. Only Anna was the only one who demanded some kind of support and pity, which she found in the guise of Luke.
More about more tragic history life we learn, getting acquainted with the image of the Actor. He was a former attendant of the theater, but after quitting his job, he sank to the very bottom of life. The actor has turned into an unrestrained drunkard. In alcohol, he found solace and an explanation for all his failures. The actor was so weak morally that it was easier for him to continue drinking than to try to rise from the bottom of life. With the advent of Luka, he learns about a hospital for people suffering from alcoholism, that treatment is carried out there for free. Inspired by this news, the Actor does not drink alcohol all day, for which he manages to earn a few coins, which he is very proud of. His hopes will collapse the moment he finds out that there is no hospital. The actor ends his life by suicide. Having settled scores with life, he did not understand that it was not a hospital, you just need to believe in yourself and your strengths.
For Pepel Luka "painted" new world And new life in Siberia. He advises to go there with Natasha. Of course, these words inspire Ash. At the end of the work, Pepel ends up in Siberia, but only in the status of a convict. I think that after returning from hard labor, he is unlikely to be able to start a new life.
The only one who emerged victorious in this intricacies human destinies, was the wife of the host of the rooming house Vasilisa. With the help of Cinder, she solved a lot of her problems in one go. Having persuaded the latter to kill her husband, it was for this crime that Pepel was exiled to hard labor, Vasilisa got rid of her hated husband, took revenge on her lover Pepel and rival Natalya. After that, she becomes the sole owner of the rooming house.
No less exciting was the fate of Sateen. It's amazing that this man sank to the bottom of life own initiative. His life position was to do nothing. Passivity and apathy towards everything have become very convenient for Sateen, and he does not want to move away from this. Luka tried to show him the other, active side of life. Sateen agrees with this. But all changes occur only in words, in reality, the character of the hero opposes the dreams, with which, unfortunately, he does not want to fight.
Summing up his play, Maxim Gorky shows us the passivity and apathy that disgust him in life. He does not advise looking for a solution to their problems in a bottle. Only real actions can overcome even the most difficult life situations, find a way out of a stalemate. In addition, "sweet lies" can give an erroneous idea of \u200b\u200bwhat is happening, which, as a rule, leads to dire consequences. In my opinion, each of us should heed these advice of the great writer and follow them in our lives.
Never be useless
submit to influence that may
awaken noble feelings in you.
D. Ruskin
I The miserable life of representatives of the "bottom" of the play by M. Gorky.
II Everyone is given the right to choose between the life of a Human and the life of a tradesman,
thief, swindler.
- what is the salvation for people who have fallen to the "bottom"
1. Carriers of theories - Luke, Satin:
a) "... a person must respect himself ...";
“You have to respect the person! Do not regret ... do not humiliate with pity ... "
(A. M. Gorky)
b) “… do nothing! Just burden the earth!..”;
c) "... whoever wants hard - will find it! ..".
- cannot be tolerated social injustice
2. Bubnov - the bearer of the "truth of the fact" and the inhabitants of the "bottom":
a) “... people all live ... like chips floating down the river ... building a house,
and the chips away ... ";
b) “all people on earth are superfluous…”;
c) “and I will die ... and you ... why be sorry?”
3. “There must be a righteous land in the world ...” And if not? (Actor, Ashes, Tick...)
- the world of the "bottom" is devastated
- the way of reconciliation with reality is untenable
III “Everything is in Man, everything is for Man! "(M. Gorky)
Quotes for essay.
1. "... my task is to arouse in a person pride in himself, to tell him that he is the best, most significant, most expensive in life and that apart from him there is nothing worthy of attention."
A. M. Gorky
2. "... from the consolations of the cunning Luke, sateen concluded about the value of every person."
A. M. Gorky
3. “Only man exists, everything else is the work of his hands and his brain! Human! It's great! That sounds…proud!”
A. M. Gorky
The central point in Gorky's socio-philosophical play (the play "At the Bottom" received a great response abroad as well, the display of the underside of the capitalist world was so burning) was the dispute about Man and the attitude towards him. This dispute, which arose (although not in a direct confrontation) between the wanderer Lukou and the former telegraph operator Satin, was reflected in the statements of other characters about truth, conscience, lies.
Gorky was the first to raise here the question of two types of humanism: humanism, calling for compassion and pity towards a person in order to console and somehow reconcile him with an unjust life, and humanism, rebelling against this injustice in the name of the indisputable rights of a person to be a Man, and not passive sacrifice.
The writer more than once called his Luka a crook, but I. Moskvin, who first and with great success played this role in the Moscow art theater, and then repeating it many times, rightly argued that Luke, who appeared in "At the Bottom", does not correspond to the judgment of the playwright himself.
The artistic embodiment, apparently, did not coincide with the author's intention in everything. Luka is a "crook" not in everyday life (he does not derive any benefits for himself), but in a more general social sense. He is an unfounded comforter, and this consolation turned into a social lie.
Preachers of this type - and there were many of them in literature, in journalism, and in life - sought to muffle the feeling of protest ripening among the people, while life demanded the appearance of humanists calling for a radical restructuring of the world. To be true to the truth of life, Gorky could not bring out the social antagonist Luka in the play (see Gorky's letter to the Red Army soldiers in 1928 on this subject). They became Satin, who opposed consolation and reconciliation with reality with a new attitude towards people.
In his famous monologue, Satin stated that the name Man “sounds proudly”, that the truth “Everything is in a person, everything is for a person!” Should be recognized, and in this regard, it is necessary to respect, not pity him.
The production of "At the Bottom" was accompanied by a huge success. At the center of the passionate debate that flared up around the play in 1902-1903 was the interpretation of the characters named above. Some critics claimed that the author sided with Luke, and not with Sateen. Such judgments, largely due to the talented acting of Moskvin-Luka (the production of "At the Bottom" preceded the publication of the text of the play), were unexpected for the author.
In response to a distorted interpretation of the central idea of the play, which caused a decrease in its social emphasis - it was well understood by a democratic audience - Gorky delivered the already mentioned poem "Man", in which, repeating the words of Sateen "Everything is in a person, everything is for a person! ”, revealed his understanding of the meaning of life.
It was a hymn to the rebellious, tirelessly advancing Man, armed with the power of Thought. Man acted as the creator of life, called upon to “destroy, trample on everything old, everything cramped and dirty, everything evil, and create something new on the unshakable foundations of freedom, beauty and respect for people forged by Thought!” The reactionaries called this poem a "criminal proclamation."
Criticism, hostile or wary of Gorky's social and artistic position, often reproached the writer for his lack of interest in "eternal themes", in common problems being. However, this was a distorted view of the writer. For Gorky, as for the previous classical literature, "eternal themes" are associated with ethical and aesthetic problems.
At the center of Gorky's work was one of the most profound "eternal themes" - the meaning of human existence, and in connection with it the problem of human responsibility to himself and the world. The coverage of this “eternal theme”, correlated with the problem of the existent (man) and the desired (Man with capital letter), was given by the writer both in a generalized symbolic way (the legend of Danko, the poem "Man"), and in conjunction with specific life material ("Mother", "Tales of Italy", etc.).
No less significant (especially for pre-October creativity) was for Gorky " eternal theme”- a person in his connections with nature, with the universe.
Gorky's plays (before October he completed 13 plays) affected sharp questions modern life. They talked about the social and moral foundations of bourgeois society, about the degradation of the individual in it, about the struggle in the world of labor and capital, about the fate of the Russian intelligentsia.
History of Russian literature: in 4 volumes / Edited by N.I. Prutskov and others - L., 1980-1983
The play "At the Bottom" was conceived by Gorky as one of the four plays of the cycle, showing the life and worldview of people from different layers society. This is one of the two purposes of creating a work. The deep meaning that the author put into it is an attempt to answer the main questions human existence: what is a person and whether he will retain his personality, sinking "to the bottom" of moral and social life.
The history of the creation of the play
The first evidence of work on the play dates back to 1900, when Gorky, in a conversation with Stanislavsky, mentions his desire to write scenes from the life of a rooming house. Some sketches appeared at the end of 1901. In a letter to the publisher K. P. Pyatnitsky, to whom the author dedicated the work, Gorky wrote that in the planned play, all the characters, the idea, the motives for the actions are clear to him, and "it will be scary." final version The work was ready on July 25, 1902, published in Munich and went on sale at the end of the year.
Things were not so rosy with the production of the play on the stages Russian theaters- it is practically prohibited. An exception was made only for the Moscow Art Theater, the other theaters had to receive special permission to stage.
The name of the play changed at least four times in the course of work, and the genre was never determined by the author - the publication read "At the bottom of life: scenes." A shortened and familiar name to everyone today first appeared in theater poster at the first production at the Moscow Art Theater.
The first performers were the stellar composition of the Moscow Artistic academic theater: K. Stanislavsky acted as Satin, V. Kachalov as Baron, I. Moskvin as Luka, O. Knipper as Nastya, M. Andreeva as Natasha.
The main plot of the work
The plot of the play is tied to the relationship of the characters and in an atmosphere of general hatred that reigns in the rooming house. This is the outer canvas of the work. Parallel action explores the depth of a person's fall "to the bottom", the measure of the insignificance of a socially and spiritually descended individual.
The play begins and ends storyline the relationship between two characters: the thief Vaska Ash and the wife of the owner of the rooming house Vasilisa. Ash loves her younger sister Natasha. Vasilisa is jealous, constantly beating her sister. She also has another interest in her lover - she wants to get rid of her husband and pushes Ash to kill. In the course of the play, Pepel really kills Kostylev in a quarrel. In the last act of the play, the guests of the rooming house say that Vaska will have to go to hard labor, but Vasilisa will "get out" anyway. Thus, the action is looped by the destinies of the two heroes, but is far from being limited to them.
The time period of the play is several weeks early spring. The season is an important part of the play. One of the first names given by the author to the work, "Without the sun." Indeed, around the spring, the sea sunlight, and in the rooming house and in the souls of its inhabitants - darkness. Luka, a vagabond, whom Natasha brings one day, became a ray of sunshine for the overnight stays. Luke brings hope for a happy outcome to the hearts of those who have fallen and lost faith in best people. However, at the end of the play, Luka disappears from the rooming house. The characters who trust him lose faith in the best. The play ends with the suicide of one of them - the Actor.
Play analysis
The play describes the life of a Moscow rooming house. The main characters, respectively, were its inhabitants and the owners of the institution. Also, persons related to the life of the institution appear in it: a policeman, who is also the uncle of the hostess of a rooming house, a dumpling seller, loaders.
Satin and Luka
Schuler, the former convict Satin and the vagabond, the wanderer Luke, are carriers of two opposing ideas: the need for compassion for a person, a saving lie out of love for him, and the need to know the truth, as proof of a person’s greatness, as a sign of trust in his fortitude. In order to prove the falsity of the first worldview and the truth of the second, the author built the action of the play.
Other characters
All other characters form the backdrop for this battle of ideas. In addition, they are designed to show, to measure the depth of the fall, to which a person is able to sink. Drunkard Actor and mortally ill Anna, people who have completely lost faith in their own strength, fall under the power wonderful fairy tale into which Luke leads them. They are the most dependent on him. With his departure, they physically cannot live and die. The rest of the inhabitants of the rooming house perceive the appearance and departure of Luke, as the play of a sunny spring ray - he appeared and disappeared.
Nastya, who sells her body "on the boulevard", believes that there is a bright love, and she was in her life. Tick, husband dying Anna, believes that he will rise from the bottom and again begin to earn a living by working. The thread that connects him to his working past remains a toolbox. At the end of the play, he is forced to sell them in order to bury his wife. Natasha hopes that Vasilisa will change and stop torturing her. After another beating, after leaving the hospital, she will no longer appear in the rooming house. Vaska Pepel strives to stay with Natalya, but cannot get out of the networks of the imperious Vasilisa. The latter, in turn, is waiting for the death of her husband to untie her hands and give her long-awaited freedom. The Baron lives on with his aristocratic past. The gambler Bubnov, the destroyer of "illusions", the ideologist of misanthropy, believes that "all people are superfluous."
The work was created in conditions when, after the economic crisis of the 90s of the 19th century, factories in Russia stood up, the population was rapidly impoverished, many found themselves at the bottom rung of the social ladder, in the basement. Each of the heroes of the play in the past experienced a fall "to the bottom", social and moral. Now they live in the memory of this, but they cannot rise "into the light": they do not know how, they have no strength, they are ashamed of their insignificance.
Main characters
Luke became a light for some. Gorky gave Luka a "speaking" name. It refers both to the image of St. Luke, and to the concept of "deceit". Obviously, the author is trying to show the inconsistency of Luke's ideas about the beneficial value of the Faith for a person. Gorky practically reduces Luke's compassionate humanism to the concept of betrayal - according to the plot of the play, the tramp leaves the rooming house just when those who trusted him need his support.
Satin is a figure designed to voice the worldview of the author. As Gorky wrote, Satin is not quite a suitable character for this, but another with an equally powerful charisma in the play just isn't. Satin is the ideological antipode of Luke: he does not believe in anything, he sees the ruthless essence of life and the situation in which he and the other inhabitants of the rooming house find themselves. Does Satin believe in Man and his power over the power of circumstances and mistakes made? The passionate monologue that he utters while arguing in absentia with the departed Luka leaves a strong, but contradictory impression.
There is also a carrier of the "third" truth in the work - Bubnov. This hero, like Satin, "stands for the truth", only she is somehow very scary in him. He is a misanthrope, but, in fact, a murderer. Only they die not from the knife in his hands, but from the hatred that he harbors for everyone.
The drama of the play increases from act to act. Luke's consoling conversations with those suffering from his compassion and Sateen's rare remarks, which indicate that he is attentively listening to the speeches of the tramp, become the connecting canvas. The culmination of the play is Sateen's monologue, delivered after Luke's departure-flight. Phrases from it are often quoted because they have the appearance of aphorisms; “Everything in a person is everything for a person!”, “Lie is the religion of slaves and masters ... Truth is God free man!”, “Man - it sounds proud!”.
Conclusion
The bitter outcome of the play is the triumph of the freedom of a fallen person to die, disappear, leave, leaving no trace or memories behind. The inhabitants of the rooming house are free from society, moral norms, family and livelihood. By by and large they are free from life.
The play "At the Bottom" has been alive for more than a century and continues to be one of the most strong works Russian classics. The play makes one think about the place of faith and love in a person's life, about the nature of truth and lies, about a person's ability to resist moral and social decline.
A notable phenomenon in Russian literature at the beginning of the 20th century was Gorky's play "At the Bottom". What explains its exceptional success? Strong impression on the viewer produced a combination of extremely realistic image people who have reached the last degree of misery, despair and lack of rights, with the glorification of Man and his truth. Before the eyes of the public, for the first time, the hitherto unseen world of thieves, tramps, cheaters, that is, people who have sunk to the "bottom" of life, appeared for the first time. And in it, as in an overturned mirror, the world from which these people were overthrown was reflected. Gorky's play was imbued with a protest against the social unrest of capitalist society and a passionate call for a just and peaceful life. "Freedom at all costs - that's its spiritual essence," - this is how K. S. Stanislavsky defined the idea of the play, who staged it on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater.
The gloomy life of the Kostylevo rooming house is depicted by Gorky as the embodiment of social evil. The fate of the inhabitants of the "bottom" is a formidable indictment against the unjust social order. The people living in this cave-like basement are the victims of an ugly and cruel order in which a person ceases to be a person, turning into a powerless creature, doomed to drag out a miserable existence. The inhabitants of the "bottom" are thrown out of normal life due to the wolf laws that reign in society. Man is left to himself. If he stumbled, got out of a rut, then he faces imminent moral, and often physical death. Disbelief in justice forced Satine to independently take revenge on the villain who killed his sister. This revenge led him to prison, which determined him further fate. Bubnov is forced to leave home, leaving the workshop to his wife and her lover, as he did not hope for protection from representatives of the law. They make mistakes, do stupid things, but they don't deserve to be thrown to the "bottom" of life by society without any support. Vaska Pepel, the son of a thief, born in prison, is doomed to follow in the footsteps of his parent, for a different path is ordered for him. The industriousness and perseverance of Tick, who does not want to accept the fate of a rooming house, did not help him rise from the "bottom" of life.
Turning to the image of the life of the urban lower classes, the playwright touched actual problem modernity: what is the way out of the current situation, what is the salvation of the people of the "bottom"? According to Gorky himself, the main question of the play is what is better: truth or compassion? Is it necessary to use lies like Luke? Will the passive-compassionate humanism of a comforting lie be healing for the inhabitants of the rooming house? Its bearer, pitying and consoling people, is the wanderer Luke in the play. He sincerely sympathizes with the victims of life, humiliated and offended people, disinterestedly seeks to alleviate their suffering, to help them. He promises the dying Anna after death life in paradise, where she will rest from earthly suffering. The old man advises Ash and Natasha to start a new life in the golden country of Siberia. He tells the actor about a free hospital for alcoholics, the address of which he has forgotten, but he will definitely remember, giving this drunk person hope for a return to his former life.
Luke's position is the idea of compassion for man, the idea of sublime deceit that allows man to bear the burden" low truths"meeting on his thorny path. Luke himself formulates his position. Turning to Ash, he says: "... why do you really need it painfully? .. Think about it, the truth, maybe it will blow up for you." Then he talks about righteous land". Luka does not believe in her, he knows that she does not exist. He is too short-sighted to see this land that Satin foresees. Luka is ready to welcome any idea, if it is capable of comforting a person, alleviating even for a minute his suffering. He does not think about the consequences of a lie that will sooner or later be revealed.In an effort to protect a person, Luke at the same time does not believe in him, for him all people are insignificant, weak, pitiful, in need of consolation: "I don't care! I respect crooks too, in my opinion, not a single flea is bad: they are all black, they all jump.
Thus, the main feature of Luke's ideology is the feature of slavery. And in this, Luka is similar to Kostylev, the philosophy of patience echoes the philosophy of oppression, the point of view of a slave - from the point of view of the owner, Gorky puts this thought into the mouth of Satin: "Whoever is weak in soul and who lives on other people's juices, they need a lie ... supports, others hide behind it ... And who is his own master, who is independent and does not take someone else's - why does he need a lie? Luke's humanism is based on passive compassion, which, bringing momentary relief, deepens the gap between a person's dream of happiness and his real hopeless situation. This gap could not be endured by the Actor, who learned that the old man had lied and there was no hospital, which means there was no hope for the future. There is only one way out - suicide. Instead of happy life in Siberia, which Peplu Luka promised, he ends up in hard labor for the murder of Kostylev. So Luke's comforting lies only make things worse for the outcasts.
Luke's lies lead the roommates into a world of illusion that deprives them of last strength to fight against social evil, social injustice, because of which there are Kostylevskie doss houses. The antipode of Luke - Satin verbally refutes the philosophy of comforting lies: "Lie is the religion of slaves and masters", "Truth is the god of a free man." He believes in man, in his ability to endure the truth, no matter how bitter it may be. "Man - that's the truth," says the hero. Unlike Luke, Satin is demanding of a person and believes that a person can do everything, since everything depends on his deeds and ideas. He does not need to be comforted by lies born of pity. To pity a person means to humiliate him with disbelief in the ability to achieve one's happiness, it means to seek support in all kinds of deceit and lies that replace the missing will to live. Under the dark and gloomy vaults of the doss-house, among miserable, unfortunate, homeless vagabonds, solemn hymn words about Man, about his vocation, strength and beauty. "Man - this is true! Everything is in a person, everything is for a person! There is only a person, everything else is the work of his hands and brain! Man! This is magnificent! It sounds ... proud!"
Man himself is the creator of his own destiny, in him are hidden forces with the help of which he is able to overcome the most cruel hardships, the treachery of fate, the injustice of the world, his mistakes and the social troubles of society. Pity and compassion are wonderful, very necessary qualities for all of us, but only a truthful, adequate understanding of one's mistakes and opportunities can give a person a chance to overcome the evil fate and become truly free and happy.
