The early works (1892-1899) of M. Gorky are fanned with a romantic mood. These are "Makar Chudra", "Old Woman Izergil", "Song of the Falcon". It cannot be unequivocally stated that the author’s early stories were created only within the framework of romanticism: Gorky also created realistic works at the same time - “Emelyan Pilyai”, “My Companion”, “Konovalov”, “Spouses Orlovs”, “Malva”, etc. Romanticism M. Gorky is, first of all, the atmosphere - night, ancient traditions and legends, incredible love stories and colorful characters. The main concepts of the author's romantic works are "freedom", "independence", "struggle", which corresponded to the revolutionary spirit of the times: " Only he is worthy of life and freedom, who every day goes to fight for them."(Goethe).
Romantic stories are born from the desire to oppose the tired, measured, monotonous reality with its spiritual poverty and degradation, the ups of human fantasy, feat, the desire "for freedom, for the light", the thirst for realization in the world, the passion for recognition. Gorky heroes stand above everyday life and everyday life. They are not satisfied with the "average", they strive for the high, the eternal.
The center of the story "Makar Chudra" is the clash of two strong and independent characters - Radda and Loiko Zobar. Both yearn for love, but it's a different kind of love - love-passion, love-fire, love-beauty And love is freedom, love is independence simultaneously. The heroes' thirst for freedom reaches the extreme: heroes are able to pay for their insubordination with their own lives. The love of freedom and beauty of the characters are poeticized by the author, raised to the ideal. The tragic legend about Rudd and Loiko is told by Makar Chudra, who contrasts them with modern man: “They are funny, those people of yours. They huddle together and crush each other, and there are so many places on earth.
From conflict between characters M. Gorky in the story "Old Woman Izergil" goes on to conflict "hero-society". This conflict is deeper, psychologically and socially sharpened. From the numerous legends and stories told by the Old Woman, images of Larra are born - the son of a woman and an eagle, Danko - "the best of all", etc. Larra, for his selfishness and desire to rule over people, was punished with freedom and the inability to end his life earlier than it was destined: " That's how the man was struck for pride!". Danko, at the cost of his life, tried to bring his fellow tribesmen to freedom and light: “ It burned so brightly. Like the sun, and brighter than the sun, and the whole forest fell silent, lit by this torch of great love for people.". But Danko's sacrifice went unnoticed: due to fatigue, people refused to continue their journey. The story of Izergil itself, which serves as a link between the two legends, is full of dedication and feat, which the author emphasizes the presence of the heroic in man. 
It is noteworthy that in his stories Gorky brings the private to the global level. So, in Makar Chudra, the proud figures of Radda and Loiko turned into clouds, where the second tries, but cannot overtake the first. In "Old Woman Izergil" the sparks of Danko's heart turned into " blue sparks of the steppe that appear before a thunderstorm.
"The Song of the Falcon" depicts a clash of two truths - the truth of the Falcon, " happiness of battle", and the truth of Uzh:" Fly or crawl, the end is known: everyone will fall into the ground, everything will be dust". Despite the measured and thoughtful position of Uzh, the author is on the side of the “fighting” Falcon: “ The madness of the brave is the wisdom of life».
Contrary to the use of Gorky's works in revolutionary propaganda, their meaning is deeper: these stories are the author's philosophical reflection on the human nature in man.
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Traditions of Russian literature in the works of early Maxim Gorky
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§2. Gorky's early romantic works
Gorky's early work strikes, 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 mighty strength from the "movement of the masses themselves", was revealed already at the very beginning of Maxim Gorky's literary work.
Acting as the herald of the coming storm, Gorky fell into the tone of the public mood. In 1920, he wrote: "I began my work as a stimulator of revolutionary mood with the glory of the madness of the brave." Exam questions and answers. Literature. 9th and 11th grades. Tutorial. - M.: AST-PRESS, 2000. - P.214. This applies primarily to Gorky's early romantic works. In the 1890s he wrote the stories "Makar Chudra", "Old Woman Izer-gil", "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 a Young Shepherd”, “The Song of the Falcon”, “The Song of the Petrel”, “The Legend of Marko”, etc. All of them differ in one feature that can be defined in the words of L. Andreev: “the taste of freedom, something free , broad, bold. Gorky M. Prose. Dramaturgy. Publicism. - M.: Olimp; LLC "Firm" publishing house "AST", 1999. - P.614. In all sounds the motive of non-acceptance of reality, confrontation with fate, a daring challenge to the elements. In the center of these works is the figure of a strong, proud, courageous man who does not submit to anyone, who is not bent. And all these works, like living gems, shimmer with unprecedented colors, spreading a romantic glow around.
2.1. The story "Makar Chudra" -
affirmation of the ideal of personal freedom
In the center of the early works of Maxim Gorky are exceptional characters, strong in spirit and proud people who, according to the author, 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, flames, torches. 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: Textbook. - St. Petersburg: "Parity", 2002. - P.131.
To the thoughtful melody of the splashing of the oncoming waves, the old gypsy Makar Chudra begins his story. From the very first lines, the reader is gripped 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 rustle of coastal bushes - all this sets one up to talk about something secret, the most important. Makar Chudra slowly talks about the vocation of man and his role on earth. “A person is a slave, as soon as he was born, a slave all his life and that's it,” says Makar. Gorky M. Prose. Dramaturgy. Publicism. - M.: Olimp; LLC "Firm" publishing house "AST", 1999. - P.18. And he opposes this with his own: “A person is born to know what will is, the expanse of the steppe, to hear the voice of the sea wave”; “If you live, then be kings over the whole earth.”
This idea is illustrated by the legend about the love of Loiko Zobar and Radda, who did not become slaves of their feelings. Their images are exclusive and romanticized. Loiko Zobar has "eyes like bright stars are burning, and his smile is like a 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 him. Zobar's strength and beauty match his kindness. “You need his heart, he himself would tear it out of his chest and give it to you, if only you would feel good about it.” Ibid., p.20. Match and beautiful Rudd. Makar Chudra calls her an eagle. “You can’t say anything about her in words. Maybe her beauty could be played on the violin, and even to those who know this violin as their soul.” Ibid., p.20.
Proud Radda rejected the feelings of Loiko Zobar for a long time, for her will was dearer to her than love. When she decided to become his wife, she set a condition that Loiko could not fulfill without humiliating himself. An unresolvable 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 arises: Loiko Zobar, who could tear the heart out of his chest for the happiness of his neighbor, checks whether the heart of his beloved is strong and plunges a knife into it. And the same knife, but already in the hands of a soldier Danila, strikes the heart of Zobar. Love and thirst for freedom turn out to be evil demons that destroy people's happiness. Together with Makar Chudra, the narrator admires the strength of the characters' character. And together with him he cannot answer the question that runs like a leitmotif through the whole story: how to make people happy and what happiness is.
In the story "Makar Chudra" two different understandings of happiness are formulated. The first is in the words of a "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 give the “strict man” even clothes to cover his naked body. The second thesis is proved by the fate of Loiko Zobar and Radda: the will is dearer than life, happiness is in freedom. The romantic worldview of young Gorky goes back to Pushkin's famous words: "There is no happiness in the world, but there is peace and freedom..."
2.2. Fairy tale "About a little fairy and a young shepherd" -
a hymn to freedom and the rapture of the storm
The problem of love develops in Gorky's romantic tales "About the Little Fairy and the Young Shepherd" and "The Girl and Death". Gorky defined the theme of one of them as follows: "A new fairy tale on an old theme: about love, which is stronger than life." The fairy tale "About the little fairy and the young shepherd" is built on the antithesis: the opposition of the forest and the steppe. The old shady forest with mighty beeches and velvet foliage is a world of peace and bourgeois comfort. Here the queen of the forest lives in contentment and bliss with her daughters, here they sympathetically listen to the speeches of an important and stupid mole, who is sure that happiness lies in wealth.
In the steppe there are neither magnificent halls, nor rich underground storerooms. Only the free wind plays with a gray feather grass, and the boundless sky turns blue, and the expanse of the steppe plays with multi-colored colors. Gorky depicts the landscape in a romantic way: the steppe at sunset is painted in bright purple, as if a huge velvet curtain was hung there, and gold burned in its folds.
The kingdom of strength and freedom -
My mighty steppe,
shepherd sings. Unlike the important mole, the cha-ban does not have any property. But he has black curls, swarthy cheeks, fiery eyes and a bold heart. The sound of his song is like the scream of an eagle. And the little fairy, who lived so happily and calmly in the palaces of the queen mother, goes to the shepherd and dies. Maya, writes Gorky, “is like a lonely birch, which, loving freedom, moved out of the forest far into the steppe and stood under the wind.” Gorky M. Prose. Dramaturgy. Publicism. - M.: Olimp; LLC "Firm" publishing house "AST", 1999. - P.35. The wind and thunderstorm killed her. The death of the fairy is symbolic: “the song of freedom does not go well with the song of love”, love is also slavery, it fetters the will of man. Dying, Maya says to chaba-nu: "You are free again, like an eagle."
The love of Maya and the shepherd is as strong as the love of Loiko Zobar and Radda. In her name, Maya renounces the palace, the forest, the mother, who is dying of grief. She tries to overcome even the insane unbearable fear that grips her during a thunderstorm: after all, after a thunderstorm, Maya still remains with the shepherd. The exclusivity of feelings makes Gorky's heroes related to the romantic images of Byron and Schiller, Pushkin and Lermontov. In the tale of the little fairy, an image of a noble human heart also arises, rejecting the petty-bourgeois canons established over the centuries. Fear of Fate and Death overcomes the feeling of Love. Maya tries to explain this to the shepherd and adds: “Maybe I would say more if I could take the heart out of my chest and bring it on my hand to your eyes.”
In the fairy tale "About the Little Fairy and the Young Shepherd", a motif appears for the first time, which, growing, will sound more and more insistently in other romantic works of Gorky. This is a hymn to freedom and the ecstasy of the storm. During a thunderstorm, the shepherd stands in the blackened steppe as hard as a rock, exposing his chest to the arrows of lightning. Spiridonova L.A. "I came into the world to disagree." Early romantic works of M. Gorky // Russian literature. - 1999. - No. 3. - P.51.
The description of the thunderstorm is made in rhythmic prose and resembles the Song of the Petrel written later: “Arrows of lightning tore the clouds, but they again merged and rushed over the steppe in a gloomy, terrifying flock. And sometimes, with a clap of thunder, something round, like the sun, blinding with blue light, fell from the sky to the ground ... ”Gorky M. Prose. Dramaturgy. Publicism. - M.: Olimp; LLC "Firm" publishing house "AST", 1999. P.84.
But what about the collision Love - Freedom? Gorky answers this question with the story "Old Woman Izergil".
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The work of the early Gorky should not be reduced only to romanticism: in the 1890s. he created both romantic and realistic works in style (among the latter, for example, the stories "Beggar", "Chelkash", "Konovalov" and many others). Nevertheless, it was precisely the group of romantic stories that was perceived as a kind of calling card of the young writer, it was they that testified to the arrival in literature of a writer who stood out sharply against the background of his predecessors.
First of all, the type of hero was new. Much in Gorky's heroes made us recall the romantic literary tradition. This is the brightness, the exclusivity of their characters, which distinguished them from those around them, and the drama of their relationship with the world of everyday reality, and the fundamental loneliness, rejection, mystery for others. The Gorky romantics make too strict demands on the world and the human environment, and in their behavior they are guided by principles that are "insane" from the point of view of "normal" people.
Two qualities are especially noticeable in Gorky's romantic heroes: this is pride and strength, forcing them to contradict fate, to boldly strive for unlimited freedom, even if one has to sacrifice one's life for freedom. It is the problem of freedom that becomes the central problem of the writer's early stories.
Such are the stories "Makar Chudra" and "Old Woman Izergil". In itself, the poeticization of freedom-loving is a feature that is quite traditional for the literature of romanticism. It was not fundamentally new for Russian literature and the appeal to the conventional forms of legends. What is the meaning of the conflict in Gorky's early romantic stories, what are the specific Gorky signs of its artistic embodiment? The originality of these stories is already in the fact that the source of conflict in them is not the traditional confrontation between "good" and "evil", but the clash of two positive values. Such is the conflict between freedom and love in Makar Chudra, a conflict that can only be resolved tragically. Loving each other, Radda and Loiko Zobar value their freedom so much that they do not allow the thought of voluntary submission to a loved one.
Each of the heroes will never agree to be led: the only role worthy of these heroes is to dominate, even if it is a mutual feeling. “Will, Loiko, I love you more than you,” says Radda. The exclusivity of the conflict lies in the complete equality of equally proud heroes. Not being able to conquer his beloved, Loiko at the same time cannot give up on her. Therefore, he decides to kill - a wild, "crazy" act, although he knows that by doing so he sacrifices pride and his own life.
The heroine of the story “Old Woman Izergil” behaves in a similar way in the sphere of love: feelings of pity or even regret recede before the desire to remain independent. “I was happy ... I never met after those whom I once loved,” she tells the interlocutor. “These are not good meetings, it’s all the same with the dead.” However, the heroes of this story are involved not only and not so much in love conflicts: it is about price, meaning and various options for freedom.
The first option is represented by the fate of Larra. This is another “proud” person (such a characterization in the mouth of the narrator is more of a praise than a negative assessment). The story of his "crime and punishment" receives an ambiguous interpretation: Izergil refrains from a direct assessment, the tone of her story is epicly calm. The verdict is entrusted to the nameless "wise man":
«– Stop! There is a punishment. This is a terrible punishment; you won't invent something like that in a thousand years! His punishment is in himself! Let him go, let him be free. Here is his punishment!
So, the individualistic freedom of Larra, not enlightened by the mind, is the freedom of exclusion, which turns into its opposite - the punishment of eternal loneliness. The opposite "mode" of freedom is revealed by the legend of Danko. With his position “above the crowd”, his proud exclusivity, and finally, his thirst for freedom, at first glance, he resembles Larra. However, the elements of similarity only emphasize the fundamental difference between the two "freedoms". Danko's freedom is the freedom to take responsibility for the team, the freedom to selflessly serve people, the ability to overcome the instincts of self-preservation and subordinate life to a consciously defined goal. The formula “in life there is always a place for a feat” is an aphoristic definition of this freedom. True, the finale of the story about the fate of Danko is devoid of unambiguity: the people saved by the hero are assessed by Izergil in no way complimentary. Admiring the daredevil Danko is complicated here by a note of tragedy.
The central place in the story is occupied by the story of Izergil herself. The framing legends about Larra and Danko are deliberately conditional: their action is devoid of specific chronological or spatial signs, attributed to indefinite antiquity. On the contrary, the story of Izergil unfolds against a more or less specific historical background (in the course of the story, well-known historical episodes are mentioned, real toponyms are used). However, this dose of reality does not change the principles of character development - they remain romantic. The life story of the old woman Izergil is the story of meetings and partings. None of the heroes of her story is awarded a detailed description - the characterization of the characters is dominated by the metonymic principle (“a part instead of the whole”, one expressive detail instead of a detailed portrait). Izergil is endowed with character traits that bring her closer to the heroes of legends: pride, rebelliousness, disobedience.
Like Danko, she lives among people, for the sake of love she is capable of a heroic deed. However, in her image there is no integrity that is present in the image of Danko. After all, a series of her love interests and the ease with which she parted with them evokes associations with the antipode of Danko - Larra. For Izergil herself (namely, she is the narrator), these contradictions are invisible, she tends to bring her life closer to the model of behavior that makes up the essence of the final legend. It is no coincidence that, starting with a story about Larra, her story rushes to the "pole" of Danko.
However, in addition to Izergil's point of view, the story also expresses another point of view, which belongs to that young Russian who listens to Izergil, occasionally asking her questions. This persistent character in Gorky's early prose, sometimes referred to as "passing", is endowed with some autobiographical signs. Age, range of interests, wandering around Rus' bring him closer to the biographical Alexei Peshkov, therefore, in literary criticism, the term “autobiographical hero” is often used in relation to him. There is also another version of the terminological designation - "author-narrator". You can use any of these designations, although from the point of view of terminological rigor, the concept of "the image of the narrator" is preferable.
Often, the analysis of Gorky's romantic stories comes down to a conversation about conditional romantic heroes. Indeed, the figures of Radtsa and Loiko Zobar, Larra and Danko are important for understanding Gorky's position. However, the content of his stories is wider: the romantic plots themselves are not independent, they are included in a more voluminous narrative structure. Both in "Makar Chudra" and "Old Woman Izergil" legends are presented as stories of old people who have seen the life of old people. The listener of these stories is the narrator. From a quantitative point of view, this image occupies little space in the texts of stories. But for understanding the author's position, its significance is very high.
Let us return to the analysis of the central plot of the story "Old Woman Izergil". This segment of the narrative - the story of the heroine's life - is in a double frame. The inner frame is made up of legends about Larra and Danko, told by Izergil herself. External - landscape fragments and portrait characteristics of the heroine, reported to the reader by the narrator himself, and his short remarks. The outer frame determines the spatio-temporal coordinates of the "speech event" itself and shows the narrator's reaction to the essence of what he heard. Internal - gives an idea of the ethical standards of the world in which Izergil lives. While Izergil's story is directed towards the Danko pole, the narrator's mean statements make important adjustments to the reader's perception.
Those short remarks with which he occasionally interrupts the old woman's speech, at first glance, are purely official, formal in nature: they either fill in the pauses or contain harmless "clarifying" questions. But the direction of the questions itself is revealing. The narrator asks about the fate of the “others”, the life companions of the heroine: “Where did the fisherman go?” or “Wait! .. Where is the little Turk?”. Izergil is inclined to talk primarily about herself. Her additions, provoked by the narrator, indicate a lack of interest, even indifference to other people ("Boy? He died, boy. From homesickness or from love ...").
It is even more important that in the portrait description of the heroine given by the narrator, features are constantly recorded that associatively bring her closer not only to Danko, but also to Larra. Speaking of portraits. Note that both Izergil and the narrator act as "portrait painters" in the story. The latter seems to deliberately use in his descriptions of the old woman certain signs that she endowed the legendary heroes, as if “quoting” her.
The portrait of Izergil is given in the story in some detail (“time bent her in half, her once black eyes were dull and watery”, “the skin on the neck and arms is all wrinkled”, etc.). The appearance of the legendary heroes is presented through characteristics snatched separately: Danko - "a handsome young man", "a lot of strength and living fire shone in his eyes", Larra - "a handsome and strong young man", "only his eyes were cold and proud".
The antithetical nature of the legendary heroes is already set by the portrait; however, the appearance of the old woman combines the individual features of both. “I, like a sunbeam, was alive” is a clear parallel with Danko; “dry, chapped lips”, “wrinkled nose, curved like an owl’s beak”, “dry ... skin” - details that echo the features of Larra’s appearance (“the sun dried up his body, blood and bones”). Particularly important is the common motif of the “shadow” in the description of Larra and the old woman Izergil: Larra, having become a shadow, “lives for thousands of years”; the old woman - "alive, but dried up by time, without a body, without blood, with a heart without desires, with eyes without fire - is also almost a shadow." Loneliness turns out to be the common fate of Larra and the old woman Izergil.
Thus, the narrator by no means idealizes his interlocutor (or, in another story, Makar Chudra's interlocutor). He shows that the consciousness of a "proud" person is anarchic, not enlightened by a clear idea of the price of freedom, and his love of freedom itself can take on an individualistic character. That is why the final landscape sketch sets the reader up for concentrated reflection, for the oncoming activity of his consciousness. There is no straightforward optimism here, the heroism is muted - the pathos that dominated the final legend: “It was quiet and dark in the steppe. Clouds were all crawling across the sky, slowly, boringly ... The sea rustled muffled and sad. The leading principle of Gorky's style is not spectacular external depiction, as it might seem if only "legends" would fall into the reader's field of vision. The inner dominant of his work is conceptuality, the tension of thought, although this quality of style in his early work is somewhat “diluted” with stylized folklore imagery and a tendency to external effects.
The appearance of the characters and the details of the landscape background in Gorky's early stories are created by means of romantic hyperbolization: spectacularity, unusualness, "excessiveness" are the qualities of any Gorky image. The very appearance of the characters is depicted in large, expressive strokes. Gorky does not care about the pictorial concreteness of the image. It is important for him to decorate, highlight, enlarge the hero, draw the reader's attention to him. The Gorky landscape is created in a similar way, filled with traditional symbolism, permeated with lyricism.
Its stable attributes are the sea, clouds, moon, wind. The landscape is extremely conventional, it plays the role of a romantic scenery, a kind of screen saver: “... the dark blue patches of the sky, adorned with golden specks of stars, shone affectionately.” Therefore, by the way, within the same description, the same object can be given contradictory, but equally catchy characteristics. So, for example, the initial description of the moonlit night in "Old Woman Izergil" contains color characteristics that contradict each other in one paragraph. At first, the "disk of the moon" is called "blood-red", but soon the narrator notices that the floating clouds are saturated with the "blue glow of the moon."
The steppe and the sea are figurative signs of the infinite space that opens up to the narrator in his wanderings in Rus'. The artistic space of a particular story is organized by correlating the boundless world and the “meeting place” of the narrator with the future narrator (the vineyard in “Old Woman Izergil”, the place by the fire in the story “Makar Chudra”) allocated in it. In the landscape painting, the words “strange”, “fantastic” (“fantasy”), “fabulous” (“fairy tale”) are repeated many times. Pictorial accuracy gives way to subjective expressive characteristics. Their function is to represent the “other”, “otherworldly”, romantic world, to oppose it to a dull reality. Instead of clear outlines, silhouettes or "lace shadow" are given; lighting is based on the play of light and shadow.
The external musicality of speech is also palpable in the stories: the flow of the phrase is leisurely and solemn, replete with a variety of rhythmic repetitions. The romantic "excessiveness" of the style is also manifested in the fact that nouns and verbs are entwined in the stories with "garlands" of adjectives, adverbs, participles - a whole series of definitions. This stylistic manner, by the way, was condemned by A.P. Chekhov, who in a friendly way advised the young writer: “... Cross out, where possible, the definitions of nouns and verbs. You have so many definitions that it is difficult for the reader to understand and he gets tired.
In Gorky's early work, "excessive" colorfulness was closely connected with the attitude of the young writer, with his understanding of real life as a free play of unfettered forces, with the desire to bring a new, life-affirming tone to literature. Subsequently, the style of M. Gorky's prose evolved towards greater brevity of descriptions, asceticism and accuracy of portrait characteristics, syntactic balance of the phrase
Maxim Gorky (Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov, 1868-1936) is one of the most significant figures in the world culture of our century and at the same time one of the most complex and controversial. In the last decade, attempts have been made to "throw Gorky off the ship of modernity." However, let's not forget that at the beginning of the century they tried to do the same with Pushkin and Tolstoy...
Perhaps only Gorky managed to reflect in his work the history, life and culture of Russia in the first third of the 20th century on a truly epic scale.
Early work of A.M. Gorky is marked by the influence of romanticism. In the legacy of any writer, something can be liked and something not. One will leave you indifferent, and the other will delight. And this is all the more true for the huge and diverse work of A.M. Gorky. His early works - romantic songs and legends - leave the impression of contact with real talent. The characters in these stories are beautiful. And not only outwardly - they refuse the miserable fate of serving things and money, their life has a high meaning. Heroes of the early works of A.M. Gorky are courageous and selfless (“The Song of the Falcon”, the legend of Danko), they glorify activity, the ability to act (images of the Falcon, Petrel, Danko). One of the most striking early works of A.M. Gorky is the story "Old Woman Izergil" (1894). The story was written using the writer's favorite form of framing: the legend of Larra, the story of the life of Izergil, the legend of Danko. The three parts of the story are united by the main idea - the desire to reveal the true value of the human personality.
In 1895 Gorky wrote his "Song of the Falcon". In the contrasting images of the Uzh and the Falcon, two forms of life are embodied: rotting and burning. In order to more clearly show the courage of the fighter, the author contrasts the Falcon with the adapting Uzh, whose soul rots in bourgeois complacency. Gorky delivers a merciless verdict on philistine-philistine well-being: "Born to crawl, he cannot fly." In this work, Gorky sings the song "to the madness of the brave", asserting it as "the wisdom of life."
Gorky believed that with the organization of a “healthy working people - democracy”, a special spiritual culture would be established, under which “life would become joy, music; labor is pleasure. That is why at the beginning of the 20th century the writer’s confessions about the happiness of “living on earth”, where “a new life in a new century” should come, are very frequent.
Such a romanticized feeling of the era was expressed by the "Song of the Petrel" (1901). In this work, a person who overthrows a stagnant world was revealed by romantic means. All manifestations of feelings dear to the author are concentrated in the image of the “proud bird”: courage, strength, fiery passion, confidence in victory over a meager and boring life. The petrel combines truly unprecedented abilities: soar up, "pierce" the darkness, call for a storm and enjoy it, see the sun behind the clouds. And the storm itself is like their realization.
Everywhere and always A.M. Gorky strove for the revival of the given foundations of human existence by nature. In Gorky's early romantic works, the awakening of the human soul is laid down and captured - the most beautiful thing that the writer has always worshiped.
Born March 28, 1868 in Nizhny Novgorod. At the age of 11 he became an orphan and lived with relatives in Kazan until 1888. He tried many professions: he was a cook on a steamer, worked in an icon-painting workshop, a foreman. In 1888 he left Kazan for the village of Krasnovidovo, where he was engaged in the propaganda of revolutionary ideas. Maxim Gorky's first story, Makar Chudra, was published in 1892 in the newspaper Kavkaz. In 1898, the collection Essays and Stories was published, and a year later his first novel, Foma Gordeev, was published. In 1901, Gorky was expelled from Nizhny Novgorod to Arzamas Durnov A.N. Gorky, which we do not know. // Literary newspaper, 1993, March 10 (No. 10). .
A little later, the writer's collaboration with the Moscow Art Theater began. The theater staged the plays "At the Bottom" (1902), "Petty Bourgeois" (1901) and others. The poem "Man" (1903), the plays "Summer Residents" (1904), "Children of the Sun" (1905), "Two Barbarians" (1905) belong to the same period. Gorky becomes an active member of the Moscow Literary Environment, takes part in the creation of collections of the Knowledge Society. In 1905, Gorky was arrested and immediately after his release, he went abroad. From 1906 to 1913 Gorky lived in Capri. In 1907, the novel "Mother" by Mironov R.M. was published in America. Maksim Gorky. His personality and works. - M., 2003 ..
The plays “The Last” (1908), “Vassa Zheleznova” (1910), the stories “Summer” (1909) and “The Town of Okurov” (1909), the novel “The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin” (1911) are created in Capri. In 1913, Gorky returned to Russia, and in 1915 he began publishing the Chronicle magazine. After the revolution, he worked at the publishing house "World Literature".
In 1921, Gorky again went abroad. In the early 1920s, he completed the trilogy "Childhood", "In People" and "My Universities", wrote the novel "The Artamonov Case", and began work on the novel "The Life of Klim Samgin". In 1931 Gorky returned to the USSR. He died on June 18, 1936 in the village of Gorki.
At the end of the 90s, the reader was amazed by the appearance of three volumes of Essays and Stories by a new writer, M. Gorky. "Great and original talent" - such was the general judgment about the new writer and his books Veselov G.D.
The growing discontent in society and the expectation of decisive changes caused an increase in romantic tendencies in literature. These tendencies were especially clearly reflected in the work of the young Gorky, in such stories as "Chelkash", "Old Woman Izergil", "Makar Chudra", in revolutionary songs. The heroes of these stories are people "with the sun in their blood", strong, proud, beautiful. These heroes are Gorky's dream. Such a hero was supposed to "strengthen a person's will to live, arouse in him a rebellion against reality, against any oppression of it."
The central image of Gorky's romantic works of the early period is the image of a hero who is ready for a feat in the name of the good of the people. Of great importance in the disclosure of this image is the story "Old Woman Izergil", written in 1895. In the image of Danko, Gorky put a humanistic idea of a man who devotes all his strength to serving the people.
Gorky's work at the initial stage bears a strong imprint of a new literary trend - the so-called revolutionary romanticism. The philosophical ideas of the young talented writer, the passion and emotionality of his prose, and the new approach to man differed sharply both from naturalistic prose, which had gone into petty everyday realism and chose the hopeless boredom of human existence as its theme, and from the aesthetic approach to literature and life, which saw value only in "refined" emotions, characters and words.
For youth, there are two most important components of life, two vectors of existence. This is love and freedom. In Gorky's stories "Makar Chudra" and "Old Woman Izergil" love and freedom become the theme of the stories told by the main characters. Gorky's plot find - that old age tells about youth and love - allows us to give a perspective, the point of view of a young person who lives by love and sacrifices everything for it, and a person who has lived his life, who has seen a lot and is able to understand what is really important, what remains at the end of a long journey.
The heroes of the two parables told by the old woman Izergil are the complete opposite. Danko is an example of love-self-sacrifice, love-bestowal. He cannot live, separating himself from his tribe, people, he feels unhappy and not free if the people are not free and unhappy. Pure sacrificial love and the desire for achievement were characteristic of romantic revolutionaries who dreamed of dying for universal ideals, could not imagine life without sacrifice, did not hope and did not want to live to old age. Danko gives the heart that lights the way for people.
This is a fairly simple symbol: only a pure heart full of love and altruism can become a beacon, and only a selfless sacrifice will help free the people. The tragedy of the parable is that people forget about those who sacrificed themselves for them. They are ungrateful, but well aware of this, Danko does not think about the meaning of his dedication, does not expect recognition, rewards. Gorky polemicizes with the official church concept of merit, in which a person does good deeds, knowing in advance that he will be rewarded. The writer gives an opposite example: the reward for a feat is the feat itself and the happiness of the people for whose sake it is accomplished.
The son of an eagle is the exact opposite of Danko. Larra is single. He is proud and narcissistic, he sincerely considers himself superior, better than other people. It causes disgust, but also pity. After all, Larra does not deceive anyone, he does not pretend that he is able to love. Unfortunately, there are many such people, although their essence is not so clearly manifested in real life. For them, love, interest come down only to possession. If it cannot be possessed, it must be destroyed. After killing the girl, Larra, with cynical frankness, says that he did it because he could not own her. And he adds that, in his opinion, people only pretend that they love and observe moral standards. After all, nature gave them only their body as property, and they own both animals and things.
Larra is cunning and can talk, but this is a hoax. He overlooks the fact that a person always pays for the possession of money, labor, time, but ultimately a life lived this way and not otherwise. Therefore, the so-called truth of Larra becomes the reason for his rejection. The tribe expels the apostate, saying: you despise us, you are superior - well, live alone if we are unworthy of you. But loneliness becomes an endless torture. Larra understands that his whole philosophy was only a pose, that even in order to consider himself superior to others and be proud of himself, others are still needed. You cannot admire yourself alone, and we all depend on the assessment and recognition from society.
The romanticism of Gorky's early stories, his heroic ideals are always close and understandable to youth, they will be loved and will inspire more and more generations of readers to search for truth and heroism.
Romanticism as a trend in literature arose in the late 18th - early 19th century, it became most widespread in Europe in the period from 1790 to 1830. The main idea of romanticism was the assertion of a creative personality, and a feature was a violent depiction of emotions. The main representatives of romanticism in Russia were Lermontov, Pushkin and Gorky.
Gorky's romantic mood was prompted by the growing discontent in society and the expectation of change. It was thanks to the protest against “stagnation” that images of heroes began to appear in the writer’s head, capable of saving the people, leading them out of the darkness, showing them the right path. But this path seemed to Gorky to be completely different, different from the usual existence, the author despised everyday life and saw salvation only in freedom from social shackles and conventions, which was reflected in his early stories.
Historically, this period of Gorky's work coincided with the flourishing of revolutionary movements in Russia, the views of which the author clearly sympathized with. He sang the image of a disinterested and honest rebel, embraced not by greedy calculations, but by romantic aspirations to change the world for the better and destroy an unjust system. Also in his works of that time, a craving for freedom and unrealizable ideals was revealed, because the writer had not yet seen the change, but only foresaw them. When the dreams of a new social order took on a real shape, his work was transformed into socialist realism.
Main features
The main feature of romanticism in Gorky's work is a clear division of characters into good and bad, that is, there are no complex personalities, a person has either only good qualities, or only bad ones. Such a technique helps the author to show his sympathy more clearly, to single out those people who need to be imitated.
In addition, love for nature can be traced in all of Gorky's romantic works. Nature is always one of the main acting characters, and all romantic moods are transmitted through it. The writer liked to use descriptions of mountains, forests, seas, endowing every particle of the surrounding world with its own character and behavior.
What is revolutionary romanticism?
The early romantic works of Zhukovsky and Batyushkov were based on the ideas of classicism and, in fact, were its direct continuation, which did not correspond to the mood of progressive and radical-minded people of that period. There were few of them, so romanticism took on classical forms: a conflict between the individual and society, an extra person, yearning for an ideal, etc. However, time passed, and the number of revolutionary-minded citizens increased.
The divergence of literature and popular interests led to a change in romanticism, to the emergence of new ideas and techniques. The main representatives of the new revolutionary romanticism were Pushkin, Gorky and the Decembrist poets, who, first of all, promoted progressive views on the prospects for the development of Russia. The main theme was folk identity - the possibility of independent existence of peasants, hence the term nationality later appeared. New images began to appear, and the main ones among them were the genius-poet and the hero, capable of saving society from an impending threat at any moment.
Old Isergil
In this story there is a contrast between two characters, two types of behavior. The first is Danko - an example of that very hero, the ideal that should save the people. He feels free and happy only when his tribe is free and happy. The young man is filled with love for his people, sacrificial love, which personifies the spirit of the Decembrists, who are ready to die for the welfare of society.
Danko saves his people, but at the same time he dies. The tragedy of this legend is that the tribe forgets its heroes, it is ungrateful, but this is not important for the leader, because the main reward for the feat is the happiness of the people for whom it was performed.
The antagonist is the son of an eagle, Larra, he despised people, despised their life and law, he recognized only freedom, turning into permissiveness. He did not know how to love and limit his desires, as a result, he was expelled from the tribe for violating social principles. Only then did the proud young man realize that he was nobody without the people. When he is alone, no one can admire him, no one needs him. Having shown these two antipodes, Gorky brought everything to one conclusion: the values and interests of the people should always be higher than your values and interests. Freedom lies in freeing people from the oppression of the tyranny of the spirit, ignorance, that darkness that hid behind the forest, unsuitable for the life of the Danko tribe.
It is obvious that the author observes the canon of romanticism: here is the confrontation between the individual and society, here is the yearning for the ideal, here is the proud freedom of solitude and superfluous people. However, the dilemma about freedom was not resolved in favor of the proud and narcissistic loneliness of Larra, this type, sung by Byron (one of the founders of romanticism) and Lermontov, the writer despises. His ideal romantic hero is the one who, being above society, does not renounce it, but helps it even when it persecutes the savior. In this feature, Gorky is very close to the Christian understanding of freedom.
Makar Chudra
In the story "Makar Chudra" freedom is also the main value for the characters. The old gypsy Makar Chudra calls it the main treasure of a person, in it he sees an opportunity to preserve his “I”. Revolutionary romanticism is colorfully manifested precisely in this understanding of freedom: the old man claims that under conditions of tyranny a moral and gifted individual will not develop. So, for the sake of independence, it is worth taking risks, because without it the country will never get better.
Loiko and Radda have the same message. They love each other, but see in marriage only chains and fetters, and not a chance to find peace. As a result, love for freedom, which so far appears in the form of ambition, since the characters cannot properly dispose of it, leads to the death of both characters. Gorky puts individualism above the bonds of marriage, which only lull the creative and mental abilities of a person with everyday worries and petty interests. He understands that it is easier for a loner to sacrifice his life for the sake of freedom, it is easier to find complete harmony with his inner world. After all, the married Danko cannot really tear out the heart.
Chelkash
The main characters of the story are the old drunkard and thief Chelkash and the young village boy Gavrila. One of them was going to go to the “case”, but his partner broke his leg, and this could complicate the whole operation, then an experienced rogue met Gavrila. During their conversation, Gorky paid great attention to the personality of Chelkash, noticed all the little things, described his slightest movement, all the feelings and thoughts that arose in his head. The refined psychologism of the image is a clear adherence to the romantic canon.
Nature also occupies a special place in this work, since Chelkash had a spiritual connection with the sea, and his state of mind often depended on the sea. The expression of feelings and moods through the states of the surrounding world is again a romantic trait.
We also see how the character of Gavrila changes in the course of the story, and if at the beginning we felt pity and compassion for him, then at the end they turn into disgust. The main idea of the story is that it does not matter how you look and what you do, but what matters is what is in your heart, the most important thing is to always remain a decent person in any business. This idea in itself carries a revolutionary message: how does it matter what the hero does? Does this mean that the killer of a high-ranking person can be a decent person? Does this mean that a terrorist can blow up His Excellency's carriage and at the same time maintain moral purity? Yes, this is precisely the liberty the author deliberately allows: not everything is a vice that society condemns. The revolutionary kills, but his motive is sacred. The writer could not say this directly, so he chose abstract examples and images.
Features of Gorky's romanticism
The main feature of Gorky's romanticism is the image of a hero, a kind of ideal designed to save the people. He does not renounce the people, but rather wants to lead them to the right path. The main values that the writer exalted in his romantic stories are love, freedom, courage and self-sacrifice. Their understanding depends on the revolutionary mood of the author, who writes not only for the thinking intelligentsia, but also for a simple Russian peasant, so the images and plots are not ornate and simple. They have the character of a religious parable and even resemble it in style. For example, the author very clearly shows his attitude to each character, and it is always clear who the author likes and who does not.
Gorky's nature was also a character and influenced the heroes of the stories. In addition, its individual parts are symbols that must be perceived allegorically.
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