The attitude of heroes to Thomas Gordeev. The novel "Foma Gordeev

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What is the tragedy of Foma Gordeev according to M. Gorky

The work of M. Gorky "Foma Gordeev" was published in 1899 in the journal "Life" with the subtitle "story". In 1900, the story was published in a separate edition.

The creative plan of A.M. Gorky revealed in a letter to S. Dorovatovsky in February 1899:

“This story gives me many good moments and a lot of fear and doubt - it should be a broad, meaningful picture of our time, and at the same time, against its background, an energetic healthy person should beat furiously, looking for things within his strength, looking for scope for his energy. He's tight. Life crushes him, he sees that there is no place for heroes in it, they are knocked down by trifles, like Hercules, who defeated the hydras, would be knocked down by a cloud of mosquitoes.

“... in parallel with working on Foma, I am drawing up a plan for another story, Mishka Vyagin’s Career. This is also a story about a merchant, but about a typical merchant, about a petty, smart, energetic swindler, who, from the utensils on the ship, reaches the post of mayor. Thomas is not typical as a merchant, as a representative of a class, he is only a healthy person who wants a free life, who is cramped within the framework of modernity. It is necessary to put another figure next to him so as not to violate the truth of life.

Being a member of the populist circles of the 80s, Gorky was critical of the teachings of the populists, but echoes of his influence can still be found in the early works of the writer; such, for example, are the motives of sacrifice in the legend of Danko and in the Song of the Falcon. The ideology of populism was based on a system of views about a special, "original" path of Russia's development to socialism, bypassing capitalism. At the time when Gorky was working on Foma Gordeev, one of the main ideas of populism was the idea that the task of the intelligentsia was to help the peasantry overcome the difficulties of a market economy.

"Foma Gordeev" testified that by this time Gorky had departed from the populist movement. This is the largest anti-populist work. After the appearance of Foma Gordeev, readers and critics began to speak of him as a Marxist writer.

Gorky built Foma Gordeev as a chronicle, which allowed him to show not only the development of human life in time, as N. Leskov did in his chronicles, but also the movement of time itself as a historical category. The heroes turned out to be correlated with the historical pace of Russia. Some of them became active figures, others convinced that a person and “his time” are not always the same values.

The main character, Foma Gordeev, inherited from his father, Ignat Gordeev, a solid fortune and a family business. He is trying to adequately continue commercial activities and increase the capital acquired by his father, but the world of businessmen is alien to him. His hot dreamy nature suggests that happiness is not measured by the amount of money. He tries to find his place in life, but it is not easy. Thomas starts drinking.

“Foma was silent. Everything he did led to nothing, his speeches did not shake the merchants. Here they surround him with a dense crowd, and he can not see anything because of them. They are calm, firm, treat him like a bully and plot something against him. He felt crushed by this dark mass of strong spirit, intelligent people... To himself he now seemed a stranger and did not understand what he had done to these people and why he had done it. He even felt insulting something, similar to shame for himself before himself. He had a sore throat, and in his chest, it was as if some kind of dust had fallen on his heart, and it was beating heavily, unevenly. bitter Gordeev bourgeois

The greatest attention is paid to two figures: the guardian and affirmer of the bourgeois consciousness - Yakov Mayakin and Foma Gordeev himself - a renegade of his class, becoming "sideways" to him. In the 90s. capitalism has taken a strong position in the country. The image of the "grimy", so expressively captured in the work of Shchedrin, Uspensky and Ostrovsky, was fading into the past, giving way to money tycoons and manufacturers. Gorky's predecessors in creating the image of the offensive bourgeois (P. Boborykin - "Vasily Terkin", Vas. Nemirovich-Danchenko - "Wolf's satiety", etc.) noted the emergence of a new type of merchant who is beginning to realize his strength, but did not create a typical figure his.

Yakov Mayakin is a social type who embodied the potential power of the bourgeoisie at the end of the century. The class, master's consciousness permeates all the life of a successful merchant, all his moral foundations. This is a merchant who thinks not only about himself, but also about the fate of his class. Capitalism began to penetrate into all areas of social and economic activity, and it turned out that it was not enough for Mayakin to dominate only in the field of economics. He is striving for power on a larger scale. Noteworthy is the opinion of the Volga millionaire Bugrov, who told Gorky that he had not met the Mayakins on his way, but he felt: “this is how a person should be!”.

The author of "Foma Gordeev" studied from the classics a comprehensive understanding of human characters and the determinism of their native environment and society as a whole. But, as an artist, penetrating ever deeper into the class structure of society, he introduced something new into his study of man. In his works, the social dominant of the heroes' worldview was strengthened, and in connection with this, the class coloring of their inner world became more tangible. The organic fusion of the class with the original allowed Gorky to create a large gallery of related, but nonetheless so dissimilar heroes.

Modern criticism has caught a characteristic feature of Gorky the psychologist. The critic L. Obolensky wrote, referring to Yakov Mayakin, that Gorky, along with the individual traits of the hero, also “grasps” family traits, hereditary traits that have developed under the influence of the profession (class), and enhances these latter to such brightness that we no longer face an ordinary figure, which in life we would not have noticed, but a semi-real, semi-ideal, almost symbolic statue, a monument to an entire class in its typical features.

Along with the merchant, who traces his genealogy back to the 18th century, Foma Gordeev also shows one of the first accumulators of capital in the post-reform era. For all the limitations of the reform of 1861, it gave an opportunity to manifest the dormant energy and ingenuity of the people. Hence Gorky's enormous interest in capitalists who have come out of the people's milieu and have not yet completely broken ties with it. Ignat Gordeev is a rich man, endowed not only with the desire for money, but also with a kind of audacity of heart, which prevents him from completely merging with the world of his masters.

"Foma Gordeev" spoke about the development of capitalism in Russia and at the same time about the instability of the new way of life. Evidence of this is the emergence of protest in the working environment, as well as the appearance of those who disagree with bourgeois practice and morality in the ranks of the bourgeoisie itself.

At first, Gorky wanted to create a work about the prodigal son of capitalism. Breaking with one's environment, breaking out of it, became an increasingly remarkable life phenomenon, attracting the attention of other writers as well. The hero of Chekhov's story "Three Years" stands on the threshold of such a breakout. However, in the process of creative work, Gorky came to the conclusion that Foma is not typical as a merchant, as a representative of the class, and in order not to violate the truth of life, another, more typical figure should be placed next to him. Thus, an equal-sized image of the second central hero arose. These are characters that mutually determined each other. Fearing that the typical image of a merchant, striving not only for economic, but also for political power, would cause a ban on censorship, and in an effort to preserve this new figure in Russian literature, Gorky blocked it with the figure of Thomas. But Foma remained dear to the author, as evidence of a violation of the solidity of the bourgeoisie, as, in turn, a typical phenomenon, although it did not become widespread.

Mayakin and Foma are opposing heroes. For one of them, everything is subordinated to the desire to get rich and rule. At the heart of his ideal lies the economic principle. He subordinates everything to him, including the lives of people close to him. Another attitude to life is connected with the social and moral knowledge of it. The master's principle will manifest itself more than once in the behavior and consciousness of Thomas (he is the son of his environment), but it does not dominate in his inner world.

And if the prodigal son of the bourgeoisie Taras Mayakin, quickly forgetting his former opposition, returns to his father's house in order to increase his father's income, then Foma, endowed with a pure moral sense and conscience, acts as an accuser of the masters of life - it is impossible for him to return to his father's house.

"Foma Gordeev" is permeated with the idea of the need to awaken the consciousness of the people. This thought, manifested in the characterization of the leading character, in the disputes of the characters, in the author's reflections on the fate of the motherland, holds together the heterogeneous material of life. In "Foma Gordeev" equally impressive pictures of the Volga nature are given, reminiscent of the greatness and painful slumber of the Russian people.

“There is an imprint of slowness on everything around; everything - both nature and people - lives clumsily, lazily, - but it seems that a huge force lurks behind laziness, an irresistible force, but still devoid of consciousness, which has not created clear desires and goals for itself ... And the absence of consciousness in this half-asleep life she lays on the whole beautiful expanse of her shadow of sadness.

The absence of a clear consciousness is also characteristic of the young Gordeev. Thomas has a warm heart. He does not accept the worldly commandments of Mayakin, he is worried about the humiliation and poverty of some and the wrong power of others. But he does not understand the causes of social inequality. He is socially blind, and this makes his anger of little effect. The radical journalist Yezhov, who is watching Gordeev's spontaneous indignation against those in power, tells him:

“Drop it! You can't do anything! There is no need for people like you ... Your time, the time of the strong, but stupid, has passed, brother! You're late..."

The spontaneous rebellion of Thomas is painted in romantic tones, and this gave rise to a number of literary critics to assert that Gorky created a romantic image. But Gorky set himself the task not to approve, but to debunk this type of romanticism. He was already an anachronism. Thomas is above his environment in the world of moral values, but his intellect is low, and his dreams are chaotic. The heart of young Gordeev yearns to overthrow social evil, but he is incapable of social generalizations. The revealing speech on the ship is the highest expression of the angry rebellion of the prodigal son of the bourgeoisie and, at the same time, evidence of the archaism of his rebellion. The hero, who is free-spirited by nature, is defeated not only because the unmasked people have taken up arms against him, but above all because he himself has not yet matured for effective social protest.

Foma Gordeev is not a revolutionary, he does not know other paths, except for those that his fathers and grandfathers followed, along which the ideologist of the merchant class and the spokesman for his demands on the "those in power" Yakov Mayakin, or the representative of the patriarchal merchant class Anany Shchurov. A spiritually healthy and honest person, Foma cannot obey the laws of capitalism, accept and make Mayakin's aphorism his motto:

“When approaching a person, hold honey in your left hand and a knife in your right. When you get the upper hand, then it’s good.”

The protest of Foma Gordeev is just as anarchic as the rebelliousness of the Gorky tramps. However, in this story, Gorky showed the process of “breaking out” a person from his class, from the shackles of class morality, more fully and deeper. Gorky's tramps are people who have already been thrown overboard from the environment to which they previously belonged, and Foma, at the beginning of the story, a full-fledged representative of the merchant class, is shown in the process of breaking with his social environment. Such was the strength of the revolutionary ferment among the people that it penetrated the stratifications of class morality and class prejudices and aroused in spiritually pure people hatred of their own environment, confronted them with this environment. Depending on the social and historical conditions of the time, as well as a number of internal and family circumstances, the renegades of their class sank to the "bottom of life", perished, or joined the liberation movement of the people. Consequently, in the protest of Foma Gordeev, Gorky showed not just the characteristic features of the collapse of the bourgeois-class consciousness, but the decomposition of proprietary morality in the context of the maturation of revolutionary ideas and their penetration into the masses. Foma gravitates towards these masses, towards the working environment, he listens with deep attention to the commoner Yezhov, in whom there is still no firmness and tempering of those proletarian revolutionaries, the images of which Gorky will soon create, but who expresses some of their thoughts.

“The future belongs to people of honest work,” says Yezhov. “Great work is ahead of you ... It is you who must create a new culture.”

The recognition of the futility of spontaneous rebellion is combined in Gorky with the search for carriers of effective social protest. He finds them in the proletarian environment. The workers depicted in the novel Foma Gordeev have not yet embarked on the path of revolutionary struggle, but the dispute between the journalist Yezhov and the worker Krasnoshchekov about the “spontaneous” and “conscious” beginning in the labor movement testified to the workers’ desire for such a struggle.

The main tragedy of the rebel Foma Gordeev was caused by a misunderstanding of the ways to combat social evil. The inability to come to terms with evil and the inability to fight it leads to the fact that the only hope for Foma Gordeev is the desire to remain human in any circumstances, even when it is practically impossible:

“What have you done? You didn’t make life - a prison ... You didn’t arrange order - you forged chains for a person ... It’s stuffy, cramped, there is nowhere for a living soul to turn ... A person dies! .. You are murderers ... Do you understand that you are alive only by human patience?

It is important to note that such a tragic opposition of an individual to the existing world order in general is typical both for the Russian mentality in general and for Russian literature as an exponent of this mentality.

Bibliography

1. Gorky M. Foma Gordeev. / M. Gorky. - M.: Bustard, 2008

2. Gruzdev I. Gorky. / I. Gruzdev. - M.: Young Guard, 1960

3. Lukov L.D. Russian literature: A.M. Bitter. / L.D. Lukov. - M.: AST, 2008

4. Sher N.I. Alexey Maksimovich Gorky. / N.I. Sher // Stories about Russian writers. - Moscow: Ministry of Education of the RSFSR, 1960

5. M. Gorky in the memoirs of contemporaries. - M.: State publishing house of fiction, 1955

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Sections: Literature

Class: 11

Target: moral search for the meaning of life by the main character of Gorky's story "Foma Gordeev";

Tasks:

reflection of the historical situation in Gorky's story; pictures of merchant life;
"superfluous" people, their limitations and "stupidity", "they pointed out what I should not be ...";
develop interest in research work, be able to independently draw conclusions, generalize, compare.

Equipment:

1) M. Gorky. "Foma Gordeev". Moscow 1977. (texts).
2) Presentation for the lesson.
3) Projector.
4) Illustrations for the work.
5) Russian literature of the 20th century. Grade 11. Practicum for educational institutions. Ed. Yu.I. Lyssogo. M. Mnemozina, 1998.

What have you done? No, you did not make a life, but a prison ...
You arranged not order - you forged chains for a person.
Stuffy, cramped, there is nowhere for a living soul to turn around.
A man is dying!

Gorky M. "Foma Gordeev"

No, I'll choose my own place.

Gorky M. "Foma Gordeev"

DURING THE CLASSES

- Expanding the topic of the lesson, proving the correctness of the chosen epigraphs, determine the purpose of the lesson. (Searching for the meaning of life, your "I", your place in it)

- In Gorky's story "Foma Gordeev" (1899), a broad picture of Russian life is presented, a contemporary of which the author himself was. The writer has always been concerned about human needs. Most importantly, he is close to the desire for a full-blooded happy life. Most heroes do not fulfill this aspiration. It is perceived as a personality drama. The hero's desire for a full-blooded life is embodied by Gorky in the story "Foma Gordeev".
The hero protests against lies and hypocrisy, he is crushed by a "close" life, he is looking for things that are within his power, trying to find his own way in life, his "I". In the end, he becomes an inveterate drunkard and can very easily become an inhabitant of a rooming house, similar to the one shown by Gorky in the play "At the Bottom".

- Each group has conducted its searches, made conclusions on the story within the framework of the topic, and now you are given the right to defend your assignments.

1 group- ch. 1, pp. 47-49 (student Kuznetsov)

- Gorky begins his story with a story about Thomas' father - Ignat Gordeev.
Why? What does this give to understand the image of the main character?
- Tell us about him (about your father) (origin, social status, lifestyle, distinctive character traits) and about your mother.
- What do Ignat Gordeev have in common with Diky and Kabanova from Ostrovsky's play "Thunderstorm"? What difference did you see?
The rebellious spirit of the parents manifested itself to a greater extent in Thomas. Parents did not yet realize what was bothering them. What is happening around makes Foma think about what place is prepared for him in life, i.e. what is his own "I" in life. The painful question about the meaning of life could have arisen before the father and mother, if they had lived
they are at a later time.

Answer to question 2. The first lessons of life were given to Foma by his father. Often he said to Foma: "We must teach you how to live."
Once a dreamy boy got on a steamer with his father, where a new life unfolded before him. He looked at everything with wide eyes, it seemed to him that he was moving along a wide path to a wonderful land of fairy tales. He asked his father about everything, and he explained to him as best he could. One day the boy relayed a conversation between the pilot and the crew about his father. And Ignat then decided that it was time
teach the son of life.

There was something clear and understandable in the father's stories, Foma liked that his father was strong, dexterous. His heart was beating hard and hot. Since then, he became more attentive to his surroundings, felt everything keenly, everything that agitated his soul aroused new vague sensations and desires in him. Thomas treated everything seriously, thoughtfully. With the uncertainty of character, dreaminess, curiosity, thoughtfulness, he resembled his mother. He felt something special in himself that distinguished him from his peers, but he also could not understand - what is it? And he watched himself suspiciously. This influenced him, but did not define the life path clearly, definitely.

Already the first lessons of life make Foma think about his own purpose, cause the desire to live not according to orders.
– Who gives Foma the first serious life lessons? (Father)
- What was the science of life taught to Thomas by his father? Could the young man accept it?

Generalization. The main thing that Father Foma taught was to be a master, to achieve his own, regardless of the means. Dreamy and thoughtful Foma, rejecting the established rules of life, begins to search for his place in life.

- In what works did we meet with the lessons of the fathers? What did they teach? (Pushkin A.S. "The Captain's Daughter" - "Take care of honor from a young age", Gogol N.V. "Dead Souls" - "save a penny ...".)
- Is the morality of Ignat Foma close? (He listened, became more attentive. He protests, although the protest is still spontaneous).

Task 2nd group.

Life lessons continue.
- Who else had a strong influence on Thomas? Who tried to turn Thomas around in their own way? (Godfather, Yakov Mayakin).
- What did Yakov Mayakin teach his godson?

We supplement the scheme "I will teach you, Thomas"
- ch. Sh, 1U, U, H., ch.4 pp. 76,78,80,90,93, ch.5 pp. 93-94,95
- How does the relationship between Yakov Mayakin and Foma Gordeev end, and at the same time the merchant life, the activities of Thomas? Growing hostility between them.
– Does Thomas accept the lessons of Jacob's life? (Rejects. Foma, as he said, wanted to be like a person. He felt a deaf dislike for Mayakin, because he does not accept his life principles. He did not feel any joy either from money or from his activities. At first, an internal rupture occurs , and after the meeting on the ship, finally, openly, he feels strong, capable of something big.)

4. What is the significance for understanding the ideological content of the story is the scene of the merchant's festivities on the ship of the merchant Kononov?

- What is the merchant class like? What are they teaching Thomas?
– Did this bring Thomas satisfaction?

a) Gorky draws more and more vividly pictures of how “frantically beating”, how a person “searches for things according to his strength”, and he is knocked down by trifles. Foma Gordeev is a person who has entered into a struggle with his environment. As in Gogol's "Inspector General" on the ship, images of the whole color of the city pass on the stage. The speech of Thomas, as on the screen, mutilates the essence of everyone.

b) - Read out the speech of Mayakin and Thomas (staging) ch.13 pp. 229-233
c) (student answer)
d) - Thomas's accusatory speech, he tells the truth to everyone. Is it always good to hear the truth? (No)

Thomas is opposed to other merchants, these ignoble money-gatherers. He is superior to his fellows because he "protests" and "denounces" and
does not follow the laws, their truth.
– What do they teach? to question 4

We read out the finale of the story - a gala dinner in honor of the launch of the steamer Kononov "Ilya Muromets". Before us is a whole gallery of images of merchants. The power of the owners of the city is not limited, speaking frankly about their position, striving to be the first everywhere - Mayakin, Kononov, Shchurov, Gushchin, Bobrov and others, and some even without a name and surname. There is some anxiety. And in front of these people, Thomas delivers his accusatory speech. He is filled with conflicting feelings (to say which) ch.13. But the spilled truth does not bring relief to Thomas, she "crushed" the accuser. And instead of a moral victory, he seemed to himself now a stranger and not understanding what he had done to these people and why. Merchants cannot understand him, because they are possessed only by a thirst for profit by any means, money-grubbing, inertia. This is how they teach Thomas to be. He was alone. Merchants do not understand Thomas, because their morality is Thomas. He does not find a single living soul capable of understanding him, giving him even a drop of love.

5. In the story, in addition to Thomas, Gorky draws the images of several more young people who come from the same merchant environment, the same age as Thomas. Why does the author talk about Lyuba M., Afrikan Smolin, Nikolai Yezhov?
– Are they trying to teach Foma something?
- How does the character of Thomas manifest itself in communication with different people?
(answer) Thomas seeks to get as close as possible to people who cause him keen interest.

Stories about the peers of Thomas

They are all different, he is disappointed in all of them, feels their emptiness, and wants to see the truth in them. He is afraid that there is this truth, that there is something so unknown. Foma tries to understand why he lives, but does not find an answer. Gorky knew that there are values in a person, the loss of which is the moral death of a person.
In dealing with different people. The character of Thomas manifests itself in different ways. He is dismissive of the poor, while stealing an apple, he first felt the power over people and the power of money. Oddities of character are manifested in many ways, he is dreamy, likes to engage in soul-searching. He is interested and curious to compare the people he meets with himself. All of them are trying to teach Thomas something, and he strives to live not by order, but is looking for “himself”, his place in life (remember the episode with himself).
Generalization. All these images are given for comparison with the main character. Some of them reconciled with the surrounding reality. Their dissatisfaction with life is temporary. They are more educated, but their predatory nature is covered with expensive clothes, and good external manners. But the principles of life, their philosophy remained the same.
Foma quickly realized the windbag and Emelya Yezhov, that he was too far from the people he constantly talks about.
Only Thomas went against the wolf laws of his environment to the end. Romantic ideas about life came across real life, the laws of which he cannot understand and explain, but does not want to live by them.
Angrily, as best he can, he protests against lies and hypocrisy, trying to find his place in life, his "I" in order to feel like a man. He tries to find people who live and think differently.
Unable to find such people, he pours wine over the suffering soul, sees no way out of the impasse of life, lost faith in everyone and everything.
Thus, Foma replenishes the gallery of extra people.
- Name them. Who are they? (Mtsyri, Eugene Onegin, Pechorin, Bazarov, etc.)
- Assume the possible future of Thomas, taking into account the historical process of this time.
- When was the story written? What is this time? (1899)

Conclusion: At the turn of the century, such a hero as Thomas is not typical either as a merchant or as a representative of his class, he is only a healthy person who wants a free life, who is cramped within the framework of modernity. So he did not find his way, his "I". At the turn of the century, there was no person who would help Foma find his "I" was a like-minded person. Challenging his class, accusing him of the fact that there is no life for a living soul, choosing his own path, Thomas did not find it (the path).

- Did Gorky manage to show such a person?
- And why? (Didn't study, didn't read, he didn't do anything)
Did Foma know what he lives for? What is it for? (Here Yezhov, Smolin found their "I", they did not have such a perception of life as Foma had.)

- You, too, are now standing on the threshold of life, you must choose your path, your path of life. We should not be like Thomas, we should immediately set a big, bright goal in life.

Reflection

Students speak in one sentence, choosing the beginning of the phrase from the reflective screen on the board:

today I found out...
it was interesting…
it was difficult…
I did assignments...
I realized that...
Now I can…
I felt that...
I purchased...
I learned…
I managed …
I was able...
I'll try…
surprised me...
gave me a lesson for life...
I wanted…

Homework:

1. Make a table diagram “The figurative system of the heroes of the story in relation to the main character.
2. Read the novel "Mother".

On the eve of 1900, Gorky published the novel Foma Gordeev. Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" said that everything had turned upside down, but had not yet fit into the post-reform period. In "Foma Gordeev" the beginning of "laying down" is depicted.

Being a member of the populist circles of the 80s, Gorky was critical of the teachings of the populists, but echoes of his influence can still be found in the early works of the writer; such, for example, are the motives of sacrifice in the legend of Danko and in the Song of the Falcon. The novel "Foma Gordeev" testified to the obsolescence of such hobbies. This is the largest anti-populist work, leaving no doubt that Gorky began to master the Marxist knowledge of social development.

After the appearance of Foma Gordeev, readers and critics began to speak of him as a Marxist writer. So, the future People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs G. V. Chicherin wrote to a comrade in 1901: “Instead of the world outlook of the era of subsistence farming, an entirely new world outlook of the urban<...>Marxism and Gorky are the main phenomena in our country in recent years. (And in Foma Gordeev there is a great influence of Marxism).

Gorky built his great works (from “Foma Gordeev” to “The Life of Klim Samgin”) as chronicle novels, which allowed him to show not only the development of human life in time, as N. Leskov did in his chronicles, but also the movement of time itself as a historical category.

The heroes turned out to be correlated with the historical pace of Russia. Some of them became active figures, others convinced that a person and “his time” are not always the same values. The inclination towards such a correlation was clearly manifested already in the first novel, the hero of which did not hear the true calls of his time.

The greatest attention in the novel is paid to two figures: the guardian and affirmer of bourgeois consciousness - Yakov Mayakin and the renegade of his class, who becomes "sideways" to him - Foma Gordeev. In the 90s. capitalism has taken a strong position in the country.

The image of the "grimy", so expressively captured in the work of Shchedrin, Uspensky and Ostrovsky, was fading into the past, giving way to money tycoons and manufacturers. Gorky's predecessors in creating the image of the offensive bourgeois (P. Boborykin - "Vasily Terkin", Vas. Nemirovich-Danchenko - "Wolf's satiety", etc.) noted the emergence of a new type of merchant, "who is beginning to realize his strength", but did not create a typical figure his.

Capitalism began to penetrate into all areas of social and economic activity, and it turned out that it was not enough for Mayakin to dominate only in the field of economics. He is striving for power on a larger scale. Noteworthy is the opinion of the Volga millionaire Bugrov, who told Gorky that he had not met the Mayakins on his way, but he felt: “this is how a person should be!”.

In his works, the social dominant of the heroes' worldview was strengthened, and in connection with this, the class coloring of their inner world became more tangible. The organic fusion of the class with the original allowed Gorky to create a large gallery of related, but nonetheless so dissimilar heroes.

Modern criticism has caught a characteristic feature of Gorky the psychologist. The critic L. Obolensky wrote, referring to Yakov Mayakin, that Gorky, along with the hero’s individual traits, also “grasps” traits “family, hereditary, formed under the influence of the profession (class), and enhances these latter to such brightness that we are already confronted with not an ordinary figure, which in life we would not have noticed, but a semi-real, semi-ideal, almost symbolic statue, a monument of an entire class in its typical features.

Along with the merchant, who traces his genealogy back to the 18th century, Foma Gordeev also shows one of the first accumulators of capital in the post-reform era. For all the limitations of the reform of 1861, it gave an opportunity to manifest the dormant energy and ingenuity of the people. Hence Gorky's enormous interest in capitalists who have come out of the people's milieu and have not yet completely broken ties with it. Ignat Gordeev, Savely Kozhemyakin, Yegor Bulychev - all these are rich people, endowed not only with the desire for money, but also with the "daring of the heart", which prevents them from completely merging with the world of the owners.

The Gorky novel spoke of the development of capitalism in Russia and, at the same time, of the instability of the new way of life. Evidence of this is the emergence of protest in the working environment, as well as the appearance of those who disagree with bourgeois practice and morality in the ranks of the bourgeoisie itself.

At first, Gorky wanted to create a novel about the prodigal son of capitalism. Breaking with one's environment, breaking out of it, became an increasingly remarkable life phenomenon, attracting the attention of other writers as well. The hero of Chekhov's story "Three Years" stands on the threshold of such a breakout. However, in the process of creative work, Gorky came to the conclusion that Foma "is not typical as a merchant, as a representative of the class" and, in order not to violate the "truth of life", another, more typical figure should be placed next to him.

Thus, an equal-sized image of the second central hero arose. These are characters that mutually determined each other. Fearing that the typical image of a merchant, striving not only for economic, but also for political power, would cause a ban on censorship, and in an effort to preserve this new figure in Russian literature, Gorky, in his words, “blocked” her with the figure of Thomas (“Thomas I blocked Mayakin, and censorship did not touch him).

And if the “prodigal son” of the bourgeoisie Taras Mayakin, quickly forgetting his former opposition, returns to his father’s house in order to increase his father’s income, then Foma, endowed with a pure moral sense and a vigilant conscience, acts as an accuser of the masters of life - a return to his father’s house for him impossible.

The novel is permeated with the idea of the need to awaken the consciousness of the people. This thought, manifested in the description of the character of the leading character, in the disputes of the characters of the novel, in the author's thoughts about the fate of the motherland, holds together the heterogeneous life material. In his early work, Gorky showed himself to be a master of the bright southern landscape. In "Foma Gordeev" equally impressive pictures of the Volga nature are given, reminiscent of the greatness of the painful slumber of the Russian people.

“There is an imprint of slowness on everything around; everything - both nature and people - lives clumsily, lazily, - but it seems that a huge force lurks behind laziness, - an irresistible force, but still devoid of consciousness, which has not created clear desires and goals for itself ... And the absence of consciousness in this half-asleep life puts on the whole beautiful expanse of her shadow of sadness. The absence of a clear consciousness is also characteristic of the young Gordeev. Thomas has a warm heart. He does not accept the worldly commandments of Mayakin, he is worried about the humiliation and poverty of some and the wrong power of others.

But, like the early heroes of Gorky, he does not understand the causes of social inequality. Like the tramp rebels, he is socially blind, and this makes his anger of little effect. The radical journalist Yezhov, who is watching the growth of Gordeev's spontaneous indignation against those in power, tells him: “Drop it! You can't do anything! There is no need for people like you ... Your time, the time of the strong, but stupid, has passed, brother! You're late..."

The spontaneous, "internal" rebelliousness of Thomas is painted in romantic tones, and this gave rise to a number of literary critics to assert that Gorky created a romantic image. But Gorky set himself the task not to approve, but to debunk this type of romanticism. He was already an anachronism. Thomas is above his environment in the world of moral values, but his intellect is low, and his dreams are chaotic.

The frenzied heart of young Gordeev yearns to overthrow social evil, but he is incapable of social generalizations. His mind is asleep, and Gorky repeatedly emphasizes this in the novel. The revealing speech on the ship is the highest expression of the angry rebellion of the prodigal son of the bourgeoisie and, at the same time, evidence of the archaism of his rebellion.

The hero, who is free-spirited by nature, is defeated not only because the unmasked people have taken up arms against him, but above all because he himself has not yet matured for effective social protest. Gorky's novel was the last novel of the century about a lonely romantic hero as a hero who does not meet the requirements of modern times.

This will be more clearly stated in the story of three comrades who are looking for their life path ("Three", 1900). One of them dies, choosing the path of non-resistance. The second one also dies, trying not to change, but only to somewhat soften the ugliness of the possessive world. And only the third, the worker Grachev, will find the true path, having come close to the revolutionary circle.

Gorky could not yet create a full-blooded image of the worker hero—this hero had only just begun to manifest himself in life, but he was able to capture the ever deeper revolutionary mood of social aspirations. A romantic appeal to a feat, which always has a place in life, sounded in "Old Woman Izergil". The “Song of the Falcon” called for a feat. In 1899, the author will enhance its revolutionary sound by creating a new ending with the famous slogan:

We sing glory to the madness of the brave!

The madness of the brave is the wisdom of life!

In Foma Gordeev, Yezhov speaks of an approaching storm. Soon, many heroes of Russian literature will already be seized with a premonition of a storm. Chekhov's Tuzenbach ("Three Sisters") will say: "The time has come, a mass is approaching all of us, a healthy, strong storm is preparing, which is coming, is already close and will soon blow away laziness, indifference, prejudice to work, rotten boredom from our society."

In the poem in prose “Lights”, V. Korolenko reminds that, no matter how dark life is, “there are still lights ahead! ..”. Chekhov's play is fraught with a premonition of impending changes, in "Lights" there is a hope for these changes. It was a response to the burning problems of the day, but both artists still do not feel the immediate breath of a formidable storm.

This breath is embodied in the famous "Song of the Petrel" (1901), in which there was not only a call for revolution, but also the confidence that it would win. This song gained even greater popularity than the Song of the Falcon, which sang the revolutionary feat.

The image of the storm, to which Burevestnik called, ascended simultaneously to two literary sources: to the tradition of freedom-loving poetry (Yazykov, Nekrasov, etc.) and to the socialist journalism of the turn of the century. The new song was widely used in revolutionary propaganda, read at student parties, and distributed in the form of leaflets.

Gorky began to be perceived as a singer of the revolution, as a writer calling for active revolutionary resistance. The revolutionary romanticism with which the "Song of the Petrel" is fanned was the expression of a new ideal, a new historical perspective.

History of Russian literature: in 4 volumes / Edited by N.I. Prutskov and others - L., 1980-1983

Ticket 18. The problem of man and the environment in the works of Gorky (Foma Gordeev, Troy).

The novels show the internal decay of the bourgeois class, the historical doom of the existing world order. "Foma Gordeev" the first novel about the fate of generations. a string of primary accumulators who became "masters of life". the bourgeoisie of the new formation, who inherited the money of their fathers and adopted new methods of dealing with capital, were brought to the fore. Yakov Mayakin is an "ideologist" and leader of the new merchant class, striving for power and social influence. He glorifies bourgeois progress, the merchant class is the life-giving force of Russian economic and cultural life. Mayakin demands for the merchants life "space", a share in the government of the country. Gorky did not place his hopes on the younger generation of merchants either. Taras Mayakin, African Smolin, Lyubov Mayakina will not bring anything new to life. By blood and spirit, they are the children of Mayakin, who left him only for a while, and then return to their father's house. (Taras, a former revolutionary, follows the path of entrepreneurship; Lyubov enters into an advantageous marriage with Smolin, the unity of the old and young Mayakins in the case of "Taras Mayakin and African Smolin" at the end). the inconsistency of the social psychology of Yezhov (journalist) and the intelligentsia. Coming from the people, he does not fulfill his calling - serving the interests of the people, not agreeing with the order of the "masters", he does not know "what to cling to with his soul." This is an intellectual at an ideological crossroads. The peculiarity of the composition is a novel chronicle, a family novel. Foma's father Ignat saves money, but the breadth of the soul remains in him, subsequent merchants lose the breadth of the soul. Ignat Gordeev still felt the joy of creative work, the beauty of life, and began to understand that he was becoming "not the master of his work, but his low slave." Thomas takes more from his mother and nanny. It is shown how it is formed: it is torn apart by its environment. Lives with Yakov Makin - either gnaw at all, or lie in the mud. Foma Gordeev - with a pure soul, a man of truth, and In the merchant environment, everyone comes to wealth through crime. Foma is not a store. The inner theme of Thomas is the knowledge of people, himself, the thought of lack of freedom, the desire to understand how to live. The image of the Owl is blind during the day, stumbled. Thomas also does not find an answer to his questions, but rebels against the merchants. This is an energetic healthy person, looking for things according to his strength, the scope of his energy. Life crushes him, he sees that there is no place for heroes in it. Gorky opposed Foma Gordeev to both the old and the young generation of merchants. he is typical as the bearer of a moral ideal, before which the incompatibility of the human and proprietary principles of life has been revealed. His subjective attempts to combine the human and the possessive are doomed in advance, just as his rebellion, the protest of a loner against the "masters of life", is doomed to defeat. Thomas discovers that all human values are perverted in the world around him. Medynskaya's feeling turns out to be false, the natural demand for humanity with which Foma addresses people is perceived in the world of owners as something abnormal - the "owners" declare Foma to have gone mad.

Thomas can oppose nothing to the immoral power of this world, his rebellion is doomed, this is the rebellion of a weak loner. The drama of Thomas is shown by Gorky against the broad background of Russian folk life, which bears the life-giving principles of the world. In the mass of the people, Thomas is looking for carriers of moral ideals, the meaning of life. Landscape - Poeticized by the people, the Volga, against which the action unfolds, grows here into a symbol of people's life. "Three". the problem of the discrepancy between the existing social and moral norms of life and the desire of a person “to live like a human being” is sharpened. the life story of three young people in the same work environment, each looking for the "truth". In the center is the fate of Ilya Lunev, through her life events and the spiritual world of other heroes. The fates of the three friends are typical of the petty-bourgeois urban environment of that time. In the people of this environment, healthy feelings and aspirations coexisted with possessive dreams. the character of Lunev, in which the feelings of the owner and the worker struggle. The first stage of Ilya's life path is the path to "people". From a young age, he dreams, seeing the hardships of the environment, about a secure life and strives for enrichment, vaguely understands that this path is associated with a moral decline. And the closer Ilya is to his ideal, the lower he himself falls morally. The culmination of the story is the murder of the merchant Poluektov by Lunev. With his own life, he wanted to answer the question of how to live? Ilya understands that he and his friends are at a dead end: a childhood friend was sold to an old husband, Yakov, in an attempt to explain life by the will of divine providence, and is slowly fading away, tortured by his father, a tavern keeper, Lunev's beloved woman becomes the kept woman of the rich merchant Poluektov. Poluektov became for Ilya the embodiment of the evil of life that fell upon them. Ilya did not kill him out of jealousy, not for the purpose of robbery: this is an explosion of hatred for those who “strangle” them, this is a challenge to fate. With the money of Poluektov, Ilya opened a petty shop - another step towards destroying the illusions about the purity of life of the "owners". purity and good looks - a mask that covers immorality, deceit, crime. Ilya rebels against the world of "prosperous" "masters". The story's finale, the party scene at which he confesses to the murder, denouncing the social and moral philosophy of the townspeople, is a peculiar variation of the scene on the steamer from Foma Gordeev. But Lunev's rebellion is just as fruitless as Thomas's rebellion. He himself admits this: “If only I knew what force you can crush you! Don't know!" This is the drama of Elijah. The dream of achieving human happiness within the framework of the existing world order turned out to be untenable. In the story, each of the three heroes goes his own way in search of the truth of life: Yakov Filimonov is the bearer of a peculiar doctrine of non-resistance, Christian humanism, there is no will to resist, but this position leads to the justification of evil (Yakov realizes the untruth of his father’s life, who robs people, but obeys him, also robs at the tavern counter), Pavel Grachev - Under the influence of socialist ideas, the public consciousness awakens in the hero, which will determine his future fate - the path to revolution. Gorky affirms the possibility and right of a person to understand the laws according to which human life develops, to find a way out of its social impasses based on reason, and not on religion.

Ticket 19. Disputes about Gorky's play "At the Bottom"

The controversy concerns the image of Luke and the author's assessment of the hero: a liar or a healer of souls. Disputes about the truth of Luke, Sateen, about the wingless truth of the inhabitants of the rooming house, the genre of the play. The main question of the bitter: which is better truth or compassion? Is it necessary to bring compassion in order to use a lie, like Luke? L. Kolobaeva: Gorky caught the tendency of compassion to illusions, the inner readiness of pity to collude with lies, affirmed the ideal of strong goodness, capable of relying on ruthless truth. Popov"A man can do anything": essential compassion, kindness, mercy, independence are captured in Luke, but he is not a fighter. But the preaching of kindness was not useless if it awakened at the bottom, in the self-consciousness of the heroes, a desire to live better, a sense of self-worth. But life does not allow these tips to come true. Dolzhenkov“only man exists”: Luke does not rely on the internal forces of a person, but looks for support outside of him. Luke is a representative of compassion and lies, seduces people with a reliable one and destroys them. Flophouse hell - demon - Luke, crafty, Satan - Satin, who does not accept others as they are, but sings of a person with a capital letter. Sateen says the right things, but he himself is not like that, and Luke does not believe in man. Genre - socio-philosophical drama (see ticket 11). + Luke: Anna begins to believe that with the death of the body, the soul departs for a better world, and dies peacefully. The actor believes Luka's fictional stories about a hospital where they treat alcoholism. Natasha and Pepel believe in the possibility of their clean life together in Siberia. For Luke, the main thing is that faith and hope live in a person, and it does not matter in what way this will be achieved. Antipode: Bubnov recognizes only a bare fact, everything else is a lie for him. The truth of Bubnov is cruel, ruthless, it is based on indifference to people, it excludes any hope of changing a person. - Luke: The loss of faith can turn into a tragedy for a person, the parable of the righteous land, the Actor is the same. Luka disappears from the rooming house at the most important moment for its inhabitants, when many of them began to believe in something better. Heroes lose faith. The actor commits suicide, Ash is imprisoned, Natasha goes to the hospital. as soon as the person who consoled them, who made them believe, disappears, they immediately lose this faith and sink again. + Luke: changed many of the inhabitants of the rooming house for the better, forcing them to think about their lives. Influenced by Sateen. From the philosophy of Luke, Satin takes faith in a person (“Man is the truth! He understood this ...”), but faith without pity and mercy. A person must be respected, not pity, one must believe in one's own strengths, a strong, proud person does not need pity and mercy, they are needed only for the weak - reasoner.

This year I decided to describe the impressions that I have from the books I read. It so happened that today I didn’t have the opportunity to properly prepare for the exam and the syntax test, as well as work on a review of Anna Karenina, but I had the opportunity to read (thanks to the e-book), and I read 3 plays from the list abroad. The plays are as follows: S. Mrozhek "Emigrants", T. Williams "A Streetcar Named Desire" and E. Ionesco "Bald Singer". Only now I will begin to describe my impressions not from plays, but from the novel by Maxim Gorky, which I read in two days (January 3-4). The novel is short (920 pages in the e-book, which is approximately equal to 230 pages in the paper version). This is Gorky's first novel, and it is called Foma Gordeev.

It is about a young man who is throughout the story in the process of becoming his own personality. That is, before us is a typical, as they say, novel of education (its indispensable condition, according to Bakhtin, is that the image of the hero is a variable value). Foma Gordeev is the son of a wealthy merchant, who volens nolens becomes the heir to a huge fortune and must now continue the work of his father. Starting from the moment of birth and further, in his life he will interact with people who, one way or another, should influence the formation of his personality. On the one hand, Thomas is brought up by his father and godfather, who teach him, so to speak, the wisdom of the merchant's business and the pragmatic philosophy of life, the meaning of which, if considered very exaggeratedly, is to be a master and increase capital. On the other hand, the daughter of his godfather Lyuba constantly looms before Thomas, who despises this very philosophy (she considers the accumulation of capital to be pointless). Added to this double influence is something that Gorky inherited from European naturalism: the influence on the hero not only of the environment, but also of heredity. It so happened that Thomas, in addition to a strong, strong-willed father, had a mother of a completely different character, who, it would seem, showed passivity and complete indifference to life. Therefore, Foma, in general, does an excellent job with the duties of a merchant, he has a rather steep temper, he can give a cuff, shout, forget that there is a living person in front of him. But there is something else in him - what the father notices, who says "no, there is something in you that is not of my blood." And this split in the personality of Thomas leads him, of course, to conflict - both external (conflict with the environment, with the existing order of human life), and internal (the question of self-determination: who am I, why I was born, why I came to this world?).

The question of self-determination torments the hero constantly. And it is with him that the key themes (problems, motives) of the novel are connected. This is the author’s rejection of the existing social system, which gives rise to such a superfluous person as Thomas - a person who does not find meaning in life - and criticism of the merchant environment, the merchant class as a supposedly better, higher, dominant class that will lead Russia forward. Gorky works as a realist, he strives to accurately reflect reality. The semantic layer of the novel is quite large, and from this point of view I liked it. The product is really powerful. Gorky had a full ride through the merchant class and through the modern (for Gorky) way of life. It must be said that the merit of the novel lies in the fact that Gorky did not limit himself to the merchants, but brought the novel to the universal level. The problem of self-determination, the problem of not finding one's own place in life, is also experienced by Yezhov, a man who is completely different from Thomas. Their fates are in general similar, equally tragic, and they are in some ways brothers in attitude (this, it seems to me, is confirmed by the scene with a booze by the fire, when Yezhov gets drunk, and Foma is the only one who does not leave his friend in this terrible state and escorts him home).

However, the book left me with mixed feelings. Despite the well-developed semantic plan, rather deep psychologism, interesting judgments about life, there are absolutely ridiculous things in this novel, at least from the point of view of time (do not forget that the beginning of the 20th century is in the yard). The main characters behave like the heroes of a classic work, and, in human terms, like fifteen-year-old teenagers. Imagine how it looks, given that the image of Thomas inherited a lot from romanticism (he is experiencing a conflict of a romantic type). What Foma, what Yezhov - they only do what they express their thoughts directly and try to fight society in words, because they cannot do otherwise, and reconciliation is impossible. Other characters keep up and develop the argument, but in general behave more realistically. The rebellion of Thomas is the rebellion of a child who naively believed that by exposing society, he could achieve victory. This is the reason for his defeat, since the very structure of life (for Gorky, the social system still remains to blame, I think) shows the impossibility of such a victory. This constant declaration, it seems to me, is Gorky's artistic blunder, but artistically the novel is still not bad. There is also a symbolic plan here, expressed in a stunning comparison of a man who has lost his way in life with a blind owl, which the boys forced to fly during the day. Yes, Gorky in the finale - apparently for especially dull readers - this comparison is also emphasized in the speech of Foma, who, recalling an episode from childhood, compares himself with this owl (a good memory, however, although, damn it, it’s not so much about her, how much is that it looks somewhat attracted and spoils the impression). But without this inappropriate emphasis, the symbolic plan is done very cool

In general, as I wrote above, the book left ambivalent feelings. One feels that Gorky is a master. But, as a prose writer, he does not impress me. Of course, all the artistic "shortcomings" that I mentioned here can be explained, rather, by Gorky's aesthetics than by flaws and in places shown by unprofessionalism, but I still write here about my own impressions and feelings, even if they turn out to be made in too philological vein

We'll borrow everything. Deep night. Get up early enough. A lot of things still need to be done. So it's time for bed.

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Ticket 18. The problem of man and the environment in the works of Gorky (Foma Gordeev, Troy).

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