Selected Letters

Name: Selected Letters
Author: Unknown Author
ISBN: 9780198151753

by Unknown Author

424 pages1997Oxford University Press, USAISBN 9780198151753

Gorky, maksim, 1868-1936 Correspondence Russian Authors

Open in BookOwl Download on App Store

About this book

The present volume has been conceived first of all as a sketch towards a new biography. It contains 177 letters, written between 1889 and Gorky's death in 1936, and selected so as to allow Gorky to tell the story of his own life and reveal his hopes and fears, his observations and preoccupations over a literary career which spanned almost fifty years. Gorky's letters are of considerable interest on a number of levels: biographically; as representations of the development of Russian literature; in terms of the light they shed on many writers of the period (such as Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Pasternak) as well as major political figures (including Lenin and Stalin), and as period documents in their own right. Remarkable for its sheer immensity and the variety of its addressees, Gorky's correspondence provides a unique personal commentary on all aspects of Russian culture and society in the era of revolution, by one of the most fascinating figures of an extraordinary generation.

Publication Details

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 1997
Pages: 424
ISBN: 9780198151753

About Unknown Author

Gorky, Maxim or Maksim [Rus.,=Maxim the Bitter], pseud. of Aleksey Maximovich Pyeshkov, 1868-1936, Russian writer. Gorky is considered the father of Soviet literature and the founder of the doctrine of socialist realism. Instilled by his grandmother with a love of romantic tales and great sympathy for mankind, Gorky began a nomadic life at 12, wandering the Volga area. Since the czar's schools were closed to peasants, he educated himself, an experience he describes in My Universities (1923). He held dozens of menial jobs, publishing his first story in 1892. Gorky then became a journalist and married a colleague on the Samarskaya Gazeta. His articles exposed local corruption and he soon lost his job. In 1898 Gorky's collection Sketches and Stories was published by a radical press and the author was an immediate sensation. These romantic tales concern the vigor and nobility of the Russian peasants and workers. About 1900 he turned to writing novels of social realism. Of these, Mother (1906) had the greatest impact on Soviet literature. Describing the awakening of revolutionary feeling in an ill-treated peasant woman, it became the prototype of the revolutionary novel. At this time Gorky became close friends with Leo Tolstoy and Chekhov, about both of whom he later wrote superb Reminiscences (tr. 1946). Gorky donated most of his income to the revolutionary movement. He was arrested frequently but treated carefully because of his tremendous popularity. The czar rescinded his election to the Academy of Sciences in 1902, whereupon Chekhov and Korolenko resigned in protest. Gorky wrote 15 plays, two of which, heavily censored, were enormously successful at the Moscow Art Theatre. One of them, The Lower Depths (1902), a study of the wretched lives of derelicts, remains a classic. His plays, at first modeled on Chekhov's, emphasized characterization over plot. After the failure of the 1905 revolution, in which he took part, Gorky sought to raise funds for the