“Art manifestos” by M. Gorky from the beginning of the 1920s (“A story about one novel”, “Rehearsal”)

UDC 821.161.1-3

https://doi.org/10.20339/PhS.2-22.099        

Primochkina Natalia N.,

Doctor of Philology, Leading Researcher

Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences

e-mail: nprim47@yandex.ru

The article analyzes the philosophical and artistic problems and experimental poetics of two works by M. Gorky from his book “Stories of 1922–1924” — “A story about one novel” and “Rehearsal”. Both works are devoted to the theme of the complex relations of modern art with reality, the assertion of the high, almost divine role of the writer-the creator of imaginary worlds. It is shown that the similar problems of the stories are expressed using different methods of narration and different artistic techniques. If “Rehearsal” is a psychologically complicated “neutral” author’s narrative with numerous dialogues and internal monologues of the characters, then “The Story of one Novel” is the most “radical” creative experience of Gorky in creating a purely fantastic, conventional, modernist work. Although the main characters of these stories — the writer Fomin and the playwright Creatorov — are shown by Gorky as if from the outside, with a sufficient degree of irony, it is impossible not to notice that many of their thoughts about art, about the great role of the artist in the modern world were very close to what the author himself professed at that time.

Keywords: M. Gorky, “Stories of 1922–1924”, “A story about one novel”, “Rehearsal”.

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