The unfulfilled idea of M. Gorky's cycle “Dreams”: Problems of textual criticism, edification, poetics

UDC 821.161.1-9
DOI 10.20339/PhS.2-26.133

Primochkina Natalia N.,

Doctor of Philology, Chief Researcher

Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences

e-mail: nprim47@yandex.ru
 

Based on archival materials, the article identifies and analyzes the dream texts of M. Gorky’s unrealized cycle “Dreams”, clarifies their dating, defines the present composition of this cycle, proves the illegality of including extraneous fragments in it when publishing in volume 18 of the Complete Works of M. Gorky, the series “Artistic Works”. The analysis shows that all the author’s dreams recorded by Gorky are absurd, symbolic and surreal. They testify to the writer’s heavy, depressed moods, his constant concern for the future of Russia and all mankind. These dream texts evoke the fantastic paintings of the Dutchman I. Bosch or the Spanish surrealist artist S. Dali. In addition, in the violence of painful fantasy, feelings of longing, horror and existential loneliness, they are similar to those apocalyptic pictures of the world that appear before the reader in some works written by Gorky after his arrival in Germany, for example, in the short autobiographical story of 1922 “On the Harm of Philosophy”.

Keywords: M. Gorky, cycle “Dreams”, textual criticism, dating, tradition, symbolism, absurdity, fiction
 

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