Book Description
This collection of literary portraits forms a gallery of life-like representations of some remarkable Russian authors.

Here we have Tolstoi --- "superhumanly wise, "Chekov --- "sagely modest,"Korolenko --- "calm and of an extraordinary simplicity," Kotsubinsky --- " at home in the ideal world of beauty and good,"Garin Mikhailovsky --- " gifted, inexhaustibly cheerful,"Prishvin, who wrote about the Earth, our great Mother."

Gorky's unfailing interest in creative personalities, his keen observation, his ability to capture every characteristic word, gesture, intonation, his profound knowledge of the times producing these personalities, enables him to penetrate the mysteries of such complex and self contradictory individuals as Tolstoi, Chekov, Korolenko, and many others.

And in his contacts with his great contemporaries new and wonderful features of the author of these portraits --- Alexei Maximovich Gorky --- are unconsciously displayed. ... Read more

Book Description

These plays, written in the years leading up to the Bolshevik revolution, are vivid portraits of the old bourgeois society of Russia in a state of dissolution, and the inevitable drift into the tragic and astonishing events of 1917.

Chekhov described Maxim Gorky (1868–1936) as, "the first in Russia to have expressed contempt and loathing for the bourgeoisie and he has done it at the precise moment when Russia is ready for protest."

Book Description
In addition to The Outcasts, this book includes Gorky's stories Waiting for the Ferry and The Affair of the Clasps.

Maxim Gorky (1868-1936) was one of the greatest Russian writers.He inherited the best traditions of 19th century classical Russian literature and was at the same time the creator of a new art, socialist realism; he laid the foundations of the young Soviet Literature.Gorky was born "Aleksey Maksimovich Peshkov" on March 16, 1868, in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia -- which was later renamed in his honor after his death (ordered by Stalin himself, it is rumored). The bitterness of his early life led him to choose the name Maxim Gorky (which means "the bitter one") as his pseudonym. Although jailed periodically for association with revolutionaries and for his own outspoken opinion on the existing social order, Gorky managed to publish a few short stories, mostly about the tramps and derelicts he had met on his journeys. These short stories soon became very popular, touching the imagination of the Russian people. Gorky became a kind of folk hero. He was the first Russian author to write sympathetically of such characters as tramps and thieves, emphasizing their daily struggles against overwhelming odds. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Beautifully written, sometimes heavy-handed
Before reading this play, I'd been avoiding Gorky for a long time, because I too had fallen prey to the notion that Communist authors are always boring.I'm glad I finally picked up "The Lower Depths," because it's really well done.Gorky has an incredible command of idiomatic Russian, and the play advances its ideology in a fairly subtle fashion.(As a note, it was written around the turn of the century, so it predates the formation of the Soviet Union.)

The play is set in a flophouse filled with degenerates -- drunken actors, a dying woman and her husband, a former baron, and so forth.From these unlikely people, Gorky builds a tale of the realities of human nature, what it means to trust, to contribute to society, even to kill.The play is also worthwhile reading for students of pre-Revolutionary Russia -- the struggles leading up to that watershed event in Russian history are clearly evident. ... Read more

Book Description

"Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov, famous throughout the world as the writer Maxim Gorky, died on the morning of June 18, 1936, not far from Moscow in an old estate once belonging to the nobility and made available for him by Stalin. This was that very same home in which Lenin had passed away twelve years earlier. Was this a stunt drummed up by the most masterly and malevolent of all playwrights that history has ever known? What kind of chance happening could be at work: the mustachioed leader knew full well about the relationship between the first Bolshevik tyrant and the 'founder' of Socialist Realism. In sending the writer to the next world in that very same home, where Vladimir Ilyich, who had banned him from Soviet Russia, died twelve years previously, Stalin clearly demonstrated his particular brand of love for both of them, as well as an undying passion for sinister metaphors."-Arkady Vaksberg

Book Description
Maxim Gorky, born Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov in 1868 to the low stratum of Russian society, rose to prominence early in life as a writer and publicist. Gorky, who did not have a formal education, became famous in his country and abroad. Writing could not satisfy the rebellious Gorky who soon became involved in revolutionary movements. After a short period with the populist/narodnik movement, Gorky became disillusioned with the peasant class, and, instead, he chose the nascent class of workers as the vehicle for change. It is as if Gorky and capitalism arrived in Russia together. In his view the intelligentsia and the workers would bring about the change in the political, social, and cultural life of the country. Gorky came close to Lenin and the Bolsheviks, taking an active part in the Revolution of 1905 and going into an exile that lasted until 1913. Gorky, returning home on the eve of World War I and the following revolutions of February and October 1917, became involved in the momentous developments. He vehemently opposed Lenin's socialist revolution, maintaining that Russia was not ready for it. A second exile followed in 1921. After returning in 1928 to Stalin's Soviet Union, Gorky was made into an "icon," with the eye of the inquisition watching over him. And here began what is often called "The Tragedy of Maxim Gorky." He died in 1936, but the circumstances of his death as well as the question "whither Gorky" is still debated Based on hitherto unavailable primary sources, Yedlin has cut through the "Gorky legend" to show the real person, the Gorky of contradictions and oscillations. Fascinating reading for scholars and students of Russian history and literature as well as the general public. ... Read more