Trilogy bitter what age restrictions. Gorky's autobiographical trilogy

Gorky highly valued autobiographies. They helped to understand the formation of a person in a certain era and to see what social, moral and ethical conclusions she made from the lessons taught by life. Shortly before the creation of the story "Childhood", Gorky re-read the autobiographical books of the largest Russian writers and the just published "History of my Contemporary" by V. Korolenko.

This strengthened the writer in the desire to tell about the development of a person brought up by a different environment. S. Aksakov and L. Tolstoy drew the childhood years of the nobles, V. Korolenko introduced the life of young intellectuals, stories about Alyosha Peshkov told about the life of the city's lower classes.

Considering his biography as a typical biography of a Russian nugget, Gorky, like Korolenko, spoke not only about his own adolescence, but also about the youth of his generation. “If in Europe they were more familiar with the Russian people,” he wrote to German writers in 1928, “then they would know that the story of Gorky is not an isolated case and does not represent a special exception.”

"Childhood" and "In People" immediately captivated readers. People lived, suffered and rioted on the pages of these books, gaining life's persuasiveness. Gorky once again showed himself to be a great master in the molding of characters. Social and everyday pictures occupy him more space, than in autobiographical stories other authors, but all these paintings are closely "linked" with the development of thoughts and feelings of the main character.

The stories convinced that the okurovschina could not kill healthy, living souls and that future deniers had already begun to form in the depths of the old world.

In The History of My Contemporary, Korolenko strove not to go beyond the bounds of pure biographism, beyond the bounds of what he himself was a witness to. In contrast to him, Gorky sought to typify the pictures of everyday life and individual figures. The stories reveal Gorky's understanding of the Russian character, drawing closer in this to the Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin and the cycle Across Rus'.

The Gorky grandmother embodies the true features of Akulina Ivanovna Kashirina, and at the same time it is an enlarged image of a Russian woman, embodying typical features national character. The words of A. Blok are noteworthy: “Now all the falsity of the end of Goncharov's “Cliff” is clear to me. This is where the real grandmother is Russia.” This bright artistic image M. Prishvin. For him, he is the embodiment of "our homeland."

The figure of the grandfather is no less expressive, reminding us that the kindred environment formed sharply different characters. In the house of the Kashirins, the child is faced with mercy and hardness of the heart, indestructible kindness and equally indestructible severity and despotism, with the manifestation of will and self-will.

Bunin considered humility to be the basis of the Russian character, and he usually opposed it not to will, but to willfulness, which was expressed in the desire to dominate or emphasize one’s unusualness (“Sukhodol”, “Merry Yard”, etc.). Gorky often depicted the self-will of his heroes, but in him it is primarily the echoes of mischief, close to rebelliousness, or a dark, still unconscious protest against a meager - spiritually and materially - life.

The writer, who considered passivism a historical ailment of the Russian people, wanted to show by example own life how the widespread worldly preaching of patience was overcome, how the will and desire to resist the world of evil and violence were tempered.

The grandmother appears in the story as the bearer of the aesthetic and ethical ideas of the people. It was she who gave her grandson a drink from an inexhaustible source folk art, introducing to the understanding of the beauty and inner significance of the word.

Grandmother was the first mentor in the field of morality. It was she who gave Alyosha an order: "I would not obey an evil order, I would not hide behind someone else's conscience!" Grandmother admired her with her optimism, perseverance in defending her attitude to the world, her kindness, her fearlessness in difficult moments life. But for the lovingly depicted Akulina Ivanovna, patience and meekness are no less characteristic. And as he grows older, the grandson begins to move away from her. Other thoughts and dreams now excite the teenager.

“I was poorly adapted to patience,” writes Gorky, “and if sometimes I showed this virtue of cattle, wood, stone, I showed it for the sake of self-test, in order to know the reserve of my strength, the degree of stability on earth<...>For nothing disfigures a person so terribly as it disfigures his patience, obedience to the power of external conditions. The generation to which the writer belonged wanted to see their life differently.

The boy went "to the people" early. This is the term that marked the beginning of his working life, and at the same time the beginning of a wide knowledge of life among a motley stream of people.

The life of the lower classes is revealed in the story through the prism of Alyosha Peshkov's perception. It predetermines the selection of phenomena, their coloration, the nature of emerging associations. But the young hero is still unable to formulate the essence of his thoughts and aspirations, and then the author himself comes to the rescue, marking significant milestones in the development of the child and adolescent.

The writer subtly traces Alyosha's rebellions, showing how spontaneous "I don't want to!" begin to take on social-volitional outlines, as the boy's romantic desire to become a defender of the oppressed becomes more and more strengthened. Dissatisfaction with the surrounding world is still unconscious, spontaneous, but it already contained the guarantee of a new worldview.

The Volga flows lazily in Foma Gordeev, as if a dream were fettering it. The great Russian river also moves half asleep in the story "In People". And the teenager, still vaguely aware of this drowsiness, is drawn to a different, “beautiful, cheerful, honest” life. The "lead abominations" that surround man appear in "Childhood" and "In People" in the light of a premonition of a battle that will destroy them.

Behind the irony of K. Chukovsky, who wrote that Gorky created in his stories “comfort for little people”, there was an involuntary recognition of the author’s special worldview position. One of the tasks of the stories is to show how "healthy and young at heart" the Russian people are, how many hopes are connected with their future.

The stories "Childhood" and "In People" were not limited, however, only to the image of the early formation of the character of the future revolutionary. They also showed the maturation of artistic talent. Both stories tenderly capture the world of young Peshkov's emotions, caused by his communication with interesting people, nature, art and literature. The formation of talent is one of the main themes of the writer's autobiography. But even this “individual” topic has been given general significance.

It was a reminder of the rich creative talent people, which he managed to show with such difficulty. In an effort to emphasize this talent, Gorky in the same 1910s. helped write autobiographical book Fyodor Chaliapin and contributed to the emergence of an autobiographical novel by Ivan Volnov.

Gorky's autobiographical trilogy (the last part of it - "My Universities" appeared in 1923) became the beginning of the "story of a young man" who took an active part in the events of 1905 and the Great October Revolution.

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

Current page: 1 (total book has 40 pages)

M. Gorky
Childhood. In people. My universities

The Gorky Trilogy

Among the books that have had a significant impact on the spiritual development of our people, one of the first places is occupied by the trilogy of Maxim Gorky "Childhood", "In People" and "My Universities". Almost every person from school years is accompanied by an exciting childhood story of Alyosha Peshkov, a boy who went through so many trials, the image of his grandmother is one of the most sublime female images Russian literature.

Gorky's stories had a different effect on each generation - they drew knowledge of people's life, and hatred for the bourgeoisie, for the unbearable burden of labor and oppression, and the strength of protest against humility; in these stories they saw a call for creative activity, for self-education, for teaching, an example of how, despite poverty and lack of rights, a person can break through to culture. They served as a source of faith in the forces of the people, an example of moral stamina.

The stories "Childhood" and "In People" were written by Gorky in 1913-1914 and have since become part of the world classics autobiographical genre, along with such masterpieces of Russian literature as "The Past and Thoughts" by A. Herzen and "Childhood", "Adolescence", "Youth" by L. Tolstoy. Later, in 1923, "My Universities" were written, and thus a complete trilogy, following Tolstoy's example, was formed.

If Tolstoy's story of a hero is, first of all, the story of his quest, his demands on himself, an analytical biography, then the Gorky trilogy is full of action, it is autobiographical, it is a biography, it consists of actions and events. At the same time, this is not only a description of private life, not the history of an individual, these are just stories, works that have artistic power generalizations. Their material, with all the accuracy of facts and events, was selected not according to the laws of memory and knowledge of an adult, but according to the laws of writing talent. It creates a gallery of types pre-revolutionary Russia, images that live independently of the biography of the hero.

Gorky tells us in Childhood not what he knows, but what a child could know. The child's vision of the world has its limits, and the author observes them with amazing accuracy. The environment opens before little Alyosha with separate, loosely connected scenes, pictures, the meaning and tragedy of which he is not yet able to appreciate. The death of a father, and right there, at the coffin, a mother giving birth - this painful, incredible combination of circumstances from the very first page plunges us into the element of authentic life. And, starting from this scene, it is the truth, the courage of the truth, that becomes the conquering power and feature of the book. Everything here is authentic. And this is what sets it apart from other books of this genre. The author does not bring here his adult understanding of people, his knowledge and experience. Nothing is done here for entertainment, there are no literary devices, there is no obligatory completeness, making ends meet ... We will never know much from the life of Alyosha Peshkov - how, why the grandfather’s condition is upset, where the mother disappears from time to time, why we suddenly have to move to another house ... Over the years, sometimes, from the stories of my grandmother, some circumstances will be clarified, but much for the boy and for us will remain unknown. And, oddly enough, such incompleteness, incomprehensibility of what is happening helps us to better see the world through the eyes of a hero.

The trilogy recreates a vast panorama of life working Russia the end of the nineteenth century. He recreates on a grand scale, with inexorable realism, which requires from the writer not only honesty, but sometimes artistic courage.

One by one, the fates of people of different classes surround us, different professions- dyers, icon painters, clerks, merchants, laundresses, stokers, sailors, prostitutes ... There are dozens of them, probably hundreds of people, and each is unique, each has not only its own history, but also its own understanding of life, its own contradictions, its own wisdom, sinking into the soul of a boy, and then a teenager. The impression of dense population is further enhanced by the brightness of each character, they are all separate, all personalities are significant, strong, rebels, blissful, eccentric, and if, for example, not strong, then most of them still have something special, their own mystery, one's own idea, one's relationship with God, with money, with love, with books... And all this is not composed or even seen. This found in life. Alyosha Peshkov constantly, inquisitively looking for answers to the eternal questions of life. He is interested in every person, I want to understand why people live this way and not otherwise. This is the peculiarity of his character. He is not an observer, not a collector, he is an active, searching hero. The answers of these people - contradictory, paradoxical, shimmering with unexpected meaning - densely saturate the trilogy with philosophical thought. Controversy does not subside in the stories. Without suspecting it, all these people are arguing, their statements clash, collide irreconcilably.

“In childhood,” Gorky wrote, “I imagine myself as a beehive, where different simple, gray people they carried away, like bees, the honey of their knowledge and thoughts about life, generously enriching my soul with whatever they could. Often this honey was dirty and bitter, but all knowledge is still honey.

Much in the life of Alyosha Peshkov was made by books. They helped to know the vastness of the world, its beauty and diversity. Books not in general, but specific books. Alyosha tells what exactly he liked, what and how he understood. He eagerly read everything that came across - boulevards, books by secondary, random, now forgotten authors, interspersed with classics: novels by Salias, Vashkov, Aimard, Xavier de Montepin, poems by Grave, Struzhkin, "The legend of how a soldier saved Peter the Great "," Beranger's "Songs", Pushkin's fairy tales, "Secrets of Petersburg", Dumas' novels ... (From the text of the Gorky trilogy, one can compile long lists of books he read, with his annotations-evaluations, and conduct interesting research on Alyosha Peshkov's reading circle.)

He himself learns to distinguish a good book from a bad one. He needs to read Tradition twice to understand that this book is weak. It is interesting to follow how the boy's taste is formed and honed. There was an advantage in his random reading - it trained the mind; he learned to navigate in the sea of books, he was free from school authorities. So he independently understood, felt the genius of Pushkin: “Pushkin so surprised me with the simplicity and music of verse that for a long time prose seemed unnatural to me and it was embarrassing to read it.” It should be noted, however, that Alyosha's aesthetic perception was prepared to a large extent by the extraordinary poetic gift of his grandmother. From childhood, listening to her songs and fairy tales, he keenly felt the game with a semi-precious word, admiring the beauty and richness of his native language.

Alyosha retold his favorite books to anyone - batmen, sailors, clerks, read aloud, and people eagerly listened to him, sometimes cursed, ridiculed, but they sighed and admired ...

And he read and read avidly: Aksakov, Balzac, Sollogub, Boisgobe, Tyutchev, Goncourt... Books cleansed the soul, gave confidence: he was not alone, he would not disappear on earth. He compared life with books and understood that the "black people" in Paris are not the same as in Kazan, they are bolder, more independent, they do not pray to God so fiercely. But he also begins to critically evaluate the fiction of the characters' relationships in the book, to separate great works from mediocre ones.

Racambol taught him to be persistent, the heroes of Dumas inspired a desire to give himself to some important business. He conveys his impressions of Turgenev, Walter Scott. “Bursa” by Pomyalovsky is similar to the life of an icon-painting workshop: “I know so well the despair of boredom, boiling over into cruel mischief.” Or: "Dickens remained for me a writer, before whom I respectfully bow, - this man amazingly comprehended the most difficult art of loving people."

It is difficult to name other works in which books would be described in the same detail, the impression from them, their influence on human life.

Suddenly Alyosha came across Lermontov's "Demon"; amazed, he read it aloud - and a miracle happened: in the icon-painting workshop, people were transformed, walked shocked, thought about their existence, imbued with kindness, secretly cried.

Inspired, Alyosha arranged all sorts of performances, he wanted at all costs "to evoke true free and easy joy in people!" And this manifested the active temperament of the hero, an ardent desire to do something good for people.

The specificity of the book interests of the hero is historical, he reads those books that were largely characteristic of the tastes of that time; but the books are only part of the historical concreteness that the trilogy is full of. This property Gorky's prose is particularly pronounced here. Life is reported in all its material details. It can be seen that people ate, how they dressed, what they sang, how they prayed, how they slept, how they had fun.

In the icon-painting workshop, glass spheres filled with water, suspended on strings from the ceiling, are accurately described. They collect the light of the lamp, throwing it onto the board of the icon with a white cold beam.

If he sells divine books and icons in a shop, then it is known what kind of books and what kind of icons.

Alyosha catches birds for sale, and grandmother sells them for forty kopecks, and on market days for a ruble or more. The exact figures in the story are a necessity, they are a measure of labor and an opportunity to live, the hero remembers every penny earned. He also depicts the Nizhny Novgorod fair in the same way, and work in a bakery, in an icon-painting workshop, with all the subtleties, differences between Byzantine, and Fryazhsky, and Italian manners of writing. Gorky's work is always physically tangible, professionally verified, whether it is the simple labor of a laundress, or trading techniques, or dyeing. Few writers understand the need to write out life in this way. It's not only artistic technique, in this there is also a consciousness of the historicity of the experienced. Indeed, these details are precious. Over time, they rise in price, because they retain irrevocably disappeared signs of the past. The merit of the artist here is undeniable. In this sense, the Gorky trilogy develops the traditions of Russian realism, such peaks as Eugene Onegin, where the encyclopedic accuracy of the era is embodied in all the concreteness of its being.

Gorky's trilogy tells, first of all, how, despite all the insults and disappointments, Alyosha Peshkov's love and faith in man grew.

The first person to instill these feelings was not books or observations, but the beautiful soul of Akulina Ivanovna Kashirina, the Balakhna lace-maker, Alyosha's grandmother. She was a person with a talent for life, able to live easily and kindly, sowing around her joy, delight in life. Her love enriched the boy, saturating him with strong strength for a difficult life. Her kindness is talented and original, because it is based on the artistry of her nature. She knew a lot of poems, songs, and she herself composed, talked about Ivan the Warrior, about the Pope the Goat, Mary the Egyptian sinner ... Happiness that Alyosha Peshkov had such a grandmother. She was a support, spiritual protection from the despotism that fell on the child's soul, the "hot fog of mutual enmity", this stupid Kashirin tribe. Where did this woman draw her inexhaustible love, her patience ... “Having drunk, she became better: her dark eyes, smiling, poured out a soul-warming light on everyone, and, fanning her flushed face with a handkerchief, she melodiously said:

- Lord, Lord! How good everything is! No, you look how good everything is!

It was the cry of her heart, the slogan of her whole life.

She had her own god, her own relationship with religion, warmed by the same active concern for people. With all her humility, humility, in moments of danger, she could bravely, intelligently, like no one else, resist trouble. So she saves both people and property in case of fire, throwing herself at the feet of a horse mad from fire, took out a bottle of oil from the flame so that it would not explode, organized neighbors to extinguish the barn ... She was not afraid of anything.

Her tenderness was indefatigable, but over the years Alyosha begins to appreciate in her both optimism and the ease with which she endures life's hardships, ruin, loss of wealth. But he also sees something else - that the bright soul of the grandmother is blinded by fairy tales, "... is not able to see, cannot understand the phenomenon of bitter reality ...". In response to his indignation, she could only say: “You must endure!” The preaching of patience no longer satisfied the teenager. And only already growing up, after the death of his grandmother, he will be able to fully appreciate the feat of life of this woman, he will understand not only that she couldn't, couldn't but what she was- the mother of all people.

Evil and good, hard and tender are intertwined unexpectedly, coexisting not only in this family, but also within people.

Grandfather, despot, petty tyrant, the personification of the petty-bourgeois, grandfather, who, it would seem, is opposed to the poetic nature of grandmother in everything, this grandfather is transformed in some minutes.

Brutally, constipating Alyosha almost to death, he comes to the sick boy's bedside and tells him about his burlatka youth on the Volga. Yes, as he says, and how much heroic prowess turns out to be in him: “Quickly, like a cloud, grandfather grew up in front of me, turning from a small dry old man into a man of fabulous strength - he alone leads a huge gray barge against the river.”

The dialectic of the soul? Yes, but not only that. Such a hero, probably, Alexei's grandmother fell in love with him in his youth. It is all the more bitter to see how gradually wealth, a passion for profit warp his soul. The most, probably, remarkable thing in this image is that destructive process of bestiality, the degeneration of humanity, which occurs with the elder Kashirin, with his sons. And no kindness, sincerity of the grandmother can save, stop them.

Closely and mercilessly, Gorky traces the growing pathological stinginess of his grandfather, how this recent rich man loses honor, dignity, begging for the houses of familiar merchants - and not from poverty, not for the sake of a piece of bread, but because of the greed that gnaws at him. Everything human disappears, is etched away. Children, grandchildren, wife, family, friendship - everything loses its value, dies off with the development of this incurable disease. Alyosha does not denounce him, the grandmother tries to explain, to forgive, but this disintegration of the personality looks all the more terrible. Is it only pathology, character that is to blame? It is not without reason that his god is different from that of his grandmother - his god is formidable, punishing, and other measures of life are seen behind him - the attitude to work has changed, the need for work has disappeared, and nothing else has appeared in return. For Gorky, labor always includes moral value, - labor educates, labor heals the soul; By his attitude to work, by the beauty of work, Alyosha learns to measure the dignity of a person.

Once upon a time, grandfather had his own wisdom, and Alyosha appreciated his teachings: “Learn to be your own worker, and don’t give in to others! Live quietly, calmly, but stubbornly! Listen to everyone, and do what is best for you ... ”Everyone really teaches him to live, each in his own way, both in adolescence and in his youth:“ First: do not marry early ... You can live where you want and how you want - your will! Live in Persia as a Mohammedan, in Moscow as a policeman, grieve, steal - everything can be fixed! And the wife is, brother, like the weather, you can’t fix her ... no! This, brother, is not a boot - he took it off and threw it away.

People appear and disappear, leaving behind something in the soul, shattering thoughts, endowing them with acquired worldly wisdom.

And Alyosha Peshkov begins to understand that thoughts about life are no less difficult than life itself. But he does not want to give up this burden. He breaks down every now and then, blinding flashes of hatred are found on him, and he is taken up by violent evil mischief; youthful sensitivity to lies pushes on absurd, wild antics. His path is not straight at all. Mistakes are offensive, misconceptions are many. Faith leaves him, he now and then breaks into disappointment, despair, up to a suicide attempt. This is not at all a constant ascent, acquisition and accumulation of wisdom. And the more heroic his struggle. No wonder Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was surprised when he listened to Gorky's stories: "You are still kind, having the right to be evil."

The life that Gorky describes is the life of the city, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, the life of working outskirts, tenement houses, streets built up with craft workshops, shops, taverns. These are the Volga piers, a fair, a courtyard, a workshop, where they immediately sleep and eat. There are no rural expanses and fields, nature is pushed aside, it is invisible, it is turned off from the worldview. The place of children's games is the street, yards, bazaars. It is difficult for children to be alone in the city. City life unpoetic, ugly, but people here are closer and more understandable. “I like the workers,” Gorky admits, “I clearly see the advantages of the city, its thirst for happiness, the daring inquisitiveness of the mind, the diversity of its goals and objectives.”

The swirling Alyosha Peshkov is increasingly appreciating independent street life. His first extra work to help his grandmother - and they are typically urban: he rents rags, he catches birds, he drags tess ... He sees how different layers of working people live and work. During these years, an energetic process of formation of the Russian proletariat took place. And at the same time, the forces of class protest grew, the figures of revolutionaries appeared, like the lodger Good Deed. With what sympathy Alyosha remembers this strange man, the boy does not really understand what he was doing, but on the other hand, the grandfather, with the instinct of an owner, sensed the danger of a seemingly harmless, serviceable lodger.

In this environment, the spiritual maturation of a teenager proceeded rapidly, observations of life, encounters with it accumulated a great deal of experience beyond their age.

From childhood admiration for the robbers, the legendary Yegor Bashlyk, from resentment at the monstrous injustices of life, Alyosha Peshkov began the work of a self-reflecting force of protest. In the story "My Universities", the adolescent searches end with a logical consequence: illegal circles, the distribution of literature, a printing house become universities - the path of a conscious revolutionary struggle that the young man begins in Kazan.

He experiences the discrepancy between the prose of life and literature more and more painfully. The world of art, with pure feelings, in clever words, almost does not come into contact with the vulgar, rude that surrounds the hero every day. Again and again he experiences disappointment, anger directed at those who create beautiful illusions. In this case, it was not books that helped him, but people. Responsive, kind, thoughtful, foolish - but precisely people, contact with the life of the people, wise in its movement. The contradictions between ideals and reality were not removed. But in these contradictions, the advantages of folk thought were revealed: “... I rarely encountered thoughts in books that I had not heard before in my life,” Gorky notes, and this striking observation is not a reproach to literature, but rather reverence for life.

From childhood, Gorky had a talent for beautiful people, he knew how to find them. Among the heroes of the trilogy, they appear one after another in a continuous succession, starting with the Gypsy, who put his hand under the rod, protecting the boy from beatings. In difficult times, they always come to his aid, saving his faith in man. Each of them is beautiful in its own way. Gypsy is a merry fellow, kind, disinterested. Cook Smury is gloomy, but he is a man of high justice, thinking, reading, lonely, "broken off from life." The personal icon painter Zhikharev is an artist in his field, a drunken man, and at the same time a spiritual one, sensitive to poetry. Similarly, another master, Evgeny Sitanov, is a strong man who knows how to live an intense spiritual life in this workshop. He fell in love with a “walking” girl, who “infected him with a shameful disease, but he does not beat her for it, as his comrades advise him, but hired her a room, treats the girl and always speaks of her somehow especially affectionately, embarrassedly.” Or the plasterer Grigory Shishlin, a blue-eyed handsome man, a dreamer and a kind man. Or the saddler, the marvelous singer Kleshchov...

How many of them, gifted by nature, talented in soul, magnificent people, wasted themselves, failed to realize themselves, became drunkards, felt unnecessary, perished, killed by the meaninglessness of existence. One after another, women appear before Alyosha, surrounded by the radiance of his childhood, and then his youthful love. The girl Lyudmila, the “porcelain” cutter, the beautiful Queen Margot, the cheerful, cheerful washerwoman Natalia Kozlovskaya ... Some gave him warmth and sweet dreams, others made him interested in reading, got him books, taught him to love poetry.

But vulgarity, dirty gossip, bullying with some incomprehensible malice fell upon these women.

With all the strength of his great humanistic talent, Gorky rebels against dirt, rudeness, vileness in human relations. He does not spare the working people either, denouncing their lack of spirituality, everything vile, swine, humiliated ...

With inexplicable cruelty, the uncles mock the half-blind master Grigory in front of Alyosha, slipping him a red-hot thimble. The stepfather kicks Alyosha's mother. The wonderful peasant Izot is innocently killed with an axe. The best bricklayer Ardalyon drinks himself, and with unreasonable malice he beats the once cheerful washerwoman Natalya. A little red-haired Cossack, singing songs about the Don and the Danube so beautifully that Alyosha thinks he is better and taller than all people, this Cossack, again for nothing, brutally beats a woman, his mistress, tears her dress, rolls naked in the mud. There are many similar scenes in each of the stories of the trilogy.

Why was it necessary to twist in front of the reader fiction all these dirty tricks of life, to depict such disgusting features of your people, such terrifying characters, deeds, all this cruelty, malice, fanaticism? Gorky himself more than once raises the question - does the writer need to draw these lead abominations Russian life?

“And, with renewed confidence, I answer myself - it’s worth it; for this is a tenacious, vile truth, it has not died to this day. This is the truth that needs to be known to the root in order to root it out of memory, from the human soul, from our whole life, heavy and shameful ... Our life is not only amazing because it is so fruitful and fat layer of any bestial rubbish, but by the fact that bright, healthy and creative nevertheless victoriously sprouts through this layer, the good - human grows, arousing unshakable hope for our rebirth to a light, human life. 1
The stories "Childhood", "In People" and "My Universities" constitute Gorky's autobiographical trilogy, in which the writer talks about his childhood and youthful years(1871–1888). Gorky himself considered these stories, written in different years as part of a single story. In 1929, he wrote to one of his correspondents: “They will send you Childhood, In People, and My Universities from Moscow. These books depict my life.
For Gorky's work as a whole, his personal life experience was of exceptional importance. In 1930, answering the question of a writer's questionnaire: "What material do you mainly use?" - he testified: “I used mainly autobiographical material ...”
The first attempts at autobiographical narration date back to the very beginning creative way writer. In 1893 appeared "A statement of facts and thoughts, from the interaction of which the best pieces of my heart withered"; two years later, Gorky published the autobiographical story "Grandma Akulina". Some episodes of these fragments were reflected in the stories "Childhood" and "In People", but their interpretation and stylistic development in early drafts is completely different.
Towards a holistic artistic autobiography Gorky is already turning to mature years. Gorky wrote "Childhood" while living in Capri, in 1912-1913. At the same time, autobiographical stories were written "A case from the life of Makar", "The owner", "The birth of a man", "Ice drift", "Passion-muzzles" and others.
The story "In People", written in 1914, after returning from Italy to Russia, was finalized by Gorky later for publication in the Chronicle magazine organized by him.
The third part of the trilogy - "My Universities" was published along with the autobiographical stories "Watchman", "Korolenko's Time", "V. G. Korolenko”, “On the dangers of philosophy”, “On first love”.
Texts are printed according to the edition: M. Gorky. Full coll. op. Artistic works in 25 volumes. M., "Science", vols. 15, 16.
The notes are based on a scientific commentary on the Complete Academic Works of M. Gorky.

Daniil Granin

UDK 821.161-321.6

A. F. Tsirulev

On the genre specifics of the trilogies of L. Tolstoy and M. Gorky

The author explores the problem of the trilogy genre and reveals the artistic novelty of M. Gorky's trilogy "Childhood", "In People", "My Universities" and L. Tolstoy's trilogy "Childhood", "Adolescence", "Youth" from the point of view of their genre specifics.

In article is considered problem of the genre to trilogies M. Gorky's "Childhood", "In folk", "My universities" and trilogies L. Tolstoy's "Childhood", "Adolescence", "Youth". The Author reveals artistic novelty two trilogies with standpoint their genre specifics.

Keywords: L. Tolstoy, "Childhood", "Boyhood", "Youth", genre, M. Gorky, "Childhood", "In People", "My Universities", innovation, autobiography.

Key words: L. Tolstoy, "Childhood", "Adolescence", "Youth", genre, M.Gorky, "Childhood", "In folk", "My universities", innovation, autobiographysm.

The trilogy "Childhood", "In People", "My Universities" appeared in print more than half a century after Tolstoy's "Childhood" was published in Sovremennik. No sooner had M. Gorky's "confession" become the property of the general public than critics almost in unison began to say that it sharply, almost in contrast, differs from Tolstoy's biography.

Pre-revolutionary reviewers actively vary the thesis that L. Tolstoy gives a poetic, blissful picture of life, and M. Gorky, on the contrary, stuns the reader with a string of terrible and cruel scenes that his young autohero witnesses. “Someday,” we read in one of the works of that time, “a theme will be set for school essays in gymnasiums: a comparative analysis of both “Childhoods,” and the gymnasium students will triumphantly prove that the estate is better than the grimy one, Tolstoy’s is more beneficial than Gorky’s. Another author, in tone with this statement, adds: “You read and get annoyed. You involuntarily recall the fragrant childhood of Leo Tolstoy. By contrast. Such an evil and rude childhood. They fight, beat, flog in every feuilleton. Approximately in the same spirit, the columnist of Severnye Zapiski A. Gvozdev speaks: “It is difficult to imagine a sharper contrast to Leo Tolstoy’s Childhood than what M. Gorky showed in his essays on childhood.”

It is important to note that many pre-revolutionary critics not only "substantially" oppose the trilogy, but also the most decisive

two autobiographies are bred in a different way on opposite sides of the "aesthetic barricades". So, for example, Vl. Kranihfeld perceives "Childhood", "Boyhood", "Youth" as an example of the classic "story about himself", but Gorky's "Childhood" he denies the right to be called a work of an autobiographical genre. In M. Gorky, in his opinion, we see a completely special type of biography, namely, an autobiography ... without an autobiographical hero. “In Nikolenka Irteniev,” the author of “The Morning of Life” insists, “you can not only guess, but even see future lion Tolstoy. But in M. Gorky, “the reader gets a vivid idea of the environment in which little Alyosha Peshkov spent his childhood. But among the numerous portraits of people. the personality of the narrator himself seems to be deliberately obscured.

In Soviet criticism, the tradition of "hard" opposition of the two trilogies continues to exist for quite a long time. Thesis Vl. Kranichfeld about the "absence of the boy", i.e. autohero - receives support and development in the studies of such authors as I. M. Nusinov, V. A. Desnitsky, F. Levin, N. A. Belkina, B. A. Byalik, B. V. Mikhailovsky, E. B. Tager and others.

Note that we are talking about the genre nature of these works. Tolstoy's "story about himself" is interpreted by the aforementioned critics as an example of an autobiographical genre. Gorky’s “confession” is reduced by some Soviet authors (A. Lezhnev, F. Levin) to “writer’s memoirs”, in which leading role plays a sketchy beginning. Others (B.A. Bialik, and later S.V. Kastorsky) seek to prove that "Childhood", "In People", "My Universities" should be perceived as "a book dominated by a gallery of portraits" . Still others (V. A. Desnitsky, G. A. Brovman, I. M. Nusinov, N. A. Belkina hold the idea that M. Gorky created a new, unique genre - something like an “epic autobiography”. They see in the trilogy a book that recreates not the "history of the individual", but the fate of the people, taken in its entirety, in the midst of a large historical event. “The content of the autobiographical cycle,” argues one of the supporters of this concept, “is not private, but General history, not the fate of an individual, his relatives, his random life companions, but the fate of the people on a given historical stage» . E. B. Tager artistic dominant Gorky's biography defines it as follows: "The trilogy has its own constitution ... the selection and arrangement of images are determined not by the requirements of a romantic intrigue, but by the tasks of a different, epic plan: each new character, emerging under Gorky's pen, is a facet of some big whole - the epic image of Russia, Russian folk life ".

However comparative analysis two famous autobiographies testifies that in terms of artistic and poetic these works are not as far apart from each other as it might seem. From our point of view, Gorky is an autobiographer in understanding his personal experience follows the path opened by his great predecessor. If L. Tolstoy makes the main means of describing the character, the personality of his hero, the display of the “dialectics of the soul”, then M. Gorky also “does not limit himself to depicting the results of the mental process: he is interested in the process itself, and the subtle phenomena of this inner life ...” . In both trilogies we are dealing with poetic structure, the basis of which is the reproduction of the inner spiritual history of the personality of the autohero. In other words, the plot basis of both autobiographies is formed by the history of the growth of human consciousness. Along with the depiction of the environment and pictures of Russian life, both artists brilliantly recreate what and how their characters feel, how their cognitive thought grows, and how this process is reflected in their morality and spiritual self-determination.

At the same time, there is no need to talk about the artistic identity of the two trilogies. Both writers turn to showing the inner, spiritual evolution of their characters. However, Tolstoy's "dialectics of consciousness" is by no means identical to Gorky's "dialectics of consciousness", for writers set themselves different aesthetic tasks.

The basis of Tolstoy's biography is the "poeticization of life", which is most closely connected with the indefatigable desire of the artist to infect his reader with a truly moral attitude to life. All Tolstoy's autobiography is imbued with the spirit of reverence for life, for its various forms and manifestations. Love for life, admiration for it, attitude towards it as the highest and incommensurable value of human existence pervades all three books of the trilogy. With the cutting off of episodes and fragments associated with the figurative realization of the idea of poetizing life, the trilogy as a single artistic whole will disintegrate and turn into a kind of philosophical and ethical treatise.

In accordance with this attitude, L. Tolstoy masters a completely unique form of his "artistic confession". He creates a special - "poetic" autobiography, in which the ethical problems of being are accentuated. The unique combination of two plans - "poetic" and ethical (ie moral), expressed through the dialectic of consciousness, forms the original spirit, "unique genre physiognomy" of his trilogy.

Unlike L. Tolstoy, the creator of "Childhood", "In People", "My Universities" relies not so much on the inner spirit of a person, but on a radical renewal of all Russian life as a whole. In order to

reveal the inconsistency of the social world order, M. Gorky actively saturates his confession with the “epic element”. He introduces broad pictures of Russian life into the narrative fabric, outlines the dramatic fates of many of Alyosha's "life partners" and creates a panoramic canvas Russian life on the eve of the inevitable, according to the author, social changes.

As a result, Gorky's biography acquires the dimensions of an "autobiography-generalization". The author of "Childhood", "In People", "My Universities" comes up with the concept of "Rus", i.e. gives an interpretation of the entire Russian social life of the period depicted. There is no such social scale, such a level of artistic generalization in Tolstoy's trilogy, as, indeed, in the entire pre-Gorky autobiographical tradition. All this speaks in favor of the fact that M. Gorky creates a special type of artistic autobiography, in which a “story about oneself” is combined with the expression of certain social ideas, forming the concept of "salvation", the renewal of Rus'. In his “confession”, the criticism of the “old, sick world” is balanced, harmonized by the image of the growth of that force that will sooner or later blow up the “endless chain of hostility and cruelty” - the force called “revolutionary reason”. With the birth of a new consciousness, a new Gorky Hero is also born.

So, the “dialectic of consciousness”, showing life through the analysis of internal perception, the study of the very mechanism of the origin of the feelings and thoughts of a small person - this is what brings together the works in question and sets them apart in the Russian autobiographical tradition. Along with this, continuing the artistic tradition of intense searches in the field of the human mind, M. Gorky, on the basis of showing the dialectic of soul and thought, creates an autobiography that becomes a discovery both in terms of worldview and in terms of artistic form.

In contrast to the "ethical autobiography" of L. Tolstoy, in which the synthesis of "poetic" and moral principles serves to reveal the inner capabilities of the individual, M. Gorky creates an autobiography of a heroic-revolutionary type, in which thought is glorified and which is designed to convince the reader of the need for a radical renewal of the Russian world .

Bibliography

1. Belkina N. A. Problem goodie in Gorky's autobiographical trilogy // Gorky Readings. 1947-1948. - M.: AN SSSR, 1949. - S. 88-143.

2. Brovman G. A. Writer and life. (Notes on the autobiographical trilogy of M. Gorky) // Znamya. - 1936. - No. 11. - S. 268-280.

3. Bialik B. A. Development of the traditions of Russian classical literature in the work of M. Gorky // Creativity of M. Gorky and questions socialist realism. - M.: AN SSSR, 1958. - S. 5-99.

4. Gvozdev A. "Childhood" by M. Gorky // Northern Notes. - 1916. - No. 2. -S. 149-154.

5. Desnitsky V. A. Autobiographical stories of Gorky. 1. "Childhood". 2. "In people" // Desnitsky V.A.M. Gorky. - L .: Artist. lit., 1935. - S.174-222.

6. Kastorsky S. V. Gorky - artist // Essays. - M.-L.: Goslitizdat [Leningr. Department], 1963.

7. Kranichfeld Vl. Morning of life // Modern world. - 1914. - No. 12. - Department. 2. - S. 116-133.

8. Levin F. Gorky's childhood // Literary critic. - 1938. - No. 7. - S. 161173.

9. Lezhnev A. (Gorelin A. V.). Latest works M. Gorky // Projector. - 1924. - No. 12. - S. 4-26.

10. Mikhailovsky B. V., Tager E. B. Creativity of M. Gorky. - M.: Enlightenment, 1969.

11. Nusinov I. M. The truth about life (Autobiographical stories of M. Gorky) // Literary studies. - 1937. - No. 6. - P. 48-64.

12. Sologub F. Notes // Writers' Diaries. - 1914. - No. 1. - S. 12-18.

13. Tager E. B. Creativity Gorky Soviet era. - M.: Nauka, 1964.

14. Chernyshevsky N. G. Childhood and adolescence. The writings of Count L.N. Tolstoy. Military stories of Count L. N. Tolstoy // Chernyshevsky N. G. Collected works in five volumes. - M.: Pravda, 1974. - T. 3. - S. 332-346.

During the years of reaction Bitter started writing autobiographical trilogy. First part - The story "Childhood"- appeared in 1913-1914.

Second part- "In people"- was published in 1916, and the third - "My Universities"- after the revolution, in 1923.

Gorky's autobiographical trilogy- one of the best, most interesting works of the writer. The first part of it is devoted to the description of the life of Alyosha Peshkov in the family of his grandfather until the time when the boy was given into service in a shoe store. The second part tells about the life of the hero of the trilogy "in people" - from 1878 to 1884. The third part is devoted to the Kazan period - from 1884 to 1888.

The autobiographical genre in Russian literature XIX century was represented by such outstanding works as “Childhood”, “Adolescence”, “Youth” by L. N. Tolstoy, “Past and Thoughts” by Herzen, “Family Chronicle” and “Childhood of Bagrov-grandson” by Aksakov, “Essays of Bursa” Pomyalovsky, "Poshekhonskaya antiquity" by Saltykov-Shchedrin. The creative experience of the classics of Russian literature was inherited by Gorky.

Gorky's trilogy is of great value for studying his life path, for understanding the process of his spiritual development. Gorky tells about his childhood years in the Kashirin family, about all the humiliations and sorrows that he had to experience, about the difficult and joyless life "in people", about his ordeals and intense ideological searches.

But Gorky's trilogy depicts not only dark and cruel morals. The writer glorified the wonderful moral strength of the Russian people, their passionate desire for justice, their spiritual beauty and resilience.

IN The story "Childhood" He wrote: “Our life is amazing not only because it contains such a fruitful and fat layer of all bestial rubbish, but because through this layer the bright, healthy and creative nevertheless victoriously sprouts, the good - human grows, arousing unshakable hope for our rebirth to a light, human life.

Before the reader passes a gallery of simple and good Russian people. Among them: an adopted in the Kashirins' house - Gypsy, a brave, cheerful man with a big and good heart; master Gregory with his warmth and love for his work; a man given the odd nickname "Good Deed"; the steamship cook Smury, who got Alyosha interested in reading; Romas and Derenkov, who brought him closer to the revolutionary intelligentsia, and many others.

Akulina Ivanovna Kashirina, Gorky's grandmother, plays a special role in the trilogy. Initially The story "Childhood" Gorky, even intended to call it "Grandma". Akulina Ivanovna is a person of great intelligence, bright artistic talent and sensitive cordial responsiveness.

The protagonist of the book Alyosha Peshkov. Bitter with exceptional depth reveals the process of his moral maturation, the growth in him of a resolute protest against the vulgar, senseless and cruel life of the bourgeoisie, the thirst for a different life, reasonable, beautiful and fair.

Protest against savagery environment gradually develops in the hero of the trilogy into a conscious struggle against the foundations of autocratic power, against the exploitative system as a whole. Impressions of harsh reality, books, revolutionaries, "the music of working life", sung by the writer in Story "My Universities", bring Alyosha Peshkov close to revolutionary conclusions. Trilogy in this sense, it becomes a story about a talented Russian man from the bottom of the people, who overcomes all obstacles on his way to the heights of culture, joining the revolutionary struggle for socialism.

Thus, Bitter and in the pre-revolutionary decade he vigorously and passionately fought for the victory of the revolution, asserting the traditions and ideas of progressive literature.

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Gorky's childhood

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If you read everything that domestic and foreign authors wrote about this work, you get the impression that we are talking completely different films. At home, the trilogy about Gorky was evaluated as a respectable example of careful attitude to the classics being filmed and, as a result, as a film classic for children. The only drawback was some randomness of the narrative, which, however, is quite excusable, explained by the natural desire of the authors to fit into the film as much as possible more heroes And storylines the book itself.

The same is true of the traditional language - it was believed to be completely appropriate, as long as we are talking about the film adaptation of a work that belongs to the national cultural tradition.

For foreign authors, the trilogy about Gorky is a grandiose cinematic prophecy, and a prophecy that has come true. Three films created at the very end of the 1930s anticipated, they believe, the main events of world cinema in the following decades until the early 1960s.

Indeed, none of the Soviet directors (with the exception of Eisenstein, Dovzhenko and Pudovkin) had such a significant impact on the world film process as Mark Donskoy.

The Italian neo-realists, who almost directly quoted Donskoy in their films, considered him a direct forerunner. The father of the Indian "parallel cinema" Satyajit Ray claimed that the very form of his trilogy, which united the films "Song of the Cart", "The World of Any", "The Defiant Ones", which bypassed almost all international film festivals of the late 50s, was chosen under the impression of Donskoy's work. And young angry French film critics from the magazine "Pozitif" in the late 50s, in search of an alternative to old-fashioned French cinema, literally created a cult of Donskoy.

The discovery of Donskoy's cinematography for world cinema was the opening of a new view of the world, or rather, a whole new world: it is no coincidence that the study of one of the French critics was called "Mark Donskoy's Universe". The meeting with this cinema was the same as the meeting of Donskoy himself with the work of Gorky - a shock that determined the future fate. And this is not about style, but about the model of the world, the place of man in it.

The Gorky word turned out to be the key for the director to his own cinematic vision, it became his philosophy. It is no coincidence that in most of Donskoy's films Gorky's quotes are present: either as an epigraph, or as final credit. It is no coincidence that it was with this film adaptation that the artist, who had been working in cinema for more than ten years, declared himself as an unconditional creative individuality, which means: he built his own world.

And if you follow the example of Donskoy, then the quote he cited in Gorky's Childhood could become the epigraph to an article about his work: "A dense, motley, inexpressibly strange life began and flowed with terrible speed."

The most amazing thing here is that each - without exaggeration! - the word characterizes the cinema of Donskoy. And characterizes literally. For everything here is translated into a visual row - with the utmost clarity and concreteness, which is inherent only in children's perception. Literally reproduced is not a verbal series, not even an event. But the very image of the world that arises in the narrative. And the book where main character- baby, turned out in this case ideal option for the director.

Three series of the film ("Gorky's Childhood", "In People", "My Universities") were shot in turn and were released on screens in 1938, 1939 and 1940. In the crowded film Donskoy two central hero: boy and river. The river in the universe of Mark Donskoy is life. Not a symbol, not a metaphor for life, but life itself: it flows. Children's primordial perception returns the metaphor to its source, reveals a secret - or a sacrament? - her birth. The life of the human community, according to historians, originated primarily on the banks of large rivers, it was concentrated there. The river gave, carried life with it, was the main condition for human life. And for a child who grew up on the banks of a large river, this identification is more than natural.

Because the Volga in the Mark Donskoy trilogy is not just a series of landscapes, wonderfully shot by the cameraman Petr Yermolov, for whom these films have become by far the largest creative creation. She in in a certain sense an animated being, carrying in itself, in its waters, a certain meaning inexpressible in words. And this meaning is connected with human existence, superimposed on it, as in a double exposure frame.

The complexity, variability, ambiguity of the world - this is what Donskoy seeks to capture. This is the source of the poetry of life. Or what will be more accurate in relation to this work - its magic.

Like Gorky, Donskoy is a childishly inspired contemplator, a pagan contemplator, like any child who looks at the variability and diversity of the world with a simultaneous feeling of delight and apprehension - "cautious curiosity", as Gorky says. Isn't that why Donskoy has a keen interest in all kinds of magic? In his films, shamans perform rituals, gypsy healers conjure, and grandmother Akulina Ivanovna in "Gorky's Childhood" every time before going to a new place, seriously and with inspiration lures the brownie.

More than once or twice near the Donskoy on the banks of the Volga, a human anthill will boil - in scenes abounding in internal action, rich in plans that make you remember Brueghel. In fact, ten events are happening in the frame at the same time: drunk people are chasing prisoners, parsley growers give a performance, a boy steals a bun from a hawker, loaders are dragging luggage - and above all this, an infinitely wide open sky, and behind all this - a great river forever flowing into the distance ..

With this open space, the theme of freedom enters Donskoy's cinematography. The connection of freedom with the natural, elemental principle was extremely important for Gorky, and above all for the young Gorky; and it turned out to be no less important for the Soviet cinema of the late 20s and early 30s. Suffice it to recall the ice drift in Pudovkin's "Mother" or the final storm over Asia in his "Descendant of Genghis Khan". But by the end of the 30s - the time the trilogy was released on the screen - this theme ceased to exist in our cinema at all: it left along with the theme of nature, which from now on is completely and completely subordinate to man.

The conflict between closed and open spaces as a visible, purely cinematic embodiment of freedom and lack of freedom was not discovered by Donskoy. But it was Donskoy who became the motive for the whole cinema, and it became precisely at the moment when it lost its relevance for Soviet cinema as a whole.

In the boundlessness of Russian spaces, through which the great river rolls its waters, Donskoy discovers the origin of a specific synonym for this concept in our language: "will". This is precisely natural freedom, and it is not by chance that a folk song is superimposed on the Volga landscapes in the trilogy, absorbing the desire for freedom, as it were, eternal in this universe. In its very length, there is an echo of spaces that save a person from constriction, wear, downtroddenness in the eternal Russian crowd.

In a closed space, this crowdedness is unbearable. Kashirin's house in "Gorky's Childhood" with low ceilings, cramped from the abundance of things and people colliding with each other, constantly bumping into each other. The same workshop of icon painters ("In People"), Semyonov's rooming house and bakery ("My Universities"). A feeling of painful tightness, crowding - people interfere with each other by their very existence.

In the trilogy, there are almost no heroes who are satisfied with their fate. All are tormented, if not directly by longing for a different life, then at least by the feeling that one’s own life does not work out in this hellish crampedness. A shrill "Oh, you-and!" grandfather Kashirin, who fell into poverty, or the no less poignant "If Jacob were a dog" by many sins aggravated by Uncle Jacob. And as a general embodiment of this aspiration, this craving for a different life - a small legless cripple Lenka, transferred to the film from the story "Passion-muzzle", dreaming in his basement hole about the "open field".

Children's highlights Donskoy in each of his characters, this is what he is looking for in performers. Isn't that why, for the majority, participation in the trilogy has become " finest hour"? And for the amazing grandmother of Akulina - Varvara Massalitinova - the prima of the Maly Theater, who worshiped Meyerhold (what did it take for the director to convince the film authorities to give her this "positive" role after the "negative" Kabanikh from "Thunderstorm"). And for Mikhail Troyanovsky - Grandfather, in fact opened by Donskoy for the cinema, in which the actor later played three dozen different grandfathers, and for the nervous, temperamental Daria Zerkalova - Queen Margo, who never had a chance to play Anna Karenina in Pudovkin in the same year. And, of course, for Daniil Sagal - Gypsy: his creative collaboration with Donskoy continued until the last work of the director, Spouses of Orlova (again, a film adaptation of the early Gorky, carried out in 1978).

However, this childishness also has a downside: immaturity. A boring life does not give people the opportunity to mature, that is, to become themselves, to be fulfilled. With all the abundance of personalities in the world of the trilogy, there are no personalities (the exception is, perhaps, the grandmother and Queen Margo - women-mothers in the world of the Donskoy have a very special place). No - and it cannot be, as long as these characters are inside the life stream, completely subordinate to it, and, consequently, to all the vicissitudes of fate. Until old age, the characters continue to remain children, like grandfather Kashirin, and even negative characters do evil with completely childish cunning, like uncles in Gorky's Childhood or the vile waiter Seryozhka ("In People"), or the owner of the bakery Semyonov, excellently played by Stepan Kayukov ( "My Universities").

This is where the wise order of the washerwoman Natalya (Irina Zarubina), who could not stand it, who broke down in single combat with life, came from: "Don't stick your head here - you'll be lost." Its essence is the need to keep a distance between yourself and the world. This distance, the role of a contemplator gives a chance to comprehend the meaning of life - to understand the path of the river.

But this position turns Alyosha Peshkov into a lyrical hero par excellence. Young Alyosha Lyarsky with a clean, open face provoked restrained reproaches from critics for some stiffness, lack of individuality, and inactivity. Meanwhile, in addition to a memorable appearance - an open forehead and a wide open eyes, - such a hero does not need anything else. For, in fact, before us is not a hero - a sign of a hero. The real hero is present, first of all, as the principle of the author's vision. The real Alyosha Peshkov of the film is the world of the trilogy as a whole.

Obviously, the failure that occurred in the third part - in "My Universities" - is connected precisely with the fact that the matured hero begins to interfere, "poked" into life. Consequently, the very nature of the narrative is forced to change, to be dramatized. The director, true to his principle, this time chooses the performer ( the only time starred in the movie N. Walbert) solely on the principle of typical correspondence - and the plot begins to crumble. For action in itself is not contraindicated for the lyrical hero, but the action is of a completely special kind: the act is purely, frankly symbolic. But with an energetic effort, the director still maintains the unity of his universe as a space spiritual world hero, holds a holistic, purely cinematic, pictorial plot trilogy.

It can be formulated as a movement from closed spaces to an "open field", either leading the hero to the river, or throwing him back to his original positions, so that in the end he still goes to the sea, into which the rivers flow. This is the comprehension of the secrets of life, given through numerous meetings with people along the way. This comprehension turns the hero from a child into a man, endows him with the ability to involve others in mastering life. And quite naturally, impeccably accurately, Donskoy completes the trilogy with a plot from the story "The Birth of Man": on the seashore, Alexei Peshkov takes birth from a migrant woman. Life, visibly emerging on the shores of great water, forever rolling its waves. If in the finals of the previous series the hero went out into the open space of the "clean field" ("Gorky's Childhood"), the river ("In people") - now he introduces another into this space: a newborn.

What did Donskoy discover for world cinema in his trilogy? The new principle of plot construction, which was at the same time the basis of the Russian tradition classical culture. If, in the tradition of the European novel, the clash of the hero with people on life path moves the plot, adventurous precisely for this reason, since the movement here can be compared with the movement of billiard balls colliding with each other, then in the Russian tradition a fleeting, random meeting changes people: each already bears the imprint of the other, the imprint of someone else's life experience, now becoming part of his own. This principle, developed thoroughly by Chekhov, Bunin, and Gorky, becomes the basis of all his work.

Where, then, are the scissors in the perception of Gorky's trilogy at home and abroad? Perhaps the most accurate answer is found in Yuri Tynyanov, who noticed back in 1924 that Gorky is "one of those writers whose personality in itself is a literary phenomenon; the legend surrounding his personality is the same literature, but only unwritten, Gorky folklore. With his memoirs, Gorky, as it were, realizes this folklore.

In this case, Mark Donskoy's trilogy is another, along with Gorky's memoirs, version of the folklore that Tynyanov speaks of - folklore, in those years, almost legalized by the state. The director acts here in the role of a narrator, reproducing a common folklore text, completely unaware of the deeply individual that he brings into it with his performance. In the same way, the domestic audience does not notice this, for which the reproduced text is no worse known, it was they who saw it in the first place, while the foreign audience - the director's individuality. Both perceptions are one-sided only because they did not assume the presence of each other, did not feel the need for it. The same necessity that gave rise to the Donskoy phenomenon, which for the first time expressed itself with full force in the Gorky trilogy.

That is why, probably, no one noticed how in the very first scenes in the Soviet film of 1938, in the midst of the pagan violent boiling of life, a character arose, ready to take on (and accept) someone else's pain, taking on a cross that would crush him, thrown treacherously, with its unbearable weight. And the House after that will begin to crumble: there is blood on its inhabitants.

In this picture, the hero's name is Ivan Tsyganok. IN following works the director of the heroes who receive the crown of thorns or bring the child-savior to the world will be called differently. But before last movie they will go and go on the "Mark Donskoy Universe".