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Description
(Text)
Maxim Gorky was dubbed the father of socialist realism in the Soviet period, but he had forged his career as an internationally known novelist and dramatist some three or more decades earlier. Posing questions that Soviet critics found difficult to confront, the author examines the effects of exile and religion on the content and form of the plays as well as the role played by women, and the personal and political implications of motherhood. All sixteen of Gorky's published plays are covered, and the book explores whether this body of work has themes and styles to unify it. While conflict is central to the core political themes and also infiltrates many aspects of the dramatic style (cartoonish and grotesque), other less expected themes and styles emerge. Viewing the post-revolutionary plays as a development of earlier work leads to a question rarely posed: are the plays written by Gorky in the process of defining the new Party-inspired socialist realism in fact less about socialist realist issues of conformity, and more about Gorky's own painful life experience? And what is equally under the microscope is a search for the monumental style frequently associated with socialist realist theatre: the proposed origins of the spatial grandeur in Gorky's plays come as a surprise.
(Table of content)
Contents: Putting on the style: Gorky as playwright - Debut: 1882-1905 - The theatrical context - On the attack: Philistines (1902) - Truth, lies and theatre: The Lower Depths (1902) - Gorky and the intelligentsia: Summerfolk, Children of the Sun and Barbarians - Off-stage: 1906-1917 - Abroad - Claiming spaces: Enemies - A tragic sideshow: The Last Ones, Eccentrics, The Reception and Vassa Zheleznova - Polemic and melodrama: Counterfeit Coin, The Zykovs, The Old Man and Iakov Bogomolov - Peripeteia: 1917-1936 - Soviet dramatist - Back to the future: Egor Bulychev and the Others and Dostigaev and the Others - Representing the present: Somov and the Others and Vassa Zheleznova.
(Review)
«[Cynthia Marsh] fills a gap in Gorky scholarship with this commendable examination of the fullness of his dramatic writing.» (Mark Conliffe, Canadian Slavonic Papers)
«... this is a long overdue study of Gor´kii's complete 'oeuvre' which is to be warmly welcomed.» (Nick Worrall, Slavonic and East European Review)
«Marsh's monograph... represents an important step in the right direction - a move to increase the availability of scholarly works in English on the complex and compelling literary career of Maxim Gorky.» (Julie S. Draskoczy, Modern Language Review)
«...Marsh's study will be of interest primarly to scholars and students of Russian literature and drama, as well as to those hoping to gain a better understanding of Gorky's truly complex and ambivalent role as a Russian and Soviet literary giant of the early twentieth century.» (Julie A. Cassiday, The Russian Review)
(Author portrait)
The Author: Cynthia Marsh teaches Russian and drama at the University of Nottingham, UK. She has published widely on Russian literature and drama, is a play translator and theatre director (she has directed Gorky in Russian and English). She is currently working on a study of translated Russian theatre in the post-war British repertoire.
