Short biography of maxim gorky
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Maxim Gorky
For much of the early twentieth century, Maxim Gorky was probably the world’s most famous writer. His early romantic stories from the 1890s, with heroes drawn from the millions of peasants-turned-tramps then roaming the Russian countryside, marked him as an exciting new force in Russian letters that cut across class lines, blurring the distinction between high and low literature. His 1902 play The Lower Depths took his homeland and then Europe by storm. These works and his 1914 autobiographical masterpiece, Childhood, found millions of readers, including many Russians who had rarely, if ever, read before.
He appeared out of the blue, a contemporary critic recalled, “an emissary from the anonymous Russian masses.” Rejecting with contempt Russian literature’s traditional sympathy for “the insulted and injured” along with its glorification of the peasant as a repository of wisdom and national values, he celebrated instead action, will, initiative, creativity. “‘Man
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Gorky, Maxim
BORN: 1868, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
DIED: 1936, Moscow, USSR
NATIONALITY: Russian
GENRE: Drama, fiction, poetry
MAJOR WORKS:
The Lower Depths (1902)
Mother (1907)
In the World (1916)
My Universities (1923)
My Childhood (1928)
Overview
Maxim Gorky (a pseudonym for Alexei Maximovich Peshkov) is recognized as one of the earliest and foremost exponents of socialist realism in literature. His brutal yet romantic portraits of Russian life and his sympathetic depictions of the working class had an inspirational effect on the oppressed people of his native land. From 1910 until his death, Gorky was considered Russia's greatest living writer. Gorky the tramp, the rebel, is as much a legend as the strong, individual characters presented in his stories. His
hero was a new type in the history of Russian literature—a figure drawn from the masses of a growing industrialized society; his most famous novel, Mother (1907), was the first in that country to po
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Spartacus Educational
Primary Sources
(1) Osip Volzhanin first met Maxim författare in 1889.
He was tall, stooped, dressed in a coat-like jacket and high polished boots. His face was ordinary, plebeian, with a homely duck-like nose. By his appearance he could easily have been taken for a worker or a craftsman. The young man sat on the fönster sill, and swinging his long legs, spoke strongly emphasizing the letter "O". We listened with great delight to his stories, though Somov, an implacable "political", disapproved of the stories and the behaviour of the young man. In his opinion, the latter occupied himself with trifles.
(2) Statement signed bygd Maxim författare and forty-two other people who were critical of the way the police dealt with the lärling demonstration on 4th March, 1901.
We believe that the students were provoked bygd the police to assemble, and that the leaflets and the invitations issued to the students originated in the offices of the Okhrana. We declare