Russian writer Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov (Russian: 袗谢械泻褋械泄 袦邪泻褋懈屑芯胁懈褔 袩械褕泻芯胁) supported the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 and helped to develop socialist realism as the officially accepted literary aesthetic; his works include The Life of Klim Samgin (1927-1936), an unfinished cycle of novels.
This Soviet author founded the socialist realism literary method and a political activist. People also nominated him five times for the Nobel Prize in literature. From 1906 to 1913 and from 1921 to 1929, he lived abroad, mostly in Capri, Italy; after his return to the Soviet Union, he accepted the cultural policies of the time.
"The man! It's magnificent! It sounds proud! The man! We must respect the man! Do not pity him. Do not lower him with pity. It would be best if you respected him." Gorky (the bitter one) wrote "The Lowlands" in 1902. It was performed the same year and met with success. Fifteen years later, tsarism was overthrown. In all misery, there is inhumanity. In every poor person, there is a man. And it is undoubtedly the proper, fair, close look of Gorky that allows us to see a little better in this asylum where all forms of abandonment live: Alcohol, unemployment, illness, prostitution, games, violence, religion, etc. "All souls are gray...Every man wants to put a little paint on it." All it takes is a light embodied in the words of old Louka for souls to find hope again. The slums are not a place of residence but a place of wandering. No freedom resides there. But fate likes to settle in and make men lie. First, man must emerge from the depths by his will and will alone. Men must become aware of their shipwreck to find the strength to reach the shore. This shore is a vision that always calls for awakening.
鈥淗epimiz insan谋z!Kendini ba艧kas谋 gibi g枚stermeye 莽al谋艧sa da,ya艧amda yalpalasa da insan olarak do臒an insan olarak 枚l眉r!陌nsanlara bak谋yorum da hepsi daha ak谋ll谋,daha ilgin莽 g枚r眉nme 莽abas谋nda...herkesten a艧a臒谋 ya艧asalar da,her 艧eyin en iyisini istiyorlar...鈥� Pek de bir 艧ey de臒i艧medi臒ini g枚r眉yoruz asl谋nda o g眉nden bug眉ne..Her ne kadar oyun okumaya al谋艧amasam da Ayaktak谋m谋 Aras谋nda g枚sterdi臒i 莽谋plak ger莽eklikle farkl谋 bir eser.
Written in 1901, this work is possibly the greatest masterpiece of social realism which would become the official literary form of the Soviet Union and would which would spread to all the countries won by communism in the 1940s both in Asia and in Europe.
Read this book to better understand what Stalin though literature should be. The social realism genre never truly achieved again the level of excellence attained in this tedious, little drama.
I imagine all lefties in The Middle East or every other place in the world, have read this play once, as a principle ... what I remember of the play now, seems to me a light melodrama story!
I read this play in a read-aloud group where I "played" the part of Vassilisa. She's basically evil incarnate, so it was great fun! ;)
But the most interesting character here is definitely the pilgrim Luka, who seems (to me) to proselytize in slightly bad faith. Luka spends a few nights at a shelter, where the entire play is set, and catalyzes the action of our characters, mostly poor and downtrodden, people utterly failed by the Russian state. 听
I think people in bad faith are fascinating: they believe, yet they know it's only their belief that makes it so. Luka is听a kind of Pascal, whose wagers are based on values other than truth-value, though he's not necessarily听aiming at the afterlife. He thinks that life, even in the depths, could be improved by donning a pair of rose-colored glasses. God, human goodness, cures to all our ills and evils, paradise on earth, all exist if we believe in them. He spreads hope where it could be dangerous. 听 "why is truth so important to you? Just think! Truth may spell death to you!" he says. "Truth doesn鈥檛 always heal a wounded soul."
A character asks him if there is a God. "If you have faith, there is; if you haven鈥檛, there isn鈥檛 .听.听. whatever you believe in, exists .听.听."
Of Vasya, a thief Luka is听urging to reform: "Only tell him every now and then that he鈥檚 a good lad so that he won鈥檛 forget it鈥攁nd he鈥檒l believe you. Just you keep on telling him 鈥淰asya, you鈥檙e a good man鈥攄on鈥檛 you forget it!鈥�
The prostitute Nastya is speaking of a lover who didn't exist, insisting she was loved once. The other听characters try to put an end to her speeches, but Luka says, "Now, now! Wait, people! Don鈥檛 interfere! Show a little respect to your neighbors .听.听. it isn鈥檛 the word that matters, but what鈥檚 in back of the word. That鈥檚 what matters!" "If you believe you had a real love affair, then you did鈥攜es!" He implores the others to "be nice to her. Being nice to people never does them any harm .听.听."
But in the end, it does听do harm. Real harm. In some cases, the crash after the death of a false hope is too much to handle. Hope, after all, is something we have to keep creating, day by day, especially when reality gives us little to shore it up. Is it a lie? It's an art, it requires imagination. Hope, like Luka, is a fleeting thing; it passes and then you must find the reserves to create it all over again, sometimes in the face of overwhelming fact.
I read this play in graduate school and was so impressed by it I started an adaptation but never finished. Now 16 years later I'm going to try again. Five years of working in a jail and now working with the homeless have given me new eyes. I feel like I understand the play and characters on a different level. What most struck me though was how little has changed in over a hundred years. The play could be brand new. Society still largely ignores those on the lowest rungs. They are almost literally invisible.
4,5 Maxim Gorki, der zu Unrecht nicht dieselbe Beachtung erf盲hrt wie die anderen gro脽en russischen Schriftsteller und ihnen allen doch eine gesunde politische Einstellung voraushatte, schmei脽t uns in ein russisches Loch zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts, in dem Armut und Verzweiflung regieren. "Nachtasyl" ist eine Darstellung der Ausgegrenzten und Vergessenen, es skizziert einen Ort, an dem sich die Gestrandeten der Gesellschaft zusammenfinden.
Gorki h盲lt nichts von Euphemismen, er spuckt uns das Elend mit voller Wucht ins Gesicht. Hunger, K盲lte und Krankheiten bilden den Alltag seiner Elendsprotagonisten. Sie sind Zeugnisse eines Systems, das den Menschen ausbeutet, eines Systems, das zu dieser Zeit noch nicht mal fl盲chendeckend erkannte, dass es zumindest deren Reproduktion gew盲hrleisten m眉sste. Wer nun denkt, dass es sich hierbei um einen Sozialporno handelt, der irrt, denn Gorki f眉hrt nicht vor, er zeichnet komplexe Individuen mit Tr盲umen und 脛ngsten, Hoffnungen und Sehns眉chten.
Was ist Wahrheit? Ist sie denn 眉berhaupt wichtig? Was ist L眉ge? Was bedeutet es, Mensch zu sein in einer Gesellschaft, die ihre Schw盲chsten vergisst? Gibt es Hoffnung in einer Welt voller Leid? Den Charakteren geht es um die gro脽en Fragen im Leben. In authentischen Dialogen, zeichnen sie den Versuch von Antworten und philosophieren 眉ber Sinn und Dasein. Die einen finden Ans盲tze in der Tradition Kierkegaards, andere taumeln auf den Pfaden Nietzsches.
Das Werk ist eine Anklage gegen soziale Ungerechtigkeit. Die Verzweiflung der Figuren ist sp眉rbar, die Sehnsucht nach einem besseren Leben mitrei脽end. Ein zeitloses Meisterwerk, schonungslos.
"...the more I contemplate mankind, the more interesting he grows . . . poorer and poorer he sinks and higher and higher his aspirations mount . . . obstinacy."
Extraordinary. Gorky's The Lower Depths is absolutely extraordinary.
While true, on its face, The Lower Depths is a short play about the lower classes and their penchant for destruction as a rebellion against an unjust world -- yet it is also a inversion of Dante's Inferno and Purgatorio, in that the notion of redemption, of self-sacrifice, of hope are all whispered lies given by a "pilgrim" (read: the devil) that keep people in the "lower depths", despairing and hoping equally in obstinacy, forever trapping them in a cycle of misery.
The final Act revolves around the principle characters, that is, the three devils-in-disguise discussing the necessity of hope as a modicum of despair, perpetuating the cyclical nature of hell in one's environment as well as one's mind but also highlights how individuals themselves give allowance and thus credence to those very lies.
BUBNOFF [to SATINE]. What are you grunting about? [SATINE keeps on grunting]
Always refreshing to read something about suffering which does not excuse the reality of suffering by way of some fairy tale cope about being made a better person by way of hardship. Hardship is not a hero's journey stumbling block but a persistent condition, in this case the social conditions of the working class. A persistent hardship creates misery, misery creates miserable people, and miserable people constitute the lower depths. This is all really bleak for socialist realism; Gorky is clear about the role of material conditions in the immiseration of the working class, but interestingly for these characters there are no inroads towards emancipatory politics, just a string of petty miseries made occasionally more miserable when paired with social hope. Of course that could make for a tedious read if you are someone who is not me, and frustrating for the person looking for a different socialist realism, but I find it fulfilling when taken as an artistic whole.
I just read the lower depths by Maxim Gorky and even though that sense of despair rarely bothers me like it did before, I enjoyed reading it specially when Luka entered the story. It's my first work by Gorky to read, so I learned about the playwright's background and how that shows in this work of his. Was a nice glimpse into the lives of Russians prior to the Russian revolution as I plan to continue reading on it.
The man wouldn鈥檛 believe it. . . . 鈥淚t must exist,鈥� he said, 鈥渓ook carefully. Otherwise,鈥� he says, 鈥測our books and maps are of no use if there鈥檚 no land of righteousness.鈥� The learned man was offended. 鈥淢y plans,鈥� he said, 鈥渁re correct. But there exists no land of righteousness anywhere.鈥� Well, then the other man got angry. He鈥檇 lived and lived and suffered and suffered, and had believed all the time in the existence of this land鈥攁nd now, according to the plans, it didn鈥檛 exist at all. He felt robbed! And he said to the learned man: 鈥淎h鈥攜ou scum of the earth! You鈥檙e not a learned man at all鈥攂ut just a damned cheat!鈥濃€攁nd he gave him a good wallop in the eye鈥攖hen another one . . . [After a moment鈥檚 silence] And then he went home and hanged himself!