What is the tragedy of Foma Gordeev according to M. Gorky. The novel “Foma Gordeev The history of the character’s creation

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What is the tragedy of Foma Gordeev according to M. Gorky

M. Gorky’s work “Foma Gordeev” was published in 1899 in the magazine “Life” with the subtitle “story”. In 1900, the story was published in a separate edition.

A.M. Gorky revealed the creative concept in a letter to S. Dorovatovsky in February 1899:

“This story gives me a lot of good moments and a lot of fear and doubt - it should be a broad, meaningful picture of modernity, and at the same time, against the background of it, an energetic, healthy person should be beating furiously, looking for something to do within his strength, looking for space for his energy. He's cramped. Life crushes him, he sees that there is no place for heroes in it, they are knocked down by little things, just as Hercules, who defeated the hydras, would have been knocked down by a cloud of mosquitoes.”

“...in parallel with working on Foma, I am drawing up a plan for another story, “The Career of Mishka Vyagin.” This is also a story about a merchant, but about a typical merchant, about a small, smart, energetic swindler who, from being a cook on a steamboat, reaches the post of mayor. Thomas is not typical as a merchant, as a representative of a class, he is only a healthy person who wants a free life, who is cramped within the framework of modernity. It is necessary to place another figure next to him so as not to violate the truth of life.”

As a participant in the populist circles of the 80s, Gorky was critical of the teachings of the populists, but echoes of his influence can still be found in the early works of the writer; These are, for example, the motives of sacrifice in the legend of Danko and in the “Song of the Falcon.” The ideology of populism was based on a system of views about a special, “original” path of development of Russia towards socialism, bypassing capitalism. At the time Gorky was working on Foma Gordeev, one of the main ideas of populism was the idea that the task of the intelligentsia was to help the peasantry overcome the difficulties of a market economy.

“Foma Gordeev” testified that Gorky had by this time moved away from the populist movement. This is the largest anti-populist work. After the appearance of Foma Gordeev, readers and critics began to talk about him as a Marxist writer.

Gorky built “Foma Gordeev” as a chronicle, which allowed him to show not only the development of human life in time, as N. Leskov did in his chronicles, but also the movement of time itself as a historical category. The heroes turned out to be correlated with the historical steps of Russia. Some of them became active figures, others convinced that a person and “his time” are not always the same values.

The main character, Foma Gordeev, inherited from his father, Ignat Gordeev, a substantial fortune and a family business. He is trying to adequately continue his commercial activities and increase the capital acquired by his father, but the world of businessmen is alien to him. His hot, dreamy nature suggests that happiness is not measured by the amount of money. He is trying to find his place in life, but it is not easy. Foma starts drinking.

“Foma fell silent. Everything he did led to nothing, his speeches did not shake the merchants. So they surround him in a dense crowd, and he can’t see anything because of them. They are calm, firm, treat him like a brawler and are plotting something against him. He felt crushed by this dark mass of strong-willed, intelligent people... He now seemed to himself a stranger and not understanding what he had done to these people and why he had done it. He even felt something offensive, similar to shame for himself in front of him. He had a sore throat, and it was as if some kind of dust had showered his heart in his chest, and it was beating heavily and unevenly.” Gorky Gordeev bourgeois

The greatest attention is paid to two figures: the guardian and affirmer of bourgeois consciousness - Yakov Mayakin and Foma Gordeev himself - a renegade of his class, becoming a “side” to him. In the 90s capitalism has taken a strong position in the country. The image of the “grimy”, so expressively captured in the works of Shchedrin, Uspensky and Ostrovsky, was becoming a thing of the past, giving way to money tycoons and factory owners. Gorky's predecessors in creating the image of the offensive bourgeois (P. Boborykin - "Vasily Terkin", Vas. Nemirovich-Danchenko - "Wolf's Fill", etc.) noted the emergence of a new type of merchant who begins to realize his strength, but did not create a typical figure his.

Yakov Mayakin is a social type who embodied the potential strength of the bourgeoisie at the end of the century. Class, master consciousness permeates the entire life activity of a successful merchant, all his moral principles. This is a merchant who thinks not only about himself, but also about the fate of his class. Capitalism began to penetrate into all areas of social and economic activity, and it turned out that Mayakin was no longer satisfied with domination only in the economic field. He is striving for power on a larger scale. Noteworthy is the review of the Volga millionaire Bugrov, who told Gorky that he had not met the Mayakins on his way, but felt: “this is how a person should be!”

The author of “Foma Gordeev” learned from the classics a comprehensive understanding of human characters and the determination of their native environment and society as a whole. But, penetrating deeper and deeper as an artist into the class structure of society, he introduced something new into his study of man. In his works, the social dominance of the heroes’ worldview was strengthened, and in connection with this, the class coloring of their inner world became more noticeable. The organic fusion of the class with the peculiar allowed Gorky to create a large gallery of related, but nevertheless so different from each other, heroes.

Modern criticism has caught the characteristic feature of Gorky the psychologist. The critic L. Obolensky wrote, referring to Yakov Mayakin, that Gorky “grabs”, along with the individual traits of the hero, also family, hereditary traits, formed under the influence of the profession (class), and strengthens these latter to such brightness that we no longer see an ordinary figure that we would not even notice in life, but a half-real, half-ideal, almost symbolic statue, a monument to an entire class in its typical features.

Along with the merchant, who traces his ancestry back to the 18th century, “Foma Gordeev” also shows one of the first accumulators of capital in the post-reform era. Despite all the limitations of the reform of 1861, it gave the opportunity to manifest the dormant energy and ingenuity of the people. Hence Gorky’s enormous interest in capitalists who emerged from the people’s environment and have not yet completely broken ties with it. Ignat Gordeev is a rich man, endowed not only with a desire for money, but also with a peculiar insolence of heart, which prevents him from completely merging with the world of his masters.

“Foma Gordeev” spoke about the development of capitalism in Russia and at the same time about the instability of the new way of life. Evidence of this is the emergence of protest among the workers, as well as the emergence of those who disagree with bourgeois practice and morality in the ranks of the bourgeoisie itself.

At first, Gorky wanted to create a work about the prodigal son of capitalism. The break with one's environment, breaking out of it, became an increasingly remarkable phenomenon in life, attracting the attention of other writers. The hero of Chekhov's story “Three Years” stands on the threshold of such a breaking out. However, in the process of creative work, Gorky came to the conclusion that Thomas is not typical as a merchant, as a representative of the class, and in order not to violate the truth of life, it is necessary to place another, more typical figure next to him. This is how an equal-sized image of the second central hero arose. These are characters that mutually condition each other. Fearing that the typical image of a merchant striving not only for economic, but also for political power, would cause a censorship ban, and trying to preserve this new figure in Russian literature, Gorky blocked it with the figure of Thomas. But Thomas remained dear to the author as evidence of the violation of the monolithic nature of the bourgeoisie, as, in turn, a typical phenomenon, although it did not become widespread.

Mayakin and Foma are opposing heroes. For one of them, everything is subordinated to the desire to get rich and rule. At the heart of his ideal is an economic principle. He subordinates everything to him, including the lives of people close to him. For another, the attitude towards life is connected with social and moral knowledge of it. The master's principle will manifest itself more than once in the behavior and consciousness of Thomas (he is the son of his environment), but it is not what dominates his inner world.

And if the prodigal son of the bourgeoisie Taras Mayakin, quickly forgetting his former opposition, returns to his father’s house in order to increase what his father has earned, then Thomas, endowed with a pure moral sense and conscience, acts as an accuser of the masters of life - a return to his father’s house is impossible for him.

“Foma Gordeev” is permeated with the idea of ​​the need to awaken the consciousness of the people. This idea, manifested in the depiction of the character of the leading character, in the disputes of the characters, in the author’s thoughts about the fate of the homeland, holds together the heterogeneous material of life. “Foma Gordeev” contains equally impressive pictures of the Volga nature, reminiscent of the greatness and painful slumber of the Russian people.

“Everything around bears the imprint of slowness; everything - both nature and people - lives clumsily, lazily, but it seems that behind laziness there is hidden a huge force - an irresistible force, but still devoid of consciousness, which has not created clear desires and goals for itself... And the absence of consciousness in this half-asleep life casts shadows of sadness over its entire beautiful expanse.”

The lack of clear consciousness is also characteristic of the young Gordeev. Foma has a warm heart. He does not accept Mayakin’s everyday commandments; he is concerned about the humiliation and poverty of some and the unjust power of others. But he does not understand the causes of social inequality. He is socially blind, and this makes his anger less effective. The radical journalist Yezhov, who observes the growth of Gordeev’s spontaneous indignation against those in power, tells him:

“Come on! You can't do anything! There is no need for people like you... Your time, the time of the strong but stupid, has passed, brother! You're late..."

Thomas's spontaneous rebellion is colored in romantic tones, and this has given rise to a number of literary scholars to argue that Gorky created a romantic image. But Gorky set himself the task not to approve, but to debunk a romantic of this type. He was already an anachronism. Thomas is above his environment in the world of moral values, but his intellect is low and his dreams are chaotic. The heart of young Gordeev longs to overthrow social evil, but he is incapable of social generalizations. The revealing speech on the ship is the highest expression of the angry rebellion of the prodigal son of the bourgeoisie and at the same time evidence of the archaic nature of his rebellion. The hero, freedom-loving by nature, suffers defeat not only because those exposed take up arms against him, but primarily because he himself is not yet ripe for effective social protest.

Foma Gordeev is not a revolutionary; he does not know other paths other than those followed by his fathers and grandfathers, followed by the ideologist of the merchants and spokesman for their demands on “those in power” Yakov Mayakin or the representative of the patriarchal merchants Ananiy Shchurov. A spiritually healthy and honest person, Thomas cannot submit to the laws of capitalism, accept and make Mayak’s aphorism his motto:

“When approaching a person, hold honey in your left hand and a knife in your right. When you gain the upper hand, then it’s good.”

Foma Gordeev's protest is as anarchic as the rebellion of Gorky's tramps. However, in this story, Gorky showed the process of “breaking out” a person from his class, from the shackles of class morality, more fully and deeply. Gorky's tramps are people who have already been thrown overboard from the environment to which they previously belonged, and Foma, at the beginning of the story a full-fledged representative of the merchant class, is shown in the process of breaking with his social environment. Such was the power of revolutionary ferment among the people that it penetrated through the layers of class morality and class prejudices and aroused in spiritually pure people hatred of their own environment, pitting them against this environment. Depending on the social and historical conditions of the time, as well as a number of internal and family circumstances, renegades of their class sank to the “bottom of life”, died, or joined the liberation movement of the people. Consequently, in Foma Gordeev’s protest, Gorky showed not just the characteristic features of the collapse of bourgeois class consciousness, but the disintegration of proprietary morality in the context of the maturation of revolutionary ideas and their penetration into the masses. Foma gravitates towards these masses, towards the working class, he listens with deep attention to the commoner Yezhov, who does not yet have the firmness and tempering of those proletarian revolutionaries whose images Gorky will soon create, but who expresses some of their thoughts.

“The future belongs to people of honest labor,” says Yezhov. “Great work lies ahead of you... It is you who must create a new culture.”

Gorky combines recognition of the futility of spontaneous rebellion with the search for carriers of effective social protest. He finds them in the proletarian environment. The workers depicted in the novel “Foma Gordeev” had not yet embarked on the path of revolutionary struggle, but the dispute between the journalist Yezhov and the worker Krasnoshchekov about the “spontaneous” and “conscious” beginning in the labor movement testified to the workers’ desire for such a struggle.

The main tragedy of the rebel Foma Gordeev was caused by a lack of understanding of the ways to combat social evil. The inability to come to terms with evil and the inability to fight it leads to the fact that the only hope for Foma Gordeev is the desire to remain human in any circumstances, even when this is practically impossible:

“What did you do? You didn’t create life - a prison... You didn’t create order - you forged chains on a person... It’s stuffy, cramped, there’s nowhere for a living soul to turn... A man is dying!.. You are murderers... Do you understand that you are alive only by human patience?”

It is important to note that such a tragic opposition of an individual to the existing world order in general is characteristic both of the Russian mentality as a whole and of Russian literature, as an exponent of this mentality.

Bibliography

1. Gorky M. Foma Gordeev. / M. Gorky. - M.: Bustard, 2008

2. Gruzdev I. Gorky. / I. Gruzdev. - M.: Young Guard, 1960

3. Lukov L.D. Russian literature: A.M. Bitter. / L.D. Lukov. - M.: AST, 2008

4. Sher N.I. Alexey Maksimovich Gorky. / N.I. Cher // Stories about Russian writers. - Moscow: Ministry of Education of the RSFSR, 1960.

5. M. Gorky in the memoirs of his contemporaries. - M.: State Publishing House of Fiction, 1955

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On the eve of 1900, Gorky published the novel Foma Gordeev. In Tolstoy's Anna Karenina it was said that everything had turned upside down, but had not yet settled into post-reform times. In “Foma Gordeev” the “laying down” that has begun is depicted.

As a participant in the populist circles of the 80s, Gorky was critical of the teachings of the populists, but echoes of his influence can still be found in the early works of the writer; These are, for example, the motives of sacrifice in the legend of Danko and in the “Song of the Falcon.” The novel “Foma Gordeev” testified to the obsolescence of such hobbies. This is the largest anti-populist work, which left no doubt that Gorky began to master the Marxist knowledge of social development.

After the appearance of Foma Gordeev, readers and critics began to talk about him as a Marxist writer. Thus, the future People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs G.V. Chicherin wrote to a comrade in 1901: “Instead of the worldview of the era of natural economy, a completely new worldview of the urban proletariat is emerging<...>Marxism and Gorky are the main phenomena in our country in recent years. (And in “Foma Gordeev” there is a great influence of Marxism).”

Gorky built his great works (from “Foma Gordeev” to “The Life of Klim Samgin”) as chronicle novels, which allowed him to show not only the development of human life over time, as N. Leskov did in his chronicles, but also the movement of time itself as a historical category.

The heroes turned out to be correlated with the historical steps of Russia. Some of them became active figures, others convinced that a person and “his time” are not always the same values. The tendency towards such a correlation was clearly manifested already in the first novel, the hero of which did not hear the true calls of his time.

The greatest attention in the novel is paid to two figures: the guardian and affirmer of bourgeois consciousness - Yakov Mayakin and the renegade of his class, who becomes a "side" to him - Foma Gordeev. In the 90s capitalism has taken a strong position in the country.

The image of the “grimy”, so expressively captured in the works of Shchedrin, Uspensky and Ostrovsky, was becoming a thing of the past, giving way to money tycoons and factory owners. Gorky’s predecessors in creating the image of the offensive bourgeois (P. Boborykin - “Vasily Terkin”, Vas. Nemirovich-Danchenko - “Wolf’s Fill”, etc.) noted the emergence of a new type of merchant, “who begins to realize his strength,” but did not create a typical figure his.

Yakov Mayakin is a social type who embodied the potential strength of the bourgeoisie at the end of the century. Class, master consciousness permeates the entire life activity of a successful merchant, all his moral principles. This is a merchant who thinks not only about himself, but also about the fate of his class.

Capitalism began to penetrate into all areas of social and economic activity, and it turned out that Mayakin was no longer satisfied with domination only in the economic field. He is striving for power on a larger scale. Noteworthy is the review of the Volga millionaire Bugrov, who told Gorky that he had not met the Mayakins on his way, but felt: “this is how a person should be!”

The author of “Foma Gordeev” learned from the classics a comprehensive understanding of human characters and the determination of their native environment and society as a whole. But, penetrating deeper and deeper as an artist into the class structure of society, he introduced something new into his study of man.

In his works, the social dominance of the heroes’ worldview was strengthened, and in connection with this, the class coloring of their inner world became more noticeable. The organic fusion of the class with the peculiar allowed Gorky to create a large gallery of related, but nevertheless so different from each other, heroes.

Modern criticism has caught the characteristic feature of Gorky the psychologist. The critic L. Obolensky wrote, referring to Yakov Mayakin, that Gorky “grabs”, along with the individual traits of the hero, also traits “family, hereditary, formed under the influence of the profession (class), and strengthens these latter to such brightness that we already see not an ordinary figure that we would not even notice in life, but a half-real, half-ideal, almost symbolic statue, a monument to an entire class in its typical features.”

Along with the merchant, who traces his ancestry back to the 18th century, “Foma Gordeev” also shows one of the first accumulators of capital in the post-reform era. Despite all the limitations of the reform of 1861, it gave the opportunity to manifest the dormant energy and ingenuity of the people. Hence Gorky’s enormous interest in capitalists who emerged from the people’s environment and have not yet completely broken ties with it. Ignat Gordeev, Savely Kozhemyakin, Yegor Bulychev - all these are rich people, endowed not only with the desire for money, but also with “insolence of heart”, which prevents them from completely merging with the world of their masters.

Gorky's novel spoke about the development of capitalism in Russia and at the same time about the instability of the new way of life. Evidence of this is the emergence of protest among the workers, as well as the emergence of those who disagree with bourgeois practice and morality in the ranks of the bourgeoisie itself.

At first, Gorky wanted to create a novel about the prodigal son of capitalism. The break with one's environment, breaking out of it, became an increasingly remarkable phenomenon in life, attracting the attention of other writers. The hero of Chekhov's story “Three Years” stands on the threshold of such a breaking out. However, in the process of creative work, Gorky came to the conclusion that Thomas “is not typical as a merchant, as a representative of a class” and, in order not to violate the “truth of life,” it is necessary to place another, more typical figure next to him.

This is how an equal-sized image of the second central hero arose. These are characters that mutually condition each other. Fearing that the typical image of a merchant, striving not only for economic, but also for political power, would cause a censorship ban, and trying to preserve this new figure in Russian literature, Gorky, in his words, “blocked” her with the figure of Thomas (“I blocked Thomas Mayakin, and the censorship did not touch him").

Mayakin and Foma are opposing heroes. For one of them, everything is subordinated to the desire to get rich and rule. At the heart of his ideal is an economic principle. He subordinates everything to him, including the lives of people close to him. For another, the attitude towards life is connected with social and moral knowledge of it. The master's principle will manifest itself more than once in the behavior and consciousness of Thomas (he is the son of his environment), but it is not what dominates his inner world.

And if the “prodigal son” of the bourgeoisie, Taras Mayakin, quickly forgetting his former opposition, returns to his father’s house in order to increase what his father has earned, then Thomas, endowed with a pure moral sense and an unsleeping conscience, acts as an exposer of the masters of life - a return to his father’s house for him impossible.

The novel is permeated with the idea of ​​the need to awaken the consciousness of the people. This idea, manifested in the depiction of the character of the leading character, in the disputes of the characters in the novel, in the author’s thoughts about the fate of the homeland, holds together the heterogeneous material of life. In his early work, Gorky showed himself to be a master of the bright southern landscape. In “Foma Gordeev” there are equally impressive pictures of the Volga nature, reminiscent of the greatness and painful slumber of the Russian people.

“Everything around bears the imprint of slowness; everything - both nature and people - lives clumsily, lazily, but it seems that behind laziness lies a huge force - an irresistible force, but still devoid of consciousness, which has not created clear desires and goals for itself... And the absence of consciousness in this half-asleep life casts shadows of sadness over its entire beautiful expanse.” The lack of clear consciousness is also characteristic of the young Gordeev. Foma has a warm heart. He does not accept Mayakin’s everyday commandments; he is concerned about the humiliation and poverty of some and the unjust power of others.

But, like Gorky's early heroes, he does not understand the causes of social inequality. Like the tramp rebels, he is socially blind, and this makes his anger less effective. The radical journalist Yezhov, who observes the growth of Gordeev’s spontaneous indignation against those in power, tells him: “Drop it! You can't do anything! There is no need for people like you... Your time, the time of the strong but stupid, has passed, brother! You're late..."

Thomas’s spontaneous, “internal” rebellion is painted in romantic tones, and this has given rise to a number of literary scholars to argue that Gorky created a romantic image. But Gorky set himself the task not to approve, but to debunk a romantic of this type. He was already an anachronism. Thomas is above his environment in the world of moral values, but his intellect is low and his dreams are chaotic.

The frenzied heart of young Gordeev longs to overthrow social evil, but he is incapable of social generalizations. His mind is asleep, and Gorky emphasizes this many times in the novel. The revealing speech on the ship is the highest expression of the angry rebellion of the prodigal son of the bourgeoisie and at the same time evidence of the archaic nature of his rebellion.

The hero, freedom-loving by nature, suffers defeat not only because those exposed take up arms against him, but primarily because he himself is not yet ripe for effective social protest. Gorky's novel was the last novel of the century about a lonely romantic hero as a hero who does not meet the requirements of the new time.

Gorky combines recognition of the futility of spontaneous rebellion with the search for carriers of effective social protest. He finds them in the proletarian environment. The workers depicted in the novel “Foma Gordeev” had not yet embarked on the path of revolutionary struggle, but the dispute between the journalist Yezhov and the worker Krasnoshchekov about the “spontaneous” and “conscious” beginning in the labor movement testified to the workers’ desire for such a struggle.

This will be said more clearly in the story about three comrades looking for their path in life (“Three”, 1900). One of them dies, choosing the path of non-resistance. The second one also dies, trying not to change, but only somewhat to soften the ugliness of the possessive world. And only the third, the worker Grachev, will find the true path, drawing closer to the revolutionary circle.

Gorky could not yet create a full-blooded image of a hero-worker - this hero had only just begun to manifest himself in life, but he captured the ever-deepening revolutionary spirit of social aspirations. A romantic call to heroism, which always has a place in life, was heard in “Old Woman Izergil.” The Song of the Falcon called for heroism. In 1899, the author strengthened its revolutionary sound by creating a new ending with the famous slogan:

We sing glory to the madness of the brave!

The madness of the brave is the wisdom of life!

In Foma Gordeev, Yezhov talks about an approaching storm. Soon many heroes of Russian literature will be gripped by a premonition of the storm. Chekhov's Tuzenbach (“Three Sisters”) will say: “The time has come, a huge force is approaching all of us, a healthy, strong storm is preparing, which is coming, is already close and will soon blow away laziness, indifference, prejudice towards work, rotten boredom from our society.”

In the prose poem “Lights” V. Korolenko will remind you that, no matter how dark life is, “there are still lights ahead!..”. Chekhov's play is fraught with a premonition of impending changes; in "Ogonki" hope for these changes is manifested. It was a response to the burning problems of the day, but both artists do not yet feel the immediate breath of the menacing storm.

This breath is embodied in the famous “Song of the Petrel” (1901), in which not only a call for revolution was heard, but also the confidence that it would win. This song gained even greater popularity than the Song of the Falcon, which glorified the revolutionary feat.

The image of the storm that Burevestnik called for went back simultaneously to two literary sources: to the tradition of freedom-loving poetry (Yazykov, Nekrasov, etc.) and to the socialist journalism of the turn of the century. The new song was widely used in revolutionary propaganda, it was read at student parties, and distributed in the form of leaflets.

Gorky began to be perceived as a singer of the revolution, as a writer calling for active revolutionary resistance. The revolutionary romanticism that permeates “The Petrel Song” was an expression of a new ideal, a new historical perspective.

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

For independent study “The theme of liberated love in the story “Foma Gordeev”

HELPFUL INFORMATION

Criticism of M. Gorky's story "Foma Gordeev"

http:///crit/povest-foma-gorddev-kritika

In new historical conditions, Gorky's realism becomes deeper and more comprehensive. The writer turned in his works to an analysis of the life of different classes and social strata of Russian society.

In the story “Foma Gordeev” (1899), the writer for the first time gave a broad and diverse picture of the capitalist system. Gorky himself admitted that for him this was a transition “to a new form of literary existence...”.

Gorky depicted the typical figures of capitalists broadly and prominently. The writer managed to combine the individual uniqueness of each of the characters with their social essence.

Ananiy Shchurov personifies the yesterday of Russian capitalism with its outright predation, backwardness, and straightforward reactionism. He is the enemy of technological progress. Having become rich at the cost of crimes, he appears in the novel as a fierce and vicious enemy of the people.

The image of the breeder Yakov Mayakn is more complex. Gorky writes that Mayakin enjoyed respect among the merchants, “the fame of a “brain” person and was very fond of showing off the antiquity of his family.” Mayakin is a kind of ideologist of the bourgeoisie, striving for political power. He divides people into slaves, doomed to always obey, and masters, called to command. In his opinion, the rulers of the country should be capitalists. Mayakin's life philosophy is revealed in his aphorisms.

“Life, Brother Thomas,” he says to his pupil, “is very simple: either gnaw at everyone, or lie in the dirt... Here, brother, when approaching a person, hold honey in your left hand, and a knife in your right...”

From the world of the Mayakins and Shchurovs, Gorky singles out Foma Gordeev. Gorky wrote that the story “should be a broad, meaningful picture of modernity” and at the same time, against its background, an energetic, healthy person should be beating furiously, looking for something to do within his strength, looking for space for his energy. He's cramped. Life is crushing him...”

Thomas also belongs to the bourgeois class. But he did not have time to turn into a predatory money-grubber; he is characterized by simple and natural human feelings.

The cruel, disgusting morals of the capitalist world, the meanness and crimes of its owners make a stunning impression on Foma Gordeev, and he rebels against this world. At a festival at Kononov’s, Foma throws angry words into the faces of merchants and manufacturers: “You didn’t build a life - you made a cesspool! You have created filth and stuffiness with your deeds. Do you have a conscience? Do you remember God? Pyatak is your god! And you drove away your conscience... Where did you drive it away? Bloodsuckers! You live by someone else's power... you work with someone else's hands! How many people have cried blood because of your great deeds?

But Thomas's rebellion is aimless and fruitless. Foma's hot, sincere speech at the festival ends with Mayaknn declaring him crazy.

Thomas's revolt showed that the bourgeoisie was not only disgusting, but also terminally ill. It is significant that already in Foma Gordeev, along with images of capitalists, images of proletarians appear. They are given only briefly, in passing. But in contrast to the wolf laws of the Mayakin world, unity and camaraderie reign among them. Drawing the workers, the writer feels in them the power that is designed to destroy the power of the Shchurovs and Mayakins.

One of the Nizhny Novgorod merchants, Bugrov, spoke of Gorky and his story like this: “This is a harmful writer, the book was written against our class. Such people should be exiled to Siberia, far away, to the very edge.”

The story was so imbued with hatred of the bourgeois world that it became an effective means of revolutionary propaganda. Berezovsky recalls: “We, old underground workers, very often read to the workers at our underground meetings such a work by Alexei Maksimovich as “Foma Gordeev,” especially the last chapter - the scene on the ship.

Why did we read this scene? Yes, because the workers perceived the burning words of hatred that permeated these pages as signals of struggle not only against the autocracy, but also against the bourgeoisie.”

http:///p_Analiz_povesti_Foma_Gordeev_Gor-kogo_M_Yu

Analysis of the story "Foma Gordeev" by Gorky

In the story “Foma Gordeev”, Gorky continued the traditional theme of Russian classical literature - exposing the anti-human nature of the power of money (-Shchedrin, etc.). He considered working on the story “a transition to a new form of literary existence.” Jack London called the work a “big book”: “... it contains not only the vastness of Russia, but also the breadth of life.” This is a “healing book” because “it affirms goodness.”

The story was prepared by the development of Russian realism in the second half of the 19th century. Its theme is the internal decay of the bourgeois class, the historical doom of the world order. Among the “masters of life”, a special, perhaps most important place is occupied by the bourgeoisie of the new formation, such as Yakov Mayakin, the “ideologist” of the new merchant class. However, the story is called “Foma Gordeev”. Why? Gorky replies: “This story... should be a broad, meaningful picture of modernity, and at the same time, against its background, an energetic, healthy person should be beating furiously, looking for something to do within his strength, looking for space for his energy. He's cramped. Life crushes him, he sees that there is no place for heroes in it, they are knocked down by little things, just as Hercules, who defeated the hydras, would have been knocked down by a cloud of mosquitoes.” Thomas is incompatible with the world of property owners and must “break out” of it. This image is clearly romanticized by the writer.

Gorky continued the theme in “Essays on America,” the story “The Artamonov Case,” the play “Vassa Zheleznova” and other works.

http:///citaty/gorkii-citaty/501-povest-foma-gordeev. html

(quotes)

Gorky's first major work is dedicated to the Russian merchants. “This story should be a broad, meaningful picture of modernity, and at the same time, against its background, an energetic, healthy person should be beating furiously, looking for something to do within his strength, looking for space for his energy. He feels cramped, life crushes him, he sees that heroes have no place in it, they are knocked down by little things,” Gorky wrote to his publisher.

The writer draws different representatives of the entrepreneurial world. Ananiy Shchurov is a merchant of the patriarchal type, a former counterfeiter and murderer. He feels like a master, does not recognize innovations, hates freedom.

Ananiy Shchurov

The old man's high forehead is covered with wrinkles. Gray, curly strands of hair covered his temples and pointed ears; blue, calm eyes gave the upper part of his face a wise, handsome expression. But his lips were thick, red and seemed alien to his face.

From freedom, man will perish, like a worm, an inhabitant of the bowels of the earth, perishing in the sun... From freedom, man will perish!

Yakov Mayakin is a man of “iron” and at the same time “brain”. He is able to think more broadly than his personal interests require; he feels the importance of his class. This is a kind of ideological mentor of the merchants. Mayakin's reasoning has echoes of the social philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.

Yakov Mayakin

Yakov Mayakin - short, thin, nimble, with a fiery red wedge-shaped beard - looked with greenish eyes, as if he was saying to everyone:

“Nothing, my sir, don’t worry! I understand you, but if you don’t touch me, I won’t give you up...”

His head looked like an egg and was ugly large. A high forehead, cut with wrinkles, merged with a bald spot, and it seemed that this man had two faces - one insightful and intelligent, with a long cartilaginous nose, visible to everyone, and above it - another, without eyes, with only wrinkles, but behind them Mayakin seemed to be hiding both his eyes and lips - he was hiding them until the time came, and when the time came, Mayakin would look at the world with different eyes, smile with a different smile.

Among the merchants, he enjoyed respect and fame as a “brain” man and loved to show off the antiquity of his breed, saying in a hoarse voice:

We, the Mayakins, were merchants back in the time of Mother Catherine; therefore, I am a man of pure blood...

First of all, Thomas, if you live on this earth, you must think about everything that happens around you. For what? And so that because of your lack of understanding you will not suffer and you will not be able to harm people through your stupidity. Now: every human deed has two faces, Thomas. One is in plain sight - it is fake, the other is hidden - it is the real one. You need to be able to find it in order to understand the meaning of the matter...

And who, according to these days, are the most powerful people? The merchant is the first force in the state, because with him are millions! Is not it?

Ignat is an intelligent and strong-willed person. He managed to preserve his love of life, the desire for vigorous activity, and the thirst for struggle. But in moments of spiritual crisis, he collapses, not having the strength to control himself.

Ignat Gordeev

Strong, handsome and intelligent, he was one of those people who are always lucky in everything - not because they are talented and hardworking, but rather because, having a huge supply of energy, they do not know how to achieve their goals - They cannot even think about the choice of means and do not know any other law than their desire.

You need to feel sorry for people... you do it well! Only - you need to regret it with reason... First, look at the person, find out what good he is, what benefit can he have? And if you see a strong, capable person, have pity, help him. And if someone is weak, not inclined to work, spit on him, pass by.

A person must take care of himself for his business and firmly know the path to his business... Man, brother, the same pilot on a ship... In your youth, as in a flood, go straight! Everywhere is dear to you... But know the time when you need to take up the law...

Foma Gordeev is an extraordinary person. He turned out to be a stranger in the merchant world. An honest, sincere man who strives for justice, he tries to break free, but this only happens at the cost of death. Faced with a reality built on deception, crime, and greed, Foma Gordeev falls into even greater despair and sees no way out of the impasse.

He inherited a lot from his mother, who felt some kind of falseness in life.

A smile rarely appeared on the oval, strictly regular face of his wife - she was always thinking about something, and in her blue eyes, coldly calm, sometimes something dark, unsociable sparkled. In her free time from doing housework, she sat at the window of the largest room in the house and sat motionless, silently there for two or three hours. Her face was turned to the street, but her gaze was so indifferent to everything that lived and moved outside the window, and at the same time was so deeply concentrated, as if she was looking inside herself. And her gait was strange - Natalya moved through the spacious rooms of the house slowly and carefully, as if something invisible was restricting her freedom of movement.

Foma Gordeev

The soul greedily fed on the beauty of his folk art.

Foma spent whole days on the captain's bridge next to his father. Silently, with wide open eyes, he looked at the endless panorama of the shores, and it seemed to him that he was moving along a wide silver path to those wonderful kingdoms where sorcerers and heroes of fairy tales live.

Even when Foma was nineteen years old, there was something childish and naive about him that distinguished him from his peers.

He himself felt something special in himself that alienated him from his peers, but he also could not understand what it was? And he watched himself suspiciously...

The death of his father stunned Foma and filled him with a strange sensation: silence flowed into his soul - a heavy, motionless silence that unresponsively absorbed all the sounds of life.

The old man's monotonous speeches soon achieved what they were intended for: Thomas listened to them and understood his purpose in life. “You need to be better than others,” he asserted, and the ambition excited by the old man ate deep into his heart...

I can’t live like this... It’s like weights are hung on me... I want to live freely... so that I can know everything myself... I will look for life for myself...

Oh, s-bastards! - Gordeev exclaimed, shaking his head. - What did you do? You didn’t create life - a prison... You didn’t create order - you forged chains on a person... It’s stuffy, cramped, there’s nowhere for a living soul to turn... A man is dying!.. You are murderers... Do you understand that only with human patience you alive?

Recently Thomas appeared on the streets of the city. He's kind of worn out, crumpled and crazy. Almost always after drinking, he appears - either gloomy, with frowning eyebrows and with his head lowered on his chest, or smiling with the pitiful and sad smile of a blessed one. Sometimes he gets rowdy, but this rarely happens. He lives in his sister's yard, in an outbuilding... Merchants and townspeople who know him often laugh at him. Foma is walking down the street, and suddenly someone shouts to him:

Hey you prophet! Come here.

Thomas very rarely approaches those who call him - he avoids people and does not like to talk to them.

Target audience: 11th grade.

Type of development: problem-based lesson in literature, group work (two groups).

The purpose of the lesson:

The moral search for the meaning of life by the main character of Gorky’s story “Foma Gordeev”;

Reflection of the historical situation in Gorky's story; pictures of merchant life;

- “superfluous” people, their limitations and “stupidity”, “they pointed out what I should not be...”;

Develop interest in research work, be able to independently draw conclusions, generalizations, and compare.

Download:

Preview:

Problem lesson based on M. Gorky’s story “Foma Gordeev”

“You need to know what you live for...”

The target audience: Grade 11.

Development type: problem lesson in literature, group work (two groups).

The purpose of the lesson:

The moral search for the meaning of life by the main character of Gorky's story

"Foma Gordeev";

Reflection of the historical situation in Gorky's story; paintings

Merchant life;

- “superfluous” people, their limitations and “stupidity”, “they pointed out what I

Shouldn't be...";

Develop an interest in research work and be able to do it yourself

Conclusions, generalizations, compare.

What have you done? No, you didn’t create life, but prison...

You did not create order - you forged chains for a person.

It’s stuffy, cramped, there’s nowhere for a living soul to turn.

A man is dying!

Gorky M. “Foma Gordeev”

No, I'll choose my own place.

Gorky M. “Foma Gordeev”

Revealing the topic of the lesson, proving the correctness of the chosen epigraphs,

determine the purpose of the lesson.

(Search for the meaning of life, your “I”, your place in it)

Gorky's story "Foma Gordeev" (1899) presents a broad picture of Russian life, a contemporary of which the author himself was. The writer is always

concerned with human needs. The most important thing is that the desire is close to him

to a full-blooded, happy life. Most heroes don't implement

this is an aspiration. This is perceived as a personality drama. A Hero's Striving

to a full-blooded life is embodied by Gorky in the story “Foma Gordeev”.

The hero protests against lies and hypocrisy, he is oppressed by a “crowded” life, he is looking for

he is capable of doing things, trying to find his way in life, his “I”. In the end

becomes an alcoholic and can very easily become an inhabitant of a flophouse similar to the one

which Gorky showed in the play “At the Lower Depths”

Each group conducted its own searches, made conclusions about the story within the framework of the topic, and now you are given the right to defend your assignments.

Group 1 - Chapter 1 p.47-49(student of Kuznetsov)

Gorky begins his story with a story about Thomas’s father, Ignat Gordeev.

Why? What does this give us for understanding the image of the main character?

Tell us about him (about your father) (origin, social status, lifestyle,

Distinctive character traits) and about the mother.

What does Ignat Gordeev have in common with Dikiy and Kabanova from Ostrovsky’s play “The Thunderstorm”? What difference did you see?

The rebellious spirit of his parents was most evident in Thomas. The parents did not yet realize what was bothering them. What is happening around makes Thomas think about what place is destined for him in life, i.e. what his own “I” is like in life. The painful question about the meaning of life could have arisen before the father and mother if they had lived

They are at a different, later time.

Answer to question 2. Thomas’s father gave him his first life lessons. He often said to Foma: “We must teach you how to live.”

One day a dreamy boy got on a ship with his father, where in front of him

a new life unfolded. He looked at everything with wide eyes; it seemed to him that he was moving along a wide path into a wonderful land of fairy tales. About

He asked his father to everyone, and he explained it to him as best he could. One day a boy relayed a conversation between the pilot and the crew about his father. And Ignat then decided that it was time

teach my son life.

There was something clear and understandable in his father’s stories; Foma liked that his father

strong, dexterous. His heart beat strongly and hotly. Since then, he became more attentive to his surroundings, he felt everything keenly, everything that worried his soul aroused in him new vague sensations and desires. Co.

Foma treated everything seriously and thoughtfully. With his vague character, dreaminess, curiosity, and thoughtfulness, he resembled his mother. He felt something special in himself that distinguished him from his peers, but he also could not understand what it was? And he watched himself suspiciously. It influenced

on him, but did not clearly and definitely define his life path.

Already the first lessons of life force Thomas to think about his own purpose and cause a desire to live not according to orders.

Who gives Thomas the first serious lessons in life?

Father

What was the science of life taught to Thomas by his father? Was the young man able to accept

Her?

Life lessons?!

Father

“We need to teach you”...You are their master, they are yours

live" servants, so you know..."

Several rules are read out, Each member of the group reads out

given by the father. according to 1 teaching chapter (2,3 pp.26,27,

(Student response) 29,30,37).

Generalization. The main thing that Father Thomas taught was to be a master, to achieve one’s own, regardless of the means. Dreamy and thoughtful Thomas, rejecting the established rules of life, begins to search for his place in life.

In what works have we encountered the lessons of our fathers? What did they teach?

Pushkin A.S. “The Captain's Daughter” - “Take care of your honor from a young age”, Gogol N.V. “Dead souls” - “save a penny...”.

Is Ignat's morality close to Thomas?

He listened and became more attentive. He protests (although the protest is still spontaneous).

Task for group 2.

Life lessons continue.

Who else had a strong influence on Thomas? Who tried in their own way

Turn Thomas? (godfather, Yakov Mayakin).

What did Yakov Mayakin teach his godson?

Complementing the scheme

“I will teach you, Thomas”

Ch. Ш, 1У, У, Х., chapter 4 pp. 76,78,80,90,93, chapter 5 pp. 93-94,95

How does the relationship between Yakov Mayakin and Foma Gordeev and at the same time the merchant life and activity of Foma end? Growing hostility between them.

Does Thomas accept the lessons of Jacob's life?

Rejects

Foma, as he said, wanted to be like a person. He felt a deep hostility towards Mayakin, because... does not accept his life principles.

He did not feel any joy either from money or from his activities.

At first there is an internal break, and after the meeting on the ship - a final, open break. He feels strong, capable of something

big.

4. What is the meaning for understanding

The ideological content of the story is the scene of the merchant party on the ship

Merchant Kononov?

What is the merchant class like? What are they teaching Thomas?

Did this bring satisfaction to Thomas?

a) Gorky paints more and more vividly pictures of how he “beats madly,” how he “searches for

A person can do things, but little things knock him down.” Foma Gordeev -

A person who has entered into a struggle with his environment. Like in Gogolevsky

"The Inspector General" on the boat - the stage passes through images of all the colors of the city.

Foma's speech, as if on a screen, mutilates the essence of everyone.

b) – Read out the speech of Mayakin and Thomas (dramatization) ch. 13 pp. 229-233

c) (students’ answer)

d) – Thomas’s speech is accusatory, he tells the truth to everyone. Is it always

Is it pleasant to hear the truth? (No)

Thomas is contrasted with other merchants, these ignoble money collectors. He is superior to his own kind because he “protests” and “convicts,” and

does not follow the laws, their truth.

What do they teach?

to question 4

We read the ending of the story - a gala dinner in honor of the launching of Kononov's steamship Ilya Muromets. Before us is a whole gallery of images of merchants. The power of the city’s owners is not limited, they speak openly about their position, striving to be the first everywhere - Mayakin, Kononov, Shchurov, Gushchin, Bobrov, etc., and some even without a name or surname. I feel some kind of anxiety. And in front of these people, Thomas makes his accusatory speech. He is filled with contradictory feelings (to say which ones) Chapter 13. But the spilled truth does not bring relief to Thomas; it “crushed” the accuser. And instead of a moral victory, he now seemed like a stranger to himself and did not understand what he had done to these people and why. Merchants cannot understand him, because... They are possessed only by the thirst for profit by any means, acquisitiveness, and inertia. This is how they teach Thomas to be. He found himself alone. The merchants do not understand Thomas because their morality is Thomas. He does not find a single living soul capable of understanding him, giving him even a drop of love.

5. In the story, in addition to Foma, Gorky draws images of several other young

people who came from the same merchant environment, the same age as Thomas. Why does the author talk about Lyuba M., Afrikan Smolin, Nikolai Yezhov?

Are they trying to teach Thomas something?

How does Thomas' character manifest itself in his interactions with different people?

(answer) Thomas strives to get as close as possible to people who cause him

he has a keen interest.

Stories about Thomas's peers.

They are all different, he is disappointed in all of them, feels their emptiness, but wants to see the truth in them. He is afraid that there is this truth, that there is something so unknown. Foma tries to understand why he lives, but does not find an answer. Gorky knew that there are values ​​in a person, the loss of which is the moral death of a person.

In communicating with different people. Thomas's character manifests itself in different ways. He

Disdainful of the poor, while stealing an apple, he first felt the power over people and the power of money. Oddities of character manifest themselves in many ways; he is dreamy and loves to engage in soul-searching. He is interested and curious in comparing the people he meets with himself. They are all trying to teach Thomas something, but he strives to live not according to orders, but is looking for “himself,” his place in life (remember the episode with himself).

Generalization. All these images are given to compare with the main character. Some of them have come to terms with the surrounding reality. Dissatisfaction with their life is a temporary phenomenon. They are more educated, but their predatory nature is covered up by expensive clothes and good external manners. But the principles of life, their philosophy remained the same.

Foma quickly realized the empty ringer and Emelya Yezhov that he was too far from the people about whom he constantly talks.

Only Thomas went completely against the wolf laws of his environment. Romantic ideas about life collided with real life, the laws of which he cannot understand and explain, but he does not want to live by them.

Angrily, as best he can, he protests against lies and hypocrisy, tries to find his place in life, his “I”, in order to feel like a man. He is trying

find people who live and think differently.

Unable to find such people, he pours wine on his suffering soul, sees no way out of the dead end of life, and has lost faith in everyone and everything.

Thus, Thomas replenishes the gallery of extra people.

Name them. Who are they?

(Mtsyri, Evgeny Onegin, Pechorin, Bazarov, etc.)

Suggest a possible future for Thomas, taking into account the historical process

This time.

When was the story written? What time is this?

1899

Conclusion: At the turn of the century, a hero like Thomas is not typical either as a merchant or as a representative of his class, he is only a healthy person who wants a free life, who is cramped within the framework of modernity. He never found his path, his “I”. At the turn of the century, there was no person who could help Thomas find his “I”; he was a like-minded person. Challenging his class, accusing it of the fact that there is no life for a living soul, choosing his own path, Thomas never found it (the path).

Did Gorky manage to show such a person?

And why?

(didn’t study, didn’t read, he didn’t do anything)

Did Thomas know what he lived for? What is it created for?

Here Yezhov and Smolin found their “I”; they did not have the same perception of life as Foma.

You, too, are now standing on the threshold of life, you must choose your path, your

The road of life. We shouldn't be like Thomas, we need to immediately put

A big, bright goal in life.

Homework:

1. Make a table diagram “Image system of the heroes of the story in relation to

To the main character.

Annex 1.

Life lessons?!

Father

“We need to teach you how to live...”

Mayakin

“I will teach you, Thomas.”

Merchants “...only we love

order and life..."

Medynskaya

"We are our lives

To your block

Must do…"

Classmates

You need to study..."

Yezhov

"You need to live

Always in love

Into anything

available to you."

Smolin

“You are a bad student.”

“Stop it, darling! What

are you crazy?"

The novel Foma Gordeev, published in 1899, is considered the first large-scale work. The work tells the story of a young man who inherited his father’s fortune and the family business. In an attempt to continue his activities and increase the capital that his father's labors brought, Thomas, a rebel and a dreamer, suggests that happiness is not measured in money. Finding his own place in life is not easy for the main character. His consolation comes from drunkenness, carousing and ridiculous antics.

History of character creation

Gorky's book is a genre symbiosis. This is a novel that describes the biography of a young man who is in conflict with his native environment. It traces the history of the modern generation - representatives of youth who stand in opposition to the bourgeoisie or submit to it. A novel about education is combined with a novel about generations. The author himself used this formulation.

The characteristics of the heroes used by Gorky give an idea of ​​the typical bourgeois, whose behavior corresponds to certain periods of the construction of capitalism. The writer paints images of merchants of the old school and people of the new formation, providing a complete picture of society and its contradictions. The interpretation of the main character of the work allows us to distinguish him from the described environment. He acts as an opponent to the entire class to which he belongs by status.

The author justifies the actions of Foma Gordeev not by his upbringing or the conditions of his existence, but by the individuality of his character and the nature of his personality. Everything about him rebels against social injustice. The hero dreams of the common good. Foma Gordeev got his name for a reason. Disciple - Thomas bore the nickname Unbeliever. And the surname Gordeev testifies to the excessive pride of its owner.

Novel "Foma Gordeev"

In literary criticism, the image of Foma Gordeev is associated with the image of a rebel opposing the merchant class and the outdated way of life adopted in Tsarist Russia. Thomas's father and godfather were cheerful and invested in their own business. Their descendant, on the contrary, is distinguished by vanity and a desire to resist the usual norms. Life seems to him like a cauldron in which living people are boiling. This gives rise to thoughts in him about the meaning of life.

Throughout the novel, the hero is accompanied by symbols. One of them is the owl, interpreted as an image of wisdom. Gorky cites as an example a situation from the character’s childhood, when Foma and his friends drove an owl and forced it to hide. The hero is in the same position at the moment of meeting the reader.

A man is characterized by a trait inherent in the heroes of Russian literature: half-asleep consciousness. It is combined with the understandable desire of youth to cut from the shoulder, attract attention and lead. Thus, Thomas himself leads himself to an intrapersonal conflict. He tries to assert himself and cannot do this, because he does not find ways for self-realization

Shy and timid, Foma is not able to understand the essence of the situation and its problems. The everyday life of the family business turns out to be not to the hero’s liking. Sublime and decent, he does not tolerate falsehood and is not ready to resort to tricks for the sake of profit. Foma is an esthete. He sees the beauty of nature, people, behavior and work. Admiring the work of a curly-haired guy lifting a barge.

The team of workers fascinates the young man and at the same time irritates him. He wants the common cause to collapse, and this happens. When the work was completed, Gordeev’s anger moved from the team of workers to the barge itself, which had lost its marketable appearance.

Thomas is not adapted to existence in the world around him. He is not ready to listen to other people's instructions. Father, godfather, Lyuba - everyone is trying to teach him about life. But everything is in vain. The hero is doomed to suffering and searching for himself. At first, everyone gives him lessons and instructions, and then leaves the hero, avoiding his melancholy and the need to empathize.

Thomas did not become useful to people and did not do a good deed for anyone. The son of a rich man squandered his fortune without thinking that the money should be used for good. Not trusting in God, the young man believes to death that everything is driven not by the finger of the Lord, but by his personal desire.

Narcissism and a sense of personal superiority control him. Thomas lacks humility and repentance. He is dominated by the strongest sin - pride. The ending of the work demonstrates the defeat of the hero and the victory of justice. He lost his common sense and wandered around the city in a semi-conscious state. The people whom the hero ridiculed now laugh at him. The death of a character is the liberation of the world from his existence, the punishment of his frivolity and shortcomings.

Film adaptations

In 1959, a film was made based on Gorky's novel. The director was Mark Donskoy. The main role was played by the actor. The content of the film coincides with the plot of the book.

A son, Thomas, is born into the merchant's family. The mother dies during childbirth, so the child is assigned to be raised by his godfather. By the age of 6, the boy is taken in by his father, who wants to raise Foma as a future merchant, a tough and unyielding continuer of the family business.

The hero does not find himself in life. After the death of his father, he squanders his fortune, not getting pleasure from carousing and senseless spending. People in his circle become strangers, and an irreconcilable conflict arises between Foma and society. At the end of the story, Gordeev is declared insane. He ends his days on the margins of life, standing in line for soup at the charity home financed by his father.

• The Maly Theater of the USSR produced a television production based on Gorky's work "Foma Gordeev". Photos of the set design and actors in the characters are posted on the Internet. The director of the production is Boris Lvov-Anokhin. The main role was played by the actor.

Quotes

“Is it really possible that a person is born to work, make money, build a house, have children and then die?”

“A person is valuable in his resistance to the force of life - if it is not his, but he twists it in his own way - my respect to him!”

“You never know whose son... Honor is not based on the father, but on the mind...”