The childhood of Maxim Gorky, one of the best Russian writers, passed on the Volga, in Nizhny Novgorod. His name was Alesha Peshkov at that time, the years spent in his grandfather's house were eventful, not always pleasant, which later allowed Soviet biographers and literary scholars to interpret these memories as accusatory evidence of the depravity of capitalism.
Mature Childhood Memories
In 1913, as a mature man (and he was already forty-five years old), the writer wanted to recall how his childhood passed. The reader was fond of Maxim Gorky, by then the author of three novels, five short stories, a good dozen plays and several good stories. Relations with the authorities were difficult. In 1902, he was an honorary member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, but he was soon stripped of this title for inciting riots. In 1905, the writer entered the RSDLP, which, apparently, definitively forms his class approach to the assessment of his own characters.
At the end of the first decade, an autobiographical trilogy began, which was composed by Maxim Gorky. “Childhood” is the first story. Its opening lines immediately tune into the fact that it was written not for the public, hungry for entertainment. It begins with the difficult scene of his father’s funeral, which the boy remembered in every detail, right down to the eyes closed with five-copeck coins. Despite the rigidity and some detachment of childish perception, the description is really talented, the picture is bright and expressive.
Autobiographical plot
After the death of the father, the mother takes the children and takes them on a ship from Astrakhan to Nizhny Novgorod, to her grandfather. The baby, Alyosha’s brother, dies on the road.
At first they are received kindly, only the exclamations of the head of the family "Oh, you-and-and!" give out the former conflict that arose on the basis of the unwanted marriage of the daughter. Grandfather Kashirin is an entrepreneur, he has his own business, he is engaged in dyeing fabrics. Unpleasant smells, noise, unusual words “vitriol”, “fuchsin” annoy the child. Maxim Gorky’s childhood passed in this turmoil, uncles were rude, cruel and, apparently, stupid, and grandfather possessed all the manners of a home tyrant. But all the hardest, defined as "lead abominations," was ahead.
Characters
A lot of everyday details and a variety of relations between the characters imperceptibly enchant every reader who picked up the first part of the trilogy, written by Maxim Gorky, "Childhood". The main characters of the story talk so that their voices seem to be hovering somewhere nearby, each of them has such an individual manner of speech. Grandmother, whose influence on the formation of the personality of the future writer cannot be overestimated, as if becoming the ideal of kindness, at the same time pugnacious brothers, seized with greed, cause a feeling of disgust.
The Good Affair, the neighbor's parasite, was an eccentric man, but at the same time, obviously, he had an extraordinary intellect. It was he who taught little Alyosha to express the idea correctly and clearly, which undoubtedly influenced the development of literary abilities. Ivan Tsyganok, a 17-year-old foundling brought up in a family, was very kind, which sometimes manifested itself in some oddities. So, going to the market for purchases, he invariably spent less money than was to be expected, and he gave the difference to his grandfather, trying to please him. As it turned out, in order to save money, he stole. Excessive diligence led to his premature death: he overstrained himself, fulfilling his master's assignment.
There will only be gratitude ...
Reading the story "Childhood" by Maxim Gorky, it is difficult not to catch the feeling of gratitude that the author had for the people who surrounded him in his early years. What he received from them enriched his soul, which he himself compared to a hive filled with honey. And nothing that tasted, he was sometimes bitter, and seemingly dirty. Departing from the disgusting grandfather’s home “to people”, he was enriched with life experience enough not to disappear, not to disappear obscurely in a complex adult world.
The story turned out to be eternal. As time has shown, relations between people, often even tied by blood ties, are characteristic of all times and social formations.