"Childhood" of Maxim Gorky as an autobiographical story. Autobiographical trilogy M

Among the books that had a significant impact on spiritual development of our people, one of the first places is occupied by the trilogy of Maxim Gorky "Childhood", "In People" and "My Universities". Almost every person from school years accompanies the exciting childhood story of Alyosha Peshkov, a boy who went through so many trials, the image of his grandmother is one of the most sublime female images Russian literature.

Gorky's stories had a different effect on each generation - knowledge was also drawn from them. folk life, and hatred for philistinism, for the unbearable burden of labor and oppression, and the forces of protest against humility; in these stories they saw a call for creative activity, for self-education, for teaching, an example of how, despite poverty and lack of rights, a person can break through to culture. They served as a source of faith in the forces of the people, an example of moral stamina.

The stories "Childhood" and "In People" were written by Gorky in 1913-1914 and have since become part of the world classics autobiographical genre, along with such masterpieces of Russian literature as "The Past and Thoughts" by A. Herzen and "Childhood", "Adolescence", "Youth" by L. Tolstoy. Later, in 1923, "My Universities" were written, and thus a complete trilogy, following Tolstoy's example, was formed.

If Tolstoy's story of a hero is, first of all, the story of his quest, his demands on himself, an analytical biography, then the Gorky trilogy is full of action, it is autobiographical, it is a biography, it consists of actions and events. At the same time, it is not only a description privacy, not the history of an individual, these are just stories, works that have the artistic power of generalization. Their material, with all the accuracy of facts and events, was selected not according to the laws of memory and knowledge of an adult, but according to the laws of writing talent. He creates a gallery of types of pre-revolutionary Russia, images that live independently of the biography of the hero.

Gorky tells us in Childhood not what he knows, but what a child could know. The child's vision of the world has its limits, and the author observes them with amazing accuracy. The environment opens before little Alyosha with separate, loosely connected scenes, pictures, the meaning and tragedy of which he is not yet able to appreciate. The death of a father, and right there, at the coffin, a mother giving birth - this painful, incredible combination of circumstances from the very first page plunges us into the element of authentic life. And, starting from this scene, it is the truth, the courage of the truth, that becomes the conquering power and feature of the book. Everything here is authentic. And this is what sets it apart from other books of this genre. The author does not bring here his adult understanding of people, his knowledge and experience. Nothing is done here for entertainment, there are no literary devices, there is no obligatory completeness, making ends meet ... We will never know much from the life of Alyosha Peshkov - how, why the state of the grandfather is upset, where the mother disappears from time to time, why you suddenly have to move to another house ... Over the years, sometimes, from the stories of my grandmother , some circumstances will be clarified, but much for the boy and for us will remain unknown. And, oddly enough, such incompleteness, incomprehensibility of what is happening helps us to better see the world through the eyes of a hero.

The trilogy recreates a vast panorama of life working Russia the end of the nineteenth century. He recreates on a grand scale, with inexorable realism, which requires from the writer not only honesty, but sometimes artistic courage.

One by one, the fates of people of different classes surround us, different professions- dyers, icon painters, clerks, merchants, laundresses, stokers, sailors, prostitutes ... There are dozens of them, probably hundreds of people, and each is unique, each has not only its own history, but also its own understanding of life, its own contradictions, its own wisdom, sinking into the soul of a boy, and then a teenager. The impression of dense population is further enhanced by the brightness of each character, they are all separate, all personalities are significant, strong, rebels, blissful, eccentric, and if, for example, not strong, then most of them still have something special, their own mystery, one's own idea, one's relationship with God, with money, with love, with books... And all this is not composed or even seen. it found in life. Alyosha Peshkov constantly, inquisitively looking for response to eternal questions life. He is interested in every person, I want to understand why people live this way and not otherwise. This is the peculiarity of his character. He is not an observer, not a collector, he is an active, searching hero. The answers of these people - contradictory, paradoxical, shimmering with unexpected meaning - densely saturate the trilogy philosophical thought. Controversy does not subside in the stories. Without suspecting it, all these people are arguing, their statements clash, collide irreconcilably.

“As a child,” Gorky wrote, “I imagine myself as a beehive, where various simple, gray people carried, like bees, their knowledge and thoughts about life, generously enriching my soul with whatever they could. Often this honey was dirty and bitter, but all knowledge is still honey.

Much in the life of Alyosha Peshkov was made by books. They helped to know the vastness of the world, its beauty and diversity. Books not in general, but specific books. Alyosha tells what exactly he liked, what and how he understood. He eagerly read everything that came across - boulevards, books by secondary, random, now forgotten authors, interspersed with the classics: the novels of Salias, Vashkov, Aimard, Xavier de Montepin, poems by Grave, Struzhkin, "The legend of how a soldier saved Peter the Great ”, “Songs” by Beranger, Pushkin’s fairy tales, “Secrets of Petersburg”, Dumas’ novels ... (From the text of the Gorky trilogy, one can compile long lists of books he read, with his annotations-evaluations, and conduct interesting research on Alyosha Peshkov’s reading circle.)

He learns to distinguish good book from bad. He needs to read Tradition twice to understand that this book is weak. It is interesting to follow how the boy's taste is formed and honed. There was an advantage in his disorderly reading - it trained the mind; he learned to navigate in the sea of ​​books, he was free from school authorities. So he independently understood, felt the genius of Pushkin: “Pushkin so surprised me with the simplicity and music of verse that for a long time prose seemed unnatural to me and it was embarrassing to read it.” It must be noted, however, that aesthetic perception Alyosha was prepared to a large extent by the extraordinary poetic gift of his grandmother. From childhood, listening to her songs and fairy tales, he keenly felt the game with a semi-precious word, admiring the beauty and richness of his native language.

Alyosha retold his favorite books to anyone - batmen, sailors, clerks, read aloud, and people eagerly listened to him, sometimes cursed, ridiculed, but they sighed and admired ...

And he read and read avidly: Aksakov, Balzac, Sollogub, Boisgobe, Tyutchev, Goncourt... Books cleansed the soul, gave confidence: he was not alone, he would not disappear on earth. He compared life with books and understood that the "black people" in Paris are not the same as in Kazan, they are bolder, more independent, they do not pray to God so fiercely. But he also begins to critically evaluate the fiction of the characters' relationships in the book, to separate great works from mediocre ones.

Racambol taught him to be persistent, the heroes of Dumas inspired a desire to give himself to some important business. He conveys his impressions of Turgenev, Walter Scott. “Bursa” by Pomyalovsky is similar to the life of an icon-painting workshop: “I know so well the despair of boredom, boiling over into cruel mischief.” Or: "Dickens remained for me a writer, before whom I respectfully bow, - this man amazingly comprehended the most difficult art of loving people."

It is difficult to name other works in which books would be described in the same detail, the impression from them, their influence on human life.

During the years of reaction Bitter started writing autobiographical trilogy. First part - The story "Childhood"- appeared in 1913-1914.

The second part- "In people"- was published in 1916, and the third - "My Universities"- after the revolution, in 1923.

Autobiographical trilogy Gorky- one of the best the most interesting works writer. The first part of it is devoted to the description of the life of Alyosha Peshkov in the family of his grandfather until the time when the boy was given into service in a shoe store. The second part tells about the life of the hero of the trilogy "in people" - from 1878 to 1884. The third part is devoted to the Kazan period - from 1884 to 1888.

The autobiographical genre in Russian literature of the 19th century was represented by such outstanding works as “Childhood”, “Adolescence”, “Youth” by L. N. Tolstoy, “Past and Thoughts” by Herzen, “Family Chronicle” and “Childhood of Bagrov-grandson” Aksakov, "Essays of Bursa" by Pomyalovsky, "Poshekhonskaya antiquity" by Saltykov-Shchedrin. The creative experience of the classics of Russian literature was inherited by Gorky.

Gorky's trilogy is of great value for the study of his life path, to understand the process spiritual development. Gorky talks about his childhood years in the Kashirin family, about all the humiliations and sorrows that he had to experience, about the difficult and joyless life "in people", about his ordeals and intense ideological searches.

But the Gorky trilogy depicts not only dark and cruel morals. The writer glorified the wonderful moral strength of the Russian people, their passionate desire for justice, their spiritual beauty and resilience.

AT The story "Childhood" He wrote: “Our life is amazing not only because a layer of all animal rubbish is so prolific and fat in it, but because bright, healthy and creative nevertheless triumphantly sprouts through this layer, good - human grows, arousing unshakable hope for our rebirth to a light, human life.

Before the reader passes a gallery of simple and good Russian people. Among them: the adopted in the house of the Kashirins - Gypsies, brave, cheerful person with big and good heart; master Gregory with his warmth and love for his work; a man given the odd nickname "Good Deed"; the steamship cook Smury, who got Alyosha interested in reading; Romas and Derenkov, who brought him closer to the revolutionary intelligentsia, and many others.

Akulina Ivanovna Kashirina, Gorky's grandmother, plays a special role in the trilogy. Initially The story "Childhood" Gorky, even intended to call it "Grandma". Akulina Ivanovna is a person of great intelligence, bright artistic talent and sensitive cordial responsiveness.

The protagonist of the book Alyosha Peshkov. Bitter with exceptional depth reveals the process of his moral maturation, the growth in him of a resolute protest against the vulgar, senseless and cruel life of the bourgeoisie, the thirst for a different life, reasonable, beautiful and just.

The protest against the wild mores of the environment gradually develops in the hero of the trilogy into a conscious struggle against the foundations of autocratic power, against the exploitative system as a whole. Impressions of harsh reality, books, revolutionaries, "the music of working life", sung by the writer in Story "My Universities", bring Alyosha Peshkov close to revolutionary conclusions. Trilogy in this sense, it becomes a story about a talented Russian man from lower ranks who conquers all obstacles on his way to the heights of culture, joining the revolutionary struggle for socialism.

In this way, Bitter and in the pre-revolutionary decade he vigorously and passionately fought for the victory of the revolution, asserting the traditions and ideas of progressive literature.

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In 1913 - 1916. Gorky publishes the stories "Childhood" and "In People", where with great artistic power he captured the autobiography of a man from the bottom, who rose to the heights of culture, creativity, and the struggle for freedom. In 1922, the story "My Universities" was published, continuing the writer's artistic autobiography and telling about the Kazan period of his life.

In the Gorky trilogy, the most tangible traditions democratic literature, with which he was connected by a common life material, the fate of an autobiographical hero. This does not in the least exclude a continuity with the trilogy of L. Tolstoy, which for Gorky was an example of the writer's penetration into the psychology of the hero, an artistic study of the "dialectics of the soul." However, unlike the stories of L. Tolstoy and S. Aksakov, who focused on the personal life of the hero, Gorky's trilogy goes beyond the fate of the protagonist - it equally deeply reveals the dialectic of the social environment that shaped the character of Alyosha Peshkov.

In his trilogy, Gorky successfully solved the problem of the hero of time. The complexity of the task lay in the fact that a typical hero had to grow out of an autobiographical character, in the image of which it is not easy to overcome narrowness and subjectivity. The trilogy was written from the position of public understanding of his biography. The diverse human environment in which the hero is placed reveals and shapes his character.

Gorky spoke about the life of the Russian people in the 70s and 80s. XIX century, about the complexity of his path to a new life, about those best representatives of the people who, overcoming difficulties, went forward, made their way to the light, fought for better life.

“Man,” Gorky wrote in My Universities, “is created by his resistance environment". The trilogy also shows those " lead abominations", which arouse the hatred of people, make the reader think about them or, in the words of Dobrolyubov, peck their eyes, persecute, torment, do not give rest - "until the reader becomes disgusted with all the wealth of dirt, so that he, finally hurt to the quick, jumps with passion and uttered: “Yes, what, they say, this is finally hard labor! It’s better to lose my soul, but I don’t want to live in this pool anymore!

The peculiarity of Gorky's stories is that the hero of the trilogy was indignant at the abominations. This hatred was one of the factors in the formation of his character. But this is only one side. If Alyosha Peshkov had brought up in himself only hatred, only a feeling of resistance, he would not have differed either from the heroes of the literature of the 60s, or from the violent characters early works Gorky type of Grigory Orlov or Foma Gordeev. But after all, “our life is amazing not only because the layer of all bestial rubbish is so prolific and fat in it, but because through this layer the bright, healthy and creative nevertheless victoriously grows, the good - human grows, arousing the unshakable hope of rebirth. ours to a light, human life.

The vital material that formed the basis of the trilogy required an emphasis on overcoming abominations, and the hero of the work had a very difficult time in many ways, because their carriers were people close to him; but, on the other hand, this also facilitated the process of liberation from the influence of the old world, for the abominations appeared before Alyosha in all their disgusting essence, not even covered by hypocritical veils.

Especially acute anger causes the boy philistinism, greed. The power of money cripples the human soul. With great artistic power, this truth is revealed in the image of Alyosha's grandfather, Vasily Kashirin. Alyosha respects him for his intelligence, perseverance, hard work. Gorky focuses on the process of transforming this essentially good person from an honest worker into a petty tyrant and a hoarder. Alyosha saw a manifestation of rebellion against tyranny on the part of some members of the Kashirin family, especially on the part of his mother, and this aroused special love and respect for her in the boy.

The brightest memories of Gorky are associated with the image of the grandmother, who played a huge role in educating the character of her grandson. It combines much of the beauty that the Russian people have developed in themselves: stamina and mental health, great love to people and bright optimism, which cannot be overcome by any dark forces. Grandmother taught Alyosha to love people, to see the good in them, “satiated her with strong strength for difficult life". However, the role of the grandmother in the upbringing of Alyosha should not be overestimated. It was necessary to “satiate with strength” for the struggle, but grandmother could not do this, because in order to fight, one must be able to hate evil and in no case reconcile with it. If the grandmother had a share of hatred, then her philosophy of humility and patience reduced this hatred to zero. Alyosha, suffering from injustice, complains about the lives of people, and the grandmother inspires: “You must endure, Olesha!” But the hero of the trilogy "was ill-suited to patience", and this saved him. Having taken all the best from his grandmother, Alyosha went further - in search of those people who could help him to better comprehend the difficult science of life.

Alyosha also saw a “healthy creative beginning” in the master Gregory, in the wonderful Russian guy Vanyusha Tsyganka, in an incomprehensible, but attractive person nicknamed “Good Deed”. A big and bright mark on his life was left by the cook Smury, who aroused in him an interest in the book, and especially Queen Margo, fanned by a romantic haze, which brought up in him a taste for great Russian and world literature.

Books broadened Alyosha's horizons, opened before him some new, bright, unusual life - "a life of great feelings and desires ... I saw that the people around me ... live somewhere away from everything that books are written about, and it is difficult to understand - what is interesting in their life? I don’t want to live such a life ... ”And on the other hand, the books of Russian writers helped to understand the reason for the hard life of the people, moreover, Alexei Peshkov, who had not childishly great life experience, had the opportunity to compare life and books and often noticed a discrepancy, especially in the works of populist literature that idealized the peasant.

Knowledge of life and books, the ability to verify the truth of books with the facts of living reality did what dozens of universities could not do at that time. Alexey Peshkov came to Kazan with certain convictions, with a certain outlook on life and people. That is why the populist utopia could not blind him, and in a dispute with the populists - people with a university education, the "nugget" Peshkov won.

In "My Universities" the hero goes to learn from life, from the people. His striving forward suggests that he will find his way and place in life. Alexey Peshkov emerges victorious because he is connected with the people, because his fate is the fate of the people.

Relying on the new and growing, actively resisting the old and dying, Alexey Peshkov develops in himself the qualities of a real person. Deeply revealing the life of the Russian people in the conditions of the 70s - 80s. XIX century, Gorky condemns those features of the psychology of workers that were an obstacle in their struggle for a better life, and notes the love of freedom of the people, the slow but steady process of the growth of their self-consciousness, typifying best features people in the image of Alyosha Peshkov.

UDK 821.161-321.6

A. F. Tsirulev

O genre specifics trilogies by L. Tolstoy and M. Gorky

The author explores the problem of the trilogy genre and reveals the artistic novelty of M. Gorky's trilogy "Childhood", "In People", "My Universities" and L. Tolstoy's trilogy "Childhood", "Adolescence", "Youth" from the point of view of their genre specifics.

In article is considered problem of the genre to trilogies M. Gorky's "Childhood", "In folk", "My universities" and trilogies L. Tolstoy's "Childhood", "Adolescence", "Youth". The Author reveals artistic novelty two trilogies with standpoint their genre specifics.

Keywords Keywords: L. Tolstoy, "Childhood", "Boyhood", "Youth", genre, M. Gorky, "Childhood", "In People", "My Universities", innovation, autobiography.

Key words: L. Tolstoy, "Childhood", "Adolescence", "Youth", genre, M.Gorky, "Childhood", "In folk", "My universities", innovation, autobiographysm.

The trilogy "Childhood", "In People", "My Universities" appeared in print more than half a century after Tolstoy's "Childhood" was published in Sovremennik. No sooner had M. Gorky's "confession" become the property of the general public than critics almost in unison began to say that it sharply, almost in contrast, differs from Tolstoy's biography.

Pre-revolutionary reviewers actively vary the thesis that L. Tolstoy gives a poetic, blissful picture of life, and M. Gorky, on the contrary, stuns the reader with a string of terrible and cruel scenes that his young autohero is a witness to. “Someday,” we read in one of the works of that time, “for school essays the theme will be set in the gymnasiums: a comparative analysis of both "Childhoods", and the gymnasium students will triumphantly prove that the estate is better than the grimy one, Tolstoy's is more beneficial than Gorky's. Another author, in tone with this statement, adds: “You read and get annoyed. You involuntarily recall the fragrant childhood of Leo Tolstoy. By contrast. Such an evil and rude childhood. They fight, beat, flog in every feuilleton. Approximately in the same spirit, the columnist for Severnye Zapiski, A. Gvozdev, speaks: “It is difficult to imagine a sharper contrast to Leo Tolstoy’s Childhood than what M. Gorky showed in his essays on childhood.”

It is important to note that many pre-revolutionary critics not only "substantially" oppose the trilogy, but also the most decisive

bred two autobiographies according to different sides"aesthetic barricades". So, for example, Vl. Kranihfeld perceives "Childhood", "Boyhood", "Youth" as an example of the classic "story about himself", but Gorky's "Childhood" he denies the right to be called a work of an autobiographical genre. In M. Gorky, in his opinion, we see a completely special type of biography, namely, an autobiography ... without an autobiographical hero. “In Nikolenka Irteniev,” the author of “The Morning of Life” insists, “you can not only guess, but even see future lion Tolstoy. But in M. Gorky, “the reader gets a vivid idea of ​​​​the environment in which little Alyosha Peshkov spent his childhood. But among the numerous portraits of people. the personality of the narrator himself seems to be deliberately obscured.

In Soviet criticism, the tradition of "hard" opposition of the two trilogies has continued to exist for quite a long time. Thesis Vl. Kranichfeld about the "absence of the boy", i.e. autohero - receives support and development in the studies of such authors as I. M. Nusinov, V. A. Desnitsky, F. Levin, N. A. Belkina, B. A. Byalik, B. V. Mikhailovsky, E. B. Tager and others.

Note that we are talking about the genre nature of these works. Tolstoy's "story about himself" is interpreted by the aforementioned critics as an example of an autobiographical genre. Gorky’s “confession” is reduced by some Soviet authors (A. Lezhnev, F. Levin) to “writer’s memoirs”, in which leading role plays a sketchy beginning. Others (B.A. Bialik, and later S.V. Kastorsky) seek to prove that "Childhood", "In People", "My Universities" should be perceived as "a book dominated by a gallery of portraits" . Still others (V. A. Desnitsky, G. A. Brovman, I. M. Nusinov, N. A. Belkina hold the idea that M. Gorky created a new, unique genre - something like an “epic autobiography”. They see in the trilogy a book that recreates not the "history of the individual", but the fate of the people, taken in its entirety, in the midst of a large historical event. “The content of the autobiographical cycle,” says one of the supporters of this concept, “is not a private, but a general history, not the fate of an individual, his relatives, his random life companions, but the fate of the people at this historical stage” . E. B. Tager defines the artistic dominant of Gorky’s biography as follows: “The trilogy has its own constitution ... the selection and arrangement of images are determined not by the requirements of romantic intrigue, but by the tasks of a different, epic plan: each new character, emerging under Gorky's pen, is a facet of some big whole - the epic image of Russia, Russian folk life ".

However, a comparative analysis of two famous autobiographies shows that in terms of artistic and poetic these works are not as far apart from each other as it might seem. From our point of view, Gorky, the autobiographer, in comprehending his personal experience, follows the path opened by his great predecessor. If L. Tolstoy makes the main means of depicting the character, personality of his hero, showing the “dialectics of the soul”, then M. Gorky also “does not limit himself to depicting the results of the mental process: he is interested in the process itself, and the subtle phenomena of this inner life ...” . In both trilogies we are dealing with poetic structure, the basis of which is the reproduction of the inner spiritual history of the personality of the autohero. In other words, the plot basis of both autobiographies is formed by the history of the growth of human consciousness. Along with the depiction of the environment and pictures of Russian life, both artists brilliantly recreate what and how their characters feel, how their cognitive thought grows, and how this process is reflected in their morality and spiritual self-determination.

At the same time, there is no need to talk about the artistic identity of the two trilogies. Both writers turn to showing the inner, spiritual evolution of their characters. However, Tolstoy's "dialectics of consciousness" is by no means identical to Gorky's "dialectics of consciousness", for writers set themselves different aesthetic tasks.

The basis of Tolstoy's biography is the "poeticization of life", which is most closely connected with the indefatigable desire of the artist to infect his reader with a truly moral attitude to life. All Tolstoy's autobiography is imbued with the spirit of reverence for life, for its various forms and manifestations. Love for life, admiration for it, attitude towards it as the highest and incommensurable value of human existence pervades all three books of the trilogy. With the cutting off of episodes and fragments associated with the figurative realization of the idea of ​​poetizing life, the trilogy as a single artistic whole will disintegrate and turn into a kind of philosophical and ethical treatise.

In accordance with this attitude, L. Tolstoy masters a completely unique form of his “ artistic confession". He creates a special - "poetic" autobiography, in which the ethical problems of being are accentuated. The unique combination of two plans - "poetic" and ethical (ie moral), expressed through the dialectic of consciousness, forms the original spirit, "unique genre physiognomy" of his trilogy.

Unlike L. Tolstoy, the creator of "Childhood", "In People", "My Universities" relies not so much on the inner spirit of a person, but on a radical renewal of all Russian life as a whole. To

reveal the inconsistency of the social world order, M. Gorky actively saturates his confession with the "epic element". He introduces broad pictures of Russian life into the narrative fabric, outlines dramatic fates many of Alyosha's "life partners" and creates a panoramic canvas Russian life on the eve of the inevitable, according to the author, social changes.

As a result, Gorky's biography acquires the dimensions of an "autobiography-generalization". The author of "Childhood", "In People", "My Universities" comes up with the concept of "Rus", i.e. gives an interpretation of the entire Russian public life depicted period. There is no such social scale, such a level of artistic generalization in Tolstoy's trilogy, as, indeed, in the entire pre-Gorky autobiographical tradition. All this speaks in favor of the fact that M. Gorky creates a special type of artistic autobiography, in which the “story about oneself” is combined with the expression of certain social ideas that form the concept of “salvation”, the renewal of Russia. In his “confession”, the criticism of the “old, sick world” is balanced, harmonized by the image of the growth of that force that will sooner or later blow up the “endless chain of hostility and cruelty” - the force called “revolutionary mind”. With the birth of a new consciousness, a new Gorky Hero is also born.

So, the “dialectic of consciousness”, showing life through the analysis of internal perception, the study of the very mechanism of the origin of the feelings and thoughts of a small person - this is what brings together, brings together the works in question and sets them apart in the Russian autobiographical tradition. Along with this, continuing the artistic tradition of intense searches in the field of the human mind, M. Gorky, on the basis of showing the dialectic of soul and thought, creates an autobiography that becomes a discovery both in terms of worldview and in terms of artistic form.

In contrast to the "ethical autobiography" of L. Tolstoy, in which the synthesis of "poetic" and moral principles serves to reveal the inner capabilities of the individual, M. Gorky creates an autobiography of a heroic-revolutionary type, in which thought is glorified and which is designed to convince the reader of the need for a radical renewal of the Russian world .

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14. Chernyshevsky N. G. Childhood and adolescence. The writings of Count L.N. Tolstoy. Military stories of Count L. N. Tolstoy // Chernyshevsky N. G. Collected works in five volumes. - M.: Pravda, 1974. - T. 3. - S. 332-346.

"My Universities" is the final part of Maxim Gorky's trilogy about the formation of the personality of the young Alexei Peshkov. Work on it was completed in 1923, when the writer was in exile, according to one version, due to the aggravation of ideological differences with new government. Life in Berlin and Prague gave Gorky the opportunity in a calm atmosphere to rethink his attitude to the events taking place in his homeland, in Soviet Russia. It is no coincidence that one of the leading storylines of the story is the participation of the hero in revolutionary activities.

The hero of the last story is a grown-up young man who forever said goodbye to orphan childhood and adolescence. Very touching is Alyosha's farewell to his grandmother, who asks him not to be strict and arrogant, like his grandfather Vasily Kashirin, who, according to his grandmother, became a fool. Both are well aware that they are no longer destined to see each other, which is why parting has a taste of bitterness.

In a new place, in Kazan, life does not immediately settle down, since Alyosha's conscience does not allow Alyosha to live on the beggarly pension of his friend's mother. Realizing that he will have to say goodbye to the dream of entering Kazan University for the time being, the young man begins an independent working life.

Soon fate brings him to the revolutionaries. Of course, this part of the work was created solely on the basis of the personal impressions of the author himself, who by that time had behind him the experience of working in an illegal Marxist circle of workers at a paper factory. Alyosha, on the other hand, takes part in the work of the “secret room” located in the bakery, where the young man not only kneaded the dough, but also delivered bread, distributing it along with forbidden literature. Previously, the word "forbidden" attracted him with its mystery, but later he experienced great disappointment, even trying to commit suicide.

The title of the story "My Universities" is, of course, largely symbolic. Never having entered the coveted university, Alyosha receives more important knowledge - his own life experience. Working in a bakery, in a merchant's shop, as a loader on the pier, he sees how the heroes of the books he once read come to life before his eyes.

Aleksey's "universities" become a motley, many-sided life. In Kazan, he knew hard work and saw scary world slums of Marusovka, here he understood great power labor. This was most clearly manifested in the scene of unloading near Kazan, when a barge with Persian goods ran aground, breaking through the bottom. That night, the hero not only admired the work of the loaders' artel - his soul "was lit up with the desire to live his whole life in this half-mad delight of doing." And he began to attend an illegal populist circle. The question of what needs to be done to change the life of the people becomes the main one for Peshkov.

It should be noted that there have already been trilogies about childhood, adolescence and youth in the history of literature, but basically they recreated the history of young man from a noble, bourgeois or raznochinsk milieu. Gorky's autobiographical trilogy is dedicated to the story of a young proletarian - a native of the people, who was to take an active part in the struggle against royal power and the bourgeoisie.

In general, a new concept of personality is associated with the name of Maxim Gorky in literature. A person not only reacts to the life around him, but also creates it, realizes himself not in the sphere of private life, but in the public arena. And in the new type of realism, asserted by Gorky, as typical circumstances that have an impact on the formation of the personality, there is also historical time but to a man, a hero new literature socialist realism, entrusted to act as the creator of modern history.

The writer in his work outlined two possible types of relationship with history: contact with time and alienation from it. Alyosha Peshkov, throughout his entire personal development, overcomes alienation and seems to be on a par with it. It opens up to the time, absorbs it into itself. His fate is put at the center of the narrative of each part of the trilogy, but at the same time the young man comes into direct contact with the era, and this, of course, places a huge burden of historical responsibility on him.

Another feature of the story "My Universities" is the change in the worldview of the protagonist. When he lived in the Kashirins' house, he often encountered manifestations of the repulsive and cheesy. However, the grandmother nevertheless helped Alyosha grow up as a real person: she brought up in him the ability not only to respect, but to love people. Sometimes in the mind of a growing young man the contradictions between book fiction and reality. But he stubbornly tried to rethink the complex life phenomena and facts, independently sought a way out of the most difficult situations.

The writer leaves open the ending of both the story and the entire trilogy: Alexei does not even try to enter the university, but on the contrary, together with Barinov, he goes to the very thick of the working people - to the fishing artel off the coast of the Caspian Sea. This is where the hero's ability to accept time is manifested, and not to reject it, which for Maxim Gorky becomes the most important criterion for assessing a person.

• "My Universities", a summary of the novel by Maxim Gorky