Mother by Maxim Gorky

At the turn of the twentieth century, the writings of Maxim Gorky of Russia aroused interest throughout the world in their dramatic presentation of the struggles taking place. His representations of the bitter lives of the people of Russia caused a sensation whenever they were published or produced on stage. Mother is one of the most famous of these early works, and it is his only long work devoted to the Russian Revolutionary Movement. Most of Gorky's early novels fail to be sustained by a persistent, powerful narrative, succumbing to frequent and irrelevant philosophical digressions, but as a motherly stand-alone and moving portrayal. If Mother is propaganda, it is propaganda raised to the level of art.

Although Gorky wrote about a proletariat and a naturalistic vein, he was not fundamentally concerned with politics, and his works exhibited a marked lyric talent that imbues his writing with a haunting poetic quality. Gorky's concern was with dogma or morality rather than strong, vital, memorable characters. He envisioned a future in which vigorous people would free themselves from their economic degradation and live as free, independent spirits. He was a dogmatist rather than a visionary. This fact is evident in Mother, in which Pelagueya Vlasova, through her son of love, converts to the revolutionary cause and gradually comes to love as her children. Gorky was heavily inspired by self-made individuals, men and women with courage to carry out their plans, and he as a reader admired them. This novel in Gorky's vision of The Lyric Sweep is compelling.

A mother's unconditional love novel by One of the World’s Great Writers Mother- the emotional classic of Maxim Gorky, one of the world’s best-loved writers, is the story of the radicalization of an uneducated woman. From her dull peasant existence into active participation in her people’s struggle for justice. Through her work she frees herself from the cowed state into which she has been beaten, and her simple motherly concern for her son becomes a motherly concern for all oppressed. To read Mother is to undergo a great emotional experience. It is a novel of strength and power, a tribute to the dignity of the individual. As one well-known literary critic puts it: “and then I came on Mother, the first of Gorky I had ever seen, and much of what I had read became thin and tasteless by comparison. It was tapestry after cotton and burlap, living, breathing people after cardboard cutouts... it was the hope and zeal of all human beings.” Maxim Gorky's Mother is a slice of the revolutionary cake in which Russia's slaving class was munching on giddily during the steamy years of 1905-1907, the 'dress rehearsal' to the 1917 Revolution. But even though the revolutionary masses were ultimately re-subordinated to tsardom, the novel preserves throughout time the spirit that its combative participants were once stirred by.

M.N.D . peiris 

MAPT/19/B1/08.