“Distant death” in Maxim Gorky's short story “Obsession”

Marianna A. Dudareva; Tatiana V. Shvetsova; Natalia E. Chesnokova; Marina A. Shtanko; Denis G. Bronnikov

doi:10.34069/AI/2021.42.06.1

Marianna A. Dudareva RUDN University, Russian Federation. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4950-2322
Tatiana V. Shvetsova Federal University named after M.V. Lomonosov (NarFU). Arkchangelsk, Russia. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9637-6958
Natalia E. Chesnokova Surgut State University Pedagogical Sciences, Russian Federation. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8973-8068
Marina A. Shtanko Taganrog Institute of Management and Economics, Taganrog, Russia. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2665-2552
Denis G. Bronnikov The Kosygin State University of Russia. Moscow, Russia. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0382-4414

DOI: https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2021.42.06.1

Keywords: Russian literature, Maxim Gorky's work, philosophical questions of the text, mortal subtext, topos, end of the modern period.

Abstract

The paper analyzes the short story “Obsession” written by Maxim Gorky in the Nizhny Novgorod period of his work, which has been given little attention in philological works. On the one hand, the author himself defined its genre as a Christmas tale; on the other hand, this work cannot be brought into line with Christmas tales and short novels by Gogol and Dostoyevsky, since in Gorky’s story, no miracle occurs. However, this small text still deserves literary scholars’ attention. The short story introduces an interesting paradox of artistic space and time: in outward appearance, the action takes place within one room, on the couch, but the hero’s internal experiences, his conflict with the alter ego carry the reader into the distant past, the Christmas days of the main character’s family, and then the imagination, vision that visited Foma Mironovich come to the fore and become a plot-forming feature. The form in which the story content is presented (obsession, dream, delusion) is typologically similar to the structure of Russian folklore tales telling about encountering the phenomena of the “other world”. The results of the study may be of interest to both literary and cultural scholars.

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Author Biographies

Marianna A. Dudareva, RUDN University, Russian Federation.

Candidate of Philology, Senior Lecturer, Russian Language Department No. 2, the Russian Language and General Education Faculty, RUDN University, Russian Federation.

Tatiana V. Shvetsova, Federal University named after M.V. Lomonosov (NarFU). Arkchangelsk, Russia.

Federal University named after M.V. Lomonosov (NarFU). Arkchangelsk, Russia.

Natalia E. Chesnokova, Surgut State University Pedagogical Sciences, Russian Federation.

Candidate of, Associate Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages, Surgut State University Pedagogical Sciences, Russian Federation.

Marina A. Shtanko, Taganrog Institute of Management and Economics, Taganrog, Russia.

Taganrog Institute of Management and Economics, Taganrog, Russia.

Denis G. Bronnikov, The Kosygin State University of Russia. Moscow, Russia.

The Kosygin State University of Russia. Moscow, Russia.

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