The Monastery In “The Life Of Matvei Kozhemyakin” By M. Gorky

Abstract

The article offers a study of the Maxim Gorky concept of rational religiosity (God-Building) in the novel “The Life of Matvei Kozhemyakin” by Maxim Gorky. The novel contains two distinct artistic plans: traditions and innovations. The genre, thematic, interpretative (the perception of the monastery as a model of heaven on earth and as a battlefield between good and evil forces) traditions are combined with the author’s insertions which in the described accentuate social contradictions, acquiring an exaggerated character in the monastery, and desacralize the monastery’s space by means of escalating details with a negative connotation in the description of the monastery daily life. In the aspect of the God-Building concept consecutively propounded by Maxim Gorky, the theme of the monastery sounds unique. From the point of view of Gorky as a collectivist, a monastery (monos – “lonely, solitary”) is neither a way nor a place to comprehend the meaning of a person’s own existence. The writer treats with trepidation both the monastery as a centuries-old tradition of organizing human shared living and monks who traditionally evoked a feeling of genuine respect among common people. However, the model of the monastery, exposed to artistic desacralization in the novel, is perceived by M. Gorky as non-constructive, requiring transformation into other forms of social existence, where the people themselves, their strength and the spirit which are transforming the world would become the basis for building a new – harmonious and fair – social world order.