Social problems in M. Gorky’s essays on cinema in a historical context

Abstract

The research aims to determine the peculiarities of the notion of cinema at the initial stage of its existence. The essays and short stories by M. Gorky published in the newspapers ‘Nizhegorodskii listok’ and ‘Odesskie novosti’ during the All-Russia Industrial and Art Exhibition 1896 and articles of this period published in the Nizhny Novgorod press served as the research material. Classical and new works on Gorky studies and film studies are involved. The research is novel in that it is the first to address the short story ‘Revenge’ and to restore the journalistic context associated with it. Through a comprehensive analysis of Gorky’s essays on cinema and the short story ‘Revenge’, the mechanism of transformation of journalistic texts into a literary one through the problem-thematic and figurative-motivic complexes is traced. The involvement of a wide range of articles in the synchronous press makes it possible to detect the deep involvement of the writer’s works in the contemporary social and everyday context. As a result of the research, the range of Gorky’s texts related to cinema expands, the social origins of Gorky’s attitude to cinema and his notion of screen art as an illusory ideal world opposed to the harsh reality of life are revealed.

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About this article

Publication history

• Received: October 30, 2023.
• Published: January 30, 2024.

Keywords

• М. Горький
• Всероссийская выставка 1896 г
• кинематограф
• очерки
• Нижний Новгород
• M. Gorky
• All-Russia Exhibition 1896
• cinema
• essays
• Nizhny Novgorod

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