Information about the author:
Oleg A. Kling
Oleg A. Kling, DSc in Philology, Professor, Head of the Department of Theory of Literature, Philological Faculty, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Leninskiye Gory, 1, 119991 Moscow, Russia; Leading Research Fellow, А.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 а, 121069 Moscow, Russia.
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ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1543-5253
Acknowledgements:
This article was prepared in A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences as part of the Russian Science Foundation grant (RSF, project № 21-18-00131, “A.M. Gorky in Germany: the Writer and his Environment in the Socioсultural and Literary-Media Space”).
Abstract:
Memoirs are an important source for the reconstruction of A.M. Gorky’s life and work in Germany. The German period (1921–1923) takes an important place in the relationship between A.M. Gorky and V.F. Khodasevich. This stage of Gorky’s life and work is the least studied. The Berlin surroundings of Gorky, who played an important role in the German sociocultural and literary-media space, were extremely wide, but it was V.F. Khodasevich who occupied a special place in it. Through the study of his relationship with Gorky, it is possible to recreate much in the writer’s German period — Khodasevich’s text is important for filling gaps in it. Khodasevich is not only a participant, but also the first historian of an important Gorky undertaking — the journal Beseda (1923). Khodasevich’s assessments and judgments, and his Gorky text, are central to the reconstruction of Gorky’s fate in the German period. The nature of N.N. Berberova’s book “My Italics” is complex: both literary and memoir. However, Berberova’s “Gorky text” is emphatically documentary. It is created by diary entries made in the home of the writer. Berberova’s recollections of Gorky help to reconstruct the little-studied German period of the writer’s life and work. This reconstruction was partly carried out by V.F. Khodasevich. But this experience does not diminish the value of Berberova’s book. Berberova’s Italics is a kind of chronicle of Gorky’s life, including his staying in Germany, which is important for chronicling the writer’s life and work. In Berberova, the temporal organization of the description of the first meeting with Gorky is dominated by the evening. The semantic center of Gorky’s life in Saarow is the Sunday dinner at the writer’s home. Formally, Gorky’s German period covered the years 1921–1923. However, Berberova raises the upper bar not on the geographical principle to 1924.