Stories of M. Gorky's unimplemented plans: why the stories “Mother” and “Son” never become a diology

The creative heritage of any writer or poet can hardly be considered complete without studying his unrealized ideas. Without them, it is quite difficult to fully understand the artistic and ideological and aesthetic world of the author. This fully applies to the work of A.M. Gorky. His legacy is also diverse and multi-layered in composition. A large number of the works of this writer have received wide recognition all over the world, many research works are devoted to them, not only by Russian but also by for eign authors. The situation is somewhat worse with Gorky’s so-called unrealized plans, which, for one reason or another, received less attention or went completely unnoticed. Perhaps this happened because the researchers considered the topic of unrealized ideas unpromising. However, these gaps need to be filled. The purpose of this article is to fill in the gaps in the study of Gorky’s early work, associated with failed plans; present the history of the creation of the story “Son” as the least studied in Gorky studies; find out why the stories “Mother” and “Son” didn’t become a dilogy; to understand what artistic technique unites unrealized ideas in Gorky’s work. The goals set put forward a number of tasks, some of which determine the scientific novelty of this article: in the course of the study, the stories of several of the most famous unrealized ideas of the writer, which were quite fully studied by philologists, were named and highlighted; Gorky’s least studied unrealized plan is presented in more detail - the story “Son” - a continuation of the story “Mother”; the reasons why the dilogy did not take place are indicated.