Maxim Gorky and the transformation of Johannes Becher’s works in the early 1920s: between the individual and the collective

The First World War and the October Revolution in Russia changed not only the political but also the literary landscape of Europe. Forced to leave his native country in 1921, Maxim Gorky found refuge in Germany, where he experienced a crisis and discovered new European philosophy and modern art. Meanwhile the German poet Johannes Robert Becher found unexpected salvation in Gorky’s work, which later defined his creative method. The article examines the similarities that can be traced in their texts, as well as in their destinies as writers: from the deepest respect and recognition in the Soviet era to the criticism which turned out to be possible with the change of ideology. The article discusses in detail how Becher’s work was transformed under the influence of Marxist and socialist ideas in general, particularly taking into consideration the fact that he was familiar with the works of Maxim Gorky. It is from Gorky’s essay “The Destruction of Personality” that Becher borrows the idea of the “nameless creator”, the creative power of the masses, which became one of the key ideas in his work. In the later period of his career as a writer, enthusiastic acceptance is replaced with disappointment. Instead of merging the personality, the “I”, with the creative power, the energy of the people, as dreamed of by Gorky and sung about in the “Great Plan”, Becher in the end of his life came to the sad conclusion that the “I”, deprived of a name, had dissolved into the totalitarian state. The “destruction of the personality” turned out to be its erasure.