The Nietzschean Paradigm of Beauty in Maxim Gorky’s Poetics

This article substantiates the hypothesis that, either due to censorship considerations or inertia, scholars of prose of the crisis of consciousness era have inadequately understood Gorky’s “law of beauty” and, consequently, have interpreted the writer’s works either independently or on the periphery of their “axis of meaning.” A complex worldview is at the heart of the content of his works, starting with his debut publications, and the view of Gorky is an entirely “proletarian writer” is questionable. According to the author, Gorky’s appreciation of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, which had developed even before the beginning of his writing career, is clearly visible in his works, which are atheistic and devoid of metaphysical dimensions. An unbiased analysis of Gorky’s artistic world reveals the fact that the author has no empathy for either the “masses” or their individual representatives. This extremely cruel world of “lead abominations” is precisely what the people who inhabit it are: “neighbors” — in Nietzsche’s ironic definition, and “failed people” — in Gorky’s understanding. The author agrees with the opinion that Gorky developed his worldview and understanding of man through suffering, which explains his equally understanding (aesthetic), if not sympathetic, narrator’s attitude to the characters he creates — the vile, the pathetic, and the faceless, united by contempt for the norms of Christian morality and ethics. The author finds that the Nietzschean paradigm underlies the writer’s attitude toward revolution and, later, toward the “reforging” of the masses. Examining Gorky’s works in connection with “modernist” philosophy leads to the conclusion that his humanism, noted by the authors of many publications, is neither Christian nor class-based, but specifically Nietzschean.