The publicistic strategies of Gorky as feuilletonist (on the material of the cycle “Cursory notes”)

The cycle of M. Gorky's feuilletons “Cursory Notes” published in the newspaper “Nizhegorodsky Listok” during the 16th All-Russian industrial and art exhibition, was recently introduced into scientific circulation in full format. In 2017, according to the results of the archival work, as part of celebrating the 150th anniversary of the writer, the book “Cursory Notes. Nizhny Novgorod Journalism of Maxim Gorky” was published in Nizhny Novgorod. The analysis of the articles of the cycle allows us to draw conclusions about how the journalistic style of young Gorky was formed, the distinctive feature of which is a pronounced critical pathos. All articles of the cycle are interconnected by the presence of cross-cutting themes and motifs. Thus, the concepts of “cultural”, “Russian”, “European” are becoming important markers for expressing the author's attitude to exhibits of various kinds. On the other hand, from the very first feuilleton to each subsequent one, these concepts gradually acquire new meanings and contexts, ensuring the ideological unity of the cycle. The journalistic strategy of Gorky as feuilletonist, whose goal is to summarize the ideological and emotional characteristics of the exhibition and fair, determined the peculiarities of the selection of the facts used to prove the validity of the assessments made, their layout in the narration, various speech markers that characterize the scientific, conversational, business styles used by the author in the text of one feuilleton. The conducted analysis allows us to conclude that the individual manner of journalistic utterance was formed in the works of Gorky as feuilletonist, the features of which will then be embodied in his essays, articles and feuilletons of the early 1900s.