Overcoming Faust: Maksim Gorky in the Perception of Philosopher, Poet, and Aesthetician Aleksandr Gorsky

Abstract

The article examines the attitude of philosopher, poet, and aesthetician Aleksandr Gorsky to the personality and legacy of A.M. Gorky. It outlines the main directions of Gorky’s perception and interpretation by Gorsky. The article argues that Gorsky highlights vitality and projectivity of Gorky’s creative thinking, and considers him a consistent immortalist. The focus is on Gorsky’s unpublished work “Overcoming Faust” (1939–1940), a typical example of philosophical criticism that uses philological methods of analysis. Gorsky examines Faustianism through the prism of the rejection of individualism, which is specific for Gorky’s work. Considering the desire for knowledge and action as the defining feature of the Faustian consciousness, Gorsky notes that this desire is constrained and limited by the fact of human mortality and the recognition of the omnipotence of nature. The fact that Faustianism does not aim at overcoming death and eventually comes to terms with with it, allows Gorsky to see Faustianism as a bourgeois type of consciousness. Instead, Gorky, by standing against petty-bourgeois passivity in his work, raises the question about the means to overcome death. Gorky’s early fairy tale “The Girl and Death” is interpreted by Gorsky in the context of the development of life-affirming consciousness that overcomes death by the power of love and devotion to the common cause.

Keywords

• literary and philosophical heritage of aleksandr gorsky
• maksim gorky’s work
• “overcoming faust
• ” criticism of the faustian consciousness
• activism
• projectivity
• immortalism
• philosophical criticism of philistinism
• individualism
• collectivism.