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157-575: Konstantin Stanislavki and the Moscow Art Theatre premiered a dramatic version of the story in May 1930. A ballet version with music by V. Oransky was presented in 1935. It has also been turned into an opera (composer, V. Rubin, 1956), a film , cartoon movies, diafilm (filmstrip), several comic versions, several radio versions, and a computer game. The events occur at an unnamed country on

314-450: A Naturalistic external surface to the characters' subtextual , inner world. Both had stressed the importance of achieving a unity of all theatrical elements in their work. Their production attracted enthusiastic and unprecedented worldwide attention for the theatre, placing it "on the cultural map for Western Europe", and it has come to be regarded as a seminal event that revolutionised the staging of Shakespeare's plays. It became "one of

471-622: A political novel of the 1920s is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . See guidelines for writing about novels . Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page . Konstantin Stanislavski Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski ( Russian : Константин Сергеевич Станиславский , IPA: [kənstɐnʲˈtʲin sʲɪrˈɡʲejɪvʲɪtɕ stənʲɪˈslafskʲɪj] ; né   Alekseyev ; 17 January [ O.S. 5 January] 1863 – 7 August 1938)

628-483: A "return to realism " in a production of Gogol's The Government Inspector as soon as The Blue Bird had opened. At a theatre conference on 21 March [ O.S. 8 March] 1909, Stanislavski delivered a paper on his emerging system that stressed the role of his techniques of the "magic if" (which encourages the actor to respond to the fictional circumstances of the play "as if" they were real) and emotion memory. He developed his ideas about three trends in

785-472: A "theatre studio" (a term which he invented) that would function as "a laboratory for the experiments of more or less experienced actors." The Theatre-Studio aimed to develop Meyerhold's aesthetic ideas into new theatrical forms that would return the MAT to the forefront of the avant-garde and Stanislavski's socially conscious ideas for a network of "people's theatres" that would reform Russian theatrical culture as

942-455: A 'literary' explanation, but speaking in terms of the play's dynamic, its action, the thoughts and feelings of the protagonists , the world in which they lived. His account flowed uninterruptedly from moment to moment. Benedetti argues that Stanislavski's task at this stage was to unite the realistic tradition of the creative actor inherited from Shchepkin and Gogol with the director-centred, organically unified Naturalistic aesthetic of

1099-741: A Girl " (written in the 1890s); plays The Philistines (1901), The Lower Depths (1902) and Children of the Sun (1905); a poem, " The Song of the Stormy Petrel " (1901); his fictional autobiographical trilogy, My Childhood, In the World, My Universities (1913–1923); and a novel, Mother (1906). Gorky himself judged some of these works as failures, and Mother has been frequently criticized; Gorky thought of Mother as one of his biggest failures. However, there have been warmer appraisals of some of his lesser-known post-revolutionary works such as

1256-461: A classical text. He began to inflect his technique of dividing the action of the play into bits with an emphasis on improvisation; he would progress from analysis, through free improvisation, to the language of the text: I divide the work into large bits clarifying the nature of each bit. Then, immediately, in my own words, I play each bit, observing all the curves. Then I go through the experiences of each bit ten times or so with its curves (not in

1413-589: A coherent, systematic methodology, which built on three major strands of influence: (1) the director-centred, unified aesthetic and disciplined, ensemble approach of the Meiningen company ; (2) the actor-centred realism of the Maly ; and (3) the Naturalistic staging of Antoine and the independent theatre movement. The system cultivates what Stanislavski calls the "art of experiencing" (to which he contrasts

1570-536: A conclusion." Reflecting in 1908 on the Theatre-Studio's demise, Stanislavski wrote that "our theatre found its future among its ruins." Nemirovich disapproved of what he described as the malign influence of Meyerhold on Stanislavski's work at this time. Stanislavski engaged two important new collaborators in 1905: Liubov Gurevich became his literary advisor and Leopold Sulerzhitsky became his personal assistant. Stanislavski revised his interpretation of

1727-402: A crucial milestone for the fledgling company that has been described as "one of the greatest events in the history of Russian theatre and one of the greatest new developments in the history of world drama ." Despite its 80 hours of rehearsal—a considerable length by the standards of the conventional practice of the day—Stanislavski felt it was under-rehearsed. The production's success was due to

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1884-416: A director. He became interested in the aesthetic theories of Vissarion Belinsky , from whom he took his conception of the role of the artist. On 5 July [ O.S. 23 June] 1889, Stanislavski married Maria Lilina (the stage name of Maria Petrovna Perevostchikova). Their first child, Xenia, died of pneumonia in May 1890 less than two months after she was born. Their second daughter, Kira,

2041-417: A discussion of what he would come to call the "through-line" for the characters (their emotional development and the way they change over the course of the play). This production is the earliest recorded instance of his practice of analysing the action of the script into discrete "bits". At this stage in the development of his approach, Stanislavski's technique was to identify the emotional state contained in

2198-615: A final decision on this is made by voting of the Odesa City Council . Monuments of Maxim Gorky are installed in many cities. Among them: On 6 December 2022 the City Council of the Ukrainian city Dnipro decided to remove from the city all monuments to figures of Russian culture and history , in particular it was mentioned that the monuments to Gorky, Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lomonosov would be removed from

2355-782: A financially successful author, editor, and playwright, Gorky gave financial support to the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), as well as supporting liberal appeals to the government for civil rights and social reform. The brutal shooting of workers marching to the Tsar with a petition for reform on 9 January 1905 (known as the "Bloody Sunday" ), which set in motion the Revolution of 1905 , seems to have pushed Gorky more decisively toward radical solutions. He became closely associated with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov 's Bolshevik wing of

2512-469: A fixed way, not being consistent). Then I follow the successive bits in the book. And finally, I make the transition, imperceptibly, to the experiences as expressed in the actual words of the part. Stanislavski's struggles with both the Molière and Goldoni comedies revealed the importance of an appropriate definition of what he calls a character's "super-task" (the core problem that unites and subordinates

2669-444: A greater attention to "inner action" and a more intensive investigation of the actor's process. He began to develop the more actor-centred techniques of " psychological realism " and his focus shifted from his productions to rehearsal process and pedagogy . He pioneered the use of theatre studios as a laboratory in which to innovate actor training and to experiment with new forms of theatre . Stanislavski organised his techniques into

2826-628: A note before dying. Suok releases Prospero, who manages to flee. This time the uprising is successful. After it ends, Tutti and Suok appear before the people and read out the note given by the prisoner. He was once a man named Toub, a great scholar who made the doll for Tutti at the Three Fat Men's order, to replace Suok, who was his twin sister. Suok was sold to the circus. Then the Fat Men demanded he replace Tutti's heart with an iron one, and, once he refused, caged him. This article about

2983-534: A paid informer. Before his death from a lingering illness in June 1936, he was visited at home by Stalin, Yagoda, and other leading communists, and by Moura Budberg , who had chosen not to return to the USSR with him but was permitted to stay for his funeral. The sudden death of Gorky's son Maxim Peshkov in May 1934 was followed by the death of Maxim Gorky himself in June 1936 from pneumonia. Speculation has long surrounded

3140-413: A personal friend of Vladimir Lenin after they met in 1902. He exposed governmental control of the press (see Matvei Golovinski affair). In 1902, Gorky was elected an honorary Academician of Literature, but Tsar Nicholas II ordered this annulled. In protest, Anton Chekhov and Vladimir Korolenko left the academy. From 1900 to 1905, Gorky's writings became more optimistic. He became more involved in

3297-515: A physical action, he assumed at this point in his experiments, the actor's repetition of that action would evoke the desired emotion. As with his experiments in The Drama of Life , they also explored non-verbal communication , whereby scenes were rehearsed as "silent études " with actors interacting "only with their eyes". The production's success when it opened in December 1909 seemed to prove

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3454-541: A play", Stanislavski argued, "is to take action in the given circumstances." Just as the First Studio, led by his assistant and close friend Leopold Sulerzhitsky , had provided the forum in which he developed his initial ideas for the system during the 1910s, he hoped to secure his final legacy by opening another studio in 1935, in which the Method of Physical Action would be taught. The Opera-Dramatic Studio embodied

3611-471: A revised, Russian-language edition in 1926), though its account of his artistic development is not always accurate. Three English-language biographies have been published: David Magarshack 's Stanislavsky: A Life (1950) ; Jean Benedetti's Stanislavski: His Life and Art (1988, revised and expanded 1999). and Nikolai M Gorchakov's "Stanislavsky Directs" (1954). An out-of-print English translation of Elena Poliakova's 1977 Russian biography of Stanislavski

3768-525: A sarcastic saying: Destroy homosexuality and fascism will disappear." Gorky was a strong and sincere supporter of such Stalinist policies as usage of forced labour, collectivization and " dekulakization " and the show trials against the saboteurs of the Plan, but being a propagandist for such policies wasn't his main role; he was regarded as an "ideological asset" to personify the myth of the "proletarian culture" and bring literature, as Tovah Yedlin writes, under

3925-449: A sensational success and his career as a writer began. Gorky wrote incessantly, viewing literature less as an aesthetic practice (though he worked hard on style and form) than as a moral and political act that could change the world. He described the lives of people in the lowest strata and on the margins of society, revealing their hardships, humiliations, and brutalisation, but also their inner spark of humanity. Gorky's reputation grew as

4082-499: A similar statement that such "legends" represent "the essence of reality", but if the boy existed, it would be impossible for Gorky to "take the boy with him" even with his reputation of a "great proletarian writer": for example, Gorky had to spend over 2 years to free Julia Danzas . Gorky also helped other political prisoners (not without the influence of his wife, Yekaterina Peshkova ). For example, because of Gorky's interference Mikhail Bakhtin 's initial verdict (5 years of Solovki)

4239-555: A strong dislike of Gumilev, but he nevertheless promised to do something. He could not keep his promise because the sentence of death was announced and carried out with unexpected haste, before Gorky had got round to doing anything." In October, Gorky returned to Italy on health grounds: he had tuberculosis . In July 1921, Gorky published an appeal to the outside world, saying that millions of lives were menaced by crop failure. The Russian famine of 1921–22 , also known as Povolzhye famine, killed an estimated 5 million, primarily affecting

4396-457: A strong staff on my road, which was neither even nor easy. I believe that Jewish wisdom is more all-human and universal than any other; and this not only because of its immemorial age...but because of the powerful humaneness that saturates it, because of its high estimate of man." He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime and was arrested many times. Gorky befriended many revolutionaries and became

4553-432: A unique literary voice from the bottom stratum of society and as a fervent advocate of Russia's social, political, and cultural transformation. By 1899, he was openly associating with the emerging Marxist social-democratic movement, which helped make him a celebrity among both the intelligentsia and the growing numbers of "conscious" workers. At the heart of all his work was a belief in the inherent worth and potential of

4710-516: A whole. Central to Meyerhold's approach was the use of improvisation to develop the performances. When the studio presented a work-in-progress, Stanislavski was encouraged; when performed in a fully equipped theatre in Moscow, however, it was regarded as a failure and the studio folded. Meyerhold drew an important lesson: "one must first educate a new actor and only then put new tasks before him", he wrote, adding that "Stanislavski, too, came to such

4867-476: Is always weak-willed and subject to emotions and moods." Gorky's best-known publication of the period were concerning antisemitism , written in response of the severe Tsarist repressions against the Jews, and an essay "Two Souls", which contrasted "the passive East" with "the active West" and promoted the values of European culture and progress and urged Russia break free from the "Eastern-Asiatic" "soul" and encouraged

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5024-409: Is interpreted as simply, as true to life, as we play Chekhov". He also staged other important Naturalistic works, including Gerhart Hauptmann 's Drayman Henschel , Lonely People , and Michael Kramer and Leo Tolstoy 's The Power of Darkness . In 1904, Stanislavski finally acted on a suggestion made by Chekhov two years earlier that he stage several one-act plays by Maurice Maeterlinck ,

5181-592: The Meiningen Ensemble . In My Life in Art (1924), Stanislavski described this approach as one in which the director is "forced to work without the help of the actor". From 1894 onward, Stanislavski began to assemble detailed prompt-books that included a directorial commentary on the entire play and from which not even the smallest detail was allowed to deviate. Whereas the Ensemble's effects tended toward

5338-570: The OGPU ) who vested interest in spying on Gorky, and two other OGPU officers, Semyon Firin and Matvei Pogrebinsky , who held high office in the Gulag . Pogrebinsky was Gorky's guest in Sorrento for four weeks in 1930. The following year, Yagoda sent his brother-in-law, Leopold Averbakh to Sorrento, with instructions to induce Gorky to return to Russia permanently. Gorky's return from Fascist Italy

5495-639: The Perestroika . The essays call Lenin a tyrant for his senseless arrests and repression of free discourse, and an anarchist for his conspiratorial tactics; Gorky compares Lenin to both the Tsar and Nechayev . He was a member of the Committee for the Struggle against Antisemitism within the Soviet government. In 1921, he hired a secretary, Moura Budberg , who later became his mistress. In August 1921,

5652-465: The " art of representation "). It mobilises the actor's conscious thought and will to activate other, less-controllable psychological processes—such as emotional experience and subconscious behaviour—sympathetically and indirectly. In rehearsal, the actor searches for inner motives to justify action and the definition of what the character seeks to achieve at any given moment (a "task"). Stanislavski's earliest reference to his system appears in 1909,

5809-514: The Belgian Symbolist . Despite his enthusiasm, however, Stanislavski struggled to realise a theatrical approach to the static , lyrical dramas. When the triple bill consisting of The Blind , Intruder , and Interior opened on 15 October [ O.S. 2 October], the experiment was deemed a failure. Meyerhold , prompted by Stanislavski's positive response to his new ideas about Symbolist theatre, proposed that they form

5966-523: The Bolsheviks, and the founder of the increasingly canonical " socialist realism ". Source: Turner, Lily; Strever, Mark (1946). Orphan Paul; A Bibliography and Chronology of Maxim Gorky . New York: Boni and Gaer. pp. 261–270. In Kharkiv Gorky Park was renamed Central Park of Culture and Recreation in June 2023. In Odesa in June 2023 a Historical and Toponymic Commission proposed renaming its Gorky Park to Park of Children's Dreams,

6123-589: The Congress of Writers to be rewritten, and in his account of the visit, Kaganovich reported that Gorky's "mood [was] apparently not very good", and that the "aftertaste" with which Gorky was critical about some life aspects in the USSR "reminded [him] of Comrade Krupskaya ", Lenin's wife who supported the Right Opposition , and that Kamenev seemingly had "an important role in shaping" Gorky's "moods"; Kaganovich also proposed to heavily edit Gorky's attack on

6280-592: The Highest Stage of Capitalism , with Lenin's criticisms of Kautsky removed from the text. After the February Revolution, Gorky visited the headquarters of the Okhrana on Kronversky Prospekt together with Nikolai Sukhanov and Vladimir Zenisinov. Gorky described the former Okhrana headquarters, where he sought literary inspiration, as derelict, with windows broken, and papers lying all over

6437-536: The Italian Ernesto Rossi , who performed major Shakespearean tragic protagonists in Moscow in 1877, particularly impressed him. So too did Tommaso Salvini 's 1882 performance of Othello . By now well known as an amateur actor, at the age of twenty-five Stanslavski co-founded a Society of Art and Literature. Under its auspices, he performed in plays by Molière , Schiller , Pushkin , and Ostrovsky , as well as gaining his first experiences as

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6594-536: The MAT staged more plays by Ibsen than any other playwright. In its first decade, Stanislavski directed Hedda Gabler (in which he played Løvborg), An Enemy of the People (playing Dr Stockmann, his favorite role), The Wild Duck , and Ghosts . "More's the pity I was not a Scandinavian and never saw how Ibsen was played in Scandinavia," Stanislavski wrote, because "those who have been there tell me that he

6751-528: The MAT, Stanislavski was instrumental in promoting the new Russian drama of his day—principally the work of Anton Chekhov , Maxim Gorky , and Mikhail Bulgakov —to audiences in Moscow and around the world; he also staged acclaimed productions of a wide range of classical Russian and European plays. He collaborated with the director and designer Edward Gordon Craig and was formative in the development of several other major practitioners, including Vsevolod Meyerhold (whom Stanislavski considered his "sole heir in

6908-486: The MAT. In 1902, Stanislavski directed the première productions of the first two of Gorky's plays, The Philistines and The Lower Depths . As part of the rehearsal preparations for the latter, Stanislavski took the company to visit Khitrov Market , where they talked to its down-and-outs and soaked up its atmosphere of destitution. Stanislavski based his characterisation of Satin on an ex-officer he met there, who had fallen into poverty through gambling. The Lower Depths

7065-552: The Maly his "university". One of Shchepkin's students, Glikeriya Fedotova , taught Stanislavski; she instilled in him the rejection of inspiration as the basis of the actor's art, stressed the importance of training and discipline, and encouraged the practice of responsive interaction with other actors that Stanislavski came to call "communication". As well as the artists of the Maly, performances given by foreign stars influenced Stanislavski. The effortless, emotive, and clear playing of

7222-660: The Meiningen approach. That synthesis would emerge eventually, but only in the wake of Stanislavski's directorial struggles with Symbolist theatre and an artistic crisis in his work as an actor. "The task of our generation", Stanislavski wrote as he was about to found the Moscow Art Theatre and begin his professional life in the theatre, is "to liberate art from outmoded tradition, from tired cliché and to give greater freedom to imagination and creative ability." Stanislavski's historic meeting with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko on 4 July [ O.S. 22 June] 1897 led to

7379-576: The Organising Committee of the Union and demands to let Leopold Averbakh , the leader of RAPP who was executed in 1937, speak at the congress. After his arrest in the beginning of 1935, Kamenev wrote a letter to Gorky: "We didn't talk with you about politics, and when I told you about the feeling of love and respect for Stalin..., about my readiness to sincerely work with him, that all feelings of resentment and anger burned out in me — I told

7536-738: The Russian boureoisie to participate "in the work of reform". Although the Okhrana , the secret police, had failed to find a legal pretext to close the journal, the government decided to do it in January 1917, but these plans failed because of the February Revolution . Gorky distrusted it at first, but in Spring became cautiously optimist about it. In Summer, Gorky's publishing house published one of Lenin's most famous writings, Imperialism,

7693-488: The Russian liberals" in Lenin's words; later he wrote a series of anti-war publications, but succeeded in publishing only one of them, in which he appealed to feelings of international brotherhood and cooperation; one of the articles was confiscated by the censor, and another was condemned and led the journal being confiscated after being published. While not being a strong " defeatist " like Lenin, Gorky supported "a speedy end of

7850-433: The Russian theatre directed by Stanislavki include: several plays by Ivan Turgenev , Griboyedov 's Woe from Wit , Gogol 's The Government Inspector , and plays by Tolstoy , Ostrovsky , and Pushkin . Maxim Gorky Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (Russian: Алексей Максимович Пешков ; 28 March [ O.S. 16 March] 1868 – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky ( Максим Горький ),

8007-561: The Socialist Realism writers earlier attacked by Gorky, published an answer to him, in which he dismissed his line of criticizing the officially acclaimed Socialist Realism writers while supporting such ostensible enemies of Communism as D. S. Mirsky . David Zaslavsky published an ironic response to Gorky's article defending Demons , in which he accused Gorky in connivance in the formation of the "counter-revolutionary intelligentsia " and directly compared his "liberal position" with

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8164-616: The Soviet regime were rather difficult: while being Stalin's public supporter, he maintained friendships with Lev Kamenev and Nikolai Bukharin , the leaders of the anti-Stalin opposition executed after Gorky's death; he also hoped to ease the Soviet cultural policies and made some efforts to defend the writers who disobeyed them, which resulted in him spending his last days under unannounced house arrest. Born as Alexei Maximovich Peshkov on 28 March [ O.S. 16 March] 1868, in Nizhny Novgorod , Gorky became an orphan at

8321-442: The Soviet vice-premier, Alexei Rykov asking him to tell Leon Trotsky that any death sentences carried out on the defendants would be "premeditated and foul murder." This provoked a contemptuous reaction from Lenin, who described Gorky as "always supremely spineless in politics", and Trotsky, who dismissed Gorky as an "artist whom no-one takes seriously". He was denied permission by Italy's fascist government to return to Capri, but

8478-625: The Turbins were allowed for staging; Gorky took Andrei Platonov to the "writers' brigades" after he was made unable to be published because of his work critical of the collectivization, although Gorky rejected his "pessimistic" texts; with Gorky's intervention, Bukharin became one of the keynote speakers on the Writers' Congress and proclaimed Boris Pasternak , who was denounced by the Stalinist party critics as "decadent", to be "first poet" of

8635-416: The USSR. Gorky was not a supporter of artistic pluralism and diversity among writers and agreed that some censorship had to be inevitable, often being dismissive and rigid of creative experiments; however, Gorky was concerned with the bureaucratization of the Union of Writers and tried to oppose the increasing pressure on writers and attacked the party-sanctioned authors and them achieving the highest ranks in

8792-573: The Volga and Ural River regions. Gorky left Russia in September 1921, for Berlin. There he heard about the impending Moscow Trial of 12 Socialist Revolutionaries , which hardened his opposition to the Bolshevik regime. He wrote to Anatole France denouncing the trial as a "cynical and public preparation for the murder" of people who had fought for the freedom of the Russian people. He also wrote to

8949-491: The abortive 1905 Russian Revolution , Gorky wrote the play Children of the Sun , nominally set during an 1862 cholera epidemic, but universally understood to relate to present-day events. He was released from the prison after a European-wide campaign, which was supported by Marie Curie , Auguste Rodin and Anatole France , amongst others. Gorky assisted the Moscow uprising of 1905 , and after its suppression his apartment

9106-672: The acting manual An Actor's Work (1938). He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour and the Order of Lenin and was the first to be granted the title of People's Artist of the USSR . Stanislavski wrote that "there is nothing more tedious than an actor's biography" and that "actors should be banned from talking about themselves". At the request of a US publisher, however, he reluctantly agreed to write his autobiography, My Life in Art (first published in English in 1924 and in

9263-697: The actor's creative process in particular. He began to formulate a psychological approach to controlling the actor's process in a Manual on Dramatic Art . Stanislavski's activities began to move in a very different direction: his productions became opportunities for research , he was more interested in the process of rehearsal than its product, and his attention shifted away from the MAT towards its satellite projects—the theatre studios—in which he would develop his system . On his return to Moscow, he explored his new psychological approach in his production of Knut Hamsun 's Symbolist play The Drama of Life . Nemirovich

9420-453: The age of 33, when he co-founded the world-famous Moscow Art Theatre (MAT) company with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko , following a legendary 18-hour discussion. Its influential tours of Europe (1906) and the US (1923–24), and its landmark productions of The Seagull (1898) and Hamlet (1911–12) , established his reputation and opened new possibilities for the art of the theatre. By means of

9577-502: The age of eleven. He was brought up by his maternal grandmother and ran away from home at the age of twelve in 1880. After an attempt at suicide in December 1887 he travelled on foot across the Russian Empire for five years, changing jobs and accumulating impressions used later in his writing. As a journalist working for provincial newspapers he wrote under the pseudonym Иегудиил Хламида (Jehudiel Khlamida). He started using

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9734-463: The assistance of "Kremlin's doctors" Pletnyov and Lev Levin using substances developed at a special NKVD laboratory in Moscow . In Soviet times, before and after his death, the complexities in Gorky's life and outlook were reduced to an iconic image (echoed in heroic pictures and statues dotting the countryside): Gorky as a great Soviet writer who emerged from the common people, a loyal friend of

9891-552: The book's value as of a work of art. His experiences in the United States—which included a scandal over his travelling with his lover (the actress Maria Andreyeva ) rather than his wife—deepened his contempt for the "bourgeois soul". From 1906 to 1913, Gorky lived on the island of Capri in southern Italy , partly for health reasons and partly to escape the increasingly repressive atmosphere in Russia. He continued to support

10048-460: The boy with him. The boy was executed after Gorky left. Gorky left the room in tears, and wrote in the visitor book "I am not in a state of mind to express my impressions in just a few words. I wouldn't want, yes, and I would likewise be ashamed to permit myself the banal praise of the remarkable energy of people who, while remaining vigilant and tireless sentinels of the Revolution, are able, at

10205-515: The boy's identity, and that the story isn't supported by documents: "In the Solovki Museum... information about the real boy was not found; this story is considered to be a legend." Dmitry Bykov in his biography of Gorky wrote that whether or not did the boy exist, "mass consciousness is structured in such a way that the boy is needed, and it is no longer possible to erase him from Gorky's biography"; Gorky's biographer Pavel Basinsky makes

10362-528: The brink of revolution. The power in the state is held by the Three Fat Men, wealthy oligarchs with monopoly on the state's natural resources. A long brewing resistance is led by two men: Prospero the Gunsmith and Tibul the Acrobat. During a major confrontation with the government's forces, Prospero is captured and is scheduled for execution. However, at the same time, guardsmen defectors wreck the doll of Tutti,

10519-496: The cast helps the director, the second is creating the performance when the director helps the cast. Stanislavski's preparations for Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird (which was to become his most famous production to-date) included improvisations and other exercises to stimulate the actors' imaginations; Nemirovich described one in which the cast imitated various animals. In rehearsals he sought ways to encourage his actors' will to create afresh in every performance. He focused on

10676-467: The character's moment-to-moment tasks). This impacted particularly on the actors' ability to serve the plays' genre, because an unsatisfactory definition produced tragic rather than comic performances. Other European classics directed by Stanislavski include: Shakespeare 's The Merchant of Venice , Twelfth Night , and Othello , an unfinished production of Molière 's Tartuffe , and Beaumarchais's The Marriage of Figaro . Other classics of

10833-458: The circumstances of his death. Stalin and Molotov were among those who carried Gorky's urn during the funeral. During the Bukharin trial in 1938 (last of the three Moscow Trials ), one of the charges was that Gorky was killed by Yagoda 's NKVD agents. According to several historians, Gorky and his son were poisoned by NKVD chief Genrikh Yagoda on the orders from Stalin and possibly with

10990-434: The classics, Stanislavski believed that it was legitimate for actors and directors to ignore the playwright's intentions for a play's staging. One of his most important—a collaboration with Edward Gordon Craig on a production of Hamlet —became a landmark of 20th-century theatrical modernism . Stanislavski hoped to prove that his recently developed system for creating internally justified, realistic acting could meet

11147-558: The coal industry, one of whom, Pyotr Osadchy, had visited Gorky in Sorrento . In contrast to his attitude to the trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries , Gorky accepted without question that the engineers were guilty, and expressed regret that in the past he had intervened on behalf of professionals who were being persecuted by the regime. During the visit, he struck up friendships with Genrikh Yagoda (deputy head of

11304-410: The common people, and wrote a series of important cultural memoirs, including the first part of his autobiography. On returning to Russia, he wrote that his main impression was that "everyone is so crushed and devoid of God's image." The only solution, he repeatedly declared, was "culture". With Russia entering World War I in 1914 and the outburst of patriotism Gorky became devastated; shortly after

11461-409: The control of the party, becoming officially praised as "the founder of Socialist Realism in literature". However, in her political biography of Gorky she also describes his various conflicts with the official cultural policies and the increasing pressure on him towards the end of his life; during his last years, he supported friendly relations with Lev Kamenev and Nikolai Bukharin , the leaders of

11618-439: The conventional practices they wished to abandon and, on the basis of the working method they found they had in common, defined the policy of their new theatre. Stanislavski and Nemirovich planned a professional company with an ensemble ethos that discouraged individual vanity; they would create a realistic theatre of international renown, with popular prices for seats, whose organically unified aesthetic would bring together

11775-469: The creation of what was called initially the "Moscow Public-Accessible Theatre", but which came to be known as the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT). Their eighteen-hour-long discussion has acquired a legendary status in the history of theatre . Nemirovich was a successful playwright, critic, theatre director, and acting teacher at the Philharmonic School who, like Stanislavski, was committed to

11932-432: The creative development of both men. His ensemble approach and attention to the psychological realities of its characters revived Chekhov's interest in writing for the stage, while Chekhov's unwillingness to explain or expand on the text forced Stanislavski to dig beneath its surface in ways that were new in theatre. In response to Stanislavski's encouragement, Maxim Gorky promised to launch his playwrighting career with

12089-509: The creative process." His interest in the creative use of the actor's personal experiences was spurred by a chance conversation in Germany in July that led him to the work of French psychologist Théodule-Armand Ribot . His "affective memory" contributed to the technique that Stanislavski would come to call "emotion memory". Together these elements formed a new vocabulary with which he explored

12246-405: The designated heir of the Fat Men. The doll is a marvelous creation, capable of singing, dancing, and looks like a real girl, even growing up like one. The Fat Men summon a famous scholar, Doctor Gaspar Arnery, and order him to fix the doll before the next day. The Doctor, unknown to them, is a sympathizer for the resistance, and had helped Tibul escape pursuit by the army. Gaspar attempts to repair

12403-540: The destruction of the Rheims Cathedral , Gorky wrote Andreeva: "All this is so terrible that I am unable to express even one one-hundredth of my heavy feelings, which are perhaps best described in words such as world catastrophe, the downfall of European culture." At first, Gorky along with the other writers signed a protest against the "barbarism of the Germans", blaming them for the war, "the despicable paper of

12560-419: The doll, but finds out it's impossible to do in less than three days. Fortunately, he encounters Suok, a young girl who looks exactly like the broken doll, and convinces her to cooperate with him. She manages to get the key to Prospero's cage from Tutti. When she goes to release him during the night, she is spoken to by another prisoner, a fur-covered humanoid creature. The prisoner calls her by name and passes her

12717-402: The end of June, Meyerhold was so impressed with Stanislavski's directorial skills that he declared him a genius. The lasting significance of Stanislavski's early work at the MAT lies in its development of a Naturalistic performance mode. In 1898, Stanislavski co-directed with Nemirovich the first of his productions of the work of Anton Chekhov . The MAT production of The Seagull was

12874-458: The evenings from the lack of adequate shelter and food, but even in the middle of the day. Most tellingly, Solzhenitsyn and Dmitry Likhachov document a visit, on 20 June 1929 to Solovki , the "original" forced labour camp, and the model upon which thousands of others were constructed. Given Gorky's reputation, (both to the authorities and to the prisoners), the camp was transformed from one where prisoners (Zeks) were worked to death to one befitting

13031-552: The family business. Increasingly interested in "experiencing the role", Stanislavski experimented with maintaining a characterization in real life. In 1884, he began vocal training under Fyodor Komissarzhevsky , with whom he also explored the coordination of body and voice. A year later, Stanislavski briefly studied at the Moscow Theatre School but, disappointed with its approach, he left after little more than two weeks. Instead, he devoted particular attention to

13188-536: The fidelity of its delicate representation of everyday life, its intimate, ensemble playing , and the resonance of its mood of despondent uncertainty with the psychological disposition of the Russian intelligentsia of the time. Stanislavski went on to direct the successful premières of Chekhov's other major plays: Uncle Vanya in 1899 (in which he played Astrov), Three Sisters in 1901 (playing Vershinin), and The Cherry Orchard in 1904 (playing Gaev). Stanislavski's encounter with Chekhov's drama proved crucial to

13345-471: The filthy venom of power", crushing the rights of the individual to achieve their revolutionary dreams. Gorky wrote that Lenin was a "cold-blooded trickster who spares neither the honor nor the life of the proletariat. ... He does not know the popular masses, he has not lived with them". Gorky went on to compare Lenin to a chemist experimenting in a laboratory with the only difference being the chemist experimented with inanimate matter to improve life while Lenin

13502-526: The first day of rehearsals, 26 June [ O.S. 14 June] 1898, Stanislavski stressed the "social character" of their collective undertaking. In an atmosphere more like a university than a theatre, as Stanislavski described it, the company was introduced to his working method of extensive reading and research and detailed rehearsals in which the action was defined at the table before being explored physically. Stanislavski's lifelong relationship with Vsevolod Meyerhold began during these rehearsals; by

13659-574: The floor. Having dinner with Sukhanov later the same day, Gorky grimly predicted that revolution would end in "Asiatic savagery". Initially a supporter of the Socialist-Revolutionary Alexander Kerensky , Gorky switched over to the Bolsheviks after the Kornilov affair . In July 1917, Gorky wrote his own experiences of the Russian working class had been sufficient to dispel any "notions that Russian workers are

13816-451: The formal demands of a classic play. Craig envisioned a Symbolist monodrama in which every aspect of production would be subjugated to the protagonist : it would present a dream-like vision as seen through Hamlet's eyes. Despite these contrasting approaches, the two practitioners did share some artistic assumptions; the system had developed out of Stanislavski's experiments with Symbolist drama, which had shifted his attention from

13973-474: The former enemies of proletariat". For other writers, he urged that one obtained realism by extracting the basic idea from reality, but by adding the potential and desirable to it, one added romanticism with deep revolutionary potential. For himself, Gorky avoided realism. His denials that even a single prisoner died during the construction of the aforementioned canal was refuted by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who claimed thousands of prisoners froze to death not only in

14130-467: The grandiose, Stanislavski introduced lyrical elaborations through the mise-en-scène that dramatised more mundane and ordinary elements of life, in keeping with Belinsky's ideas about the "poetry of the real". By means of his rigid and detailed control of all theatrical elements, including the strict choreography of the actors' every gesture, in Stanislavski's words "the inner kernel of the play

14287-494: The grass and was now chopping off branches, leading Gorky to write that he was "stubborn as a mole, and apparently as blind as one too". Gorky's relations with the Bolsheviks became strained, however, after the October Revolution . One contemporary recalled how Gorky would turn "dark and black and grim" at the mere mention of Lenin. Gorky wrote that Vladimir Lenin together with Leon Trotsky "have become poisoned with

14444-477: The history of acting, which were to appear eventually in the opening chapters of An Actor's Work : "stock-in-trade" acting, the art of representation , and the art of experiencing (his own approach). Stanislavski's production of A Month in the Country (1909) was a watershed in his artistic development. Breaking the MAT's tradition of open rehearsals, he prepared Turgenev's play in private. They began with

14601-417: The human person. In his writing, he counterposed individuals, aware of their natural dignity, and inspired by energy and will, with people who succumb to the degrading conditions of life around them. Both his writings and his letters reveal a "restless man" (a frequent self-description) struggling to resolve contradictory feelings of faith and scepticism, love of life and disgust at the vulgarity and pettiness of

14758-541: The human world. In 1916, Gorky said that the teachings of the ancient Jewish sage Hillel the Elder deeply influenced his life: "In my early youth I read...the words of...Hillel, if I remember rightly: 'If thou art not for thyself, who will be for thee? But if thou art for thyself alone, wherefore art thou'? The inner meaning of these words impressed me with their profound wisdom...The thought ate its way deep into my soul, and I say now with conviction: Hillel's wisdom served as

14915-486: The idea of a popular theatre. Their abilities complemented one another: Stanislavski brought his directorial talent for creating vivid stage images and selecting significant details; Nemirovich, his talent for dramatic and literary analysis, his professional expertise, and his ability to manage a theatre. Stanislavski later compared their discussions to the Treaty of Versailles , their scope was so wide-ranging; they agreed on

15072-699: The ideological enemies, namely Kamenev and Zinoviev : "Next thing you know you'll be calling for publication of White Guard writers", as Korney Chukovsky summarized in his diary; Gorky's second answer to Zaslavsky was not published. During the officially organized campaign against the composer Dmitry Shostakovich , Gorky wrote a letter to Stalin in defense of the composer, demanding a "careful" treatment of him and calling his critics "a bunch of mediocre people, hack-workers" "attack[ing] Shostakovich in every possible way." Such sources as Romain Rolland 's diary demonstrate that because of Gorky's refusal to blindly obey

15229-419: The importance to great actors' performances of their ability to remain relaxed, he discovered that he could abolish physical tension by focusing his attention on the specific action that the play demanded; when his concentration wavered, his tension returned. "What fascinates me most", Stanislavski wrote in May 1908, "is the rhythm of feelings, the development of affective memory and the psycho-physiology of

15386-519: The incarnation of spiritual beauty and kindness". Gorky admitted to feeling attracted to Bolshevism, but admitted to concerns about a creed that made the entire working class "sweet and reasonable – I had never known people who were really like this". Gorky wrote that he knew the poor, the "carpenters, stevedores, bricklayers", in a way that the intellectual Lenin never did, and he frankly distrusted them. During World War I, his apartment in Petrograd

15543-531: The interpretation of every role, blocking , and the mise en scène in detail in advance. He also introduced into the production process a period of discussion and detailed analysis of the play by the cast. Despite the success that this approach brought, particularly with his Naturalistic stagings of the plays of Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky , Stanislavski remained dissatisfied. Both his struggles with Chekhov's drama (out of which his notion of subtext emerged) and his experiments with Symbolism encouraged

15700-851: The invitation of Mark Twain and other writers. An invitation to the White House by President Theodore Roosevelt was withdrawn after the New York World reported that the woman accompanying Gorky was not his wife. After this was revealed all of the hotels in Manhattan refused to house the couple, and they had to stay at an apartment in Staten Island . During a visit to Switzerland, Gorky met Lenin, who he charged spent an inordinate amount of his time feuding with other revolutionaries, writing: "He looked awful. Even his tongue seemed to have turned grey". Despite his atheism , Gorky

15857-474: The literary bureaucracy. Such Stalin's closest associates as Lazar Kaganovich opposed Gorky and Bukharin in their efforts against the increasing party control of literature, and Kaganovich in his letters to Stalin wrote about Gorky's ideological faults and the ostensible influence of the Opposition on him. For example, Kaganovich and several Politburo members visited Gorky and demanded his keynote speech for

16014-564: The members of the Organising Committee and publish it so it wouldn't circulate illegally. Another act which concerned the Politburo was Gorky's support of the members of the RAPP , the former party institution to control literature the members of which fell out of favour after its disbandment; Kaganovich wrote about Gorky supporting the RAPP-led campaign against Stalin's hand-picked leadership of

16171-501: The most complete implementation of the training exercises described in his manuals. Meanwhile, the transmission of his earlier work via the students of the First Studio was revolutionising acting in the West . With the arrival of Socialist realism in the USSR , the MAT and Stanislavski's system were enthroned as exemplary models. Stanislavski had a privileged youth, growing up in one of

16328-460: The most famous and passionately discussed productions in the history of the modern stage." Increasingly absorbed by his teaching, in 1913 Stanislavski held open rehearsals for his production of Molière 's The Imaginary Invalid as a demonstration of the system. As with his production of Hamlet and his next, Goldoni's The Mistress of the Inn , he was keen to assay his system in the crucible of

16485-641: The novels The Artamonov Business (1925) and The Life of Klim Samgin (1925–1936); the latter is considered by some as Gorky's masterpiece and has been viewed by some critics as a modernist work. Unlike his pre-revolutionary writings (known for their "anti-psychologism") Gorky's later works differ, with an ambivalent portrayal of the Russian Revolution and "unmodern interest to human psychology" (as noted by D. S. Mirsky ). He had associations with fellow Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov , both mentioned by Gorky in his memoirs. Gorky

16642-443: The official Soviet idea of "transformation through labour". Gorky did not notice the relocation of thousands of prisoners to ease the overcrowding, the new clothes on the prisoners (used to labouring in their underwear), or even the hiding of prisoners under tarpaulins, and the removal of the torture rooms. The deception was exposed when Gorky was presented with children "model prisoners", one of who challenged Gorky if he "wanted to know

16799-419: The opposition movement, for which he was again briefly imprisoned in 1901. In 1904, having severed his relationship with the Moscow Art Theatre in the wake of conflict with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko , Gorky returned to Nizhny Novgorod to establish a theatre of his own. Both Konstantin Stanislavski and Savva Morozov provided financial support for the venture. Stanislavski believed that Gorky's theatre

16956-410: The opposition which were executed after Gorky's death, and he could be sympathetic to the centrist and Right Opposition in general; both Bukharin and Kamenev had been friends with Gorky since 1920s. Paola Cioni noted that although there are traits of a conflict in the relations between Stalin and the state and Gorky, it is uncertain when this conflict was provoked by psychological motives, and when it

17113-472: The party, with Bogdanov taking responsibility for the transfer of funds from Gorky to Vpered . It is not clear whether he ever formally joined, and his relations with Lenin and the Bolsheviks would always be rocky. His most influential writings in these years were a series of plays on social and political themes, most famously The Lower Depths (1902). While briefly imprisoned in Peter and Paul Fortress during

17270-466: The performances of the Maly Theatre , the home of Russian psychological realism (as developed in the 19th century by Alexander Pushkin , Nikolai Gogol and Mikhail Shchepkin ). Shchepkin's legacy included a disciplined, ensemble approach, extensive rehearsals, and the use of careful observation, self-knowledge, imagination, and emotion as the cornerstones of the craft. Stanislavski called

17427-500: The poet Nikolay Gumilev was arrested by the Petrograd Cheka for his monarchist views. There is a story that Gorky hurried to Moscow, obtained an order to release Gumilev from Lenin personally, but upon his return to Petrograd he found out that Gumilev had already been shot – but Nadezhda Mandelstam , a close friend of Gumilev's widow, Anna Akhmatova wrote that: "It is true that people asked him to intervene. ... Gorky had

17584-600: The policies of Stalinism, he had lost the Party's goodwill and spent his last days under unannounced house arrest. With the increase of Stalinist repression and especially after the assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934, Gorky was placed under unannounced house arrest in his house near Moscow in Gorki-10 (the name of the place is a completely different word in Russian unrelated to his surname). His long-serving secretary Pyotr Kryuchkov had been recruited by Yagoda as

17741-578: The pseudonym "Gorky" (from горький; literally "bitter") in 1892, when his first short story, " Makar Chudra ", was published by the newspaper Kavkaz (The Caucasus) in Tiflis where he spent several weeks doing menial jobs, mostly for the Caucasian Railway workshops. The name reflected his simmering anger about life in Russia and a determination to speak the bitter truth. Gorky's first book Очерки и рассказы ( Essays and Stories ) in 1898 enjoyed

17898-403: The psychological experience of the character during each bit and, through the use of the actor's emotion memory, to forge a subjective connection to it. Only after two months of rehearsals were the actors permitted to physicalise the text. Stanislavski insisted that they should play the actions that their discussions around the table had identified. Having realised a particular emotional state in

18055-406: The publishing house Academia ; Gorky also made efforts to support the literary " fellow travellers " and writers who had troubles with their works being published for ideological or artistic reasons or were disapproved by the official critic. For example, in letters to Stalin he defended Mikhail Bulgakov , and partly because of Gorky, Bulgakov's plays The Cabal of Hypocrites and The Days of

18212-562: The revelation", Stanislavski wrote of the rapturous acclaim they received. The success of the tour provided financial security for the company, garnered an international reputation for their work, and made a significant impact on European theatre. The tour also provoked a major artistic crisis for Stanislavski that had a significant impact on his future direction. From his attempts to resolve this crisis, his system would eventually emerge. Sometime in March 1906—Jean Benedetti suggests that it

18369-550: The richest families in Russia, the Alekseyevs. He was born Konstantin Sergeyevich Alekseyev—he adopted the stage name "Stanislavski" in 1884 to keep his performance activities secret from his parents. Up until the communist revolution in 1917, Stanislavski often used his inherited wealth to fund his experiments in acting and directing. His family's discouragement meant that he appeared only as an amateur until he

18526-415: The role of Trigorin (and Meyerhold reprised his role as Konstantin) when the MAT revived its production of Chekhov's The Seagull on 13 October [ O.S. 30 September] 1905. This was the year of the abortive revolution in Russia . Stanislavski signed a protest against the violence of the secret police, Cossack troops, and the right-wing extremist paramilitary " Black Hundreds ", which

18683-622: The same time, to be remarkably bold creators of culture". In a collection of academic papers about Gorky by the World Literature Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences published in 1995 it was noted that the story about the boy was first told by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The GULAG Archipelago and there was no other testimonies in support of it, that there were never details given about

18840-458: The same year that he first incorporated it into his rehearsal process. The MAT adopted it as its official rehearsal method in 1911. Later, Stanislavski further elaborated the system with a more physically grounded rehearsal process that came to be known as the "Method of Physical Action". Minimising at-the-table discussions, he now encouraged an "active analysis", in which the sequence of dramatic situations are improvised . "The best analysis of

18997-402: The search for inner motives to justify action and the definition of what the characters are seeking to achieve at any given moment (what he would come to call their "task"). This use of the actor's conscious thought and will was designed to activate other, less-controllable psychological processes—such as emotional experience and subconscious behaviour—sympathetically and indirectly. Noting

19154-406: The study is necessary, as previously, when he alone decided the whole plan and all the details of the production, wrote the mise en scène and answered all the actors' questions for them. The director is no longer king, as before, when the actor possessed no clear individuality. [...] It is essential to understand this—rehearsals are divided into two stages: the first stage is one of experiment when

19311-430: The techniques of the Meiningen Ensemble and those of André Antoine 's Théâtre Libre (which Stanislavski had seen during trips to Paris). Nemirovich assumed that Stanislavski would fund the theatre as a privately owned business, but Stanislavski insisted on a limited , joint stock company . Viktor Simov , whom Stanislavski had met in 1896, was engaged as the company's principal designer . In his opening speech on

19468-408: The theatre"), Yevgeny Vakhtangov , and Michael Chekhov . At the MAT's 30-year anniversary celebrations in 1928, a massive heart attack on-stage put an end to his acting career (though he waited until the curtain fell before seeking medical assistance). He continued to direct, teach, and write about acting until his death a few weeks before the publication of the first volume of his life's great work,

19625-400: The truth". On the affirmative, the room was cleared and the 14-year-old boy recounted the truth – starvation, men worked to death, and of the pole torture, of using men instead of horses, of the summary executions, of rolling prisoners, bound to a heavy pole down stairs with hundreds of steps, of spending the night, in underwear, in the snow. Gorky never wrote about the boy, or even asked to take

19782-415: The truth... I loved you from the bottom of my heart"; Gorky's secretary Kryuchkov didn't register the letter in Gorky's correspondence receipt book, but the hand-written copy in the Gorky archives contains the writer's characteristic annotations in red pencil; meanwhile, as Gorky's relationship with Stalin worsened, the latter stopped visiting him and replying to his phone calls, and their formal correspondence

19939-709: The validity of his new methodology. Late in 1910, Gorky invited Stanislavski to join him in Capri , where they discussed actor training and Stanislavski's emerging "grammar". Inspired by a popular theatre performance in Naples that employed the techniques of the commedia dell'arte , Gorky suggested that they form a company, modeled on the medieval strolling players , in which a playwright and group of young actors would devise new plays together by means of improvisation . Stanislavski would develop this use of improvisation in his work with his First Studio. In his treatment of

20096-432: The war and for peace without annexation or indemnities." In 1915, he launched the publishing house Parus and the magazine Letopis to spread anti-war stance and "defend the idea of international culture against all manifestations of nationalism and imperialism"; among its prominent writers were the poets Sergei Yesenin , Aleksandr Blok and Vladimir Mayakovsky . Lenin was critical of Gorky's position: "In politics Gorky

20253-463: The work of Russian social-democracy, especially the Bolsheviks and invited Anatoly Lunacharsky to stay with him on Capri. The two men had worked together on Literaturny Raspad which appeared in 1908. It was during this period that Gorky, along with Lunacharsky, Bogdanov and Vladimir Bazarov developed the idea of an Encyclopedia of Russian History as a socialist version of Diderot 's Encyclopédie . In 1906, Maxim Gorky visited New York City at

20410-518: Was a Russian and Soviet writer and proponent of socialism . He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature . Before his success as an author, he travelled widely across the Russian Empire changing jobs frequently, experiences which would later influence his writing. Gorky's most famous works are his early short stories " Chelkash ", " Old Izergil ", and " Twenty-six Men and

20567-552: Was a major propaganda victory for the Soviets. He was decorated with the Order of Lenin and given a mansion (formerly belonging to the millionaire Pavel Ryabushinsky , which was for many years the Gorky Museum ) in Moscow and a dacha in the suburbs. The city of Nizhny Novgorod, and the surrounding province were renamed Gorky. Moscow's main park , and one of the central Moscow streets, Tverskaya, were renamed in his honour, as

20724-448: Was a seminal Soviet Russian theatre practitioner . He was widely recognized as an outstanding character actor , and the many productions that he directed garnered him a reputation as one of the leading theatre directors of his generation. His principal fame and influence, however, rests on his "system" of actor training, preparation, and rehearsal technique. Stanislavski (his stage name) performed and directed as an amateur until

20881-413: Was a triumph that matched the production of The Seagull four years earlier, though Stanislavski regarded his own performance as external and mechanical. The productions of The Cherry Orchard and The Lower Depths remained in the MAT's repertoire for decades. Along with Chekhov and Gorky, the drama of Henrik Ibsen formed an important part of Stanislavski's work at this time—in its first two decades,

21038-534: Was active in the emerging Marxist socialist movement and later supported the Bolsheviks . He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime and for a time closely associated himself with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov 's Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party . During World War I , Gorky supported pacifism and internationalism and anti-war protests. For a significant part of his life he

21195-420: Was almost entirely maintained by Gorky, with Stalin replying occasionally. Later Gorky tried to defend an issue of Dostoevsky's Demons which was prepared by Kamenev and came out after his arrest; the novel had a reputation of a "counter-revolutionary" work. As the conflict was becoming more visible, Gorky's political and literary positions became weaker. Fyodor Panferov , one of the party-sanctioned leaders of

21352-466: Was also published in 1982. Stanislavski subjected his acting and direction to a rigorous process of artistic self-analysis and reflection. His system of acting developed out of his persistent efforts to remove the blocks that he encountered in his performances, beginning with a major crisis in 1906. He produced his early work using an external, director-centred technique that strove for an organic unity of all its elements —in each production he planned

21509-472: Was an opportunity to develop the network of provincial theatres which he hoped would reform the art of the stage in Russia, a dream of his since the 1890s. He sent some pupils from the Art Theatre School—as well as Ioasaf Tikhomirov , who ran the school—to work there. By the autumn, however, after the censor had banned every play that the theatre proposed to stage, Gorky abandoned the project. As

21666-463: Was born on 2 August [ O.S. 21 July] 1891. In January 1893, Stanislavski's father died. Their son Igor was born on 26 September [ O.S. 14 September] 1894. In February 1891, Stanislavski directed Leo Tolstoy 's The Fruits of Enlightenment for the Society of Art and Literature, in what he later described as his first fully independent directorial work. But it

21823-531: Was changed to 6 years of exile. Gorky strongly supported efforts in getting a law passed in 1934, making homosexuality a criminal offense . His attitude was coloured by the fact that some members of the Nazi Sturmabteilung were homosexual. The phrase "exterminate all homosexuals and fascism will vanish" is often attributed to him. Writing in Pravda on 23 May 1934, Gorky said: "There is already

21980-460: Was during An Enemy of the People —Stanislavski became aware that he was acting without a flow of inner impulses and feelings and that as a consequence his performance had become mechanical. He spent June and July in Finland on holiday, where he studied, wrote, and reflected. With his notebooks on his own experience from 1889 onwards, he attempted to analyze "the foundation stones of our art" and

22137-640: Was exiled from Russia and later the Soviet Union (USSR), being critical both of the Tsarism and of the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War and the 1920s, condemning the latter for political repressions. In 1928 he returned to the USSR on Joseph Stalin 's personal invitation and lived there from 1932 until his death in June 1936. After his return he was officially declared the "founder of Socialist Realism ". Despite this, Gorky's relations with

22294-404: Was experimenting on the "living flesh of Russia". A further strain on Gorky's relations with the Bolsheviks occurred when his newspaper Novaya Zhizn ( New Life ) fell prey to Bolshevik censorship during the ensuing civil war, around which time Gorky published a collection of essays critical of the Bolsheviks called Untimely Thoughts in 1918, which would not be republished in Russia until after

22451-497: Was having difficulty earning enough to keep his large household, and began to seek an accommodation with the communist regime. The General Secretary of the Communist Party Joseph Stalin was equally keen to entice Gorky back to the USSR. He paid his first visit in May 1928 – at the very time when the regime was staging its first show trial since 1922, the so-called Shakhty Trial of 53 engineers employed in

22608-520: Was later depicted by Viktor Govorov in his painting . On that same day Stalin left his autograph on the last page of this work by Gorky: "This piece is stronger than Goethe's Faust (love defeats death)" Voroshilov also left a "resolution": "I am illiterate, but I think that Comrade Stalin more than correctly defined the meaning of A. Gorky's poems. On my own behalf, I will say: I love M. Gorky as my and my class of writer, who correctly defined our forward movement." As Vyacheslav Ivanov remembers, Gorky

22765-483: Was not a materialist. Most controversially, he articulated, along with a few other maverick Bolsheviks, a philosophy he called " God-Building " (богостроительство, bogostroitel'stvo ), which sought to recapture the power of myth for the revolution and to create religious atheism that placed collective humanity where God had been and was imbued with passion, wonderment, moral certainty, and the promise of deliverance from evil, suffering, and even death. Though 'God-Building'

22922-400: Was not until 1893 he first met the great realist novelist and playwright that became another important influence on him. Five years later the MAT would be his response to Tolstoy's demand for simplicity, directness, and accessibility in art. Stanislavski's directorial methods at this time were closely modelled on the disciplined, autocratic approach of Ludwig Chronegk , the director of

23079-409: Was particularly hostile to his new methods and their relationship continued to deteriorate in this period. In a statement made on 9 February [ O.S. 27 January] 1908, Stanislavski marked a significant shift in his directorial method and stressed the crucial contribution he now expected from a creative actor: The committee is wrong if it thinks that the director's preparatory work in

23236-412: Was permitted to settle in Sorrento, where he lived from 1922 to 1932, with an extended household that included Moura Budberg, his ex-wife Andreyeva, her lover, Pyotr Kryuchkov , who acted as Gorky's secretary (initially a spy for Yagoda) for the remainder of his life, Gorky's son Max Peshkov, Max's wife, Timosha, and their two young daughters. He wrote several successful books while there, but by 1928 he

23393-422: Was provoked by his political position. It is certain, however, that Gorky intervened on behalf of such politically persecuted individuals as the historian Yevgeny Tarle and the literary critic, Mikhail Bakhtin , succeeded in making possible for the writers Yevgeny Zamyatin and Victor Serge to leave the country, tried to intercede on behalf of Karl Radek and Bukharin, and made Kamenev appointed as director of

23550-610: Was raided by the Black Hundreds . He subsequently fled to Lake Saimaa , Finland . In 1906, the Bolsheviks sent him on a fund-raising trip to the United States with Ivan Narodny . When visiting the Adirondack Mountains , Gorky wrote Mother , his probably most famous novel of revolutionary conversion and struggle; despite its success and political impact, various critics and Gorky himself were harsh of

23707-436: Was revealed by itself". Analysing the Society's production of Othello (1896), Jean Benedetti observes that: Stanislavski uses the theatre and its technical possibilities as an instrument of expression, a language, in its own right. The dramatic meaning is in the staging itself. [...] He went through the whole play in a completely different way, not relying on the text as such, with quotes from important speeches, not providing

23864-474: Was ridiculed by Lenin, Gorky retained his belief that "culture"—the moral and spiritual awareness of the value and potential of the human self—would be more critical to the revolution's success than political or economic arrangements. An amnesty granted for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty allowed Gorky to return to Russia in 1914, where he continued his social criticism, mentored other writers from

24021-712: Was submitted to the Duma on the 3 November [ O.S. 21 October]. Rehearsals for the MAT's production of Alexander Griboyedov 's classic verse comedy Woe from Wit were interrupted by gun-battles on the streets outside. Stanislavski and Nemirovich closed the theatre and embarked on the company's first tour outside of Russia. The MAT's first European tour began on 23 February [ O.S. 10 February] 1906 in Berlin , where they played to an audience that included Max Reinhardt , Gerhart Hauptmann , Arthur Schnitzler , and Eleonora Duse . "It's as though we were

24178-580: Was the Moscow Art Theatre . The largest fixed-wing aircraft in the world in the mid-1930s, the Tupolev ANT-20 was named Maxim Gorky in his honour. He was also appointed President of the Union of Soviet Writers , founded in 1932, to coincide with his return to the USSR. On 11 October 1931 Gorky read his fairy tale poem "A Girl and Death" (which he wrote in 1892) to his visitors Joseph Stalin , Kliment Voroshilov and Vyacheslav Molotov , an event that

24335-536: Was thirty three. As a child, Stanislavski was interested in the circus , the ballet, and puppetry . Later, his family's two private theatres provided a forum for his theatrical impulses. After his debut performance at one in 1877, he started what would become a lifelong series of notebooks filled with critical observations on his acting, aphorisms, and problems—it was from this habit of self-analysis and critique that Stanislavski's system later emerged. Stanislavski chose not to attend university, preferring to work in

24492-520: Was turned into a Bolshevik staff room, and his politics remained close to the Bolsheviks throughout the revolutionary period of 1917 . On the day after the October Revolution of 7 November 1917 , Gorky observed a gardener working the Alexander Park who had cleared snow during the February Revolution while ignoring the shots in the background, asked people during the July Days not to trample

24649-465: Was very upset: They wrote their resolution on his fairy tale "A Girl and Death". My father , who spoke about this episode with Gorky, insisted emphatically that Gorky was offended. Stalin and Voroshilov were drunk and fooling around. In 1933, Gorky co-edited, with Averbakh and Firin, an infamous book about the White Sea–Baltic Canal , presented as an example of "successful rehabilitation of

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