Gorky's play "At the Depths" was written in nineteen hundred and two. In these pre-revolutionary years, the writer was especially concerned about the question of Man. On the one hand, Gorky is aware of the circumstances that force people to sink to the “bottom of life”; on the other hand, he tries to study this problem in detail and, perhaps, find a solution. There are two conflicts unfolding in the drama. The first, social, is between the owners of the shelter and the tramps, the other, philosophical, touching on the basic questions of existence, unfolds between the inhabitants of the shelter. He is the main one. The world of the flophouse is the world" former people". Previously, they were people of different strata: here is a baron, and a prostitute, and a mechanic, and an actor, and a cap maker, and a merchant. And all the same in this scary world Outcasts, these people search for truth and try to solve eternal problems. How to bear the burden of life? What to oppose to the terrible force of circumstances - open rebellion, patience based on sweet lies, or humility? These are the three positions that the characters in the play adhere to.
The darkest thinker in the shelter is Bubnov. He is unpleasant to Gorky because his remarks reflect the “truth of fact.” Life in Bubnov’s assessment is devoid of any meaning. It is monotonous and flows according to laws that a person cannot change: “everything is like this: they will be born, live and die. What is there to regret?” Dreams for him are a person’s desire to appear better or, as the Baron said: “all people have gray souls that all want to turn brown.”
With the appearance of Luka, the atmosphere in the shelter becomes tense. The wanderer Luke is a complex and interesting character in the play. His ideas are based on the fact that he does not believe in human capabilities; for him, all people are insignificant, weak, petty, in need of compassion and consolation. Luke believes that the truth can be a “butt” for a person. Sometimes it is better to deceive a person with fiction, to instill in him faith in the future: “man lives for the best.” But this is the philosophy of slavish obedience; it is not for nothing that Satin says that “False is the religion of slaves and masters. It supports some, others hide behind it.” Luke's ideas are aimed at making people either “get around” life, or try to adapt to it. The wanderer's advice did not help anyone: Vaska kills Kostylev and goes to prison, the actor commits suicide. Of course, this is not Luke’s direct fault, it’s just that the circumstances turned out to be stronger than people. But he is indirectly to blame, or rather not he, but his ideas: they made changes in the lives of the shelters and in their worldviews, after which they could no longer continue to live normally.
Satin opposes this harmful lie. His monologue sounds a demand for freedom and humane relationships to a person: “We must respect a person! Don’t feel sorry, don’t humiliate him with pity,... we must respect!” Satin is convinced of the following: need to not to reconcile a person with reality, but to make this reality work for a person. "Everything is in man, everything is for man." “Only Man exists, everything else is the work of his hands, his brain.” "Man! That sounds proud!"
The author undoubtedly likes Satin, although he is a “hero of words.” Unlike most night shelters, he committed a decisive act in the past, for which he paid: he spent four years in prison. But he does not regret it: “Man is free, he pays for everything himself.”
Thus, the writer argues that a person is able to change circumstances, and not adapt to them.
“Only man exists, everything else is the work of his hands and brain...!” says one of the heroes of Maxim Gorky’s play “At the Bottom,” which tells about the difficult, difficult destinies of people who have slipped to the very “bottom” of life, who have fallen into the very bottom of society. The inhabitants of the “flopshouse” - the place where the main action of the work takes place - are, according to the author’s definition, “former people” who do not have a solid social status, who have lost their “weight” in society. Some in the past were representatives of the upper strata of society, others, on the contrary, came from peasant backgrounds. Still others were predetermined by their fate to end up here...
All events take place in a dark, damp basement, more like a cave. The ceiling here is heavy, stone vaults, smoked, with crumbling plaster. Sunlight never penetrates here, and the beds are called bunks. A feeling of prison is created, and with it the feeling complete hopelessness, the inability to influence reality.
Against the background of such a depressing picture, there is a clash of different “truths” - points of view on human essence, on the meaning of its existence. It is the collision of these “truths” that gives rise to the main philosophical question of the play: what is better for a person - pity, truth or, perhaps, praise of him dignity, honoring a person as an individual?
The position of “truth” is defended by Bubnov, a forty-five-year-old card-carrier who ended up in a poor house after his wife left for her lover. Bubnov is convinced that a person is born only to die and that there is no point in feeling sorry for him: “It’s all like this: they’ll be born, they’ll live, They’re dying. And I’ll die, and so will you. Why regret it..."
The bearer of the second truth, which consists in compassion for a person, in pity for him, is Luka, a wanderer of sixty years old, about whom nothing is really known. He knows how to calm every inhabitant of the “bottom”, finds the necessary words of support. For example, he tells Anna, who is seriously dying from consumption, about happiness in the afterlife: “Nothing will happen! Just lie there! You will rest there!” And indeed, without pity, compassion and mercy, the familiar world of people would have ceased to exist long ago.
Absolutely different life position adheres to Satin, who fell to the “bottom” after being released from prison for the murder he committed while defending the honor of his sister. His position is that only a person himself is able to change his life, only by believing in himself can a person rebuild the world, “reshape “reality at its own discretion, to get out of the “bottom.” However, Satin does not deny all of the above positions, but, on the contrary, to some extent, supports: “A person can believe and not believe... that’s his business! A person is free. ..he pays for everything himself: for faith, for unbelief, for love, for intelligence - a person pays for everything himself, and therefore he is free!”
“Everything is in a person, everything is for a person. A person - this sounds proud!” - these famous words are the motto not only of Satin, but also, it seems to me, of Gorky himself, giving us a certain message: it’s time to finally feel like a human being, stop humiliating yourself and enduring arbitrariness; it’s time to believe in your strength, because without that very faith, Without the feeling of being a whole person, a person simply cannot exist, and this is the great tragedy of today’s life.
At all times, man has strived to understand his “I,” the purpose and meaning of life. Eternal problems Pushkin and Gogol, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky tried to resolve human existence. M. Gorky was no exception, but he developed his own understanding of man and his life purpose, which differed from the philosophical concepts of his predecessors. In this regard, Gorky’s play “At the Depths” is indicative.
This work is an indictment of society, which throws people to the “bottom of life”, depriving them of honor, dignity, eradicating the highest human feelings. But even here, “at the bottom,” the power of the “masters of life” continues, represented in the play by the sinister figures of the hostel owners. World drama has never known such a harsh, merciless truth about the life of the lower social classes, about their hopeless fate.
Under the gloomy, dark arches of the Kostylevo flophouse there are people with different characters, people from different social strata. In one room there are old and young, single and married, men and women, healthy and sick, hungry and well-fed. Overcrowding and terrible poverty give rise to mutual irritation, quarrels, fights and even murder. People, thrown back to a cave existence, become brutal, lose their human appearance, shame and conscience, and trample on moral standards.
The Kostylevs’ shelter resembles a prison; it’s not for nothing that its inhabitants sing the prison song “The Sun Rises and Sets.” Those who end up in their basement belong to different social strata, but everyone has the same fate - no one manages to get out of it. Locksmith Kleshch considers the shelter to be only a temporary shelter, hoping that hard, honest work will save him. At first, he even treats the night shelters with contempt, opposing himself to them: “I am a working man... I’m ashamed to look at them... I’ve been working since I was little... do you think I won’t get out of here? I’ll get out... I’ll rip off my skin, but I’ll get out.” But Kleshch's dreams do not come true. Soon he is forced to become an ordinary slum dweller.
For most of the night shelters, all the best is in the past: for the Baron it’s a prosperous life, for the Actor it’s creative work. However, as the former telegraph operator, and now a sharper, Satin, says, “you won’t go anywhere in the carriage of the past.”
Gorky does not introduce readers to the life history of his characters; the play talks about it briefly. The present for the residents of the shelter is terrible, and they have no future at all. The past has left an indelible imprint on their personality.
But “At the Bottom” is not an everyday play, but a socio-philosophical play, based on an ideological conflict. It contrasts different views on man, on the truth and lies of life, on imaginary and true humanism. Almost all overnight residents take part in the discussion of these big issues to some extent. Gorky's drama is characterized by dialogue-disputes that reveal the social, philosophical and aesthetic positions of the characters. Verbal duels are also typical for the heroes of this play.
Many generally accepted truths are rejected by social outcasts. As soon as Kleshch is told, for example, that the night shelters live without honor and conscience, Bubnov will answer him: “What is conscience for? I’m not rich,” and Vaska Ash will quote Satin’s words: “Every person wants his neighbor to have a conscience, but, you see, it’s not beneficial for anyone to have one.”
Disputes about man continue between the inhabitants of the shelter throughout the play, but they intensify in connection with the disappearance of the wanderer Luke. The assessment of Luka’s personality and his role in the life of the night shelters is ambiguous. On the one hand: “He was a good old man!” (Nastya); “He was compassionate” (Kleshch); “The old man was good... he had a law for his soul!.. Don’t offend a person - that’s the law” (Tatar); “Man is the truth... He understood this...” (Satin). On the other hand: "Old Charlatan" (Baron); “He... didn’t like the truth, old man...” (Mite), etc.
Both of these points of view are correct. The essence of Luke's position is revealed in two parables. The first is the wanderer’s story about how he took pity on two robbers who were plotting murder, fed and warmed them, that is, he responded to evil with good. The parable of the “righteous land” raises the question of what is more important for a person - truth or hope. Luke believes that, albeit false, there is hope.
“I lied out of pity for you,” Satin says about the hero. This lie gave people the strength to live, resist fate and hope for the best. When the deception was revealed, real life horrified the Actor - and he hanged himself, Nastya fell into despair, Vaska Ash went to prison at the first attempt to change his fate.
Thus, Luke's philosophy includes Christian long-suffering, sensitivity to the suffering of others, and sober realism. This is one of the points of view in a dispute about a person - “a white lie.” Weak, impressionable people believe in it, just as they believe in “golden dreams.” This is Actor, Ash, Nastya. Those who find support in themselves do not need either pity or soothing lies.
Bubnov has a different view of a person. He confesses the truth of the fact: you should not try to change something, you need to come to terms with evil and go with the flow. The most crushing blow to the philosophy of Luka and Bubnov is dealt by Satin, who, however, will not go further than his words about an all-powerful man, a Man with capital letters, but it is he who expresses the idea that the salvation of man lies in him.
Each of the last three acts of the play ends with the death of Anna, Kostylev, and Actor. These events attest not only to the moral and everyday foundations of “traglessness.” The philosophical subtext is important here. At the end of the second act, Satin shouts: “The dead do not hear!” Dead people don’t feel... Scream... roar... Dead people don’t hear!” Vegetation in a shelter is not much different from death. The “tramps” living here are as deaf and blind as dust buried in the earth. The movement of Gorky's drama is associated with the awakening of “living corpses,” their hearing, and emotions. In the fourth act, complex processes take place in the sleepy soul, and people begin to hear, feel, and understand something. The “acid” of sad thoughts is purified, like an “old, dirty coin”, Satin’s thought is tempered.
This is where the main meaning of the play's ending lies. According to the author, only a person’s faith in his own strength and his courage can change the world around him.
The ending of the play is ambiguous. Having put forward the idea in Satin’s monologue strong personality, the author helps the characters feel something, understand something, realize something. But the answer to the author’s question: “What is better: truth or compassion?” - not in the play.
Gorky's play “At the Depths” was written in nineteen hundred and two. In these pre-revolutionary years, the writer was especially concerned about the question of Man. On the one hand, Gorky is aware of the circumstances that force people to sink to the “bottom of life,” on the other, he tries to study this problem in detail and, perhaps, find a solution. There are two conflicts unfolding in the drama. The first, social, is between the owners of the shelter and the tramps, the other, philosophical, touching on the basic questions of existence, unfolds between the inhabitants of the shelter. This is the main one.
The world of the flophouse is the world of “former people”. Previously, they were people of different classes: here is a baron, a prostitute, a mechanic, an actor, a cap maker, and a merchant. And yet, in this terrible world of outcasts, these people are searching for truth, trying to solve eternal problems.
How to bear the burden of life? What to oppose to the terrible force of circumstances - open rebellion, patience based on sweet lies, or humility? These are the three positions that the characters in the play adhere to. The darkest thinker in the shelter is Bubnov. He is unpleasant to Gorky because his remarks reflect the “truth of the fact.” Life in Bubnov’s assessment is devoid of any meaning. It is monotonous and flows according to laws that man cannot change: “everyone is like this: they are born, they live and they die. What is there to regret?” Dreams for him are a person’s desire to appear better or, as the Baron said: “all people have gray souls, everyone wants to brown up.”
With the appearance of Luka, the atmosphere in the shelter becomes tense. Luke the Wanderer is a complex and interesting character in the play. His ideas are based on the fact that he does not believe in human capabilities; for him, all people are insignificant, weak, petty, in need of compassion and consolation. Luke believes that the truth can be a “butt” for a person. Sometimes it is better to deceive a person with fiction, to instill in him faith in the future: “man lives for the best.”
But this is a philosophy of slavish obedience; it is not for nothing that Satin says that “Lies are the religion of slaves and masters. She supports some, others hide behind her.” Luke’s ideas are aimed at making people either “get around” life, or try to adapt to it.
The wanderer's advice did not help anyone: Vaska kills Kostylev and goes to prison, the actor commits suicide. Of course, this is not Luke’s direct fault, it’s just that the circumstances turned out to be stronger than the people. But he is indirectly to blame, or rather not he, but his ideas: they made changes in the lives of the shelters and in their worldview, after which they could no longer continue to live normally. Satin opposes this harmful lie. In his monologue there is a demand for freedom and a humane attitude towards people: “We must respect people! Don’t feel sorry, don’t humiliate him with pity,... you need to respect him!”
Satin is convinced of the following - it is necessary not to reconcile a person with reality, but to make this reality work for a person. “Everything is in man, everything is for man.” “Only Man exists, everything else is the work of his hands, his brain.” "Human! It sounds proud!” The author undoubtedly likes Satin, although he is a “hero of words.” Unlike most night shelters, he committed a decisive act in the past, for which he paid: he spent four years in prison. But he does not regret it: “Man is free, he pays for everything himself.” Thus, the writer argues that a person is able to change circumstances, and not adapt to them.
In the play “At the Bottom,” her philosophical wisdom is surprising. Gorky managed to immerse us in the life of the Kostylevo doss house, make us think about the problems that concern him, the playwright, and some of his heroes. Among the dirt, drunken screams, card games, monetary settlements, people who are capable of rising to philosophical heights in understanding the complex and difficult issues of life live and do not dissolve in that way of life.
First of all, Luke attracts attention. The name of this hero is noteworthy. On the one hand, it comes from the word “evil one,” which has a double meaning. He is a cunning, clever, deceiving man - and at the same time a good-natured, playful person. Both of these semantic poles are contained in the word “evil” and in the character of this character. On the other hand, this name recalls one of the apostles, the creator of the “Gospel” of Luke. This means that before us is a certain bearer of wisdom, bringing people some new, its own Gospel - a certain truth. It’s not for nothing that he is a wanderer. This concept is often associated with the concept of “truth seeker.”
What is the truth and wisdom of Luke? This hero is convinced that one must be able to feel sorry for a person, especially when it is difficult for him, that one must show him compassion. This position is close to us in its own way today, when we think a lot about mercy, about helping disadvantaged people; but this compassion takes on a very unique form in Luke. He believes that people are more afraid of the real truth of life, because it is too harsh. To make their situation easier, you need to embellish their life, bring into it a fairy tale, a beautiful deception, a “golden dream”. It is curious that after Luke’s reasoning, the Actor, who listens attentively to him, unexpectedly recalls poems on this topic:
Gentlemen, if the truth is holy
The world won't be able to find its way,
Honor the madman who inspires
Humanity has a golden dream.
These poems by the French poet Bérenger are, of course, addressed to Luke or others like him. It is Luka who plays the role of the madman who evokes a golden dream for each of the night shelters. That is why he is so affectionate with people, calling them “darling”, “dove”, “baby”; so he tells Anna about afterlife, Ash - about the golden country of Siberia, and Actor - about a hospital with marble floors. All these are varieties of the same “golden dream”.
A completely different point of view is shared by two other inhabitants of the shelter: Baron and Bubnov. Once a rich aristocrat who had descended to the position of a pimp, the Baron has left hundreds of serfs, carriages with coats of arms far in the past and understands perfectly well that all this cannot be returned. And Satin aptly remarks to him: “You can’t go far in the carriage of the past.” And now the Baron, completely devastated, does not believe in anything, does not dream of anything. And this became his position, his philosophy. He utters, for example, his cherished phrase: “I don’t expect anything. Everything has already... happened! It's over... it's over! Therefore, he does not console anyone, he insists on facts from which you cannot escape.
Bubnov adheres to related positions. This man once suffered a lot in life. Life made him an indifferent cynic, a person who did not believe in anything. Bubnov recognizes only what exists. He states the harsh truth of life: “But I don’t know how to lie! For what? In my opinion, tell the whole truth as it is! Why be ashamed? And Bubnov is not shy. He speaks his truths like a caw. And it’s no coincidence that Ash calls him exactly that: “Raven.” Bubnov declares all people’s dreams unnecessary and false: “Color, crow, feathers... go ahead!” - he says to Nastya in response to her dreams of a student’s love. Bubnov is deeply convinced of this. that he does not need such “coloring”, and for the edification of others he tells that he, Bubnov, once repainted dogs into raccoons in a dyeing shop, which is why his hands were constantly red, but now they have become simply dirty. So “no matter how you paint yourself, everything will be erased, only one naked person will remain.”
It is not difficult to see in these arguments the philosophy of naked fact that Bubnov professes. He says: “People all live... like chips floating down a river.” Bubnov's truth is a very cruel, wingless truth.
The third philosophical position in the play is expressed and defended by Satin. This is a former telegraph operator who once read a lot and performed on stage. While reading, he did not blindly trust what was written, but analyzed and tested what he had learned with his extraordinary critical mind. Satin rejects lies, all kinds of illusions, golden dreams, fairy tales about life. According to him, “lie is the religion of slaves and masters.” The Kostylevs need lies to deceive people like night shelters. And the latter need it to justify their humiliated and powerless position or to console themselves with pitiful and vain hopes. Therefore, Satin says quite frankly that Luke lied and misled everyone.
At the same time, Satin also speaks out against the inhuman “truth” of Bubnov and Baron. According to Satin, one must live in the present, soberly assessing reality, but at the same time with a dream about the future, detached from real life. And this is the real Truth. Such truth, which is based on deep faith in man, in his infinite possibilities, in his exceptional potential powers, is the “God of free man.” Satin reflects not on a specific person, now oppressed by need and oppression, but on man in general. This is exactly philosophical view for life. The time will come when people will be united and united by common deeds and ideas. People will be valued most of all in this society. He will become free, full-fledged, harmoniously developed, beautiful and majestic. Everything will be in man and everything will be for man. This is why, Satin argues, one must respect a person; not to feel sorry, not to humiliate him with pity, but to respect him. This will be the basis of the morality of the society of the future, so the name of Man will sound proudly.
Perhaps. Satin in vain denies compassion, pity, mercy. These feelings can coexist perfectly with respect for a person. But Satin values the attention to the human personality, the sensitivity to it that Luke showed. That is why Satin declares: “The old man is not a charlatan... he affected me like acid on an old and dirty coin”; in other words. Luke gave Gorky's hero the impetus for reflection and for his broad generalizations, which absorbed the high philosophical truth of life. Gorky here entrusted Satin with his own innermost thoughts.
This clash of three main positions in Gorky's play strikes surprising sparks. They give food to the mind. They deeply excite readers and do not leave them indifferent. After all, even today, many decades after the play was written, we are thinking about what is the truth and meaning of life, is it necessary to constantly talk in newspapers, on radio and television, in everyday life about its difficulties, without hiding the truth from people, or, to be Maybe you need to trust optimistic forecasts, prophecies of psychics, political scientists, fortune tellers. And today we reflect on compassion for a person whose life is especially difficult these days. And Gorky’s play, its deep philosophical wisdom, helps to understand all this.
