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Autobiography#1
Çocukluğum
Gorki'nin Çocukluğum, Ekmeğimi Kazanırken ve Benim Üniversitelerim'den oluşan üçlemesi, Rus dilinde yazılmış en güzel otobiyografilerden biridir. Çocukluğum'da babasını küçük yaşta yitirdikten sonra taşındığı dedesinin evinde geçirdiği yılları anlatır. Miras kavgaları, doğumlar, ölümler, küçük Aleksey'in tanık olduğu ve bizzat maruz kaldığı akıl almaz şiddet, bu evde gündelik hayatın akışı içinde sıradan olaylardır.
"Herkesin herkese düşman" olduğu bu aile, 19. yüzyıl Rusya'sında hüküm süren acımasız ve hoyrat hayatın bir "küçük evreni" dir aslında. Neyse ki idealizmi ve tertemiz kalbiyle adeta bir halk filozofu olan ninesi hep Aleksey'in yanındadır. Bir de her biri hayatında iz bırakan çok sayıda capcanlı karakter vardır… Onlar sayesinde hayat zor olduğu kadar gizemli ve renklidir de. Hem Gorki'nin "kendi ülkelerinde bir yabancı gibi yaşayan, gerçekteyse o toplumun en iyileri olan" insanlardan ilkiyle tanışması da yine çocukluğuna rastlar…
"Herkesin herkese düşman" olduğu bu aile, 19. yüzyıl Rusya'sında hüküm süren acımasız ve hoyrat hayatın bir "küçük evreni" dir aslında. Neyse ki idealizmi ve tertemiz kalbiyle adeta bir halk filozofu olan ninesi hep Aleksey'in yanındadır. Bir de her biri hayatında iz bırakan çok sayıda capcanlı karakter vardır… Onlar sayesinde hayat zor olduğu kadar gizemli ve renklidir de. Hem Gorki'nin "kendi ülkelerinde bir yabancı gibi yaşayan, gerçekteyse o toplumun en iyileri olan" insanlardan ilkiyle tanışması da yine çocukluğuna rastlar…
282 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1913
About the author
Maxim Gorky
1,418books1,631followersRussian writerAleksei Maksimovich Peshkov(Russian:Алексей Максимович Пешков) supported the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 and helped to develop socialist realism as the officially accepted literary aesthetic; his works include
The Life of Klim Samgin
(1927-1936), an unfinished cycle of novels.
This Soviet author founded the socialist realism literary method and a political activist. People also nominated him five times for the Nobel Prize in literature. From 1906 to 1913 and from 1921 to 1929, he lived abroad, mostly in Capri, Italy; after his return to the Soviet Union, he accepted the cultural policies of the time.
This Soviet author founded the socialist realism literary method and a political activist. People also nominated him five times for the Nobel Prize in literature. From 1906 to 1913 and from 1921 to 1929, he lived abroad, mostly in Capri, Italy; after his return to the Soviet Union, he accepted the cultural policies of the time.
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December 4, 2023
My Childhoodbegins tragically… When Alyosha is three years old his father dies…
He and his mother return to their family nest in Nijni… He stays with his grandparents… His grandmother is the only kind soul in the entire family…
His grandfather is a cruel despot… He has everybody in the family under his thumb… He and his sons apparently have sadistic inclinations… He whipped his grandson half dead so Alyosha couldn’t rise from bed for days… And his both sons terrorized their wives to death… Right from the start Alyosha couldn’t help but loathe his granddad…
So since his early childhood Alyosha was exposed to human meanness and cruelty… And his grandfather was also tutoring him:
If one’s nature is mean and beastly no social changes, however progressive, can eliminate bestiality.
In a narrow, darkened room, my father, dressed in a white and unusually long garment, lay on the floor under the window. The toes of his bare feet were curiously extended, and the fingers of the still hands, which rested peacefully upon his breast, were curved; his merry eyes were tightly closed by the black disks of two copper coins; the light had gone out of his still face, and I was frightened by the ugly way he showed his teeth.
He and his mother return to their family nest in Nijni… He stays with his grandparents… His grandmother is the only kind soul in the entire family…
Until she came into my life I seemed to have been asleep, and hidden away in obscurity; but when she appeared she woke me and led me to the light of day. Connecting all my impressions by a single thread, she wove them into a pattern of many colors, thus making herself my friend for life, the being nearest my heart, the dearest and best known of all; while her disinterested love for all creation enriched me, and built up the strength needful for a hard life.
His grandfather is a cruel despot… He has everybody in the family under his thumb… He and his sons apparently have sadistic inclinations… He whipped his grandson half dead so Alyosha couldn’t rise from bed for days… And his both sons terrorized their wives to death… Right from the start Alyosha couldn’t help but loathe his granddad…
I was very well aware that grandfather’s shrewd, sharp green eyes followed me everywhere, and I was afraid of him. I remember how I always wished to hide myself from that fierce glance. It seemed to me that grandfather was malevolent; he spoke to every one mockingly and offensively, and, being provocative, did his best to put every one else out of temper.
So since his early childhood Alyosha was exposed to human meanness and cruelty… And his grandfather was also tutoring him:
“The gentlefolk, of course, are to blame, because they have more intelligence to back them up; but that can’t be said of all of them, but only of a few good ones who have already been proved. As for the others – most of them are as foolish as mice; they will take anything you like to give them. We have plenty of nut shells amongst us, but the kernels are missing; only nut shells, the kernels have been devoured. There’s a lesson for you, man! We ought to have learned it, our wits ought to have been sharpened by now; but we are not keen enough yet.”
If one’s nature is mean and beastly no social changes, however progressive, can eliminate bestiality.
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October 13, 2020I never knew my grandparents, and as I don't see any prospect of being a grandparent anytime soon, other people's accounts of their deep relationships with their grandparents or their grandchildren have a great appeal for me, an almost spiritual quality, something rich that is beyond my reach.
Fortunately there are many stories of such richness to be found in literature so I have been able to experience the grandchild/grandparent relationship vicariously many times, and depending on the skill of the writer, the experience can seem almost as real as if I had lived it myself.
I remember that when I read Tove Jansson'sSummer Book,I identified closely with both the grandmother and the granddaughter, and felt I was living their relationship to each other and to the island on which they lived as intensely as if I'd been there.
I read another grandparent/grandchild story set on an island more recently and again the story was so well told that I lived it with the characters. The author ofTwenty Years A-Growing,Maurice O'Sulluvan, though living on a remote island where books were rare, is said to have read Maxim Gorky's memoir of childhood so I thought I'd read it too, though I didn't know that it would contain the most powerful grandparent/grandchild story I'd yet met.
From the first page to the last, Gorky's grandmother, Akulina, is portrayed as the centre point of the author's childhood existence, the person he loved the most in the world. And, as in the case of O'Sullivan's grandfather, it is storytelling that creates the deep bond between the two. Akulina has a huge fund of orally transmitted stories and verses, and never grows tired of telling them to the young Gorky. Is it any wonder he became a writer?
Fortunately there are many stories of such richness to be found in literature so I have been able to experience the grandchild/grandparent relationship vicariously many times, and depending on the skill of the writer, the experience can seem almost as real as if I had lived it myself.
I remember that when I read Tove Jansson'sSummer Book,I identified closely with both the grandmother and the granddaughter, and felt I was living their relationship to each other and to the island on which they lived as intensely as if I'd been there.
I read another grandparent/grandchild story set on an island more recently and again the story was so well told that I lived it with the characters. The author ofTwenty Years A-Growing,Maurice O'Sulluvan, though living on a remote island where books were rare, is said to have read Maxim Gorky's memoir of childhood so I thought I'd read it too, though I didn't know that it would contain the most powerful grandparent/grandchild story I'd yet met.
From the first page to the last, Gorky's grandmother, Akulina, is portrayed as the centre point of the author's childhood existence, the person he loved the most in the world. And, as in the case of O'Sullivan's grandfather, it is storytelling that creates the deep bond between the two. Akulina has a huge fund of orally transmitted stories and verses, and never grows tired of telling them to the young Gorky. Is it any wonder he became a writer?
February 22, 2024
That's the first volume of a trilogy recounting the author's childhood and youthful memories. Fatherless, abandoned by his mother, he tells about his miserable childhood with his grandparents. His grandfather is a brutal, tyrannical, often drunk man who terrorizes those around him even if we feel he loves his grandson. Her grandmother is a good but weak woman, passive, fatalistic, bigoted, of great tenderness, of immense love for her little Alyosha. The daily life of all these poor people is made up of misery, misfortune, and violence. They suffer so much that each new casualty is a "distraction"! Alyosha grows up and becomes resourceful, naughty, and cheerful, but there is deep sadness in his heart. When his mother dies, he has to earn a living as a rag picker, which he tells in "By winning my bread."
Lenin and Stalin made Gorky the favorite writer of the new regime while not appreciating his work, for several reasons, in my opinion. First of all, there is undoubtedly a misguided bourgeois. Still, the popular class is far from being idealized as among the Communists (and Christians, too, for that matter); the misery which overwhelms them develops common passions (savagery, avarice.) It also drives away from the "positive proletarian." Then, Gorky has faith in man but believes more in progress due to an internal struggle, culture, and ideology. If he collaborated with the Soviet regime in the cultural field, the Communists had a dual attitude toward culture.
On the one hand, they disseminated it and tried to liberate the people. Still, they were also wary of it because, according to them, they were associating with the bourgeoisie. Finally, its novels are Russian, bathed in religiosity; they refer to "Eternal Russia," far from building a new world, and "from the past, let's make a clean sweep."
Lenin and Stalin made Gorky the favorite writer of the new regime while not appreciating his work, for several reasons, in my opinion. First of all, there is undoubtedly a misguided bourgeois. Still, the popular class is far from being idealized as among the Communists (and Christians, too, for that matter); the misery which overwhelms them develops common passions (savagery, avarice.) It also drives away from the "positive proletarian." Then, Gorky has faith in man but believes more in progress due to an internal struggle, culture, and ideology. If he collaborated with the Soviet regime in the cultural field, the Communists had a dual attitude toward culture.
On the one hand, they disseminated it and tried to liberate the people. Still, they were also wary of it because, according to them, they were associating with the bourgeoisie. Finally, its novels are Russian, bathed in religiosity; they refer to "Eternal Russia," far from building a new world, and "from the past, let's make a clean sweep."
August 18, 2023
Before Gorky went political, he wrote this book. It is his best writing, amazing despite his having so little formal education, amazing for its beauty and power, amazing for how devoid of self pity it is. It begins with a memory of seeing his father dead. Gorky is only a small child. He doesn't understand what death means. But he can distinguish between the father who played "merrily" with him and the cadaver with "set teeth." This is a writer who gets inside the head of a child. That's the kind of writing I like. Nothing feels imposed by the adult author. Fine details make lasting impressions just as small teeth do. Here, for example is his grandmother:
"She had a peculiar way of singing her words that made it easy for me to remember them - words as vivid and luscious as flowers. When she smiled, the irises of her dark eyes expanded and shone with an inexpressible light; her smile revealed strong white teeth, and in spite of the numerous wrinkles on her swarthy cheeks, her whole face seemed young and bright."
Though there is violence and cruelty, there is also love here. That will get me every time. The grandmother is beautifully drawn. The landscapes are vivid. The many characters breathe off the page. Skip Gorky's other writings, but give this a try. It's on my top childhood memoirs list in the sky.
"She had a peculiar way of singing her words that made it easy for me to remember them - words as vivid and luscious as flowers. When she smiled, the irises of her dark eyes expanded and shone with an inexpressible light; her smile revealed strong white teeth, and in spite of the numerous wrinkles on her swarthy cheeks, her whole face seemed young and bright."
Though there is violence and cruelty, there is also love here. That will get me every time. The grandmother is beautifully drawn. The landscapes are vivid. The many characters breathe off the page. Skip Gorky's other writings, but give this a try. It's on my top childhood memoirs list in the sky.
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October 13, 2020In recalling my childhood I like to picture myself as a beehive to which various simple obscure people brought the honey of their knowledge and thoughts on life, generously enriching my character with their own experience. Often this honey was dirty and bitter, but every scrap of knowledge was honey all the same.
I sat at a table near the door of my English class when I was around thirteen. Hard by the door to its left was a slightly battered steel cupboard which held a modest library of books. The idea was we could borrow a book from the cupboard to broaden our reading and this book is the one I best remember, it stands out more clearly thanRogue MaleorThe Fallen Idoland numerous others whose titles I've forgotten since turning their pages.
On the one hand it is a great book to read while growing up because it concerns the process of growing up and in particular for any bookish child this is an autobiography of reading, a child formed by books as much as anything else. And in this respect it is like many other literary autobiographies -The Classic Slumleaps to mind as a British equivalent. On the other hand the young Alexei Peshkov, who later adoptedMaxim Gorkyas his pen name, grew up in Nizhni-Novgorod, brought up by his downwardly mobile grandparents at the end of the nineteenth century as the Russian Empire was undergoing one of its periods of rapid yet uneven economic growth, so it is also the story of a very particular childhood.
This volume is the first of an autobiographical trilogy that continues withMy Apprenticeshipand closes withMy Universities.It opens with the young Gorky watching his mother crying over the dead body of his father while she goes into labour and ends some years later, barely a teenager, with his grandfather tossing him out of the house to fend for himself.
The whole trilogy builds into an impressive picture of pre-revolutionary life in a big provincial city. Its a colourful and hard existence, people don't so much struggle to avoid poverty so much as regularly see it flood over them, just as the river Volga floods the lower reaches of the city every spring. Almost the only constant are the books and the reading, the impact of that reading on the life and mind of a growing child who as the series closes has become an adult, in part an adult shaped by books they have read.
Above all there are two constant figures in this story. His grandmotherand his grandfather.The grandfather was a self made businessman.However this is not the cool, calm world of the corporation but rather the by the skin of the teeth world of the family business, riven by jealousies and insecurity. The grandmother by contrast inhabits the world of folk religion.This is a fascinating book I am still inclined to recommend to lovers of Tolstoy and Turgenev as a corrective to a top down, rural vision of pre-revolutionary Russia. Here instead is the teeming town, the tradesman, the small business. A world in which going to school and getting a formal education can be a child's dream, while getting the kind of beating that lands them in hospital is part of the reality of their upbringing.
I sat at a table near the door of my English class when I was around thirteen. Hard by the door to its left was a slightly battered steel cupboard which held a modest library of books. The idea was we could borrow a book from the cupboard to broaden our reading and this book is the one I best remember, it stands out more clearly thanRogue MaleorThe Fallen Idoland numerous others whose titles I've forgotten since turning their pages.
On the one hand it is a great book to read while growing up because it concerns the process of growing up and in particular for any bookish child this is an autobiography of reading, a child formed by books as much as anything else. And in this respect it is like many other literary autobiographies -The Classic Slumleaps to mind as a British equivalent. On the other hand the young Alexei Peshkov, who later adoptedMaxim Gorkyas his pen name, grew up in Nizhni-Novgorod, brought up by his downwardly mobile grandparents at the end of the nineteenth century as the Russian Empire was undergoing one of its periods of rapid yet uneven economic growth, so it is also the story of a very particular childhood.
This volume is the first of an autobiographical trilogy that continues withMy Apprenticeshipand closes withMy Universities.It opens with the young Gorky watching his mother crying over the dead body of his father while she goes into labour and ends some years later, barely a teenager, with his grandfather tossing him out of the house to fend for himself.
The whole trilogy builds into an impressive picture of pre-revolutionary life in a big provincial city. Its a colourful and hard existence, people don't so much struggle to avoid poverty so much as regularly see it flood over them, just as the river Volga floods the lower reaches of the city every spring. Almost the only constant are the books and the reading, the impact of that reading on the life and mind of a growing child who as the series closes has become an adult, in part an adult shaped by books they have read.
Above all there are two constant figures in this story. His grandmotherand his grandfather.The grandfather was a self made businessman.However this is not the cool, calm world of the corporation but rather the by the skin of the teeth world of the family business, riven by jealousies and insecurity. The grandmother by contrast inhabits the world of folk religion.This is a fascinating book I am still inclined to recommend to lovers of Tolstoy and Turgenev as a corrective to a top down, rural vision of pre-revolutionary Russia. Here instead is the teeming town, the tradesman, the small business. A world in which going to school and getting a formal education can be a child's dream, while getting the kind of beating that lands them in hospital is part of the reality of their upbringing.
February 25, 2018
My Childhood, Autobiography Part I, 1913–1914, Maxim Gorky
My Childhood, Autobiography Part I (Russian: Детство, translit. Detstvo) is an autobiographical work by Maxim Gorky, published in Russian in 1913–14, and in English in 1920. It was republished by Pocket Penguins in 2016.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: ماه اکتبر سال 1975 میلادی
عنوان: دوران کودکی؛ نویسنده: ماکسیم گورکی؛ مترجم: کریم کشاورز؛ تهران، سپهر، 1330، در 267 ص؛ تهران، کتابهای جیبی، چاپ دوم 1341؛ در 336 ص؛ چاپ دیگر: تهران، آگاه، چاپ ششم 1357؛ در 336 ص؛ چاپ دیگر: تهران، نگاه، 1388؛ در 319 ص؛ شابک: 9789643515461؛ موضوع: سرگذشتنامه و اتوبیوگرافی نویسندگان روسیه - قرن 20 م
میان پدربزرگی خشن و پرخاشگر که میخواهد او را به سبک قدیم تربیت کند، و مادر بزرگی مهربان و پرهیزگار، به سر میبرد. خانواده در وحشت از پیرمرد به زندگی ادامه میدهند و پیرمرد هم بیدریغ زن و بچه هایش را به باد کتک میگیرد. ا. شربیانی
My Childhood, Autobiography Part I (Russian: Детство, translit. Detstvo) is an autobiographical work by Maxim Gorky, published in Russian in 1913–14, and in English in 1920. It was republished by Pocket Penguins in 2016.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: ماه اکتبر سال 1975 میلادی
عنوان: دوران کودکی؛ نویسنده: ماکسیم گورکی؛ مترجم: کریم کشاورز؛ تهران، سپهر، 1330، در 267 ص؛ تهران، کتابهای جیبی، چاپ دوم 1341؛ در 336 ص؛ چاپ دیگر: تهران، آگاه، چاپ ششم 1357؛ در 336 ص؛ چاپ دیگر: تهران، نگاه، 1388؛ در 319 ص؛ شابک: 9789643515461؛ موضوع: سرگذشتنامه و اتوبیوگرافی نویسندگان روسیه - قرن 20 م
میان پدربزرگی خشن و پرخاشگر که میخواهد او را به سبک قدیم تربیت کند، و مادر بزرگی مهربان و پرهیزگار، به سر میبرد. خانواده در وحشت از پیرمرد به زندگی ادامه میدهند و پیرمرد هم بیدریغ زن و بچه هایش را به باد کتک میگیرد. ا. شربیانی
January 1, 2021
Now, with one swift mighty motion
He has raised his bride on high
And has cast her where the waters
Of the Volga roll and sigh.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenka_...
WhenIantold me (in our youth) of this Russian song, the story of the robber Stenka Razin, it began my fascination with the Russian people. Stenka Razin, still an heroic warrior, has taken a Persian princess aboard ship and overhears his men accusing him of weakness, of turning into a woman himself. He throws his bride overboard, to her death in the Volga.
After reading Maxim Gorky’s “My Childhood” I feel I am several steps closer to being able to encompass this, to me, utterly amazing disregard for human life in the face of personal insult. The five-year-old Gorky learned it the hard way. His father has died of cholera, and Alexei (he used his patronym in his writing) has gone to live with his mother’s family, the violent and generally repulsive Kashirins. The incomprehensible rage that defines his grandfather is vented on him; at one point he asks someone, “Are small boys always beaten?”
Later, writing this gruesome childhood account, he is still asking the same question:
“When I try to recall those vile abominations of that barbarous life in Russia, at times I find myself asking the question: is it worth while recording them? And with ever stronger conviction I find the answer is yes, because that was the real loathsome truth and to this day it is still valid...Life is always surprising us – not by its rich, seething layer of bestial refuse – but by the bright, healthy and creative human powers of goodness that are forever forcing their way up through it. It is those powers that awaken our indestructible hope that a brighter, better and more humane life will once again be reborn.”
I knew nothing about Gorky before reading this first volume of his autobiography, and the narrative came as a shock. As I read of the mad violence and uncontained hatred in Gorky’s maternal family, where he was routinely mocked, insulted and beaten unconscious, the question that repeated itself in my head was, “How did this child survive?” He is so young that he describes people as shapes, their features forming distorted impressions, their very size changing with their words, their actions incomprehensible to him. Their rage spends itself on him, a child. My second question was, “How could people live their lives with this constant inflicting of suffering upon one another?” and, near the end, Gorky answers it:
“Long afterwards I understood that to Russians, through the poverty and squalor of their lives, suffering comes as a diversion, is turned into a game and they play at it like children and rarely feel ashamed of their misfortune. In the monotony of everyday existence grief comes as a holiday, and a fire is an entertainment. A scratch embellishes an empty face.”
Gorky was born in 1868, just after the emancipation of the serfs. There’s a bit of discussion in the book about the serfs having been better off before emancipation. They were badly treated then, but as property they had some value, while now they must fend for themselves. The child Alexei grew up in the insecurity of all the social evils one could think up. Due to this he stands out from other Russian authors who wrote of the living conditions which ordinary Russians endured – he knew them intimately.
As he grew older he writes of having turned “sullen”. How could his spirit survive this constant denigration? He writes without hatred or bitterness:
“Much of what happened in our house was interesting and amusing, but at times I felt weighed down by a sadness impossible to overcome. It was as though I had been filled up with something very heavy and for a long time I lived at the bottom of a deep and dark pit, without sight or hearing, or any kind of feeling, blind and half dead...”
The brief moments of social enjoyment and gaiety are in contrast with, but seem to be born of, an endurance of suffering that has something of nobility and even beauty, embodied in the figure of his grandmother, whose essential attribute is love. In the face of violence and insult she embraces a ready forgiveness in a tenderness that seems to reach through it all and physically pull people towards her for protection. While her husband is religious in a formal sense, she keeps her God close, chatting with him freely in prayer at night while the child pretends to be asleep, and invoking him at any opportunity.
“Her God was with her all day, and she even talked about him to animals. It was plain that it was easy for everything to submit to this God: people, dogs, birds, bees, even herbs. He bestowed his kindness on all earthly creatures without distinction, and was close to all things...."
She goes on to chastise a cat for catching a starling –
“You’ve no fear of God, you miserable wretch!”
and commiserates with her old horse,
“Why are you so down in the dumps, my servant of God? Getting old, aren’t you?”
The horse would sigh, and shake his head.”
Above all, it is the stories and legends of which his grandmother – I suppose it will be “Babushka” in the Russian – has in abundance, all memorised, as she is illiterate, that fascinate the young Gorky more than anything. She endows him with a legacy that fires his imagination, and feeds his deprived soul, providing the material that forms his early stories. “My Childhood” is described in the Introduction (which I read at the end) as “life in the raw”. The fairy stories, the ancient romances and the heroic legends must have mitigated this, merged into the daily violence as a necessary antidote.
I have said little about Gorky’s parents, or even his terrible grandfather, and nothing about the ramshackle cavalcade of characters that swarm in and out of the house. That moveable population did teach me that the herding together of several families in one house under Communism had been more or less the norm before that, for the working classes. The insecurity and violence in which they all live disturbs him less as he becomes used to it all. On the face of it, his story expresses the supreme powerlessness of the child; but he soon learns to glean what he can, to assert what he can. As he grows older he lays bare to us the resistance that grew and hardened in his soul, so that his deliberate defiance would lead him into more beatings. He is at pains however to stress the sickening revulsion he felt at seeing harm done to other people and creatures, which affected him so that for the rest of his life he could not bear to see suffering being inflicted on any creature or human being.
Despite the legacy of his grandmother that inspired at least his early writing, I felt throughout that he was like his father, not his mother’s family, and by chance I came across this photograph of him (with Chekhov), in which I see him as very like the photograph of his father on the front cover above.
© Ronald Hingley, Russian Writers and Society 1825 – 1904
Thanks toJohnfor lending me the above book!
I’m not sure that I’ll go on to read the two other books in the trilogy,My ApprenticeshipandMy Universities.I’ll need some time to recover from this one. What I take from it, and consider, is that from the childhood Gorky endured, came the powerful voice of one of Russia’s greatest writers.
“You must learn(to write),” says one of the motely collection of lodgers to him, “And when you’ve done that, write down your grandmother’s stories...”
He did more than that. He wrote the Russian people as he knew them, in all their mutual hostility, suspicion and in the wide, mad embrace of their capacity to live life to the utmost, tumbling together in uproar every cruelty, every joy, every obstacle, every possibility that life offers; despite it all, despite it all.
July 30, 2019
"Çocukluğumda bir kovan gibi görürdüm kendimi: Basit, sıradan insanlar, hayat üzerine bilgilerinin, düşüncelerinin balını arılar gibi kovanıma taşır, sunabildikleri ne varsa ruhumu zenginleştirmek üzere getirip cömertçe sunardı. Bal her zaman temiz olmazdı, hatta çoğu kez acı olurdu. Ama her bilgi, yine de baldı!"(s.149).
Çocukluğum, Maksim Gorki'nin otobiyografisini oluşturan üç kitaptan ilki. Biyografi ve otobiyografi çok severek okuduğum bir tür değildir normalde, bu sebeple Çocukluğum'a da biraz tereddütle başlamıştım; fakat elimden düşüremedim. Rus klasiklerini çok özlemişim!
Çocukluğum, Maksim Gorki'nin otobiyografisini oluşturan üç kitaptan ilki. Biyografi ve otobiyografi çok severek okuduğum bir tür değildir normalde, bu sebeple Çocukluğum'a da biraz tereddütle başlamıştım; fakat elimden düşüremedim. Rus klasiklerini çok özlemişim!
February 21, 2017
What a wonderful book! I liked everything of it: the story, which is the autobiographical account of Gorky's childhood, but also the writing style. The language is so simple but powerful and there are wonderful descriptions of everything: the landscapes, the emotions of the people, Russian life and habits of that period and, above all, Gorky's considerations about his childhood.
It's impossible to hate even only one of the characters though sometimes they seem harsh and rude. I liked a lot how Gorky depicts the humanity in every character: they can be sometimes bad but also kind. All are so human with their virtues but also with their vices. Every aspect of the personality was important for Gorky. As he himself says in the story:"If I think about myself as a child, I imagine myself like a hive where several simple and insignificant people brought, like bees, the honey of their knowledge and their thoughts on life, generously enriching my soul, each according to his ability. Often this honey was dirty and bitter, but all knowledge is still honey."(*translation made by me, I've read the book in Italian)
I do agree so much with this quote. In my opinion it is so important to observe and listen to the people because from everyone we can learn something.
Through the description of his childhood we can also feel the Russian soul; the life and habits of simple and poor people in that period but also during the time when his grandparents were kids because they told him from their childhood. There is another quote I liked, when Gorky's grandfather says:We are not lords. No one teaches us. We have to understand everything by ourselves. For the others books have been written and schools built, and for us there is nothing ready-made. We have to take it all by ourselves.(*)
It was really interesting to read about how life was in that period for poor people. His grandfather hit him a lot when he was a child but also told him that he did it to teach him. The grandfather hit also his wife but for her there was nothing strange in this. But she was such a lovely person, full of compassion for her husband and for the other people. Gorky's uncles had tried to kill Gorky's father, there was often a lot of violence but Gorky seems detached from everything; he talks about his youth but there is no bitterness or judgment. He used also the bad things (as we can understand from the first quote) to better understand people, life and what surrounded him. He was a big observes and it's only through observation that we can learn something and attain knowledge.
Another theme I liked a lot was that about God. There were two different points of view: the one of Gorky's grandmother and the one of his grandfather. For his grandfather God was far away, someone to respect and be afraid of. He was a strong believer but in a "serious" way. For the grandmother, on the contrary, God was a friend. Every evening, before going to bed, she talked to him telling what happened during the day and how people had behaved, as if she was chatting with a neighbor. There was so much sweetness and tenderness in her way of loving God. She talked also to God's Mother as if she was more important that God himself. Once, talking to her, the grandmother said: "but don't tell your Son!". It was so sweet! It seemed a relationship of confidence among mothers.
But Gorky's grandmother believed also in spirits and goblins of the Russian folklore. The tales she told to Gorky when he was a child were wonderful and I liked that mix of superstition and faith. For the grandmother all these spirits were real, she strongly believed in them. She talked also about angels and devils she had seen and Gorky-child was fascinated by all these stories.
His grandmother was the most important person of his childhood and the reader feels the importance of this person and her sweetness. Gorky's father had died when he was a child and his mother decided to leave him with her parents and to go away. She wasn't present in Gorky's life, his grandfather hit him often so we understand why his grandmother with her sweetness, kindness and fables has been the most important person in his life.
There would be a lot more to say about this book. It was also moving. Not only because of the people's lives but I found also some descriptions of the landscape very touching. In my opinion this is a must-read!
It's impossible to hate even only one of the characters though sometimes they seem harsh and rude. I liked a lot how Gorky depicts the humanity in every character: they can be sometimes bad but also kind. All are so human with their virtues but also with their vices. Every aspect of the personality was important for Gorky. As he himself says in the story:"If I think about myself as a child, I imagine myself like a hive where several simple and insignificant people brought, like bees, the honey of their knowledge and their thoughts on life, generously enriching my soul, each according to his ability. Often this honey was dirty and bitter, but all knowledge is still honey."(*translation made by me, I've read the book in Italian)
I do agree so much with this quote. In my opinion it is so important to observe and listen to the people because from everyone we can learn something.
Through the description of his childhood we can also feel the Russian soul; the life and habits of simple and poor people in that period but also during the time when his grandparents were kids because they told him from their childhood. There is another quote I liked, when Gorky's grandfather says:We are not lords. No one teaches us. We have to understand everything by ourselves. For the others books have been written and schools built, and for us there is nothing ready-made. We have to take it all by ourselves.(*)
It was really interesting to read about how life was in that period for poor people. His grandfather hit him a lot when he was a child but also told him that he did it to teach him. The grandfather hit also his wife but for her there was nothing strange in this. But she was such a lovely person, full of compassion for her husband and for the other people. Gorky's uncles had tried to kill Gorky's father, there was often a lot of violence but Gorky seems detached from everything; he talks about his youth but there is no bitterness or judgment. He used also the bad things (as we can understand from the first quote) to better understand people, life and what surrounded him. He was a big observes and it's only through observation that we can learn something and attain knowledge.
Another theme I liked a lot was that about God. There were two different points of view: the one of Gorky's grandmother and the one of his grandfather. For his grandfather God was far away, someone to respect and be afraid of. He was a strong believer but in a "serious" way. For the grandmother, on the contrary, God was a friend. Every evening, before going to bed, she talked to him telling what happened during the day and how people had behaved, as if she was chatting with a neighbor. There was so much sweetness and tenderness in her way of loving God. She talked also to God's Mother as if she was more important that God himself. Once, talking to her, the grandmother said: "but don't tell your Son!". It was so sweet! It seemed a relationship of confidence among mothers.
But Gorky's grandmother believed also in spirits and goblins of the Russian folklore. The tales she told to Gorky when he was a child were wonderful and I liked that mix of superstition and faith. For the grandmother all these spirits were real, she strongly believed in them. She talked also about angels and devils she had seen and Gorky-child was fascinated by all these stories.
His grandmother was the most important person of his childhood and the reader feels the importance of this person and her sweetness. Gorky's father had died when he was a child and his mother decided to leave him with her parents and to go away. She wasn't present in Gorky's life, his grandfather hit him often so we understand why his grandmother with her sweetness, kindness and fables has been the most important person in his life.
There would be a lot more to say about this book. It was also moving. Not only because of the people's lives but I found also some descriptions of the landscape very touching. In my opinion this is a must-read!
October 29, 2017
I read this book in Russian--and a fairly simple Russian it was, as I recall. From Maxim Gorky's Trilogy, (Moskva, 1975), Детство (this book) began it, followed by "Among the People," and "My University." One sentence I admire, even aspire to: at his father's grave he did not cry. "Я плакал редко и толко от обиды, ни от боли" (17) I cry very rarely, and only from insults or outrages, never from suffering or pain. Moreover, his father would laugh at his tears.
When his bereaved mother comes on deck to see her own mother singing Aida to vodka-smashed sailors, Mother says, "They're laughing at you, Mamasha!" "God Bless them!" her mother replies, "Let them laugh...It's good for their health." (21)
This was decades ago, so what I principally recall is seeing Gorky's house on Capri! What a shock that this avatar of the simple life, this hero of socialist realism, this denizen of economic sequestration, actually lived in splendor quite a few years on the Isle of Capri (1906-13, before the Revolution, then again in the 1920s). Wrote one of his best novels there, at his own villa Pierina. A couple years ago, Capri named one of its streets for him, as did Norway, Maine for my grandfather, Ralph W Richardson. (Even has his middle initial.)
When his bereaved mother comes on deck to see her own mother singing Aida to vodka-smashed sailors, Mother says, "They're laughing at you, Mamasha!" "God Bless them!" her mother replies, "Let them laugh...It's good for their health." (21)
This was decades ago, so what I principally recall is seeing Gorky's house on Capri! What a shock that this avatar of the simple life, this hero of socialist realism, this denizen of economic sequestration, actually lived in splendor quite a few years on the Isle of Capri (1906-13, before the Revolution, then again in the 1920s). Wrote one of his best novels there, at his own villa Pierina. A couple years ago, Capri named one of its streets for him, as did Norway, Maine for my grandfather, Ralph W Richardson. (Even has his middle initial.)
October 27, 2021
Probably one of the most positive things in Maxim Gorky’s memoir of him looking back at himself on when he was a young child was the cover photo of the Penguin 20th Century Classics edition I read from — it was a photograph of him when he was probably 2 or 3 sitting on top of his father’s shoulders. It was a sweet picture of a young father and his young son. When we start reading the memoir the father is dead and his mother, sick with grief, essentially abandons him, leaving him with his grandfather and grandmother. Gorky has mostly fond memories of his grandmother…she said she bore 18 children in her lifetime…. apparently only two lived. She was illiterate, and I think she was married when she was 15… The grandfather regularly flogged Maxim. People in this memoir seemed to always be beating the crap out of each other. Or praying to Christian icons.
Maxim has a memory of an event...his grandmother must have told him…the event is unreal (unreal in the sense of "I can't believe I am reading this). Her two sons, Yakov and Mikhail, were jealous or mad at Maxims’ father (obviously when he was alive) and they cut a hole in some ice and camouflaged it so that his father fell into the hole. And when he tried to grab onto the ice to crawl back on it, they stomped his fingers with their boots. Then they threw chunks of ice at him, “and went off leaving him to drown on his own…” He lived to tell the tale, but that was attempted murder! He did not go to the authorities because he liked the sons’ mother (Maxim’s grandmother). Crazeeeeeee...
At the end of the memoir his mother, who came back to live with her mother and father because her second husband had an affair, is on her deathbed, and Maxim is there to witness her death. And his grandfather who seemed crazy-bonkers to me (beating up his wife or Maxim and occasionally being nice), at the end of the memoir, has a grandfather-to-grandson Hallmark card moment with Maxim and says:
• “Alexei, you’re not a medal, you’re only hanging round my neck. There’s no room for you here. You must go into the world.”
Touching, eh? 🤨
I’ve read lots of memoirs (people looking back on their childhoods) and I would say this was OK, but not in the upper tier of memoirs in my opinion.
Reviews
• From a blogger…http://guyportman.com/reviews/my-chil...
•https://www.mouthshut.com/product-rev...
•https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re...
Maxim has a memory of an event...his grandmother must have told him…the event is unreal (unreal in the sense of "I can't believe I am reading this). Her two sons, Yakov and Mikhail, were jealous or mad at Maxims’ father (obviously when he was alive) and they cut a hole in some ice and camouflaged it so that his father fell into the hole. And when he tried to grab onto the ice to crawl back on it, they stomped his fingers with their boots. Then they threw chunks of ice at him, “and went off leaving him to drown on his own…” He lived to tell the tale, but that was attempted murder! He did not go to the authorities because he liked the sons’ mother (Maxim’s grandmother). Crazeeeeeee...
At the end of the memoir his mother, who came back to live with her mother and father because her second husband had an affair, is on her deathbed, and Maxim is there to witness her death. And his grandfather who seemed crazy-bonkers to me (beating up his wife or Maxim and occasionally being nice), at the end of the memoir, has a grandfather-to-grandson Hallmark card moment with Maxim and says:
• “Alexei, you’re not a medal, you’re only hanging round my neck. There’s no room for you here. You must go into the world.”
Touching, eh? 🤨
I’ve read lots of memoirs (people looking back on their childhoods) and I would say this was OK, but not in the upper tier of memoirs in my opinion.
Reviews
• From a blogger…http://guyportman.com/reviews/my-chil...
•https://www.mouthshut.com/product-rev...
•https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re...
November 27, 2015
كنتُ أجهل أن هذه سيرة ذاتية للمؤلف، عندما أنهيتها علمت فصُدِمت.
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حياة مزرية عاشها هذا الطفل الصغير، خلت حياته من الرحمة من العلم من كل مايتمتع به الطفل، ولكن ذكاءه كان متوقدا دائما، وجهة نظره المختلفة لكل ماحوله ومن حوله، اعتزازه برأيه، نقده للأشخاص الذين عاش بينهم، أظهرت لنا شخصية مفكرة جميلة.
حديثه عن إله جده وإله جدته والفرق بينهم ذكرني بصديقة لأمي كانت تخاف أن زوجها يبحث عن زوجة أخرى فكانت تكثر الشكوى والإتصال على أمي، فقالت لها أمي ذات مرة: أنا مابيدي شي، إذا سجدتي ادعي ربك يسخره لك ويسخرك له.
ضحكت صديقة أمي قائلة: وتتوقعين ربي بيسمع هالتفاهات؟ يجوز أدعي ربي بشي زي كذا؟
؟!
من الأمور التي صدمتني في ذلك الزمن هو المعاملة الفظة الموجهة للنساء!
لا أعلم إن كان هذا واقعا، فالحمد كل الحمد أني لم أخلق في ذاك الزمان.
لم يقحم الكاتب الكثير من الأسماء بل كان يقول "جدي فعل" و "جدتي فعلت" وهذا كان مريحا في القراءة، وأسهل في تذكر الأحداث.
الترجمة كانت جميلة ومفهومة، ولم أشعر بالملل أبدا أثناء القراءة رغم أن الوصف كان يحتل جزءا كبيرا من النص.
أنا أعيش حالة من الإنبهار بحياة مكسيم غوركي!
فلترقد روحه في سلام!
February 5, 2017
Cred că pot spune că a fost una din cele mai bine scrise (şi traduse) cărţi citite de mine vreodată. Povestea plină de frământări şi încercări a micului Alioşa m-a dus cu gândul la Remi din "Singur pe lume" al lui Hector Malot, primul roman citit în copilărie.
Cu siguranţă, am să trec în curând şi la următoarele două volume din trilogia gorkiana ( "La stăpân" şi "Universităţile mele" ).
Cu siguranţă, am să trec în curând şi la următoarele două volume din trilogia gorkiana ( "La stăpân" şi "Universităţile mele" ).
December 6, 2020
3.5
دوران کودکیبخش اول از اتوبیوگرافیآلکسی ماکسیموویچ پشکوف(همون ماکسیم گورکی- به معنی تلخ- لقبی که خودش برای خودش انتخاب کرد) هستش که به جز ارزشهای ذاتی خود زندگینامهنویسی از یک لحاظ دیگه هم دارای ارزشه و اون نشون دادن فقر و تنگدستی مردمان فرودست روسیه است.
ماکسیم گورکی، پنج سال بیشتر نداشت که پدرش رو از دست میده و مادرش ناچارا به همراه الکسی به خونه پدری برمیگرده. پدربزرگی بسیار خشن و سختگیر که مرتب و به خاطر کوچکترین خطایی اون رو شدیدا کتک میزد. با اینحال طی کتاب آدم یواش یواش دلش برای پدربزرگه هم میسوزه و متوجه میشه واقعا آدم بدی نیست. منتهی همونقدر از لطافت طبع بویی برده که طی زندگیش دیده و چشیده. مادرش هم از قراری خیلی بالای سرش نبوده و خلاصه بیشتر ایام کودکی الکسی در کنار پدربزرگ و مادربزرگش میگذره تا شاهد تلاطم وحشتناکی از فقر و خشونت و حماقت باشه که زندگی این مردمان رو میبلعید و فقط سرسختترین و خشنترین و دغلترین انسانها میتونستن جون سالم در ببرن.
چنگ زدن در ریسمان عقاید دینی و البته خرافات چیزهایی هستن که رنجها و مصیبتهای بیپایان رو برای این مردم بدبخت تحملپذیر میکرده. این مساله رو میشه به خوبی در مادربزرگ ماکسیم گورکی دید. زنی که به نوعی قهرمان کتاب هم هست و نقش مهمی در شکلگیری دوران کودکی اون داره. با اینحال، تفاوت این عقاید و خرافات بین پدربزرگ و مادربزرگش، نشان از جهانبینی متفاوتی داره که این دو نفر نسبت به دنیا داشتن و این موضوع در کتاب به شیوایی تشریح شده و خیلی جالب توجه بود.
ماکسیم گورکی شاید یکی از متفاوتترین نویسندههای روسی باشه که عمده کارهاش با تمرکز بر مردمان فرودست نوشته شده، نه طبقه اعیان و یا حتی متوسط. خودش گفته کتکهایی که در دوران کودکی خورده بود باعث شدن تا هیچ وقت نتونه نسبت به رنج انسانهای بیپناه بی تفاوت باشه. این رو بذاریم در کنار تمامی لحظاتی که الکسی مجبور بود در میان آشغالها دنبال ضایعات بگرده و برای چند کوپک سگدو بزنه و خیلی ناملایمات دیگه، اونوقت بوضوح میشه دلایل این تفاوت رو درک کرد. دلایلی که ریشههای اونها رو میشه بخوبی در این کتاب، کند و کاو کرد.
"مدتها بعد فهمیدم مردم روسیه بر اثر فقر و تنگدستی، غصه خوردن را وسیله تفریح خود قرار دادهاند و همچنان که کودکان با بازیچههای خود بازی میکنند، آنان نیز با مصیبتهای خ��د ور میروند و کمتر اتفاق میافتد که از بدبخت بودن شرم داشته باشند. در میان زندگی پر مشقت و یکنواختشان مصیبت هم خود جشنی است...؛"
دوران کودکیبخش اول از اتوبیوگرافیآلکسی ماکسیموویچ پشکوف(همون ماکسیم گورکی- به معنی تلخ- لقبی که خودش برای خودش انتخاب کرد) هستش که به جز ارزشهای ذاتی خود زندگینامهنویسی از یک لحاظ دیگه هم دارای ارزشه و اون نشون دادن فقر و تنگدستی مردمان فرودست روسیه است.
ماکسیم گورکی، پنج سال بیشتر نداشت که پدرش رو از دست میده و مادرش ناچارا به همراه الکسی به خونه پدری برمیگرده. پدربزرگی بسیار خشن و سختگیر که مرتب و به خاطر کوچکترین خطایی اون رو شدیدا کتک میزد. با اینحال طی کتاب آدم یواش یواش دلش برای پدربزرگه هم میسوزه و متوجه میشه واقعا آدم بدی نیست. منتهی همونقدر از لطافت طبع بویی برده که طی زندگیش دیده و چشیده. مادرش هم از قراری خیلی بالای سرش نبوده و خلاصه بیشتر ایام کودکی الکسی در کنار پدربزرگ و مادربزرگش میگذره تا شاهد تلاطم وحشتناکی از فقر و خشونت و حماقت باشه که زندگی این مردمان رو میبلعید و فقط سرسختترین و خشنترین و دغلترین انسانها میتونستن جون سالم در ببرن.
چنگ زدن در ریسمان عقاید دینی و البته خرافات چیزهایی هستن که رنجها و مصیبتهای بیپایان رو برای این مردم بدبخت تحملپذیر میکرده. این مساله رو میشه به خوبی در مادربزرگ ماکسیم گورکی دید. زنی که به نوعی قهرمان کتاب هم هست و نقش مهمی در شکلگیری دوران کودکی اون داره. با اینحال، تفاوت این عقاید و خرافات بین پدربزرگ و مادربزرگش، نشان از جهانبینی متفاوتی داره که این دو نفر نسبت به دنیا داشتن و این موضوع در کتاب به شیوایی تشریح شده و خیلی جالب توجه بود.
ماکسیم گورکی شاید یکی از متفاوتترین نویسندههای روسی باشه که عمده کارهاش با تمرکز بر مردمان فرودست نوشته شده، نه طبقه اعیان و یا حتی متوسط. خودش گفته کتکهایی که در دوران کودکی خورده بود باعث شدن تا هیچ وقت نتونه نسبت به رنج انسانهای بیپناه بی تفاوت باشه. این رو بذاریم در کنار تمامی لحظاتی که الکسی مجبور بود در میان آشغالها دنبال ضایعات بگرده و برای چند کوپک سگدو بزنه و خیلی ناملایمات دیگه، اونوقت بوضوح میشه دلایل این تفاوت رو درک کرد. دلایلی که ریشههای اونها رو میشه بخوبی در این کتاب، کند و کاو کرد.
March 28, 2012
The most horrific violence, terrible poverty and degradation is described here, most frighteningly of all, in the indifferent voice of a child. It is terrifying to see how quickly the horror of this reality becomes an accepted, to the point of being almost ignored, part of Alexei's life. Only on two occasions does the voice of the adult Maxim Gorky give us an indication of the true effect of such experiences on a young child.
"...I couldn't believe any longer that all this was in earnest and that tears came hard to them. All those tears and shouts, and all the suffering they inflicted on each other, all those conflicts that died away just as quickly as they flared up, had now become an accepted part of my life, disturbed me less and less, and hardly left any impression. Long afterwards I understood that to Russians, through the poverty and squalor of their lives, suffering comes as a diversion, is turned into a game and they play at it like children and rarely feel ashamed of their misfortune. In the monotony of everyday existence grief comes as a holiday...
"When I try to recall thsoe vile abominations of that barbarous life in Russia, at times I find myself asking the question: is it worth while recording them? And with ever stronger conviction I find the answer is yes, because that was the real loathsome truth and to this day it is still valid.
"It is the truth that must be known down to the very roots, so that by tearing them up it can be completely erased from the memory, from the soul of man, from our whole oppressive and shameful life."
Yet this story is beautifully told, with charm and without bitterness, with an appreciation for the happy times and for the love.
"...I couldn't believe any longer that all this was in earnest and that tears came hard to them. All those tears and shouts, and all the suffering they inflicted on each other, all those conflicts that died away just as quickly as they flared up, had now become an accepted part of my life, disturbed me less and less, and hardly left any impression. Long afterwards I understood that to Russians, through the poverty and squalor of their lives, suffering comes as a diversion, is turned into a game and they play at it like children and rarely feel ashamed of their misfortune. In the monotony of everyday existence grief comes as a holiday...
"When I try to recall thsoe vile abominations of that barbarous life in Russia, at times I find myself asking the question: is it worth while recording them? And with ever stronger conviction I find the answer is yes, because that was the real loathsome truth and to this day it is still valid.
"It is the truth that must be known down to the very roots, so that by tearing them up it can be completely erased from the memory, from the soul of man, from our whole oppressive and shameful life."
Yet this story is beautifully told, with charm and without bitterness, with an appreciation for the happy times and for the love.
September 27, 2022
এমন নির্মোহ এবং তীব্র অনুভূতি-সৃষ্টিকারী আত্মজৈবনিক লেখা সর্বশেষ কবে পড়েছি স্মরণ নেই। আদৌ কখনও গোর্কির ছেলেবেলার মতো লেখা পড়ার সুযোগ হয়েছে কি না তা-ও নিশ্চিত নই। মূল রুশ থেকে বইটি অনুবাদ করেছেন অমল দাশগুপ্ত। অধুনালুপ্ত প্রগতি এই ধ্রুপদী বইটির প্��কাশক।
ছোট্ট আলিওশার সৈনিক বাবা মারা গেছে। ঘরে স স্বামীর মৃতদেহ দেখে মৃত্যুশোকে কাতর আলিওশার মা মূর্ছা যাচ্ছেন। মেয়ে ও নাতিকে নিতে এসেছে আলিওশার ধর্মপ্রাণ নানি। মূলত, পুরো বইতে কোথাও লেখকের নাম গোর্কি লেখা নেই। ম্যাক্সিম গোর্কি নামটি লেখকের নিজের দেওয়া। যার মানে তিক্তপ্রাণ ম্যাক্সিম।
যেদিন আলিওশার বাবা মারা যায়, সেদিনই তার একটি ভাই জন্ম নেয় এবং কিছুদিন পর শিশুটি মারা যায়। মা ও নান���র সাথে আলিওশা পেশকভ রওনা হয় নতুন গন্তব্যে, নানা কাশিরিনের বাড়িতে।
হুমায়ূন আহমেদের হিমু যারা পড়েছেন, তারা জানেন হিমুর নানা বাড়ির মানুষগুলো হচ্ছে পিশাচশ্রেণির। কতটা মন্দ হিমুর নানা ও মামারা এর কিছু বর্ণনা হুমায়ূন আহমেদ হিমু সিরিজের বইগুলোতে কম-বেশি দিয়েছেন। আমার ধারণা এই বুদ্ধিটা তিনি গোর্কির লেখা পড়ে পেয়েছিলেন।
গোর্কির নানাবাড়ির সবগুলো মানুষ প্রচণ্ড অর্থলোভী, দয়া-মায়াহীন এবং নিম্নশ্রেণির। এখানে এসে ছোট্ট গোর্কি অচেনা এক জগতের সন্ধান পায়। এই দুনিয়ায় সম্পদের জন্য গোর্কির দুই মামা একে-অপরকে খুন করতে উদ্যােত। বিধবা বোনকে তারা উটকো ঝামেলা মনে করে এবং সম্পদের ভাগ দিতে হবে ভেবে ভীষণ বিরক্তি ও ঘৃণার চোখে দেখে। গোর্কির মাতামহ কাশিরিন রীতিমতো নির্দয় মানুষ। কথায় কথায় সে গোর্কিকে মারধর করে। অসহনীয় এক পরিবেশের এত নিখুঁত বর্ণনা গোর্কি দিয়েছেন যে পড়তে গিয়ে পুরো কাশিরিন পরিবারের কীর্তিকলাপ যেন স্পষ্ট দেখতে পাচ্ছিলাম। এমন অনবদ্য বিশদ বিবরণ দেওয়া সাধারণ লেখকের কম্ম নয়।
মায়ের সাথে কখনোই নিবিড় সম্পর্ক গোর্কির ছিল বলে প্রতীয়মান হয়নি। সন্তানের সাথে হৃদ্যতা তৈরির সময়েই স্বামীর মৃত্যুর মতো ট্র্যাজেডি নেমে আসে। ফলে সন্তান এবং পরিবার দুটোর প্রতিই নিস্পৃহ হয়ে ওঠেন গোর্কির মা। উপরন্তু হঠাৎ একদিন বাড়ি থেকে নিখোঁজ হন। নরকতুল্য পরিবেশে রেখে যান গোর্কিকে।
তখনই মাতামহীর সাথে বোঝাপড়া তৈরি হতে থাকে গোর্কির। পুরো বাড়িতে এই একটি মানুষই মমতায় পূর্ণ আর ধর্মের ওপর নিখাদ আস্থাশীল। তিনি গোর্কির স্নেহ করতেন। অপত্য স্নেহ বললে একে কম বলা হবে। নানির কাছেই বেড়ে উঠতে থাকে গোর্কি। মাতামহীর সাথে নিজেকে সম্পর্ককে ভীষণরকম জীবন্ত করে উপস্থাপন করেছেন গোর্কি। সরলমনা এবং ভালো এই মানুষটিকে পাঠক কখনোই ভুলতে পারবেন না।
দুষ্টুমির জন্য প্রায়শই প্রহারের শিকার হতে হতো গোর্কিকে। সেই মারধর এখানকার জমানায় মধ্যযুগীয় নির্যাতনের চাইতে কম মনে হবে না। নানা কাশিরিন মারতেন গোর্কিকে।
দু'বছর পর আচমকা গোর্কির মা ফিরে এলেন। ভদ্রমহিলা এতদিন কোথাও ছিলেন এর সুস্পষ্ট ইঙ্গিত লেখক দেননি। তবে, যেদিকে সংকেত দিয়েছেন তা পাঠককে বিব্রতকর চিন্তায় ফেলতে বাধ্য করতে পারে।
মায়ের প্রত্যাবর্তন গোর্কির জীবনে বড়ো কোনো অদল-বদল আনেনি। ইতোমধ্যে বুড়ো কাশিরিনের পরিবারের হাট ভেঙে গেছে। ছেলেরা ঝগড়াঝাটি করে নিজস্ব সংসার পেতেছে। পুরোনো বাড়ি বিক্রি করে ছোট একটি নতুন বাড়িতে উঠে এসেছে কাশিরিন, গোর্কি এবং গোর্কির নানি অর্থাৎ বুড়ো কাশিরিনের বউ। এই বাড়ির ভাড়াটিয়া 'বাঃ! বেশ' নামে একটি বিচিত্র চরিত্র। একে চমৎকার লেগেছে আমার।
ত্রিশ বছর বয়সী গোর্কির মায়ের সাথে বিয়ে হয়ে গেল বিশ বছর বয়সী এক তরুণ শিক্ষার্থীর। এই বিয়ে, সৎ বাবা - কোনোটিই গোর্কি ভালোভাবে গ্রহণ করতে পারেননি। অসন্তুষ্টি আর ক্ষোভ জমা হয়েছিল তার মনে।
মেয়ের বিয়ের যৌতুকের জন্য বাড়ি বেচে দিতে হলো বুড়ো কাশিরিনকে। স্বামীর সাথে মস্কো চলে গেল গোর্কির মা। এই সময় এবং তার পরবর্তীতে যে তীব্র অভাবের মধ্যে দিয়ে গোর্কি দিনযাপন করেছেন তা সহ্য করতে পাঠকের হৃদয় হতে হবে পাথরের মতো। খাবারের ব্যবস্থা করতে রাস্তায় রাস্তায় আবর্জনা সংগ্রহ করতেন গোর্কি, চুরিতেও হাত পাকাতে হয়েছিল তাকে। ভীষণ মর্মস্পর্শী সেইসব ঘটনা।
অমল দাশগুপ্ত সম্ভবত মূলানুগ অনুবাদ করেছেন। কিছু বর্ণনা না হলেও বাঙালি পাঠকের এই বই বুঝতে অসুবিধা হতো না। খগেন মিত্তির বইটির একটি তুলনামূলক সংক্ষিপ্ত অনুবাদ করেছেন। সেটি যথেষ্ট সুখপাঠ্য। প্রগতির অন��বাদে অস্বস্তি লাগলে মিত্রবাবুর অনুবাদ পড়তে পারেন।
ছোট্ট আলিওশার সৈনিক বাবা মারা গেছে। ঘরে স স্বামীর মৃতদেহ দেখে মৃত্যুশোকে কাতর আলিওশার মা মূর্ছা যাচ্ছেন। মেয়ে ও নাতিকে নিতে এসেছে আলিওশার ধর্মপ্রাণ নানি। মূলত, পুরো বইতে কোথাও লেখকের নাম গোর্কি লেখা নেই। ম্যাক্সিম গোর্কি নামটি লেখকের নিজের দেওয়া। যার মানে তিক্তপ্রাণ ম্যাক্সিম।
যেদিন আলিওশার বাবা মারা যায়, সেদিনই তার একটি ভাই জন্ম নেয় এবং কিছুদিন পর শিশুটি মারা যায়। মা ও নান���র সাথে আলিওশা পেশকভ রওনা হয় নতুন গন্তব্যে, নানা কাশিরিনের বাড়িতে।
হুমায়ূন আহমেদের হিমু যারা পড়েছেন, তারা জানেন হিমুর নানা বাড়ির মানুষগুলো হচ্ছে পিশাচশ্রেণির। কতটা মন্দ হিমুর নানা ও মামারা এর কিছু বর্ণনা হুমায়ূন আহমেদ হিমু সিরিজের বইগুলোতে কম-বেশি দিয়েছেন। আমার ধারণা এই বুদ্ধিটা তিনি গোর্কির লেখা পড়ে পেয়েছিলেন।
গোর্কির নানাবাড়ির সবগুলো মানুষ প্রচণ্ড অর্থলোভী, দয়া-মায়াহীন এবং নিম্নশ্রেণির। এখানে এসে ছোট্ট গোর্কি অচেনা এক জগতের সন্ধান পায়। এই দুনিয়ায় সম্পদের জন্য গোর্কির দুই মামা একে-অপরকে খুন করতে উদ্যােত। বিধবা বোনকে তারা উটকো ঝামেলা মনে করে এবং সম্পদের ভাগ দিতে হবে ভেবে ভীষণ বিরক্তি ও ঘৃণার চোখে দেখে। গোর্কির মাতামহ কাশিরিন রীতিমতো নির্দয় মানুষ। কথায় কথায় সে গোর্কিকে মারধর করে। অসহনীয় এক পরিবেশের এত নিখুঁত বর্ণনা গোর্কি দিয়েছেন যে পড়তে গিয়ে পুরো কাশিরিন পরিবারের কীর্তিকলাপ যেন স্পষ্ট দেখতে পাচ্ছিলাম। এমন অনবদ্য বিশদ বিবরণ দেওয়া সাধারণ লেখকের কম্ম নয়।
মায়ের সাথে কখনোই নিবিড় সম্পর্ক গোর্কির ছিল বলে প্রতীয়মান হয়নি। সন্তানের সাথে হৃদ্যতা তৈরির সময়েই স্বামীর মৃত্যুর মতো ট্র্যাজেডি নেমে আসে। ফলে সন্তান এবং পরিবার দুটোর প্রতিই নিস্পৃহ হয়ে ওঠেন গোর্কির মা। উপরন্তু হঠাৎ একদিন বাড়ি থেকে নিখোঁজ হন। নরকতুল্য পরিবেশে রেখে যান গোর্কিকে।
তখনই মাতামহীর সাথে বোঝাপড়া তৈরি হতে থাকে গোর্কির। পুরো বাড়িতে এই একটি মানুষই মমতায় পূর্ণ আর ধর্মের ওপর নিখাদ আস্থাশীল। তিনি গোর্কির স্নেহ করতেন। অপত্য স্নেহ বললে একে কম বলা হবে। নানির কাছেই বেড়ে উঠতে থাকে গোর্কি। মাতামহীর সাথে নিজেকে সম্পর্ককে ভীষণরকম জীবন্ত করে উপস্থাপন করেছেন গোর্কি। সরলমনা এবং ভালো এই মানুষটিকে পাঠক কখনোই ভুলতে পারবেন না।
দুষ্টুমির জন্য প্রায়শই প্রহারের শিকার হতে হতো গোর্কিকে। সেই মারধর এখানকার জমানায় মধ্যযুগীয় নির্যাতনের চাইতে কম মনে হবে না। নানা কাশিরিন মারতেন গোর্কিকে।
দু'বছর পর আচমকা গোর্কির মা ফিরে এলেন। ভদ্রমহিলা এতদিন কোথাও ছিলেন এর সুস্পষ্ট ইঙ্গিত লেখক দেননি। তবে, যেদিকে সংকেত দিয়েছেন তা পাঠককে বিব্রতকর চিন্তায় ফেলতে বাধ্য করতে পারে।
মায়ের প্রত্যাবর্তন গোর্কির জীবনে বড়ো কোনো অদল-বদল আনেনি। ইতোমধ্যে বুড়ো কাশিরিনের পরিবারের হাট ভেঙে গেছে। ছেলেরা ঝগড়াঝাটি করে নিজস্ব সংসার পেতেছে। পুরোনো বাড়ি বিক্রি করে ছোট একটি নতুন বাড়িতে উঠে এসেছে কাশিরিন, গোর্কি এবং গোর্কির নানি অর্থাৎ বুড়ো কাশিরিনের বউ। এই বাড়ির ভাড়াটিয়া 'বাঃ! বেশ' নামে একটি বিচিত্র চরিত্র। একে চমৎকার লেগেছে আমার।
ত্রিশ বছর বয়সী গোর্কির মায়ের সাথে বিয়ে হয়ে গেল বিশ বছর বয়সী এক তরুণ শিক্ষার্থীর। এই বিয়ে, সৎ বাবা - কোনোটিই গোর্কি ভালোভাবে গ্রহণ করতে পারেননি। অসন্তুষ্টি আর ক্ষোভ জমা হয়েছিল তার মনে।
মেয়ের বিয়ের যৌতুকের জন্য বাড়ি বেচে দিতে হলো বুড়ো কাশিরিনকে। স্বামীর সাথে মস্কো চলে গেল গোর্কির মা। এই সময় এবং তার পরবর্তীতে যে তীব্র অভাবের মধ্যে দিয়ে গোর্কি দিনযাপন করেছেন তা সহ্য করতে পাঠকের হৃদয় হতে হবে পাথরের মতো। খাবারের ব্যবস্থা করতে রাস্তায় রাস্তায় আবর্জনা সংগ্রহ করতেন গোর্কি, চুরিতেও হাত পাকাতে হয়েছিল তাকে। ভীষণ মর্মস্পর্শী সেইসব ঘটনা।
অমল দাশগুপ্ত সম্ভবত মূলানুগ অনুবাদ করেছেন। কিছু বর্ণনা না হলেও বাঙালি পাঠকের এই বই বুঝতে অসুবিধা হতো না। খগেন মিত্তির বইটির একটি তুলনামূলক সংক্ষিপ্ত অনুবাদ করেছেন। সেটি যথেষ্ট সুখপাঠ্য। প্রগতির অন��বাদে অস্বস্তি লাগলে মিত্রবাবুর অনুবাদ পড়তে পারেন।
February 2, 2021
It is interesting story how he became books reader and then writer
October 15, 2022
این کتاب در مورد کودکی گروکی نوشته شده و ظاهرا یکی از سه گانه های او است.
سهگانههای گورکی، شامل کودکی گورکی، شاگردیهای من و دانشکدههای من است.
سهگانههای گورکی، شامل کودکی گورکی، شاگردیهای من و دانشکدههای من است.
April 3, 2021
الجزء الأول من المؤلفات المختارة يتضمن السيرة الذاتية للكاتب في مرحلة الطفولة؛ حياة غزيرة يكتنفها البؤس والفقر والجهل والإهمال والقسوة.. الكثير من القسوة، أكثر مما بمقدور طفل في طور اكتشاف العالم على استيعابه، وأكبر مما بإمكانه تجاوزه من دون ندوب عميقة وأبدية.
لكن ذكاء هذا الإنسان وروحه اللماحة كانا حاضرين منذ البدء، واستمرا بالتفتح والتحليق عالياً فوق أي ظروف، ولم يفلح كل ذلك الخراب في دفنهما تحت أنقاضه.
قراءتي الأولى لمكسيم غوركي، وأظن أنني بدأت أحبه لتوّي.
لكن ذكاء هذا الإنسان وروحه اللماحة كانا حاضرين منذ البدء، واستمرا بالتفتح والتحليق عالياً فوق أي ظروف، ولم يفلح كل ذلك الخراب في دفنهما تحت أنقاضه.
قراءتي الأولى لمكسيم غوركي، وأظن أنني بدأت أحبه لتوّي.
June 3, 2019
Üç farklı yayınevinden okudum, ve buradaki çeviri kadar muhteşemini görmedim. Gorki'den bahsederken, dilinin şiirselliğine mutlaka dem vurulur. Bu üçlemeyi okuduğum zaman, o hissiyatı aldım. Normalde betimlemelerden hoşlanmayan bir insanım, ama burda sarılıp öpesim geldi kitabı.
February 27, 2015
NO SPOILERS!!!
Magnificent writing!:
I loved listening to those kind words and watching the red and gold fire flickering in the stove and milky white clouds of steam rising over the vats, leaving a dove coloured crust; like hoar frost, on the sloping rafters of the roof, where jagged chinks let through blue patches of sky. The wind died down, the sun came out, and the whole yard seemed sprinkled with ground glass. The screeching of sleighs came from the street, light blue smoke curled up from chimneys, and soft shadows as if they too had a story to tell.
The tall, bony Grigory, hatless, with his long beard, and large ears, looked like a kind-hearted magician as he stood there mixing the bubbling dye and continued the lesson:
Never be afraid to look a person straight in the face. Even the dog that attacks you will run away then……(23%)
Russian authors are the best – in my view. Their description of people, both in appearance and character, of places and events are unsurpassed. This is an autobiography, the first book of three, by and about Maxim Gorky. Tolstoy has also written an autobiography entitled My Childhood; their lives were very different. Gorky's portrays the lowest classes of the Russian people. It is not surprising that he became an enthused supporter of Marxism. Please read the book description if you are unaware of the basics of Gorky's life. Here, in this book, you see the events of the author's first eight years, through his own eyes.
Stories after stories – that is what you get. Gorky had a very frightening, terrible childhood. The suffering he describes is physical. Beatings, brawls, fights: and yet at the same time there are fairy tales and legends he has learned from his grandmother; he is close to his grandmother and her life philosophy inspires hope even during the darkest of times. When Gorky's father dies he goes to live with his mother's family, but even his mother cannot bear to live there. He is thus raised primarily by his grandmother……and grandfather. Although the grandfather is brutal, you see that he is also kind, well sometimes. The times are different; children are beaten, how else can they be taught?! Both grandparents are religious, but each in their own way. Both ways are vividly painted through Alexei's perception. The book shows how this child saw his world; it was utterly frightening and incomprehensible. You absorb his experiences through story after story after story:
I waited until the innkeeper's wife had gone down to the cellar, and then shut the hatch and locked it over her, danced a dance of revenge over it, flung the key onto the roof and rushed as fast as my legs could take me to the kitchen, where Grandmother happened to be doing the washing. It took her some time to find out why I was so delighted, and when she did, she gave me a smack in the right place, dragged me outside and sent me up on the roof after the keys. Amazed at the reception, I silently retrieved the key and then ran off to one corner of the yard, from where I could see Grandmother freeing the captive innkeeper's wife. Then both of them, laughing all over their faces, came towards me across the yard.
"You'll get it from me!" said the innkeeper's wife threatening me with her plump fist, but still smiling benevolently with that eyeless face of hers.
Grandmother took hold of me by the scruff of the neck and hauled me off to the kitchen, where she asked me: "What did you do that for?"
"She threw a carrot at you…."
"So you did it for me? Well! What a nerve. I've a good mind to put you under the stove to keep the mince company. Perhaps that will knock some sense into you.((42%)
There are stories about everything, but they are all true stories: funerals where live frogs end up buried on top of the coffin, blazing fires, cockroach battles, people crushed under crosses…… Life was hard. One can understand why Gorky, or Alexei Maximovich Peshkov as he was really called, came to sympathize for the downtrodden tramps, factory workers and the poorest of the poor of Russian society. He lived from 1863 - 1936. His book "Mother" was the first comprehensive portrait of the Russian socialist movement. He was a friend of Stalin and was given a "Hero's Funeral" in the Red Square. But you should read this book for the marvellous storytelling, not for a summary of historical events. For that, look elsewhere.
I believe the following quote wonderfully expresses Gorky's view on both life and people:
In recalling my childhood I like to picture myself as a beehive to which very simple obscure people brought the honey of their knowledge and thoughts on life, generously enriching my character with their own experience. Often this honey was dirty and bitter, but every scrap of knowledge was honey all the same. (55%)
This book deserves more than five stars!!!
Magnificent writing!:
I loved listening to those kind words and watching the red and gold fire flickering in the stove and milky white clouds of steam rising over the vats, leaving a dove coloured crust; like hoar frost, on the sloping rafters of the roof, where jagged chinks let through blue patches of sky. The wind died down, the sun came out, and the whole yard seemed sprinkled with ground glass. The screeching of sleighs came from the street, light blue smoke curled up from chimneys, and soft shadows as if they too had a story to tell.
The tall, bony Grigory, hatless, with his long beard, and large ears, looked like a kind-hearted magician as he stood there mixing the bubbling dye and continued the lesson:
Never be afraid to look a person straight in the face. Even the dog that attacks you will run away then……(23%)
Russian authors are the best – in my view. Their description of people, both in appearance and character, of places and events are unsurpassed. This is an autobiography, the first book of three, by and about Maxim Gorky. Tolstoy has also written an autobiography entitled My Childhood; their lives were very different. Gorky's portrays the lowest classes of the Russian people. It is not surprising that he became an enthused supporter of Marxism. Please read the book description if you are unaware of the basics of Gorky's life. Here, in this book, you see the events of the author's first eight years, through his own eyes.
Stories after stories – that is what you get. Gorky had a very frightening, terrible childhood. The suffering he describes is physical. Beatings, brawls, fights: and yet at the same time there are fairy tales and legends he has learned from his grandmother; he is close to his grandmother and her life philosophy inspires hope even during the darkest of times. When Gorky's father dies he goes to live with his mother's family, but even his mother cannot bear to live there. He is thus raised primarily by his grandmother……and grandfather. Although the grandfather is brutal, you see that he is also kind, well sometimes. The times are different; children are beaten, how else can they be taught?! Both grandparents are religious, but each in their own way. Both ways are vividly painted through Alexei's perception. The book shows how this child saw his world; it was utterly frightening and incomprehensible. You absorb his experiences through story after story after story:
I waited until the innkeeper's wife had gone down to the cellar, and then shut the hatch and locked it over her, danced a dance of revenge over it, flung the key onto the roof and rushed as fast as my legs could take me to the kitchen, where Grandmother happened to be doing the washing. It took her some time to find out why I was so delighted, and when she did, she gave me a smack in the right place, dragged me outside and sent me up on the roof after the keys. Amazed at the reception, I silently retrieved the key and then ran off to one corner of the yard, from where I could see Grandmother freeing the captive innkeeper's wife. Then both of them, laughing all over their faces, came towards me across the yard.
"You'll get it from me!" said the innkeeper's wife threatening me with her plump fist, but still smiling benevolently with that eyeless face of hers.
Grandmother took hold of me by the scruff of the neck and hauled me off to the kitchen, where she asked me: "What did you do that for?"
"She threw a carrot at you…."
"So you did it for me? Well! What a nerve. I've a good mind to put you under the stove to keep the mince company. Perhaps that will knock some sense into you.((42%)
There are stories about everything, but they are all true stories: funerals where live frogs end up buried on top of the coffin, blazing fires, cockroach battles, people crushed under crosses…… Life was hard. One can understand why Gorky, or Alexei Maximovich Peshkov as he was really called, came to sympathize for the downtrodden tramps, factory workers and the poorest of the poor of Russian society. He lived from 1863 - 1936. His book "Mother" was the first comprehensive portrait of the Russian socialist movement. He was a friend of Stalin and was given a "Hero's Funeral" in the Red Square. But you should read this book for the marvellous storytelling, not for a summary of historical events. For that, look elsewhere.
I believe the following quote wonderfully expresses Gorky's view on both life and people:
In recalling my childhood I like to picture myself as a beehive to which very simple obscure people brought the honey of their knowledge and thoughts on life, generously enriching my character with their own experience. Often this honey was dirty and bitter, but every scrap of knowledge was honey all the same. (55%)
This book deserves more than five stars!!!
March 31, 2021
Maybe the five stars I awarded this book are because I am so grateful to it. Let me explain. In my late teens, I deliberately turned my back on "cultural" pursuits, thinking that they would be very boring. Strange, seeing that I was training to be a junior school teacher at the time. I remember the child psychology lecturer recommending certain novels, such as "The Member of the Wedding", "A Death in the Family", "The Lord of the Flies" and this, because they were able to enter so completely into the mind of a child. I wasn't particularly interested, but then, in my first year of teaching, something made me buy this book. It bowled me over. I entered into the life of the boy Gorky to such an extent that I almost felt as if I were living the story rather than reading it. There was nothing heavy, nothing boring, it was involving, and as my lecturer had promised, psychologically acute. This book opened a door. I had been wrong about literature, could I be wrong about culture? And so the great symphonies of Beethoven came tumbling into my life, other great works of Russian literature, the life changing films of Bergman, Fellini, Truffaut and Visconti, followed swiftly after (this was the 60s). How could I not give this wonderful book the highest rating, when it opened the door to such riches?
31st March 2021
I have just reread My Childhood, decades after my first time. My enthusiasm for this book remains undimmed. Gorky's world is vibrantly alive, it becomes an experience rather than an exercise in reading. Each character is beautifully portrayed, even those who are marginal, and his word painting, giving us a palpable sense of place is masterly. This, as it was for me, would be a perfect way to begin an exploration of Russian literature for any person who wishes to do so. A life changing and life affirming masterpiece.
31st March 2021
I have just reread My Childhood, decades after my first time. My enthusiasm for this book remains undimmed. Gorky's world is vibrantly alive, it becomes an experience rather than an exercise in reading. Each character is beautifully portrayed, even those who are marginal, and his word painting, giving us a palpable sense of place is masterly. This, as it was for me, would be a perfect way to begin an exploration of Russian literature for any person who wishes to do so. A life changing and life affirming masterpiece.
January 25, 2022
geriye dönüp de baktığınızda aklınıza gelen ilk hatıralarınız... çocukluğunuz... ama ilk anılarınızı 2000'li yılların başında değil de 1900'lü yılların başında yaşadığınızı düşünün.
gorki'nin anlattığı dönem bana çok da uzakmış gibi gelmedi. dedeniz ve nineniz... atmosfer şöyle: bazen soba kenarında sabah kahvaltısı, bazen yaz gecelerinin tertemiz yıldızlı gökyüzü, bazen yoksulluk, küçücük kalpleri yaralayan üzüntüler, bazen tarifi mümkün olmayan mutluluklar... bazen köy evinin insanın gönlünde ürperti yaratan soğuk odaları, bazen sıcacık avlunun insanları bir araya getiren sıcak havası... yeni yetişen bir bireyin çevresini anlama, çevresine kendini anlatma çabası... okuyun, kendi çocukluğunuzdan mutlaka bir şeyler bulacaksınız.
gorki'nin anlattığı dönem bana çok da uzakmış gibi gelmedi. dedeniz ve nineniz... atmosfer şöyle: bazen soba kenarında sabah kahvaltısı, bazen yaz gecelerinin tertemiz yıldızlı gökyüzü, bazen yoksulluk, küçücük kalpleri yaralayan üzüntüler, bazen tarifi mümkün olmayan mutluluklar... bazen köy evinin insanın gönlünde ürperti yaratan soğuk odaları, bazen sıcacık avlunun insanları bir araya getiren sıcak havası... yeni yetişen bir bireyin çevresini anlama, çevresine kendini anlatma çabası... okuyun, kendi çocukluğunuzdan mutlaka bir şeyler bulacaksınız.
October 22, 2019
Beautifully written! Poetic and very impressive. I read this during the weekend while sitting on a stained chipped wooden bench in one of the ram-shackles coffee houses in my new area and it was the only thing that brought joy to my lonely heart. The story is very moving. At one point I was asking myself whether this is really a story about childhood or death and beatings.
March 19, 2023
Maxim Gorky was a new author for me. Only because the bookstore had a copy of Gorky’s novel,Mother,did I notice this edition of his autobiographical series. I boughtMy Childhoodamong the two options, and shortly afterward returned to purchase the novel. Having read a history of the Volga last year, much of the geographical aspects of this novel brought nuance to a generalized history.
This narrative begins in Astrakhan where Alexei’s father is commissioned to complete some works and contracts cholera. A sequence of events leads he and his mother back to Nizhny Novgorod where his life begins again and Alexei’s life joins that of his grandfather and grandmother. The stories are lovely portrayals of family, in all its demented contradictions, tension and paradox. The complex almost kaleidoscopic cast of characters often times feels far more fictive than autobiographical. Above all the responsibilities, obligations, care, love found in the bonds of his grandparents offer a variety of love at once troubling, damaging and traumatic, while at times deeply sacrificial, custodial, providing an unconditional and definitive foundation for life. A stellar read.
This narrative begins in Astrakhan where Alexei’s father is commissioned to complete some works and contracts cholera. A sequence of events leads he and his mother back to Nizhny Novgorod where his life begins again and Alexei’s life joins that of his grandfather and grandmother. The stories are lovely portrayals of family, in all its demented contradictions, tension and paradox. The complex almost kaleidoscopic cast of characters often times feels far more fictive than autobiographical. Above all the responsibilities, obligations, care, love found in the bonds of his grandparents offer a variety of love at once troubling, damaging and traumatic, while at times deeply sacrificial, custodial, providing an unconditional and definitive foundation for life. A stellar read.
July 16, 2020
This review is for the entire trilogy 'My Childhood', 'My Apprenticeship', and 'My Universities'
When one thinks about Russian classical literature, two names invariably pop up: Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Often somebody would mention Chekhov in the same breath, some would rightly point out that Pushkin deserves his place on the pedestal, others would insist that Turgenev should be put side-by-side with his two most recognized contemporaries.
Ever since I read 'My Childhood' by Maxim Gorky, the first part of his autobiographic trilogy, the trio of Russian giants was firmly established for me: Dostoevsky, Gorky, Tolstoy - in that order.
The first sentence of this book sets the tone:
"Father lay on the floor, by the window of a small, darkened room, dressed in white, and looking terribly long. His feet were bare and his toes were strangely splayed out. His gentle fingers, now peacefully resting on his chest, were also distorted, and the black discs of copper coins firmly sealed his once shining eyes. His kind face had darkened and its nastily bared teeth frightened me"
I did not misspeak - this is one sentence in Russian, fittingly broken up by Ronald Wilks in his English translation (which is supposed to be quite good).
Already after reading this you realize that you are in for something unusual. The book never lets up, it holds you firmly in its grip, you are bound to remember some passages long after the book is closed and put away.
The pen name of the author - Gorky - translates from Russian as 'bitter' and you will get to taste the bitterness when you read this trilogy. Deaths are scattered around the pages, they are noted and recounted in a matter-of-fact voice of a child as regular, commonplace events. But it is not all doom and gloom, the darkness is followed by light and some of the most memorable passages are filled with tenderness and joy.
“For sadness and gladness live within us side by side, almost inseparable; the one succeeding the other with an elusive, inappreciable swiftness.”
“In recalling my childhood I like to picture myself as a beehive to which various simple obscure people brought the honey of their knowledge and thoughts on life, generously enriching my character with their own experience. Often this honey was dirty and bitter, but every scrap of knowledge was honey all the same.”
It is these "simple obscure people" that light the pages of the book. Uneducated, uncouth, rough and often violent these people from the end of the 19th century Russia come alive in short but precise descriptions of the writer at the height of his powers. It is rare to find character sketches so economically executed and yet so complete.
The main two characters are of course grandmother and grandfather of the little Alexei, seemingly representing two opposing forces shaping up his life, leaving the traces of warmth and the scars of anger behind. At the age of fourteen Alexei has to quit his grandparents' home to earn his living.
The second book is translated as 'My Apprenticeship' or 'In the World' and here the voice of a teenager, hardened beyond his years, picks up where the voice of a child left off. Dissatisfied with what he sees around him Alexei aims to break free from this monotonous existence and finds his release in books, in words. He sees education as the only way out.
The third book 'My Universities', probably the weakest of the three, was written seven years after the first two. Alexei meets with students, idealists with a revolutionary agenda. However, he is disillusioned, having lived through the torture of his young years he no longer believes in the inherent goodness of people. There is less hope and more bitterness in this book, probably reflecting the writer's state of mind while in exile. The book ends with Alexei leaving on an aimless journey on foot across Russia that would last for five years.
Gorky was initially extremely critical of the Soviets and personally of Lenin. He eventually returned from his exile in Italy to Soviet Russia and seemingly accepted the ideology of the regime. He was most likely killed by Stalin's thugs.
When one thinks about Russian classical literature, two names invariably pop up: Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Often somebody would mention Chekhov in the same breath, some would rightly point out that Pushkin deserves his place on the pedestal, others would insist that Turgenev should be put side-by-side with his two most recognized contemporaries.
Ever since I read 'My Childhood' by Maxim Gorky, the first part of his autobiographic trilogy, the trio of Russian giants was firmly established for me: Dostoevsky, Gorky, Tolstoy - in that order.
The first sentence of this book sets the tone:
"Father lay on the floor, by the window of a small, darkened room, dressed in white, and looking terribly long. His feet were bare and his toes were strangely splayed out. His gentle fingers, now peacefully resting on his chest, were also distorted, and the black discs of copper coins firmly sealed his once shining eyes. His kind face had darkened and its nastily bared teeth frightened me"
I did not misspeak - this is one sentence in Russian, fittingly broken up by Ronald Wilks in his English translation (which is supposed to be quite good).
Already after reading this you realize that you are in for something unusual. The book never lets up, it holds you firmly in its grip, you are bound to remember some passages long after the book is closed and put away.
The pen name of the author - Gorky - translates from Russian as 'bitter' and you will get to taste the bitterness when you read this trilogy. Deaths are scattered around the pages, they are noted and recounted in a matter-of-fact voice of a child as regular, commonplace events. But it is not all doom and gloom, the darkness is followed by light and some of the most memorable passages are filled with tenderness and joy.
“For sadness and gladness live within us side by side, almost inseparable; the one succeeding the other with an elusive, inappreciable swiftness.”
“In recalling my childhood I like to picture myself as a beehive to which various simple obscure people brought the honey of their knowledge and thoughts on life, generously enriching my character with their own experience. Often this honey was dirty and bitter, but every scrap of knowledge was honey all the same.”
It is these "simple obscure people" that light the pages of the book. Uneducated, uncouth, rough and often violent these people from the end of the 19th century Russia come alive in short but precise descriptions of the writer at the height of his powers. It is rare to find character sketches so economically executed and yet so complete.
The main two characters are of course grandmother and grandfather of the little Alexei, seemingly representing two opposing forces shaping up his life, leaving the traces of warmth and the scars of anger behind. At the age of fourteen Alexei has to quit his grandparents' home to earn his living.
The second book is translated as 'My Apprenticeship' or 'In the World' and here the voice of a teenager, hardened beyond his years, picks up where the voice of a child left off. Dissatisfied with what he sees around him Alexei aims to break free from this monotonous existence and finds his release in books, in words. He sees education as the only way out.
The third book 'My Universities', probably the weakest of the three, was written seven years after the first two. Alexei meets with students, idealists with a revolutionary agenda. However, he is disillusioned, having lived through the torture of his young years he no longer believes in the inherent goodness of people. There is less hope and more bitterness in this book, probably reflecting the writer's state of mind while in exile. The book ends with Alexei leaving on an aimless journey on foot across Russia that would last for five years.
Gorky was initially extremely critical of the Soviets and personally of Lenin. He eventually returned from his exile in Italy to Soviet Russia and seemingly accepted the ideology of the regime. He was most likely killed by Stalin's thugs.
November 14, 2016
Roman tadında bir otobiyografi,daha doğrusu ilk bölümü;üç bölümden oluşuyor çünkü,bu daha ilk bölümü.
Mazlum Beyhan'ın akıcı tercümesi de rahat ilerlemeyi sağlıyor.
Çocuklukta geçirdiği olaylar demek ne kadar içine işlemiş ki Aleksey'in,büyüyünce çok net bir şekilde yazıya dökmüş her ayrıntıyı.Anlatmış da anlatmış.O daha çok küçük yaşta iken ölen babasıyla başlamış anlatmaya,votka içen enfiye çeken iyi kalpli ninesini,onu döven ama yetiştiren dedesini,ortadan bir kaybolup bir ortaya çıkan annesini,üvey babasını,arkadaşlarını,dayılarını...en ince ayrıntılarına kadar.
Yaşadığı hayat hoşuna gitmiyor,sürekli bir umutsuzluk hali içinde ama bunu gizlemeye çalışıyor dedesinden,ninesinden ve annesinden;hep olay çıkarıyor,yaramazlık yapıyor ve de dayak yiyor.
Kavga hayatının biricik zevki çocukluk zamanlarında.Annesi onu kemerle dövüyor,içinde sevgi kurumuş,her şeye kin duyar olmuş.Hiç sevmediği,sürekli alaya alındığı okulunda türlü haylazlıklar yapıyor,dersleri pek iyi değil,ama çok kötü de değil.Okulda Piskopos Hrisanf ile tanışması ona kitapların yolunu açıyor bir şekilde.
Annesini dövdüğü için üvey babasını bıçaklamaya teşebbüs ediyor ama başarılı olamıyor.
Kendi deyimiyle vahşi Rus yaşamına ışık tutuyor Gorki'nin otobiyografisinin ilk bölümü olan "Çocukluğum".
Okunmaya değer...
Mazlum Beyhan'ın akıcı tercümesi de rahat ilerlemeyi sağlıyor.
Çocuklukta geçirdiği olaylar demek ne kadar içine işlemiş ki Aleksey'in,büyüyünce çok net bir şekilde yazıya dökmüş her ayrıntıyı.Anlatmış da anlatmış.O daha çok küçük yaşta iken ölen babasıyla başlamış anlatmaya,votka içen enfiye çeken iyi kalpli ninesini,onu döven ama yetiştiren dedesini,ortadan bir kaybolup bir ortaya çıkan annesini,üvey babasını,arkadaşlarını,dayılarını...en ince ayrıntılarına kadar.
Yaşadığı hayat hoşuna gitmiyor,sürekli bir umutsuzluk hali içinde ama bunu gizlemeye çalışıyor dedesinden,ninesinden ve annesinden;hep olay çıkarıyor,yaramazlık yapıyor ve de dayak yiyor.
Kavga hayatının biricik zevki çocukluk zamanlarında.Annesi onu kemerle dövüyor,içinde sevgi kurumuş,her şeye kin duyar olmuş.Hiç sevmediği,sürekli alaya alındığı okulunda türlü haylazlıklar yapıyor,dersleri pek iyi değil,ama çok kötü de değil.Okulda Piskopos Hrisanf ile tanışması ona kitapların yolunu açıyor bir şekilde.
Annesini dövdüğü için üvey babasını bıçaklamaya teşebbüs ediyor ama başarılı olamıyor.
Kendi deyimiyle vahşi Rus yaşamına ışık tutuyor Gorki'nin otobiyografisinin ilk bölümü olan "Çocukluğum".
Okunmaya değer...
December 6, 2018
Nobody writes about death as the Russians do. The scene at the end of the book, a mere page in length, where Gorky describes the death of his mother that he witnessed as a child, will stay with me for a long time. The stuffy smell, wax coloured skin, paper think limbs and dimness of the small room - it is so accurately described with so little words.
The book is very grim. There are no champagne-problems or existential ennui one is used to encountering when reading Russian classics that describe the lives of the aristocracy. Gorky's family were commoners and lived a simple life. His mother was absent from the picture most of the time and he was largely brought up by his grandmother and grandfather. The former being described with such kindness - a very good character building, she really comes alive in front of the reader's eyes. His grandfather was mindlessly violent towards almost all the family members. This was tolerated with stern patience by all apart from Maxin Gorky himself. Also described are various practical jokes Gorky played on others and that were played on himself - a great inspiration if you happen to have a secret enemy. All in all, it painted a very thorough and vivid picture of a family in Tsarist Russia, at all times keeping an observant and non-judgemental attitude towards the happenings. A painfully beautiful book.
The book is very grim. There are no champagne-problems or existential ennui one is used to encountering when reading Russian classics that describe the lives of the aristocracy. Gorky's family were commoners and lived a simple life. His mother was absent from the picture most of the time and he was largely brought up by his grandmother and grandfather. The former being described with such kindness - a very good character building, she really comes alive in front of the reader's eyes. His grandfather was mindlessly violent towards almost all the family members. This was tolerated with stern patience by all apart from Maxin Gorky himself. Also described are various practical jokes Gorky played on others and that were played on himself - a great inspiration if you happen to have a secret enemy. All in all, it painted a very thorough and vivid picture of a family in Tsarist Russia, at all times keeping an observant and non-judgemental attitude towards the happenings. A painfully beautiful book.
October 31, 2016
An intriguing memoir by a fascinating and to many, controversial, person. Gorky, is very much attuned to the Russian underclass and was a natural supporter and ally of the Bolsheviks. Yet he quickly became an opponent of their post-revolution repressive ways and thus began an on-again off-again love-hate dance between Gorky and the USSR hierarchy, which saw him leave and return to his homeland and eventually, become an early proponent of the boy-meets-tractor, boy-loves-tractor Soviet state-approved literary genre that came to be known as “socialist realism.”
His childhood was harsh and this memoir reflects that. By now, it’s familiar stuff. We’re all hypersensitive nowadays to anything resembling the a-word (abuse). So if we simply look at “My Childhood” in terms of what happens, it can come off as been-there done that (although in fact, Gorky was there first). What’s interesting here, though is the tone of the narration, the way things are just accepted because that’s the way they are; because, as Gorky calmly states “Russian people, because of the poverty and squalor of their lives, love to amuse themselves with sorrow—to play with it like children, and are seldom ashamed of being unhappy.” Hence we don’t see the overtly outraged finger-pointing judgments so common today, although goodness knows, grandfather and others are as deserving of finger-pointing as any of today’s famous abusers.
Through it all, though, one can spot hints of Gorky’s eventual espousal of socialist realism. The grandmother often doesn’t seem really. She’s more iconic or mythical than human and in many ways, can be seen in terms of Gorky’s eventual socialist realism formula of reality with positive traits accentuated, using reality to establish the basic idea but instead of focusing on the negative, focusing on the potential or positive. That’s grandmother. Let simmer for a few decades, garnish with a few wars including a revolution, add a tractor factory, and voila, socialist realism.
This was my first go round with Gorky. It was not a pleasant read, but it was a significant one, and one that piqued my curiosity. So I expect I’ll follow up with more.
His childhood was harsh and this memoir reflects that. By now, it’s familiar stuff. We’re all hypersensitive nowadays to anything resembling the a-word (abuse). So if we simply look at “My Childhood” in terms of what happens, it can come off as been-there done that (although in fact, Gorky was there first). What’s interesting here, though is the tone of the narration, the way things are just accepted because that’s the way they are; because, as Gorky calmly states “Russian people, because of the poverty and squalor of their lives, love to amuse themselves with sorrow—to play with it like children, and are seldom ashamed of being unhappy.” Hence we don’t see the overtly outraged finger-pointing judgments so common today, although goodness knows, grandfather and others are as deserving of finger-pointing as any of today’s famous abusers.
Through it all, though, one can spot hints of Gorky’s eventual espousal of socialist realism. The grandmother often doesn’t seem really. She’s more iconic or mythical than human and in many ways, can be seen in terms of Gorky’s eventual socialist realism formula of reality with positive traits accentuated, using reality to establish the basic idea but instead of focusing on the negative, focusing on the potential or positive. That’s grandmother. Let simmer for a few decades, garnish with a few wars including a revolution, add a tractor factory, and voila, socialist realism.
This was my first go round with Gorky. It was not a pleasant read, but it was a significant one, and one that piqued my curiosity. So I expect I’ll follow up with more.
August 18, 2018
Gorki’yi çok beğendim. Adam çocukluğunda neler yaşamış be dedim.
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