My Childhood

by Maxim Gorky

Other authorsRonald Wilks (Translator)
Paperback, 1983

Status

Available

Call number

809

Collection

Publication

Penguin Classics (1983), Edition: 4th printing, Paperback, 240 pages

Description

Aleksey Peshkov overcame indigence, violence, and suicidal despair to become Maksim Gorky, one of the most widely read and influential writers of the twentieth century. Childhood, the first book in Gorky's acclaimed autobiographical trilogy, depictshis early years, when after his father's death he was taken to live in the home of his maternal grandfather, a violent and vindictive man who both provided the child with a rudimentary education and subjected him to savage beatings. With remarkable freshness and candor, Gorky immerses his reader in a young child's world, recreating in dynamic pro

User reviews

LibraryThing member yuvalro
Amazing insight into the mechanics of a tough, poor society. The perspective of a child has never been so blood chilling. An exquisite read.
LibraryThing member nickrenkin
A brilliant moving account of the very tough childhood of a revered Russian folk hero. The notions of resiliance and survival in spite of cruelty and deprevation spill form each page of this great account of life.
LibraryThing member Marse
'My Childhood' by Maxim Gorky was published 60 years after Tolstoy's 'Childhood' and they make fascinating companion pieces. It is not Tolstoy's gentile, educated society, where money is only hinted at as a source of both pride and shame -- it is the coarse, hardscrabble world of the trade and
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lower classes. Children are not protected, but beaten to within an inch of their life as a matter of course. Drunkenness is expected and greed, prejudice and envy are commonplace.

Gorky knew this world well, and his memoirs (his protagonist uses Gorky's real name) are both agonizing and lyrical. His descriptions of place and characters are so deftly drawn that one feels as if he had included pictures in the book. Gorky manages to show us the love he felt for his grandmother, a gifted storyteller, but also towards his grandfather, a brutal and miserly man, who nevertheless taught Alexei to read, and supported his family as best he could, for as long as he could.

A wonderful and terrifying book. Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member Proustitutes
If you're looking for a plot of any kind, don't read this book.

With that said, this book celebrates the beauty of nature and at the same time indifferently reveals the often senseless cruelty of humans. Gorky--a celebrated Russian writer--writes autobiographically of his childhood with his
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Grandfather, Grandmother, and Mother. His mother is an absent figure for most of Gorky's childhood, be it physically or emotionally. His Grandfather is a practical man, stubborn, and violently abusive.

Grandmother is one of the two reasons this book holds value to me. She is the classic "wise old woman" figure in literature: accepting, loving, respected, and, of course, wise. She prays to her own mystical God, and this is what brings the story its praise of nature. Grandmother's God is a pagan god of sorts; he lives in the trees' branches as they flow in the wind, or in the blooming of the flower, or in the kindness of Gorky himself as a child. Gorky's writing on this topic lends itself naturally to the reader's fuller appreciation of these things, even if you may not (as I didn't) view them as "filled with God" but rather simply as beautiful.

Another facet of this novel that I enjoyed was Gorky's message: that, though Russia's lower classes may be riddled with violence and senseless, harmful actions, they hold infinite promise and wellness of heart deep within them. That Russian culture has spawned a generation of dynamic individuals that are in the midst a huge possibility of change. Though he doesn't quite state this outright, it came through to me as I read his autobiography.

I didn't rate this higher because it bored me to no end. It simply went nowhere. Gorky goes back and forth from his Grandfather's, to his Mother's; they move from one boarding house to another; he gets in trouble in one school and two pages later he's in a childish street gang, only seven pages later to be top student; I found it all hard and somewhat useless to follow because, honestly, the plot never reached any sort of resolution for me. (Weird, too: for me it's been three books in a row that I haven't fallen into any sort of love with. Unusual!)

Overall, though, a good read, and a great insight into Gorky himself if you're a fan of his other writings.
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LibraryThing member AlanWPowers
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
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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.)
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Language

Original language

Russian

Original publication date

1913

Physical description

240 p.; 7 inches

ISBN

0140441786 / 9780140441789

Other editions

Childhood by Maxim Gorky (Hardcover)

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