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Plays 1: The Lower Depths / Summerfolk / Children of the Sun / Barbarians / Enemies
Modern accurate and stageable translations of five of Gorky's plays
This volume includes Gorky's major works for the theatre. The Lower Depths, first staged by the Moscow Art theatre in 1902, portrays a cast of down and outs living in the underbelly of Russian society; Summerfolk depicts a society after the disintegration of feudalism with a new class of businessmen, intellectuals and professionals. Children of the Sun was completed in prison in 1905 and premiered in St Petersburg in the same year, St Petersburg critic Alexander Kugel wrote: "If Summerfolk boxed the ears of the intelligentsia, the Children of the Sun spits in their face"; Barbarians looks at the tragedy of an individual caught between opposing forces in a society on the brink of revolution - Lenin's future Minister of Culture, Alexander Kugel wrote: "Gorky helps us to understand and assess the mighty phenomenon of this war between two forms of barbarism through the direct experience of real people"; Enemies looks at the struggle between workers and industrialists and has been described as "the missing link between Chekhov and the Russian revolution" (Observer)
This volume includes Gorky's major works for the theatre. The Lower Depths, first staged by the Moscow Art theatre in 1902, portrays a cast of down and outs living in the underbelly of Russian society; Summerfolk depicts a society after the disintegration of feudalism with a new class of businessmen, intellectuals and professionals. Children of the Sun was completed in prison in 1905 and premiered in St Petersburg in the same year, St Petersburg critic Alexander Kugel wrote: "If Summerfolk boxed the ears of the intelligentsia, the Children of the Sun spits in their face"; Barbarians looks at the tragedy of an individual caught between opposing forces in a society on the brink of revolution - Lenin's future Minister of Culture, Alexander Kugel wrote: "Gorky helps us to understand and assess the mighty phenomenon of this war between two forms of barbarism through the direct experience of real people"; Enemies looks at the struggle between workers and industrialists and has been described as "the missing link between Chekhov and the Russian revolution" (Observer)
560 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1988
About the author
Maxim Gorky
1,729 books1,834 followersRussian writer Aleksei 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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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 9, 2026
Favourite speech – Maria Lvovna from Act Four of Summerfolk:
“We really ought to be different, you know – all of us! We’re the children of cooks and washerwomen and decent working people – we should be different! This country’s never before had an educated class with direct blood ties to the people – surely this blood relationship ought to have nourished in us a burning desire to bring some light and meaning into the lives of our own people, who’ve known nothing but hard work, in dirt and darkness, all their born days? Not out of pity or charity – it’s for our own sakes that we ought to be working for a richer life for them – so’s to escape from this damnable isolation of ours, and not to have to see all the time that awful abyss between us, up here on the heights, and our own kith and kin down there in the depths, gazing back up at us with hatred because we live on their labours! They sent us on ahead to seek out a road that would lead them to a better life, and we left them behind, went on and lost our way, and created a lonely wilderness for ourselves, and filled it with hustle and bustle and bitter divisiveness ... And that’s our tragedy. But we made it ourselves – we fully deserve every one of our little torments!”
“We really ought to be different, you know – all of us! We’re the children of cooks and washerwomen and decent working people – we should be different! This country’s never before had an educated class with direct blood ties to the people – surely this blood relationship ought to have nourished in us a burning desire to bring some light and meaning into the lives of our own people, who’ve known nothing but hard work, in dirt and darkness, all their born days? Not out of pity or charity – it’s for our own sakes that we ought to be working for a richer life for them – so’s to escape from this damnable isolation of ours, and not to have to see all the time that awful abyss between us, up here on the heights, and our own kith and kin down there in the depths, gazing back up at us with hatred because we live on their labours! They sent us on ahead to seek out a road that would lead them to a better life, and we left them behind, went on and lost our way, and created a lonely wilderness for ourselves, and filled it with hustle and bustle and bitter divisiveness ... And that’s our tragedy. But we made it ourselves – we fully deserve every one of our little torments!”
August 14, 2007
great book from great autor
September 15, 2020
Gorky Pulled off a literary hat trick: wrote good plays; he wrote good novels: he rote good journalism. Oh, and he also wrote great memoirs!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews