The Significance of the Symbol and the Role of Dramatisation in Maxim Gorky’s Artistic World

The author of this study highlights the remarkable diversity of Maxim Gorky’s artistic, journalistic, and epistolary works and emphasises the idea that the core of his personality was the talent of artistic vision of reality. In his search for Gorky’s identity, the scholar relies on Umberto Eco’s idea: in the essential interpretive trinity of author, text and reader, Eco raises the question of whether one should look for what the author wanted to say in the text, or whether one should look at what the text says independently of its author. He proceeds from the idea that artistic intent serves as a testament to the world. Given its intricate nature, the world is understood not through direct expression, but through the medium of artistic image, that is, indirect figurative metaphorical expression. He also uses the classical definition of the symbol as a sign of art, as described by J. W. Goethe, who regarded the symbol as the most important defining part of the artistic text. He emphasises the iconic agency of the symbol and its capacity for independent and autonomous ‘signification’. The author of the article emphasises Gorky’s remarkable narrative talent. His phenomenal memory allows the writer to meticulously transform observed fragments of reality into fictional tales, presenting them through the eyes of the observer-narrator and characters. Gorky focuses on the genres of narrative (short story, essay, novella) that best suit his artistic nature. His work is dominated by the genre principle of drama, whose essential feature is the creation of the illusion of vivid spectacular immediacy and unmediatedness, their interaction leading to the creation of the dramatic scene. Gorky’s narrative is a long sequence of scenes, episodes, and situations, which is often considered a disadvantage of the epic genre. However, in this sequence, Gorky allows living reality to overflow into the artistic world and appear as a reality in its own right. The linear chain of dramatic scenes and the author’s interaction with the ‘fictitious’ plan of the narrator and the character, unfolding in the space-time of the dramatic statement, are manifestations of the writer’s peculiar artistic vision.