Neo-mythology of the Estate in the А.M. Gorky’s Novel “The Life of Klim Samgin”

The article examines the semiotics and poetics of the estate in the unfinished epic novel by A.M. Gorky “The Life of Klim Samgin” (1925–1936), where the transition between the pre-revolutionary and Soviet eras is interpreted, among other things, as a process of maturation of the labor movement, the growth of revolutionary sentiments that transformed the culture of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century into a socialist way of life. It is shown that Gorky’s socialist myth-making is born within the mystery myth of the Silver Age about the sunken city of Kitezh, the path to which is opened to the righteous with a pure heart. The motives of the destruction of estates and estate life turn into motives of finding ways of salvation - the inclusion of the values of the cultural estate of the past in the new proletarian culture. In this transformation one can see not only the features of the Soviet myth about the solidary “happy space” of the future, but also the manifestation of the deep estate myth about paradise, with its plot of man’s return from an egoistic existence in discord and displacement to being together with everyone. In the depiction of the estate myth, allusions to classical literature are read. The true path of Russia, according to the writer, is revealed to the Bolshevik Kutuzov, who contrasts bourgeois consumerism, merciless to the estate culture, with the values of the union of the intellectual past (where the estate plays an important role) and the future proletarian culture with its idea of creative labor.