(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) Dimitrov, Lyudmil
The text examines Maxim Gorky’s most famous play, The Lower Depths, in the context of its emergence, which was not merely the period of the author’s early dramatic expressions. This period marked the concluding stage of 19th-century Russian literature, when the archetypal plot built by Griboyedov and Pushkin, and constantly maintained by Russian playwriting through shifts, mimicry and revivals, is ultimately deconstructed by Chekhov as exhausted and henceforth untenable. The article outlines the contradictory figure of Gorky, whose work relies on vain imitations, ideological constructs, and the use of, or reference to, external authority, borrowed from his illustrious contemporaries, Leo Tolstoy and Chekhov, without Gorky’s surpassing the artistic level achieved in Russian drama up to that point.