Good godless commies, this book was a slog.Maxim Gorky was one of the USSR's favorite sons — there's a park named after him and everything.The Mother tells the story of Pelagueya Nilovna, mother of Pavel Vlasov. Nilovna, or "the Mother" as she is called throughout the novel, is married to a big wife-beating ogre of a man who works for the factory in some village. He dies, leaving the Mother alone with her teenage son, who turns out to be cut from very different cloth than his father. Pavel is a well-spoken, sophisticated young man who comes back after some time spent getting an education with revolution and love of all mankind in his heart.The Mother is a pure revolutionary novel, written before the Russian Revolution actually happened and touting the praises of the glorious workers' revolution that would lift the serfs out of bondage and bring justice to the workers and the masters. It is full of miserable oppression and suffering by the working classes, long heartfelt speeches laced with very non-Soviet Christian subtext, and soapboxing by Pavel, the author's mouthpiece, and his friends."This is the way it ought to be!" said the Little Russian, returning. "Because, mark you, mother dear, a new heart is coming into existence, a new heart is growing up in life. All hearts are smitten in the conflict of interests, all are consumed with a blind greed, eaten up with envy, stricken, wounded, and dripping with filth, falsehood, and cowardice. All people are sick; they are afraid to live; they wander about as in a mist. Everyone feels only his own toothache. But lo, and behold! Here is a Man coming and illuminating life with the light of reason, and he shouts: 'Oh, ho! you straying roaches! It's time, high time, for you to understand that all your interests are one, that everyone has the need to live, everyone has the desire to grow!' The Man who shouts this is alone, and therefore he cries aloud; he needs comrades, he feels dreary in his loneliness, dreary and cold. And at his call the stanch hearts unite into one great, strong heart, deep and sensitive as a silver bell not yet cast. And hark! This bell rings forth the message: 'Men of all countries, unite into one family! Love is the mother of life, not hate!' My brothers! I hear this message sounding through the world!"It is, frankly, quite boring. About the only positive thing I can say for The Mother is that Gorky does a good job of capturing Russia at a particular point in its history and from a particular angle, like a skilled photographer framing exactly the picture he wants to capture even if it does involve leaving a few things out of the picture.Gorky describes the political awakening of the Mother as she proudly watches her son go to prison for what he believes. He recruits her to the cause of distributing illegal socialist literature to wake up the masses. The book ends in a long trial scene with more speeches, then the Mother picking up the cause of her exiled son.Russia has never struck me as a particularly hospitable place to live. No insult to the Russian people, who have survived the worst that history can throw at them, but you just don't associate laughter, light, and joy with the place that went from brutal Czars to brutal Soviets. I can't blame Gorky for not knowing what his revolution would reap, but as a novelist, he was a less entertaining soapboxer than Tolstoy and his characters are all mouthpieces and plot puppets. His descriptions are, I admit, vivid and alternately grim and humorous, and some of my disdain for the writing may be the result of an inferior translation.The factory spread itself like a huge, clumsy, dark-red spider, raising its lofty smokestacks high up into the sky. The small one-storied houses pressed against it, gray, flattened out on the soot-covered ground, and crowded up in close clusters on the edge of the marsh. They looked sorrowfully at one another with their little dull windows. Above them rose the church, also dark red like the factory. The belfry, it seemed to her, was lower than the factory chimneys.The mother sighed, and adjusted the collar of her dress, which choked her. She felt sad, but it was a dry sadness like the dust of the hot day."Gee!" mumbled the driver, shaking the reins over the horse. He was a bow-legged man of uncertain height, with sparse, faded hair on his face and head, and faded eyes. Swinging from side to side he walked alongside the wagon. It was evidently a matter of indifference to him whether he went to the right or the left."Gee!" he called in a colorless voice, with a comical forward stride of his crooked legs clothed in heavy boots, to which clods of mud were clinging. The mother looked around. The country was as bleak and dreary as her soul."You'll never escape want, no matter where you go, auntie," the driver said dully. "There's no road leading away from poverty; all roads lead to it, and none out of it."Shaking its head dejectedly the horse sank its feet heavily into the deep sun-dried sand, which crackled softly under its tread. The rickety wagon creaked for lack of greasing.Still, I can't really recommend this book for entertainment, and I don't know why anyone would want to read it unless they're deeply interesting in early Bolshevik history or on a Russian literature jag. 2 stars is being generous — it's a serious work, just too damn serious and neither entertaining nor, with historical hindsight, convincing.
4.5 stars *contians spoilers* Vladimir Lenin said “It is a book of the utmost importance; many workers, who have joined the revolutionary movement impulsively, without properly understanding why, will begin to comprehend after reading Mother”. Maxim Gorky was a socialist novelist and a founder of social realism. Socialist realism is a style of realistic art that was developed in the Soviet Union. It glorifies the roles of the working class and the struggle for its emancipation. Gorky is a pen name that stands for bitter in Russian “Maxim the Bitter”, also the influence of Vladimir Lenin on Gorky thoughts and believes is vivid in this novel. he was persecuted by the tsarist government and forced to live abroad for his ties with the Bolshevik Party, and he was a strong believer in the 1917 revolution. Mother isn't just a novel, it captures the soul of Russian workingmen lives and gives a better understanding to the reasons that lead to 1917 revolution, knowing how Gorky was connected to Lenin and Bolshevik party, helps for a better understanding to the whole thing. * i googled all of these information and they helped me understand the novel better even though it's kind of irrelevant in the review* Mother, a novel written in 1906, it portraits the pre-revolution Russia, and describes the lives of working people and peasants. It focuses on the role women played in the struggle, revealing their hardships and brutalization they faced during that era, but also shows their humanity. It's an overwhelming story of a mother and what she'll do for her son. Pelagueya Vlasova is a revolutionary heroine, she's the mother of Pavel Mikhailovich, the novel’s hero, for more than 20 years, she lead a miserable life with her bad-tempered abusive husband Mikhail Vlassov, whose passing didn’t sadden anyone. After his father's death Pavel, gives himself up to reading and becomes a member of a socialist circle of suffering workers, where they have reading sessions in safety of the Vlasov's small house. Full of hope for a better future, Pavel becomes a hero of a revolutionary circle and with the help of his friends and mother, they set out to put their ideas into practice. His devotion to the socialist cause leads to his exile in Siberia at the end. Pelagueya's love for her son and his friends takes her into the revolutionary movement, to which she becomes passionately devoted to. Her life takes on new meaning as she becomes the delivery woman for the forbidden books and documents by tsarist regime. She gives herself to the cause for which Pavel and his friends are willing to sacrifice so much for. Pelagueya's transformation from the silent scared wife to a key figure in Socialist cause is overwhelming, and to me it makes her one of the most touching and extraordinary characters that I have ever encountered. What makes this book special, to me at least are the courageous female characters, their bravery and humanity is life changing, like Natasha and Sophia. Natasha is the daughter of a rich man who owns a lot of property, yet she leaves her life of luxury and disowns her father, to join the revolutionary struggle for the establishment of a socialist society. Sasha is in love with Pavel. Gorky's preview of Natasha is strong enough to get you falling in love with them from first line!While reading the book, the realist description is heartbreaking and touching on so many levels, it takes you to a brutal era, where humans were treated like animals, asking for education, reading the "wrong books" and telling the truth can get you killed. The beginning and the end of the novel are the best parts of the story, you can really see the developments of characters, but it somehow lags in the middle where events take a slow turnings. The most touching part ( i cried while reading this) is the end. Where Pelagueya is finally caught by the police distributing her son's last speech at the courthouse before his exile, while they beat and choke her, she says : “ Not even an ocean of blood can drown the truth”. Mother is a beautiful, lethal and eccentric experience and the kind of book i can read more than just one time. It's a moving story of an uneducated woman and her pure love and pride in her son and a humanitarian cause, being able to relate to all of this brutality after more than 100 years of it's publication ( to me at least, i'm living somewhere where all of these terrible things still happen) proves Gorky's great talent of capturing and understanding of human sufferings.
What do You think about Mother (2006)?
A moving story about the mother of a working class hero, who is drawn into her son's fight for dignity and fair wages at a plant operated by an oppressive and elite managerial regime. Wonderfully written and engaging (as was Gorky's autobiographical writing - though I've only read the first of his three autobiographical works, My Childhood), this book is probably more socially relevant than it has been for a while, as we move into an epoch where individuals who try to stand up for themselves are quieted and/or fired and unions are, once again, being misrepresented, stripped of their ability to bargain collectively, and in danger of losing the power to protect the working class effectively. Gorky was a master of social realism, and his work anticipates that of Steinbeck.
—Aaron Cance
765.tMother, Maxim Gorkyمادر - ماکسیم گورکی (هیرمند) ادبیات روسیهترجمه علی اصغر سروش اولین بار انتشارات هیرمند منتشر کرده. رمان در فهرست یکهزارویک کتابی که باید، قبل از مرگ خواند، قرار دارد. همچنین در لیست روزنامه گاردین (۱۰۰۰ رمان که هر شخص باید بخواند). اولین بار که این کتاب را خواندم، حتی یادم نیست مترجمش که بود، انگار هدیهء بی نظیری گرفته باشی که از همهء دنیا باارزش تر باشد. نمیدانم چه شوری در من بیست ساله برانگیخت، حاضر بودم برای خواندنش بمیرم. کتاب را تکه تکه کرده بودیم، و هر تکه را لای جلد کتاب دیگری گذاشته، دانشجو بودیم، پنج نفری میخواندیم، بخش اول را که یکی میخواند، به دومی رد میکرد، و خود بخش دوم را شروع میکرد، فاصله ی خانه ها زیاد بود، یکی پائین شهر، یکی در شرق و دیگری در خیابان فلسطین فعلی، شبانه قسمتی را که خوانده بودم به در خانهء نفر بعدی میرساندم و بعد میرفتم تا قسمت بعدی را بگیرم. سه روز طول کشید تا بخوانم، خواندن که نه انگار نوشیدیم. در اوایل انقلاب، که نشر کتاب آزاد شد، انتشارات گوتنبرگ کتابهای بیشتری از گورکی داشت. باز هم مادر را خواندم، ولی انگار همان خوانش اول با آن هول و هراس، چیز دیگری بود. ا. شربیانی ترجمه: محمد قاضی(۱۲مرداد ۱۲۹۲ مهاباد، ۲۴دی ۱۳۷۶ تهران)، ناشر عصر جدید، چاپ دوم 1366، 480 صفحهترجمه: علی اصغر سروش، ناشر: هیرمند، 1382، 496 صفحه
—Ahmad Sharabiani
"الأم هي الوطن ... و حين تثور الأم فالوطن كلّه سيثور ... " بهيّة " هي نموذج للأم عند أحمد فؤاد نجم هذه الأم التي استكانت عقودا و تغنّي الآن الثورة و التغيير في ميدان التحرير ... الأم هي الوطن ... و بهيّة لن تستكين بعد اليوم .. من بالنسبة للر...moreالأم هي الوطن ... و حين تثور الأم فالوطن كلّه سيثور ... " بهيّة " هي نموذج للأم عند أحمد فؤاد نجم هذه الأم التي استكانت عقودا و تغنّي الآن الثورة و التغيير في ميدان التحرير ... الأم هي الوطن ... و بهيّة لن تستكين بعد اليوم .. من بالنسبة للرواية فلعلّها أهمّ ما ألّف مكسيم غوركي على الإطلاق و أهم ما أُلّف ضمن مدرسة الواقعيّة الاشتراكيّة أيذا التي أسّسها غوركي نفسه , هي رواية التحوّل .. التحوّل السياسي و الاجتماعي الثوري الذي شهدته روسيا مع الثورة الشيوعيّة و التحوّل الأدبي الذي أسّس أو نتج عن ذلك , ولذلك لا بدّ لكلّ مهتمّ بالأدب الروسي من قراءتها .الرواية لديّ من إصدار دار التقدّم في روسيا و بترجمة المحامي سهيل أيّوب و أخيه و هما لا يحتاجان لشهادة تثبت رقيّ ترجمتهما
—أحمد أبازيد Ahmad Abazed
