The Life Of Klim Samgin

''The Life of Klim Samgin'' (russian: Жизнь Клима Самгина, translit=Zhizn' Klima Samgina) is a four-volume novel written by Maxim Gorky from 1925 up to his death in 1936. It is Gorky's most ambitious work, intended to depict "all the classes, all the trends, all the tendencies, all the hell-like commotion of the last century, and all the storms of the 20th century." It follows the decline of Russian ''intelligentsia'' from the start of the 1870s and the assassination of Alexander II to the Russian Revolution, 1917 Revolution, seen in the eyes of Klim Samgin, a typical petit-bourgeois intellectual. The fourth and final part is unfinished and abruptly ends with the beginning of the February Revolution, although as seen from Gorky's drafts and fragments, Lenin's return to Russia in April 1917 and Samgin's death may have been intended as the possible ending.

The novel received controversial reputation in critic, although later it was described as a notable work of the 20th-century literature. In English, the four volumes were published in 1930s under the titles ''Bystander'', ''The Magnet'', ''Other Fires'' and ''The Specter''; the whole book was referred as ''Forty Years: The Life of Clim Samghin'', "a tetralogy of novels".

Reception and criticism

Despite that Gorky himself thought of the book as a message to future generations (as he said, "the old ones won't like it, while the young ones won't get it") and called it his masterpiece and "his only good book", it has a controversial reputation in literary critic: while it was seen typical work of Socialist realism satire and criticized for "tediousness" and having "two-dimensional" characters, and for being "overly tendentious", others find it one of the most important works of Russian 20th century literature (some critics see it as a modernist work).Paola Cioni. "Life of Klim Samgin as a novel about the 'man without qualities'"
/ref>Armin Knigge. Der Autor und sein Held. Maksim Gor’kijs Roman "Zizn‘ Klima Samgina" im Kontext des modernen europäischen Romans // Zeitschrift für Slavische PhilologieДмитрий Затонский
«Современность «"Жизни Клима Самгина"» // Иностранная литература. — 1968. — № 6
/ref>

The reviews of the novel given by Gorky's contemporaries were mixed. For example, the white émigré critic Gleb Struve said that all the parts of the novel suffered from compositional problems. On the other hand, Boris Pasternak after reading the first part was "struck by Gorky's emphasis on the decisive role of the ''intelligentsia'' in the revolution, his understanding of its broad national character transcending caste and class divisions". More to it, in a letter to Gorky, Pasternak noted its poetic feautures (see below) and gave a favorable estimate of the novel because it was close to his own views on the contemporary epic. He also praised the novel's complexity because it "forced the reader to make an effort to follow Samgin's growth and development".

Marc Slonim, also a white émigré critic, described the book in 1958 as "an artistic failure", a "fragmentary and shapeless work", while Andrei Sinyavsky wrote a dissertation about the novel, in which, while keeping to the standards of the "political consciousness" that Soviet dissertations required, he also defended Gorky's style and described the novel's poetics and its formal elements, including its polyphony, what was uncharacteristic of the Soviet critic of Gorky's work.

After the first volume came out in English in 1930, the reviews were mixed. '' VQR'' criticized the novel for "ignor ngthe demands for reality of character" and compared it to ''Ann Veronica'' by H. G. Wells