The Lower Depths and Other Plays

by Maxim Gorky

Book Overview

In addition to the celebrated Lower Depths, this volume contains a biographical sketch of Gorky by Alexander Bakshy and two of his less well-known plays, Enemies and The Zykovs.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300001002
• ISBN13: 9780300001006
• Release Date: September 1959
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Beautifully written, sometimes heavy-handed

Before reading this play, I'd been avoiding Gorky for a long time, because I too had fallen prey to the notion that Communist authors are always boring. I'm glad I finally picked up "The Lower Depths," because it's really well done. Gorky has an incredible command of idiomatic Russian, and the play advances its ideology in a fairly subtle fashion. (As a note, it was written around the turn of the century, so it predates the formation of the Soviet Union.)The play is set in a flophouse filled with degenerates -- drunken actors, a dying woman and her husband, a former baron, and so forth. From these unlikely people, Gorky builds a tale of the realities of human nature, what it means to trust, to contribute to society, even to kill. The play is also worthwhile reading for students of pre-Revolutionary Russia -- the struggles leading up to that watershed event in Russian history are clearly evident.