Back Vie de Klim Samguine (Quarante années) French लाइफ अफ क्लिम सम्जिन Nepali Жизнь Клима Самгина Russian Життя Клима Самгіна Ukrainian
 First edition cover (1927) | |
| Author | Maxim Gorky |
|---|---|
| Original title | Жизнь Клима Самгина |
| Language | Russian |
| Genre | Philosophical novel, bildungsroman, modernist novel, historical novel |
| Publisher | Verlag "Kniga" |
Publication date | 1927–1931; 1937 |
| Publication place | Italy / Germany / Soviet Union |
Published in English | 1930–1938 |
The Life of Klim Samgin (Russian: Жизнь Клима Самгина, romanized: 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."[1] It follows the decline of Russian intelligentsia from the start of the 1870s and the assassination of Alexander II to the 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.[2]
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".
- ^ Cornwell, Neil (2013). Reference Guide to Russian Literature. Routledge. ISBN 9781315073873.
- ^ Freeborn, Richard (1985). The Russian Revolutionary Novel: Turgenev to Pasternak. Cambridge Studies in Russian Literature. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521317371.