The semantic potential of the concept "faith" in Maxim Gorky's novel "Foma Gordeev"

Karakhanian Narine Joraevna Assistant Department of English for Humanities, National Research Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod 95 Bournakovskaya street, Nizhny Novgorod, 603074, Russia narine.80@list.ru

In modern literary criticism, there has been a revision of the established concept of M. Gorky's work, according to which the writer was considered outside the culture of the Silver Age ^[12,17]. Meanwhile, both the writer's early stories and his first significant work, the novel "Foma Gordeev", certainly fit into the philosophical context of the Silver Age, in the search by the Russian intelligentsia for answers to the challenges of the time. The end of the 19th century was a crisis era in the history of Russia, a time of loss of faith in former ideals, when a new idea of faith was born, devoid of sacred meaning, which could not but affect the ideological and philosophical concept of the story.

In creating images of characters, the author uses almost the entire paradigm of the signs of the concept of "faith", combining them depending on the character of the hero or the situation in which he finds himself. Deciphering the meaning depends "on the momentary context and cultural experience, the cultural individuality of the concept carrier <...> ^{[13, p.5]}, reflecting a certain ideological environment. The word "faith" sounds on the lips of almost all the heroes of the story: it is included in the judgments of the characters, in their reflections on the meaning of life, it is pronounced by Thomas's aunt, Yakov Mayakin, Ananii Shchurov, Nikolai Yezhov, and, of course, Thomas himself. The actualization of the concept of "faith" is realized according to the principle of dichotomy: each character presents his interpretation of the peripheral content of the analyzed concept of "faith", arguing about the "ideal", that is, about what he believes in, and about the "meaning of life", understood as faith in a certain ideal that determines the movement towards the goal.

The functional significance of the concept, as well as the general idea of a large work, was not immediately determined, as evidenced by the correspondence of the Gorky period of work on the story. Thus, in a letter to A.L.Volynsky (September 1897), Gorky speaks of his intention to "deal with a thing of wider significance", ^{[10, p. 236), E.P.Peshkova (October 7, 1897 from Manuilovka) reports: "I am slowly writing a novel", [ibid., p. 240]}, In more detail about his work, he writes to S.P. Dorovatovsky on January 5 or 6, 1899: "To my great regret, the story intended for "Life" wriggles like a snake in my mind. I should have written it on 5 sheets, but I won't be able to do it without compromising the topic. It hurts me. But now I can bet that there will be good pictures in this story" [ibid., p. 303]. However, doubts soon arise "about the correctness of the figurative and compositional structure of the story" [7 p. 589], since Foma Gordeev, conceived by him as the main character, is not "typical as a merchant, as a representative of the class <...> It is necessary to put another figure next to him so as not to violate the truth of life" (letter to Dorovatovsky, February 11 1899) ^{[10, p. 311]}.

The figure who embodied the vivid type of the Russian merchant of the turn-of-the-century era was Yakov Mayakin, the vital plausibility of whose image was received with approval by representatives of the merchant class, who believed that Gorky "copied" Mayakin from some particular person. The artistic concept of the image was formed in Gorky's mind gradually, as a result of understanding a significant number of facts, but the writer's work as a correspondent at the Nizhny Novgorod All-Russian Exhibition (1896) played an important role in this process. "In one of the feuilletons of the cycle "Cursory notes" (July 11, "Lower. leaflet") Gorky reproduces the way of thinking of one of the owners, the "organizers of life": "We," said a merchant speaker recently at a private dinner, "we currently represent the ruling class in the country, the richest and smartest. Capital, the main driving force of life, is in our hands and, therefore, all life is at our disposal" ^{[11, p.430]}. Gorky himself believed that the image of Yakov Mayakin, a typical representative of the merchant class, was more successful for him than the image of Foma Gordeev. Using his copyright, as he would later say, he brought to the judgments of Yakov Mayakin something from the philosophy of F. Nietzsche, which greatly influenced the formation of the writer's own worldview, as researchers have repeatedly written, noting that Gorky is close to the idea of Nietzsche about a strong personality, but its role in the history of mankind It was understood by the writer and the philosopher in different ways (S.V.Zaika, D.A.Balika, L.N.Spiridonova, P.Basinsky ^[4,1,18,2]. In the image of Yakov Mayakin, this idea receives a peculiar interpretation, according to which the Nietzschean motive of the right of a strong personality to control the destinies of people receives a different interpretation.  "How can everyone be happy and equal," Mayakin answers his godson about the law of life in the form of a rhetorical question, "if everyone wants to be above the other?" ^{[7, p.376]}, which confirms his right to realize his will and faith in the power of capital, which he could not inspire his godson with Thomas.

 The main character of the story, Foma Gordeev, is being tested by the many beliefs of the people around him. The faith of each character is tested by Thomas's consciousness, expands the horizon of his knowledge about the world, which determines the features of the plot and compositional structure of the story. It is no coincidence that one of Thomas's main mentors in his faith becomes his godfather, Yakov Mayakin, a man who, according to Orthodox law, is obliged to be his spiritual mentor, to teach him communication with God. After all, according to Orthodox traditions, godparents "must be strong in faith, must pray, live a full-fledged church life, and bring up a godson in faith" ^[15].

A special role in the ideological and philosophical concept of the story belongs to Yakov Mayakin, who inspires Thomas with his idea of faith. It is connected, first of all, with the belief in the power of money, in the power of work, the purpose of which is the accumulation of wealth: "And who are the strongest people these days? The merchant is the first force in the state, because millions are with him!" he explains to Thomas ^{[7, p.282]} The name of the Lord, which often sounds in his words, is mentioned by him in vain, justifying the thirst for profit. Mayakin is sure that "no matter how much a person sins, if there is capital, God will forgive him everything" ^{[7, p.286]}. The sinful Ananii Shchurov also hopes for the mercy of the Lord, believing in "the mercy of the Lord," and Yashka," Ananii added, "does not believe in choh, soy, or bird grayness... Yasha does not believe in God... I know that! And for not believing, he will still be punished on earth!" ^{[7, p.305]}.

 Mayakin has numerous references to biblical and evangelical parables, which he interprets in his own way. Even on his deathbed, he trusts in the mercy of God, since he lived without discouragement and was not afraid of sin, for "The Lord appointed man to arrange life... and he didn't give him much sense — so he won't strictly look for arrears!.. For he is holy and full of mercy..." ^{[7, p.457]}. The owner of the city himself is not ready to forgive Thomas and exclaims: "Although we are all Christians, you will not be forgiven by us... So know..." ^{[7, p.453]}. The validity of Shchurov's words that Mayakin does not believe in God is confirmed by an episode of his godfather's explanation about houses for the destitute, invented by merchants in order to "lock them in different houses and, so that it would not be expensive to keep them there, they were forced to work, old and crippled... And there is no need to give alms now, and having removed various rags from the streets, we do not see their fierce sorrow and poverty, and therefore we can think that all people on earth are well fed, shod, dressed... That's what they're for, these houses are different, they're for hiding the truth... for the expulsion of Christ from our life!" ^{[7, p.281]}.

 Perhaps the word "faith" is used most often by Yakov Mayakin, describing his attitude towards Thomas, who is gradually losing his confidence. In this context, the verbalization of the concept of "faith" occurs on the periphery of the lexemes with the meaning of "hope" and "trust", since one of the outdated meanings of the word "faith" - "hope" was considered as a synonym for the word "trust" ^[5]. Over time, his hope fades that Thomas will grow into a worthy heir to capital.  After an open confrontation with Thomas and his words that he was going to squander his father's entire fortune for the sake of his own freedom, Mayakin tells his daughter Lyuba: "Hope for Thomas is bad... although I will not give up on him..." ^{[7, p.378]}.

Several versions of faith are associated with the female images of the story, despite the fact that the author himself, in a letter to Dorovatovsky in June 1899, noted their insufficient elaboration: "Women do not succeed. There is a lot of absolutely unnecessary, and I do not know where to put the necessary, necessary things" ^{[10, p.346]}. Nevertheless, the love trials of the hero included in the story become an additional argument in the characterization of Thomas: they do not make his life more meaningful, the faith of the women he met does not contribute to the spiritual rebirth of the hero. Pelageya leaves Thomas, as she believes in her truth about the relationship between a man and a woman, rejects his offer to marry her, breaking his heart and causing Thomas deep longing. The disappointment experienced by Thomas gives rise to "in addition to fear for his father and longing for a woman <...> some new, strong and caustic feeling. He could not name it to himself, but it seemed to him close to resenting someone <...> ^{[7, p.247]}. With the image of Pelagia, the story includes an image of faith in fate: the hero recalls this word, which he often heard from aunt Anfisa, and it is now associated with "a power like the power of God." With the image of Sofia Medynskaya, the theme of the intelligentsia is introduced into the story - another version of faith in fate, which is understood by Medynskaya as a way of protection from the ordinary. Foma interests Sophia as an unusual representative of the merchant class, with whom she flirts out of boredom, admitting at parting that she "only wanted to see [Foma] around her..." ^{[7, p.299]}. Faith as the goal of life and its ideals, Thomas does not grasp and does not understand, therefore, in this case, another disappointment overtakes him. Sasha, another friend of Thomas, immediately defines the essence of their relationship: "I will not lie, I say it bluntly, I love for money, for gifts. You can love like that. You wait, I'll look at you, and maybe I'll love you for free... In the meantime, don't forget... in my life, I need a lot of money..." ^{[7, p.330]}. The circle closes, Foma is again faced with a cynical belief in the power of capital, as Mayakin repeatedly told him.

Another important touch concerning the hero's relationship to the intelligentsia is connected with the image of Yezhov, in whose words about faith the author's assessment of the modern intelligentsia sounds, which says a lot, but does little. Yezhov's confidence is that "you must always live in love with something that is inaccessible to you... A person becomes taller because he stretches upward" ^{[7, p.387]} is close to the Bitterest. It is no coincidence that the author gives this hero the profession of a journalist. Despite the fact that Yezhov complains about life, he believes in his strength, his ability to expose the depravity of modern society.  Yezhov refutes the Mayakins' belief that capital is power, because the heirs of capital like Thomas are no longer able to continue the work of their fathers. "Come on! Yezhov shouts. - You can't do anything! There's no need for people like you... Your time, the time of the strong, but the stupid, has passed, brother! You're too late... There is no place for you in life..." ^{[7, p.392]}.

In fact, the whole narrative about the fate of Thomas is a chain of episodes in which the author introduces the hero to the faith (confidence) of other characters, which motivates a growing sense of inner tension in him. He does not accept the faith of others, but also does not find a foothold in himself, intuitively feeling the inability to understand what he is, what he lives for and what he believes in. Thomas realizes the lack of faith in himself as a "bottomless, languishing emptiness" <...> in its dark depths he suspected the lurking existence of some force hostile to him, still formless, but already cautiously and persistently striving to incarnate..." ^{[7, p.257]}. In this context, the image of a hostile force is a symbol of fate, a belief in tragedy, which gradually replaces Thomas' faith in man, the belief that he will find a kindred soul who will understand his suffering. In the story, this loss of faith in a person by Thomas is accompanied by growing mental anguish, which finds an outlet in ugly carousing and drunkenness. Thus, the semantic core of the concept of "faith" expands by enriching its periphery with such associative characteristics of the inner world of the hero as "longing", "fear", "emptiness", which have a negative connotation. The concept of faith in the story can also be considered from the point of view of Thomas's disbelief in his own strength, since "from every impression, Thomas immediately had a sharp thought about his inability to live" ^{[7, p.422]}. This is how another peripheral meaning of the concept of "faith" is realized: unbelief as an inability to find one's place in life.

The examples given show that the context of using the concept of "faith" is different every time, and the paradigm of its features turns out to be extremely broad.  The paradigm of lexical meanings of the word includes such semantic components that are associated with the designation of "confidence", "conviction", "belief", that is, the absence of any doubt or hesitation about the existence and being of God; "to believe in what, to whom or what; to have faith, to give faith, to believe; to accept as truth, do not doubt, be sure" ^[19].

One of the most important options for the implementation of the concept is the religious aspect. In different contexts of the story, motivating the character's action, the author uses lexemes located on the periphery of the core of the concept of "faith". Its actualization occurs through the use of the words "God", "prayer", "lord", "Christ". The source of Thomas's moral education was the sincere, spontaneous faith of his aunt, who instructed the boy: "Remember God, Fomushka" ^{[7, p.220]}, which in this context means the desire to be kind and sympathetic, but may also have another meaning: "fear God", remember the possible retribution for unseemly deeds.  Anfisa's aunt banishes the boy's night terrors with the advice to read the prayer "May God rise again" to herself, being convinced that she will drive away the unconscious dark principle that has accumulated in Thomas's soul. By including in the text a prayer based on Psalm 67 of David ^[22], Gorky thereby confirms the depth and sincerity of Aunt Anfisa's faith that the pronounced evening rule will take the child to paradise, just as David's return of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem was perceived as the resurrection of Jesus. Anfisa's faith is a common faith in God, and one of the possible sources of the image of the aunt could be the writer's memories of grandmother Akulin, whose image would be fully embodied much later in "Childhood", written already in 1913. It can be assumed that the verbalization of the concept of "faith" reflected elements of an autobiographical nature, as indicated by a number of researchers. ^[21,16,3]. It is possible that the folk legends and fairy tales of Aunt Anfisa served as a kind of bridge from this image to the image of grandmother Akulina, one of the central ones in the first part of Gorky's autobiographical trilogy.

The concept of "faith" is realized in the story and indirectly, through the reproduction of the peculiarities of Thomas's perception of Anfisa's stories, as it happens with the "Tale of Christ's Godson", a little-studied monument of the XVIII century ^{[14, pp.156-158]}. The story itself is not named in the text, it is said that Thomas "knows this terrible tale about God's godson, he has heard it more than once and already draws this godson in front of him in advance..." sent by God and the Virgin to punish sinners on earth. The child's imagination paints pictures of "the unbearable torments by which sinners are condemned... And he hears their soft moans and pleas: "Oh! Human! Ask the Lord, how long will we suffer?" ^{[7, p. 223]}.

In a different context, Ignat commemorates God, for whom the instruction to the son of "Our Lord, look, do not forget... That's right!" means the certainty that a donation to the church is a way to "appease" Him. And his expression "Honor God and the parent! It is a verbal cliche, which Ignat uses to denote parental participation in the upbringing of his son ^{[7, p.220]}.

It is known that Gorky returned to editing the text of the story several times ^{[6, pp.397-490]}.A comparative analysis of the draft versions and the final text showed a significant reduction in the amount of material showing Thomas's reverent attitude to God, prayerful appeals to him, which eased his suffering in childhood ^{[16, p.598, p.615]}.For example, an episode of Thomas's instruction to a half-drunk who complains about an unfair life was deleted from the final version of the text. "Life is not God, but people build! Foma blurted out and was even surprised at the audacity of his words... Build your life with your mind. God will judge you... We are all in his service... and we all have the same price in front of him..." ^{[7, p.601]}.

In the image of Thomas Gordeev, the author captures a man who intuitively does not accept the norms of morality of the society in which he lives. As you know, Gorky shortened large episodes from the story in order not to cause the reader to have an erroneous idea about the image of Thomas, for example, about his insanity or repentance before God in atonement for the sin of wealth. The actualization of the concept of "faith" also occurs through the associative perception of the image of Thomas Gordeev with the Evangelical apostle Thomas, one of the twelve closest disciples of Christ, who did not believe in the Resurrection of Christ until he saw the Lord with his own eyes.

Even modern critics of Gorky noticed that the writer, creating the image of Thomas, often endows him with his judgments, just as the hero's search for his place in life goes back to the facts of the writer's biography (N.K.Mikhailovsky) ^{[16, p.594]}. It is obvious that the questions that worried Thomas Gordeev about understanding himself and his place in life determined the peculiarity of his interpretation of biographical material in works of art. It is impossible not to draw a parallel between the spiritual struggles of Thomas Gordeev and Gorky himself, as the writer will write later in his essay "On the Harm of Philosophy", referring to the Nizhny Novgorod period of his search for the meaning of life, when, as a result of visiting self-education circles, meetings with members of the society of "sober philosophers", "disturbing chaos" settled in the mind of the young Peshkov and he "felt my brain melting and boiling, giving rise to strange thoughts, fantastic visions and pictures. A feeling of longing, sucking away my life, seized me, and I began to fear insanity" ^{[8, p.58]}. Gorky leads his hero to something very reminiscent of this life reality in the finale of the story. Longing as a state of mind caused by a person's need to understand himself and determine his place in life was well known to the writer ^[20]. However, Foma Gordeev wants not only to believe in something, but also to understand what the meaning of life is for him, and who he is.

 Modern criticism reproached Gorky for the lack of motivation in the finale of the story (A.I. Bogdanovich) ^{[16, p. 618]}. However, the finale of the story is quite natural, since Thomas Gorky prepared only the fate of a prophet, a harbinger of the death of the bourgeois class, and not an active fighter against it. Thomas's protest – his "accusatory" speech on the deck of the steamer does not change anything in the minds of those to whom he addresses: "I am lost... I know! Only — not from your strength... and from his weakness... yes!" ^{[7, p.455]}. But there is also a threat in it, referring the reader to someone whom Mayakin, Shchurov and many others consider merciful, forgiving the sins of "strong-minded, intelligent people." The image of God and the associated motive of posthumous punishment: "You will be boiled not in fire, but in boiling mud. You will not be tormented for centuries..." ^{[7, p.450]} in the angry denunciations of Thomas, they appear in the final as another variant of the peripheral meaning of the concept of "faith", as the hero's hope that there will be no forgiveness for those who counted on His mercy in the name of capital multiplication.

The writer briefly formulates his understanding of God in a letter to F.D. Batyushkov dated October 9, 1898 from Nizhny Novgorod while working on the story. It can be assumed with a certain degree of confidence that the expression that Gorky uses to define his nature "... my thoughts and feelings will never be balanced, will never come to the same denominator — there is no place for God in my soul..." can be interpreted as a kind of variant of the final situation in which his Thomas Gordeev finds himself. However, if the hero of the story strives to gain inner peace and clarity, then its author declares faith in the creative power of man, using the Slavic expression "I am", describing his task as a writer as the creator of another world: "I am a wave of the sea, reflecting the rays of the sun and singing about life with praise and anger" ^{[10, p.275.]}.

As a result of our research, we can conclude that the analyzed concept of "faith" in the story "Foma Gordeev", in addition to its main dictionary meaning, has a wide semantic content, actualized through the system of images and composition of the work. The whole range of additional associative meanings of the concept of "faith", namely "hope", "longing", "fear", "emptiness", "unbelief", is due to the writer's task to show the significant changes taking place in a society experiencing the maturation of a moral and ideological crisis. The judgments and actions of the atypical protagonist of the story, as well as other characters in the story, embodied the general picture of Russian reality at the turn of the epochs, the brewing social shift and the accompanying search for moral support by a person in a changing world, including the author himself, who is developing his own worldview.