BARBARIANS by Maxim Gorky
While time and subject overlap in the plays of Chekhov and Gorky, the two men differ in their angles of vision. Chekhov was a cardiologist of the wounded heart; Gorky was a cartographer of a scarred social landscape. Chekhov's characters transcend their enervating environment; Gorky's characters drown in the swamp of their surroundings.
The landscape in this play is a tiny Russian village in the year 1905, where civilization is, at best, a rumor. Gorky populates the canvas of his drama with wife beaters, sodden vodkaholics, corrupt bureaucrats, venal merchants, sanctimonious hypocrites, neurotically damaged children and disaffected wives who...
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