In 1906-1917 Gor&soft;kij was particularly attracted to the genre
of fairytales
(skazki
) writing both his
realistic.
The former
never introduce any fantastic elements, yet present larger than life
characters ruled by superhuman passions, as well as a land drenched in
golden sunlight. Also at that time, Gor&soft;kij wrote the cycle of
sketches best fairytales are those
created by life itself.
In short, we see Gor&soft;kij working
on the principles of socialist realism which, when wedded to
Stalinism, promised to make fairytales come true.
However, why are the true Europe
in the midst of European
decay.
As such, Italy also becomes the cornerstone of a future
European cultural renaissance to be inspired by Russia (which as
The Third Rome
had preserved an ancient genuine
legacy). Gor&soft;kij does something similar in regard to his island
of Capri, transforming it into a kind of remnant of a lost
beautiful world
(Schiller) that was destroyed by a
capitalist northern Europe. Gor&soft;kij's Italy may be part of the
declining West, but it yearns for redemption (as its strong Socialist
movement proves) and it welcomes Russian bear
strength.
It is true that Russia still needs purification and the satiric
tales point to this need. Yet, Russia is the country where there is
faith
in the miracles of labor, as there is faith in
life's beauty in Italy. When the (feminine) festivity of Italian
culture (Gogol&soft;'s life-giving mother
—be
this Capri's Madonna of Catholic-pagan ceremonies (Italy, like Russia,
has the double faith
), or the light comes from the East
indeed and the new Socialist light
from Russia surpasses even the ancient sunshine of Italy in its power
to transform all it touches. (Sologub, by the way, offers a quite
similar message in his
Thus Gor&soft;kij uses Gogolian elements of romantic nostalgia for a lost Europe and Slavophile visions of a future great Russia to create a Socialist myth in which Russia recreates the European past while elevating itself to arbiter of world culture.