“The Author’s Forces of Students”: M. Gorky and Novice Writers of the Village of Norskoe (Yaroslavl Region)

Numerous letters of the writer’s correspondents are stored in the Archive of A. M. Gorky IWL RAS. They shared with the writer their impressions of what they had read, asked for help in literary endeavors, asked for advice, and sent their essays for review. Among M. Gorky’s correspondence there is a letter from a member of the editorial board of the school literary magazine, teacher and local historian Sergei Petrovich Suryaninov (Krasnoperevalskaya Factory school, Norskoye settlement, Yaroslavl region). Suryaninov attached two continuations of Gorky’s story “Mother” to the letter. “Pavel after the Tsar’s Trial” – works by 7th grade students Vladimir Tikhomirov and Mikhail Vereykin. Two essays are interesting for the students’ comprehension of what they have read, the desire to learn more about Gorky’s work, and the desire to change the fate of the characters. Students’ texts are artistically imperfect. The continuations of the original work demonstrate the students’ study of the plot of the story. Young authors borrow images of heroes and elements of the original text; events significant for plot-building unfold within a given chronotope, but students prolong the time thread and thereby weaken deep intertextual connections with the original. Creative works are examples of the activation of the children’s literary movement in the 1930s, the awakening of writing talents among active readers, as well as examples of “continuation texts” as a kind of secondary text. The article analyzes the work of methodologist M. A. Rybnikova, who was engaged in the development of children’s verbal creativity in the 1920s and 1930s. Her activity was in line with the Gorky strategy of educating writers. The responses of young readers to Gorky’s work “Mother” are introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. Critical and emotional reviews were important for all participants in the literary process. They allowed the author to get a reaction to the work and feel his relevance. Reviews helped the reader to evaluate what they read and establish feedback with the author, they formed a readership. The appendix of the article contains a letter from S. P. Suryaninov and the writings of V. Tikhomirov and M. Vereykin as an illustration of the methodical and artistic work of the literary circle.