Gorky and his novel Confession

Maxim Gorky wrote the novel Confession in 1908, that is, after the first Russian uprising in 1905. The novel is about 275 pages of medium size. This novel has a realistic basis, as the Russian writer Bogdan Stepanets wrote about this character, and Gorky took that character from the article and then embodied him in a novel to express through it the situation of the Russian elite, both on the social and religious levels. There is no doubt that this Russian elite was influenced by the French Revolution, which brought with it doubt to religion, its origins, and to the clergy, who were the brutal arm of the Tsar. The religious establishment formed the main barrier to all social justice´-or-political liberation in Tsarist Russia. The clergy formed a parasitic group whose only work was to make false promises to people of salvation, exploit them, and blackmail them financially, while the majority lived in tragedy and extreme poverty, but they lived a soft life like the Tsar and his entourage. Accordingly, the ideas of doubt and atheism spread among the educated elite until it reached the church itself.
This novel talks about a monk who lived in a church and lost his faith through his exposure to books, knowledge, and ideas, in addition to being influenced by his past as a bastard. The novel is an intellectual formation to reconsider existence, faith, and even God himself. Perhaps Gorky was influenced by the movement established by Tolstoy, which was a cultural revolution that combined religious and cultural renewal. On the other hand, the Tsar s men considered it a chaotic and riotous movement, so they resisted it and persecuted everyone who believed in it. However, Gorky s novel did not pass unnoticed, but was criticized by many, the first of whom were the Marxists who considered the novel a reconciliation between socialism and Christianity that ultimately served the Russian reality in the continuation of the Tsar s unjust rule. The novel is not one of his most important works, but Gorky defended it, saying that it is a bridge that takes man from forms of individualism to a human society liberated from slavery internally and externally. The novel speaks in the first person about a foundling child, left among the bushes next to the door of the church chapel in one of the villages. The gardener found him and lived with him until he was four years old, then he was adopted by the church deacon Larion, a man addicted to alcohol and loves birds, but he is affectionate like a caring mother, as the novel describes him. In general, most of Gorky s novels embody his life in their details and characters. The child Matvey´-or-Motka asks the deacon a question that adults dare not ask: Why does God help his creatures so little?
Lorin (the deacon) answers with the ease of a savant:
This is not God s business, you should help yourself, he gave you a mind. He is there to relieve us of the fear of death, but life is up to you.
As for the priest of the church, he had a huge, black face, as if wrapped in gunpowder, a wide mouth and a shaggy beard. Another character is Savelka, whom Matvey describes as a thief, who sits at the table like a peg, and when he hears Lorin singing, his eyes fill with tears. But Lorin did not live long, his boat capsized once and he died when Matvey was a teenager, having just finished elementary school. In that school, the protagonist remembers how the children followed him and called him a baster. During that period, he lived with the Titov family, and in the novel he describes him as the man who pulled Larion s body out of the river, and who saved Matvey from drowning and then took him home. He was a tall, aggressive man, with his head shaved like a soldier and a mustache and a beard. He was not liked by the villagers, and he was a scoundrel who exploited the village women. When he worked with him in a small factory, he asked him to cheat and change the numbers, and for this reason, the Titov family never stopped looking at him and treated him with caution. Titov and his wife walked around the house with their heads lowered like two horses with their legs tied and constantly asked Matvey to pray for them. Matvey married Titov s daughter (Olga), but his happiness did not last long, as his wife died with the child while giving birth. When he reached this point of feeling sad, he decided to hang himself, saying: (My soul became cold and empty like a field in winter, so I could no longer live, so I decided to commit suicide). Instead of committing suicide, he finds himself going to a monastery to become a monk, worship God and escape from his tragic life. But he is surprised that the clergy there are no better than people outside the church, they sell words of miracles to people but they cheat the peasants by stealing their money and lands, he describes them by saying:
- How many times have I seen people like him (meaning Father Anthony) crawling at night before the face of God and during the day they trample people s chests without mercy.
He does not stay long in that monastery, but moves to another monastery to see the same characters repeating themselves through exploitation and selling superstitions to people. Matvey becomes a skeptical man who asks monks and others but does not find answers to his questions. Among the questions and answers, the novel includes sayings on his tongue:
- Human have dismantled God into parts, each according to his need, he is good to some and terrifying to others, while the priests have made him a beneficiary for them.
- Where is our Lord, I wonder, from the calamities that befall us, and where is He from the people who cheat, steal, and kill?... The old monk Mardari said to me: If God punishes you, you must say thank to God, but if you ask about the devil, he is just a creature and a commanded servant.
He also says: These people have lowered God to the point that they made Him cover up their filth.... Then he says:
O people, the less fear there is, the more truth there is, and death is true for everyone, for Christ himself was not spared from it....
The old man said: It is not the weakness of humans that created God, but their strength, and He does not live outside us but inside us.... In my conversation with Michaela, my question was: Who am I and why do I exist, and is it permissible to search for God?... Michaela replied: The slaves did not have a God in the past, but they deified the human law that they received from an external force.
In his travels from one monastery to another and from one place to another, he encounters different people. On one of his trips, he goes carrying a letter of recommendation for Father Iona, saying: I was received by a young man.
A young man with protruding bones met me... Then old man said to me, remember that a small thing is part of a big thing and a big thing is a collection of small parts... When I told him that I doubted the power of God, his dull face dried up and became long, then his eyes darkened.
The novel contains beautiful phrases describing things, nature and people-;- I will mention some of them:
- I remember how the sun began to rise from behind the mountain, while the night hid in the forests... Night began to descend, taking off its thin veil, and the forest sighed and the squirrels meowed above me and the birds chirped around me... Night fell upon us and the forest surrounded us and a damp darkness thickened between the trees, so I could no longer distinguish between the trees and the night.
- Many days passed by me like a sick person filled with heavy boredom... A quiet fire was kindled in my soul and a vast meadow was burning inside me... My thoughts were like a murky swamp in which my memories were swimming...
Finally, this novel, as I said, is a de-script-ion of the Russian reality before the revolution to demonstrate the exploitation of the Christian clergy of the people and the help of the Tsar to control them by selling them illusions. And Matvey the bastard sees all these abnormal situations and expresses them through a beautiful narrative.

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