About the work
Drama in four acts by Maxim Gorky, written in 1901 and published as a book by the St Petersburg publisher Znaniye in March 1902. It premiered on 7 April 1902 during a guest engagement of the Moscow Art Theatre in St Petersburg — Gorky's first play written specifically for the stage.
Plot
In the household of the well-off railway craftsman Bessemyonov, the generations clash: his foster son Nil, a self-assured locomotive driver, marries the young relative Polya instead of the daughter Tatyana, who then attempts suicide. Son Pyotr flees the family home with the widowed Yelena, while old Bessemyonov grows ever more isolated in his narrow view of the world.
Cultural significance
With the worker Nil as a moral counterweight to the stagnant petty-bourgeois world of the Bessemyonovs, Gorky was among the first to put a self-assured working-class character on a Russian stage as a positive figure. The play marked Gorky's debut as a playwright at the Moscow Art Theatre, just eight months before the premiere of his far more famous The Lower Depths.