Reshaping the Past: Gorky's Reminiscences of Korolenko

Although not as well‐known as his memoirs of Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Andreev, Gorky's two essays devoted to Korolenko are of no less interest. First, like some of Gorky's other works that draw on his life experiences, they show clear evidence of artistic reworking: he is not beyond playing with the chronology and introducing certain elements to reshape his memories into effective narratives. The existence of a third item on Korolenko, a speech that Gorky gave in 1918, provides comparative data that helps reveal the artistic embellishment in the two later works. Second, these two pieces straddle the boundary between memoir and autobiography, both in terms of content and within the context of Gorky's career. He composed them in 1922, just three years after he initially published his memoirs of Tolstoy and Andreev; like those works and others devoted to a single prominent figure, the writings on Korolenko seemingly belong to the category of memoir. However, they begin with the period that immediately follows the final events in the third part of his autobiographical trilogy, My Universities , which was written at about the same time, and so can also be regarded as a continuation of that work. Third, his relationship with Korolenko is of intrinsic interest. Their first meetings go back to Gorky's literary beginnings and so offer some insights into his early steps as a writer and Korolenko's role in those. In more subtle ways, the two essays also reflect aspects of an epistolary exchange between the writers toward the very end of Korolenko's life and contain a veiled critique of the social and political atmosphere of the post‐Revolutionary years.