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The Play The Lower Depths is Maxim Gorky’s best known play, widely considered both a masterpiece and an extremely problematic work. Subtitled Scenes from Russian Life, the play was a huge success from its first performance. The idea for the play was conceived in 1900, and it was written during the winter of 1901 and the spring of 1902. It was produced by the Moscow Arts Theatre on December 18, 1902. Konstantin Stanislavski directed the play and starred in it as Satin, and as it was one of his earliest successes, it became a hallmark of his work, the Moscow Arts Theatre, and Russian socialist realism. The play was performed worldwide and established Gorky both at home and in the West. It has been regularly staged, in productions across the globe, ever since. Truth, lies and story-telling in The Lower Depths Critical writing on The Lower Depths, has concentrated on the issue of a "harsh truth" versus a "consoling lie" as the heart of Gorky's play. Such an exclusively thematic view of this text, however, neglects the fact that it was written for performance. If theme is integrated with theatrical form in the construction of meaning, different interpretations may emerge. A focal area of interest lies in the story-telling episodes. They provide several moments where the dramatic form becomes consciously engaged with the truth and lies theme of the play. They also create a set of links which informs interpretation of the perplexing ending to the play. When operating in a theatrical medium: truth, or reality, is pursued through the theatrical illusions which present the fictional world. Story-telling, particularly oral storytelling, embodies a similar structure of truth and lies, as content is conveyed by the illusions of performance. Story-telling may also refer to efforts to mask truth, but it is nevertheless a venerable tradition of entertainment. The argument here is that the oral story-telling in The Lower Depths, when located in a theatrical, performance, framework, may hold a key to a new understanding of this text. 2 The generally held view regards Gorky as a writer dedicated to one political agenda, which he realises by showing signs of the disintegration of established society of his day. The key to a new understanding is that oral story-telling in the Lower Depths not only exemplifies, but also greatly expands the truth and lies debate. Truths and lies are not in conflict, but working Photograph from Original Production together to produce a unified whole. Gorky is less of a propagandist and more of a humanist than has generally been allowed. The memorable setting for this play is a place of extremes. On the one hand, it is a refuge for the destitute, suffering and dying; on the other, a place for survivors, the perverse and self-preservers. Into this pit of humanity comes Luka. He is wily, shrewd, lives on his wits, a survivor, but he is also kindly. Unable to pass suffering by, he offers his "consoling lies”. His words bring instant calm and hope. Other characters, trapped in a life of poverty, dislike his temporary comforting, calling him a liar. They prefer to justify their aimless existences by the hopelessness, both theological and social, of their situation. The climax of the play in Act 4 emerges from a previously reticent but powerful character, Satin. To stop complaints at Luka’s disappearance Satin launches into a defence of his actions. Luka was right to console others, he drunkenly proclaims. Every human being is sacred and should be cherished and comforted. No one individual has access to the truth. Then Satin develops Lukas ideas for his own purpose. The truth resides, he argues, in the recognition that all people are members of the human race whatever their status, beliefs or ethnic origins. These words appear to cap the debate which has simmered throughout the play. On the one hand, the realist and pessimist (Satin) who accepts and deals with whatever life offers, and on the other, the consoler and optimist (Luka) who gives comfort by offering hope that life will improve. In fact, the two sides of the 3 argument are not quite as clear-cut as may appear. Gorky operates a shift in views in the course of the play. Satin, embraces the idealist view of unifying the human race, while Luka, bends beliefs to suit his own purpose betraying an underlying pessimism: things (including God and stories) are true if you believe in them, not if you don't. Each of these two leading characters resists easy classification. This central issue of truth and lies is illuminated by the form Gorky chose for his material. It is necessary to shift the focus, move it away from the polarisation between philosophy and ideology, away from a choice between Satin and Luka. Gorky, the consummate dramatist, is able to fuse the complexity of his world view with the plurality which arises from drama in performance. Theatricality is a rich seam explored by Gorky in this "naturalistic" play. There are many examples which could be analysed, his use of quotation or of melodrama, for example; similar sustained usage of self-referential performance devices in the opening scene to the play. Story-telling is an aspect central to The Lower Depths. It not only exemplifies the truth and lies theme, but also operates at the heart of the theatrical experience. Stories contain a juxtaposition of truth and lies: the real world of the listeners is usually related in some way to the fictional world created. Like theatre, oral story-telling is a performance, and when used in drama creates performances-within- performances. In The Lower Depths the stories vary from escapist fiction to parables. Not only do all the characters have a story to tell about how they have come to be in destitution, but stories are also inserted into the action. The question is what do the stories (Luka’s, Nastya’s), and their more fragmentary biographical counterparts (Bubnov’s, Kvashnia’s, Actor’s, etc), contribute in performance terms and how, as a result, do they integrate with the debate on truth and lies? Story-telling offers the characters escape. It transports them beyond the time parameters of the action and beyond the spatial confines of the doss-house walls. But more than that stories also offer escape to the audience and greatly enlarge the temporal and scenic action by consciously appealing to the imagination. A gap opens up between the squalid, prison-like conditions on the stage and the fictional worlds created by the stories. 4 This is a set which entraps its inhabitants. Theoretically they are free to leave which they do on a daily basis. They all unfailingly return, however: they have nowhere else to go. In this sense the fictional world of the play and the stage set are one: there is no escape. Equally, the audience is as entrapped as the characters. However, both characters and audience in listening to the stories are transported simultaneously to new fictional worlds. As a result, the audience is made as aware as the characters of the confined space of the depths. Just like the stories, Satin's trio of climactic speeches in Act stand out for their monologic quality. Just like the previous story-tellers he is surrounded by a silenced on-stage audience, he transports his on-stage and auditorium audiences together to a fictional and temporal world beyond the stage. The climax to Satin's "story" is his assertion of the collective spirit and strength of mankind. His inclusion of the good and the evil (Napoleon), the recognisable and the different (Luka, Mahomet) might also be seen as a hint of the need for plurality. Frequently claimed as the ideological climax to the play, this speech, is in fact a prelude to a much stronger dramatic climax. The fact that a climax may yet come is signalled in Satin's agitation after his rhetoric. The Baron fills the stasis with his now truthful version of his life story and his exit; the Actor appeals to the Tartar to pray for him and Gorky inserts two further pauses into this brief exchange, allowing focus to shift back to Satin's growing agitation. This time, however, it does not stimulate further debate about truth and lies, but creates moments of harsh truth, which mount in their devastation from the Baron's recognition of truth about himself to the cruel reality of the Actor's suicide. This moment is fraught with irony. There is irony in that this suicide is prefigured in Luka’s story of the man who sought the promised land; and there is the irony that the play is itself in the end only a fiction. In terms of the story-telling mode, this time the on-stage and auditorium audiences are powerless to intervene. The debate is over and the play is 5 Photograph from Original Production drawing to a close. At this moment, arguably, the usual gap between theatricality and verisimilitude is narrowed almost to closure: the shock of the suicide is the same whether it is fiction or truth. In conclusion, therefore, story-telling is used by Gorky in ways seminal to both his thematic and dramatic purposes. The stories are used to enlarge the theme and to indicate the "story" nature of Satin's solution. His claims on behalf of humanity are not a resolution but a further component in the patterns that life offers. His exaltation of man makes the presence of suffering, of crime, of exploitation, the more painful.

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