Information about the author:
Marie-Christine Аutant-Мathieu
Marie-Christine Аutant-Мathieu, DSc in Philology, Professor, Sorbonne University/CNRS, Research Unit EUR’ORBEM, rue Michelet, 9, 75006 Paris, France.
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Abstract:
Gorky began as a playwright for the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT) and was staged in parallel with Chekhov. Thus, the two MAT directors, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, were confronted with two playwriters they appreciated but whose modes of writing diverged. I study the way in which Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko in their biographies written in Soviet period, 1926 for My Life in Art and 1936 for My Life in the Russian Theatre, rewrote and embellished their relations with a writer who created difficulties, for his political commitment and for interpretation of his plays. From the middle of the 1920s, Gorky became a defender of the MAT and consequently, the two directors gummed their politico-esthetics divergences and sought to reconcile themselves with Gorky.
Keywords: Moscow Art Theater, A. Chekhov, K. Stanislavsky, V. Nemirovich-Danchenko, My life in Art, From the Past, Soviet cultural policy, At the Bottom, Burghers, Summer Residents, Children of the Sun.