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Abstract:

In the article it is proved that the literary and philosophical discoveries contained in the novel The Life of Klim Samgin, by their significance, go beyond the scope of literary criticism, because the writer, like I. Turgenev, L. Tolstoy, F. Dostoyevsky, etc., managed to uncover such new aspects of knowledge and understanding of a person’s psychological nature, manifested in his relations with the real world, which are the subject of research by psychologists in the middle of the 20th century. The main attention is paid to the issues that are acute on the pages of the novel — the psychological field and cognitive dissonance. Only at first glance it may seem that it will be about Gorky’s determinism of types, characters, situations... But this is true only partially. The principal difference is that M. Gorky speaks about relationship to the reality of an already formed man, whose life in the process of self-realization faces with a fateful choice or quasi-choice. This is already a reaction — often forced — to the challenges of reality, before which there is a person who is understood as a complex energy field (Kurt Levin), a personality interacting with the living space (Lebensraum), appearing cognitive dissonance (Leon Festinger), and the need to remove it. Gorky’s methods of motivating the actions of the hero(s) in critical situations are analyzed. The significance given by the writer to the characters’ emotions is determined under the action of which they committed or did not commit those or other acts.

Keywords: living space, cognitive dissonance, psychological field.