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The Manuscript of The Life of Klim Samgin

In the first year of this blog I happened to be anticipating the release of Quiet Flows the Don (2006) whereby I was researching the subject and came across Sholokhov’s 1926 manuscript. It was an amazing coincidence because I wrote the post 80 years after Sholokhov drafted the text.

Not in a dissimilar fashion I have just discovered a photo taken at Gorky’s archive at the State Literary Institute in Moscow. The photo by A. Cheprunov (STF) shows the manuscripts of The Life of Klim Samgin, as well as Gorky’s letter to Anton Chekhov. The photo was taken in 1955, but unfortunately there is no information as to the dates of manuscripts themselves.

 What I find amazing, and so will you surely, is that Gorky’s copies are impressively neat. I’ve never seen his other manuscripts, but what is shown in the picture suggests an amazing clarity of his creative vision.

The image is courtesy of RIA Novosti archives in Moscow.

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