The Artamonov Business

The Artamonov Business (Russian: Дело Артамоновых, romanized: Delo Artamonovykh; also translated as The Artamonovs or Decadence) is a novel by Maxim Gorky written during his 10-year emigration from Soviet Russia. It was published in Berlin in 1925 by Verlag "Kniga". Critics often call it Gorky's best novel, or best after The Life of Klim Samgin. The plot concerns the three generations of a pre-revolutionary industrialist family, from the beginning of 1860s to the Revolution of 1917.[1]

The Artamonov Business
AuthorMaxim Gorky
Original titleДело Артамоновых
CountryItaly / Germany
LanguageRussian
GenreFamily chronicle, historical novel
PublisherVerlag "Kniga"
Publication date
1925

Reviews

Дело Артамоновых is undoubtedly the best of Gorky's novels. Something that only loomed in Foma Gordeyev, The Three, A Confession, Okurov, being lost in the fog of "conversations" and God-building searches, is now appearing in flesh... It belongs to one of the main traditions of Russian literature, to a great number of denunciations of Russian spiritual poverty, such as Oblomov, The Golovlyov Family and Bunin's The Village.

— Dmitry Svyatopolk-Mirsky, Russian émigré critic, 1925[2]

Decadence is not a book that will add to Gorky's reputation as a novelist. Indeed, it might be contended with some show of reason that by no means the only decadence is that with which the story deals. Compared with Mother and others of the author's earlier works, his latest offering is weak in treatment, chaotic in texture, and loose in its grip upon its subject-matter.

— The New York Times, 1927

This lengthy history of the Artamonov family, father and sons, rising with their big linen factory to as much power as they can control, then losing it all, is not satire or invective. It is honest, impersonal realism, thoughtful though morose. <...> But Author Gorky's powers, however fully displayed here, have produced books that were far more readable than this one.

— Time, 1927

Of all Gorki’s novels, The Artamonov Business is the most impressive and dramatic. Here in concentrated form is the tragic failure of Russia’s middle classes in the decades before the Revolution, seen in the small-town microcosm of a family of textile-manufacturers. In this book Gorki displays at their best the power of creating character and the gift for managing scenes of energetic action which won world-wide admiration for his early stories. His distinctive blend of humour and tragedy, violence and pity, exuberance and introspection, is here put at the service of a grander and more moving theme than he had hitherto attempted.

— Alan Hodge, 1948[3]

Screen adaptations

References
  1. Neil Cornwell, Reference Guide to Russian Literature Routledge, 2013, ISBN 9781134260706, 810 p.
  2. Мирский Д. О литературе и искусстве: Статьи и рецензии 1922–1937
  3. The Artamonov Business at the Internet Archive


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