A tutorial of a writer s success. Part II. Ch 1

Instead of preface.


The reader's interest encourages me to produce in English a some volume (amount) of text of my book "A tutorial of a writer's success. Part II. Heinrich Schliemann, Nikolai Gogol, Maxim Gorky and their lessons, "270 pp. (ISBN 978-5-4483-3252-4).

What goals to put?

Translate the entire book (Part II) is a huge work. Moreover, this book exceeds the volume of Part I by 90 pages.

A rather difficult task is to send an additional part of the book in English to the Internet every day.

Apparently, a much more realistic task is to direct readers' attention to the figure of Heinrich Schliman and to the book "The textbook of writing success. Part II. Heinrich Schliemann, Nikolai Gogol, Maxim Gorky and their lessons. "

If to put such a task, then the minimum program will be performed when even one page from Part II will be provided in English .

The frequency of text additions will not be specify in advance. Let this activity be carried out in the "Hobby" format - in the presence of desire and free time. There is no fundamental objection against the daily add text.

If the events will develop such a unique way that at some point the entire text of Part II in English will be available to readers - it will be fine.

So, there is a goal to provide for readers one page (or more) of "A tutorial of a writer's success. Part II. Heinrich Schliemann, Nikolai Gogol, Maxim Gorky and their lessons".

August 9, 2021 04:44


A tutorial of a writer's success. Part II. Heinrich Schliemann, Nikolai Gogol, Maxim Gorky and their lessons

© Vladimir Vladimirovich Zalessky, 2016

A book about successful writers. The author makes an attempt to determine what made the literary activity of these writers successful.

ISBN 978-5-4483-3252-4


Table of contents

A tutorial of a writer's success. Part II.

Chapter 1. Paradoxes, comics, maxims. Instead of preface

Chapter 2. Hansa. The Dnieper Cossacks. Russian petty bourgeois-craftsmen
2.1. Hanseatic merchants and a partnership (a comrades' relations; a comrades' system)
2.2. The Dnieper Cossacks and a partnership (comrades' relations; comradship)
2.3. Instantly a short comradship and an infinitely long period of a senor-vassalage relations. A few historical details
2.4. Volgian mosaic
2.5. Medals of Maxim Gorky

Chapter 3. Home (parental) education

Chapter 4. Transformation (changing) of (parental) families. The situation in families

Chapter 5. Relations with family and fellow countrymen

Chapter 6. A purpose (originally planned, established suitability). A setting of goals

Chapter 7. Books. Libraries

Chapter 8. Connoisseurs of historical and archival researches ("Benedictians")

Chapter 9. Publish (your works)!

Chapter 10. Creative environment. Strong-willed qualities. Literary knack (Literary skills, literary dexterity). Homer

Chapter 11. Theater. Give me a theater and I'll roll over!
11.1. Melpomene and amphitheatres. "Cherry Orchard" of Heinrich Schlimann
11.2. Success and an escape (a fleeing). "The Government Inspector" by Nikolai Gogol
11.3. A magic casket and a fateful theater ticket. "At the bottom" by Maxim Gorky

Chapter 12. Systems of personal self-development. (Become ... a university! Or a Literary Institute?)
12.1. Create a System! Consciously, intuitively, spontaneously (easily) ...
12.2. Wise Goethe: The Libra of Existence (of a Beingness)
12.3. Memorizing by heart
12.4. A writing of letters
12.5. Maintenance of a diary
12.6. Daily schedule (an organization of the events of the day). Physical activity (exercises). Sport.
12.7. Universities, institutes, publishing houses, editorial offices, museums, collections
12.8. Charity

Chapter 13. Natural talent, capital intensity of creativity, multifunctionality

Chapter 14. "Playing on multiple chessboards", "accumulation of success", "a mosaic-type success" (a success, similar to a mosaic pattern)

Chapter 15. Systems of personal independence
15.1. To be or not to be... a slave (a bondman)?
15.2. Asketism, abstainment (abstinence). "anti-asketism: abundance plus a generosity"
15.3. Travels
15.4. Reincarnations
15.5. Apoliticality
15.6. System efficiency

Chapter 16. A family? A social cell? A place for secret meetings?

Chapter 17. "Interception" of success
17.1. Hercules' the feat (Hercules' the heroic deed)
17.2. The "Real Government Inspector"
17.3. The System of countering to a "theft of success"

Chapter 18. An energy of a name
18.1. A tench in Mecklenburg, a financial whale in Gellespont
18.2. We are all ... out ... Dnepr. Or from Dniester?
18.3. From Volga up to Volga (Wide Bolivar (cap) of Peshkov; "Gorky's community")
18.4. Hyperboloid and the magic tuzhurka (uniform jacket)  of engineer Garin-Mikhailovsky
18.5. From Volga up to Volga (Volgin-Volzhin)

Chapter 19. Mysticism
19.1. Icons on the Hissarlik hill
19.2. The builderess of the temple
19.3. It's necessary to know the Bible

Chapter 20. An interaction with the future. Promises. Oaths. A power of a word (of a word spoken, written)
20.1. I conjure you…  (I strongly (powerfully) ask you...)
20.2. I will reach a result (I will do ... I will fulfill...)
20.3. A written word is powerful ... (A word written has a power…)

Chapter 21. A victimity (a quality to be a victim). Weapons
21.1. Colt and dagger. Shipwrecks and fever
21.2. A rifle (a short gun)
21.3. Knife, a revolver of a drummer, tuberculosis

Chapter 22. Capital: tangible and intangible assets
22.1. Lucky man's gold
22.2. Magic houses of genius
22.3. Grandmaster's honorariums

Chapter 23. Heinrich Schliemann, Nikolai Gogol, Maxim Gorky. Comparison of success. (Instead of an afterword). The happiest of people

List of information sources

Appendix 1. Bunin or Gorky? (A culturological essay)


Chapter 1. Paradoxes, comics, maxims. Instead of preface

Nikolai Gogol (1809 - 1852) and Heinrich Schliemann; Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890) and Aleksey Peshkov (Maxim Gorky) (1868 - 1936). They are contemporaries.

But they are close one to each other not only chronologically.

There were territorial rapprochement. For example, obeying a sudden impulse, Nikolai Gogol visited in 1829 in Pomerania (as a fact: in Western Pomerania, in Mecklenburg, in Ankershagen, Heinrich Schliemann lived at that time); Nikolai Gogol visited, in particular, -  Hanseatic (in the past) city of Lubeck, a kind of ancestral nest of Schliemanns family.

Heinrich Schliemann, in turn, in January 1846 came to St. Petersburg, to Russia; One of the first business trips is to Moscow ("Yes! Into Moscow"). In 1848, Nikolai Gogol lived in Russia after returning from Jerusalem (mainly in Moscow). (1851-1852: Schliemann in the United States, in California).

It need to clarify: it can probably be argued that Nikolai Gogol and Heinrich Schliemann were not personally acquainted.

Heinrich Schliemann and Aleksey Maximovich Peshkov (1868-1936): their places of residence and the trajectories of their movements often coincide. Heinrich Schliemann visited Nizhny Novgorod, and in 1866 he took a trip along the Volga. Aleksey Peshkov (Maxim Gorky) was born in 1868, at this time Heinrich Schliemann, having left Russia, lived outside its borders. Until 1890 (the year of Heinrich Schliemann's death), the great archaeologist lived in Western Europe, in the USA, in Troad, in Egypt… Young Peshkov lived in Russia during this period. Both Heinrich Schliemann and Maxim Gorky, each at his own time, "took sessions" of kumysolechenie [a treatment with kumys (kumis) - that is, with horses milk; the beverage kumis is traditionally made from mare milk] in the Samara region. They made long voyages along the Volga. Both of them have visited Italy, Rome, and other countries and regions of Western Europe. They both visited the island of Capri.

I will note, that a long voyage along the Volga-on a (not large) boat with my brother, - and kumysolechenie, and a visit to Italy, Rome, and other countries of Western Europe — all these biographical elements are present in the life of Leo Tolstoy.

Both Heinrich Schliemann and Nikolai Gogol entered the arena of history as civilizational figures. Each of them had its own historical and cultural foundation, its own "city of Kitezh" — beautiful in its own way, but hidden in the depths of history: Heinrich Schliemann had the Hansa (Hanseatic League), Nikolai Gogol had the Dnieper Cossacks.

Both of them had representatives of the clergy among their ancestors and relatives.

The historical and cultural basis of Maxim Gorky is more difficult to identify. About it - in the corresponding section of this book, below.

To some extent, the "dissolved", "disappeared" historical foundation was transformed for both Heinrich Schliemann, Nikolai Gogol, and Maxim Gorky into tasks and problems of their personal fate, of their personal life arrangement.

How did each of them solve the problems of personal self-realization?

What was similar and what was different in these ways, in ways of self-realization, how these elements of the" success system", of "fate constructor", of "success constructor" influenced the results obtained: all these questions may be of interest for a certain circle of readers.

When presenting the material, the author combines two approaches: first, the material is concentrated thematically, and secondly, to the extent possible, the material grouped by topic is presented with the desire to illustrate the lives of Heinrich Schliemann, Nikolai Gogol, Maxim Gorky in accordance with the principle of chronological sequence.

The material itself is such, that the logic of its presentation and of its subsequent interpretation are very subjective.

The success system is the circumstances, events, actions (actions and inactions) that, when integrated, create, generate success.

Those of the respected Readers who do not agree with the approaches and conclusions of the author can consider this work as another biographical and popularization material in addition to others that characterize the life and work of Heinrich Schliemannn, Nikolai Gogol, Maxim Gorky.

At the beginning of the XXI century, there was a tendency to define the life of Heinrich Schliemann through the prism of negative stereotypes.

(How not to recall "a strong premonition of the coming general savagery after the peaks of historical and philological knowledge reached on the eve of the XX century" [Гаврилов А. К. С. 290] [Gavrilov A. K. P. 290]).

A person who has been busy with work all his life, who has tried to make every moment of his life useful, to devote himself to self-improvement and achievements, who was a great family man, he - in the style of a  stereotyping (comic book) culture, becomes the object of primitive figurative processing, seems to be a kind of pathological suspicious type, a strange eccentric.

Can this trend be explained by the desire for author's success, for increased salesability, and for citation of the book? Does this trend excuse a certain popularization effect (which is taking place) and the obviously significant work on collecting facts and on preparing a book?..

To this primitivizing trend is added the desire to present the enrichment of Heinrich Schliemann in Russia through the stereotypes of a corrupt businessman who made money during the Crimean War on the supply of military  boots with cardboard soles, and unusable, defective military overcoats.

(For some reason, no great philanthropists and no prominent figures of the stock markets are  remembered in order of a positive comparison).

There is a difference between "comics" and "comics' style".

Comics can be talented drawings. 

"Comics' style" refers to the fragmentary nature of perception and thinking.

Fragmentary information blocks, emotionally colored, are offered to the attention of a person.


Due to the simplicity of perception, they are easily absorbed by the consciousness of simple-minded individuals, create guidelines for behavior.

At the same time, the perceiver does not understand either the real development of what he perceives, nor the cause-and-effect relationships.

An excellent example of thinking in a comics' style is the multiple sale of houses at high prices in the suburbs of one of the Russian megacities; communications were not connected to the houses; it was practically impossible to live in them; after a while, unhappy buyers got rid of their purchases, using references to different reasons (with a significant loss), and the houses were again put on sale at high prices.

The houses looked great: beautiful "pictures"!

Buyers who were used to perceiving pictures did not understand either the history of objects or the cause-and-effect relationships in which they (buyers) "fit in". Here we see: as often happens, a business was built on comics' style.

Another example of comics' style: gossip and slander against a useful and honest person.

You can remember Gorky's "ignorance's skepticism", when you are reading negative reviews about the original author's method of learning foreign languages by Heinrich Schliemann. And you ask yourself the question: are those who speak so unfavorably about this method of learning a language, are they — these critics — able to keep a diary in French, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Modern Greek, Arabic, Russian, Dutch and Turkish?

A photocopy of one of the pages of the Russian-language diary of Heinrich Schliemannn (entries from July 16, 17, 18, 1866) is presented in the book by A. K. Gavrilov [Гаврилов А. К. С. 172] [Gavrilov A. K. P. 172].

With a certain degree of conditionality, we can come to the opinion that there are tendencies of forming and applying certain archetypes of the "pathological subject" and "unprincipled soulless greedy businessman"to Heinrich Schliemann.

A certain set of second-level stereotypes has developed regarding Nikolai Gogol.

Yes, in the first place: genius, writing skills, creative discoveries and achievements.

However, somehow imperceptibly, one can say, with a "regretful sigh", they are followed — in the background — by assessments of this type: poor man [a person without means of subsistence], not quite normal, partly prone to untruth, not always delicate, stingy, and other judgments of this kind (or hints of appropriate content).

A certain archetype of a holy fool [an idiot] [юродивый] begins to manifest itself, but not of a positive, respected, holy one, but with a negative declension (like "he showed promise [he stimulated hopes] but what did he turn into").

Such biographical assessments of Nikolai Gogol require significant correction.

Many of these assessments cannot withstand careful consideration and turn into simplified labels that have no grounds.

Just as the sonorous negative epithets addressed to Heinrich Schliemann on the topic of his enrichment during the Crimean War do not find documentary confirmation and hang in the air.

Heinrich Schliemann was rich and successful. These judgments are unlikely to be disputed by anyone.

Is it possible to talk about the "success of life", about the "wealth" of Nikolai Gogol? In the everyday, and not in the literary and creative sense?

I believe that it is possible. Although this success and this wealth were of a slightly different type, if we compare them with the success and wealth of Heinrich Schliemann.

Probably, if you think about the laws of success, you may take a closer look at the example of the success of Nikolai Gogol, to his life path.

"And about the demon and all sorts of strange guests who climb into the head, I'll tell you: just spit on them! Tell: I have no time, I now have many more important concerns, including, let's say, the theme of Gogol. And even better, say: I have other, higher duties: I need to thank God for having preserved me until now, that I am still living in the world, that my life is still needed for good deeds. There is no time, there is no time, Satan, go to your own hell! He, the brute, will run away with his tail between his legs. Goodbye until the first opportunity. God will protect you! " [Гоголь Н. В. Письма. 1848—1852] [Gogol N. V. Letters. 1848—1852].

"Start shooting! (Пли!) ( ... )" (М. Горький. «Афоризмы и максимы») (Maxim Gorky. "Aphorisms and maxims"). The paradox of Maxim Gorky is noted in many biographical works. Here, for example, is a typical replicated epithet for the Soviet era: "A great proletarian writer". And is he so "great"? And is he "proletarian" [writer]? And is he only a "writer"?

Maxim Gorky is a very ambiguous figure.

Sometimes we see an author's feel of confusion in the works about Gorky (as, by the way, in the works about Heinrich Schliemann, about Nikolai Gogol).

Biographer presents the material, but does not understand it (the material) internal logic, he feels confused, which was manifested in the written text.

Maxim Gorky more than once recalled with pleasure the biographical initiative of a certain Nizhny Novgorod publisher, who "tried to persuade him to write his own  biography in a «lubok style». Publisher foresaw a huge sale in case of trading with such text, and for the author — a large income. "Your life, Aleksey Maksimovich — is pure money," he said" [Ходасевич В. Ф. «Горький» (1936)] [Vladislav Khodasevich "Gorky" (1936)].

It is clear that this (our) book does not pretend and cannot to claim to unambiguous solutions to those issues that existed and will exist in the (partly) mysterious fates of Heinrich Schliemann, Nikolai Gogol, Maxim Gorky.

But maybe some problems will be "highlighted" in a new way, some approaches to solving biographical issues will seem interesting to the respected Reader.