CULT OF THE MOTHER IN RUSSIAN (SOVIET) CULTURE: RELIGIOUS AND REVOLUTIONARY ASPECTS OF MAXIM GORKY'S AND VSEVOLOD PUDOVKIN'S THE MOTHER

The essay considers the signification and development of the mother's archetype in Russian (Soviet) culture and examines its function in the structure of the famous but controversial novel The Mother (1906) by Maxim Gorky and its eponymous screen adaptation by Vsevolod Pudovkin (1926) bearing in mind the dominating prevalence of the filmic narrative in the Soviet art of the 1920s. The essay reminds us of some important insights by the Russian Formalists (Shklovsky, Tynyanov) about the interrelatedness of literature and film, but relies also on the works of contemporary scholars and philosophers (Bazin, Aronson, Dobrenko) while suggesting that transmutation of the maternal principle be examined within a three-part communication frame: original-script-film. Although screen adaptation is mostly approached as a (largely hapless) dialogue between a literary text and film in which the filmic pursuit for the so-called language of the original is destined to fail, the essay presents the strategies resorted to by the screenwriter Zarhi in characterizing the heroine furnished by Pudovkin with a new masculine-revolutionary face.