Varenka Olesova

For the first time, this early work of the future “great proletarian writer” was published in 1898 with an intricate epigraph from “Telemachus”: “Cupid, to the greater torment of mortals, arranges that we do not always love the person whom we are loved by, and likewise—vice versa,”—and it immediately sparked a great deal of conflicting opinions. This is understandable. The ten-part version of “Varenka Olesova” introduces the audience to the new Gorky—unexpected, passionate in the Bunin manner, and, in the Chekhov manner, reflecting on the fates of people of the “passing century.”