Leonid Nikolaivich Andreyev was born in Orel in 1871. After his
father’s death he was thrown upon his own resources, but managed to
study at both Petrograd and Moscow Universities, graduating in Law in
1897. During this period he endured great hardship—often even actual
hunger—and was the victim of deep melancholia. His first writings were
unsuccessful; and, for a time, he devoted himself to painting. Later he
came into touch with the Russian press as police-court reporter for a
leading newspaper.
Then “Silence” was published, and brought him immediate recognition.
This terrible story may serve as an example of his method. The silence
of the frightened girl, dying with her secret, and of her mother,
stricken, through shock, with paralysis, crushes the pride of the
priest whose training has so stiffened his nature that he cannot
express or welcome affection. He cries for help; he entreats them to
show him pity. His daughter lies dead; his wife motionless. An abstract
idea is the germ of each tale; around it are woven both characters and
incident—a process which is in marked contrast to the work of his
contemporary Maxim Gorky whose people with their actions come directly
from life—mostly, indeed, from his own personal experiences. Sometimes
the double note is tragic; oftener, the abstract idea redeems the gloom
or horror of the actual tale, as in “The Little Angel” and “In the
Basement,” for, while the stories of Andreyev are tinged with more than
even the ordinary tone of sadness of the Russian writer, there seems to
be in his mind a balancing, a search for some kind of compensation, as
though he would say, “No man is wholly good or wholly bad.” Perhaps it
is the weakness of a method by which his characters become the
puppets—however real—illustrating an idea; perhaps it is the strength
of the author’s vision, that makes his people sometimes morbid and
unhealthy. They are driven by a relentless creator, as in Masefield’s
“Nan,” to their destiny. Nevertheless, the beauty of his style, the
clear imagination, and the perfect form of his stories come not only
from an artist but from a philosopher and poet. His work is not for
babes. Deep truths are presented not more realistically in the
anomalies and terrors of life than in the symbolism of his short
stories and, in its more elaborate form, of his plays. Touches of
tenderness, beauty, and sympathetic insight are found on every page
side by side with brutality and coarseness, for Andreyev draws Life
without hiding, without shirking. But, beyond and behind, his mind is
working ceaselessly, struggling to coordinate the whole.
His works comprise a large number of stories, including beside the
present collection “Judas Iscariot,” “The Red Laugh,” “The Seven Who
Were Hanged,” and some powerful studies in madness; and of plays most
of which are performed upon the Russian, though not yet upon the
English, stage. Among the latter are “The Life of Man,” “Anathema,”
“The Black Maskers,” “The Sabine Women,” and “The Tragedy of Belgium.”