Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 4, 2025
His brother then attempts to complete the narrative from the scattered, confused notes, but to his horror, whenever he approaches the desk, the phantom of the dead man is ever there, busily writing: he can hear the pen squeak on the paper. No more terrible protest against war has ever been written than Andreev's "Red Laugh."
Andreev's "Red Laugh" ought to be read in America as a contrast to our numerous war stories, where war is pictured as a delightful and exciting tournament. This book has not a single touch of patriotic sentiment, not a suggestion of "Hurrah for our side!"
In some characters, such as those Dostoevski has given us, it leads to deeds of wild absurdity; in Andreev, it usually leads to madness. One of Andreev's books is indeed a whole commentary on the remark of Merezhkovski quoted above. No one should read this story unless his nerves are firm, for the outcome of the tale is such as to make almost any reader for a time doubt his own sanity.
But like nearly all Russian authors, he suffered from intense melancholia, and in 1888 committed suicide at the age of thirty-three. His short story "Four Days on the Field of Slaughter" first brought him into public notice. One cannot read Andreev's "Red Laugh" to-day without thinking of it. "On the edge of the wood there was visible something red, floating here and there.
The first two words of the book are "Madness and Horror!" and they might serve as a text for Andreev's complete works. There seems to be some taint in his mind which forces him to dwell forever on the abnormal and diseased. He is not exactly decadent, but he is decidedly pathological.
Professor Bruckner has said of Andreev's stories, "I do not recall a single one which would not get fearfully on a man's nerves." He has deepened the universal gloom of Russian fiction, not by descending into the slums with Gorki, but by depicting life as seen through the strange light of a decaying mind. He has often been compared, especially among the Germans, with Edgar Allan Poe.
Every argument that he can think of to persuade himself of his sanity he marshals; but there are plenty of arguments on the other side. The story is an excellent example of what Merezhkovski must mean by the passion of thought. Another illustration of Andreev's uncanny power is seen in the short story "Silence."
And one of the most remarkable of contemporary Russian novels Andreev's "The Seven Who Were Hanged," a book bearing on every page the stamp of indubitable genius radiates a sympathy and pity that are almost divine.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking