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Updated: May 8, 2025
Bourenine, the well-known critic of the "Novoye Vremya," says that he received from several correspondents a series of letters which blamed Andreyev vehemently and requested that this "skunk" of literature be called to order according to his deserts.
It is principally in the dramas which he has written in the last few years that Andreyev has developed with most force and clearness his favorite themes: the fear of living and dying, the madness of believing in free-will, and the nonsense of life, the weakness and vanity of which he depicts for us.
"The Seven Who Were Hanged," written in 1908, right after the executions at Kherson and Warsaw, shows us pictures of terror and fright aptly described by the genius of Andreyev. This work has prodigious color and strength, and one experiences deep emotions on reading it.
Andreyev has no simplicity, and his talent reminds me of an artificial nightingale. Skitalets now is a sparrow, but he is a real living sparrow.... YALTA, December 30, 1902. ... You write that we talked of a serious religious movement in Russia. We talked of a movement not in Russia but in the intellectual class.
They do not appeal to one as sacrificed patriots. There is no nobility in their vacant stare. They create a cold feeling of bodily decay only it is the spirit that is dead and gangrenous. There is a blasphemous story by Leonid Andreyev, which recounts the bitterness of the after years of Lazarus and the mischief Christ wrought in recalling him from the grave.
Two important Russian newspapers organized a sort of inquiry, and they published many of the answers received from the young people of both sexes, but these were all favorable to Andreyev. In truth, all these judgments are too passionate. It is true that "most of the critics have understood Andreyev only in a superficial manner," as Tolstoy rightfully asserted.
The result is a deep penetration of the popular mind, in conjunction with an acute, and sometimes sickly, nervousness, which is shown in the works of the great Uspensky, and, more recently still, in Tchekoff, Andreyev, and many others.
Those who think that the adventure of young Nemovetsky is a slice of life and characterizes certain psychological states, have, without a doubt, the right to judge this story as an indiscretion, and to reproach the author with a deviation from morality; but Andreyev has not taken his hero from reality; he has not tried to give us a picture of manners, but has expressed an idea, born in his brain under the influence of the philosophy of Nietzsche.
"As long as I am in the shadows," he murmurs with the sombre resignation of an Andreyev hero, "I might as well remain there." At dawn, the police come to arrest him. And while his friend tries desperately to resist the agents of the force, he contemplates the brutal scene with an ironic smile.
Second and third- rate writers, like Merezhkovsky, Andreyev, and Artsybashev, have found their way into England and are still supposed to be the best Russian twentieth century fiction can offer. The names of really significant writers, like Remizov and Andrey Bely, have not even been heard of.
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