Leonid Andreyev (1871–1919)

Collection of nine short stories of Leonid Andreyev (1891 - 1919) written c. 1904 - 1913 depicting the fear, madness, bewilderment and desolation of the Russian soul at the end of Tsar Nicholas II's reign and the beginning of the Bolshevik regime. The Seven That Were Hanged is the most famous story ('To die is not so terrible; the terrible thing is to know that one is going to die. It would be quite impossible for a man to live if he knew the hour and day of his death with absolute certainty.'), decrying capital punishment in a society where “people and life had transformed theselves for him into an unspeakably frightful world filled with mechanical dolls.”

The Abyss peels back layers of socially constructed high-mindedness in the male protagonist to reveal individual's capabilty for debasement. Beautiful prose depicting weather in inspired detail sets off sordid acts. The Lie examines one of author's fears, infinity: 'never did I understand so profoundly and terribly the meaning of infinity, norever realized it with such force. I felt in fear and pain that my very life was passing out in a slender ray...until I became a stranger to myself--desolated, speechless, almost dead.' Also: 'what madness it is--to be man and to seek the truth! What pain!' In Laughter, society's pain: 'Don't you feel that there's a living, suffering face behind my rediculous mask'.

Last story, The Red Laugh, also more famous, early account re war's reality: the first line reads 'Horror and madness.' Preceeded 'All Quiet On The Western Front' in depicting immediate horror and longterm madness of war. 'All were silent, as if an army of dumb people were moving, and when anyone fell down, he fell in silence;...as though these bumb men were also blind and deaf. I sutmbled and fell several times and then involuntarily opened my eyes, and all that I saw seemed a wild fiction, the terrible raving of a mad world.' Red laugh possibly = Bolshevik asendence. 'Something occured, something darkened our vision, and two regiments, belonging to the same army, facing each other at a distance of one verst, had been destroying each other for a whole hour in the full conviction that iw was the enemy they had before them' = White vs Red Armies? Foresaw Iron Curtain: 'A time will come when nobody will be able to go away from here.'… (more)

Kur vështronte ai, dielli ndrinte njëlloj, njëlloj gurgullonte dhe burimi dhe qielli amtar ishte pa re e kaltërosh si gjithnjë, porse njeriu i mbërthyer prej vështrimit të tij të mistershëm tani nuk e ndjente më diellin, nuk e dëgjonte burimin dhe nuk e njihte paskëtaj qiellin e tij amtar. Kur e kur, ai shkrehej në vaj, ndukte leshtë i dëshpëruar dhe kërkonte ndihmë si i marrë, por më shpesh zinte të vdiste indiferent e i nemitur, dhe hiqte shpirt tepër, po tepër ngadalë, për shumë mot, faqe të gjithëve, shpëlarë, i plogësht e i mërzitshëm, mu si një pemë që thahet pa u ndjerë në gurishtë.… (more)

Haunting and beautiful pre-Revolution COLOR photographs circa 1910 to 1914 by Russian Expressionist writer Leonid Andreyev. Subjects are anything from family to nature. This book is a unique peek at what pre-revolutionary Russia looked like. The rusticity is what impressed me.

However, Andreyev also had an eye for the color photograph like no other. He takes advantage of the inherent graininess of the early color photographic medium as well as light and dark and the seeming effortless pose to make each photographs look like a living Renoir or Seurat. At first scan you will swear these are all oil paintings.

I literally cannot convey how beautiful this book is. The other thing you will find yourself saying is: "these cannot possibly be this old." They just do not look like photographs from the turn of the century.

There is a forward that gives some detail about how the photographs were found in 1978. The rest of the text parallels Andreyev's life in the context of the photographs.

Andreyev died in 1919 at the age of 48, just a few years after these photographs were taken.… (more)

Condemned in Tsarist Russia
Review of the Amazon Kindle Public Domain eBook edition (2012) translated from the Russian language original Рассказ о семи повешенных (The Tale of the Seven Hanged) (1908)

I was not at all familiar with Leonid Andreyev's work until I chanced upon my GR friend Kiekiat's 4-star rating for The Seven... and I had to investigate further. Seeing that there was an Estonian character named Ivan Yanson (would have Jaan Jaanson in Estonian, or John Johnson in English) I took that as a sign to be sure to read it.

As it happens, Yanson is the most pathetic character of The Seven... and is one of two condemned murderers alongside the five members of a terror cell who had planned an assassination of a government minister. Andreyev paints portraits of each of seven in individual chapters and manages to convey the various states of fear, defiance, stoicism, acceptance, and other emotions that occur. These are simplified by being assigned 1 to 1 to each character. It is quite the unique novella and it is curious that it passed the Tsarist censors at the time. Admittedly it doesn't criticize the regime, but allowing sympathy for the condemned is not something that you would expect in repressive totalitarian states.

The public domain translation is that of Herman Bernstein who produced it as early as 1909. It still reads very well although some archaic spellings are present e.g. "Esthonians" instead of the present day "Estonians".

The Seven... is based on a true 1908 case where an anti-Tsarist terror cell was arrested and charged with the planned assassinations of Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich (a grandson of Tsar Nicholas I) and the Minister of Justice I.G. Shcheglovitova. The plot was disclosed by an informer. The group was tried by a Military Tribunal and 7 of them were hanged, with 2 sentenced to 15 years of hard labour. 3 of the group members were women, including 2 of the hanged. I found this background information from the Russian Wikipedia entry for the book, the English Wikipedia entry has only a short summary of the novel itself.

Trivia and Links
The character Werner in The Seven... was based on the real-life Vsevolod Lebedintsev who was arrested under the name of Mario Calvino as he had re-entered Russia with identity papers borrowed from that Italian socialist. Fearing prosecution after Lebedintsev's execution, Calvino emigrated to the Americas where his famous author son Italo Calvino was born in Cuba. The family later returned to Italy.

The Seven... has been adapted into film and stage plays several times. The most recent film version is the Slovak language Balada o siedmich obesených (1968) dir. Martin Holly.… (more)