Memoirs and Madness: Leonid Andreev Through the Prism of the Literary Portrait 9780773560086

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
A BOOK ABOUT LEONID ANDREEV
Maksim Gor’kii
Kornei Chukovskii
Aleksandr Blok
Georgii Chulkov
Boris Zaitsev
Nikolai Teleshov
Evgenii Zamiatin
Andrei Belyi
LEONID ANDREEV THROUGH THE PRISM OF THE LITERARY PORTRAIT
1 The Literary Portrait
2 Projecting Personal Isolation: Zaitsev
3 “He is not with them, he is with us, he is ours”: Belyi
4 The Importance of Friendship and Sreda: Teleshov
5 Creative Energy and Manic Episodes: Chukovskii
6 Inner Turmoil and the Dark Side of Depression: Chulkov
7 A Shared Sense of Chaos: Blok
8 The Dreamer and the Mathematician: Gor’kii
9 Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
U
V
W
Z

Citation preview

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memoirs and madness

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Memoirs and Madness Leonid Andreev through the Prism of the Literary Portrait frederick h. white

Includes an annotated translation of A Book about Leonid Andreev

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston · London · Ithaca

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© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2006 ISBN-13: 978-0-7735-3044-7 ISBN-10: 0-7735-3044-4 Legal deposit second quarter 2006 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free This book has been published with the help of grant from the Memorial University of Newfoundland. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication White, Frederick H., 1970– Memoirs and madness : Leonid Andreev through the prism of the literary portrait / Frederick H. White. Includes an annotated translation of “A book about Leonid Andreev.” Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-7735-3044-7

isbn-10: 0-7735-3044-4

1. Andreev, Leonid. 2. Andreev, Leonid – Health. 3. Authors, Russian – 20th century – Biography – History and criticism. 4. Manicdepressive illness in literature. 5. Biography as a literary form. 6. Zamiatin, Evgenii Ivanorich, 1884–1937 – Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. pg3452.z5w46 2006

891.7′8309

c2006-900626-1

Typeset in 11/13 Garamond by True to Type

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Contents

Acknowledgments

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Introduction 3 a book about leonid andreev Maksim Gor’kii 11 Kornei Chukovskii 59 Aleksandr Blok 71 Georgii Chulkov 79 Boris Zaitsev 93 Nikolai Teleshov 109 Evgenii Zamiatin 123 Andrei Belyi 129 leonid andreev through the prism of the literary portrait 1 The Literary Portrait 143 2 Projecting Personal Isolation: Zaitsev 163

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3 “He is not with them, he is with us, he is ours”: Belyi 181 4 The Importance of Friendship and Sreda: Teleshov 195 5 Creative Energy and Manic Episodes: Chukovskii 211 6 Inner Turmoil and the Dark Side of Depression: Chulkov 227 7 A Shared Sense of Chaos: Blok 243 8 The Dreamer and the Mathematician: Gor’kii 257 9 Conclusion 283 Notes 293 Bibliography 325 Index 341

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This book is dedicated to my beloved mother ruth elizabeth white

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Acknowledgments

The researching and writing of this book have stretched over many years now. It would be impossible to acknowledge everyone who has offered support, advice, or a critical eye. There are, however, a few people who have very directly contributed to this scholarly process. Richard Davies opened his home to me and provided immeasurable help as I took my first steps in researching Leonid Andreev. I greatly appreciate our long discussions as well as his generosity in providing me with a wealth of material. Mikhail Koz’menko has been a valuable resource and conversant. Jeff White provided important insights into and material about manic-depression and mental illness. Alexander Zholkovsky and Thomas Seifrid were influential in my academic development and this book has benefited from their advice. In this vein, I would like to thank Susan Kechekian, Tatyana Akishina, Marcus Levitt, and John Bowlt for their support and guidance. Irene Masing Delic, Maria Carlson, and David Patton should also be mentioned as important scholarly influences. To all of these and to others who have not been mentioned who helped me in the process of writing this book, thank you very much! I would also like to acknowledge the generous financial support of Memorial University of Newfoundland for the publication of this book. Unless otherwise noted, all translations in the text are mine. I would like to thank Irina Popova greatly for her help with the translation and Timothy D. Sergay for his substantial assistance in revising the text. Any remaining inaccuracies and infelicities are my own. I worked from the

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original 1922 text (second edition) and have retained names in their transliterated form (Gor’kii as opposed to Gorky, except in the case of Meyerhold) in an attempt to remain consistent throughout the manuscript. The annotations for the most part are my own and again I take full responsibility for all inaccuracies. I deferred to Russian scholarly annotations in some cases and have noted those sources at the end of each translation or annotation. I would like to thank the various librarians in Russia, England, the United States, and Canada who have assisted me in finding the answers to my many questions. The photographs of Kornei Chukovskii (p. 210) and Leonid Andreev and Anna Il’inichina Andreeva (p. 282) are reprinted from Leonid Andreyev: Photographs by a Russian writer, edited and introduced by Richard Davies (London: Thames and Hudson, 1989), with the permission of the heirs of Vadim and Valentin Andreev.

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Introduction

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev (1871-1919) was one of the best-selling authors in Russia. In 1901 he published his first collection of short stories and became an overnight success. His literary and dramatic works were concerned with contemporary issues and often touched a nerve with reading public and critics alike, which led to lengthy debates in newspapers and journals. In 1904 his story “Red Laugh” (Krasnyi smekh) sold over sixty thousand copies; three years later, his play The Life of Man (Zhizn’ cheloveka) was successfully produced in St Petersburg by Vsevolod Meyerhold; in 1908 “The Story of Seven Who Were Hanged” (Rasskaz o semi poveshennykh) sold more than 23,000 copies in a few days and by 1911 it had been translated into several languages and had sold over 100,000 copies at home and abroad. Over time, however, Andreev’s fate as a writer changed. The revolutions of 1917 and the rise of Bolshevik influence drastically altered the Russian literary scene. When he died prematurely in 1919, Andreev’s literary legacy (and personal reputation) were much in doubt. In his early works Andreev sympathized with the revolutionary movement that was to topple the tsarist regime. However, at the end of 1916 he lent prominent support to Russia’s war effort in the pages of The Russian Will (Russkaia Volia). By 1917 he was bitterly against the Bolsheviks for their role in the collapse of military morale and the

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betrayal of the February Revolution. The fact that Andreev had spent time in two political camps did not endear him to either the Bolsheviks or the Russian émigré community after his death. Andreev’s situation was further complicated by the fact that since 1908 his permanent home had been the large villa at Vammelsuu, just outside of St. Petersburg, along the Gulf of Finland. After the October Revolution, the borders of the newly liberated Finnish state moved past Vammelsuu to within a few miles of Petrograd. At that point, Andreev found himself outside Russia, although he had not chosen to emigrate. At the time of his death, therefore, he was neither pro-Bolshevik nor anti-revolution; he was neither an émigré nor a Soviet citizen; neither a representative of nineteenth-century Russian Realism nor an avid supporter of the Russian avant-garde. And yet for over a decade he had been one of Russia’s most popular literary figures. Because of that popularity, once news of Andreev’s death reached Moscow, Maksim Gor’kii began to elicit literary portraits from writers who had known Andreev either personally or professionally. Some of the portraits were first read at various literary evenings and a few appeared first in periodicals.1 They were then published in two editions entitled A Book about Leonid Andreev (Kniga o Leonide Andreeve). The first edition was published in January 1922 and the second, which included a portrait by Andrei Belyi, was published at the very end of that same year. This book was important for various reasons and can be read from many different points of interest. For one, it established a literary biography for Andreev shortly after his death, which continues to influence the way his works are read and the way his life is represented. A Book about Leonid Andreev is also a snapshot of an unstable moment in Russian history and culture. Written shortly after the revolutions and before the Bolsheviks had solidified power, the portraits are just as much about their authors as they are about Andreev. The instability caused the contributors to re-examine their own lives and literary legacies and it is within their memoirs of Andreev that we can read the first attempts to redefine and negotiate their own places within a literary history. In many cases, the authors were attempting literary portraiture for the first time and the results are interesting as early explorations into a new genre. Several of the authors edited or rewrote their Andreev portraits for inclusion in later works, and often the revised versions convey a very dif-

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ferent tone and self-interpretation on the part of the authors due to changes in the political and cultural landscape. The portraits in this collection are very representative of Russia in the early twenties, when they were written. The authors of these portraits, more importantly, represent some of Russia’s greatest writers and poets of the Silver Age. Gor’kii was an immensely successful literary figure at the turn of the century with his stories about hobos and thieves, which introduced Russian literary society to the stark realities of life among the lower classes. Later, his support for the Revolution and his willingness to work with the Bolsheviks made him a cultural ambassador for the new regime. It is because of Gor’kii’s political position in the Soviet Union that Andreev was not completely excluded from Soviet literary discussions. Aleksandr Blok, one of Russia’s greatest twentieth-century poets, came to prominence as a Symbolist poet of the second generation, along with Belyi. After 1905 Blok was critical of his fellow intelligentsia and many Symbolists and his disappointment with Russia’s social and political climate is felt in the decadent strains of his later poetry. His death in 1921 at a relatively young age was seen as a great loss for Russian culture. Blok’s good friend Belyi is remembered for various artistic contributions in the area of poetic language and Symbolist theory, but perhaps in this context, it is Belyi’s trilogy of memoirs – Between Two Revolutions (1934), On the Border of Two Centuries (1930), and The Beginning of the Century (1933) – that is most relevant. Whereas Blok’s portrait of Andreev was one of the last pieces he ever wrote, Belyi’s exploration of the memoir genre began in Berlin with the writing of his Andreev portrait. Belyi found it necessary to reinvent himself due to changing political pressures in the Soviet Union that cast Symbolism in a negative light. In the Andreev portrait we find Belyi’s last ardent associations with the Symbolist movement, before he was forced to renounce much of it in his trilogy. Like Belyi, Nikolai Teleshov is remembered mainly for his memoirs about Russian cultural life at the turn of the century. Originally a writer of short stories, Teleshov worked in the People’s Commissariat for Education and published an anthology of children’s stories after the Revolution. His book Notes of a Writer, many versions of which were published between 1925 and 1955, captures the literary and cultural milieu that developed around and out of the Wednesday literary circle (Sreda),

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which he organized, and of which Andreev had been an active member. Most of the neo-realist writers of the time participated in this circle along with such cultural figures as the opera singer Feodor Shaliapin, the painter Isaac Levitan, and many others. As with Belyi, it was the impetus of Andreev’s death that first directed Teleshov’s energies toward the memoir genre. Teleshov and Andreev had become close friends, and Teleshov’s book captures both the activities of the circle and the bonds of friendship that developed out of them. Boris Zaitsev, as a young writer just beginning his literary career in Moscow, was introduced to Sreda by Andreev. Zaitsev’s career in Russia, however, was interrupted by the Revolution and he eventually became one of the leading Russian literary émigrés in Paris, along with Ivan Bunin, who in 1933 became the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Abroad, Zaitsev published many semi-autobiographical works that captured life in Imperial Russia just prior to the Bolshevik takeover and he returned to his Andreev portrait again and again for publications in émigré journals and newspapers. It is probably for this reason that Zaitsev’s interpretation of Andreev’s life history has become the standard for short literary biographies. Like Zaitsev, Georgii Chulkov met Andreev at the beginning of his literary career. Andreev published Chulkov’s first short story in the newspaper Courier, which he edited. Chulkov is best known for his theories on Mystical Anarchism, which attempted to combine literary Symbolism with political radicalism. Chulkov worked with both the Symbolists (Blok and Belyi) and the neo-realists (Bunin and Andreev) at a time when the distinctions between literary camps were dissolving. In the 1910s he wrote novels about contemporary society and after the Revolution Chulkov devoted his energies to historical prose and literary criticism. Chulkov’s perspective on Andreev is similar to that of Belyi and Blok. It is created in the discourse of Russian Symbolism and reflects a certain world view prevalent at the turn of the century. Zaitsev and Chulkov became acquainted with Andreev when he was a newly discovered Moscow literary figure. Kornei Chukovskii, on the other hand, met Andreev after he was well established. Chukovskii, as a young literary critic, wrote several critical works about Andreev and met with the author during the first decade of the twentieth century when both spent time on the Gulf of Finland. Chukovskii remained an important literary figure in the Soviet Union as a critic, memoirist, and author

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of children’s stories. It was Chukovskii, as a favoured Soviet literary critic, along with Gor’kii and Teleshov, who saved Andreev from being completely forgotten in his homeland. Most of the authors mentioned here knew Andreev as a friend or a literary colleague. Evgenii Zamiatin is the exception, having met Andreev by chance at a political rally in 1906. Zamiatin published his first short story in 1908 but did not receive attention for his literary works until some years later. He is best known today for his novel We, which influenced other anti-utopian works such as George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) Zamiatin’s novel caused controversy and from 1929 he was no longer published in the Soviet Union. In 1931 he wrote a letter to Stalin asking permission to go abroad and was allowed to go to Paris (where he died in 1937), while retaining his Soviet citizenship. Zamiatin’s portrait of Andreev is very much in the style of his satirical short stories. A Book about Leonid Andreev has not been translated previously. This translation now offers to a larger audience the opportunity to explore a turbulent time in Russian history and culture. I chose the second edition for my translation and critical study since I thought it necessary to include Belyi’s portrait. Gor’kii and Teleshov’s portraits have been translated into English in revised or edited versions.2 These translations are inaccurate and incomplete, however, and lose the larger context in which the portraits were originally presented. Many of the Andreev portraits have been reprinted in Russian in the authors’ collected works, again in their revised versions without any reference to the larger context. Therefore, A Book about Leonid Andreev remains a literary artifact – a document that is very relevant to Russia and its cultural figures at the turn of the century, but that has been left undisturbed for the most part since its original publication in 1922. After the first two editions, it was reproduced again in Russian only in 1970 (the first edition, without Belyi’s portrait) for academic libraries. The translation of this text into English as well as the critical study that follows it unearths this literary artifact in order to explore how memoir literature is used in the creation of a cultural figure’s posthumous legacy. The fact that this text was created only three years after the subject’s death and that many of the original portraits have been changed in later official versions provides us with a unique opportunity to examine the process of an artist’s creation of self and other through memoir.

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The critical study following the translation is entitled Leonid Andreev through the Prism of the Literary Portrait. At issue is the creation of Andreev’s posthumous legacy through the portraits, viewed as individual interpretations as well as a collective statement. In examining the portraits, I pay special attention to Andreev’s medical history of mental illness. Past scholarship has focused on philosophical and sociological factors in the author’s life history; in this instance, however, concentrating on Andreev’s mental health provides an effective way in which to decipher the literary portraits. Therefore, the critical section will focus on biographical and psychological claims made in the portraits that either clarify or possibly mystify our understanding of Andreev. Scholars often investigate intellectual influences that act upon literary figures – the books they read, the philosophies they studied, the politics they espoused – the better to understand writer and writings alike. Philosophical and political influences, however, change with time. For Andreev, mental illness was the one constant in his life. His two siblings had died in mental institutions and the threat of madness hung over him constantly. He suffered from periods of mania that drove him to three–day drinking binges as he tried to deaden the thoughts racing through his mind. At other times, he was depressed and would not come out of his room, lying in bed for a week with the blinds closed, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Each of these episodes influenced the way Andreev interacted with the world around him, and it is possible that his experience of illness was more important than the politics he espoused or the philosophies he studied. It was just such personal experiences that the authors of A Book about Leonid Andreev had to describe, interpret and put into the larger context of Andreev’s life and literary works. The critical text following the translation investigates their explanations and describes how they led to the creation of Andreev’s posthumous legacy.

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A Book About Leonid Andreev Memoirs of m. gor’kii, k. chukovskii, a. blok, georgii chulkov, bor. zaitsev, evg. zamiatin, n. teleshov, andrei belyi



 Originally published in Russian by Z.I. Grzhebin Berlin, St Petersburg, Moscow 1922

A Book about Leonid Andreev





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A Book about Leonid Andreev

Maksim Gor’kii

n the spring of 1898 I read in the Moscow Courier1 a story called Bergamot and Garas’ka,2 an Easter story of the usual type. Written to appeal to the heart of the holiday reader, it reminded him once again that man is still capable, at certain moments and in certain special circumstances, of a feeling of generosity, and that at times, enemies become friends, if only for a short while, if only for a day. Since the time of Gogol’s “Overcoat,”3 Russian literati have written probably hundreds or even thousands of these intentionally touching stories. Amid the magnificent flowers of genuine Russian literature, such stories are dandelions, intended to decorate the wretched life of the afflicted and coarse Russian soul.4 Moreover from this story, I caught a distinct whiff of talent, a talent that somehow reminded me of Pomialovskii,5 besides which the author had snuck into the tone of the story a wise little grin of mistrust toward facts. This little grin easily reconciled one with the obligatory sentimentalism of “Easter” and “Christmas” literature. I wrote the author a few lines about his story and received from Leonid Andreev an amusing reply; a few cheerful and funny remarks in eccentric handwriting, with half-printed letters; amongst them stood out an unpretentious but sceptical aphorism: “For the well-off, being generous is as pleasant as having coffee after dinner.” Thus began my literary and epistolary acquaintance with Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev. In the summer, I read some more of his short

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stories and the satirical feuilletons of James Lynch,6 while observing how quickly and boldly the distinctive talent of the new writer was developing. In the autumn, on the way to the Crimea, at the Kursk train station in Moscow, someone introduced me to Leonid Andreev.7 Dressed in an old sheepskin coat, in a shaggy sheepskin hat tilted to one side, he reminded me of a young actor from a Ukrainian troupe. His handsome face struck me as not very mobile, but in the attentive gaze of his dark eyes gleamed the smile that shone so nicely through his stories and feuilletons. I do not remember his words, but they were unusual, and unusual also was the construction of his agitated speech. He spoke hurriedly, with a dullish, booming voice, coughing from a cold, choking on his words a little and waving his hand in a regular pattern, as if conducting. He seemed to me a healthy person of unearthly happiness, capable of living while laughing at the adversities of existence. His excitement was pleasant. “Let’s be friends!” he said, pressing my hand. I too was joyfully excited.

 In the winter on my way from the Crimea to Nizhnii,8 I stopped in Moscow and there our relationship rapidly assumed the character of a sincere friendship. I saw that this man was little acquainted with reality and took little interest in it – even more, I was surprised by the power of his intuition, by the fertility and keenness of his imagination. One phrase was enough, and sometimes only a single, well-chosen word and he, having seized the insignificant thing given to him, developed it instantly into a scene, anecdote, character, story. “What sort of man is S.?” he asked about a certain writer, who was quite famous at the time. “A tiger from a fur shop.” He laughs and sotto voce, as if confiding a secret, he hurriedly says: “You know, I need to describe a person who convinced himself that he is a titan, a real destroyer of worlds, and frightening even to himself – exactly! Everyone believes him – so well has he deceived himself. But somewhere in his own little corner – in real life – he is a pathetic nonentity, afraid of his wife or even a cat.”

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While threading one word after another onto the core of a flexible idea, he had a felicitous way of always creating something unexpected and singular. The palm of one hand was pierced by a bullet, his fingers crooked. I asked him: how did that happen? “An equivocation of my youthful romanticism,” he answered. “You yourself know that a person who has not tried to kill himself is not worth much.” He sat on the couch right next to me and marvellously told about how once, as an adolescent, he threw himself under a freight train, but fortunately he fell lengthwise between the rails and the train passed above him, only stunning him. In the story there was something vague and unreal, but he painted it with an astonishingly vivid description of the sensations of a man above whom, with an iron rumble, moves a thousand-pood load.9 This too was familiar to me, because as a little boy of about ten, I used to lie under a ballast train competing in daredevilry with my buddies. One of them, the son of a switchman, did this with particular cold-bloodedness. This amusement is almost safe if the firebox of the locomotive is raised high enough and the train is going uphill and not downhill. That way, the couplings are tightly stretched and not able to strike you or hook you and drag you over the railroad ties. For several seconds you experience a frightening feeling, while trying to stick to the ground as flat as possible and while, by the exertion of your entire will, hardly conquering the passionate desire to stir, to raise your head. You feel the stream of iron and timber rushing over you, pulling you off the ground and trying to drag you off somewhere, and the rumble and grinding of the iron rings in your bones. Then, when the train has passed, you lie motionless for a minute or more, powerless to rise, seeming to swim along after the train; and it is as if your body stretches out endlessly, grows, becomes light, melts into air and – in the next moment you will be flying above the earth. A very pleasant feeling. “What drew us to such an absurd amusement?” asked Leonid Nikolaevich. I said that perhaps we were testing our will power, by opposing the mechanical motion of huge masses with the conscious immobility of our puny bodies. “No,” he replied, “that is too complicated, not like a child.”

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Having reminded him of how children play “crush the cradle,” they rock back and forth on the flexible ice of a newly frozen pond or of a backwater, I said that children generally like dangerous games. He was silent. He lit a cigarette and immediately after threw it away, looking with squinted eyes into a dark corner of the room. “No, that’s probably not right. Almost all children are afraid of the dark.... Someone said: There is delight in battle and on the edge of a dark abyss,10 but that was strictly for effect. I think somehow differently, only I cannot understand how.” And suddenly he started, as though burned by an inner fire. “One should write a story about a man, who all his life, suffering madly, searched for truth. And, truth appeared to him, but he closed his eyes, stopped his ears, and said, ‘I do not want you even if you are marvellous, because my life, my torments have ignited in my soul a hatred for you.’ What do you think?” I did not care for this subject. He said with a sigh: “Yes, first one must answer, where is the truth – in man or outside of him? According to you, it is in man?” He laughed. “Then this is very bad, very insignificant ...”

 There was hardly one fact, one question on which we would agree. But numerous conflicts did not prevent us, for entire years, from behaving toward each other with a kind of intense interest and attention that are seldom found in a long-standing friendship. We conversed tirelessly. I remember once we sat more than twenty hours without a break, having drunk a couple samovars of tea – Leonid put down tea in unbelievable amounts. He was an amazingly interesting conversationalist – inexhaustible and sharp-witted. Even though his thought always revealed a stubborn will to glance into the darkest corners of the soul, it was light and capriciously original and freely took humorous or grotesque form. In friendly conversations he was able to use this humour supply and elegantly. But

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unfortunately, in his stories he lost this ability – a rare one for Russians. Possessing a lively and sensitive imagination, he was lazy. He liked far more to talk about literature than to create it. The delight of expending heroic efforts late into the night on a white, clean sheet of paper in silence and solitude was beyond him. He never properly appreciated the joy of covering that sheet of paper with a pattern of words. “I write with difficulty,” he confessed. “Quill pens seem uncomfortable to me and the process of a letter is too slow and even degrading. My thoughts flit about like jackdaws in a fire, I soon tire of catching them and arranging them in proper order. It happens like this: I have written a word ‘cobweb’ and suddenly, for no reason, I begin to think of geometry, algebra, and a teacher from the Orel Gymnasium – of course, a dense man. He often recalled the words of some philosopher: ‘True wisdom is tranquil.’ But I know that the best people in the world are painfully agitated. To hell with tranquil wisdom! And what takes its place? Beauty? Long may it live! However, even though I have not seen Venus in the original, in the pictures she seems to be rather a stupid gal. In general, beautiful things are always somewhat stupid, for example a peacock, a borzoi or a woman.”

 One would think that, being indifferent to the facts of reality and a sceptic in relation to human reason and will, he ought not to have indulged in didacticism and teacherliness – which are unavoidable for people for whom reality is altogether too familiar. But our first discussions clearly indicated that this person, while possessing all the attributes of a superb artist, wanted to strike the pose of a thinker and philosopher. This seemed to me dangerous, almost hopeless, mainly because his reserve of knowledge was strangely poor. One always felt that he somehow sensed near him an unseen enemy. He argued intensely with someone. He wanted to vanquish someone. Leonid Nikolaevich did not like to read and himself a maker of books, a creator of miracles, he looked upon old books sceptically and indifferently. “For you a book is like a savage’s fetish,” he said to me. “This is because you have not rubbed holes in your pants on the benches of the gymnasium, because you have not come in contact with university learn-

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ing. But for me The Iliad,11 Pushkin, and all their ilk are drooled on by teachers, prostituted by hemorrhoidal bureaucrats. Woe from Wit 12 is as boring as Evtushevskii’s book of arithmetical problems.13 I am as tired of The Captain’s Daughter 14 as I am of a young lady from Tverskoi Boulevard.”15 I had heard these familiar words about the influence of school on one’s attitude toward literature too often, and they had long since ceased to be convincing, for one felt in them the prejudice begotten by Russian laziness. It was much more original when Leonid Andreev depicted how newspaper reviews and critical articles mutilated and maimed books, talking about them in the language of news reports about street incidents. “They are mills, they grind Shakespeare, the Bible – anything you like – into the dust of banality. Once I was reading a newspaper article about Don Quixote16 and suddenly, with horror, I see that Don Quixote is a little old man of my acquaintance, directing the Public Chamber; he had a chronic sniffle and a lover, a girl from a confectionery shop. He called her Millie but in reality, on the boulevards, they called her Sonka Bubble.”17 But while regarding books and knowledge casually, indifferently, and sometimes with hostility, he was constantly and keenly interested in what I was reading. Once, seeing in my room at the Moscow Hotel Aleksei Ostroumov’s book on Sinesius, the Bishop of Ptolemais,18 he asked wonderingly, “What do you have this for?” I told him about the strange half-pagan bishop and read a few lines from his essay “In Praise of Baldness”: “What can be more bald, yet more divine, than the sphere?” This pathetic exclamation from the descendent of Hercules drove Leonid into a fit of laughter, but immediately, wiping the tears from his eyes and still laughing, he said: “You know, that would be a superb subject for a story about an unbeliever who, wishing to test the stupidity of believers, assumes a mask of saintliness, lives the life of a martyr, preaches a new doctrine of God – a very stupid doctrine – and so wins the love and admiration of thousands. Then he says to his disciples and followers: ‘All this is rubbish.’ But they need faith, so they kill him.” I was struck by the fact that Sinesius had expressed the very same idea: “If I were told that a bishop must share the opinions of the people, I

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would reveal to all who I am. For what can there be in common between the rabble and philosophy? Divine truth must be hidden; the people need something quite different.” But I had not told Andreev this idea, nor had I the opportunity of telling him about the unusual position of the unbaptized pagan-philosopher in the role of a Christian bishop. When I said something to him about this, he exclaimed triumphantly and laughingly: “There you see, it is not always necessary to read in order to know and understand.”

 Leonid Nikolaevich was talented by nature, organically talented; his intuition was astonishingly keen. In everything that touched on the dark side of life, the contradictions of the human soul, fermentation in the area of instincts, he was terribly perceptive. The instance of the Bishop Sinesius is not the only one. I could recount a score of such cases. Thus, talking with him about various seekers after unshakable belief, I related to him the contents of the manuscript “Confession” by the priest Apollov – a work by one of the unknown martyrs of thought which called forth to life the Confession of Lev Tolstoi.19 I told him what I had observed about people of dogmatic beliefs. They often are voluntary prisoners of a blind, rigid faith and the more despairingly they doubt it the more actively they defend its validity. Andreev thought to himself for a while, slowly stirring his glass of tea with a spoon, then he said laughingly, “It is strange to me that you understand this. You speak like an atheist and think like a believer. If you die before me, I will write on your gravestone: ‘While urging others to bow to reason, he secretly mocked its impotence.’” And after two or three minutes of leaning heavily on me with his shoulder, glancing into my eyes with the dilated pupils of his dark eyes, he said in an undertone: “I will write about a priest, you will see! This, brother, I will write well!” And threatening someone with his finger, firmly rubbing his temples, he smiled. “Tomorrow, I am going home and will begin! I even have the first

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A Book about Leonid Andreev

phrase: ‘Among people he was alone, for he had come in contact with a great mystery ...”20 The next day he left for Moscow and after a week, no more, he wrote to me that he was working on the priest and the work was going well, “like being on skis.” Thus he always captured in flight everything that answered the demands of his spirit, in contact with the most acute and tormenting secrets of life.

 The noisy success of his first book filled him to overflowing with youthful joy. He visited me in Nizhnii – happy, in a new tobacco-coloured suit; the front of his stiffly starched shirt was decorated with a devilishly multicoloured tie, and on his feet he had yellow boots. “I searched for straw-coloured gloves, but some lady in a store on Kuznetskii warned me that straw was no longer in style. I suspect that she lied. Probably she valued the freedom of her heart and was afraid of being convinced of my irresistible attractiveness in straw-coloured gloves. But I will tell you a secret; all of this magnificence is uncomfortable. A plain shirt is much better.” And suddenly, hugging me about the shoulders, he said: “You know, I would like to write a hymn. I do not see yet to whom or to what; but a hymn it must be! Something in the style of Schiller, eh?21 Something grand, sonorous, – boom!” I gave him a hard time. “So what?” he happily exclaimed. “Is not Ecclesiastes right when he says: ‘Even a rotten life is better than a good death.’ Although he put it differently, something about a lion and a dog: ‘In a domestic situation a bad dog is more useful than a good lion.’22 Well, what do you think; could Job have read Ecclesiastes?” Drunk on the wine of joy, he dreamed about a trip on a good boat along the Volga, a journey about the Crimea on foot. “I will drag you off, otherwise you will totally wall yourself up with these bricks,” he said, pointing to the books. His happiness resembled the lively and comfortable state of a baby that has been hungry too long and now thinks it has eaten enough to last forever. We sat on a wide divan in a little room. We drank red wine. Andreev took from the shelf a notebook of poetry.

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“May I?” He began to read aloud: Columns of coppery pines, The monotonous sound of the sea. “Is this the Crimea? Me, I can’t write poems, and I do not have the desire. I like ballads best – as a rule: I like all that is new, Romantic, nonsensical, Like a poet, of olden times. “I believe that’s from the musical comedy The Green Island:23 And the sighing of the trees, Is like unrhymed verses. “That I like. But, tell me, why do you write poetry? It does not really suit you. After all, whatever you may think, poetry is an artificial business.” Then we composed parodies of Skitalets:24 I will grab a huge log In my powerful hand And all of you until the seventh generation – I will kill one after the other! Moreover, I will stupefy – Hurrah! Tr-r-emble! I am glad. – I will strike you in the heads with Kazbek, I will bring down upon you Ararat. He laughed, inexhaustibly composing endearing, funny nonsense. But suddenly, bending toward me, with a glass of wine in his hand, he began to speak in a low voice and seriously. “Not long ago I read an amusing anecdote. In a certain English city stands a statue to Robert Burns – the poet.25 But there are no inscriptions to inform you to whom it is erected. At its feet a boy sells newspapers. A certain author approaches him and says, ‘I will buy a newspaper from you

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A Book about Leonid Andreev

if you can tell me whose statue this is.’ ‘Robert Burns,’ answered the boy. ‘Excellent! Now, I will buy all of your papers, but you must tell me why this memorial was erected to Robert Burns?’ The boy answered, ‘Because he died.’ How do you like that?” I did not really like that much. I was always seriously perturbed by Leonid’s sudden and sharp fluctuations of mood.

 Fame for him was not merely “a bright patch on the worn-out tatters of a singer.”26 He wanted a great deal of it, greedily, and he did not hide it. He said: “When I was only fourteen years old I said to myself that I would be famous – or it was not worth living. I am not afraid to say to you that everything that has been done before me does not seem better than what I, myself, can do. If you took my words as arrogance, you would be mistaken. No, this must be the basic conviction of anyone who does not want to place himself in the impersonal ranks of millions of others. Indeed belief in one’s own exceptionalness must – and can – serve as a source of creative power. First we tell ourselves we are not like the others, and then it will be easy to prove this to all the others.” “In a word, you are a baby that does not want to feed at its nurse’s breast.” “Precisely! I want only milk of my soul. A person needs love and attention or must be feared. This is even understood by the peasants, who wear the masks of wizards. Happiest of all are those who are loved with fear, as they loved Napoleon.” “You read his ‘Notes’?”27 “No. I do not need to do that.” He winked at me, grinning. “I, too, keep a diary and I know how it is done. Notes, confessions, and such are excrement of a soul poisoned by bad food.” He loved such sayings, and when they came off well he was sincerely delighted. Despite his gravitation toward pessimism there was in him something ineradicably childish – for instance, in his childishly naive boasting about his verbal agility, of which he made much better use in conversation than on paper. Once I told him about a woman who prided herself to such a degree on her “honest” life. She took so much trouble to convince absolutely

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everyone of her inaccessibility that those around her, gasping from weariness, either rushed headlong away from this model of virtue, or hated her, on the verge of frenzy. Andreev listened, laughed, and suddenly said, “I am an honest woman. I have no need to clean my nails – eh?” With these words he defined, with almost perfect exactness, the character and even the habits of the person about whom I was speaking – the woman did not look after herself well. I told him this. He was delighted and with childlike sincerity began to boast, “I, brother, sometimes surprise myself, that with two or three words I can so adroitly and accurately seize the very essence of a fact or of a character.” He delivered a long speech in praise of himself. But being clever, he understood that this was a little ridiculous, and finished his tirade with a humorous caricature. “In time I shall develop my capacity as a genius to such an extent that I shall be able to define in a single word the meaning of the entire life of a man, of a nation, of an epoch ...” Yet his capacity for self criticism was not particularly well developed and this spoiled at times his work and life.

 I think that in each one of us live and struggle the embryos of several personalities. They argue amongst themselves until there emerges from that struggle the strongest embryo or the one most capable of adapting itself to the various impressions that form the final spiritual character of a person, thus creating a more or less integrated individual psyche. Strangely and to his own torment Leonid Andreev split into two – in one and the same week he could sing “Hosannah” to the world and pronounce “Anathema” against it. This was not an external contradiction between the bases of his character and the habits or demands of his profession; no, in both cases he felt equally sincerely. And the more loudly he proclaimed Hosannah, the more powerfully resounded the echo Anathema. He said, “I hate people who do not walk on the sunny side of the street for fear of sunburning their faces or fading their jackets. I hate everyone who for dogmatic motives hampers the free, capricious play of his inner self.”

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A Book about Leonid Andreev

Once he wrote a rather caustic feuilleton about the people of the shaded side,28 and right after this, on the occasion of Emile Zola’s death from gas fumes, he engaged in a vigorous attack on the barbarous asceticism fairly popular at that time among the intelligentsia.29 But while talking to me about this polemic, he unexpectedly declared, “All the same, you know, my interlocutor is more consistent than I: a writer should live like a homeless tramp. Maupassant’s yacht is an absurdity.”30 He was not joking. We argued a bit and I maintained that the more varied the needs of a man, the more greedy he is for the joys of life, however small, the more quickly the culture of the body and the spirit develops. He retorted, no, Tolstoi is right, culture is rubbish. It only distorts the free growth of the soul. “Attachment to things,” he said. “This is the fetishism of savages and idolatry. Do not create for yourself an idol,31 otherwise you are vile, that is the truth! Make a book today and tomorrow make a machine. Yesterday you made a boot and already you have forgotten about it. We must learn to forget.” And I said, “It is necessary to remember that each thing is the embodiment of the human spirit and often the inner value of a thing is more significant than man.” “That is worship of dead matter,” he shouted. “In it is embodied immortal thought.” “What is thought? It is two-faced and repulsive for its impotence.” We argued more and more often, more and more intensely. The sharpest point of difference was our attitude toward thought. To me thought is the source of everything that exists, out of thought arose everything that is seen and felt by man; even in the consciousness of its impotence to solve the “accursed questions” thought is majestic and noble. I feel myself living in the atmosphere of thought and, seeing how much that is great and majestic has been created by it, I believe its impotence is temporary. Maybe I am romanticizing and exaggerating the creative power of thought; but this is so natural in Russia, in a country where there is no spiritual synthesis, in a country paganly sensual, monstrously cruel. Leonid Nikolaevich regarded thought as a “wicked joke played on man by the devil.” It seemed to him false and hostile. Luring man to the abyss of inexplicable mysteries, it deceives him, it leaves him in painful

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and impotent loneliness in front of all that is mysterious, and itself vanishes. No less irreconcilably did we differ in our views on man, the source of thought, its crucible. For me man is always the victor, even when he is mortally wounded, dying. Splendid is his longing to know himself and know nature, and even though his life is tortuous, he is ever widening its bounds, creating with his thought wise science, marvellous art. I felt that I did sincerely and truly love man – both the man now living and working by my side and also the sensible, the good, the strong man who will appear at some point in the future. To Andreev man appeared poor in spirit: woven together of irreconcilable contradictions of instinct and intellect, forever deprived of the possibility of attaining inner harmony. All his works are “vanity of vanities,”32 decay, and self-deception. And, above all, he is a slave of death and he walks his whole life on its chain.

 It is very difficult to speak about a person whom you sense quite well. This sounds like a paradox, but – it is true: when you sense the mysterious tremble of the burning of someone else’s self, it worries you. You are afraid to touch with your crooked heavy word the invisible rays of a soul that is dear to you, afraid to say the wrong thing, the wrong way. You do not want to distort that which is felt but almost defies description. You do not dare to confine what someone else humanly values – even if it has general significance – in the narrow confines of your speech. It is much easier and simpler to describe things you do not perceive quite so clearly – in such cases you can make up a great deal – or even as much as you like – out of your own experience. I think that I perceived Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev well: more specifically – I saw how he walked along that path hovering above the precipice dropping off into a quagmire of madness, above the abyss from which, once peering into it, the perception of reason is extinguished. His power of imagination was great, but despite the constant and intense attention he gave to the insulting secret of death, he could not conceive of anything majestic or consoling for himself beyond the grave. He was too much of a realist to invent consolations for himself, much as he desired them. It was his following that path above the abyss that separated the two

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A Book about Leonid Andreev

of us more and more. I had long since lived through a mood like Andreev’s, – and due to a natural sense of human pride, it became disgusting and offensive for me physically to think about death. I told myself at the time that as long as the feeling and thinking part of me was alive, death would not dare to touch that power. Once I told Leonid about how I had experienced my own difficult period of “a prisoner’s longings for an existence outside his prison walls, about the ‘stony gloom’ and a ‘stillness poised for eternity.’” He leapt from the couch, and running about the room, conducting with his crippled palm, hastily, indignantly, gasping for air, he said: “This, my brother, is cowardice, – to close the book without reading until the end! After all, the book contains your indictment – the book repudiates you, understand? You are repudiated there – together with everything there is about you, your humanism, your socialism, your aesthetics, your love – the book says all that is worthless, doesn’t it? That’s ridiculous and pathetic: you are condemned to death – for what? And you, pretending that you don’t know this, are not outraged by it – admiring the flowers, deceiving yourself and others – silly flowers!” I pointed out to him a certain uselessness in protests against earthquakes, arguing that protests could have no effect on the convulsions of the earth’s core. All of this only made him more upset. We had a conversation that autumn in St Petersburg in an empty, dreary room on the fifth floor. The city was enveloped in a thick fog and in the grey mass of the fog the iridescent, ghostly orbs of the lanterns were suspended motionlessly, reminding one of enormous soap bubbles. Through the moist clouds of fog, absurd sounds rose up to us from the street – the smack of horseshoes on the bridge’s paving blocks was especially tiresome. Leonid rose to stand at the window, his back to me – I really sensed at this moment that he hated me for walking the earth more easily and freely than he, because I had thrown off a humiliating and unnecessary burden. Even before this I had felt in him waves of intense hatred for me. I cannot say that it offended me, but it was a bit disturbing. I understood the source of this malice in my own way of course, seeing how hard life was for this rare talent, this person who was dear to me and at that time a close friend. There, below, a fire brigade rushed by sounding its alarm. Leonid

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came up to me, collapsed on the divan, and offered: “Do you want to go see the fire?” “In St Petersburg fires are not that interesting.” He agreed. “It’s true. But now in the provinces, somewhere like Orel, then the wooden streets burn and the petty bourgeois rush about like moths – it’s great! And – the doves above the cloud of smoke – have you seen that?” Embracing me by the shoulders, he said, smirking: “You’ve seen everything, the devil take you! Even – the ‘stony emptiness’ – this is very good – the stony gloom and emptiness! You understand the prisoner.” And butting his head into my ribs: “I hate you sometimes for that, the way I’d hate a lover who is smarter than me.” I said that I felt that and had felt it in particular just a moment before. “Yes,” he confirmed, resting his head on my lap. “You know why? I want you to feel my pain – then we would be closer. You already know how lonely I am!” Yes, he was very much alone, but at times, it seemed to me, he jealously protected his loneliness; it was dear to him, like the source of his fantastical inspiration and the fertile soil of his originality. “You – lie, when you say that scientific reason satisfies you,” he said, gloomily glancing at the ceiling with a dark gaze from frightened eyes. “Science, brother, is a mysticism of facts: No one knows anything – this is the truth! But the questions – how I think and why I think, the source of man’s greatest pain – those are the most frightening truths of all! Let’s go somewhere, please.” The mechanism of thought was the subject that excited him most of all, and frightened him, too. We put our coats on and went downstairs into the fog. For about two hours we swam along Nevskii Prospect in the fog, like catfish on the bottom of a muddy river. Then we sat down in some sort of café, where three young ladies insisted on sitting with us – one of them a svelte Estonian who introduced herself as “El’frida.” The face of this girl was stonelike and she looked at Andreev with large grey glazed eyes and a terrible seriousness. She drank some kind of green poisonous liqueur from a coffee cup. The liqueur smelled of burnt leather. Leonid drank cognac, quickly began to get a little tipsy, became uproariously witty, made the ladies laugh with unexpectedly amusing and unlikely jokes and, finally, he decided to go to the girls’ apartment –

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A Book about Leonid Andreev

they were most insistent on this point. It was impossible to let Leonid go alone. When he began to drink, something terrible awoke in him, a vindictive demand for destruction, something like the hatred of a “caged animal.” I set off with him. We bought wine, fruit, candy, and somewhere on Razezzhaia Street, in the corner of a dirty courtyard littered with barrels and firewood, we began to drink on the second floor of a wooden annex, in two small rooms, within walls decorated wretchedly and pathetically with postcards. Before drinking himself unconscious, Leonid became dangerously and surprisingly agitated, his mind boiled over, his imagination blazed, and his speech became almost unbearably brilliant. One of the young ladies, round, soft, and adroit as a mouse, almost with delight told us how a gentleman public prosecutor had bitten her leg above the knee. She, it seemed, considered this act by the lawyer the most significant event of her life. Showing the scar from the bite and falling into waves of laughter, she happily told us with shining glassy eyes: “He loved me so – it is even scary to recall the memory! He bit me, you know – but he had a false tooth – and it remained stuck in my skin.” This young lady, who had quickly got drunk, fell asleep on a couch in the corner and set to snoring. A well-developed woman with thick auburn hair, eyes like a sheep, and unnaturally long fingers played the guitar. El’frida on the other hand carefully undressed until she was naked, placed the bottles and plates on the floor, jumped onto the table, and danced, silently, twisting like a snake, not taking her eyes off Leonid. Then she began to sing in an unpleasant thick voice, angrily widening her eyes; at times, she bent double, leaning toward Andreev. He kissed her knees, shouting out the lyrics he had made out of this strange song, in its strange language. He jabbed me with his elbow, saying: “She understands something, look at her, do you see? She understands!” At times, Leonid’s excited eyes became still darker – as though they were blind. They reached deeper inside themselves, trying to catch a glimpse of his mind. Tiring, the Estonian hopped from the table to the bed. She stretched herself out, opening her mouth and palming her small breasts, sharp as a goat’s. Leonid said: “The highest and deepest sensation available to us in this life is – the spasm of sexual intercourse – yes, yes! And maybe the

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earth, like this bitch here, tosses and turns in the wasteland of the universe, waiting for me to fertilize her with understanding of the purpose of existence, while I myself, with all the miracles in me – am only a spermatozoid.” I suggested that we go home. “Go on, I am going to stay here.” I could not leave him there. He was already very drunk and was carrying a lot of money. He sat on the bed, stroking the slender leg of the girl and he began amazingly enough to say that he loved her, but she intently looked into his face, throwing her hands behind her head. “When a baron tries a radish, he grows wings,” said Leonid. “No. This is not true,” the girl said seriously. “I am telling you that she understands something,” cried Leonid in drunken happiness! After a few minutes he left the room. I gave the girl money and asked her to convince Leonid to go for a ride. She immediately agreed and, jumping up, quickly began to get dressed. “I am afraid of him. Men like him shoot pistols,” she muttered. The young girl playing on the guitar went to sleep sitting on the floor near the divan, where, snoring, her friend was already sleeping. The Estonian was already dressed when Leonid returned. He began to rebel, shouting: “I don’t want this! Let there be the feast of the flesh!” And again he tried to undress the young lady, but, driving him back, she looked so directly into his eyes that her gaze cut Leonid short and he agreed: “Let’s go!” But he wanted to wear the lady’s hat à la Rembrandt33 and had already torn all the feathers from it. “Are you going to pay for the hat?” asked the girl in a businesslike tone. Leonid raised his eyebrows and began to laugh, shouting: “So it’s all in the hat! Hurrah!” On the street we hailed a cab and went off through the fog. It still was not very late, barely past midnight. Nevskii Prospect, covered in lanterns like enormous beads, seemed to lead down into the depths; around the lanterns could be glimpsed wet specks of dust, in the grey dampness swam black fish, standing on their tails; the hemispheres of umbrellas seemed to lift people upward – and it was all very ghostly, strange, and sad. In the fresh air, Andreev became completely intoxicated, began to

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A Book about Leonid Andreev

doze off, swaying, and the girl whispered to me: “I can get out now, right?” And springing from my knees into the liquid mud of the streets she disappeared. At the end of Kamennoostrovskii Prospect Leonid asked, opening his eyes frighteningly: “Where are we going? I want to go to a tavern. Did you get rid of her?” “She left.” “You lie. You are sly. So am I. I left the room in order to see what you would do. I stood at the door and listened to how you convinced her. You conducted yourself innocently and nobly. You really are not a very good person. You drink a lot and do not get drunk, because of this your children will be alcoholics. My father also drank a lot and never got drunk, and I am an alcoholic.” We then took a seat aboard the “Arrow” under some stupid bubble of fog. We smoked and when the spark of a cigarette flared up we could see that our coats looked grey, covered by dull beads of dampness. Leonid spoke with absolute candour, and this was not the candour of a drunk. His thinking remained clear until the last possible moment, when the poison of alcohol completely shut down his brain. “Yes, you have done a lot and continue to do a lot for me, even today – I understand. If I’d stayed with the girls, it would have ended badly for someone. That’s all true. But that’s exactly why I don’t love you, exactly because of this! You stop me from being myself. Leave me alone – I will live larger. Maybe you are the hoop around the barrel and if you go, the barrel will fall to pieces, but let it – do you understand? Do not hold anything in check, let it all fall apart. Maybe the true meaning of life is found exactly in the destruction of something, what exactly we do not know – or – maybe the destruction of everything invented and created us.” His dark eyes stared glumly into the grey mass around him and above him. Sometimes he lowered them to the earth, wet, strewn with leaves, and trodden upon, as if testing the firmness of the earth. “I don’t know what you think, but what you always say doesn’t come from your faith, it’s not the words of your prayer. You say that all life forces proceed from the violation of equilibrium, but you yourself seek that equilibrium, some kind of harmony and you’re always pushing me to do the same, even though – to your way of thinking – equilibrium is dead!” I objected: I never pushed him in any direction and did not wish to,

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but his life was dear to me, his health was dear, his work. “All you really care about is my work – my exterior – and not my real self, not the things I can’t incarnate in my work. You get in my way and everyone else’s too! Get lost, why don’t you?” He collapsed on my shoulder and with a smile gazed into my face, continuing: “You think that I am drunk and do not understand that I am talking nonsense? No, I simply want to make you angry. You are a rare friend, I know that, and you foolishly give without getting anything in return, while I am a poseur, like a beggar who shows his sores, soliciting the alms of attention.” It was not the first time that he had said this to me and in it I felt a kernel of truth, meaning that it was a well-considered explanation for several peculiarities of his character. “I, brother, am a decadent, a degenerate, a sick person. But Dostoevskii was also sick, like all great people. There is a little book – I do not remember whose – about genius and madness, in which it is proven, that genius is a psychological disease!34 That book ruined me. If I had not read it, I would be simpler. But now I know that I am almost a genius, but I am not sure if I am crazy enough. Do you understand, I am pretending to myself that I am crazy to persuade myself that I am talented – do you understand?” I laughed. The idea seemed to me contrived and therefore not true. When I said this to him, he also laughed and suddenly, with the flexible movement of his soul, adroitly like an acrobat, skipped into the tone of a humorist. “And where is the tavern, this place for the holy rites of literature? Talented Russian people absolutely must discuss things in a tavern – such is our tradition, and without all that critics will never pronounce one a talent.” We sat in a late-night pub for cabbies, in the damp smoky stuffiness: a filthy room in which sleepy “men” angrily and tiredly walked about, drunks cursed “by the numbers,” frightening prostitutes yelped, and one of them, baring her left breast – yellow with an enormous bovine nipple – laid it on a plate and brought it to us, offering: “Care to buy a pound?” “I love shamelessness,” said Leonid. “In cynicism I sense the sadness, almost the despair of a person, who realizes that he is incapable – do you understand? – incapable of not being an animal. He doesn’t want to be one, but he can’t help it! Understand?”

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A Book about Leonid Andreev

He drank strong, almost black tea. I knew that he liked it and that it sobered him up. I made the tavern brew a lot of tea on purpose. Soaking up the pitchlike, bitter liquid, and feeling with his eyes the puffy faces of the drunk women, Leonid spoke without interruption. “With women I am cynical. It’s more honest, and they go for that. It is better to be an inveterate sinner than a righteous man, who cannot pray his way to complete saintliness.” He looked about, was silent, and then said: “It’s boring here, like in a consistory!” This struck him as funny. “I have never been in a consistory, they probably have something resembling a fishpond.” The tea sobered him up. We left the pub. The fog had gotten thicker and the opal globes of the lanterns melted like ice. “I wouldn’t mind some fish,” said Leonid, leaning his elbows on the railing of a bridge spanning the Neva, and animatedly continued. “You know how it is with me? Probably just as it is with children, I stumble upon a word – fish – and I find other words that sound like it – fish, dish, Irish, rash, cash35 – but when it comes to writing real verses, I’m completely lost.” He thought a bit, then added: “This is how compilers of ABC books think, too.” Once again we were sitting in a pub while treating ourselves to salted fish and Leonid told me that the “decadents” had invited him to participate in The Scales.36 “I won’t go, I don’t like them. I don’t sense any content behind their words, they ‘get drunk’ on words, Bal’mont37 likes to say. Bal’mont is another one who’s both talented and ill.” On another occasion I remember that he said about the group of writers at Scorpion:38 “They rape Schopenhauer,39 and I love him and therefore hate them.” But coming from him, hate was too strong a word: hating anyone was impossible for him; he was too soft-hearted for that. One time he showed me a passage in his diary that he called “words of hate,” but they were really words of humour, and he himself laughed over them sincerely. I took him to the hotel and laid him down to sleep, but the next day I stopped by some time after noon and learned that as soon as I had left, he had gotten up, dressed, and disappeared some place. I searched for

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him the entire day but did not find him. He drank for four days straight and then left for Moscow.

 He had an unpleasant way of testing the sincerity of other’s relationships. He would sometimes, very unexpectedly, ask: “Do you know what Z. said about you?” Or he would announce: “A.S. says that you’re …” And with his dark probing glance, he would search your eyes for a reaction. Once I said to him: “Look – keep this up and you will have your comrades quarrelling with one another.” “What do you mean?” he answered. “If they quarrel over nonsense, it means their relationships were insincere.” “What are you after?” “Some sort of stability, you know, a majesty and beauty to relations. It is essential for each of us to realize how fragile the lace of the soul is; and with what tenderness and care one has to treat it – there has to be some degree of romanticism in relations. It existed in Pushkin’s circle and I envy this. Women are sensitive only to eroticism. A woman’s gospel is The Decameron.”40 After half an hour, however, he ridiculed his own opinion about women, hilariously describing a conversation between a pervert and a young schoolgirl. He could not stand Artsybashev41 and ridiculed him with vulgar hostility for his one-sided description of women, as if they were exclusively meant for sensuality.

 Once he told me this story. When he was around eleven, somewhere in a grove or a garden he saw the deacon kissing a young lady. “They kissed each other and both of them were crying,” he said. He lowered his voice and shrank down. Whenever he told some intimate story, he tensed his somewhat flabby musculature. “The young lady was the type, you know, thin, frail, on straw legs. The deacon was fat; his cassock was grease-stained and shiny at the midriff. I already knew why they were kissing, but it was the first time

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A Book about Leonid Andreev

that I saw them kissing and crying and it seemed to me very funny. The deacon’s beard had caught in the hooks of her unfastened jacket, and he began to tug with his head. I whistled so as to frighten them, but I got frightened myself, and ran away. But that same day I felt myself falling in love with the daughter of the justice of the peace, a girl about ten years old. In the evening, I groped her, she still had not developed breasts, therefore there wasn’t anything to kiss, and she was not fit for love. Then I fell in love with the neighbour’s chambermaid, a short-legged girl, eyebrowless, but with large breasts – her blouse was just as strained over her bust as the deacon’s cassock had been over his belly. I set upon her with great resolve, and with equal resolve she boxed my ears. This, however, did not affect my love for her, she seemed to me a beauty, and became more beautiful to me by the day. This was almost torturous and yet sweet. I had seen many genuinely beautiful young women and in my mind I well knew that my beloved was hideous by comparison, but for some reason she remained for me the prettiest of them all. I was satisfied because I knew that no one could love her the way I was able to love her – the cheap tow-haired wench, whom no one – understand? – no one would be able to see as the most beautiful of all beauties!” He told this story excellently, saturating his words with his winning sense of humour, which I am not able to convey. It is unfortunate that his humorous side, which he used so well in conversation, he neglected or was afraid to use when he wrote his stories – he was afraid, I guess, that he would destroy the dark tones of his pictures with a bit of humorous colour. When I said that it was too bad that he had forgotten how splendidly he had transformed a short-legged chambermaid into the world’s greatest beauty, and that he’d given up on extracting gold veins of the beauty from the filthy ore of reality, he squinted at me slyly and comically and said: “Who would’ve thought you had such a sweet tooth! No, I don’t intend to spoil you, you romantic.” It was impossible to convince him that it was he who was the real romantic.

 In his Collected Works, which Leonid presented to me in 1915, he wrote: “Beginning with ‘Bargamot’ from the Courier everything here

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was written and transpired right before your eyes, Aleksei: in many respects this is the history of our relationship.” This unfortunately is true. Unfortunately because, I think, for Andreev it would have been better if he had not introduced into his stories “the history of our relationship.” But he did this too willingly and, rushing to “refute” my opinion, he made a mess of things. It was as if exactly in me he personified his unseen enemy. “I wrote a story, which you probably will not like,” he said once. “Shall we read it?” We read it. I really liked the story, except for a few details. “It’s not a big deal. I will correct it,” he said, with great animation, pacing back and forth about the room, shuffling with his slippers. Then he sat down next to me and, tossing back his hair, looked me in the eye. “Look, – I know, I feel, that you sincerely praise the story. But I do not understand why it is that you like it?” “There are plenty of things on earth that I do not like; however, this does not ruin them, as I see it.” “The way you reason, it is impossible to be a revolutionary.” “What do you mean, you look on the revolutionary with the eyes of Nechaev 42 – ‘a revolutionary’ is not a man?” He embraced me and began to laugh. “You understand yourself badly.” “But, listen, after all when I wrote ‘The Thought,’ I was thinking about you – Aleksei Savelov is you!43 There is one phrase, ‘Aleksei was not talented.’ This, maybe, was nasty on my part, but you sometimes irritate me so much with your obstinacy that you seem untalented to me. Was it very wrong of me to write that?” He was worried, he even blushed. I calmed him down, having said that I do not consider myself an Arabian stallion but only a dray horse. I know that I owe my successes not so much to natural talent as to the ability to work, to my love of labour. “You are a strange person,” he said, quietly interrupting my words, and suddenly, dispensing with trivia, he began to speak thoughtfully about himself, about the agitation of his soul. He did not posses the unpleasant general Russian inclination to confess his sins and repent, but sometimes he managed to talk about himself with a courageous candour, even in a slightly brutal way; however, he did not lose his self-respect. And this was a pleasant feature in him.

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“You see,” he said. “Every time, when I would write something that especially excites me – as if the crust has fallen off my soul, I see myself more clearly, I see that I am more talented than my writings. Take ‘The Thought.’ I expected you to find it so striking, but now I see myself that, in reality, it’s a polemical work, and one that misses its target.” He jumped to his feet and half-jokingly revealed, shaking his hair, “I am afraid of you, villain! You are stronger than I am. I do not want to succumb to you.” And again he was serious, “I am missing something, brother! Something very important, eh? What do you think?” I thought that he behaved toward his talent unforgivably carelessly and he lacked knowledge. “You need to study, to read, you need to go to Europe.” He waved his hand. “It is not this. You need to find for yourself God and to believe in His wisdom.” As always we began to argue. After one of these arguments he sent to me proofs for the story “The Wall.”44 And in regards to “Phantoms”45 he said to me, “The madman who knocks is me. And you are the active Egor. There is in you a real inherent feeling of your own strength and it is the main point of your madness and the madness of all similar romantics, idealizers of reason, who are torn away from life by their dreams.”

 The nasty publicity stirred up by the story “The Abyss” upset him.46 People who are always ready to serve the mob began to write various nasty remarks about Andreev, reaching the comical in their slanderous essays. One poet wrote in a Kharkov newspaper that Andreev swam with his bride without a bathing suit.47 Leonid, offended, asked, “What does he think; that I should swim in tails? And by the way, I did not swim either with my bride or solo. I did not swim at all this year because there was nowhere to swim. You know, I have decided to print and hangup on fences a humble request to my readers – a short request: If you come across my ‘Abyss,’ Do me a favour: give it a miss!”

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He was excessively, almost pathologically, attentive to reviews of his stories and always, with sadness or with irritation, complained about the barbarian cruelty of the critics and reviewers. Even in print he once complained about the antagonistic relationship of critics toward him as a person. “There’s no need to do that,” some advised him. “No, I have to, or else in their attempts to correct me, they’ll end up cutting my ears off or scalding me with boiling water.”

 He suffered from hereditary alcoholism; his malady would manifest itself at comparatively rare intervals, but nearly always in a very aggravated form. He fought against it, the struggle cost him enormous efforts, but at times, falling into despair, he scoffed at his efforts. “I will write a story about a person who, since his youth onwards, was afraid for almost twenty-five years to drink a shot of vodka. Because of this he lost a multitude of splendid hours in life, he spoiled his career and died in his prime, after botching an attempt to cut off an ear of corn or getting a splinter in his finger.” And indeed, arriving to see me in Nizhnii, he brought along a manuscript on this subject.

 In Nizhnii, Leonid Nikolaevich met at my house Father Feodor Vladimirskii,48 archpriest of the town of Arzamas, who subsequently became a member of the Second State Duma – a remarkable person. Sometime I will attempt to write his hagiography, but meanwhile I find it necessary to outline briefly the main exploits of his life. The town of Arzamas, almost from the time of Ivan the Terrible,49 drank its water from ponds, in which corpses of drowned rats, cats, chickens, and dogs used to float in the summertime, while in the winter, under the ice, the water became tainted and acquired a nauseating smell. And so Father Feodor set out to supply the town with wholesome water and spent twelve years personally investigating the water tables around Arzamas. Year after year, every summer, he rose at dawn and wandered like a sorcerer about the fields and woods, observing where the ground

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“sweated.” And after long labour he found underground springs, traced their course, dug a ditch, directing it for three versts50 from the city through a forest gully, thereby obtaining more than forty thousand buckets51 of superb spring water for ten thousand residents. He consequently proposed that the town construct a waterline. The city had some capital, bequeathed to it by a merchant to be used for either a waterline or the organization of a credit bank. The merchants and authorities, who employed horses to carry their water in barrels from remote springs outside the town, had no need of a waterline. Using all means to hinder the work of Father Feodor, they tried to get hold of the capital for the establishment of a credit bank; and the poor inhabitants gulped down the tainted water of the ponds, indifferent and passive, in conformity with their immemorial custom. Thus, having discovered clean water, Father Feodor was compelled to carry on a long and tedious struggle with the stubborn selfishness of the rich and the base stupidity of the poor. Arriving in Arzamas under police surveillance, I found him at the end of his work collecting the springs. Exhausted as he was by backbreaking work and misfortune, this man was the first Arzamasian who dared to make my acquaintance. The wise Arzamasian authorities had most strictly forbidden the employees of the Zemstvo and all other civil servants to visit me and, in order to intimidate them, had established a police post just under the windows of my apartment. Father Feodor came to me one evening in a pouring rain, soaking wet from head to toe, soiled with clay, in heavy peasant boots, in a grey cassock and a faded hat – it was so wet that it looked a mound of mud. Pressing my hand tightly with his callused digger’s hands, he said in a stern low voice, “Are you the unrepentant sinner who has been foisted on us for the correction of your soul? Leave it to us – we’ll get you corrected! Could you treat me to tea?” In his grey little beard the dried-up little face of an ascetic was hidden. From his deep sockets shone the meek smile of understanding eyes. “I have stopped by straight from the forest. Do you have anything I could change into?” I had already heard a great deal about him. I knew that his son was a political exile, that one daughter was in prison “for politics,” and that a second daughter was intent on following in her sister’s footsteps. I knew that he had already spent all his means on this search for water, had mortgaged his house, and was now living like a pauper, himself digging

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ditches in the forest and packing sluice gates with clay. When his strength failed he would implore the neighbouring peasants, for the love of Christ, to lend him a hand. They would help him; but the townspeople, sceptically watching the work of this “eccentric” priest, would not lift a finger. It was this man whom Leonid Andreev met at my house. It was October, a dry cold day; the wind was blowing in the streets, scraps of paper, birds’ feathers, and onion peels were flying about. The dust scratched against the windowpanes, a huge rain cloud moved from the fields to the town. Unexpectedly, into our room entered Father Feodor, rubbing his eyes into which dust had flown, shaggy, angry, cursing the thief who had stolen his handbag and umbrella, and the governor-general who refused to understand that a waterline is more useful than a credit bank. Leonid opened his eyes wide and whispered to me, “What is this?” An hour later, at the samovar, with his mouth quite agape, he listened to the archpriest of the absurd town of Arzamas, striking the table with his fist, denouncing the Gnostics for having fought against the democratic principles of the Church and for trying to make the doctrine of the Experience of God inaccessible to the minds of ordinary people. “These heretics consider themselves seekers after the highest knowledge, aristocrats of the spirit. But are not the people, in the persons of their wisest guides, the embodiment of the wisdom of God and His spirit?” “Decetists,” “ophites,” “pleroma,” “Karpocratus”52 – Father Feodor droned on, and Leonid, nudging me with his elbow, whispered, “There is the Arzamasian horror incarnate!”53 But soon he was waving his hand in front of Father Feodor’s face as he argued the impotence of thought; and the priest, shaking his beard, retorted, “It is not thought that is impotent but unbelief.” “But that is the essence of thought.” “You are composing sophisms, Mr Author.” The rain lashed the windowpanes, on the table the samovar gurgled, the old man and the young one rummaged among the ancient wisdom, and from the wall Lev Tolstoi, with the little stick in his hand, the great pilgrim of the world, gazed down on them. After dethroning everything we could, we retired to our rooms long after midnight. I was already in bed, with a book in my hands, when there came a knock at my door and

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Leonid appeared, dishevelled, agitated, his shirt collar undone; he sat down on my bed and began rapturously, “What a priest! How he found me out, eh?” And suddenly tears gleamed in his eyes. “You are lucky, Aleksei, the devil take you. You always have wonderfully interesting people near you, and I – am alone ... or around me swarm ...” He waved his hand. I began telling him of the life of Father Feodor, how he had been prospecting for water, of the book he had written, The History of the Old Testament, the manuscript of which had been confiscated by order of the synod; of his book Love, the Law of Life, also forbidden by the ecclesiastical censorship. In that book Father Feodor marshalled quotations from Pushkin and other poets to argue that the love of one person for another is the basis of the existence and development of the world, and that it was as powerful as the law of universal gravitation and resembled it in every respect. “Yes,” said Leonid thoughtfully, “there are certain things I need to learn; otherwise I feel ashamed before the priest.” Again there was a knock at the door. In came Father Feodor, folding his cassock, barefoot and sad. “You are not asleep? So, well ... Here I am! I heard people talking, I thought I would come and apologize! I shouted at both of you sharply, young people, but do not take offence ... I lay down, thought about you. You are good people, well, I decided that I’d been wrong to get so worked up ... So, here I am, please forgive me! I am going to sleep.” Both of them climbed onto my bed and again began an endless conversation about life. Leonid laughed and became sentimental. “What a country our Russia, eh? ‘But wait – we still did not decide the problem of the existence of God, and you are calling us to dinner?’ It is not Belinskii54 who says this, it is what all Rus’ says to Europe. It’s as though Europe in reality calls us to dine, to feed well, nothing more than this!” And Father Feodor, wrapping his thin, bony legs in his cassock, smilingly objected, “But Europe is our godmother, don’t forget it! Without her Voltaires,55 without her men of science, we should not now be arguing over philosophical matters but should be silently swallowing pancakes and only that!” At dawn Father Feodor excused himself and after about two hours he

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disappeared to fuss over the Arzamas waterline. However, Leonid slept until the evening and then asked me, “Just think, in whose interest and for what purpose is it that a priest who is energetic, interesting, and a clever person should live in this rotten little town? And why, indeed, should precisely the priest of this town be a clever person, eh? What nonsense! You know one can live only in Moscow. Come, leave this place. It is horrid here – rain, mud ...” And right then he began gathering his things to go home. At the railway station he said, “And yet, this priest is an oddity. A funny thing!” He quite often complained that he hardly ever saw significant and original people. “Now you can find them; while I always end up with some kind of burs that stick to my tail everywhere I go. Why is that?” I mentioned people with whom it would be useful to get acquainted; people of high culture or an original mind. I spoke about Vasilii Vasil’evich Rozanov56 and others. It seemed to me that an acquaintance with Rozanov would be extremely useful for Andreev. He was surprised. “I don’t understand you!” He talked about Rozanov’s conservatism, which he need not have done, since he was profoundly indifferent to politics, only now and then displaying fits of superficial curiosity about it. His real attitude to political activities he expressed most sincerely in his story “So It Was – So It Will Be.”57 I tried to prove to him that one can learn from the devil himself or a thief as well as from a saintly recluse, and that study does not mean submission. “This is not quite true,” he replied, “all science represents a submission to facts. And I don’t like Rozanov. He reminds me of the dog in the Bible who returns to his own vomit.”58 Sometimes it seemed as if he avoided personal acquaintance with prominent people because he was afraid of their influence on him. He would meet such a person once or twice. Sometimes he would ardently praise him; but soon he would lose his interest in him and would not seek further meetings with him. So it was with Savva Morozov.59 After the first long conversation with him Leonid Andreev, carried away by the man’s subtle mind, wide knowledge, and energy, called him Ermak Timofeevich60 and said that he

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would play a great political role. “He has the face of a Tartar; but I tell you, brother, he is an English lord!” And Savva Timofeev said of Andreev, “He only appears self-assured; but he does not feel confidence in himself and seeks to obtain it from his reason. But his reason is shaky. He knows that and does not trust it.”

 I write as my memory prompts me, with no care for sequence or for chronology. In the Moscow Art Theatre, when it was still on Karetny Riad, Leonid Nikolaevich introduced me to his fiancée, a slim fragile young lady with lovely clear eyes.61 Modest, reserved, she appeared to me unoriginal; but I soon became convinced that she was a person with an understanding heart. She understood perfectly the need for a maternal, supportive attitude toward Andreev; she immediately and profoundly felt the significance of his talent and the agonizing fluctuations of his moods. She was one of those rare women who, while being passionate mistresses, do not lose the ability to love with a mother’s love. This double love armed her with a subtle instinct, so that she was well able to distinguish between the genuine complaints of his soul and the clanging words of capricious passing moods. As the saying goes, a Russian “for a word witty does neither father nor mother pity.” Leonid Nikolaevich, too, was very much carried away by “words witty” and at times uttered remarks that were in very dubious taste. “After a year of marriage a wife is like a well-worn boot: one doesn’t feel it,” he once said in the presence of Aleksandra Mikhailovna. She was capable of taking no notice of such verbal play and at times even found these pranks of the tongue witty and laughed tenderly. But possessing a high degree of self-respect, she could – if need be – show herself to be very insistent, even immovable. Subtly developed in her was a taste for the music of words, for forms of speech. She was small, lithe, elegant, and at times somewhat amusingly, childishly grave – I nicknamed her Lady Shura. The name stuck to her. Leonid Nikolaevich valued her, and she lived in constant concern for him, all of her power in continuous tension. Her personality was completely sacrificed to her husband’s interests.

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At the Andreev’s house in Moscow literati often gathered; it was very crowded and cozy. Lady Shura’s lovely eyes, smiling tenderly, restrained to a certain extent the “expansiveness” of Russian souls. Feodor Ivanovich Shaliapin62 was often there, fascinating everyone with his stories. When “Modernism” was in full flower, attempts were made to understand it. But on the whole it was condemned, which was much easier to do. There was no time to think seriously of literature; war and politics were of the first importance. Blok, Belyi, Briusov,63 appeared to be “isolated provincials” – in the most favourable opinion, eccentrics; at worst, something like traitors to “the great traditions of Russian public life.” I also thought and felt that. Was it the time for a “Symphony,” when the whole of Rus’ was gloomily making ready to dance the trepak?64 Events were moving toward a catastrophe, the symptoms of its approach were becoming more and more ominous. The SRs [Socialist Revolutionaries] were throwing bombs; and each explosion shook the whole country, calling forth the intense expectation of a fundamental social upheaval. Meetings of the CC [Central Committee] of the Bolshevik faction of the Social Democrats – the Bolsheviks were a faction – were held in Andreev’s apartment, and once the entire Komitet, together with the host, were arrested and carried off to prison. Having spent a month in prison, Leonid Nikolaevich emerged as though from the Pool of Siloam, hearty and cheerful.65 “It does one good to be tied down,” he said, “it makes you want to expand in all directions!” And he laughed at me. “Well now, pessimist. Is not Russia coming to life? And you rhymed, ‘autocracy – gone rusty.’” He then published his stories “The Marseillaise,”66 “The Alarm,”67 “The Story Which Will Never be Finished.”68 But already in October 1905 he read to me the manuscript of his story “So It Was.” “Is it not premature?” I asked. “Good things are always premature,” he answered. Soon he went off to Finland, and he was right in doing so: the senseless brutality of the December events would have crushed him.69 In Finland he was active politically; he spoke at rallies, published bitter attacks on the policy of the Monarchists in Helsingfors newspapers. But his mood was depressed, his outlook hopeless. In St Petersburg I received a letter from him. Among other things he wrote, “Each horse has its inborn peculiarities, nations too. There are horses for which all roads lead back to the tavern: our country has now turned toward its

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favourite heading of all, and once again, for a long time yet, it will live to drink either in the tavern or out on the street.”

 A few months later we met in Switzerland, at Montreux. Leonid jeered at the life of the Swiss. He would say, “We people of broad open plains cannot live in those cockroach crannies.” It appeared to me that he had become somewhat faded, dimmed; a glassy expression of fatigue and of disquieting sadness showed in his eyes. Of Switzerland he spoke as flatly, as superficially, and in the same words as the freedom-loving inhabitants of Chukhlomy, Konotopa, and Tetiush have been wont to speak for as long as anyone can remember.70 One of these defined the Russian notion of freedom profoundly and pointedly with the words, “In our town we live as in a public bath, without restrictions, without ceremony.” About Russia Leonid Nikolaevich spoke reluctantly and tediously; once sitting by the fireplace, he recalled a few lines of Iakubovich’s melancholy poem “To My Homeland”: “Why should we love you, what kind of mother are you to us?”71 “I have written a play, shall we read it?” And in the evening he read Savva.72 While he was still in Russia, hearing about young Ufimtsev73 and his comrades who attempted to blow up the icon of the Virgin of Kursk, Andreev decided to work this episode into a story; immediately he proceeded to create the plan of the story and to outline the characters clearly. He was particularly fascinated by Ufimtsev, a poet of science and technology, a youth who possessed the undoubted talent of an inventor. Exiled to Semirechensk province, I believe to Karkaraly, living there under the strict surveillance of ignorant and superstitious men, without access to tools and materials, he invented an original internal combustion engine, perfected the cyclostyle, worked on a new system of dredging, invented a “permanent cartridge” for hunting rifles. I showed the designs of his engine to engineers in Moscow, and they told me that Ufimtsev’s invention was very practical, ingenious, and clever. I do not know the fate of all these inventions; after settling abroad I lost sight of Ufimtsev. But I knew that this youth was from among those superb dreamers who, carried away by their belief and love, march in different ways to

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one and the same goal – to arouse in their people that sensible energy that creates goodness and beauty. I was sad and upset to see that Andreev had distorted such a character, as yet untouched in Russian literature. It seemed to me that in the way the story had been conceived, that character should have found the appreciation and the tone worthy of him. We had an argument, and perhaps I spoke rather sharply of the necessity of faithfully representing certain – most rare and positive – real phenomena. Like all people with strictly circumscribed egos, with a keen sense of their own identities, Leonid Nikolaevich did not like being contradicted. He took offence and we parted coldly.

 It seems like it was 1907 or 1908 when Andreev arrived on Capri, after burying Lady Shura in Berlin. She died of postnatal fever. The death of this intelligent and dear friend gravely affected Leonid’s psyche. All his thoughts and words centred on recollections of the senselessness of Lady Shura’s death. “You understand,” he said with strangely dilated pupils, “she was still alive as she lay in bed, but already her breath smelt of a corpse. It was a very ironical smell.” Dressed in some kind of black velvet jacket, he seemed outwardly crushed, downtrodden. His thoughts and words were eerily concentrated on the question of death. It so happened that he settled down in the Villa Caraciollo,74 which had belonged to the widow of an artist, a descendant of the marquis Caraciollo, that supporter of the French party who had been executed by Ferdinand, King “Bomba.” The dark rooms of the villa were damp and gloomy; on the walls hung unfinished grimy pictures, reminding one of mildew stains. In one of the rooms was a large smoke-stained fireplace, and in front of the windows, shading them, grew a dense cluster of shrubs. From the walls of the house ivy crept in at the windowpanes. Leonid made this room his dining-room. One evening when I arrived I found him in a chair in front of the fireplace. Dressed in black and bathed in the crimson glow of the smouldering coal, he held on his knees his little son Vadim,75 and in low tones, with sobs, was telling him something. I quietly entered and it seemed to me that the child was falling asleep. I sat down in a chair by the door and

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listened – Leonid was telling his son how Death stalks over the earth and strangles little children. “I’m scared,” Vadim said. “Don’t you want to hear?” “I’m scared,” the boy repeated. “Well, go to bed.” But the child pressed close to his father’s knees and began crying. For a long time we could not manage to comfort him. Leonid was in a hysterical mood; his words irritated the boy, who stamped his feet and cried: “I don’t want to sleep! I don’t want to die!” When his grandmother took him away, I remarked that it was hardly necessary to frighten the boy with stories like that, stories about death, the invincible giant. “And if I cannot speak of anything else?” he said sharply. “I’ve finally grasped how indifferent ‘beautiful Nature’76 is, and I only want one thing – to tear my portrait out of this trite pretty frame.” It was difficult, almost impossible, to speak to him. He was nervous, irritable, and it seemed as though he deliberately rubbed salt in his own wounds. “The idea of suicide haunts me; it seems to me that my shadow crawls after me, whispering, ‘Leave, die!’” This aroused considerable anxiety among his friends; but now and then he would drop his hints that he was consciously and deliberately creating anxiety. It was as though he wished to hear once more what they had to say in justification and defence of life. But the cheerful scenery of the island, the caressing beauty of the sea, and the genial attitude of the Caprians to the Russians very quickly drove away Leonid’s gloomy mood. After about two months he was seized, as by a whirlwind, with a passionate desire for work. I remember one moonlit night, sitting on the rocks by the sea, he said, with a shake of his head, “Basta! Tomorrow morning I will begin to write!” “It’s the best thing you could do.” “Just so!” And cheerfully – he did something he had not done for a long time – he began to tell of his plans for new works. “First of all, brother, I will write a story about the despotism of friendship. I‘ll get even with you yet, you fiend!”

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And instantly he began – easily and quickly – to weave a humorous story of two friends: one a dreamer, the other a mathematician. The one spends his whole life longing to take to the skies, while the other, by carefully calculating the expense of these imaginary travels, decisively kills once and for all the dreams of his friend. But right after that he said: “I want to write about Judas. When I was in Russia I read a poem about him. I do not remember by whom.77 It was very clever. What do you think of Judas?” At that time I had someone’s translation of Julius Wexell’s trilogy Judas and Christ,78 and a translation of Thor Hoedberg’s story,79 also Golovanov’s poem.80 I suggested that he should read them. “I do not want to; I have an idea of my own, and they might muddle me. You had better tell me what they say. No, you had better not tell me.” As was his way in moments of creative excitement, he jumped to his feet – he had to move about. “Let’s go.” On the way he gave me an account of “Judas” and in three days brought me the manuscript.81 With that story began one of the most productive periods of his creative activity. On Capri he thought out his play Black Maskers,82 wrote the caustic satire Love of One’s Neighbour83 and the story “Darkness,”84 created the plan for Sashka Zhegulev,85 sketched out his play Ocean,86 and wrote several chapters – two or three – of his long tale “My Notes,”87 all of this in the course of six months. These serious works and plans did not prevent Leonid Nikolaevich from taking lively part in composing Alas, a play in the spirit of classical folk theatre, written in verse and in prose, with songs, dances, and all kinds of tortures visited on hapless Russian ploughmen. The plot of the play is clearly enough indicated by the dramatis personae: Oppressum: A Merciless landlord. Furiosa: His wife – of the same kind as her husband. Philisterius: Brother to Oppresum, a prose litterateur. Decadentius: Unsuccessful son to Oppressum. Endurance: A peasant, very unhappy, but not always drunk. Griefella: Endurance’s beloved wife, full of meekness and common sense, although pregnant. Sufferella: Endurance’s beautiful daughter.

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Smackface: A most horrible police constable. Bathes in full uniform and all his medals. Smooth: An unmistakable village policeman, but, in fact, the noble Count Edmond de Ptie. Mortia Smallbell: Secretly married to the Count, the Spanish Marchioness Donna Carmen Intolerablia Detestablia, in fact disguised as a Spanish gypsy. The shade of the Russian literary critic Skabichevskii. The shade of Kaklits-Uzov. Athanasius Schapov: In a perfectly sober state. “We told you so”: A group of persons without words or actions. The play takes place in “Light-blue Mud,” Opressum’s estate, twice mortgaged to the Noblemen’s Bank and once mortgaged somewhere else.

A whole act of the play was written, saturated with delightful absurdities. Andreev wrote the prose dialogue, which was terribly funny, so droll indeed that he himself laughed like a child at his own inventions. Never before or since did I see him in such a mood – such a high degree of activity, so unusually industrious. He renounced, as it were forever, his dislike of the process of writing; he could sit at his table all day and all night, half-dressed, unkempt, cheerful. His imagination blazed wonderfully bright and productive; nearly every day he told me the plan of a new tale or story. “Now at last I have taken myself in hand,” he would say triumphantly. He inquired about the famous pirate Barbarossa,88 about Tommaso Aniello,89 about smugglers, carbonari, about the life of Calabrian shepherds. “What a multitude of subjects, what a diversity of life!” He was in raptures. “Yes, these people have accumulated something for posterity. But with us: I picked up one day The Lives of the Russian Tsars and read that they ate. I began to read The History of the Russian People – they suffered.90 I gave it up. It is offensive and boring.” But, while the plans he related were full of colour and substance, he composed carelessly. The first version of his “Judas” contained several mistakes that indicated that he had not even bothered to read the New Testament. When he was told that Duke Spadaro91 sounds as absurd to an Italian as Prince Bashmachnikov would to a Russian,

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and that St Bernard dogs did not exist in the twelfth century, he was annoyed. “These are trifles!” he objected. “One cannot say ‘They drink wine like camels’ without adding ‘drink water.’” “Nonsense!” he said. He behaved toward his talent the way a careless rider treats a superb horse; he galloped upon it mercilessly but did not love it, did not look after it. His hand had not the time to draw the intricate designs of his riotous imagination; he did not trouble to develop the power and dexterity of his hand. At moments he realized that this was a great hindrance to the normal growth of his talent. “My language is ossifying. I feel it is getting more difficult for me to find the right words.” He tried to hypnotize the reader with the monotony of his phrasing, but his phrasing was losing the convincing quality of beauty. Wrapping his thoughts in the wadding of monotonously dark words, he only succeeded in revealing too much of it, and his stories read like popular dialogues on philosophical subjects. Now and then, aware of this, he was vexed. “It is all cobweb, it sticks, but is not solid! Yes, I must read Flaubert.92 I believe you are right. Indeed he is a descendant of those masonry geniuses who built the indestructible temples of the Middle Ages.”

 On Capri Leonid was told an episode of which he made use for his story “Darkness.” The hero of that episode was an old acquaintance of mine, a revolutionary.93 In reality the affair was very simple. A girl at a brothel, having guessed intuitively that her “guest” was a revolutionary, hunted by detectives and driven to take shelter there from the pursuit of the political police, treated him with a mother’s tender care and with the tact of a woman entirely capable of feeling respect for a hero. But the hero, a bookish man clumsy in emotional matters, responded to this impulse of the woman’s heart with a sermon on morality, thus reminding her of what she wanted just then to forget. Hurt by this, she slapped him on the cheek – just what he deserved in my opinion. Then, having realized the

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whole crudity of his mistake, he apologized to her and kissed her hand – I think he might have omitted the kissing. That is all. Sometimes, unfortunately very seldom, reality happens to be more truthful and more beautiful than even a very talented story that is based on it. So it was in this case. But Leonid distorted both the meaning and the form of the event out of all recognition. In the actual brothel there was neither the agonizing and foul mockery nor any of those gruesome details with which Andreev so richly embellished the story. This distortion affected me very painfully. Leonid, as it were, revoked and annulled a celebration that I had long and hungrily been awaiting. I know people too well not to appreciate very highly the least manifestation of a good, honest feeling. Certainly I could not help pointing out to Andreev the meaning of his action, which to me was equivalent to committing murder on a mere whim, a wicked whim. He reminded me of the freedom of the artist, but this did not change my attitude; even now I am not convinced that such rare manifestations of ideally human feelings should be arbitrarily distorted by the artist, in the interest of his favourite dogma. We talked long on this theme. But although our conversation was perfectly peaceful and friendly, still, from that moment something had snapped between me and Andreev. The end of that conversation is very memorable for me: “What do you want?” I asked Leonid. “I don’t know,” he said shrugging his shoulders and closing his eyes. “But you certainly have some desire; either it is always there before all others, or it arises more often than all others.” “I don’t know,” he repeated. “It seems that there is nothing of the sort. Sometimes, though, I feel I need fame, much fame, as much as the whole world could give. Then I concentrate it in myself, condense it to its ultimate capacity, and when it has acquired the force of explosive matter, I explode, illuminating the world with some kind of new light. And after that people will begin to live by a new kind of reason. You see, what we need is a new intellect, not this lying old swindler! He takes from me all the best of my flesh, all my feelings, and promising to return them with interest, returns nothing, saying, ‘Tomorrow! Evolution,’ he says. Then when my patience is exhausted and the thirst for life

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stifles me, ‘Revolution,’ he says, the dirty liar. And I die, having received nothing.” “You need belief, not intellect.” “Perhaps. But if so, then first of all belief in myself.” He darted about the room in agitation; then sitting down on the table, waving his hand in front of my face, he went on, “I know that God and the Devil are mere symbols. But it seems to me that the entire life of people, all the meaning of it, consists in expanding these symbols, infinitely and boundlessly, feeding them with the flesh and blood of the world. And having invested these two opposite principles with all his powers – to the very last – mankind will disappear, but those two will become carnal realities and will go on living in the emptiness of the universe, face to face with one another, invincible, immortal. Is there no sense in this? But there is none anywhere in anything.” He grew pale, his lips trembled, stark horror shone in his eyes. Then he added in a low voice, feebly, “Let us imagine the Devil as a woman, God as a man, and let them beget a new being, certainly just as dual as you and I. Just as dual.”

 He left Capri unexpectedly. Only the day before, he had said that he would sit down at his table and work for three months. But the evening of the very same day he said to me, “You know, I have decided to leave this place. After all one must live in Russia. Here one is overcome by a kind of operatic levity; one wants to write vaudevilles, vaudevilles with songs. Life simply is not real here, it is an opera: there is more singing here than thinking. Romeo, Othello, and the rest of their kind – Shakespeare made them; the Italians are incapable of tragedy. Here neither Byron94 nor Poe95 could have been born. “And what about Leopardi?”96 Well, Leopardi, who knows him? He is one of those who are talked about, but not read.” As he left, he said to me, “This, my dear Aleksei, is also an Arzamas, a happy little Arzamas, no more than that.” “Don’t you remember how it used to delight you?” “Before marriage we are all delighted. You will be leaving here soon?

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Do leave this place, it’s time you went. You’re beginning to resemble a monk.”

 While living in Italy, I was very uneasy on account of Russia. As early as 1911, people around me spoke confidently of the inevitability of an allEuropean war and of the certainty that this war would be devastating for the Russians. My uneasy mood was particularly heightened by facts that indicated beyond all doubt that in the spiritual world of the great Russian people there lurked something terribly dark and forbidding. Reading the volume on agrarian disorders in the great Russian provinces published by the Free Economic Society, I saw that those riots were particularly brutal and senseless in nature.97 An investigation of the crimes of the Moscow court district’s inhabitants, based on an examination of the reports of the Moscow High Court, astounded me with its revelation that the trend of criminal intent, in a great number of cases, was toward violence against individuals, molestation of women, and corruption of minors. Even before then I had been unpleasantly struck by the fact that, though in the Second State Duma there had been a considerable number of priests, men of the purest Russian blood, these men had not produced a single talent, a single solid statesman. And there was a great deal more that confirmed my anxiously sceptical attitude toward the fate of the Russian race. On my arrival in Finland I met Andreev and related to him my unhappy thoughts.98 He refuted me hotly, almost as if personally affronted. But his arguments seemed to me unconvincing – he had no facts. Suddenly lowering his voice, with his eyes screwed up as though straining to look into the future, he began to talk of the Russian people in words unusual for him – abruptly, incoherently, and with great and undoubtedly sincere conviction. I am unable, and even if I could I would not like, to reproduce his words. Their force consisted not in their logic nor in their beauty, but in a feeling of tormented sympathy for the people, a feeling of which, in such force and in such expression, I had not thought Leonid Nikolaevich capable.

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He shook all over with nervous tension; and sobbing like a woman, almost wailing, he shouted at me, “You call Russian literature provincial because the majority of the great Russian writers are men of the Moscow province? Good, let us suppose so. But even so, it is world literature, it is the most serious and powerful creative activity of Europe. The genius of Dostoevskii99 alone is enough in itself to justify the senseless, even the out and out criminal life of millions of people. And suppose the nation is spiritually sick – let us heal it and remember, as has been said, ‘a pearl grows only in a diseased shell.’” “And the beauty of the beast?” I asked. “And the beauty of human endurance, of mildness and love?” he replied. And he went on to speak of the people, of literature, more and more ardently and passionately. It was the first time he had spoken so passionately, so lyrically. Previously I had heard him express such love only for talents congenial to his own spirit – for Edgar Poe most frequently of all. Soon after our conversation this filthy war broke out. Our attitudes toward it drove Andreev and me still further apart. We scarcely met. It was only in 1916, when he brought me his books, that we both once more deeply felt how much we had gone through and what old comrades we were. But, to avoid arguing, we could speak only of the past; the present erected between us a high wall of irreconcilable differences. I shall not be violating the truth if I say that to me that wall was transparent and permeable. I saw behind it a prominent original man who for ten years had been very near to me, my sole friend in literary circles. Differences of outlook ought not to affect sympathies; I never gave theories and opinions a decisive role in my relations with people. Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev felt otherwise. But I do not blame him for this; for he was what he wished to be and what he was capable of being – a man of rare originality, rare talent, and quiet courageous in his quest for truth.

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notes 1 A Moscow daily newspaper published from 1897 to 1904. 2 First published in Courier, no. 94 (5 April 1898). It is actually entitled “Bargamot and Garas’ka.” 3 Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol’ (1809–1852) published “The Overcoat” in 1842. 4 Gor’kii added this footnote: “It is highly probable that now I do not perceive events the way I did then, and my old perceptions are not as interesting to recall.” 5 Nikolai Gerasimovich Pomialovskii (1833–1863), author. 6 Andreev wrote a column, “Moscow: Trifles of Life,” for Courier under the pseudonym of James Lynch. 7 Gor’kii has made a mistake about the time of year. Their first meeting was on 12 March 1900. 8 Nizhnii Novgorod. 9 One pood is equal to 16.38 kilograms. 10 This is not an exact quote from Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin’s “A Feast in the Time of a Plague” (1830). 11 The Iliad was written by Homer around 800 bc. 12 A play by Aleksandr Sergeevich Griboedov (1795–1829), published between 1822 and 1824. 13 Vasilii Andreevich Evtushevskii (1836–1888), mathematician and pedagogue. His textbook was first published in 1871 and went through seventy-six editions until 1916. 14 A historical novel by Pushkin published in 1836. 15 Tverskoi Boulevard is the main street running through central Moscow down to Red Square. 16 The main character in Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s 1605 novel of the same name. 17 In this paragraph Gor’kii is quoting from a play by Andreev entitled The Monument published as a comedy in one act in the Monthly Journal for Everyone, no. 1 (January 1917). 18 Aleksei Ostroumov, Sinesius, The Bishop of Ptolemais (Moscow, 1879). 19 Aleksandr Ivanovich Apollov (1864–1893) was a priest with a parish in the Stavropol region. He conducted scientific experiments in the area on soil fertility and eventually rejected the Orthodox church and gave up his position. Apollov sent a copy of his Confession to Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoi (1828–1910) and in this way the two became acquainted. It has been suggested that Andreev’s “Life of Vasilii Fiveiskii,” (Knowledge Almanac for 1903, book 1 (St Petersburg: Knowledge, 1904), was influenced by Gor’kii’s story about Apollov.

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20 Within the first paragraph of “The Life of Vasilii Fiveiskii” is the sentence: “Among men he stood alone, like a planet among planets, and a peculiar atmosphere, baneful and blighting, seemed to enshroud him like an invisible, diaphanous cloud.” 21 Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805), German composer. 22 Ecclesiastes 9:4; “For to him that is joined to all living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion.” 23 Among many other operettas, Charles Lecocq (1832–1918) wrote Les cent vierges (1872) in which a Green Island figures; hence, presumably, the Russian title. 24 Skitalets was the pseudonym of Stepan Gavrilovich Petrov (1868–1941), poet and author. 25 Robert Burns (1759–1796), Scottish poet. 26 This is a quote from Pushkin’s “Conversations of a Bookseller with a Poet” (1825). 27 The History of Napoleon’s Captivity on the Island of St Helena. Compiled by Count Tristan Montholon, the Former General Aide-de-camp of the Emperor Napoleon and his Companion on the Island of St Helena. Translation by Nikolai Polevoi (St Petersburg, 1846). 28 This feuilleton appeared in Courier, no. 360 (30 December 1901). 29 Emile Zola (1840–1902), French author. Zola died of accidental asphyxiation after inhaling fumes from a blocked chimney. The feuilleton appeared in Andreev’s Moscow: Trifles of Life in Courier, no. 269 (29 September 1902). 30 Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893), French author. 31 Exedous 20:4; “Thou shall not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” 32 Ecclesiasties 1:2; “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” 33 Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), Dutch painter and engraver. 34 This is probably a book by Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909), Genius and Madness: Parallels between Great and Mad People, which was published in several editions in St Petersburg. 35 Gor’kii uses the following words, which in Russian all end in an “a” sound: fish, grave, fate, yoke, Riga. 36 A Symbolist journal, which was published in Moscow from 1904 to 1909. Andreev never published in The Scales. 37 Konstantin Dmitrievich Bal’mont (1867–1942), poet. 38 A Moscow publishing house (1900–16), which published the journal Scales (1904–09), works by Russian Symbolists, contemporary western European literature, the almanac Northern Flowers (1904–1911), and albums of art.

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39 Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), German philosopher known for his philosophy of Pessimism. His major work was The World as Will and Representation (1819–44). Andreev was greatly influenced by Schopenhauer’s philosophy, which he read as a young man while still at the gymnasium. 40 The Decameron was written by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) in 1350. It is a collection of one hundred stories written in the wake of the Black Death. 41 Mikhail Petrovich Artsybashev (1878–1927), author. 42 Sergei Gennadievich Nechaev (1847–1882), terrorist and organizer of the People’s Reprisal revolutionary group. 43 “The Thought” was first published in World of God, no. 7 (1902). Aleksei Savelov is one of the main characters in the story. 44 First published in Courier, no. 244 (4 September 1901). 45 First published in the journal Truth, no. 11 (1904). 46 “The Abyss” was first published in Courier, no. 10 (10 January 1902). This story, along with “In the Fog,” caused S.A. Tolstaia to write a letter to the editor of New Times, no. 9,673 (7 February 1903) accusing Andreev of concentrating on the basest points of human frailty and corrupting the minds of Russia’s youth. This letter by Tolstaia generated more letters to the editor both defending and attacking Andreev and his stories. 47 L. Dobrokhotov, “The Talent of Leonid Andreev. Letter to the Editor,” Khar’kov Sheet, no. 835 (30 August 1902). 48 Feodor Ivanovich Vladimirskii (1843–1937). 49 Ivan IV Vasil’evich “The Terrible” (1530–1584) became the first Russian tsar in 1547. 50 A verst is approximately two-thirds of a mile. 51 As a liquid measure, the Russian “bucket” is equal to twenty-one pints, or 2.625 gallons; Father Feodor’s water supply was thus more than 105,000 gallons. 52 “Decetists,” “ophites,” “pleroma,” are various Gnostic sects and Karpocratus was a Gnostic spiritual leader from Alexandria in the first half of the second century. 53 Here Andreev is making a joking reference to a famous episode in which Tolstoi may have had an anxiety attack near the town of Arzamas. 54 Vissarion Grigor’evich Belinskii (1811–1848), literary critic. This is in reference to a famous vignette, recorded by Ivan Turgenev (1818–1883), about an occasion when he and Belinskii were summoned to dinner by Belinskii’s wife; the critic objected to being interrupted for a meal when the two still had not settled the question of God’s existence. 55 Voltaire, pseudonym of Marie François Arouet (1694–1778), French author, philosopher, and historian. 56 Vasilii Vasil’evich Rozanov (1856–1919), philosopher, public affairs writer, and critic.

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57 “So It Was” was first published in the Torches almanac, book 1, St Petersburg (1906). 58 Proverbs 26:11; “As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.” 59 Savva Timofeevich Morozov (1862–1905), who came from a rich merchant family; Morozov was instrumental in supporting the arts at the turn of the century. 60 Ermak Timofeevich (? – 1585), Kazak ataman who led an expedition through Siberia and claimed the area for Russia. 61 This is in reference to Aleksandra Mikhailovna Veligorskaia (1881–1906), Andreev’s first wife. Shura, part of Gor’kii’s nickname for her, is a diminutive of Aleksandra. 62 Feodor Ivanovich Shaliapin (1873–1938), opera singer and member of the Wednesday literary circle. 63 Valerii Iakovlevich Briusov (1873–1924), poet, playwright, critic, translator, and author. 64 A reference to Andrei Belyi’s cycles of poetry that he called “Symphonies.” The trepak is a dance in quick duple meter of Cossack origin. 65 It was in the Pool of Siloam that Christ healed a blind man. John 9:6–7; “When he has thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, and said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went this way therefore, and washed and came seeing.” 66 First published in the Nizhegorodskii Collection (St Petersburg: Knowledge, 1905). 67 First published in the Nizhegorodskii Sheet, no. 322 (24 November 1901), and in Courier, no. 325 (24 November 1901). 68 First published in Morning of Russia, no. 1 (16 September 1906). 69 The depression of 1900–03, bad harvests, military defeat during the RussoJapanese war, V. Pleve’s assassination in 1904, and much more contributed to the political unrest sparked by “Bloody Sunday” (9 January 1905), when factory workers peacefully marched to the Winter Palace to petition Tsar Nicholas II to end the war and were fired upon by troops. This event galvanized the Russian people against the autocracy and in May and June strikes broke out as well as a mutiny on the battle cruiser Potemkin. In July there was peasant disorder and the government was forced to concede after the general strike of 19 September. On 17 October the tsar’s October Manifesto promised a constitution, civil liberties, and a national parliament (Duma) elected by a broad suffrage, without whose consent no bill was to become law. The two months after the October Manifesto were the most disorderly of 1905, in which censorship restrictions were ignored, rural violence reached a peak,

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naval mutinies broke out, and, in November, postal and telegraph workers went on strike, touching off new railroad strikes. In December the Moscow Soviet led a week-long armed workers’ rebellion, which was eventually repressed by government troops. The end of the Russo-Japanese war, suppression of naval mutinies, timely political and economic concessions, a lack of coordinated rebellion on the side of the revolutionaries, and a large scale loan from France led to a restoration of order. Gor’kii is referring to remote areas and peoples within Imperial Russia. Petr Filippovich Iakubovich-Mel’shin (1860–1911) published “To My Homeland” in 1890. First published in the Knowledge Almanac for 1906, book 11 (St Petersburg: Knowledge, 1906). Anitolii Georgievich Ufimtsev (1880–1936), revolutionary. Niccolo Caraciollo was an artist from Capri. Ferdinand II (1810–1859), King of Sicily, was called “the Bomb” for his attack on Messina in 1849 during Sicily’s rebellion against the monarchy. Vadim Leonidovich Andreev (1902–1976), eldest child from L.N. Andreev’s marriage to Aleksandra Mikhailovna; poet and author This is in reference to Pushkin’s poem “I Wander along the Noisy Street” (1829). In a footnote Gor’kii adds: “By A. Roslovlev.” Aleksandr Stepanovich Roslavlev’s (1883–1920) “Judas” was published in the journal Education, no. 8 (1907). The Finnish writer Joseph Julius Wexell (1838–1907) did not write such a work. Gor’kii is speaking about a dramatic poem in four parts, Jesus (1906), by the German writer Karl Weiser (1848–1913). Thor Hoedberg (1862–1931), Swedish author, published Judas in 1886. A Russian translation was published in 1908. Nikolai Nikolaevich Golovanov (1867–1938), playwright, translator and publisher. He published his play in verse called Iscariot in 1905. “Judas Iscariot and Others” was first published in the Knowledge Almanac for 1907, book 16 (St Petersburg: Knowledge, 1907). First published in the Sweetbriar Almanac, book 7 (St Petersburg: Sweetbriar, 1908). First published in Contemporary World, no. 11 (1908). First published in the Sweetbriar Almanac, book 3 (St Petersburg: Sweetbriar, 1907). First published in the Sweetbriar Almanac, book 16 (1911). Ocean (St. Petersburg: Prometheus, 1911). First published in the Sweetbriar Almanac, book 6 (St Petersburg: Sweetbriar, 1908).

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88 Barbarossa (1473–1518), corsair of the Mediterranean sea. 89 Tommaso Aniello (Masaniello), 1620–1647, Neapolitan revolutionary who led a revolt against the Spanish rulers of Naples. 90 This reference is to Ivan Egorovich Zabelin (1820–1909), The Domestic Life of the Russian People in the 16th and 17th centuries, vol. 1, Moscow, 1862; vol. 2, Moscow, 1869; Nikolai Alekseevich Polevoi (1796–1846), History of the Russian People published from 1829 to 1833 in six volumes. 91 This is a character in Andreev’s Black Maskers. 92 Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880), French author. 93 Pinkhus (Petr) Moiseevich Rutenberg (1878–1942), terrorist and engineer. 94 George Noel Gordon (Byron), 1788–1824, English poet. 95 Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), American author and critic. 96 Giacomo Leopardi (1798–1837), Italian poet. 97 Gor’kii is speaking about the book The Agrarian Movement in Russia 1905–1908 (St Petersburg, 1908). 98 This meeting took place in the summer of 1914. 99 Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevskii (1821–1881), author. Anisimov, Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vol. 72, 397–9. Gor’kii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 16, 591–600.

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Kornei Chukovskii

H

e loved the enormous. On the enormous desk in his enormous study there stood an enormous ink-well. But there was no ink in it. It was pointless trying to dip the enormous pen into it. The ink had dried up. “I haven’t been writing for three months now,” Andreev said. “The only thing I read is The Helmsman ...” The Helmsman was a sailing magazine.1 There at the end of the table lay the latest issue with a drawing of a yacht on the cover. Andreev walked about his enormous study talking boats and boating: topgallant sails, anchors, sails. Today he is a sailor, a sea-wolf. He even walks like a sailor. Instead of a cigarette he smokes a pipe. He has shaved off his moustache, his shirt is open at the neck like a sailor’s. His face is tanned. A pair of sea binoculars is hanging from a nail. You try talking about something else. He only listens out of politeness. “Tomorrow morning we’ll take Savva, but for now ...” Savva is his motorboat. He talks about accidents, submerged rocks and shoals. Night. Four o’clock. You sit listening on the divan while he paces and delivers monologues. He always delivers monologues. His speech is rhythmical and flowing. Every so often he stops, pours himself a glass of strong cold black tea, knocks it back in one go, like a glass of vodka, feverishly swallows a

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caramel and carries on talking, talking ... He talks about God, about death, about all sailors believing in God and how, surrounded by abysses, they feel the closeness of death throughout their lives; contemplating the stars every night, they become poets and sages. If they could express what they feel while on watch somewhere in the Indian Ocean beneath the enormous stars, they would eclipse Shakespeare and Kant.2 But at last he grows tired. His monologue is interrupted by long pauses. His pacing grows listless. It is half past five. He drinks another couple of glasses, picks up a candle, and goes to bed. “Tomorrow we’ll take Savva out.” A bed has been made for you nearby, in the tower. You lie down but cannot fall asleep. You think to yourself: “How tired he must be! After all, tonight he covered at least twelve miles walking about his study, and if what he said tonight had been written down, it would make a sizeable book. What a crazy waste of energy!” In the morning we put out to sea in the launch Khamoidol. Where on earth did Andreev get that Norwegian fisherman’s leather hat from? I had seen hats like that only in pictures in the magazine Around the World.3 And those high waterproof boots, just like the ones pirates wear in films? Give him a harpoon and he would make a wonderful Jack London4 whaler. We reach the yacht. There is the gardener, Stepanych, made up as the boatswain.5 We sail about the Gulf of Finland until late in the evening, and I cannot stop admiring this brilliant actor who for twenty-four hours has been playing such a new and difficult role, playing to himself, without an audience. How he fills his pipe, how he spits, how he looks at his toy compass! He sees himself as the captain of an ocean liner. Standing with his powerful legs set wide apart, he looks intently and silently into the distance; he barks out his staccato commands. Not a word to the passengers: since when does the captain of an ocean liner talk to his passengers! In this game there was much that was charming, a childish simpleheartedness. Only very talented people – only poets – are able to be such children. It is easy to imagine Pushkin’s Mozart playing with wooden horses. Salieri was untalented precisely because he was incapable of playing. When a child makes himself a railroad out of chairs, only a miserable dullard would tell him that those are not train cars. The great charm of Andreev was that no matter what game he was playing – and he was always playing some game – he sincerely believed in it and invested himself fully in it, without holding anything back.



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When you came to visit him again a few months later, you found he had become a painter. His hair was long and flowing, his beard short like an aesthete’s. He was wearing a black velvet jacket. His study had been transformed into a studio. He was as prolific as Rubens,6 not putting his brushes down all day. You go from room to room, he shows you his golden, greenish-yellow pictures. Here is a scene from The Life of Man.7 Here is a portrait of Ivan Belousov.8 Here is a large Byzantine icon, naively sacrilegious, depicting Judas Iscariot and Christ.9 They look like twins and share a halo over their heads. All night long he walks about his enormous study talking about Valesquez,10 Dürer,11 Vrubel.12 You sit on the couch and listen. Suddenly he screws up one eye, steps back, appraises you like an artist, then calls his wife and says, “Anya, just look at that chiaroscuro!” You try talking about something else, but he only listens out of politeness. Tomorrow is the opening of an exhibition at the Academy of Arts, yesterday Repin13 came to visit him, the day after tomorrow he is going to see Gallen-Kallela.14 You want to ask, “What about your yacht?” But the family signals you not to ask. Once he is caught up in something, Andreev can only talk about that one thing, all his previous enthusiasms become hateful to him. He does not like to be reminded of them. When he is playing an artist, he forgets his previous role as a sailor; in general he never returns to his previous roles, however brilliantly he had played them. And then there is the colour photography. It was as if he himself was an entire factory, working ceaselessly in shifts, preparing all those masses of large and small photographs that were stacked up in his study, contained in special boxes and chests, overflowing on every table, mounted on the window panes. There was no corner in his dacha that he had not photographed several times over. Some photographs were extremely successful, for instance spring landscapes. It was hard to believe that they were photographs at all, so suffused were they with elegiac musicality, reminding one of Levitan.15 In the course of a month he made thousands of photographs, as if fulfilling some colossal order, and when you visited him he made you look through all those thousands, sincerely convinced that for you, too, they were a source of bliss. He could not imagine that there might be people who could find his plates uninteresting. It was touching to hear him trying to persuade everyone to buy a colour photograph. At night, pacing up and down his enormous study, he would deliver

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monologues on the great Lumière who had invented colour photography, on sulfuric acid and potash ...16 You sat on the couch and listened.

 Every one of his enthusiasms turned into a temporary mania that absorbed him totally. A whole period of his life was coloured by his love for gramophones – not just love but mad passion. It was as if he had fallen ill with gramophones, and it took several months for him to be cured of his illness. However trivial the object of his current obsession may have been, he would blow it up to colossal dimensions. I remember how in Kuokkala17 he became interested in a game, gorodki.18 “We can’t play anymore,” his exhausted partners said. “It’s so dark, you can’t see anything!” “Light the lanterns,” he shouted. “We’ll play by the light of the lanterns.” “But we’ll smash the lanterns.” “No big loss.” The very first throw of the stick struck the lantern and not the pegs. The lantern was shattered but Andreev shouted, “Come on, light another one!” This lack of moderation was his chief characteristic. He was drawn to everything colossal. The fireplace in his study was the size of a gateway, while the study itself was like a square. His house in Vammelsuu towered over all the other houses: every beam weighed over a ton, the foundations were cyclopean blocks of granite. Shortly before the war, I remembered him showing me the plan of a huge building. “What’s this building?” I asked. “It’s not a building, it’s a desk,” Andreev replied. It turned out that he had commissioned the design for a multistoried desk from an architect: an ordinary desk was too confining for him. This penchant for the enormous, the magnificent, the splendid revealed itself at every turn. The hyperbolic style of his books was matched by the hyperbolic style of his life. It was not for nothing that Repin called him “Duke Lorenzo.”19 He should have lived in a gilded castle and walked about on luxurious carpets attended by a brilliant entourage. That would have suited him, it was as if he had been born to it. How majestically he appeared before his guests on the broad ceremonial staircase leading from

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the study to the dining-room! If music had struck-up somewhere at that moment, it would not have seemed out of place. He wrote letters on luxurious paper; the handwriting was generous and powerful, as would befit manifestos and not letters – and in such a grand, elevated, and sumptuously ornamental style, in which every phrase was hung with clusters of magnificent periods. His house was always full of people: guests, relatives, a large staff of servants, and children, lots of children, both his and others’ – his temperament required expansiveness and abundance. There are people who are created as if for crampedness and poverty – it is hard to imagine Dostoevskii as a degenerate. This would be an unnatural deformity. For Leonid Andreev it was quite organic to be a person of great influence. In every one of his gestures there was an aristocrat. His handsome, firmly chiselled, decorative face, his well-proportioned, slightly heavy figure, his imposing light step – it was all in harmony with the role of a majestic duke, which he played so brilliantly towards the end. That was his crowning role; he merged with it organically. He was one of those talented, ambitious, pompous people who long to be the captain on every ship and the bishop in every cathedral. He could not bear to play supporting roles in anything; even in a game of skittles, he wanted to be the one and only. He was born to walk at the head of a magnificent procession, lit by torches, and with bells ringing.

 His enormous fireplace consumed an incredible amount of firewood and all the same this office was so brutally cold it was terrible to enter. The bricks of the massive fireplace pressed so heavily on the thousand-pound beams that the ceiling collapsed and one was not allowed to eat in the dining-room. A gigantic plumbing pump that delivered water from the Black River broke down – it seems in the first months – and thereafter stuck out like a rusted skeleton, as if boasting of its uselessness, until it was sold for scrap. Winter life in the Finnish countryside is sterile, uncomfortable, and dead – snow, silence; even the wolves do not howl. The Finnish countryside is not for dukes. In general, this lavish life seemed sometimes like a stage set. It seemed that offstage lurked something else. “Do you think this is granite?” a drunken writer said to me, standing

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before the facade of Andreev’s home. “Do you believe it, this is not granite but cardboard. Blow on it and it will fall apart.” But no matter how much the drunken writer blew, the granite refused to fall apart. And yet the words of this drunken writer nevertheless contained an element of truth. Indeed, in everything that surrounded and reflected Andreev there was something decorative, theatrical. The whole decor of his house sometimes seemed to have come from the property department; and the house itself, in the Norwegian style, with a tower, seemed to be the invention of a talented director. Andreev’s costumes suited him like those of an operatic tenor – the costumes of an artist, a sportsman, a sailor. He wore them as actors wear their costumes on stage.

 I do not know why every time, as I was leaving Andreev’s, I experienced not delight but pity. It seemed to me that someone was victimizing him. Why was he thrashing about in the Gulf of Finland, if he could take on an entire ocean? How could he waste such an outsized soul on gramophones? Yesterday he spoke about war the entire night. For eight straight hours he paced about his office and declaimed a fantastic monologue about zeppelins, amphibious landings, and bloody Austrian fields. Why did he not go there himself? Why did he sit alone in a wasteland, seeing nothing, knowing nothing, and speaking into a vacuum, before neighbours who happened to drop in on him? If he only used the energy he wasted on pacing his office by night (or even half of it) for something else, he would be the world’s greatest traveller. He would traverse the entire world; he would eclipse Livingstone and Stanley.20 His energetic mind thirsted for uninterrupted work. This unstoppable mill demanded for its millstones an endless supply of grist, but there was almost none, there were no new impressions – and so the enormous millstones spun and roared with furious, useless energy, grinding out not flour but only dust. For that matter, where was he supposed to find that new grist? In his Finland, Andreev lived as if in a wasteland. You left for some place in a distant land, flew on airplanes, fought in battles, and returning home you saw with amazement that all this time he has continued – pacing about his office, carrying on the monologue he began almost a year ago. And his enormous office seems on this evening very small and his speech is provincial. Is it not sad that an artist so sensitive, with such sharp, eager, and perceptive eyes, should have nothing to see except snow – sitting

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inside four walls and listening to the wind howl? While his favourite authors, Kipling,21 London, and Wells,22 travelled the length and breadth of four continents, he lived in a void, in a wasteland, without any external materials for his art. One must be astonished at his creative powers, which even in this void did not run dry. Leonid Andreev threw himself into his writing with the same excessive determination with which he did everything else, to the point of utter exhaustion. There were months when he did not write a thing and then suddenly with unbelievable rapidity he dictated an enormous tragedy or story in only a couple of nights. He would pace about the carpet, drinking black tea and declaiming with clipped diction. The typewriter would click madly away, barely keeping up with him. The rhetorical periods that he dictated were subordinated to a musical rhythm that bore him along, like a wave. This rhythm, which was nearly metrical, accompanied everything he wrote, even letters. He did not simply write his things: he was engulfed by them as though by fire. He became a maniac for a time. He saw nothing except the work; however minor it may have been, he imparted to it a grandiose size, saturating it with gigantic images, for both in his literary works and in his life he was excessive. It was no wonder that his favourite words in his books were “enormous,” “extraordinary,” “monstrous.” Every theme became for him colossal, much larger than himself, and obscured for him the entire universe. Strikingly, when he created his Leizer, the Jew from the play Anathema,23 even in personal conversations, during tea, he unintentionally slipped into biblical intonations. He became himself a Jew for a time. When he wrote Sashka Zhegulev, in his voice was heard the devil-maycare notes of the Volga. He involuntarily took on the voices and gestures of the characters in his works, their whole emotional tone, and was transformed into them, like an actor. I remember one evening he surprised me with his rollicking merriness. It turned out that he had just created the Gypsy, a bold inhabitant of Orel, for his story “The Seven Who Were Hanged.”24 Depicting the Gypsy, Andreev turned into him and by inertia remained the Gypsy until morning – by words, intonations, and gestures. He made himself into Duke Lorenzo when he wrote his Black Maskers and a sailor when he wrote The Ocean. That is why there are so many contradictory opinions of him. Some said he was arrogant, others that he wore his heart on his sleeve. One commentator might find him in the role of “Savva” when he visited him. Another might come across a student from the comedy Days of Our

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Life25; yet another – the pirate Khorre.26 And each of them thought this was Andreev. They forgot that before them was an artist who wore dozens of masks, who sincerely and with total conviction considered that every one of his masks was his own face. There were many Andreevs, and every one was genuine.

 I did not like a few of the Andreevs, but the one who was a Moscow student appealed to me. He would suddenly become boyishly mischievous and jolly, would bubble over with jokes, often bad ones, but nice in a homely way, would compose clumsy verses. In one of those mischievous moments, he decided to have some fun with the Moscow writer T., who was uncommonly polite, and called him at dawn on the phone. “Who is this?” asked the polite writer not completely awake. “Boborykin,”27 answered Andreev. “Is that you, Petr Dmitrievich?” “It is I,” answered Andreev with Boborykin’s feeble voice. “How can I help you?” asked the polite writer. “I have a request for you,” mumbled Andreev into the telephone. “You see, I am getting married on Sunday... I was hoping that you would do me the honour of being my best man.” “With pleasure!” exclaimed the polite writer, out of politeness not daring to act astonished by the wedding of the eighty-year-old-man who already had a wife. Some of Andreev’s wisecracks were successful. For example, he called his dacha “Villa Advance” (it was build with money received in advance from the publisher). He called one critic “Judas of Teriok.” But often this gaiety, like everything else with Andreev, was excessive and resembled a fit. It made you feel ill at ease and you were glad when it finally passed. After one of these attacks of gaiety he became gloomy and usually began delivering monologues about death. This was his favourite topic. He pronounced the word death in a special way – very distinctly and sensually: death, the way some voluptuaries pronounce the word woman. Here Andreev displayed great talent: he was better than anyone else at fearing death. It is no easy matter to fear death; many try but fail to bring it off. Andreev succeeded splendidly; that was his true vocation: to experience the despair and horror of death. This horror can be felt in all his books, and I think it was precisely this horror that he was trying to escape

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when he grasped at colour photography, gramophones, painting. He needed something or other to screen himself from his sickening bouts of despair. In the terrible postrevolutionary years, when in Russia an epidemic of suicide wreaked havoc, Andreev became an unwilling leader and apostle for these people exiting life. They sensed in him a kindred spirit. I remember that he showed me an entire collection of suicide notes that he had been mailed. Obviously, this became the standard practice: before you killed yourself, you had to send a letter to Leonid Andreev. Sometimes this seemed strange. Sometimes, as you watched him striding confidently and with an owner’s pride about his yard, amidst the manor stables and service buildings, accompanied by Tiukha, his magnificent dog, or posing in a velvet jacket for a visiting photographer, you could scarcely believe that this man could harbour a tragic sense of eternity, of nonexistence, chaos, and the emptiness of the world. But the spirit breathes where it will and this sense of the emptiness of the world saturated Andreev’s entire life. This sense imparts to his art its distinctive philosophical colouring, for it is impossible to spend a lifetime contemplating the emptiness of the world and eternity without ending up a metaphysician. This was the distinctive feature of his personality as a writer – that for better or worse he always dealt with the eternal questions, with metaphysical, transcendental themes in his books. Other themes did not interest him. The literary group in which he accidentally found himself at the beginning of his writer’s profession – Gor’kii, Chirikov,28 Skitalets, Kuprin29 – was organically alien to Leonid Andreev. These were bytovki – chroniclers of the quotidian, of everyday life, but not of Being. He was the only writer among them who pondered the eternal and tragic. He was himself a tragedian by nature, and all of his ecstatic, extravagant, and purely theatrical talent, which gravitated toward a sumptuous style, toward traditionally exaggerated forms, was best suited for metaphysic and tragic subjects.

 What is there to say about the most important – about his creative process? We know so little about it. He almost always wrote late at night. I do not remember a single thing of his that was written by daylight. Having written and published something, he became strangely indifferent to it, as if he had had his fill of it, and ceased thinking about it. He was able to devote himself only to what had not yet been written. When he wrote any kind of tale or play, he could talk only about that. It seemed to him that of all his works it would be the best, the pinnacle. He would prefer it

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far above any of his previous works. He was offended if you liked something he wrote ten years ago. He was not able to redo something he had written – he had far less taste than talent. His works were essentially impromptus. When he was engrossed in some subject, he would draw every trifle into its circle. I remember how, having arrived once in Kuokkala late at night, he took the driver and paid him a ruble. The Finn was offended and said with obstinate brevity, “I don’t need no ruble.” Andreev added fifty kopecks for the Finn and after a few days in “The Seven Who Were Hanged” there appeared the figure of dull-eyed Ianson, obstinately repeating to the judges, “I don’t need no hanging ... I don’t need no hanging.” The insignificant episode with the driver was turned into a centrally effective moment in this theatrically emotional story. Andreev’s strong suit was always his ability to impart an unexpected artistic value to what seemed insignificant and trivial. Once he came across the newspaper Odessa News,30 where the famous aviator Utochkin,31 describing a flight, said, “At sunset our prison is extraordinarily beautiful.” This admiring of “our prison” very much struck Andreev and after a few days he had already written his famous story “My Notes” about a person who comes to love his prison; he concluded the story with the words, “At sunset our prison is extraordinarily beautiful!” And he managed to impart to these words a grandiose metaphysical meaning.

notes 1 The Helmsman: Organ of the Russian Sailing Society was published in St Petersburg from 1913 to 1916. 2 Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), German philosopher. 3 Around the World, a monthly journal, was published in St. Petersburg from 1861 to 1868 by M.O. Vol’f. In 1885 it resumed publication under the control of Georgii and Mikhail Verner as a travel journal. In 1891, it was acquired by Ivan Cytin, who expanded the readership by including photographs of and stories about distant locales, ethnographic articles, and travel literature. The journal stopped publication shortly after the 1917 Revolution but began again in 1927 and is still published to the present day. 4 Jack London (1876–1916), American author, largely of adventure stories. 5 Nikolai Stepanovich Ivanov (? – ?), Andreev’s mechanic and boatswain.

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6 Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), Flemish painter. 7 First published in the Literary-Artistic Almanac, book 1 (St. Petersburg: Sweetbriar, 1907). 8 Ivan Alekseevich Belousov (1863–1930), author. 9 A picture of this painting can be found in Leonid Andreev, S.O.S., between pages 320–1. 10 Diego de Silva y Velasquez (1599–1660), Spanish painter. 11 Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), German painter. 12 Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel (1856–1910), Symbolist painter. 13 Il’ia Efimovich Repin (1844–1930), realist painter and member of the Wanderers group of artists. 14 Akseli Valdemar Gallen-Kallela (1865–1931), Finnish painter and engraver. 15 Isaak Il’ich Levitan (1861–1900), painter. 16 In 1904 Auguste and Louise Lumière used potato starch grains dyed red, blue, and green, scattering them on a sheet of glass with a sticky coating to produce colour photography. The Lumière Autochrome process became commercially available in 1907. Ken Phillips explains the process in detail in Leonid Andreyev, Photographs by a Russian Writer, edited and introduced by Richard Davies, 141. 17 Kuokkala was only forty-two kilometres from St Petersburg and many of the capital’s intellectuals would rent cheap cottages there, near the Gulf of Finalnd, in the summer. Chukovskii and Repin established permanent residences there. In 1948 Kuokkala was renamed Repino. 18 A Russian game, for which a throwing stick is used to knock pegs out of a designated area. 19 The main character in Andreev’s play Black Maskers. 20 David Livingstone (1813–1873), Scottish missionary and explorer of Africa, and Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904), British explorer (who later became American). 21 Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865–1900). 22 Herbert George Wells (1866–1946). 23 Anathema (St Petersburg: Sweetbriar, 1909). 24 First published in the Literary-Artistic Almanac, book 5 (St Petersburg: Sweetbriar, 1908). 25 First published in the Knowledge Almanac, book 26 (St Petersburg: Knowledge, 1908) under the title of The Student’s Love. 26 A character from Andreev’s The Ocean. 27 Petr Dmitrievich Boborykin (1836–1921), author. 28 Evgenii Nikolaevich Chirikov (1864–1932), author and playwright. 29 Aleksandr Ivanovich Kuprin (1870–1938), author. 30 Published in Odessa from 1901 to 1916. 31 Sergei Isaevich Utochkin (1876–1915 or 1916), aviator.

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Aleksandr Blok

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y recollections are almost utterly devoid of factual content, but Leonid Andreev and I were connected. During rare meetings we declared this connection to each other with annoying tongue-tiedness and awkwardness, which immediately dampened our feelings and alienated us from each other. That is why everything that I am now able to say will be joyless and unhappy. It will be a tale, of which there are many, about people who knew something about each other and kept it to themselves. We did not know how to, could not, did not want to embody this knowledge, to put it into action. I talk about this so boldly because I am not the only one to blame for this spiritual solitude, there are many of us – almost all of us are lonely in spirit. The history of those years, which were spent by Russian artists between two revolutions, is in essence a history of solitary ecstatic states; those states were the best thing about those times, and they bore real fruit. People will say that during these years there were literary circles, there were journals and publishing houses, around which like-minded people gathered and entire artistic schools emerged. All of this happened or rather it appeared to have happened. But I find none of this remotely convincing, because all of that bore no fruit that I can see. There is no fruit because there was nothing organic about any of it. On the contrary, having spent the last two years in St Petersburg, I am becoming ever more firmly convinced that the remarkable Russian journals Old Years1 or Apollon,2 for example, were some kind of crazy undertaking. Thumbing through these pearls of typographical art today, my mind boggles at

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how their editors-in-chief failed to sense what we would turn into, what we would become in only three or four years. But that is not the point. The point is probably, and even certainly, that these people, too, knew solitary ecstatic conditions. Leonid Andreev knew them as well, but to imagine Andreev together with the editor of Old Years would be impossible. They could be pictured together only in a caricature. Much closer to him were a few Symbolists, specifically Andrei Belyi and myself, as he told me more than once.3 Yet despite that closeness between us, nothing came of that either. My connection with Leonid Andreev was immediately established and defined long before our acquaintance. Our actual acquaintance did nothing to enrich it. I remember the shock that I experienced upon reading “The Life of Vasilii Fiveiskii” at my country estate, on a rainy autumn night. Now nothing remains of these native places where I spent the best time of my life.4 Maybe only the old lime trees still rustle, presuming they too were not barked. I knew that things were not going well there, that everywhere things were going badly, that the catastrophe was near, that horror was at the door – this I had known for a long time, since before the first revolution, and all at once I found that knowledge rebounding in me through “The Life of Vasilii Fiveiskii,” then “The Red Laugh,”5 and then – with particular force – the short story “The Thief.”6 I published a review of that story in the journal Questions of Life.7 The review fell into the hands of Leonid Andreev and, as I was told, he liked it.8 I knew that he should have liked it, not because it was laudatory but because in it I responded to him – more precisely, not to him but to the chaos that he carried in himself. Not carried, but dragged; somehow he trailed it behind himself, teasing everyone with it. He was capable of sometimes exhibiting this genuine chaos like a parrot or lap dog, with the result that all the straightlaced people around him (and the intelligentsia were very straightlaced because they had not yet chopped firewood and had not carried pails of water to the seventh floor) stopped believing in this genuine chaos. So it was that our two chaoses called out to each other and it so happened that by the time of our personal acquaintance Leonid Andreev already knew that a certain Aleksandr Blok existed, a man whom somewhere, somehow, and for some reason he should meet, and who would not prove a stranger. I had just finished my studies at the university and had turned into a writer. Like others, I went around in civilian9 clothes and asked in various places for advances. On one of these occasions, I absolutely do not remember where, I became acquainted with Leonid Andreev.10 I did not find any of that familiar chaos. Before me was simply an already very famous writer.

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I was terribly shy around all famous writers. Andreev also did not know, probably, how to begin the conversation. Soon he invited me to his place. I went. Andreev lived on Kamennoostrovskii Prospect, in a terribly gloomy house, in which I knew the rooms had moveable partitions. I remember a torrent of autumn rain, a wet night. A huge corner room with a bay window, and this bay window looked out in the direction of the islands and Finland. You would approach the window – and the street lamps of Kamennoostovskii retreated before you in a chain into the wet distance. In the room there was a crowd of people, almost everyone a writer, many of them famous.11 But what they talked about is not clear. No one was connected with anyone else. Between everyone yawned black chasms, like the ones outside the window, and the most isolated – the loneliest – was Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev. The more sweet, the more obliging as a host, the more alone he was. That is the only impression that remains with me. It is reinforced by his letter of invitation, which was comical – to joke in such a way is very nice; it shows how approachable the famous person is. Everyone will smile, but no one will feel cheerful. That same evening, against that wet expanse with its chain of street lamps, Andreev was dear to me, dearer than he was on a few other occasions because, as far as I remember, he was unaffected and a little shy. He also did not exhibit his chaos, his terrible lap dog, which is terrifying precisely because if you were to see it you would not be frightened, but while it remains invisible, you feel it. The evening described was in the fall of 1906, but in 1907, “in the second half of the season,” Komissarzhevskaia’s company premiered, in the theatre on Ofitserskaia Street, The Life of Man,12 a work that very deeply affected Andrei Belyi and me.13 Again I remember on this occasion not Leonid Andreev – the famous person in the distinctively cut jacket – but his atmosphere, the air that surrounded him, which was translated to the stage, something that was never again achieved as well, even at the Moscow Art Theatre. There was in certain actors and in the director of the Komissarzhevskaia company something akin to Andreev. Even the weaker actors succeeded in rousing that internal chaos that relentlessly followed him. In The Life of Man, as in the entire series of Andreev’s works that opens with this play, is presented the absurd and annoying question that children pose, “Why?” Whatever you say to a child, he asks “Why?” Adults are not capable of answering this question. They are also not capable of admitting that they cannot answer this question. It is simply a “stupid question,” a “childish question.” That is what seems to me to be the most precious

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thing about Andreev. He always asked this question and was thrice correct to do so, for this very same question is now being asked by the great child of civilization – Russia. But no one can answer it in a way that will not provoke yet another half-indifferent, half-capricious “Why?” Leonid Andreev asked this question from the very depth of his being, relentlessly and unconsciously. Consciously, the further he went the more he rationalized and the more he himself proved capable of answering the question often in ways more adult than adults could manage, or more foolishly than could a fool. But still there lived in him these precious untouched chaotic murky depths, from out of which someone sitting inside him kept asking, “Why? Why? Why?” and banged his head against the wall of the big, fashionably appointed, repulsive manse, where dwelled the famous writer Leonid Andreev amidst furniture of the latest style. It seems that The Life of Man in this sense was his most autobiographical play. I had occasion to see it from the stage, for which I am indebted to the directorial tricks of Meyerhold.14 I will never forget what a stunning impression the first act made. It was presented “on burlap.”15 At the very back of the stage there was a little couch with old women and a screen, and at the front there was a round table with chairs all around. The stage was lit only with a lamp on the table and with a narrow circular spot from an upper light. And so, standing in the dark, almost right next to the actors, I looked at the theatre, at the flashes of ruby opera glasses here and there. The Life of Man unfolded right next to me – next to me a mother in childbirth cried out piercingly, next to me a doctor in a white apron and with a cigarette nervously paced the space diagonally, and most importantly, next to me was the square back of “Someone in Grey,” who cast his lines into the theatre from a dull column of light. Those lines were – and still are – considered by many to be banal. I remember that the actor Kazimir Vinkent’evich Bravich16 grew bored to death with them (Bravich, too, is also now deceased). But there is something in them that troubles me to this day. Andrei Belyi called the mood that permeates this play “sobbing despair.”17 This is true; sobbing despair burst from the breast of Leonid Andreev more than once, and for this several of us were eternally grateful. I remember then also being struck by “A Tale about Judas.”18 After that, nothing struck me anymore, but I firmly knew what Leonid Andreev was all “about,” and Leonid Andreev knew what he and I could be about with each other. “Being about something”: I say that phrase, but what does it mean? I do not know and he did not know. A year later Andreev wrote to me: “How many times I have planned to visit you,

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how I wanted to see you – but an occasion somehow never arises, it never arises. Why do you and I go against fate?”19 But we did not meet. Another year passed: finally he seemed to have found a real reason for our meeting (this was my play Song of Fate,20 which he, by the way, did not like at all), but things did not work out again. I answered him, trying not to offend him, but he was a little offended. It was already 1909. The clouds of reaction had thickened. I then left for Italy, where I was burnt by art, burnt to such a degree that I began to avoid modern literature, and modern writers as well. There were still more reasons why I practically stopped seeing almost everyone and left for my own “solitary ecstasy.” Leonid Andreev at this time was also different; he had accumulated a lot of resentment, his fame was great, but the critics did not spare him, and he was strangely attentive to them. In 1911 he remembered me for some reason. The occasion was one of my poems. “I don’t know if I should write this to you or not,” he added in the letter, “maybe it is not necessary.”21 He sent Sashka Zhegulev. It seems that I sent him some books and that was that. I do not even remember if we met again – that is how meaningless the words we said to each other must have been, if indeed we did meet again. At the end of 1916 I returned to St Petersburg for a short time while on vacation and found a very sweet letter, in which Leonid Nikolaevich invited me to take part in the newspaper Russian Will, for which he edited the literary and theatrical section.22 In this letter he mentioned that the paper was described by some as “pro-bank, pro-German, proministerial – and all of this is a lie.” It had been dinned into my ears that this paper was a tool of Protopopov’s, and so I declined.23 Leonid Nikolaevich was very hurt. He sent me a letter sounding very offended. My vacation came to an end and I left without answering the letter. That is how our personal acquaintance ended – forever and ever. Compared to what Andreev and I knew about each other deep inside, all of our meetings and letters, and even more so our conversations about Judaism, Protopopov, Germanophilism, etc., were total nonsense and senseless banality. However, if Leonid Nikolaevich were alive today and we were to meet again, we would still find nothing of common interest to talk about, except communism or the broken pavement on Mokhovaia Street. We encountered one another, and responded to one another, quite independently of our personal relationship – more often in “chaos,” less often in “solitary ecstatic states.” I know one thing well about him, that the real Leonid Andreev, the one who lived in the writer Leonid Nikolaevich, was infinitely lonely, unrecognized, and forever gazing into the

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abyss of a black window that looked out in the direction of the islands and Finland, into a damp night and the autumn rain that he and I loved with a shared love. It was through such a window that his last guest came to him in a black mask – death. 29 October 1919

notes 1 A monthly journal interested in art and antiquity, published in St Petersburg from 1907 to 1916. 2 An artistic-literary monthly published in St Petersburg from 1907 to 1917. 3 Andreev wrote on several occasions telling Blok of the special connection he felt for him. On 3 April 1908 Andreev wrote: “I would really like to see you. Why do you and I go against fate?” In a letter of 26 January 1911, Andreev wrote that he felt spiritually drawn to Blok; on 6 October 1916 he wrote that he held great affection for Blok. In this letter of 1916, Andreev also asked Blok to participate in Russian Will, the paper Andreev was editing. All of these references can be found in Andreev and Beklemisheva, Requiem, 86–7. 4 This is a reference to Blok’s family summer home in Shakhmatovo, which was destroyed in 1917 by the local peasants. 5 First published in the Knowledge Almanac for 1904, book 3 (St Petersburg: Knowledge, 1905). 6 First published in the Knowledge Almanac for 1904, book 5 (St Petersburg: Knowledge, 1905). 7 Blok reviewed the Knowledge stories and paid special attention to Andreev’s “The Thief.” This review was first published in Questions of Life, no. 3 (1905). 8 On 29 August 1905, Blok wrote to his mother that he was pleased to learn from Chulkov that Andreev liked his poetry and was greatly satisfied with his review of “The Thief.” 9 Students at that time wore uniforms. 10 The two met on 15 September 1907 and then saw each other five days later at Meyerhold’s production of The Life of Man at the Komissarzhevskaia Theatre, at which time Andreev invited Blok to visit him the following week. 11 Blok attended Andreev’s St Petersburg version of a Wednesday circle meeting on 26 September 1907. Blok was present at two such meetings. At one, Andreev read his play Tsar Hunger and at the second, Blok read Andreev’s story “Darkness.” 12 First published in Sweetbriar Almanac, book 1 (St Petersburg: 1907). On 22 February 1907 the play premiered in St Petersburg at the Komissarzhevskaia Theatre under the direction of Vsevelod Meyerhold. The Life of Man premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre under the direction of Konstantin Stanislavskii on 12 December 1907.

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13 Blok wrote an article reviewing Andreev’s play “About Drama,” which was first published in The Golden Fleece, nos. 7–9 (1907). Belyi also wrote about The Life of Man in his article “Death or Revival,” which was first published in the Literary-Artistic Almanac, book 1 (St Petersburg: Sweetbriar, 1907). 14 Vsevelod Emil’evich Meyerhold (1874–1940), director and actor. 15 Meyerhold left the entire stage bare and simply hung grey linen (Blok describes it as burlap) to create a smoky monotone grey space, which curled about the figures on stage. Meyerhold wished to create for each scene a source of light that would illuminate a certain area in which the actors were to appear as sculptures. Andreev was unhappy with this presentation; he felt that it was too mystical and gloomy. For the Moscow production, Stanislavskii covered the stage in black velvet as well as the actors and scenery. This had the effect of making people and scenery seem to disappear. Different-coloured ropes were used to indicate the contours of the rooms, windows, doors, tables, and chairs. The characters also wore rope outlines on black velvet so as to appear unreal, mere symbols. 16 Kazimir Vinkent’evich Bravich (Baranovich), 1861–1912, actor. 17 This is from his review “Death or Revival” mentioned above; see note 13. 18 Blok is mistaken about the title of the story, which was “Judas Iscariot and Others.” The review for this story appeared as “About the Realists” in The Golden Fleece, no. 6 (1907). 19 A letter from Andreev to Blok of 3 April 1908. 20 The manuscript of Song of Fate is dated April 1907–29 April 1908. On 4 May 1908 Blok read the play at Chulkov’s. Andreev was present for this reading and asked if he could publish the play in the Sweetbriar Almanac that he was editing. A year later (May 1909), Andreev tried to convince Blok to stage his play at the New Theatre, but, Blok was still not satisfied with the play and continued to work on it. Song of Fate was finally published in 1909 in the ninth Sweetbriar Almanac. 21 This letter was written by Andreev to Blok on 26 January 1911. Four days later, Blok wrote to his mother that he found Andreev’s letter rather artificial. 22 In 1916 Andreev returned to the capital from his home in Finland to join the editorial staff of Russian Will, a large Petrograd daily suspected of being an organ of the minister of the interior (Aleksandr Dmitrievich Protopopov, 1866–1918). Andreev received a salary of thirty-six thousand rubles a year and fifteen hundred per printed sheet as head of the fiction, stage, and criticism sections. 23 In a letter of 29 October 1916, Blok explained that he had nothing worth publishing to offer to Andreev. At the time Blok was serving in the military and had no time to write. It is not exactly true that Blok did not respond to Andreev after this letter. There is one more letter of 21 November 1916 in which Blok tried to smooth over his refusal and ended the letter with the sentence, “Again, I beg you not to think that I wanted to offend you.” Blok, Sobranie sochinenii, volume 5, 510–11.

A Book about Leonid Andreev





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Georgii Chulkov

I

first met Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev in 1899 in the editorial office of the Moscow newspaper Courier where he published his stories and feuilletons. We met quite often in the following two years, until in 1901 I was arrested and exiled to Yakutsk Province. How distant and incomprehensible that world, that life seems now; one would not believe that it has been only twenty years and not two centuries. What a sleepy kingdom it was that surrounded us then! The Russia of Nikolai ii1 still lived its ponderous, plodding, and cumbrous life, moving along blindly – as if led by the ghost of Aleksandr iii.2 We in Russia still did not foresee the imminent Japanese threat;3 we lived without fear of storm or turmoil, complaining only of the stifling monotony of the supervision that weighed upon language, upon life, and all of that Chekhovian world, which was so cramped and constrained. It seemed that everything was so permanent and so unshakeable that only our grandchildren might see another sort of Russia. Therefore, each time I met Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev in the Moscow literary circles, I felt as if this person had arrived from some other country. It was not that he had surpassed his contemporaries in his habits, his convictions, views or tastes. On the contrary, he was quite typical of certain circles of literary Moscow at that time. And yet there was something else in him, something that could not be defined in terms of taste or opinion, and that made him solitary and unique, not withstanding the “common expres-

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sion” that was characteristic of him as a Muscovite, a writer, a staff member of Courier or the magazine Life,4 which was published then in St Petersburg with the close participation of Maksim Gor’kii. At this time in Moscow, a group of new poets had already made a name for themselves, uniting under the sign of the Scorpion.5 These individuals, “founders of a new art,” to a certain extent were true decadents, giving voice to the “fin-de-siècle.” It was as if their works heralded a turning point in cultural life. Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev never belonged to this circle and never could have. He was too “provincial,” not “refined” enough for them, and he did not like or respect them. However, in his unconscious essence, which was belied by his externalities, he and the Scorpion group were “birds of a feather.” Andreev then lived in a region called Gruziny. All around him was the common old-style Moscow life, the average-intellectual life. Leonid Nikolaevich’s mother was a hospitable and welcoming host; his first wife (now deceased) young and sweet, happy and tender; his sister and brothers, who adored their older brother (he was, by the way, head of the household after their father’s death) – all of this was a bit old-fashioned, a little bit provincial. The entire family, with good-natured adoration and jealous pride, took great interest in the increasing fame of their beloved Leonid. Almost all of Moscow’s literary figures paid visits to Leonid Nikolaevich’s house. As for the beginning writers, at Andreev’s I met Boris Konstantinovich Zaitsev, whose first story “Wolves”6 made such a great impression on Andreev, as I recall. Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev was on familiar terms with many literary figures. From the outside it seemed that his life had worked out well: many friends, a loving family, literary success. But in Andreev, in Andreev himself, in his soul there was no happiness. And this terrible uneasiness, this excruciating anxiety and a sort of rebellion, “discord in all things” – that was what was new and original in Andreev. He was always in public, always with friends. However, it is very possible that in the Moscow of that time there was no one more lonely, more uprooted from the soil or even from the world, than this successful fiction writer – favoured by Maksim Gor’kii and endorsed by Nikolai Konstantinovich Mikhailovskii.7 True, in our literature there were enormous talents and enormous personalities who were likewise loners and “rejecters of this world” – we all know their names – but the prophetic shadows of those geniuses do not detract from the significance of

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Andreev. Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev’s personality was the defining one of his epoch, of his time. He has his own page not only in the history of Russian literary narratives but, no less importantly, in the spiritual history of our homeland. Some kind of doom lurked in Andreev, some kind of destruction. There was nothing at all bourgeois about him. And though this word has become somewhat ambiguous nowadays, it is worth recalling its original meaning. There was nothing bourgeois in Andreev: in no way did he want to somehow “peacefully settle down” or even less “to rest on his laurels.” The happier his external life was, the more troubled he became, the more painfully and sharply he felt that “this is no way to live.” He was one of many Russian wanderers, but our wanderers from the times of Aleksandr ii8 and Nikolai ii were almost always from the gentry, descendants of rich old culture. Leonid Andreev was a wandering raznochinets,9 without any cultural roots through ancestry or upbringing. But he was a son of his times, sensing inevitable catastrophe with his entire being. After all, our small historical catastrophes – the fall of a certain social order, or form of government – always reflect the general catastrophic nature of history and of the world. And when Tiutchev,10 for example, talks about the end of the world apropos of the fall of Sevastopol, this is not that far fetched, because chronology, dates are sometimes completely irrelevant. Among us there were many individuals more troubled and more remarkable than Andreev who were saying that the end of the world was approaching. However, Leonid Andreev had his own individual intonation, his own voice. I can see him pacing his office with a cigarette burning constantly in his hands, with sparkling eyes, with a bitter smile, forever talking about a story he is planning, or about himself – and always in a kind of feverish state, as if expecting something terrible and final. The tendency to always talk about oneself or about subjects relating to oneself is often unpleasant and tiresome in other people. But strangely enough, in Leonid Andreev this was so inevitable, so determined by the very essence of his personality, that it was not a burden to listen to his confessions and lyrical ravings. What could he do, poor thing, when he had nothing solid, nothing stable on which to stand and look more humbly and wisely at God’s creation? His talking about himself did not stem from egotism but from misery, distress, sickness, and despair. He was

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engrossed in himself and it was impossible not to love him exactly as he was. That there was nothing solid or firm about him was confirmed by his own confessions. Here is something that he once wrote to me: “I would like to write every new piece under a different name. It is hard for me to be beholden to my own past, to thoughts I have already expressed, to fleeting promises – I do not want to promise anything. I do not want to be a victim of logic. To love, cry, and laugh freely – that is what I want. Today I am a mystic and an anarchist – that is fine, but tomorrow I will write revolutionary slogans like Tan,11 but the day after tomorrow I will maybe go to Iverskaia12 with a prayer, and from there to the local policeman’s for pie.” And further: “Believe me, I passionately hate today’s cultured humanity; I do not and will not ever accept this life as it is, but I do not want to hoist any kind of banner, even the banner of rebellion ...”13 But Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev not only did not and could not create a coherent worldview; he did not even want to learn or understand those people of the past who dared to affirm such a coherent worldview. It was as if he was afraid of possible influences on himself. Earlier, when I was younger, it annoyed me that Andreev justified Pushkin’s aphorisms – “we are lazy and not curious.”14 He was indeed “lazy and not curious” in a certain sense. There was much that he did not know; he did not have enough time during his student years to acquire knowledge, since he spent his time and energy earning money – doing legal reporting for a newspaper and some other work, but later, when he was no longer suffering from poverty, he still lived as before, taking no interest in the intellectual achievements of humankind. I was annoyed that he kept reading and rereading adventure novels and somehow did not want to delve into the depth and variety of world culture. But now I understand that it was too late for him “to learn.” Nothing good would have come of it. He would not have endured knowledge; he would have withered and drooped the moment he concluded that “America” had already been discovered. And it was not that he quite often discovered “Americas”; what mattered was the way he went about discovering them. Whether his style was successful or not, whether his ideas were deep or shallow, he himself, his personality, his unruly mind, his sick heart, were like portents of our destiny. He sacrificed for all of us. And for this we have to take our hats

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off and bow, not criticize. Whatever Andreev possessed – granted sometimes it was flawed and tasteless – was always authentic. He had no desire to lie or put up a front, and was incapable of doing so.

ii. Which “social” views and beliefs did he have? To tell you the truth, it is hard for me to answer this question, though I knew him – true, with some big breaks inbetween – for almost twenty years. It is difficult to answer not because I ignored these subjects in conversations with Andreev or because he avoided expressing his opinions but simply because the notion of “public opinions” was essentially alien to Andreev. He himself would probably not confess to this. It seems he was sure that he possessed some definite opinion on this matter ... But now, recalling our meetings, I feel that this notion of “the public” was incomprehensible to Leonid Andreev. He could make all sorts of laudable remarks about freedom or social justice, but for him all of that was alien, not visceral for him, not primary. The primary thing for him was death, “the life of the individual” – private, solitary, doomed. “We will die! We will die! We will all die!”: that was his scream, his howl. And whenever he touched upon public affairs, it was always through the prism of death. Such is his “Story of the Seven Who Were Hanged.”15 Not long ago, while sorting through papers, I found an article I had by Leonid Andreev. I do not know if it was ever published. He sent it to me from abroad and asked me to get it printed in a certain publication, but as far as I recall, the article proved for some reason unpublishable. The article is dedicated to the memory of the executed revolutionary Vladimir Mazurin,16 whom Leonid Andreev knew personally. And in this article Andreev does not say a word about Mazurin’s views or beliefs. All that matters to him is the fact that an appealing, cheerful, kind, and sociable man lived in this world, and then a dark force arose – and now the man is no more. This was frightening and horrible. It calls for moaning and wailing. The issue is framed not from the perspective of public affairs, but personally. My second meeting with Leonid Andreev took place in 1903 in Nizhnii Novgorod, where I lived, following my exile, on parole, under police supervision. Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov17 also lived in Nizhnii Novgorod at the time. Andreev came to visit him, I believe to

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participate in some kind of literary meeting. How I found Leonid Andreev then or how he found me is totally beyond me. I remember only that we were in some kind of cheap restaurant, and that when Andreev arrived he was already somewhat drunk, and to this day I recall the evening as nightmarish. Until the eve of the war with Germany, Andreev experienced attacks of deep despair, and during such periods he was overpoweringly drawn to alcohol, with gloomy and painful perseverance. He was not a bon vivant. Nor was he a binge drinker. But sometimes his misery, after reaching a certain limit, resulted in a two- or threeday drunken haze. Even then he remained faithful to himself, to his theme, to his own dread of death, but at such moments all these painful thoughts and blind emotions turned into huge fantastic ghosts, and he had conversations with them, long-winded and convoluted, with passion and tears. It is too difficult for me to recount our conversation of that time or, more exactly, his monologue. It sounded like pieces of his tales and stories mixed together. I remember only feeling great pity for him and constantly trying to persuade him to go back to his wife in Moscow, to which he finally agreed, though with reluctance, and we separated at the train station. He took a bottle of vodka into the train car – one for the road. He was following the same fateful path travelled before him by such despairing Russian wanderers as Apollon Grigor’ev18 or Gleb Uspenskii.19 The only difference is that Apollon Grigor’ev had his daring and grandeur, his guitars and gypsies, Gleb Uspenskii had his monomania and his “power of the earth,” 20 but Andreev, a city man for sure, had his literary hysterics. I am not talking and do not want to talk about Andreev as a writer. I am considering him now as a person, and as a person he was, after all, from that country, from that spiritual motherland where the “blue flower” grows.21 All of his miserable drunkenness was justified by the fact that his heart always hearkened to some kind of “otherworldly” song. Andreev was a romantic and a peculiar kind of romantic. In him there was none of the pathos of French Romanticism, none of the abstraction and abstruseness of German Romanticism. But he was a romantic – because for all of his religious blindness, he accepted one religious truth as a vital and indubitable reality – the truth of eternalfeminine beauty, of a possible but non-existent world harmony. To what extent this spiritual experience of his found expression in his

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stories, tales, and dramas is another question, but that he had such an interior experience is something that I do not doubt. It is true that his semiconscious love for the eternal-feminine essence, for the Mysterious Lady, was darkened with bitter irony, but not in the spirit of the German Romantics’ subtle irony. Andreev had a penchant for crude mockery both of himself and of the dubious embodiments of the Beautiful Stranger who crossed his path.22 He was sentimental and bashful. Behind his outward self-confidence and even insolence, Andreev always concealed dissatisfaction with himself and a sense of disappointment. He mourned both himself and the woman who for a moment in his life seemed so beautiful and mysterious. This theme brought him together with Aleksandr Blok. Of all the modern poets, Andreev liked him the most. And this was not by chance. They both sensed something on the otherworldly plane. It is true that Blok was always more subtle and more significant than Andreev, and Blok was supported by a large cultural tradition. You can trace his poetical theme in Lermontov,23 Fet,24 Apollon Grigoriev, Vladimir Solov’ev,25 and the German Romantics – Novalis first and foremost. Andreev came from no tradition whatever and had no roots. He simply blundered onto the scene, which is why he was more naive than Blok. However, I remember well that at the first performance of The Life of Man at the V.F. Komissarzhevskaia Theatre,26 Blok was delighted with Andreev’s play, although it seems he changed his mind on this account later. Yes, Andreev had a sickly and suicidal evasion of the truth that he vaguely foresaw in his inchoate insights into the eternal-feminine essence. This explains his drunken sadness and the bitter smirk he had both for himself and for the world. He was not able and did not want to comprehend history and the real life of man. It was as if he was afraid of each and every attempt to find meaning, wisdom, or a path in life and in the world. In one of his letters to me, he confessed: “Where am I going? Hell if I know where. I am going and that is it ...”27 He felt downright loathing for our contemporaries who were trying and are trying to create a coherent world view. Leonid Andreev did not know the history of philosophy and never studied philosophy, with one exception – Schopenhauer. He had read him while still young and found Schopenhauerian pessimism congenial.

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iii. I have already said that I knew Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev for almost twenty years, but there were some years that we did not see each other – either I lived abroad or he went off somewhere – but during some years we met each other quite often. Especially memorable for me are two years in Finland. We met sometimes at the dacha of the deceased Valentin Aleksandrovich Serov,28 and at the same time Leonid Nikolaevich would visit me almost daily. At that time I lived not far away from the place where he subsequently built himself a villa. He built it according to a design by a young architect and himself took an active part in the designing.29 And indeed, the house turned out in the spirit of its owner. There was something darkly romantic to it, aesthetically dubious, stylistically undefinable, but I have to admit that it had a certain originality characteristic of Andreev himself. Inside it was cold and uncomfortable. Leonid Nikolaevich did not want comfort. Especially after the death of his first wife, he was in a constant state of anxiety – even when he married for a second time and had children with his second wife. Despite his romantic gloominess, Leonid Nikolaevich in other respects was somewhat childish and preoccupied with various trifles and toys. At one point he was interested in colour photography, then he made amateurish copies of a few artistic reproductions and seemingly took great pride in his work. Finally, he acquired a motorboat and, in the costume of a sailor, amused himself with short journeys. In literature Andreev was just as homeless and alone as he was in his private life. He published with Maksim Gor’kii’s Knowledge30 and then with Sweetbriar31 and then published a few things with the Writers Publishing House,32 but he did not have his own literary circle. Everywhere he was a chance guest and internally he was not connected to anyone. He published a story in Torches33 but when the almanac came out, he was not satisfied with it; Symbolists dominated the almanac and he was afraid of them. They seemed to him too rational, too artistic, and cold. He made an exception only for Blok and even knew some of his poems by heart. He did not appreciate and did not like other modern poets. Here is what he wrote to me once with irritated partiality and obvious vehemence: “The last Northern Flowers (Assyrian),34 which I saw just now, reeks unbearably of sweat. How could they not understand that if they

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all resemble each other so much, it means that only one of them is straight, and the rest are crooked. They are just the hairdressers of the artistic world, curling the entire world like a poodle – God as a poodle – the devil in ringlets, everything in ringlets: tiny ringlets, and tiny words, so tiny – a degeneration of words. So very small. It is no wonder they are printed in such a small typeface – larger type would be impossible for them. And just look what they have done to love! The more they sing of its strength, greatness, mystical quality, the more trivial, weak, and ridiculous it becomes. They call themselves poets – and they kill poetry. Buzzing flies, with wings beating a thousand times a second, they make us forget how an eagle flies. What impotence!” And further: “They kill poetry. There is no more verse in Russia.”35 In Finland we sometimes took long walks together. On these walks he usually nervously chain-smoked cigarettes and incessantly talked about his ideas and plans. He evidently loved to improvise his future narratives aloud. Once in a while with affected diffidence he would glance at his interlocutor to see if he was bored, but it was obviously hard for him to stop talking. In his essence, he was simple-hearted and kind. And he never harboured ulterior motives. He came to people with an open heart. And when he detected coolness or scepticism on their part, he was devastated. He was terribly sensitive to hostile critics, who in Andreev’s last years spared no effort to abuse his works. He had been spoiled by the praise lavished on him in his early career and continued eagerly to seek outward support. But he found none and felt trapped. And so Andreev lived a double life. On one side was a large family, many acquaintances, publishers, critics, reporters, actors, and an endless procession of chance visitors: which means a lot of concern and fuss. On the other side, there was his internal excruciating anxiety, blind and grim, which tormented him: here, in solitude, his soul consumed itself. Once I visited Andreev when he lived in St Petersburg, in a large house in the Petersburg region. His mother met me and said in a whisper that Leonid was “ill.” This meant that he was drunk. I wanted to leave but Andreev heard my voice, came out, and drew me into his office. Before him stood a bottle of cognac, and he continued to drink. It was obvious that he had already been drinking for about three days. He said that life in general was “one hell of a thing,” and that his life was ruined:

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“She is gone, the one who was a star for me. Deceased!” he said in a whisper, mysteriously and grimly. Then he put his head on the table and began to cry. And again there was that mysterious whisper and ravings. Suddenly he became silent and began to listen, having turned to the glass door, which, it seems, led out onto the balcony. “Do you hear?” he said. “She is there.” And he resumed his ravings, and it was impossible to understand whether he was indeed hallucinating or whether he needed all of this to express the enigmatic feelings – which he himself could not understand – that weighed upon his soul at that time.37 I write these lines in January 1920. The future of Russia is dark and unpredictable. But now we know that many events of Russian cultural life, on the eve of revolution, had a special meaning, prophetic and significant. We loved to repeat that Russia, cultural Russia, was still young; exhausted by the political reaction of the last tsarist reigns, somehow we failed to notice that the spiritual culture of our country, despite the decrepitude of its form of government, had reached its peak; that the appearance of the so-called Decadents was by no means accidental – they were authentic harbingers of a cultural turning point. Such fragrant but poisonous flowers can only grow in the soil of a great culture that has outlived itself. The Decadents worked quite a bit on the minds and hearts of their contemporaries: “Absolute values do not exist. Everything is relative. You could laugh at anything. Besides, there is nothing sacred. It would not be a bad idea to say, to hell with everything.” All of this was said with wit and subtlety, and some even infused this thought with a certain demonic profundity. Leonid Andreev repeated this same thing, but mixed with distress and grief: he felt pity for man. He rebelled like a Decadent, but his rebellion was somehow feminine, hysterical, and sentimental. Less subtle than the Decadent poets, he was probably more typical and definitive of our cultural dark age than they were. As a personality, Andreev always represents for me not so much a poisoner of his contemporaries as a victim. He himself was poisoned and tortured by the strange, dark forces that invisibly penetrated our life and corrupted it. Leonid Andreev had a specific spiritual experience; let us call it “mystical” (I say this not on the basis of his writings, but on personal impressions), but religiously, Andreev was blind and he did not know what to do with that experience. He bore not a trace of the cold cynicism typical of Decadents. He was a genuinely good person, but a person tortured by premonitions, confused and lost.

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So, then came a time of great ordeal for Russia – a world war with the German dynasty. And an ultimate divide immediately formed in Russian society: those on one side and those on the other. One had to take sides once and for all: resolve for oneself the question of Russia – the country one “can only believe in,” as the poet once said.38 And Andreev had found, despite his lack of religion, such a faith in Russia. I returned from Italy during the eighth month of the war and saw Andreev at that time. And it was the first time that I heard Andreev talking not about himself but about Russia, with passion and boldness, as if he was talking about something alive and real, as if he was talking about his mother. A Decadent, a real Decadent would not be able to speak in such language. Maybe Andreev’s articles about Russia, Germany, and the war were quite weak, but for him as a person they were important. It was important and meaningful that beyond the haze of his despair, he still found somewhere deep in his heart a longing for his native land. 14 January 1920

notes 1 Nicholas ii (1868–1918), last Russian tsar. 2 Aleksandr iii (1845–1894) became tsar of Russia in 1881 after the assassination of his father, Aleksandr ii. 3 The reference is to the Russo-Japanese war (1904–05). 4 A monthly journal published in St Petersburg from 1897 to 1901. 5 Scorpion was a publishing house mainly for Symbolist poets. 6 “Wolves” was first published in Courier, no. 61 (3 March 1902). 7 Nikolai Konstantinovich Mikhailovskii (1842–1904), public affairs writer, critic, and ideologist of liberal populism. Mikhailovskii’s positive review was published in Russian Wealth, no. 1 (1901). 8 Aleksandr ii (1818–1881) became tsar of Russia in 1801. 9 Raznochinets was a term used for intellectuals who did not belong to the gentry. 10 Feodor Ivanovich Tiutchev (1803–1873), poet. 11 N.A. Tan (Vladimir Germanovich Bogoraz), 1865–1936, poet, author, and ethnographer. 12 The Chapel of the Virgin Mother of Iversk is located at the entrance to Red Square and on the outside of the Resurrection Gates hung the Iversk icon.

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13 This is an inexact quote from a letter sent by Andreev to Chulkov from Berlin some time before 15 September 1906. See Chulkov, Pis’ma Leonida Andreeva, 17–19. 14 A quote from Pushkin’s Travels to Arzrum (1835). 15 The actual title is “The Seven Who Were Hanged.” 16 Vladimir Vladimirovich Mazurin (1882–1906), a revolutionary who was hung for his crimes, which included murder and bank robbery. “In memory of Vladimir Mazurin” was first published as a pamphlet in 1906 by the St Petersburg printing house Work and Profit. 17 The real name of Maksim Gor’kii. 18 Apollon Aleksandrovich Grigor’ev (1822–1864), poet and critic. 19 Gleb Ivanovich Uspenskii (1843–1902), author and populist. 20 This is in reference to Uspenskii’s cycle of sketches, The Power of the Earth (1882) 21 The image of the blue flower comes from “Heinrich von Ofterdingen,” an unfinished work by Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), 1772–1801. The blue flower for Romantics represented the unattainable and came to symbolize romantic langour. 22 Conceptualization of the “eternal-feminine,” “Mysterious Lady,” and “Beautiful Stranger” began with the philosophy of Vladimir Sergeevich Solov’ev and was expanded upon by Symbolist poets – most notably by Blok. 23 Mikhail Iur’evich Lermontov (1814–1841), poet. 24 Afanasii Afanas’evich Fet (Shenshin), 1820–1892, poet. 25 Vladimir Sergeevich Solov’ev (1853–1900), philosopher, public affairs writer, poet. 26 The Dramatic Theatre of V.F. Komissarzhevskaia was founded by Vera Feodorovna Komissarzhevskaia (1864–1910). 27 This is from a letter Andreev sent to Chulkov from Munich at the end of January 1906. See Chulkov, Pis’ma Leonida Andreeva, 19–22. 28 Valentin Aleksandrovich Serov (1865–1911), painter and graphic artist. 29 The young architect in question was Andrei Andreevich Ol’ (1883–1958). 30 A publishing house for Realist writers (1898–1919). From 1901 to 1907 Knowledge published the collected works of Andreev. 31 A private publishing house in St Petersburg (1906–1918) that united both Symbolist and Realist writers. Andreev moved to Sweetbriar in 1907. 32 A publishing house used by Wenesday circle members (1912–19) who had formerly had close links with Knowledge (for example, Nikolai Teleshov and Ivan Bunin). 33 The almanac of mystical anarchists. Andreev published his story “So It Was” in the first number (1905). 34 Northern Flowers (Assyrian) was published by the Scorpion publishing house in four editions (1901, 1902, 1903, 1905).

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35 This is from the same letter of January 1906 mentioned in note 27, above. 36 St Petersburg is made up of several different islands. The area where Andreev lived is called the “Petersburg region.” 37 This is in reference to the death of Andreev’s first wife, Aleksandra Mikhailovna Andreeva (Veligorskaia), 1881–1906. 38 The reference is to Tiutchev’s poem “Russia cannot be understood with the mind” (1866). Chulkov, Gody stranstvii (1999), 701–5.

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Boris Zaitsev

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n 1901 i read a short story in Journal for All signed Leonid Andreev. I was extremely taken with the story. I do not remember it anymore. The only thing I know is that it was about a spring flood, somewhere around Easter.1 I also remember another thing that surprised me – is it possible for there to be a talented writer by the name of Andreev?2 But soon something else appeared, again by Andreev: “Silence,”3 and it became clear that a new star had emerged. I decided to meet Andreev. I wanted this so badly that once I got in a carriage and went driving about Moscow. I found out his address at Courier and went there, to Vladimir Dolgorukii Street. Once there I searched for a long time for his living quarters. I found a poor little apartment high up on one of the top floors and appeared at the back door of the kitchen, where they were doing laundry. His mother, a simple and good Russian mother, led me to her son’s office. This office was tiny, with a small window looking onto a filthy courtyard, a leather couch and a simple desk, at which its young owner wrote his first stories, pungent and new for our literature. I liked the desk’s owner very much. First, I found him to be handsome. He had refined features; he was dark haired with a southern tint. He had amazing eyes: dark but with so much light in them. I observed these eyes for many years. It seems that they were the best part of Andreev – these eyes (I cannot say the same about his hands). Everything that was electric, nervous, searing in his nature poured out through his eyes, in waves of light or ether.

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I fell in love with him, a boyish love, at first sight, at the first word. He was so amazingly familiar, a gentle, easygoing Russian from Orel. He immediately adopted a straightforward and affectionate approach towards an unexpected and shy visitor. This was touching. And very soon it seemed to me that we had known each other for a long time, a very long time – almost as if we were relatives. The fact that I met him defined my future. He helped, encouraged, and supported me. With his talent and emerging fame, he opened the window for me to a new world of literature and writers. And not only that: he himself was a banner of a new literary party. These particular years were the Sturm und Drang4 of our literature. Andreev was of its spearhead in fiction. Those who loved him and those who cursed him equally felt that in the current literature he represented something very definitely his own, very powerful, very daring – something explosive. Hence the hubbub that at times turned into a howl that surrounded Andreev from the very beginning. He somehow immediately amazed everyone, arousing admiration and irritation; and only three or four years after our first acquaintance his name became known all over Russia. Fame yielded to him immediately. But it did him a disservice at the same time – dragged him roughly onto the market square and began to push and pull, to taunt and poison him in every way. It seems in the life of Andreev (as a writer and maybe in his personal life as well) that the years 1901–06 were the fullest, most joyous, most cheerful. All of his being at this time was pressing forward; he was at full strength, wrote zealously – despite grim outings like his “Abyss” and “Vasilii Fiveiskii” – he was full of hope, of successes, and his cruel fortune had not yet broken him. He had only just married Aleksandra Mikhailovna Viel’gorskaia,5 a tender and quiet girl. A bright hand was felt above him. This influence calmed his stormy, passionate, and sometimes not very stable nature. His fame grew, money followed; the Andreevs lived bigger – they had given up their little apartment on Vladimir Dolgorukii Street long ago, but they still stayed in the area. They lived near the public garden in Gruziny then on some little street nearby and then only once on Presnia. The apartments kept getting better and there appeared a level of prosperity. Often guests appeared; there were literary readings. At this time a literary circle, the Wednesday circle, bloomed; on Wednesdays they gathered at Nikolai Dmitrievich Teleshov’s, at Sergei Sergeevich Goloushev’s6 and at Andreev’s. In atten-

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dance were Ivan7 and Iulii Bunin,8 Veresaev,9 Belousov, Timkovskii,10 Razumovskii,11 and others. Sometimes Chekhov,12 Gor’kii and Korolenko13 stopped by. Bal’mont14 and Briusov attended. Each time something was read. Andreev read a lot – I think more than anyone else. He read in a restrained manner, somewhat monotonously, sometimes adjusting the thick hair falling onto his forehead. In his left hand he held a cigarette – sometimes he waved it rhythmically and with his head lowered, he would cast quick fervent glances at the audience. He probably hypnotized me. I liked absolutely everything about him and his writing. In debates over what he had read, I was always on his side. Then again, he was at that time enjoying great success and had everyone excited, although the style of his writing was far from his listeners’ usual cup of tea. At the Wednesday circle everyone was easygoing and friendly. A spirit of camaraderie and acceptance prevailed. And then, even when a work was criticized, it was done inoffensively. In general these were friendly “gentle” Moscow evenings. The evenings were not stormy and intellectually tense; they were rather provincial but agreeable for their humanitarian tone, and for their unclouded, amicable (sometimes even overly imperturbable) atmosphere. Upon entering, many warmly embraced each other, a majority were on informal terms (which Andreev especially liked), they gave each other nicknames, patted each other on the shoulder, laughed and cracked jokes, and in the end, as is the ancient custom of Moscow, enjoyed lavish dinners. One can say that Moscow is old-fashioned, hospitable, and goodnatured. One can also say that a young writer might want more youth, excitement, and novelty. A young writer might not fit into this environment completely. Nevertheless, those meetings of the Wednesday circle had their own, very Russian, gentle, and edifying atmosphere. I know that Andreev also loved that circle. But fate decided that he, one of its youngest members, would be the first to leave it. Sometimes I visited him in the morning – meaning we wanted to talk about something “intellectual.” Like all real Russian writers he got up late, like a Muscovite he drank tea endlessly – he poured it onto a saucer, blew on it, drank it with relish – and he was extremely friendly to his guests. Maybe I ought not to have visited him in the morning. Maybe I risked overstaying my welcome. But I recall those mornings with pleasure, Russian conversations somewhere on Presnia, with white snow on the street, the little trees along the sidewalk, crows flying low from tree

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branches to the roof of a house. We spoke about God, death, about literature, revolution, war, about everything that came to mind. While smoking, pacing from corner to corner, extinguishing and then lighting a new cigarette, Andreev held forth with great feeling. He spoke quite well. But he had the tendency to abuse comparisons and he loved to crack jokes. He had a strange sense of humor – he did possess a humorous streak, but somehow it did not hit the mark. In any case, the humour in his writing is constrained. It conveys no cheer. At three Andreev ate lunch and then took a nap. The habit is not European, just as in everything else he was far from being European. (He dressed in an undercoat and later went about in a velvet jacket. Among the “progressive” writers it was fashionable to dress outrageously, so that our appearance would negate everything bourgeois.) Waking up in the evening, around eight o’clock, he again drank strong tea, smoked, and sat down to write all night. There he warmed up; his brain became overheated and easily started to produce terrible, sometimes monstrous images. Writing was an intoxication for him, a very strong one. In his youth, by the way, he drank a lot, and as he told it, there was no greater happiness in this activity than feeling the ordinary world recede. He sank into delirium, into dreams, and this was much better than reality. When he was a student, after a drinking bout and in a large group of friends – fellow devotees of phantasmagoria – he went to St Petersburg without even a kopeck. There they lived in the same sort of trance for an entire week. They were even planning a trip around the world. Not surprisingly he hated to write in the morning, in a sober state of mind as much as he hated any kind of discipline. Night, tea, and cigarettes – these remained with him, it seems, his entire life. Sometimes he wrote himself into a hallucinatory state. I remember his story of when he was writing “Red Laugh” and turned his head to the door, there flashed something like the receding train of a woman’s dress. Nightmarish writing was not an invention or a fashion for him. All of this was his nature. He was a man of irrational, or as James15 would have called it, subliminal consciousness. His unchained subconscious always longed for the night, that was his character; but this longing was genuine. There was a reason why he was compared with Edgar Poe, whom he knew and loved. During one morning conversation I asked him: “What is the purpose of Edgar Poe’s poetry?”

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He smiled. “Timkovskii might ask that. You resemble Timkovskii now.” The question, of course, was not well put. I was not interested in the practical purpose of Poe’s poetry. I wanted to clarify for myself what his literature means, what it expresses. Andreev understood this of course and after a minute said seriously, “Edgar Poe says that there is Night in the world. And this is true.” Andreev himself felt the World Night and expressed it in his own writings. But one should not conclude that this Night controlled him completely. I already said that in Andreev there was a gentle man from Orel. He loved the warm domestic life. He never lost his streak of Moscow student life from legendary times. He loved all things Russian, our nature, ponds, and the humid, fragrant evenings after a rain in Tsaritsyno (outside Moscow, where he lived in the summer), white birch trees, and the fields of Butovo. He loved sunsets with rose-coloured clouds, even in his writings, for example in “Once There Was,”16 there is the light, the flowering apple tree, and a wonderful deacon. I often and gladly recall us like this: we are walking somewhere in the white and glowing forest of birch trees in Butovo. It is May. The grass is soft, fragrant. Women from the dachas wander about. A cow tied to the fence grazes, the sunset turns red, and along the yellow embankment a train is rushing along, in white or rose-coloured clouds of steam. From the fields wafts the expanse and welcome of the Russian homeland. We are walking with an easy and quick pace, and we talk excitedly, the conversation is so interesting for us. Here he escorts me to the train platform – in a wide-brimmed artistic hat, in a dark blue shirt, a tie flapping in the wind, with excited shining black eyes. This liveliness and excitement makes one look and feel so much younger! And it is so good to feel young, to have ardent conversations, to be inspired and a little bit in love. At sunset your train rushes you to Moscow. You look out the window and again relive what you have experienced, the dreams fill up your head, and at home, having returned, it is hard to fall asleep immediately. I was around when the Night, which Andreev perceived so well (and that is why he rebelled so vociferously against God) – this Night breathed on him for the first time. In 1906 his wife died in childbirth in Berlin. We buried her in Moscow, in Novodevichy Cemetery, in a cruel,

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severe cold. Andreev remained abroad. From Germany he made it to Capri. His life there was difficult and stormy. Here is a section from his letter of 9 January 1907: “Here is what life is like: there are several people whom I love, beyond them are cities, people, fields, seas, and finally the stars, and all this is alien to me. And if all of my few loved ones were suddenly to die or were to forget about me, I would look about and start howling from fright and loneliness.” Further he says that it would be good if my wife and I would come there and again he adds, “I am so alone here, even though ... with you I would be able to speak about Shura’s death, to try and grasp it.” I had the opportunity to meet with him in Italy, in May of that year but the conversation about which he wrote did not occur. Going back through his letters, I came upon a postcard sent to Florence, “I am going from Napoli to Berlin without any stops, so I can see you for only a minute in Florence at the train station. Please come with V.17 if only for a minute!” This “if only for a minute!” even now pierces my heart: now I will never see him again, not even for “a minute!” My wife and I went to meet him in the bright, hot Florence evening. We brought a bouquet of red roses (blessed Florence is full of them). Among the noise and dust, the international luxury train rushed into the modest train station and Andreev hopped out of the first-class coach in his wide-brimmed hat and flapping tie, in an artist’s velvet jacket, just as I knew him in Butovo, in Moscow. Just as it was then, he still did not speak a word of the “foreign” language. It turned out that his mother was in the coupe – he had not been able to get “a glass of tea” all day, neither for himself nor for her. His mother groaned. He himself was panting in his hot velvet jacket, but his eyes sparkled, as they had in past years. He sniffed our roses; we exchanged a few random phrases – there was no time; and after a few minutes he waved the bouquet at us from the window of the departing train. For an instant I saw him and again the European express rumbled and steamed, leaving a trace of smoke and dust behind, carrying away the Moscow-Orel people. Now, recalling those seventeen years that I knew Andreev, I feel that compared to the infinity that has separated us forever, those years containing nearly all of his creative life were no longer than that brief moment at the Florence train station in the sultry, marvellous Italian evening. That year Andreev moved to St Petersburg. Maybe it was difficult for

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him to start a stable domestic life in Moscow. His mood was stormy, gloomy, with repetitive crises. The sorrow burned itself out, ate away at him, but his active, passionate nature drove him forward. He still did not know what to do, how to settle down. “Again, for some time,” he writes on 17 August 1907, “my day, each of my days and nights is full of despair. What is to be done; I do not know, but I do not want to kill myself, I also do not want to go to a madhouse. But my life is not working out and the despair, indeed, is unbearable. It is all about the same thing, about Shura, about her death. It had eased its grip on me for a short time, but now, again, the same thoughts and dreams are nailing me down. Dreams! They are terrible things, these dreams, brother, in which she rises from the dead and all night long she fills me with wild joy, and in the morning she goes away.” He came to Moscow quite often. Often he stayed in the Loskutnaia Hotel near the Iverskaia Gate and the Historical Museum. The European Petr Dmitrievich Boborykin, who also stayed there, told me, slightly horrified, “Imagine, I get up at six in the morning; by nine I’ve already done some work, and that’s the time he comes back.” Petr Dmitrich who has never gone to bed after midnight, who drank mineral water, and wore snow-white collars, and our Leonid Andreev had adjacent rooms at the Loskutnaia Hotel! Oh, Rus’, Rus’! I remember that at this time Andreev was always in public, amidst commotion, with interviewers, in a frenzy. This was the year that he set out to become a playwright – a path that brought him even greater fame, but that was also very thorny. The Life of Man was the first of his Symbolist tragedies whose schematic and symbolic features strained to embrace a life’s path and the fate of “man in general.” This work was fateful for him. You can love it or not (I personally did not like it from the first reading); but one must say that it is inseparable from Andreev’s emotional, literary, and personal fate. In it one period ended and another began –Andreev’s youth ended, the schematics and pathos increased, and the crack in his soul showed forth more clearly. There is also something prophetic about the life of the author in the play – if one is to understand prophecy in a broad sense. Leonid Andreev did not die in the same way that Man dies and he did not fall into poverty, however, he did feel a certain decline in his life. The Life of Man enjoyed great success in Moscow at the Art Theatre, and in St Petersburg under Meyerhold. Andreev was more and more

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taken with the theatre. And he adjusted to St Petersburg better and better. He became very close to the greatly successful publishing house Sweetbriar18 and he was considered a staple in their almanacs. Sweetbriar also published his books. He still felt friendly towards us, towards Moscow, as before; when he visited – he either read his own plays or sent the manuscripts to be read at the Wednesday circle. But he found Moscow “sweetly provincial,” welcoming and warm. It seemed to him that St Petersburg was more rigid and somewhat cooler. There is a certain truth in the juxtaposition of the two capitals. It was for good reason that Pushkin did not completely become acclimated to Moscow life (nor was it an accident that he died in St Petersburg). Pushkin was sharp, strong, masculine. Andreev was easygoing and unrestrained. It only seemed to him that the northern air, the water of Finland, her forests and the twilight were closer to him than the birches of Butovo. It is true that in The Life of Man there already was no place for birch trees. All the same: to turn Andreev, a true Russian and former Moscow student, into a gloomy abstract philosopher debating the fate of the world on the rocky skerries of Finland with the help of Meyerhold was a pity. Nobody has a right to say by which path he should have gone. He himself knew better. However, it is possible to note that his entire essence was bigger than just Finland and Meyerhold. Starting from the spring of 1908 he took up residence at his dacha in Raivola, on the Black River. This dacha greatly expressed his new course; it suited him and did not suit him at the same time. When I first approached it in the summer, in the evening, it reminded me of a factory: pipes, an enormous roof, an absurd unwieldy mass. The same blackhaired Leonid Andreev with sparkling eyes in a velvet jacket lived there, but he had already begun a new life. He got married, he was building a new nest, he was full of new plans more grandiose than before and his soul was more confused by fame, wealth, by a burning desire to drain the cup of life dry – a cup that seemed bottomless at the time. The interior was luxurious for a writer (in Russia). The dacha was built and decorated in the northern modern style; a northern steep roof with exposed beams in the ceiling and custom-made furniture copied from drawings of German exhibitions. Admirers of the hall and the foyer of the Moscow Art Theatre would like this place. We spoke a lot in a very friendly manner. It was really nice with

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Andreev, but his dwelling suggested a lack of integrity, he had not found his own style. The style clashed with his mother from Orel, Nastasiia Nikolaevna,19 who spoke in a Moscow-Orel dialect. It clashed with the eternal samovars, boiling from morning till night and almost until dawn, with the smell of cabbage soup, endless cigarettes, the nervousness, the soft shambling gait of the host, his gentle eyes – with so many other details. It is true, though, that his predilection for the grandiose found certain practical uses: it was nice to use sailor’s binoculars from the tower on the Finnish gulf to watch the night stars. But first thing the next morning, having woken in a side room for guests that was not quite finished, I heard a pair of workers who were painting the exterior walls on a platform, lazily singing one of our simple, delightful songs. In this song was the Moscow soil, the birch trees of Butovo, the fields of Orel. There was no Finland in that song, no majolica decorations, no frosted cubes; there was nothing modern. And there was no Life of Man. At this new dacha Andreev wrote Tsar Hunger, Black Maskers, Anathema, The Ocean, and others. Reporters described the dacha: “On the hill, facing the white blind nights, the dacha seems sinister, frightening, gloomy, like a haven of loneliness or a castle of Death. And the same horror and the same dead light are inside the dacha as are in these white blind nights.” In other words, here was a field day for newspapermen. As for life, “every evening and into the night Andreev sat in his office, which looked as if it was brought intact from the stage of The Life of Man – with walls upholstered in grey-green woollen cloth, a library in the alcove, large windows covering the whole wall. The office, in semidarkness, secrecy and beauty, is illuminated by a few pairs of candles.” One must say that the critics, the chroniclers, the reporters who were so perfect at describing his life, played for him a large and burdensome role during this period. They inflamed and stung him. It was good to leave the capital but this was no withdrawal to Iasnaia Poliana.20 The capital trailed after him in the most vain and pitiful form – it agitated him, pushed him to chase success, fame, and applause, and then cheated him. Who would not enjoy flattery and success? Andreev hungered eagerly for those things. He could no longer live unless he was still being written about, praised, applauded. I do not even know if he would have been able to write for himself, out of the public eye.

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He hated the crowd and worshipped it. He despised the newspapermen and could not free himself from them. To promote his fame he needed these little people, who would arrive in swarms and he told them about his life, his plans, his writing. He was mad at himself for doing this, but the next day he would do it again. They published their absurd accounts and the interviews, which irritated Andreev’s friends and gave his enemies material to taunt him with. All of this newspaper nonsense, the sea of clippings containing accounts of his plays, reviews, criticism laced with abuse and libel, the notices – all of this flowed into his awareness every day and poisoned his soul. It almost certainly made him miserable, particularly since the critics kept talking about the decline of his talent. But perhaps the more confused, rude, and poisonous life became, the larger grew the world of fantasy that loomed before him, the world into which he immersed himself while working or simply daydreaming. Here is what he wrote about a second reality in his letters of this period: “With every passing year, I am all the more indifferent to the first reality, because in it I am only a slave, a husband, a father; there are headaches and ‘with regret we notify you ...’ Nature itself, all of these seas, clouds, and smells I must adapt for internal intake, since in raw form there is too much physics and chemistry about them. The same goes for people – they become interesting for me from the moment they become characters in a story, in other words, a lie, that is, our only possible truth. I am not making a theory out of this, but for me the imaginary has always been more sublime than the real, and the greatest love I have ever felt has been in dreams. That is why before I became a writer and released the capacities of my imagination, I loved drunkenness and its marvellous and horrible dreams.” Flaubert, so infinitely distant from Andreev, says in a letter: “La vie n’est supportable qu’en travailant,”21 and, it is true, he drugged himself with work. For Andreev, who was a genuine writer, the essence of these years, the years of maturity, also evidently boiled down to work as a drug that could carry him away from boring reality. “There are so many boring days and simply uninteresting people in the first reality! But in my own reality all the days are interesting, even the rainy ones, and all people are interesting, even the stupidest ones. Today, it is drizzling outside, just drizzling, and there is nothing but plain wet Finland and shivers in the spine – but start describing this,

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and it will be interesting, my mood will improve; and the more accurate I make my portrayals, the less truth will remain in them. For the word itself belongs to the second reality, it is in itself a picture, a story, a composition.” However, he corrects himself – not all reality is despicable. “I will not even insist that I was right when I so persistently and persuasively preferred the imaginary to the real thing; and if we could hold a competition between them, the definitive, the ultimate beauty would be on the side of reality. But this kind of beauty is found only in isolated moments widely scattered in space and time. It is not only impossible to gather these moments, but you can live your entire life without encountering one of them. There are plenty of beautiful people in the world, but the distance between them is like the distance between the stars – one is not born yet, while another died a long time ago. Even if he is alive, he is either too far away, or he speaks a different language, or I simply do not know that he exists. After all, those whom we love and consider our real friends – Dante,22 Jesus, Dostoevskii – exist only in our imagination, in the second reality, in dreams.” In the first reality, despite the praise, money, applause, and the bustle all around, it is doubtful that Andreev was at all happy. He did not give that impression. In any case, he was evidently becoming lonelier. Maybe those with whom he could have become soul mates were across the sea, behind the veils of time, but about friendship, about “male, firm, deep, serious friendship,” he now spoke with bitterness. “How strange the word ‘friendship’ sounds – do you remember what it means? I have forgotten” (8 July 1909). Or, “Have you noticed ... that friendship is an early fruit and it ripens before the rest? Love accompanies you like a shadow, as long as there is still light, but early on one crosses a border beyond which there are no new friendships. If you did not keep a friend from youth, do not expect to make new friends; it is well-nigh impossible just to keep the old ones. It is no accident that my friendship with ... ended – all writers form friendships while young, but as they mature, they inevitably become isolated. Maybe that is how it must be” (23 June 1911). It seems that during those years, Leonid Andreev did not, in fact, acquire any new friends and, living in Finland, he became estranged from his old ones. It seems his life there was restricted to a circle (the most important one, of course) – his family. He rarely appeared in

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Moscow. He never had many literary friends in St Petersburg and literary criticism seemed to settle on a negative attitude toward him. Generally, his literary fate is very much Russian: unlimited praise followed by equally merciless criticism. The hoopla, the honoraria, the interviews – nothing could conceal the sudden coolness of the public. They used to admire his uniqueness, now it only annoyed them. He tried to speak louder, with more pathos – they listened with more irritation. And over the short period of his successes and defeats, the deceased might well have recalled the words of Marcus Aurelius,23 “Fate is a mystery, fame is treacherous.” Or he could have turned to his own work – The Life of Man. During this time I saw little of him. Once in a while a letter would arrive, but less and less often. I knew that he had shaved his beard, acquired a motorboat, and roamed the skerries. His seafaring instincts awoke in him unexpectedly. He liked the spray, the foam, the sound of the wind, the solitude. Maybe he imagined that there was something Byronic in his solitary wanderings. A challenge to life, people, pride, shattered ambition. I saw him for the last time in the fall of 1915 in Moscow. His play He Who Gets Slapped24 was in production. It is no masterpiece and is far from perfect since Leonid Andreev produced little that was perfect. Chaos, haste, lack of restraint, fervour, excitability were too visible in his writing. These are the enemies of perfection. But as in all of the most important works that he wrote, there is in this play something very Andreev, caustic, very mournful, poisoned by bitterness... You can get angry, argue and criticize but you will not pass by indifferently. I felt a heavy soul, terribly wounded and ailing in the author himself. This was another Andreev, not the one with whom I would philosophize on Presnia and wander through the birches of Butovo. There was a breakdown, fatigue, a heavily beating heart, a painful irritability. And only his eyes at times sparkled like before. “They spoiled the play,” he said. “They ruined it. The main role was misinterpreted. But look,” he pointed to a heap of clippings, “how happy all these asses are. It is such a pleasure for them – to kick me.” He left for St Petersburg sullen and depressed, though sometimes he laughed and joked a lot. It is doubtful that we, the few friends who saw him off in Moscow, could predict the future, could have felt that we would not ever see him again, the real-life Andreev, in his velvet jacket

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with bright black eyes, not a “dream,” not an image of the second reality. It is difficult for me to speak about the final years of Andreev’s life. I know only one thing: after October 1917 he did not even visit St Petersburg.25 He lived in Finland. The Revolution affected him profoundly. He proved unable to survive. For as long as I knew him, he was an individualist. He died as an individualist as well, as a writer, at his desk, dying from heart failure. His heart worried too much during quiet periods; it did not survive the storm. When I visualize Andreev, I always see an image of a young man, with a headful of black curly hair, nervous, with sharply sparkling, bright eyes, as he was during the years of Gruziny, Presnia Street, and Tsaritsyno. He talks with a fervour, smokes, drinks glass after glass of tea somewhere on the terrace of his dacha, amidst the birch trees at dusk and the distant, gently descending fog. With him, somewhere behind him, is his slender large-eyed fiancée in a dark dress, with a gold chain around her neck. Young love, freshness, the radiance of a young woman’s eyes, the springtime of their lives. I am probably unable to speak coldly and objectively about Andreev, because my youthful infatuation with him cast its reflection on the rest of my life. Andreev was for me not only a Russian talent, who was born on a certain day and died on a certain day, but using his own expression, he was a dear phantom,26 my first favourite writer, my first friend in the literary world, my elder brother in the world, watching over my first steps with tenderness and attention. This cannot be forgotten. Let these words, however inadequate they are, be a distant salute to your grave in a foreign land,27 dear Leonid. I believe in the immortality of your spirit.

notes 1 This is a reference to Andreev’s story “On the River,” which was published in Journal for Everyone, no. 5 (May 1900). 2 The surname Andreev was quite common. 3 First published in Journal for Everyone, no. 12 (December 1900). 4 Storm and Stress was a German literary movement (1767–85) that glorified the “genuine genius” as a notion of a superior human being and artist, the

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true creator of art. Here Zaitsev is also referring to the “counterculture,” or the rebellious nature of the movement. Zaitsev is mistaken. The maiden name of Andreev’s first wife was Veligorskaia. Sergei Sergeevich Goloushev (1855–1920), doctor, critic under the penname Sergei Glagol’, and journalist. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin (1870–1953), poet, author, translator. Iulii Alekseevich Bunin (1857–1921), a public affairs writerd engaged in literary activities. Vikentii Vikent’evich Veresaev (Smidovich), 1867–1945, doctor and author. Nikolai Ivanovich Timkovskii (1863–1922), author. Razumovskii was the pseudonym for Sergei Dmitrievich Makhalov (1864–1942), playwright, public affairs writer, and critic. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904), author and playwright. Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko (1853–1921), author. Konstantin Dmitrievich Bal’mont (1867–1942), poet, critic, and translator. This is probably a reference to William James (1842–1910) and his book The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). James argues that the conscious mind and the subliminal consciousness exist side by side within the psyche. The conscious mind is that by which one primarily perceives reality and responds to stimuli in a public manner. The subliminal unconsciousness is the source of dreams, unaccountable impulses, and half-conscious systems; it influences consciousness. First published in Life, no. 3 (March 1901). A reference to Zaitsev’s wife, Vera Alekseevna. A St Petersburg publishing house (1906–18), which published books on art, philosophy, and a literary-artistic almanac, Sweetbriar (1907–17). Anastasiia Nikolaevna Andreeva (Patskovskaia), 1851–1920, Andreev’s mother. Tolstoi’s family estate. “Only while working can one tolerate life.” It may be that Zaitsev is mistaken. A very similar phrase is found in Voltaire’s Candide (1759): “Travaillons sans raisonner, dit Martin, c’est le seul moyen de rendre la vie supportable.” (Let’s work without reasoning, says Martin, it’s the only way to make life bearable). Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), Italian poet. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121–180), Roman emperor from ad 161– 180. First published in the Literary-Artistic Almanac, book 24 (Petrograd: Sweetbriar, 1916). It premiered in 1915 at the Moscow Dramatical Theatre on 27 October and in Petrograd on 27 November at the Aleksandrinskii Theatre.

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25 Andreev spent part of January and February 1918 incognito in Petrograd, as St Petersburg was renamed, with his mother, who was sick at the time. This was his last visit to Russia. 26 This is a reference to Andreev’s play Dear Phantoms, which was published in the Literary-Artistic Almanac, book 26 (Petrograd: Sweetbriar, 1917). 27 Andreev was originally buried in Metsäkyälä, Finland. His remains were moved to the Volkovo Cemetery (St Petersburg) in 1956.

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year or two before Andreev’s first book of stories came out – it came out in 1901 – Gor’kii wrote to me once from Nizhnii Novgorod, that he liked our friendly gatherings, our so-called “Wednesdays,”1 where authors read unpublished works in progress in an intimate circle of their colleagues, who were primarily young at the time. The comrades expressed frank opinions about the new work. And Gor’kii, when he was next in Moscow, definitely wanted to visit these Wednesday circles. Besides, Gor’kii wrote that he recommended and asked us to look after and be kind to a young beginning writer named Andreev, an unknown, but very nice and talented. Shortly afterwards, Gor’kii came to Moscow and brought Andreev with him to the next meeting of the Wednesday circle. He was a young man, a student type, with a handsome face, very quiet and shy, dressed in a tobacco-coloured dress jacket. At ten o’clock, when our meetings usually began, Gor’kii suggested that we listen to a short story by the young author. “I heard it yesterday,” said Gor’kii. “I confess that I had tears in my eyes.” “Go ahead, Leonid Nikolaevich,” they suggested to Andreev. But he started by saying that his throat was sore and he would be unable to read. In a word, he was shy and embarrassed. “Then give it to me, I will read it,” volunteered Gor’kii.

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He took the thin notebook, sat down by the lamp and began, “The story is called ‘Silence’ ...” The reading lasted under half an hour. Andreev was sitting next to Gor’kii and never stirred the entire time, his legs crossed and his eyes staring at one fixed point in a dark corner at the far end of the room. Of course, he could feel that everyone looked at him. But it was doubtful whether he could feel that every new page turned brought him closer to these men he knew, yet did not know, sitting among them like a new boy at school. The reading came to an end ... Gor’kii lifted his eyes, tenderly smiling at Andreev and said, “The Devil take it, it has moved me again to tears!” Aleksei Maksimovich was not the only one who had been “moved.” It immediately became clear that in this new boy the Wednesday circle had gained a good comrade. Miroliubov,2 publisher of the popular Journal for All,3 was there that night; he went up to Andreev, took the notebook and put it in his pocket. Andreev’s eyes gleamed. To be published by Miroliubov in his journal, with his great reputation and huge number of subscribers and readers, was quite another thing from appearing in Courier, the modest Moscow newspaper where he worked at the time. This was his first step forward and a good one. Soon after, the story was published. From that first time at the Wednesday circle, Andreev was one of us. After “Silence,” other stories followed and they all passed through the Wednesday circle. “Once There Was,” “Sergei Petrovich,”4 “The Wall,”5 and the famous “Abyss” – all of them were read to the Wednesday circle by the author himself while still in rough draft. The author listened to the most frank comments, to both praise and objections. Once he read a story called “The Little Ruffian” and received such a unanimous rebuff that to this day the story has not been published anywhere.6 Once, seven or eight years later, when Andreev was famous, I asked him to give me something for a charity collection of stories, which he never refused me, but at the time he had nothing ready. I then remembered “The Little Ruffian” and wrote to him about it. He answered me with the following letter: “I will write a story for you, I swear by the giblets of the goose that saved Rome, but I cannot manage it before the end of October. ‘The Little Ruffian’ – which unfortunately you have not forgotten – is the most shameful occurrence in literature, an embarrassment, shame, and disgrace for mankind. I embrace you.”7

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Andreev from his first visit completely blended with the Wednesday circle. It seems that he never missed a meeting. All winter he participated in his “rust” sports jacket. He was both a zealous reader and an attentive listener. About himself he had a modest opinion and his earnings were also extremely modest. At the end of the winter, Andreev had accumulated several stories and wanted to publish them as a separate book. But this was not so easy. As an author, he was known only to his own circle, but his name had not reached the general public or even the publishers’ ears. Finally, somehow his circle contrived to introduce him to a very solid publisher. They convinced this publisher to take the little book. Out of respect the publisher took it on recommendation, without reading it – on a big ship there is always room for such cargo. The publisher gave Andreev an honorarium – as I remember it was five hundred rubles for the entire book – and salted it away for the future. Month after month passed, but they did not think to send the book to the printing house. Andreev waited and hoped: he attached great significance to the publication of this book. And he was right as it turned out. This book immediately opened a great many doors for him. I remember at some point that his proper name “Andreev” began to embarrass him. “I want to take a pseudonym,” he said. “But I can’t think of one. It comes out either contrived or stupid. And that’s why the publisher will not publish my book, because my name expresses absolutely nothing. ‘Andreev’ – what on earth is Andreev? You can’t even remember it. It is a completely indifferent name, completely nondescript. ‘L. Andreev’ – now there’s an author’s name for you!” “Well, you know there is a writer Nikitin,” we challenged him. “Everyone knows him and no one confuses him with anyone else. Why couldn’t there be a writer named Andreev?” This search for a pseudonym ended in bringing the book out with the name “Leonid Andreev,” instead of just “L. Andreev.” This seemed to him less impersonal. While his book gathered dust at the publisher’s, waiting in some mysterious queue for an especially opportune moment, there appeared a new publishing house in St Petersburg – Knowledge, under Gor’kii and Piatnitskii.8 Naturally, they were quite interested in Andreev’s stories. It was necessary to annul the first contract. So the same people went back to the publisher, this time to release the abandoned book from bondage. To everyone’s delight, the publisher was only too glad not to

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have to waste paper and effort on publishing this unknown Andreev. In a matter of minutes, contracts were exchanged, Andreev’s friends reimbursed the publisher his five hundred rubles, collected the manuscript and went straight to the post-office and sent it to the printing house in St Petersburg. Every young writer, publishing a book for the first time in his life, knows the joys of receiving the fresh galleys from the printer, smelling of turpentine and ink. There is no finer smell in the world; no one on earth is happier than the author at that moment. Andreev experienced this joy and while his book was being printed, he never took those galleys out of his pocket; he kept them on his person while visiting friends, at the theatre, and in the street. This brings to mind another episode. That fall, when the book was being printed, we were expecting Gor’kii to arrive in Moscow. He had to go from Nizhnii Novgorod to Yalta. And suddenly we learned that Gor’kii’s family had arrived, but Aleksei Maksimovich himself was under arrest. At the freight station outside Moscow, they unhooked his car from the Nizhnii Novgorod train, placing it on the rails to Kursk, and under the watch of a gendarme it was sent to Podolsk. Why this was done, for what purpose and for how long no one had the slightest idea. It was necessary to visit him, if possible to spring him: in any case, to clear the matter up. Andreev, Bunin, and I decided to go to Podolsk on the first train. At the station Piatnitskii and Gor’kii’s German translator, Scholz,9 joined us. Scholz had come from Berlin expressly to meet with Aleksei Maksimovich and to see with his own eyes how famous writers lived in Russia... and he certainly saw! Shaliapin also arrived at the meeting with Gor’kii. Here, on the Podolsk platform, we all met him and after a week he became a member of the Wednesday circle. Scholz became interested in Andreev, talked a lot with him about his stories, about future plans, and asked Andreev to send a book to him in Berlin, as soon it came out, for translation into German. We spent about three hours in Podolsk in very unorthodox social circumstances, which caused the unaccustomed German first to blush and then to become pale. Finally, they took our names, and under an escort of gendarmes we were led from the room onto the platform. They sent Gor’kii in an express train to Sevastopol and us back to Moscow. Subsequently we received an edition of the Berlin newspaper where Scholz described in detail our trip to Podolsk and his attempt to see how the fraternity of writers lived in Rus’ ... He spoke ecstatically of Andreev.

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Andreev’s little book finally came out.10 It had a mere ten stories and cost eighty kopecks. Leonid Nikolaevich had high hopes for this publication. But he could have never anticipated what happened. First of all, he got a long and very favourable letter from Nikolai Konstantinovich Mikhailovskii, in which he welcomed the young author, predicted great things in his future, and promised to write a serious article about him. Soon after, a laudatory review appeared in Russian Riches11 under the full signature of Mikhailovskii, and this was enough to make the literary world take serious notice of a new and major talent. The name Leonid Andreev became immediately famous. All the magazines and newspapers began to talk about him. His book, as they say, “took off.” A new edition soon came out, expanded with new stories – among them “The Abyss.” Thanks to “The Abyss” the name Andreev was met everywhere with hubbub, squealing, and hooting. An article in New Times12 and another by Sofia Andreevna Tolstaia,13 both lambasting the young writer, only poured fuel on the fire: now everyone was talking about Andreev and about “The Abyss” – some in favour, some against. Leonid Nikolaevich himself, smiling, loved to quote among friends a witticism someone had come up with: If you come across “The Abyss,” Do us a favour: give it a miss!

 Andreev had a fiancée, a very sweet young girl, a student, slim and dark. Her name was Aleksandra Mikhailovna Viel’gorskaia.14 They always appeared together at the theatre, at premieres, at concerts. They were a striking and handsome pair. Once I found the following letter for me on the table, original in its tone, in which the joyous care of a happy man is felt: “My dear friend. Be my father! Be my Godfather. My wedding is on the 10th (in three days), on Sunday. No outsiders, only relatives – quite simple. Goloushev is the best man. Be my father! I ask you, to be my father! If you feel that you absolutely cannot, then come in the capacity of a friend. Make me happy: come! I ask you once again, be my father! Your friend and son Leonid Andreev. Be my father. The church of Nikola Iavlenyi on the Arbat. Be my father!”

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And his father I was ... The wedding was very joyous. Leonid Nikolaevich was somehow internally happy and unusually humble. Whatever they said to him, he did without objection, without a second thought, as they say, and with pleasure. There was dancing. They taught Andreev how to dance beforehand. He danced the waltz, the polka, and the quadrille. By the way, he came up to me and, glancing at the dancing couples with a smile, said, “Well, Father, what if we taught our whole Wednesday circle to dance? Imagine, there they’d all be suddenly dancing – Veresaev, Belousov, Vanechka Bunin ... There would be the gloomy Skitalets waltzing in a whirl ... or Mamin-Sibiriak with his pipe and his smoke ... What a sight! Just imagine ...” As far as I know, Andreev’s family life was very happy but not for long. Aleksandra Mikhailovna, who could justly be called his kindly genius, died after giving birth to their second son. Through these long years Leonid Nikolaevich worked hard and well and consolidated his literary reputation. “Vasilii Fiveiskii” appeared – it was read, like almost all of Andreev’s works, at the Wednesday circle with enormous success. At this time, the idea of publishing a volume of collected stories came up. The publishing house Knowledge was also interested in this, and so the first “Knowledge Anthology” for 1903 was compiled entirely out of material from the Wednesday circle: “The Life of Vasilii Fiveiskii” appeared on the first page. Andreev was followed by Bunin, Veresaev, Gor’kii, and our other comrades. About this time, Leonid Nikolaevich began to appear everywhere – at parties, at homes, at the theatre – in an undercoat and high boots. This gave the minor newspapers reason to scoff. They began to ridicule Andreev’s undercoat and to print all kinds of cock-and-bull stories about him, often very wicked and offensive ones. They said that Leonid Nikolaevich would drink a “yard of vodka;” meaning that he would place shot glass after shot glass the length of an entire yard and drink them without interruption, one after the other. In another paper they wrote that the writer Andreev, “this modern celebrity,” at birthday celebrations for Zlatovratskii15 asked haughtily and in surprise, “Is there really such a writer, Zlatovratskii? Never heard of him ...” And all this nonsense was said about a man who not only constantly met with Zlatovratskii at the Wednesday circle but also wrote one of the first birthday greetings to him ... The rapid and wide success of Andreev made many people hostile

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and jealous; and on various pretexts and under various pseudonyms these people would take potshots at him. Leonid Nikolaevich often replied with a joke, but some gibes affected and offended him. But there were also amusing and witty jokes that he himself found genuinely funny. The Society for Aid to Female Students invited Andreev to organize a literary evening on their behalf. He agreed and invited his comrades from the Wednesday circle. Interest in this group of writers had grown. Tickets were in great demand. The enormous hall of the Noble Assembly was overflowing. The Society earned a good amount but Andreev, as the organizer of the evening on the official posters, suddenly was held to account for the fact that Skitalets read a poem “Gusliar’,”16 in which revolution and the anger of the people is prophesied: My song won’t be to your liking: It will ring out like a truncheon Crashing on empty heads … That song was indeed “not to the liking” of certain circles. The recital was cut short, the lights were doused, and the whole lot of us were later summoned to the police investigator, and then as witnesses to the district court, where Leonid Nikolaevich sat on the defendants’ bench and was nearly punished for no real reason. “Written by Skitalets, read by Skitalets but I’m the one they want to put in jail,” laughed Leonid Nikolaevich. He loved a good joke, a bon mot, to which his many feuilletons in Courier, published under the name of “James Lynch,” can attest. He often said, “For some reason people think I’m a likely candidate for suicide ... This is not true: I love life, love happiness ...” Even so, his new stories became ever more gloomy: “Vasilii Fiveiskii,” “Doctor Kerzhentsev,”17 and finally, “The Red Laugh” ... While he was writing this “Red Laugh,” he would tremble with fever in the evenings and was brought to such a nervous state that he was afraid to be alone in a room, and his faithful friend Aleksandra Mikhailovna silently sat with him in his office the entire night without sleep. While bundling herself in a warm shawl, she eased her husband’s angst with her silent presence. It was with good reason that he dedicated his play The Life of Man, which Andreev wrote in 1906 in Germany shortly before the death of

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Aleksandra Mikhailovna, with the following touching inscription: “To the sacred memory of my friend, my wife, I dedicate this work, the last on which we worked together ...” Andreev, as I have already said, was very devoted to the Wednesday circle and always tried to help, attracting interesting people. “Father!” he wrote to me once. “Tomorrow I am having some people over, literary brothers and some others. Veresaev will be here – he wishes to make your acquaintance; he would make a most pleasing future member of our Wednesday circle. You must come.” And so, Veresaev became our comrade from that moment on. “Father!” another time he sent me in a short letter. “In St Petersburg I said to Korolenko that the Wednesday circle awaits him. Today he arrived in Moscow, but he cannot stay until the Wednesday meeting, so please hold the Wednesday meeting on Monday.” And so the Wednesday meeting, although on a Monday, took place with Korolenko and was a very interesting evening. Once Andreev brought us someone new. Just as he had been brought to us by Gor’kii, so now he brought to the Wednesday circle a young student in a grey formal double-breasted jacket with gold buttons. “This is a talented young man,” Andreev said about him. “He has published all of two stories in Courier, but it is clear that he has a promising future ahead of him.” Everyone liked the youth. They also liked his story “Wolves.” From that evening forward he became a member of the Wednesday circle and its patron. This youth was Boris Zaitsev. Andreev loved the Wednesday circle; he valued very much its opinions. It was unthinkable that he would not first share with us his newest work. He always said, “Until I’ve read it to the Wednesday circle, I don’t consider any of my works finished.” Even when he went abroad, where he stayed for almost a year, he longed to hear the opinions of his old comrades. In Berlin he parted for good with his famous undercoat and, according to his humorous letters written in German, went about the city “in zylinder, und rock, und ohne a beard ...”18 This is how he himself described his relationship with the Wednesday circle. “My dear Mitrich,” he wrote to me in 1906: I have run away from the council of the unholy and I am sitting in Berlin, staying through the winter. It is comfortable to work, but without my favourite

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people around, it is boring. It is so very boring. When I think that there will be no more Wednesdays, no more brotherhood, it is so nauseating. I live here completely in isolation, and for some reason do not want to strike up new acquaintances. It is the old ones that I want and I have not lost hope that I will return to them. I mean to do a lot of work. Shura should give birth any day – that is my care ... Please write about how you are living, about your frame of mind, what you are doing, about your work. You do not have to write a lot, it is not worth it, but just a little – you must write at least a short note so that our connection is not completely severed. It is a pity that all of our brothers – and I’m no exception – dislike writing letters. Living abroad, one ends up utterly cut off from one’s homeland. Ever a member of the Wednesday circle, I will send you my things to read and discuss. In a few days I will send you two pieces – the story “Lazarus” and the play The Life of Man. The first is nothing to talk about, but the second thing is new in form – an experimental approach to a certain new manner of constructing a drama. Therefore, I beg you to tell me how the Wednesday circle responds. Their advice and opinions were always important to me, and in this new business, where I am still feeling my way – even more so. And I ask especially that you do not let the reporters know about The Life of Man. Warn our comrades not to give away the contents and I want you to keep safe the manuscript and only give it out after it has been signed for. It would be really unpleasant – it would do the play a lot of harm if the newspapermen started saying a bunch of stupid things too early. Goloushev wrote once that Savva was read very badly. So tell the reader that this time it should be read like a book, without acting or a great deal of expression. Just read it – no more. Tell my dear ones that whoever can manage it, please write me a few lines about their lives. To all of them I send the most tender greetings – it is just so boring to write! Reproach Zaitsev; why hasn’t he answered me, did he not get my letter? I am not in any particular mood because I am working. When I read a Russian paper, I become melancholy for a period of time. My health is not good. Literature makes the situation less difficult. Here, I do not know how Savva will be received in Russia, but it has done well here. It is being performed, and next month To the Stars19 will open at the Kleines Theatre. To the Stars is also being staged by the National Theatre in Vienna. In another Vienna theatre, they say that Savva is having a good run. About revolution, I will not write one word for at least a year. Maybe even two. There is no point in writing something bad, and it is currently impossible to write anything good. All the best! Your Leonid. Berlin, Grünwald, Villa Klara. – It is a good villa, brother: I am living in a kind of Paradise. Greenery and flowers.”

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 After his wife’s death, Andreev was only in Moscow for quick visits. He lived at first in the south, then in St Petersburg, then, after his second marriage, he left for Finland. He built a dacha there and isolated himself. However, he corresponded with several of his comrades from the Wednesday circle and from time to time sent us his latest work in manuscript form, in particular the plays Anathema, Tsar Hunger, and others. “Greetings to the old lady Wednesday,” he wrote to me in 1909 from Raivola. “If you want to see me as I am, take a few days off and come to visit – I shall be extraordinarily happy. I only feel human in the country ... “I am falling to pieces: something with my nerves, something with my heart, something with my head – everything hurts, especially my cursed head... I have not written one solitary line since February. I sold Anathema a long time ago, received the money and it is already gone – it went for debts. But what can you do when your head hurts, hurts, hurts ... I am tired.” Once I heard a rumour that Andreev had gotten too big for his britches, no longer cared about his old friends, etc. Nothing could be further from the truth. Here is a letter from 1913, full of attentiveness and friendship: “Belousov wrote to me that you were not well. Therefore, I am sending to you all of my sympathy and greetings. We see each other seldom but it is as if you and I have been friends since childhood – such a place you have in my soul and you remain lodged there firmly. I always long to see you and always believe in something, feel some support ... There is the possibility that I will drop by Moscow. I would like to rest. I worked a lot this year and am tired. I have been ill for the last four days: a bad heart, it cannot support stress, it’s giving under the strain. In general I have rotten health, but my only sin is work. In addition, there are still scoundrels, who provoke, scheme, disturb ...” All the letters he wrote over a number of years when he did not live in Moscow included thoughtful questions about Goloushev, Shmelev,20 Belousov and tender remarks about the “old Wednesdays” and about old comrades ... At the height of the last war, when we decided to publish in Moscow a collection of stories, The Call, Andreev sent us right away his Youth.21

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He sent a new story for a collection dedicated to prisoners. In general, he was always sympathetic, considerate and conducted himself like a good comrade. “Thank you for The Call,” he wrote to me in 1915. “There are a lot of good things in it ... Yours is good ... Bunin, as with all of his latest stuff he gets the highest mark. But what moved me to tears was Trenev.22 If you know him, tell him ‘thank you’ from me, from the bottom of my heart! ... Oh, if only I were well! Now, on top of my ordinary ill health, I’ve got streptococcus to boot. Do you know it? It’s worse than a crocodile ... It certainly would be good to get a small friendly group together, four or five people, and strike out for Solovki,23 for the White Sea or some place like that! ... Now, I’ve just read Trenev for a second time and again I’m bawling my head off. Fantastic! ...” Knowing Andreev as I did for almost twenty years, I often saw him in public, with his family, at work, and I always knew him to be a person with a tender, good soul, an intelligent and interesting conversationalist, and a faithful comrade. For many years he dedicated much attention and care to the Wednesday circle, gave us the benefit of his outstanding talent, and shared with us before all others his finest work. The last thing he read to us was his Samson.24 That was just before the Revolution. And then events parted him from us. He remained in Finland, on the other side of the border, and so we did not get any letters or communication from him for three years. In the last years, when a short newspaper announcement reached us saying that the writer Leonid Andreev had died of heart failure, few of us believed it. For almost an entire year we were in doubt – although there was nothing improbable in it. On that side and on this one, the losses have been mounting, and unusually quickly. But now that his closest relatives have received direct confirmation, there is no longer any room for doubt. “Someone in Grey”25 has blown out one more of the Old Lady Wednesdays’ bright candles, the one named the life of man ... Farewell, dear friend! Remembering Andreev, you cannot help thinking of a remark he once made: “It is a bitter lot at times – very bitter – to be a Russian writer. But it is a great joy to be one of them!” Moscow, 1920 October 23

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notes 1 The meetings originally took place on Wednesdays. 2 Viktor Sergeevich Miroliubov (1860–1939), singer and editor of several journals. 3 A literary-artistic monthly journal published in St Petersburg from 1896 to 1906. 4 The full title is “A Tale about Sergei Petrovich,” first published in Life, no. 10 (October 1900). 5 First published in Courier, no. 244 (4 September 1901). 6 Andreev worked on this story from 1899 to1901. The final version, dated 27 November 1901, was never published. 7 This letter was sent by Andreev to Teleshov from Vammelsuu on 30 July 1910. 8 Konstantin Petrovich Piatnitskii (1864–1938), organizer of various literary projects. 9 August Scholz was a pseudonym for Thomas Schäfer (1857–1923), German translator of Russian literary works. 10 Short Stories (St Petersburg: Knowledge, 1901) first appeared on 30 September 1901. 11 A monthly scientific and literary journal published in St Petersburg from 1876 to 1918. 12 A weekly newspaper published in St Petersburg since 1868. 13 Sofia Andreeva Tolstaia (1844–1919), wife of Lev Tolstoi. 14 Like Zaitsev, Teleshov is mistaken. The maiden name of Andreev’s first wife was Veligorskaia 15 Nikolai Nikolaevich Zlatovratskii (1845–1911), author, public affairs writer, and memoirist. 16 “Gusliar’” was written in 1901 and published in Stories and Songs, vol. 1 (St Petersburg: Knowledge, 1902). 17 Actually, the story was entitled “The Thought,” in which Dr Kerzhentsev is a main character. 18 This passage is written in cyrillic but approximates German spelling. Here Andreev makes a play on words by using his pseudo-German spelling for “top hat” (Zylinder in German), which has been borrowed into Russian as the same word (tsilindr) and then uses “beard” in Russian (boroda) rather than the German word Bart: “in tsilinder, und rok, und one boroda.” 19 First published in the Knowledge Almanac, book 10 (St Petersburg: Knowledge, 1906). The play premiered in Austria in October 1906. In Imperial Russia, the play was first produced on 27 May 1907 in Terijoki, Finland. 20 Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev (1873–1950), author and public affairs writer.

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21 This play was first published in Word, collection 6 (Moscow: Publishing House of Moscow writers, 1916). Fragments of the play were published in The Call. A Collection Aiding the Victims of War (Moscow: Printing Day, 1915). 22 Konstantin Andreevich Trenev (1876–1945), author, public affairs writer, dramatist. 23 Solovetskii Monastery. 24 Samson in Chains was first published in Epoch. A Literary-Artistic Collection, book 2 (Moscow: 1923) and in Contemporary Notes, no. 24 (Paris 1925). 25 This passage is making reference to the play The Life of Man, in which “Someone in Grey” holds a candle representing the duration of Man’s life.

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he year was 1906. The Revolution was still not a legal spouse, jealously guarding her legal monopoly on love. The Revolution was young, free, a fiery-eyed lover – and I was in love with the Revolution. On Sundays, the Red Guards solemnly marched through the streets of Helsingfors,1 with music, banners – the famous Captain Kock2 in front. In Tele Park, among the pines, and the grey and red granite blocks, under the glazed-blue July sky – maneuvers and exercises were organized. There was a rumour (delivered in a whisper) that something was cooking on these little Sveaborg islands, hidden behind the green bastions. And the sun was hotter and hotter, the sky heavier, of a deepening blue, the thunderstorm came closer and closer. All at once, in the evening, the newspapers brought the telegram: the Duma has been dispersed. The next morning in the Work House there is a crush of people, feverish. There are Finnish workers with pipes. Russian students. A sailor from Sveaborg in a civilian coat, but out from under the coat naively shows the top white part of a sailor’s jacket. “Grey” came out onto the porch. He was hard-packed, firm, a head covered with hoarfrost. He was believed to have been a participant in the December events in Moscow. “Grey” read the appeal from the members of the Duma and declared: “Tomorrow there will be a rally in

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Kaisanieme Park. One of the members of the Duma and Leonid Andreev will give a talk.” Everyone connected Leonid Andreev with “The Thought” and “Vasilii Fiveiskii,” but Leonid Andreev and revolution ... This was quite a new persona for Andreev and all the members of the Russian diaspora flocked to get tickets for the rally.3 It was a stifling day. In a clearing stood a tall wooden stage covered in flowers. There was a crowd pressed shoulder to shoulder. Behind it, from behind the forest, rose a dark five-fingered hand – a rain cloud. “Oh, my God, it’s going to rain ... And he won’t show. What do you think? Will he show?” someone cooed from the back. That was a party damsel cooing. Under her arm was a package – maybe proclamations. Her head was always tilted sideways, turkeylike, and with one eye she kept anxiously casting glances up at the rain cloud. But the music was already playing. The crowd split like the parting of the Red Sea and in the narrow passage, in the focus of a thousand eyes – two people: Leonid Andreev in his black shirt, without a hat, a little pale, a bouquet of red roses in his hands, and a member of the Duma, Mikhailichenko4 – a heavy-set bow-legged figure wearing a huge horsecollar of flowers on his neck. I do not now remember why, but they assigned me to “look after” Andreev. He was absentmindedly lost in concentration, nibbling on his mustache, and most likely nervous. Before us, from behind someone’s shoulder, the damsel with the turkey’s head pulls herself up on her tiptoes. She had already forced her way to this spot in front of everyone and shone directly into Andreev’s face with a single ecstatic and affectionate eye. Wherever Andreev turned, she was before him like the arrow of a compass pointing directly at him. “Who is this?” asks Andreev in my ear. “Oh, just – a party damsel. One of the adoring ...” Maybe the damsel noticed Andreev’s glance, thrown in her direction ... I do not know. But just then she jerked me to one side and there was a whisper: “Listen ... for the love of God, introduce me to Andreev ... I cannot ... I must shake his hand ... I must ...” I made the introduction. The damsel, all aglow and on tip-toes, babbled something enthusiastically. On the stage, Mikhailichenko in his horse-collar unspooled clumsy horsey drayish words. The five-fingered

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cloud covered the sun with its palm, and a warm rain began to spit from the sky. Andreev opened his umbrella and absentmindedly, while thinking his own private thoughts, smiled at the glowing damsel. The cloud quickly collapsed. Again, everything was clear, crystal and blue. Someone ran up. “Leonid Nikolaevich, it is your turn ....” Andreev looked around a bit absentmindedly. Where should I put my wet umbrella? It would not do to take the stage carrying an umbrella. “Leonid Nikolaevich, for the love of God, please give it to me ... I will take care of your umbrella ... for the love of God ...” said the damsel, all aflutter. Andreev handed her the umbrella. Presently above their heads appears a pale agitated face, a bouquet of blood-red roses. In the silence could be heard words, distinctive and widely spaced. “The seconds fall, like drops. And with each second, the head wearing the crown comes ever closer to the executioner’s block. A day from now, three days, a week – the last second will fall and the crown will go tumbling down from the block with a clatter, followed by the head ...” I do not remember what came after. I remember one thing: at the time, that all seemed very meaningful, beautiful and infectious. After every two or three phrases Andreev stopped, a translator translated his speech into Finnish, unintentionally imitating Andreev’s measured, distinct delivery and his intonation. And this solemn, slow alternation of slow words reminded one of an Easter service – the priest and deacon reading the Gospel line by line, one in Greek and the other in Old Church Slavonic ... He finished. A long ovation. Those below the stage laid siege to him in a tight greedy circle. Heads stretching over shoulders cocked eager ears up to him, trying to catch and secrete some scraps of words. Finally, he fought them off and freed himself. “I don’t like it when there are so many eyes,” he said. “You do not know which to choose ...” He now hurried to leave. He stretched out his hand for the umbrella. The damsel retreated a step, pressing the umbrella to her heart and with pleading glances at Andreev, with turkeylike eyes, told him in a great rush of words: “Leonid Nikolaevich, for the love of God ... Leave the umbrella with me ... for the love of God ... It, I will forever ... It, I will ...”

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Andreev began to laugh; slyly he glanced at the girl, “Well, all right. God be with you. Just be sure to take care of it.” “Leonid Nikolaevich ... Could you really think... really that I ...” Two steps beyond the trees, Andreev waved his hand choking with laughter: “The thing is ... the main point is ... That umbrella’s not even mine. It belongs to our governess.” He began talking about something else, then again recalled the umbrella. He waved with his hand and chokes with laughter ... At the exit, while saying his goodbyes, he said to me quite seriously: “Only please, don’t say a word to her about the umbrella. Why should she know the truth? There’s no need ...”

notes 1 Present-day Helsinki, Finland. 2 Captain Johan Kock (1861–1915), leader of the Finnish Red Guard during the Finnish general strike in October 1905. He tried to organize a strike by Finns in support of the Sveaborg mutiny in the summer of 1906. Kock then fled to the United States of America, where he worked as a journalist and farmer. 3 Andreev’s greatest involvement with the revolutionary intelligentsia came in the period of 1905–06. He was arrested for allowing a meeting of the Social Democratic Labour Party in his apartment and was briefly imprisoned in the Taganka jail. His reputation as a revolutionary sympathizer along with such literary works as “The Red Laugh” led to fears of a reprisal by the Black Hundred. In November 1905 Andreev moved to Berlin with his wife and child as a precaution. While Andreev was abroad, the Russian press suggested that he was involved in revolutionary activities. On 21–22 July 1906, demonstrations were held in Helsingfors (Helsinki), organized by representatives of the Finnish Red Guard. Andreev appeared at a mass demonstration held in Hesperia Park on the twenty-second, where he protested the dismissal of the Duma and appealed for armed insurrection against the autocracy. Andreev’s participation at the rally did not lead to further revolutionary activity. In fact, fearing that by reputation alone he might be implicated in the Sveaborg mutiny, Andreev left for Stockholm and a tour of the Norwegian coast. The meeting was staged on 30 July 1906 by soldiers and sailors at the Sveaborg fortress near Helsingfors. It was crushed on 2 August by naval bombardment. 4 Mitrofan Ivanovich Mikhailichenko (1872 – ?), worker, Social Democrat,

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deputy to the first Duma, where he was leader of the workers’ group and a signatory of the Vyborg manifesto, an act of defiance in response to Nicholas ii’s dissolution of the first Duma. The manifesto urged Russians not to pay taxes or supply army recruits until the Duma was reconvened. In 1912 he was arrested and spent some time in jail for a political offence.

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Andrei Belyi

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y memories of Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev are two-sided. On the one hand, he occupied an important place in my soul; not long ago I was staggered by his enormous story “Charmer of the Beast.”1 Once again, a cosmic significance, one that was entirely unrecognized, was revealed to me in Leonid Nikolaevich. On the other hand, my memory of Leonid Andreev is somehow scanty. We met so few times, and memory has drawn an impenetrable veil over a number of our infrequent meetings. It seems that the thickest fog arises exactly where the precise circumstances of our meetings should surface most clearly. Two or three moments – individual, clear, sharp – emerge from this fog, where a gesture of Leonid Nikolaevich – a wordless, suprarational gesture towards me – cuts through this dark fog with a very clear flash of light, similar to magnesium. For an instant – while snatched from the darkness – this light reveals very strange poses of people who are in motion, but in the instantaneous flash – appear motionless, with widespread legs – a man standing with one leg raised unnaturally over a puddle that he is about to step over. However, the motion disappears into the gloom (after all, a flash is instantaneous); and it seems that the stance of the man with his leg raised slightly above the puddle will last for a millennium. So it is that Leonid Andreev is snatched for me from the darkness of oblivion, blazing for an instant.

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I remember him standing before me in the middle of an empty illuminated square room uncrowded by objects – his apartment on Presnia street. It is obvious that people were sitting in this room moments ago. Chairs are variously placed about in intricate patterns – in groups of twos and threes, half turned to one another. They describe the arrangement of the guests only just seated. Everyone has moved on. There in the doorway to the neighbouring room, they move about – and they seem to be absurd silhouettes. The honking of human voices resounds indistinctly. It might be that they are eating appetizers and probably Teleshov, Aleksei Evgen’evich Gruzinskii,2 the late Sergei Sergeevich Goloushev, the artist Pervukhin,3 Ivan Belousov, Timkovskii and Chirikov, and other participants of the Wednesday circle are there. I do not remember who is there. Before me in the empty room is Boris Konstantinovich Zaitsev, asking me about something. He seems undersized to me only because the really quite large and stout figure of Leonid Nikolaevich is leaning heavily on Boris Zaitsev’s shoulder, half embracing him, resting one foot on an empty chair. Leonid Nikolaevich is staring at me with a sharp, piercing glance; his black eyes quite astonishing, setting off the whiteness of a calmly hardened face, with a loose black strand of somehow dishevelled hair, cutting his forehead in two. The entire scene of memories is like a flash. I do not remember what I said to Boris Konstantinovich Zaitsev. I do not remember what followed. What did Leonid Nikolaevich and I talk about? I do remember that a decidedly trivial conversation occurred between us, producing the impression that we had both made every effort to talk only of things that scarcely mattered to us. Meanwhile, the black gaze of Leonid Nikolaevich, sharply and curiously fixed on me from behind his white face, said: “Yes, yes – no use trying to wriggle out of it, brother mine.” “It doesn’t matter what is said. What matters is what is behind it. ” “Come on, come on, show me what is going on inside of you.” “How do you look at things when you are all alone?” That is what I heard said by the unblinking glance slicing through the conversation about art that transpired between us. His very pale cheeks and nose, very pale, a small beard, tufts of unmoving hair – this all seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with the discourse that was taking place between us. It was then that I sensed that Leonid Nikolaevich had become close

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and dear to me; and yet during these years we were in opposite camps. We Scorpion writers regarded the writers of Knowledge as opponents, while the writers of Knowledge regarded us at best as “eccentrics, at worst – as something like traitors to the traditions of the public good.”4 Earlier, the creative works of “Leonid Andreev” to a large degree seemed to me profoundly congenial. I made an effort, mixed with a kind of annoyance at the fact that Leonid Nikolaevich “did not see” us, to be restrained. I tried to be cordial with this celebrated writer, towards whom newspaper columnists acted subserviently, while victimizing and insulting us. Finally, I practically did not know Leonid Nikolaevich personally – all of this raised a fence between us, but finally through the “fence” an attentive, curious glance suddenly penetrated my soul, encouraging me, as if saying: “Literary schools and their opinions about one another are such nonsense. We are all equally lonely in the ultimate things, in our nocturnal existence.” All of this lasted an instant (a flash of magnesium in the darkness) and the glance from behind the words remained with me – a little sad, sympathetic “through it all.” No, I do not even remember what year this was – maybe 1905 or maybe 1906? I do not remember whether this was the same evening we first met, or whether the meeting took place at Sergei Sergeevich Goloushev’s, at one of those delightfully cozy Wednesday meetings. I used to go then to these Wednesday gatherings and there I argued with writers remote from ourselves in terms of style and tastes. Sergei Sergeevich Goloushev usually started the arguments, about Symbolism, which I defended and which were attacked by this or that writer from Knowledge. (By the way, the arguments were conducted in a completely friendly manner. A wonderful atmosphere at the AndreevGoloushev Wednesday meetings did not allow things to degenerate into tabloid tones.) Then we ate dinner. For that matter, I do not remember when I met Leonid Andreev. How we met, what was said between us, again I cannot recall. I was familiar with the massive and seemingly motionless figure of the writer before we met personally. I remember Leonid Nikolaevich, his head rising above the public in the foyer of the Moscow Art Theatre. He seemed to be frozen in conversation. I recall him leaning against the wall and around him is a small circle of young ladies, a small circle of students – gazing at the writer with amorous eyes. I recall the black velvet shirt, the high black glossy boots, and the silver belt restraining an expanding girth.

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That evening on Presnia, in just such a shirt, he stood before me, girded in the same silver belt. He was already close to me. I do not know why. He was very affectionate and a hospitable host. Every movement of his ample body reminded me by its rhythm of his strange hieratic phrases. It seemed that everything he did, he did in front of himself; he observed himself in sharp focus among us, separated by spaces: from himself; and he was looking: from there to here; his experiences were over there, while his learning took place here; his knowledge was never overlaid upon his experiences; his knowledge was ordinary; his experiences were prodigious; regarding himself through his knowledge, he saw emptiness (instead of images of the other world); feeling and probing the texture of life through his experience, he saw: incoherence, to which he tried to lash himself so as not to plummet into a reality about which he consciously knew nothing: a split, and enormous loneliness; you could be sitting next to him: a man like any other; yet – no, no: not like any other; you could sit next to him, but you cannot touch him. Like a traveller leaning against a window where a group of friends is having a banquet, he convinces himself that he, too, is actually here – with everyone. Hence his “theatricality,” which was an effort to coordinate the rhythm of his emotions from over there to here, so as to reach for a glass; for anyone else, that would be natural, but for Andreev, any gesture was the result of a great many efforts: to will from over there (from the constellation Canis Major, perhaps) so that the exertion of his will enters an apparatus representing the temporal and spatial shell of the “Andreev” sitting next to Bunin – just imagine – in Presnia. The spatial shell tries to be like everyone else: a gesture of effort seems a pose. In his liveliness he is too lively; in silence, too slow-moving. A sudden sharp glance, a flash of magnesium that bridges spaces: from over there; a flash that abolishes the representation of “Leonid Andreev”; hence the shell is incapable at any time of assuming the pose of Doctor Kerzhentsev5 – quickly dropping to all fours. That evening I understood all of this. It seemed that he understood that I understood. The words did not seem interesting. I kept casting my glance at him “from over there.” He felt that I was looking. Twice I caught a quick glance – good-hearted and a little ironical – cast at me, catching me, and I understood from where it was that he set his Kerzhentsev “on all fours.” And he understood what dictated to me the phrase “There is no hope for a person who has sat down on the floor.”6 And that is how he remained for me: in the realm of infrequent meet-

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ings; I met him, but I did so from there – to there. In everyday life he could scold me and I could be indignant with the Knowledge writers for their inability to understand. That Leonid Nikolaevich was close to me and dear I realized quite unexpectedly – only after a year, a year and a half, or two (again my recollection is foggy). It was in July or August 1907 on the dusty Arbat, by the home of Chulkov – where Dr Dobrov7 resided. I was going to see a very close woman friend during a time when she was living at Dobrov’s place, and in the doorway I bumped into a man, heavily darting out with a bicycle from the dark and crooked doorway. He almost knocked me off my feet. He was wiping his sweaty forehead. He was in a pale yellow loose-fitting raw silk shirt hanging in folds around his body. At first we exchanged irritated glances and started to apologize. Suddenly then we leaned back, stopped, and looked one another up and down. The man in the shirt, still holding his bicycle upright, leaned toward me. “Is that you, Boris Nikolaevich?”8 “Leonid Nikolaevich?” He was, as I recall, clean shaven. I, on the other hand, had not shaved for two months and my beard had grown out. Because of this we did not recognize each other at first and therefore exchanged a few jokes. But for those few moments of a quite unforeseen meeting, I suddenly sensed the onrush of our former joyful closeness, as though we were very, very close acquaintances. I felt something welcoming of me was rising in him. I felt tenderness in his simple words. Again, beyond the words we spoke, we exchanged some kind of recognition of one another, a recognition out of keeping with the chance nature of our insignificant meetings. Suddenly he shook his hair out as a youngster might, leaving a fallen lock of hair standing upright again. And then he mounted his bicycle, quickly and adroitly, and turned off down a side street. There, in that house, we soon met again. We spent an evening together in the apartment of Dr Dobrov, where I often spent time with my woman friend. Leonid Nikolaevich questioned me that evening in great detail about the St Petersburg writers – Aleksei Mikhailovich Remizov9 and Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Blok. He had moved by then to St Petersburg and expressed an interest in St Petersburg writers – our Decadent trend. He talked about pranks played by Aleksei Remizov and he spoke to me about Blok with affection. Leonid Nikolaevich showed obvious curiosity in his persistent conversation with me about Blok. It

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was precisely at this time that I had parted ways with Blok. He evidently knew about the reasons for our difficult separation and by talking about Blok, he was testing me. Among those assembled was a young lady to whom, as was the rumour, I was paying court. He was especially tender with her, looking at me encouragingly. We left the table, exchanging strange phrases that did not make much sense. I felt that I could convey to him my thoughts about him. He answered with the sharpest sympathetic glance – across all divisions. Once again I do not remember the words (only momentary flashes). They belonged to an absolutely trivial conversation and have dimmed. I soon read The Life of Man, which I found stunning. Boris Konstantinovich Zaitsev talked me into expressing my impressions in an article, which I did. Leonid Nikolaevich was satisfied with my article. In Kiev, I expressed to Blok my impression of Andreev’s drama and he agreed with me.10 Later in the fall Leonid Nikolaevich appeared in Moscow. We saw a lot of each other during this short period and between us there was no uneasiness. It seemed that he wanted to approach me, but somehow the approaches were not successful. I remember that once in the foyer of the Moscow Art Theatre I felt someone’s soft hand on my shoulder. I turned and there stood Leonid Nikolaevich smiling. We began to talk – I do not remember about what. Just as I do not remember my conversations with Andreev in general. I do remember the silence that underlay them, and it was kind. Once, around this same time, he and I set out from somewhere (I do not remember where) to see a production of Brand.11 He listened very attentively and was captivated by Kachalov.12 Kachalov did not really speak to me in this role. Then we talked about Ibsen, quietly pacing back and forth on the soft carpet during the intermissions. I began to complain about my shattered nerves, about how I had long since worn myself out dealing with people. Leonid Nikolaevich gave me a kind of sidelong glance and said to me with a sigh, “You’ve done too much thinking for your own good, Boris Nikolaevich. You need to spend some time in nature; someone should confiscate all your books and send you packing to Finland with a fishing pole. There’s more wisdom in fishing than there is in philosophizing.” At this time something attracted me to Leonid Nikolaevich. Once I stopped in to see him at the Loskutnaia Hotel and we had lunch together.

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This is where Boborykin also stayed at the time. I was fighting off a migraine and I was afraid that it might ruin the evening. As I recall, I was scheduled to deliver a lecture in the hall of the Political Museum13 (“About Friedrich Nietzsche”)14 that evening. Leonid Nikolaevich gave me powder for the migraine. That afternoon he was very excited and, during lunch, he told us a great deal about an incident that made a deep impression on him involving an old maid. One day she imagined quite clearly that she was not a virgin. She insisted on this despite reassurances from doctors that she was mistaken. Leonid Nikolaevich told this story masterfully. We laughed but were frightened and terrified by his mimicry of a completely serious and bewildered face. While telling it Leonid Nikolaevich winked at us with a slightly elevated eyebrow. As I recall, after lunch I tried to convey to Leonid Nikolaevich something internal I saw in him. He heard me out, looked attentive, was silent – and did not answer at all. Subsequently he remarked to someone, “You know Andrei Belyi came here to see me and spoke very heatedly to me about something. I did not understand a word he said …” I was upset and even offended. It seemed to me that in these words was a deliberate caricature – “for the benefit of journalists.” Andrei Belyi for them represented the outer reaches of unintelligibility. Along with this I understood that a barrier existed between us due to the fact that Leonid Nikolaevich belonged to the opposite literary circle. I realized: the one thing that his glance at times conveyed to me, a glance from over there (like a flash of the whitest magnesium) – cannot be incarnated in face-to-face interactions – we recognized in each other the very thing that lies outside the boundaries of words. But our entire life paths were different. And so I drew a firm line then under that difference, saying to myself that I would have nothing to do with Andreev. There could be no more interactions of any kind here. From there, our interaction would remain. I ceased visiting him. And yet we ran into each other once more by chance at a masquerade at Iuon’s.15 The striking profile of Andreev, intensely pale, with a pointed nose and a shaggy cap of hair, rose like an immobile frozen mask above the masks of harlequins and dominos. I retained in my mind: the very, very attentive gaze, very stern, slicing through the multicoloured crowd of playful and dancing spots before him to fix in the passing masks, as if these were living and material essences appearing to him from out of a haze of common vices. I was struck by the hungering fixedness of that gaze; I suddenly grasped that what we consider a mask

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was for Andreev authenticity. What we consider authenticity is for him only a mask. It seemed that by the masks that concealed the true face, he could identify what the masks sought to hide. I recall Leonid Andreev striding amidst the masks; there was no longer a fateful invisible circle segregating him from the rest of us; here in the fantasy of our soaring gestures, he was with us in spirit. There was no from-over-there about him anymore; the from-over-there had descended to the here and now bloomed in our midst in a patchwork of glittering cloth and the ring of sleigh bells. I too was behind a mask, wrapping myself in a red domino, and I was frolicking wildly. There in the corner, a huge, long palm tree danced spiritedly: it was Pashukanis,16 who was tragically executed by gunshot eleven years later. Here Ellis17 ranted – an Arab waving a sabre. I was quarrelling with him at the time. Asking him to dance a waltz with me, I spun with him in a whirlwind of multicoloured cloth. Then I threatened him. He was frightened. He did not recognize me. Disguising both my walk and my voice, I walked among the revellers, recognizing people I knew and whispering things to them. As they recognized one another, everyone took off their masks, but I remained incognito. All around me people said, “Tell me, who is that?” I talked with Poliakov,18 and with Mme. Baltrushaitis.19 Neither one recognized me, although I often met with Poliakov at that time and he knew me very well. And there, curiously lodging his nose in the narrow slit of my mask, he asked who I was. Suddenly I heard distinctly from behind, “Who is this? I’ll tell you: it’s Boris Nikolaevich ...” I turned and saw Leonid Nikolaevich standing behind me, laughing quite good-naturedly. Aleksei Mikhailovich Poliakov protests: “What do you mean, this isn’t him at all ...” Leonid Nikolaevich squinted at me through the eye-slit. I saw that there was no evading that man. However, in the interest of preserving my incognito, he gave me a slight wink and passed into the crowd of masks. I understood that he recognized me. His keenness of observation, as I recall, amazed me. But his grin told me, just as it had upon our first meeting in Presnia: “Remember I asked you who exactly you were? Now I know.” Again something intimate and unmediated entered directly into my soul. Andreev was already gone. He had passed at a slightly slowed, hieratic pace, raising his serious brow, slightly frowning, away from twittering masks – to twittering masks.

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I did not see him anymore after this. But he lived in me, though he knew that we would never meet in what united us. There – maybe. Here – never. Our meeting would always end badly. About me he would say, “Belyi arrived and said a lot of things. I did not understand a word.” About him I would say, “No, Andreev lacks literary culture. Just look: he is like a bad woodcut.” Nevertheless, I knew somewhere over there Andreev is an enormous writer, and still unrecognized. Neither Teleshov nor Timkovskii could appreciate him. He is not with them. He is with us. He is one of ours. Leonid Nikolaevich knew, I think, that he and I were constantly meeting somewhere, but … not in Moscow, not at the Loskutnaia Hotel, and least of all at Sergei Sergeevich Goloushev’s. We would meet there – in the worlds of dreams, where all masks are essences and where the appearance of Presnia, the Loskutnaia, Khamovniki, Scorpion, and Knowledge are masks, at times illuminated in the blaze of a strange light and instantly frozen in that light like the figures of running people caught by a flash. Yes, all of the images in Leonid Andreev’s works, all of his inventory of everyday life, are motionless and heavy. He walks by with the frozen step of a man. And a whisper can be heard: “Richly and ornately.” Someone in Grey stands and the candle burns down. To me the opinions of naturalist critics about Andreev’s “realism” seemed like such false-noted phrases: about an enormous writer who created enormous caricatures of realism: it was then that Doctor Kerzhentsev was dropping to all fours, felled by the curse of the “Beast,”20 and stomping away from the wide-open door: into the darkness. What was secretly hidden in Andreev later revealed itself. (Instead of our reality he had emptiness, instead of our nature, an intentional mannequin, instead of symbols, allegory.) He was a futurist (before futurism); he was the sole mystical anarchist in our literature (Maiakovskii21 and Khlebnikov22 are mystical anarchists unwittingly). I wrote this about him in an early review. This was precisely the impression he made on me in life. He strode above the problem of the self, and all the best work he gave us was his “self”; Andreev’s reason tears itself apart in self-criticism of our daily consciousness, passed into spheres of cosmic darkness. The day is covered over with spots of masks; and night enters day; a daylight masquerade unfolds, and he hides his head like an ostrich, in communion with a circle of people he regards as mere masks. He laments in a conversation with Gor’kii, who understood

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him, “Here you are able to find them (people that is), but what clings to me is always some kind of burdock.”23 The split that I observed irritated me. I remember that in a fit of polemics I wrote very cutting remarks about his drama Anathema.24 It seems that Leonid Nikolaevich was constantly irritated by the entire style of the reviews in The Scales. Our respective literary movements separated us. We turned up later at opposite poles (during the war). If Leonid Nikolaevich was alive, we would not meet. But I always saw him there, where there are no borders. I saw the Face of the Century in Andreev’s spatial-temporal “Man.”25 I loved him and continue to love him. Reading deeply into pages of his work that can be hopelessly bad, I see immense powers, beside which the slick stylistic techniques of contemporary “men of letters” simply pale. No, he did not die, he will be discovered in the future. We will grasp what was unuttered in his utterances; we will appreciate his attempt to infuse human speech with the rhythm of the cosmos, so that the orbit of a phrase might by this rotation of a single refrain recall to us the orbital rotation of the cosmos. He wanted to be enormous – but not for himself. He wanted to reflect in his own perishable writerly stride the stride of the Age. His walk through the history of twentieth-century literature seemed at times a theatrically affected walk. It seemed to Kornei Chukovskii that he was an unselfish actor. He was Don Quixote in the most wonderful sense: the greatness of his creation lies in the vivid aspiration toward the great; the life of his books is an epic. In his guise lived the “Self” of the entire world, which he was never able to realize. Berlin 1922

notes 1 Belyi is mistaken. The name of the story is “The Cursed Beast,” which was first published in the almanac Earth, no. 1 (Moscow 1908). 2 Aleksei Evgen’evich Gruzinskii (1858–1930), literary critic and pedagogue. 3 Konstantin Konstantinovich Pervukhin (1863–1915), painter and member of the Wanderers artistic group.

Andre Belyi

4 5 6 7

8 9 10

11

12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

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Belyi’s footnote: “The words of Gor’kii.” The main character in Andreev’s story “The Thought.” Belyi’s footnote: “First Symphony.” Filipp Aleksandrovich Dobrov (1869–1941), doctor. The husband of Aleksandra Mikhailovna Andreeva’s sister. After the death of Aleksandra Mikhailovna, their son Daniil (1906–1959) lived with the Dobrovs. Daniil later became a poet and author. “Andrei Belyi” was the pseudonym of Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev. Aleksei Mikhailovich Remizov (1877–1957), author. Blok set off for Kiev on 2 October 1907 where he joined Belyi, Nina Petrovskaia, and Sergei Alekseevich Sokolov for a literary evening at the Kiev Opera House. The “Evening of Art,” sponsored by the Kievan journal In the World of Art, took place on 4 October. Belyi and Blok returned together to St Petersburg on 5–6 October. A play written in 1866 by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906). It was performed at the Moscow Art Theatre on 20 December 1906. They could not have met at the premiere in 1906 because Belyi was in Paris; therefore, they probably met at a performance in September 1907. Vasilii Ivanovich Kachalov (Shverubovich), 1875–1948, actor. On 21 January 1908 Belyi gave a lecture in Moscow for the Literary-Artistic Circle entitled “Friedrich Nietzsche and the Portents of the Present.” On 25 January he gave a lecture by the same title at the Tenishev School in St Petersburg. On 28 January he presented the same lecture he gave in St Petersburg, still under the title of “Friedrich Nietzsche and the Portents of the Present,” at the Polytechnical Museum in Moscow. Belyi published the article “Friedrich Nietzsche” in The Scales in numbers 7, 8, and 9 (1908). Konstantin Feodorovich Iuon (1875–1958), artist. Vinkentii Vinkent’evich Pashukanis (? – 1919), journalist. “Ellis” is the pseudonym for Lev L’vovich Kobylinskii (1879–1947), poet, translator, and critic. Aleksei Mikhailovich Poliakov (1874–1948), translator and owner of the Scorpion publishing house. Mariia Ivanovna Baltrushaitis (1878–1948), wife of Iurgis Kazimirovich Baltrushaitis (1873–1942), poet, translator, and diplomat. This is a reference to Andreev’s short story “The Cursed Beast.” Vladimir Vladimirovich Maiakovskii (1893–1930), poet. Velemir (Viktor Vladimirovich) Khlebnikov (1885–1922), poet. From Gor’kii’s memoir of Leonid Andreev. Belyi’s article was published in The Scales, no. 9 (1909).

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25 Here Belyi makes a play on words: Chelo Veka, or Face (or brow) of the Century, and Chelovek, which refers to the main character “Man” from Andreev’s play The Life of Man. Belyi, Nachalo veka, 658–9.

Recto Running Head

Leonid Andreev through the Prism of the Literary Portrait

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A portrait of Andreev (1902) sold as a postcard

A portrait of Andreev (1900s) sold as a postcard

Portrait of Andreev found in Kornei Chukovskii’s Leonid Andreev: Big and Little (1908)

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1 The Literary Portrait Memoir writers must manufacture a text, imposing narrative order on a jumble of half-remembered events. With that feat of manipulation they arrive at a truth that is theirs alone, not quite like that of anybody else who was present at the same events. William Zinsser, Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir

In a single classroom lecture on a significant person the most salient points must be presented in fifty minutes: when and where the person was born and died, highlights of personal development, contributions to art or politics, and the individual’s cultural legacy. One begins by gathering information: memoirs, newspaper reports, letters, eye-witness accounts of events, and many other such documents that provide various portraits of the subject. Each portrait is slightly different from the last, providing only one representation of a complex individual. Once the information has been (re)collected, decisions about content must be made. The tendency is to do away with extraneous information and focus instead on the major influences – philosophical, historical, and sociological. In this way, the multifaceted life history of an individual is simplified. Sometimes it is in the excluded material, however, that the true nature of the individual can be found. Vladimir Nabokov’s passion for butterflies; Valerii Briusov’s love affair with Nina Petrovskaia; the unhealthy relationship between Feodor Sologub and his sister – details are important for understanding a complicated individual but expendable given sufficient constraints on time or space. After all, choices of inclusion and exclusion are made relative to the task at hand, whether for a lecture, biographical entry, or a monograph. It was just such “extraneous” information in the life of Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev (1871–1919) that first peaked my interest. He was Russia’s most popular writer of the fin-de-siècle as well as the most

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reviled after his death; a “literary personality” who embraced decadent behaviour and scandalous debauchery but hid his bouts of illness from the reading public. Considered neither a Realist nor a Symbolist while alive, he was regarded as both once he was dead. Most of his friends thought him mentally sane but spiritually tormented. The search for biographical information eventually led me back to the first collection of memoirs dedicated to Andreev. A Book about Leonid Andreev, published three years after his death, represents the first attempt by the literary establishment to create a posthumous image of their contemporary,1 and it was in these pages that much of the standard portrait of the writer had been created. Andreev is well worth remembering on his own. Beyond that, however, his untimely death in 1919 is associated with the demise of Imperial Russian culture and a way of life that was destroyed by Bolshevik ideology. Thus, Andreev came to embody many of the important literary and social debates of the time and his legacy gains in significance as a result. Through these texts we also come to know something about the memoirists and their creative processes. Gor’kii, Belyi, Zaitsev, and the other authors wrote about Andreev at a moment when they themselves worried about how they would be portrayed in the Bolshevik future. Their texts reveal as much about how they construed themselves as about their subject. Thus, my book opens a debate on how the authors of the memoirs situated themselves and their own posthumous legacies as the era drew to a close. In the course of my research, I found that Andreev suffered from mental illness – a difficult point to make since Andreev himself spent a lot of energy trying to deflect attention from his periods of illness. Andreev’s attempt to deflect attention from his mental health was compounded by the limited understanding of mental health issues at the turn of the century. Contemporary descriptions of Andreev’s episodes in terms of “creative energy,” undefined “inner turmoil,” “chaos,” etc., have done more to mystify Andreev and his literary works than to clarify. I situate Andreev’s work in terms of his mental condition and attempt to demystify and dispel many of the misconceptions that surround his life history. As already noted, Andreev was one of the best-selling authors in Russia for nearly a decade at the beginning of the twentieth century. His short stories, plays, and novel were eagerly read by the public and gen-

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erated lively debates, which often focused on contemporary issues, in the pages of newspapers and journals. In many ways, Andreev was a celebrity with all the intrusive media coverage that we associate with that status. This intense scrutiny was all the more difficult for Andreev because of his bouts of mental illness. During his lifetime, he was diagnosed and treated as an acute neurasthenic. His letters, diaries, and literary works indicate that he was well aware of his condition and concerned about his public image, understanding that his fame was connected to his personality as much as to his literary works. As a result, there were competing narratives about how Leonid Andreev, the popular figure would be represented, a discourse in which Andreev himself participated and by which he tried to deflect interest in his mental health. Andreev became the subject of many memoirs after his death, in addition to those in A Book About Leonid Andreev. In 1924 Alexander Kaun published the first major Western study of Andreev.2 That same year, a biography of Andreev was published in the Soviet Union. Nikolai Fatov’s The Early Years of Leonid Andreev also included memoirs by Andreev’s classmates and childhood acquaintances.3 Another significant book of memoirs dedicated to Andreev was published in 1930. Requiem: In Memoriam of Leonid Andreev contained a selection from Andreev’s diary, his play Requiem (Rekviem), letters to nine friends and colleagues, and memoirs by Vinkentii Veresaev, Aleksandr Kipen, and Vera Beklemisheva.4 Requiem was the last major Andreev publication in Russia until the 1960s. Exclusion from Soviet literary history made Andreev virtually taboo until the Thaw period. As a by-product of Nikita Krushchev’s attempt to undermine Joseph Stalin’s Cult-of-Personality, literature and literary figures excluded from official Soviet culture could once again be spoken about. It was then that two memoirs were published in the Soviet Union by Andreev’s children: Childhood: A Tale (Detstvo: Povest’) by Andreev’s first son Vadim, and House on the Black River: A Tale,5 written by Andreev’s only daughter Vera. Over the last four decades, there has been a steady flow of text editions, archival publications, articles, monographs, and doctoral dissertations.6 The main task in the last ten years has been the recovery of Andreev’s published and unpublished literary and journalistic writings, along with surviving letters and diaries. A lot of attention has been paid to the reconstruction of Andreev’s biography through this remaining

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documentation. One of the few areas that has not attracted much attention, however, is the memoir literature devoted to Andreev. A systematic critical approach to this literature is important to any comprehensive account of Andreev’s posthumous legacy. To begin with, however, it is important to examine the memoir in general. George Egerton, in his discussion of the political memoir, calls it a polygenre because of its political, historical, autobiographical, biographical and literary elements.7 In all types of memoir, there are elements of auto/biography, chronology and retrospectivity. As noted earlier, the author must decide what episodes will be described, how they will be depicted, and to what other events they will be linked. It is this creative quality that blurs the boundaries between literature and history.8 “Memoir literature” is a broad classification. Within the general classification of the literary memoir, there are notes and memoirs,9 diaries, literary portraits, and autobiographies. The literary portrait is usually a monograph and sometimes a fragment of a larger memoir. The term “literary portrait” has been explained by means of an analogy to visual portraiture and sculpture. As the painter has to decide questions of lighting, composition, and background, so the creator of the literary portrait has similar considerations. The literary portrait works, then, on two levels. One is the representation of the external qualities of the subject – physiognomy, manners of speech, dress, etc. The second is the description of the internal character of the subject – social and psychological as well as the byt 10 of the individual.11 However, unlike visual or plastic portraiture, where concrete physiognomic details of the subject are often the method for evaluating the work, literary portraiture is concerned with the depiction of the inner world of the individual – secrets, thoughts, and feelings.12 One of the specific qualities of literary portraits is that often the authors are literary figures themselves.13 This feature is important, of course, because these are people who understand and regularly employ literary techniques in their work. Their portraits may thus be more highly stylized and subjective than a portrait written by someone without literary training or by someone who is not trying to fashion or maintain a public reputation. The authors of literary portraits are conscious of their own reputations as they create an addition to their oeuvre that should embody their own literary talents. In other words, they are making a statement about

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the subject’s influence on them, as well as demonstrating their own literary abilities within the limitations and restrictions imposed by the biographical form.14 Vladimir Barakhov, the leading Soviet critic in the study of literary portraiture, states: “The object and subject in a literary portrait are always interconnected, and to a significant degree this obvious connection completely determines the scope of the portrait, its composition, the arrangement of material, the style.”15 The author, when writing the memoir, becomes a part of the past and present. He is a character in the memoir of which he is also the author. He lives in, works on, and thinks about events in the past, while the present continues to have an influence on the work.16 One of the elements that determines the scope of a portrait is the degree of intimacy between subject and author. After all, the writer does not capture the “being” of the subject but the experience of “being with” the subject.17 When there are many such experiences, the literary portrait becomes more complicated. Rather than having just a few episodes to describe, the writer must decide which of many events to depict. Because the literary portrait is “a mosaic of heterogeneous impressions,” there must be some cohesive internal logic holding it together. This inner logic should be the distinctive qualities of the subject, the qualities that made that person unique.18 The success of the literary portrait thus depends on the ability of the author to express the subject’s “inner world” while limiting his own subjective interpretations. In order to convey the “inner world” there must be some sort of contextual narrative. In a painting it might be the depiction of the subject on a white horse with a historic battle raging in the background. The audience in this case views the subject in the context of a heroic leader. Without this narrative, the portrait loses its vitality and often its message. The narrative is the reflection of the author’s artistic form, the core idea. Uniting various facts with certain modes of plot structure provides narrative in the literary portrait. Hayden White calls this “emplotment” and argues that the transformation of events into a story requires the subordination of some events and the highlighting of others by means of narrative strategies used in literature. In order to make sense of the real world the writer must impose a formal coherence that is often associated with fiction.19 Emplotment gives facts fictive meaning. It is the power of the “story” that provides a coherent vision of life.20 This suggests that

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human beings are predisposed to structure factual details into coherent narrative wholes in order to control the chaos of a life experience and to structure memory. This need to understand or to present life as a “coherent vision” can be associated with concepts of temporality and memory, as the author often wishes to convey “cause and effect” in his narrative. Events that did not seem important at the time are given special meaning in retrospect. Temporality is perceptible in the tension between memory and imagination. Memory is a delicate combination of the event experience, the process of recollection and time consciousness, which becomes the raw material for the author’s narrative imagination. The experience of memory and temporality allows the autobiographical imagination to reformulate and restructure experience as a conscious act of interpretation.21 This process has been called “reperception.”22 To evaluate each portrait and to understand the inner world of the subject, this book will be attuned to each of the memoirist’s narratives or core ideas. However, as White suggests, the core ideas are often conveyed by means of literary strategies. These strategies in turn introduce varying levels of subjectivity into the literary portrait that are mainly associated with autobiographical intentions. Subjectivity is found in all types of memoir literature and literary criticism; it is the fact that the author is known outside of the portrait as well as represented within that makes the literary portrait’s brand of subjectivity unique.23 In examining memoir literature, the critic must uncover the fiction of non-fiction. Unlike the theoretical concept of zhiznetvorchestvo, life creation, or an artist’s self-fashioning, this study targets the creation of an artiste’s image by others, thus involving elements of interpretation and reception. The interaction of the memoirists’ strategies of self-creation and those of creation of the subject are at play. The published memoir establishes a set of references (a posthumous legacy) that reflects both the author and the subject, and that will be accepted, rejected, or repeated by readers and future memoirists. Lidiia Ginzburg writes that aesthetic form is the common thread that runs through literary prose, history, memoir, biography, and human documents (letters, diaries, etc).24 This creates a continuum that has literary creation at one end and documentary fact at the other. The different types of memoir literature are located at various points on the continuum – some closer to fact and some closer to fiction. This allows

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Ginzburg, in relation to memoirs, to talk about the “reworking of factual material”25 and the “deformation of individual facts in the name of a higher truth, poetical and historical.”26 Lev Levitskii in turn argues that the reader has the right to accept certain details of a memoir and to throw some away, to agree and to disagree. He states that you cannot ask the author to deny his own experiences, interpretations, and views in favour of the objectivity of a camera.27 The question then for the critic is how well the author approximates historical objectivity. In a collection of portraits, or when comparing memoirs, the critic must make an objective assessment. The aim is to identify the possible subjective influences and to clarify to what extent the portrait is biased.28 The end result is not a radical rewrite of the literary portrait by the critic but rather an evaluative statement based on the level of subjectivity. The aim is to ensure that future readers or critics will be able to identify the author’s narrative line of discourse more easily. It is also an attempt to identify the source of subjective material, which may have been repeated and accepted as fact in the subject’s biography. This will ultimately lead to a more accurate understanding of the subject’s life history and the author’s auto/biographical intentions. Understanding the authors’ motivations also opens a window into their “inner world” and suggests that critics reassess the authors’ relationships with others and with their creative “selves.” Such a study has a ripple effect, since much of our criticism is based (to a greater or lesser degree) on biographical “truths.” When these “truths” are changed or modified, a reinterpretation of old and new scholarship seems necessary.

We now turn specifically to the literary portraits of Andreev and consider their core ideas, while being aware of the autobiographical intentions and literary devices that result in varying levels of subjectivity. Some of these autobiographical influences are dictated by the time in which the literary portrait is written. Understanding the prevailing political, social, and cultural pressures provides insights into the creation of the memoir. The two decades from Andreev’s first literary success to the publication of A Book about Leonid Andreev were arguably among the most complex in the literary and political history of Russian culture. The various artistic movements – decadence, symbolism, neo-realism, futurism, and a number of other doctrines of the period – were formulated

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with an acute awareness that Russia’s political, social, and cultural life was on the verge of apocalyptic change. This cultural period was a clear rebellion against the materialist legacy of the 1860s. Some modernist writers rebelled by turning to philosophical dualism and religious explorations oriented toward other worlds. Many of these writers came from well-to-do families and led comfortable bourgeois lives, which supported such intellectualized reactions to social and political problems. Another group of writers came from the lower strata of society and often knew first-hand the social and political inequities of contemporary Russian life. These writers, Andreev among them, used their literary endeavours not only as acts of rebellion but also as a means of feeding, clothing, and housing themselves. The goals of these two loosely defined groups were similar, but the methods by which they explored and fought for political and social change were quite different and often predicated on their socioeconomic status. Literary society at the time was still small enough to allow for personal contact. Thus, writers formed shifting groups to discuss everything from literary theory to politics. These groups changed, however, as the dramatic political events of the Russo-Japanese war, the 1905 Revolution, World War i, and the revolutions of 1917 drastically affected friendships, allegiances, and political positions. The rise of the Bolshevik regime further delineated political and personal relationships and often caused writers to reassess their past in relation to their present and future. During these years there was an explosion of memoir literature, surely promoted by the turbulent historical events. A significant number of Russians went abroad in order to escape Bolshevik controls and even those who stayed behind sensed that Imperial Russia was quickly dying. Many writers felt that they possessed knowledge of a recent past that would not find a place in the Bolshevik culture of tomorrow. This sense of impending cultural loss created an outpouring of memoiristic writing that both looked to the past and peered with mistrust at the future. The memoir therefore often positioned both subject and author in a way that was dictated by this uncomfortable tug of the past and future. The tensions were not always the same for the émigré living in Paris and the Bolshevik in Moscow; hence the same events and people are often captured in very different ways. It is out of this historical, political, social, cultural, and personal confusion that the turn of the century was captured in memoirs. Gor’kii became the unofficial minister of culture during the years of War Communism (1918–21), an emergency program of nationalization,

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grain requisitioning, and labour mobilization instituted during the civil war by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks. He tried to help Russian intellectuals by creating numerous institutions and establishments that provided employment and housing. Gor’kii, Aleksandr Serebrov (A. Tikhonov), Zinovii Grzhebin, and Ivan Ladyzhnikov established the publishing house World Literature (Vsemirnaia literatura) in September 1918. The aim of the group was to make world literary classics readily available to the Russian people, which would have been the most extensive translation enterprise in Europe. World Literature eventually expanded beyond translations. For this, Grzhebin was allowed by the Soviet government to establish a publishing house in Germany, where costs were lower and materials more readily had. It was through Gor’kii’s leadership that A Book about Leonid Andreev was published. Gor’kii arrived at the offices of World Literature in September 1919 and announced that Andreev had recently died in Finland. He was in tears and stated that Andreev had been his only true friend. He then turned to Blok and asked him to write something about Andreev. Chukovskii notes in his diary that Gor’kii was in charge of collecting the memoirs for publication, but Chukovskii himself organized a memorial evening for Andreev. This took place in Petrograd on 15 November 1919. Unfortunately, the evening was not a success. Chukovskii describes it in his diary: Late evening: Again I cannot sleep. I am still thinking about yesterday evening’s “Memorial for Andreev” – I have had no other thought the entire night! It turned out stupid and awkward – and I was tortured for almost three straight hours. Beginning with the fact that it was very cold in the Tenishev School. The public sat there being glum. There were about 200 people but there was no feeling of unity. There was Belopol’skii, Otsup’s mother. Gor’kii’s entire retinue – Grzhebin, Tikhonov, their wives, m-me Khodasevich, her husband, Batiushkov, office staff of World Literature, two or three commissars, a group of ten students of the newest formation. [A.E.] Red’ko was there. There was my audience from the studio – Nad. Filippovna, Polonskaia, Volodia Pozner, Veksler, but they never merged and everyone remained apart. There was no literary atmosphere and the temperature never increased a degree when Alek. Blok read with a dull voice his insipid thing, where the word I ... I ... I ... I flashed much more often than the word “Andreev.” Actually, that is how it is supposed to be when lyrical poets are involved, and for those studying the works of Blok

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this article is extremely interesting, but for the memory of Leonid Andreev, it does not fit the bill. Then the actors wanted to read but unexpectedly Gor’kii darted out onto the stage and with this he spoiled the entire matter. He, as they say, “tore apart the evening.” He read with a deep base, read long and dimly, not very distinctly. He went unnecessarily into details and jokes of little interest, – without sincerity. He did not give any personal characteristics and he did not raise the atmosphere one degree ... When he finished, six o’clock advanced and everyone began to rush for the last tram. It was then that the actors appeared to read a scene from “Prof. Storitsyn.” The outflow from the halls began – the commissars, Gor’kii’s entire retinue, etc., etc. This outraged me so much that when it came to my turn, I suggested to the public (there remained only about 100 people), either leave at once or listen to the reading until the end. Everyone remained, many of those who left returned. I read very nervously, loudly, first standing, then sitting (skipping over a lot) – and with great love for Andreev. My little article came out brutal, caustic in some places, but in general and mainly, Andreev was dear to me. Therefore, Damanskaia (for some reason with a black eye), really upset me when she took me to the side and said: “They say that many are dissatisfied, that it is too wicked, but I liked it.” Then Zamiatin appeared and charmingly read his funny story about Andreev and the umbrella. Everyone laughed warmly, and the temperature began to rise, – but that was the end of it.29

Interestingly, Blok also made a note about the evening: “At four o’clock was the memorial for L. Andreev in the Tenishev School. Again madness. A small group of people in fur coats and overcoats listen to Gor’kii, whose foot has been stomped on by a soldier.”30 As noted above, A Book about Leonid Andreev was important and distinctive for many reasons. Although these were not the very first Andreev memoirs to be published, they were the most influential.31 The collection was more accessible than newspaper articles. It packed “star power” with Gor’kii and Blok and was the first word from the literary establishment on how the posthumous Andreev would be remembered. It became the starting point, consciously or unconsciously, for anyone writing a portrait of Andreev after 1922. This literary discourse is evident in memoirs by Vadim Andreev, Beklemisheva, Lev Kleinbort, Aleksandr Kugel’, Veresaev, Fatov’s early biography, and the psychological analysis of Andreev by Dr Ivan Galant.32 Memoir can be defined as some portion of a life, as described by its author. Unlike autobiography, which usually moves from birth to fame, memoir focuses on a time in the

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writer’s life that was unusually vivid, such as childhood or adolescence, or that was framed by war or public service or contact with famous people or important historical events.33 The memoirs, A Book about Leonid Andreev, focus on the authors’ relationships with their subject. Each memoir is different in its own way, but because they were published together as a book, the collective literary portrait is just as important as the individual memoirs. Some of the authors had known Andreev for most of his adult life (Gor’kii, Teleshov, Zaitsev); others knew him as a literary figure (Belyi, Blok, Chukovskii, Chulkov), and one barely knew him at all (Zamiatin). I have organized the memoirs into two types, biographical and psychological,34 according to the intent of the author and what he conveys about Andreev. The literary portraits of the biographical type are written with an eye toward the historical record. They attempt to classify Andreev in a larger historical context. Teleshov talks about Andreev and the literary circle Sreda (the Wednesday circle); Belyi explains Andreev’s connection to the Symbolists; Zamiatin tells of Andreev’s 1906 revolutionary activities, and Zaitsev creates a framework for interpreting Andreev’s life and literary career. Most of these memoirs overlap and they show how the same event can be given various interpretations. In each of these memoirs, the author’s subjective appraisal is clear. Literary critic V. (Emil’ Vladimirovich) Kardin notes that when literary portraits are published in a collection, an added dimension is involved. Instead of a single discourse on the subject’s life, numerous opinions and interpretations vie for the reader’s attention. This can result in an open “argument” between writers as they try to win over the reader and stake a certain claim on the subject.35 It would be an overstatement to say that there was an open argument between the writers of A Book about Leonid Andreev. It is fair to say, however, that there might be some slight jostling going on. The portraits by Zaitsev, Belyi, and Teleshov, for example, are grouped together because of their common goal: each has chosen to add to Andreev’s life history. But because the claims they make at times clash, it is important to examine the three portraits within one theoretical context. Each of these clashes contributes to a slightly biased portrait. Imagine a painting composed by several artists. One artist colours the sitter’s eyes blue even though they are green. The next artist ignores the fact that the sitter has a slight scar on his left cheek. The third artist decides that the

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sitter would look better in a grey suit instead of the light summer shirt he is wearing. Each minor change alters the portrait to such an extent that when they are combined, the sitter is no longer represented faithfully in the painting. The changes may not be noticed immediately. However, anyone relying on the portrait in future will repeat these inaccuracies – blue eyes, the lack of a scar (that may tell a tale about the individual’s past or fiery personality), and a grey suit that conveys something very different about the individual’s personality than a light summer shirt. In the same way, the slight inaccuracies of the literary portrait warp the overall understanding of the subject. The goal of the critic of biographical portraits is to remind the audience of the green eyes, the scar, and the light summer shirt so that the inaccuracies do not distract from the larger picture, the historically accurate parts of the picture. Zamiatin’s portrait appears to fit thematically into the biographical group of portraits. Upon investigation, however, it becomes clear that Zamiatin has fictionalized his account. There is a designation for this kind of memoir literature – memoir-biographical literary prose. This is when an author fictionalizes his own life to create a semibiographical story. An example of this is Gleb’s Journey (Puteshestvie Gleba) by Zaitsev, where the events of Zaitsev’s life are altered and presented as fiction – although a fiction that greatly resembles the historical truth. Zaitsev is Gleb, Andreev appears as Andrei Aleksandrov, but Belyi remains Belyi. On the other hand, the literary portrait attempts to be historically accurate. It is accepted that while there are varying levels of subjectivity, the core of the memoir is based on fact. Zamiatin took the basic events of his first meeting with Andreev and, wishing to convey the writer’s lack of passion for the 1905 Revolution, created for the portrait a character representing the Revolution – the Party damsel. The historical events become secondary to the situation constructed between Andreev and this woman. Although such a young lady might have existed, this literary personage came directly from Zamiatin’s “The Fisher of Men” (Lovets chelovekov). The similar female characters, Mrs Fitzgerald and the Party damsel, as well as many other striking parallels between the two texts, lead one to the conclusion that Zamiatin fashioned a highly stylized and therefore fictionalized account of his meeting with Andreev. These fictional elements blur the distinctions between a literary portrait and a short story. 36 This might be explained by the fact that Andreev and Zamiatin were not close friends. Zamiatin had little to write about when Gor’kii asked

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him to contribute to A Book about Leonid Andreev and resorted to an embellished account of his first meeting with Andreev. This is a problem for scholars who turn to these memoirs as a source of fact. Therefore, I do not deal with Zamiatin’s portrait in great detail. The seven other portraits attempt to record and explain Andreev’s life. When examined as one text, they fashion a discourse about Andreev’s abnormal behaviour and its realization in his biography. Since Zamiatin’s portrait is not engaged in this discourse, it must be dealt with in another context, one that is not relevant to the book at hand. In Western criticism, the term “life writing” is gaining currency for texts that are considered autobiographical fragments, including journals, memoirs, letters, metafiction, etc. Critical approaches to life writing, as described by Marlene Kadar, are concerned with issues of colour, class, and gender and their relationship to the text (applicable to both the writer and the reader). “Life writing as a critical practice, then, encourages (a) the reader to develop and foster his/her own self-consciousness in order to (b) humanize and make less abstract (which is not to say less mysterious) the self-writing.”37 In this instance, the issues surrounding the creation of a posthumous Andreev involve questions of class. Social labels such as uncultured, revolutionary, bourgeois, wealthy, and successful are enmeshed in the core ideas of the authors’ literary portraits. My focus is to humanize, as Kadar suggests, the literary portrait. This means giving perspective on both the author and the depicted subject. This in turn allows the critic to understand why Andreev’s biographical legacy has been bound to labels: uncultured, counterrevolutionary, unsuccessful. In the following three chapters, the portraits of Zaitsev, Belyi, and Teleshov are examined individually. The authors’ subjective claims are identified with the goal of establishing a basis of historical fact.38 At the end of the fourth chapter, the portraits are compared in terms of subjectivity, with the intention of finding the lines of discourse that are free from the author’s interpretation. This allows me to examine Andreev’s life with greater clarity and to understand the intentions of the authors. In turn, this lends perspective on the authors’ understanding of “self” in relation to the subject. The chapters devoted to Zaitsev’s, Teleshov’s, and Belyi’s portraits address biographical additions to Andreev’s posthumous legacy. The goal is to clarify Andreev’s role in the Wednesday circle and with the Symbolists and to take issue with how his life history is to be understood by future readers. These chapters do not add to Andreev’s biography but subtract or, at best, adjust certain claims and interpretations.

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The psychological type of memoir presents a different challenge. The literary memoir is meant to show what has previously been hidden, to reveal the inner world of the subject.39 Some authors are more successful at this than others. However, when several memoirs are compared, common characteristics are exposed. In the case of Andreev, his psychological condition was so extreme that it is very easy to track this line of discourse from the first writers (Blok, Chukovskii, Chulkov, and Gor’kii) through the following memoirs. What results is a type of psychoanalysis by means of the literary memoir. An interest in the psychological side of the subject in portraiture took root in seventeenth-century French society as a result of an intellectual dialogue on thought, philosophy, and morals. The process of self-awareness and a search for the subject’s inner world in both literature and the plastic arts, stimulated an interest in psychology. The rationalistic and normative aesthetic of writers and memoirists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries influenced the debates on individualization and the depiction of the underlying essence of the subject, reflected in the works of Rembrandt and Velasquez. The further development of the portrait is found in the assertion of Realism in the arts, which attempted to characterize the real individual. In the Russian Realist tradition, theory about portraiture was greatly influenced by Vissarion Belinskii and Nikolai Chernyshevskii. Both argued that the portrait created a new image of the individual and expanded the boundaries of our understanding of life in images and types. As a result, the nineteenth century became saturated with sociobiographical and psychological discourse. Nikolai Gogol’ was able to capture sociopsychological traits in the physical description of his characters. In the works of Feodor Dostoevskii, the outward description of the individual conveys the internal drama of the character. The internal portrait is thus a driving force in the development of the plot. Lev Tolstoi’s works exploit the psychological portrait in such a way that the slightest change of mood or state of mind is reflected in the complex relationship between the individual and the surrounding world. It is from this Realist tradition that the literary portrait develops. Barakhov argues that the basic goal of the author, like the portrait painter, is to create an artistic image, which approximates the world of the individual – the life and biography – refracted through the individual perception of the artist.40 Tat’iana Koliadich traces the development of psychological discourse in nineteenth-century Russian memoir-biographical literary prose. Koliadich

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suggests that the roots of this development can be found in the literary, semiautobiographical works of Nikolai Karamzin, Tolstoi and Sergei Aksakov. Karamzin’s Letters of a Russian Traveller (Pis’ma russkogo puteshestvennik) was one of the first to explore the inner world of the author. Aksakov’s Family Chronicle (Semeinaia Khronika) examines the evolution of the individual within the framework of a historical novel. Tolstoi’s semiautobiographical trilogy analyzes childhood as an explanation for adult behaviour.41 Koliadich’s broader definition of memoir literature merges with Barakhov’s more specific examination of the literary portrait to provide the line of connection from seventeenth-century French society to Russian memoir literature and the literary portrait.42 This leads to a discussion of a developing field of study known as psychohistory, or psychobiography.43 Sigmund Freud, with his Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood (1910), created the study of psychobiography. As the field of psychology has developed, so too have the methods used by scholars. Erik Erikson argues that psychological assumptions are embedded in the interpretation of lives and that even if a systematic psychological approach is not used, then an implicit psychology will be.44 William Runyan defines psychobiography as the explicit use of systematic or formal psychology in biography. Three aspects of this definition should be noted. First, the field is defined by the use of psychology, which may or may not be psychoanalytic. Second, the use must be explicit or visible, in order to distinguish psychobiography from all those biographies which make implicit use of commonsense psychology. Third, the definition refers not to the application of personality theory but to the use of psychology, which is intended to include within psychobiography those works drawing upon the full range of resources from the field of psychology, including psychological concepts, data, and methods, as well as theory, from developmental, social, and personality psychology.45

Psychohistorians research the repetitions, deviant cases, and their meanings in the private and often unconscious world of their subjects.46 The discussion of Andreev and his psychological condition comes under Runyan’s classification of “case study.” He writes: “The traditional case study places a relatively greater emphasis upon identifying the origins and historical course of a client’s disorder, or upon searching for the causes and meaning of a person’s problems within the contexts of his or her life

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history ... [T]raditional or naturalistic case studies seem relatively effective for interpreting the origins and historical course of disorders.”47 Understanding Andreev offers insights into his literary works and his biographical legacy. Andreev had a reputation for reckless and extreme emotional behaviour. Many of the memoirs are filled with stories that read like “My Adventures with Andreev.” Some, like Gor’kii, have used this behaviour to downgrade Andreev’s artistic ability and his literary production. Others, like Chukovskii, have seen it as the source of his creative energy. Part of the reason for this confusion, as noted earlier, is that Andreev wished to keep his mental health issues out of the public eye. Some of his close friends knew of his treatments in mental institutions and some had only heard rumours. Most of the rumours had been refuted in the press by Andreev himself, so the situation was quite complicated when the authors began to write their memoirs. Andreev appears to have suffered from bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depression. I am aware that offering a contemporary diagnosis retrospectively is fraught with danger.48 Questions arise as to the validity of our present diagnostic classifications, the reliability of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,49 and the fact that a modern diagnosis is necessarily influenced by our own social and cultural milieu. What is clear is that Andreev suffered from mental illness. The options are to continue to use the diagnosis given to Andreev during his lifetime (which is also problematic for the reasons stated above); not to “name” his condition (which is what has contributed to the present confusion); or to give a contemporary diagnosis in an attempt not to stigmatize Andreev but to clarify much of his legacy, which is associated with a mental condition. Whatever the diagnosis, illness influenced his life, his literary works, the people around him, and his posthumous legacy. In order to tackle the issue of Andreev’s mental condition and his legacy, I have chosen to frame the dialogue within the modern understanding of manicdepression. Even if the classification turns out to be incorrect, I think it is more responsible to view Andreev and his life history through the perspective of mental illness than through the vague concepts of “creative energy,” “inner turmoil,” or a “modernist sensitivity.” Shirley Neuman discusses designations such as “feminist,” “womenof-colour,” “lesbian,” etc., that both liberate and confine the users of these labels in the course of life writing: “An adequate poetics of autobiography, I would suggest, would acknowledge that subjects are con-

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structed by discourse but it would also acknowledge that, if the autobiographical self is to some extent passive before the ideological forces constructing its group identity, it also has agency.”50 In a similar way, the portraits by Chukovskii, Chulkov, and Gor’kii are depictions of Andreev in the discourse of the “psychologically healthy.” They confront the categories of normal versus abnormal behaviour from the position of “normalcy,” which is indifferent to Andreev’s plight and attempts to interpret his condition as creative energy, inner turmoil caused by historical events, or disrespect for the literary craft. Blok is the exception since he approaches the problem as an “abnormal” author, and it is his portrait, once understood in this light, that possibly gives the greatest insight into Andreev. The designations of “normal” and “abnormal” are far more covert than such designations as “lesbian” or “feminist,” but they are no less restrictive. Therefore, chapter 5 examines Chukovskii’s descriptions of Andreev’s mania and how it has been understood as an expression of his creative energy. Chapter 6 is devoted to the manifestation of Andreev’s depression, as introduced by Chulkov, and how it led to attempts at suicide and troubles with alcohol and added to his reputation as a “gloomy” writer. These two chapters provide a vocabulary for Andreev’s mental condition, while chapter 7 looks at Blok’s claims of a shared sense of chaos. It is possible that Blok also suffered from a form of mental illness and his description of chaos becomes much clearer once put into this context. Chapter 8 is dedicated to Gor’kii and his attempts to come to grips with Andreev’s condition. Gor’kii was one of the few people who tried to confront and possibly understand both Andreev’s manic and depressed periods. However, Gor’kii’s own inability to associate with Andreev on a level other than a literary one leaves him stabbing in the dark for answers. By understanding Andreev’s condition, new perspectives on the relationship between Gor’kii and Andreev and the death of their friendship can be realized and explanations of behavior can be put into focus.

Reading the biography of Andreev in a recent Russian high-school textbook, one can find many of the motifs that have developed out of the memoir literature. For example, the textbook states that Andreev’s tragic quality developed from his interest in German philosophical pessimism.51 This line of discourse can be traced to Gor’kii and Chulkov.

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Following the standard line of thinking, Gor’kii and Andreev’s troubled friendship is explained in political and literary terms.52 The text then states: “From Petrograd, Andreev went to Finland, which was cut off from Russia after revolutionary events.”53 This echoes Zaitsev’s interpretation and ignores the fact that Andreev lived in Finland for a decade before he was “cut off” from Russia. The text indirectly quotes Blok’s literary portrait about Andreev’s feelings of solitude.54 A phrase such as “Intense feelings of life compelled Andreev to be constantly tortured by sensations and a knowledge of coming death”55 comes from the confusion resulting from Andreev’s mental condition and echoes statements made by Chukovskii, the diagnosis of Dr Galant, and claims made by Gor’kii. Even in a Western staple such as Victor Terras’s Handbook of Russian Literature, we find the following paragraph on Andreev: “Personally, Andreev was as extravagant and contradictory as much of his writing. His nihilism and pessimism, particularly after the death of his beloved wife in 1906, were genuine, yet there was still much theatricality and pose in him. A handsome man, he wore velvet jackets and page-caps, impersonating a painter (which he partially was) of the Renaissance (to which he in no way belonged). He loved the sea, and needed such means of stimulation as extremely strong tea and alcohol.” This is a synopsis of Chukovskii’s literary portrait. Terras also writes: “Brought up in poverty, he longed for lavish decors and furnishings, and his way of life, consuming all of the great deal of money that his writings brought him. As for his writings, Andreev’s preoccupation with death and morbidity, and his perception of the vulnerability of human reason and of the futility of human endeavor in the face of the dark and irrational forces of life were all sincere. Yet much of what he published was melodramatic or unsupported by any convincing personal experience.”56 The lavish decor is mentioned in many of the portraits, especially Zaitsev’s. Death and morbidity appear in the portraits of Chukovskii, Chulkov, and Gor’kii. This is considered “sincere” literature because the authors of the portraits have linked these traits to the death of Andreev’s first wife, who is presented in a favourable light. The motif of a “lack of personal experience” goes back to Gor’kii’s claim that Andreev relied on organic talent rather than any real-life experience. This again shows that A Book about Leonid Andreev established the way Andreev would be understood and reproduced.

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That is why it is important to take the core ideas, of a biographical or psychological nature, as the starting points for a discussion of the literary portraits and their interpretations. The aim is to offer perspective by giving a wider context, confronting subjective material, offering alternative interpretations and highlighting the memoirs and criticism that followed. Although A Book about Leonid Andreev is the starting point and main focus of this study, the entire body of memoir material devoted to the subject is relevant to the discussion. This is the first systematic critical attention that the Andreev memoirs have received. It is also the first time since the 1920s that Andreev’s mental illness has been confronted.57 The end point of the discussion is the cumulative portrait that the book provides for Andreev, and the overall impression that the reader is left with. The impression is that Andreev suffered from mental illness, which affected and influenced his family, friends, and literary works. The authors of the portraits lacked an adequate vocabulary for or understanding of Andeev’s mental condition. That is why individually the memoirs concern literary circles, creative energy, etc., but read as a whole, A Book about Leonid Andreev is a description of the subject’s abnormal behaviour and mental illness. How can one possibly re-examine or redefine Andreev’s posthumous legacy? The book at hand is as much a polygenre as the memoir itself. It includes historical, psychological, biographical, and autobiographical critical approaches. The critic’s role in such an exercise is captured by the critical biographer Leon Edel: “Not having the testimony of his own eyes, he finds he must use the testimony of others; and then he discovers that the testimony is often contradictory and invariably colored by individual points of view. But again, precisely this awareness of contradictions may give the distant biographer a marked advantage in his search for the truest picture.”58 It is this distance of both a temporal and emotional sort that provides the modern critic with the ability to offer perspective on Andreev’s posthumous reputation.

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A portrait of Andreev (1907)

Andreev and Aleksandra Mikhailovna (1905)

A meeting of Sreda (1902). Skitalets, Andreev, Gor’kii, Teleshov, Shaliapin, Chirikov (standing) and Ivan Bunin.

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2 Projecting Personal Isolation Memory is the catalyst of ... autobiographical “truth,” but it is also the agent of its impossibility (an impossibility acknowledged and explored within humanist poetics of the genre), for what is forgotten or misremembered may be at least as important to the “truth” of the sought-for “self” as what is remembered. Shirley Neuman, “Autobiography: From Different Poetics to Poetics of Differences”

Boris Zaitsev (1881–1972) made Andreev the subject of numerous articles and memoirs after Andreev’s death in 1919.1 In 1950 he transformed Andreev into Andrei Aleksandrov in his short novel Youth (Iunost’). In 1969 he wrote a new version of the memoir published in 1922 in A Book about Leonid Andreev. Even then Zaitsev did not greatly deviate from that first memoir. This is significant, showing that over the years, Zaitsev, unlike Gor’kii and Chukovskii, remained faithful to his earliest memories and perceptions of Andreev. Zaitsev was born in Orel, Andreev’s hometown. As a young writer, he was impressed with Andreev’s works and sought him out. A friendship developed after their first meeting and Andreev did what he could to help his new protégé. He introduced Zaitsev to the Sreda (Wednesday) literary circle and the two, along with Sergei Glagol’ (S. Goloushev), came to represent Sreda’s “left” flank – admirers of the Decadent and Symbolist artistic trends. Andreev also found work for Zaitsev at the newspaper Courier (Kur’er), publishing his first story, “On the Road” (V doroge), in 1901, as well as some other early “impressionistic” and gloomy stories, which imitated Andreev’s own style.2 Zaitsev actively published his works in various periodicals and in 1906 Shipovnik (Sweetbriar) issued his first collection of stories.3 He soon became an editor (along with Andreev) of the Shipovnik almanacs,

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which often brought him to St Petersburg and expanded his literary associations. His second collection of stories was published in 1909. Although his style had changed, many critics felt that his story “Agrafena” was influenced by Andreev’s play The Life of Man (Zhizn’ cheloveka).4 In 1912 Zaitsev married Vera Alekseevna Oreshnikova. Four years later, he was drafted and entered the Aleksandrovskii Military Academy for officer training. He received his commission in 1917 but fell ill and was sent to his father’s family estate at Pritykino to recover.5 Zaitsev identified the period 1917–22 as his “tragic years.” During this time both his nephew and father died. His wife’s son by her first marriage was tried and executed for counter-revolutionary activities. Zaitsev himself was arrested and spent several days in Lubianka prison. These “tragic years” coincide with Andreev’s death and the writing of Zaitsev’s first literary portrait. In 1922, Zaitsev contracted typhus and was in critical condition for two weeks. He was given a visa to go abroad for treatment, and the Zaitsevs went first to Berlin, then to Italy. In 1924 they moved to France. Once in France, Zaitsev published his works in all of the major periodicals of the Russian diaspora. For a time he was the editor of the French journal Russian Thought (Russkaia mysl’). As well as literary works, Zaitsev wrote several memoirs (Moscow, Distant) and a series of autobiographical works (The Travels of Gleb: Dawn, Quiet, Youth, and Tree of Life).6 He died in January 1972, a few days short of his ninety-first birthday. It is to Zaitsev’s “tragic years” and his literary portrait of Andreev that we turn our attention. Like the memoirs of Gor’kii, Teleshov, and Belousov, Zaitsev captures Andreev from a very early stage of his literary career. It is interesting to look at Zaitsev’s memoir for several reasons: he knew Andreev both personally and professionally; as noted above, he never changed the basic premise of his literary portrait; and his description of Andreev’s life and career became the standard interpretation.7 Zaitsev describes Andreev’s life as a whole created out of two halves. The first half associates Andreev with Moscow, good friends, and his first wife. Finland, isolation, and Andreev’s second wife represent the second half. This approach is not totally unique. Almost all of Andreev’s close friends mention the death of Andreev’s first wife as a pivotal

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moment in the author’s life and career. However, it is Zaitsev who organizes Andreev’s life into two distinct phases, marked by locale and family, and ascribes to them positive and negative judgments. “It seems, in the life of Andreev (as a writer and maybe in his personal life as well) the years 1901–1906 were the fullest, most joyous, most cheerful. All of his being at this time was pressing forward; he was at full strength, wrote zealously – despite grim outings like his ‘Abyss’ and ‘Vasilii Fiveiskii’ – he was full of hope, of successes, and his cruel fortune had not yet broken him. He had only just married Aleksandra Mikhailovna Viel’gorskaia,8 a tender and quiet girl. A bright hand was felt above him.”9 Zaitsev describes how Andreev’s financial situation improved with literary success. He associates this time with Sreda meetings, which brought together Andreev’s closest friends. The ideas contained in this section are so central to the memoir that in a later version, Zaitsev makes it the opening paragraph.10 After Aleksandra Mikhailovna’s death, Andreev moved to St Petersburg. Zaitsev marks this as the end of Andreev’s youth: “One period ended and another began.”11 “Starting from the spring of 1908 he took up residence at his dacha in Raivola, on the Black River ... The same black-haired Leonid Andreev with sparkling eyes and in a velvet jacket lived there, but he already had begun a new life. He got married, he was building a new nest, was full of new plans, more grandiose than before and his soul was more confused by fame, wealth, by a burning desire to drain the cup of life dry – a cup that seemed bottomless at the time.”12 Zaitsev continues: “It seems that during those years, Leonid Andreev did not, in fact, acquire any new friends and, living in Finland, he became estranged from his old ones. It seems his life there was restricted to a circle (the most important one, of course) – his family. He rarely appeared in Moscow.”13 Zaitsev says that he felt that Andreev’s soul was wounded and sick. “This was another Andreev, not the one with whom I would philosophize [in Moscow] and wander through the birches of Butovo. There was a breakdown, fatigue, a heavily beating heart, a painful irritability. And only at times did his eyes sparkle like before.”14 It was the early Andreev, the Andreev of the first half of his life, that Zaitsev wanted to remember. “When I visualize Andreev,” he writes, “I always see an image of a young man, his head full of black curled hair, nervous, with sharply sparkling, bright eyes, as he was during the years of Gruziny,

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Presnia Street, and Tsaritsyno. He talks with fervour, smokes, drinks glass after glass of tea somewhere on the terrace of the dacha, amidst the birch trees at dusk and the distant, gently descending fog. With him, somewhere behind him, is the slender, large-eyed fiancée in a dark dress, with a gold chain around her neck. Young love, freshness, the radiance a young woman’s eyes, the springtime of their lives.”15 Zaitsev did not simply create this binary model for the memoir. One of his letters to Andreev in July 1909 attests to a developing rift between the two writers: I have not received any news about you for a long time. The old habit of writing letters is dying out. We do not write letters, but some kind of tiny labels. I also have not had the occasion to talk with you in earnest for a long time. I do not count the days when you were in Moscow like I do not count the shameful reading of Anathema. All of this is too absurd and offensive. I would like to see you on the bank of the river (Russian), in the region outside Moscow, roughly near Butovo. You and I would sit on the tiny bank and peacefully swear at each other. This would be more genuine. To see each other in the Literary Circle is nonsense. In general, something was wrong, something not right in our last meeting. I cannot exactly define it, but I feel it clearly. You somehow suspiciously glanced at me and said that I have an “official politeness.” But I did not feel you. It happens that you talk with a person, you see and hear him and at the same time he is absent. Maybe it was because we were in public and in a scandalous situation. However, it seemed to me and sometimes now seems that we have grown further apart from each other. How happy I would be to again see you properly in Moscow in silence.16

This division in Andreev’s life is realized in a two-article series published in 1929. The articles are entitled “The Youth of Leonid Andreev” and “Leonid Andreev in the Mature Years.”17 This is Zaitsev’s memoir, republished word for word from A Book about Leonid Andreev. The end of Andreev’s “youth” comes after the death of his first wife and a brief meeting between the two authors in Florence. Zaitsev then adds: “These are all cursory characteristics remaining with me of the ‘young Andreev.’ I also knew Leonid in the mature years of a broken and agonizingly suffering life. To this, the other half of his life, we can still

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return.” Andreev’s “mature years” begin with his move to St Petersburg. The division of Andreev’s life in this case is not only thematic. In the 1969 version of Zaitsev’s memoir, the split between Andreev’s youthful years in Moscow and the isolation of Finland is much more explicit. The literary portrait has been refined to such a degree that it is the unreserved core idea of the memoir. The model for Andreev’s life is fairly accurate – there was indeed a noticeable shift in his life after the death of his first wife. One can understand, too, the tendency to portray the flowering of youth as positive and the mature years of an individual either as a comfortable and logical stage in a successful career or a tragic and flawed end to a once-promising future. However, Zaitsev’s approach is overly simplified and too broadly stated. In approaching his memoir, then, the critic must objectively compare his core idea with Andreev’s biography. Specifically in the case of Andreev’s “broken and suffering” mature years, the critic must separate subjective claims from objective fact. If Zaitsev is correct, there should be evidence to support the claim that Andreev’s life was qualitatively better during the years that he lived in Moscow and worse when he lived in Finland. With this in mind, we begin with the Moscow period. Andreev met Aleksandra Mikhailovna Veligorskaia in 1896 and courted her for five years. In 1897 he graduated with a law degree from Moscow University but worked for Courier as a court reporter and later as the newspaper’s columnist, writing under the name of James Lynch. He was very poor, often depressed, and he regularly turned to drink. It did not seem that he would amount to much and so Andreev was not greatly welcomed in the Veligorskii home. His first real literary success came with the publication of “Once There Was” (Zhili-byli) in 1901. Dmitri Merezhkovskii asked whether it was Anton Chekhov or Gor’kii who was hiding behind the name of Leonid Andreev. The first volume of Andreev’s stories, which gained wide popular acclaim, quickly followed. Nikolai Mikhailovskii, the dean of critics, confirmed this triumph with a favourable review. For Andreev this was a heady time. He belonged to the literary circle Sreda, which meant that he was often in the company of Gor’kii, Ivan Bunin, Feodor Shaliapin, Skitalets, and many other celebrities. His name was splashed across newspapers in big cities and in the provinces. Soon Andreev and the other members of Sreda appeared on postcards and were caricatured in newspapers. As noted earlier, Andreev was one of the

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first popular figures to receive the kind of intrusive media coverage that we now take for granted for our modern celebrities. His stories “In the Fog” (V tumane) and “The Abyss” (Bezdna) caused a national debate in 1902, sparked by Sofia Andreevna Tolstaia’s letter to the editor, in which she said that Andreev illuminated filth and vice in Russia’s youth. Kaun writes of Andreev’s literary life: “The number of Andreev’s adverse critics grew with the increase of gods he denied ... While the conservative press, notably The New Times, called Andreev a firebrand of revolution, the socialistic organs accused him of anti-revolutionary sentiments; both sides could cite abundant instances in favor of their indictments.”18 On 10 February 1902 Andreev and Aleksandra Mikhailovna were married. It has often been written that she brought stability to her husband’s life. After Gor’kii, she is said to have had the greatest influence on Andreev as a writer. As early as 1898, Andreev wrote to her that he did not consider a work complete until she had commented on it.19 Aleksandra Mikhailovna’s role increased once they were married. Much like his mother, Andreev’s wife seemed to buffer him from the outside world and from his own emotional turmoil, which allowed him to function with a greater level of “normalcy.” Their first child, Vadim, was born at the end of 1902. After his marriage and while he was an active member of Sreda, Andreev published mainly short stories.20 Davies suggests: “The works Andreev wrote between 1903 and 1906 reflect his new personal and professional fulfillment in their greater artistic mastery, philosophical range and psychological penetration, without losing anything of the urgency and ambiguity of earlier stories.”21 It was during this period of literary fame, financial success, and youthful exuberance that Zaitsev met Andreev. Zaitsev writes in his memoir: “He probably hypnotized me. I liked absolutely everything about him and his writing. In debates over what he had read, I was always on his side. Then again, he was at that time enjoying great success and had everyone excited, although the style of his writing was far from his listeners’ usual cup of tea.”22 For Zaitsev, this time represents youth and friendship – not only for Andreev but for himself as well. One must take into consideration that the second period of Andreev’s life, which Zaitsev identifies with isolation, reflects as much Zaitsev’s own isolation from Andreev as it does Andreev’s isolation from everyone else.

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In February 1905, Andreev was arrested for allowing the Social Democratic Labour Party to use his apartment for a meeting. He spent some time in the Taganka jail. Thanks to this experience, his stories of 1905–06 expressed overtly revolutionary themes, as a result of which Andreev and his family were placed on the death lists of the Black Hundreds. To avoid an unfortunate confrontation with these loyalist gangs supporting the autocracy, the Andreevs went abroad at the end of November 1905. The turning point in Andreev’s life was the death of Aleksandra Mikhailovna on 10 December 1906. The Andreevs were in Berlin and he had just completed work on his play The Life of Man. Shura (as she was nicknamed) gave birth to their second son, Daniil, but died afterwards of a postnatal infection. The effect on Andreev of Aleksandra Mikhailovna’s death should not be underestimated. The pain of loss was so closely linked to Daniil that Andreev gave his son away to be raised by his wife’s family. From Berlin Andreev went to Capri, Italy, looking for Gor’kii’s friendship and possible salvation. Gor’kii writes of this period: All his thoughts and words centred on recollections of the senselessness of Lady Shura’s death. “You understand,” he said with strangely dilated pupils, “she was still alive as she lay in bed, but already her breath smelt of a corpse. It was a very ironical smell.” Dressed in some kind of a black velvet jacket, he seemed outwardly crushed, downtrodden. His thoughts and words were eerily concentrated on the question of death. It so happened that he settled down in the Villa Caraciollo ... One evening when I arrived I found him in a chair in front of the fireplace. Dressed in black and bathed in the crimson glow of the smouldering coal, he held on his knees his little son Vadim and in low tones, with sobs, was telling him something. I quietly entered and it seemed to me that the child was falling asleep. I sat down in a chair by the door, and listened – Leonid was telling his son how Death stalks over the earth and strangles little children ... When his grandmother took him away, I remarked that it was hardly necessary to frighten the boy with stories like that, stories about death, the invincible giant.

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“And if I cannot speak of anything else?” he said sharply. “I’ve finally grasped how indifferent ‘beautiful Nature’ is, and I only want one thing – to tear my portrait out of this trite pretty frame.” It was difficult, almost impossible, to speak to him. He was nervous, irritable, and it seemed as though he deliberately rubbed salt on his own wounds. “The idea of suicide haunts me; it seems to me that my shadow crawls after me, whispering, ‘leave, die!’”23

Before his return to Russia, Zaitsev saw Andreev, in Florence as his train was passing through. Interestingly, in both the 1922 and 1969 versions of his memoir, Zaitsev ends this section with the words: “That is it, you will never see him again, not even ‘for a minute.’”24 This sentence is meant figuratively since Zaitsev goes on to tell about seeing Andreev in St Petersburg and Finland. Not surprisingly, it is the years when Zaitsev was closest to Andreev that are painted in the brightest colours. When Andreev returned to Russia, he could not live in Moscow; the place of his youth, where he had courted and then lived with Aleksandra Mikhailovna. Although he moved to St Petersburg, however, he was still “enslaved” by her sickness and death.25 The change of locale meant that Andreev had also separated himself from a majority of his friends and acquaintances. It is here that Zaitsev begins to create his dividing line: Moscow is associated with friends and warmth; St Petersburg is cold and isolated. Vladimir Piskunov argues that Zaitsev’s treatment of St Petersburg in his literary portraits is very much in line with the Slavophile tradition. Zaitsev understands the city as a symbol of the government’s will and repression. He sees it as located outside of spiritual Russia – representing something unnatural and inorganic. 26 At play in the portrait is both Andreev’s departure from his Moscow friends and Zaitsev’s own negative associations with the capital. Andreev had decided to stay in the northern capital for personal and professional reasons. St Petersburg was the centre of literary activity and Andreev was warmly accepted there. Andreev himself writes that he felt that he had to move to St Petersburg for his own artistic development. He wanted to be near the capital’s theatres, publishing houses, and literary milieu.27 At this time, Andreev decided that he needed a secretary. He placed an advertisement and received an overwhelming response. He was not

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happy, however, with any of the candidates and in the end, Chukovskii recommended Anna (Matil’da) Il’inichna Denisevich. At the beginning of March 1908 Andreev officially hired Anna Il’inichna as his secretary. Not quite a month later they were married. Chukovskii later remembers the circumstances surrounding Andreev’s second marriage, which dampen the possible impression of love at first sight: “A week ago Grzhebin and I were returning from Tikhonov’s and he was telling how Andreev, returning from Berlin, fell in love with the wife of Kopel’man and she reciprocated his feelings. But, alas, at that time she was pregnant and Andreev had just proposed to the Denisevich sisters – both of them straight away. I remember this too. Tolia said that she was married (secretly!). Then, he proposed to Margarita, whom he transformed into Anna.”28 Anna Il’inichna, born in 1883, was twenty-five when she first met Andreev. She had already been married and divorced and had a daughter named Nina. Anna Il’inichna was well educated, spoke several foreign languages, and was very attractive. Zaitsev refers to her as “beauty-wife” (krasavitsa-zhena) in his 1969 memoir. However, she was disliked by many of Andreev’s friends.29 On 7 April 1908 Andreev and Denisevich left for the Crimea. Andreev wrote to his mother from Yalta: “The more I get to know Anna, with each day, the happier I feel that I met her. This truly is a wonderful person with a beautiful soul, and I not only love her but I am in love like only a fool can be. Aren’t I lucky once again, my sweet devil, fate is still on my side.”30 They were married two weeks later. The Andreevs moved from St Petersburg to Finland on 26 May 1908. In his diary, Andreev claims that he wanted to be near both St Petersburg and the sea. He also gives the following reasons for their move: “1) to create a beautiful life; 2) to become harshly impervious to tragedy. To position myself not only beyond classes, beyond mundane everyday existence, but also beyond life.”31 Beklemisheva argues that Andreev moved to Finland for three reasons: first, because of his heart condition, he needed to avoid the dry heat of central Russia; second, he did not like life in the city; and third, he had a love of the sea and of motion.32 In the Finnish village of Vammelsuu, Andreev built a huge villa. None of Andreev’s fellow writers had built their own houses (or could probably afford to). This was a great, if not vulgar, display of wealth. Perhaps it was for this reason, and because of its sheer size, that the house became such a focal point of Andreev’s Finnish period. Zaitsev writes:

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When I was first approaching it in the summer, in the evening, it reminded me of a factory: pipes, an enormous roof, an absurd unwieldy mass. The same blackhaired Leonid Andreev with sparkling eyes and in a velvet jacket lived there, but he already had begun a new life. He got married, he was building a new nest, was full of new plans, more grandiose than before and his soul was more confused by fame, wealth, by a burning desire to drain the cup of life dry – a cup that seemed bottomless at the time. The interior was luxurious for a writer (in Russia). The dacha was built and decorated in the northern modern style; a northern steep roof with exposed beams in the ceiling and custom-made furniture copied from drawings of German exhibitions. Admirers of the hall and the foyer of the Moscow Art Theatre would like this place.33

In Finland, Andreev blended his old family with his new. Andreev’s mother, Anastasiia Nikolaevna, and his first son Vadim lived with Anna Il’inichna and their children: Savva (b. 1909); Andreev’s only daughter Vera (b. 1910); and finally Valentin (b. 1912). The Andreevs were cut off from the bustle of the capital but were often surrounded by family and friends. Andreev’s siblings, Pavel, Andrei, and Rimma, were frequent visitors. In his memoir Valentin writes: “There was always a mass of people and noise in our house. They came, went, slept, ate, talked nonstop about something.”34 Andreev was content with his new house and family. Anna Il’inichna played an important role in his literary life. Andreev composed his literary works into the early morning with his wife often typing as he dictated. Out of this production came his only novel, Sashka Zhegulev, in 1911. However, during the last ten years of his life, Andreev’s literary output consisted mainly of works for the stage.35 His plays were very popular with audiences, although literary critics grew increasingly negative. As a well-established writer and a family man, Andreev turned his exuberant energies to travel and his other hobbies. He went to Hamburg and Amsterdam in 1909, to Marseilles, Corsica, and Florence in 1910, and to Italy twice again, in 1913 and 1914.36 Painting had been a source of income as a student and now he returned to it for pleasure. He made copies from Goya’s Capriccios and tried his hand at portraits and religious themes. Many of these paintings decorated his study. He also became fascinated by photography. Aleksandr Kipen writes of Andreev’s hobby: “In the shortest amount of time, he comprehends all

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of the fine points of photographic art. He produces an utterly unheard of amount of pictures, large and small, common and stereoscopic, colour and black and white, depicting everything that lends itself to depiction – landscapes, portraits, interiors, still lives, genre groupings, dogs, horses, geese, etc.”37 The sea also beckoned to Andreev. His moods were said to depend on the winds, and he spent early spring until late fall on his yacht off the coast of Finland. Andreev stated that he had loved the sea in books since childhood and that he had waited his entire life to feel the sway of a deck under his feet.38 The change in Andreev could probably be attributed to age and financial comfort. He now had a large family to support; he engaged in hobbies and enjoyed the outdoors. He was no longer the poor Moscow youth who stumbled from tavern to tavern drinking up his last kopeck. He was now an established literary figure and celebrity. He was also tired of being constantly in the limelight.39 It is doubtful whether Zaitsev in 1910 was the same person he had been in 1901. One wonders whether he was not slightly jealous of Andreev’s way of life in Finland. He writes: It was good to leave the capital but this was no withdrawal to Iasnaia Poliana. The capital trailed after him in the most vain and pitiful form – it agitated him, pushed him to chase success, fame, and applause, and then cheated him. Who would not enjoy flattery and success? Andreev tasted eagerly for those things. He could no longer live unless he were still being written about, praised, applauded. I do not even know if he would have been able to write for himself, out of the public eye. He hated the crowd and worshipped it. He despised the newspapermen and could not free himself from them. To promote his fame he needed these little people, who would arrive in swarms and he told them about his life, his plans, his writing. He was mad at himself for doing this, but the next day he would do it again. They published their absurd accounts and the interviews, which irritated Andreev’s friends and gave his enemies material to taunt him with. All of this newspaper nonsense, the sea of clippings containing accounts of his plays, reviews, criticism laced with abuse and libel, the notices – all of this – flowed into his awareness every day and poisoned his soul. It almost certainly made him miserable, particularly since the critics kept talking about the decline of his talent.40

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In the memoir of 1969, Zaitsev’s description of this period is illuminating. The reporters and interviewers are far less prominent. Andreev’s wealth is certainly at issue. However, the most interesting motif is culturally specific to Russians – Andreev’s display of wealth and, therefore, his spiritual poverty: “He now received a lot of money – from his plays in the theatre, from the publishing house Shipovnik, where Zinovii Isaevich Grzhebin in his own almanac published Andreev’s plays and stories, and larger honorariums. But there was no emotional peace. To a large degree this depended on literature. He was quite spoiled by the early praise. Now Fortune turned in the other direction. The honorariums still came in, the press runs were large, but there was a sharp change in the criticism. Earlier they praised him to the skies, now they began to write a lot that was rude and insulting. This was annoying. Leonid became gloomy. His friends, sympathizers were in Moscow and in Finland he was quite alone.”41 The fact is that Andreev was anything but alone in Finland. He lived with his mother, wife, and four children. He had family and friends who visited. This was not Sreda, however. These were not his Moscow literary friends. For Russians at the time, wealth and especially an ostentatious show of wealth was not admirable.42 To an extent, Zaitsev argues that Andreev’s wealth and his need for attention corrupted his inner being, which in turn caused his isolation. Zaitsev is not alone in his assessment. Chulkov and Blok also write about Andreev’s isolation, but they see it as an inherent problem within Andreev. The torment is not due specifically to the Finnish period or excessive material wealth. Chulkov sees Andreev’s isolation as one of the main characteristics that made him special; that defined who he was for his entire life. Beklemisheva describes a very different Finnish sojourn for Andreev. He enjoyed sailing and walking in the forest alone. From these activities, he returned refreshed and relaxed. It was a time of family and friends, bicycle rides and croquet.43 The tranquility of Andreev’s life in Finland was first interrupted in 1914 with the start of the world war. It stirred an ardent patriotism in him, and he thought of the war as both a personal resurrection and a resurrection of Russia.44 His health was deteriorating, however, and during the course of the war he was hospitalized many times. In 1916 Andreev returned to the capital to join the editorial staff of The Russian Will, a large Petrograd daily suspected of being an organ of the Ministry of the Interior. Andreev received a salary of thirty-six thou-

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sand rubles a year and fifteen hundred per printed sheet as head of the fiction, stage, and criticism sections. Andreev thought the job would allow him to write plays without worrying about money: his lavish spending and gradual decline in productivity had placed his family in a dire financial situation. However, most of his friends and fellow writers were put off by the negative reputation of the paper and refused to contribute.45 Andreev supported the February Revolution of 1917. He thought that it would return order to the government, which would result in a more united campaign against the Central Powers. In April 1917 the provisional government enlisted him as a propaganda writer, but he quickly grew disenchanted. He continued to support the Russian war effort but blamed the Bolsheviks for the collapse of the military’s morale. The Russian Will was sold on the eve of the October Revolution and Andreev lost his position as editor.46 On 18 December 1918 Andreev suffered a prolonged heart attack.47 His health was severely compromised, but he continued to write antiBolshevik propaganda and planned to go on a lecture tour of America. He moved his family to the summer home of a friend until he could organize his trip abroad because he could no longer afford his enormous house at Vammelsuu. On 12 September 1919 Andreev suffered a brain hemorrhage. At the age of forty-eight, Andreev was dead, having reached fame and success after a youth of poverty and hardship. He died at a precarious time in Russian history, leaving not even enough money for his own burial expenses. Andreev’s last years in Finland were not happy. However, few Russians lived well during this time of war and revolution. Other artists who died during this period, Blok for example, who died in 1921, are also remembered for the tragic quality of their deaths. There is some truth to Zaitsev’s description of Andreev’s life. His youth was dominated by Moscow, literary success, the camaraderie of Sreda, and his first wife, Aleksandra Mikhailovna. But Andreev’s mature years cannot simply be discounted as lonely and spiritually isolated. Andreev was a family man who built his dream home in the country. His time was spent on hobbies – photography, painting, and boating. The issues concerning Andreev’s literary career probably would not have been remedied simply by his remaining in Moscow, as Zaitsev suggests. Andreev moved to St Petersburg (and then Finland) in part to be closer to the capital’s dynamic literary and theatrical societies. Andreev’s success came with works that were timely and provocative. More than most of his fellow members of

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Sreda, Andreev stayed at the forefront of artistic trends, although most of his attempts at symbolism were unsuccessful.48 Many factors may have influenced the nature of Zaitsev’s portrait of Andreev: losing a close friend of youth to middle-aged family life, the isolation that Zaitsev himself felt upon Andreev’s move to St Petersburg, Andreev’s extravagant display of wealth, the rapid disintegration of his financial, mental, and physical well-being during the years of war and revolution, and the natural tendency to idealize youth and perceive the death of an artist as tragic. One only has to turn to the memoir of Pavel Andreev to realize that his brother’s youth was far from ideal. Pavel tells of Andreev’s drinking, failed romances, suicide attempts, depression, and financial struggle. The stories are less than flattering, and it seems a miracle that Andreev ever made it through his Moscow period. Pavel writes: “In Moscow there were nine hundred thousand people and Leonid did not have one close friend out of these nine hundred thousand. Nights and days he spent in great anguish and in total solitude.”49 Zaitsev only became acquainted with Andreev in 1901. By that time, his financial situation was much better, he was a member of Sreda, and he had set his sights on marrying Aleksandra Mikhailovna. Zaitsev either did not know about Andreev’s negative Moscow experiences or chose not to write about them. The years that Zaitsev calls the best of Andreev’s life (1901–1906) Sergei Elpat’evskii describes very differently: “I knew Andreev in this period of his life – then he was not genuinely happy, joyous, unclouded.”50 Andreev himself echoes this opinion after a trip to Moscow and Butovo in 1916: “I wandered through the woods of Butovo and, while reflecting, understood a lot about myself in my past life. I understood why I got drunk there and why it could not have been different; why outwardly the happiest years of my life were with Shura and the brilliant beginning of my career – my soul remembers and feels these moments like a continual dark downfall, despair and endlessness ...”51 The main factor influencing Zaitsev’s own portrait was his isolation from his friends at the time. This separation had already begun in 1916 when Zaitsev began his officer training. Zaitsev wrote in his memoir that he loved literature and Moscow and that his first day of training was like being put in prison. For Zaitsev, books, manuscripts, and slow walks through the city no longer existed.52

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After the Revolution, Zaitsev lived on his father’s estate in the Tula district in Pritykino and felt as though he had been torn away from literary society, from Moscow, from his friends. Thus, it seems more than likely that Zaitsev projected his own sense of isolation onto his portrait of Andreev. In June 1918 Zaitsev wrote to Ivan Novikov: “I have a small favour to ask of you: if something pops up in the newspapers about the almanac, where my tale (“Blue Star”) is, put it aside – I am totally cut off now from communication with the outside world.”53 In April 1919, at the same time that he was writing his literary portrait, Zaitsev wrote to Chulkov in Moscow: “Is the professional union alive? Do you still dine together? Do you drink a lot of vodka without me? I do not, alas, drink without all of you – not a drop. I am rereading Lermontov’s prose, Mérimée, and Turgenev. I myself wrote a novella, Rafael. The rest of the time I either smoke or play solitaire. Or I drink tea. All the same, Moscow is sweet. I think about her often.”54 Two weeks later, Zaitsev wrote: “I was glad to get your letter, like a friendly reminder from a country where there are still literature, books and a few decent people, etc. I receive very few letters nowadays, as if there was no one out there in the whole wide world.”55 Once again, these letters speak to many of the same issues that Zaistev describes in relation to Andreev – separation from Moscow, from friends, and from an earlier (happier) way of life. Because Zaitsev and Andreev had little contact during the second period of Andreev’s life, it is only logical that Zaitsev would have to imagine what it must have been like for Andreev living in Finland. His description of Andreev’s life in Finland is very similar to Zaitsev’s own “tragic years” in Pritykino.56 Further evidence that Zaitsev wrote the memoir while under the influence of Pritykino is found in a letter to Novikov of September 1919: “Did you read about the death of L. Andreev? I am very saddened; this, of course, is a loss of our agitated time. I found out about his death in Zakhar’ino and, while returning on foot through our fields and tiny groves already turning gold, I remembered, not paying attention to the various [plays] The Life of Man and Masks, that he was (fundamentally) a very Russian person, he was from Orel, he loved Butovo, Tsaritsyno, birches, meadows, the smells of his motherland. I regret very much that he will never again see this, modest and earthy – our delights.”57 Koliadich discusses how memoirs often begin with the archetype “Home,” which establishes a topos by which the description of the outer

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world defines the inner world of the individual. In memoirs, this usually means the childhood home and leads to psychological characterizations. As the individual grows, the topos becomes larger – home, garden, street, city.58 In Zaitsev’s portrait, Moscow is Andreev’s archetypal home, where friends, success, and literary society portray positive outer and inner worlds for Andreev. The movement away from this topos disrupts the archetype and allows Zaitsev to convey the disruption of Andreev’s worlds. However, the orientation towards Moscow as the archetypal home and Finland/St Petersburg as the anti-home is a projection of Zaitsev’s own attachment to Moscow and his sphere of comfort – not to mention his dislike (and possible distrust) of St Petersburg. Piskunov writes of Zaitsev’s attachment to Moscow and how it manifests itself in his literary portraits: “Zaitsev often writes a portrait of one and the same person (A. Blok, A. Belyi, I. Bunin, L. Andreev) from one of two perspectives – Moscow or St Petersburg – and each time it happens that Moscow appeases, comforts ‘the sick and nervous hearts,’ rounds off sharp edges, smoothes overly harsh characteristics.” The solution is simple: in Moscow and in Muscovites, there is an organic quality that leads to a natural harmony that is not found in any other place. St Petersburg in turn represents the opposite of Moscow.59 To reiterate, each author will have his own interpretation of the life of an individual and often the role of the author in that life will dictate the description. Zaitsev offers a useful model for understanding Andreev’s biography. However, the tragic quality of Andreev’s life did not begin at age thirty-five and his personal happiness was not limited to the years 1901–06. Zaitsev preferred to remember the young and energetic Andreev of Sreda meetings, rather than the “broken and suffering” Andreev railing against the Bolsheviks from Finland. This is understandable. Yet one must be objective when reading Zaitsev’s memoir as a representation of Andreev’s life and literary career since, as we have seen, Zaitsev’s own biases affected his portrait. It is important to illuminate these biases because Zaitsev’s memoir has influenced the way Western and Soviet scholars as well as other memoirists have understood Andreev’s life. In part this is a matter of timing and circumstance. Zaitsev’s portrait of Andreev was first published in 1922 in a book that was readily attainable (as opposed to newspaper or journal articles) and then republished in various forms over half a century, the final version appearing in 1969. Beklemisheva’s portrait, on the other hand, like many

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others, was published only once, in 1930, just about the time that Andreev became a taboo subject in the Soviet Union. Thus, her view, so different from Zaitsev’s, was largely ignored, and it is the repetition of Zaitsev’s biases that has distorted Andreev’s life history. By confronting Zaitsev’s prejudices, we are attacking the root of the distortion. If Andreev’s isolation can actually be attributed to the author’s own associations with Moscow, Pritykino and his “tragic years” (and later his isolation from Russia itself), then it refocuses our understanding of the portrait and asks us to reassess the conclusions made about Andreev’s life based on Zaitsev’s claims.

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A caricature from the St Petersburg Gazette, 25 December 1906, of various authors in hell. Andreev is struggling with Gor’kii, buying characters for Christmas stories.

This is the cover for the tenth Znanie anthology (1906) and includes works by Serafimovich, Skitalets, and others, as well as Andreev’s play To the Stars.

Maksim Gor’kii

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3 “He is not with them, he is with us, he is ours”: Belyi You have to take [Andreev] as he was, with his weak technique, with his frequent disruptions, but with his enormous gift to ignite the hearts of people even with a weak verb. Letter of December 1944 from Ivanov-Razumik to A. Bem

At the beginning of the 1920s, Andrei Belyi (1880–1934) looked back on his life and literary career. The changing political and literary landscape in Russia made it increasingly difficult for a writer to remain a modernist, Argonaut,1 or Symbolist and this forced Belyi not only to redefine his literary career but to reinterpret most of his life. Belyi’s remodelling of himself and others was accomplished by means of memoir literature. Belyi experienced his first autobiographical impulse right after the completion of Petersburg (1913–22). He planned to write a cycle of novels under the title of “My Life,” which would have taken up ten volumes.2 However, Blok’s death in 1921 is accepted as the main impetus behind Belyi’s memoirs. He published Recollections of Blok (Vospominaniia o Bloke) in 1922 in the final issue of The Notes of Dreamers (Zapiski mechtatelei), a literary journal published in Petrograd. That same year, while living in Berlin, Belyi wrote his literary portrait of Andreev, which was published in the second edition of A Book about Leonid Andreev. Belyi returned to the Soviet Union in 1923 and found that the literary milieu had changed, trapping him between competing forces. As various literary groups struggled to define themselves as the arbiters of official Soviet literature, elements of the Symbolist movement, especially those promoting its religious-philosophical aspects, were disparaged by critics,

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especially after 1925. This disparagement extended to Belyi, who was classified negatively as a “mystic” and the leader of the movement, while the deification of Blok as a “revolutionary” had already begun. These developments encouraged Belyi to continue to re-examine his literary past and involvement in the Symbolist movement and to attempt to rewrite himself into the prevailing version of Soviet literature, past and present, through his memoirs.3 Belyi published On the Border of Two Centuries (Na rubezhe dvukh stoletii) in 1930. However, a campaign had begun in the summer of 1929 to “reconstruct” Soviet literature and Belyi seemed to be in conflict with the new ideological position. When he returned to the article version of “The Beginning of the Century” (Nachalo veka), begun in Berlin, he was under the influence of competing political, personal, and literary agendas and had become increasingly vulnerable as people close to him were being detained and arrested. Eventually, he wrote a letter to Stalin detailing his personal situation and his desire to serve the state. Although the letter was never answered, Belyi’s position in Soviet literary society began to improve.4 Belyi’s memoirs are not typically known for their historical or factual accuracy. As Lazar Fleishman states: “Often discrepancies, inconsistencies, and sharp contradictions emerge when accounts of the same events and portraits of the same people in various volumes of the memoirs are compared.”5 To a lesser extent, this is the case when one compares the Andreev memoir of 1922 with the one published in The Beginning of the Century (1933). The differences between the two versions speak to the intentions of and outside pressures on Belyi both in 1922 and, especially, in 1930–31. By comparing them one can find the material that was relevant or timely in 1922. This material becomes important when examining A Book about Leonid Andreev as representative of its time and as the first attempt at creating a posthumous image of Andreev. Both portraits are constructed out of the same major episodes: a gathering of the literary circle Sreda, a chance meeting on the Arbat, another meeting at a mutual friend’s, and a later meeting at the Moscow Art Theatre. Belyi visited Andreev at the Loskutnaia Hotel in Moscow and their last meeting occurred at a masquerade party. Most of these episodes are brought intact from the first version to the second, and they create the framework on which the memoir is constructed. Much of what is expressed overtly in the first version is often less obviously stated in the second. In both versions it is significant that Belyi and Andreev belong to dif-

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ferent literary camps. The second version begins with an expanded discussion of a Sreda meeting, which Belyi attended. What is missing from the second version, however, is the direct claim that Belyi shared an unspoken understanding with Andreev on some “higher” level. In the 1922 version Belyi states: “During these years we were in opposite camps. We Scorpion writers regarded the writers of Knowledge as opponents, while the writers of Knowledge regarded us at best as ‘eccentrics, at worst – as something like traitors to the traditions of the public good.’6 … I practically did not know Leonid Nikolaevich personally – all of this raised a fence between us, but finally through the ‘fence’ an attentive, curious glance suddenly penetrated my soul, encouraging me, as if saying: ‘Literary schools and their opinions about one another are such nonsense. We are all equally lonely in the ultimate things, in our nocturnal existence.’”7 It is this knowing glance that becomes the main motif in the earlier version, and signifies Andreev’s connection with Belyi on some higher plane. Reference to that connection all but disappears in the second version. Much like Blok and Chulkov, Belyi expresses in 1922 the idea that although Andreev belonged to a rival literary camp, there was a part of him that was in tune with the modernists.8 “We left the table,” Belyi writes, “exchanging strange phrases that did not make much sense. I felt that I could convey to him my thoughts about him. He answered with the sharpest, most sympathetic glance – across all divisions.”9 In examining Belyi’s memoir of 1922, it is necessary to look at his assessment of Andreev prior to 1919. In this way, it can be established whether he always viewed Andreev as a modernist or whether he simply created the idea for the memoir. Luckily, there is a large body of literary criticism that attests to the fact that Belyi believed that Andreev was a quasi-modernist. Therefore, as we shall see, the discussion of Andreev’s mystical connection in the 1922 version is consistent with the literary criticism that preceded the memoir. The fact that this motif is subdued in the later version is apparently due to the negative appraisal of both modernism and Andreev by the Soviet authorities in 1930. Belyi wrote: “I forgave [Andreev], more than I did Blok and Boris Zaitsev.” Belyi originally encouraged Andreev, but “having gotten closer, I could not make out anything in him. Becoming always more and more alienated, his Shipovnik became a reservoir of cheap modernism, with which The Scales [a modernist journal] strug-

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gled; everything fashionable done by those followers of Andreev was stolen from the Symbolists.”10 This revisionism runs counter to what Belyi had written about Andreev just a decade before. The 1922 version begins in a typical modernist fashion. Belyi remembers being impressed with Andreev, but he cannot recall many specific meetings. Instead, he explains them as brief flashes. He remembers attending a meeting of the literary circle Sreda and talking to Zaitsev. Andreev leaned on Zaitsev’s shoulder and fixed his gaze on Belyi. Later, Andreev and Belyi talked about something that was totally unimportant to both of them. All the time, Andreev’s eyes suggested a different conversation, which is meaningful. Belyi tells how Andreev tried to be an attentive host at the Sreda meeting but was in fact drawn in another direction. He was split in two. Later that evening, Belyi understood that Andreev was just striking a pose. He understood that Andreev was actually “over there,” in an alternative, lonely place, and the knowing glance he had given came from that place. Belyi declares that their relationship continued as a series of rare meetings that always originated from this alternative place. The next time they met was a year or two later on the Arbat. They bumped into each other outside a mutual friend’s house. Recognizing each other after a moment of confusion, they exchanged insignificant phrases, but Belyi felt the resumption of their unspoken bond. Soon after, they met at the Dobrovs’. Andreev expressed his interest in the decadent St Petersburg writers, especially Blok and Aleksei Remizov. Again, this connection was expressed in “barely understandable phrases” and knowing glances. Belyi was impressed with Andreev’s Life of Man and wrote a positive review of the play. They saw each other a couple of times that fall in Moscow. One night in the foyer of the Moscow Art Theatre, they talked about Ibsen and the actor Kachalov, and Belyi confided that he was worn out. Andreev suggested that he put his books aside and go fishing in Finland. Soon after this, Belyi visited Andreev at his hotel. While there, Belyi tried to speak personally to Andreev about himself. Andreev listened to Belyi but later told someone that he had no idea what Belyi was talking about. This offended Belyi, but he understood it as some sort of pose since Andreev belonged to the other literary camp. Belyi decided to have no further contact with Andreev. They met once more, however, at a masquerade. No one recognized Belyi, not even his

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closest friends, as he “frolicked wildly” in his red domino costume. Only Andreev knew who he was. Not wanting to ruin Belyi’s surprise, Andreev continued on, but they exchanged another significant glance. This time it was as if Andreev entered Belyi and lived inside him. Belyi knew that they were not meant to meet again. In this fantasy setting, Andreev was no longer split in two and Belyi understood that Andreev was a modernist – using allegory instead of symbol, a futurist before there was Futurism, a unique mystical anarchist. Andreev was Don Quixote in his vivid aspiration for greatness and life. Belyi’s memoir covers roughly the period of 1904–09. This could be considered the height of Andreev’s literary success and the point at which he most appealed to modernist critics. The core idea of Belyi’s literary portrait is that although Andreev belonged to an opposing literary camp, he was in fact closer to the modernist writers in spirit. In this chapter, I will not debate whether Andreev was a modernist or a realist. I will examine Andreev’s relationship with the modernists and follow the development of Belyi’s literary criticism so as to understand the important steps leading up to his literary portrait. It should then become possible to argue that Belyi’s memoir of 1922 is the final statement in the development of his literary criticism.

To understand the relationship between Andreev and the modernists, especially Belyi, one must understand the literary milieu in which it took place. At the beginning of the century, modernist critics were willing to find elements in certain realist writers, such as Andreev, that could work within their own literary system. By the end of 1906, however, the boundaries between the two groups began to disintegrate – about the same time as the modernist movement was experiencing its own internal problems. By 1908 the modernist and realist movements had become so amorphous that a polemical relationship was nearly impossible. At that time, Andreev occupied a “middle ground” between both camps.11 This meant that he was alternately rejected and accepted by both literary groups. In an attempt to reconcile this “middle ground,” Belyi defines Andreev as an artist who existed at one and the same time in two literary camps. Realist writers were organized by Gor’kii around the publishing house Znanie (Knowledge), which acted as a cooperative in which writers held shares and received profits from their own publications.12

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In March 1904 Znanie published its first anthology in an edition of 41,000 copies, costing only a ruble each. Between 1904 and 1907, nineteen anthologies were published with a total printing of over 700,000 copies. By the beginning of wwi and the closing of Znanie, over forty anthologies had been published.13 The modernist writers were led by Briusov in Moscow and by Merezhkovskii and Zinaida Gippius in St Petersburg. In 1899 the publishing house Scorpion (Skorpion) was established and in the following years Scorpion issued Northern Flowers (Severnye tsvety, 1904–09; 1911), an almanac that published the works of both Moscow and St Petersburg representatives of the modernist movement. In 1904 Scorpion also began to publish its own journal, The Scales (Vesy, 1904–09). The Scales was followed by modernist journals such as the Golden Fleece (Zolotoe runo, 1906–09) and Apollo (Apollon, 1910–17). Belyi occupied an important position in the creation of modernist theory thanks to his articles “About Theurgy” (O teurgii) and “Symbolism as a World-Concept” (Simvolizm kak miroponimanie), both published in 1903. With these articles and others, he attempted to construct a world view and aesthetic that would address most of the important philosophical-aesthetic questions of the modernist movement. Belyi also wrote impressionistic articles and reviews of contemporary writers and reinterpreted the works of nineteenth-century writers such as Aleksandr Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol’, and Feodor Tiuchev. As noted by Margarita Mysliakova, Belyi attempted to smooth over the contradictions between modernism and realism, finding universal truths in both aesthetic systems. He considered realism to be one of the main lines in the development of world art and actively sought contact with writers such as Gor’kii and Andreev. Belyi’s desired effect was to expand the boundaries of art and our understanding of the surrounding world, which were leftover influences of the nineteenth century and the growing interest in psychoanalysis. It was through a modernist world view that he planned to go beyond the boundaries of our present existence to reveal the banal quality of our immediate condition. However, the true value of Belyi’s critical works comes from the revelations he makes about himself, the Belyi that is revealed in his criticism of others.14 In The Scales’ second number of 1904, Belyi wrote a review of Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard (Vishnevyi sad). He clearly associated Chekhov and his work with the realist tradition, yet he claimed that

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symbols could be found in the play.15 Literally, Belyi argued that there was a secret code of symbols, which was evident to those who were attuned. At this stage, The Scales was not as concerned with form (i.e., realist, modernist) as with content. Briusov stated that even a realist text could have modernist content.16 Belyi, more than the rest, believed that true Symbolism coincided with true realism when they both expressed a genuine experience and its effect.17 The May 1904 issue of The Scales exhibited this concentration on content over form in Viacheslav Ivanov’s review of Andreev’s “Life of Vasilii Fiveiskii.” According to Ivanov, Andreev had touched upon mystical problems of life through symbolic forms. Through this review and a few other pieces about “The Life of Vasilii Fiveiskii,” the modernists were hoping to lure Andreev to The Scales and away from the Znanie.18 In the December 1904 issue, Belyi reviewed Andreev’s story “Phantoms.” As with his review of The Cherry Orchard, Belyi appraised the work in modernist language. He began by explaining that our life is madness. Masks cover the chaos that spills out of our souls and into our lives. Belyi said that in “Phantoms,” Andreev rips away the last mask of fraudulent sensibility. That being the case, Belyi considered Andreev a “solid talent.”19 He returned to “Phantoms” in an article entitled “The Present and Future of Russian Literature” (Nastoiashchee i budushchee russkoi literatury), written in 1907 but published two years later. By then Belyi understood the story as representative of the contradictions found in Andreev himself. The real and the ghostly were realized as social and decadent literary trends. These two trends ran parallel in Andreev but did not synthesize modernism and realism.20 This new critical stance toward “Phantoms” shows the evolution of Belyi’s criticism and also underlines the personalized interpretations that he afforded Andreev’s works. In the fourth issue of 1905, Belyi published a long article entitled “The Apocalypse in Russian Poetry” (Apokalipsis v russkoi poezii). Much of the philosophical basis for the article came from his reading of Vladimir Solov’ev and Friedrich Nietzsche. Belyi argued that the purpose of religion is to integrate into life what art has created in images. He combined the idea of the religious function of art with an apocalyptic vision found in images from the Russo-Japanese War. In the second section of the article, Belyi refers to Andreev’s story “Red Laugh.” Belyi understood “Red Laugh” in the context of the modernist discourse concerning the end of the world and the arrival of an “era of the third Testament.” As with many modernists, Belyi interpreted the Russo-Japanese War as a dis-

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ruption of cosmic proportions and for Belyi, Andreev’s expressionistic representation of the war spoke to this higher cosmic meaning. Belyi reviewed Andreev’s second volume of stories in the May 1906 edition of The Scales. This second volume contains the stories that most appealed to the modernists – “The Thought,” “In the Fog,” “The Life of Vasilii Fiveiskii,” “Phantoms,” and “Red Laugh.” Belyi fixed on the themes that were foreign to Znanie and especially to Gor’kii in the continued attempt to lure Andreev away.21 In the review, Belyi defined mystical anarchism as an indicator of the disappointment in our decisions regarding the meaning of life. He argued that mystical anarchism is the sole answer for everything that is not satisfying in our lives. It is a revolt. Therefore, this anarchic crisis demands that art be unusually sincere and display the power of disappointment. Belyi stated that Andreev “may be the only mystical anarchist among us contemporary Russian writers”22; he was also the only one to portray faithfully the formless chaos of life. It is not surprising that the majority of The Scales’ attention centred on Andreev and his work. In the fall of 1904 Belyi took part in Sreda meetings to find out which of Gor’kii’s writers might have leanings toward the modernist mode of thinking.23 It was Andreev with whom Belyi was most taken. He wrote of his experience: “Nevertheless, I knew somewhere over there Andreev is an enormous writer, and still unrecognized. Neither Teleshov nor Timkovskii could appreciate him. He is not with them. He is with us. He is one of ours.”24 The fact that Belyi claimed Andreev for the modernist movement shows that originally the modernists were less concerned with affiliations and more interested in finding other members for their literary cause. The highly charged atmosphere generated by the failed 1905 Revolution took a toll on writers and relationships within both literary groups. As Gor’kii became increasingly involved in the revolutionary movement, many of his contemporaries felt alienated and left Znanie.25 By 1907 Andreev had partially broken with Znanie, publishing with Shipovnik and later editing a couple of their almanacs. One of Andreev’s main reasons for leaving Znanie was that Gor’kii had offered him an editorial position, an offer that was rescinded once Gor’kii realized that Andreev wished to include works by Blok and Sologub. Andreev’s move to Shipovnik created further confusion. Shipovnik published works by modernists, such as Sologub and Ivanov, as well as realists who had personal contact with Gor’kii, such as Aleksandr Amfiteaterov. One would expect that with his move to Shipovnik and with the modernist influence

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that began to appear in his plays (The Life of Man, Tsar Hunger, and Anathema), Andreev would have been accepted by the modernists with open arms. However, this was not the case. Many modernists were worried that Andreev would once again follow behind Gor’kii’s banner. Kseniia Muratova argues that they could not forget that Andreev was “half-realist/half-decadent” and his ideology was still seen as belonging to Znanie. Even though The Life of Man was a dramatic presentation of Symbolist motifs, it was still concerned at its core with everyday life (byt).26 A theoretical distinction was made between symbol and allegory and the modernists almost unanimously disapproved of allegory. Andreev’s “new dramas” contained allegorical forms and the modernists saw this as a vulgarization of Symbolism and an appeal to the artistic sensibilities of the masses.27 In a review of Shipovnik’s first almanac, Gippius took issue with Andreev’s attempt to “imitate” Maeterlink and was appalled that The Life of Man received a positive review when it was staged at the Komissarzhevskaia Theatre.28 At first, however, Blok and Belyi interpreted the play in a positive light. Belyi’s initial comments appeared in The Pass (Pereval).29 Mysliakova suggests that the review is typical of Belyi’s style with its forced associations and personalized interpretations. He does not recreate the atmosphere of Andreev’s play so much as build his own artistic material on top of it.30 Belyi wrote a second review of The Life of Man in September 1907. He took a risky critical position, considering that Briusov and The Scales had already come out against the play. Belyi claimed that Andreev’s attempt at modernism was careless in form but not in style. He was willing to admit that The Life of Man was not a work of the highest degree; nonetheless it had a “dizzying” effect. “You can neither praise nor condemn The Life of Man,” he wrote. “You can reject or accept it. And I am accepting it.”31 In an article published in The Scales32 Meyerhold spoke of the “Theatre of the Future,” naming the “Neo-realists”: Andreev, Blok, and Briusov. The designation is important because it introduces the term Neo-realist and also combines Andreev with two major representatives of the modernist movement. Meyerhold was an entity outside of the Znanie and Scorpion circles, so his “outsider’s” view offers insight into the hazy boundaries that already existed between these movements. One of the most telling reviews regarding this situation of confused allegiances and literary camps is entitled “Common Grave” (Bratskaia mogila) by Anton Krainy (Z. Gippius). The common grave refers to the

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death, in a literary sense, of both Gor’kii and Andreev. Without directly naming individual writers, other than Lidiia Zinov’eva-Annibal, Krainy attacked “hooligans in Gor’kii-esque rags” for their pornographic and revolutionary works. 33 The issue of pornography could be traced back to Andreev’s “Abyss” and “In the Fog,” published in 1902. Contemporary with this review would have been Mikhail Artsybashev’s Sanin (Sanin), Mikhail Kuzmin’s Wings (Kryl’ia), and Zinov’eva-Annibal’s Thirty-three Abominations (Tridtsat tri uroda).34 More interesting than Krainy’s review are the editorial comments that followed. The Scales acknowledged that Anton Krainy’s remarks were often harsh but supported all of his statements except for the allusions to Kuzmin’s short novel Wings, which had been published in The Scales. In this instance, the loyalties to literary groups and publishing houses are clearly evident. The boundaries had become so hazy that a tribe mentality was the only way to differentiate between the players – Kuzmin’s work can be grouped with Artsybashev’s, Zinov’eva-Annibal’s, and Andreev’s stories, while Andreev’s plays are connected to those of Blok and Briusov. By 1907 the distinctions between the modernists and realists were no longer clear-cut. Blok defended Andreev in an article entitled “About the Realists” (O realistakh), which dismayed Belyi and others in the modernist camp.35 Belyi’s own theoretical positions gave way to tactical ones that were often dictated by the immediate situation. This resulted in further conflicts between the Moscow and St Petersburg factions of the modernist movement.36 By 1908 Briusov had become a lame-duck editor of The Scales. In order to keep his allies, he often allowed publication of articles of which he did not approve. In the issue of October 1908, Belyi published “Symbolism and Russian Art,” in which he tried to separate Symbolism from the rest of the modernist movement. When Belyi defined modernism it became apparent that it was everything that was not related to The Scales.37 Belyi argued that Shipovnik consisted of two flanks. The right flank was made up of writers moving from realism to Symbolism, whom Belyi called “impressionists.” The left flank consisted of writers moving from Symbolism to impressionism. This left flank was trying to create a school of symbolic realism and mystical anarchism. Belyi said that Andreev was part of the extreme left flank, which contained the most talented artists and Symbolists.38 Here Belyi seems to be associating Andreev with the Symbolists who produce mystical anarchism. Belyi clarified his position in his article “The Present and Future of Russian

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Literature,” which was written prior to, but published after, “Symbolism and Russian Art”: “Leonid Andreev grew up in this epoch of struggle, reflecting in himself both tendencies of Russian literature – the social and the decadent, the real and the ghostly – not blending but shifting, not unity but parallel ... L. Andreev is a talented spokesman for vagueness: as if at one in the same time he was growing in two hostile camps.”39 About this time, Gor’kii wrote to Andreev from Capri: “Take a look at what all these hooligans are doing to you, your present-day comrades through collaboration: their founder, Merezhkovskii, walks around with dirty feet on your face, Gippius defames you in Mercure de France, and in Briusov’s journal you have been called an ignoramus and a fool – already, this is not criticism, but an organized persecution, vile persecution, nothing seen before in our literature.”40 By the end of 1908 The Scales had almost come to the end of its journey. It had propagated the ideals of modernist literature and was now adrift. Briusov recognized this and left in 1909. The journal continued for the rest of 1909, but as Belyi became more involved with Ivanov and Blok, the publisher decided to discontinue publication.41 In that final year, Belyi reviewed Andreev’s play Anathema. He recalled how he defended The Life of Man as a critical literary moment for Andreev. Now, Belyi understood that this critical moment was in fact the end of Andreev’s literary career. Andreev, he wrote, “wishes to be a symbolist and instead of this he becomes a ‘maximist’: to clothe maxims in a frock-coat, to represent ‘essences’ in the form of a knight in a raincoat still is not symbolism.”42 Belyi did not want to believe that Andreev had written this play. He argued that everything good about it could be attributed to the Moscow Art Theatre and everything bad to Andreev’s text. This was Belyi’s (as well as The Scales’) last critical review of Andreev’s literary work. In general terms, Andreev’s pessimism was attractive to the modernists. Stories like “The Lie,” “The Thief,” and “Phantoms” had a foggy multifaceted quality that employed symbols that the early Decadents could associate with. Similarly, his post-revolutionary plays employed motifs that were understandable to the Symbolists.43 For a section of the modernist movement, the stories with religious themes, “The Christians” and “The Life of Vasilii Fiveiskii,” seemed to draw Andreev into its circle of ideas. Dmitrii Filosofov argued that Andreev’s atheism and pessimism helped him to understand the Symbolist method, yet he claimed that Andreev’s Symbolism was made of cardboard. They realized that Andreev was not cognizant of the “pure spirit of Symbolism.” The real

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problem was that while the modernists believed that Andreev was talented, they found him uncultured. Andreev’s interests were narrow and his knowledge limited when compared to the modernists who came almost entirely from the well-educated bourgeoisie. Thus, it was on the basis of “culture” that The Scales could defend Kuzmin’s Wings. Unlike Andreev and Artsybashev, Kuzmin was a cultured writer.44 Yet the modernists were still intrigued by Andreev and wanted to entice him away from Znanie. In 1906 he was courted by Chulkov. This led to the publication of Andreev’s “Once There Was” in Torches (Fakely), the almanac of mystical anarchists, along with works by Ivanov, Briusov, and others. That same year, he published “Lazarus” in the Golden Fleece. The publisher of the journal asked Andreev to edit the literary section after many modernists left in 1907, but he turned down the offer.45 Andreev was aware of the modernists’ philosophical, literary, and critical works. However, he was not willing to subscribe altogether to their views on art. Other than Blok and Sologub, Andreev negatively appraised the works published by the various modernist journals and publishing houses.46 He was raised on Tolstoi and Dostoevskii and took Vsevelod Garshin and Chekhov as his literary mentors. For his own purposes, however, the nineteenth-century brand of Realism was a bit boring, while the modernist alternative was too beholden to the ideas of artistic form. Andreev seemed to pick a path between the two extremes. Critics within both movements noted his artistic originality but also resented the synthesis of these two literary movements. Andreev wrote in 1912 to Gor’kii: “Who am I? For the noble-born decadents I am a contemptible realist. For the hereditary realists I am a suspicious symbolist.” 47 Belyi’s memoir of 1922 is consistent with his critical stance toward Andreev. For Belyi and the modernists, Andreev was an enigma. They seemed to speak a similar language but were unable to communicate with each other. Interestingly, Vadim Andreev met Belyi in Berlin shortly after the memoir had been published in the second edition of A Book about Leonid Andreev. Vadim told Belyi that he liked the memoir and Belyi responded: “I am glad that you liked it. For me it has always been regrettable that between Leonid Nikolaevich and me there existed a misunderstanding, a lack of agreement, and a lack of complete understanding. I do not know what to call it – something was hindering us from approaching each other.”48 For almost their entire relationship Belyi interpreted Andreev’s works in a favourable, modernist light. There is a kernel of truth in this inter-

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pretation. Andreev made no allegiance to any one literary camp. Therefore, Belyi could claim a part of Andreev for the modernists and the historical record. What Belyi captured so well, however, was the duplicity found in Andreev. Belyi identified this rift with loneliness; Blok associated it with his own understanding of chaos; Chulkov called it an “illness” that reflected the upheaval of Russia at the beginning of the century. For the modernists, this disruption in Andreev (consciously or unconsciously) brought him closer to them. Mysliakova argues that the modernists (Blok, Belyi, and Chulkov) strongly felt the discord in Andreev and grasped the dissonance between the external and internal Andreev. She claims that Belyi captured this very well in his description of the masquerade. There Belyi echoed many of the main motifs of his novel Petersburg in interpreting the contradictory inner world of Andreev.49 However, where Blok and Chulkov used this dissonance as a starting point to explain Andreev’s psychological condition, Belyi used it to stamp Andreev as a quasi-modernist. As in his literary criticism, Belyi was less concerned with the work at hand than in his own interpretation. He did the same thing in the memoir of 1922. His mission was not to explain Andreev’s discord in any way other than by claiming him for the modernist cause. The modernists spent much of their creative energy in defining the theories of their literary movement. These theoreticians were often in disagreement and this ultimately (along with historical events) brought an end to their literary movement. One of the points of contention was Leonid Andreev and his artistic works. He belonged to a hostile literary camp, he was from a different social background, he was “uncultured,” and he confused allegory with symbol. Yet like the modernists he was influenced by “pessimism,” Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. He shared a connection with the modernists on some metaphysical level. Both Blok and Belyi believed this. Belyi described it best, not in his memoir but in his article “The Present and Future of Russian Literature,” when he said that Andreev was a product of his time; competing forces lived in him without mixing – they ran in parallel lines. These forces (or possibly Andreev’s own internal disruption) at times pulled him closer to the modernists and at times alienated him from them. Belyi, however, was one of the few who seemed consistently to appreciate Andreev and his works, even after the author’s death. Therefore, in many ways the 1922 memoir can be understood as Belyi’s final attempt to claim Andreev (at least partially) for the literary category Modernist.

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Members of Sreda (1902). Skitalets and Gor’kii (standing), Andreev, Shaliapin, Ivan Bunin, Teleshov and Chirikov (seated)

Andreev, Goloushev, and Teleshov (1906)

A portrait of Skitalets (1900s) sold as a postcard

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4 The Importance of Friendship and Sreda: Teleshov Yet now, in order to describe what I saw, I need a new perspective, because I never was a passive observer, but rather an involved participant. Are the points of view from which I previously looked still valid? No, they are not: they are subjective. I have been waiting all this time for reconciliation, objectivity, historical perspective. One should not attempt to come to terms with one’s own past in one’s memoirs; one must be severed from it. Liubov’ Mendeleva-Blok, Facts and Myths About Blok and Myself

The two previous chapters have examined very different biographical portraits of Andreev. Zaitsev creates a binary model for Andreev’s life and assigns positive and negative values. Belyi claims Andreev for the modernist movement and suggests that his solitude was a sign of his connection to the other (Symbolist) world. Both of these memoirs employ subjective interpretations of Andreev’s life history. Nikolai Teleshov’s memoir provides a third line of biographical discourse for A Book about Leonid Andreev. As with Zaitsev and Belyi, the first task is to examine the core idea in Teleshov’s portrait and identify how closely the portrait approximates the historical facts. The second step is to compare these three portraits in order to make a judgment about their subjectivity and the degree to which it has influenced the portrait. Once the subjective influences have been identified, the life history can be refocused and the lines of subjective discourse traced back to their sources. Teleshov (1867–1957) published his first poem in 1884. Two years later, he contributed to an anthology of poetry called A Sincere Word (Iskrennee slovo). The book was not well received by critics, but it introduced Teleshov to a wide circle of literary friends. This led to his partic-

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ipation in Dmitrii Tikhomirov’s literary circle and later resulted in the creation of his own literary group. In 1886 Teleshov published philosophical stories about the meaning of life under the title of Fantastical Drafts (Fantasticheskie nabroski). In 1893 he published a collection of sketches in the Russian Review (Russkoe obozrenie). Two years later these sketches were published as the book On Troikas (Na troikakh). Following the advice of Chekhov, Teleshov travelled throughout Siberia, which resulted in a book of sketches, Beyond the Urals (Za Ural), and furnished material for two cycles of stories – The Migrants (Pereselentsy) and Through Siberia (Po Sibiri). After the Revolution, Teleshov worked in the People’s Commissariat for Education and published an anthology of children’s stories. In 1925 he began work on what would be his best known text – Notes of a Writer (Zapiski pisatelia). This memoir begins with the dedication of the Pushkin statue in 1880 and ends (in its final version) with the eightyfifth literary anniversary of Ivan Bunin in 1955. Andreev’s death in 1919 gave rise to Teleshov’s first memoir, published in A Book about Leonid Andreev. Seven years later, he wrote about Sreda for Red Virgin Soil (Krasnaia nov’).1 In 1943 Teleshov published the first version of Notes of a Writer, which included the Andreev portrait, renamed “‘Sreda’ and Leonid Andreev.” There were virtually no changes to the original Andreev text,2 but the new title denotes the major theme of the portrait – Andreev’s involvement in the Sreda literary circle. Gor’kii introduced Andreev to the circle in 1900 as an unknown writer who showed promise. Teleshov remembers Andreev’s first visit: Gor’kii came to Moscow and brought Andreev with him to the next meeting of the Wednesday circle. He was a young man, a student type, with a handsome face, very quiet and shy, dressed in a tobacco-coloured dress jacket. At ten o’clock, when our meetings usually began, Gor’kii suggested that we listen to a short story by the young author. “I heard it yesterday,” said Gor’kii. “I confess that I had tears in my eyes.” “Go ahead, Leonid Nikolaevich,” they suggested to Andreev. But he started by saying that his throat was sore, and he would be unable to read. In a word, he was shy and embarrassed.

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“Then give it to me. I will read it,” volunteered Gor’kii. He took the thick notebook, sat down by the lamp and began, “The story is called ‘Silence’...” The reading lasted under half an hour. Andreev was sitting next to Gor’kii and never stirred the entire time, his legs crossed and his eyes staring at one fixed point in a dark corner at the far end of the room. Of course, he could feel that everyone looked at him. But it was doubtful that he could feel that every new page turned brought him closer to these men he knew, yet did not know, sitting among them like a new boy at school. The reading came to an end ... Gor’kii lifted his eyes, tenderly smiling at Andreev and said, “The Devil take it, it has moved me again to tears!” Aleksei Maksimovich was not the only one who had been “moved.” It immediately became clear that in this new boy the Wednesday circle had gained a good comrade.3

Could it be that Teleshov exaggerated Sreda’s role in Andreev’s life and literary career? After all, Teleshov’s legacy is most certainly tied to his position as organizer of the literary circle and to his memoirs. Upon investigation it becomes clear that Sreda definitely played an important role in the literary careers of Andreev, Ivan Bunin, Skitalets, and many others from roughly 1900 to 1909. Even more importantly for Andreev, it was the bond of friendship that was established in those early years that bound him to Sreda even after he had moved away from Moscow. This is Teleshov’s core idea, which has been ignored to a large degree by scholars who wish to use the portrait as evidence for arguments about literary groupings and political allegiances. However, this connection of friendship is seen in one of Andreev’s letters to Teleshov, written in Berlin in 1906: I am sitting in Berlin, staying through the winter. It is comfortable to work, but without my favourite people around, it is boring. It is so very boring. When I think that there will be no more Wednesdays, no more brotherhood, it is so nauseating. I live here completely in isolation, and for some reason do not want to strike up new acquaintances. It is the old ones that I want and I have not lost

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hope that I will return to them … Please write about how you are living, about your frame of mind, what you are doing, about your work. You do not have to write a lot, it is not worth it, but just a little – you must write at least a short note so that our connection is not completely severed. It is a pity that all of our brothers – and I’m no exception – dislike writing letters. Living abroad, one ends up utterly cut off from his homeland. Ever a member of the Wednesday circle, I will send you my things to read and discuss. […] …I beg you to tell me how the Wednesday circle responds. Their advice and opinions were always important to me… Tell my dear ones that whoever can manage it, please write me a few lines about their lives. To all of them I send the most tender greetings – it is just so boring to write! Reproach Zaitsev; why hasn’t he answered me, did he not get my letter?4

At its core the portrait is accurate regarding the role that Sreda played in Andreev’s life, although slightly embellished by Teleshov. Most of the members came to this circle at a young age and the sense of “student camaraderie” is evident. Add to this a heavy dose of fame, which many of the members experienced while participating in Sreda, and you have an intoxicating combination. The friendships and fame that were forged at Sreda meetings provided Andreev with the support and guidance that he so desired. Teleshov organized Sreda in the fall of 1899 in Moscow. His literary circle grew out of Tikhomirov’s Saturday-evening group.5 As the circle grew, it was not limited to literary figures. Teleshov’s wife, Elena Andreevna, was educated as an artist and many of her friends from the Moscow School of Art participated. Musicians, publishers, and columnists also joined the meetings. Among the regulars were Andreev, Ivan Belousov, Ivan and Iulii Bunin, Evgenii Chirikov, Vladimir Ermilov, Vladimir Giliarovskii, Sergei Goloushev, Viktor Gol’tsev, Gor’kii, Evgenii Goslavskii, Lev Khitrovo, Aleksandr Kuprin, Vukol Lavrov, Viktor Miroliubov, Ivan Mitropol’skii, Vasilii Mikheev, Aleksandr Serafimovich, Shaliapin, Skitalets, Nikolai Timkovskii, Tikhomirov, Veresaev, and Nikolai Zlatovratskii. Occasional participants included Nikolai Asheshov, Petr Boborykin, Chekhov, Elpat’evskii, Aleksandr Feodorov, Nikolai Garin-Mikhailovskii, Aleksei Gruzinskii, Sergei Gusev-Orenburgskii, Semen Iushkevich, Vladimir Korolenko, Isaak Levitan, Dmitrii Mamin-Sibiriak, Sergei Naidenov, Sergei Semenov, Apollinarii Vasnetsov, Zaitsev, and others.

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The purpose of the circle was to provide an environment in which young authors could read their latest works and receive constructive criticism. The criticism at times was harsh, but honesty was welcomed. Teleshov writes of Andreev: “From that first time at the Wednesday circle, Andreev was one of us. After ‘Silence,’ other stories followed and they all passed through the Wednesday circle. ‘Once There Was,’ ‘Sergei Petrovich,’ ‘The Wall,’ and the famous ‘The Abyss’ – all of them were read to the Wednesday circle by the author himself while still in rough draft. The author listened to the most frank comments, to both praise and objections. Once he read a story called ‘The Little Ruffian’ and received such a unanimous rebuff that to this day the story has not been published anywhere.”6 Belousov explains that new literary works were considered and criticized without hypocrisy – both good and bad were noted openly and without embarrassment.7 This allowed writers to develop a work while receiving valuable critical advice and support. Gor’kii’s Lower Depths is an example of the kind of support Sreda gave to its authors. In the fall of 1902, Andreev, Naidenov, Chirikov, Piatnitskii, and Shaliapin went with Gor’kii to the Moscow Art Theatre when he read his play for the first time to the cast. Gor’kii was very nervous and broke down twice while reading. Soon after, he gave his first “public” reading at a Sreda meeting at Andreev’s apartment and everyone came to hear it read – lawyers, doctors, artists, scientists, etc. The reading was a great success and generated publicity for the play. In attendance at the opening night and at the party afterwards at the Hermitage restaurant were Andreev, Ivan Bunin, Naidenov, Skitalets, and many others.8 Clearly, the Sreda group was more than just a literary circle. They were friends who supported each other in all phases of their literary careers. Of all the Sreda members, Andreev was probably the most active participant. Almost all of Andreev’s works were read for the first time at Sreda.9 He even sent some things from abroad to be read. “Andreev read a lot,” writes Zaitsev. “I think more than anyone else. He read in a restrained manner, somewhat monotonously, sometimes adjusting his thick hair falling onto his forehead. In his left hand he held a cigarette – sometimes he waved it rhythmically and with his head lowered, he would cast quick fervent glances at the audience.”10 Sreda meetings, however, were not always centred on readings and lit-

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erary discussions. Skitalets often brought his gusli and sang Volga songs. Teleshov remembers one special meeting when Shaliapin invited Rakhmaninov to play the piano for him, while he sang: “Shaliapin set fire to Rakhmaninov and Rakhmaninov fired Shaliapin; and these two greats urging each other on, literally achieved a miracle. This was not music or singing as anyone had ever known it – it was some fit of inspiration by two great artists.”11 Eating and drinking followed the main presentation at each meeting. It was usually then that music was performed. Most meetings consisted of twenty to twenty-five people. On special nights, however, there might be as many as fifty. Iulii Bunin recalls that the number of participants depended on certain factors such as “if a new work was planned to be read by one of the especially distinguished writers, for example, Leonid Andreev, if the appearance was expected of an especially interesting guest at Sreda, like Gor’kii or Shaliapin, if in public life some kind of major event took place, attracting to itself general attention ...”12 Besides the regular meetings, there were special Sreda meetings to which people from other literary movements were invited. These special meetings were held either at Andreev’s or Goloushev’s apartments. Belyi writes of one of these evenings in his portrait.13 The meetings were also used by Sreda to initiate new members. According to Belousov, an established member would first befriend a prospective candidate and then invite him to one of the special meetings.14 Andreev himself introduced Serafimovich, Veresaev, Korolenko, and Zaitsev to the circle.15 Andreev not only hosted regular Sreda meetings but he also attempted in the fall of 1902 to form an elite Monday group out of the usual participants. He wished to attract Gor’kii, Skitalets, Ivan Bunin, Teleshov, and a few others to discuss works in a more intimate atmosphere. He also wanted a higher level of literary competence among the participants. However, he was unable to shape the group as he wanted to and even more people showed up at Andreev’s Mondays than at the regular Sreda meetings. It also became too difficult to meet twice a week. Eventually, Andreev abandoned the idea of a “select” Sreda.16 Politics and social causes were important to Sreda, but the members did not represent just one political group or ideology.17 Many

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members were arrested for political reasons and spent time in jail. Gor’kii was the most “notorious” political activist of the group. In 1901 he was released from prison in Nizhnii Novgorod and allowed to go by train to the Crimea for health reasons. However, government officials were afraid that Gor’kii’s trip might turn into a whistle-stop promotional tour for revolution; upon nearing Moscow, therefore, Gor’kii’s car was diverted to Podolsk. As soon as they learned of this, Andreev, Ivan Bunin, and Teleshov set off for Podolsk to see Gor’kii. Along the way they met up with Shaliapin, Piatnitskii, and Gor’kii’s German translator, who had come to Russia to meet famous writers. Once in Podolsk, the friends went to a local restaurant and dined together until Gor’kii’s train departed. It was such meetings that brought the writers closer together and garnered much popular fame for the group. In 1902 Andreev organized a charity evening to aid female students. Readings included Andreev’s “The Foreigner” (Inostranets), a scene from Naidenov’s play “The Lodgers” (Zhitsy), Bunin’s “Edge of the World” (Na krai sveta), Teleshov’s “About Three Youths” (O trekh iunoshakh), and some verse from Skitalets. The Sreda writers were rapidly gaining in popularity and the event was sold out. The evening was a triumph. At the end of the program, Skitalets took the stage in a workman’s blouse and hurled rebellious verses at the audience. The police quickly brought the evening to a close. The audience stormed the stage to shake Skitalets’s hand. The police turned out the lights in the hall to force the people onto the streets. Teleshov writes: “The end of it all was that Skitalets left for the Volga, the society for the aid of female students got a good sum out of the evening, and Leonid Andreev, as the official organizer of the evening, having signed the announcements, suddenly was called in to answer to the criminal code for not hindering Skitalets from reading poems that prophesized the revolution and the anger of the masses.”18 Andreev was fined twentyfive rubles for “disturbing the peace” and the other participants escaped without punishment.19 At some of the first Sreda meetings, Iulii Bunin had lectured on revolutionary movements and leaders. It was at a Sreda meeting that Skitalets and Andreev first learned of “Bloody Sunday,” the attack by government soldiers on peaceful demonstrators in the capital.20 After the revolution of 1905, politics gained even more currency. That year, Sreda published a volume of stories and gave the profits to striking postal

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workers. Members often got up petitions and public protests against the government, and they participated in most of the social causes of the day.21 The group also provided commercial publishing opportunities for its members. Sreda writers were originally published in the journal Life (Zhizn’) and grouped around the newspaper Courier. With the closing of Life in 1901, Sreda turned to the St Petersburg publication A Journal for All (Zhurnal dlia vsekh). The writers, however, were located in Moscow, and needed a sympathetic Moscow publisher.22 In May 1902, through the organization of Teleshov, Sreda published A Book of Stories and Poetry (Kniga rasskazov i stikhotvorenii). In it were previously published works by Gor’kii, Mamin-Sibiriak, Kuprin, Ivan Bunin, Andreev, Chirikov, Teleshov, Zaitsev, Belousov, and others. The book received positive reviews, which inspired Teleshov to continue his search for a way to publish Sreda writers as a group.23 In March 1903 Teleshov and Gor’kii, as a representative of the Znanie publishing house, began negotiations to publish Sreda writers. This proved beneficial for both because Znanie wished to expand its literary section. 24 These negotiations led to the publication of an anthology in 1903 of Sreda writers under the banner of Znanie. This was the beginning of nearly a decade of cooperation between Znanie and Sreda, during which time Znanie issued many anthologies and monographs of Sreda writers. By 1909 Sreda meetings had lost their intimacy. The group celebrated ten years of activity and registered as a legal circle. They moved from the comforts of Teleshov’s apartment to the general quarters of the Literary and Artistic Circle. There they were registered as the “Commission of Moscow society for aid to writers and journalists” (Komissiia pri moskovskom obshchestve pomoshchi literatoram i zhurnalistam). The make-up of Sreda changed with an influx of young poets and writers. As the new members increased, many of the original writers dropped out. The older members now met only three to five times a year, once again at Teleshov’s or Goloushev’s apartment. The last meeting of old members was in 1916, at which time Goloushev read Samson in Chains (Samson v okovakh), a play by Andreev, who had come down from Petrograd.25 Critics have tried to explain Andreev’s relationship with Sreda. Many, such as V. Shakurov, never get beyond the basic questions about literary camps and political loyalties, which seem to haunt earlier Andreev

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studies.26 In this instance, critics who wish to use the portrait for their own ends have ignored Teleshov’s narrative discourse. Teleshov is not greatly concerned with defining literary genres and political ideologies but rather suggests that Sreda provided Andreev with friendships that lasted his entire life. For Andreev, Sreda had a twofold purpose. It provided him with help in his literary career and gave him an extended family. Teleshov describes the larger significance of Sreda: “The personal relationships of the Sreda participants were entirely friendly, at least in a majority of cases, and also very heartfelt and sincere, especially between several of us. This closeness was not only as writers, professionals, or comrades but we were close personally, our families were close, which added even more intimacy to our relationships.”27 Sreda represented for Andreev support and stability. He felt more comfortable in close-knit groups and Sreda acted as part of his family. In a letter to Goloushev in 1918, Andreev wrote: For me personally, Sreda was a second childhood. My first childhood was on Pushkarnaia street [in Orel] – it was truly blessed. My second childhood was literary – Sreda meetings. And it is strange – just like I played all the time on Pushkarnaia. I have such memories about Sreda meetings, as though we all merrily played there, merrily wrote literature and merrily read it ... Note that, being terrible with alcohol, I was never drunk at Sreda meetings. The spirit of reverence for you, for Ivan and for the others remained in me and hitherto this is a fact. And I was simply afraid of Timkovskii, he might have stuck me in the corner. ... There remains with me the feeling of a certain Wunderkind quality – as if I were the Wunderkind of Sreda.28

Although harshly expressed, Veresaev notes that Sreda was where Andreev felt comfortable: “For me it was always a mystery why Andreev joined Sreda and not the circle of modernists (Briusov, Bal’mont, Sologub, Merezhkovskii, Gippius, etc.) coming into being at this time. I think to a large degree there were a couple factors. On one side was Andreev’s close personal relationship with the representatives of literary realism, especially with Gor’kii. On the other side was Andreev’s Moscow passivity, compelling him to accept life as it developed.”29 Iulii Bunin writes: “N.D. Teleshov was his godfather when Andreev got married to his first wife A.M. Veligorskaia. S.S. Goloushev displayed

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a special concern for Leonid Nikolaevich, when the latter was sick or worried at some difficult moments.”30 Andreev asked Belousov to be his godfather the second time he wed.31 The camaraderie of the group is shown in the tradition of nicknames. Members received street names that were to convey their personalities. This was called “giving [your] address” and was done in good fun. Upon Andreev’s arrival at Sreda, he was called “Grand New Project Alley” (Bol’shoi Novo-Proektirovannyi pereulok). Later, Andreev argued that since he had written so much about corpses, he should be called “Vagankovo Cemetery” (Vagan’kovo kladbishche). Eventually the new nickname stuck.32 Sreda’s influence on Andreev’s literary career should not be overlooked. It was due to the intervention of Sreda members that Andreev had his first book published. Andreev had sold the rights to his stories to a publisher, who had no intention of publishing a book in the near future. With the expanded role of Gor’kii at Znanie, Sreda members went to the publisher and bought back the rights to Andreev’s collection of stories. Teleshov writes: “To everyone’s delight the publisher himself was happy that he would not have to publish this Andreev somebody, waste paper, and offer assistance. In moments they changed the agreements, gave back the five hundred rubles, received the manuscript, and went straight to the post office and sent it to the printing house in St Petersburg.”33 It was at a Sreda meeting that Gor’kii and Andreev first discussed coauthoring the play The Astronomer (Astronom), which eventually led to Gor’kii’s Children of the Sun (Deti solntsa) and to Andreev’s To the Stars. Andreev’s story “The Christians” resulted from a conversation with Elpat’evskii and Gor’kii about a newspaper article. In 1907 Andreev suggested to Serafimovich that they write a play together about student life. This later became Andreev’s Days of Our Life (Dni nashei zhizni).34 Andreev also wrote a book with Goloushev (under the signatures of Sergei Glagol’ and James Lynch) about the Moscow Art Theatre.35 Andreev was an active participant in Sreda until around 1906. After the death of his first wife, Andreev rarely went to Moscow. His move to the publishing house Shipovnik caused further problems as Sreda had been closely linked to Znanie. This did not mean that he did not still long for Sreda and all that it represented – friendship and support. Andreev sent works to Moscow to be read and on a few occasions he went to

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Moscow and participated in meetings. In 1912 the following article appeared in a Moscow daily: “Yesterday, in the apartment of N.D. Teleshov, in a small group of friends consisting mainly of members of the ‘old’ Sreda, L.N. Andreev read his play Professor Storitsyn. At the reading were present: I.A. Belousov, Iu.A. Bunin, I.A. Bunin, V.V. Veresaev, A.E. Gruzinskii, S.S. Goloushev, B.K. Zaitsev, A.A. Korzinkin, I.I. Popov, S.D. Razumovskii, I.S. Shmelev, M.P. Chekhova, the artists Pervukhin, Shanks, and others. The play made an impression and evoked a lively exchange of opinions.”36 In the fall of 1907 Andreev attempted to organize a Sreda group in St Petersburg. He wrote to Gor’kii: “I have transferred the Moscow Sreda to here.”37 The participants at the St Petersburg version included: Blok, Belousov, V. Tan-Bogoraz, Ivan Bunin, Akim Volynskii, Zaitsev, Naidenov, Sergei Sergeev-Tsenskii, Sologub, Nikolai Khodotov, Chirikov, and Chulkov. As before, participants read and discussed new literary works. It was not the same, however, and Andreev was disappointed that he could not recreate the atmosphere of the Moscow meetings.38 If it was the camaraderie and youthful excitement that bound the Sreda members together, it is understandable that Andreev could not recreate the Sreda meetings in St Petersburg. The dynamics were different. The members were now a decade older and many had been famous for some time. Blok captures the disastrous mood and Andreev’s dilemma: “In the room there is a crowd of people, almost everyone is a writer, many of them famous. But what they talked about is not clear. No one was connected with anyone else. Between everyone yawned black chasms, like the ones outside the window, and the most isolated – the loneliest – was Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev. The more sweet, the more obliging as a host, the more alone he was.”39 Since Teleshov is concerned with Andreev’s participation in Sreda, his memoir describes the period 1900 to 1906 in the greatest detail. This was when Andreev lived in Moscow and regularly attended meetings. As noted earlier, the core idea of Teleshov’s portrait is that Sreda meetings were at the centre of a larger friendship that extended beyond literary boundaries. Teleshov captures this idea in describing Gor’kii’s introduction of Andreev to the group, the rescue of Andreev’s book for publication by Znanie, the meeting with Gor’kii in Podolsk, Andreev’s wedding party, and the organization of the literary evening that ended in Andreev’s arrest.

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The second half of the portrait attempts to soften Andreev’s departure from Moscow and therefore Sreda. In this shorter section, Teleshov describes how Andreev continued to send manuscripts to Moscow to be read and how he longed to be with his friends.40 It is clear that Teleshov’s connection to Andreev, like Zaitev’s, is limited after Andreev’s departure and the memoir takes on a melancholic tone even though Teleshov continues to drive home the point that Andreev was always an important (and much loved) member of Sreda. It must be remembered, however, that Sreda (and Andreev’s participation in it after 1906) should be viewed in the context of a developing polarization among members. Historical events took their toll on personal relationships as political loyalties began to supersede literary ones. Sreda (as remembered fondly by Teleshov) came to an end in 1909 and friendships among members were tested even further after the Revolution. Serafimovich left Sreda unceremoniously; Ivan Bunin, Zaitsev and Kuprin went abroad after the Revolution, although Kuprin returned (in order to die in Russia); Gor’kii and Shaliapin became “official representatives” of the Soviet Union, although Shaliapin went abroad in 1922 and Gor’kii stayed in Italy until the 1930s; Andreev and Chirikov found themselves in Finland once the borders were moved. For his part, Andreev was greatly disappointed when many various former Sreda members rejected his invitation in 1916 to publish in The Russian Will. The Petrograd daily was rumoured to be an organ of the minister of the interior, Aleksandr Protopov, and possibly financed by pro-German sources just as Russia was at war with Germany. Andreev’s friends were, therefore, deterred by the newspaper’s reputation. To all intents and purposes, this marked the end of his friendship with many of his old literary colleagues. Veresaev describes the final meeting of Sreda in 1916 when Andreev’s Samson in Chains was read. He tells how not a word was said about the play after its reading. “Andreev did not ask for opinions, talking all the time about extraneous things. No one thought it possible to give an opinion without his invitation. It was obvious that he did not need this, and it would be unpleasant. Looking at him, it was strange to remember the earlier Andreev, how greedily he listened to the harshest criticism from all of Sreda.”41 The problem with Teleshov’s core idea is that Andreev’s active participation in the circle ended in 1906 and the “old” Sreda itself lasted only

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three more years. Seemingly, in an attempt to solidify his own legacy as the founder of the literary circle, Teleshov has stretched the boundaries of Sreda to include the relationships that developed within the group and continued beyond 1909. In many ways, Zaitsev and Teleshov create similar portraits. However, where they diverge is in their final assessment. Zaitsev argues that Andreev lived the second half of his life in isolation. Although Teleshov also bleakly portrays Andreev’s life in Finland, his core idea is that the bond of friendship was never broken. This, at first, seems like a very minor difference. Nonetheless, when Belyi’s memoir is added to the collection, the interpretations become more important. Belyi had the advantage of reading the first edition of A Book about Leonid Andreev and therefore had entered into a dialogue, to some degree, with Zaitsev and Teleshov. Belyi enters the gap between the two and argues that Andreev did not belong to Sreda completely – that his discordant life connected him with the modernists. Belyi suggests that this is why Andreev moved away from Moscow and formed allegiances with the writers of the other literary camp. In order to come to grips with these literary portraits, we must remember that some memoirists are more subjective than others. Kardin writes: “Subjectivity is inevitable and imperative in memoirs. But as soon as it starts contradicting life itself or giving into reality, it stops being a virtue and turns into a shortcoming, a vice.”42 The memoirist’s truth is as relative as any other truth. But biographical truths are also fictions in the literal (etymological) sense of the word: in biographical or memoir writing the subject’s image is fashioned to suit the overt or hidden, conscious or unconscious ambitions of each individual writer.43 As already noted, this means that in a collection of portraits, the critic must make an objective assessment as to which memoir best approximates the historical facts. In this case, Teleshov comes the closest. Belyi’s claims are based on his own interpretation of Andreev’s works in an attempt to appropriate him for the modernist movement. Zaitsev displays his own sense of alienation from Andreev and Moscow and projects this onto the memoir, while Teleshov describes the role of Sreda in Andreev’s life. He does not avoid Andreev’s movement away from the group but uses it to show that Sreda was more than just a literary circle. He uses the difficulty of this separation to highlight the strong bonds of friendship that were created

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and the difficulties Andreev experienced in moving away. This assessment seems to approximate or even capture the historical facts to the greatest degree of accuracy.

Zaitsev’s, Belyi’s, and Teleshov’s biographical portraits of Andreev lead to certain conclusions. 1) Andreev’s life can be understood as a whole, made out of two halves. The first half includes Andreev’s struggles as a young writer, his rise to fame, his first marriage, and his life in Moscow. The second half is centred on his home in Finland, his second marriage, an interest in the theatre, hobbies, and family. During both parts of his life, however, Andreev experienced great emotional and psychological difficulties, which make it impossible to describe one part as better or worse than the other. 2) Andreev and his literary works at times displayed a modernist sensibility and therefore, for certain modernists, Andreev seemed to be an unwitting comrade-in-arms. But his social background, “lack of culture,” and allegiance to the realist literary camp precluded any serious participation in modernist circles. 3) Sreda’s role in Andreev’s life was not only literary and political: more importantly, Sreda provided Andreev with friendships that lasted his entire life. Even when he left Moscow, Andreev maintained these friendships but was never able to recreate the camaraderie of the original group. In creating their posthumous images of Andreev, these portraits have contributed to inaccuracies in Andreev’s legacy. Belyi’s memoir gives credence to a line of criticism that wants to assign Andreev to the modernist circle. Valerii Bezzubov’s entire book is a corrective to this view. 44 Zaitsev’s memoir has created the impression that Andreev’s life in Finland was isolated and full of suffering. Beklemisheva and others have refuted this claim; to reiterate, however, Zaitsev’s interpretation prevailed for various reasons and his has become the standard for all but a few who specialize in Andreev.45 Teleshov’s has fallen victim to politics. Because Teleshov remained in the Soviet Union and Gor’kii participated in Sreda, Teleshov’s memoir has been used mainly in political and literary debates about whether Andreev was a realist or a modernist; whether he was politically active (in a pro-Bolshevik sense) or counterrevolutionary.46

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The fact that Teleshov’s portrait does not specifically address such issues has been largely ignored. All three memoirs provide valuable information about Andreev. Each approaches its subject from a slightly different angle but the points of intersection are interesting when read together. Of equal interest, however, are the inaccuracies pinpointed in these chapters, and the motives of the authors that gave rise to them.

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Andreev’s “Villa Advance” on the Black River (1910)

Andreev in his study in Vammelsu (1910)

A photograph of Chukovskii taken by Andreev in 1910

Andreev prepared for summer sailing in Finland (1910s)

Maksim Gor’kii

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5 Creative Energy and Manic Episodes: Chukovskii Now Leonid Andreev in my eyes divided into two: one is frightening, inquiring, suffering; the other is simple, happy, loves life, a sportsman; in a black velvet shirt with a Christ-like face he resembled more a painter. Vasilii Kamenskii

In her book on the Russian literary memoir, Vatnikova-Prizel describes the literary portrait as a fragment of a memoiristic whole, but completely independent as a text.1 If the portraitist is to be successful, he must uncover the subject’s character and “inner world,” which hitherto have been unknown.2 A chapter of Vatnikova-Prizel’s book is devoted to the collection of literary portraits, Contemporaries (Sovremenniki), by Kornei Chukovskii (1882–1969).3 Vatnikova-Prizel identifies many of the stylistic devices that Chukovskii uses in creating his literary memoirs. He often employs outside texts, such as articles, literary reviews, letters, memoirs of others, etc., to supplement his own portrait. At times, Chukovskii reverts to “commentary.” This is when an author not only describes an episode but also tells why it is important or what it means. This is typical of most types of memoir literature, but in the case of the literary portrait, it creates a dual narrator – the narrator who participated in the event and the narrator who is giving commentary. Specifically in the case of Chukovskii, this results in a particular double: the participant narrator and the literary critic.4 It is the duality of literary critic and participant narrator that is the starting point for this chapter. I look at two works of literary criticism written by Chukovskii about Andreev and then juxtapose them with his literary portrait. The core ideas of Chukovskii’s literary criticism

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resonate in the memoir and show the development over a decade of his understanding of Andreev – beginning as criticism about art and ending as a memoir about life. Chukovskii once wrote to Gor’kii that for his portraits he studied both his subjects’ lives and their works to provide a “psychological conclusion.”5 Accordingly, the second part of this chapter will discuss Chukovskii’s account of Andreev’s behaviour, which seems to support a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Specifically, it is the manic and highly creative periods that Chukovskii has captured and placed in a positive light. For Chukovskii, these creative periods unite Andreev’s life and his art. The two are described as one and the same, not simply because Andreev drew details from his life to include in his stories but also in the sense that he became his art. In 1908 Chukovskii published a critical essay within his book of essays Leonid Andreev: Big and Little (Leonid Andreev: Bol’shoi i malen’kii).6 In it he wrote: “One attribute, one line, one thesis, one phrase grows and expands and swells ... Each one of Andreev’s characters has his own specialty, his own monopoly on some one emotional experience, which he exhausts to the end, and which none of his other characters ever repeats – his own patent on an ugly spiritual face.”7 Chukovskii argues that these various ugly faces are glued to Andreev’s own personal “I,” just as an actor plays each of the roles drawn on his face. Andreev understands that all of these various characters “are one and the same face, one and the same actor, with different greasepaint.”8 “Andreev walked about his enormous study talking seafarer’s shop: topsails, anchors, sails. Today he is a sailor, a sea-wolf. He even walks like a sailor. Instead of a cigarette he smokes a pipe. He has shaved off his moustache, his shirt is open at the neck like a sailor’s. His face is tanned. A pair of sea binoculars is hanging from a nail,” wrote Chukovskii in the 1922 memoir published in A Book about Leonid Andreev.9 “We sail about the Gulf of Finland until late in the evening, and I cannot stop admiring this brilliant actor who for twenty-four hours has been playing such a new and difficult role, playing to himself, without an audience. How he fills his pipe, how he spits, how he looks at his toy compass! He sees himself as the captain of an oceanliner. Standing with his powerful legs set wide apart, he looks intently and silently into the distance; he barks out his staccato commands. Not a word to the passengers: since when does the captain of an oceanliner talk to his passengers!”10

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“When you came to visit him again a few months later, you found he had become a painter. His hair was long and flowing, his beard short like an aesthete’s. He was wearing a black velvet jacket. His study had been transformed into a studio. He was as prolific as Rubens, not putting his brushes down all day … You try talking about something else, but he only listens out of politeness. Tomorrow is the opening of an exhibition at the Academy of Arts, yesterday Repin came to visit him, the day after tomorrow he is going to see Gallen-Kallela. You want to ask, ‘What about your yacht?’ But the family signals you not to ask. Once he is caught up in something, Andreev can only talk about that one thing, all his previous enthusiasms become hateful to him ... He does not like to be reminded of them.”11 In this selection from the memoir, we find that Chukovskii identifies Andreev as a great actor — first playing a ship’s captain and then a painter. The greasepaint remains from Chukovskii’s 1908 article, but now the actor is real, the part is played on the stage of life. The subject is no longer Andreev’s characters but Andreev himself. And just as Andreev’s characters monopolize roles that will never be played again, Andreev plays a role until it becomes hateful to him. The periodic assumption of various personalities that Chukovskii describes is consistent with manic behaviour. Rather than just flights of creative fancy, such periods represent shifts in Andreev’s psychological condition that affected his family, friends, and literary work. More importantly, these bouts of mania are the counterweight to the depression that is most often associated with Andreev. During manic episodes, there is an increase in goal-directed activities, which often involve excessive planning of and excessive participation in multiple activities. Sufferers of these episodes “may change their dress, make-up, or personal appearance to a more sexually suggestive or dramatically flamboyant style that is out of character for them.”12 For Andreev, the world was painted with one colour. “When he writes about milk – the entire world is milklike, and when he writes about chocolate, the entire world is chocolate – a chocolate sun and a chocolate sky illuminate chocolate people,” wrote Chukovskii in 1914. “Give him any subject and it becomes for him air, his poetry, his cosmos, and everything else disappears for him.”13 “The great charm of Andreev was that no matter what game he was playing – and he was always playing some game – he sincerely believed

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in it and invested himself fully in it, without holding anything back,” Chukovskii remembered of Andreev. “Every one of his enthusiasms turned into a temporary mania, which absorbed him totally ... He did not simply write his things: he was engulfed by them as though by fire. He became a maniac for a time. He saw nothing except the work ... both in his literary works and in his life, he was excessive.”14 “This psychology of envelopment, of obsession is so instinctive for Andreev that he endows everyone with it,” wrote Chukovskii in 1914. “His characters most often are monists. Doctor Kerzhentsev (from the story ‘The Thought’) thinks only about an idea, and talks only about it. The entire world for him is only an idea.”15 “And then there is the colour photography,” Chukovskii remembered after Andreev’s death. “It was as if he himself was an entire factory, working ceaselessly in shifts, preparing all those masses of large and small photographs that were stacked up in his study, contained in special boxes and chests, overflowing on every table, mounted on the window panes. There was no corner in his dacha that he had not photographed several times over ... In the course of a month he made thousands of photographs, as if fulfilling some colossal order, and when you visited him he made you look through all those thousands, sincerely convinced that for you, too, they were a source of bliss. He could not imagine that there might be people who could find his plates uninteresting. It was touching to hear him trying to persuade everyone to buy a colour photograph.”16 Taken together, it becomes difficult to distinguish which passages were written as literary criticism in 1914 and which were written as a memoir eight years later. From the very beginning, Chukovskii explained that Andreev was obsessed with ideas and that his stories and characters mirrored this obsession. Understanding an author’s works and life as intertwined is not uncommon; it was especially prevalent among Symbolists engaged in “life creation.” However, Chukovskii, especially in his memoir, went beyond the simple “decoding” of characters and motifs. This is not the same as disentangling the triangular relationship between Belyi, Briusov and Nina Petrovskaia in Briusov’s The Fiery Angel (Ognennyi Angel; 1907–08). Nor is it the same as deciphering the major players in Blok’s The Puppet Booth (Balaganchik; 1906). Chukovskii picked up very early on Andreev’s “mania,” as he described it. He understood that it made Andreev artistically creative. He wrote in 1914: “Andreev does not control the subjects, the subjects control

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him.”17 This was so much the case that Chukovskii was afraid that he did not know the real Andreev.18 Chukovskii’s literary portrait is a montage of various impressions from his meetings with his subject in Finland. He had written literary criticism about Andreev as early as 1902, but the two men did not become close until several years later.19 They met for the first time in 1903, while Chukovskii was visiting Moscow. Andreev showed him around the city and introduced him to Moscow literary society. They did not meet again until after Chukovskii returned from England in 1904. Chukovskii was a frequent guest of Andreev’s in St Petersburg and the two spent part of the summer together in Kuokkala, Finland, in 1907. Chukovskii was instrumental in introducing Andreev to Tolia Denisevich, which led to his marriage to Anna in 1908. In 1912 Chukovskii and his family moved their permanent residence to Kuokkala, where he was in close contact with Iliia Repin and Andreev. Chukovskii does not date any of the encounters described in his portrait, since he is more interested in capturing Andreev’s inner world; the portrait therefore lacks a strict line of chronology.20 However, it is their various meetings during the Finnish period of Andreev’s life, beginning as early as 1908, that Chukovskii depicts. When he began to write his literary portrait in 1919, Chukovskii returned to the same core ideas found in his literary criticism. In fact, he mentioned twice in his diary during 1919 that he did not feel that Andreev was dead and that he had written the memoir as if Andreev were alive.21 This becomes evident upon reading the later version of the Andreev memoir in Contemporaries. Chukovskii added a section entitled “Letters of Leonid Andreev” (Pis’ma Leonida Andreeva) whose tone is very different, and it is clear that Chukovskii is writing about Andreev for the historical record. If it is the case that Chukovskii refined his portrait of Andreev over the course of a decade, first as literary criticism and later as a literary memoir, then the portrait should reflect a coherent line of discourse connecting seemingly random episodes. If Chukovskii could not imagine that Andreev was dead, then his memoir should tell about the living man. Chukovskii captured Andreev’s creative moments and, in doing so, revealed the extent of his mania. In order to explore the ramifications of this form of creative energy, I rely on some of the extant scholarship on manic-depression. Someone who suffers from bipolar disorder will

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move between periods of depression/inactivity and mania/hyperactivity. For creative people, these periods of mania are often their most productive periods. Kay Jamison writes: “My manias, at least in their early and mild forms, were absolutely intoxicating states that gave rise to great personal pleasure, an incomparable flow of thoughts, and a ceaseless energy that allowed the translation of new ideas into these fast-flowing, high-flying times.”22 Andreev also suffered periods of depression, but it was the other pole that Chukovskii portrayed, Andreev’s high-flying mania, his creative periods, the part of his illness that made him a successful literary figure. A review of some basic literature highlights many of his traits: Manic symptoms in bipolar disorder tend to be extreme, and there is significant impairment of occupational and social functioning. A person who experiences a manic episode has a markedly elevated, euphoric, and expansive mood, often interrupted by occasional outbursts of irritability or even violence – particularly when others refuse to go along with the manic person’s antics and schemes ... A notable increase in goal-directed activity may occur, which sometimes may appear as an unbelievable restlessness, and mental activity may also speed up, so that the person may evidence a “flight of ideas” or thoughts that “race” through the brain. Distractibility, high levels of verbal output in speech or in writing, and a severely decreased need for sleep may occur ... Many highly creative people are believed to have had bipolar disorder, going through intense productivity in their creative medium during manic phases, and often through unproductive periods when clinically depressed.23

Andreev is not the first creative person to have suffered from extreme mood swings and the argument has often been made that genius and insanity are entwined. Artists such as William Blake, Lord Byron, Sylvia Plath, Vincent van Gogh, Georgia O’Keeffe, Cole Porter, Tennessee Williams, Virginia Woolf, and many others have suffered from that fine madness. Edgar Allan Poe, a favourite of Andreev’s, also belongs in this group. One percent of the general population suffers from bipolar disorder and five percent from major depression or unipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder afflicts equal numbers of women and men, and more than a third of all cases surface before the age of twenty. A large majority of adolescents and adults who commit suicide have a history of bi- or unipolar illness. “It would be wrong to label anyone who is unusually

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accomplished, energetic, intense, moody or eccentric as manic-depressive. All the same, recent studies indicate that a high number of established artists – far more than could be expected by chance – meet diagnostic criteria for manic-depression or major depression ... In fact, it seems that these diseases can sometimes enhance or otherwise contribute to creativity in some people.”24 This is not to say that the bipolar Andreev was constantly either manic or depressed. Manic-depressives can go through long periods without symptoms or sometimes with milder, almost unnoticeable, expressions of the illness. Even more confusing may be the mixed states. This is when both elements of mania and depression are present at the same time. For example, Andreev wrote to his future second wife Anna Il’inichina: “I wrote something insane to you – forgive me. For some time now, especially the last couple of days in St Petersburg, I have found myself in such a melancholic and wild condition.”25 Jamison writes: Madness, or psychosis, represents only one end of the manic-depressive continuum, however; most people who have the illness, in fact, never become insane. Likewise, work that may be inspired by, or partially executed in, a mild or even psychotically manic state may be significantly shaped or partially edited while its creator is depressed and put into final order when he or she is normal. It is the interaction, tension, and transition between changing mood states, as well as sustenance and discipline drawn from periods of health, that is critically important; and it is these same tensions and transitions that ultimately give such power to the art that is born in this way.26

Extremes in a person are easier to describe than the normal run of emotions. Just as Blok and Chulkov chose to highlight the darker side of Andreev’s character, Chukovskii described the creative exuberance of mania. Both of these extremes, however, as well as periods of “normalcy,” were possible in the chemical cocktail of Andreev’s brain. Andreev wrote to Aleksandr Izmailov at the end of August 1902 about his illness: “I sit and am in despair about something invisible. Either it is because I am sick (without an abrupt attack) all of the time and my nerves are like that of a hysterical woman’s, or because somewhere, sometime, by some strange turn of events, I have lost and cannot seem to find myself.”27

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During periods of mania, mood and self-esteem are elevated. The sufferer is more productive, has abundant energy, and sleeps less. Speech is rapid, excitable, and intrusive and thoughts move quickly and fluidly from one topic to another. Sufferers are often convinced that they are right and that their ideas are important. This results in grandiose and impulsive behaviour.28 Chukovskii wrote in his memoir: You sit listening on the divan, while he walks about delivering monologues. He always delivers monologues. His speech is rhythmical and flowing. Every so often he stops, pours himself a glass of strong, cold, black tea, knocks it back in one go, like a glass of vodka, feverishly swallows a caramel and carries on talking, talking ... He talks about God, about death, about all sailors believing in God and how, surrounded by abysses, they feel the closeness of death throughout their lives; contemplating the stars every night, they become poets and sages. If they could express what they feel while on watch somewhere in the Indian Ocean beneath the enormous stars, they would eclipse Shakespeare and Kant ... But at last he grows tired. His monologue is interrupted by long pauses. His pacing grows listless. It is half past five. He drinks another couple of glasses, picks up a candle and goes to bed: “Tomorrow we’ll take out Savva [his boat].” A bed has been made for you nearby, in the tower. You lie down but cannot fall asleep. You think to yourself: “How tired he must be! After all, tonight he covered at least twelve miles walking about his study, and if what he said tonight had been written down, it would make a sizeable book. What a crazy waste of energy!”29

Mania tends to result in a decreased need for sleep and an aggressive desire for human contact.30 Virginia Woolf’s nephew describes the results of his aunt’s sleepless nights: “After such nights the days brought headaches, drilling the occiput as though it were a rotten tooth; and then came worse nights; nights made terrible by the increasing weight of anxiety and depression.”31 Andreev was a creature of the night (he generally wrote into the early hours of the morning) and often suffered from headaches.32 Valentin Andreev remembers the constant refrain, “Children, quiet, papa has a headache.”33 Similarly, Vadim Andreev writes that the disappearance of his father always meant that he was sick and that the children had to be quiet.34 Vera Andreeva writes that her father increasingly suffered from headaches and insomnia, which drove him

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into a separate part of the house, where he could draw the shutters and rest.35 According to Jamison, these manic phases are highly conducive to original thinking and often result in sharpened and unusual creativity with increased productivity. Expansive and grandiose moods may also lead to increased fluency and frequency of thought. The illness may allow one to function on only a few hours sleep and experience a greater depth of emotion. It brings about an alert and sensitive state, a period of increased focus and intensity. “In a sense, depression is a view of the world through a dark glass, and mania is that seen through a kaleidoscope – often brilliant but fractured.”36 Chukovskii writes: “Every one of his enthusiasms turned into a temporary mania, which absorbed him totally. A whole period of his life was coloured by his love for gramophones – not just love but mad passion. It was as if he had fallen ill with gramophones, and it took several months for him to be cured of his illness. However trivial the object of his current obsession may have been, he would blow it up to colossal dimensions.”37 It is during these times of mania that manic-depressives exhibit pronounced combinatory thinking. They are able to sort, combine, and categorize vaguely related concepts as well as experience more elaborate cognitive operations. Studies have found that rhyming, punning and sound associations increase as well as problem-solving capabilities. Manics report their greatest degree of creativity during these periods due to an increased speed of association, original thinking, and expansiveness.38 There are various degrees of affliction. Hypomania is a less-severe form of mania. The individual is ebullient and self-confident with an irritable underpinning. Acute mania is more psychotic. Cognition and perception become fragmented, paranoia and grandiose delusions are common, and incoherence and rapid thinking are prevalent. This may lead to bizarre, impulsive, and grossly inappropriate behaviour patterns. Delirious mania is a grave form of mania and is less common. The sufferer’s moods change very quickly and the individual seems highly disturbed. Chronic mania is the same as acute mania, except that the individual does not recover from the manic phase.39 Chukovskii was not the only person to witness Andreev’s manic periods. As the writer Aleksandr Kipen noted: “This amazing ability to catch fire, to concentrate all thoughts, all feelings, and sensations on

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what occupied him at the given moment, was displayed by Andreev not only in the course of his literary work, but in just about everything that he did.”40 Chulkov gave a similar description: “I can see him pacing his office with a cigarette burning constantly in his hands, with sparkling eyes, with a bitter smile, forever talking about a story he is planning, or about himself – and always in a kind of feverish state, as if expecting something terrible and final.”41 The literary critic Petr Pil’skii wrote of Andreev: “In Andreev’s artistic perception an element of mania is constantly present ... If we were to talk, not about an exceptional artist, but simply about a person, it would be possible to diagnose this gravitation towards themes of the night, and of the darkness as a persecution of mania.”42 Aleksandr Kugel’ wrote that Andreev did not just burn the candle at both ends but expended amazing amounts of energy on numerous activities. He drank strong tea and smoked hundreds of cigarettes. “There was something feverish in him, like a cloud of hashish – in his sudden flashes of thought, in brilliant, sometimes witty comments, in the way he jumped from subject to subject like a grasshopper-musician. And then he would become quiet.”43 One cannot assume that Andreev’s literary works were created only during manic periods. He developed his stories internally over a period of time. Vera Andreeva tells how her father would dictate his stories as though they had already been written and formalized in his head.44 As Jamison suggests, a work may be carried through periods of mania, depression, and normalcy. Each of these phases provides an alternative sensibility or possibly allows for a different task to be accomplished. However, it is not difficult to find that frenzied, manic pace in stories like “The Thief,” “The Lie,” or “Red Laugh.” Andreev wrote “Red Laugh” in just nine days. Afterwards he was physically and mentally exhausted and felt as though he was near a breakdown. For nearly six months after this effort Andreev could not find the energy to write. Here is a possible instance where Andreev’s manic phase had a direct and tangible influence on one of his stories.45 Literary critic Sergei Iasenskii, in an article written in 1983 dealing with the psychological aspects of Andreev’s prose, argues that due to sociohistorical pressures Andreev’s characters display “sharp” and “unexpected” changes in their inner worlds. It is this motif, he claims, that occupies the central position of Andreev’s works from 1907 to 1911.46 One might suggest, however, that these “sharp” and “unex-

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pected” “revolutions” in the inner worlds of his characters also reflects Andreev’s own phasic and variable mental condition, along with his personal reaction to external historical events. An example of this sudden change in Andreev is found in one of his letters to Grigorii Blokh in 1919. Andreev writes: “I throw myself into either [my book Diary] of Satan, or into Evening Conversation, and I write for two or three evenings – and then suddenly I fall into debility and despair.”47 Iasenskii’s point should not be discounted; many critics have connected Andreev’s works to the events and intellectual currents of his time. Vatslav Vorovskii, for example, believed that Andreev personified the “unstable mood” of the Russian intelligentsia and Anatolii Lunacharskii suggested that Andreev captured the intelligentsia’s desire for death – as a type of release.48 Andreev certainly was influenced by historical events, but these alone probably did not shape his literary works. In Iasenskii’s investigation of Andreev’s psychological prose, it is just as relevant to consider the author’s medical history, his own narratives of illness, and how his personal struggles underpin many of his literary works. In 1927 Dr Ivan Galant published two pathogaphies concerning Andreev’s mental condition. The first article was entitled “A Psychopathological Image of Leonid Andreev. Leonid Andreev, a HystericNeurasthenic Genius” (Psikhopatologicheskii obraz Leonida Andreeva. Leonid Andreev isteronevrastenicheskii genii). Dr Galant begins by saying that Andreev’s history of attempted suicide, bouts of alcoholism, debauchery, and mental breakdowns would normally lead one to a diagnosis of neurasthenia. However, Dr Galant argues, such a diagnosis ignores the “energetic” periods of Andreev’s life. He therefore describes Andreev as suffering from hysteric-neurasthenia.49 Dr Galant begins with Andreev’s early childhood and blames the death of his father and material hardship on his “gloomy pessimism.” He then states: Reading the testimonies of his mother about the mental life of her son in the early years of childhood and adolescence, one might think that in the early years of his life Leonid may have suffered from something like manic-depressive psychosis. This suspicion would seem even more justified if we take into account the fact that Leonid’s melancholy states of mind were pathological in nature and were accompanied by a sense of horror and an intensified thought process, while the manic states of mind were characterized by uninhibited childish excitement.

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But of course it is too difficult to arrive at such a diagnosis, not having access to more accurate data, not knowing if the “melancholy” and “manic” states alternated in a strict cyclical pattern, how long each lasted and how and what ended this “manic-depressive psychosis.” I am rather inclined to see in these “melancholy” and “manic” states the highlights of the abnormal fluctuations of the mental life of the young Andreev, which had a tendency towards pathological, or to be more accurate, neurasthenic passivity and weakness. The proof for this conclusion can be easily deduced from an analysis of the future development of Leonid’s psychological life. “Uninhibited excitement,” obviously, played a very insignificant role in this development. Only “the melancholy state of mind” kept developing, acquiring new forms and deepening its roots in the ever more gloomy soul of Leonid.50

According to Dr Galant, it is Andreev’s fear of death and of the horror of life that are at the core of his melancholy. Using passages from Andreev’s stories and relying heavily on Gor’kii’s literary portrait, Dr Galant tells of Andreev’s heavy drinking and attempts at suicide. Often citing the literary critic Vasilii L’ov-Rogachevskii, a contemporary of Andreev’s, he makes the claim that Andreev’s literary works betray this hysteric-neurasthenic condition, reflected in a quality of hysterical shrieks and fits of madness in his texts. Neurasthenia is defined as a nervous debility caused by a weakness or exhaustion of the nervous system.51 The term “hysteria” can be used in many different ways. However, the mental symptoms include “amnesiae, somnambulisms, fugues, trances, dream-states, hysterical ‘fits’ or ‘attacks,’ etc.”52 Many of Dr Galant’s ideas seem to echo certain elements of Chukovskii’s literary portrait. It is possible that the doctor chose information selectively from the memoir. Thus Chukovskii wrote: But often this gaiety, like everything else with Andreev, was excessive and resembled a fit. It made you feel ill at ease and you were glad when it finally passed. After one of these attacks of gaiety he became gloomy and usually began delivering monologues about death. This was his favorite topic. He pronounced the word death in a special way – very distinctly and sensually: death, the way some

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voluptuaries pronounce the word woman. Here Andreev displayed great talent: he was better than anyone else at fearing death. It is no easy matter to fear death; many try, but fail to bring it off. Andreev succeeded splendidly; that was his true vocation: to experience the despair and horror of death. This horror can be felt in all his books, and I think it was precisely this horror that he was trying to escape when he grasped at color photography, gramophones, painting. He needed something or other to screen himself from his sickening bouts of despair.53

In his second article, Dr. Galant relies heavily on Fatov’s biography of the author’s childhood to research the basis for Andreev’s condition. Dr Galant maintains his diagnosis of hysteric-neurasthenia but also seems to give some further credence to a diagnosis of manic-depression: “Leonid’s ‘gloomy mood’ periods, alternating with periods of carefree bubbling happiness, could, of course, give one reason to think that Leonid suffered from ‘manic-depressive psychosis,’ even more so because of his physical build. He belonged to a cyclical type (as defined by Kretschmer54), which is disposed to manic-depressive psychosis.”55 Dr Galant argues, however, that although Andreev exhibits cyclical moods, his periods of depression do not fit the requirements for manic-depression. He understands Andreev’s overall behaviour to be “impulsive,” rather than cyclical. Dr Galant recounts an episode found in Fatov wherein Andreev was struck on the head with a samovar lid as a possible cause of the writer’s headaches and later mental condition. Neurasthenia was first described by the American neurologist George Beard in 1869 and the term was already in use at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Physicians in continental Europe rapidly accepted the diagnosis. During World War i, neurasthenia was so frequently diagnosed that the British army instituted a program to train “neurasthenic experts.” In 1922 Shoma Morita, a Japanese professor of psychiatry, published a treatise entitled “The Nature of Shinkeishitu (Neurasthenia) and Its Treatment.”56 Gradually, neurasthenia fell into disrepute, mainly due to its overly inclusive description. What once was called neurasthenia would probably be diagnosed as depression, anxiety, or fatigue today.57 “Many of the symptoms listed by Beard would now be seen as part of definable psychiatric disorders (e.g., phobias, panic disorder, affective illness, psychosis) or as organic diseases or psychophysiological symptoms.”58

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Dr Galant’s diagnosis of hysteric-neurasthenia is unique and suggests that he wished to account for Andreev’s manic phases as well as his depression. Freud distinguished two forms of psychoneurosis: hysteria and obsessional neurosis. Hysterical symptoms could appear as phobias, which Freud classified as “anxiety hysteria,” or as types of “conversion hysteria,” which includes motor paralysis, involuntary contractions, and hallucinations.59 However, Dr Galant’s use of the term “hysteric” is not consistent with psychiatric terminology.6o Instead of describing some element of hysterical neurosis, Dr Galant wishes to account for Andreev’s “energetic” phases – his manic behaviour. Nearly seventy-five years after Dr Galant’s diagnosis, Andreev’s granddaughter wrote in her memoirs: “Leonid Andreyev had evidently been a manic-depressive. Through my father’s book about his childhood I gained an awareness of this affliction, which often affects highly creative individuals.”61 Olga Carlisle does not give further support for this claim in her book and no such claim is made directly by Vadim Andreev in his memoir, so I asked Carlisle to elaborate on the subject of Andreev’s manic-depression and she responded: Having closely observed two people (including R. Lowell, with whom I had a long and wonderful relationship) and studying L[eonid] A[ndreev]’s Letters to Gorky, published by Columbia University in the sixties ... I came to the following conclusion (based also on familiarity with family data, some of which cannot be discussed openly at this time) that L[eonid] A[ndreev] clearly suffered from what was known until recently as manic-depressive illness – the kind against which lithium is so very effective. It often affects highly creative individuals (Lowell) and may have affected also D[aniil] L[eonidovich] A[ndreev], though I’ll never be familiar enough with his life story to make such an assertion. But I know enough about L[eonid] N[ikolaevich] A[ndreev]’s daily life through letters, journals, my father’s recollections, etc. to make this claim.62

Carlisle’s letter suggests that a history of manic-depression exists in the Andreev family tree, which will be discussed further in the following chapter. It also provides a more contemporary diagnosis. Dr Galant followed the prevailing diagnosis of the time, neurasthenia, which is mainly associated with depressive disorders today. The additional diagnosis of “hysteric” elements is, once again, an attempt to describe Andreev’s “energetic” or manic fits or attacks.

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Chukovskii experienced Andreev’s manic attacks. He described these obsessive and energetic periods in his memoir and understood them as the source of Andreev’s creative energy. The fact that Chukovskii placed them in a positive light is a much-needed counterbalance to descriptions of Andreev’s depression and Gor’kii’s scorn for his “unprofessional behaviour,” which will be discussed in subsequent chapters. Chukovskii’s desire to find a “psychological conclusion,” the fact that he wrote his memoir as if Andreev were still alive, his familiarity with both Andreev and his literary works, all add to the portrait and do, in fact, open the “inner world” of Andreev to the reader. Understanding the effects of these manic periods on Andreev’s life and works is the next step for critics in realizing this inner world in some tangible way. Mania does not mean crazy. As we have seen, mania often results in high levels of combinatory thinking, a greater degree of artistic sensibility, and, at times, debilitating headaches and excessive mental activity. To understand Andreev and his literary works, one must understand his experience of illness. In this sense, Chukovskii was correct in connecting Andreev’s mental condition, as manifested in his life, with his literary legacy.

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A postcard portrait of Andreev Lithograph of Andreev by Valentin Serov (1907)

Lithograph of Andreev by Valentin Serov (1907)

Andreev’s “So It Was” (1906)

Maksim Gor’kii

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6 Inner Turmoil and the Dark Side of Depression: Chulkov I became insane with long periods of horrible sanity. During these fits of absolute unconsciousness, I drank – God knows how often or how much. As a matter of course, my enemies referred the insanity to the drink rather than the drink to the insanity. Edgar Allan Poe

Georgii Chulkov (1879–1939) writes in his literary portrait that he first met Andreev in the editorial office of Courier in 1899. At the time, Andreev was the newspaper’s columnist and court reporter. Chulkov was publishing his first story, “To the Other Shore” (Na tot bereg). The two met frequently in 1901 and Chulkov talks about Andreev in relation to Moscow literary society. In 1902 Chulkov was exiled to Iakutsk Province for political activities but a year later was allowed to move to Nizhnii Novgorod under police supervision. Andreev went to Nizhnii Novgorod to see Gor’kii and to participate in a literary evening. While there, Andreev also met with Chulkov. They spent most of an evening in a tavern and in the morning Chulkov saw Andreev off at the train station. In 1906 Andreev published “So It Was” in Chulkov’s almanac Torches. He did not like the heavy Symbolist feel of the collection, however, and did not participate in the following two issues. Chulkov claims that they met often when they both lived in Finland, either at Valentin Serov’s or at the Chulkovs’.1 They often took long walks and Chulkov remembers Andreev talking and smoking incessantly. Chulkov describes visiting Andreev in St Petersburg some time around 1907–08. At that meeting, Andreev was still grieving over the loss of his first wife. Chulkov makes reference to Andreev’s house in Vammelsuu and claims that he saw Andreev eight months after the start of the world war.

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Chulkov states that he and Andreev were friends for nearly twenty years, with long gaps between meetings. His portrait is light on concrete details and specific meetings, which makes it hard to determine the true extent of their friendship.2 There is scanty historical material to link the two together. Chulkov and Andreev were both active in the circle of modernists and realists that mixed in journals and at the publishing house Shipovnik after 1906. At times, modernist critics called Andreev a mystical anarchist; however, he never claimed to follow Chulkov’s religious-philosophical and aesthetic theories.3 The published correspondence between the two consists of nineteen letters and in Andreev’s diary from 1914–19 there is no mention of Chulkov.4 The vague quality of Chulkov’s memoir probably attests to the incidental quality of their relationship. One can say that Chulkov knew Andreev and sporadically met with him during the course of nearly two decades. If nothing else, this contact provided Chulkov with a certain insight into Andreev – as one of the few people who knew Andreev during most of the major phases of his adult life. Chulkov wrote his portrait of Andreev in January 1920. It was published in A Book about Leonid Andreev and then again in 1924 and 1930.5 About twenty-five years later, Chulkov’s wife, Nadezhda Grigor’evna, included a chapter on Andreev in her unpublished manuscript, A Memoir about My Life With G. I. Chulkov and about Meetings with Many Famous People.6 In this she writes: “Georgii Ivanovich wrote memoirs about [Andreev], where he lovingly and respectfully described [Andreev] as a gifted man, but one who internally is tragically unsettled, which caused him to suffer enormously throughout his life.”7 Chukovskii described Andreev’s creative mania. Blok explained their mutual connection through Dionysian chaos. Chulkov chose to highlight Andreev’s dark side: the depression, alcoholic behaviour, and isolation that were elements of his mental illness. Chulkov remembers: Once I visited Andreev, when he lived in St Petersburg, in a large house on the St Petersburg side. His mother met me and said in a whisper that Leonid was “ill.” This meant that he was drunk. I wanted to leave but Andreev heard my voice, came out and drew me into his office. Before him stood a bottle of cognac, and he continued to drink. It was obvious that he had already been drinking for about three days. He said that life in general was “one hell of a thing,” and that his life was ruined: “She is gone, the one who was a star for me. Deceased!” 8 he

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said in a whisper, mysteriously and grimly. Then he put his head on the table and began to cry. And again there was that mysterious whisper and ravings. Suddenly he became silent and began to listen, having turned to the glass door, which, it seems, led out onto the balcony. “Do you hear?” he said. “She is there.” And he resumed his ravings, and it was impossible to understand whether he was indeed hallucinating or whether he needed all of this to express the enigmatic feelings – which he himself could not understand – that weighed upon his soul at that time. 9

At the beginning of the memoir, Chulkov attempts to explain, or at least to understand, Andreev’s condition as a reflection of the changing political, cultural, and social climate. It is as if his internal turmoil was a reflection or a premonition of Russia’s eventual upheaval. But as Nadezhda Grigor’evna wrote, her husband was really describing a man who was simply suffering inside. Chulkov writes: “From the outside it seemed that his life had worked out well: many friends, a loving family, literary success. But in Andreev, in Andreev himself, in his soul there was no happiness. And this terrible uneasiness, this excruciating anxiety and a sort of rebellion, ‘discord in all things’ – that was what was new and original in Andreev.”10 Chulkov’s explanation of Andreev’s behaviour betrays his modernist bent. For many modernists, Andreev’s inner turmoil seemed to coincide both with historical events and their own sense of revolt, but his lack of cultural sophistication precluded participation in their literary circles. In retrospect, it could be argued that Andreev’s mental illness was reinterpreted as some sort of intuitive, and possibly mystical, connection to the modernist cause, which unfortunately has clouded the issues concerning his mental health. With that in mind, it is significant that Chulkov makes a connection between Blok and Andreev. Blok’s mother suffered from severe bouts of depression and Blok himself may have suffered from a very mild form of mental illness. Just as interesting, Chulkov attempts to wed Andreev’s condition with his interest in philosophical “pessimism” and the reading of Schopenhauer. Gor’kii makes a similar argument in his introduction to the English version of Andreev’s novel, Sashka Zhegulev.11 The truth of the matter is that Chulkov did not have the vocabulary or the experience of mental illness to express Andreev’s condition properly, and while German pessimism and historical events did influence Andreev’s moods,

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Chulkov contextualizes Andreev’s condition in the modernist discourse of feelings, signs, and intuition. Chulkov highlights a few episodes of possible mania, but for the most part, it is the mind-numbing depression and internal strife that he describes. Therefore, I will fix my attention mainly on Andreev’s inner turmoil and only briefly touch on Chulkov’s modernist explanations. Bipolar disorder is a genetic illness. Those that suffer from it can usually trace the disease backward and forward through their family tree. Tell-tale signs are first-degree relatives (parents, siblings, or children) who committed suicide (or attempted to), were committed to mental asylums, showed pathological behaviour patterns (alcoholism, gambling problems, repeated financial reversals) or displayed signs of extreme swings in emotional behaviour.12 Chulkov argues that Andreev’s unhappiness was in his soul. Andreev himself believed that he had inherited the illness.13 His father was a heavy drinker and died at the age of forty-two from a stroke. Andreev’s siblings (he was the eldest) displayed various problems. His sister, Zinaida, died in a mental institution at the age of twenty-one.14 At the age of thirty-three, his brother Vsevolod also died in a mental institution.15 His brother Pavel had a drinking problem16 and was described as suffering from “constant distress and alarm.”17 It seems that Andreev’s children were also affected. His granddaughter Olga Carlisle’s letter cited in the previous chapter suggests that manic-depression has been diagnosed in Andreev’s descendents.18 All of this suggests that Andreev’s family tree is littered with victims of mental illness. Andreev himself showed many of the classic signs of manic-depression. He attempted suicide several times in his youth; he had a breakdown and was institutionalized in 1901; he exhibited extreme emotional mood swings and trouble with alcohol; he acted at times in a grandiose manner; he engaged in reckless behaviour; he made great amounts of money and spent it just as rapidly. His medical history highlights some of the confusion surrounding his condition. Andreev himself complained of various illnesses – mainly headaches and heart pains. However, it was the mental conditions – depression and mania – that always seemed to underpin his physical illnesses. Rimma Andreeva wrote that her older brother was hospitalized under the care of Professor Mikhail Cherinov from 25 January to 22 March 1901 for “acute neurasthenia.”19 Vladimir Azov claimed that friends had

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to convince Andreev to check into the university clinic. Soon after, a rumour spread around Moscow that he had gone completely insane. Azov, upon visiting his friend, found Andreev in a sublimely clean ward, in a white robe and slippers. On a little chalkboard was written in Roman letters “Neurasthenia.” “What’s that for?” asked Azov. “Are the doctors afraid they will forget?” “No, they are afraid I might forget,” Andreev answered. Azov continued: “He left the clinic renewed and energetic, got himself a bike and started to exercise. But only a month later the same Andreev was facing me, with the inextinguishable flicker of despair and doubt in his beautiful eyes, with a grimly set mouth.”20 On a medical certificate from 1905, Georgii Pribytkov (junior staff member at the clinic for nervous illnesses in Moscow) noted Andreev’s bouts of depression and anxiety, migraines and fear of going insane. He wrote that the periods of despair and anxiety were so torturous that Andreev was led to thoughts of suicide and to seek solace in alcohol, nearly qualifying as pathological drunkenness. Such periods resulted in drunken unconsciousness, anxiety, and insomnia. Pribytkov wrote that Andreev had not followed his advice to check into a sanatorium but had shown signs of improvement after following the instructions he had given that winter. The final diagnosis was acute neurasthenia and nervous shocks of anxiety.21 Andreev spent part of October 1914 under the care of Dr. Iosif Gerzoni in a Petrograd clinic.22 Andreev wrote to his brother from the hospital: “The first couple days I began to feel better, but suddenly something unexpectedly snatched my head and heart and I began to feel bad.”23 A couple of months later, Andreev wrote: “Lately the pains rifle in my head with particular strength ... I have begun to take a cure with a new, good doctor, perhaps things will turn out well.”24 In a letter from May 1915, Andreev wrote that he had been in a “difficult and vague mood.” He could not do anything in particular, he could only “exist.” He claimed to have recently finished treatment with Dr Gerzoni. Part of his treatment was a strict diet of semolina and no more than four glasses of weak tea a day. However, Andreev claimed that the diet has not had a noticeable affect; he still suffered from a “gloomy mood” and felt like a partial invalid.25 Andreev discussed his illness with friends and he also turned to them

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for treatment. Goloushev was one of Andreev’s closet friends. He wrote as a drama critic under the pen-name “Sergei Glagol’” and was a member of Sreda. Goloushev was an obstetrician/gynecologist by profession. He also studied psychiatry and Andreev was his ongoing patient (more than likely on an unofficial basis). 26 In April 1915 Andreev wrote to Goloushev about his treatment with Dr Gerzoni, mentioning his stomach, head, and hand. His hand had been injured in childhood and remained a problem. However, he wrote: “The real reason [for my illness] is known to you alone.”27 In his next letter Andreev wrote that his hand was not the real problem, “but my stomach and soul ...”28 Andreev then wrote that his hand was better. “However, the permanent essence of my illnesses is a nervous-pysche.”29 From February to April 1916 Andreev was under the care of Dr L.S. Abramov for fatigue.30 Andreev was again prescribed semolina and electric shock therapy.31 He wrote: “Physically, according to the doctors, I am recovered and my liver has returned to normal, but my nerves play devilish games, the devil knows it.”32 In December 1916 Andreev wrote to Goloushev: “Simply and thoroughly, I am unhealthy ... There does not seem to be any visible reasons; the invisible ones are somewhere deep in my soul. My soul is unsatisfied and sick.”33 Surprisingly, the memoir literature about Andreev is filled with various anecdotes about his tormented behaviour, but few connect it to mental illness. Chulkov was the first to dedicate an entire memoir to Andreev’s turmoil, but perhaps because he did not offer a reasonable explanation, subsequent memoirs are full of stories and possible rationales for these destructive intervals and illnesses. Andreev may very well have shared with Chulkov such vague expressions regarding an “unsatisfied and sick soul,” leaving Chulkov to guess at the cause. Just as Andreev suffered from mania, he was afflicted with cycles of depression. Major bouts of depression in manic-depressives result in prolonged periods of apathy, lethargy, hopelessness, sleep disturbances, slowed physical movements and thinking, impaired memory and concentration, and a loss of pleasure in typically enjoyable situations.34 In a diary entry of 11 August 1898 Andreev wrote: Again meaningless, endless suffering, again aimless complaints. Terrible days, horrible nights, when the entire world is far from you and you are alone with this insane, dismal head ... It is insane, deathlike despair. It is terrible when one

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awaits a death sentence in the morning. But to be sentenced to death; to live despairing and crying, while torturing yourself like a sinner in hell; to live, recognizing the entire emptiness and absurdity, the endless, cheerless anguish of life; to live, everything is to live, to live. Oh, if I were to die. To freeze in silence and immobility. The heart does not despair; thoughts, which seem to tear apart my head, do not beat in it. These are terrible, painful thoughts, which are impossible to put into words ... Yes, the sorrow is endless and deep, like the sea. And the deeper I plunge into it, [the more] I know that I still have not reached the bottom, that still more horrible nights await me ... People find hope in life, but I search for hope in death.35

One of the first problems of bipolar disorder is the issue of medication. Most manic-depressives do not like the idea of losing the sensations of everyday life or, and especially, the intense sensations of mania. Modern medications can slow the patient down and make the entire world seem fuzzy. In Andreev’s time there were no such medications. Instead, he tried to self-medicate at various times with cigarettes, strong tea, and alcohol. Andreev even made reference to this self-medication in a letter to Belousov, calling his tea, alcohol, and cigarettes “anesthetic.”36 E.J. Khantzian writes of the habit of self-medication: “The drugs that addicts select are not chosen randomly. Their drug of choice is the result of interaction between the psychopharmacological action of the drug and the dominant feelings with which they struggle.”37 Chulkov notes in his memoir: I remember only that we were in some kind of a cheap restaurant, that when Andreev arrived there, he was already somewhat drunk, and to this day I recall the evening as nightmarish. Until the eve of the war with Germany, Andreev experienced attacks of deep despair, and during such periods he was overpoweringly drawn to alcohol, with gloomy and painful perseverance. He was not a bon vivant. Nor was he a binge drinker.38 But sometimes, his misery, after reaching a certain limit, resulted in a two- or three-day drunken haze.39 All of this miserable drunkenness was justified by the fact that in his heart [he] always hearkened to some kind of “otherworldly” song.”40

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Studies have found that alcohol and drug abuse are often found in people suffering from bipolar disorder. Although it might seem that alcohol would be linked to the periods of depression, it is actually more frequent in periods of mania or mixed states. One of the reasons may be an attempt by the individual to heighten or prolong the euphoric condition. If the manic period becomes too severe, it may also be an attempt to deaden the hyperactivity of the brain. Jamison writes: “Excesses of all kinds characterize mania, and intemperate drinking may be just one aspect of this general pattern; however, self-medication of painful or uncomfortable mood states no doubt accounts for some of the association as well. To an extent, alcohol does provide relief from the irritability, restlessness, and agitation associated with mania; not surprisingly, alcohol use often increases dramatically during mixed states as well.”41 It is hard to say whether Andreev’s mania or his depression brought on his drinking.42 One study has found that “chronic excessive drinking predominated in the manic phase; whereas, periodic excessive drinking [predominated] during depression.”43 Andreev was a binge drinker and far from a “happy” drunk. It is said that Aleksandra Mikhailovna, his first wife, brought sobriety to her husband’s life; but while Andreev’s drinking may have been curtailed, it never totally stopped.44 His alcoholic behaviour was so prevalent and persistent that it seems to have affected every relationship he had. This is significant in a culture that accepts heavy drinking as a national trait. The fact that Andreev’s alcoholic behaviour was such a persistent theme in the memoir literature illustrates the degree to which he abused alcohol. It is significant, however, that Andreev was never identified as an alcoholic. Almost always, his drinking has been associated with some inner turmoil and is described as episodic.45 Beklemisheva seems to describe Andreev’s drinking as a direct result of mania: “When [Andreev] began to drink, this he could not give up, the drunken period continued several days. He could not sleep and drank without a break ... He wore out everyone around him, that is, not wishing to drink alone he demanded that we drink with him and not leave ... Usually he began to drink when there was something especially weighing on his soul.”46 Andreev’s brother Andrei gives a similar description of these highly active drunken periods. He argues that Leonid was often more profound when he drank. His ideas were deeper and more meaningful. Andrei goes so far as to say that he remembers looking forward to the “genius” that appeared when Leonid was drunk.47

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It may well have been that Andreev drank during his manic periods and only stopped when he had shifted into a state of depression. Anna Andreeva, his sister-in-law, describes how Andreev could not drink alone and preferred to drink with his brother Pavel. She tells how Andreev had no sense of time when he drank, how he did not sleep or even take a nap, and how he drank either cognac or wine all day, for days on end. During these times, the Andreevs’ family life was destroyed. They would not eat together, there was total silence in the house, and Andreev’s mother would lock herself away in her room and cry. “Leonid Nikolaevich drinks for the third day in a row. He walks, talks, and is in motion the entire time. He is tired, but does not want to lie down. In a struggle with himself, he feels the strong, nervous tension ... The worst days for Leonid Nikolaevich were the days he sobered up – the return to life and to people. He stopped drinking, but he would still not come out of his room – only his mother went in to see him. His first appearance at the dinner table was difficult for everyone who knew his mental condition.”48 Some tried to explain Andreev’s behaviour as a natural condition of student life and poverty. Chukovskii wrote in his diary: About eight years ago, [Andreev] told Brusianin and me that when he was a Moscow student, he once had a five-ruble note in his pocket. He decided to sail around the world, meaning that he twirled along the alleys and streets, stopping along the way at every bar and tavern and in every one he had a shot. The entire goal of this navigation consists of not missing even one establishment and conscientiously arriving in a circular route at the place from which you started out. “At first everything went well, I was under full sail, but in the middle of the trip each time I ran into a sandbank. The problem is that in a certain side street there were two pubs situated so that one door was across from another door. Leaving one pub, I immediately entered the other, and then returned to the first one. Every time I left one pub, I was not clear whether I had already visited the other, and since I am a conscientious person, every single time I kept going from one pub to the other for a couple of hours until I was dead drunk.”49

Although Andreev liked to joke about his student days, his brother Pavel tells of how Andreev’s drinking and depression led to suicidal tendencies. Suicide and drinking go hand in hand for many with manicdepression. Goodwin and Jamison write: “It is important for clinicians to detect substance abuse in manic-depressive patients because it is a par-

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ticularly strong predicator of lethality in suicide, especially in males. Alcohol and illicit drugs diminish impulse control, impair judgement, and worsen the course of the affective illness. These substances often are used as an attempt by the patient to lessen the severe anxiety and panic associated with suicidal depression. The combination greatly increases the risk of suicide.”50 Pavel writes that Andreev’s younger siblings (himself included) were quite afraid of these periods. When Andreev’s mother saw that Andreev was returning home drunk, she would hide all the sharp objects in the house.51 Andreev’s suicidal tendencies and depression were exacerbated by his drinking, poverty, and failed romances. Pavel tells of how one evening Andreev returned home drunk and argued with his mother about killing himself. He left again very upset. At midnight, Andreev’s mother and eldest sister went out to look for him. Pavel soon joined the search. He found a policeman who said that a student had tried to shoot himself with a revolver but had only been wounded. Friends had taken the student to a nearby apartment. After finding Andreev, Pavel went home to tell his mother that Leonid was wounded but alive. “At about three or four in the morning, they brought Leonid home totally drunk ... Leonid had shot himself in the chest and the wound would have been fatal if the bullet had not struck a copper button on his double-breasted jacket ...”52 The idea of killing himself was not new. Even before his student days, Andreev had attempted suicide. Vera Andreeva writes, “He was young, healthy and attractive and here he wanted to die.”53 Fatov tells of another time when heavy drinking and a failed romance led Andreev to a suicide attempt. One evening Andreev found himself in the company of two students who were also drunk and broken-hearted. All three decided that they would kill themselves. One tried to hang himself, another threw himself under a train, which severed both his legs, and Andreev tried to cut himself with a razor. A friend found Andreev and talked him out of it, even as Andreev threatened to kill him.54 Kaun gives several possible explanations for Andreev’s attempts at suicide – “material wretchedness and spiritual loneliness”; “a reflex expression of his disgust with life and with its unanswerable questions”; “Depressed by poverty, self-centred and shy, impressionable and analytical, Andreyev the student felt keenly life’s contradictions, and in those days sought an easy solution in escaping from life.”55 The fact that Andreev’s adolescence and university years were so violently suicidal is quite consistent with manic-depression. “Evidence suggesting an

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increased risk of suicide early in the first episode of effective illness is fairly consistent. Tsuang and Woolson found that an increased risk for suicide in patients with manias and depressions were largely limited to the first decade following first admissions.”56 Andreev only became seriously suicidal once more during his life and that was after the death of his first wife. Even then, he did not take action but only contemplated it. Gor’kii notes rather callously that during this period, Andreev talked about suicide so that his friends would talk him out of it.57 It is important to remember that being bipolar does not mean that the individual is constantly manic, in a mixed state, or depressed. The fact that there are periods of “normalcy” is a distinctive quality of manic-depression (remember Azov’s conversation with Andreev in the university clinic). Jamison argues: “Lucidity and normal functioning are ... perfectly consistent with – indeed, characteristic of – the phasic nature of manicdepressive illness. This is in contrast to schizophrenia, which is usually a chronic and relatively unrelenting illness characterized by, among other things, an inability to reason clearly.”58 Therefore, Andreev’s drinking, melancholy, or grandiosity would surface for a time and then disappear. The duration of these states varied. In 1906 Andreev wrote to Chulkov: “I feel bad, my head hurts. Soon it will be two months already that I have had this relentless pain.”59 In a letter to Belousov, Andreev complains of a “two-week migraine” that has left him unable to work.60 The changes in Andreev’s emotional states could also come in degrees so that the transitions were at times more or less dramatic. Beklemisheva describes the range of Andreev’s depression. She writes that sometimes he would play cards during his depressed periods and joke ironically that he felt “terribly gloomy.” When his depression was more serious and caused headaches, he would sit and write comic letters in verse. During his most severe episodes, however, he would lock himself in his bedroom. It was at those times that the illness could be seen on his face – he grew pale and irritated.61 Pavel Andreev tells how Leonid’s dog, Moisei Moiseevich, was his faithful friend when he was sick and stayed in his locked room for a couple of days.62 As with mania, there are recognized levels of depression. There is nonpsychotic depression, which is characterized by suicidal thinking, psychomotor retardation, self-denigration, guilt, confusion, marked fatigue, morbid obsessions, and irrational fears. Psychotic depression results in the same conditions, although more severe, accompanied by delusions and hallucinations.63

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In 1898 Andreev recorded in his diary: “Right now I have no sorrow – why then does everything in me groan and weep? Despondency.”64 Andreev wrote to his fiancée, Aleksandra Mikhailovna, of his depression: “It is not just a word – melancholy – not only a mental awareness of this or that lacking in your life that could make it complete and happy. It is this torturous state of mind, when you cannot do anything, when it is revolting to be with people, and it is too frightening to be alone, when all thoughts and everything you see seem to be wrapped in funeral crepe.”65 Beklemisheva goes so far as to say that Andreev had a split personality. She claims that one half was introspective, while the other was grandiose.66 Andreev himself believed that he had various personalities and discussed them with Belousov.67 Ivan Sevast’ianov went to school with Andreev in Orel and lived with him during their student days in Moscow. He remembers many times during their years at the university when Andreev’s mental condition deteriorated, when all his ideas were “broken” and his mind was “abnormal, sick.” Sevast’ianov states that two people lived inside of Andreev. One was normal and wrote works like Days of Our Life and “The Seven Who Were Hanged,” while the other was psychologically disturbed and wrote Tsar Hunger, “Red Laugh,” The Life of Man, and Anathema.68 Accordingly, another friend believed that Andreev’s depression helped him to tap successfully into the prevailing mood of the time. Chirikov had known Andreev as a member of Sreda in Moscow and later he lived in the same part of Finland. He writes that Andreev covered his pain with jokes because he did not like to show his wounds to his friends. It was this despair that allowed Andreev to be, as Chirikov argues, the son of the “twilight” epoch. He sees Andreev’s depression in works like “Once There Was,” “The Grand Slam” (Bol’shoi shlem), “Petka at the Dacha” (Pet’ka na dache), and “Little Angel” (Angelochek).69 Vera Katonina, like Chirikov, saw this facade of laughter give way to depression on various occasions. “[Andreev] was joking, smiling, and seemed to be in a good mood, but once in a while he would suddenly become quiet, his face – gloomy. Something unconsciously sad, plaintive, would fill his soul at these moments. You could feel some hidden grief in his smile then.”70 Katonina also found that Andreev’s works reflected his mental condition. Once, when she asked him why his stories were so

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full of tragedy and gloom, Andreev answered: “I do not aim for this, Vera Borisovna, so as to weigh down life, but simply I pour everything out of my soul. It is the outcome of everything that I have experienced.”71 Vadim Andreev writes that his father’s jokes were a shield from depression. “Grandmother was never offended by father’s jokes. She knew that with the laughter and gaiety, like a shield, he protected himself from the constant melancholy, from the solitude, from the agonizing images, which he created in his books.”72 Most associate Andreev’s condition with an unspecified inner turmoil. As with his mania, many argue that Andreev’s depression had a significant influence on his literary work. This is certainly true of “Once There Was,” which was written by Andreev while he was recovering in a mental institution in 1901.73 Maybe more significantly, understanding Andreev’s depression offers an explanation for his problems with alcohol and attempted suicide, not to mention his morose behaviour, for which he was so famous. In a letter to Serafimovich, Andreev wrote: “My head was hurting so much that I became depressed and fell into deep despair. I started hating my life, and I cursed it with the damnation of a neurasthenic. I imagined charging a revolver and killing myself; and after having killed myself, I imagined burying myself and mourning over myself; and after having mourned over myself, I went to see a doctor, and then another, and finally that evening I assembled several of them for a consultation.”74 For some, like Gor’kii and later Soviet critics, it was easier to discount Andreev’s literary production by criticizing his behaviour. Gor’kii held the literary profession in high regard and felt that Andreev’s conduct showed contempt for the profession and had a negative influence on his stories and plays.75 In the light of mental illness, Gor’kii’s interpretation seems callous and self-centred. In many ways, Chulkov simply opened the door to a discussion of Andreev’s condition. His description of Andreev’s state is vague and can only be understood if read in conjunction with the portraits of Andreev by Blok and Belyi. Significantly, Alexander Etkind argues: “Russian symbolism was filling the same roles and performing roughly the same sociocultural and psychological functions that psychoanalysis had come to fill in German and English-speaking countries around that time.”76

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Chulkov writes: “Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev never belonged to this [Scorpion] circle and never could have. He was too ‘provincial,’ not ‘refined’ enough for them, and he did not like or respect them. However, in his unconscious essence, which was belied by his externalities, he and the Scorpion group were ‘birds of the feather.’”77 In evasive modernist language, Chulkov continues by suggesting that Andreev felt the advance of historical upheaval. Like other modernists, Chulkov argues that Andreev was too concerned with wages and newspaper work to engage in ideas. It was Andreev’s inner turmoil, however, that made up for his lack of knowledge: “Whether his style was successful or not, whether his ideas were deep or shallow, he himself, his personality, his unruly mind, his sick heart, were like portents of our destiny.”78 Chulkov connects Andreev to Blok and the eternal feminine but suggests that Andreev had an avoidance of the truth and could not follow the path forged by the modernists. As with Belyi, Chulkov argues that Andreev did not belong to any literary circle and that he was a “chance guest” wherever he appeared. Notably, Chulkov suggests: “He rebelled like a Decadent, but his rebellion was somehow feminine, hysterical and sentimental. Less subtle than the Decadent poets, he was probably more typical and definitive of our cultural dark age than they were. As a personality, Andreev always represents for me not so much a poisoner of his contemporaries, as a victim. He himself was poisoned and tortured by the strange, dark forces that invisibly penetrated our life and corrupted it.”79 In this way, Chulkov introduces readers to Andreev’s depression but then, like Blok and Belyi, becomes entangled in modernist interpretations. Chulkov goes further than Blok, however, in defining Andreev’s inner turmoil and he avoids simply claiming Andreev for the modernist movement, as Belyi does. Possibly, Chulkov did not know Andreev well enough to make a serious attempt at explaining the basis of his problems. Pavel Andreev does a much better job in his memoir published three years after A Book about Leonid Andreev. However, even then, Andreev’s behaviour is explained by sociological factors: poverty, the stress of student life, and failed romances. Once again, mental illness must be taken into account when discussing Andreev’s life and literary works. Certainly his wife thought that he was ill. In May of 1916 Anna Il’inichna wrote to Goloushev: “[Andreev] fell into such despair that from general advice, he is smoking again. Last

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night he spoke very gloomily. He spoke about how a person loses his willpower and is ready to grab a gun and shoot himself, for example. His head aches ... It is truly unlucky that we never happened to meet an intelligent, real doctor.”80 It is Andreev’s illness experiences that underpinned his own spirituality, his reading of literature and philosophy, his reception of political and historical events. Even with all the negatives, “insanity” probably enhanced Andreev’s literary career. In fact mental illness was more powerful in shaping Andreev than any other singular event in his life.

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A postcard from Andreev’s play Days of Our Life

A postcard from Andreev’s play He Who Gets Slapped

A postcard from Andreev’s play Anathema

A postcard from Andreev’s play The Life of Man

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7 A Shared Sense of Chaos: Blok There are tidings of doom and disaster In your secret melodiousness, The damnation of all that’s held secret, The defilement of all happiness. Blok, To the Muse

The relationship between Aleksandr Blok (1880–1921) and Andreev is difficult to comprehend. It may best be termed a situation of mutual understanding but nothing more. That is to say that there was a common bond that they were unable to develop into a relationship, either as a genuine friendship or on the level of literary collaboration. Blok makes this point at the beginning of his literary portrait: “Leonid Andreev and I were connected. During rare meetings we declared this connection to each other with annoying tongue-tiedness and awkwardness, which immediately dampened our feelings and alienated us from each other.”1 According to Blok, this is a story of two people who connected on an alternate plane, not the plane of normal social or literary interaction but a plane Blok identifies with chaos. They came from different social backgrounds and moved in different social and literary circles. By the time that Blok established himself on the literary scene, Andreev had already attained popular fame and removed to his house in Finland. Blok argues that a contributing factor in their uncommon relationship was the period’s “spiritual solitude.” Everyone was guilty in the interval between the two revolutions of 1905 and 1917, at which time it seemed that society was functioning properly but in fact was not. Even with the solitude, Blok claims that his association with Andreev was something special: “My connection with Leonid Andreev was immediately established and defined long before our acquaintance. Our actual acquaintance did nothing to enrich it.”2 Blok felt that this special connection was

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a shared sense of chaos: “I responded to him – more precisely, not to him but to the chaos that he carried in himself. Not carried, but dragged; somehow he trailed it behind himself, teasing everyone with it. He was capable of sometimes exhibiting this genuine chaos like a parrot or lap dog, with the result that all the straightlaced people around him (and the intelligentsia was very straightlaced because it had not yet chopped firewood and had not carried pails of water to the seventh floor), stopped believing in this genuine chaos.”3 They were drawn to each other by this chaos. The first time they met, however, Blok saw no sign of it. The meeting did not go well, but still Blok was invited to Andreev’s a couple days later.4 Blok visited on a cold and rainy night. He tells of big bay windows that looked out toward the Gulf of Finland. There, Blok found many famous writers, but says that even so, Andreev seemed the loneliest person there. Andreev did not display the chaos on this night either, but this made Blok even more aware of it. It was “terrifying precisely because if you were to see it you would not be frightened, but while it remains invisible, you feel it.”5 Around the same time, Blok went to see Andreev’s play The Life of Man. He liked the production and wrote, “Even the quite weak actors succeeded in waking in themselves this chaos, which relentlessly followed [Andreev].”6 Blok claimed that Andreev’s strength came from the ability to ask “Why?” Not the “why” of the simply inquisitive but the “why” that challenges, the “why” of frustration: “In him was this precious, untouched, chaotic, murky depth, from which someone sitting inside him kept asking, “Why? Why? Why?” and banged his head against the wall of the big, fashionably appointed, repulsive manse, where dwelled the famous writer Leonid Andreev amidst furniture of the latest style.”7 Blok recounts their history, highlighting the fact that they never seemed to make a real or personal connection. He states that if Andreev were still alive, they would even now only talk about the most mundane things. It was chaos, however, that somehow united them even though they never became much more than acquaintances; chaos and everything that went with it, turmoil and loneliness: “[He] was infinitely lonely, unrecognized, and forever gazing into the abyss of a black window that looked out in the direction of the islands and Finland, into a damp night and the autumn rain that he and I loved with a shared love. It was through such a window that his last guest came to him in a black mask – death.”8 Reading the memoir, it seems that there were two chaotic planes on

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which Blok and Andreev met. There was the plane of literary output, to which the chaos was harnessed and from which something was produced. There was also the plane of personal chaos. This was the dark side of these writers’ private lives. This was the side that never allowed them to become intimate friends but did allow for some sense of mutual understanding. The language of Blok’s memoir is typical of Symbolist prose texts in its elusiveness. The Symbolists believed, in accordance with Book VII of Plato’s Republic, that most of us live in a cave with our backs to a fire; hence the only world we know is a shadow world on the walls in front of us. There are only a few select people who have been out of the cave, whose eyes have grown used to the sun and who have seen the world as it really is. In returning to the cave, these few have a difficult time explaining what they have seen outside because we do not have the language to explain what is not on the wall of shadows. Therefore, they must use a symbolic language to try to get those of us in the cave to understand what is outside, to understand that our world is based on shadows. The Symbolists believed that they were the select few and so they used a special language that those who still lived in the cave had to interpret. The task in reading Blok’s literary portrait is to understand what he meant by chaos and how that chaos impinged on both his literary and personal relationship with Andreev. To understand Blok’s use of the term chaos, we must first turn to the philosophy of Solov’ev and Nietzsche. Solov’ev’s theory of chaos is found in articles such as “The General Meaning of Art” (Obshchii smysl iskusstva) and “Beauty in Nature” (Krasota v prirode), where chaos is a state of the material world – the dark power. Beauty reigns over chaos and together they form the cosmos. The two are dependent on each other so that beauty cannot exist without chaos. It is the role of the artist, therefore, to subjugate chaos in order fully to realize beauty in art. Based on this philosophy, many modernist critics described Andreev as a writer who captured “the formless chaos of life.”9 Belyi and Blok saw in Andreev’s works the archetypal Dostoevskian struggle between chaos and cosmos. Their accent was on the “chaos of the human soul.” This understanding of chaos became conflated with the psychological issue of the individual’s internal conflict with a seemingly orderless and fractured world. “It was not by accident,” argues Mysliakova, “that the category ‘chaos’ was often used by them for characteristics of the internal world of the individual.”10

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As Blok’s artistic vision evolved, Solov’ev’s philosophy became less influential in modernist circles and the ideas of Nietzsche assumed a dominant role.11 Blok embraced Nietzsche later (ca. 1906) than most Symbolists. He never accepted the philosophy in whole but chose certain ideas that were interesting to him. Blok participated in Viacheslav Ivanov’s literary circle and was influenced by his host’s own reading of Nietzsche, which concentrated on the Dionysian elements.12 Ivanov himself interpreted Andreev in Nietzschean terms and regarded the negative conditions – fear, madness, and despair – in Andreev’s works as emotional-psychopathological aspects that promoted a “chaotic” essence in the world order.13 Possibly under the influence of Ivanov, Blok’s concept of chaos took on elements of Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy, in which Nietzsche identifies the Dionysian and Apollonian forces in life and artistic creation. The Dionysian is the wild, orgiastic, uncontrollable force and the Apollonian the staid, plastic, controlled elements. Nietzsche felt that both were necessary and integral parts of life and art. Blok seemingly reinterpreted Nietzsche’s philosophy and replaced the terms Dionysian and Apollonian with chaotic and cosmic. Blok understood this Dionysian force as chaos, or the uncontrollable and corporeal elements of life that create art. In an article entitled “On the Poet’s Vocation” (O naznachenii poeta), Blok wrote: “What is harmony? Harmony is the agreement of world powers, an order of the world life. The order is the cosmos, in opposition to the disorder – chaos. Ancient philosophers taught us that from chaos is born the cosmos, the world. The cosmos is related to chaos like resilient waves of the sea are akin to the mass of ocean water ... Chaos is primeval, poetic anarchy. Cosmos is ordered harmony, culture. From chaos is born cosmos.”14 In a letter of 1909, Blok tries to explain to his friend, Evgenii Ivanov, how chaos and cosmos interact with the artist: “Art is only cosmos – the creative spirit, which gives form to chaos (the emotional and corporeal world). There is no need to elaborate on the fact that the world of corporeal and emotional phenomena is only chaos – this must be known to the artist (as it was known to Aeschylus, Dante, Pushkin, Bellini, Leonardo, Michelangelo and will be known to future artists). Our great writers (primarily I have in mind Tolstoi and Dostoevskii) built everything on top of chaos (they ‘valued’ it), and therefore chaos emerged multiplied tenfold, that is, they were bad artists. One can build cosmos only out of chaos.”15 David Sloane characterizes Blok’s theory thus: “Where life translates directly into art and imposes its own orders on the

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latter, the poet relinquishes control over his creation and defers to the authority of chance and chaos. Where the poet separates art from life and imposes his own purely esthetic orders on his creation, he serves design and cosmos.”16 Since chaos for Blok was the uncontrollable, discordant forces in life and art, it is understandable why Blok perceived chaos in Andreev’s literary work. Bezzubov has covered many of the literary connections in his chapter on the two authors.17 Blok was introduced to Andreev through the author’s works, particularly “The Life of Vasilii Fiveiskii,” “Red Laugh,” and “The Thief.” Blok liked Andreev’s image of the “terrible world” and created such a world himself in his third volume of poetry. While reading “Red Laugh,” Blok wrote to Sergei Solov’ev that he “had come close to madness.”18 According to Bezzubov, the problems touched upon in these three stories and in “Little Angel,” “not only interested the poet, but they played a large role in the formation of his thought and mood during the period of the 1905 revolution.”19 Of even more importance was Andreev’s play The Life of Man. Blok highly regarded Meyerhold’s production of the play at the Komissarzhevskaia theatre in 1907. In reaction to this play, Blok wrote a letter to the actress Valentina Verigina in which he states, “I am with L. Andreev – alone, and we are both despairing and desperate.”20 The Life of Man was one of the major influences on Blok’s article “About the Realists” (O realistakh), in which he defended Andreev from other writers in the Symbolist literary camp. Blok also defended Andreev in an article entitled “About Drama” (O drame). In these two articles, Blok defended not only Andreev’s play but also his unapologetic gloominess and constant pessimism – “Yes, there is darkness, despair. But there is a light from the darkness.”21 Andreev learned of Blok through the poet’s review of “The Thief.” However, they did not meet face to face until September 1907. They saw each other five days later (20 September) at a performance of the Komissarzhevskaia production of The Life of Man. On the twenty-sixth Blok came to Andreev’s St Petersburg version of Sreda. Blok was one of the few Symbolists whom Andreev valued artistically and he had plans for the organization of a new style of theatre, in which he wanted Blok to play a major role. For this, Andreev asked Blok to contribute his play Song of Fate (Pesnia sud’by) in 1909. In 1907–08 a relationship between Blok and Andreev developed both

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personally and on a literary level. Yet quite unexpectedly at the end of 1908, this relationship changed with the advent of Andreev’s play Days of Our Life. Blok felt that the play had been written for the provincial stage and for the petty bourgeoisie. He did not see it as a realistic portrayal of student life or as a comment on social vices. For Blok, Days of Our Life was a travesty when compared to The Life of Man or Tsar Hunger. He began to re-evaluate everything that Andreev had written. Yet the two continued to correspond into 1909. Blok soon left for Italy, however, and cut himself off from most of his friends. Blok’s attitude again changed toward Andreev and in 1912–13 they began to meet. But the friendship never reached the closeness of the earlier years. At the time, both were interested in psychology. Andreev liked the psychological elements in Blok’s play The Rose and the Cross (Roza i Krest), and attempted to convince Vladimir NemirovichDanchenko to stage the play at the Moscow Art Theatre. Andreev wanted to strengthen their friendship but Blok, who thought that Andreev was uncultured, was unwilling. Blok tried to pinpoint what it was about Andreev that attracted him. He decided that it was a “nonhuman connection,” a connection to the “intimate horrors of a mystical order.”22 Their friendship finally came to an end in 1916. Andreev invited Blok to contribute to The Russian Will. Blok declined and Andreev took offence. At that point Blok and Andreev were polar opposites, politically. Andreev supported the war effort and attacked the Bolsheviks for undermining the military’s fighting morale. Blok was anti-war and supported the Bolsheviks’ revolutionary activities. The two did not speak again before Andreev’s death in 1919. Bezzubov states that after Andreev’s death in 1919 Blok reassessed his feelings about the author and became decidedly more positive. Bezzubov also suggests that Blok’s literary portrait is more than just mere lip service: it betrays the connection that Blok and Andreev shared and suggests that Andreev had a larger influence on Blok’s art than one might think.23 What remains to be discussed is where Blok and Andreev intersected on a personal level. During the period of their acquaintance (1907–1916), Blok wrote his third volume of poetry. The volume begins with the poetic cycle “Terrible World” (Strashnyi mir) and is concerned mainly with the concepts of chaos and cosmos. The poems in this volume were influenced by Feodor Tiutchev’s poem “About What Do

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You Howl, Night Wind?” (O chem ty voesh’, vetr nochnoi?...), which is concerned with the chaos that inhabits and unites the natural elements and the human soul. Blok’s preoccupation with chaos was not limited to philosophical interests and literary theory. The poet was well aware of chaos on the psychological level – the chaos that affected relationships between family and friends. His paternal grandfather had spent time in a mental institution and Blok’s father, in the poet’s mind, likewise displayed signs of mental illness. Blok’s mother also suffered from severe bouts of depression and both as a young boy and later as an adult, Blok was forced to accompany her to sanatoriums.24 The adult Blok may have been diagnosed as suffering from cyclothymic disorder, which today is considered a mild form of bipolar disorder.25 Even without a diagnosis, Blok was aware that within himself there was something inherently at odds.26 He felt that the cruelty of his father and the depressive stupors of his mother were embodied within himself. He thought that his blood was tainted and did not want children. He sensed that there was something contaminated in both of his family lines, paternal and maternal, and he did not want to pass it on to a child. These factors suggest that Blok might be more sensitive to the signs of mental illness than the average person and might therefore have had a greater understanding of Andreev’s illness experience. In the sense that life imitates art, Blok’s personal life was chaotic during this period, which may have undermined his own mental health. In his poem “The Double” (Dvoinik) he said: “I am tired of stumbling, / Of breathing the dank fog, / Of being reflected in other people’s mirrors, / And kissing the women of others ...27 Chukovskii wrote of Blok: “He was a double, and all of his themes, and all of his works were doubles ...”28 In the spring of 1908 Blok’s wife, Liubov’ Dmitrievna, was touring the provinces as a member of the troupe with Meyerhold and his theatrical company. Blok was depressed and drinking heavily. Liubov’ Dmitrievna came to see him at times, but her visits did little to reassure the poet. He wrote to his mother: “I am going to bed only every other night and am wasting much energy on wine, boating on the sea, wandering about the fields and forests, women.”29 In July, at a point of desperation, he wrote to his wife: “I am writing to you absolutely ill and exhausted by drunkenness. All this time I am being eaten up by some inner sickness of the soul, and I can see no reason whatsoever for going on living as everybody else does as though they could count on a long

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life ... I need you to take some part in my life and even in my work; to find some means to heal me of this hopeless depression which is my permanent state just now ...”30 This letter did bring Liubov’ Dmitrievna back, but she arrived home pregnant, having conducted an affair with one of the young actors in her troupe. Blok and Liubov’ Dmitrievna agreed that they would raise the child as their own. Blok’s mental state began to stabilize, but the couple was devastated when the child died shortly after birth. In January 1910 Blok was diagnosed as suffering from an advanced form of neurasthenia and it was suggested that he should check into a sanatorium.31 A month later, the poet’s mother, Aleksandra Andreevna, fell ill and went to live for a time with the Bloks in St Petersburg. She was suffering from one of her bouts of depression, for which she had been hospitalized many times. The move brought mother and wife together, which was unpleasant for all involved. Blok’s mother was described as “night and darkness ... that swallowed up the light of day.” Liubov’ Dmitrievna opposed the gloom of night, “and in her soul she wanted to tear the mother away from the son like a weed, as the root of the inborn dark double that was growing within him.”32 Due to her depression, Aleksandra Andreevna returned to the sanatorium and only joined the Bloks at their summer home, Shakhmatovo in July. By then it had become clear that her condition was chronic and her recovery superficial. Blok sank into a gloomy silence and was a “nervous wreck,” what with his mother’s condition, his relationship with Liubov’ Dmitrievna, and the strenuous business of renovating their summer home.33 In January 1911, Blok was again advised to check into a sanatorium. The doctor claimed that Blok was physically fit but suffered from a nervous condition. That summer Blok went to see a neurologist, who confirmed the diagnosis. During the fall of 1911 and on through 1913, Blok continued to suffer from bouts of nerves and depression.34 Blok’s extramarital affairs and his indulgence in the “elemental gypsy excitement of Petersburg nightlife” exacerbated his domestic problems.35 His continual debauchery was physically and mentally exhausting. In January 1912 he fell very ill and a doctor was consulted. According to Avril Pyman, venereal disease was the diagnosis. Blok was depressed and ashamed of his disease and its origins. During his long convalescence, he spent much time with his mother and wife (the two had reached a truce during Blok’s illness). He also quoted from Andreev’s “Darkness” on the shame of being good.36

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Somewhat humbled, Blok agreed that Liubov’ Dmitrievna should return to the stage during the summer of 1912. He quickly regretted it, however, and felt abandoned. At first he kept busy with work, but soon he began to spend time with his friends. He spent one June evening with Andreev and the artist Nikolai Sapunov and described it as “one of the most dreadful nights of my life.”37 Both Andreev and Sapunov were known for their heavy drinking and one can only imagine the debauchery that led to this remark from a man who spent so much time in the taverns and bordellos of St Petersburg. Liubov’ Dmitrievna spent the 1912–13 theatrical season with a new lover, while Blok underwent an intensive course of treatment for his illness. One result was that he decided that he was through with drink and prostitutes. That season, Blok experienced another bout of depression and Liubov’ Dmitrievna returned for a short time, until there was no longer a threat of suicide. Coincidentally, both Blok and Andreev fell in love with Carmen at that time during a run of the opera in the capital. Blok courted the singer Liubov’ Aleksandrovna Andreeva-Del’mas, sending roses and unsigned notes after each performance. At the end of March 1914, he confessed to being her admirer. Soon after, they started a passionate love affair and began to be seen in public together. Their relationship was interrupted when Blok left for military service in the summer of 1916. In 1915 Andreev became infatuated with Maria Samoilovna Davydova, who alternated with Del’mas in the lead role. Davydova was invited to Andreev’s house in Finland and accompanied him to various events in the capital. In her memoir, Davydova calls their relationship a “tender friendship.”38 During the years that Andreev and Blok were acquainted there was much that was “chaotic,” in the Dionysian sense, in Blok’s life. As Chulkov wrote: “Blok had two lives – a life that was not without its comforts, the domestic life, the quiet life, and the other – not an everyday life, the street life, the intoxicated life. Blok had order in his home, measure, and an outward well-being. It is true that there was no real well-being there, but he treasured its appearance. Under the mask of correctness and pedantry lurked the terrible stranger – chaos.”39 Andreev was also no stranger to chaos in his personal life. “Andreev was never an alcoholic in the usual sense of the word: he drank very rarely, his entire life he struggled with what he thought was a hereditary defect, displaying a great force of will,” writes Skitalets. For a couple of

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years he did not drink at all, but sometimes, thanks to his personal life, he “broke loose and then the defect appeared grandiosely, sickly, with some kind of terribly tragic beauty of the soul’s fire.”40 Belousov remembers a conversation in which Andreev agreed that he seemed to have a split personality. “Yes, exactly, in me exist all kinds of anesthetic, not talking about alcohol, but even if I smoke a lot or drink strong tea, I feel that I am cut in two: in me live two people, who do not resemble one another.”41 Later Andreev wrote to his friend that for a few months past he had been strangely unnerved. He claimed that it was a case of splitting not just in two but in ten directions. The problem was affecting him both emotionally and physically. “I have searched for a long time for an explanation for this strange and torturous occurrence. At present, I have not met an exhaustive explanation in an encyclopedia.”42 Andreev once wrote to his fiancée: “Yesterday I looked through my diaries and was horrified. Before me stood my life, wasted in the pursuit of ghosts, drowning in vodka, full of unconscious lies ... I have moments when despair and rage grip me, when I am not able to say words; aren’t there moments when I appear bored, uninterested, despondent, sick? ... And so as a result of these moments, when you need more than anything a loving person, you sit alone and write a disgusting diary [entry], or you are silent, and you furiously suck down vodka.” 43 Blok understood the effects of depression and mental illness. Both he and his mother had suffered from bouts of depression44 and Blok worried greatly about his mother’s deteriorating mental condition.45 In a letter of 24 June 1911, Blok’s mother characterized her son’s condition as periodic, affecting all those around him, and stated that she could always tell “when it had started.” She wrote that Blok’s illness had reached the “peak” of this particular cycle; that while Blok and his wife had planned to go to the dacha, now he did not want to do anything.46 Five days later, Aleksandra Andreevna wrote that her son was ready to leave their summer home; but, she noted: “He is terribly nervous and needs to get serious and correct treatment.”47 It is difficult to know whether Aleksandra Andreevna was not using the vocabulary that her doctors employed in describing her own condition, rather than her son’s. It is also possible, however, that he suffered from a mild affective illness, which led him to seek medical treatment. Liubov’ Dmitrievna claimed: “Without any doubt, Blok and his entire family were not quite normal ... [The letters and diaries of Blok’s mother and aunt] are full of signs of mental illness ... On Blok’s side (Lev

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Alexandrivoch), on the Beketovs’ (Natalia Alexandrovna), on the Karelins’ (Alexandra Mikhailovna Markonet and Maria Andreeva Beketova) – everywhere one finds unmistakable symptoms of clinical insanity ... An imbalance, an extreme ‘borderline condition’ (as psychologists call it) – that is what they all had in common.”48 Liubov’ Dmitrievna also notes a discussion she had with Dr Pekelis, the family doctor, about her husband’s failing health: All and all, the condition of [Blok’s] psyche immediately struck me as abnormal ... Sasha’s usual everyday condition already presented a considerable deviation from the norm. In an average individual, changes of mood from a childish wholehearted gaiety to a gloomy, despondent pessimism would be regarded as “illness,” as would the inclination Sasha had not to resist anything evil and to lash out in irritation, banging on furniture and breaking dishes ... And now when this behaviour pattern became even more painfully accentuated, it was still only an extension of his “normal” state of health. In Sasha those symptoms were not an indication of abnormality, but had they manifested themselves in an ordinary person they would surely have presented a picture of real mental illness.49

It would be significant if Andreev and Blok suffered from a similar condition. Maliciously, Ivan Bunin called both Andreev and Blok “abnormal.” He said that Andreev was tragically addicted to drink. Of Blok Bunin wrote: “[Blok’s] grandfather (on his father’s side) died in a psychiatric hospital, his father ‘with oddities that bordered on mental illness’ and his mother ‘more than once recovered in a hospital for the mentally ill.’”50 Bunin continued by describing Blok’s own mental health problems. In 1908 Blok wrote an article entitled “Irony” (Ironiia). He called irony a disease that begins with a provocative smile and ends with blasphemy. The smile represents an internal laughter that, figuratively, drowns the soul. In reality, people drink vodka in an attempt to drown “their joy and their despair, themselves and those close to them, their creative activity, their life and finally their death.”51 However, Blok believed that there was a way to treat this disease – “an illness of identity, an illness of ‘individualism.’”52 This treatment was to separate oneself from one’s own egoism. On one level, “Irony” was a reaction to the literary trends and politics of Blok’s contemporaries in St Petersburg.53 On another level, irony is described as a disease that sounds a lot like current descriptions of manic-depression. The illness manifests itself in a joyless laughter or in

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anger and leads to one’s own destruction through drunkenness in an attempt to drown the effects of the illness. In his discussion of irony, Blok wrote: “Andreev not only struggles with the ‘red laugh,’ he, in the unconscious depths of his chaotic soul, loves the Double (Black Maskers), loves the national provocateur (Tsar Hunger) loves that ‘cosmic provocation’ that penetrated The Life of Man, that ‘icy wind of endless space’ that causes the yellow flame of the candle of man’s life to waver.”54 Here, Blok identified Andreev’s chaotic soul with this illness of laughter, anger, and drunkenness. On a certain level, Blok could surely understand Andreev because he had spent a lot of time caring for his own mother during her depressive stupors. Blok also might have suffered from similar, although milder, mood swings and depressive symptoms. His own course of treatment when he was depressed, like Andreev’s, was to self-medicate through alcohol. His response, like Andreev’s, was chaotic. Close friends, as we have seen, blamed Andreev’s problems on his pessimism and the philosophy of Schopenhauer.55 Blok, with Solov’ev and Nietzsche as his guides, understood it as chaos.56 Blok’s understanding of chaos combined at the same time with his interest in the “human document.” In the spring of 1918 Blok wrote an article about Ol’ga Sokolova’s Diary of a Woman No One Loved (Dnevnik zhenshchiny, nikto ne liubil). He suggested that it was an important autobiographical document for the new epoch. This in turn led to Blok’s own personal interest in the human record and how it would relate to him.57 His literary portrait of Andreev, therefore, displays the various influences of Solov’evian and Nietzschean philosophy, personal concerns relating to the human document, and his own conceptualization of his mental health. In an article written shortly before his Andreev memoir, Blok interpreted Shakespeare’s Othello within his philosophical framework of chaos, cosmos, and harmony. He believed that only Desdemona could save Othello from the chaos of Iago. Iago was the “dark power” from which the world is built while Desdemona represented harmony. It was through Desdemona that Othello found his own soul, order, and harmony. 58 Iago, then, represented disorder and discord. Two weeks later, Blok wrote that it was on the level of chaos that he and Andreev had a special connection. Often people with variable mood swings look for companions who are emotionally stable and constant. Combining two people with manic

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tendencies can exacerbate their abnormal behaviour. If anything, Blok and Andreev were equivalent to fire and gasoline and they both probably knew it. The chaos that Blok saw in Andreev existed on two planes. On the literary plane it was the dark pessimistic qualities for which Andreev was famous and that Blok interpreted as the elemental corporeal force of Dionysus. On the personal plane, it was the dark moods of depression, the loneliness, and the escapes into wine and women that were the expression of their mental illness. As a result of Blok’s portrait, Andreev has been characterized as a dark, lonely figure, which neatly coincides with many of the pessimistic motifs found in his literary works. In a review of A Book about Leonid Andreev, V. Iretskii (V. Glikman) wrote that both Blok and Andreev were lonely; that Blok was closer than the other memoirists to the “solitary enthusiastic soul of Andreev and said the most important things about him as a person.”59 On a psychological level, this was probably the case. Suffering from severe depression, one often feels alone even when surrounded by friends and family. The following chapter, dedicated to Gor’kii’s literary portrait, further supports this idea, although there Andreev’s solitude is portrayed in a very different way. Andreev needed stabilizing forces in his life – his mother, his friends, and his two wives – to combat his variable mood swings. In this light, Teleshov’s portrait gains added significance. Rather than the gloomy lonely individual that Blok describes, we find an Andreev who craved companionship and made great emotional demands on the people around him. Blok’s description of solitude is more romantic and meshes with Andreev’s literary style. It is also a description of chaos by someone who is personally acquainted with loneliness and depression. We shall find that Gor’kii could never understand Andreev’s condition; Blok seemingly could. Blok’s description comes not from someone who was required to be a stabilizing force in Andreev’s life but from someone who recognized Andreev’s condition and avoided an intimate relationship. Blok gives a glimpse of Andreev’s chaos from the inside. Although he never established a lasting friendship with Andreev, Blok may have provided one of the better insights into his psychological condition. The two literary figures were possibly too alike to be friends. However, a mutual connection existed and, according to Blok, the connection was their shared experience of chaos.

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A portrait of Andreev and Gor’kii taken in Nizhnii Novgorod (1902)

“Gor’kii and his shadow.” A caricature of Gor’kii and Andreev (1905)

A portrait of Gor’kii and Skitalets with his gusli (1900s), sold as a postcard

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8 The Dreamer and the Mathematician: Gor’kii I, too, keep a diary and I know how it is done. Notes, confessions, and such are excrements of a soul poisoned by bad food. Andreev’s reported comments to Gor’kii

Maxim Gor’kii (1868–1936) wrote his memoir of Andreev during a period in his literary career occupied by autobiographical subjects. This period began at the end of 1909 after the disappointing failure of the Capri School, which Gor’kii had founded along with Aleksandr Bogdanov and Lunacharskii to train Bolshevik party workers in revolutionary theory. It was opposed and eventually undermined, however, by Vladimir Lenin and the party centre in Paris. This disappointment came at a bad time for Gor’kii, who was sick and, it was believed, did not have long to live. In 1912 Gor’kii wrote “An Incident from the Life of Makar” (Sluchai iz zhini Makara) and “The Boss” (Khoziain) and began work on the first stories for Through Russia (Po Rusi). He wrote Childhood (Detstvo) in 1913 and Among People (V liudiakh) in 1915. The revolution of 1917 slowed down his literary production, but he did write literary portraits of Tolstoi and Andreev. In 1921 Gor’kii began work on My Universities (Moi universitety) and by 1924 he had completed Notes from My Diary – Recollections (Zapiski iz dnevnika. Vospominaniia). Andrew Barratt calls this period of 1912–24, “one of the most extensive experiments in narrative self-representation by a single writer in the history of any literature.”1 He also notes that during this period, Gor’kii gave up almost completely the writing of plays and fiction.2 An abbreviated version of the Andreev memoir first appeared in Life of Art (Zhizn’ iskusstva).3 Gor’kii publicly presented his portrait on 15

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November 1919 in Petrograd and again on 18 February 1920 in Moscow. The second 1922 edition of A Book about Leonid Andreev included hastily prepared changes to Gor’kii’s memoir.4 At the same time an abbreviated version of the Andreev memoir appeared in French translation in the journal Clarté.5 Gor’kii reworked his memoir for the last time in 1923 for a publication entitled Recollections (Vospminaniia).6 There is evidence that in the period 1928–36 he planned to add two more episodes to the memoir, but neither was published until after Gor’kii’s death.7 Of the eight authors who contributed to A Book about Leonid Andreev, Gor’kii had been Andreev’s closest personal friend. Yet Gor’kii’s portrait seems the most critical and subjective of the group. Zhak states that the leitmotif of Gor’kii’s memoir is the dissolution of their friendship.8 Beklemisheva writes that the best thing about the memoir is Gor’kii’s comments on Andreev’s natural literary talent.9 In fact, Gor’kii argues that Andreev’s waste of his natural talent and his depression were to blame for the demise of their friendship. The problem is that two Gor’kiis appear in the memoir: the Gor’kii who witnessed the life of Andreev and the Gor’kii of 1919–22, who was fighting his own literary and political battles. Koliadich argues that these two Gor’kiis create a polemical dialogue. The result is two voices within the portrait that often clash and give irreconcilable opinions. Koliadich believes that this creates a “complete” image of Andreev.10 Zhak states that most of Gor’kii’s reported conversations with Andreev over literature and politics are particularly relevant for 1922. She notes that in one of their arguments, Gor’kii is actually expressing “the principles of the esthetic code for revolutionary proletarian art,” which would be extremely important during the first years of the Revolution.11 In this chapter I shall avoid the political and literary arguments that were offered by Gor’kii to deflect attention from the important issue of his personal relationship with Andreev. It is the literary and political lines of discourse that scholars have followed, losing sight of Gor’kii’s description of a failed friendship. The relationship was built on a weak foundation to begin with, thanks to Andreev’s emotional demands. For his part, however, Gor’kii seemed incapable of dealing with people who could not play the role he assigned to them. This chapter examines the

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personal problems on which their friendship foundered and how Gor’kii’s own coping mechanisms alienated him from Andreev and resulted in a literary portrait that lays the blame at Andreev’s feet in literary and political terms. With the exception of Muratova and Grechnev, little attention has been paid to the two writers as human beings.12 V. Kholopova examines Gor’kii’s memoir of Andreev in the context of their personal relationship but does little more than highlight what already exists in the literary portrait.13 The one exception is Barratt, who examines both the personal and literary tensions in his doctoral dissertation.14 Literary and ideological differences played no small part in the authors’ relationship, but these must be combined with personal issues to get at a comprehensive understanding. In fact, it is the personal factors that provide the underpinning for a majority of their problems and that are therefore essential for putting the literary and political disagreements into context. Problems such as Andreev’s emotional demands and Gor’kii’s emotional avoidance surfaced early on in their relationship, and it is those problems that are actually reflected (or possibly deflected) by Gor’kii in his portrait of Andreev. The events of their relationship are usually summarized as follows. Gor’kii discovered Andreev in 1898. Publication of Gor’kii’s local newspaper, Nizhegorodskii Sheet (Nizhegorodskii listok), had been suspended by the authorities and in the meantime, Gor’kii was getting his news from other sources – one of which was Courier, a Moscow publication. It was Andreev’s Easter story, “Bargamot and Garas’ka,” that caught Gor’kii’s eye, causing him to write to Miroliubov to recommend Andreev for publication in Journal for All. Gor’kii continued to follow Andreev’s literary career and a year later he wrote to Asheshov asking for an official introduction. Their friendship grew out of a correspondence and the two eventually met face to face at a train station on 12 March 1900. Gor’kii was only three years older than Andreev and had himself just become a “literary figure” with the publication of his Sketches and Stories (Ocherki i rasskazy) in 1898. It is true that he had published his first short story, “Makar Chudra,” in 1892.15 However, Gor’kii and his works were hardly noticed until the publication of his collected short stories. With his newfound success, Gor’kii was quick to help other

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young writers. He found work for Andreev at two popular journals and organized the publication of Andreev’s first collection of stories in 1901. Andreev showed his appreciation by dedicating his first book to Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov. Critics usually fix 1904 and the publication of Andreev’s “Red Laugh” as the first indication of trouble between the two writers. Gor’kii did not appreciate Andreev’s expressionistic description of the Russo-Japanese war. Andreev was moving farther away from Gor’kii’s brand of realism and becoming more independent in literary matters. Then in 1905 Gor’kii’s Children of the Sun came out while Andreev published To the Stars. Originally the two had planned to write a play together on the theme of astronomy and revolution. But Gor’kii was sent to jail and wrote his version while imprisoned at the Peter and Paul Fortress. He then read and criticized Andreev’s version, causing him to rewrite the play three times. In 1906 Andreev’s wife died after giving birth to their second son. Consumed by grief, Andreev went to stay with Gor’kii on the island of Capri for six months. While on Capri, Andreev was offered the job of editing the anthologies put out by Gor’kii’s Znanie publishing house. Andreev wanted to broaden the scope of the publication by including the works of Blok and Sologub. This did not meet with Gor’kii’s approval and in the end Andreev turned down the position16 and went to the literary house Shipovnik, where he became both a literary contributor and editor. Soon after, Gor’kii took issue with Andreev’s Tsar Hunger and “Darkness,” using them as the reason for the dissolution of their friendship. In 1911 Andreev tried to engineer a reconciliation. He felt sure that he could repair the relationship through literature. Unfortunately, Gor’kii responded negatively to Andreev’s novel Sashka Zhegulev, and to another story entitled “My Notes,” suggesting that Andreev had advocated a passive approach to life.17 In the following years, the two authors made a few more unsuccessful attempts to repair their friendship.18 The outbreak of wwi caused further ideological disagreement. In 1916 Andreev was offered a position with The Russian Will. He was willing to overlook the journal’s dubious qualities in order to have a platform from which he could state his position, in opposition to that of Gor’kii’s journal, the Chronicle (Letopis’). Andreev now saw Gor’kii as a literary enemy. After the revolutions of 1917, Andreev lived in Finland. Gor’kii often appears in

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Andreev’s diary of this period, but there were no further developments in their friendship before Andreev’s death in 1919.

In order to investigate the personal relationship between the two authors, we must first understand something about each of them individually. Gor’kii’s own version of his life is well known thanks to his autobiographical trilogy. Gor’kii was forced to grow up quickly. He was self-educated and self-made in the truest sense. He was not given to extreme swings of emotion and was rather self-confident. Gor’kii’s selfreliance led him to be emotionally distant and it was only on rare occasions that he could warm up to his friends.19 His trials and tribulations as a young man had made him a businesslike and serious adult. He did not deal well with weakness or pessimism in other people. Andreev perceived this quality in Gor’kii and once told his brother: “Gor’kii cannot stand weak people. He does not even take them into consideration.” Andreev, his first wife, and Gor’kii were returning home one evening. As they stood at the door, an old man who looked “lost and pathetic” greeted Gor’kii and asked after his health. Gor’kii lowered his head between his shoulders and hissed, “Greetings.” “We were both terribly shocked,” said Andreev. “This was simply rude. I understood that one can grow tired of the constant admiration, this could bore the hell out of you, but to forget who you are dealing with – it is not proper. And this old man ... it was clear what it meant to this person. He was truly touched by this meeting with Gor’kii ... with Gor’kii himself!”20 Vladislav Khodasevich saw the same characteristic in Gor’kii: He never refused to help financially or by making efforts on someone’s behalf (khlopotami). His charity had a distinctive feature: the more bitterly the petitioner complained and his spirits fell, the more Gor’kii became inwardly indifferent towards him – and this was not because he wanted fortitude or restraint from people. His demands went much further: he could not endure despondency and demanded that a person hope for whatever it may be. This is how his peculiar and stubborn egoism revealed itself: in exchange for his involvement he demanded for himself the right to dream of a better future for the person he was helping. And if the petitioner did not give him a chance to dream by his despair, Gor’kii would become angry and would help reluctantly, without concealing his annoyance.21

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Dislike for the weak was only one small part of Gor’kii’s world view. He also displayed an unwillingness to engage with those realities of life that dissatisfied him and often cast off individuals who could not conform to his expectations.22 Therefore, Gor’kii’s portrait of Andreev must be read as a personalized interpretation and not as an objective assessment of their relationship. Andreev, as an eldest son, also grew up quickly with the death of his father when he was eighteen and his assumption of financial responsibility for his family. Unlike Gor’kii, Andreev was constantly surrounded by familial warmth (his mother lived with him his entire life). The security that Andreev felt, however, was often broken by persistent and uncontrollable mood swings. Not only was Andreev probably bipolar but he craved praise and acceptance from other people.23 In 1898 Gor’kii and Andreev were a perfect match. Gor’kii took pride in his “discovery” and Andreev was elated with Gor’kii’s praise and help. The first years of their correspondence are filled with Gor’kii’s advice and his self-satisfaction in recognizing Andreev’s talent. Gor’kii’s belief in Andreev’s talent was the one constant in their relationship.24 At first it was a source of pride for Gor’kii, but later he regretted that Andreev never realized his full potential. This was probably because Gor’kii believed that he himself lacked natural talent and he was always attracted to those with this gift.25 Because of his talent, then, Gor’kii was willing at first to overlook Andreev’s other problems. Gor’kii wrote to Aleksandr Aleksin in 1904, “Let’s talk about Leonid – your opinion of him is too harsh, though in essence you are right – alcohol plays a powerful role in his psyche. But the talent – it remains talent – don’t lie ...”26 Upon meeting face to face, Gor’kii was greatly satisfied with Andreev’s sense of gratitude. Bezzubov notes this characteristic as important in the development of their relationship.27 Andreev was genuinely grateful and he remained so even after their friendship had come to an end. It was not only help with his career that Andreev appreciated. In the beginning of their relationship, Andreev also felt that Gor’kii had a positive effect on his emotional state. In letters to Piatnitskii of 1902 and to the critic Vladimir Botsianovskii of 1903, he credits Gor’kii for his new and positive outlook on life.28 That said, Andreev was not completely happy with the relationship. As Muratova notes, Andreev constantly questioned whether Gor’kii appreciated him as a friend or simply as a “talent.”

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As noted earlier, the issues that arose in 1904–05 pertaining to “Red Laugh” and then Children of the Sun and To the Stars are generally seen as the beginning of their troubles. In fact the first problems had already surfaced by then and were of a personal nature. As early as May 1902 Andreev asked Gor’kii whether they were really friends and gave his own opinion that they were not.29 In their correspondence of 1902–03 Andreev pleaded for Gor’kii’s acceptance, emotional support, stability, and friendship. While Gor’kii was ready to accept the role of literary patron, his emotional avoidance was clear. Ultimately that avoidance was crucial to the demise of their relationship.30 During a bout of depression, Andreev, admittedly drunk, articulated his misgivings about their friendship in a letter of January 1903: There was a time when I tried to become your friend. To that end I mounted several attacks on your person – and was repelled with losses ... But this passed and I reconciled myself with the inevitable: to be for you only a comrade at arms, to serve honestly under your banner and not to flatter myself with the hope for a close, personal relationship ... And so, our relationship is friendly – I am the same for you as are Bunin, Teleshov and others. You love me for what you consider is my talent. If my talent weakens, dies – so will your friendship also die. In a word, you only value me as a writer. 31

In his response Gor’kii dismisses Andreev’s letter and recommends that he not write such “gluposti” (stupidities) in the future. His only attempt to explain his position is as follows: My feelings for you have changed a little, this is true. There are two reasons for this: first, I do not want to prevent you from living your new life, which you have not yet started enjoying.32 Second, is my exhaustion. So many people interfere in your life that I consider myself in this matter superfluous. You live badly – there are too many empty and insignificant people around you. That is why, I think, you get into these moods. Like the one that forced you to write that absurd huge letter. You are a strange person.33

Gor’kii did little to alleviate Andreev’s doubts and all but said that he was not interested in taking part in Andreev’s personal life. One can understand, however, that Gor’kii had probably grown tired of

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Andreev’s volatile emotional behaviour. Literature was the one area in which Gor’kii could relate to Andreev and even that was becoming a bone of contention. In February 1903 Andreev and some others were visiting Gor’kii in Nizhnii Novgorod. Toward the end of the night, Gor’kii upbraided Andreev for being so drunk and suggested that he should go to sleep. Instead, Andreev said that he was leaving. Gor’kii hid his boots since it was four in the morning. Andreev became very angry and attempted to stab Aleksin with a knife, striking only the door. He was then allowed to leave.34 Andreev wrote a long letter to apologize and to accept responsibility for his alcoholic behaviour. Gor’kii’s response was warm and he outlined his feeling for Andreev compassionately. He refers to Andreev’s problem as an “illness” and asks, “What can I do? How can I get across to you how important it is to get treatment?”35 On numerous occasions, Andreev wrote effusively to tell Gor’kii how much he valued their friendship.36 Gor’kii did not reciprocate; he wished to encourage Andreev’s career and keep their friendship within the confines of literary concerns. Andreev was looking for acceptance from Gor’kii not only as a talented writer but also as a good friend. He attempted to explain one of his drunken episodes to Gor’kii: “When I was preparing to go to Nizhnii, I had already stopped drinking. It began when I could not sleep all night in the train because of my teeth and because I felt lousy. When I was in your company I did not want to be miserable, and so I began to cheer myself up. Do you understand? I wanted you to think better of me.”37 By 1904 Gor’kii had witnessed many of Andreev’s mood swings and his destructive behaviour. He was also confronted with Andreev’s everpresent physical and mental ailments. He began a letter of 1904 with the following: Having read your letters, filled with an enumeration of all known illnesses which are ruining you, I began with animosity to wait for your telegram with a notification of death and the signature, “Recently Deceased Leonid.” But as it turns out, today you have changed your mind and will go to the Crimea instead of to Hell. Obviously, you prefer the place that is more boring.38

At this same time, Andreev made an interesting assessment of Gor’kii:

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Do you know how you will die? You will lie alone, and the moment will come, when your life will depend on a gulp of water. The glass will stand so that you cannot reach it. You will look at the glass, will look at the door, behind which there are people and you will die. You will not call anyone. And, while dying, you will know that this is Gor’kii dying, and on one side of the scale you will put Gor’kii, all that that means, and on the other a simple plea for help – and you will not ask anyone for help.39

This gloomy prediction speaks to Gor’kii’s emotional inaccessibility and, unfortunately, foreshadows his death at the hands of Stalin. One of the issues was simply that Gor’kii was unable or unwilling to place himself in a vulnerable emotional position. Interestingly, Gor’kii addressed this issue in a memoir dedicated to Blok. During a conversation, Blok asked why Gor’kii did not write on subjects such as life, human happiness, or death. Gor’kii replied: “Questions of the meaning of being, of death, of love – were strictly personal, intimate questions for myself alone. I do not like to air them in public, and if, from time to time, I do so involuntarily, then the result is always clumsy, awkward. ‘To speak of yourself is a subtle art, I do not possess it.’”40 These quotes, taken from letters that predate the conflict over “Red Laugh,” capture the two sides of the argument – Andreev’s destructive behaviour and Gor’kii’s inaccessibility. At the end of 1905 there were further doubts for Andreev. Following a meeting in Finland, he asked Gor’kii whether their relationship has changed. In his response, Gor’kii took Andreev to task for his constant misgivings about their relationship. He concluded with the following analogy: “If there are two trees in the forest, taller than the others, no matter how far they are from each other, they will acknowledge each other in a storm. They will see one another also in calm weather. Day and night.”41 Until this time, many had thought of Gor’kii as a tutor for the young writers associated with Znanie. However, with the publication of “Red Laugh,” Andreev became more than just a Znanie writer. He had stepped out of Gor’kii’s shadow and established himself as a literary figure in the reading public’s estimation. This shifted the balance of power between the two writers. Although Andreev still wanted Gor’kii’s input, he was now willing to publish works against his friend’s protestations. The reference to two trees taller than the rest may reflect this new tension in

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their relationship as well as their incredible fame. The quote certainly highlights Gor’kii’s growing dissatisfaction at having to reassure Andreev constantly about their friendship. Andreev’s behaviour and overall mental health had improved with his marriage to Alexandra Mikhailovna Veligorskaia in 1902. Now there were two people who had a calming effect on his life – Gor’kii and his wife. Gor’kii very much liked Lady Shura (as he called her) and appreciated the emotional support that she could give. But that support came to an abrupt end in 1906 with her death. It was during this bleak period that Andreev was persuaded to go to Capri and stay in a villa near Gor’kii. He arrived with his mother and eldest son, Vadim, in December of 1906 and stayed until the spring of 1907. Gor’kii wrote to Grzhebin of Andreev’s arrival, “Andreev’s wife passed away. In ten days he will be here and I will try to compel him to work,” 42 and that is exactly what he did. In fact, it was one of the most productive times in Andreev’s literary career. While in Capri he wrote or outlined such works as “Judas Iscariot and Others,” “Darkness,” Sashka Zhegulev, “My Notes,” Black Maskers, The Ocean, and a caustic satire, Love of One’s Neighbour.43 Thus Andreev was able to transform some of his grief into creative energy. But it was still a dangerous time for him, and his sense of loss was compounded by his inability to speak to the emotionally distant Gor’kii. Andreev wrote to many of his friends about his distress – to Chirikov, to Serafimovich, and, at the beginning of March 1907, to Veresaev: “How strange this will seem to you, that there is one person on Capri with whom I can speak openly. Gor’kii – he is like a good book with its contents set in advance or a picture gallery. Behind the super- or overman, the simple man has slipped away from him. He does not see it, does not feel it or know it. Though he has intellect, nobility and purity of spirit, he is sometimes lower than a normal man – and exactly at those moments, he thinks that he is higher.”44 It was not until 1912 that Andreev spoke of this painful period to Gor’kii himself. He wrote: “You would never allow me and still do not allow me to be open with you ... I have never met anyone, who would so stubbornly and brutally kill off personal life, personal conversation, personal sufferings. For almost half a year I lived side by side with you on Capri, I lived through unbearable and dangerous storms and stresses, searched for sympathy and advice specifically in my shattered personal

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life – and I talked with you only about literature and politics. It is a fact that while living alongside of you, I was waiting for Veresaev to arrive, so that I could ask his advice about whether I should kill myself or not!”45

Although Gor’kii had considered Andreev’s visit to Capri a success on the level of literary production, it ended in typical fashion with Andreev getting drunk and causing a scene. The period might therefore be viewed as the starting point for the definitive rupture in their relationship. Most scholars date the major rupture to Andreev’s publication of “Darkness” in 1908; but the problems in their relationship were already present on Capri. And it was on Capri that Andreev began to write “Darkness” and other works that Gor’kii strongly disliked. Andreev’s volatile behaviour had returned and he was moving stylistically closer to the Symbolists. By 1912 Gor’kii had come to the conclusion that all was lost. In a letter to Tikhonov, Gor’kii told of how he had suggested to Andreev that they end their correspondence: “It seems to me that [Andreev] has not climbed out of this pit, into which he has squeezed himself up to his ears. He has not climbed out because he does not want to. In reality, he likes it in this pit.”46 Gor’kii’s highly critical behaviour was not reserved for Andreev alone. Khodasevich tells of how at a celebration for H.G. Wells’s arrival in Russia in 1920, Gor’kii spoke with people about the opportunities the proletarian government had developed in the arts and sciences. “Unexpectedly A.V. Amfiteatrov, whom Gor’kii had particularly liked, stood and said something opposite to the preceding conversation. From that day onwards Gor’kii had a deep hatred for him, not at all because the writer came out against Soviet power but because he had disrupted the celebration, trouble fête.”47 In reality there was no one event that marked the end of the relationship between Andreev and Gor’kii. Andreev understood that his behaviour was to blame. In a letter of February 1908, he told Gor’kii about his depression and how he tried to drink it away. He then claimed that he had given up drinking and that Gor’kii was his only remaining friend.48 However, the basic problems remained. Andreev needed emotional support and Gor’kii could not, or would not, give it. After 1908 there was virtually no correspondence between the two for three years.49

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In 1911 Andreev tried to repair the relationship, but his attempt only led to an acrimonious exchange of letters. In a letter written at the end of February 1912, Andreev articulated what he thought was missing from their relationship; in Gor’kii’s reply, written towards the end of March, all of the fundamental problems in their relationship rose to the surface: You write: “You would never allow me and still do not allow me to be open with you.” I think this is untrue ... I have never allowed anyone to touch upon my private life and I do not intend to start now. I am I, and it is no business of anyone else where I hurt, if indeed I do hurt. To reveal one’s wounds to the world, to scratch them in public, to bathe in pus, to squirt one’s bile into people’s eyes, as many have done ... is a vile occupation, and a harmful one, of course. “Brotherhood” is not at all a matter of revealing one’s inner dirt and filth to a comrade – even though this is how we Russians understand it; it is a matter of at least maintaining a bashful silence about such things, if you are unable to destroy them. You and I drifted apart – and will continue to drift even further – not because there never emerged between us a personal relationship but because it never could appear ... We are too different.50

Gor’kii and Andreev were “too different” in what each wanted from their relationship. But Gor’kii was unable to accept any responsibility for this and instead used his portrait of Andreev to proffer a reading of the relationship that cast Andreev in a negative light. Gor’kii begins the memoir with his discovery of the unknown writer. He talks of Andreev’s “Bargamot and Garas’ka,” saying that from this story he “caught a distinct whiff of talent.”51 It is this word talent that Gor’kii uses as a double-edged sword. Talent is only positive if one lives up to expectations and, according to Gor’kii, Andreev did not. Gor’kii briefly tells about following Andreev’s career and their subsequent correspondence. He then recounts their first meeting. Of great interest is Gor’kii’s comment that Andreev “seemed to me a healthy person of unearthly happiness, capable of living while laughing at the adversities of existence.”52 Gor’kii makes this comment at the very

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beginning of the portrait because the rest of the text shows that Andreev was not happy, healthy, or able to laugh at adversity. Gor’kii proceeds to tell about Andreev’s power of intuition: “I saw that this man was little acquainted with reality, and took little interest in it – even more I was surprised by the power of his intuition, by the fertility and keenness of his imagination.”53 The first mention of his intuition is presented as a positive characteristic and will be used as proof of Andreev’s “organic talent.” Gor’kii was not alone in describing Andreev’s ability to grasp the essence of a situation or idea with the slightest bit of information.54 The first hint of Andreev’s depression is introduced with the theme of suicide. Gor’kii makes note of a scar on his friend’s hand. To a question about the scar, Andreev replies, “An equivocation of my youthful romanticism. You yourself know that a person who has not tried to kill himself is not worth much.”55 Andreev then tells of his attempt as an adolescent to throw himself under a train. Rather than entering into a discussion of suicide and the dark side of Andreev, Gor’kii sidesteps the issue and tells about the childhood game he himself played with friends of lying between railroad tracks as a freight train passed above. Why does Gor’kii not take this chance to introduce Andreev’s pessimism and depression? For one thing, Gor’kii avoids any serious discussion of his own youthful attempt at suicide. By juxtaposing his own childhood railroad game with Andreev’s adolescent suicide attempt, Gor’kii makes light of Andreev’s experience, shrugging it off as juvenile. Intentionally or not, Gor’kii is setting up the argument that while the notion of suicide may be common among boys caught up in the romantic fervour of youth, it is unacceptable in adults. When Gor’kii does begin to talk of Andreev’s depressed behaviour, he refers to Andreev as a child and strikes the pose of a disappointed teacher. Evidence of this is found in Gor’kii’s introduction to the 1925 English translation of Andreev’s novel Sashka Zhegulev.56 Gor’kii follows a discussion of Andreev’s depression with a more detailed description of Andreev’s train experience. Gor’kii does not mention his own train experience or that he had also had early suicidal tendencies.57 In this instance, the train episode is not made out to be child’s play but an early indication of Andreev’s pessimistic outlook on life. Thus, the exact same incident is presented in two different lights, depending solely on how Gor’kii associates himself with the story.

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In his portrait, Gor’kii continues to frame his argument. When Andreev asks what might have drawn them to the “absurd amusement” of their train ventures, Gor’kii suggests that maybe children simply like testing the power of their wills or playing dangerous games. Andreev replies: “No, that’s probably not right. Almost all children are afraid of the dark ...”58 This is the first glimpse into Andreev’s pessimistic outlook. More importantly, Gor’kii is foreshadowing the incident in which the depressed Andreev scares his own son, just before bedtime, with stories of death and darkness – an incident of which Gor’kii made his disapproval abundantly clear. Having eased into the subject of Andreev’s depression, Gor’kii begins to list his issues with Andreev in rapid succession. First, Gor’kii addresses the difference in their personalities and then begins his assault on Andreev as a writer. He characterizes Andreev as lazy, not committed to creating literature: “Possessing a lively and sensitive imagination, he was lazy. He liked much more to talk about literature than to create it. The delight of expending heroic efforts late into the night on a white, clean sheet of paper in silence and solitude was beyond him. He never properly appreciated the joy of covering that sheet of paper with a pattern of words.”59 The two writers had very different work habits. Khodasevich tells of Gor’kii’s rigorous, unchanging daily schedule and comments that Gor’kii did not sleep much and did not like laziness.60 Andreev, on the other hand, went through long periods of inactivity and then became consumed by his work. He asked both of his wives to assist him in his creative process, which meant long nights and feverish literary creation.61 Andreev may not have been an “ascetic” in the way that Gor’kii pictured himself; nonetheless, Gor’kii’s characterization is not exactly fair. Gor’kii continues to create an unattractive picture of Andreev. He states that Andreev wanted to strike the pose of a thinker, but that his knowledge was poor and he did not like to read. He makes it seem as if Andreev got by on his natural intuition and talent alone. Beklemisheva writes that Andreev never saw himself as a thinker or philosopher.62 Andreev read Schopenhauer and von Hartmann and he took an interest in Nietzsche. He was an avid reader as a child and “adventure” writers such as Jack London forever remained his favourites. Vadim Andreev’s strongest memory was of his father sitting and reading in the library.63

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Andreev held a law degree from Moscow University and although he might not have been as erudite as Viacheslav Ivanov, he certainly was not as ignorant as Gor’kii made him out to be. Gor’kii himself was self-educated and had an incredible memory for things that he had read. One wonders, however, whether Gor’kii was not still sensitive about his lack of formal education. Thus: “For you a book is like a savage’s fetish,” [Andreev] said to me. “This is because you have not rubbed holes in your pants on the benches of the gymnasium, because you have not come in contact with university learning.” ... I had heard these familiar words about the influence of school on one’s attitude toward literature too often, and they had long since ceased to be convincing, for one felt in them the prejudice begotten by Russian laziness ... But while regarding books and knowledge casually, indifferently, and sometimes with hostility, [Andreev] was constantly and keenly interested in what I was reading.64

Gor’kii continues by recounting how Andreev was able to grasp the very essence of a book when only a few lines had been read to him. This returns to the earlier, more positive characterization of Andreev’s natural intuition. However, after Gor’kii’s comments about laziness and lack of interest in learning, the reader finds it difficult to appreciate Andreev’s gift. This leads to Gor’kii’s main indictment – that Andreev wasted his natural talent. It could be said that Gor’kii took the literary calling more seriously. One of Gor’kii’s main concerns in writing literary portraits was to capture the high demands of the literary profession.65 He overcame great obstacles and books were his tools for success. But rather than presenting Andreev as he was, Gor’kii takes his own positive characteristics and uses them subtly to undermine Andreev’s own opposite tendencies. Thus, Gor’kii, who did not see himself as naturally gifted, wrote: “Leonid Nikolaevich was talented by nature, organically talented; his intuition was astonishingly keen.”66 Later, he makes the point even more bluntly: “I calmed him down, having said that I did not consider myself an Arabian stallion but only a dray horse. I know that I owe my successes not so much to natural talent but to the ability to work, to my love of labour.”67 Gor’kii interprets much of Andreev’s behaviour as juvenile. He introduces this idea, at first peripherally, by characterizing Andreev’s happi-

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ness as “the lively and comfortable state of a baby that has been hungry too long and now thinks it has eaten enough to last forever.”68 The reference becomes more personal when Gor’kii states: “In a word, you are a baby that does not want to feed at its nurse’s breast.”69 In the same passage Gor’kii goes one further, actually characterizing Andreev as childish: “Despite his gravitation toward pessimism there was in him something ineradicably childish – for instance, his childishly naive boasting about his verbal agility, of which he made much better use in conversation than on paper.”70 Gor’kii weaves the motifs of talent and childishness together to affirm his characterization of Andreev: “With these words he defined, with almost perfect exactness, the character and even the habits of the person about whom I was speaking – the woman did not look after herself well. I told him this. He was delighted and with childlike sincerity began to boast.”71 Throughout, Gor’kii assumes the guise variously of the amused, disappointed, or patient older brother. However, it was not only Andreev’s childishness that was at issue. The real problem was the emotional demands Andreev put on their relationship. The first mention of his depression comes midway through Gor’kii’s characterization of Andreev as juvenile. He tells about a time when their jokes about poetry led suddenly to a change in Andreev, who then told a morbid joke about Robert Burns. Gor’kii states: “I did not really like this much. I was always seriously perturbed by Leonid’s sudden and sharp fluctuations of mood.”72 In the next section of the memoir, Gor’kii begins to deal with the question directly: “I think that in each one of us live and struggle the embryos of several personalities. They argue amongst themselves until there emerges from that struggle the strongest embryo or the one most capable of adapting itself to the various impressions that form the final spiritual character of a person, thus creating a more or less integrated individual psyche. Strangely and to his own torment Leonid Andreev split into two – in one and in the same week he could sing “Hosannah” to the world and pronounce “Anathema” against it. This was not an external contradiction between the bases of his character and the habits or demands of his profession; no, in both cases he felt equally sincerely.

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And the more loudly he proclaimed Hosannah, the more powerfully resounded the echo Anathema.”73

This is Gor’kii’s attempt to understand Andreev’s severe mood swings. He would not have had the clinical vocabulary to describe Andreev’s condition. His talk of embryos of personalities, Hosannas, and Anathemas are the best that Gor’kii can do to come to grips with the chaotic behaviour with which he had been forced to deal. At the end of the discussion of Andreev’s psychological condition, Gor’kii states: “We argued more and more often, more and more intensely.”74 Within the text itself, this is the first statement of open conflict. It comes after the portrait of Andreev’s psychological condition and is followed by their disagreement over “thought.” The discussion over thought is simply an explanation of Gor’kii’s opposition to Andreev’s pessimism. In the memoir Gor’kii does not mention “pessimism,” but by the time he wrote the introduction for Sashka Zhegulev, had grown sure sure that it was Andreev’s allegiance to the philosophies of Schopenhauer and von Hartmann that had led to this pessimistic outlook.75 Some have accepted the idea of his philosophical pessimism without delving too deeply into what the term meant.76 It is unlikely that one remains under the sway of any one philosophy for one’s entire life. Therefore, to say that Andreev was pessimistic simply because he read Schopenhauer is an oversimplification. Like “embryos of personalities,” it seems that Gor’kii’s discussion of Andreev’s “thought” or “pessimism” is just another attempt to put into words the mental illness that haunted Andreev and affected his friends. Andreev probably did have an affinity for Schopenhauer in his own search for answers, but one must be careful in dismissing Andreev’s “pessimism” as a by-product of German philosophical trends. I do not want to discount the role that Schopenhauer’s philosophy played in Andreev’s biography. If we accept that Andreev experienced clinical bouts of mania and depression, during which he lacked control in his own life, then we might also accept that Schopenhauer’s description of the Will (as an uncontrollable force) and the dreadful agony of life may well have appealed to Andreev as a way to intellectualize his own illness experience. In other words, it was not his reading of Schopenhauer that coloured Andreev’s mental state but his mental state – his particular life experience – that drew him to Schopenhauer.

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Gor’kii gives a very short description of Andreev’s drinking problem and refers to it as hereditary. This leads to the account of Aleksandra Mikhailovna’s calming influence. Unlike most of the other memoirists, Gor’kii does not focus on Shura’s effect on Andreev’s drinking or on his literary career. He highlights Andreev’s psychological weakness and Shura’s strength while also absolving himself to a degree. Unlike Shura, Gor’kii could not be expected to be mother or mistress to Andreev. He is able to grasp what Andreev needed – an emotionally stabilizing force – while excusing himself from the role. Following in more or less chronological order, Gor’kii discusses Andreev’s political and literary evolution. This is followed by a long section about Andreev’s stay on Capri. Here, it is apparent that Gor’kii still has not come to terms with what Andreev had really wanted from him at the time – emotional support and sympathy. His presentation of the facts is somewhat like: Andreev’s wife died, he was very upset, the clean air did him some good, he started to write again. The most disturbing episode in Gor’kii’s memoir is the description mentioned earlier of Andreev holding his son on his lap just before bedtime and frightening him with a story about death.77 This section depicts Andreev as cruel. In creating a literary portrait, the artist is free to select the episodes he will depict in order to convey his artistic vision. Here Gor’kii captures Andreev’s tormented state; but he also shows that Andreev’s emotional pain is visited upon everyone else as well. Significantly, Gor’kii chooses to show how this affected the most defenceless – Andreev’s young son. It is not by chance that the most damning section of the memoir addresses the emotional toll that Andreev took on those around him. Just as telling, although probably unintentionally so, are Gor’kii’s comments that Andreev pretended to be suicidal to create anxiety in his friends and to hear them defend life.78 Gor’kii, it seems, was still unable to grasp Andreev’s fragile condition and made it sound as though Andreev was only playing a game. One is reminded of Andreev’s letter to Gorky in 1912 concerning his anticipation of Veresaev’s arrival on Capri so that he could discuss his thoughts of suicide. This is especially callous of Gor’kii, considering that Andreev had attempted suicide more than once in his youth. But one must remember the ground rules that Gor’kii laid down: suicide was simply the sport of overly romantic juveniles.

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Gor’kii’s inability to grasp Andreev’s predicament is highlighted by the following description of the healing effect of Capri, as Gor’kii saw it, on his troubled friend: But the cheerful scenery of the island, the caressing beauty of the sea, and the genial attitude of the Caprians to the Russians, quite quickly drove away Leonid’s gloomy mood. After about two months he was seized, as by a whirlwind, with a passionate desire for work.79 Never before or since did I see him in such a mood – such a high degree of activity, so unusually industrious. He renounced, as if it were forever, his dislike of the process of writing; and he could sit at his table all day and all night, halfdressed, unkempt, cheerful. His imagination blazed wonderfully bright and productive; nearly every day he told me the plan of a new tale or story.80

It should now be clear why Capri was so detrimental to the authors’ relationship. Here Andreev’s depression (and possibly an episode of mania) and Gor’kii’s emotional vacuity are thrown into relief. Gor’kii wished to limit the relationship to the area of literature and once Andreev had begun to write, Gor’kii was satisfied. If Gor’kii had not understood it in 1907, by 1912 it should have been clear that Andreev’s discussion of suicide was to be taken with the utmost seriousness. Andreev had expressed himself fully and still Gor’kii shows that he was unable to grasp the demands that Andreev was making on their friendship. There is no note of compassion, no admission that possibly he had not understood his friend’s grave situation, no regret. Gor’kii tells of another episode: “And instantly [Andreev] began – easily and quickly – to weave a humorous story of two friends: one a dreamer, the other a mathematician. The one spends his whole life longing to take to the skies, while the other, by carefully calculating the expense of these imaginary travels, assuredly kills once and for all the dreams of his friend.”81 Ironically, the mathematician not only kills the dreams of his friend: he also kills the friendship. In some sense Gor’kii must have understood this paradox since he chose to add the anecdote to his memoir. However, it is told in such a whimsical fashion that Andreev is again portrayed as the guilty party since he is here depicted as the dreamer. Yet, if you have killed the dreams of the dreamer, have

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you not killed the dreamer himself? For Gor’kii it is regrettable that the dreamer cannot become a mathematician (or, at least pretend to be one). Even though Andreev had begun to write again, much to Gor’kii’s satisfaction, he still displayed what Gor’kii saw as a careless disrespect for the writing profession. Gor’kii notes: “He behaved toward his talent the way a careless rider treats a superb horse ...”82 Of course, Gor’kii is ignoring the fact that Andreev was forced to use his writing as an emotional outlet in the absence of friendship. Even more importantly, Andreev probably used it as an expression of his chaotic and variable mental health. Here Gor’kii continues the theme of Andreev’s wasted talent, but he also displays his own insensitivity. The friendship had come to an end because of personal problems, but Gor’kii suggests that it was Andreev’s “Darkness” that underlay the failure of their relationship. Gor’kii could not relate to Andreev in many areas other than literature, so it is understandable that he might try to place the demise of their friendship in this context. Even when Gor’kii tried to be self-reflective about the rupture, he was blind to anything outside the boundaries of literature. Gor’kii quickly moves through the last death throes of the relationship. He states: It was only in 1916 ... [that] we both once more deeply felt how much we had gone through and what old comrades we were. But, to avoid arguing, we could speak only of the past; the present erected between us a high wall of irreconcilable differences. I shall not be violating the truth if I say that to me that wall was transparent and permeable. I saw behind it a prominent, original man, who for ten years had been very near to me, my sole friend in literary circles. Differences of outlook ought not to affect sympathies; I never allowed theories and opinions to play a decisive role in my relationships with people.83

Gor’kii has addressed the problem indirectly. It was not literary or political theories that had divided them but a difference in outlook. It was Andreev’s pessimism (depression) and Gor’kii’s constant optimism (remember Khodasevich) that created this “transparent” wall. For all of

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Gor’kii’s statements about politics and literature, he admits that in the end it really came down to a difference in outlook. In a long section added for the second edition of A Book about Leonid Andreev, many of these motifs (Andreev’s mental illness, drunkenness, disrespect for his organic talent, etc.) are repeated. There are two very telling episodes. The first involves a conversation about a fire in St Petersburg. Both Gor’kii and Andreev agree that fires are more exciting in provincial towns, where everything is made of wood. St Petersburg is made of stone, so the fires are not as fantastic. Andreev then says that Gor’kii himself is like St Petersburg – made of stonelike darkness and emptiness. Andreev says, “I hate you sometimes for that ...” Gor’kii replies that he senses this. “‘Yes,’ [Andreev] confirmed, resting his head in my lap. ‘You know why? I want you to feel my pain – then we would be closer. You already know how lonely I am!’”84 This leads to a story of how Gor’kii and Andreev met three women and how Andreev proceeded to get drunk with them. Eventually, Gor’kii’s admonishments provoke the following from Andreev: You think that I am drunk and do not understand that I am talking nonsense? No, I simply want to make you angry ... I, brother, am a decadent, a degenerate, a sick person. But Dostoevskii was also sick, like all great people. There is a book – I do not remember whose – about genius and madness, in which it is proven that genius is a psychological disease! That book ruined me. If I had not read it, I would be simpler. But now I know that I am almost a genius, but I am not sure if I am crazy enough. Do you understand, I am pretending to myself that I am crazy to persuade myself that I am talented – do you understand?85

Gor’kii underlines their love-hate relationship and blames it on Andreev’s loneliness. He also addresses Andreev’s talent/illness claim and rejects it as “contrived and therefore not true.”86 Gor’kii is not willing to excuse Andreev’s behaviour. He also is not willing to connect this organic talent or Andreev’s problems to some psychological illness.87 Certainly, this addition by Gor’kii must be seen in the context of a dialogue with or response to Chukovskii, Chulkov, and Blok. Gor’kii is rejecting out of hand the idea that Andreev suffered from any real illness and continues to depict Andreev as childish, “a decadent and a degenerate” – degenerate in the sense of a literary pose, a conventional method

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for taking on the mantle of genius. Gor’kii maintains his status as a sober stonelike older brother, while Andreev remains the drunken waster of talent. Again, there is an underlying dialogue with the first edition of A Book about Leonid Andreev: Gor’kii’s response to Blok – Andreev’s chaos is simply chaos; to Chukovskii – there is no creative spark in Andreev’s wild extravagance; to Chulkov – Andreev’s turmoil is not an illness; to all three – Andreev’s actions are nothing more than an oftenrepeated drama of booze, women, and debauchery, which ruined a friendship and wasted his organic talent.88 Gor’kii felt justified in making the argument that he had been Andreev’s good friend. He had recognized Andreev’s talent and tried to encourage the use of this natural gift. It was Andreev’s laziness, pessimism, and disrespect for the literary trade that had brought their friendship to an end. Gor’kii never seems willing to accept that Andreev may have needed the emotional support and kindness of a friend, rather than the grimace of a disapproving older brother. For Gor’kii, Andreev’s literary concerns represented the limits of his friendship.

To understand Gor’kii’s behaviour, one might recall his relationship with Grigorii as described in the autobiographical Childhood. Grigorii had worked for Gor’kii’s grandfather for many years but was rapidly losing his eyesight and would no longer be needed in the dye shop. The young Gor’kii – Alesha – promised that he would leave with Grigorii (once blind) and help him beg for food. But Alesha did not leave and even hid from Grigorii when he called out for help during the dye-shop fire. Later, when Alesha saw his old friend in the streets, he did not help him but followed behind him and watched him beg. Why is Gor’kii so averse to human frailty? In Childhood we turn to the moment when Alesha lies face down in bed after being beaten by his grandfather. The old man tries to convince his grandson that suffering will result in salvation. He even tells about his own suffering as a boy with the implication that, as psychologist Erik Erikson interprets it, “suffering explains and excuses imparting further suffering of those weaker than [oneself].”89 But Alesha does not forgive his grandfather or accept his explanation. Erikson writes in a chapter devoted to Childhood that Alesha has eluded the attempt to identify him with his tor-

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mentor, avoiding a moment of pity for himself and for his grandfather.90 That Gor’kii might later have identified with Nietzsche’s Übermensch,91 as Betty Forman posits, is not difficult to imagine. Looking at his relationship with Grigorii, Erikson says of Gor’kii: “To leave the ruins of men and systems behind seems to be a job which does not call for any expenditure of emotion.”92 Mary Loe also writes how Nietzschean philosophy gave form to Gor’kii’s own sense of self. Nietzsche offered Gor’kii not only confirmation of grandfather’s beliefs but also specific reasons for the weakness and effeminacy of male intellectuals. Like Nietzsche, Gor’kii associated weakness with effeminacy and condemned intellectuals for not demonstrating the masculine traits of aggressiveness and strength.93 More specifically relating to Andreev, Loe notes Gor’kii’s contempt for the drunken and violent behaviour of his uncles and his disappointment at finding that many Russians behaved in similar ways, “lacking the ability to control their desires and passions and pursuing their immediate selfish needs without any higher personal goal. Gorky was repelled by this lack of self-control and direction, reflecting an asceticism in him which had a strong affinity to Nietzsche’s own, and which became more pronounced as he matured.”94 Theories of the Übermensch and the theatricality of life are only descriptive ways of explaining Gor’kii’s behaviour. The fact is that for all of the warm-hearted qualities of his grandmother, it was Gor’kii’s brutal grandfather who seemed to have had the greater influence on the writer’s subsequent relationships. Just as he reneged on his promise to help Grigorii beg for food, Gor’kii withdrew his help from those whom he deemed weak. If the weak could not put a “brave face” on the situation, then Gor’kii felt contempt for them, their weakness, and their inability to reinvent themselves. Gor’kii’s coldness is linked to self-deception and the creation of his own reality. Khodasevich tells how Baroness V.I. Ikskul’ asked Gor’kii to procure an exit visa for her from Soviet officials to travel abroad. Gor’kii, having returned from Moscow, told the baroness that she would have her exit visa in a few days. The baroness sold or gave away all of her possessions in expectation of her departure. However, it soon became apparent to Khodasevich that there would be no visa, and he was left to deal with the baroness’s disappointment. Upon later learning that he had received a definite denial in Moscow concerning the exit visa, Khodase-

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vich questioned Gor’kii as to why he would blatantly lie to the old woman. Gor’kii was unable to explain his actions, and it is on the basis of such episodes that Khodasevich argues that Gor’kii often deceived himself and others when life did not conform to his own self-styled reality.95 Finding a prototype for life and actually living that life are two different matters. It is this disjunction that led Gor’kii to lie to himself and to others; to play the role of Zarathustra; to “live up to” his status of proletarian cultural hero. D.S. Mirsky once wrote: “For cold-blooded Gorky is to the last; and free-minded, if he chooses; never checked by reverence or emotion ... But in him there is an inherent vice which cripples him. With an enormous insight into reality, Gorky has no love of truth. And he has no motive to restrain him from telling half-truths and insinuating untruths, his essays more often than not become grotesque distortions of reality.”96 That being the case, it is clear that Gor’kii’s portrait of Andreev is both a search for answers and an attempt at absolution. The reality of the situation was that Andreev demanded a great deal from his friendships because of his mental instability, especially in the case of his closest friends. He was unable to play the role of Übermensch but instead reminded Gor’kii of his drunken uncles. Eventually, Gor’kii cast Andreev aside because he could not overcome his condition, he could not find that “brave face.” When Gor’kii looked back on their relationship, he could no more explain his actions regarding Andreev than he could explain his lying to the baroness. Instead, he created a portrait that blamed Andreev for the demise of their friendship. It was in the context of literature that Gor’kii could confront these issues and offer plausible answers, while also avoiding the emotional issues that he so disliked. Unfortunately, thanks to his authority in the Soviet Union, Gor’kii’s portrait greatly influenced how Andreev would be perceived. His interpretation was wedded to the general Bolshevik discourse offered by critics such as Lunacharskii and Vorovskii, who more than a decade earlier had held up Andreev as emblematic of the unstable, weak-willed, death-welcoming Russian intelligentsia. The reality is that Gor’kii did not want or was unable to understand that Andreev suffered from a mental illness that led to his heavy drinking, depression, and erratic behaviour. It also resulted in bursts of energy that made Andreev

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buoyant and enterprising and promoted his highly creative artistic periods. But Gor’kii depicts Andreev in less than sympathetic colours, and it is because of Gor’kii that Andreev has been remembered largely as a pessimistic unprofessional writer who wasted his natural talent and destroyed his friendships through drink and debauchery.

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A portrait of Andreev in his student uniform (1894) Andreev and Anna Il’inichna in Vammelsu (1910s)

A portrait of Andreev (1910–1911)

One of the last portraits of Andreev (1919)

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9 Conclusion I am a melancholic, a hypochondriac, a neuropath and a psychasthenic.1 Andreev to Goloushev in 1916.

On a July afternoon, guests enjoy the sunny weather on the terrace of Andreev’s home in Finland, reading newspapers and journals. One friend quotes a St Petersburg newspaper in which it is written that Andreev suffers from a nervous condition and that his friends are worried about his mental health. Smiling, Andreev asks everyone to attest to his madness – how he howls at the moon and chases them around like a mad dog. Vasilli Brusianin, telling this story in 1911, suggests that Andreev is healthy and that such articles are simply a result of sensational journalism.2 In 1903 Andreev wrote an open letter to the Stock Exchange News (Birzhevye vedomosti) after it was suggested that his story “The Thought” reflected his own experience in a psychiatric hospital. The paper based its comments on Andreev’s hospitalization in 1901 for “acute neurasthenia” and Dr I. Ivanov’s lecture at the time on “Leonid Andreev as Artist-Psychotherapist,” which was subsequently covered in the Stock Exchange News.3 Andreev stated in his open letters that his stay in the hospital was not for psychiatric treatment but for an internal illness – suggesting some sort of heart condition associated with fatigue. He wrote that he was willing to ignore gossip about his madness, but now that it had been reported in a publication and connected to his literary works, he wanted to state for the record that he was not mentally ill.4 In 1908 Andeev published the following open letter:

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Recently there have appeared a whole series of articles, that give information about my life, as if they had received real statements from me about various events and people. I need to state in print, once and for all, that I do not take responsibility for such articles. Very often, they appear without my knowledge and agreement and almost always distort the facts beyond recognition. They even distorted my opinions – on one occasion to such an extent that the information was arbitrary. Another time, the authors of an article simply attributed their own ideas and views to me. I beg of you readers that you take into consideration only that which is signed with my name. Leonid Andreev.5

In 1910 three articles appeared claiming that Andreev had gone mad and was suffering from an acute nervous disorder.6 Andreev answered these articles in an open letter entitled “The Madness of L. Andreev.” He wrote: “I am fed up with questions about my health. But all the same, I support this gossip that I have gone mad; now everyone will fear me, as a madman, and will finally give me some peace to work.”7 For all of this energy in defence of mental health, however, Andreev wrote to his best friend in 1915 of what sounds like a manic, followed by a depressive episode: It happens that you do a lot of work, make a lot of noise, talk a lot and talk a lot with yourself, race on your nerves at something like a gallop for a week or two – and suddenly you start to mope. That is how I am now. At first, from the middle of August, I worked without sleep and without rest, then two weeks I turned somersaults in St Petersburg, while taking the largest dose of people and telephone calls, aspirin and the theatre. I arrived home, still quite stirred up, like a parrot after a bath, with an ardent intention to quickly write a huge story and a huge comedy. For still three days I showed off and sang the high octave note “doh” – but now there is weakness and languor, like a newborn kitten. I do not like anything; do not want or wish for anything; ideas have faded; and I think with sorrow, that I am an actual secret idiot.8

It is quite clear that Andreev was concerned about his public image and realized that his fame was connected to his “personality” as much as to his literary works. In letters to Goloushev from 1915, Andreev joked about a self-portrait he had painted. It is clear that the joking tone betrayed a concern about his posthumous image. Andreev stated that his self-portrait, at that moment, was just “pure shit” and not much more

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than “the fruits of an idiot’s leisure.” However, after twenty-five years, Andreev joked, people would write about how interesting he was. The critic Konstantin Arabazhin (whom Andreev strongly disliked) would have written a psychoanalysis of him. Then it would be important that Andreev had painted a self-portrait – a portrait that showed his “anxious thoughts” and the “zig-zags of his soul.” Then the portrait would be worth something, Andreev suggested to his friend.9 These incidents show that even during Andreev’s lifetime, there was a discourse about how Leonid Andreev the popular figure would be represented and portrayed, a discourse in which Andreev himself participated and in which he tried to deflect interest in his mental health. In our modern age, this would be the domain of Andreev’s literary agent and spokesman. A Book about Leonid Andreev might be considered an unauthorized biography of sorts. Today, Andreev’s estate might enter into a legal battle with World Literature to present the Andreev that would best preserve his literary and personal legacy. Instead, A Book about Leonid Andreev is a combination of eight different portraits by eight very different people, written at a turbulent time in Russian history. It is the combination of these portraits, even with their contradictions and competing agendas, that created the posthumous image of Andreev. Nadezhda Mel’nikova-Papoushek wrote in 1922 that the memoirs of Blok and Gor’kii held particular interest because they told as much about the authors as they did about Andreev. Gor’kii’s memoir, she felt, was unexpected and unnecessary. “We do not plan to accuse Gor’kii of anything – each person writes as he sees fit and as he can, but it is all the same sad and unpleasant to read an obituary that sounds not only like an accusatory document but also a political pamphlet. All of this would have been better said while Andreev was alive and could defend himself. It is not surprising therefore that [Andreev] was so lonely, since his close friend, and fellow writer, would treat him like this.”10 The critic felt that the other memoirs offered only minor glimpses of Andreev. Nina Petrovskaia wrote in emigration that the literary establishment had produced a very depressing book. Like Mel’nikova-Papoushek, she found the “stamp” of each author on the portraits. Quoting mainly from the disheartening passages, Petrovskaia came to the conclusion that Andreev died as he lived – alone – repeating Blok’s conclusion.11 A Book about Leonid Andreev exists as a singular text, with Andreev

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as its focal point. Koliadich correctly states that often an anthology of literary portraits develops its own internal logic that presents a complete and instantaneous image of the subject.12 It is the sum total of eight portraits that creates A Book about Leonid Andreev; eight voices that combine to form one harmony, or rather polyphony. I have argued in this book that the memoirs can be split into two groups, biographical and psychological; however, it might be suggested that the unifying theme – the harmony – of all the portraits (excluding Zamiatin’s) amounts to an attempt to depict Andreev’s mental illness. Zaitsev wishes to argue that Andreev’s “broken and tormented” life was limited to his Finnish period. Belyi, Blok, and Chulkov, sensing Andreev’s “internal discord,” use modernist sensibilities to come to various conclusions about his condition. Teleshov claims that Sreda provided Andreev with the friends and support that long remained a stabilizing force in his life. Chukovskii sees his extravagant behaviour and bursts of energy as the creative impulse behind his various projects: literature, painting, and photography. Finally, Gor’kii clears the record about their friendship, claiming that it was destroyed by Andreev’s drinking and emotional demands. Taken individually, the core ideas of the portraits deal with chaos, literary classifications and circles, creative energy, etc., but read as a whole, the book speaks about Andreev: his mania, despair, anxiety, drinking, and torment. The reason why the psychological group of portraits sets the tone for the book as a whole is probably due to the fact that the first four memoirs are of the psychological type. One reads the portraits by Gor’kii, Chukovskii, Blok, and Chulkov before confronting Zaitsev’s explanation of how to conceptualize Andreev’s life. Thus the reader has already been introduced to Andreev’s drinking, suicide attempts, creative energy, “chaos,” and inner turmoil before reading the first biographical portrait. Teleshov’s portrait and finally Zamiatin’s do little to contradict the tales of mental illness. Belyi’s was added in the second edition and also addresses Andreev’s inner discord, although he interprets it as an allegiance to modernist literature. The portraits do exist outside of A Book about Leonid Andreev and that is why I addressed them individually. However, it must also be understood as the first collective statement about Andreev, in which his controversial behaviour is the core idea of a majority of the portraits. That many of the memoirs that followed this collection are in direct discourse (and possibly open confrontation) with the portraits in A Book

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about Leonid Andreev speaks to the book’s influence in shaping Andreev’s life history. Beklemisheva, Belousov, Skitalets, and Pavel Andreev address Andreev’s illness in a much more concrete fashion in memoirs after 1922, picking up where the earlier portraits left off. Pavel goes the farthest in suggesting sociological factors: poverty and the stress of supporting his family after their father’s death. The vast majority of memoirs written after 1922 address Andreev’s tormented state (often depicted as creative energy or inner turmoil), which supports the idea that the internal logic of the 1922 collection and the following discourse were explications of Andreev’s abnormal behaviour. Even today these portraits influence the way Andreev and his works are perceived. Valerii Belianin quotes Chukovskii’s portrait to help support his theory that Andreev suffered from clinical depression and, therefore, wrote “sad” texts.13 In this instance, Belianin’s theories of psycholinguistics as applied to literary texts are supported, if not shaped, by Chukovskii’s depiction of Andreev’s inner world. It is therefore very important to explore Andreev’s illness as well as the portraits that first attempted to describe it. This exploration eventually leads back to the authors themselves. In this sense, A Book about Leonid Andreev is also the starting point for the authors’ own internal struggles with historical, political, social, cultural, or personal pressures. A by-product of looking at each portrait is that the authors themselves come into greater focus. Belyi continued to claim Andreev for the modernist movement, letting go of his impulse to make Andreev “one of us” only in the 1930s. Zaitsev projected onto Andreev his own feelings of isolation while at his father’s estate in the Tula district and persisted in this interpretation after he had left Russia. Blok understood Andreev from a distance because of his own relationship with mental illness. Teleshov knew that his legacy was connected to Sreda and made sure that Andreev’s was too. Chulkov’s relationship with Andreev was superficial and his ideas about Andreev’s inner turmoil were vague and suggest a modernist influence. Chukovskii was the constant literary critic, who saw Andreev’s life in literary terms. Finally, Gor’kii was playing the role of a Russian Zarathustra, unable to deal with the human frailty or emotions that interfered in his relationship with Andreev. The insights into the authors and their portraits suggest a re-evaluation of Andreev’s posthumous legacy. Edel, in discussing the role of the literary biographer, touches upon Henry James’s literary portrait of Russell Lowell:

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We, from our distance, more than half a century later, and many years after James’ death, find that time has further summarized Lowell and made him more remote. A certain staleness pervades his writings – they seem bookish and derivative; he has stepped into a greater shadow; at moments he seems to us, in our twentieth-century sophistication, a figure naive and parochial; he lives for us vividly only in some of his essays and lectures and largely when a writer, like James, succeeds in making him vivid for us. The figure of James, along with other of Lowell’s contemporaries, has moved into the records of Lowell’s life; and the biographer, his task more complex than ever, must himself move among these shadows and documents and “points of view,” called upon to sift, to evaluate, to re-create.14

This book has been an exercise in sifting, evaluating, and re-creating. In much the same way as with Russell Lowell, it may be argued that Andreev’s literary works today seem parochial. It is important to remember, however, that Andreev was the most popular and successful literary figure in Russia at the turn of the century. This is clear from the eight literary portraits that constitute A Book about Leonid Andreev. But they conveyed much more than Andreev’s significance as a popular figure: they created a discourse that determined how Andreev was to be remembered. Nietzsche once wrote, “If a temple is to be erected a temple must be destroyed.”15 Thus, in this book, the portraits of Andreev have been examined and subjective material has been identified and stripped away. The chapters dealing with the biographical portraits may seem like little more than the elimination of what are perhaps the most interesting aspects of the memoirs: their culturally influenced myth making. However, this is the first step in building a new understanding of Andreev. The destruction of this subjective material allows for an examination of Andreev’s life history in the discourse of mental illness – a discourse that asks critics to look at Andreev’s literary works in a new way; that offers new insights into his relationships with literary figures; and that suggests that Andreev scholars reinterpret their approaches to Andreev’s social, historical and literary biographies. Only by stripping away the old mythologies can we look again at Teleshov’s memoir, for example, and realize that his core idea is relevant because we now understand that Andreev made great emotional demands on the people close to him because of his condition. This means that the friendships offered

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by Sreda were very important for his psychological stability, highlighting the idea that Sreda’s role in Andreev’s life was not strictly literary or political. Further insight is gained into Zaitsev’s claim that only the second half of Andreev’s life was tragic. The modernists’ interpretations are also refocused and possibly better understood. Each of the portraits can add to our understanding of Andreev’s condition, when viewed in the light of mental illness. Virginia Woolf, Robert Lowell, and Sylvia Plath are just a few examples of authors whose history of mental illness is well documented and understood as a contributing factor to their literary legacy. Comprehending their illness experiences and the demands it made on their lives has expanded not only our understanding of their literary works but of who they were as people. Until now, Andreev has not been afforded the same opportunity. For the most part, much of the discourse has been mired in questions about literary camps, the influence of German philosophical ideas, political allegiances, sociological factors, and much more that was relevant and yet, at the same time, slightly off the mark. This book has tried to disrupt those interpretations in order to interject a dialogue about mental health, a line of discourse the portraits clearly seem to raise. Once mental illness is included in the discussion, the issues of literary camps, philosophical and sociological influences gain a new relevance. It is difficult to imagine a discourse involving Plath that would ignore her manic-depression. It is to be hoped that this will be the case for Andreev too. Mental illness and its effects are unavoidable. It is an intrusive illness, which caused Andreev and those in contact with him much suffering. It also probably enhanced his literary career and can be felt in the manic frenzy and deep pessimism of many of his works. Andreev denied for the public his periods of illness and vigorously attacked the critics who associated his literary works with his illness experiences, but we must view these reactions in their social and cultural context. Andreev was concerned with his public image and realized that his fame was connected to his “personality” as much as to his literary works. At the time, mental illness was something to hide or deny. After all, bookstores in 1910 did not have self-help sections and were not stocking “survivor tales” (for cancer, aids, leukemia). David B. Morris makes the argument that mental illness at the turn of the century was associated with “female pain.” Male pain was much more open and tended to be

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manifested in aggressive displays in public spaces, as with street fights or combat.16 It is not surprising, therefore, that Andreev might be ashamed of his mental condition and try to contextualize it as “male” in many of his literary works. Several of Andreev’s stories are directly or indirectly about madness and mental illness – “Phantoms,” “The Thought,” “Red Laugh,” and “The Thief” to name a few. Each one of these stories could be read as an exploration of madness within the “male” arena of pain. Yet since Andreev wanted to keep his personal life separate from his literary life, this “taboo subject” created an uncomfortable situation for those who were to write about his “inner world” after his death. Andreev was hospitalized several times, lost siblings to mental illness, frequently complained to friends of various ailments, and wrote about madness, yet he was adamant that he did not want his literary legacy to be associated with personal pain and mental illness. It is the tension between these factors that is felt in many of the literary portraits. Because the contributors were so influential, A Book about Leonid Andreev was, and may still be, the most significant statement about Andreev, as well as the first. The fact that the Zaitsev and Zamiatin portraits were republished in the West; that Blok, Chukovskii, Gor’kii and Teleshov, were accepted Soviet writers; that Belyi and Chulkov were caught up in Russia’s renewed infatuation with modernist writers today, has meant that the portraits of Andreev have been regularly read and reread in the West, in the Soviet Union, and now in present-day Russia. It is also significant that Prideaux Press chose to reprint A Book about Leonid Andreev in 1970 (although without the Belyi portrait), providing Western scholars with an accessible text. With the revived interest in Andreev studies, especially in Russia, it is important to revisit Andreev’s posthumous reputation, just as scholars are doing for Gor’kii and many others. It may come to pass that other scholars will offer a different explanation for Andreev’s behaviour, but the desired effect is an evolution of thought regarding Andreev, his life, and his works. In this book, I have confronted the tales of Andreev’s abnormal behaviour and suggested a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Highlighting a medical view of Andreev’s life history is not meant to deny or diminish the validity of other approaches – sociological, philosophical, or historical – in the extant scholarship. Rather, it asks scholars engaged in Andreev studies to confront the author’s biography and the tales of his abnormal behaviour in a new way. In a country that accepts a greater

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degree of alcoholic and chaotic behaviour in its creative artists, it is a challenge to discuss behaviour that is usually seen as “acceptable” for writers, without searching for a plausible reason for such conduct. Understanding and accepting mental illness causes a fundamental shift in how scholars must deal with Andreev. Should “Red Laugh” be read as a text created during a manic phase? Could Andreev’s clinical depression account for his highly personalized reading of Schopenhauer’s pessimistic philosophy? Can we continue to identify Andreev as a lonely gloomy writer without considering what that means in the context of his mental health? Is it not relevant when researching Daniil Andreev to consider that his father suffered from a hereditary mental illness? Refocusing Andreev’s posthumous legacy is the first step in creating a shift in Andreev studies.17 Logic states that mental illness is so pervasive that it affects and influences every aspect of the sufferer’s life. The fact that Andreev’s illness has been ignored in recent scholarship suggests that there is an axiomatic terra incognita in Andreev studies that begs to be further explored. Once scholars engaged confront Andreev’s mental illness and begin to look at the memoir literature in a new light, then the discourse may be reinterpreted, beginning and ultimately ending with A Book about Leonid Andreev, which provided our first posthumous glimpse at the most popular writer in Russia at the turn of the century.

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Notes

A B B R E V I AT I O N S

IRLI LRA RGALI

Institure of Russian Literature, Pushkin House, St Petersburg Leeds Russian Archive, Leeds University, UK Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, Moscow I N T RO D U C T I O N

1 Chukovskii, “Iz vospominani: o L.N. Andreeve”; Gor’kii, “Leonid Andreev,” Zhizn’ iskusstva; Blok, “Pamiati L. Andreeva.” Memorial evenings dedicated to Andreev at which memoirs were read were held on 15 November 1919 in Petrograd and on 18 February 1920 in Moscow. 2 For example see: Gorky, Reminiscences of Leonid Andreyev; Teleshov, A Writer Remembers: Reminiscences. CHAPTER ONE

Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 2d ed. Kaun, Leonid Andreev: A Critical Study. Fatov, Molodye gody Leonida Andreeva. Andreev and Beklemisheva, eds., Rekviem: Sbornik Pamiati Leonida Andreeva. 5 Andreeva, Dom na Chernoi rechke: Povest’. 6 A partial list of the major publications would include: Afonin, Leonid

1 2 3 4

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7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22

Notes to pages 146–8

Andreev; Anisimov, ed., Literaturnoe nasledstvo: Gor’kii i Leonid Andreev: Neizdannaia perepiska; Woodward, Leonid Andreyev: A Study; Newcombe, Leonid Andreev; Afonin, Andreevskii sbornik: Issledovaniia i materialy; Iezuitova, Tvorchestvo Leonida Andreeva, 1892–1906; Kurliandskaia, Tvorchestvo Leonida Andreeva: Issledovaniia i materialy; Bezzubov, Leonid Andreev i traditsii russkogo realizma; Chuvakov, Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev: Bibliografiia, vypusk 1; Sochineniia i teksty; Chuvakov, Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev: Bibliografiia, vypusk 2; Literatura 1900–1919; Keldysh and Koz’menko, Leonid Andreev: Materialy i issledovaniia; Koz’menko, Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev: Bibliografiia, vypusk 2a; Annotirovannyi catalog Sobraniia retsenzii Slavianskoi biblioteki Khel’sinskogo universiteta. Egerton, “The Politics of Memory,” 3. Vatnikova-Prizel, O russkoi memuarnoi literature: Kriticheskie analizy i bibliographiia, 18. In Russian literature, examples would include Teleshov’s Notes of an Author (Zapiski pisatelia) or Herzen’s Past and Thoughts (Byloe i dumy). The Russian word byt’ is usually defined as common, everyday existence. Tager, Tvorchestvo Gor’kogo sovetskoi epokhi, 76–82. Barakhov, Literaturnyi portret. (Istoki, poetika, zhanr), 15–16. Vatnikova-Prizel, 24–39. Barakhov creates a system of classification for four types of literary portrait: 1) the memoir-autobiographical kind that is written by a writer about another writer; 2) the documentation kind of memoir that relies on letters and other documents; 3) the critical memoir that critically examines the work and life of an artist; 4) the “scientificmonographic investigation of the works of a famous individual of literature.” Using this system of classification, my discussion will centre on the first type. See Barakhov, “Iskusstvo literaturnogo portreta,” 152. Nadel, Biography: Fiction, Fact and Form, 121. Barakhov, Iskusstvo literaturnogo portreta. Gor’kii o V.I. Lenine, L.N. Tolstom, A.P. Chekhove, 13. Kardin, “Segodnia o vcherashnem,” 51–4. Bruss, Autobiographical Acts, 72. Barakhov, Iskusstvo literaturnogo portreta. Gor’kii o V.I. Lenine, L.N. Tolstom, A.P. Chekhove, 23–4. See Hayden White, “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact,” 81–100, and the introduction to Metahistory, The Historical Imagination in 19th Century Europe, 1–42. Nadel, Biography: Fiction, Fact and Form, 9. Harris, “Diversity and Discourse,” 26. Harris, “An Inquiry into the Function of the Autobiographical Mode,” 202.

Notes to pages 148–53

23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30 31

32

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Barakhov, “Iskusstvo literaturnogo portreta,” 162. Ginzburg, O psikhologicheskoi proze, 6. Ibid., 250. Ibid., 137. Levitskii, “Gde zhe predel sub”ektivnosti?,” 109. As a counterargument to the idea that subjectivity interferes with the historical truth, Barakhov states that subjectivity is not always in opposition to an objective description of the individual. At times, it is this subjectivity (or artistic freedom) that allows the artist to characterize the past and to create a faithful depiction of the individual’s milieu. In fact, he argues that subjectivity expands the possibilities of the artist to convey biographical events and facts. See Barakhov, Literaturnyi portret, 273. Chukovskii, Dnevnik 1901–1929, 120–1. Blok, Zapisnye knizhki 1901–1921, 480. For example, see Dolgov, “Teatr Andreeva: Klochki vospominanii”; Azov, “Otryvki ob Andreeve”; Belenson, “Vospominaniia (Melochi v zhizni iskusstva)”; Kaufman, “Andreev v zhizni i v svoikh proizvedeniiakh”; Chirikov, “Leonid Andreev”; Belousov, “Razdvoenie lichnosti. Iz perepiski i vospominanii o L.N. Andreeve”; Belousov, “Shutki L. N. Andreeva”; Vasilevskii, “Pamiatnaia vstrecha s L. Andreevym.” Fatov, Molodye gody Leonida Andreeva; Galant, “Psikhopatologicheskii obraz Leonida Andreeva. Leonid Andreev isteronevrastenicheskii genii,” 147–65; Kleinbort, “Vstrechi. L. Andreev”; Kugel’, List’ia s dereva. Vospominaniia, 82–95; Beklemisheva, Rekviem: Pamiati Leonida Andreeva; Veresaev, Rekviem: Pamiati Leonida Andreeva; Vadim Andreev, Detstvo: Povest’. Zinsser, Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, 14–15. Barakhov makes the argument that the nineteenth-century literary portrait, represented by Herzen, is interested in “the reflection of history in the individual,” while the twentieth-century literary portrait, represented by Gor’kii, is concerned with the personal characteristics of the individual. In many ways, organizing the memoirs into “biographical” and “psychological” may reflect this difference in artistic approach along the lines of nineteenth- and twentieth-century creative perspective. See Barakhov, “Iskusstvo literaturnogo portreta,” 152–4. In a later study, Barakhov suggests that at the beginning of the twentieth century, the literary portrait develops into an independent genre and part of this evolution is shown in a concentration on depicting the “character” (philosophical, psychological, sociological), rather than just the historical biography of the individual. See Barakhov, Literaturnyi portret, 146–7. Koliadich makes a similar distinction (biographical/personal) in the portraits of Zaitsev. However, she classifies them as portrait-biography and literary

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36

37 38

39 40 41

Notes to pages 153–7

portrait respectively. See Koliadich, Vospominaniia pisatelei. Problemy poetiki zhanra, 81. Kardin, “Segednia o vcherashnem,” 44. Viacheslav Grechnev argues that the reader’s main interest in a memoir is to find the line of discourse that is independent of the author’s own life and judgments (Grechnev, “Pisateli o pisateliakh,” 194). Arguably, it is more to the point that the reader is interested both in the author’s “self-creation” and in how his or her subjectivity affects the portrait of the subject. For example, a reader would expect Symbolist rhetoric in the portraits by Belyi or Blok but not in the portraits by Chukovskii or Gor’kii. Indeed, it is precisely this Symbolist influence that makes a portrait by Belyi different from a portrait by Gor’kii. (B. Bialik suggests that Gor’kii and Korolenko each create portraits of “their own Chekhov,” because each author addresses the characteristics of the subject that are closest to their own. Bialik considers this a positive, ignoring the possibility of highly subjective interpretations. See Bialik, “Moi Gor’kii,” 6.) Therefore, a reader approaches the Belyi memoir with certain expectations and is interested in how this expected subjectivity will influence the portrait of the subject. The reader, being aware of this subjectivity to a greater or lesser degree, then searches (possibly unconsciously) for the line of discourse that is free of the author’s judgment. For a more detailed discussion of Zamiatin’s literary portrait, see Frederick H. White, “Zamiatin’s Fact and Fiction: Andreev, Mrs Fitzgerald and the 1905 Revolution,” 165–84. Kadar, “Coming to Terms: Life Writing – from Genre to Critical Practice,” 12. E. Bushkanets gives several points for working with memoirs. These points speak to the various factors that can influence a text. Bushkanets argues that the authenticity of the memoir must be checked. Did the author actually know or meet the subject? The ideological-political stance and the character of the author must be taken into account, as well as any changes of opinions about events or ideology. The length of time between when the memoir was written and when the events happened and also censorship restrictions are important to consider. Documentary materials, either referred to or used in a memoir, can cause gaps in time referencing. Finally, the critic must be aware of when authors are in dialogue with other memoirs about a subject or a certain event. See Bushkanets, Memuarnye istochniki. Uchebnoe posobie k spetskursu. Barakhov, Iskusstvo literaturnogo portreta, 19, Literaturnyi portret, 85; and Vatnikova-Prizel, 119. Barakhov, Literaturnyi portret, 19–29. Koliadich, Vospominaniia pisatelei, 13–21, 91.

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42 For a very good general history of the Russian memoir see Tartakovskii, Russkaia memuaristika XVIII-pervoi poloviny XIX v., and Russkaia memuaristika i istoricheskoe soznanie XIX veka. 43 The two have explicit or implicit implications for each other. In some sense, psychobiography can be seen as a subcategory of psychohistory. 44 Erikson, Young Man Luther, 13–22. 45 Runyan, Life Histories and Psychobiography, 202. 46 Loewenberg, Decoding the Past: The Psychological Approach, 15–16. 47 Runyan, Life Histories, 147. 48 There is a large body of critical material that argues that diseases are socially and culturally constructed. For a discussion of the social construction of disease see Ziporyn, Nameless Diseases; Waxler, “Learning to be a Leper”; Engelhardt, Jr, “The Disease of Masturbation.” 49 The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association is meant to provide a taxonomy for mental disorders. However, cynics argue that political, cultural, racial, and gender prejudices have shaped what are purportedly objective disease syndromes. 50 Neuman, “Autobiography: From Different Poetics to a Poetics of Differences,” 223. 51 Agenosova, Russkaia literatura XX veka, 11 klass. Uchebnik dlia obshcheobrazovatel’nykh uchebnykh zavedenii, 137. 52 Ibid., 138. 53 Ibid., 139. 54 Ibid., 139–40. 55 Ibid. 56 Terras, Handbook of Russian Literature, 21. 57 Many of Andreev’s works were read within the context of mental illness until the end of the 1920s. The critical methods and overall knowledge of mental illness at the time were limited and the critical work was rather narrow in focus. For example see Amenitskii, Analiz geroia “Mysli”: K voprosu o paranoidnoi psikhopatii; Ianishevskii, “Geroi rasskaza L.Andreeva ‘Mysl’ s tochki zreniia vracha-psikhiatra”; Ivanov, “Leonid Andreev kak khudozhnik-psikhopatolog”; Kube, Koshmary zhizni: Kritiko-psikhologicheskii ocherk o L.Andreeve, Pshibyshevskom i dr. sovremennykh pisateliakh; Platonov, “Ekaterina Ivanovna” L.Andreeva: (Sudebno-psikhopatologicheskii etiud); Rybakov, Sovremennye pisateli i bol’nye nervy: Psikhatricheskie etiudy; Shaikevich, Psikhopatologiia i Literatura; Tkachev, Patologicheskoe tvorchestvo. As Andreev’s works were discussed less and less in Soviet criticism, the issue of his mental condition disappeared. Once he was rediscovered in the 1960s, scholarly concentration was directed at recovering his published and unpublished literary and

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Notes to pages 161–8

journalistic works. Most biographical scholarship, as mentioned above, has centred on one of two approaches: philosophical or sociological. Neither of these approaches addresses Andreev’s medical history or the ongoing discussion during his lifetime about his mental health. 58 Edel, Literary Biography, 24–5. C H A P T E R T WO

1 See “Molodost’ Leonida Andreeva,” 3; “Leonid Andreev v zrelye gody,” 2–3; Moskva; “O Leonide Andreeve,” 3; “Dni Sud’by [O L. Andreeve i M. Gor’kom],” 2–3; “Leonid Andreev. (Iz vospominanii),” 8. 2 Zaitsev, Sochineniia v trekh tomakh, vol. 1, 10. 3 I will continue to refer to the publishing house by its Russian name as it is hardly ever translated. 4 Zaitsev, Sochineniia v trekh tomakh, vol. 1, 18. 5 Pritykino was located in the Tula district in western Russia. 6 The Russian titles for the works mentioned are as follows: Moskva, Daleko, Puteshestvie Gleba: Zaria, Tishina, Iunost’, and Drevo Zhizni. 7 “Standard interpretation” here means that most biographical surveys of Andreev’s life tend to divide his life and career into two parts and portray the second half as significantly worse than the first (see textual examples in chapter 1). 8 Zaitsev is mistaken. The maiden name of Andreev’s first wife was Veligorskaia. 9 Zaitsev, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 129. 10 Zaitsev, Moskva. 11 Zaitsev, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 137. 12 Ibid., 138–9. 13 Ibid., 143–4. 14 Ibid., 145. 15 Ibid., 146. 16 Zaitsev, “Boris Zaitsev: Strannoe puteshestvie. Rasskazy, ocherki, pis’ma,” 93. 17 Zaitsev, “Molodost’ Leonida Andreeva,” 3; “Leonid Andreev v zrelye gody,” 2–3. 18 Kaun, Leonid Andreyev: A Critical Study, 75. 19 LRA, MS 606\G. 8. ii. Letter of 20 November 1898. 20 His works of that time include: “At the Station” (Na stantsii), “Spring Promises” (Vesennie obshchaniia), “The Life of Vasilii Fiveiskii” (Zhizn’ o.Vasiliia Fiveiskogo), “There is No Forgiveness” (Net proshcheniia), “Phantoms” (Prizraki), “The Red Laugh” (Krasnyi Smekh), “The Thief”

Notes to pages 168–74

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

36 37 38 39 40 41 42

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(Vor), “Ben-Tovit” (Ben-Tovit), “Marseillaise” (Marsel’eza), “The Christians” (Khristiane), “Lazarus” (Eleazar), “The Governor” (Gubernator), To the Stars (K zvezdam), Savva (Savva) “So It Was” (Tak bylo), and The Life of Man. See Chuvakov, Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev: Bibliografiia, vypusk 1; Sochineniia i teksty, 40–6. Davies, ed., Leonid Andreyev: Photographs by a Russian Writer, 13. Zaitsev, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 130–1. Gor’kii, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 58–60. Nazarov and Afonin, “Vospominaniia B. K. Zaitseva o Leonide Andreeve,” 230. Andreev, S. O. S., 23. Piskunov, Chastyi ritm Mnemoziny (Memuary russkogo “serebrianogo veka” i russkogo zarubezha), 39. Andreev, S.O.S., 38. Here Chukovkii is actually mistaken. Her name was Matil’da and she changed it to Anna. Chukovskii, Dnevnik 1901–1929, 118. Chukovskii states that no one could stand Andreev’s new wife and they had begun to “boycott” her. See Chukovskii, Dnevnik 1901–1929, 39. Andreev, “Polunochnoe solntse moe ... : Pis’ma Leonida Andreeva Anne Il’inichne Andreevoi-Denisevich,” 47 footnote 5. Andreev, S. O. S., 38. Andreev and Beklemisheva, eds., Rekviem, 204. Zaitsev, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 138–139. Valentin Andreev, “Chto pomniu ob ottse,” 236. He published Anathema (Anatema), Gaudeamus, The Ocean (Okean), Ekaterina Ivanovna, The Beautiful Sabines (Prekrasnye sabinianki), Professor Storitsyn, The Mark of Cain (Kainova pechat’ (Ne ubii)), King, Law and Freedom (Korol’, zakon i svoboda), The Thought (Mysl’), He Who Gets Slapped (Tot, kto poluchaet poshchechiny), Dear Phantoms (Milye prizraki), Requiem (Rekviem), Monument, A Horse in the Senate (Kon’ v senate), Waltz of the Dogs (Sobachii vals’), and Samson in Chains (Samson v okovakh). The last two were published posthumously. See Chuvakov, comp., Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev, 53–71. Davies, ed., Leonid Andreyev: Photographs by a Russian Writer, 15. Kipen, Rekviem: Pamiati Leonida Andreeva, 179. Kaun, Leonid Andreyev, 84. A. Maniushko, “V gostiakh u Leonida Andreeva,” 58–9. Zaitsev, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 140–1. Zaitsev, Andreevskii sbornik, 231. Sergeev-Tsenskii adds to this motif with his story of Andreev’s villa. He asked Andreev why he built such a large house and Andreev answered that

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49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

57 58 59

Notes to pages 174–81

when a publisher came to offer him an advance for his literary works, the size of the house would increase the amount of the advance. Although Andreev might have said this, the reason that his house was nicknamed “Villa Advance” is because it was built with money advanced to him – not to increase the amount of future advances. See Sergeev-Tsenskii, “Moia perepiska i znakomstvo s A. M. Gor’kim,” 240–1. Andreev and Beklemisheva, eds., Rekviem, 195–276. Beklemisheva’s memoir is concerned with the Finnish period of Andreev’s life and provides an excellent response to Zaitsev’s comments on this period. Ibid., 268. Kaun, 138–9. Woodward, Leonid Andreyev: A Study, 265. Kaun, Leonid Andreyev, 163. Here I use a small “s” to make the distinction between Andreev’s attempts at symbolic art and the “official” Symbolism of the time. As will be discussed in the chapters involving Belyi and Blok, Andreev’s play The Life of Man was warmly greeted by the Symbolists, however, his subsequent plays (such as Tsar Hunger) were criticized by these same Symbolists for employing allegory rather than symbol. Kaun addresses many of these issues quite well in his study: see Leonid Andreyev, 106–112. Pavel Andreev, “Vospominaniia o Leonide Andreeve,” 174. Elpat’evskii, “Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev: Iz vospominaniia,” 276. IRLI, f. 9, op. 2, n. 4, l. 43. Letter of 18 July 1916 from Andreev to Andrei Andreev. Zaitsev, “Moskva,” in Sochineniia v trekh tomakh, vol. 2, 427–8. Cited in Nazarova and Puzin, “Boris Zaitsev i Tul’skii krai,” 78. Cited in Zybalov, “Pis’ma B.K. Zaitseva k G.I. Chulkovu,” 303. Ibid. Zaitsev was to leave Russia for good in 1922. Living abroad would have exacerbated the feelings of isolation that he experienced in Pritykino. That is probably why Zaitsev maintains (if not strengthens) this core idea for Andreev in his émigré publications. Cited in Nazarova and Puzin, “Boris Zaitsev i Tul’skii krai,” 78. Koliadich, Vospominaniia pisatelei. Problemy poetiki zhanra, 113–16. Piskunov, Chastyi ritm Mnemoziny, 40. CHAPTER THREE

1 Belyi was one of the Symbolist poets who, until 1907, published in the journal The Golden Fleece (Zolotoe Runo). His programmatic poem “Argonauts” (Argonavty) appeared in the journal in 1903.

Notes to pages 181–5

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2 Alexandrov, “Kotik Letaev, The Baptized Chinaman, and Notes of the Eccentric,” 145. 3 Fleishman, “Bely’s Memoirs,” 229–31. Another work of interest is Castellano, “Andrey Bely’s Memories of Fiction,” 66–98. 4 Fleishman, “Bely’s Memoirs,” 234. 5 Ibid., 215. 6 In a note Belyi writes, “The words of Gor’kii.” 7 Belyi, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 179–80. 8 The term “modernists” is used in this chapter to represent all the different factions of Decadence/Symbolism. It is not meant to include the entire Modernist movement of the twentieth century. Therefore, it does not include Acmeism and Futurism but does include Mystical Anarchism. I am also using the term realist with a small “r” to avoid associations with the nineteenth-century Realist tradition. This is the realist tradition that follows from Chekhov and Korolenko – the movement toward the short story and urban life – rather than the nineteenth-century tradition of the novel, as associated with Tolstoi and Dostoevskii. Many of these classifications and titles are presently being reinterpreted and redefined, but this chapter is not meant to enter into that dialogue. A great deal of energy has been spent discussing whether Andreev was a “realist” or a “Symbolist.” Bezzubov confronts this issue quite well in the conclusion of his book on the subject (see Leonid Andreev i traditsii russkogo realizma). It is a fact that Andreev did not see himself as a strict member of any one literary group. His early works are more closely related to “realistic” trends and some of his works after 1906, especially his plays The Life of Man and Tsar Hunger, were written in the spirit of the Symbolist movement. However, membership in these literary groups seemed to rely heavily on socioeconomic background and Andreev did not fit the intellectual and social mould of the modernists. Andreev’s personal life was connected to writers of the “realist” camp and Andreev himself disliked the majority of modernist works. 9 Belyi, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 184–5. 10 Belyi, Mezhdu dvukh revoliutsii, 179–80. 11 G. Tasteven wrote to Chulkov in 1908 that the Golden Fleece had to adopt a new tactic in its “argument” over Symbolism. Tasteven suggested that the discourse should move from a theoretical to a more practical basis. He wanted to come out against “decadence” as a “tragic relationship with life” as represented by Andreev. However, in the same letter Tasteven states: “You agree, don’t you, to write about Andreev, underlining the enormous moral strength of his talent against the hooligan criticism of The Scales.” See Khrapchenko and Shcherbina, eds., Literaturnoe nasledstvo, book 3, vol. 92, 326–7.

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Notes to pages 185–91

12 I will continue to refer to the publishing house by its Russian name as it is hardly ever translated. 13 Luker, An Anthology of Russian Neo-Realism, 14. 14 Mysliakova, “Kontseptsiia tvorchestva Leonida Andreeva v simvolistskoi kritike,” 28–30. 15 Vesy, no. 2 (1904): 46. 16 Lavrov and Maksimov, “Vesy,” 73–4. 17 Ibid., 84. 18 Il’ev, “Leonid Andreev i simvolisti,” 205. 19 Vesy, no. 12 (1904): 71–2. 20 Vesy, no. 3 (1909): 74–8. 21 Il’ev, “Leonid Andreev i simvolisti,” 207. 22 Vesy, no. 5 (1906): 65. 23 Il’ev, “Leonid Andreev i simvolisti,” 206. 24 Belyi, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 189. 25 Keldysh, “Sborniki tovarishchestva ‘Znanie,’” 256–64. 26 Muratova, Gor’kii i Leonid Andreev neizdannaia perepiska, 31. 27 Mysliakova, “Kontseptsiia tvorchestva Leonida Andreeva v simvolistskoi kritike,” 11–12. 28 For a flattering article on Gippius’s vitriolic critical stance toward Andreev see Pachmuss, “Leonid Andreev as Seen by Zinaida Gippius,” 141–54. 29 Pereval, no. 5 (1907): 51. 30 Mysliakova, dissertation, “Kontseptsiia tvorchestva Leonida Andreeva v simvolistskoi kritike,” 83. 31 Belyi, “Smert’ ili vozrozhdenie?,” 446. Originally published in Literaturno-khudozhestvennaia nedelia (17 September 1907). 32 “Iz pisem o teatre” (From Letters about the Theatre),Vesy, no. 6 (1907): 93–8. 33 Vesy, no. 7 (1907): 59. 34 Andreev is reported to have said in response to Krainy’s article: “My heroes are terrified to be in a grave with Kuzmin’s heroes!” See Pil’skii, Kriticheskie stat’i, 13. 35 Il’ev, “Leonid Andreev i simvolisti,” 208. 36 Ibid., 210–11. 37 Rice, Valery Briusov and the Rise of Russian Symbolism, 103–5. 38 Belyi, “Simvolizm i sovremennoe russkoe iskustvo,” 269–72. When first published in The Scales, the article was called “Simvolism i russkoe iskusstvo.” It was republished with the expanded title in 1910 in Lug zelenyi. 39 Vesy, no. 3 (1909): 74–8. Belyi was not the only one making this claim in 1908. Filosofov argued that Gor’kii and Briusov represented the two

Notes to pages 191–9

40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

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extremes of the literary scene and that Andreev stood in the middle “and drinks water from both springs. Both camps consider him theirs.” See D. Filosofov, “Dela domashnie,” Tovarishch, no. 373 (1908), as quoted in Nemerovskaia and Vol’pe, Sud’ba Bloka, 133. Anisimov, ed., Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vol. 72, 305. Rice, Valery Briusov and the Rise of Russian Symbolism, 108–11. Vesy, no. 9 (1909): 105. Kulova, “L. Andreev i A. Gor’kii razmezhevanie sil russkoi literatury,” 74–5. Anisimov, ed., Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vol. 72, 31–33. Il’ev, “Leonid Andreev i simvolisti,” 214–5. Ibid, 214. Anisimov, ed., Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vol. 72, 351. Vadim Andreev, Istoriia odnogo puteshestviia, 264. Mysliakova, “Kontseptsiia tvorchestva Leonida Andreeva v simvolistskoi kritike,” 183. CHAPTER FOUR

1 Teleshov, “Vse prokhodit (iz literaturnykh vospominanii). Kruzhok ‘Sreda,’” 218–34. 2 Some episodes have been moved to other parts of the book, but there have been no major additions or subtractions of material. 3 Teleshov, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 149–50. 4 Ibid., 161–3. 5 S. Malakhovym-Razumvskii loosely organized a group of writers, artists, and musicians in 1883 called “Parnas.” The “Parnas” group and Tikhomirov’s “Saturdays” group eventually joined together through the guidance of Teleshov. The meetings for this circle were first held on Tuesdays and then moved to Wednesdays, resulting in the name Sreda Literary Circle. 6 Teleshov, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 151. Andreev worked on this story from 1899 to1901. The final version is dated 27 November 1901 but was never published. Teleshov, remembering the story, did ask Andreev to publish it in a collection of unpublished works of Sreda writers, but Andreev declined in a letter of 30 April 1909. “The Little Ruffian,” which uses his hometown, Orel, as its point of reference, is typical of Andreev’s early works. Elements of this story can be found in another text – “On the River” (Na reke). 7 Belousov, Literaturnaia sreda: Vospominaniia, 1880–1928, 110. 8 Ninov, M. Gor’kii i Iv. Bunin: Istoriia otnoshenii, problemy tvorchestva, 175–84.

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Notes to pages 199–202

9 Iulii Bunin lists twenty works read by Andreev at Sreda meetings: “Silence” (Molchanie), “The Abyss” (Bezdna), “The Thought” (Mysl’), “Furniture” (Mebel’), “In the Fog” (V tumane), “At the Station” (Na stantsii), “Marseillaise” (Marsel’eza), “Day of Crucifixion” (Den’ rapiatiia), “The Life of Vasilii Fiveiskii” (Zhizn’ Vasiliia Fiveiskogo), Tsar (Tsar’), “Red Laugh” (Krasnyi cmekh), “The Life of Man” (Zhizn’ cheloveka), Savva (Savva), “Lazarus” (Eleazar’), “Judas from Kariot” (Judas iz Kariota), “Christians” (Khristiane), Anathema (Anatema), “Phantoms” (Prizraki), “The Theif” (Vor’). See RGALI, f. 1292, op. 4, ed. khr. 6. Iu. Bunin, “Doklad o deiatel’nosti literaturnogo kruzhka ‘Sreda’ (1899–1918)”; see also RGALI, f. 1292 op. 2, ed. khr. 2. “Doklad i kratkii otchet o deiatel’nosti tseliakh i zadachakh kruzhka ‘Sreda’.” 10 Zaitsev, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 129–30. 11 Teleshov, Zapiski pisatelia: Vospominaniia, 64–5. 12 RGALI, f. 1292 op. 2, ed. khr. 2. Iu. Bunin, “Doklad i kratkii otchet o deiatel’nosti tseliakh i zadachakh kruzhka ‘Sreda.’” Also quoted in Ninov, 143. 13 Belyi, “L.N. Andreev,” in Nachalo Veka, 402–9. 14 Belousov, Literaturnaia sreda, 110. 15 I. Vladykin, “Teleshovskie ‘Sredy,’” 28. Serafimovich tells about this first Sreda meeting in his literary portrait of Gor’kii. See Serafimovich, Sobranie Sochinenii v chetyrekh tomakh, vol. 4, 444–6. 16 Ninov, M. Gor’kii i Iv. Bunin, 149. 17 Ibid., 136–7. 18 Teleshov, Zapiski pisatelia, 62. 19 Skitalets, Povesti i rasskazy. Vospminaniia. (Vstrechi), 430. 20 Skitalets, “Vstrechi. L. Andreev,” 166. 21 In 1900 an anthology was published and the proceeds were given to Jews suffering from a poor harvest. In 1901 Sreda defended university students in Kiev who were drafted into the army after taking part in political activities. In 1904 Sreda produced a petition that condemned police brutality used during the 5–6 December demonstrations. In 1905 Sreda published an anthology of stories and the proceeds went to the children of teachers in the Nizhegorodskii Province. 22 Keldysh, “Sborniki tovarishchestva ‘Znanie,’” 228–32. 23 Ledenev, “Pisatel’skie ob”edineniia v russkoi demokraticheskoi literature kontsa XIX – nachala XX v.,” 61. 24 Keldysh, “Sborniki tovarishchestva ‘Znanie,’” 228–32. 25 Teleshov claims that this was the last meeting (Zapiski pisatelia, 85). However, there is a picture entitled “Last meeting of Sreda” which is dated 1917 in Mikhailova, ed., Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vol. 84, book 1, 619. The “new/young” Sreda lasted as an official organization until 1919.

Notes to pages 203–8

305

26 Shakurov, “Leonid Andreev i ‘Sreda’,” 156–73. 27 Teleshov, “Kruzhok ‘Sreda,’” 231. 28 Leonid Andreev, S.O.S., 244–5. Andreev’s claim that he was always sober at Sreda meetings is not accurate. Veresaev remembers two instances after 1907 when Andreev came to Moscow and was drunk. See Veresaev, Sobranie sochinenii v piati tomakh, vol. 5, 418–20. 29 Veresaev, Sobranie sochinenii v piati tomakh, 399. 30 RGALI, f. 1292 op. 2, ed. khr. 2. Iu. Bunin, “Doklad i kratkii otchet o deiatel’nosti tseliakh i zadachakh kruzhka ‘Sreda.’” Also see Ninov, M. Gor’kii i Iv. Bunin, 145. Goloushev was also Andreev’s best man at his first wedding; see Mikhailova, ed., Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vol. 84, book 1, 538. 31 Belousov, Literaturnaia sreda, 144. 32 Teleshov, Zapiski pisatelia, 68. 33 Teleshov, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 153–4. 34 Ledenev, “Pisatel’skie,” 62. 35 Linch and Glagol’, Pod vpechatleniem Khudozhestvennogo teatra. 36 From “L.N. Andreev v Moskve,” Stolichnaia Moskva, 3 December (1912), in Vladykin, “Teleshovskie ‘Sredy,’” 40. 37 In Anisimov, Gor’kii i Leonid Andreev, neizdannaia perepiska, Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vol. 72 , 300. 38 Belousov, Literaturnaia sreda, 139. According to Belousov, Andreev also wanted to organize Sreda-type literary meetings when he lived in Finland (ibid., 139–40). 39 Blok, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 98. Sergeev-Tsenskii tells about two of Andreev’s Sreda meetings in St Petersburg. At one, Andreev read his play Tsar Hunger and at the second, Blok read Andreev’s “Darkness.” See Sergeev-Tsenskii, Radost’ tvorchestva, 167–9. 40 Veresaev’s version of this period is much more negative. He writes that although Andreev continued to send heartfelt letters, he saw less and less of Andreev when he was in Moscow. Finally, Veresaev suggested to Andreev that it would be better to stop writing such letters if they were not actually going to see each other. See: Veresaev, Sobranie sochinenii v piati tomakh, vol. 5, 420. 41 Ibid., 420–1. 42 Kardin, “Segodnia o vcherashnem,” 54. 43 Doherty, “The Image of Nikolai Gumilev in the Memoir Writings of Georgii Ivanov,” 87–8. 44 Bezzubov, Leonid Andreev i traditsii russkogo realizma. In his conclusion, Bezzubov states that Andreev’s literary roots are connected to Realist writers – Dostoevskii, Tolstoi, and Chekhov – and that he was in the realist camp of Gor’kii until 1907, although he did like Blok’s poetry and had

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Notes to page 208

high regard for Sologub’s Petty Demon (Melkii bes). After 1908 Bezzubov argues that Andreev avoided all forms of “canonization” or “dogmatization” of his literary method and style; that he made “bold experiments” with different forms depending on what the work required. In discussions about the artistic development of the early twentieth century, it is possible to argue that Andreev was a Realist; it is also possible to argue that he was a Symbolist or even an Expressionist. However, Bezzubov suggests that whether it was “neo-realism,” “fantastic realism,” or some other type, at its core it was still Realism, yet in Andreev’s experimental works (post-1908), there are strains that could be connected with later movements of the avant-garde. This does not mean that Andreev was a member of these groups, but it does speak to the richness of his literary experiments (ibid., 329–34). Bezzubov, therefore, argues that Andreev was a Realist and not a Symbolist, despite all claims to the contrary. Not all of the blame for this confusion can be placed at the feet of Belyi. However, within the context of the literary portrait, Belyi (specifically), Blok, and Chulkov (indirectly) wove this line of discourse into Andreev’s posthumous legacy. The fact that Bezzubov devotes an entire book to “Leonid Andreev and the Tradition of Russian Realism,” suggests that a corrective was needed. 45 Andreev and Beklemisheva, eds., Rekviem. Again, for the discussion of “standard interpretations” refer to the final part of chapter 1 and chapter 2. 46 This particular type of reading can be found in K. Panteleeva’s afterword to Teleshov’s Notes of a Writer (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1966), 370–83. Panteleeva argues that Teleshov is a “typical representative” of the literature of the period; a new literature (Socialist Realism as exemplified by Gor’kii) that was created by “revolutionary conditions.” “Around Gor’kii was grouped the leading literary forces – realist writers [… who] criticized the old society.” Among the authors listed is Leonid Andreev. Panteleeva tells how Teleshov was involved in literary battles, defending “the best traditions of Russian classical literature.” A brief biographical sketch connects Teleshov with Chekhov, Korolenko, Gor’kii, and other Soviet writers. In discussing Sreda, Panteleeva writes that the main goal of the literary circle was to “continue to develop the best traditions of Russian classical literature.” Andreev is again listed among these writers. Teleshov’s circle fought against “anti-realist” trends that were trying to “overthrow realism,” while the circle maintained “the truly glorious tradition of classical Russian literature.” According to Panteleeva, the members of Sreda were active in public life and protested police brutality. For the fifteen years of Sreda’s existence there was “not one major literary or cultural undertaking” in which the circle did not take part. Panteleeva high-

Notes to pages 208–15

307

lights Chekhov and Gor’kii’s participation in the circle, mentioning Andreev once again. Finally, she writes: “Notes of a Writer does not only have literary but historical value as well.” It describes old Moscow and the “social protest” of the ancient Russian capital. CHAPTER FIVE

1 Vatnikova-Prizel, O russkoi memuarnoi literature, 33–5. 2 Ibid., 119. Chukovskii states that his goal as a literary critic was to “open in each [of my subjects] those characteristics, which have not been noticed by other critics.” See Chukovskii, “Avtobiografiia,” 710. 3 Vatnikova-Prizel, “‘Sovremenniki’ K. Chukovskogo,” 117–27. 4 A. Tepliashina argues that this duality of literary critic and portraitist gives Chukovskii’s memoirs an added dimension of characterization, by combining the subject’s biography and literary style. See Tepliashina, “Literaturnyi portret v tvorchestve Korneia Chukovskogo,” 56–63. 5 “Chukovskii K.I. – Gor’komu A.M.: 1920 god,” Voprosy literatury, no. 1 (1972): 158. 6 Chukovskii, “Kriticheskii ocherk,” 19–62. 7 Chukovskii, Leonid Andreev: Bol’shoi i malen’kii, 32–3. 8 Ibid., 48–9. 9 Chukovskii’s memoir should probably be dated 1919 as there appeared “Iz vospominanii o L.N. Andreeve,” Vestnik literatury, no. 11 (1919): 2–5. Chukovskii also notes in his diary on 28 October 1919 that he has written the memoir; see Dnevnik 1901–1929, 117. However, the first full publication of the memoir was in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve in 1922. 10 Chukovskii, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 75–7. 11 Ibid., 78–9. 12 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 329–30. 13 Chukovskii, Leonid Andreev, 29. The 1914 article quoted here was originally published in Kornei Chukovski, Litsa i maski (Faces and Masks; St Petersburg: Shipovnik, 1914) and was a new version of an earlier piece, O Leonide Andreeve (About Leonid Andreev) published in 1911. 14 Chukovskii, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 77; 80; 85; 85. 15 Chukovskii, “Leonid Andreev,” 33. 16 Chukovskii, Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 79. 17 Chukovskii, “Leonid Andreev,” 31. 18 Ibid., 38. 19 See Odesskie novosti, no. 5,567 (21 June 1902): 1; Odesskie novosti, no. 5,570 (24 June 1902): 1. 20 From various sources (Chukovskii’s diary, “Letters of Leonid Andreev,”

308

21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37

Notes to pages 215–19

and his notebook Chukokkala), some of Chukovskii’s visits to Vammelsuu can be attested to: 31 May–2 June 1909, a boat ride in 1910, 9 June 1914, 8 August 1914, 8 August 1915. Chukovskii, Dnevnik 1901–1929, 118 and 121. Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness, 6. Carson, Butcher, and Mineka, Abnormal Psychology and Modern Life, 210–12. Jamison, “Manic-Depressive Illness and Creativity,” 64. Also, Arnold Ludwig finds: “Those in the creative arts not only experience emotional difficulties earlier in life and over a longer time span but they also display greater rates of alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, mania, somatic problems, anxiety, psychoses, and adjustment disorders and, consequently, undergo most forms of psychiatric therapy more often.” See Ludwig, “Creative Achievement and Psychopathology: Comparison among Professions,” 330–56. LRA MS 606\ G.11.i. Letter of 26 November 1907. Jamison, Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, 6. RGALI, f. 11, op. 1, ed. kh. 34, l. 3. Letter of 30–31 August 1902 from Andreev to A. Izmailov. Jamison, “Manic-Depressive Illness and Creativity,” 65. Chukovskii, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 75–6. Jamison, Touched with Fire, 32. Bell, Virginia Woolf: A Biography, 11. Fatov gives an interesting explanation for Andreev’s headaches. He claims that once, as a young child, Andreev was playing on the floor with a girl of his own age. The young girl began hitting Andreev over the head with the lid of a samovar. Andreev’s cries eventually brought help but Fatov suggests that this may have brought on the headaches that, he points out, the doctors never could explain. See Fatov, Molodye gody Leonida Andreeva, 39. Ol’gin suggests that these headaches could be traced back to an event when Andreev and his friends got into a fight with the local police. Andreev, as one of the main instigators, took a lot of physical punishment. See L. Ivanova, ed., “Vospominaniia Mikhaila O-na o Leonide Andreeve. (Devianostye gody proshl stoletiia chasti moskovskogo studenchestva)” in Leonid Andreev: Materialy i issledovaniia, 156. Valentin Andreev, “Chto pomniu ob ottse,” 234. Vadim Andreev, Detstvo: Povest’, 41. Vera Andreeva, Dom na Chernoi rechke: Povest’, 64. Jamison, “Manic-Depressive Illness and Creativity,” 66–7. Chukovskii, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 80.

Notes to pages 219–22

38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

46 47 48 49

50

309

Jamison, Touched with Fire, 107–8. Goodwin and Jamison, Manic-Depressive Illness, 22–5. Kipen, Rekviem: Pamiati Leonida Andreeva, 178. Chulkov, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 111. Pil’skii, Kriticheskie stat’i, 32. Kugel’, List’ia s dereva, 84. Vera Andreeva, Dom na Chernoi rechke: Povest’, 73. Presenting Andreev in the light of mental illness asks critics to reassess all aspects of his life and literary works. A large number of Andreev’s plays and stories are concerned with the theme of madness, warranting scholarly investigation (see chapter 1, note 57). A brief summary of these works and the possible influences on them of Andreev’s own illness experience would not do the subject justice and a longer discussion of this topic would divert our attention from the focus of this book. For a discussion of how Andreev’s mental illness might have influenced one of his literary works, see Frederick H. White, “Leonid Andreev: Litsedeistvo i obman,” 130–43. Iasenskii, “Osobennosti psikhologizma v proze L. Andreeva 1907–1911 godov,” 35–44. Andreev, S.O.S., 282. Orlovskii, “V noch’ posle bitvy: L.Andreev, F.Sologub,” 3–17; Lunacharskii, Literaturnyi raspad: Kriticheskii sbornik, 153–78. This is not necessarily a new diagnosis. Other doctors had diagnosed Andreev as a neurasthenic (see the next chapter) and Fatov suggests that people were aware of Andreev’s “hysterical-nervous” condition (see Fatov, Molodye gody Leonida Andreeva, 65). The awareness and understanding of mental illness at the turn of the century was very limited. Mental disorders were only vaguely understood, and conditions such as depression were considered to be the result of nervous exhaustion. It was believed that the expenditure or depletion of bodily energies as a result of excessive living caused emotional problems. This condition of mental deterioration, resulting from a depleted nerve force, came to be referred to as neurasthenia. “Neurasthenia involved pervasive feelings of low mood, lack of energy, and physical symptoms that were considered to be, in part, related to ‘life style’ problems brought on by the demands of civilization.” See “Nineteenth Century Views of the Causation and Treatment of Mental Disorders” in Carson et al., eds., Abnormal Psychology and Modern Life, 1998 Update, 47. Today neurasthenia has no formal clinical status and is not a diagnostic category in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Galant, “Psikhopatologicheskii obraz Leonida Andreeva. Leonid Andreev isteronevrastenicheskii genii,” 148.

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55 56 57 58 59 60

61 62

Notes to pages 222–7

Hinsie and Campbell, Psychiatric Dictionary, 495. Ibid., 367. Chukovskii, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 87–8. Ernest Kretschmer was a German psychiatrist who developed theories about types of personalities based on body type (somatotype). He wrote in 1921 that among his patients a frail build as well as a muscular physique were characteristic of schizophrenic patients, while a short, rotund build was found among manic-depressives. Slim and delicate physiques are associated with introversion, while rounded heavier and shorter bodies tend to be cyclothymic. See Kretschmer, Physique and Character. Galant, “Evroendokrinologiia velikikh russkikh pisatelei i poetov. L. N. Andreev,” 231. Costa e Silva and DeGirolamo, “Neurasthenia: History of a Concept,” 69. Ibid., 75–6. Abbey and Garfunkel, “Neurasthenia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome,” 1,639; the emphasis is mine. Levin, Sigmund Freud, 44. See “Conversion Disorder (or Hysterical Neurosis, Conversion Type)” in American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 244–247. The term “Hysterical Neurosis” is no longer used in the fourth edition (1994). Carlisle, Far from Russia: A Memoir, 147. Olga Andreyev Carlisle, personal communication, San Francisco, California, 1 September, 2000. CHAPTER SIX

1 The chronology for this claim is hard to fix. Andreev spent the summer of 1905 in Vammelsuu. In 1906 he lived outside of Helsinki in the Frisians. He rented a summer home in Kuokkala in 1907. In 1908 he built his house in and moved to Vammelsuu. In the literary portrait, Chulkov says that they met often during the two summers before Andreev moved into his house. In a later publication, Chulkov says that they met regularly while in Finland in 1908. Published letters between the two come from 1906, when Andreev was in the Frisians. See Chulkov, Pis’ma Leonida Andreeva, 9, 25–30. N. Chulkova states more specifically that it was 1907. Andreev’s dacha was near the Kuokkala station and the Chulkovs’ dacha was at the following station, Raivola. However, it seems that Andreev was less interested in seeing Chulkov, who was often in St Petersburg working, and more interested in spending time with Chulkov’s attractive older sister, Liubov’ Ivanovna, wife of the professor F.E. Rybakov. See Frederick H. White, “Portret Leonida Andreeva,” 332–40.

Notes to pages 228–31

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2 Liubov’ Blok writes in September 1907: “Georgii Ivanovich visited us the third day – it’s not good, he puts on airs, he scorns L. Andreev, but what would he be without him now? Andreev is the only one who supports him.” See Khrapchenko and Shcherbina, Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 306. 3 In a letter to Chulkov, Andreev even states that he wants no part of literary programs, including that of the mystical anarchists. See Chulkov, Pis’ma Leonida Andreeva, 14. 4 For published letters see Chulkov, Pis’ma Leonida Andreeva, and Anisimov, Gor’kii i Leonid Andreev neizdannaia perepiska, 514. For Andreev’s diary see Andreev, S. O. S., 23. At RGALI, there are three letters from Chulkov to Andreev (f. 11, op. 1, ed. kh. 225) and thirty-four letters from Andreev to Chulkov (f. 548, op. 3, ed. kh. 6). At IRLI, there is one letter from Chulkov to Andreev (f. 9, op. 3, n. 62). 5 Chulkov, Pis’ma Leonida Andreeva, 31–47. This second publication is a reprint of the 1922 version except that the last three paragraphs have been omitted. Chulkov, Gody stranstvii. Iz knigi vospominanii, 108–20. 6 Frederick H. White, “Portret Leonida Andreeva.” 7 Ibid., 337. 8 The following refers to Aleksandra Mikhailovna, who had recently died of a postnatal infection. 9 Chulkov, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 121–2. 10 Ibid., 109. 11 Andreyev, Sashka Jigouleff. 12 Jamison, Touched with Fire, 58–9. 13 Skitalets, “Vstrechi. L. Andreev,” 161. 14 Pavel Andreev, “Vospominaniia o Leonide Andreeve,” 203. 15 Katonina, “Moi vospominaniia o Leonide Andreeve,” 23. 16 Beklemisheva, Rekviem: Pamiati Leonida Andreeva, 225. 17 Katonina, “Moi vospominaniia o Leonide Andreeve,” 23. 18 Respect for an individual’s privacy precludes further expansion on the mental health of Andreev’s still-living descendants. 19 Rimma Andreeva, “Trudnye gody,” 3. 20 Azov, “Otryvki ob Andreeve,” 5. 21 Frederick H. White, “«Tainaia zhizn’» Leonida Andreeva: Istorii bolezni,” 323–39. 22 Chuvakov, “Perepiska L. Andreeva i E. Chirikova,” 83, footnote for letter 26. 23 IRLI, f. 9, op. 2, n. 4 l. 20. Letter of 7 October 1914 from Leonid Andreev to Andrei Andreev. 24 Ibid., l. 30. Letter of 31 December 1914 from Leonid Andreev to Andrei Andreev.

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Notes to pages 231–3

25 Ibid., l. 32. Letter of 25 May 1915 from Leonid Andreev to Andrei Andreev. 26 Sobolev, “Leonid Andreev: Vstrechi i pis’ma (K 5–letiiu do dnia smerti),” 126. 27 LRA, MS 606\F. 24. i. (18). Letter of 14 April 1915 from Leonid Andreev to S. Goloushev. See also Beklemisheva and Andreev, eds., Rekviem: Pamiati Leonida Andreeva, 111. 28 LRA, MS 606\F. 24. i. (19). Letter of April 1915 from Leonid Andreev to S. Goloushev. 29 Ibid. (20). Letter of 29 April 1915 from Leonid Andreev to S. Goloushev. See also Beklemisheva and Andreev, eds., Rekviem, 113. 30 Chuvakov, “L. N. Andreev: Pis’ma k A.P. Alekseevskomu,” 192, footnote 1. 31 In a letter to Goloushev of May 1915 Andreev talks about electric shock therapy, so he may have undergone this treatment with Dr Gerzoni as well. See LRA, MS 606\F. 24. i. (22). See also Beklemisheva and Andreev, eds., Rekviem, 115. Modern shock therapy can be traced back to 1848 when an English newspaper, the Lancet, published a lengthy defence of the use of galvanic electricity as a therapeutic technique. It was a popular treatment in the late 1860s and 1870s in America and England. In 1874 G. Beard published Medical and Surgical Uses of Electricity, which included cases of patients suffering from “neurasthenic collapse” who were cured with electrical shock. See Rabinbach, “The Body without Fatigue: A Nineteenth-Century Utopia,” 55–6. 32 IRLI, f. 9, op. 2, n. 4, l. 59. Letter of 21 March 1917 from Leonid Andreev to Andrei Andreev. 33 LRA, MS 606\F. 24. i. (30). Letter of 15 December 1916 from Leonid Andreev to S. Goloushev. See also Beklemisheva and Andreev, eds., Rekviem, 131. 34 Jamison, “Manic-Depressive Illness and Creativity,” 64. 35 LRA, MS 606\G. 8. ii. A diary entry, which was given to A.M. Veligorskaia and remained with her letters from Andreev. 36 Belousov, Literaturnaia sreda, 159. 37 Khantzian, “The self-medication hypothesis of addictive disorders,” 1,259. 38 This is a peculiar claim since in the same literary portrait (already quoted) Chulkov writes of a three- or four-day drinking binge and in the following sentence he contradicts this statement. A majority of the literary portraits claim that Andreev could go for long periods without drinking, but when he did drink, he usually abused alcohol for a couple of days in a row. 39 Chulkov, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 115.

Notes to pages 233–8

313

40 Ibid., 116. 41 Jamison, Touched with Fire, 39. 42 Most associate Andreev’s drinking with depression. However, few would have been sensitive to the cyclic nature of Andreev’s mood swings. See Pavel Andreev, Vospominaniia o Leonide Andreeve, 151. 43 Goodwin and Jamison, Manic-Depressive Illness, 220. 44 Pavel Andreev states that although his brother gave up alcohol in 1903 (Leonid married in 1902), he still drank “sometimes.” However, his drinking was not as severe and his attitude changed dramatically for the better. See Pavel Andreev, Vospominaniia o Leonide Andreeve, 152. 45 Dr Galant classifies Andreev’s drinking as “dipsomanic,” which he describes as intervals of uninterrupted drunkenness, lasting a period of several days, in what is essentially a sober life. See Galant, “Psikhopatologicheskii obraz Leonida Andreeva. Leonid Andreev isteronevrastenicheskii genii,” 156. 46 Beklemisheva and Andreev, eds., Rekviem, 211. 47 Andrei Andreev, “Iz vospominanii o L. Andreeve,” 212. 48 Ken, “Leonid Andreev v vospominaniiakh Anny Ivanovny Andreevoi,” 85. 49 Chukovskii, Dnevnik 1901–1929, 120. 50 Goodwin and Jamison, Manic-Depressive Illness, 226. 51 Pavel Andreev, Vospominaniia o Leonide Andreeve, 152. 52 Ibid., 165–6. 53 Vera Andreeva , Dom na Chernoi rechke: Povest’, 73. 54 Fatov, Molodye gody Leonida Andreeva, 88. 55 Kaun, Leonid Andreev, 30–1. 56 Goodwin and Jamison, Manic-Depressive Illness, 239. 57 Gor’kii, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 60. 58 Jamison, Touched with Fire, 154. 59 Chulkov, Pis’ma Leonida Andreeva, 29. 60 RGALI, f. 66, op. 1, ed. kh. 471, l. 24. Letter of 18 March 1913 from Leonid Andreev to Belousov. 61 Beklemisheva and Andreev, eds., Rekviem, 233. 62 Pavel Andreev, Vospominaniia o Leonide Andreeve, 194. 63 Goodwin and Jamison, Manic-Depressive Illness, 37–40. 64 Pavel Andreev, Vospominaniia o Leonide Andreeve, 190. 65 Andreev, “Pis’ma k neveste: Iz neizdannoi perepiski Leonida Andreeva,” 189. 66 Andreev and Beklemisheva, eds., Rekviem, 266–7. 67 Belousov, Literaturnaia sreda,159. Afonin quotes the following passage from Andreev: “It is as if I am divided into two halves. One half laughs, is

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76 77 78 79 80

Notes to pages 238–44

bored, talks, courts, kisses, and the other half won’t take its eyes off of the [normal half] and asks every minute: ‘Well, why are you so happy? Why is that? For whom?’” Afonin, Leonid Andreev, 31. Fatov, Molodye gody Leonida Andreeva, 228–9. Chirikov, “Leonid Andreev,” 62–3. Katonina, Moi Vospominaniia o Leonide Andreeve, 15. Ibid., 21. Vadim Andreev, Detstvo: Povest’, 40. Ivarskii, “Zhili-byli. O Leonide Andreeve.” RGALI, f. 457, op. 1, ed. kh. 251, l. 5. Letter from Leonid Andreev to A. Serafimovich some time after 1911. This situation is changing, but remnants can be found in a recent textbook for high school students; the introduction states that Andreev was “semiprohibited” in the Soviet period not so much because he depicted wickedness and crime in a certain social class but because they were depicted as timeless qualities inherent in every individual. This is mentioned just after Gor’kii’s positive “idealism” is contrasted with Andreev’s negative “abyss,” highlighting the two stereotypes: Gor’kii is always positive and therefore writes positive literary works, while Andreev is negative and his literary works are not read as critical of certain behaviour but as depicting (read: advocating) the basest qualities of mankind. See Basinskii, “Bezdny mrachnoi na kraiu … (Sud’ba Leonida Andreeva),” 6. Etkind, Eros of the Impossible. The History of Psychoanalysis in Russia, 76. Chulkov, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 108. Ibid., 113. Ibid., 123. RGALI, f. 734, op. 1, ed. kh. 7, l. 6–8. Letter from A.I. Andreeva to S. Goloushev of May 1916. CHAPTER SEVEN

Blok, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 95. Ibid., 96. Ibid., 97. Liubov’ Dmitrievna Blok writes of their first meeting: “L. Andreev was at the theatre. Sasha met him and I saw and heard how [Andreev] talked with Sasha. I did not like him, there is something about him that is similar to Chulkov.” See Khrapchenko and Shcherbina, eds., Literaturnoe nasledstvo, book 3, vol. 92, 304. 5 Blok, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 99. 6 Ibid.

1 2 3 4

Notes to pages 244–9

315

7 Ibid., 100. 8 Ibid., 103. 9 Mysliakova, “Kontseptsiia tvorchestva Leonida Andreeva v simvolistskoi kritike,” 151–3. 10 Ibid., 153. 11 For a more in-depth discussion of Blok’s shift from Solv’evian to Nietzschean philosophy, see Bristol, “Blok between Nietzsche and Soloviev.” 12 Papernyi, “Blok i Nitsshche,” 89. 13 Mysliakova, “Kontseptsiia tvorchestva Leonida Andreeva v simvolistskoi kritike,” 20. 14 Blok, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 6, 161. 15 Ibid., vol. 8, 292–3. The emphasis is Blok’s. 16 Sloane, Aleksander Blok and the Dynamics of the Lyric Cycle, 275. 17 Bezzubov, “Leonid Andreev i Aleksandr Blok,” in Leonid Andreev i traditsii russkogo realizma, 156–250. 18 Ibid., 160. 19 Ibid., 180. 20 Ibid., 182. 21 Ibid., 188. 22 Ibid., 242. 23 Ibid., 250. Petrovskii makes further connections between Andreev’s works and Blok’s poem “The Twelve.” See M. Petrovskii, “‘Dvenadtsat’’ Bloka i Leonid Andreev,” in Zil’bershtein and Rozenblium, eds., Literaturnoe nasledstvo, book 4, vol. 92, 203–32. 24 Mochulsky, Aleksandr Blok, 17–40. 25 RGALI, f. 55, op. 1, ed. kh. 536(2), l. 57. Letter of A. Kublitskaia-Piottukh to M. Ivanovna on 24 June 1911. Also see Pyman, The Life of Alexander Blok: Volume 2, The Release of Harmony 1908–1921, 130. Cyclothymia is defined as “a chronic, fluctuating mood disturbance involving numerous periods of hypomanic symptoms and numerous periods of depressive symptoms.” See American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 363–5. Cyclothymic disorder is a less severe form of manic-depression that results in periods of depression and intense, fast-paced manic periods without the psychotic elements. 26 Blok’s life has been filtered through various lenses with each lens meant to offer new insights. Special significance has been given to the 1905 Revolution, Blok’s fascination with the Divine Sophia, his marriage to Liubov’ Dmitrievna, his relationship with Andrei Belyi, and much more in order to gain a greater understanding of his biography and poetry. Less has been written, however, about Blok’s mental health. A. Pyman makes reference to cyclothymia but mainly concentrates on his depressive moods in her

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Notes to pages 249–51

biography of the poet. A much more extensive discussion of his mental condition is given by M. Shcherba and L. Baturina, but cylothymia is never mentioned by name. A. Etkind mentions Blok’s psychotherapeutic treatment only in passing in his book about psychoanalysis in Russia. L. Dolgopolov thoroughly discusses Aleksandra Andreevna’s illness but only mentions the “Beketov family illness” in relation to Blok’s “Retribution” (Vozmezdie). K. Mochulsky writes of Blok’s paternal grandfather’s stay in a psychiatric hospital and how Blok and his father “inherited the [grandfather’s] mental illness.” Mochulsky also addresses Aleksandra Andreeva’s condition, but he never makes any direct connections between Blok’s mental health and his literary output. Certainly, one reference to cyclothymia in a letter does not mean that Blok necessarily suffered from this condition. Aleksandra Andreevna may well be using the vocabulary that her own doctors employed in describing her own condition. However, the suggestion that Blok suffered from some form of mental illness presents for scholars another lens through which to view his life, or at least it begs that this claim be investigated. See Pyman, The Life of Alexander Blok: Volume 2, 130; M.M. Shcherba and L.A. Baturina, “Istoriia bolezni Bloka,” 729–35; Etkind, Eros of the Impossible. A History of Psychoanalysis in Russia, 57–8; 98; 131; Dolgopolov, Aleksandr Blok: Lichnost’ i tvorchestvo, 123–5; Molchulsky, Aleksandr Blok, 17–40. Blok, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 3, 13–14. Chukovkii, in Kniga o Aleksandre Bloke, 43. Pyman, Life of Alexander Blok: Volume 2, 7. Ibid., 14. Shcherba and Baturina, “Istoriia bolezni Bloka,” 730. Pyman, Life of Alexander Blok: Volume 2, 83. M. Beketova, “Shakhmatovo. Semeinaia khronika,” 781–2. Shcherba and Baturina, “Istoriia bolezni Bloka,” 730–1. Pyman, Life of Alexander Blok: Volume 2, 146. Ibid., 156. Andreev wrote “Darkness” (1907), wherein a proud terrorist becomes ashamed of his moral loftiness on encountering a prostitute, who hates him for his purity, spits at him, and hurls into his face the maxim: “T’is a shame to be good, when such as I exist.” Andreev’s hero is persuaded by the prostitute’s argument. He concludes that moral privileges are as unjust as economic or political privileges, and he casts away his glorious life of danger, even his “immortality,” to plunge into “darkness,” to merge with filthy humanity, with the proletarian masses. The concept is that it is not always “right” to be “good.” Here we might notice the Nietzschean rebellion against labels such as “good” and “evil.” Therefore Andreev seems to argue that his hero is still good and self-sacrificing in

Notes to pages 251–4

37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

57

317

spite of his resolution to be “bad” out of solidarity and sympathy for the prostitute and her kind. Blok, Dnevnik, 148. Davydova, “Vstrechi s L.N. Andreevym,” 10. Chulkov, “Aleksandr Blok i ego vremia,” 363. Skitalets, “Vstrechi. L. Andreev,” 161. Belousov, Literaturnaia sreda, 159. Ibid. The original letter of 15 March 1917, quoted by Belousov in his memoir, can be found at RGALI, f. 11, op. 1, ed. kh. 471, l. 60. LRA, MS 606\G. 8. ii. Letter to A.M. Veligorskaia on 6 November 1897. Pyman, The Life of Alexander Blok: Volume I, 47–9. Khodasevich writes: “Aleksandra Andreevna was very sickly ... Hysteria began to reveal itself in adolescence and from around 1908–1909 it took on a very severe and difficult form. Several times it happened that Aleksandra Andreevna needed to stay in a sanatorium ... Fits of unhealthy melancholy were particular to her.” See Khodasevich, “Blok i ego mat,’” 177. Beketova writes of Blok’s mother: As a child [Blok’s mother] was the happiest creature and full of life, as one can only imagine, but she also had capricious and nervous characteristics, which appeared then in her son. See Beketova, “Mat’ Aleksandra Bloka,” 62. Beketova, Aleksandr Blok. Biograficheskii ocherk, 78. RGALI, f. 55, op. 1, ed. kh. 536(2), l. 57. Letter of A. Kublitskaia-Piottukh to M. Ivanovna, 24 June 1911. Krapchenko and Shcherbina, eds., Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 385. Letter of A. Kublitskaia-Piottukh to E. Ivanov, 29 July 1911. Mendeleeva-Blok, “Facts and Myths about Blok and Myself,” 59. Ibid., 61–2. Bunin, Vospominaniia, 43. Blok, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 5, 346. Ibid., 349. A. Lavrov, “Perepiska G.I. Chulkova s Blokom,” 379–80. Blok, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 5, 348. See Gor’kii’s introduction to Andreyev, Sashka Zhigouleff. Surely Blok was aware that Dionysus was the son of Zeus and a mortal mother, that he was afflicted with madness while young and subjected both to great rapture and to terrible suffering. He was the god of wine; he induced frenzied ecstasies, madness, and savage brutality in those around him. He was worshipped for rebirth and for bringing creation out of chaos and destruction. Zablotskaia, “‘Avtobiograficheskii dokument’ v tvorchestve A. Bloka 1918–1921 godov,” 179–80.

318

Notes to pages 254–61

58 Blok, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 6, 384–9. 59 Iretskii, “Retsenzii. Kniga o Leonide Andreeve,” 8. CHAPTER EIGHT

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14 15

16

17 18

19 20

Barratt, “The Forgotten Gorky: Notes from My Diary,” 5. Barratt, “Maksim Gorky’s Autobiographical Trilogy,” 26. Gor’kii, Zhizn’ iskusstva. Zhak, “Portet-polemika: Ocherk ‘Leonid Andreev,’” 99. Gor’kii, Clarté. Gor’kii, Vospominaniia. For a more detailed discussion of changes in the text and their ramifications, see Zhak, “Portet-polemika.”. Anisimov, Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 644–6. Zhak, “Portet-polemika,” 100. Andreev and Beklemisheva, eds., Rekviem, 251. Koliadich, Vospominaniia pisatelei. Problemy poetiki zhanra, 79. Zhak, “Portet-polemika,” 155. K. Muratova, “Maksim Gor’kii i Leonid Andreev”; Grechnev, Zhanr literaturnogo portreta v tvorchestve M. Gor’kogo (Vospominaniia o pisateliakh). Kholopova, “ Masterstvo khudozhestvenno-publitsisticheskoi polemiki (Ocherk M. Gor’kogo ‘Leonid Andreev’),” 133–9. Barratt, “Personal and Literary Relations of Maksim Gorky and Leonid Andreyev.” Andreev’s first attempt at literature also came in 1892 with the story “In Cold and Gold,” written under the signature L.P. He published “He, She and Vodka” and “The Riddle” in 1895, and “The Eccentric” in 1896. However, Andreev himself marked the beginning of his literary career with “Bargamot and Garas’ka.” Barratt argues that Gor’kii was forced by K. Piatnitskii into a tactical retreat over the issue of the Znanie anthologies and in fact Gor’kii had little intention of turning the editorial position over to Andreev. See Barratt, “Maksim Gorky and Leonid Andreev,” 76–7. Anisimov, ed., Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 42. Andreev writes to his brother in 1915: “Maksimych [Gor’kii] visited and spent the night. What can I say – it seemed that he quite loves me, as of old ... It is hard to grasp, and I sincerely do not understand.” See IRLI, f. 9, op. 2, n. 4, l. 37. Letter from Andreev to Andrei Andreev of 7 December 1915. Anisimov, ed., Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 518 and footnote 1 for letter 79 from Leonid Andreev to Vinkentii Veresaev, 5 April 1906. IRLI, f. 9, op. 4, n. 14, l. 6–7. From a diary entry of Andrei Andreev.

Notes to pages 261–6

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21 Khodasevich, Sobranie sochinenii v chetyrekh tomakh, vol. 4, 170–1. 22 Zholkovsky explains Gor’kii’s concept of “truth” (istina) and “illusion/deceit” (obman), by claiming that Gor’kii covered reality with literary decoration, which promoted an orientation toward the “ennobling illusion/deceit” (vozvyshaiushchii obman). This played into his self-generated cultural images of the literary hobo, bearer of proletarian bitterness, and stormy petrel and shaped his autobiographical trilogy. See Zholkovskii and Iampol’skii, Babel’/Babel, 159–66. 23 Bezzubov, Leonid Andreev i traditsii russkogo realizma, 228. 24 Andreev said of Gor’kii: “No one searches for new talent with such faith and passion as [Gor’kii] ... No one is so gladdened, I think, by the appearance of a good, new literary piece or a new, talented writer.” See Pil’skii, Kriticheskie stat’i, 21. 25 Iuzovskii, Maksim Gor’kii i ego dramaturgiia, 424. 26 Anisimov, ed., Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 416. 27 Bezzubov, 257. 28 Anisimov, ed., Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 494 and 502 respectively. 29 Ibid., 149. 30 Barratt writes: “Gorky’s personal feelings towards Andreev during this period were by no means unambiguous. In his self-appointed role of mentor to his protege, he was prepared to sacrifice both time and energy, in the belief that he was furthering the cause of democratic literature ... Despite his considerable efforts to promote Andreyev’s career as a writer, Gorky was unwilling to allow their relationship to transcend the professional level ... Having consciously sacrificed his personal life to his social duty as a writer, Gorky was understandably reluctant to allow the personal affairs of others to distract him from his work.” Barratt, “Personal and Literary Relations of Maksim Gorky and Leonid Andreyev,” 17–18. 31 Anisimov, ed., Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 173. 32 Andreev had been married only eleven months. 33 Anisimov, ed., Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 177. 34 Ibid., 501–2, footnote 1. 35 Ibid., 182. 36 For example in ibid., 180, 203, 204 and 209. 37 Ibid., 179. 38 Ibid., 206. 39 Ibid., 241. 40 Gor’kii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 17, 224. 41 Anisimov, ed., Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 266. 42 Ibid., 424, see footnote for letter 46. 43 Gor’kii, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 61–2. Despite Andreev’s productiv-

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46 47 48 49

50 51 52 53 54

55

56 57

58 59 60 61

Notes to pages 266–70

ity, Barratt takes a dimmer view of Gor’kii’s approach to his stricken friend: “Gorky’s expectations, however sincere, reveal his total inability or unwillingness to appreciate Andreyev’s nature. Always prone to instability, Andreyev had immediately lost confidence in his literary ability following the death of his wife and hence was a thoroughly unsuitable subject for Gorky’s ‘work therapy.’” See Barratt, “Personal and Literary Relations of Maksim Gorky and Leonid Andreyev,” 293. Anisimov, ed., Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 523. Ibid., 324. To Andreev’s relief, Veresaev came to Capri to spend a month with his friend. He tells in his memoir of how Andreev had returned to his destructive behaviour – drinking binges, depression, talks of death and suicide, etc. Anisimov, ed., Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 452. Khodasevich, Sobranie sochinenii, 171. Anisimov, ed., Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 302. During this interval, Andreev told Pil’skii of his relationship with Gor’kii: “Naturally it would be desirable [for Gor’kii] to reeducate me or to remake or, at the least, to change my direction a little bit.” See Pil’skii, Kriticheskie stat’i, 21. Anisimov, ed., Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 327–8. Gor’kii, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 7. Ibid., 8. Ibid., 9. See Andreev and Beklemisheva, eds., Rekviem, 251–3; Elpat’evskii, “Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev: Iz vospominanii,” 280–1; Kleinbort, “Vstrechi. Leonid Andreev,” 168. Gor’kii, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 10. Pavel Andreev claims that the injury to his brother’s hand actually happened while he was ice-skating. See Pavel Andreev, “Vospominaniia o Leonide Andreeve,” 152–3. Andreyev, Sashka Jigouleff. In 1887, at the age of nineteen, Gor’kii bought an old army pistol and on 12 December shot himself in the chest on the bank of the Kazanka River. The bullet went through his left lung and lodged in his back. After a successful operation and while still in hospital, Gor’kii attempted suicide a second time by drinking hydrochloride. His stomach was pumped out and he was released from the hospital after about a week. Troyat, Gorky, 34–5. Gor’kii, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 11. Ibid., 13. Khodasevich, Sobranie sochinenii, 157. See Veresaev, Sobranie sochinenii v piati tomakh, vol. 5, 401–2, and Kaun, Leonid Andreev, 85–6.

Notes to pages 270–8

62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

76

77

78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88

321

Andreev and Beklemisheva, eds., Rekviem, 256. Vadim Andreev, Detstvo: Povest’, 203. Gor’kii, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 14–15. Grechnev, Zhanr literaturnogo portreta v tvorchestve M. Gor’kogo (Vospominaniia o pisateliakh), 7. Gor’kii, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 16. Ibid., 43. Ibid., 19. Ibid., 21. Ibid., 21–2. Ibid., 22. Ibid., 20 Ibid., 23. Ibid., 24. The first mention of this comes from Chulkov, in his portrait of Andreev. Gor’kii may very well have developed his own ideas about Andreev and German pessimism from Chulkov’s comments. Fatov also suggests that Andreev’s interest in Schopenhauer and von Hartmann in the sixth form played an important role in his psychological condition and brought about a “hysterical-nervous” reaction. See Fatov, Molodye gody Leonida Andreeva, 65. Grechnev is one of the critics who does speak of Andreev’s pessimism in ways that suggest that he has Andreev’s depression and emotional difficulties in mind, but he never truly defines what he means by the term. Grechnev, Zhanr literaturnogo portreta v tvorchestva M. Gor’kogo, 97. Vadim Andreev says that he does not remember this particular incident, but he does admit that it, or something like it, remains in his subconscious. See Vadim Andreev, Detstvo: povest’, 24. Gor’kii, in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 60. Ibid. Ibid., 63. Ibid., 61. Ibid., 64. Ibid., 71. Ibid., 29. Ibid., 35–36. Ibid. It is partially on the basis of this section of Gor’kii’s literary portrait that Dr I. Galant makes his diagnosis of hysteric-neurasthenia. Understanding this section as a response to A Book about Leonid Andreev gains further support when, at the end of it, Gor’kii and Andreev have a

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92 93 94 95 96

Notes to pages 278–84

discussion about the Decadents, The Scales, and the modernist publishing house Scorpion. Here, Andreev claims that he does not like them and their “drunken” words. They “rape” Schopenhauer, which he hates (in Kniga o Leonide Andreeve, 38). This must be understood as a response to Chulkov, Blok, and especially Belyi, who made the claim that Andreev was in fact an unwitting modernist. The conversation does not follow logically upon what went before but rather feels as if Gor’kii is tying up loose ends. Erikson, Childhood and Society, 370–1. Ibid. Forman writes: “Both Nietzsche and Gorky have in common an interest in the individual personality, the affirmation of man – as Gorky would later observe, ‘Man with a capital M.’ Both glorify strength, pride, will and beauty in the exceptional individual, despite his criminal or apathetic stance vis-à-vis the larger society. Liberated from ordinary morality, strength is to be revered ... The rejection of Philistinism by Nietzsche parallels the hatred of Gorky for meshchanstvo, the self-serving complacency which saps the strength from life.” See Forman, “Nietzsche and Gorky in the 1890s,” 161. Erikson, Childhood and Society, 383. Loe, “Gorky and Nietzsche: The Quest for a Russian Superman,” 260. Ibid., 261–2. Khodasevich, Sobranie sochinenii, 172–5. Mirsky, Uncollected Writings on Russian Literature, 70. CONCLUSION

1 Andreev might be playing with the final two terms – neurasthenic and psychopath – conveying the absurdity of the various treatments and diagnoses given for his illness. This quote is found in an unpublished letter in LRA, MS 606\F. 24. i. (35). 2 Brusianin, Leonid Andreev: Zhizn’ i tvorchestvo, 5. 3 Ivanov, “Leonid Andreev na sude psikhiatrov,” 3. The lecture was published in 1905. See Ivanov, “Leonid Andreev kak khudozhnik-psikhopatolog,” 72–103. 4 Birzhevye vedomosti, no. 103 (27 February 1903). 5 Rech’, no. 300 (7 December(1908): 4; Obozrenie teatrov, no. 602 (10 December 1908): 8. 6 See Obozrenie teatrov, no. 1159 (30 August 1910): 17; Penzenskie vedomosti, no. 188 (2 September 1910): 3, and no. 191 (5 September 1910): 4. 7 Utro Rossii, no. 242 (5 September 1910): 3.

Notes to pages 284–91

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

323

606\F. 24. i. (26). Letter from Andreev to S. Goloushev, 30 September 1915. Ibid., (13). Letter from Andreev to S. Goloushev, 25 February 1915. Mel’nikova-Papoushek, “Book Review,” 81–2. Petrovskaia, Nakanune, 11. Koliadich, Vospominaniia pisatelei. Problemy poetiki zhanra, 84. Belianin, Osnovy psikholingvisticheskoi diagnostiki: Modeli mira v literature, 140–2. Edel, Literary Biography, 14–15. Nietzsche, “The Genealogy of Morals,” in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, 531. Nietzsche’s emphasis. Morris, The Culture of Pain, 104. Paperno writes: “Individual predispositions and psychological potentialities are converted into the structure of personality that is intimately related to a certain society and culture. Viewed in this way, the individual psychological process appears as an integral part of culture. It can thus become a legitimate object of semiotic research.” See Paperno, Chernyshevsky and the Age of Realism: A Study in the Semiotics of Behavior, 3. LRA, MS

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Gay Rights Trump Freedom of Religion

341

Index

Abramov, L.S., 232 Aksakov, Sergei, 157 Aleksandr ii, 81 Aleksandr iii, 79 Aleksin, Aleksandr 262, 264 Amfiteatrov, Aleksandr, 188, 267 Andreev, Andrei (brother), 172, 234 Andreev, Daniil (son), 139n7, 169, 224, 291 Andreev, Leonid: alcoholism, 28, 35, 84, 85, 87–8, 96, 203, 222, 228–9, 231, 233–6, 251–2, 253, 264, 267; arrest 41, 169; on Capri, 43–50, 97, 169–70, 260, 266–7, 274–6; and The Russian Will, 3, 75, 174–5, 206, 260; suicide, 13–14, 44, 67, 115, 170, 176, 222, 231, 235–7, 269, 274. Works: “The Abyss,” 34, 94, 110, 113, 165, 168, 190, 199; “The Alarm,” 41; Alas, 45–6; Anathema, 65, 101, 118, 138, 166, 188, 191, 238; “Bargamot and Garas’ka,” 11, 32–3, 259, 268; Black Maskers, 45, 46–7, 62, 65, 101, 177, 254, 266; “The Christians,” 191, 204; “In Cold and Gold,” 318n15; “The Cursed Beast,” 129; “Darkness,” 47–8,

76n11, 251, 260, 266, 267, 276; Days of Our Life, 65–6, 204, 238, 248; Dear Phantoms, 105; Diary of Satan, 221; “In the Fog,” 168, 188, 190; “The Eccentric,” 318n15; “The Foreigner,” 201; “The Grand Slam,” 238; “He, She and Vodka,” 318n15; He Who Gets Slapped, 104; “Judas Iscariot and Others,” 45, 46, 74, 266; “Lazarus,” 117, 192; “The Lie,” 191, 220; The Life of Man, 3, 61, 73–4, 85, 99, 100, 101, 104, 115–16, 117, 134, 164, 169, 177, 184, 188, 191, 238, 244, 247, 254, 300n48; “The Life of Vasilii Fiveiskii,” 17–18, 72, 94, 114, 115, 124, 165, 187, 188, 191, 247, 248; “The Little Angel,” 238, 247; “The Little Ruffian,” 110, 199; Love of One’s Neighbour, 45, 266; “The Marseillaise,” 41; “My Notes,” 45, 68, 260, 266; The Ocean, 45, 65, 66, 101, 266; “Once There Was,” 97, 110, 167, 192, 199, 238, 239; “Petka at the Dacha,” 238; “Phantoms,” 34, 187, 188, 191, 247, 290; Professor Storitsyn, 152, 205; “Red Laugh,” 3, 72, 96, 115, 187,

342

Index

188, 220, 238, 254, 260, 263, 265, 290, 291; “The Riddle,” 318n15 “On the River,” 93, 303n6; Samson in Chains, 119, 202, 206; Savva, 42–3, 65, 117; Sashka Zhegulev, 45, 65, 75, 260, 266, 269, 273; “The Seven Who Were Hanged,” 3, 65, 68, 83, 238; “Silence,” 93, 109–10, 197, 199; “So It Was,” 39, 41, 86, 227; To the Stars, 117, 204, 260, 263; “The Story Which Will Never be Finished,” 41; “A Tale about Sergei Petrovich,” 110, 199; “The Thief,” 72, 191, 220, 247, 290; “The Thought,” 33, 34, 115, 124, 132, 188, 214, 283, 290; Tsar Hunger, 76n11, 101, 118, 188, 238, 248, 254, 260; “The Wall,” 34, 110, 199; Youth, 118 Andreev, Pavel (brother), 172, 176, 235, 237, 240, 287, 320n55 Andreev, Savva (son), 172 Andreev, Vadim (son), 43–4, 145, 152, 168, 169, 172, 192, 218, 224, 239, 266, 270, 321n77 Andreev, Valentin (son), 172, 218 Andreeva, Aleksandra (née Veligorskaia; wife), 40–1, 80, 94, 105, 113–14, 115, 117, 165, 167, 168, 170, 176, 234, 238, 252, 261, 266, 274; death of, 43–7, 86, 88, 97–8, 99, 203–4, 115–16, 169–70, 237, 266 Andreeva, Anna (née Denisevich; wife), 61, 171–2, 215, 217, 240 Andreeva, Anastasiia (née Pastkovskaia; mother), 44, 80, 93, 98, 101, 169, 172, 235, 236, 239, 266 Andreeva, Rimma (sister), 172, 230 Andreeva, Vera (daughter), 145, 172, 218, 220, 236 Andreeva-Delmas, Liubov’, 251 Aniello, Tommaso, 46 Apollov, Aleksandr, 17 Arbazhin, Konstantin, 285 Artsybashev, Mikhail, 31, 190, 192

Asheshov, Nikolai, 198, 259 Azov, Vladimir, 230, 237 Bal’mont, Konstantin, 30, 95, 203 Baltrushaitis, Maria, 136 Barakhov, Vladimir, 147, 156, 295n34 Barratt, Andrew, 257, 259, 319n30, 319n43 Beard, George, 223, 312n31 Beklemisheva, Vera, 145, 152, 171, 174, 178–9, 237, 238, 258, 270, 287 Belianin, Valerii, 287 Belinskii, Vissarion, 54, 156 Belousov, Ivan, 61, 95, 114, 118, 130, 164, 198, 199, 200, 202, 205, 233, 237, 238, 252, 287 Belyi, Andrei (Boris Bugaev), 4, 5, 6, 7, 41, 72, 73, 74, 144, 153, 154, 178, 181–93, 195, 200, 207, 208, 214, 239, 240, 245, 286, 287, 290. Works: “About Theurgy,” 186; “The Apocalypse in Russian Poetry,” 187; The Beginning of the Century, 5, 182; Between Two Revolutions, 5; On the Border of Two Centuries, 5, 182; “Friedrich Nietzsche,” 139; Petersburg, 181, 193; “The Present and Future of Russian Literature,” 187, 191, 193; Recollections of Blok, 181; “Symbolism and Russian Art,” 190–1; “Symbolism as a WorldConcept,” 186 Bezzubov, Valerii, 208, 247, 248, 262 Bipolar disorder, 158, 212, 213, 215–25, 230, 232–5, 237; cyclothymia, 249, 310n54 Blake, William, 216 Blok, Aleksandr, 5, 6, 41, 85, 96, 133–4, 151–2, 159, 160, 174, 175, 178, 182, 183, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 205, 214, 217, 243–55, 260, 265, 277–8, 285, 286, 287, 290. Works: “About Drama,” 247; “About the Realists,” 190, 228, 229, 239, 240, 247; “The Double,” 249; “Irony,” 253–4; “On the Poet’s Vocation,” 246; The Rose and the

Index Cross, 248; Song of Fate, 75, 247; “Terrible World,” 248 Blok, Aleksandra (mother), 250, 252 Blok, Liubov’(wife), 249–53, 314n4 Blokh, Grigorii, 221 Boborykin, Petr, 66, 88, 135, 198 Boccaccio, Giovani, 31 Bogdanov, Aleksandr, 257 Botsianovkii, Vladimir, 262 Bravich, Kazimir, 74 Briusov, Valerii, 41, 95, 143, 186, 187, 189, 190, 191, 192, 203, 213 Brusianin, Vasilii, 235, 283 Bunin, Iulii, 95, 198, 200, 201, 203, 205 Bunin, Ivan, 6, 90n32, 95, 112, 114, 119, 132, 167, 178, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 205, 206, 253, 263. Work: “Edge of the World,” 201 Burns, Robert, 19–20, 272 Byron (George Noel Gordon), 49, 216 Caraciollo, Niccolo, 43 Carlisle, Olga, 224, 230 Chekhov, Anton, 95, 167, 192, 196, 198. Work: The Cherry Orchard, 186 Cherinov, Mikhail, 230 Chernyshevskii, Nikolai, 156 Chirikov, Evgenii, 67, 130, 198, 199, 202, 205, 206, 238, 266 Chukovskii, Kornei, 6–7, 138, 151–2, 158, 159, 160, 163, 171, 211–25, 249, 277–8, 286, 287, 290. Works: Contemporaries, 211, 215, 228, 235; Leonid Andreev: Big and Little, 212 Chulkov, Georgii, 6, 76n8, 77n20, 133, 159, 160, 174, 177, 183, 192, 193, 205, 217, 220, 227–41, 251, 277–8, 286, 287, 290, 301n11, 321n75. Work: “To the Other Shore,” 227 Chulkova, Nadezhda, 228, 229 Cyclothymia. See Bipolar disorder Dante Alighieri, 103 Davies, Richard, 168

343

Davydova, Maria, 251 Dobrov, Filipp, 133, 184 Dostoevskii, Feodor, 29, 51, 63, 103, 156, 192, 245, 277 Dürer, Albrecht, 61 Edel, Leon, 161, 287 Ellis (Lev Kobylinskii), 136 Elpat’evskii, Sergei, 176, 198, 204 Erikson, Erik, 157, 278–9 Ermilov, Vladimir, 198 Etkind, Alexander, 239 Evtushevskii, Vasilii, 16 Fatov, Nikolai, 145, 152, 308n32, 321n75 Feodorov, Aleksandr, 198 Fet, Afanasii, 85 Filosofov, Dmitri, 191, 302–3n39 Flaubert, Gustave, 47, 102 Fleishman, Lazar, 182 Forman, Betty, 279 Freud, Sigmund, 157 Galant, Ivan, 152, 160, 221–4, 313n45, 321n87 Gallen-Kallela, Akseli, 61, 212 Garin-Mikhailovskii, Nikolai, 198 Garshin, Vsevolod, 192 Gerzoni, Iosif, 231 Giliarovskii, Vladimir, 198 Ginzburg, Lidiia, 148–9 Gippius, Zinaida, 186, 189–90, 191, 203 Gogh, Vincent van, 216 Gogol’, Nikolai, 11, 156, 186 Goloushev, Sergei, 94, 113, 117, 118, 130, 131, 137, 163, 198, 200, 202, 203, 204, 205, 232, 240, 284 Golovanov, Nikolai, 45 Goodwin, Frederick, 235 Gor’kii, Maksim (Aleksei Peshkov), 4, 5, 7, 67, 80, 83, 86, 95, 109–10, 111, 112, 114, 137–8, 144, 150–2, 154, 158, 159, 160, 163, 164, 167, 168, 185, 186, 188, 191, 196–7, 198, 200, 201, 203, 206, 208, 222, 225, 227,

344

Index

229, 237, 239, 257–81, 285, 286, 287, 290. Works: Among People, 257; “The Boss,” 257; Childhood, 257, 278; Children of the Sun, 204, 255, 260, 263; Lower Depths, 199; “An Incident from the Life of Makar,” 257; “Makar Chudra,” 259; My Universities, 257; Notes from My Diary – Recollections, 257; Sketches and Stories, 259; Through Russia, 257 Goya, Francisco, 172 Grechnev, Viacheslav, 259, 321n76 Grezhebin, Zinovii, 151, 171, 174, 266 Griboedov, Aleksandr, 16 Grigor’ev, Apollon, 84, 85 Gruzinskii, Aleksei, 130, 198, 205 Gusev-Orenburgskii, Sergei, 198 Hartmann, Eduard von, 270, 273 Hoedberg, Thor, 45 Homer, 16 Huxley, Aldous, 7 Iakubovich-Mel’shin, Petr, 42 Ibsen, Henrik, 134, 184 Iasenskii, Sergei, 220–1 Ikskul’, V., 279 Iretskii, V. (V. Glikman), 255 Iuon, Konstantin, 135 Iushkevich, Semen, 198 Ivan the Terrible, 35 Ivanov, Evgenii, 246 Ivanov, Viacheslav, 187, 188, 191, 192, 246, 270 Izmailov, Aleksandr, 217 James, Henry, 287 James, William, 96 Jamison, Kay, 216, 217, 219, 220, 234, 235 Kachalov, Vasilii, 134, 184 Kadar, Marlene, 155 Kant, Immanuel, 60, 218 Karamzin, Nikolai, 157

Kardin, V., 153, 207 Katonina, Vera, 238–9 Kaun, Alexander, 145, 168 Khantzian, E.J., 233 Khitrovo, Lev, 198 Khlebnikov, Velemir, 137 Khodasevich, Vladislav, 261, 267, 270, 279–80, 317n44 Kholopova, V., 259 Kipen, Aleksandr, 145, 172, 219 Kipling, Joseph Rudyard, 65 Kleinbort, Lev,152 Kock, Johan, 123 Koliadich, Tat’iana, 156–7, 177–8, 258 Komissarzhevskaia, Vera: theatre, 73, 85, 189, 247 Korolenko, Vladimir, 95, 116, 198, 200 Krushchev, Nikita, 145 Kugel’, Aleksandr, 152, 220 Kuprin, Aleksandr, 67, 198, 202, 206 Kuzmin, Mikhail, 190, 192 Ladyzhnikov, Ivan, 151 Lavrov, Vukol, 198 Lenin, Vladimir, 151, 257 Leopardi, Giacomo, 49 Lermontov, Mikhail, 85 Literary portrait,146–9, 152–9, 161, 211, 286; biographical, 153–5, 288; psychological, 156–9; subjectivity, 149, 207, 296n35 Livingstone, David, 64 Levitan, Isaac, 6, 61, 198 Levitskii, Lev, 149 London, Jack, 60, 65, 270 L’ov-Rogachevskii, Vasilii, 222 Lowell, Robert, 224, 289 Lowell, Russell, 287–8 Lumière, Auguste and Louise, 62 Lunacharskii, Anatolii, 221, 257 Maiakovskii, Vladimir, 137 Mamin-Sibiriak, Dmitri, 114, 198, 202 Manic-depression. See Bipolar disorder Maupassant, Guy, 22 Mazurin, Vladimir, 83

Index Mel’nikova-Papoushek, Nadezhda, 285 Memoir. See Literary portrait Merezhkovskii, Dmitri, 167, 186, 191, 203 Meyerhold, Vsevelod, 3, 74, 99, 100, 189, 247, 249 Mikhailichenko, Mitrofan, 124 Mikhailovskii, Nikolai, 80, 113, 167 Miroliubov, Viktor, 110, 198, 259 Mitropol’skii, Ivan, 198 Mikheev, Vasilii, 198 Morita, Shoma, 223 Morozov, Savva, 39–40 Morris, David, 289–90 Moscow Art Theatre, 73, 99, 100, 131, 134, 184, 191, 199, 204, 248 Muratova, Kseniia, 189, 259, 262 Mysliakova, Margarita, 186, 189, 193, 245 Nabokov, Vladimir, 143 Naidenov, Sergei, 198, 199, 205. Work: The Lodgers, 201 Nemirovich-Danchenko, Vladimir, 248 Nechaev, Sergei, 33 Neuman, Shirley, 158 Neurasthenia, 221–4 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 187, 193, 245, 246, 254, 270, 279, 288 Nikolai (Nicholas) ii, 79, 81 Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), 85 Novikov, Ivan, 177 O’Keeffe, Georgia, 216 Ol’, Andrei, 86 Oreshnikova, Vera, 98, 164 Orwell, George, 7 Ostroumov, Aleksei, 16 Pashukanis, Vinkentii, 136 Pervukhin, Konstantin, 130, 205 Petrovskaia, Nina, 139n10, 143, 214, 285 Piatnitskii, Konstantin, 111, 112, 199, 201, 262, 318n16 Pil’skii, Petr, 220

345

Piskunov, Valerii, 170, 178 Plath, Sylvia, 216, 289 Plato, 245 Poe, Edgar Allan, 49, 51, 96–7, 216 Poliakov, Aleksei, 136 Pomialovskii, Nikolai, 11 Porter, Cole, 216 Pribytkov, Georgii, 231 Protopopov, Aleksandr, 77n22, 206 Pushkin, Aleksandr, 16, 31, 38, 44, 60, 82, 100, 186 Pyman, Avril 250 Rakhmaninov, Sergei, 200 Razumovskii (Sergei Makhalov), 95, 205 Rembrandt van Rijn, 27, 156 Remizov, Aleksei, 133, 184 Repin, Il’ia, 61, 62, 215 Roslovlev, Aleksandr, 45 Rozanov, Vasilii, 39 Rubens, Peter Paul, 61 Runyan, William, 157 Rutenberg, Pinkhus, 47–8 Sapunov, Nikolai, 251 Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich, 18 Scholz, August, 112, 201 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 30, 85, 193, 229, 254, 270, 273, 291 Semenov, Sergei, 198 Serafimovich, Aleksandr 198, 200, 204, 206, 239, 266 Serebrov, Aleksandr, 151, 171, 267 Sergeev-Tsenskii, Sergei, 205 Serov, Valentin, 86, 227 Sevast’ianov, Ivan, 238 Shakespeare, William, 16, 49, 60, 218 Shaliapin, Feodor, 6, 41, 112, 167, 199, 200, 201, 206 Shmelev, Ivan, 118, 205 Skitalets (Stepan Petrov), 19, 67, 114, 115, 167, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 251–2, 287 Sokolova, Ol’ga, 254 Sologub, Feodor, 143, 188, 192, 203, 205, 260

346

Index

Solov’ev, Sergei, 247 Solov’ev, Vladimir, 85, 187, 245–6, 254 Sreda. See Wednesday Literary Circle Stalin, Joseph, 145, 265 Stanislavskii, Konstantin, 76n12, 77n15 Stanley, Henry Morton, 64 Tan, N.A., 82 Teleshov, Nikolai, 5, 7, 90n32, 94, 130, 137, 153, 188, 195–209, 263, 286, 287, 288–9, 290. Works: “About Three Youths,” 202; Beyond the Urals, 196; Fantastical Drafts, 196; Notes of a Writer, 5–6, 7, 196, 255; A Sincere Word, 195; On Troikas, 196; The Migrants, 196; Through Siberia, 196 Teleshova, Elena, 198 Thikhomirov, Dmitri, 196, 198 Tikhonov, Aleksandr. See Serebrov, Aleksandr Timkovskii, Nikolai, 95, 97, 130, 137, 188, 198, 203 Tiutchev, Feodor, 81, 89, 186, 248–9 Tolstaia, Sofia, 113, 168 Tolstoi, Lev, 17, 22, 53, 156, 157, 192, 257 Trenev, Konstantin, 119 Ufimtsev, Anitolii, 42–3 Uspenskii, Gleb, 84 Utochkin, Sergei, 68

Vasnetsov, Apollinarii, 198 Vatnikova-Prizel, Z., 211 Velasquez, Diego, 61, 156 Veresaev, Vinkentii, 95, 114, 116, 145, 152, 198, 200, 203, 205, 206, 266, 274, 305n40 Verigina, Valentina, 247 Vladimirskii, Feodor, 35–9 Vorovskii, Vatslav, 221 Vrubel, Mikhail, 61 Wednesday Literary Circle (Sreda), 5–6, 76n11, 94–5, 100, 109–19, 130–2, 163, 165, 167, 168, 174, 176, 183, 184, 188, 195–209, 247 Weiser, Karl, 45 Wells, Herbert George, 65, 267 Wexell, Joseph Julius, 45 White, Hayden, 147 Williams, Tennessee, 216 Woolf, Virginia, 216, 218, 289 Zabelin, Ivan, 46 Zaitsev, Boris, 6, 80, 116, 117, 130, 134, 144, 153, 154, 160, 163–79, 183, 184, 195, 198, 199, 200, 202, 205, 206, 207, 208, 286, 287, 289, 290 Zamiatin, Evgenii, 7, 152, 153, 154–5, 290 Zhak, L., 257 Zholkovsky, Alexander, 319n22 Zinov’ev-Anibal, Lidiia, 190 Zola, Emile, 22 Zlatovraskii, Nikolai, 114, 198