Leonid Andreyev (1871–1919)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Los textos de Leonid Andréiev están cargados de humanismo, no exentos de las tensiones y contradicciones propias de la naturaleza humana. Indagando sobre las luces y sombras de la existencia de los seres humanos, se adentró en el lado más sombrío de éstos e intentó desentrañar, en muchas ocasiones de forma alegórica, la tensión, esperanzas, tormentos y aspiraciones de un siglo XX que se manifestaba convulsionado y confuso. Andréiev nunca se apartó de una profunda compasión por los personajes que retrata. Las obras seleccionadas para este volumen, «Judas Iscariote, Mutismo» y «El gobernador», trazan la pluma prolija, limpia, intuitiva e intensa de una narración perfecta, plena de imágenes, develando justas meditaciones sobre la soledad del poder, el miedo a la muerte, la lucha del bien y el mal, la locura, en un proceso de fusión de elementos realistas con simbólicos y alegóricos en proporciones variables según la obra que tratemos.… (mehr)