Leonid Nikolaievich Andreyev was a
RussianRussian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe...
playwright and short-story writer who led the
Expressionist movementExpressionism was a cultural movement originating in Germany at the start of the 20th-century as a reaction to positivism and other artistic movements such as naturalism and impressionism. It sought to express the meaning of "being alive" and emotional experience rather than physical reality...
in the national literature. He was active between the revolution of 1905 and the Communist revolution which finally overthrew the Tsarist government.
Born in the
OryolOryol or Orel is a city in Russia, administrative center of Oryol Oblast. It is located on the Oka River, approximately 360 km south-south-west of Moscow. In Russian, the word means eagle. Population: 333,310...
province of
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, Andreyev originally studied law in
MoscowMoscow is the capital and the largest city of Russia. It is also the largest metropolitan area in Europe, and ranks among the largest urban areas in the world. Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the world, a...
and
Saint PetersburgSaint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city's other names were Petrograd and Leningrad...
, but abandoned his unremunerative law practice to pursue a literary career.
Leonid Nikolaievich Andreyev was a
RussianRussian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe...
playwright and short-story writer who led the
Expressionist movementExpressionism was a cultural movement originating in Germany at the start of the 20th-century as a reaction to positivism and other artistic movements such as naturalism and impressionism. It sought to express the meaning of "being alive" and emotional experience rather than physical reality...
in the national literature. He was active between the revolution of 1905 and the Communist revolution which finally overthrew the Tsarist government.
Biography
Born in the
OryolOryol or Orel is a city in Russia, administrative center of Oryol Oblast. It is located on the Oka River, approximately 360 km south-south-west of Moscow. In Russian, the word means eagle. Population: 333,310...
province of
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, Andreyev originally studied law in
MoscowMoscow is the capital and the largest city of Russia. It is also the largest metropolitan area in Europe, and ranks among the largest urban areas in the world. Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the world, a...
and
Saint PetersburgSaint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city's other names were Petrograd and Leningrad...
, but abandoned his unremunerative law practice to pursue a literary career. He became police-court reporter for a Moscow daily, performing the routine of his humble calling without attracting any particular attention. His first story published was
About a Poor Student, a narrative based upon his own experiences. It was not, however, until
GorkyAleksey Maksimovich Peshkov , better known as Maxim Gorky , was a Russian/Soviet author, a founder of the socialist realism literary method and a political activist...
discovered him by stories appearing in the
Moscow Courier and elsewhere that Andreyev's literary career really began.
From that day to his death he was one of the most prolific writers in Russia, producing short stories, sketches, dramas, etc., in frequent succession. His first collection of stories appeared in 1901, and sold a quarter-million copies in short time. He was hailed as a new star in Russia, where his name soon became a by-word. He published his short story, "In the Fog" in 1902. Although he started out in the Russian vein he soon startled his readers by his eccentricities, which grew even faster than his fame. His two best known stories may be "The Red Laugh" (1904) and "
The Seven Who Were HangedThe Seven That Were Hanged is a 1909 novel by Russian author Leonid Andreyev. Herman Bernstein translated the novel from Russian to English.-Plot:...
" (1908). His dramas include the
SymbolistRussian symbolism was an intellectual and artistic movement predominant at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. It represented the Russian branch of the symbolist movement in European art, and was mostly known for its contributions to Russian poetry.-Russian symbolism in...
plays
The Life of Man (1906),
Tsar Hunger (1907),
Black Masks (1908),
Anathema (1909), and
He Who Gets SlappedHe Who Gets Slapped is a 1924 film starring Lon Chaney, Norma Shearer, and John Gilbert. It was directed by Victor Sjöström. The film is based on the Russian play Tot, kto poluchayet poshchechini by playwright Leonid Andreyev, which was published in 1914 and in English, as He Who Gets Slapped, in...
(1915)..
The Life of Man was staged by both Stanislavski (with his
Moscow Art TheatreThe Moscow Art Theatre is a theatre company in Moscow that the seminal Russian theatre practitioner Constantin Stanislavski, together with the playwright and director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, founded in 1897. It was conceived as a venue for naturalistic theatre, in contrast to the melodramas...
) and
MeyerholdVsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold was a Russian and Soviet director, actor and producer whose provocative experiments dealing with physical being and symbolism in an unconventional theatre setting made him one of the seminal forces in modern theatre.-Life and work:Vsevolod Meyerhold was born Karl...
(in Saint Petersburg), the two giants of Russian theatre of the twentieth century, in 1907.
Idealist and rebel, Andreyev spent his last years in bitter poverty, and his premature death from heart failure may have been hastened by his anguish over the results of the Bolshevik Revolution. Unlike his friend Maxim Gorky, Andreyev could not make peace with the new order. From his house in
FinlandFinland , officially the Republic of Finland
, is a Nordic country and democracy situated in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe. It borders Sweden on the west, Russia on the east, and Norway on the north, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland...
he addressed manifestos to the world at large against the excesses of the
BolshevikThe Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903...
s.
Aside from his political writings, Andreyev published little after 1914. A play,
The Sorrows of Belgium, was written at the beginning of the War to celebrate the heroism of the Belgians against the invading German army. It was produced in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, as were the plays,
The Life of Man (1917),
The Rape of the Sabine Women (1922),
He Who Gets Slapped (1922), and
Anathema (1923). A popular and acclaimed film version of
He Who Gets SlappedHe Who Gets Slapped is a 1924 film starring Lon Chaney, Norma Shearer, and John Gilbert. It was directed by Victor Sjöström. The film is based on the Russian play Tot, kto poluchayet poshchechini by playwright Leonid Andreyev, which was published in 1914 and in English, as He Who Gets Slapped, in...
was produced by MGM Studios in 1924.
Poor Murderer, an adaptation of his short story
Thought made by
Pavel KohoutPavel Kohout is a Czech and Austrian novelist, playwright, and poet. He was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, a Prague Spring exponent and dissident in 1970s until he was expelled to Austria...
, opened on Broadway in 1976.
He was married to Countess Wielhorska, a niece of
Taras ShevchenkoTaras Hryhorovych Shevchenko was a Ukrainian poet, artist and humanist. His literary heritage is regarded to be the foundation of modern Ukrainian literature and, to a large extent, the modern Ukrainian language...
. Their son was
Daniil AndreyevDaniil Leonidovich Andreyev was a Russian writer, poet, and Christian mystic.- Biography :...
, a poet and mystic, author of
Roza MiraRoza Mira is the title of the main book by Russian mystic Daniil Andreev. It is also the name of the predicted new universal religion, to emerge and unite all people of the world before the advent of the Antichrist, described by Andreev in his book...
.
Leonid Andreyev's granddaughter, the American writer Olga Andrejew Carlisle, published a collection of his short stories,
Visions, in 1987.
Sources
- Banham, Martin, ed. 1998. The Cambridge Guide to Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521434378.
- Benedetti, Jean. 1999. Stanislavski: His Life and Art. Revised edition. Original edition published in 1988. London: Methuen. ISBN 0413525201.
- Carnicke, Sharon M. 2000. "Stanislavsky's System: Pathways for the Actor". In Twentieth Century Actor Training. Ed. Alison Hodge. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415194520. p.11-36.
Trivia
- Copies of his "The Seven Who Were Hanged" and "The Red Laugh" was found in the library of horror writer H.P.Lovecraft, as listed in "Lovecraft's Library¨" catalogue by S.T.Joshi .
External links