Dr. Kaun, Professor of Slavic languages at the University of California, put the American reading public under obligations when he wrote Andreyev’s biography. It is the best I have encountered since Mr. Janko Lavrin’s psycho-critical study of Ibsen, and as it is more kindly, sympathetic and tolerant than that important contribution, it is pleasanter to read and quite as illuminating.
Next to Maxim Gorky, Leonid Andreyev is more widely known in this country than any recent Russian writer. Many of his novels, sketches and plays have been translated and some, such as The Seven That Were Hanged, Satan’s Diary, The Little Angel, Samson in Chains, and various plays, have been extensively read.
The question has often been asked: “What kind of author was this soul-analyst, this student of the brute in man, this writer who caused more discord in the camp of Russian criticism than any of his fellows?” Mr. Kaun’s book not only provides the answer but gives a glimpse of literary tendencies in the Russia of yesterday which is as welcome as it is instructive.
Leonid Andreyev was forty-eight years old when he died in 1919; although he began literary work soon after his admission to the bar in 1897, it was not until the publication of Once There Lived in 1901 that the critics had intimation that a new force had appeared in Russian literature. In the next fifteen years he won a place in the literary hierarchy of his country, which since his death has become more secure. When the history of Russia in the generation from 1895 to 1920 comes to be dispassionately and judicially written the name and influences of Leonid Andreyev will frequently be mentioned.
The Slav is an enigma to most Americans and the more we learn of Andreyev the less soluble seems the riddle. He was of the manic-depressive temperament; at least three times in his life he attempted suicide; he was addicted to strong drink; he had the naïveté and egotism of a child; he was mulishly obstinate. Maxim Gorky, who was one of the first to recognise his ability, who counselled and befriended him, has recently written: “Strangely, and to his own torment, Leonid split in two; in one and the same week he could sing hosanna to the world and pronounce anathema against it.” In this respect he resembled another writer of manic-depressive temperament, Giovanni Papini.
This lack of co-ordination in Andreyev’s moods is continually shown by Dr. Kaun, who follows him through all the periods of his life. His childhood was gloomy, filled with serious thoughts and arid reading. At times he put aside all his interests in literature and became a “rough boy.” He displayed a remarkable gift for the stage and an early inclination to draw and to paint. The death of his father, which occurred when Leonid was very young, gave him a taste of poverty, privation and humility and made him realise that his future was what he alone would make it. Soon after graduation he became a court reporter and then an editorial writer. Mr. Kaun devotes an instructive and interesting chapter to this plastic period, during which he displayed few indications of possessing constructive ability.
The transformation that Russia witnessed during the years of Andreyev’s adolescence and early maturity must of necessity have influenced a mind such as his. He saw aristocracy fail to convince itself that slavery was legitimate; he saw the slow but constant development of a sentiment of democracy which soon extended to all branches of society and turned all eyes and sympathies to the peasantry.
They became the idols of the day in Russia; literature was concentrated around their activities and that new discovery, their souls. The Intelligentsia, to which Andreyev belonged, recognised and praised their long disdained brothers. In his introduction Dr. Kaun has expressed all this in clear and simple language; he has shown the tendencies of Russian literature with such authority and coolness that what seemed an abyss of darkness passing understanding becomes at once easy to penetrate. Some of his definitions dismiss the cloud of vagueness that before surrounded the object. “The term Intelligentsia may be applied to the unorganised group of Russian men and women who, regardless of their social or economic status, have been united in a common striving for the betterment of material and spiritual conditions.”
When Russian literature became as it were “single tracked,” when all its interests turned abruptly to the “street” (save for the exception of a few writers who refused to give up “art for art’s sake” and take up the defence of any one class of society), the danger was that Russian literature would become “a didactic sermon.” But Dr. Kaun hastens to reassure us that “What saved it ... was the genius of its creators, who remained artists under all circumstances.”