"In 1897, I received my counsellor's degree and I took up that profession in Moscow. For want of time I did not succeed in getting any sort of a 'clientele'; in all, I pleaded but one civil case, which, however, I lost completely, and several gratuitous criminal cases. However, I was actively working in reporting these cases for an important paper."
Finally, two strangely impressionistic stories: "Silence," and "He Was...," published in an important Petersburg review, brought the author into prominence. From that time, he devoted himself entirely to literature.
Andreyev is considered, to-day, as one of the most brilliant representatives of the new constellation of Russian writers, in which he takes a place immediately next to Tchekoff, whom he resembles in the melancholy tone of his work. In him, as in Tchekoff, the number of people who suffer from life, either crushed or mutilated by it, by far exceed the number of happy ones; moreover, the best of his stories are short and sketchy like those of Tchekoff. Andreyev is then, so to speak, his spiritual son. But he is a sickly son, who carries the melancholy element to its farthest limit. The grey tones of Tchekoff have, in Andreyev, become black; his rather sad humor has been transformed into tragic irony; his subtle impressionability into morbid sensibility. The two writers have had the same visions of the anomalies and the horrors of existence; but, where Tchekoff has only a disenchanted smile, Andreyev has stopped, dismayed; the sensation of horror and suffering which springs from his stories has become an obsession with him; it does not penetrate merely the souls of his heroes, but, as in Poe, it penetrates even the descriptions of nature.
Thus, the "near and terrible" disk of the moon hovers over the earth like the "gigantic menace of an approaching but unknown evil"; the river congeals in "mute terror," and silence is particularly menacing. Night always comes "black and bad," and fills human hearts with shadows. When it falls, the very branches of the trees "contract, filled with terror." Under the influence of the disturbing sounds of the tocsin, the high linden-trees "suddenly begin to talk, only to become quiet again immediately and lapse into a sullen silence." The tocsin itself is animated. "Its distinct tones spread with rapid intensity. Like a herald of evil who has not the time to look behind him, and whose eyes are large with fright, the tocsin desperately calls men to the fatal mire."[9]
Most of Andreyev's characters, like those of Dostoyevsky, are abnormal, madmen and neurasthenics in whom are distinguishable marked traces of degeneration and psychic perversion. They are beings who have been fatally wounded in their life-struggle, whose minds now are completely or partially powerless. Too weak to fight against the cruel exigencies of reality, they turn their thoughts upon themselves and naturally arrive at the most desolate conclusions, and commit the most senseless acts. Some, a prey to the mania of pride, despairing because of their weakness and their "nothingness," look—as does Serge Petrovich—for relief in suicide. Others, who have resigned themselves to their sad lives, become passive observers, become transformed into living corpses whose sole desire is peace; such a one is the hero of "At the Window." Others still instinctively choke in themselves the best tendencies of their characters and are passionately fond of futile and senseless amusements, by means of which they enjoy themselves like children, until a catastrophe makes them "come back to themselves." This is the idea of the original story called "The Grand Slam." In "The Lie" Andreyev depicts the pathological process in the soul of a man who, crushed by the falsehood of his own solitary existence, becomes insane at the idea that truth is inaccessible to human reason and that the reign of the Lie is invincible. The hero of "The Thought"[10] reveres but one thing in the world—his own thought. Wrapped up in this one idea, he admires the force and finesse of it, while his reason, detached from reality and having only him for an end, begins to weaken, becomes gradually perverted to the point where this man, harassed by a terrible doubt, begins to ask himself whether he is insane. In the long and pathetic story, "The Life of a Priest," we are shown the disturbance of the religious feelings of a country priest who, although he has an ardent and strong soul, is crushed by his moral isolation among the ignorant people of a miserable village. It is again this moral isolation that is analyzed in "Silence," in which story it is the cause of a domestic tragedy. The same cause provokes a rupture between a father and a son in "The Obscure Distance," and brings with it in some way the death of the neurasthenic student.
In general, the stories of Andreyev, after passing through various catastrophes, lead the reader back to this theme,—the moral isolation of a human being, who feels that the world has become deserted, and life a game of shadows. The abyss which separates Andreyev's heroes from other men makes them weak, numb, and miserable. It seems, in fact, that there is no greater misfortune than for a man to feel himself alone in the midst of his fellow-creatures.
Finally, in "The Gulf," a somewhat imaginary thesis is developed, based on the terrible vitality which certain vile instincts keep even in the purest and most innocent minds, while the story "He Was ..." shows us the inside of a clinic, in which there are two dying men whose illusions of life persist till the supreme moment.
If we carefully study a few of Andreyev's characters we can more easily understand his feelings and his style. Here is, for instance, Serge Petrovich, a student. Although he is not very intelligent, he is above the average. His mind is preoccupied with all sorts of questions; he reads Nietzsche, he ponders over many things, but he does not know how to think for himself. The fact that there are people who can find a way to express themselves appears to him as an inaccessible ideal; while mediocre minds have no attraction for him at all. It is from this feeling that all his sufferings come. So "a horse, carrying a heavy burden, breathes hard, falls to the ground, but is forced to rise and proceed by stinging lashes from a whip."