"And, during the night, in the place where Petka and Nicolka sleep side by side, a weak little voice speaks of the country, of things that do not exist, of things that no one has ever heard of or seen!..."
"The Cellar" is inhabited by absolutely fallen people. A baby has just been born there. With down-bent necks, their faces unconsciously lighted up by strangely happy smiles, a prostitute and a miserable drunkard look at the child. This little life, "weak as a fire in the steppe," calls to them vaguely, and it seems to promise them something beautiful, clear, and immortal. Among the inhabitants of this cellar, the most unfortunate of all, is a man named Kizhnakov; he is pale, sickly, worn by work, almost devoured by suffering and alcohol; death already lies in wait for him. The most terrible thing for this man is the necessity of having to begin to live again each day. He would like to lie down all day and think of suicide under the heap of rags that serve him as a covering. He would like best to have some one come up back of him, and shoot him. He fears his own voice and his own thoughts. And it is on him that the baby produces the deepest impression. Since the birth of the child Kizhnakov does not sleep any more; he tries to protect himself from the cold, and weeps softly, without sadness and without convulsions, like those who have pure and innocent hearts, like children.
"'Why do I weep?' he asks himself.
"Not finding a suitable answer, he replies: 'It is thus....'
"And the meaning of his words is so deep that a new flood of tears come to the eyes of the man whose life is so sad and solitary."
We find the same theme again in "The Angel." A child who also lives in a cellar comes back from a Christmas-tree; he brings with him a toy, and a pretty little wax angel, which he shows to his father. The latter has seen better days, but in the last few years he has been sick with consumption, and now he is awaiting death, silent and continually exasperated by the sight of social injustice. However, the delight of the child infects the father, and both of them have a feeling "of something that joins all hearts into one, and does away with the abyss which separates man from man, and makes him so solitary, unfortunate, and weak." The poor dying man seems to hear a voice from this better world, where he once lived and from which he had been sent forever.
But these are only the dreams of a dying man, the last rays of light of the life which is being extinguished. The ray, penetrating this sick soul, is like the weak sunlight which passes through the dirty windows of a dark hovel.
In his two stories, "The Stranger" and "The Obscure Future," Andreyev shows us two men of entirely different character, animated by generous feelings and a firm will. One of them, a young student, being disgusted with the miseries of Russian life and having decided to expatriate himself, suddenly changes his mind, as a result of the patriotism of one of his friends, a Servian, named Raiko. He makes it his duty never to leave his country, although life there is so terrible and hopeless. There is, in this new feeling, an immense joy and a terrible sadness. The other, the hero of the second story, having one day expressed to his father the hatred he has for the bourgeois life that he is leading, leaves his family, who love him, in order to penetrate the "obscure future."
Evidently, these are people who are fitted to struggle. However, these strugglers, so infrequent in the work of Andreyev, have, in spite of all, something sickly and savage in them; instead of real fighting courage, they possess only extreme audaciousness, mystical rapture, or nervous exaltation. The "obscure future" toward which their eyes are turned is not lighted up by the rays of faith and hope.