Leonid Andreev: biography and creativity

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Many articles about Leonid Andreev begin with the message that he was the founder of Russian expressionism (this direction is based not on the reflection of reality, but on the inner world of the author, generated by it). Although very often, along with this definition of his work, contemporaries attributed his method to critical realism, neorealism, fantastic realism and real mysticism.

Not belonging to a particular direction

Leonid Andreev, whose work was hung with so many labels, sometimes he himself could not decide whether he belonged to any particular movement.

The writer in a letter to A. M. Gorky himself asked who he really was, since for decadents he is a realist, and for realists he is a symbolist. In his work, the talented and original writer wanted to achieve a synthesis, or at least reconciliation, of two directions of worldview that live and constantly oppose him in his mind - decadent and realistic.

Two inone

With realism, everything is clear. What is decadence? Direct translation means decline or cultural regression. In art and literature, this is a modernist trend, which is characterized by extreme forms of aestheticism, individualism and amoralism or immorality. And Leonid Andreev wanted to synthesize these two mutually exclusive extremes in his work. All this served as a facet of his brilliant original talent, and his prose was immediately recognizable, although he had the gift of skillfully writing for someone - either Garshin, or Chekhov and Dostoevsky, whose work he admired. It should be added that from his youth and then throughout his life he read Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and considered them his spiritual mentors.

Parents

Leonid Andreev was born in a fairly we althy family. The paternal grandfather was the leader of the nobility, and the grandmother was a serf. This handsome man went to his grandfather's article. A heightened sense of justice and a craving for booze - in his father, a land surveyor-taxator (appraiser), who died of drunkenness at the age of 42. And the writer owes his love for everything beautiful to his mother - a representative of an impoverished Polish noble family, who loves him selflessly. So, in the city of Orel, in the family of an official on August 21, 1871, the future "Sphinx of the Russian intelligentsia", as his contemporaries called him, was born.

Amateur artist

He learned the alphabet at the age of 6 and retained the habit of reading voraciously throughout his life. He entered the local Oryol gymnasium at the age of 11, studied poorly,but compositions - in exchange for solving problems - he wrote to almost the entire class, and all of them were different in style. But Leonid Andreev did not think of any writing, for he was completely occupied with drawing. He did not become a professional painter, since there was no art school in Orel, but the ability to draw at one time fed his family well - he was paid up to 11 rubles for a portrait. Years after the writer's death, his works began to be exhibited at international exhibitions along with the masterpieces of the masters of painting, his contemporaries.

From Petersburg to Moscow

Next Leonid Andreev, whose biography will be associated with the city on the Neva for some time, enters the metropolitan university at the department of jurisprudence. But soon the father dies, and the family finds itself in such cramped circumstances that often they all had to starve. Naturally, in conditions when such worries fell on his shoulders, the future writer was completely apolitical. After leaving the capital, the family moved to more bready Moscow, where L. Andreev eventually, it must be said, very successfully graduated from the correspondence department of Moscow University, with the right to work in the legal profession. What he did for five years.

Loving and emotional

It is necessary to stipulate the fact that this imposing handsome man with delicate features was loved by women and he himself adored them passionately - he could not imagine life without love. And along the way, he was prone to suicide: in his whole life he made three attempts to die - then, due to his youth and stupidity at 16, he will settle down between the rails (fatalist), thenshoots himself in the heart because his girlfriend refuses to marry him. Actually, this second attempt led to heart disease and early death.

Recognized from the first story

The writer Leonid Andreev refers to the beginning of his literary activity in 1898. It was then that in the "Courier", in which he worked for a long time writing ads, feuilletons and other notes, his first story "Bargamot and Garaska" was published. The bright, original talent is evidenced by the fact that immediately after the first story, the author was noticed by readers, critics and Maxim Gorky, who immediately invited him to the Knowledge Society and introduced him to the entire writing world. They started talking about L. N. Andreev, and when his story “Once upon a time” was published in 1901, he woke up famous, beloved, recognized.

Incredibly popular

Leonid Andreev, whose biography is now inextricably linked only with writing, was an incredibly popular author. There was a time when, in terms of popularity, he left behind not only Veresaev and Bunin, but also Gorky, and his fees were crazy. According to his granddaughter, he was paid 5 rubles in gold per line (line by line in Russia before him only poets were paid). In brackets it is reported that the chicken then cost 14 kopecks. Leonid Andreev has a magnificent literary language, extraordinary plots, his prose captures. The stunning works Judas Iscariot, Thought, The Life of Basil of Thebes, the story "He", which contemporaries called the masterpiece of Russian Gothic - each of his works was eagerly awaited, read andreread, discussed everywhere.

Ardent anti-adviser

The work of Leonid Andreev is almost unfamiliar to the current generation. The Soviet reader did not know him until the 60s, and the S. O. S. - an appeal to the leaders of the West with a request to save Russia from the Bolsheviks. This is not forgiven. Maybe soon something will change, because some of the stories of this writer are included in the school curriculum. Bright, with unexpected plot twists, written in a good, understandable language, the works bring this brilliant writer to the top of the Silver Age of Russian literature. Each of his offspring is so perfect that it is difficult to call any of them the peak of creativity. Maybe that would be the novel "Satan's Diary" if it were finished. The unfortunate Satan Andreeva, fooled by people who have become more cunning and meaner than him, deserves readers' sympathy and sincere sympathy. True, The Mirror of the Russian Revolution spoke disparagingly of Leonid Andreev, but this did not diminish the admirers of the writer's talent.

A kind of emigration

Unlike anyone else in his work, L. N. Andreev in life was a little like anyone else. He stood out in any society. His first wife was the great-niece of Taras Shevchenko - Alexandra Veligorodskaya, who died as a result of postpartum fever. The second wife was Anna Ilyinichna Denisevich, who was his first and only literary secretary.

After marriage, the whole big familymoves into his own house, bought in the Finnish village of Vammelsu. Andreev spent 1916-1917 in St. Petersburg, but did not accept the October Revolution in the most decisive way. He returned to Finland, which soon separated from Russia. The author of amazing stories such as "The Seven Hanged Men" and "Red Laughter", like Ilya Repin in his Penates, became a foreign citizen.

Road home

Leonid Andreev, whose brief biography is indeed very short, like, in fact, life … The writer died at the age of 48 from a heart disease. He died not at home, but visiting a friend of F. N. Falkovsky. Death came on September 12, 1919. They buried him in Marioki. However, in 1956, the body was reburied at Literary Mostki, a site at the Volkovsky cemetery in Leningrad. The writer's descendants live in Paris, America, and some in Moscow, in which Clement Voroshilov helped those who wished to return.