Children's short stories by Leonid Andreev. Andreev, Leonid Nikolaevich

There were other facts that had to be put up with, and when Sergei Petrovich peered deeper into his life, he thought that she, too, was a fact from the same category. He was ugly - not ugly, but ugly, like hundreds and thousands of people. A flat nose, thick lips and a low forehead made him look like others and erased his individuality from his face. He rarely approached the mirror and even scratched himself so, to the touch, and when he approached, he peered into his eyes for a long time, and they seemed to him cloudy and similar to pea jelly, into which a knife freely penetrates and does not stumble upon anything hard to the very bottom. . In this respect, as in many others, he differed from his friend Novikov, who had keen, bold eyes, high forehead and a well-defined, beautiful oval face. And a tall body, when one had to wear such a head on it, seemed to Sergei Petrovich not an advantage, but a disadvantage, and, perhaps, because of this, he stooped when he walked. But the most difficult fact for Sergei Petrovich seemed to be that he was stupid. In the gymnasium, the teachers considered him downright stupid and in lower grades openly expressed it. In connection with one of his absurd answers, the father called him "the stupid Smolensk and Mogilev", and although the nickname did not take root in him, but became a household name for every stupid student, Sergei Petrovich did not forget his origin. And out of the whole class, it seems, he alone remained without a nickname to the end, except for the name "Sergey Petrovich", which everyone called him: teachers, schoolboys and watchman. There was nothing in him that could be attached to a witty nickname. At the university, comrades who were very fond of distributing each other according to their minds, Sergei Petrovich was classified as limited, although they never expressed this directly to his face, but he himself guessed from the fact alone that no one had ever turned to him with a serious question and conversation but always with a joke. As soon as Novikov appeared at the same time, the conversation immediately turned to serious topics. At first, Sergei Petrovich silently protested against the general recognition of his limited person and tried to do, say, or write something clever, but, apart from laughter, nothing came of it. Then he convinced himself of his limitations and was convinced so strongly that if the whole world recognized him as a genius, he would not believe him. After all, the world did not know and could not know what Sergei Petrovich knew about himself. The world could hear from him a clever thought, but he might not know that this thought was stolen by Sergei Petrovich or acquired after such labor, which completely depreciated it. What others assimilated on the fly cost him painful efforts, and yet, even though it was indelibly etched into his memory, it remained alien, extraneous, as if it were not living thought, and a book that hit the head, pricking the brain with its corners. A special resemblance to a book was given by the fact that always next to the thought was a clear and distinct page on which he read it. The same thoughts, in which the pages were not shown, and which Sergey Petrovich therefore considered his own, were the simplest, most ordinary, not intelligent, and completely resembled thousands of other thoughts on earth, just as his face resembled thousands of other faces. It was difficult to reconcile with this fact, but Sergei Petrovich reconciled. Compared to him, the other little facts—lack of talent, weak chest, awkwardness, lack of money—seemed unimportant.

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

Lack of belonging to a particular direction

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

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

Two in one

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 immoralism. And Leonid Andreev wanted to synthesize these two mutually exclusive extremes in his work. All this served as a facet to his brilliant original talent, and his prose was immediately recognizable, although he had the gift of masterfully writing for someone - either for Garshin, or for Chekhov, and whom he admired. It must be added that with youthful years and then throughout his life he read Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and considered them his spiritual mentors.

Parents

Leonid Andreev was born in a fairly wealthy 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 for the rest of his life. He entered the local Oryol gymnasium at the age of 11, studied poorly, but he wrote compositions - in exchange for solving problems - 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, but the ability to draw at one time fed the family well - he was paid up to 11 rubles for a portrait. Years after the death of the writer, his works began to be exhibited at international exhibitions along with the masterpieces of masters of painting, his contemporaries.

Biography

Creativity, main ideas

Artworks

stories

Novels and short stories

Screen versions of works

Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev(9 (21) August 1871, Orel, Russian Empire - September 12, 1919, Neivola, Finland) - Russian writer. Representative Silver Age Russian literature. Considered the founder of Russian expressionism.

Biography

Childhood

Born in Orel in a wealthy family of land surveyor-taxator Nikolai Ivanovich Andreev (1847-1889) and Anastasia Nikolaevna Andreeva (Packovskoy) - the daughter of a bankrupt Polish landowner. Since childhood, he has shown an interest in reading. He studied at the Oryol classical gymnasium (1882-1891). He was fond of the works of Schopenhauer and Hartmann.

Youth

Youthful impressionability and developed imagination several times they encouraged him to act recklessly: at the age of 17, he decided to test his willpower and lay down between the rails in front of an approaching steam locomotive, but remained unharmed.

After graduating from high school, Andreev entered the law faculty of St. Petersburg University; after the death of his father, financial situation his family deteriorated, and Andreev himself began to abuse alcohol. At one time, Andreev even had to starve. In St. Petersburg, he tried to write his first stories, but from the editorial office, as Andreev recalls in his memoirs, they were returned with laughter. Expelled for non-payment, he entered the Faculty of Law of Moscow University. In Moscow, in the words of Andreev himself: "life was better financially: the comrades and the committee helped."

In 1894, after a love failure, Andreev tried to commit suicide. The consequence of an unsuccessful shot was church repentance and heart disease, which subsequently caused the death of the writer. After this incident, Leonid Andreev was again forced to live in poverty: now he needed to feed his mother, his sisters and brothers, who had moved to Moscow. He was interrupted by odd jobs, teaching and painting portraits to order. AT political activity did not participate.

In 1897 he successfully passed final exams at the university, which opened the way for him to the bar, which he did until 1902. In the same year, he began his journalistic activity in the newspaper "Moskovsky Vestnik" and "Courier". He signed his feuilletons with the pseudonym "James Lynch". In 1898, his first story was published in the "Courier": "Bargamot and Garaska". According to Andreev, the story was an imitation of Dickens, but the young author was noticed by Maxim Gorky, who invited Andreev to the Knowledge book publishing partnership, which unites many young writers.

First Russian Revolution and pre-war years

Real fame came to Andreev after the publication in 1901 of his story "Once Upon a Time" in the magazine "Life".

In 1902 Andreev marries A. M. Veligorskaya, the great-niece of Taras Shevchenko. In the same year, he became the editor of Kurier, was forced to give the police an undertaking not to leave because of his connection with the revolutionary-minded students. Thanks to the help of Maxim Gorky, the first volume of his works was published in large numbers. During these years, the direction of creativity and its literary style were designated.

In 1905 he welcomed the First Russian Revolution; he hid hiding members of the RSDLP at his home, on February 10 he was imprisoned because a secret meeting of the Central Committee was held at his apartment the day before (on February 25 he was released on bail brought by Savva Morozov). In the same year, he will write the story "The Governor", which became a response to the murder on February 17 by the Socialist-Revolutionary I. Kalyaev of the Moscow Governor-General, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich.

In 1906, the writer was forced to leave for Germany, where his second son, Daniel, was born, who later became a writer (he wrote the treatise "Rose of the World"). His wife dies from childbirth (buried in Moscow at the cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent). Andreev leaves for Capri (Italy), where he lives with Gorky. After the beginning of the reaction in 1907, Andreev became disillusioned with the revolution itself. He moves away from the revolutionary-minded literary environment of Gorky.

In 1908 Andreev moved to own house in Wammels. At the villa "Advance" (the name was chosen due to the fact that the house was built on an advance from the publisher) Leonid Andreev writes his first dramatic works.

Since 1909, he has been actively collaborating with the modernist almanacs of the Rosepovnik publishing house.

World War I, the 1917 revolution and the writer's death

Leonid Andreev met the beginning of the First World War with enthusiasm:

During the war, Andreev publishes a drama about military events in Belgium ("King, Law and Freedom"). However, the works of the writer at that time were mainly devoted not to the war, but to petty-bourgeois life, the theme of the “little man”.

After February Revolution In 1917 he was a member of the editorial board of the reactionary newspaper Russkaya Volya.

The October Revolution did not accept and did not understand. After the separation of Finland from Russia, he went into exile. Recent compositions The writer is imbued with pessimism and hatred for the Bolshevik authorities (“Diary of Satan”, “SOS”).

On September 12, 1919, Leonid Andreev died suddenly of a heart disease. He was buried in Marioki. In 1956, he was reburied in Leningrad at the Volkov cemetery.

In 1991, Leonid Andreev's house-museum was opened in Orel, the writer's homeland.

Addresses in St. Petersburg - Petrograd

• 1907-1908 - the profitable house of K. Kh. Geldal - Kamennoostrovsky prospect, 13;
• 1914−1917 years - tenement house of K. I. Rozenshtein - Bolshoy Prospekt, 75.

Creativity, main ideas

The first works of Leonid Andreev, largely under the influence of the disastrous conditions in which the writer was then, are imbued with critical analysis. modern world("Bargamot and Garaska", "City"). However, even in early period The writer's work revealed his main motives: extreme skepticism, disbelief in the human mind ("The Wall", "The Life of Basil of Thebes"), there is a fascination with spiritualism and religion ("Judas Iscariot"). The stories "The Governor", "Ivan Ivanovich" and the play "To the Stars" reflect the writer's sympathy for the revolution. However, after the beginning of the reaction in 1907, Leonid Andreev abandoned any revolutionary views, believing that a revolt of the masses could only lead to great sacrifices and great suffering (see The Story of the Seven Hanged Men). In his story "Red Laughter" Andreev painted a picture of horror modern war(reaction to Russo-Japanese War 1905). The dissatisfaction of his heroes with the surrounding world and orders invariably results in passivity or an anarchic rebellion. The writer's dying writings are imbued with depression, the idea of ​​the triumph of irrational forces.

Despite the pathetic mood of the works, literary language Andreev, assertive and expressive, with emphasized symbolism, met with a wide response in the artistic and intellectual environment of pre-revolutionary Russia. Positive reviews Maxim Gorky, Roerich, Repin, Blok, Chekhov and many others left about Andreev. Andreev's works are distinguished by sharp contrasts, unexpected twists plot, combined with the schematic simplicity of the syllable. Leonid Andreev recognized bright writer Silver Age of Russian Literature.

Artworks

stories

Plays

• 1906 - "To the Stars"
• 1907 - "The Life of a Man"
• 1907 - Savva
• 1908 - "Tsar Famine"
• 1909 - "Anatema"
• 1909 - "Days of our lives"
• 1910 - "Anfisa"
• 1910 - Gaudeamus
• "Katerina Ivanovna"
• "Thought"
• "The one who gets slapped"

Novels and short stories

• 1903 - "The Life of Basil of Thebes"
• 1905 - "Governor"
• 1907 - "Judas Iscariot and others"
• 1911 - "Sashka Zhegulev"
• 1916 - "Yoke of War"
• 1919 - "Satan's Diary" (not finished)

Screen versions of works

• 1916 - The one who gets slapped ( Russian empire)
• 1924 - The one who gets slapped (USA)
• 1987 - Christians
• 1990 - Purification
• 1991 - Night of Sinners (according to the story "Darkness") (also called "The Highest Truth of the Bomber Alexei")
• 2009 - Abyss (Russia)

Years of life: from 08/09/1871 to 09/12/1919
Russian writer and playwright. In his work he used many impressionistic techniques, is considered the founder of existentialism in Russia. In dramaturgy, in many respects he anticipated Brecht's theater.
Biography
L.N.Andreev was born in the city of Orel on August 9, 1871.
Leonid was the eldest son in the family, his mother loved and spoiled him very much. Memories of friendship, warm relations with his mother Andreev carried through his whole life.
The father was strict with the children, tried to keep them within strict limits. However, Andreev Sr. had one drawback - like all other residents of the street, he often went on a drinking bout and at that time there was no control over the children. Andreev inherited a penchant for alcohol from his father, but he struggled with this habit all his life.
The pictures and manners of the street where the Andreevs lived were vividly depicted in the first published story of Leonid Nikolaevich - "Bargamot and Garaska".
Leonid Andreev received his primary education at home, then entered the Oryol gymnasium. Andreev was a negligent student, a rare teacher could interest him, and teachers did not strive for this at that time. Andreev stayed in his second year, often skipped classes, wrote poetry in class and drew caricatures of teachers and students.
In the gymnasium, Andreev became interested in the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Hartmann. After reading Schopenhauer's treatise The World as Will and Representation, Andreev literally pursued his comrades with questions that they could not answer. The philosophy of Schopenhauer had a significant impact on the worldview of Andreev and his creative method. It is from here that the writer's pessimism comes, disbelief in the triumph of reason, doubt in the triumph of virtue and confidence in the irresistibility of fate.
In 1891, Andreev graduated from high school and went to St. Petersburg to continue his education. He lives very poorly, since his father had already died by this time, and the family could not help him financially. Andreev is expelled from the university for non-payment, and he enters the law faculty of Moscow University, where his studies are paid for by the Society for Assistance to the Needy.
During this period, Andreev experiences a deep feeling of love, but reciprocity does not last long - his chosen one refuses the marriage proposal, and the writer attempts suicide. Its result was heart disease, from which Andreev subsequently dies.
In 1897, Andreev graduated from the university, and quite successfully, and began serving as an assistant to a barrister, however, Andreev did not have to practice law for a long time - already in 1898 he published his first story in the Kurier newspaper. The story "Bargamot and Garaska" was written to order for the Easter edition of the newspaper and immediately became the object of heated discussions and praise. In particular, the story was noticed by Gorky, with whom Andreev began a correspondence, and the writers became almost the best of friends.
It should be noted that Andreev was published in the Courier even before that. But he acted as a simple correspondent who wrote reviews of trials and feuilletons. His pseudonym was James Lynch.
In 1900, Andreev finally personally met Gorky, who immediately introduces him to a realistic literary circle"Wednesday", where the novice writer is very well received and a great future is predicted for him. At the meetings of the society, the most prominent artists of that time met, and not only writers (Bunin, Serafimovich, Chekhov, Korolenko, Kuprin), but also artists (Vasnetsov, Levitan), as well as stage figures (Chaliapin). Thus, Andreev gets into the best intellectual society, where writers read their works, listened to the opinion of professionals about them, learned from each other.
When the circle decides to organize its own publishing house, Andreev has the opportunity to publish his first collection of short stories. So, in 1901, under own name- Leonid Andreev - the writer releases his first collection - "Stories".
Those 10 works that were published in it made the most favorable impression on readers and critics. Many of the country's leading critics wrote laudatory articles, and Andreev himself jokingly said that the volume of laudatory articles exceeded the volume of the collection itself. So fame immediately came to Andreev.
In 1902, Andreev happily marries Alexandra Mikhailovna Veligorskaya, a very meek and patient woman.
In 1905, one thing happens in Russia major events, and Andreev, of course, does not stand aside. Like most progressive people of his time, he welcomes the First Russian Revolution, seeing it as an opportunity for further development Russia.
However, the revolution is defeated, and Andreev is forced to leave Russia and travels to Germany in November, where his wife dies in childbed fever.
AT terrible depression aggravated by binges, Andreev goes to the Gorky estate on the island of Capri, where he lives until 1908.
In 1907, Andreev became disillusioned with the ideas of the revolution, which caused a cooling friendly relations with Gorky.
In 1908, having remarried (to Anna Ilyinichna Denisevich), Andreev left for his estate in Finland - "Advance", so named because it was built on an advance received from the publisher. Andreev will live there most the rest of his life, occasionally traveling to the capitals on business of his publications.
Andreev met the beginning of WWI with enthusiasm, believing in the victory of the Russian army over Germany, but soon he understands the soullessness of the war, and refuses military-patriotic sentiments.
Andreev also welcomes the February Revolution of 1917, but realizing how much blood is shed by the Bolsheviks in the name of a good cause, he refuses to take their side and already condemns the October Revolution.
Unwittingly - after the proclamation of the independence of Finland, where Andreev continued to live in his dacha - he ended up in exile. The writer felt like "an exile three times: from home, from Russia and from creativity."
So, not accepting the revolution, but not taking the side of the whites, Andreev lives in Finland until 1919.
In the autumn, in mid-September, Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev dies of heart failure - an old suicide attempt has affected.

AT student years Andreev is engaged in painting - he draws portraits to order for 3-5 rubles apiece. His amateur works were positively evaluated by such masters of the brush as N. Roerich and I. Repin.

In 1905, Andreev sheltered the revolutionaries, provided his apartment for meetings of the Central Committee of the RSDLP, for which he would be imprisoned in February 1905. After staying in the fortress for about a month, Andreev is released on bail brought by Savva Morozov. Moreover, he comes out quite pleased with himself, which he tells Gorky about - the conclusion helps to feel life more fully, to turn around in full breadth.

"... I, chasing mirages, denying life and incapable of peace ..."

L. Andreev

September 12, 1919 in Finland, in the village of Neivola, at the age of 48, the famous Russian writer Leonid Andreev died. Very close - at hand - Russia, which just a few years ago followed every step of this man, did not seem to notice his very last step. The border that marked the independence of Finland in 1918 turned out to be almost impenetrable, and for a long time in the press confirmations and denials of the sad news followed each other.

Nevertheless, two public farewell ceremonies were organized - thanks to the efforts of M. Gorky, who was especially acutely worried about the death of this great artist, with whom he was personally connected by a long and difficult history of friendship and enmity. We also owe him the "Book of Leonid Andreev" (Pg. - Berlin, 1922), which collected the memoirs of Gorky himself, Chukovsky, Blok, Bely, Chulkov, Zaitsev, Teleshov and Zamyatin. This document literary life has now become a bibliographic rarity, like the collection in memory of Leonid Andreev "Requiem", released in 1930 by the son of the writer Daniil and V. E. Beklemisheva. The fate of Andreevsky literary heritage was more than unenviable. It cannot be said that Andreev immediately after the revolution became a “forbidden” writer, and such writers, perhaps, did not exist before the well-known “historical turning point”. But in a country that did not easily assimilate the new revolutionary order, in a country that was quite specifically oriented first to survival, and then to socialist renewal, creativity "outside time and space", creativity, according to the definition of the writer himself, "has no political significance" , was somehow not entirely appropriate. Andreev was still reprinted in some places, his plays were staged in some places (there was even a staging of Andreev's last, unfinished work - "Satan's Diary"), but former glory"ruler of thoughts" seemed already a fantastic legend. In 1930, the last collection of stories by L. Andreev was published, and then - long years default.

Oblivion became just as quick in the opposite Russian camp - in exile. Vadim Leonidovich Andreev, who spent his whole life abroad, recalled: “... Most of the best things of the father of this (last. - A. B.) period were published only after his death in the emigrant press and did not deserve a single, literally not a single review. In general, Andreev was not loved in exile. “If they sometimes wrote about him,” adds V. Andreev, “it was always ironic or arrogantly contemptuous,“ in the style of Merezhkov-Gippius and they always mentioned that Andreev was a bitter drunkard.

The second "discovery" of the work of Leonid Andreev, as part of all pre-revolutionary literature, occurred in our country in 1956, with the release of the collection "Stories". This discovery has been going on for more than thirty years, but the current six-volume collection of works is only a stage in the comprehension of this remarkable writer.

Leonid Andreev was born on August 9 (21), 1871 in the city of Orel on 2nd Pushkarnaya Street. His father, Nikolai Ivanovich, and mother, Anastasia Nikolaevna, then just got out of poverty: the land surveyor-tax operator Andreev got a job in a bank, bought a house and began to acquire a household. Nikolai Ivanovich was a prominent figure: "gunners, broken heads", respected him for his extraordinary physical strength and a sense of justice that did not betray him even in his famous drunken tricks and regular fights. Leonid Andreev later explained the hardness of his character (as well as craving for alcohol) by heredity from his father, while his Creative skills attributed entirely to the maternal line. Anastasia Nikolaevna, nee Patskovskaya, although she is believed to have come from a Russified and impoverished Polish noble family, was a simple and poorly educated woman. Her main merit was her selfless love for children, and especially for her first-born Lenusha; and she also had a passion for fiction: in her stories, no one could separate the truth from the fable.

Already in the gymnasium, Andreev discovered in himself the gift of words: writing off problems from friends, he instead wrote essays for them, enthusiastically varying his manners. A penchant for stylization later manifested itself in literary experiments, when, analyzing the works of famous writers, he tried to imitate "under Chekhov", "under Garshin", "under Tolstoy". But in his gymnasium years, Andreev did not think about writing and was seriously engaged only in ... drawing. However, in Orel there were no opportunities to study painting, and more than once later he lamented famous writer about his undeveloped talent as an artist, a talent that every now and then forced him to drop his pen and take up a brush or pencil.

In addition to drawing, Oryol nature and street fighting, the life of Andreev, a gymnasium student, was filled with books. The characters of stories not yet conceived, seen on the surrounding streets - Bargamot and Garaska, Sazonka and Senista ("Hotel"), Sashka ("Angel") and others - lived in the mind of the future writer along with the heroes of Dickens, Jules Verne, Mine Reed ...

“The moment of a conscious attitude to the book” Andreev calls “the one when I first read Pisarev, and soon after that“ What is my faith? ”Tolstoy ... He bit into Hartmann and Schopenhauer and at the same time by heart (otherwise it was impossible) memorized half the book“ Teaching about food "Moleschott" .

It must be assumed that it was serious reading that prompted Andreev to write, and Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation for many years remained one of his favorite books and had notable influence to his creativity. At the age of seventeen, Andreev made a significant entry in his diary, known in the retelling of V. V. Brusyanin. The future novelist promised himself that “with his writings he would destroy both morality and established human relations destroy love and religion, and end his life in destruction.” It is amazing that, without writing a single line, Leonid Andreev already seemed to see himself as scandalous famous author"The Abyss" and "In the Fog," Fr. Basil of Thebes and Savva...

In the senior classes of the gymnasium, Andreev's countless love interests began. However, the word "hobby" does not give an idea of ​​the fatal force that he from his youth to the very last day I felt in myself and around me. Love, like death, he felt thinly and sharply, to the point of pain. Three suicide attempts, black failures of drunken drunkenness - such a price was paid by the consciousness that could not withstand the terrible tension for the torment caused by unrequited love. “Just as words are necessary for some, as labor or struggle is necessary for others, love is necessary for me,” L. Andreev wrote in his diary. “Like air, like food, like sleep, love is a necessary condition for my human existence.”

In 1891, Andreev graduated from high school and entered the law faculty of St. Petersburg University. Deep mental trauma (the betrayal of his beloved woman) makes him quit his studies. Only in 1893 he was restored - but already at Moscow University. At the same time, according to the rules, he undertakes "not to take part in any communities, such as, for example, fraternities and the like, and also not to join even societies permitted by law, without the permission of the nearest authorities in each individual case" . However, the tendency to political activity Andreev did not show; he maintained relations with the Oryol community: together with other “old men” who came to general conspiratorial meetings, he ridiculed the “reformists” who studied and propagandized Marx. The “golden pastime”, which the Oryol “old men” opposed to political self-education, was described with photographic similarity by Andreev himself in the plays “Days of Our Life” and “Gaudeamus” (“Old Student”) - the characters and events of these works were almost not conjectured by the author. Reading, in particular, philosophical, further removed Andreev from the topic of the day. Whole nights, according to P. N. Andreev, the brother of the future writer, Leonid sat over the works of Nietzsche, whose death in 1900 he perceived almost as a personal loss. Andreev's "Story about Sergei Petrovich" is a wonderful synthesis of his own experience of understanding the world "according to Nietzsche" and vivid impressions of the "golden pastime", which often masked the deepest despair.