Leonid Andreev: biography and creativity

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

Absence of belonging to a particular direction

Leonid Andreev, whose creativity hung so many labels, sometimes he could not decide on his belonging to any particular trend. The writer in a letter to AM Gorky himself asked who he really is, since for decadents he is a realist, and for realists - a symbolist. In his work, a talented and original writer wanted to achieve a synthesis or at least reconciliation of the two directions of the world outlook, living and constantly opposing in his mind - decadent and realistic.

Two in one

With realism, everything is clear. And what is decadence? Direct translation means decay or cultural regress. In art and literature, this is a modernist trend, which has extreme forms of aestheticism, individualism and amoralism or immorality. And these two mutually exclusive extremes Leonid Andreev wanted to synthesize in his work. All this served to cut his brilliant original talent, and his prose was recognizable right away, although he had the gift to write masterfully for someone - either under Garshin, or under Chekhov and Dostoevsky, whose work he admired. It must be added that from his youthful years and then throughout his entire life he was read by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and considered them his spiritual mentors.

Parents

Leonid Andreev was born in a well-to-do family. The grandfather on the paternal line was the leader of the nobility, and the grandmother - the serf. The article this handsome man went to his grandfather. A sharpened sense of justice and a desire for drinking - in his father, surveyor-surveyor (appraiser), who died of drunkenness at the age of 42 years. And love to all the beautiful writer is obliged to the 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" was born, as his contemporaries called it.

The artist-amateur

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

From St. Petersburg to Moscow

Further, Leonid Andreev, whose biography will be connected for some time with the city on the Neva, enters the capital's 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 the conditions when such cares fell on his shoulders, the future writer was completely apolitical. Leaving the capital, the family moves to a more breaded Moscow, where L. Andreev with time, I must say, very successfully graduated from the correspondence department of Moscow University, with the right to work in the bar. What he did five years.

Ambitious 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 a life without love. And incidentally, he was inclined to suicide: for all his life he made three attempts to leave his life - then by youth and stupidity at 16 years will settle between the rails (fatalist), then shoot himself in the heart because of the refusal of a friend 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 in the "Courier", in which he worked for a long time in writing ads, feuilletons and other notes, published his first story "Bargamot and Garaska." About the bright, original talent speaks the fact that immediately after the first story the author was noticed by readers, critics and Maxim Gorky, who immediately invited him to the society "Knowledge" and re-acquainted with the entire literary world. People began to talk about LN Andreev, and when his story "Once upon a time" was published in 1901, he woke up famous, loved, recognized.

Incredible popularity

Leonid Andreev, whose biography is now inextricably linked only with writing, was an incredibly popular author. There was a time when, by popularity, he left behind not only Veresaev and Bunin, but also Gorky, and his fees were furious. According to the testimony of his granddaughter, he was paid 5 rubles in gold for a line (in Russia only poets were paid before him). In brackets it is informed that the hen then cost 14 cents. Leonid Andreev has a great literary language, unusual subjects, his prose captures. Stunning works of "Judas Iskariot", "Thought", "The Life of Basil of Thebes", the story "He", which contemporaries called the masterpiece of Russian Gothic - every his work was expected with impatience, read and reread, discussed everywhere.

An ardent anti-Soviet

The work of Leonid Andreev is almost unfamiliar to the current generation. The Soviet reader did not know him until the 1960s, and the fault of the whole "SOS" was 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 twists of the plot, written in good, understandable language, the works lead 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. Perhaps, such would become the novel "Diary of Satan", whether it is finished. The unfortunate Satan Andreeva, surrounded by fingers of people who have become more cunning and more wicked, deserves the sympathy of readers and sincere sympathy. True, the "Mirror of the Russian Revolution" dismissed Leonid Andreev negligently, but the writer's admirers of talent did not lose sight of this.

Peculiar emigration

Unlike anyone in his work, LN Andreev and in life was not much like anyone else. He stood out in any society. His first wife was the grand-niece of Taras Shevchenko, Aleksandra 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 the marriage, the whole large family moves to their own house, bought in the Finnish village of Vamemsu. 1916-1917 Andreev spent in Petersburg, but the October Revolution did not take the most decisive way. I returned to Finland, which soon separated from Russia. The author of stunning stories such as The Seven Hanged and Red Laughter, like Ilya Repin in his Penates, became a foreign subject.

Way home

Leonid Andreev, whose short biography is really very brief, like, actually, life ... The writer died at the age of 48 from heart disease. He died not at home, but at a friend's friend FN Falkovsky. Death occurred on September 12, 1919. He was buried in Marioks. However, in 1956, the body was reburied on the "Literary Bridge" - a site on the Volkovsky cemetery in Leningrad. Descendants of the writer live in Paris, America, and some - and in Moscow, in which Clement Voroshilov helped those who wanted to .