Savva and The Life of Man

Savva and The Life of Man

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Savva and The Life of Man, by
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Title: Savva and The Life of Man
Author: Leonid Andreyev
Release Date: August 9, 2004 [EBook #13147]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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AND THE LIFE OF MAN ***

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THE MODERN DRAMA SERIES
EDITED BY EDWIN BJÖRKMAN
SAVVA

THE LIFE OF MAN
BY LEONID ANDREYEV

SAVVA
THE LIFE OF MAN
TWO PLAYS BY
LEONID ANDREYEV

TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY
THOMAS SELTZER
BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1920
1914, BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
_This edition is authorized by Leonid Andreyev, who has selected the
plays included in it._
_All Dramatic rights reserved by Edwin Björkman_

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF PLAYS BY LEONID ANDREYEV
SAVVA

THE LIFE OF MAN

INTRODUCTION
For the last twenty years Leonid Andreyev and Maxim Gorky have by
turns occupied the centre of the stage of Russian literature. Prophetic
vision is no longer required for an estimate of their permanent
contribution to the intellectual and literary development of Russia. It
represents the highest ideal expression of a period in Russian history
that was pregnant with stirring and far-reaching events--the period of
revolution and counter-revolution. It was a period when Russian
society passed from mood to mood at an extremely rapid tempo: from
energetic aggressiveness, exultation, high hope, and confident trust in
the triumph of the people's cause to apathetic inaction, gloom, despair,
frivolity, and religious mysticism. This important dramatic epoch in the
national life of Russia Andreyev and Gorky wrote down with such
force and passion that they became recognized at once as the leading
exponents of their time.
Despite this close external association, their work differs essentially in
character. In fact, it is scarcely possible to conceive of greater artistic
contrasts. Gorky is plain, direct, broad, realistic, elemental. His art is
native, not acquired. Civilization and what learning he obtained later
through the reading of books have influenced, not the manner or
method of his writing, but only its purpose and occasionally its subject
matter. It is significant to watch the dismal failure Gorky makes of it
whenever, in concession to the modern literary fashion, he attempts the
mystical. Symbolism is foreign to him except in its broadest aspects.
His characters, though hailing from a world but little known, and often
extreme and extremely peculiar, are on the whole normal.
Andreyev, on the other hand, is a child of civilization, steeped in its
culture, and while as rebellious against some of the things of
civilization as Gorky, he reacts to them in quite a different way. He is
wondrously sensitive to every development, quickly appropriates what
is new, and always keeps in the vanguard. His art is the resultant of all

that the past ages have given us, of the things that we have learned in
our own day, and of what we are just now learning. With this art
Andreyev succeeds in communicating ideas, thoughts, and feelings so
fine, so tenuous, so indefinite as to appear to transcend human
expression. He does not care whether the things he writes about are true,
whether his characters are real. What he aims to give is a true
impression. And to convey this impression he does not scorn to use
mysticism, symbolism, or even plain realism. His favorite characters
are degenerates, psychopaths, abnormal eccentrics, or just creatures of
fancy corresponding to no reality. Frequently, however, the characters,
whether real or unreal, are as such of merely secondary importance, the
chief aim being the interpretation of an idea or set of ideas, and the
characters functioning primarily only as a medium for the embodiment
of those ideas.
In one respect Gorky and Andreyev are completely at one--in their bold
aggressiveness. The emphatic tone, the attitude of attack, first
introduced into Russian literature by Gorky, was soon adopted by most
of his young contemporaries, and became the characteristic mark of the
literature of the Revolution. By that token the literature of Young
Russia of that day is as easily recognized as is the English literature of
the Dryden and Pope epoch by its sententiousness. It contrasts sharply
with the tone of passive resignation and hopelessness of the preceding
period. Even Chekhov, the greatest representative of what may be
called the period of despondence, was caught by the new spirit of
optimism and activism, so that he reflected clearly the