Leonid Andréev

Leonid Andreyev (1871-1919), a mad and rebellious genius, is one of the most important authors of 20th-century Russian literature, famous for works such as The Seven Hanged Men (1904) and The Red Laughter (1908). A voracious reader of Schopenhauer, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche, he studied law in Saint Petersburg and Moscow, and soon became a prisoner of alcohol and suicidal tendencies. He was a playwright, photographer, and anti-Czarist activist, and ties of friendship bound him to Gorky, with whom he disagreed due to the publication of the short story. The DarknessHe bequeathed to us the unbridled sensitivity of writing that goes to the bone, a masterful work marked by fatalism and a premonitory voice that echoes in modernity and its condemned and executioners. He called himself an apostle of self-annihilation, dealing like no other with the chaos of the world and the madness and tragedies of his fellow man. He viewed Bolshevik terror as an absolute evil and went into exile in Finland, where he died alone and in poverty. His work was censored by Soviet authorities until the late 1950s.