Others, who have resigned themselves to their sad lives, become
passive observers, become transformed into living corpses whose sole
desire is peace; such a one is the hero of "At the Window." Others
still instinctively choke in themselves the best tendencies of their
characters and are passionately fond of futile and senseless
amusements, by means of which they enjoy themselves like children,
until a catastrophe makes them "come back to themselves." This is
the idea of the original story called "The Grand Slam." In "The Lie"
Andreyev depicts the pathological process in the soul of a man who,
crushed by the falsehood of his own solitary existence, becomes
insane at the idea that truth is inaccessible to human reason and
that the reign of the Lie is invincible. The hero of "The
Thought"[10] reveres but one thing in the world--his own thought.
Wrapped up in this one idea, he admires the force and finesse of it,
while his reason, detached from reality and having only him for an
end, begins to weaken, becomes gradually perverted to the point
where this man, harassed by a terrible doubt, begins to ask himself
whether he is insane. In the long and pathetic story, "The Life of a
Priest," we are shown the disturbance of the religious feelings of a
country priest who, although he has an ardent and strong soul, is
crushed by his moral isolation among the ignorant people of a
miserable village. It is again this moral isolation that is
analyzed in "Silence," in which story it is the cause of a domestic
tragedy. The same cause provokes a rupture between a father and a
son in "The Obscure Distance," and brings with it in some way the
death of the neurasthenic student.

[10] In the English translation this book is called "A Dilemma."

In general, the stories of Andreyev, after passing through various
catastrophes, lead the reader back to this theme,--the moral
isolation of a human being, who feels that the world has become
deserted, and life a game of shadows. The abyss which separates
Andreyev's heroes from other men makes them weak, numb, and
miserable. It seems, in fact, that there is no greater misfortune
than for a man to feel himself alone in the midst of his
fellow-creatures.

Finally, in "The Gulf," a somewhat imaginary thesis is developed,
based on the terrible vitality which certain vile instincts keep
even in the purest and most innocent minds, while the story "He
Was..." shows us the inside of a clinic, in which ther