f Andreyev it is certain that the bulk
of his works would not have been written, and could not be what they
are, were it not for the fact of death. If there is one idea that can
be said to dominate the author of "The Life of Man," it is the idea of
death. Constantly he keeps asking: Why all this struggling, all this
pain, all this misery in the world, if it must end in nothing? The
suffering of the great mass of mankind makes life meaningless while
it lasts, and death puts an end even to this life. Again and again
Andreyev harks back to the one thought from which all his other
thoughts seem to flow as from their fountain-head. Lazarus, in the
story by that name, is but the embodiment of death. All who behold
him, who look into his eyes, are never again the same as they were;
indeed, most of them are utterly ruined. "The Seven Who Were Hanged"
tells how differently different persons take death. Grim death lurks
in the background of almost every work, casting a fearful gloom,
mocking the life of man, laughing to scorn his joys and his sorrows,
propounding, sphinx-like, the big riddle that no Oedipus will ever be
able to solve.

For it is not merely the destructive power of death, not merely its
negation of life, that terrifies our author. The pitchy darkness
that stretches beyond, the impossibility of penetrating the veil that
separates existence from non-existence--in a word, the riddle of
the universe--is, to a mind constituted like Andreyev's, a source of
perhaps even greater disquiet. Never was a man hungrier than he with
"the insatiable hunger for Eternity"; never was a man more eager to
pierce the mystery of life and catch a glimpse of the beyond while yet
alive.

Combined with the perplexing darkness that so pitifully limits man's
vision is the indifference of the forces that govern his destiny. The
wrongs he suffers may cry aloud to heaven, but heaven does not hear
him. Whether he writhe in agony or be prostrated in the dust (against
all reason and justice), he has no appeal, societies, the bulk
of mankind, may be plunged in misery--who or what cares? Man is
surrounded by indifference as well as by darkness.

Often, when an idea has gained a powerful hold on Andreyev, he pursues
it a long time, presenting it under various aspects, until at last
it assumes its final form, rounded and completed, as it were, in some
figure or symbol. As such it appears either as the leading theme of an
entire story or drama, or a