Resultado de "Leonid Andreyev" em Todas as categorias

The Seven Who Were Hanged is one of the most famous novels by celebrated Russian writer Leonid Nikolayevich Andreyev (1871-1919). The story, recounting the final hours of seven people sentenced to death by hanging following a secret trial, shocked Russian society. Andreyev presents his characters - five would-be terrorists and two common criminals - with great pathos and human sympathy, forcing the listener to confront the uncomfortable moral realities of capital punishment.

When we read or listen, words can have a transforming effect. Our mood can alter in the space of a few sentences from joy to sadness. And not just our mood. These words can affect us physically, they can engage our emotions and even in their sadness bring a lump to our throat and tears to our eyes. Sometimes the relief can be palpable. Our authors, from Anton Chekhov, Stephen Crane, Willa Cather, Katherine Mansfield and a wealth of others, are well aware of what their talents will evoke. Genius has many names.

Mental illness though can still carry a stigma. A case of ‘you’re not trying hard enough’, ‘or knuckling down and getting on with it’. But in more recent decades mental issues have come to be recognised as an illness, a disease rather than an affliction. We all remember horror stories of lobotomy’s and electric shock being used to ‘cure’ what society viewed as anti-social behaviour but illness, mental or physical is very real. Depression, schizophrenia, breakdown, psychosis are alarming events to have or to witness.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. The Russian Literary Tradition has justly earned a magnificent reputation. The Russian Empire of the Czars was a huge and disparate patchwork of peoples ruled by an overbearing elite that employed a middle-class bureaucracy to keep the working class firmly underfoot. Within its vaulted ranks are a role call of many of the greatest literary talents of the ages.

Leonid Nikolaievich Andreyev was born on 21st August in Oryol, Russia, to a middle-class family of Polish, Ukranian and Finnish ancestry. In 1898 his first short story ‘Bargamot and Garaska’, published in the ‘Kurier’ newspaper, caught the attention and friendship of Maxim Gorky. Andreyev now discarded any other career path apart from that of author. His classic story ‘Lazarus’ brilliantly tells the story of Christ’s disciple, forced to wander the earth for all time; it is both chilling and heart-breaking in its Russian setting.

Leonid Nikolaievich Andreyev was born on 21st August in Oryol, Russia, to a middle-class family of Polish, Ukranian and Finnish ancestry. In 1898 his first short story ‘Bargamot and Garaska’, published in the ‘Kurier’ newspaper, caught the attention and friendship of Maxim Gorky. His first collection of short stories appeared in 1901 and sold over a quarter of a million copies. He was a sensation. His classic story ‘Silence’ is a haunting and a desperately sad account of a family broken by death and unable to reconcile their feelings.