Anathema: A Tragedy in Seven Scenes

Leonid Andreyev

Jan 1910 · Macmillan

About this ebook

This play was first produced by Stanislavsky in Moscow in 1909. It treats one 'David', who inherits a fortune and sets out to relieve the suffering of the world. Vast crowds gather round him, their sense of their own hardship intensified. When his resources are exhausted and he can do no more for them, they turn against him, and finally stone him to death. He is manipulated throughout by 'Anathema', a Satanic figure who wishes to have something to strengthen his case against God the Creator. But when he challenges an angel at the heavenly gates, the angel replies that good and evil on earth cannot be measured: the goodness that David represents has a value that is incomparable and transcendent. The play excited lively debate in the Russian Orthodox Church at the time, between those who condemned it as an attack on Christianity and those who praised it as a vindication of Christianity. Further performances were finally banned after intervention by Tsar Nicholas II, whose piety was equal to his stupidity. Apart from its theology, the play has the great merit of presenting two chief characters, David and Anathema, who are subtle and arresting figures that, in the first production, gave great actors real scope.