The Seven Who Were Hanged

Leonid Andreyev

Okt 2004 · 1st World Publishing

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I am very glad that "The Story of the Seven Who Were Hanged" will be read in English. The misfortune of us all is that we know so little, even nothing, about one another-neither about the soul, nor the life, the sufferings, the habits, the inclinations, the aspirations of one another. Literature, which I have the honor to serve, is dear to me just because the noblest task it sets before itself is that of wiping out boundaries and distances. As in a hard shell, every human being is enclosed in a cover of body, dress, and life. Who is man? We may only conjecture. What constitutes his joy or his sorrow? We may guess only by his acts, which are oft-times enigmatic; by his laughter and by his tears, which are often entirely incomprehensible to us. And if we, Russians, who live so closely together in constant misery, understand one another so poorly that we mercilessly put to death those who should be pitied or even rewarded, and reward those who should be punished by contempt and anger - how much more difficult is it for you Americans, to understand distant Russia? But then, it is just as difficult for us Russians to understand distant America, of which we dream in our youth and over which we ponder so deeply in our years of maturity.

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Leonid Andreyev became one of the most popular writers of the first decade of the twentieth century because of his ability to combine modernist and realist techniques and his willingness to break taboos of theme. His subjects included topics, such as venereal disease, and various abnormalities. His works caused a scandal but won their author a wide following. In the aftermath of 1905, Andreyev dealt with the defeated revolutionaries' moral and psychological dilemmas and with the intelligentsia as a whole, while in The Tale of the Seven Who Were Hanged (1909), he produced a stunning condemnation of the death penalty. Andreyev had a talent for depicting the dark, irrational forces in life within existential dilemmas. However, his pessimism and mysticism are sometimes undercut by a blatant tugging on the heartstrings and a lack of personal engagement and authenticity. Andreyev died in 1919.