151:'s "static" plays, it is recognized now as a dramatic summary of several important short stories and novellas by Andreyev of the 1903–1906 period ("The Wall", "The Thought", "The Life of Vasily Fiveysky"), focusing, through a set of abstract and schematic characters and scenes, upon the meaning of human life, or rather the tragic lack of it, epitomized by the mysterious Someone in Grey, the symbol of both disinterested God and desperate human mind.
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affluence, and finally hits the bottom again. Cursing the anonymous witness to his tribulations, he imagines himself as a hapless warrior who loses everything in his strife against the unfathomable, evil forces. "I am armless now", he exclaims, before the candle (a symbol of life) dies and darkness falls.
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who, while praising his rebellious, anti-establishment attitude, still considered
Andreyev's outlook be utterly pessimistic, the author himself insisted that his play was life-affirming. "Everybody tells me I am a pessimist. But I think you should play Man as somebody who is very strong, powerful and
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in his 1925 essay wrote: "In his symbolic dramas
Andreyev is keen to avoid even remote similarities with the real life... They are totally abstract and rhetorical, the distant relatives of the Byron mysteries, seeped in through their Teutonic interpretations, written in tense, lofty, didactic
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Surveyed by
Someone in Grey (as well as another, anonymous character who is never leaving the stage), Man passes through life (in the grey world where all things are of colour grey) from birth to death as a blind man, unable to see what comes to him next. First he is destitute, then rises to
232:; at least the other-worldliness of these howling, spectral characters creates a certain atmosphere. Its success was to some extent justified but to re-read it now is unbearable. is driven by one single motif, that of death, and void and the futility of all human effort."
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by D.S. Mirsky. The
History of Russian Literature from the Old Times Till 1925 // История русской литературы с древнейших времен до 1925 года / Пер. с англ. Р. Зерновой. - London: Overseas Publications Interchange Ltd, 1992. - С.
269:. Summary // Источник: Все шедевры мировой литературы в кратком изложении. Сюжеты и характеры. Русская литература XX века / Ред. и сост. В. И. Новиков. — М. : Олимп : ACT, 1997. — 896 с.
190:(writing under the moniker Anton Krainy) attacked the author personally, describing him as 'uncultured', 'poorly educated', 'pretentious' and thus unequal to the task he'd burdened himself with.
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The original critical response to the play was mixed, even if the Moscow Art
Theatre production was met with unanimous acclaim. Especially harsh were the
257:. Leonid Andreyev, the Summary. Obshchestvennaya Polza Publishers. Saint Petersburg, 1910 // Типографія т-ва "Общественная Польза", В. Подъяч., 39. 1910.
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Alexander Blok. The Works of... in 8 volumes. Vol. 5, p. 193 // Блок А. А. Собр. соч.: В 8-ми т. М.; Л., 1962, т. 5, с. 193.
197:'s 1907 review, Someone in Grey should be seen as an amalgam of the world's forces of evil, including the power of the state.
360:
303:
Vikenty
Veresayev. The Works of... in 5 Volumes // Вересаев В. В. Собр. соч.: В 5-ти т. М., 1961, т. 5, с.415.
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manner... daubed with crude palette of black and red, no overtones allowed. The best of them is, still,
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saw this figure as the embodiment of the impersonal, absolute Law, outside the realm of good and evil.
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Critics differed in their interpretations of the play's ideas and symbolism. According to
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unwilling to succumb to his destiny," he told (an unspecified) actor, according to
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critics who chose to pan it for its allegedly 'reactionary' politics. Avrely in
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217:(who saw Man as "a wonderful sphynx, rather than a mere puppet"), as well as
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called the play "the unique, in its own right, collection of banalities."
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124:. Written in the September 1906, it premiered on 22 February 1907 in the
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V. Verigina. memoirs // Веригина В. П. Воспоминания. Л., 1974, с. 117
255:Леонидъ Андреевъ. Итоги творчества. Литературно-критическій этюдъ
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Vestnik Zhizni // Вестн. жизни, 1907, No 3, с. 103-104).
281:. Someone in Grey by Maximilian Voloshin. Originally in
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