ANDREEV and the PRACTICE of TRANSLATION in A

CHAPTER FOUR

ANDREEV AND THE PRACTICE OF TRANSLATION

In a hierarchically arranged library of Russian literature the books of Leonid Andreev would occupy a higher shelf than those of Ropshin and Artsybashev. Most other writers of the “Silver Age” had to wait until the 1990s to regain their reading audience in Russia, but Andreev was rehabilitated sooner. Along with the works of such prominent émigrés as the Nobel Prize laureate Ivan Bunin, a ﬁ rst substantial selection from Andreev’s rich literary heritage was allowed into print during the “thaw” that followed Stalin’s death. Scholarly interest in the writer in his country grew steadily during the 1970s. Beginning from the early 1980s, several of his plays were again staged by the main theatres.1 Widely reprinted from the early days of perestroika, his works have remained available in Russian bookstores, even as his fame has been eclipsed by that of his son Daniil (1906–59): a victim of Stalinist terror, whose mystical-philosophical writings have attracted a large following ever since their ﬁ rst posthumous publication in 1989.2 Contrary to the writers discussed in previous chapters, Andreev has not been neglected by Western scholarship.3

1 Iu. N. Chirva, “O p’esakh Leonida Andreeva”, p. 4. Cf. Iu. V. Babicheva, “Smert’ i vozvrashchenie Leonida Andreeva”, p. 155. Babicheva’s main argument in favour of bringing back Andreev’s work to a Soviet audience in 1981 was still her “deep con- viction” that the writer’s death in exile at the age of forty-eight “had resulted from a feeling of irreparable guilt towards his country” (pp. 153–54). 2 Daniil Andreev’s Rose of the World and The Iron Mystery are by now translated into several languages. Andreev’s eldest son Vadim (1902–76) was also a writer and a poet, whose life passed in tsarist Russia, Germany, France, the USA and Switzerland. Interestingly, a search in the Chambers Biographical Dictionary (7th ed., 2002), will reveal an entry on “Leonid Andreyev” but none on his sons; nothing on either Boris Savinkov or Mikhail Artsybashev, but an entry on “Boris Artzybashev, 1899–1965”, deﬁ ned as a “US artist”. Artsybashev’s only son, who lived in the USA from 1919 to his death, became known as an illustrator of books and journals. At least one of his drawings was reproduced in a Chinese journal, the fortnightly Huanzhou (Mirage): see vol. 1, no. 6 (16 Dec. 1926). 3 Two of the several monographs in English are James B. Woodward, Leonid Andreyev: A Study, and (on the writer’s social environment and struggle with a possible mental illness, rather than on his literature) White, Memoirs and Madness. Avram Brown, “Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev”, in Kalb et al., Russian Writers of the Silver Age, pp. 21–33, is a knowledgeable recent essay. andreev and the practice of translation 229

Fig. 1. Leonid Andreev (on a visit to his hometown Orel, 1910). Courtesy of the Leeds Russian Archive, University of Leeds.

Born in Orel, in central Russia, in 1871, the young Leonid Andreev passed his school years between voracious reading, love affairs cul mi nat - ing in suicide attempts, and a passion for painting that may remind us of Mikhail Artsybashev.4 Graduating from the Law Faculty of Moscow University in 1897, he became a public attorney, but he worked in that capacity for less than three years. By 1900, his decision to devote him- self to writing had been made, encouraged by the patronage of Maxim Gorky. The following year already brought the young writer incontest- able success with the publication of his ﬁ rst collection of stories. The friendship and eventual bitter rupture with Gorky would leave an imprint on Andreev’s entire literary career. A sympathizer of the

4 A. V. Bogdanov, “Mezhdu stenoi i bezdnoi”, pp. 7–8. A more committed painter than Artsybashev, Andreev also developed a pioneering interest in colour photography. Richard Davies, Leonid Andreev: Photographs by a Russian Writer, reproduces these together with an authoritative biographical sketch.