LAZARUS
By LEONID ANDREYEV
Translated by
ABRAHAM YARMOLINSKY
BOSTON
The Stratford Company, Publishers
1918
About the print version
Lazarus by Leonid Andreyev
Translator Abraham Yarmolinsky
The Stratford Company
Boston
1918
Note: This work appeared in a Stratford Universal Library edition containing two
works: this one and The Gentleman from San Francisco by Ivan Bunin. Both works
translated by Abraham Yarmolinsky.
Published: 1918
Foreword
Lazarus and The Gentleman from San Francisco, while fairly typical of Slavic
literature, nevertheless contain few of the elements popularly associated with
the work of contemporary Russian writers. They have no sex interest, no
photographic descriptions of sordid conditions and no lugubrious philosophizing.
These stories are not cheerful, yet their sadness is uplifting rather than
depressing. They both contain what the Greek called katharsis in their
tragedies, -- that cleansing atmosphere which purges us of every baser feeling
as we read them.
In Lazarus Andreyev has come as near as it is humanly possible to achieving
the impossible. He has made concretely vivid an abstraction; he has arrested for
an instant the ceaseless, unmeasurable flood of eternity; he has enclosed in a
small frame the boundless void of the infinite. That which no human faculty can
understand Andreyev has made almost intelligible. For a terrible moment he
unveils the the secrets of the grave, and together with Augustus and the others
who have come under the spell of Lazarus' eyes, we see how the most enduring of
human monuments crumble into chaos even at the instant when they are being
built, how nations upon nations tower like the shadows of silent ghosts, rising
out of nothingness and sinking instantaneously into nothingness again, "for Time
was no more, and the beginning of all things came near their end: the building
was still being built, and the builders were still hammering away, and its ruins
were already seen and the void in its place; the man was still being born, but
already funeral candles were burning at his head, and now they were extinguished
and there was the void in place of the man and of the funeral candles. And
wrapped by void and darkness the man in despair trembled in the face of the
Horror of the Infinite."
Lazarus is a story which depicts the misery of knowing the Unknowable.
In The Gentleman from San Francisco -- Ivan Bunin demonstrates the poverty
of wealth and the impotence of power. This story has been called the best work
of fiction produced in Russia during the last decade.
The petty seriousness of the life of the modern Babylon, the deference paid
by all people to bald heads and patent leather shoes and well-filled pockets,
and the utter disregard for human feelings, are pictured with the pen of one who
pities rather than scorns the frailties of the earth. The author stands aside,
letting the world rush by like a hurdy gurdy, each gentleman from San Francisco
or Boston or Berlin or Hong Kong sitting on his hobby horse, while the head
waiter Luigi clownishly mocks their antics and nudges Death in the ribs.
The Gentleman from San Francisco shows the wide gulf that yawns between our
estimate of our own worth and our actual worth. "I need the whole wide world for
my amusement!" cries the man of wealth. "Yes, and here it is," answered Death,
handing him a coffin. And as a further humiliation, those who were most anxious
to serve this man of wealth in life are the first to shove the coffin into the
ground.
The two stories in this book will arouse thought. They will be severely
criticized by those who hate thought and as an excuse for their superficial
shallowness condemn all Russian literature, for Russian literature is nothing if
not thought-provoking. I do hope, however, that nobody will be found quite so
devoid of a sense of humor as an admirable college dean and a sweet old lady the
former of whom wrote to me that Chekhov's Nine Humorous Tales was immoral, and
the latter of whom insisted that Lazarus was ungodly, inasmuch as Christ would
never have raised a man from the dead for the purpose of teaching us so sad a
lesson about the grave.
H. T. S.
C O N T E N T S
Foreword
Lazarus
The Gentleman from San Francisco
Lazarus
BY LEONID ANDREYEV
TRANSLATED BY ABRAHAM YARMOLINSKY
Chapter 1
I
WHEN Lazarus left the grave, where, for three days and three nights he had
been under the enigmatical sway of death, and returned alive to his dwelling,
for a long time no one noticed in him those sinister oddities, which, as time
went on, made his very name a terror. Gladdened unspeakably by the sight of him
who had been returned to life, those near to him carressed / him unceasingly,
and satiated their burning desire to serve him, in solicitude for his food and
drink and garments. And they dressed him gorgeously, in bright colors of hope
and laughter, and when, like to a bridegroom in his bridal vestures, he sat
again among them at the table, and again ate and drank, they wept, overwhelmed
with tenderness. And they summoned the neighbors to look at him who had risen
miraculously from the dead. These came and shared the serene joy of the hosts.
Strangers from far-off towns and hamlets came and adored the miracle in
tempestuous words. Like to a beehive was the house of Mary and Martha.
Whatever was found new in Lazarus' face and gestures was thought to be some
trace of a grave illness and of the shocks recently experienced. Evidently, the
destruction wrought by death on the corpse was only arrested by the miraculous
power, but its effects were still apparent; and what death had succeeded in
doing with Lazarus' face and body, was like an artist's unfinished sketch seen
under thin glass. On Lazarus' temples, under his eyes, and in the hollows of his
cheeks, lay a deep and cadaverous blueness; cadaverously blue also were his long
fingers, and around his fingernails, grown long in the grave, the blue had
become purple and dark. On his lips the skin, swollen in the grave, had burst in
places, and thin, reddish cracks were formed, shining as though covered with
transparent mica. And he had grown stout. His body, puffed up in the grave,
retained its monstrous size and showed those frightful swellings, in which one
sensed the presence of the rank liquid of decomposition. But the heavy
corpse-like odor which penetrated Lazarus' graveclothes and, it seemed, his very
body, soon entirely disappeared, the blue spots on his face and hands grew
paler, and the reddish cracks closed up, although they never disappeared
altogether. That is how Lazarus looked when he appeared before people, in his
second life, but his face looked natural to those who had seen him in the
coffin.
In addition to the changes in his appearance, Lazarus' temper seemed to have
undergone a transformation, but this circumstance startled no one and attracted
no attention. Before his death Lazarus had always been cheerful and carefree,
fond of laughter and a merry joke. It was because of this brightness and
cheerfulness, with not a touch of malice and darkness, that the Master had grown
so fond of him. But now Lazarus had grown grave and taciturn, he never jested,
himself, nor responded with laughter to other people's jokes; and the words
which he uttered, very infrequently, were the plainest, most ordinary and
necessary words, as deprived of depth and significance, as those sounds with
which animals express pain and pleasure, thirst and hunger. They were the words
that one can say all one's life, and yet they give no indication of what pains
and gladdens the depths of the soul.
Thus, with the face of a corpse which for three days had been under the
heavy sway of death, dark and taciturn, already appallingly transformed, but
still unrecognized by any one in his new self, he was sitting at the feasting
table, among friends and relatives, and his gorgeous nuptial garments glittered
with yellow gold and bloody scarlet. Broad waves of jubilation, now soft, now tempestuously-sonorous surged around him; warm glances of love were
reaching out for his face, still cold with the coldness of the grave; and a
friend's warm palm caressed his blue, heavy hand. And music played: the tympanum
and the pipe, the cithara and the harp. It was as though bees hummed,
grasshoppers chirped and birds warbled over the happy house of Mary and Martha.
Chapter 2
II
One of the guests uncautiously lifted the veil. By a thoughtless word he
broke the serene charm and uncovered the truth in all its naked ugliness. Ere
the thought formed itself in his mind, his lips uttered with a smile:
"Why dost thou not tell us what happened yonder?"
And all grew silent, startled by the question. It was as if it occurred ...
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