as it did to pompousness in style and to traditional and exaggerated forms, was admirably adapted to metaphysically tragic subjects.
What is one to say about the chief thing of all—his creation? We know very little about it. He almost always worked at night: I cannot recall a single one of his works which was written by day. Having written and printed anything, he became extraordinarily indifferent about it and, as if sick of it, thought no more of the matter. He was only really carried away by what was as yet unwritten. While he was writing any story or piece he could talk about nothing else: it appeared to him that it would be his best, greatest, unsurpassed work. He jealously compared it with all his previous efforts: he was annoyed if you liked anything which he had written ten years before. He was never able to modify anything: his taste was much smaller than his talent. His writings, by their very nature, were extempore. When he was possessed by a theme every tiny circumstance became connected with it. I remember how once, having arrived at Kuokallo at night, he hired a droshky and paid the driver a rouble. The Finn was offended and said laconically:
"I don't want a rouble."
Andreyev added another half rouble and in a few days in The Seven Who Were Hanged appeared the dim-eyed Janson, obstinately repeating to the judges:
"I don't want to be hanged . . . I don't want to be hanged."
The insignificant episode with the driver had become the central effect in a theatrically pathetic story. This capacity for giving an unexpected artistic value to what was apparently trifling and superficial was always one of Andreyev's strong points.
One day he came across in The Odessa News the remark of the famous aviator Utochkin in describing his flight:
"At sunset our prison is extraordinarily beautiful."
This affection for "our prison" pleased Andreyev very much and in a few days he had written his well-known story, My Diary, about a man who had grown to love his prison. It concluded with the very same words:
"At sunset our prison is extraordinarily beautiful."
But he gave to the words an unexpectedly grandiose, metaphysical, sense.
