Record Nr.

UNINA9910961575603321

Autore

White Frederick H. <1970->

Titolo

Memoirs and madness : Leonid Andreev through the prism of the literary portrait / / Frederick H. White

Pubbl/distr/stampa


Montreal ; ; Ithaca, : McGill-Queen's University Press, 2006

ISBN


9786612850059
9780773577947
0773577947
9781282850057
1282850059
9780773560086
0773560084

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (x, 339 pages) : illustrations, portraits

Disciplina

891.733

Soggetti

Biography as a literary form

Authors, Russian - 20th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

"Includes an annotated translation of A book about Leonid Andreev."

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front Matter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Leonid Andreev through the Prism of the Literary Portrait -- Introduction -- Maksim Gor’kii -- Kornei Chukovskii -- Aleksandr Blok -- Georgii Chulkov -- Boris Zaitsev -- Nikolai Teleshov -- Evgenii Zamiatin -- Andrei Belyi -- The Literary Portrait -- Projecting Personal Isolation -- “He is not with them, he is with us, he is ours”: Belyi -- The Importance of Friendship and Sreda: Teleshov -- Creative Energy and Manic Episodes: Chukovskii -- Inner Turmoil and the Dark Side of Depression: Chulkov -- A Shared Sense of Chaos: Blok -- The Dreamer and the Mathematician: Gor’kii -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Memoirs and Madness examines memoir as a literary genre, investigates the creation of Leonid Andreev's posthumous legacy by his contemporaries, and explores the possibility that Andreev, Russia's leading literary figure at the beginning of the twentieth century, suffered from mental illness. Frederick White's primary focus is A Book About Leonid Andreev (1922), the most important collection of

memoirs dedicated to the Russian author, presented here in the first English translation. The agendas of the memoirists resulted in portraits that have influenced how Andreev is read and spoken about to the present day. White pays special attention to Andreev's history of mental illness, which the memoirists described with vague terms such as "creative energy" or "inner turmoil." Past scholarship has focused on philosophical and sociological factors in the author's life but this concentration on his mental health provides a fruitful approach to deciphering the literary portraits.