Page:Andreyev - When the King Loses His Head.djvu/11

Rh these misfortunes Father Vassili believes in his Maker with the depth and passion of despair. But little by little this faith and this despair pass into insanity. During a requiem mass over the body of a villager Father Vassili commands the corpse to arise. He calls upon God to sustain him and to work a miracle. He is left alone with the corpse, the worshippers having fled in terror. He inclines over the body and sees in the coffin the mocking features of his idiot child. A crash of thunder rends the sky. It seems to Father Vassili that heaven and earth are crashing into nothingness, he flees precipitately into the highway and falls dead. The utter solitude of the man, the monstrous domination of elementary powers arrayed against him, a moment of consciousness of oneness with the divine—and insanity, these are the constant horrible and tragic features of Andreyev's art.

In his stories dealing with biblical characters, Judas Iscariot and Lazarus, we have horror and dreams again. Judas Iscariot and the Saviour are pictured as twins nailed to the same cross and wearing the same crown of thorns. The traitor in Andreyev's story loves Jesus the Man. There is a dread secret in the terrible eyes of Judas, as there is a wondrous secret in the beautiful eyes of Jesus. This horrible proximity of divine beauty and of monstrous hideousness presents a problem which the artist tries to solve. He makes of Judas a fanatical revolutionist, the slave of an idea who has resolved to materialize "horror and dreams" and to bring about the truth. There is in Judas that same duality which characterizes so many of Andreyev's heroes. He has two faces. He lies and dissembles. Throughout the whole story the dual personality of the Traitor is brought out with wonderful skill.

In "Judas Iscariot" Andreyev contrasts Judas with