Durham Modern Languages Series Degeneration, decadence and disease in the fin de siècle Russian • Neurasthenia in the life and work of Leonid Andreev • Frederick H. White Degeneration, decadence and fin de siècle disease in the Russian Durham Modern Languages Series Series editor: Michael Thompson Essays in later medieval French literature: The legacy of Jane H. M. Taylor.Edited by Rebecca Dixon Fire, blood and the alphabet: One hundred years of Lorca. Edited by Sebastian Doggart and Michael Thompson Auraby Carlos Fuentes.Edited by Peter Standish The flâneur and his city: Patterns of daily life in Paris 1815–1851.Richard D.E. Burton Malherbe, Théophile de Viau and Saint-Amant: A collection.Edited, with intro- duction and notes by, Richard G. Maber Intertextuality in modern Arabic literature since 1967. Edited by Luc Deheuvels, Barbara Michalak-Pikulska and Paul Starkey Candide en Dannemarc, ou l’optimisme des honnêtes gensby Voltaire. Edited by Édouard Langille The limits of performance in the French Romantic theatre.Susan McCready Confabulations: Cologne life and humanism in Hermann Schotten’s Confabula- tiones Tironum Litterariorum (Cologne, 1525).Edited by Peter Macardle Confabulationes tironum litterariorum (Cologne, 1525) by Hermannus Schotten- nius Hessus.Peter Macardle Malherbe, Théophile de Viau and Saint-Amant: A selection. Edited by Richard G. Maber Collaboration and interdisciplinarity in the Republic of Letters: Essays in honour of Richard G. Maber.Edited by Paul Scott EccentriCities: Writing in the margins of Modernism: St. Petersburg to Rio de Janeiro. Sharon Lubkemann Allen Pyostryye skazkiby V. F. Odoyevsky.Edited by Neil Cornwell Saramago’s labyrinths: A journey through form and content inBlindness andAll the Names. Rhian Atkin Framing narratives of the Second World War and Occupation in France, 1939– 2009. Edited by Margaret Atack and Christopher Lloyd Degeneration, decadence and fin de siècle disease in the Russian Neurasthenia in the life and work of Leonid Andreev Frederick H. White Manchester University Press Manchester and New York distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan Copyright © Frederick H. White 2014 The right of Frederick H. White to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA Distributed in Canada exclusively by UBC Press, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 978 0 7190 9164 3 hardback First published 2014 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Typeset by Action Publishing Technology Ltd, Gloucester This book is dedicated to my wife Jaclyn Contents Figures ix Acknowledgements xi Note on Russian terms, images and abbreviations xiii 1 Introduction 1 2 Degeneration and decadence 24 3 Diaries and diagnosis 62 4 Controversy and success 91 5 Loss and rebellion 134 6 Feigned and performed 181 7 Diaries and death 230 8 Conclusions 256 Bibliography 269 Index 283 Figures 1.1 Leonid Andreev from February 1901, while a patient at the 2 Imperial clinic for nervous disorders. This picture was graciously provided from the photography collection of the United State Literary Museum of I.S. Turgenev, Orel (OGLMT). 3.1 Leonid Andreev in the Imperial clinic for nervous disorders. 83 Photographs, Leonid Andreyev miscellaneous papers, 1900-1920, box 1, Hoover Institute Archive. 6.1 A photograph of Andreev taken in the 1910s. Russian 182 Pictorial Collection, box XX764, file DN, Hoover Institute Archive. This photograph was originally a gift to the Hoover Institute Archive from Olga Andreyev Carlisle. 7.1 Leonid Andreev in 1914, while under the treatment of 231 Dr Iosif Gerzoni in Petrograd. This picture was graciously provided from the photography collection of the United State Literary Museum of I.S. Turgenev, Orel (OGLMT). 8.1 Leonid Andreev from February 1901, while a patient at the 257 Imperial clinic for nervous disorders. This picture was graciously provided from the photography collection of the United State Literary Museum of I.S. Turgenev, Orel (OGLMT).