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A review by schmidtmark56
The Seven Who Were Hanged by Leonid Andreyev
5.0
Okay. I wanted to hate this because it's kinda socialist propaganda, but I see how it's renowned, especially as it went on. The premise is so simple, but the content is so beautifully Russian in the best way imaginable. We slog through an unnecessary introduction, we roll our eyes at the one-sided politics in that and the first chapter, but then we get to the terroristic revolutionaries. We remain with them until the end.
We start off with a dignitary who is startled by the announcement from his guards that an assassination attempt on his life has been foiled. There is some temporary astonishment at the very fact, because it implies that the would-be assassins knew his schedule, so he has a traitor among his men, but that's never really addressed. From his perspective, we get neurotic dwellings upon death from the perspective of someone who accidentally learned when he would have died. But instead of dying, he knows he specifically won't die at that time, paradoxically making him even more nervous, as he ponders when he will die (he has some physical condition and knows he can't last forever).
After that initial chapter, we are switched to the 5 proto-communist terrorists who intended to kill the dignitary (two women and three men). They range from stoic to totally losing it, and we get to see them on trial. We then switch to a couple other characters who committed heinous crimes before the 5 terrorists. These two guys are on death row for a while as the guards wait for enough capital punishment convicts to pile up to warrant a hanging.
“And when will that be?” persisted Yanson. He was not at all offended that it was not worth while to hang him alone. He did not believe it, but considered it as an excuse for postponing the execution, preparatory to revoking it altogether. And he was seized with joy; the confused, terrible moment, of which it was so painful to think, retreated far into the distance, becoming fictitious and improbable, as death always seems."
Death becomes an impossibility for him, an indefinite future event, like it is for most of us. This nervous man contemplated his fate ever-increasingly, especially as a set date was announced suddenly:
"His weak mind was unable to combine these two things which so monstrously contradicted each other—the bright day, the odor and taste of cabbage—and the fact that two days later he must die. He did not think of anything. He did not even count the hours, but simply stood in mute stupefaction before this contradiction which tore his brain in two."
Another man, Tsiganok, committed many crimes in a spree and willingly gave all the details, was almost overjoyed at the prospect of turning himself in, just to make something interesting happen. His madness drives him to imagine he is among the hangmen, that he's part of the killing party (but killing for the state? somehow that's fine because it's solomn? but his was crazed?):
"After that, into that chaos of bright, yet incomplete images which oppressed Tsiganok by their impetuosity, a new image came—how good it would be to become a hangman in a red shirt. He pictured to himself vividly a square crowded with people, a high scaffold, and he, Tsiganok, in a red shirt walking about upon the scaffold with an ax. The sun shone overhead, gaily flashing from the ax, and everything was so gay and bright that even the man whose head was soon to be chopped off was smiling. And behind the crowd, wagons and the heads of horses could be seen—the peasants had come from the village; and beyond them, further, he could see the village itself."
As his mind deteriorates, he starts making a ruckus, but we have a poignant moment with the guards:
And the sentinel, in the meantime white as chalk, weeping with pain and fright, would knock at the door with the butt-end of the gun and cry helplessly:
“I’ll fire! I’ll kill you as sure as I live! Do you hear?”
But he dared not shoot. If there was no actual rebellion they never fired at those who had been condemned to death. And Tsiganok would gnash his teeth, would curse and spit. His brain thus racked on a monstrously sharp blade between life and death was falling to pieces like a lump of dry clay.
When discussing or even imagining capital punishment, we have lots of contradictions. I always remember being alarmed that known criminals and mass murderers were carted into hospitals to be repaired while their victims lay dead, all so that they could be taken to trial, waste taxpayer money, and then get killed in an orderly way by the state. Kinda feels like a power trip or some sort of petty attempt to prove to itself that the state is legitimate, by flexing on helpless prisoners. So of course they won't shoot this madman right now, we have to make a spectacle out of it.
Those two are utterly alone, and only some of the revolutionaries have family members who wish them goodbye. One of their meetings was especially poignant:
“The main thing is, kiss—and say nothing!” he taught her. “Later you may speak—after a while—but when you kiss him, be silent. Don’t speak right after the kiss, do you understand? Or you will say what you should not say.”
“I understand, Nikolay Sergeyevich,” answered the mother, weeping.
“And you must not weep. For God’s sake, do not weep! You will kill him if you weep, old woman!”
We have moments of dark comedy (or is it really comedy? is it actually just a sad reflection on desire and control of the situation?):
Death was something inevitable and even unimportant, of which it was not worth while to think; but for a man in prison, before his execution, to be left without tobacco—that was altogether unbearable.
Each of the various terrorists react to the prospect differently. Some totally deny the existence of death, and confound their enemies within their head:
“You will be executed. Here is the noose.”
“I will be executed, but I will not die. How can I die, when I am already—now—immortal?”
And the scientists and philosophers and hangmen would retreat, speaking—with a shudder:
“Do not touch this place. It is holy.”
Some of them are defiant (like the eternal rebel of contemporary ideology):
What do those people think? That there is nothing more terrible than death. They themselves have invented Death, they are themselves afraid of it, and they try to frighten us with it. I should like to do this—I should like to go out alone before a whole regiment of soldiers and fire upon them with a revolver. It would not matter that I would be alone, while they would be thousands, or that I might not kill any of them. It is that which is important—that they are thousands. When thousands kill one, it means that the one has conquered.
One of them had been doing stretches and gymnastic movements in his cell, but he eventually gives it up as futile, because of finitude:
“It is foolish, Sergey! To die more easily, you should weaken the body and not strengthen it. It is foolish!”
So he dropped his gymnastics and the rub-downs. To the soldier he shouted, as if to explain and justify himself:
“Never mind that I have stopped. It’s a good thing, my friend,—but not for those who are to be hanged. But it’s very good for all others.”
We are faced again and again with this unlawful knowledge of the time of one's death. Normally it is hard enough for us conscious creatures to suffer the vague, shadowy foreknowledge of our own death, but when we know the exact date, it makes our souls, our very being melt into less than shadows:
When he awoke in his cell the next day he realized clearly that everything between him and life was ended, that there were only a few empty hours of waiting and then death would come,—and a strange sensation took possession of him. He felt as though he had been stripped, stripped entirely,—as if not only his clothes, but the sun, the air, the noise of voices and his ability to do things had been wrested from him. Death was not there as yet, but life was there no longer,—there was something new, something astonishing, inexplicable, not entirely reasonable and yet not altogether without meaning,—something so deep and mysterious and supernatural that it was impossible to understand.
In this in-between existence, nothing is real, not even life:
Everything became strange.
He tried to walk across the cell—and it seemed strange to him that he could walk. He tried to sit down—and it seemed strange to him that he could sit. He tried to drink some water—and it seemed strange to him that he could drink, that he could swallow, that he could hold the cup, that he had fingers and that those fingers were trembling. He choked, began to cough and while coughing, thought: “How strange it is that I am coughing.”
I have experienced the same hyper-consciousness when my mind dwells too long on death or eternity. I feel myself floating off of the surface of the world, just like part of me is grating with the physical part of me, like the inevitability of time is a weight which continually makes the scale hand inch up, until I'm so deep underwater I am crushed by the pressure into sand.
He saw all that at one glance, all to the very end, to the mysterious abyss—Death. And he was tortured not by the fact that Death was visible, but that both Life and Death were visible at the same time. The curtain which through eternity has hidden the mystery of life and the mystery of death was pushed aside by a sacrilegious hand, and the mysteries ceased to be mysteries—yet they remained incomprehensible, like the Truth written in a foreign tongue.
There were some points as the moment of death neared that possible references to Christ appeared (which also recasts the entire story, as we consider this psychology going along with Christ, the God-Man, God himself dying, experiencing the fear of it, for which one suffers twice, both in the mind and in the body):
He can no longer choose freely, like all people, between life and death, but he will surely and inevitably be put to death. The incarnation of will-power, life and strength an instant before, he has now become a wretched image of the most pitiful weakness in the world. He has been transformed into an animal waiting to be slaughtered, a deaf-mute object which may be taken from place to place, burnt and broken.
&
“What kind of master are you, if you are going to hang right beside me? There is a master for you”
As they load up and ride toward death, the most trivial things all become impactful, like small talk and last-minute introductions:
They were riding thus in order to appear two hours later face to face before the inexplicable great mystery, in order to pass from Life to Death—and they were introducing each other. Life and Death moved simultaneously, and until the very end Life remained life, to the most ridiculous and insipid trifles.
&
“Well, thank you. I’m sitting all right. Are they going to hang you too?”
“Yes,” answered Werner, almost laughing with unexpected jollity, and he waved his hand easily and freely, as though he were speaking of some absurd and trifling joke which kind but terribly comical people wanted to play on him.
“Have you a wife?” asked Yanson.
“No. I have no wife. I am single.”
“I am also alone. Alone,” said Yanson.
Here is the train of thought until the end:
Then again everything died out, and only their sense of smell remained: the unbearably fresh smell of the forest and of the melting snow. And everything became unusually clear to the consciousness: the forest, the night, the road and the fact that soon they would be hanged.
...
“The train will stop for five minutes.”
And there death would be waiting—eternity—the great mystery.
...
“Master! master! There’s the forest! My God! what’s that? There—where the lanterns are—are those the gallows? What does it mean?”
Werner looked at him. Tsiganok was writhing in agony before his death.
...
The services of the priest were also declined by them all. Tsiganok said:
“Stop your fooling, father—you will forgive me, but they will hang me. Go to—where you came from.”
...
“Oh, my God!” some one cried hoarsely and wildly. They looked about. It was Tsiganok, writhing in agony at the thought of death. “They are hanging!”
They turned away from him, and again it became quiet. Tsiganok was writhing, catching at the air with his hands.
“How is that, gentlemen? Am I to go alone? It’s livelier to die together. Gentlemen, what does it mean?”
...
“Good-by, master!” called Tsiganok loudly. “We’ll meet each other in the other world, you’ll see! Don’t turn away from me. When you see me, bring me some water to drink—it will be hot there for me!”
...
“I am alone,” sighed Tanya Kovalchuk suddenly. “Seryozha is dead, Werner is dead—and Vasya, too. I am alone! Soldiers! soldiers! I am alone, alone—”
The sun was rising over the sea.
The bodies were placed in a box. Then they were taken away. With stretched necks, with bulging eyes, with blue, swollen tongues, looking like some unknown, terrible flowers between the lips, which were covered with bloody foam—the bodies were hurried back along the same road by which they had come—alive. And the spring snow was just as soft and fresh; the spring air was just as strong and fragrant. And on the snow lay Sergey’s black rubber-shoe, wet, trampled under foot.
Thus did men greet the rising sun.
I was shocked that there was no, and I mean no description of the actual executions: no sound effects, no visuals, no first person thoughts, or only third person complaints of people feeling alone. There is a little gore of the bodies afterwards, as you read above. That’s a fascinating choice... It really conveys a feeling of hollowness, emptiness, and anti-climax. We go the entire story knowing that there will be a hanging, and we don’t even get to see it. I’m not complaining from a place of vicarious hunger, I’m merely stating how surreal that made the story, like death doesn’t even exist………....
We start off with a dignitary who is startled by the announcement from his guards that an assassination attempt on his life has been foiled. There is some temporary astonishment at the very fact, because it implies that the would-be assassins knew his schedule, so he has a traitor among his men, but that's never really addressed. From his perspective, we get neurotic dwellings upon death from the perspective of someone who accidentally learned when he would have died. But instead of dying, he knows he specifically won't die at that time, paradoxically making him even more nervous, as he ponders when he will die (he has some physical condition and knows he can't last forever).
After that initial chapter, we are switched to the 5 proto-communist terrorists who intended to kill the dignitary (two women and three men). They range from stoic to totally losing it, and we get to see them on trial. We then switch to a couple other characters who committed heinous crimes before the 5 terrorists. These two guys are on death row for a while as the guards wait for enough capital punishment convicts to pile up to warrant a hanging.
“And when will that be?” persisted Yanson. He was not at all offended that it was not worth while to hang him alone. He did not believe it, but considered it as an excuse for postponing the execution, preparatory to revoking it altogether. And he was seized with joy; the confused, terrible moment, of which it was so painful to think, retreated far into the distance, becoming fictitious and improbable, as death always seems."
Death becomes an impossibility for him, an indefinite future event, like it is for most of us. This nervous man contemplated his fate ever-increasingly, especially as a set date was announced suddenly:
"His weak mind was unable to combine these two things which so monstrously contradicted each other—the bright day, the odor and taste of cabbage—and the fact that two days later he must die. He did not think of anything. He did not even count the hours, but simply stood in mute stupefaction before this contradiction which tore his brain in two."
Another man, Tsiganok, committed many crimes in a spree and willingly gave all the details, was almost overjoyed at the prospect of turning himself in, just to make something interesting happen. His madness drives him to imagine he is among the hangmen, that he's part of the killing party (but killing for the state? somehow that's fine because it's solomn? but his was crazed?):
"After that, into that chaos of bright, yet incomplete images which oppressed Tsiganok by their impetuosity, a new image came—how good it would be to become a hangman in a red shirt. He pictured to himself vividly a square crowded with people, a high scaffold, and he, Tsiganok, in a red shirt walking about upon the scaffold with an ax. The sun shone overhead, gaily flashing from the ax, and everything was so gay and bright that even the man whose head was soon to be chopped off was smiling. And behind the crowd, wagons and the heads of horses could be seen—the peasants had come from the village; and beyond them, further, he could see the village itself."
As his mind deteriorates, he starts making a ruckus, but we have a poignant moment with the guards:
And the sentinel, in the meantime white as chalk, weeping with pain and fright, would knock at the door with the butt-end of the gun and cry helplessly:
“I’ll fire! I’ll kill you as sure as I live! Do you hear?”
But he dared not shoot. If there was no actual rebellion they never fired at those who had been condemned to death. And Tsiganok would gnash his teeth, would curse and spit. His brain thus racked on a monstrously sharp blade between life and death was falling to pieces like a lump of dry clay.
When discussing or even imagining capital punishment, we have lots of contradictions. I always remember being alarmed that known criminals and mass murderers were carted into hospitals to be repaired while their victims lay dead, all so that they could be taken to trial, waste taxpayer money, and then get killed in an orderly way by the state. Kinda feels like a power trip or some sort of petty attempt to prove to itself that the state is legitimate, by flexing on helpless prisoners. So of course they won't shoot this madman right now, we have to make a spectacle out of it.
Those two are utterly alone, and only some of the revolutionaries have family members who wish them goodbye. One of their meetings was especially poignant:
“The main thing is, kiss—and say nothing!” he taught her. “Later you may speak—after a while—but when you kiss him, be silent. Don’t speak right after the kiss, do you understand? Or you will say what you should not say.”
“I understand, Nikolay Sergeyevich,” answered the mother, weeping.
“And you must not weep. For God’s sake, do not weep! You will kill him if you weep, old woman!”
We have moments of dark comedy (or is it really comedy? is it actually just a sad reflection on desire and control of the situation?):
Death was something inevitable and even unimportant, of which it was not worth while to think; but for a man in prison, before his execution, to be left without tobacco—that was altogether unbearable.
Each of the various terrorists react to the prospect differently. Some totally deny the existence of death, and confound their enemies within their head:
“You will be executed. Here is the noose.”
“I will be executed, but I will not die. How can I die, when I am already—now—immortal?”
And the scientists and philosophers and hangmen would retreat, speaking—with a shudder:
“Do not touch this place. It is holy.”
Some of them are defiant (like the eternal rebel of contemporary ideology):
What do those people think? That there is nothing more terrible than death. They themselves have invented Death, they are themselves afraid of it, and they try to frighten us with it. I should like to do this—I should like to go out alone before a whole regiment of soldiers and fire upon them with a revolver. It would not matter that I would be alone, while they would be thousands, or that I might not kill any of them. It is that which is important—that they are thousands. When thousands kill one, it means that the one has conquered.
One of them had been doing stretches and gymnastic movements in his cell, but he eventually gives it up as futile, because of finitude:
“It is foolish, Sergey! To die more easily, you should weaken the body and not strengthen it. It is foolish!”
So he dropped his gymnastics and the rub-downs. To the soldier he shouted, as if to explain and justify himself:
“Never mind that I have stopped. It’s a good thing, my friend,—but not for those who are to be hanged. But it’s very good for all others.”
We are faced again and again with this unlawful knowledge of the time of one's death. Normally it is hard enough for us conscious creatures to suffer the vague, shadowy foreknowledge of our own death, but when we know the exact date, it makes our souls, our very being melt into less than shadows:
When he awoke in his cell the next day he realized clearly that everything between him and life was ended, that there were only a few empty hours of waiting and then death would come,—and a strange sensation took possession of him. He felt as though he had been stripped, stripped entirely,—as if not only his clothes, but the sun, the air, the noise of voices and his ability to do things had been wrested from him. Death was not there as yet, but life was there no longer,—there was something new, something astonishing, inexplicable, not entirely reasonable and yet not altogether without meaning,—something so deep and mysterious and supernatural that it was impossible to understand.
In this in-between existence, nothing is real, not even life:
Everything became strange.
He tried to walk across the cell—and it seemed strange to him that he could walk. He tried to sit down—and it seemed strange to him that he could sit. He tried to drink some water—and it seemed strange to him that he could drink, that he could swallow, that he could hold the cup, that he had fingers and that those fingers were trembling. He choked, began to cough and while coughing, thought: “How strange it is that I am coughing.”
I have experienced the same hyper-consciousness when my mind dwells too long on death or eternity. I feel myself floating off of the surface of the world, just like part of me is grating with the physical part of me, like the inevitability of time is a weight which continually makes the scale hand inch up, until I'm so deep underwater I am crushed by the pressure into sand.
He saw all that at one glance, all to the very end, to the mysterious abyss—Death. And he was tortured not by the fact that Death was visible, but that both Life and Death were visible at the same time. The curtain which through eternity has hidden the mystery of life and the mystery of death was pushed aside by a sacrilegious hand, and the mysteries ceased to be mysteries—yet they remained incomprehensible, like the Truth written in a foreign tongue.
There were some points as the moment of death neared that possible references to Christ appeared (which also recasts the entire story, as we consider this psychology going along with Christ, the God-Man, God himself dying, experiencing the fear of it, for which one suffers twice, both in the mind and in the body):
He can no longer choose freely, like all people, between life and death, but he will surely and inevitably be put to death. The incarnation of will-power, life and strength an instant before, he has now become a wretched image of the most pitiful weakness in the world. He has been transformed into an animal waiting to be slaughtered, a deaf-mute object which may be taken from place to place, burnt and broken.
&
“What kind of master are you, if you are going to hang right beside me? There is a master for you”
As they load up and ride toward death, the most trivial things all become impactful, like small talk and last-minute introductions:
They were riding thus in order to appear two hours later face to face before the inexplicable great mystery, in order to pass from Life to Death—and they were introducing each other. Life and Death moved simultaneously, and until the very end Life remained life, to the most ridiculous and insipid trifles.
&
“Well, thank you. I’m sitting all right. Are they going to hang you too?”
“Yes,” answered Werner, almost laughing with unexpected jollity, and he waved his hand easily and freely, as though he were speaking of some absurd and trifling joke which kind but terribly comical people wanted to play on him.
“Have you a wife?” asked Yanson.
“No. I have no wife. I am single.”
“I am also alone. Alone,” said Yanson.
Here is the train of thought until the end:
Then again everything died out, and only their sense of smell remained: the unbearably fresh smell of the forest and of the melting snow. And everything became unusually clear to the consciousness: the forest, the night, the road and the fact that soon they would be hanged.
...
“The train will stop for five minutes.”
And there death would be waiting—eternity—the great mystery.
...
“Master! master! There’s the forest! My God! what’s that? There—where the lanterns are—are those the gallows? What does it mean?”
Werner looked at him. Tsiganok was writhing in agony before his death.
...
The services of the priest were also declined by them all. Tsiganok said:
“Stop your fooling, father—you will forgive me, but they will hang me. Go to—where you came from.”
...
“Oh, my God!” some one cried hoarsely and wildly. They looked about. It was Tsiganok, writhing in agony at the thought of death. “They are hanging!”
They turned away from him, and again it became quiet. Tsiganok was writhing, catching at the air with his hands.
“How is that, gentlemen? Am I to go alone? It’s livelier to die together. Gentlemen, what does it mean?”
...
“Good-by, master!” called Tsiganok loudly. “We’ll meet each other in the other world, you’ll see! Don’t turn away from me. When you see me, bring me some water to drink—it will be hot there for me!”
...
“I am alone,” sighed Tanya Kovalchuk suddenly. “Seryozha is dead, Werner is dead—and Vasya, too. I am alone! Soldiers! soldiers! I am alone, alone—”
The sun was rising over the sea.
The bodies were placed in a box. Then they were taken away. With stretched necks, with bulging eyes, with blue, swollen tongues, looking like some unknown, terrible flowers between the lips, which were covered with bloody foam—the bodies were hurried back along the same road by which they had come—alive. And the spring snow was just as soft and fresh; the spring air was just as strong and fragrant. And on the snow lay Sergey’s black rubber-shoe, wet, trampled under foot.
Thus did men greet the rising sun.
I was shocked that there was no, and I mean no description of the actual executions: no sound effects, no visuals, no first person thoughts, or only third person complaints of people feeling alone. There is a little gore of the bodies afterwards, as you read above. That’s a fascinating choice... It really conveys a feeling of hollowness, emptiness, and anti-climax. We go the entire story knowing that there will be a hanging, and we don’t even get to see it. I’m not complaining from a place of vicarious hunger, I’m merely stating how surreal that made the story, like death doesn’t even exist………....