What, then, constitutes the essence of Andreyev's talent is an extreme impressionability, a daring in descriptions of the negative sides of reality, melancholy moods and the torments of existence. As he usually portrays general suffering and sickness rather than definite types, his heroes are mostly incarnations and symbols. The very titles of some of his stories indicate the abstract character of his work. Such are: "Silence," "The Thought," and "The Lie." In this respect he has carried on the work of Poe, whose influence on him is incontestable. These two writers have in common a refined and morbid sensibility, a predilection for the horrible and a passion for the study of the same kind of subjects,--solitude, silence, death. But the powerful fantasy of the American author, which does not come in touch with reality, wanders freely through the whole world and through all the centuries of history. His heroes take refuge in half-crumbled castles, they look at the reader from the top of craggy rocks, whither their love of solitude has led them; even death itself is not a repulsive skeleton, but rather a majestic form, full of grandiose mystery. Andreyev, on the other hand, but rarely breaks the bounds which unite him to reality. His heroes are living people, who act, and whose banal life ends with a banal death. This realism and this passionate love of truth make the strength and the beauty of all his work. * * * * * A certain harmony between the imaginative and the real element is characteristic of the best of Andreyev's productions, especially his last stories: "The Red Laugh," "The Governor," "The Shadows," and "The Seven Who Were Hanged." "The Red Laugh" is the symbol, the incarnation, of the bloody and implacable cynicism of war. The psychologist of the mysterious has, in these pages, recorded the terrifying aspects of the Manchurian campaign, which one could not have foreseen in all of its horror. He has shown in a lasting manner the poor human creature torn from his home, debased to the role of a piece of mechanism. Not knowing where he is being led to, he goes, making murderous gestures, the meaning of which he does not know, without even having the illusory consolation of possible personal bravery, being killed by the shots of an invisible enemy, or, what is worse, being killed by the shots of his own comrades--and all of this, automatically, stupidly. The feeling of terror, the somewhat mystical intuition of events which, at times, seem to be paradoxes in the other works of Andreyev, are perfectly adapted to this terribly real representation of the effects of war. The inner drama which Andreyev analyzes in "The Governor" makes a bold contrast with the violent pages of "The Red Laugh," the savage powers of which attain the final limits of horror.