The Ocean

Leonid Andreev (1871–1919) is one of the prominent representatives of the Silver Age literature, the founder of Russian Expressionism, whose prose blends everyday reality with symbolic, irrational images in a strange way.

The play “The Ocean” is one of the writer’s most complex dramas. The contrast between the infernal image of the ocean—as “the abyss”—and the land—as “a point of support”—the conflict between elemental and rational forces inevitably plunges the reader into deep philosophical reflection.