able to solve.

For it is not merely the destructive power of death, not merely its
negation of life, that terrifies our author. The pitchy darkness
that stretches beyond, the impossibility of penetrating the veil that
separates existence from non-existence--in a word, the riddle of
the universe--is, to a mind constituted like Andreyev's, a source of
perhaps even greater disquiet. Never was a man hungrier than he with
"the insatiable hunger for Eternity"; never was a man more eager to
pierce the mystery of life and catch a glimpse of the beyond while yet
alive.

Combined with the perplexing darkness that so pitifully limits man's
vision is the indifference of the forces that govern his destiny. The
wrongs he suffers may cry aloud to heaven, but heaven does not hear
him. Whether he writhe in agony or be prostrated in the dust (against
all reason and justice), he has no appeal, societies, the bulk
of mankind, may be plunged in misery--who or what cares? Man is
surrounded by indifference as well as by darkness.

Often, when an idea has gained a powerful hold on Andreyev, he pursues
it a long time, presenting it under various aspects, until at last
it assumes its final form, rounded and completed, as it were, in some
figure or symbol. As such it appears either as the leading theme of an
entire story or drama, or as an important subordinate theme. Thus
we have seen that the idea of death finds concrete expression in the
character of Lazarus. The idea of loneliness, of the isolation of the
individual from all other human beings, even though he be physically
surrounded by large numbers, is embodied in the story of "The City."
Similarly the conception of the mystery and the indifference by which