It's a grotesque vision of war, a bit like watching a contortionist's act, and darkly comical. What matters more in this book is getting across a sensation, a single horrific vision. There are no actual characters, no real human beings in this book because they are all indistinguishable. "He can crawl in under the door," said I to myself with horror, and as if he had guessed my thoughts, he grew thin and long and waving the end of his tail rapidly, he crawled into the dark crack under the front door.Leonid Andreyev was a controversial and well-known writer, a contemporary of Chekhov and Gorky, but has become virtually unread in the past few decades. They were the most terrible of all that I had seen, for they were little and could penetrate everywhere. Their mouths, resembling the jaws of toads or frogs, opening widely and convulsively behind the transparent skin of their naked bodies the red blood was coursing angrily-and they were killing each other at play. They were jumping lightly and nimbly, like young goats at play, and were breathing with difficulty, like sick people. Something was ominously burning in a broad red glare, and in the smoke there swarmed monstrous, misshapen children, with heads of grown-up murderers.
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