An individual’s detachment as a precursor to existentialism in Andreev’s The Grand Slam [Bolshoy shlem]

Abstract

The article examines L. Andreev’s early short story The Grand Slam [Bolshoy shlem] (1899) which features a number of themes explored in his later oeuvre. The article offers characteristics of the four protagonists. None of them finds the outside world to be of particular importance: they are fully engaged in their game of vint (Russian whist). Their interactions are markedly pragmatic and confined to necessary remarks around the card table; therefore, their psyches never cross. However, upon the sudden death of one of the players, their familiar game world is shattered. Ironically, the player dies on the verge of achieving his long-term goal — to win a grand slam. This is Andreev’s way of showing the irrationality of human existence and raising the subject of death, absurdity, and people’s detachment, all three conceptually related to existentialism, a philosophy that would be defined in the 20th c.