Has anyone ever wondered what happened to Lazarus after Jesus Christ raised him from the dead? It’s a great story about a man who fell ill, died, and then 4 days later is raised from the dead. What a miracle and so inspirational to all those who witnessed it.
If thought of from a religious standpoint, it can strengthen your faith. If thought of from the point of view that overcoming death is unnatural and scary - this tale will send shivers down your spine. Loenid Andreyev thought of the tale of Lazarus from the latter point of view and paints a very bleak outlook on what transpired after the miracle of his raising and how it affected everyone around Lazarus in his 1906 tale Lazarus. John Skipp sums up this story very succinctly: “What stuns me most about this piece is its vastness of scope and economy of prose. It’s one of the most profoundly rare short stories that manages to simultaneously address the entirety of the human condition while always hewing close to the narrative bone. Which is to say that every strata of civilization introduced is yet a deeper plot point in the unfolding tale of poor Lazarus: his experience, his vision, and its impact on the world.”
I couldn’t agree more.
You would think that the people around Lazarus would be happy that he had returned. However, if you put yourself in that same situation, very aware that Lazarus was indeed dead for 4 days and everything that comes along with death soon after it occurs – decay, emaciation, and rot – would you not wonder about how such a thing could occur, and the very mechanics of it be such a curiosity that you couldn’t think of anything else when you see him? In fact characters from Andreyev’s story continue to ask Lazarus “What was There?” because they wonder where his soul had gone during the 4 days that he was dead. He didn’t come back the same happy Lazarus that he had been before he died. He came back a very somber fellow with piercing gazes and blank stares. Andreyev uses very vivid language to describe what the resurrected Lazarus looked like after he came back: “That which was new in Lazarus’ face and gestures they explained naturally, as the traces of his severe illness and the shock he had passed through. It was evident that the disintegration of the body had been halted by a miraculous power, but that the restoration had not been complete; that death had left upon his face and body the effect of an artist’s unfinished sketch seen through a thin glass. On his temples, under his eyes, and in the hollow of his cheek lay a thick, earthy blue. His fingers were blue, too, and under his nails, which had grown long in the grave, the blue had turned livid. Here and there on his lips and body, the skin, blistered in the grave, had burst open and left reddish glistening cracks, as if covered with a thin, glassy slime. And he had grown exceedingly stout. His body was horribly bloated and suggested the fetid, damp smell of putrefaction. But the cadaverous, heavy odor that clung to his burial garments and, as it seemed, to his very body, soon wore off, and after some time the blue of his hands and face softened, and the reddish cracks of his skin smoothed out, though they never disappeared completely. Such was the aspect of Lazarus in his second life. It looked natural only to those who had seen him buried.”
From here, we join Lazarus on his life’s journey, so bleak and so horrible as he encounters different people and interacts with them as they are consumed with what he has seen during his 4 day death. It is an interesting look in to human nature about how we are so consumed with our own direction and with our own life’s journey that we are only concerned with information from other people if it benefits us. No one wanted to ask Lazarus about what he saw to lift some of his burden away, but only because they wanted to prepare themselves for when their inevitability came. The result of receiving this knowledge is not a relieving thing but rather a burden that they must carry for the remainder of their lives as it drags them down into the depths of despair and ask the question, “What’s the point?”
The story ends with a conversation Caeser Augustus has with Lazarus who has been summoned to his chamber. Andreyev gives a great account of despair and indifference that afflicts that human spirit and how it can be overcome. This story definitely is not meant to cheer up but make the reader aware of their circumstance and to take a hard look at where their station in life is and hopefully pull themselves from the mire of despair and indifference.
I will be reviewing other short stories found in a collection called Zombies: Encounters with the Hungry Dead
For information about Zombies: Encounters with the Hungry Dead click HERE.
For more information about the story of Lazarus click HERE.
For more information about Leonid Andreyev and his works click HERE.
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