The motif of horror in Leonid Andreev's prose

The article is devoted to one of the most important for the creative concept of Leonid Andreev motives - the motif of horror. The article deals with the philosophical and ideological foundations for identification of a sense of horror in the works by L.Andreev as a special metaphysical category, which is a marker of a real person's life or his aimless existence. Understanding of horror in L.Andreev's works is close to the concept of horror in the conceptions of the existentialists (Shestov, Heidegger). The relation between the basic ideas of L.Andreev (total loneliness of man, fatal predestination of his life, moral stagnation and so on) and the category of horror, which often becomes dominant in the works of the author, is analysed. The article also provides a detailed classification of horror in the writer's works, which is divided in two main groups: fear of life and fear of death (in broad meaning - non-existence).