Note from the site administration: between psychiatrists there is no unambiguous and unanimous opinion about the presence of mental disorders in Gogol. Readers should take information about the writer's mental health as versions, not facts.

Illness of N. V. Gogol

Chapter I

For a long time I considered it necessary to study the illness of N. V. Gogol and determine its influence on the work of a brilliant author " dead souls". Our great critic in his famous letter to Gogol wrote: "Either you are sick and you need to rush to be treated, or - I don’t dare to finish my thought ..." S. T. Aksakov expressed the same thing in a letter to I. S. Aksakov 1. “If I didn’t have the consolation to think that he was crazy about some subjects, then I would call him a harsh word.” A clear mind and a noble heart prompted both Belinsky and Aksakov the correct explanation of Gogol’s character and his “Selected passages from correspondence with friends". Deep respect both for Gogol himself and for these two noble pioneers of our enlightenment obliges the psychiatrist to answer the question so categorically posed by Belinsky, to explain how right the perfectly honest S. T. Aksakov was. Consequently, the psychiatric study of life and Gogol's works are not only of scientific interest, but also of great moral significance.In fact, the question of whether Gogol was mentally ill, no matter how interesting scientifically, would not have public interest if Belinsky and Aksakov did not consider Gogol's only justification that he was mentally ill. The psychiatrist must study and explain the life and works of Gogol, mainly in order to remove from the memory of the long-suffering genius author of Dead Souls those heavy accusations that were expressed with such spiritual anguish by our great critic both in mind and in nobility of character.

Obviously, if Gogol was not mentally ill, then we, together with Belinsky, do not even dare to "prove our thoughts." The enormous influence of Gogol's works on the development of our entire enlightenment positively obliges the Russian psychiatrist to explain Gogol's life from a psychiatric point of view in order to correctly illuminate the moral character of our great satirist, to give a correct explanation of the reasons for those of his actions that aroused the indignation of his best contemporaries. Understanding the task of the psychiatrist in this way, I hesitated for a long time to undertake this work; I kept waiting for more competent authors to explain Gogol's life and works from a psychiatric point of view; I clearly realized that knowledge of psychiatry textbooks was not enough for such work, but a long independent study of the mentally ill, a deep knowledge of psychology and, finally, a thoughtful attitude to the subject were necessary. In addition, this task presented many difficulties due to the lack of complete biography Gogol and the complete collection of his letters.

V. I. Shenrok's extremely detailed work "Materials for the biography of Gogol" and the "Letters of N. V. Gogol" published under his editorship greatly facilitated the study of the life of the author of "Dead Souls" for the psychiatrist. All memoirs and in general all literature about Gogol is developed by Shenrock so completely that the study of the sources adds very little to the information collected by this respected researcher, which is why I almost exclusively quote Shenrock's work, and only very rarely have to resort to references to sources. Having studied the "Letters of N. V. Gogol" and all the literature about Gogol, I, however, did not find it possible to start this work, firstly, because I was expecting new reports about Gogol on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his death, and secondly , because some questions were not completely clear to me. Therefore, with all my desire, I could not finish this work in 1902. Dr. N. N. Bazhenov's study, The Illness and Death of Gogol, which appeared this year, delayed the completion of my work, since I had to check my conclusions again in order to explain to myself the significant disagreement between Dr. Bazhenov's view and my own. .

Only now, after more than twenty-five years of studying psychiatry and a long study of literature about Gogol, do I dare to express my thoughts on Gogol's illness and its influence on his work. I believe that my work will not be superfluous after the study of Dr. Bazhenov, if only because, agreeing in general with Dr. Bazhenov, I, in addition to what was expressed by this author, find in Gogol many pathological manifestations that he does not talk about Dr. Bazhenov. My work, in my opinion, complements the research of this author and therefore, to a large extent, confirms the validity of Dr. Bazhenov's main view, just as his research confirms the validity of my main conclusion. In fact, if there are two doctors at the bedside of a patient, agreeing that the patient is sick, depending on the degree of their experience, their knowledge, and finally, their abilities, they understand the disease somewhat differently - one finds fewer painful phenomena, the other more - then this does not it follows that the patient is healthy and both doctors are mistaken; it is quite natural that, studying such a complex phenomenon as a disease, one doctor pays more attention to any one of its manifestations, while another notices a greater number of symptoms of the disease. Of course, I cannot decide which of us, Dr. Bazhenov or I, understood Gogol's illness more correctly, but this is a disagreement and does not matter much, both in view of the fact that we agree in the main conclusion, and because I pursued a different target than Dr. Bazhenov.

An exact, definite diagnosis of Gogol's disease, in my opinion, is not of great importance, and is hardly possible. In modern psychiatry, there is not only a generally recognized classification, but even a nomenclature of diseases, and therefore, depending on the school to which psychiatrists belong, on the basis of personal views, somewhat different diagnoses are made on the basis of the same signs. I am sure that if Gogol lived now and was examined by several psychiatrists, there would be some disagreement in their diagnoses, and yet our information about Gogol's illness is very incomplete, and therefore a definite, accurate diagnosis of his illness is impossible. And what is the significance of such a diagnosis; indeed, does it really matter whether he suffered from periodic melancholy, or circular insanity, or hereditary insanity (folie heriditaire) in the sense of Morel, or, as they now say, degenerative insanity. It seems to me that it makes no sense to argue about the diagnosis of the illness of a brilliant writer fifty years after his death, since we cannot verify the validity of opinions, and therefore everyone can remain with their own opinion.

The psychiatric study of Gogol's life and works, I think, should pursue a different task, namely that indicated to us by Belinsky. Therefore, without setting myself the goal of accurately diagnosing the form of Gogol's mental illness, I studied all the pathological phenomena in Gogol, starting from his childhood. First of all, of course, if possible, it is necessary to find out the state of health of his parents, to determine the inherited properties of his organization.

The pathological manifestations of Gogol's organism matter only insofar as they manifested themselves in his actions and in his works, and that some of his actions and some features of his work depended on his pathological organization, this was quite clear to many of Gogol's friends and acquaintances, who could not explain the quirks in any other way. Gogol, as by the fact that "something went off in his head ... all of Moscow had such an opinion about him" 2 . Psychiatrists must explain how the pathological symptoms developed and how they manifested themselves, what they actually consisted of, and why they gave the right to think to Gogol's friends that "something went wrong in his head." It is especially important to analyze and trace the development of these symptoms in order to explain to what extent they determined Gogol's actions that would have caused indignation if the perpetrator had been healthy.

A psychiatric study of Gogol's life and works is also necessary in order to explain certain episodes from his life that are completely incomprehensible to his biographers who do not know psychiatry. The biography of Gogol, as a sick person, cannot be understood without a psychiatric study of it; in fact, what implausible hypotheses were not expressed by Gogol's biographers to explain his trip to Lübeck, to explain the early termination of his creative activity; it was written about love for Rosseta, and about grief from the failure of "Hanz Küchelgarten", and Kulish explains the early cessation of Gogol's creative activity as follows: "Pushkin's death marked a sharp edge in Gogol's life ...

During the life of Pushkin, Gogol was one person, after his death he became another. "A lot was written about Gogol's mysticism, they argued that mysticism distracted him from artistic activity, although it is so clear that Gogol was never a mystic, and for Vogüe there could be no doubt about one can only wonder how the conviction about Gogol's mysticism arose. In a word, the study of Gogol's biography from a psychiatric point of view should explain his whole life, should point out those errors of Gogol's biographers, which depend on their ignorance of psychiatry. Gogol V. I. Shenrok was fully aware of the need for a psychiatric study of Gogol's biography, and indeed, how can the life of a sick person be understood by people who have not studied psychiatry.

It goes without saying that if Gogol's mental illness did not affect his work, if it did not affect his artistic activity, a psychiatric study of Gogol's biography would be of little value. Indeed, in order to understand the works of Alfred de Musset, one needs to know what pathological manifestations his body represented. The situation is quite different in relation to Gogol; biographers have not explained to us and, of course, cannot explain why the brilliant satirist did not finish Dead Souls, why he wrote Selected Places..., The Author's Confession, why love does not play any role in his works, why the excerpt "Rome" is so short and, to put it bluntly, so weak. It is precisely Gogol's artistic activity that is not entirely clear, because his pathological condition had a very sharp effect on his artistic activity. Of course, it is not the job of a psychiatrist to evaluate the artistic merits of Gogol's works, to explain them; this is done by quite competent critics, the conclusions of which the psychiatrist should use. The psychiatric study of Gogol's life and works is so important precisely because it explains a lot both in the behavior and in the work of the author of Dead Souls. It's time to finally refute the legend about some turning point in Gogol's life, about a change in his creative activity.

This work seemed to me especially difficult, because the psychiatrist is obliged to explain not only the life of Gogol, but also the influence of the disease on his work, and this is a very, very difficult task; here, knowledge of psychiatry is not enough, and it is necessary to study the very extensive literature on Gogol.

From the foregoing it is clear why I intend this work not for doctors, but for all those interested in Gogol's works. I do not think that a highly specialized study of Gogol's illness could be of any serious significance; for psychiatrists, pathological phenomena in Gogol's body are understandable, and disputes about the exact diagnosis of his illness are fruitless in essence. Therefore, I did not find it possible to give this work a highly specialized character, to place it in a medical organism. The life and works of Gogol are of serious interest to many educated people, and especially to those who study Russian literature. It is precisely for these persons that I have processed this work; in the confidence that he would understand a lot in Gogol's life, explain those features of his work that depended on his illness.

As a doctor, I should be guided by Diderot's advice: "Your business is to question nature, and you make her lie or are afraid of her own explanations" (Didero D. Thoughts on the interpretation of nature); therefore, I have no right to bypass questions that are extremely painful to touch on due to reverence for the genius of Gogol; for all my unwillingness to touch on the completely intimate aspects of his life, as well as the unsympathetic features of his character, I could not pass over in silence, in view of their great importance from a psychiatric point of view. Deep respect for the fruitful work of Gogol, admiration for his wonderful works of art serve as a guarantee that I only speak about the negative aspects of the character and work of the author of "Dead Souls" only out of extreme necessity and love for truth, in full confidence that a psychiatric study of his life and works will give us, together with S. T. Aksakov, "consolation to think "that the long-suffering Gogol is not responsible, because of his illness, for his bad deeds.

Our information about the health of N. V. Gogol's parents is not accurate and complete enough to be able to serve to explain the pathological organization of the brilliant author of Dead Souls. Of course, we will never have the information we need, because not only the state of health of persons who have died long ago, but even our acquaintances, often remains unknown to us. Nervous and mental disorders are especially hidden, and, for example, Möbius could not obtain accurate information about the health of Nietzsche's parents 3 .

We know only three circumstances that could have influenced the health of N.V. Gogol: the first is the illness of Vasily Afanasyevich Gogol; the second is Marya Ivanovna Gogol's nervousness; the third is her youth, when she gave birth to her famous son.

In all likelihood, Vasily Afanasyevich suffered from tuberculosis and died from this disease; according to M. I. Gogol, “before his marriage, he had a fever for two years, from which he was cured by the then-famous doctor Trakhimovsky” (Shenrok). However, this was not a recovery, but an improvement, easily explained by the favorable environment in which the patient lived. Finally, as is usually the case, deterioration set in; Vasily Afanasyevich was ill for several years, and finally the disease took an unfavorable course. "My husband," says Marya Ivanovna, "had been ill for four years, and when his throat began to bleed, he went to Kibintsy to consult a doctor." Throat bleeding is a phenomenon very characteristic of pulmonary tuberculosis, that is, consumption. Further confirmation of such a recognition of Vasily Afanasyevich's illness can be his letter: "... I feel good, but my chest suffers terribly and I can hardly sleep"; this is how dying consumptives complain about their suffering. Like most consumptives, he did not understand the seriousness of his situation and, already in a hopeless state, went to Lubny for treatment, with full confidence in success; after a short treatment in Lubny, Vasily Afanasyevich died at the forty-fourth year of his life; even in Lubny he was interested in the economy, which once again confirms that he did not understand the danger of his position.

Despite the incompleteness of our information about V. A.'s illness, one can hardly doubt that he died of consumption; overall picture diseases, seizures very characteristic of consumption, and, finally, the attitude of the patient to the disease - all this gives us the right to think that the father of our brilliant writer suffered from tuberculosis.

Such an understanding of Vasily Afanasyevich's illness is important, because we can explain the morbidity and general weakness of the body of our brilliant writer with his tuberculosis; there is no doubt that N.V. Gogol is a physically weak person with narrow shoulders and a hollow chest; he was always thin and never had a perfectly healthy, fresh complexion. It can hardly be doubted that a weak physical organization was of tremendous importance in the entire development of N.V. Gogol, in his entire life, in the make-up of his character, in his way of life.

Tuberculosis of the father may be the cause of degeneration, the pathological organization of all or some of the children; there is no doubt that a father who died of tuberculosis can have quite healthy children. Therefore, we should limit ourselves to the assumption that V. A. Gogol's tuberculosis could be the cause of the pathological organization of the nervous system, or the degeneration, of his great son; with great right, we can explain the weakness of the body of N.V. Gogol by the consumption of his father. A strong confirmation of this assumption is the high mortality of the children of V. A. Gogol: out of twelve children, only five survived; Of course, a large mortality occurs between children of completely healthy parents, but nevertheless, especially if children die in the first years of life, it occurs more often in children descended from sick parents.

Our information about Marya Ivanovna is not accurate and does not make it possible to make a completely correct judgment about the health of this beautiful woman. The persons who left us fragmentary memories of M. I. Gogol did not treat her with the objectivity necessary for accurate observation, for which, of course, they cannot be reproached; both her personal charm and the halo of the mother of a brilliant writer deprived her acquaintances of the objectivity necessary for observation. There is no doubt that M. I. Gogol had a noble character, a soul sensitive to everything beautiful; she knew how to love and could arouse love; she certainly had a lively, highly flexible mind, and was well educated, taking into account the conditions of her life. Therefore, I consider it absolutely impossible even to suggest that M. I. Gogol suffered from a mental illness; there is no doubt that until the end of her life this wonderful woman retained her mental health and never suffered from any mental illness.

Together with such a categorical conclusion, however, we cannot deny that M. I. Gogol was endowed with a nervous, pathological organization; in other words, she was not a completely healthy, normal or ordinary woman, which, of course, in no way diminishes our respect and sympathy for the mother of a brilliant writer. It is impossible not to pay attention to the instability and abrupt changes in her mood and mood-dependent behavior; then she, without moving from her place, without changing her posture, for whole hours thought about something unknown, and her face became lifeless, then she was cheerful, lively and mobile. Of course, everyone’s mood changes, we all are attacked by lethargy, replaced by mobility, but in M. I. Gogol, immobility and dreaminess reached such an extent that they attracted the attention of people who knew her. It is obvious that in this respect she differed from the majority; we cannot judge how pathological these changes of mood, unconditioned by external causes, were; perhaps Marya Ivanovna's motionless daydreaming depended on obsessive ideas, perhaps on deceptions of the senses, perhaps these mood swings were not of such a difficult nature. It is indisputable that in persons endowed with a pathological organization of the nervous system, without any external cause, sharp mood swings occur: complete apathy is replaced by revival; suddenly, without any reason, the subject feels weakness, general lethargy, complete indifference to everything, any effort, any change is difficult for him. Also, without any external reason, a revival develops: the subject feels good, everything seems easy to him, he becomes mobile, talkative, looking for new impressions; both states also disappear without any external cause. The same instability of M. I. Gogol’s mood was also expressed in the fact that she easily fell into despair, “which was often repeated later, because, out of natural kindness, she warmly took to heart not only her own misfortunes, but also the grief of loved ones” (Shenrok T. I, p. 53).

Of lesser importance is the suspiciousness and suspicion of M.I.; moreover, we do not know how much she differed in this respect from the environment in which she lived. It is indisputable that M.I. was extremely dreamy and amazingly impractical, which, of course, can only explain that she left her beloved son almost without means, although her estate, with a more or less skillful household, would have provided income sufficient for a comfortable existence. The striking impracticality of M. I. can hardly be explained by education; she was brought up like everyone else, and yet many widows of landowners managed their household so satisfactorily that they helped their sons in the first years of their service.

At the same time, M.I. was so frivolous that she made purchases from visiting merchants above the means and even bought things that she did not need; her son reproached her that "you went to seek the truth from a wandering shopkeeper who came to the fair." A mother who passionately loves her only son buys unnecessary rubbish, and her son lives in poverty in St. Petersburg; M.I. was not stupid in the usual sense of the word; on the contrary, it was a richly gifted nature, but one must think that M. I.’s thinking completely depended on feelings, on direct impressions; she was not endowed with will, did not manage the course of thinking to the proper extent.

It is clear that M. I. was proud of her son, talked about his fame, praised his works, assured herself that her son was known to the Sovereign, etc.; mother's love even more balanced than M.I., mothers, deprives them of the opportunity to be critical of their children. At the same time, M.I. had every right to be proud of her son and did not exaggerate his glory a little.

After all, we know so little about MI's health that we must confine ourselves to the most general conclusion: MI was a nervous woman, unbalanced by nature; with a great softness of heart, sensitivity, she did not possess business abilities, she was little capable of calm rational activity; her imagination was highly developed. She seemed strange, downright abnormal to Danilevsky and Trakhimovsky; the latter reports that "M. I. Gogol, at the same time, was extremely impressionable and suspicious: there were days, weeks, whole months when M. I.'s impressionability reached its extreme limits, reached an almost painful state." The brilliant son, of course, noticed the sickness of his mother in a letter to his sister Anna Vasilievna dated 12. IV. 1839 writes: "Thank God, our mother is physically completely healthy. I meant spiritual and mental illness; we were talking about it."

However, it is necessary to take into account that M. I. Gogol was a widow for thirty-two years; there is no doubt that early widowhood greatly affects the health of the nervous system; the influence of this circumstance on the health of the nervous, abnormal Marya Ivanovna was especially strong; it is quite possible that if it were not for this extremely unfavorable circumstance for the health of the nervous system, M.I.'s "nervousness" would not have reached such an extreme degree. On the basis of my own, quite numerous, observations, I attach great importance early widowhood.

We do not know what kind of mental illness Trushkovsky, N.V. Gogol's nephew, suffered from, and therefore the fact that the nephew suffered from mental illness does not yet give us enough grounds to judge degeneration in the Gogol family; maybe Trushkovsky suffered from an acquired mental illness; it is possible that the pathological organization was inherited from the father.

It is difficult to decide to what extent the young age of the mother could be the cause of the pathological organization of the nervous system of N.V. Gogol; both a priori and on the basis of observation of animals, we must think that among the children of very young mothers there are relatively many weak and frail ones. It is quite possible that the weak physique of N.V. Gogol, his poor health, although partly depends on the extreme youth of his mother. However, we do not have accurate observations indicating that the youth of the mother can be the cause of degeneration and poor health of the offspring. We have even less reason to assert that the youth of the mother can be the cause of the pathological nervous organization of the offspring; it is possible, but not proven.

M. I. was fifteen years old when she gave birth to the great satirist; other children did not have nervous disorders; therefore, it is possible with some reason to explain the pathological organization of the nervous system and, in general, the frail health of N.V. Gogol by the extreme youth of his mother.

Thus, our meager information about the health of N.V. Gogol's parents does not give us the right to give any categorical conclusions; we know that the state of health of parents often affects the health of offspring; quite healthy parents can have sick children, and vice versa: sick parents have healthy children. N. V. Gogol's sisters, at least the younger ones, enjoyed satisfactory health until old age, and N. V. Gogol was undoubtedly a sickly person.

It is much more important to find out what biologically N.V. Gogol inherited from his parents; to find out whether it is possible to biologically explain the genius of N. V. Gogol as an inherited gift, or whether the genius of the author of Dead Souls cannot be explained by the laws of heredity, therefore, should be considered an accidental, purely individual deviation.

N. V. Gogol's father was an ordinary man; he did not stand out from the environment in which he lived, did not achieve perfection in any kind of activity; he did not want to finish his education, he tried to serve, but without success, he was zealous in housekeeping, but he was a bad owner. He wrote not bad plays for the Troshchinsky Theatre, but these plays were very far from perfect and did not attract attention; he wrote poetry, but there was a time when everyone who had nothing to do wrote bad poetry. They say he was a good storyteller; you have to believe this statement.

One can hardly doubt that V. A. Gogol was gentle, kind, good man, loved by his family and his acquaintances; at the same time, he was not distinguished either by industriousness, or energy, or perseverance, or efficiency.

The son of genius inherited from his good-natured and affectionate father only poor health and, perhaps, a pathological organization of the nervous system; it can hardly be argued that V. A. Gogol conveyed his ability to tell stories well; firstly, it is highly doubtful that such an ability or such a property is inherited. At least there are no more good storytellers among the children of well-known orators and actors than among the children of persons who did not have this ability. Secondly, N.V. Gogol can hardly be considered a good storyteller; he was a brilliant reader of his brilliant works, an inimitable and, perhaps, a brilliant storyteller of funny, mostly "unprintable" anecdotes, but in general he did not have an outstanding gift for words and did not speak well about anything, except for the area that he comprehended perfectly due to its exceptional and one-sided genius. It is also hardly possible to admit that V. A. passed on his literary talent to his son. Not to mention the fact that V. A.’s talent was extremely mediocre, one can hardly find anything but an external resemblance between the innocent, from nothing to do, written for the amusement of a wealthy relative and his guests, theatrical plays by V. A. Gogol and "Auditor".

In general, N.V. Gogol was in no way like his complacent father; my father was satisfied with his life, quite reconciled with the environment. The brilliant son always strove forward, never put up with reality; the father was complacent and loved everyone and everything, the son was practical and businesslike; the father was lazy, the son was industrious and active, as far as his poor health allowed. The father enjoyed life, no matter how modest his share of happiness was, the son could have everything in life and never enjoyed life, because in his temperament he could not enjoy life. The father spent his life as a holiday, for a brilliant son life was suffering, interrupted by short moments of delight, which V. A. Gogol could not even dream of. In order to appreciate how much the son did not resemble his father, it is necessary to take into account that the father for his time was just as, if not better, educated than the son.

In general, it is not often that a son resembles his father so little as the author of Dead Souls resembles V. A. Gogol. It can be said that N. V. Gogol was just as bad a master as his father, but we absolutely cannot agree with this. N.V. Gogol did not take care of the household, because his mother's small estate could not even interest him; but if he had to take care of the household, he would be an excellent master, since he possessed the main property of a good master - to recognize and subjugate people. One can, of course, say that V. A. Gogol had an influence on his son as an educated and even literary person. Although this is already out of the scope of my specialty, I can note that the education of my father had an impact only on the external life of N.V. Gogol: if he grew up in an uneducated family, he could have died out, his genius would have been unknown to us, but after all, NV would have been a man of genius.

There is no doubt that the more N.V. Gogol resembled his father, the easier it would be for him to live; The suffering life of N. V. Gogol convincingly proves to us that he inherited only poor health from his consumptive father.

Very little N. V. Gogol inherited from his mother; their resemblance is subtle and difficult to define; one has to be content with the same vague, vague expressions as this similarity is vague. Both mother and son had a highly developed spiritual life; they were spiritual natures, so to speak; M. I. Gogol, like her son, had a nature of the highest order. Of course, all this is uncertain, but after all, we cannot more accurately determine the similarity of the son and mother, both of them were not vulgar, they were not coins that all looked alike, but medals, although of different sizes, but both of noble metal. If we pay attention to the fact that M. I. Gogol always passionately loved her son of genius, but hardly pleasant in the family circle, we cannot deny this old-world landowner great spiritual sensitivity. Sincerity, sensitivity, the ability to love - all this testifies to the high soul of M. I. Gogol; this spirituality was inherited by the son.

This is where the resemblance between M. I. Gogol and her son ends. He did not inherit from his mother either her loving nature, or her meekness, or her immediate cordial interest in life, or her resignation to fate, or her impracticality, or her spiritual simplicity and beautiful naivety. M. I. Gogol is described very well in her letters, and in the letters of N. V. Gogol, and in the memoirs of her famous son’s friends, and therefore it can hardly be doubted that the resemblance between him and his mother was very small, and most importantly, indefinitely . This conclusion is also confirmed by the fact that the living bond between mother and son, despite their mutual love, soon broke, but both often wrote to each other a lot. N.V. Gogol was too lazy to go to his mother in 1839 and sent the old mother, who did not travel far, to Moscow, and even to a strange house. It is unlikely that the joy of M. I. Gogol at a meeting with his son differed much from that state of mind, which Bazarov's mother experienced when this latter came home. MI Gogol's life was much easier than her son's; like her husband, she had a cheerfulness and knew how to be content with a little. She wanted to increase the income of her estate, but she also endured economic failures easily; only with a sensitive maternal heart did she understand, but, of course, only vaguely, the suffering of her great son, but the aspirations of her son, the essence and causes of his suffering were completely alien to her nature.

That N.V. Gogol biologically inherited nothing but poor health from his father and inherited very little from his mother is also proved by the fact that all his sisters definitely did not resemble their brilliant brother in anything. They did not stand out from the environment in any way, they did not declare their abilities in anything, they lived life in the same environment in which they were born, they lived serenely and enjoyed happiness, as far as ordinary people can. The ingenious sick brother and healthy sisters, similar to their parents, were completely alien to each other; even the brilliant education received by Anna and Elizaveta Gogol thanks to their famous brother did not distinguish them from the crowd, and for us it is quite clear that N.V. Gogol's attempts to incite his sisters to literary work were unsuccessful. There was nothing unconditionally outstanding, nothing even resembling genius in the good, honest, even, say, smart family of N.V. Gogol, which is proved by the fact that not a single person came out of this family, at least something that stood out from the crowd , although somewhat known.

Thus, we have the right to conclude that the genius of the author of Dead Souls was not inherited by him, that there was nothing in his family that could explain to us the genius of N.V. Gogol. Once again we see that a genius was born in the most ordinary, respectable family; among the ancestors and sisters of N.V. Gogol there was not a single person with outstanding abilities. We can say that a genius can be born in every family, without any preparation; genius is some kind of accidental deviation, incomprehensible to us. The biography of N. V. Gogol once again confirms to us that we absolutely do not know either the biological or psychological conditions conducive to the development of genius. This position is especially convincingly confirmed by the biography of N. V. Gogol; not only by his genius, but also by his whole organization, by his whole spiritual make-up, he differed from his family. In everything, in relation to his own family, he was an exceptional phenomenon; one should say that genius is some kind of ugliness, but this word has a bad meaning. For the time being, we must be content with this word, since it better than others expresses all the little that we know about the origin of geniuses. N.V. Gogol was not like either his father or his mother, his genius was not a further development of the abilities that were in his family; for some reason, for reasons incomprehensible to us, a brilliant satirist was born into a respectable, benevolent family. Involuntarily, we have to explain the genius of N. V. Gogol by illness, since only illness can explain to us such a sharp deviation, such a significant difference. Indeed, how else can one explain the undoubted fact that N.V. Gogol, both in his amazing abilities and in his organization, differed from all members of his family? Only a disease could have caused this ugliness and deviation from type, which is so useful to all of us. Inherited degeneration or illnesses suffered in childhood, or, most likely, both of them together caused either deviation in organization, or ugliness in the structure of the brain, which was expressed both in genius and in N.V. Gogol's character traits. Otherwise, we cannot explain the genius of N. V. Gogol: the disease caused the unilateral development of the brain, delayed the harmonious development of the entire brain.

The pathological organization of the nervous system of N. V. Gogol is undoubted, and with it, or, in other words, with a disease, we can explain the genius of the author of "Dead Souls". It remains not entirely clear what explains both the illness and the genius of N.V. Gogol: inherited degeneration or an accidental illness in childhood, but this is not of great importance.

I fully understand that the explanation of genius as a pathological phenomenon does little to clarify the essence of the matter; Even if we accept as unconditionally proven that genius is caused by illness, that genius in general is a pathological deviation from type, the main thing still remains unexplained: what diseases and how cause genius, what deviations of the brain occur in people of genius.

However, such an explanation also has some value, since thanks to it, the mistake of biographers is quite clear to us, trying to explain genius by the nature of parents, upbringing, environmental influences, etc. All such attempts are completely untenable, as the life of N. V. Gogol convinces us of. ; neither the environment, nor the character of the parents, nor the upbringing, nor the impressions of childhood, nor education - in a word, nothing but illness can explain to us the amazing abilities of N.V. Gogol.

In general, upbringing, the influence of relatives and friends have very little effect on people of genius; the life of N. V. Gogol can serve as a good confirmation of this. V. A. Gogol had the most insignificant influence on his son, which, of course, cannot be blamed on him; the brilliant satirist himself re-educated himself, developed completely independently. Biographers usually try to explain the life and work of a genius by the influence of the environment on him, forgetting that a genius both perceives and processes differently than we, ordinary people; Genius is precisely distinguished by both extreme independence and tremendous originality.

Notes

1 S. T. Aksakov. The story of my acquaintance with Gogol. Russian archive. 1890. No. 8. S. 162.

2 Turgenev. Literary Memories. Edition of Marx. III. XII. S. 61.

3 Mobius. Uber das pathologische bei Nietzsche. 1902

Woven from contradictions, he amazed everyone with his genius in the field of literature and oddities in everyday life. The classic of Russian literature, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, was an incomprehensible person.

For example, he only slept sitting up, afraid of being mistaken for dead. He took long walks around ... the house, drinking a glass of water in each room. Periodically fell into a state of prolonged stupor. And the death of the great writer was mysterious: either he died of poisoning, or of cancer, or of mental illness.

Doctors have been unsuccessfully trying to make an accurate diagnosis for more than a century and a half.

strange child

The future author of "Dead Souls" was born in a disadvantaged family in terms of heredity. His grandfather and grandmother on his mother's side were superstitious, religious, believed in omens and predictions. One of the aunts was completely “weak in the head”: she could grease her head with a tallow candle for weeks to prevent graying of her hair, made faces while sitting at the dinner table, hid pieces of bread under the mattress.

When a baby was born in this family in 1809, everyone decided that the boy would not last long - he was so weak. But the child survived.

True, he grew up thin, frail and sickly - in a word, one of those “lucky ones” to whom all sores stick. First, scrofula became attached, then scarlet fever, followed by purulent otitis media. All this against the backdrop of persistent colds.

But Gogol's main illness, which bothered him almost all his life, was manic-depressive psychosis.

It is not surprising that the boy grew up withdrawn and uncommunicative. According to the recollections of his classmates at the Nezhinsky Lyceum, he was a gloomy, stubborn and very secretive teenager. And only a brilliant game in the lyceum theater said that this person has a remarkable acting talent.

In 1828 Gogol came to St. Petersburg with the aim of making a career. Not wanting to work as a petty official, he decides to enter the stage. But unsuccessfully. I had to get a job as a clerk. However, Gogol did not stay long in one place - he flew from department to department.

The people with whom he was in close contact at that time complained about his capriciousness, insincerity, coldness, inattention to the owners and hard-to-explain oddities.

He is young, full of ambitious plans, and his first book, Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka, is published. Gogol meets Pushkin, which he is terribly proud of. Rotates in secular circles. But already at that time in the St. Petersburg salons they began to notice some oddities in the behavior of the young man.

Where to put yourself?

Throughout his life, Gogol complained of stomach pains. However, this did not prevent him from eating dinner for four in one sitting, “polishing” it all with a jar of jam and a basket of cookies.

No wonder that from the age of 22 the writer suffered from chronic hemorrhoids with severe exacerbations. For this reason, he never worked while sitting. He wrote exclusively while standing, spending 10-12 hours a day on his feet.

As for relationships with the opposite sex, this is a secret behind seven seals.

Back in 1829, he sent his mother a letter in which he spoke of a terrible love for some lady. But already in the next message - not a word about the girl, only a boring description of a certain rash, which, according to him, is nothing more than a consequence of childhood scrofula. Having connected the girl with a sore, the mother concluded that her son had caught a shameful illness from some kind of metropolitan flirtatious.

In fact, Gogol invented both love and malaise in order to extort a certain amount of money from a parent.

Whether the writer had carnal contact with women is a big question. According to the doctor who observed Gogol, there were none. The reason for this is a certain castration complex - in other words, a weak attraction. And this despite the fact that Nikolai Vasilyevich loved obscene anecdotes and knew how to tell them, without omitting obscene words at all.

Whereas bouts of mental illness were undoubtedly evident.

The first clinically delineated bout of depression, which took the writer "almost a year of life", was noted in 1834.

Beginning in 1837, seizures, varying in duration and severity, began to be observed regularly. Gogol complained of anguish, "which has no description" and from which he did not know "what to do with himself." He complained that his "soul ... is languishing from a terrible blues", is "in some kind of insensible sleepy position." Because of this, Gogol could not only create, but also think. Hence the complaints about the "eclipse of memory" and "strange inactivity of the mind."

Attacks of religious enlightenment gave way to fear and despair. They encouraged Gogol to perform Christian deeds. One of them - exhaustion of the body - and led the writer to death.

Subtleties of the soul and body

Gogol died at the age of 43. The doctors who treated him last years, were in complete bewilderment about his illness. A version of depression was put forward.

It began with the fact that at the beginning of 1852 the sister of one of Gogol's close friends, Ekaterina Khomyakova, died, whom the writer respected to the depths of his soul. Her death provoked a severe depression, resulting in religious ecstasy. Gogol began to fast. His daily diet consisted of 1-2 tablespoons of cabbage pickle and oatmeal, occasionally prunes. Considering that Nikolai Vasilyevich's body was weakened after an illness - in 1839 he had malarial encephalitis, and in 1842 he suffered from cholera and miraculously survived - starvation was mortally dangerous for him.

Gogol then lived in Moscow, on the first floor of the house of Count Tolstoy, his friend.

On the night of February 24, he burned the second volume of Dead Souls. After 4 days, Gogol was visited by a young doctor, Alexei Terentiev. He described the state of the writer as follows: “He looked like a man for whom all tasks were resolved, all feelings were silent, all words were in vain ... His whole body had become extremely thin; the eyes became dull and sunken, the face was completely haggard, the cheeks were sunken, the voice weakened ... "

The house on Nikitsky Boulevard, where the second volume of "Dead Souls" was burned. Here Gogol died. Doctors invited to the dying Gogol found severe gastrointestinal disorders in him. They talked about "gut catarrh", which turned into "typhus", about an unfavorable course of gastroenteritis. And, finally, about "indigestion", complicated by "inflammation".

As a result, the doctors diagnosed him with meningitis and prescribed bloodletting, hot baths and douches, which are deadly in this state.

The writer's pitiful withered body was immersed in a bath, his head was poured with cold water. They put leeches on him, and with a weak hand he convulsively tried to brush away the clusters of black worms that were clinging to his nostrils. But how could one think of a worse torture for a person who had felt disgust all his life in front of everything creeping and slimy? “Remove the leeches, lift the leeches from your mouth,” Gogol groaned and pleaded. In vain. He was not allowed to do so.

A few days later the writer was gone.

Gogol's ashes were buried at noon on February 24, 1852 by parish priest Alexei Sokolov and deacon John Pushkin. And after 79 years, he was secretly, thievishly removed from the grave: the Danilov Monastery was being transformed into a colony for juvenile delinquents, in connection with which its necropolis was subject to liquidation. It was decided to transfer only a few of the most dear to the Russian heart burials to the old cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent. Among these lucky ones, along with Yazykov, Aksakovs and Khomyakovs, was Gogol ...

On May 31, 1931, twenty to thirty people gathered at the grave of Gogol, among whom were: historian M. Baranovskaya, writers Vs. Ivanov, V. Lugovskoy, Yu. Olesha, M. Svetlov, V. Lidin and others. It was Lidin who became almost the only source of information about the reburial of Gogol. With his light hand, terrible legends about Gogol began to walk around Moscow.

“The coffin was not found right away,” he told the students of the Literary Institute, “for some reason, it turned out not to be where they were digging, but somewhat at a distance, to the side. And when they pulled it out of the ground - flooded with lime, seemingly strong, from oak planks - and opened it, bewilderment was added to the heart trembling of those present. In the fobo lay a skeleton with a skull turned to one side. No one has found an explanation for this. Someone superstitious, probably, then thought: “Well, after all, the publican - during his life, as if not alive, and after death, not dead, this strange great man.”

Lidin's stories stirred up old rumors that Gogol was afraid of being buried alive in a state of lethargic sleep and, seven years before his death, bequeathed:

“Do not bury my body until there are clear signs of decomposition. I mention this because even during the illness itself, moments of vital numbness came over me, my heart and pulse stopped beating.

What the exhumers saw in 1931 seemed to indicate that Gogol's testament had not been fulfilled, that he was buried in a lethargic state, he woke up in a coffin and experienced nightmarish minutes of a new death...

In fairness, it must be said that Lidin's version did not inspire confidence. Sculptor N. Ramazanov, who took off Gogol's death mask, recalled: "I did not suddenly decide to take off the mask, but the prepared coffin ... finally, the incessantly arriving crowd who wanted to say goodbye to the dear deceased forced me and my old man, who pointed out the traces of destruction, to hurry ... "Found my own an explanation for the rotation of the skull: the side boards at the coffin were the first to rot, the lid falls under the weight of the soil, presses on the dead man’s head, and it turns to its side on the so-called “Atlantean vertebra”.

Then Lidin launched a new version. In his written memoirs of the exhumation, he told a new story, even more terrible and mysterious than his oral stories. “This is what Gogol's ashes were like,” he wrote, “there was no skull in the coffin, and Gogol's remains began with the cervical vertebrae; the entire skeleton of the skeleton was enclosed in a well-preserved tobacco-colored frock coat ... When and under what circumstances Gogol's skull disappeared remains a mystery. At the beginning of the opening of the grave at a shallow depth, much higher than the crypt with a walled coffin, a skull was found, but archaeologists recognized it as belonging to a young man.

This new invention of Lidin required new hypotheses. When could Gogol's skull disappear from the coffin? Who could need it? And what kind of fuss is raised around the remains of the great writer?

They remembered that in 1908, when a heavy stone was installed on the grave, a brick crypt had to be erected over the coffin to strengthen the foundation. It was then that the mysterious intruders could steal the writer's skull. What about stakeholders, then it was not for nothing, apparently, that rumors circulated around Moscow that in the unique collection of A. A. Bakhrushin, a passionate collector of theatrical relics, the skulls of Shchepkin and Gogol were secretly kept ...

And Lidin, inexhaustible in inventions, amazed the listeners with new sensational details: they say, when the ashes of the writer were taken from the Danilov Monastery to Novodevichy, some of those present at the reburial could not resist and grabbed some relics for themselves. One allegedly pulled off Gogol's rib, the other - the tibia, the third - the boot. Lidin himself even showed the guests a volume of his lifetime edition Gogol's writings, in the binding of which he inserted a piece of fabric, torn off by him from the frock coat lying in Gogol's coffin.

In his will, Gogol shamed those who "will be attracted by some kind of attention to rotting dust, which is no longer mine." But the windy descendants were not ashamed, violated the writer's testament, with unclean hands began to stir up "rotting dust" for fun. They did not respect his covenant not to erect any monument on his grave.

The Aksakovs brought to Moscow from the Black Sea coast a stone resembling Golgotha, the hill on which Jesus Christ was crucified. This stone became the basis for the cross on the grave of Gogol. Next to him, a black stone in the form of a truncated pyramid with inscriptions on the edges was installed on the grave.

The day before the opening of the Gogol burial, these stones and the cross were taken away somewhere and sunk into oblivion. It was not until the early 1950s that Mikhail Bulgakov's widow accidentally discovered Gogol's Golgotha ​​stone in a cutters' shed and managed to install it on the grave of her husband, the creator of The Master and Margarita.

No less mysterious and mystical is the fate of the Moscow monuments to Gogol. The idea of ​​the need for such a monument was born in 1880 during the celebrations for the opening of the monument to Pushkin on Tverskoy Boulevard. And 29 years later, on the centenary of the birth of Nikolai Vasilyevich on April 26, 1909, a monument created by the sculptor N. Andreev was opened on Prechistensky Boulevard. This sculpture, depicting a deeply dejected Gogol at the moment of his heavy thoughts, caused mixed reviews. Some enthusiastically praised her, others furiously condemned her. But everyone agreed: Andreev managed to create a work of the highest artistic merit.

Disputes around the original author's interpretation of the image of Gogol did not continue to subside even in Soviet times, which could not bear the spirit of decline and despondency even among the great writers of the past. Socialist Moscow needed a different Gogol - clear, bright, calm. Not Gogol of Selected Places from Correspondence with Friends, but Gogol of Taras Bulba, The Government Inspector, Dead Souls.

In 1935, the All-Union Committee for Arts under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR announced a competition for a new monument to Gogol in Moscow, which marked the beginning of developments interrupted by the Great Patriotic War. She slowed down, but did not stop these works, in which the largest masters of sculpture participated - M. Manizer, S. Merkurov, E. Vuchetich, N. Tomsky.

In 1952, on the centennial anniversary of Gogol's death, a new monument was erected on the site of the Andreevsky monument, created by the sculptor N. Tomsky and the architect S. Golubovsky. The Andreevsky monument was moved to the territory of the Donskoy Monastery, where it stood until 1959, when, at the request of the USSR Ministry of Culture, it was installed in front of Tolstoy's house on Nikitsky Boulevard, where Nikolai Vasilyevich lived and died. It took Andreev's creation seven years to cross the Arbat Square!

The controversy surrounding the Moscow monuments to Gogol continues even now. Some Muscovites are inclined to see the transfer of monuments as a manifestation of Soviet totalitarianism and party dictates. But everything that is done is done for the better, and Moscow today has not one, but two monuments to Gogol, equally precious for Russia in moments of both decline and enlightenment of the spirit.

IT LOOKS LIKE GOGOL WAS ACCIDENTALLY POISONED BY DOCTORS!

Although the gloomy mystical halo around Gogol's personality was largely generated by the blasphemous destruction of his grave and the absurd inventions of the irresponsible Lidin, much remains mysterious in the circumstances of his illness and death.

Indeed, from what could a relatively young 42-year-old writer die?

Khomyakov put forward the first version, according to which the root cause of death was a severe mental shock experienced by Gogol due to the fleeting death of Khomyakov's wife Ekaterina Mikhailovna. “From then on he was in some kind of nervous breakdown, which took on the character of religious insanity,” Khomyakov recalled. “He talked and began to starve himself, reproaching himself for gluttony.”

This version seems to be confirmed by the testimonies of people who saw what effect the accusatory conversations of Father Matthew Konstantinovsky had on Gogol. It was he who demanded that Nikolai Vasilyevich keep a strict fast, demanded from him special zeal in fulfilling the harsh instructions of the church, reproached both Gogol himself and Pushkin, before whom Gogol revered, for their sinfulness and paganism. The denunciations of the eloquent priest shocked Nikolai Vasilievich so much that one day, interrupting Father Matthew, he literally groaned: “Enough! Leave, I can’t listen any longer, it’s too scary!” Tertiy Filippov, a witness to these conversations, was convinced that Father Matthew's sermons set Gogol in a pessimistic mood, convinced him of the inevitability of imminent death.

And yet there is no reason to believe that Gogol has gone mad. An unwitting witness to the last hours of Nikolai Vasilyevich's life was the yard man of a Simbirsk landowner, paramedic Zaitsev, who in his memoirs noted that the day before his death Gogol was in a clear memory and sound mind. Having calmed down after the “therapeutic” tortures, he had a friendly conversation with Zaitsev, asked about his life, even made corrections in the poems written by Zaitsev on the death of his mother.

The version that Gogol died of starvation is not confirmed either. An adult healthy person can do without food for 30-40 days. Gogol, on the other hand, fasted for only 17 days, and even then he did not refuse food completely ...

But if not from madness and hunger, then could some infectious disease cause death? In Moscow in the winter of 1852, an epidemic of typhoid fever raged, from which, by the way, Khomyakova died. That is why Inozemtsev, at the first examination, suspected that the writer had typhus. But a week later, a council of doctors, convened by Count Tolstoy, announced that Gogol did not have typhus, but meningitis, and prescribed that strange course of treatment, which cannot be called anything other than "torture" ...

In 1902, Dr. N. Bazhenov published a small work, Gogol's Illness and Death. After carefully analyzing the symptoms described in the memoirs of the writer's acquaintances and the doctors who treated him, Bazhenov came to the conclusion that it was precisely this wrong, weakening treatment for meningitis, which actually did not exist, that killed the writer.

It seems that Bazhenov is only partly right. The treatment prescribed by the council, applied when Gogol was already hopeless, aggravated his suffering, but was not the cause of the disease itself, which began much earlier. In his notes, Dr. Tarasenkov, who first examined Gogol on February 16, described the symptoms of the disease as follows: “... the pulse was weakened, the tongue was clean, but dry; the skin had a natural warmth. For all reasons, it was clear that he did not have a feverish condition ... once he had a slight nosebleed, complained that his hands were cold, his urine was thick, dark-colored ... ".

One can only regret that Bazhenov, when writing his work, did not think of consulting a toxicologist. After all, the symptoms of Gogol's disease described by him are practically indistinguishable from the symptoms of chronic poisoning with mercury - the main component of the same calomel that everyone who started the treatment of Aesculapius stuffed Gogol with. In fact, in chronic calomel poisoning, thick dark urine and various kinds of bleeding are possible, more often gastric, but sometimes nasal. A weak pulse could be a consequence of both the weakening of the body from burnishing, and the result of the action of calomel. Many noted that throughout his illness, Gogol often asked for water: thirst is one of the characteristics of signs of chronic poisoning.

In all likelihood, the start of the fatal chain of events was an upset stomach and the "too strong effect of the medicine" about which Gogol complained to Shevyrev on February 5. Since gastric disorders were then treated with calomel, it is possible that the medicine prescribed for him was calomel and prescribed it by Inozemtsev, who after a few days fell ill himself and stopped observing the patient. The writer passed into the hands of Tarasenkov, who, not knowing that Gogol had already taken a dangerous medicine, could prescribe him calomel again. For the third time, Gogol received calomel from Klimenkov.

The peculiarity of calomel is that it does not cause harm only if it is relatively quickly excreted from the body through the intestines. If it lingers in the stomach, then after a while it begins to act as the strongest mercury poison of sublimate. This, apparently, happened to Gogol: significant doses of the calomel he took were not excreted from the stomach, since the writer was fasting at that time and there was simply no food in his stomach. The amount of calomel gradually increasing in his stomach caused chronic poisoning, and the weakening of the body from malnutrition, discouragement and Klimenkov's barbaric treatment only accelerated death ...

It would not be difficult to test this hypothesis by examining the mercury content of the remains using modern means of analysis. But let us not become like the blasphemous exhumers of the year 1931, and for the sake of idle curiosity we will not disturb the ashes of the great writer a second time, we will not again throw tombstones from his grave and move his monuments from place to place. Everything connected with the memory of Gogol, let it be preserved forever and stand in one place!

On February 21 (March 4), 1852, the great Russian writer Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol passed away. He died at the age of 42, suddenly, "burned out" in just a few weeks. Later, his death was called terrifying, mysterious and even mystical.

164 years have passed, and the mystery of Gogol's death has not been completely solved.

Sopor

The most common version. The rumor about the allegedly terrible death of the writer, who was buried alive, turned out to be so tenacious that many still consider it an absolutely proven fact. And the poet Andrei Voznesensky in 1972 he even immortalized this assumption in his poem "The Funeral of Gogol Nikolai Vasilyevich".

You carried the living across the country.
Gogol was in a lethargic dream.
Gogol thought in the coffin on his back:

“They stole the underwear from under the tailcoat.
It blows into the crack, but you can't get through it.
What is the torment of the Lord
before waking up in a coffin."

Open the coffin and freeze in the snow.
Gogol, crouching, lies on his side.
An ingrown toenail tore through the lining of the boot.

In part, rumors about his burial were created alive without knowing it ... Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. The fact is that the writer was subject to fainting and somnambulistic states. Therefore, the classic was very afraid that in one of the attacks he would be mistaken for dead and buried.

In the Testament, he wrote: “Being in the full presence of memory and common sense, I state here my last will. I bequeath my body not to be buried until clear signs of decomposition appear. I mention this because even during the illness itself, moments of vital numbness came over me, my heart and pulse stopped beating ... "

It is known that 79 years after the death of the writer, Gogol's grave was opened to transfer the remains from the necropolis of the closed Danilov Monastery to Novodevichy cemetery. They say that his body lay in an unusual position for a dead man - his head was turned to the side, and the upholstery of the coffin was torn to shreds. These rumors gave rise to an ingrained belief that Nikolai Vasilyevich had died. terrible death, in pitch darkness, underground.

This fact is almost unanimously denied by modern historians.

“During the exhumation, which was carried out in conditions of certain secrecy, only about 20 people gathered at the grave of Gogol ... - writes in his article “The Mystery of Gogol's Death”, an associate professor of the Perm Medical Academy Mikhail Davidov. - The writer V. Lidin became essentially the only source of information about the exhumation of Gogol. At first, he told about the reburial to the students of the Literary Institute and his acquaintances, later he left written memoirs. Lidin's stories were untruthful and contradictory. It was he who claimed that the writer's oak coffin was well preserved, the lining of the coffin was torn and scratched from the inside, and a skeleton lay in the coffin, unnaturally twisted, with the skull turned to one side. So, with the light hand of Lidin, who was inexhaustible in his inventions, the terrible legend that the writer was buried alive went for a walk around Moscow.

Nikolai Vasilyevich was afraid of being buried alive. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

To understand the inconsistency of the lethargic dream version, it is enough to think about the following fact: the exhumation was carried out 79 years after the burial! It is known that the decomposition of the body in the grave occurs incredibly quickly, and after only a few years, only bone tissue remains from it, and the discovered bones no longer have close connections with each other. It is not clear how, after eight decades, some kind of “twisting of the body” could be established ... And what remains of the wooden coffin and upholstery material after 79 years of being in the ground? They change so much (rot, fragment) that it is absolutely impossible to establish the fact of “scratching” the inner upholstery of the coffin.”

And according to the memoirs of the sculptor Ramazanov, who took off the death mask of the writer, post-mortem changes and the beginning of the process of tissue decomposition were clearly visible on the face of the deceased.

However, the version of Gogol's lethargic dream is still alive.

Suicide

In the last months of his life, Gogol experienced a severe spiritual crisis. The writer was shocked by the death of his close friend, Ekaterina Mikhailovna Khomyakova who died suddenly of a rapidly developing disease at the age of 35. The classic stopped writing, spent most of his time in prayer and fasting furiously. Gogol was seized by the fear of death, the writer reported to his acquaintances that he heard voices telling him that he would die soon.

It was during that hectic period, when the writer was half-delirious, that he burned the manuscript of the second volume of Dead Souls. It is believed that he did this largely under the pressure of his confessor, Archpriest Matthew Konstantinovsky, who was the only person to read this never published work and advised to destroy the records. The priest had a huge impact on Gogol in the last weeks of his life. Considering the writer not righteous enough, the priest demanded that Nikolai Vasilievich "renounce Pushkin" as a "sinner and pagan." He urged Gogol to constantly pray and abstain from food, and also mercilessly intimidated him with the reprisal awaiting him for his sins "in the other world."

The writer's depression intensified. He grew weak, slept very little, and ate practically nothing. In fact, the writer voluntarily lived himself out of the world.

According to the doctor Tarasenkova, who observed Nikolai Vasilyevich, in the last period of his life, he aged “at once” in a month. By February 10, Gogol's forces had already left Gogol so much that he could no longer leave the house. On February 20, the writer fell into a feverish state, did not recognize anyone, and kept whispering some kind of prayer. A council of doctors gathered at the bedside of the patient prescribes “compulsory treatment” for him. For example, bloodletting with leeches. Despite all efforts, at 8 o'clock in the morning on February 21, he was gone.

However, the version that the writer deliberately "starved himself to death", that is, in fact, committed suicide, is not supported by most researchers. And for a fatal outcome, an adult needs not to eat for 40 days. Gogol refused food for about three weeks, and even then periodically allowed himself to eat a few tablespoons of oatmeal soup and drink linden tea.

medical error

In 1902, a short article by Dr. Bazhenov“Illness and death of Gogol”, where he shares an unexpected thought - most likely, the writer died from improper treatment.

In his notes, Dr. Tarasenkov, who first examined Gogol on February 16, described the writer's condition as follows: “... the pulse was weakened, the tongue was clean, but dry; the skin had a natural warmth. For all reasons, it was clear that he did not have a feverish condition ... once he had a slight nosebleed, complained that his hands were cold, his urine was thick, dark-colored ... ".

These symptoms - thick dark urine, bleeding, constant thirst - are very similar to those seen in chronic mercury poisoning. And mercury was the main component of the calomel preparation, which, as is known from the testimonies, Gogol was heavily fed by doctors, "for gastric disorders."

The peculiarity of calomel is that it does not cause harm only if it is quickly excreted from the body through the intestines. But this did not happen with Gogol, who, due to the long fasting, simply had no food in his stomach. Accordingly, the old doses of the drug were not withdrawn, new ones were received, creating a situation of chronic poisoning, and the weakening of the body from malnutrition and discouragement only accelerated death, scientists say.

In addition, an incorrect diagnosis was made at the medical consultation - "meningitis". Instead of feeding the writer with high-calorie foods and giving him plenty to drink, he was prescribed a procedure that weakens the body - bloodletting. And if not for this "medical care", Gogol could have survived.

Each of the three versions of the writer's death has its adherents and opponents. One way or another, this mystery has not been solved so far.

“I will tell you without exaggeration,” he wrote Ivan Turgenev Aksakov, - since I can remember, nothing has made such a depressing impression on me as the death of Gogol ... This strange death - historical event and is not immediately clear; this is a mystery, a heavy, formidable mystery - one must try to unravel it ... But the one who solves it will not find anything encouraging in it.

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol is a great classic. Rather, he will become a great classic after his death. And during his lifetime, he was not only a brilliant writer, but also a person subject to many illnesses and sufferings. Moreover, until now no one knows exactly which of his illnesses led Gogol to a sudden death.

Psychosis and indigestion

It is only known for certain that the writer constantly suffered from something. As soon as Kolenka Gogol was born, everyone sighed sadly: "Not a tenant." The boy was so small and weak. But the boy, contrary to fate, survived. True, he was sick more often than other children, all childhood illnesses and adult colds stuck to him. From this, Kolya got into the habit of constantly staying at home, became unsociable, withdrawn and - strange.

Gogol often told doctors that his stomach hurt. The Aesculapius examined the writer, but found no pathologies. But Gogol's relatives knew the reason for his intestinal colic: despite his frail appearance, Nikolai could eat several dishes at a time, which would be enough for at least three healthy men. It was after such plentiful dinners that Gogol had a stomach ache.

He also suffered from severe hemorrhoids, which forced him to write his brilliant works while standing. In addition to everything, the writer had been ill with malarial encephalitis and cholera.

Not only the body, but also the soul were sick of the genius. As a mental illness, Gogol was attributed to manic-depressive psychosis from an early age. They say that, probably, this disease was inherited by him - Gogol's aunt was also "out of her mind." She kept food under her mattress, waxed her hair with candle wax, and made faces at dinner.

Because of his psychosis, Gogol often fell into prolonged depression. At that time, he was extremely withdrawn, he could sit all day, staring at one point. At such moments, he was most disturbed by "spiritual melancholy" and "strange inactivity of the mind." After all, during these periods he was not able to write a single line.

avoided women

According to contemporaries, Gogol categorically avoided relationships with women. Only once, in 1829, did he please his mother by writing that he was suffering from love for a beautiful lady. Mom, it was, was delighted: well, finally, the son took up his mind, will soon give her grandchildren. It wasn't there. In subsequent letters, Kolenka already complained to his mother that his skin was covered with spots, and now he suffers from his appearance. They say that then the mother strongly scolded her son, deciding that he had contacted a fallen woman, from whom he picked up a “spotted disease”.

However, to those who master the entire correspondence of Gogol with his mother, it becomes clear that the son invented some facts that do not correspond to reality.

And above all, that very beautiful lady whom he fantasized only so that his mother would take pity and send him some money.

Perhaps one of the few women for whom Gogol had sincere warm feelings was Ekaterina Khomyakova, the sister of one of his friends, Nikolai Yazykov. True, the writer sometimes played weird with the Khomyakovs.

“Gogol always behaved unceremoniously at the Khomyakovs,” said the publisher Pyotr Bartenev. - He was incredibly capricious, ordering several times to bring, then take away some glass of tea, which they could not pour to his taste: the tea turned out to be too hot, then strong, then too diluted; now the glass was too full, then, on the contrary, Gogol was angry that too little was poured. In a word, those present became uncomfortable; they only had to marvel at the patience of the hosts and the extreme indelicacy of the guest.

But, despite the eccentricities and whims, Ekaterina Khomyakova accepted the writer as he was.

I love Gogol,” she wrote in one of her letters. - ... Everyone here attacks Gogol, saying that, listening to his conversation, one cannot assume anything unusual in him; Ivan Vasilyevich Kireevsky said that it was almost impossible to talk to him: he was so empty. I'm terribly angry about it. They who do not scream, he is stupid.

Often Ekaterina and Nikolai retired and talked for hours. They are said to have agreed on their excessive religiosity and superstition. Once Khomyakova found out that her husband had lost his wedding ring. She was very worried about this, considering it a bad omen, she told Gogol about her fears. However, misfortune came only after a year and a half - Khomyakova suddenly died of typhus. Gogol decided that death close friend- this is heavenly punishment for him.

In general, Gogol from childhood was reputed to be incredibly religious and superstitious. It was in him from his grandfather and grandmother, who prayed earnestly, kept all the fasts, went to church and at the same time were afraid of black cats and other bad signs.

After the death of Khomyakova, Gogol decided to start an exhausting fast in order to atone for all his sins. This was the beginning of the end for him. Depression and hunger finally clouded the mind of the writer. On February 11, 1852, while staying at the house of his friend Count Tolstoy, he burned the second volume of Dead Souls. Then a doctor was called to Gogol.

The doctor spoke extremely unfavorably about the patient's condition: “His whole body has become extremely thin; the eyes became dull and sunken, the face was completely haggard, the cheeks were sunken, the voice weakened ... ". Doctors assumed that the writer also had typhus, someone insisted on indigestion, even the word "meningitis" sounded.

The patient was treated in the old fashioned way. They put them in cold water and applied leeches. Now any specialist knows that such executions were fatal for an exhausted organism. At the same time, Gogol was very afraid of being buried alive. He was so afraid that he preferred to sleep in a sitting position - they definitely wouldn’t confuse a sitting sleeping person with a dead one. “Do not bury my body until there are clear signs of decomposition. I mention this because even during the illness itself, moments of vital numbness found on me, my heart and pulse stopped beating, ”the classic bequeathed. Friends obeyed his will.

The writer died on February 21, 1852. He was only 42 years old. And on May 31, 1931, it was decided to rebury Gogol's body - the grave was located on the territory of the Danilov Monastery, which was given over to a colony for minors. On that day, terrible rumors spread around Moscow:

Those who were present at the exhumation claimed that the skeleton allegedly lacked a skull.

However, it turned out that in 1909 the grave was reconstructed and then one of the workers could have stolen the skull of the great writer. But where does he go? It was said that Alexei Bakhrushin got it for a lot of money in his collection. By the way, it was then that the industrialist began to have troubles, so he hurried to give the rarity to the relatives of Gogol himself. About what happened to the head of the writer, history is silent.