9 classics of literature who were known for their weird habits

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

It seems that the constant companion of talent is not loneliness at all, as Faina Ranevskaya once argued, but a bright individuality that distinguishes geniuses from other people. Therefore, information about the presence of very wonderful habits among the recognized classics of literature is no longer surprising, but very interesting. Some writers had strangeness exclusively about the creative process, while others influenced their entire lives.

Ernest Hemingway

Everyone knows that Ernest Hemingway had a weakness for cats and alcohol. He also adhered to one unshakable rule: write only 500 words a day. He always got up early and at six in the morning at the most, or even earlier, was already sitting at his desk, no matter what time he fell asleep the day before. More precisely, he did not sit at the table, but stood, for the writer worked exclusively standing. He usually wrote on paper, but on especially good days he stood behind a typewriter, which was located on a bookshelf at the level of his chest. According to Hemingway, a straight back allowed him to concentrate better on the process.

Vladimir Nabokov

For the writer, literary work was akin to playing chess, which he was passionate about. Vladimir Nabokov wrote down parts of his future works on lined cards, not adhering to any system. And then he could manipulate these pieces, rearranging them in any order. Vladimir Nabokov carried a box of cards with him everywhere, which allowed him to work anytime and anywhere. He also collected butterflies and often mentioned them in his works.

Arthur Conan Doyle

The author of novels about Sherlock Holmes at the end of his life was seriously carried away by spiritualism. And all would be fine, but he was by nature so trusting that it was not difficult to deceive him. He sincerely believed that people can communicate with the spirits of the dead, but his belief in the non-existent was even more touching and naive. He unconditionally accepted the two teenage girls' tale of fairies, even more so when he was shown the photograph. In addition, he himself took part in the experiment: the illusionist who photographed the writer, with him developed a photograph in which fairies were flying around Doyle. And he categorically refused to accept the fact that the picture was the fruit of the sleight of hand of a professional magician.

Alexander Kuprin

The writer had a habit that looked very exotic from the outside. He loved to sniff women. He always wondered what scent came from them. There was no sexual connotation in this. According to Kuprin, young girls smell of fresh milk and watermelon, and older women living in southern Russia smell of bitter wormwood, wildflowers and incense. In fact, an amazing perfumer could come out of Kuprin, because he could decompose any fragrance into its components.

Agatha Christie

The queen of detectives' habits seem completely innocent compared to her colleagues. Rather, Agatha Christie had her own little weaknesses that surprised only people from her close circle. For example, due to dysgraphia, she made a lot of spelling mistakes in her texts and rearranged letters in places in words. Therefore, it was much easier for her to simply dictate her books. She was at odds with mathematics and geography, but she was well versed in the properties of drugs and poisons, since she served as a nurse during the war, and later became a pharmacist. But the family of the writer was struck to the depths of her soul by her passionate love for heavy cream, which she drank from a funny cup with the inscription: "Do not be greedy." And she ate Devonshire cream, which looked more like butter, just with a spoon and without any bread or rolls.

Evgeny Petrov

The writer collected stamps all his life, but they had to be “with history”. He himself acquired stamps, pasted them on envelopes and sent letters to different countries, inventing both addresses and recipients of correspondence. As a result, the letter could go around the entire globe and return to Petrov already with foreign stamps, stamps and a note: "The addressee is not found." Only once the addressee in New Zealand invented by the writer turned out to be real, and Evgeny Petrov received an answer from a living person.

Fedor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Mikhailovich was extremely sociable, and therefore, without a shadow of hesitation, he could stop any passer-by and strike up with him, in his opinion, a conversation that was most fascinating. One can only imagine what the people who were stopped by the writer felt, especially since during a conversation on any topic, he intently, almost without blinking, looked directly into the eyes of a random interlocutor. In this way, Dostoevsky collected the characters of his heroes.

Ivan Krylov

The famous fabulist had a truly fiery passion - he simply adored fires. He tried not to miss a single fire in St. Petersburg, and once, when renting an apartment, the landlord even included in the contract a clause on the payment of 60 thousand rubles by Krylov in case he was careless with the fire and starts a fire. Ivan Krylov signed the contract, adding two more zeros to the amount of compensation, with the words that he could not pay either the first amount or the second, but let the landlord be pleased. Another oddity of the fabulist was a complete disregard for his own appearance. He did not care at all about cleanliness or tidiness. Even at an appointment with Tsarina Maria Fedorovna, he could appear in clothes with greasy and dirty spots and in holey boots with a protruding thumb.

Ivan Turgenev

Unlike Krylov, Turgenev was famous for his pathological cleanliness. He did not just put on clean linen every day, he changed it several times, wiping himself with a sponge soaked in special toilet vinegar or cologne. The writer did his hair according to his own system: first with a brush 50 times in each direction, then with one comb, brushing through the hair about a hundred times, and then with another, with more frequent teeth.

Not only the heroes of our today's review were weird, their colleagues also surprised their fans. very eccentric behavior.