The incomprehensible Gogol: is it true that the author of Dead Souls died of poisoning?

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

Gogol is the most mysterious and mystical figure in the pantheon of Russian classics. 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 Vasilievich Gogol was an elusive person. For example, he slept only while sitting, fearing that he would not be mistaken for dead. I 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 from poisoning, or from cancer, or from mental illness. Doctors have been trying unsuccessfully to make an accurate diagnosis for more than a century and a half.

Strange child

The future author of Dead Souls was born into a dysfunctional family in terms of heredity. His grandfather and grandmother on the mother's side were superstitious, religious, believed in omens and predictions. One of the aunts was completely "weak on the head": she could lubricate her head with a tallow candle for weeks to prevent graying of her hair, made faces while sitting at the dining 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.

He grew up, however, 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 It is not surprising that the boy grew up withdrawn and uncommunicative.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 fellow students at the Nizhyn Lyceum, he was a gloomy, stubborn and very secretive teenager. And only a brilliant play in the lyceum theater said that this man has an outstanding 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 in one place for a long time - 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 oddities that are difficult to explain.

Despite the hardships, this period of life was the happiest for the writer. He is young, full of ambitious plans; his first book, Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, is being published. Gogol meets Pushkin, which is terribly proud of. Rotates in secular circles. But already at this time in the St. Petersburg salons 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" all this with a jar of jam and a basket of cookies.

It is 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 the relationship with the opposite sex, it is a secret sealed with seven seals. Back in 1829, he sent his mother a letter in which he spoke of the 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 linked the girl with a sore, the mother concluded that her son had caught a shameful illness from some kind of metropolitan jerk.

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. This is due to 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, not omitting obscene words at all.

Whereas attacks of mental illness were undoubtedly present.

The first clinically delineated attack of depression, which took "almost a year of his life" from the writer, was noted in 1834. Beginning in 1837, seizures, varying in duration and severity, began to be observed regularly. Gogol complained of melancholy, "of which there is no description" and from which he did not know "where to put himself." He advised that his "soul … languishes from a terrible blues", is "in some kind of insensible sleepy state." Because of this, Gogol could not only create, but also think. Hence the complaints about "memory eclipse" and "strange inaction of the mind."

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

The subtleties of the soul and body

Gogol died at the age of 43. The doctors who treated him in recent years were completely perplexed 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 core. Her death provoked severe depression, resulting in religious ecstasy. Gogol began to fast. His daily diet consisted of 1-2 tablespoons of cabbage brine and oat broth, and occasionally prunes. Considering that Nikolai Vasilyevich's body was weakened after an illness - in 1839 he fell ill with malarial encephalitis, and in 1842 suffered 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, a young doctor, Alexei Terentyev, visited Gogol. He described the state of the writer as follows: “He looked like a man for whom all tasks were resolved, every feeling fell silent, all words were in vain … His whole body was extremely thin; the eyes became dull and sunken, the face was completely sunken, the cheeks were sunken, the voice weakened …"

Doctors invited to the dying Gogol found that he had severe gastrointestinal disorders. They talked about the "intestinal catarrh", which turned into "typhoid", about the unfavorable course of gastroenteritis. And, finally, about "indigestion", complicated by "inflammation".

As a result, doctors diagnosed him with meningitis and prescribed lethal bloodletting, hot baths and douches in this state. The writer's wretched body was immersed in a bath, his head was poured with cold water. They put leeches on him, and with his weak hand he frantically tried to brush away the clusters of black worms that stuck to his nostrils. How could anyone think of the worst torture for a man who had been loathing all his life in front of everything that was creeping and slimy? "Take off the leeches, lift the leeches from your mouth," Gogol groaned and prayed. In vain. He was not allowed to do it. A few days later, the writer was gone.

So what caused the death?

Madness? Unlikely. A witness to the last hours of Gogol's life, paramedic Zaitsev said that the day before his death, the writer was in clear memory and sound mind. Having calmed down after "medical" torture, he talked with him in a friendly way, asked about life, even made corrections in the verses written by Zaitsev on the death of his mother.

Or some infectious disease was the cause of death? In Moscow in the winter of 1852, an epidemic of typhoid fever raged, from which, by the way, Khomyakova died. That is why the attending physician at the first examination suspected that the writer had typhoid fever. But a week later, a council of doctors convened by Count Tolstoy announced that Gogol had not typhoid, but meningitis.

An outstanding oncologist, Pyotr Herzen (now the Oncological Institute bears his name), worked in Moscow at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. By describing the symptoms of Gogol's disease, he diagnosed the great writer died of pancreatic cancer. Hence this emaciation of Nikolai Vasilyevich, to the extent that his spine was felt through his stomach. And complete rejection of food due to the inability to swallow even a small piece.

However, there is a version that the writer was poisoned with mercury - the main component of calomel, which was fed to Gogol by every Aesculapius who began treatment. But there were no pathologists at the time. Therefore, the true cause of Nikolai Vasilyevich's death, we, apparently, will not find out.