Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol - (1809 - 1852) - classic of Russian literature, writer, brilliant satirist, publicist, playwright, critic. He belonged to the old noble family of Gogol-Yanovsky.

Although the mysterious mystical halo around Gogol's personality was to a certain extent generated by the blasphemous destruction of his grave and strange inventions, many of the circumstances of his illness and death remain a mystery. In fact, from what and how could Gogol die at the age of 43?

The strangeness of the writer

Nikolai Vasilyevich was an incomprehensible person. For example, he slept only sitting up, being careful not to be mistaken for dead. He took long walks around ... the house, while drinking a glass of water in each room. From time to time he fell into a state of prolonged stupor. Yes, and Gogol's death was mysterious: either he died from poisoning, or from cancer, or from mental illness ...

To determine the cause of death and how Gogol died, doctors have been trying to no avail for more than a century and a half.

Causes of death (Versions)

Khomyakov put forward the first version of depression, according to which the root cause of Gogol's death was the severe emotional shock that the writer experienced due to the sudden death of Ekaterina Mikhailovna Khomyakova, sister of the poet N. M. Yazykov, with whom Gogol was friends. “From that time on, he was in some kind of nervous breakdown, which took on the character of religious insanity,” from the memoirs of Khomyakov. “He talked and began to starve himself, reproaching himself for gluttony.”

Ekaterina Mikhailovna Khomyakova (1817-1852), born Yazykova.

This version is allegedly confirmed by the testimony of people who saw the impact on the writer of the accusatory conversations of Father Matthew Konstantinovsky. It was he who insisted that Gogol keep a strict fast, demanded from him special zeal in fulfilling harsh church instructions, reproached both Nikolai Vasilyevich himself, and, before whom Gogol revered, for their sinfulness and paganism. The denunciations of the eloquent priest shocked the writer to such an extent that once, interrupting Father Matthew, he literally groaned: “Enough! Leave, I can’t listen anymore, it’s too scary!” Tertiy Filippov, an eyewitness to these conversations, was sure that Father Matthew's sermons set Nikolai Vasilyevich in a pessimistic mood, and he believed in the inevitability of imminent death.

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

The version that Nikolai Vasilievich died of starvation does not find confirmation either. An adult healthy person is able to do without food for 30-40 days. The writer fasted only 17 days, and even then he did not completely refuse food ...

However, if not from madness and hunger, then could not any infectious disease be the cause of Gogol's death? In Moscow in the winter of 1852, an epidemic of typhoid fever raged, from which, it should be noted, Khomyakova died. That is why Inozemtsev, at the first examination, suspected that Nikolai Vasilyevich had typhus. However, a week later, a council of doctors, which was convened by Count Tolstoy, announced that the writer had not typhus, but meningitis, and he was prescribed that strange course of treatment, which cannot be called anything other than “torture” ...

1902 - Dr. N. Bazhenov published a small work "Gogol's Illness and Death". After a thorough study of the symptoms described in the memoirs of Nikolai Vasilyevich's acquaintances and the doctors who treated him, Bazhenov came to the conclusion that Gogol's death was precisely this wrong, weakening treatment for meningitis, which in reality did not exist.

First symptoms

Probably Bazhenov is only partly right. The treatment that was prescribed by a council of doctors, applied when the writer was already hopeless, increased his suffering, but was not the cause of the disease itself, which began much earlier. In his notes, Dr. Tarasenkov, who first examined Nikolai Vasilyevich 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 ... "

Was Gogol accidentally poisoned by doctors?

One can only regret that Bazhenov, while writing his work, did not think of consulting a toxicologist. Because the symptoms of the disease that he described are practically indistinguishable from the symptoms of chronic mercury poisoning - the main component of the same calomel that every doctor who started treatment fed the writer. In fact, in chronic calomel poisoning, there may be thick dark urine, and various kinds of bleeding, more often stomach, but sometimes nasal. A weak pulse could be both a consequence of the weakening of the body from burnishing, and the result of the action of calomel. Many noted that during the entire illness, Nikolai Vasilyevich often asked for water: thirst is one of the characteristic signs of chronic poisoning.

Apparently, the start of a fatal chain of events was an upset stomach and that “too strong effect of drugs,” which the writer complained to Shevyrev on February 5. Because gastric disorders at that time were treated with calomel, it is possible that it was calomel that was prescribed for him and that Inozemtsev prescribed it, who a few days later fell ill himself and stopped monitoring the patient. Gogol came under the care of Tarasenkov, who, not knowing that the writer had already taken a dangerous drug, could prescribe him calomel again. For the third time, Nikolai Vasilievich received calomel from Klimenkov.

The peculiarity of calomel is that it does not cause harm only if it can be quickly excreted from the body through the intestines. If it lingers in the stomach, then after some time it begins to act as the strongest mercury poison of sublimate. This, apparently, could have happened to Gogol: rather large doses of calomel taken by him were not excreted from the stomach, since Gogol was then fasting and there was simply no food in his stomach. The gradually increasing amount of calomel in his stomach caused chronic poisoning, and the weakening of the body from malnutrition, discouragement and Klimenkov's barbaric treatment only brought death closer ...

The room in which Gogol died

Sopor

According to experts, contrary to popular belief, the classic did not have schizophrenia. But he suffered from manic-depressive psychosis. This disease could manifest itself in different ways, but its strongest manifestation was that the writer was terribly afraid of being buried alive. Perhaps this fear appeared in his youth, after he had been ill with malarial encephalitis. The course of the disease was quite severe and was accompanied by deep fainting.

This is one of the most popular versions. Rumors about Gogol's allegedly horrific death, who was buried alive, proved to be so tenacious that to this day many consider this a completely proven fact.

To a certain extent, the rumors about his burial were created alive, without knowing it ... the writer. All because, as already mentioned, Nikolai Vasilievich was subject to fainting and somnambulistic states. Therefore, the writer was very afraid that in one of the attacks he would be mistaken for dead and buried.

This fact is essentially unanimously denied by modern historians.

“During the exhumation, which was carried out in conditions of a certain secrecy, no more than 20 people gathered at the grave of the classic ...,” Mikhail Davidov, associate professor of the Perm Medical Academy, wrote in his article “The Mystery of Gogol's Death”. - The writer V. Lidin became, in fact, the only source of information about the exhumation of Nikolai Vasilyevich. At first, he told about the reburial to the students of the Literary Institute and his acquaintances, later he wrote written memoirs. Lidin's story was not true and contradictory. According to him, Gogol's oak coffin was well preserved, its upholstery from the inside was torn and scratched, in the coffin there was a skeleton, unnaturally twisted, with a skull turned to one side. So, with the light hand of Lidin, inexhaustible in inventions, the gloomy legend that Gogol was buried alive went for a walk around Moscow.

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

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

And yet, Gogol's version of the lethargic dream is still alive today.

Disappeared Skull

Gogol died on February 21, 1852. He was buried in the cemetery of the St. Danilov Monastery, and in 1931 the monastery and the cemetery on its territory were closed. When the remains of the writer were transferred to the Novodevichy cemetery, they discovered that a skull had been stolen from the coffin of the deceased.

And the writer Lidin, inexhaustible in inventions, amazed the listeners with new sensational details: According to the version of the same V. Lidin, who was present at the same time, Gogol's skull was stolen from the grave in 1909. At that time, the patron and founder of the theater museum Alexei Bakhrushin was able to persuade the monks to get for him the skull of Nikolai Vasilyevich. “In the Bakhrushinsky Theater Museum in Moscow, three skulls belonging to unknown persons are kept: one of them, presumably, is the skull of the artist Shchepkin, the other is Gogol’s, nothing is known about the third,” Lidin wrote in his memoirs “Transferring the ashes of Gogol”.

Interesting fact (Gravestone)

There is an interesting story that is told to this day at Gogol's grave... 1940 - another famous Russian writer died, who considered himself a student of Nikolai Vasilyevich. His wife, Elena Sergeevna, went to choose a stone for her dead husband's tombstone. By chance, from a pile of blank gravestones, she chose only one. When it was lifted up to engrave the name of the writer on it, they saw that it already had another name on it. When they examined what was written there, they were even more surprised - it was a tombstone that had disappeared from Gogol's grave. Thus, Nikolai Vasilievich seemed to give a sign to Bulgakov's relatives that he was finally reunited with his outstanding student.

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 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.

Despite the hardships of the job, this period of life was the happiest for the writer. 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 in recent years were completely at a loss 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. Given 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 Gogol's grave, 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 boards - and opened it, bewilderment was added to the heart trembling of those present. In the coffin 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 lifetime, 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 of people 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. As for those interested, it was not without reason that rumors circulated around Moscow that the skulls of Shchepkin and Gogol were secretly kept in the unique collection of A. A. Bakhrushin, a passionate collector of theatrical relics ...

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 took some relics for themselves as a keepsake. One allegedly pulled off Gogol's rib, the other - the tibia, the third - the boot. Lidin himself even showed the guests a volume of a lifetime edition of Gogol's works, in the binding of which he inserted a piece of fabric, torn off by him from the coat of Gogol, who was lying in the 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 shaped like 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. Andreev's creation took 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. “Since then, he has been 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 Vasilievich observe a strict fast, demanded from him special zeal in fulfilling the harsh instructions of the church, reproached both Gogol himself and Pushkin, 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 that killed the writer, which in fact did not exist.

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 very 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 and 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, a few days later, 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 let us not disturb the ashes of the great writer a second time, let us not again throw off the 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!

According to materials:

The mysterious story of the death of a genius impressed everyone so much that even after a century and a half, many different rumors continue to circulate about it.

What really happened

In January 1852, a close friend of Gogol's, Ekaterina Mikhailovna Khomyakova, died in Moscow. This death, caused by a serious illness, so impressed the writer that when he came to the memorial service, all he could say, looking into the face of the deceased, was: « It's all over for me..."

Immediately after this shock, Gogol fell into a severe depression, began to spend sleepless nights praying, refused food and, without saying a word, spent days only lying on his bed, not even bothering to take off his boots.

Modern researchers tend to argue that Gogol suffered from a severe form of bipolar affective disorder, or, as it is also called, manic-depressive psychosis. This disease consists in the alternation of two opposite phases of mood. Manic periods are accompanied by a very high spirits and irrepressible energy. But with the onset of the depressive phase, Gogol hit the opposite extreme - he lost motivation anything to do, suffered from thoughts that tormented him up to the complete disappearance of his appetite.

In the middle of the 19th century, this disease had not yet been described by anyone, so the doctors of that time did not connect the writer’s behavior with a mental disorder in any way, preferring to look for the cause in physical ailment. As a result, when by February Gogol's condition became extremely serious, the assembled council of the best doctors in Moscow treated him for anything, but not from exhaustion due to mental anguish.

When the patient's condition became worse than ever, the doctors gave him another incorrect diagnosis - meningitis, after which they began to forcibly treat the patient. They let the writer bleed from his nose, put leeches on his face and doused him with cold water, although Gogol himself resisted the procedures as best he could. But by common efforts, holding his arms and legs, the doctors continued to treat him for a non-existent ailment.

Against the backdrop of extreme exhaustion of the body and Gogol's poor health since childhood, such procedures worsened his condition so much that he eventually could not stand it. On the night of February 20-21, according to the old style, Gogol died. From that day on, all kinds of speculation about the death of a genius began, the cause of which was, for the most part, he himself.

What was said after

In 1839, while in Italy, Gogol fell ill with encephalitis, after which he began to experience prolonged fainting, turning into a lethargic sleep. Being in this state, Gogol could practically not show signs of life visible to an ordinary person - his pulse and breathing were barely noticeable, and there was no way to wake the sleeping person. These circumstances gave rise to a fairly common mental illness in Gogol - taphophobia, or the fear of being buried alive.

Photo of Gogol in Italy

History knows severalexamples when people plunged into a lethargic sleep were mistakenly recognized as dead and buried. Such a prospect frightened the writer so much that for 10 years he could not force himself to sleep in bed. Gogol spent the night on armchairs and couches, being in a sitting and semi-sitting position.

In his will, Gogol specifically requested that he not be buried until there were obvious signs of decomposition of the body. It was the will of the writer that was never fulfilled - namely due to of this fact, stories became popular that Gogol was nevertheless buried alive.

This version began to be widely discussed only in the second half of the 20th century and is associated with the fact of the writer's reburial in 1931. Then the Soviet authorities wished to remake the Danilovsky Monastery, where the grave of the writer was located, into a children's boarding school. It was decided to rebury Gogol at the Novodevichy cemetery.

The ceremony of exhumation of the body was attended by several significant writers of that time, including Vladimir Lidin. It was he who later said that after opening the coffin, everyone saw how Gogol's head lay turned on its side. At the same time, the inner lining of the coffin was allegedly torn to shreds, which could testify in favor of the version of being buried alive. But modern researchers do not take this version too seriously. And there are several strong arguments for that.

Firstly , the same Lidin told some acquaintances a completely different version - supposedly Gogol's skull was not in the coffin at all, since the famous Moscow collector Alexei Bakhrushin dug it up before. This rumor also became very popular, although those who could confirm it were never found.

The second argument suggests that in the 80 years that have passed since the writer's funeral, the lining of the coffin should have completely decayed. And if his head nevertheless turned out to be turned on its side, then there is a simpler explanation for this - due to subsidence of the soil, the coffin lid eventually falls and begins to put pressure on the head, since it is located above the rest of the body. A change in the position of the head of the deceased, found after the exhumation of graves, is a fairly common phenomenon.

And finally third , even despite the erroneous diagnosis, there is no doubt about the professionalism of the doctors who treated Gogol. They really were one of the best doctors in the Russian Empire. And the likelihood that all of them could incorrectly record the death of a person was extremely small, even if he fell into a very deep lethargic sleep. Many people knew about this feature of the writer's body and they simply could not help but check it.

Death mask of Gogol

In addition, the next morning after his death, the death mask was removed from Gogol's face. This procedure is accompanied by the application of very hot material to the face, and if Gogol were alive, his body could not help but react to such an irritant. Which, of course, didn't happen. That is why, despite the writer's will, the decision to bury him was made almost immediately.

But, despite all the rational arguments, you can be sure that rumors about the mysterious death of a genius will not disappear anywhere. And it's not just the need of society for this kind of speculation. No matter how paradoxical it may sound, Nikolai Gogol, in part, himself became the author of rumors about his mysterious death. And it will be discussed as long as the classic himself is remembered.

Igor Zolotussky in his biography about Gogol wrote: “He (Gogol) did not appear at the funeral (E. Khomyakova), citing illness and malaise of the nerves. He himself served a memorial service for the deceased in the church and lit a candle. At the same time, he remembered, as if saying goodbye to them, all those close to his heart, all those who had departed from those whom he loved. “She, as if in gratitude, brought them all to me,” he said to the Aksakovs, “it became easier for me.”

“Why is it scary? Just to be sure of God's mercy to a suffering person, and then it is gratifying to think about death, ”they turned to Gogol.

Nikolai Vasilyevich said: "But this must be asked of those who have crossed this minute."

There were 10 days left before the death of the writer, Nikolai Vasilyevich, in a fit of a painful crisis of the soul, burned the original of the second volume of Dead Souls, along with them some more papers went into the furnace. After this act, he said to Khomyakov: “I must die, I am already ready and I will die ...”

Immediately after the burning of the manuscripts, Gogol went to bed and never got up again. The only thing he drank was warm red wine diluted with water.

The owner of the house where the famous writer lived gathered the best doctors of Moscow at Gogol's bed. Nikolai Vasilyevich was lying with his back to all his guests, the writer was looking at the wall, he was wearing a dressing gown and boots, his gaze was fixed on the icon of the Mother of God. Gogol claimed that before the burning of the manuscripts he heard voices from the other world, the same voices "came" to the writer's father before his death. Gogol firmly decided that death was near.

The writer no longer wanted to live, because he could not write, he considered his existence no longer possible. We can say that his departure from life seemed to be independent. Everyone around believed that the writer had gone crazy, because he did not eat, did not want to fight his condition, kept talking about death all the time. It seemed that the soul of the writer was dying, and the body simply could not resist for a long time.

The doctors were unable to diagnose the patient, there were many options - inflammation in the intestines, typhus, nervous fever and even insanity. During the life of the writer, few understood that those who simply took him for a madman gathered at his deathbed.

Vyazemsky, the writer wrote the following letter in 1852 about the need to write a will:

“... a testament after ourselves to posterity, which should also be dear to us and close to our hearts, as children are close to the heart of their father (otherwise the connection between the present and the future is broken) ...”

Gogol's life in bed ended, his pulse disappeared, he wheezed, his eyes opened, but it was a fainting spell that lasted a couple of minutes. After this event, Gogol became completely inanimate - he did not even ask for a drink, he lay on his back all the time and did not say a word. Such data was provided by Dr. Tarasenkov, who observed Gogol's last day. The doctor said the following: “... I put down a jug of hot water, began to give the broth to swallow more often, and this, apparently, revived him; however, breathing soon became hoarse and even more labored; the skin was covered with cold perspiration, it turned blue under the eyes, the face was haggard, like that of a dead man. In this position I left the sufferer ... "

Officially, Gogol's death was recorded at eight o'clock in the morning on February 21, 1852. At that moment, E.F. Wagner was present in the room, she wrote to M.P. Pogodin on the same day:

“... Nikolai Vasilyevich died, he was all unconscious, he was a little delirious, apparently he did not suffer, he was quiet all night, he only breathed heavily; by morning his breathing became less and less frequent, and he seemed to fall asleep...”

According to Dr. Bazhenov, Gogol was treated incorrectly, the doctor believes that the writer suffered from periodic psychosis. Nikolai Vasilievich died, according to Bazhenov, from "exhaustion and acute anemia of the brain, caused both by the very form of the disease - accompanying it with starvation and the rapid decline in nutrition and strength associated with it - and improper debilitating treatment, especially bloodletting."

The legend about Gogol's lethargic dream went to the people after the writer was reburied from the territory of the Danilovsky Monastery at the Novodevichy Cemetery. Allegedly, during the exhumation, it was revealed that the inside of the coffin lid was scratched. The writer has been afraid of such an end all his life. Who knows if this is legend or reality.

Reading time: 9 min

The amazing mysterious world of N. Gogol surrounds many from childhood: delightful images of The Night Before Christmas, Sorochinskaya Fair, Viy, Terrible Revenge, from which the whole body is covered with small goosebumps. This is just a small list of the famous works of N.V. Gogol, the most mystical Russian writer. Abroad, his stories are equated with the gothic stories of Edgar Allan Poe.

In this article, you will learn interesting facts from Gogol's biography, which are considered mysterious and mystical. Get ready to get goosebumps.

About the birth of the Great

Gogol was born into a rural Ukrainian family with many children, he was the third child out of twelve. His mother is a woman of rare beauty. She was 14 when she married a man twice her age.

They say that it was the mother who developed the religious and mystical worldview in her son. Maria Ivanovna was distinguished by her natural view of religion, she told her son about ancient Russian pagan traditions. Gogol's letters to his mother dating back to 1833 have been preserved.

In one of them, Gogol writes that a mother in childhood told her child in colors what the Last Judgment is, what will await a person for virtuous deeds, and what is the fate of sinners.

Childhood, adolescence and youth

Nikolai Gogol from an early age was withdrawn and uncommunicative, even close relatives could not imagine what was going on in his head and soul. The boy lived apart, had little contact with his brothers and sisters, but spent a lot of time with his beloved mother.

Gogol later said that at the age of five he first experienced panic fear.

“I was 5 years old. I was sitting alone in Vasilievka. Father and mother left ... Twilight descended. I clung to the corner of the sofa and, in the midst of complete silence, listened to the sound of the long pendulum of the old wall clock. There was a buzzing in my ears, something approaching and leaving somewhere. Believe me, it already seemed to me then that the knock of the pendulum was the knock of time passing into eternity.

Suddenly, the faint meow of a cat broke the peace that weighed on me. I saw her, meowing, cautiously creeping towards me. I will never forget how she walked, stretching, and her soft paws weakly tapped her claws on the floorboards, and her green eyes sparkled with an unkind light. I got scared.

I climbed onto the couch and leaned against the wall. "Kitty, kitty," I muttered, and, wanting to encourage myself, I jumped off and, grabbing the cat, which easily gave itself into my hands, ran into the garden, where I threw it into the pond and several times, when it tried to swim out and go ashore, pushed her sixth.

I was scared, I was trembling, but at the same time I felt some satisfaction, maybe revenge for the fact that she scared me. But when she drowned, and the last circles on the water fled, complete peace and silence settled in, I suddenly felt terribly sorry for the “kitty”. I felt remorse. I felt like I drowned a man. I cried terribly and calmed down only when my father, to whom I confessed my deed, whipped me.

Nikolai Gogol from childhood was a sensitive person, succumbing to fears, experiences, life's troubles. Any negative situation was reflected in his psyche, when another person could withstand such a thing.

The child drowned the cat because of fear, he seemed to have overcome his fear through cruelty and violence, but he realized that panic cannot be overcome in this way. It can be assumed that the writer was left alone with his fears, since his conscience did not allow him to use violence again.

This situation is very reminiscent of the moment in the work “May Night, or the Drowned Woman”, when the stepmother turned into a black cat, and the lady hit her in fear and cut her paw.

It is known that Gogol drew as a child, but his drawings seemed mediocre, incomprehensible to others. Such an attitude towards his art, again, could have a negative impact on self-esteem.

From the age of 10, Nikolai Gogol was sent to the Poltava gymnasium, where the boy became a member of a literary circle. It is not known why Gogol developed such low self-esteem, but it was precisely this self-isolation that provoked a mental breakdown in maturity.

The first attempt to bring his work to the people's court

Nikolai Gogol began to create, he wrote a lot, but at first he ventured to show only one work, Hanz Küchelgarten. It was a failure, criticism rained down on him, then Gogol destroyed the entire circulation. Before becoming a writer, Gogol tried to become an actor and enter the official service. But the love of literature still captured the young man, who was able to find a new approach to this type of art. It was Gogol who touched on the other side of life and showed how they live in Little Russia!

The collection "Evenings on a farm near Dikanka" made a splash. His mother Maria Ivanovna helped to collect material and develop plots for the writer. For many years Gogol successfully worked in the literary field, corresponded with Pushkin and Belinsky, who were delighted with his works. Despite his fame, Gogol never became an open person, but on the contrary, over the years he led an increasingly reclusive lifestyle.

By the way, Pushkin gave Gogol the pug Josie, after the death of the dog Gogol was attacked by longing, because the writer definitely had no one closer to Josie.

Question about writer's homosexuality

Gogol's personal life is surrounded by conjectures and assumptions. The writer has never been married to a woman, perhaps even had no intimacy with them. There are references in a letter to his mother that Gogol wrote about a beautiful divine person whom he did not want to correlate with an ordinary woman.

Contemporaries say that it was an unrequited love for Anna Mikhailovna Vielgorskaya. After this incident, there were no more women in Gogol's life, as well as men. But researchers believe that letters to men are highly emotional. In the unfinished work "Nights at the Villa" there is a motif of love for a young man suffering from tuberculosis. The work is autobiographical, hence the researchers had a hunch that, perhaps, Gogol had feelings for men.

Semyon Karlinsky argued that Gogol is a very religious person, God-fearing, therefore he could not include any intimate relationships in his life.

But Igor Kon believes that it was God-fearing that prevented Gogol from accepting himself as he is. Therefore, depression developed, fears of being incomprehensible appeared, as a result, the writer completely fell into religion and brought himself to death, the sea of ​​hunger - these were attempts to cleanse himself of sinfulness.

Candidate of Philological Sciences L. S. Yakovlev calls attempts to determine Gogol's sexual orientation "provocative, outrageous, curious publications."

Eggnog

Nikolai Gogol was madly in love with goat's milk combined with rum. The writer jokingly called his amazing drink “mogul-mogul”. In fact, the eggnog dessert appeared in ancient times in Europe, was first made by the German confectioner Keukenbauer. So the famous beaten egg yolk with sugar has nothing to do with the famous writer!

Writer's phobias

1. Gogol was terribly afraid of thunderstorms.
2. When a stranger appeared in society, he left so as not to run into him.
3. In recent years, he stopped going out and communicating with writers altogether, led an ascetic lifestyle.
4. I was afraid to look ugly. Gogol terribly disliked his long nose, so he asked the artists to depict a nose close to the ideal in portraits. On the basis of his complexes, the writer wrote the work "The Nose".

Lethargy or death?

Gogol constantly thought about being buried alive and was terribly afraid of such a fate. Therefore, 7 years before his death, he made a will, where he indicated that he should be buried only when visible signs of decomposition appeared. Gogol died at the age of 42, after fasting before Lent for 15 days.

On the night of February 11-12, a week before his death, the writer burns the second volume of Dead Souls in the oven, explaining that he was beguiled by an evil spirit. The writer was buried on the third day after his death. In 1931, the necropolis where Gogol was buried was liquidated and a decision was made to transfer the writer's grave to the Novodevichy cemetery.

After opening the grave, they discovered the absence of Gogol's skull (according to Vladimir Lidin), later there is a rumor that the skull was in the grave, but turned on its side. This information was not made public for many years, and only in the 90s they again started talking about whether Gogol was accidentally buried in a state of lethargic sleep?

There are some facts confirming that Gogol could have been buried alive. I am posting what I have been able to find.

After suffering from malarial encephalitis in 1839, Gogol often fainted, which led to many hours of sleep. Based on this, the writer developed a phobia that he could be buried alive while he was unconscious.

But there is no official evidence that in 1931, during the opening of the grave, a skull turned on its side was found. Witnesses to the exhumation give different testimonies: some say that everything was in order, others claim that the skull was turned on its side, and Lidin did not see the skull at all in its proper place.

The presence of a death mask completely debunks these myths. It cannot be done on a living person, even if he is in a lethargic sleep, because the person will still react to the high temperature during the procedure and begin to suffocate from filling the external respiratory organs with plaster. But this was not the case, Gogol was buried after a natural death.

Death mask of Gogol