There were many circumstances in Gogol's life that are still difficult and even impossible to explain. He led a strange lifestyle, wrote strange, but brilliant works. He could not be called a healthy person, but doctors could not classify his illness.

Gogol was ... a clairvoyant! Hence his striking phrase in a letter to Zhukovsky about a completely new country - the USA: “And what is United States? CARRION. The man in them has weathered to such an extent that it is not worth a damn egg. "

Realizing that "carrion" is full around and in his "native country", Gogol pondered, but for WHOM did he write a sequel to "Dead Souls" on January 1 (according to Art.), 1852?

The "abyss of the fall of human souls" seized by Gogol in the Nikolayev Russian Empire inevitably led to the idea that almost the entire population of the country was going "in a straight line" to ... Hell.

And the damned question arose for the thinking writer: "What to do?"

Even after his death, his body did not find rest (the skull mysteriously disappeared from the grave) ...

Since childhood, Gogol was not distinguished by good health and diligence, he was "unusually thin and weak", with an elongated face and a large nose. The leadership of the lyceum in 1824 repeatedly punished him for "untidiness, buffoonery, stubbornness and disobedience."

Gogol himself recognized the paradox of his character and believed that he contained "a terrible mixture of contradictions, stubbornness, daring arrogance and the most humiliated humility."

As for his health, his illnesses were also strange. Gogol had a special view of his body and believed that he was arranged in a completely different way from other people. He believed that his stomach was upside down and constantly complained of pain. He constantly talked about the stomach, believing that this topic is interesting to everyone. As Princess V.N. Repin: “We constantly lived in his stomach” ...

His next "attack" was strange seizures: he fell into a somnambulistic state, when his pulse almost died down, but all this was accompanied by excitement, fears, numbness. Gogol was very afraid that he would be buried alive when they thought he was dead. After another attack, he wrote a will, in which he demanded "not to bury the body until the first signs of decomposition."

But the feeling of a serious illness did not leave Gogol. Beginning in 1836, performance began to decline. Creative rises became a rarity, and he sank deeper and deeper into the abyss of depression and hypochondria. His faith became frantic, filled with mystical ideas, which prompted him to go on religious "exploits."

On the night of February 8-9, 1852, Gogol heard voices telling him that he would soon die. He tried to hand over the papers with the manuscript of the second volume of Dead Souls c. A.P. Tolstoy, but he did not take it, so as not to strengthen Gogol in the thought of imminent death. Then Gogol burned the manuscript! After February 12, Gogol's condition deteriorated sharply. On February 21, during another severe attack, Gogol died.

Gogol was buried in the cemetery of the Danilovsky Monastery in Moscow. But immediately after his death, terrible rumors spread around the city that he was buried alive.

Lethargic sleep, medical error or suicide? The mystery of Gogol's death

The mystery of the death of the greatest classic of literature Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol has been haunted by scientists, historians and researchers for more than a century and a half. How did the writer actually die?

Basic versions of what happened.

Sopor

The most common version. The rumor about the allegedly terrible death of a writer buried alive turned out to be so tenacious that many still consider it an absolutely proven fact.

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

This fact is almost unanimously denied by modern historians.

“During the exhumation, which was carried out under conditions of certain secrecy, only about 20 people gathered at Gogol’s grave ...” writes the associate professor of the Perm Medical Academy in his article “The Mystery of Gogol's Death” 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 students of the Literary Institute and his acquaintances, later he left written memoirs. Lidin's stories were untrue and contradictory. It was he who argued that the writer's oak coffin was well preserved, the coffin upholstery was torn and scratched from the inside, a skeleton lay in the coffin, unnaturally twisted, with the skull turned to one side. So, with the light hand of Lidin, inexhaustible on inventions, the terrible legend that the writer was buried alive went for a walk in Moscow.

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

And according to the recollections of the sculptor Ramazanov, who took off the writer's death mask, the posthumous changes and the beginning of the process of tissue decomposition were clearly visible on the deceased's face.

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

On May 31, 1931, twenty to thirty people gathered at the grave of Gogol, among whom were: the historian M. Baranovskaya, the 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 Gogol's reburial. 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 was not where they were digging, but somewhat at a distance, to the side. And when it was taken out of the ground - covered with lime, seemingly strong, from oak planks - and it was opened, then bewilderment was added to the heartfelt trembling of those present. In the fobu lay a skeleton with a skull turned to one side. Nobody found an explanation for this. Someone superstitious, probably, then thought: "Well, after all, the tax collector - as if not alive during his life, and not dead after death, is this strange great man."

Lida'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 he bequeathed: “My body should not be buried until there are obvious signs of decomposition. I mention this because even during the illness itself they found moments of vital numbness on me, my heart and pulse stopped beating. " What the exhumators saw in 1931 seemed to indicate that Gogol's behest was not fulfilled, that he was buried in a lethargic state, he woke up in a coffin and experienced nightmarish moments of a new dying ...

For the sake of fairness, it must be said that the Lidin version did not inspire confidence. The sculptor N. Ramazanov, who was taking off Gogol's death mask, recalled: “I did not suddenly decide to take off the mask, but the prepared coffin ... finally, the constantly 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 .. . ”There was also an explanation for the turn of the skull: the side boards at the coffin were the first to rot, the lid lowers under the weight of the soil, presses on the dead man's head, and it turns on its side on the so-called“ Atlantean vertebra ”.

Then Lidin launched a new version. In his written memoirs about the exhumation, he told a new story, even more terrible and mysterious than his oral stories. “This is what Gogol's ashes were,” he wrote. “There was no skull in the coffin, and Gogol's remains began from the cervical vertebrae; the entire 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-up coffin, a skull was discovered, but archaeologists recognized it as belonging to a young man. "

This new invention of Lidin demanded new hypotheses. When could Gogol's skull disappear from the coffin? Who could need it? And what kind of fuss was 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 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 on inventions, amazed the listeners with new sensational details: they say, when the writer's ashes were being transported from the Danilov Monastery to Novodevichy, some of those present at the reburial could not resist and took some relics for themselves. One seemed to have pulled off Gogol's rib, the other - the tibia, the third - the boot. Lidin himself even showed the guests a volume of the lifetime edition of Gogol's works, into the binding of which he made a piece of cloth that he had torn off from his coat that was lying in Gogol's coffin.

In 1931, the remains were exhumed to transfer the writer's body to the Novodevichy cemetery. But a surprise awaited those present at the exhumation - there was no skull in the coffin! The monks of the monastery told during interrogation that on the eve of the centenary of Gogol's birth in 1909, the grave of the great classic was being restored at the cemetery. During the restoration work, the Moscow collector and millionaire Alexei Bakhrushin, an extravagant personality of those times, appeared at the cemetery. Presumably, it was he who decided to sacrilege by paying the gravediggers for the theft of the skull. Bakhrushin himself died in 1929 and forever took the secret of the current location of the skull to the grave.

The merchant crowned the head of the writer with a silver wreath and placed it in a special rosewood chest with a glass window. However, the "acquisition of the relic" did not bring happiness to the collector - Bakhrushin began to have troubles in business and in his family. Moscow inhabitants associated these events with "a blasphemous violation of the peace of a mystic writer."

Bakhrushin himself was not happy with his "exhibit". But where to put it? Throw it away? Sacrilege! To give to someone means publicly
confess to the desecration of the grave, incur shame, prison! Bury it back? Difficult, since the crypt was soundly bricked up by order of Bakhrushin.

The unfortunate merchant was rescued by a chance ... Rumors about Gogol's skull reached the nephew of Nikolai Vasilyevich, a lieutenant of the Navy Yanovsky. The latter decided to "restore justice": to get the skull of a famous relative in any way and to bury it in the ground, as required by the Orthodox faith. This will "calm down" the remains of Gogol.

Yanovsky, without an invitation, came to Bakhrushin, put the revolver on the table and said: “There are two cartridges here. One in the barrel for you if you don’t give me the skull of Nikolai Vasilyevich, the other in the drum for me if I have to kill you. Make up your mind! "

Bakhrushin was not frightened. On the contrary, he gladly gave the "exhibit". But Yanovsky could not carry out his intention for a number of reasons. Gogol's skull, according to one version, came to Italy in the spring of 1911, where it was kept in the house of the captain of the Navy Borghese. And in the summer of the same year, the skull-relic was stolen. And now it is not known what became of him ... Is it true or not - history is silent. Only the absence of a skull is officially confirmed - this is stated in the documents of the NKVD.

According to rumors, at one time a secret group was formed, the purpose of which was to search for Gogol's skull. But nothing is known about the results of her activities - all documents on this topic were destroyed.

According to legend, the one who owns Gogol's skull can communicate directly with dark forces, fulfill any desires and rule the world. They say that today it is kept in the personal collection of the famous oligarch, one of the five Forbes. But even if this is true, it will probably never be announced publicly ..

A ceremonial bust was erected over the new grave by order of Stalin. The mystery of the death of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol has not yet been solved.

When in 1931 Gogol's ashes were transferred to the Novodevichy cemetery and the sculptor Tomsky made a Gogol bust with a gold inscription under it "From the Soviet government", a symbolic stone with a cross was not needed ... On the writer's grave, only a tombstone of black marble with an epitaph from the prophet was left Jeremiah: "They will laugh at my bitter word." And “Golgotha”, together with the white marble bust of Gogol on a column, was thrown into the pit.

This multi-ton stone, at the request of Bulgakov's widow, was pulled out with difficulty and dragged along the boards to the grave of the creator of the mystical creation "The Master and Margarita", laying it with its top down ... So Gogol "gave up" his cross stone to Bulgakov.

By the way, in 1931, when opening the coffin of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, Soviet writers revealed their "dead souls": they robbed the deceased, tearing off "for memory" shreds from the coat of the great writer-"soul mate", from his boots ... They did not disdain to take even some bones ... Soon these "creators of new Soviet literature" fully experienced what the fetishist merchant Bakhrushin ...

Suicide

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

It was during that feverish period, when the writer was 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 who read this unpublished work and advised to destroy the records.

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

According to the doctor's testimony Tarasenkova, observing Nikolai Vasilyevich, in the last period of his life he "at once" aged "at once" in a month. By February 10, Gogol's strength had already left 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 patient's bedside prescribes "compulsory treatment" for him. For example, bloodletting with leeches. Despite all efforts, at 8 am on February 21, he was gone.

However, most researchers do not support the version that the writer deliberately "starved himself to death", that is, in fact committed suicide. And for a lethal outcome, an adult needs not to eat for 40 days. Gogol, on the other hand, refused food for about three weeks, and even then he occasionally allowed himself to eat a few spoons of oatmeal soup and drink linden tea.
CONTACTS WITH ANGELS

There is a version that the mental disorder could have happened not because of an illness, but "on religious grounds." As they would say these days - he was involved in a sect. The writer, being an atheist, began to believe in God, reflect on religion and wait for the end of the world.

It is known: having joined the "Martyrs of Hell" sect, Gogol spent almost all of his time in an impromptu church, where, in the company of parishioners, he tried to "establish contact" with angels, prayers and starvation, bringing himself to such a state that he began hallucinations, during which he saw devils, babies with wings, and women who resembled the Mother of God in vestments.

Gogol spent all his money savings on the fact that, together with his mentor and a group of sectarians like him, go to Jerusalem to the Holy Sepulcher and to meet the end times on the holy land.

The organization of the trip takes place in an atmosphere of the strictest secrecy, the writer informs his relatives and friends that he is going to be treated, only a few will know that he is going to stand at the origins of a new humanity. Leaving, he asks everyone he knew for forgiveness and says that he will never see them again.

The trip took place in February 1848, but the miracle did not happen - the apocalypse did not happen. Some historians claim that the organizer of the pilgrimage planned to give the sectarians an alcoholic drink with poison so that everyone would go to the next world at once, but the alcohol dissolved the poison and it did not work.

Having suffered a fiasco, he allegedly fled, abandoning his followers, who, in turn, returned home, barely scraping up money for the return trip. However, there is no documentary evidence of this.

Gogol returned home. His trip did not bring spiritual relief; on the contrary, it only exacerbated the situation. He becomes withdrawn, strange in communication, capricious and unkempt in clothes.
As Granovsky later recalled, a black cat suddenly approached the grave, into which the coffin had already been lowered.

Where he came from at the cemetery - no one knew, and church workers reported that they had never seen him either in the temple or in the adjacent territory.

“You will involuntarily believe in mysticism,” the professor will write later. “The women gasped, believing that the soul of the writer had taken over the cat.”

When the burial was completed, the cat disappeared as suddenly as it appeared, no one saw him leaving.

Medical error

DRAMA IN A HOUSE ON NIKITSKY BOULEVARD

The last four years of his life, Gogol spent in Moscow in a house on Nikitsky Boulevard.

With the owners of the house - Count Alexander Petrovich and Countess Anna Georgievna Tolstoy - Gogol met at the end of the 30s, the acquaintance grew into close friendship, and the count and his wife did everything to make the writer live freely and comfortably in their house. It was in this house on Nikitsky Boulevard that Gogol's final drama took place.

On the night from Friday to Saturday (February 8-9), after another vigil, he, exhausted, dozed off on the sofa and suddenly saw himself dead and heard some mysterious voices.

On Monday, February 11, Gogol was exhausted to such an extent that he could not walk and went to bed. He was reluctant to receive friends who came to him, spoke little, dozed off. But he still found the strength to defend the service in the home church of Count Tolstoy. At 3 o'clock in the morning from 11 to 12 February, after fervent prayer, he summoned Semyon to him, ordered him to go up to the second floor, open the stove valves and bring a briefcase from the closet. Taking a bunch of notebooks out of it, Gogol put them in the fireplace and lit a candle. Semyon on his knees begged him not to burn the manuscripts, but the writer stopped him: “None of your business! Pray! " Sitting on a chair in front of the fire, he waited until everything burned out, got up, crossed himself, kissed Semyon, returned to his room, lay down on the sofa and began to cry.

“This is what I did! - he said the next morning to Tolstoy, - I wanted to burn some things that had been prepared for a long time, but I burned everything. How the crafty is strong - that's what he pushed me to! And I was there, I figured out a lot and laid it out ... I thought of sending it to my friends from a notebook as a souvenir: let them do what they wanted. Now everything is gone. "

AGONY

Stunned by what had happened, the count hastened to summon the famous Moscow doctor F. Inozemtsev to Gogol, who at first suspected typhus in the writer, but then refused his diagnosis and advised the patient to simply lie down. But the doctor's equanimity did not calm Tolstoy, and he asked his good friend, the psychopathologist A. Tarasenkov, to come. However, Gogol did not want to receive Tarasenkov, who arrived on Wednesday 13 February. “You must leave me,” he said to the count, “I know that I must die” ...

Tarasenkov urged Gogol to start eating normally in order to recuperate, but the patient was indifferent to his admonitions. At the insistence of the doctors, Tolstoy asked Metropolitan Filaret to influence Gogol, to strengthen his confidence in doctors. But nothing acted on Gogol, to all persuasions he quietly and meekly replied: “Leave me alone; I feel good. " He stopped taking care of himself, did not wash, did not comb his hair, did not dress. He ate crumbs - bread, prosphora, gruel, prunes. I drank water with red wine, linden tea.

On Monday, February 17, he went to bed in his dressing gown and boots and never got up. In bed, he proceeded to the sacraments of repentance, communion and blessing of the holy oil, listened to all the gospels in full consciousness, holding a candle in his hands and crying. “If it pleases God that I still live, I will live,” he said to his friends, who urged him to be treated. On that day he was examined by a doctor invited by Tolstoy A. Over. He did not give any advice, rescheduling the conversation the next day.

Doctor Klimenkov appeared on the stage, astonishing those present with his rudeness and impudence. He shouted his questions to Gogol, as if there was a deaf or unconscious person in front of him, trying to forcibly grope for a pulse. "Leave me!" - Gogol told him and turned away.

Klimenkov insisted on active treatment: bloodletting, wrapping in wet cold sheets, etc. But Tarasenkov suggested postponing everything to the next day.

On February 20, a council gathered: Over, Klimenkov, Sokologorsky, Tarasenkov and the Moscow medical luminary Evenius. In the presence of Tolstoy, Khomyakov and other Gogol acquaintances, Over told Evenius the history of the disease, emphasizing the oddities in the patient's behavior, allegedly indicating that "his consciousness is not in a natural position." "Leave the patient without benefits or treat him like a person who does not control himself?" Over asked. “Yes, you have to force-feed him,” Evenius said importantly.

After that, the doctors went to the patient, began to question him, examine him, and touch him. From the room came the groans and cries of the patient. "Don't bother me, for God's sake!" He finally cried out. But they no longer paid attention to him. It was decided to put two leeches to Gogol's nose, to make a cold douche of his head in a warm bath. Klimenkov undertook to perform all these procedures, and Tarasenkov hastened to leave, "so as not to witness the suffering of the sufferer."

When he returned three hours later, Gogol was already taken out of the bath, six leeches hung at his nostrils, which he tried to tear off, but the doctors forcibly held his hands. At about seven in the evening, Over and Klimenkov arrived again, ordered to maintain the bleeding as long as possible, put mustard plasters on the limbs, a fly on the back of the head, ice on the head and inside a decoction of marshmallow root with laurel-cherry water. “Their appeal was inexorable,” Tarasenkov recalled, “they gave orders like a madman, shouted in front of him, as in front of a corpse. Klimenkov pestered him, crumpled, turned, poured some caustic alcohol on his head ... "

After their departure, Tarasenkov stayed until midnight. The patient's pulse dropped, breathing became intermittent. He could no longer turn himself, lay still and calm when he was not being treated. He asked for a drink. By the evening he began to lose his memory, muttered indistinctly: “Come on, come on! Well, what then? " At eleven o'clock he suddenly shouted loudly: "Ladder, hurry up, let's get the ladder!" I tried to get up. They lifted him out of bed, put him on a chair. But he was already so weak that his head did not hold and fell, like that of a newborn child. After this outbreak, Gogol fell into a deep faint, around midnight his legs began to feel cold, and Tarasenkov ordered to put jugs of hot water on them ...

Tarasenkov left so that, as he wrote, not to run into the medical executioner Klimenkov, who, as they later said, tortured the dying Gogol all night long, giving him calomel, covering his body with hot bread, which made Gogol moan and shriek. He died without regaining consciousness at 8 am on Thursday 21 February. When at ten o'clock in the morning Tarasenkov arrived at Nikitsky Boulevard, the deceased was already lying on the table, dressed in the frock coat in which he usually went.

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

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

"I looked at the deceased for a long time," wrote Tarasenkov, "it seemed to me that his face expressed not suffering, but calmness, a clear thought carried away to the coffin." "It is a shame to him who is attracted to rotting dust ..."

Gogol's ashes were buried at noon on February 24, 1852 by the parish priest Alexei Sokolov and deacon John Pushkin. And 79 years later, he was secretly, thieves removed from the grave: the Danilov Monastery was transformed into a colony for juvenile criminals, in connection with which his necropolis was subject to liquidation. It was decided to move 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 the Yazykov, Aksakovs and Khomyakovs, was Gogol ...

In his will, Gogol shamed those who "would be attracted by some attention to rotting dust, which is no longer mine." But the windy descendants were not ashamed, they violated the writer's will, with unclean hands, for fun, began stirring up the "rotting finger." They also did not respect his commandment not to put 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.

These stones and the cross the day before the opening of the Gogol burial were taken somewhere and sunk into oblivion. It was only in the early 1950s that Mikhail Bulgakov's widow accidentally discovered Gogol's Golgotha ​​stone in the 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 unveiling 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 unveiled on Prechistensky Boulevard. This sculpture, depicting a deeply discouraged Gogol at the time of his serious thoughts, caused controversial assessments. Some praised her enthusiastically, others fiercely condemned her. But everyone agreed: Andreev managed to create a work of the highest artistic merit.

The controversy surrounding the original author's interpretation of the image of Gogol did not continue to subside even in Soviet times, which did not tolerate 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 in Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends, but Gogol in Taras Bulba, The Inspector General, Dead Souls.

In 1935, the All-Union Committee for Arts under the USSR Council of People's Commissars 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, which were attended by the largest masters of sculpture - M. Manizer, S. Merkurov, E. Vuchetich, N. Tomsky.

In 1952, on the centenary of the death of Gogol, a new monument, created by the sculptor N. Tomsky and the architect S. Golubovsky, was erected on the site of the Andreev monument. Andreevsky monument was transferred 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 Arbat Square!

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

There are several versions of how N.V. Gogol died.

Gogol has not lost his mind

On the night from Friday to Saturday (February 8-9), after another vigil, he, exhausted, dozed off on the sofa and suddenly saw himself dead and heard some mysterious voices.
In the morning, in fear, he summoned the parish priest, wanting to take unction, but he persuaded him to postpone.

He didn't die of meningitis

On Monday, February 11, Gogol was exhausted from meningitis to such an extent that he could not walk and went to bed. He was reluctant to receive friends who came to him, spoke little, dozed off. At 3 o'clock in the morning from 11 to 12 February, after fervent prayer, he called a friend to him, ordered him to go up to the 2nd floor, open the stove valves and bring a briefcase from the closet. Taking a bunch of notebooks out of it, Gogol put them in the fireplace and lit with a candle. He was begged not to burn the manuscripts, but he did not listen to anyone. Sitting on a chair in front of the fire, he waited until everything burned out, got up, crossed himself, returned to his room, lay down on the sofa and cried.

Didn't starve myself

His friends tried to strengthen his confidence in doctors. But nothing acted on Gogol, to all persuasions he quietly and briefly replied: “Leave me alone; I feel good. " He stopped taking care of himself, did not wash, did not brush his hair, did not dress. He ate crumbs - bread, gruel, prunes. I drank water and linden tea.

On Monday, February 17, Nikolai Vasilyevich went to bed in his dressing gown and boots and never got up. In bed, he proceeded to the sacraments of repentance, communion and blessing of the holy oil, listened to all the gospels in full consciousness, holding a candle in his hands and crying.
“If it pleases God that I still live, I will be alive,” he said to his friends who tried to convince him to be treated.
Gogol was dying ... He was half-sitting in an armchair, his head thrown back, on a high back, his legs stretched out on the attached chair. He raised his head when the doctor entered, but she immediately fell powerlessly.
N.V. Gogol died on February 18, 1852.

Mental trauma

The first version of the death of N.V. Gogol was mental trauma in connection with the fleeting death of his wife.
Since then, he was in some kind of nervous breakdown, which took on the character of a religious insanity. And he began to starve himself. In addition, he observed strict fasts. Therefore, it can be assumed that the cause of death was exhaustion.

Typhoid fever epidemic

The second version of the writer's death was an infectious disease. Indeed, it was in 1852 that an epidemic raged across Moscow, namely typhoid fever. Therefore, when examining Gogol, doctors immediately suspected typhoid fever. But soon doctors established that the writer did not have typhoid, but meningitis. Or the consequences of the wrong course of treatment for a previous outbreak of meningitis. In 1902, Dr. N. Bazhenov published the work "Illness and Death of Gogol". He came to the conclusion that the wrong diagnosis and treatment had ruined the writer.

Gogol's deadly dream

To uncover the secret of Gogol's death, experts opened the grave of the writer. During the autopsy, they saw that Gogol's head was turned to the side and the coffin upholstery was all scratched, which means that the writer wanted to get out of the grave. From this it followed that the writer was buried alive.

Due to many versions of the writer's death, scientists still cannot establish exactly what exactly N.V. Gogol died from. Therefore, it is quite possible that several more versions of the writer's death will appear.

“Encyclopedia of Death. The Chronicles of Charon "

Part 2: Dictionary of Chosen Deaths

The ability to live well and die well are one and the same science.

Epicurus

GOGOL Nikolay Vasilievich

(1809-1852) Russian writer

Contemporaries say that the last year and a half of Gogol's life was tormented by the fear of death. This fear multiplied when, on January 26, 1852, Yekaterina Khomyakova, the sister of the poet N.M. Yazykov, with whom Gogol was friends, died. (She died of typhoid fever, while she was pregnant.) Dr. A. T. Tarasenkov says that “her death did not so much affect her husband and family as it struck Gogol ... He may have seen death here face to face for the first time. ... "About the same AP Annenkov writes:" ... the contemplation of death was unbearable for him. " At the funeral service, peering into the face of the deceased, Gogol, according to A. S. Khomyakov, said: "It's all over for me ..."

Indeed, very soon an attack of a disease incomprehensible to those around him seized the writer so much that he found himself at the last line of life.

There are two portraits of Gogol's death - medical and psychological. The first is made up of eyewitness notes (including doctors). Doctor Tarasenkov recalls Gogol's last day:

"... When I returned three hours after leaving, at six o'clock in the evening, the bath had already been done, six large leeches hung from his nostrils; a lotion was attached to his head. shouted, said that they were doing it in vain; after he was again put into bed without underwear, he said: "Cover your shoulder, close your back!", and when they put the leeches, he repeated: "Don't!" , he kept repeating: "Take off the leeches, lift (from your mouth) the leeches!" - and tried to reach them with his hand. In my presence they hung for a long time, his hand was held with force so that he would not touch them. ; they ordered to maintain the bleeding for a longer time, put mustard plasters on the limbs, then a fly on the back of the head, ice on the head and inward a decoction of marshmallow root with laurel-cherry water.

Klimenkov pestered him, crumpled, grumbled, poured some caustic alcohol on his head, and when the patient groaned from this, the doctor asked: "What hurts, Nikolai Vasilyevich? Huh? Speak!" But he groaned and did not answer. - They left, I stayed the whole evening until twelve o'clock and carefully watched what was happening. The pulse soon and clearly fell, became even more frequent and weaker, breathing, already difficult in the morning, became even heavier; already the patient himself could not turn, lay still on one side and was calm when nothing was done to him ...

Late in the evening he began to forget, to lose his memory. "Come on the keg!" - he said once, showing that he wanted to drink. He was given the old glass of broth, but he could no longer raise his head and hold the glass ... Even later, at times he muttered something indistinctly, as if in a dream, or repeated several times: “Come on, come on! same! " At about eleven o'clock, he shouted loudly: “Ladder, hurry up, let's get the ladder! ..” He seemed to want to get up. They lifted him out of bed, put him on a chair. At this time, he was already so weak that his head could not hold on to his neck and fell mechanically, like a newborn child. Then they tied a fly around his neck, put on a shirt (he was lying naked after a bath); he just groaned.

When they put him back to bed, he lost all senses; his pulse stopped beating; he wheezed, his eyes opened, but seemed lifeless. It seemed that death was coming, but it was a faint that lasted for several minutes. The pulse returned soon, but was barely perceptible. After this swoon, Gogol no longer asked to drink or turn around; constantly lying on his back with his eyes closed, not uttering a word. At twelve o'clock in the morning my legs began to feel cold. I put down a jug of hot water, began to give broth to swallow more often, and this, apparently, revived him; however, soon the breathing became hoarse and even more difficult; the skin was covered with cold sweat, it turned blue under the eyes, the face was haggard like that of a dead man. In this position I left the sufferer ...

They told me that Klimenkov arrived shortly after me, stayed with him at night for several hours: he gave him calomel and covered his whole body with hot bread; at the same time, the groan and the shrill scream resumed again. All this probably helped him to die as soon as possible. "

Gogol's death happened at eight o'clock in the morning on February 21, 1852. E.F. Wagner, who was at the same time, wrote to her son-in-law (M.P. Pogodin) on the same day:

"... Nikolai Vasilyevich died, was all without memory, was a little delirious, apparently, he did not suffer, the whole night was quiet, only breathing heavily; towards morning his breathing became less frequent and less frequent, and he seemed to fall asleep ..."

Half a century later, Dr. N. N. Bazhenov said that the cause of Gogol's death was improper treatment. “During the last 15-20 years of his life,” Bazhenov argued, “he suffered from that form of mental illness, which in our science is called periodic psychosis, in the form of the so-called periodic melancholy. In all likelihood, his general nutrition and strength were undermined by the him in Italy (almost in the autumn of 1845) with malaria.He died during an attack of periodic melancholy from exhaustion and acute anemia of the brain, caused as the very form of the disease - accompanying starvation and associated with it a rapid decline in nutrition and strength, - and inappropriate debilitating treatment, especially bloodletting. "

The harsh prose of medical reports is opposed by a remarkable psychological portrait of the dying Gogol, created by the critic I. Zolotussky.

“At the funeral (E. Khomyakova), he did not appear, citing illness and malaise of the nerves. those whom she loved. "It was as if in gratitude she brought them all to me," he said to Aksakov, "it became easier for me."

"The moment of death is terrible."

- "Why is it scary? - they asked him, - if only to be sure of God's mercy to a suffering person, and then it is gratifying to think about death." He replied:

"But it is necessary to ask about this those who have passed through this minute."

Ten days before his death, Gogol, being in a painful mental crisis, burned the manuscript of the second volume of the poem (novel) "Dead Souls" and a number of other papers. “We must die,” he said after that to Khomyakov, “I’m ready and I’ll die ...” He almost did not accept anything from the hands of Semyon, who stood permanently at his head (after burning, Gogol moved onto the bed and never got up), only warm red wine diluted with water.

The concerned owner of the house called a council, all the famous doctors who were then available in Moscow gathered at Gogol's bedside. He lay with his face turned to the wall, in a dressing gown and boots, and looked at the icon of the Mother of God leaning against the wall. He wanted to die quietly, calmly. The clear knowledge that he was dying was written on his face. The voices he heard before burning the second volume were voices from there - the same voices his father heard shortly before his death. In this sense, he was a father. He believed that he had to die, and this faith was enough to bring him to the grave without any dangerous illness.

And the doctors, not understanding the cause of his illness and looking for it in the body, tried to heal the body. At the same time, they raped his body, offending the soul with this violence, this interference in the sacrament of leaving. It was a departure, not a suicide, a conscious, irrevocable departure ... He could not live, just to live, to drag out the days and wait for old age. To live and not write (and he was no longer able to write), to live and stand still meant for him during his lifetime to become a dead man ...

Gogol's torment before death was the torment of a man who was not understood, who was again surrounded by amazed people who believed that he was crazy, that he was starving himself, that he almost thought of committing suicide. They could not believe that the spirit was so controlling him that his orders were enough for the body to obey unquestioningly.

Doctors were at a loss in conjecture about the diagnosis, some said that he had inflammation in the intestines, others that typhoid fever, others called it a nervous fever, the fifth did not hide their suspicion of insanity. In fact, they no longer treated him like Gogol, but like a madman, and this was the natural end of the misunderstanding that began since the time of the "Inspector General". In this case, the doctors represented the crowd, the public, which did not do all this out of malice, but from a tragic divergence between themselves and the poet, who was dying in a clear mind and firm memory.

At the beginning of 1852, Gogol wrote to Vyazemsky: we must leave “a will after ourselves to posterity, which should be just as dear to us and close to our hearts as children are close to the heart of a father (otherwise the connection between the present and the future is broken) ...” He thought about this connection, and his death - a strange, mysterious death - was this connection, for Gogol in it brought his search to the end. If earlier they accused him of hypocrisy, of hypocrisy, they called him Tartuffe, then there was no longer any hypocrisy. The rise of Gogol was confirmed by this last act of his on earth. "

Gogol was buried in the churchyard of the Danilov Monastery, but in 1931 the writer's ashes were transferred to the Novodevichy cemetery. The reburial gave rise to the legend that Gogol died twice, and the second time was truly terrible - underground, in the darkness and cramped coffin. During the exhumation, it was found that the coffin's lining was torn from the inside! This means that, possibly, Gogol was buried alive - in a state of lethargic sleep. This is what he feared all his life and more than once warned not to be buried hastily until they were convinced of the authenticity of his death! Alas! The warning didn't help.

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 amazed 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, only lay on his bed for days, not even bothering to take off his boots.

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

In the middle of the 19th century, this disease had not yet been described by anyone, therefore, the doctors of that time did not associate the writer's behavior with mental disorder, preferring to look for the cause in physical ailment. As a result, when by February Gogol's condition became extremely difficult, a council of the best doctors in Moscow gathered him to treat him for anything but exhaustion due to mental anguish.

When the patient's condition became worse than ever, the doctors diagnosed him with another wrong diagnosis - meningitis, after which they began to forcibly treat the patient. The writer was bled 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 with joint efforts, holding his hands and feet, the doctors continued to treat him for a non-existent ailment.

Against the background 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 very day, all kinds of speculations began on the topic of the death of a genius, the cause of which was, for the most part, he himself.

What did they talk about after

In 1839, while in Italy, Gogol fell ill with encephalitis, after which he began to experience prolonged fainting, turning into lethargic sleep. Being in such a 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 a fewexamples when people plunged into a lethargic sleep were mistakenly recognized as dead and buried. This prospect frightened the writer so much that for 10 years he could not bring himself to sleep in bed. Gogol spent the night on armchairs and couches, being in a seated and semi-seated position.

In his will, Gogol separately asked not to bury him until there were obvious signs of decomposition of the body. This will of the writer was never carried out - exactly due to This fact became popular stories that Gogol was still 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 government wished to remake the Danilovsky Monastery, where the grave of the writer was located, into a children's boarding school. Gogol was decided to be reburied 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 the opening of the coffin, everyone saw Gogol's head lying 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 burial alive. But modern researchers do not take this version too seriously. And there are several weighty arguments for that.

At first , to some acquaintances, the same Lidin told a completely different version - supposedly Gogol's skull was not in the coffin at all, since it had been dug up by the famous Moscow collector Alexei Bakhrushin before. This rumor also became very popular, although there were no people who could confirm it.

The second argument suggests that in the 80 years after the writer's funeral, the coffin lining should have completely decayed. And if his head nevertheless turned out to be turned on its side, then there is a simpler explanation for that - due to subsidence of the soil, the coffin lid eventually lowers and begins to press on the head, since it is located above the rest of the body. Changes 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 reason to doubt the professionalism of the doctors who treated Gogol. These were indeed some 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 fail to check it on this score.

Gogol's death mask

In addition, the next morning after his death, the death mask was removed from Gogol's face. This procedure is accompanied by the imposition of a very hot material on the face, and if Gogol was alive, his body could not fail to respond to such a stimulus. Which, of course, did not happen. That is why, in spite of the writer's will, the decision on his burial 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. As paradoxical as 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 is remembered.

For more than 150 years now, many doctors, historians, analysts and other experts have been trying to understand how Gogol died, what caused the latter to be so painful, and what kind of ailments did he suffer in the last years of his life? Some believe that the famous author was simply "crazy", others believe that he committed suicide by starving himself. However, the truth, as it turned out, in this whole story is only apparent, somewhat ephemeral. The facts that have come down to our days and the research of contemporaries make it possible to draw certain conclusions about how Gogol died. Therefore, now we will consider in detail all these materials and his last years of life.

A few words about the life of the writer

The now famous playwright, writer, critic, writer and poet was born in Poltava province in 1809. In his native land, he graduated from high school, after which he entered the Academy of Higher Sciences for children of the provincial nobility. There he studied the basics of literary criticism, painting and other forms of art. In his youth, Gogol moved to the capital - to St. Petersburg, where he met a number of famous poets and critics, among whom it is important to highlight A. Pushkin. It was he who became the closest friend of the then young Nikolai Gogol, who opened new doors for him to literary criticism, influenced the formation of his social and cultural views. In St. Petersburg, the writer is taken to compiling the first volume of "Dead Souls", but at home, the work begins to be very harshly criticized. Nikolai Vasilyevich goes to Europe and, having visited a number of cities, stops in Rome, where he finishes writing the first volume, after which he is taken for the second. It was after he returned from Italy that doctors (and all his close people) began to notice changes in the writer's state of mind, not at all in a good way. We can say that it was from this time that the very story of Gogol's death began, which exhausted him mentally and physically and made the last days of his life extremely painful.

Was there schizophrenia?

There was a time when rumors circulated in Moscow that the writer, who had just returned from Rome, was a little out of his mind and suffered from schizophrenia. His contemporaries believed that it was because of such a mental disorder that he himself brought himself to complete exhaustion. In fact, everything was a little wrong, and several other circumstances caused the death of this writer, if you read it in more detail, it says that the author suffered from the last 20 years of his existence, I mean, he had periods when the mood became especially cheerful, but they were quickly replaced by the opposite - severe depression. Not knowing such a definition in those years, doctors exposed the most ridiculous diagnoses to Nikolai - "intestinal catarrh", "spastic colitis" and others. It is now believed that it was the treatment of these alleged ailments that played a fatal role in his fate.

Did the author wake up in his own coffin?

Very often in a conversation about how Gogol died, many argue that he was buried alive. Say, the writer plunged into which everyone took for death. The rumors are based on the fact that during the exhumation, the body of Nikolai in the coffin was unnaturally bent, and the upper part of the lid was scratched. In fact, if you think about it, you can understand that this is fiction. By the time the exhumation was carried out, only ashes were found in the coffin. The wood and upholstery were completely decayed (which, in principle, of course), so they could not find any scratches or other traces there.

Interesting fact about ... the fear of being buried alive

In fact, there is another circumstance that made people believe for many years that the famous writer was buried alive, in a state of lethargic sleep. The fact is that Gogol suffered from taphobia - this is precisely the very fear of being buried in the ground during his lifetime. This fear he had was based on the fact that after suffering from malaria in Italy, he often fainted, which made his pulse slow down too much, breathing almost completely stopped as well. Then the author of "Viy" and "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka" woke up and felt normal. It is for this reason that the last 10 years of his life, he almost never went to bed. Nikolai Vasilyevich dozed in an armchair, fell asleep at the manuscripts in constant anxiety and readiness to awaken. Moreover, in his will, he indicated that he wanted to be buried only after his body began to show signs of complete decomposition. His will was done. The official date of Gogol's death is February 21, 1852 (old style), and the date of his burial is February 24.

Other ridiculous versions

Among the conclusions of doctors who personally saw how Gogol died and how he spent his last days, or indirectly knew about it, guided by his analyzes and the results of examinations, there were many ridiculous records. Among them there is one, as if the writer took mercury poison to commit suicide. Like, due to the fact that he practically did not eat anything, and his stomach was empty, the poison corroded him from the inside, and therefore he died for a long time and painfully. The second theory is typhoid fever, which caused Gogol's death. The author's biography testifies to the fact that in fact he did not suffer from this ailment, and moreover, not a single such symptom manifested itself in his entire life. Therefore, at the council, which was held among doctors after the nomination of this version, the latter was officially rejected.

Causes of a severe dying condition

It is believed that the story of Gogol's death dates back to January 1852, when Yekaterina Khomyakova, the sister of his close friend, died. The poet experienced the requiem for this person with particular horror, and during the burial he said very terrible words: "It's all over for me too ..." Physically weak, prone to various ailments, with poor immunity, Nikolai Vasilyevich that day gave way completely. It is also worth considering the fact that for 20 years he had suffered from a bipolar personality, therefore such a significant and mournful event drove him into the phase of depression, and not hypomania. Since then, he began to refuse food, despite the fact that previously he always preferred hearty meat dishes. Eyewitnesses claimed that the writer seemed to have left reality. He stopped communicating with friends, often closed in on himself, could go to bed in a dressing gown and boots, while muttering something. The culmination of his depression was the fact that he burned the second volume of Dead Souls.

Attempts to cure

For many years, analysts and researchers did not understand why Gogol died. The poet and playwright, struck by an unknown ailment at that time, was under close medical supervision and care. Although it is worth noting that the doctors treated him very harshly, trying, however, to do what was best. An imaginary "meningitis" was treated. They forced them into a hot bath, poured ice water over their heads, and then did not allow them to dress. Leeches were seated under the writer's nose to increase the bleeding, and if he resisted, his hands were twisted, causing pain. It is likely that another of these procedures is the answer to the question of why Gogol died so suddenly. At 8 am on February 21, he fell into unconsciousness, when there was no one beside the nurse. By 10 am, when the doctors had already gathered at the writer's bed, they found only a corpse.

An unbroken chain leading to demise

Thanks to the research of contemporaries, it is possible to build a logical and correct connection between all the events and circumstances during which the playwright died. Initially, the place where Gogol died (Moscow) had a negative impact. There were often rumors about his madness, many of his works were not recognized. Due to these factors, his mental illness began to aggravate, and as a result, Nikolai Vasilyevich came to the conclusion that he should refuse food. Complete bodily exhaustion, distortion of the perception of reality indescribably weakened a person. It was fatal that he was subjected to sudden changes in temperature, shock and other harsh therapeutic methods. The date of Gogol's death was the last day of such bullying for him. After a long and painful night on the morning of February 21, he no longer woke up.

Could the writer have been saved?

Definitely, you can. To do this, it was necessary to use force-feeding with highly nutritious foods, the introduction of saline solutions under the skin, and also force a person to drink a lot of water. Another factor is the use of antidepressants, however, given the year in which Gogol died, we can say that this was impossible. By the way, one of the doctors, Tarasenkov, insisted precisely on such methods, in particular, that Nikolai Vasilyevich was forced to eat. However, most of the doctors rejected this prescription - they began to treat non-existent meningitis ...

Afterword

We briefly examined all the circumstances of the death of the famous writer and playwright - Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. It was he who won the hearts of ordinary readers and directors, children and adults with his works. You can read his works avidly, without looking up from the book, because each of his creations is extremely interesting. Now you know when Gogol was born and died, how he lived his life, and in particular - what his last years were like. And most importantly, we tried to understand at least a little about how this genius died and why there are so many rumors around his death.