There has long been debate about whether Gogol was buried alive.
Indeed, the writer was haunted by the fear of being buried during his lifetime. In 1827, Gogol wrote to his friend Vysotsky: “ How hard it is to be buried together with the creatures of the low unknown in the silence of the dead».

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (1809-1852)

Gogol begins his collection “Selected Places of Correspondence with Friends” with a will: “ Being in the full presence of memory and common sense, I express here my last will. I bequeath the body not to be buried until obvious signs of decomposition appear... I mention this because even during the illness itself, moments of vital numbness came over me, my heart and pulse stopped beating...».

Photo - Gogol and artists in Rome

Andrei Voznesensky dedicated poetry to Gogol (1972), describing an eerie version of his death:

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

“My underwear was stolen from under my tailcoat.
It blows into the crack, but you can’t fit through it.
What are the torments of the Lord?
before waking up in a coffin.”

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

Enlarged photo of Gogol (1845), the writer is 36 years old

According to the memoirs of Gogol's contemporaries, in the last year of his life he was haunted by the fear of death.

Ekaterina Khomyakova

There is an assumption that Gogol predicted the prophecy of his death in “Old World Landowners”, describing the death of Afanasy Ivanovich: “ ;He completely submitted to his spiritual conviction that Pulcheria Ivanovna was calling him: he submitted with the will of an obedient child, withered, coughed, melted like a candle, and finally died out like she did, when there was nothing left that could support her poor flame».
It was assumed that the death of Ekaterina Khomyakova had a similar detrimental effect on the writer.

Friends recalled that Gogol was “melting before our eyes,” he was weakening - but refused to eat, he was sick - but he rejected the advice of doctors.
"It was difficult to do anything with a person who rejected all treatment“- his attending physician later said.

Gogol in the coffin

Gogol foresaw a quick end to his life.
On February 7, he confessed and received communion. On the night of February 12, he burned the second volume of Dead Souls.

The next day the writer regretted what he had done. Gogol told A.P. Tolstoy: “ Imagine how powerful the evil spirit is! I wanted to burn papers that had been determined for a long time, but I burned the chapters of Dead Souls, which I wanted to leave it as a souvenir for my friends after my death ».

According to another version, Gogol’s words sounded like this:
“Now everything is gone!” Gogol said to Tolstoy as he entered, pointing to the burning papers.
He said and cried.
“That’s what I did! I wanted to burn some things specially prepared for this, but I burned everything. How strong the evil one is - that’s what he led me to! And I explained and explained a lot of useful things there.”

9 days later (February 21), Gogol died at the age of 42. His last phrase was: “ How sweet it is to die...».
The writer was famous during his lifetime; all of Moscow came to say goodbye to Gogol.

Portrait by F. Moller (1841), Gogol is 32 years old

In June 1931, the writer's ashes were reburied from the cemetery of the St. Daniel's Monastery to the Novodevichy Cemetery.
That’s when the legend arose that Gogol was buried alive.

One of the participants in the reburial, professor of the Literary Institute V.G. Lidin described another unexplained incident. The writer's skull was missing from the coffin.
«... Gogol's grave was opened for almost the whole day. It turned out to be at a much greater depth than ordinary burials. Having started to dig it out, they came across a brick crypt of unusual strength, but did not find a bricked-up hole in it; Then they began to dig in a transverse direction in such a way that the excavation would be to the east, and only in the evening a side aisle of the crypt was discovered, through which the coffin was pushed into the main crypt. The work of opening the crypt took a long time.

It was already dusk when the grave was finally opened. The top boards of the coffin were rotten, but the side boards with preserved foil, metal corners and handles and partially surviving bluish-purple braid were intact. This is what Gogol's ashes represented: 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; Even underwear with bone buttons survived under the frock coat; there were shoes on his feet... The shoes were with very high heels, approximately 4-5 centimeters, this gives absolute reason to assume that Gogol was of short stature.

When and under what circumstances Gogol's skull disappeared remains a mystery. When opening the grave at a shallow depth, significantly higher than the crypt with the walled coffin, a skull was discovered, but archaeologists recognized it as belonging to young man... Unfortunately, I could not take pictures of Gogol’s remains, since it was already twilight, and the next morning they were transported to the cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent, where they were interred...”

The famous film adaptation of the story "Viy" with Natalya Varleya

Comrade Pompolitians did not disdain to grab grave items as souvenirs:
« Thus, Vsevolod Ivanov took Gogol’s rib, Malyshkin took foil from the coffin, and the director of the cemetery, Komsomol member Arakcheev, even appropriated the shoes of the great writer. What blasphemy! But the historian Bantysh-Kamensky, who in the era of Nicholas I opened the grave of Prince Menshikov, an associate of Peter I, in Berezovo and took his cap “as a souvenir,” was accused of looting and blasphemy. Soviet morality was somewhat different!»

Lidin commented on the emerging version of the writer being buried alive:
« Apparently, due to the foil lid of Gogol’s coffin warping over time and the displacement of his remains in the coffin due to natural subsidence of the earth, a terrible legend about a writer buried alive appeared!».

Where Gogol’s head could have gone, Lidin suggested:
« In 1909, when during the installation of the monument to Gogol on Prechistensky Boulevard in Moscow (in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of the great writer), the restoration of Gogol’s grave was carried out, one of the most famous collectors in Moscow and Russia, Bakhrushin, who is also the founder of the Theater Museum, allegedly persuaded the monks St. Daniel's Monastery to obtain Gogol's skull for him, and that indeed in the Bakhrushinsky Theater Museum in Moscow there are three unknown skulls belonging to: one of them, by assumption, is the skull of the artist Shchepkin, the other is Gogol's, nothing is known about the third».

According to legend, Yanovsky, the great-nephew of the writer, managed to take the skull of his ancestor from Bakhrushin. He threatened the desecrator of the ashes with violence - “There are two cartridges here. One in the barrel. The other in the drum. The one in the barrel is for you, if you refuse to give me Nikolai Vasilyevich’s skull. The one in the drum is for me.”...
Yanovsky, Russian lieutenant imperial fleet, took the casket with the skull to Sevastopol, where he served. In 1910, Italian ships arrived in Sevastopol. Yanovsky gave the skull to Captain Borghese with a request to bury the skull in Italy, which Gogol considered his second home. But the captain was unable to fulfill the request.
In a letter of apology to Yanovsky, Borghese writes a strange phrase “A person’s destiny does not end with his life”. Having set sail, the captain handed the skull over to his younger brother for safekeeping.
Borghese Jr. told how he encountered an unidentified phenomenon. On July 14, 1911, setting off by train from Rome, he took with him a casket with a skull. The traveler suddenly felt uneasy and decided to jump off the train. Then he saw a white cloud in which the train disappeared. This is how Gogol's skull ended up on the ghost train.

According to legend, the writer’s ashes were reburied without a skull.

Postcard with a portrait of Gogol

According to the memoirs of a contemporary of Gogol, the writer was very loved in his native land, waited for his return, refusing to believe the words about his death:
« Strange thing. Neighboring farmers, as I verified at that time, indeed, perhaps due to Gogol’s frequent and long stay abroad, were convinced for a long time that he had not died, but was in foreign lands. Some of them, who owed him something in their lives, even used it to tell fortunes by placing an empty watered pot at night and planting a spider in it. Gogol’s mother, whom all the neighbors knew and loved closely, told me about this. According to local belief, if a spider crawls out of a pot with convex, slippery walls at night, then the person being told is alive and will return. The spider, who was entrusted by the farmers with deciding whether Rudy Panko was alive, covered the side of the pot with a web at night and crawled out along it; but Gogol, to the chagrin of those who were guessing, did not return»

Gogol (E. Redko) and Smirnova-Rosset (A. Zavorotnyuk)
Film "Gogol. The Closest"

"Wonders and Adventures" 11/95

GOGOL DIDN'T STARVE HIMSELF, DIDN'T GO CRAZY, AND DIDN'T DIED FROM MENINGITIS.

HE WAS POISONED BY DOCTORS!

Konstantin SMIRNOV

The work of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol (1808-1852) has long been recognized as a classic, and in the opinion of his descendants he has long been rooted as the greatest Russian writer. But there is no unanimity when it comes to assessing him as a person. In the memoirs of his contemporaries, he is often characterized as a secretive, mysterious, crafty person, prone to hoaxes and deceptions. And this was said not only by enemies or casual acquaintances, but even by true admirers of his talent, friends who more than once helped the writer out of life’s difficulties. When Gogol once asked Pletnev to openly express his opinion about him as a person, this oldest and most helpful friend of his wrote: “A secretive creature, selfish, arrogant, distrustful and sacrificing everything for glory...”

And Gogol, who lived and breathed only by his writing and artistic inspiration, who doomed himself to poverty and homelessness and limited all his wealth to “the tiniest suitcase” with four changes of linen, was forced to listen to all this and turn to these same people for services and even for financial help.

What prompted Gogol to endure these impartial assessments from his friends? What made him beg his friends for trust, to assure them of his sincerity?

He was forced to do this by the great goal he set for himself: the completion of the second volume of “Dead Souls,” the main work of his life, which he decided to carry out according to the ideal revealed as a result of his religious quest. Labor into which he decided to invest the whole truth about Russia, all his love for it, all the wealth of his soul.

“My work is great,” he told his friends more than once, “my feat is saving!”

With all the greater amazement and distrust, every unbiased researcher should approach those widespread guesses and generally accepted opinions that now explain the reasons that prompted Nikolai Vasilyevich to burn the manuscript of his great work a few days before his death...

DRAMA IN A HOUSE ON NIKITSKY BOULEVARD

Gogol spent the last four years of his life in Moscow in a house on Nikitsky Boulevard. This house has survived to this day; Two rooms on the first floor, which were occupied by Nikolai Vasilyevich, have also been preserved; the fireplace in which the writer, according to legend, burned the manuscript of the second volume of “Dead Souls” has been preserved, although in a modified form...

Gogol met the owners of the house - Count Alexander Petrovich and Countess Anna Georgievna Tolstoy in the late 30s, the acquaintance grew into a close friendship, and the count and his wife did everything to ensure that the writer lived freely and comfortably in their house. “Here Gogol was looked after like a child,” recalled one contemporary. “He didn’t care about anything at all. Lunch, breakfast, tea, dinner were served wherever he ordered. His linen was washed and put in chests of drawers by invisible spirits... In addition to the numerous servants of the house, he was served in his rooms by his own man from Little Russia named Semyon, a very young guy, meek and extremely devoted to his master. The silence in the outbuilding was extraordinary. Gogol either walked around the room from corner to corner, or sat and wrote, rolling balls from white bread, about which I told my friends that they help solve the most complex and difficult problems.” It was in this house on Nikitsky Boulevard that Gogol’s final drama took place.

On January 26, 1852, the wife of Gogol’s friend, the famous Slavophile Khomyakov, unexpectedly died. The death of Ekaterina Mikhailovna, whom Gogol loved very much and considered the most worthy of the women he met in life, shocked the writer. “The fear of death came over me,” he told his confessor. And from that moment on, literally every day began to bring Gogol closer to death.

On Wednesday, January 30, after he ordered a memorial service for Ekaterina Mikhailovna in the Church of Simeon the Stylite on Povarskaya, he went to the Aksakovs, where he among other things said that after the memorial service he felt better, but he was afraid of the moment of death. On February 1 and 3, he again visited the Aksakovs and complained of fatigue from reading the proofs of his collected works that were being prepared for publication. And already on Monday, February 4, he was overcome by a breakdown: he told S. Shevyrev, who came to see him, that he now had no time for proofreading, because he was not feeling well and decided to fast and speak. The next day, February 5, to the same Shevyrev, Gogol complained of “an upset stomach and the too strong effect of the medicine that was given to him.”

In the evening of that day, he accompanied the then famous preacher Archpriest Matthew Konstantinovsky to the station, who severely reproached the writer for his sinfulness and demanded that he strictly observe fasting. The stern sermon had an effect: Nikolai Vasilyevich gave up his literary work, began to eat little, although he did not lose his appetite and suffered from food deprivation, prayed at night, and began to sleep little.

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. The next morning he called the parish priest, wanting to perform unction, but he persuaded him to wait.

On Monday, February 11, Gogol became so exhausted that he could not walk and went to bed. He received friends who came to see him reluctantly, spoke little and dozed off. But I still found the strength to defend the service in Count Tolstoy’s home church. At 3 o'clock in the morning from February 11 to 12, after fervent prayer, he called 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 them with a candle. Semyon begged him on his knees not to burn the manuscripts, but the writer stopped him: “It’s none of your business! Pray! Sitting on a chair in front of the fire, he waited until everything burned down, stood up, crossed himself, kissed Semyon, returned to his room, lay down on the sofa and cried.

“That's what I did! - he said to Tolstoy the next morning, - I wanted to burn some things that had been prepared for a long time, but I burned everything. How strong the evil one is - this is what he has brought me to! And I understood and presented a lot of useful things there... I thought I would send out a notebook to my friends as a souvenir: let them do what they wanted. Now everything is gone."

AGONY

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

A day later it became known that Inozemtsev himself fell ill, and on Saturday, February 16, Tolstoy, extremely alarmed by Gogol’s condition, persuaded the writer to accept Tarasenkov. “When I saw him, I was horrified,” the doctor recalled. “Not even a month had passed since I had dinner with him; he seemed to me a man of flourishing health, vigorous, strong, fresh, but now before me was a man as if exhausted to the extreme by consumption or brought by some prolonged exhaustion to extraordinary exhaustion. He seemed dead to me at first sight.” Tarasenkov convinced Gogol to start eating normally in order to regain strength, but the patient was indifferent to his admonitions. At the insistence of the doctors, Tolstoy asked Metropolitan Philaret to influence Gogol and strengthen his confidence in the doctors. But nothing had any effect on Gogol; to all persuasion he quietly and meekly answered: “Leave me alone; I feel good." He stopped taking care of himself, didn’t wash, didn’t comb his hair, didn’t dress. He ate crumbs - bread, prosphora, gruel, prunes. I drank water with red wine and linden tea.

On Monday, February 17, he went to bed in a robe and boots and never got up again. In bed, he began the sacraments of repentance, communion and consecration of oil, listened to all the gospels in full consciousness, holding a candle in his hands and crying. “If God wills me to live longer, I will live,” he said to his friends who urged him to undergo treatment. On this day, he was examined by the doctor A. Over, invited by Tolstoy. He didn't give any advice and postponed the conversation until the next day.

In Moscow they had already heard about Gogol’s illness, so the next day, February 19, when Tarasenkov arrived at the house on Nikitsky Boulevard, the entire front room was filled with a crowd of Gogol’s admirers, standing silently with mournful faces. “Gogol was lying on a wide sofa, in a dressing gown, in boots, turned to the wall, on his side, with his eyes closed,” recalled Tarasenkov. “Against his face is the image of the Mother of God; in the hands of a rosary; near him there is a boy and another servant. He didn't answer my quiet question... I took his hand to feel his pulse. He said: “Don't touch me, please!”

Soon M. Pogodin brought Doctor Alfonsky, who suggested using the services of a “magnetizer,” and in the evening Doctor Sokologorsky, known for his psychic abilities, appeared at Gogol’s bedside. But as soon as he, placing his hands on the patient’s head, began to make passes, Gogol jerked his body and said irritably: “Leave me alone!” At this point the session ended, and Doctor Klimenkov appeared on stage, striking those present with his rudeness and insolence. He shouted his questions to Gogol, as if in front of him was a deaf or unconscious person, trying to forcibly feel his 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 outlined the history of the disease to Evenius, emphasizing the oddities in the patient’s behavior, allegedly indicating that “his consciousness is not in its natural state.” “Leave the patient without benefits or treat him as a person who does not control himself?” asked Over. “Yes, we need to force-feed him,” Evenius said importantly.

After this, the doctors entered the patient and began to question him, examine him, and feel him. Moans and screams of the patient were heard from the room. “Don’t bother me, for God’s sake!” - he finally shouted. But they no longer paid attention to him. It was decided to put two leeches on Gogol’s nose and do a cold douse on his head in a warm bath. Klimenkov undertook to carry out all these procedures, and Tarasenkov hastened to leave, “so as not to witness the torment of the sufferer.”

When he returned three hours later, Gogol had already been taken out of the bath, six leeches hung from 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 and ordered to maintain the bleeding as long as possible, put mustard plasters on the limbs, a front sight on the back of the head, ice on the head, and a decoction of marshmallow root with cherry laurel water inside. “Their treatment was inexorable,” recalled Tarasenkov, “they gave orders as if he were crazy, shouted in front of him as if in front of a corpse. Klimenkov pestered him, crushed him, tossed him around, 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 on his own; he lay quietly and calmly when he was not treated. Asked for a drink. In the evening he began to lose his memory, muttering indistinctly: “Come on, come on! Well, what then? At the eleventh hour he suddenly shouted loudly: “The ladder, quickly, give me the ladder!” I tried to get up. He was lifted out of bed and sat on a chair. But he was already so weak that his head could not hold up and fell, like that of a newborn child. After this outburst, Gogol fell into a deep faint, around midnight his legs began to get cold, and Tarasenkov ordered jugs of hot water to be applied to them...

Tarasenkov left so that, as he wrote, he would not encounter the medical executioner Klimenkov, who, as they later said, tortured the dying Gogol all night, giving him calomel, covering his body with hot bread, causing Gogol to moan and scream shrilly. He died without regaining consciousness at 8 a.m. on Thursday, February 21. When Tarasenkov arrived at Nikitsky Boulevard at ten o’clock in the morning, the deceased was already lying on the table, dressed in the frock coat in which he usually wore. A memorial service was served over him, and the plaster mask was removed from his face.

“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 into the coffin.” “Shame on the one who is attracted to the rotting dust...”

Gogol's ashes were buried at noon on February 24, 1852 by parish priest Alexei Sokolov and deacon Ioann Pushkin. And after 79 years, he was secretly, thieves removed from the grave: the Danilov Monastery was transformed into a colony for juvenile delinquents, and therefore its necropolis was subject to liquidation. It was decided to move only a few of the graves dearest to the Russian heart 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, Y. Olesha, M. Svetlov, V. Lidin and others. It was Lidin who became perhaps the only source of information about the reburial of Gogol. With him light hand Terrible legends about Gogol began to circulate around Moscow.

The coffin was not found right away, he told the students of the Literary Institute; for some reason it turned out to be not where they were digging, but somewhat further away, to the side. And when they pulled it out of the ground - covered in lime, seemingly strong, from oak boards - and opened it, then bewilderment was mixed with the heartfelt trembling of those present. In the fob lay a skeleton with its skull turned to one side. No one found an explanation for this. Someone superstitious probably thought then: “The publican is like not alive during life, and not dead after death - this strange great man.”

Lidin's stories stirred up old rumors that Gogol was afraid of being buried alive in a state lethargic sleep and seven years before his death he bequeathed: “My body should not be buried until obvious signs of decomposition appear. I mention this because even during the illness itself, moments of vital numbness came over me, my heart and pulse stopped beating.” What the exhumers 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 minutes of dying again...

To be fair, it must be said that Lida’s version did not inspire confidence. The sculptor N. Ramazanov, who removed 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 those 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 rotation of the skull: the side boards of the coffin were the first to rot, the lid lowers under the weight of the soil, pressing on the dead man’s head, and it turns to one side on the so-called “Atlas vertebra.”

Then Lidin launched 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,” 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. When the opening of the grave began, a skull was discovered at a shallow depth, much higher than the crypt with a walled coffin, 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 being raised around the remains of the great writer?

They remembered that in 1908, when a heavy stone was installed on the grave, it was necessary to build a brick crypt over the coffin to strengthen the base. It was then that mysterious attackers could steal the writer’s skull. As for the interested parties, it was not without reason that rumors circulated around Moscow that the unique collection of A. A. Bakhrushin, a passionate collector of theatrical memorabilia, secretly contained the skulls of Shchepkin and Gogol...

And Lidin, inexhaustible in inventions, amazed listeners with new sensational details: they say, when the writer’s ashes were taken from the Danilov Monastery to Novodevichy, some of those present at the reburial could not resist and grabbed some relics for themselves as souvenirs. One allegedly stole Gogol's rib, another - a shin bone, a third - a boot. Lidin himself even showed the guests a volume of the lifetime edition of Gogol’s works, in the binding of which he had inserted a piece of fabric that he had torn from the frock coat lying in Gogol’s coffin.

In his will, Gogol shamed those who “would be attracted by any attention to rotting dust that is no longer mine.” But the flighty descendants were not ashamed, they violated the writer’s will, and with unclean hands they began to stir up the “rotting dust” for fun. They also did not respect his covenant not to erect any monument on his grave.

The Aksakovs brought to Moscow from the shores of the Black Sea a stone shaped like Golgotha, the hill on which Jesus Christ was crucified. This stone became the basis for the cross on Gogol's grave. Next to him on the grave was a black stone in the shape of a truncated pyramid with inscriptions on the edges.

These stones and the cross were taken somewhere the day before the opening of Gogol’s burial and sunk into oblivion. Only in the early 50s, the widow of Mikhail Bulgakov accidentally discovered Gogol's Calvary stone in the lapidary's barn 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 unveiled on Prechistensky Boulevard. This sculpture, depicting a deeply dejected Gogol at the moment of his heavy thoughts, caused mixed assessments. Some enthusiastically praised her, 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 in Soviet time, 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 the Gogol of “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends,” but the Gogol of “Taras Bulba,” “The Inspector General,” and “Dead Souls.”

In 1935, the All-Union Committee for Arts under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR announced a competition for new monument 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 greatest masters of sculpture participated - M. Manizer, S. Merkurov, E. Vuchetich, N. Tomsky.

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

Disputes around Moscow monuments to Gogol continue even now. Some Muscovites tend to see the removal of monuments as a manifestation of Soviet totalitarianism and party dictatorship. 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 dark mystical aura around Gogol’s personality was largely generated by the blasphemous destruction of his grave and the absurd inventions of the irresponsible Lidin, much in the circumstances of his illness and death continues to remain mysterious.

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

Khomyakov put forward the first version, according to which the root cause of death was the severe mental shock experienced by Gogol due to the sudden death of Khomyakov’s wife Ekaterina Mikhailovna. “From then on, he was in some kind of nervous disorder, which took on the character of religious insanity,” recalled Khomyakov. “He fasted and began to starve himself, reproaching himself for gluttony.” This version seems to be confirmed by the testimony of people who saw the effect that the accusatory conversations of Father Matthew Konstantinovsky had on Gogol. It was he who demanded that Nikolai Vasilyevich observe strict fasting, demanded from him special zeal in fulfilling the harsh instructions of the church, and reproached both Gogol himself and Pushkin, whom Gogol revered, for their sinfulness and paganism. The denunciations of the eloquent priest so shocked Nikolai Vasilyevich that one day, interrupting Father Matthew, he literally groaned: “Enough! Leave me alone, I can’t listen any longer, it’s too scary!” Terty Filippov, a witness to these conversations, was convinced that the sermons of Father Matthew set Gogol in a pessimistic mood and convinced him of the inevitability of his imminent death.

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

The version that Gogol died of starvation is also not confirmed. A healthy adult can go completely without food for 30-40 days. Gogol fasted for only 17 days, and even then he did not give up food completely...

But if not from madness and hunger, then could some infectious disease have caused 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 had not 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, “The Illness and Death of Gogol.” Having carefully analyzed 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 incorrect, debilitating treatment for meningitis, which in fact did not exist, that destroyed the writer.

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

One can only regret that Bazhenov did not think to consult a toxicologist when writing his work. After all, the symptoms of Gogol’s disease described by him are practically indistinguishable from the symptoms of chronic mercury poisoning - the main component of the same calomel that every doctor who began treatment fed Gogol with. In fact, with chronic calomel poisoning, thick dark urine and various types of bleeding are possible, most often gastric, but sometimes nasal. A weak pulse could be a consequence of both the weakening of the body from polishing and the result of the action of calomel. Many noted that throughout his illness Gogol often asked to drink: thirst is one of the characteristics of the signs of chronic poisoning.

In all likelihood, the beginning of the fatal chain of events was laid by 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 to him was calomel and was prescribed by Inozemtsev, who a few days later fell ill himself and stopped seeing the patient. The writer passed into the hands of Tarasenkov, who, not knowing that Gogol had already accepted dangerous medicine, could prescribe calomel for him 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 eliminated 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, sublimate. This is exactly what apparently happened to Gogol: significant doses of 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 gradually increasing amount of calomel in his stomach caused chronic poisoning, and the weakening of the body from malnutrition, loss of spirit 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 analytical tools. But let us not become like the blasphemous exhumers of the year thirty-one 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 down the tombstones from his grave and move his monuments from place to place. Let everything connected with the memory of Gogol be preserved forever and stand in one place!

The mystery of the death of the greatest classic of literature, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, has tormented scientists, historians, and researchers for more than a century and a half. How exactly did the writer die? Let's talk about the most popular versions of what happened.

On February 21 (March 4), 1852, the great Russian writer Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol passed away. He died at the age of 42, suddenly, “burning out” in just a few weeks. There are many mysteries and mystical phenomena surrounding his death.

Sopor

This is the most popular version. Rumors about the allegedly terrible death of the classic, buried alive, turned out to be so persistent that many still consider them an absolutely reliable fact. And the poet Andrei Voznesensky even immortalized this hypothesis in 1972 in his poem “The Funeral of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol.”
We can say that this rumor was created without meaning to... Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. The fact is that he was prone to fainting and somnambulistic states. Therefore, Gogol was very afraid that during one of his attacks he would be mistaken for dead and buried.
In his “Testament” he wrote: Being in good memory and sound mind, I state here my last will. I bequeath my body not to be buried until obvious signs of decomposition appear. I mention this because even during the illness itself, moments of vital numbness came over me, my heart and pulse stopped beating... It is known that 79 years after the writer’s death, Gogol’s grave was opened to transport the remains from the necropolis of the closed Danilov Monastery to the Novodevichy cemetery. They say that his body lay in an unnatural position for a dead person - his head was turned to the side, and the upholstery of the coffin was torn to shreds. These rumors gave rise to the deep-rooted belief that Nikolai Vasilyevich died terrible death, in complete darkness, underground.
This option is almost unanimously denied by all modern historians.
To understand the illogicality of the lethargic dream version, it is enough to think about the following fact: the exhumation was carried out 79 years after the burial! It is known that the decomposition of a body in a grave occurs incredibly quickly, and after just a few years, only bone tissue remains from it, and the discovered bones no longer have close connections with each other. It is not clear how, after so many years, they could establish some kind of “twisting of the body”... And what remains of the wooden coffin and upholstery material after 79 years of being in the ground? They change so much (rot, fragment) that it is absolutely impossible to establish the fact of “scratching” the inner lining of the coffin.”
And according to the recollections of the sculptor Ramazanov, who made the writer’s death mask, post-mortem changes and the beginning of the process of tissue decomposition were clearly visible on the face of the deceased.

Suicide

In the last months of his life, Gogol suffered from a severe mental crisis. The writer was hit by the death of his close friend, Ekaterina Mikhailovna Khomyakova, who suddenly died from a rapidly developing illness at the age of 35. The classic stopped writing, devoted most of his time to prayer and fasted furiously. Gogol was overcome by the fear of death; the writer reported to his acquaintances that he heard voices telling him that he would soon be gone.
It was during that feverish period, when the writer was semi-delirious, that he burned the manuscript of the second volume of Dead Souls. It is believed that he did this largely under pressure from his confessor, Archpriest Matthew of Konstantinovsky, who was the only one who read this unpublished work and advised us to destroy the records.
The priest had a great influence on Gogol in the last weeks of his life. Considering the writer not righteous enough, the priest demanded that Nikolai Vasilyevich “renounce Pushkin” as a “sinner and pagan.” He urged Gogol to constantly pray and fast, and also intimidated him with the reprisals awaiting him for his sins “in the other world.”
The writer's depressive state intensified. He grew weaker, slept very little and ate practically nothing. In fact, the writer voluntarily extinguished himself from the light.
However, most researchers do not support the version that the writer deliberately “starved himself to death,” that is, essentially committed suicide. And for a fatal outcome, an adult must not eat for 40 days. Gogol refused food for about three weeks, and even then periodically allowed himself to eat a few spoons of oatmeal soup and drink linden tea.

Medical error

In 1902, a short article by Dr. Bazhenova“The Illness and Death of Gogol,” where he shares an unexpected thought - most likely, the writer died from incorrect treatment.
In his notes, Doctor Tarasenkov, who examined Gogol for the first time on February 16, described the writer’s condition this way: “... the pulse was weakened, the tongue was clean, but dry; the skin had a natural warmth. By all accounts, it was clear that he did not have a fever... once he had a slight nosebleed, complained that his hands were cold, his urine was thick, dark-colored...” These symptoms - thick dark urine, bleeding, constant thirst - are very similar to those observed with chronic mercury poisoning. And mercury was the main component of the drug calomel, which, as is known from evidence, Gogol was intensively fed by doctors “for stomach disorders.”
In addition, at the medical consultation, an erroneous diagnosis was made - “meningitis”. Instead of feeding the writer high-calorie foods and giving him plenty of drink, he was prescribed a procedure that weakened the body - bloodletting. And if not for this “medical care,” Gogol could have remained alive.
Each of the three versions of the writer’s death has its adherents and opponents. One way or another, this mystery has not yet been solved.

Associate Professor of the Perm Medical Academy M. I. Davidov analyzed 439 documents while studying Gogol’s disease.

Mikhail Ivanovich, even during the writer’s lifetime there were rumors in Moscow that he was suffering from “madness.” Did he have schizophrenia, as some researchers claim?

No, Nikolai Vasilyevich did not have schizophrenia. But during the last 20 years of his life he suffered, in the language of modern medicine, from manic-depressive psychosis. At the same time, he was never examined by a psychiatrist, and doctors had no idea that he had a mental illness, although close friends suspected it. The writer had periods of unusually cheerful mood, so-called hypomania. They were replaced by attacks of severe melancholy and apathy - depression.

Mental illness occurred while masquerading as various somatic (physical) illnesses. The patient was examined by leading medical luminaries of Russia and Europe: F. I. Inozemtsev, I. E. Dyadkovsky, P. Krukkenberg, I. G. Kopp, K. G. Karus, I. L. Shenlein and others. Mythical diagnoses were made: “spastic colitis”, “catarrh of the intestines”, “damage to the nerves of the gastric region”, “nervous disease” and so on. Naturally, the treatment of these imaginary diseases had no effect.

To this day, many people think that Gogol died truly horribly. He allegedly fell into a lethargic sleep, which was mistaken by those around him for death. And he was buried alive. And then he died from lack of oxygen in the grave.

These are nothing more than rumors that have nothing to do with reality. But they regularly appear on the pages of newspapers and magazines. Nikolai Vasilyevich himself is partly to blame for the emergence of these rumors. During his lifetime, he suffered from taphephobia - the fear of being buried alive, since since 1839, after suffering from malarial encephalitis, he was prone to fainting followed by prolonged sleep. And he was pathologically afraid that during such a state he might be mistaken for dead.

For more than 10 years he did not go to bed. At night he dozed off, sitting or reclining in a chair or on the sofa. It is no coincidence that in “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends” he wrote: “I bequeath my body not to be buried until obvious signs of decomposition appear.”

Gogol was buried on February 24, 1852 in the graveyard of the Danilov Monastery in Moscow, and on May 31, 1931, the writer’s ashes were transferred to the Novodevichy cemetery.

In the periodical press there are statements that during the exhumation it seemed to be discovered that the lining of the coffin seemed to be all scratched and torn. The writer's body is unnaturally twisted. This is the basis for the version that Gogol died already in the coffin.

To understand its inconsistency, it is enough to think about the following fact. The exhumation took place almost 80 years after the burial. At such a time, only bone structures that are not connected to each other remain from the body. And the coffin and upholstery change so much that it is completely impossible to determine any “scratching from the inside.”

There is also such a point of view. Gogol committed suicide by taking mercury poison shortly before his death...

Yes, indeed, some literary scholars believe that approximately two weeks before his death, Nikolai Vasilyevich took a calomel pill. And since the writer was starving, it was not removed from the stomach and acted like a strong mercury poison, causing fatal poisoning.

But for an Orthodox, deeply religious person like Gogol, any attempt at suicide was a terrible sin. In addition, one pill of calomel, a common mercury-containing medicine of the time, could not cause harm. The assumption that in a fasting person drugs remain in the stomach for a long time is erroneous. Even during fasting, drugs, under the influence of contraction of the walls of the stomach and intestines, move through the digestive canal, changing under the influence of gastric and intestinal juices. Finally, the patient had no symptoms of mercury poisoning.

Journalist Belysheva put forward a hypothesis that the writer died from the abdominal type, an outbreak of which occurred in 1852 in Moscow. It was from typhus that Ekaterina Khomyakova died, whom Gogol visited several times during her illness.

The possibility of typhoid fever in Gogol was discussed at a council held on February 20 with the participation of six famous Moscow doctors: professors A. I. Over, A. E. Evenius, I. V. Varvinsky, S. I. Klimenkov, doctors K. I. Sokologorsky and A. T. Tarasenkova. The diagnosis was categorically rejected, because Nikolai Vasilyevich really had no signs of this disease.

What conclusion did the council come to?

The writer’s attending physician A.I. Over and Professor S.I. Klimenkov insisted on the diagnosis of “meningitis” (inflammation of the meninges). This opinion was joined by other participants in the consultation, with the exception of the late Varvinsky, who diagnosed “gastroenteritis due to exhaustion.” However, the writer had no objective symptoms of meningitis: no fever, no vomiting, no tension in the neck muscles... The conclusion of the consultation turned out to be erroneous.

By that time, the writer’s condition was already serious. The pronounced exhaustion and dehydration of the body was striking. He was in a state of so-called depressive stupor. He was lying on the bed in his robe and boots. Turning his face to the wall, not talking to anyone, immersed in himself, silently waiting for death. With sunken cheeks, sunken eyes, dull gaze, weak, accelerated pulse...

What was the cause of such a serious condition?

Exacerbation of his mental illness. A psychotraumatic situation—Khomyakova’s sudden death at the end of January—caused another depression. The most severe melancholy and despondency took possession of Gogol. An acute reluctance to live arose, characteristic of this mental illness. Gogol had something similar in 1840, 1843, 1845. But then he was lucky. The state of depression passed spontaneously.

From the beginning of February 1852, Nikolai Vasilyevich almost completely deprived himself of food. Severely limited sleep. Refused to take medications. I burned the almost finished second volume of Dead Souls. He began to retire, wishing and at the same time fearfully expecting death. He firmly believed in the afterlife. Therefore, in order not to end up in hell, he exhausted himself with prayers all night long, kneeling in front of the images. Lent started 10 days earlier than expected church calendar. Essentially, it was not fasting, but complete hunger, which lasted three weeks until the writer’s death.

Science says you can survive 40 days without food.

This period is hardly unconditionally fair for healthy, strong people. Gogol was a physically weak, sick man. After previously suffering from malarial encephalitis, he suffered from bulimia - a pathologically increased appetite. I ate a lot, mostly hearty meat dishes, but due to metabolic disorders in the body I did not gain any weight. Until 1852, he practically did not observe fasts. And here, in addition to fasting, I sharply limited myself in liquids. Which, together with food deprivation, led to the development of severe nutritional dystrophy.

How was Gogol treated?

According to an incorrect diagnosis. Immediately after the end of the consultation, from 15:00 on February 20, Doctor Klimenkov began treating “meningitis” with those imperfect methods that were used in the 19th century. The patient was forcibly placed in a hot bath, and ice water was poured over his head. After this procedure, the writer felt chills, but he was kept without clothes. They performed bloodletting and placed 8 leeches on the patient’s nose to increase nosebleeds. The treatment of the patient was cruel. They shouted at him rudely. Gogol tried to resist the procedures, but his hands were wringed forcefully, causing pain...

The patient's condition not only did not improve, but became critical. At night he fell into unconsciousness. And at 8 o’clock in the morning on February 21, in his sleep, the writer’s breathing and blood circulation stopped. Medical workers wasn't nearby. There was a nurse on duty.

The participants of the consultation that took place the day before began to gather at 10 o’clock and instead of the patient they found the body of the writer, from whose face the sculptor Ramazanov was removing the death mask. The doctors clearly did not expect death to occur so quickly.

What caused it?

Acute cardiovascular failure caused by bloodletting and shock temperature effects on a patient suffering from severe nutritional dystrophy. (Such patients tolerate bleeding very poorly, often not at all. A sharp change in heat and cold also weakens cardiac activity). Dystrophy arose due to prolonged starvation. And it was caused by the depressive phase of manic-depressive psychosis. This creates a whole chain of factors.

Did the doctors openly do harm?

They made a mistake in good faith, making an incorrect diagnosis and prescribing irrational treatment that weakened the patient.

Could the writer be saved?

Force-feeding highly nutritious foods, drinking plenty of fluids, subcutaneous infusions salt solutions. If this had been done, his life would certainly have been spared. By the way, the youngest participant in the consultation, Dr. A. T. Tarasenkov, was convinced of the need for force feeding. But for some reason he did not insist on this and only passively observed the incorrect actions of Klimenkov and Over, later cruelly condemning them in his memoirs.

Now such patients are necessarily hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital. Force-fed highly nutritious formulas through a gastric tube. Saline solutions are injected subcutaneously. They also prescribe antidepressants, which did not yet exist in Gogol’s time.

The tragedy of Nikolai Vasilyevich was that his mental illness was never recognized during his lifetime.

Letter from Nikolai Ramazanov about the death of Gogol

“I bow to Nestor Vasilyevich and convey extremely sad news...

This afternoon, after lunch, I lay down on the sofa to read, when suddenly the bell rang and my servant Terenty announced that Mr. Aksakov and someone else had arrived and were asking to take off Gogol’s mask. This accident struck me so much that for a long time I could not come to my senses. Although Ostrovsky was with me yesterday and said that Gogol was seriously ill, no one expected such a denouement. At that moment I got ready, taking with me my molder Baranov, and went to Talyzin’s house, on Nikitsky Boulevard, where Nikolai Vasilyevich lived with Count Tolstoy. The first thing I encountered was a coffin roof of crimson velvet /.../ In the room on the lower floor I found the remains of someone taken by death so early.

In a minute the samovar boiled, the alabaster was diluted and Gogol’s face was covered with it. When I felt the crust of the alabaster with my palm to see if it was warm enough and strong enough, I involuntarily remembered the will (in letters to friends), where Gogol says not to bury his body until all signs of decomposition appear in the body. After removing the mask, one could be completely convinced that Gogol’s fears were in vain; he will not come to life, this is not lethargy, but an eternal sleepless dream /.../

While leaving Gogol's body, I came across two legless beggars at the porch who were standing on crutches in the snow. I gave it to them and thought: these legless poor things live, but Gogol is no longer there!”

Famous literary critic, Chief Editor academic complete works of N.V. Gogol, RSUH professor Yuri MANN commented on this document.

When and under what circumstances did this letter become known?

It was first published in the collection of M.G. Danilevsky, published in 1893 in Kharkov. The letter was not given in full, without indicating the addressee, and therefore turned out to be outside the attention of researchers who studied the circumstances of Gogol’s death. About two years ago I worked in the manuscript department of the Russian National Library (formerly the Saltykov-Shchedrin library), fund 236, storage unit 195, sheets 1-2, where I collected materials for the second volume of Gogol’s biography. (The first volume - "Through the Laughter Visible to the World..." The Life of N.V. Gogol. 1809-1835." - was published in 1994.) Among others, I discovered this document.

Why were you silent for so long?

All this time I have been working on a book where the letter will be published in full. I was forced to provide fragments of the letter for publication by the fact that by a recent sad date, the version that Gogol was buried alive again began to circulate on the pages of newspapers.

What exactly in this letter indicates that Gogol was not buried alive?

Let's start with the facts. Gogol was treated by the best doctors of that time. Even if, from the point of view of modern medicine, not everything was done as it should be, after all, these were not charlatans, not idiots, and, of course, they could distinguish the dead from the living. In addition, Gogol himself warned the doctors accordingly, or rather, his will, which said: “Being in the full presence of memory and common sense, I express here my last will. I bequeath my body not to be buried until obvious signs of decomposition appear "

But there is nothing in the letter about these signs...

And it couldn't be. Gogol died at 8 o'clock in the morning, Ramazanov appeared immediately after lunch. He was a wonderful sculptor, knew Gogol personally and, of course, paid all attention to the task assigned to him. Removing a mask from a living person is impossible. Ramazanov became convinced that Gogol’s fears were in vain, and with the greatest regret stated that this was an eternal dream. The reliability of his conclusion is increased by the fact that attention was directed accordingly, that is, Gogol’s testament. Hence the categorical conclusion.

Why did Gogol’s head turn out to be turned?

It happens that the lid of a coffin shifts under pressure. At the same time, she touches the skull, and it turns.

And yet the version that Gogol was buried alive is circulating...

The reason for this is life circumstances, character, psychological appearance. Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov said that Gogol’s nerves were upside down. Everything could be expected from him. We must also take into account that two secrets were involuntarily combined: " Dead Souls"were supposed to reveal the secret of Russian life, the destiny of the Russian people. When Gogol died, Turgenev said that some secret was hidden in this death. As often happens, the high mystery of Gogol's life and work was relegated to the level of a cheap fictional move and melodramatic effect , which always fits mass culture.

The personality of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol is shrouded in mystery. Before his death, he was hungry, had a fever, and heard voices. He died on March 4, 1852, less than a month old at the age of 43. The opening of the grave and the transfer of the remains to another cemetery gave rise to many rumors. There is still debate about the causes of the writer’s death.

Secret life and mysterious reason Gogol's death causes numerous debates among literary scholars, historians, psychologists and ordinary readers. Over the years, along with many of the characters in his works, the author himself turned into a semi-fantastic figure.

Date of death

Date of death of N.V. Gogol March 4, 1852 Great classic of Russian literature died, a little less than a month before reaching the age of 43. The full circumstances of the writer’s death still remain unclear.

“I am considered a mystery to everyone, no one can completely solve me,” - this is how Nikolai Vasilyevich wrote about himself, and this is what happened after his death.

Events before death

The physical and mental condition of Nikolai Vasilyevich began to deteriorate in January 1852. From this period, a struggle between two personalities begins in him: the writer (artist of words) and the zealous Christian.

Starvation

Since February 5, 1852, Nikolai Vasilyevich eats very little. Perhaps the reason for Gogol's fasting was the incidents that happened to him recently:

• the unexpected death of Ekaterina Mikhailovna Khomyakova, with whom the writer was very friendly and often shared his literary plans. After this, Gogol said that once during prayer he heard voices warning that he would soon die;
• frequent quarrels and the expressed opinion of Archpriest Matthew Konstantinovsky, to whom the writer in a fever gave the 2nd volume of “Dead Souls” to read. He responded negatively to the essay, urgently asking to burn some chapters, and called the manuscript itself “harmful.”

After 5 days, Gogol asks Alexei Tolstoy to hand over the briefcase with manuscripts to the Moscow Metropolitan. The Count refuses, fearing that his actions will increase his friend’s mental agitation.

Burning of manuscripts

Subjecting his body to fasting, the writer stops leaving the house. On the night of February 11-12, he wakes up the servant, orders him to open the stove and bring a briefcase with works. As a result, the manuscripts are almost completely burned.

In the morning, he explained to Tolstoy that he planned to destroy the separately folded things, but was influenced by an evil spirit. Thus, the manuscripts containing Volume II of Dead Souls, which the writer worked on before his death, were burned, and we will never know what was in them.

Archpriest Konstantinovsky is one of the few who managed to read the second volume.

On February 18, Gogol completely refused to eat; he was already exhausted. The doctors tried to force him to eat, but nothing came of it. On February 20, the writer fell into unconsciousness, and on the morning of the 21st (March 4, new style) he died.

Property left after the death of Nikolai Gogol

After the classic died, an inventory of his meager property was taken. The only valuables were a gold watch donated by Zhukovsky. The extensive library, consisting of 234 volumes, was not described in detail, so it is impossible to understand what Nikolai Vasilyevich read before his death.

Information about the writer’s manuscripts and notes was not mentioned in official papers. It later turned out that Count Tolstoy confiscated them before the police arrived. Later he handed over the papers to the relatives of the deceased. As a result, the 5 chapters remaining from the second volume of Dead Souls were published in 1855.

Funeral and grave of the writer

The funeral service for the body of the deceased was held on March 7, 1852 in the Church of the Martyr Tatiana, which belongs to Moscow University. He was buried on this day in the cemetery of the Danilov Monastery. As a monument at Gogol's grave, a calvary was used on which a bronze cross stood.

With the advent of Soviet power, the monastery was closed and liquidated, the writer’s burial along with the calvary was moved to the Novodevichy cemetery, where it is currently located.

Hypotheses about the causes of death

In the story of the writer’s death, there are several versions, each of which requires the right to exist. The most plausible are the following.

The version of lethargic sleep into which the author fell as a result of severe exhaustion is confirmed by many historians. They claim that at the time of exhumation, the writer’s head was in an unnatural position for a dead person. A similar opinion is shared by the sculptor N. Ramazanov, who was invited to make a death mask of the face of the deceased.

The version of burial alive can be refuted by the fact that the writer’s skull moved from its place as a result of the coffin board rotting underneath it. This led to displacement of the cervical vertebrae. That's why the head was slightly turned to the side.

“Repentant rejection of carnal things” implies secretly falling under psychological impact spiritualism (a religious and philosophical movement based on the belief in life after death). According to this version, Gogol brought himself into a state of clinical death by starvation.

There is another hypothesis, according to which Nikolai Vasilyevich also brought himself to death. This is manic-depressive psychosis or paroxysmal schizophrenia, expressed in increased religiosity, which he has suffered from recently.

The latest version is that Gogol was killed by a disease unknown to doctors of that time. Lack of knowledge led to erroneous treatment, prescription of drugs that aggravated the writer’s condition, as was the case in last days his life. As a result, the body weakened by starvation and the depressed mental state, together with contraindicated drugs, did their job.

short biography

• it’s not possible to go to college;
• It’s also not possible to break into the theater stage;
• work as a low-ranking official is not satisfactory;
• the written stories are not popular.

The situation changes in the early 30s, when Gogol's mystical and funny stories become popular. His stories about Ukrainian life, included in the collection “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka,” made a strong impression on Pushkin. However, after 10 years, the era of “withering” begins:

• the number of works is reduced.
• The general condition deteriorates, as a result of which the author dies under strange circumstances.

Where and when was he born

The writer was born into the family of a landowner, in the Poltava province, on March 20, 1809. In 1828 he moved to St. Petersburg, where he began to engage in creativity, trying to get a job in the theater, but to no avail.

A year later he takes up the position of assistant chief, but serving as an official turns out not to be for him. As a result, Nikolai leaves her and devotes himself to creativity.

Famous works

The first jobs didn't pay desired result. They were not in demand and are little known today. The work “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka”, published in 1831, brought success.

The subsequent 10-year period is considered the era of the heyday of Nikolai Vasilyevich’s creativity. At this time, he wrote works that were recognized by his contemporaries, and after his death they became classics of Russian and world literature:

• “Mirgorod” is a collection of stories considered a continuation of “Evenings” (“Viy”, “Taras Bulba”).
• "Old World Landowners"
• St. Petersburg stories, revealing the life of officials with an inherent dose of humor (“Overcoat”, “Nose”, “Portrait”).
• Stories considered separate works(“The Inspector General”, “Dead Souls”).

Mysterious person

The life and incomprehensible death of N.V. Gogol is filled with dramatic events, the plot of which no one has yet been able to reveal. This could well have happened because the writer was not married, moved away from his parents’ home early, did not achieve what he wanted in life, and the creative thread began to be lost.

Finding himself alone in a big, foreign city as a teenager, he closed himself off and created works in the hope of expressing his own, individual point of view. Or maybe he wants to warn about something...

Video

“Gogol. The Mystery of Death" - a documentary project of the Ostankino television company