Gogol's work has long been recognized throughout the world, and the writer himself is known as an original and unsurpassed genius. There is still no general opinion about his works. If we examine the memories of contemporaries about a talented and mystical writer, then everyone characterizes him as a strange, a little crafty, mysterious and secretive person who had a craving for deception and mystification. Even his close friend Pletnev, not hiding from Nikolai Gogol, his opinion about him more than once said that he was selfish and distrustful, arrogant and secretive. But N. Gogol's life was poor: all his property was placed in a small suitcase and consisted of four sets of bed linen. Therefore, he often asked to borrow money from his friends. Therefore, not only his life was strange, but his death turned out to be just as mystical and full of mysteries.

House on Nikitsky Boulevard

It is known that the writer spent four years of his life, just before his death, in a large house on Nikitsky Boulevard. This building has survived to this day. There are those two rooms in which the writer lived. They are located on the first floor of the house. There is still a fireplace in which the author burned his manuscript of the second volume of the greatest poem Dead Souls. But it has changed a bit over time. The owners of the house are fat. The writer met them at the age of 30, but then they became friends, and Count Alexander Petrovich and his wife even offered their new friend, who was in poverty and wandering, to stay with them.

One of the contemporaries of that time wrote about how the author of mystical works lived in the Tolstoy house:

According to the memoirs of the same contemporary, Countess Anna Georgievna ordered that food be served to him on time and where he ordered. His underwear was not only washed and laid out, but also sprayed with perfume. Despite the fact that there were many servants in the house who looked after him, a young man from Little Russia was personally discharged for him. Stepan, like the writer himself, was a quiet and calm person.

The author experienced great stress in 1852 after the death of his friend Khomyakov's wife. He loved Ekaterina Mikhailovna, so her death shocked him so much. She became the ideal woman for him. She died on January 26th. Then he confesses to his confessor that he is afraid of his own death. This date of the death of Gogol's female ideal began to bring the mystical writer closer to death. Already on January 30, after a church memorial service, he told the Aksakovs that he felt better, but the fear of death still frightens him. He also visited the Aksakovs in early February, where he mentioned in a conversation that he was tired of work.

Already on February 4, he tells Shevyrev that he feels a breakdown, so he decided to fast a little. The next day, to the same friend, he complains of stomach pains and that the medicine he was given does not work somehow. On the same day, the preacher Matthew Konstantinovsky demanded fasting from the writer. Nikolai Gogol decided to obey him and, having abandoned his literary work for a while, he practically stopped eating, although he had a good appetite and was tormented by hunger. At night he prayed. And only on February 8, he was finally able to fall asleep. He had a strange dream: he saw his dead body and some voices.

But already on February 11, Nikolai Gogol became so ill that he could not walk and took to his bed. He kept dozing, spoke little and reluctantly, and was not at all glad of the visits of his friends. But still, having gathered with the last of his strength, he reached the church in the Tolstoy courtyard and with difficulty defended the service. That same night, at three o'clock in the morning, he called Semyon, whom he ordered to bring him a briefcase, where his notebooks lay. These were the manuscripts of the second volume of the poem Dead Souls. He put all the notebooks in the fireplace and set it on fire. When everything burned down, the writer returned to his room and, already lying on the sofa, wept like a child. Only in the morning did he realize what he had done and greatly repented

Hypotheses about Gogol's disease

The researcher of the personality of N. Gogol, the psychiatrist Chizh, wrote an article in which he outlined his vision of the illness of the mystical writer. The researcher claims that the mystical writer developed mental illness in his youth, but the disease began to progress about ten years before his death. The reason for this disorder, the same researcher calls his strong passion for religion. But it is still worth looking into this in more detail.

When Nikolai Gogol fell ill, Count Tolstoy hurried to call a doctor for him. At that time, Inozemtsev was considered the best doctor in the capital, who first diagnosed him with typhus, and then just a slight malaise. Another doctor, Tarasenkov, was immediately invited by the count. But Gogol agreed to be examined by this doctor only from his second visit. According to the doctor's recollections, he saw an emaciated writer, but all his attempts to persuade him to eat normally were unsuccessful.

All friends and acquaintances tried to persuade him, but each time they were refused. He also stopped taking care of himself: he did not wash and comb his hair, and did not want to get dressed at all. He drank water and ate little. Already on the seventeenth of February, he went to bed without taking off his boots and dressing gown. He never got up from her again. When he passed the sacraments of communion and repentance, the mystical writer wept. His friends tried to persuade him to be treated, but Nikolai Gogol placed all his hopes only on God. But Count Tolstoy still fought for his life. And on the same day, February 17, he invited another doctor. But Auvers couldn't say or do anything either.

The very next day, all of Moscow knew about N. Gogol's illness, so on February 19 all his fans crowded near the house of Count Tolstoy. But the writer did not want to see anyone. One of my friends brought doctor Alfonsky. It was decided to use psychics and for this they invited a doctor with special abilities Sokologorsky. but the sick writer drove him away too. He was followed by the rude Dr. Klimenkov, whom the writer also drove away. But Klimenkov proposed a more active treatment. Therefore, already on February 20, a medical consultation is going to be held, at which it was decided to put several leeches on him and do a cold douche in a warm bath, put mustard plasters and other procedures.

By the evening of the same day, the pulse of the sick writer began to disappear, his breathing was interrupted. At 11 pm he began to see something. After trying to get up, he fell into unconsciousness. At 12 o'clock his legs began to get cold. Nikolai Gogol died at 8 o'clock in the morning without regaining consciousness. It happened on Thursday, February 21, 1852. At ten o'clock in the morning he was already washed and dressed, and at that time the plaster mask was removed from his face. The brilliant writer was buried at 12 noon on February 24.

Hypotheses about the causes of death of N. Gogol

To date, there are several versions of what the writer Nikolai Gogol did die from:

Sopor.
Suicide.
Exhaustion by hunger.
medical error

The version of lethargic sleep is the most common. This is due to the fact that his coffin was opened. After 79 years, the writer's coffin was secretly removed from the grave, since the monastery where the mystical writer was buried was given over to a colony for children, and it was decided to transfer all the burials to the Novodevichy cemetery. This event took place on May 31, 1931. Witnesses recall that the coffin was not found at all in the place where it was expected to be found. When the coffin was opened, the skull of the mystical writer was turned on its side. This gave rise to rumors that Nikolai Gogol was buried alive. But the sculptor, who made the death mask from Gogol's face, claimed that traces of decomposition were already visible on his body. Most likely, the side boards of the coffin simply rotted, and the lid fell, pressing on the skull.

One version said that the mystical writer was buried without a head. Lidin said that when the coffin of the mystical writer was opened, the corpse began not with a skull, as is usually the case, but with the cervical vertebrae. When Gogol's grave was opened for the second time, the skull lay separately, but it did not belong to a mystical writer, but it was the skull of some young man. The mystery of the disappearance of the skull of Nikolai Gogol is still unknown. But there were rumors in Moscow that at the beginning of the twentieth century this skull was seen in the unusual collection of Bakhrushin.

It is believed that in the last months of his life, the mystical writer was in a state of spiritual crisis. This was especially aggravated after the death of Khomyakova, who was barely 35 years old. He quits writing at this time, fasting, afraid of death. It is known that his confessor demanded that the author burn the manuscripts and stop any communication with Pushkin, who, in his opinion, was a great sinner. It was he who urged Nikolai Gogol not only to pray more, but also to refrain from eating. It is known that Nikolai Gogol starved for seventeen days, so starvation as one of the versions of the death of the writer arises. But scientists have proven that a person can go without food for more than 30 days. But the author's depression only intensified.

There is another version, according to which it is argued that Gogol's death is an ordinary mistake of doctors. One of the investigators of the death of this mystical writer, Dr. Bazhenov, claims that, most likely, the writer was treated incorrectly. He focuses on what description of the appearance of Nikolai Vasilyevich describes the doctor Tarasenkov. The researcher claims that all of these symptoms point to mercury poisoning. And she was part of calomel, the drug with which the sick writer was so abundantly treated. This medicine is harmless if excreted through the intestines, but Gogol had a period of exhaustion when he ate practically nothing. Accordingly, doses of the drug that were given before were not withdrawn, and yet new ones were received. At this time, the doctors had to ensure that he ate more high-calorie food and drink plenty of food, and instead he was prescribed bloodletting. But the mystery of Gogol's death has not yet been solved.

In world practice, there are repeatedly cases when doctors established the fact of a false death of a person. It’s good if such a patient comes out of a state of imaginary death before his own funeral, but, apparently, sometimes living people turn out to be in the graves ... So, for example, when an old English cemetery was reburied, when many coffins were opened, skeletons were found in four of them lying in unnatural positions, in which their relatives could not see them off on their last journey.

It is known that Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, who suffered from bouts of lethargic sleep, was afraid of being buried alive. Considering that lethargy from death can be very difficult to distinguish. Gogol ordered his acquaintances to bury him only when there were clear signs of decomposition of the body. However, in May 1931, when the cemetery of the Danilov Monastery, where the great writer was buried, was destroyed in Moscow, during the exhumation, those present were horrified to find that Gogol's skull was turned to one side.

However, there was no lethargic sleep at the time of death, which I found documentary evidence while collecting material for this article in the historical section http://www.forum-orion.com/viewforum.php?f=451 of the forum library. Why, then, during the reburial, a skeleton with a skull turned to one side was found in the coffin?

This fact inspired Andrei Voznesensky to write a poem:
Open the coffin and freeze in the snow. Gogol, crouching, lies on his side. An ingrown toenail tore the lining of the boot.
But how was it really? In May 1931, in connection with the liquidation of part of the necropolis near the Danilov Monastery, the reburial of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol took place. The ceremony was attended by many writers: Vsevolod Ivanov, Yuri Olesha, Mikhail Svetlov and others. When the coffin was opened, everyone was struck by the unusual posture for the deceased.

But it turned out that there is nothing surprising in that. As experts explained, the side boards of the coffin are usually the first to rot. They are the narrowest and most fragile. The lid begins to fall under the weight of the soil, presses on the head of the buried person, and it turns to its side on the so-called atlas vertebra. Exhumation professionals claim that they encounter this pose of the dead quite often. However, the well-known suspiciousness of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, his belief in the mysteries beyond the grave, covered with a touch of mystery not only his death, but also the burning of the manuscript of the second volume of Dead Souls. Gogol in the last years of his life became very discouraged: he did not receive acquaintances, remained alone at night, spent a lot of time in prayer, cried, fasted, thought about death, tried to remain in an armchair, believing that the bed would be his deathbed.

Associate Professor of the Perm Medical Academy M. I. Davidov, whom our readers know from publications about the injuries of A. S. Pushkin and M. Yu. Lermontov, analyzed 439 documents, studying Gogol's disease.

Mikhail Ivanovich, even during the life of the writer, rumors circulated in Moscow that he was suffering from "madness". Did he have schizophrenia, as some researchers claim?

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

Mental illness proceeded, masquerading as various somatic (bodily) illnesses. The patient was examined by the 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.

Until now, many people think that Gogol died truly horribly. He allegedly had a lethargic dream, taken by others 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 partially to blame for the appearance of these rumors. During his lifetime, he suffered from taphephobia - the fear of being buried alive, because since 1839, after suffering 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 the deceased.

For more than 10 years he did not go to bed. He dozed at night, sitting or reclining in an armchair or on a sofa. It is no coincidence that in "Selected places from correspondence with friends" he wrote: "I bequeath my body not to be buried until clear 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 ashes of the writer were transferred to the Novodevichy cemetery.

There are statements in the periodical press that during the exhumation, it seemed to be discovered that the lining of the coffin seemed to be all scratched and torn. The body of the writer is unnaturally twisted. This is the basis of the version that Gogol died already in the coffin.
- To understand its inconsistency, it is enough to think about the following fact. The exhumation was carried out almost 80 years after the burial. At such times, 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 absolutely impossible to determine any "scratching from the inside".
- There is such a point of view. Gogol committed suicide by taking mercury poison shortly before his death...
- Yes, indeed, some literary critics believe that about two weeks before his death, Nikolai Vasilyevich took a calomel pill. And since the writer was starving, she was not excreted from the stomach and acted like a strong mercury poison, causing fatal poisoning.

But for an Orthodox, deeply religious person, like Gogol, any suicide attempt was a terrible sin. In addition, one pill of calomel, a common mercury-containing medicine of the time, could not have done any harm. The judgment that drugs stay in the stomach for a long time in a starving person 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.

The journalist Belysheva put forward a hypothesis that the writer died of an abdominal type, an outbreak of which was 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 consultation held on February 20 with the participation of six well-known Moscow doctors: professors A. I. Over, A. E. Evenius, I. V. Varvinsky, S. I. Klimenkov, doctors K. I. and A. T. Tarasenkov. 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 physician A. I. Over and Professor S. I. Klimenkov insisted on the diagnosis of meningitis (inflammation of the meninges). This opinion was shared by other members of the council, with the exception of the late Varvinsky, who diagnosed him with gastroenteritis due to exhaustion. However, the writer had no objective symptoms of meningitis: no fever, no vomiting, no tension in the occipital muscles... The conclusion of the consultation turned out to be erroneous.
By that time, the writer's condition was already difficult. There was a pronounced emaciation and dehydration of the body. He was in a state of so-called depressive stupor. Lying on the bed right in a dressing gown and boots. Turning his face to the wall, not talking to anyone, immersed in himself, silently waiting for death. With sunken cheeks, sunken eyes, a dull look, a weak, accelerated pulse...
- What was the reason for such a serious condition?
- Exacerbation of his mental illness. The traumatic situation - the sudden death of Khomyakova at the end of January - caused another depression. The most severe melancholy and despondency seized Gogol. There was an acute unwillingness to live, characteristic of this mental illness. Gogol had something similar in 1840, 1843, 1845. But then he was happy. The state of depression spontaneously passed.
From the beginning of February 1852, Nikolai Vasilievich almost completely deprived himself of food. Severely limited sleep. Refused to take medication. He burned the almost finished second volume of Dead Souls. He began to retire, wishing and at the same time fearfully waiting for 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 before the images. Lent began 10 days earlier than expected according to the church calendar. In essence, it was not a fast, but a complete famine that lasted three weeks, until the death of the writer.
- Science says that you can survive for 40 days without food.
- This term is hardly unconditionally fair even for healthy, strong people. Gogol was a physically weak, sick man. After suffering from earlier malarial encephalitis, he suffered from bulimia - a pathologically increased appetite. He ate a lot, mostly hearty meat dishes, but due to metabolic disorders in the body, he did not gain weight at all. Until 1852, he practically did not observe fasts. And here, in addition to starvation, he sharply limited himself to liquids. Which, together with food deprivation, led to the development of severe alimentary dystrophy.
- How was Gogol treated?
- According to a misdiagnosis. Immediately after the end of the consultation, from 3 pm on February 20, Dr. Klimenkov began to treat "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 was shivering, but he was kept without clothes. Bloodletting was performed, 8 leeches were put to the nose of the patient to increase nosebleeds. The treatment of the patient was cruel. They yelled at him harshly. Gogol tried to resist the procedures, but his hands were wrung with force, 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 a dream, the writer's breathing and circulation stopped. There were no medical workers around. A nurse was on duty.
The participants of the consultation held the day before began to gather by 10 o'clock and instead of the patient they found the corpse of the writer, from whose face the sculptor Ramazanov removed the death mask. Doctors clearly did not expect such a rapid onset of death.
- What caused it?
- Acute cardiovascular insufficiency caused by bloodletting and shock temperature effects on a patient suffering from severe alimentary dystrophy. (Such patients do not tolerate bleeding very well, often not at all large. A sharp change in heat and cold also weakens cardiac activity). Dystrophy arose due to prolonged starvation. And it was due to the depressive phase of manic-depressive psychosis. Thus, a whole chain of factors is obtained.
- Doctors frankly harmed?
- They were conscientiously mistaken, making a wrong diagnosis and prescribing an irrational, debilitating treatment for the patient.
Could the writer have been saved?
- Force-feeding highly nutritious foods, drinking plenty of water, subcutaneous infusions of saline solutions. If this had been done, his life would certainly have been spared. By the way, the youngest member of the council, Dr. A. T. Tarasenkov, was sure of the need for force-feeding. But for some reason, he did not insist on this and only passively watched the wrong actions of Klimenkov and Auvers, later severely condemning them in his memoirs.
Now such patients are necessarily hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital. Force-fed high-nutrient mixtures through a stomach tube. Salt solutions are injected subcutaneously. They also prescribe antidepressants, which were not yet available in Gogol's time.

The tragedy of Nikolai Vasilyevich was that his mental illness during his lifetime was never recognized.
Nikolai Ramazanov's letter on Gogol's death

"I bow to Nestor Vasilyevich and inform you of extremely sad news ...
That afternoon, after dinner, 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 asked to remove the mask from Gogol. This accident struck me so much that for a long time I could not come to my senses. Although yesterday Ostrovsky used to say to me that Gogol was seriously ill, but no one expected such a denouement. At that moment, I got ready, taking my molder Baranov with me, and went to Talyzin's house, on Nikitsky Boulevard, where Nikolai Vasilyevich lived with Count Tolstoy. The first thing I met was a crimson velvet coffin roof /.../ In a room on the ground 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 alabaster with my palm to see if it had warmed up and strengthened enough, I involuntarily remembered the testament (in letters to friends), where Gogol says not to bury his body in the ground until all signs of decomposition appear in the body. After removing the mask, one could be fully convinced that Gogol's fears were in vain; he will not come to life, this is not lethargy, but an eternal deep sleep /.../
When 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 poor poor things are living, but Gogol is no more!"
(Nikolai Ramazanov - to Nestor Kukolnik, February 22, 1852).

Well-known literary critic, editor-in-chief of the academic complete works 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 specifying the addressee, and therefore was out of the attention of researchers who studied the circumstances of Gogol's death. About two years ago I worked in the manuscript department of the National Library of Russia (the former library named after Saltykov-Shchedrin), fund 236, item 195, sheet 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. - came out in 1994.) I found this document among others.
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 the recent sad date, the version that Gogol was buried alive again went for a walk through 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. If, from the point of view of modern medicine, not everything was done as it should, after all, they 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, where it was said: “Being in the full presence of memory and common sense, I state here my last will. I bequeath my body not to be buried until there are clear signs of decomposition ."
- 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 dinner. He was a wonderful sculptor, he knew Gogol personally and, of course, he paid full attention to the assigned work. Removing a mask from a living person is impossible. Ramazanov was 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 in the coffin the lid shifts under pressure. In doing so, she touches the skull, and it turns.
- And yet, the version that Gogol was buried alive is circulating ...
- The reason for this is the circumstances of life, character, psychological appearance. Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov said that Gogol's nerves were upside down. Everything could be expected from him. It must also be taken into account that two mysteries were involuntarily conjugated: "Dead Souls" was 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 lofty mystery of Gogol's life and work was reduced to the level of cheap fiction and melodramatic effect, which are always fit for mass culture.

Academician Ivan Pavlov described a certain Kachalkin who slept for 20 years from 1898 to 1918. His heart, instead of the usual 70-80 beats per minute, made only 2-3 barely perceptible beats. Instead of 16-18 breaths, he did 1-2 imperceptible breaths per minute. That is, all the functions of the human body have slowed down by about 20-30 times. At the same time, there are no signs of life, no reflexes, the body temperature is slightly warmer than the air temperature. For many days, patients do not drink, do not eat, the excretion of urine and feces stops. As relatives often notice, people who have slept for 2-3 decades outwardly age only a year during this period. But after waking up, apparently, the natural processes in the body take their toll, and over the next 3-4 years, those who wake up "gain" their "passport" age.
Lethargy - from the Greek "lete" (oblivion) ​​and "argy" (inaction). The Great Medical Encyclopedia (3rd edition, 1980) defines lethargy as "a state of pathological sleep with a more or less pronounced decrease in metabolism and a weakening or lack of response to sound, tactile and pain stimuli. The causes of lethargy have not been established."
There are cases when a lethargic dream arose periodically. One English priest slept six days a week, and on Sunday he got up to eat and serve a prayer service. Clear statistics on lethargic "falling asleep" has never been conducted by anyone, but it is known that most people suffer from this disease in adulthood. It was often mentioned that after a lethargic sleep, awakened people acquire paranormal abilities for some time - they begin to speak foreign languages, read people's thoughts, and heal ailments. The correspondent of "Interfax TIME" managed to visit a young woman-phenomenon Nazira Rustemova, who fell asleep at the age of four and slept in a lethargic dream for 16 years!!! Nazira kindly agreed to answer some questions about her unusual fate.
Nazira, how old are you? How did it happen that you fell asleep?
I fell asleep at the age of four. I don't remember how it was, because I was very young.
Soon I should be 36 years old, but I slept through 16 of them. I was born in a small mountain village near the city of Turkestan in the South Kazakhstan region. From the stories of my mother, I know that since childhood I suffered from severe headaches, then one day I fell into a state of delirium, and I was taken to the regional hospital, where I lay for about a week. The doctors decided that I had died because I did not show any signs of life, and my parents buried me. But the night after that, my grandfather and father heard a Voice in a dream, which told them that they had committed a grave sin, as they buried me alive.
- How did you not suffocate?
- According to our customs, people are not buried in coffins and are not buried in the ground. The human body is wrapped in a shroud and left in a special underground burial house of a special configuration. Apparently, there was air access there, despite the fact that the entrance to the burial ground is closed with bricks. Parents waited for the second night and went to "rescue me." According to dad, the shroud was even torn in some places, and this convinced them that I was really alive. I was first taken to the regional center, but then transferred to a research institute in Tashkent, where I lay under a special cap until I woke up.
- When you were sleeping, did you see anything? Were there dreams?
- These were not dreams, I LIVED there. I communicated with my ancestor, to whom I am a granddaughter in the fourteenth generation.
He was the greatest mystic, scholar, spiritual healer and Sufi poet of the 12th century.
His name is Ahmed Yasawi, and a large temple was built in his honor in Turkestan. I talked with him, walked through the gardens and lakes. It was very good there.
- What was your "second birth"? What did you wake up from?
- I woke up on August 29, 1985 from a phone call. He called long and hard. I realized that no one but me would pick up the phone and I needed to get up and pick it up. I went to the bell and heard another radio on which Valery Leontiev sang: "Joy pops up through the fog and like in a dream ..." It turns out that the phone rang in the next room. Some of the institute's staff was sitting there, and when they saw me, they were probably shocked.
- At the age of four, did you know what a telephone was? And in general, do you remember anything before sleep?
- Virtually nothing, because I was very small. I only remember my grandfather and how he taught me prayers. Of course, at that time I could not write, read, or speak Russian. Naturally, there was never a telephone in the village, and I never heard Leontiev's song. But at the moment of waking up, I clearly knew everything about phones and knew the song I heard by heart.
- That is, after waking up, you began to possess some knowledge and abilities unusual for an ordinary person ...
- Yes. The doctors almost fainted when they saw me standing in front of them, because the pressure chamber in which I was lying was closed, and no one opened it. She remained intact and unharmed. But I got out of it, or rather, I went through it, as I went through the walls to get into the next room, where the phone was ringing. After what they saw, Tashkent specialists called Moscow and reported that their patient woke up from a 16-year hibernation and began to do incredible things. Upon arrival in Moscow, many psychologists and parapsychologists worked with me, studied my abilities, and examined me. I was taken from one place to another, to different countries, they showed me in the TV show "Third Eye". At that time, the whole new world was completely unusual and surprising for me. When I was "introduced" to my mom and dad, I didn't know why I needed them. In addition, everyone was terribly afraid of me, and my mother even offered to take me to a madhouse. And dad said that it was useless to do anything with me, since you won’t tie me up, you won’t ban me - I’ll still go through the walls.
- What else could you do and how can you explain the emergence of such abilities?
- I could levitate - take off from the ground and fly in the truest sense of the word. I knew the language of nature, the language of animals, all existing languages, I could communicate telepathically. The latter has survived to this day.
Only if earlier I only had to look at a person, I knew his thoughts and he understood that I was answering him, now it has become more difficult. I have to adjust and focus. In the first years after waking up, I could even materialize money if I needed it. This ability has been closed to me for over a year now.
To my own surprise, I discovered that I could teleport - move around in space. Let my friend Sergey tell about this case better.
- Physically, it happened like this. Nazira and I were on the bus, I got off at the bus stop, and she drove on to the subway. I crossed the road and quickly walked to one office. There was a sign at the entrance: "Lunch". Then I turned around and saw Nazira standing in front of me. But how could she be here when I saw how she stayed on the bus, how its doors closed and it started off? I waved to her again! How did you do it, Nazira?
- And I got to the subway, started to go down the stairs and suddenly remembered that Sergey had my documents, money, tokens. I don't know how I did it, I had one strong desire - to return the handbag. In addition, I did not know where Sergey was at that moment, but I needed to find him. And here I was in front of him. That is, I kind of disappeared from one point in space and appeared in another. But, unfortunately, my ability to teleport disappeared about three years ago. Apparently, at that time there was practically nothing material in me, I was in a spiritual body. It was then that I was fed with meat, bread, and I more and more began to "enter" the physical body.
- Nazira, you fell asleep as a small child, and woke up as a mature woman?
- No, despite the fact that by the time I woke up I should have been 20 years old, I woke up as a child. True, in 16 years of sleep, I grew by 28 centimeters. Then I formed quite quickly, as if in accelerated time, and, as you can see, now I look my age, if you count from the day of birth. But I kind of skipped my childhood years and still feel like a kid.
- For 16 years of sleep, you have not forgotten how to move on your feet?
- I know that if a person lies even for several months without moving, then the muscles of his body will atrophy and it is necessary to learn to walk again. But I didn’t have a single muscle numb, and I went without hesitation.
- Nazira, did you study at school, institute?
- No, of course not, and it's not necessary. If I have a question, then I receive an answer from above, from a certain information field. Otherwise I can't explain it. At first, as I said, I knew almost all languages ​​and writing. Now a lot, however, began to be forgotten, probably due to the fact that practice was necessary. Currently, I write and speak only in Russian, Kazakh, Uzbek, Tajik and Arabic. I can still write in English, but I can no longer read and understand what I have written. Many say that it is possible to return all my former knowledge and unusual abilities, and I really hope so...

Here is such an extraordinary woman Nazira Rustemova now lives in Moscow. Recently, she realized that her physical body is not afraid of either heat or cold, since then, both in summer and in winter, a woman walks only barefoot and in a light dress. Repeatedly, special attention was paid to her by the guardians of the capital's order, and Nazira had to serve a couple of times in the police.

Not only the fate and abilities of a young woman are unusual, her appearance is also amazing. Dark, deep eyes glow with genuine sincerity, kindness and love. On the one hand, Nazira is a wise woman, on the other hand, she is an open, direct child. By the way, let's remember what Jesus taught: "Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven" (Gospel of Matthew, ch. 18, v. 3). In addition, in almost all esoteric teachings, the process of self-improvement of the individual involves the growth and development of the human essence. But already in a five-year-old child, this essence ceases to develop and "overgrown with a thick shell" of instilled manners, decency and other limits that restrict freedom.

According to some authoritative metaphysicians, when a person is in a state of lethargic sleep, his soul resides in a subtler world than the physical one - in the astral one. In this world, where all life processes occur at the level of thought, Nazira, apparently, spent 16 earthly years, from there she received all her extraordinary knowledge and abilities. The line between the astral and the physical world for Nazira remained blurred. Living for an ever longer time here on Earth, a woman involuntarily "drawn" into the gross world and began to lose touch with the subtle. As a result of this, her paranormal abilities began to be lost, which Nazira is very worried about. However, the woman refuses the help of some rather obsessive "gurus" of various esoteric schools and believes that she will be able to return the abilities of a person of the future without their guardianship.

For more than 150 years, 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 are sure that he committed suicide by starving himself to death. However, the truth, as it turned out, in this whole story is only apparent, somewhat ephemeral. The facts that have survived to this day, and the studies of contemporaries, make it possible to draw certain conclusions about how Gogol died. Therefore, now we will examine in detail all these materials and his last years of life.

A few words about the writer's life

The now famous playwright, writer, critic, writer and poet was born in the Poltava province in 1809. In his native land, he graduated from a gymnasium, after which he entered the Academy of Higher Sciences for the children of the provincial nobility. There he learned the basics of literature, painting and other arts. 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 single out A. Pushkin. It was he who became the closest friend of the then young Nikolai Gogol, who opened new doors for him in literary criticism and influenced the formation of his social and cultural views. In St. Petersburg, the writer begins to compile the first volume of Dead Souls, but in his homeland the work is beginning to be criticized very harshly. Nikolai Vasilievich goes to Europe and, having visited a number of cities, stops in Rome, where he finishes writing the first volume, after which he starts the second. It was after he returned from Italy that the doctors (and all his close people) began to notice changes in the writer's state of mind, not 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 it 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 was suffering 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 different, and somewhat different circumstances caused the death of this writer, if you read it in more detail, he tells that the last 20 years of his life the author suffered from That is, he had periods when his mood became especially cheerful, but they were quickly replaced by the opposite - severe depression. Not knowing such a definition in those years, doctors made the most ridiculous diagnoses for Nikolai - “gut catarrh”, “spastic colitis” and others. It is now believed that it was the treatment of these imaginary 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 curved, 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, is natural), so they could not find any scratches or other marks there.

An 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 taphephobia - this is precisely the very fear of being buried in the ground during his lifetime. This fear was based on the fact that after suffering from malaria in Italy, he often fainted, which caused his pulse to slow down too much, breathing also almost completely stopped. Then the author of "Viya" and "Evenings on a farm near Dikanka" woke up and felt fine. It was for this reason that he hardly went to bed for the last 10 years of his life. Nikolai Vasilievich dozed in an armchair, fell asleep over manuscripts in constant anxiety and readiness to wake up. 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 carried out. 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 examination results, there were many ridiculous records. Among them there is one, as if the writer took mercury poison in order to commit suicide. They say, 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 biography of the author testifies that in fact he did not suffer from this disease, and moreover, not a single such symptom appeared in his entire life. Therefore, at the consultation, which was held among doctors after the nomination of this version, the latter was officially rejected.

Causes of a severe near-death state

It is believed that the story of Gogol's death originates in January 1852, when Ekaterina Khomyakova, the sister of his close friend, died. The poet experienced the funeral service of this person with particular horror, and during the burial he said very terrible words: “Everything is over for me too ...” Physically weak, prone to various ailments, with poor immunity, Nikolai Vasilyevich finally buckled that day. It is also worth considering the fact that for 20 years he had suffered from a bipolar personality, because 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 mumbling something. His depression culminated in 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, stricken at that time with an unknown illness, was under careful medical supervision and guardianship. Although it is worth noting that the doctors treated him very harshly, trying, however, to do the best. They treated imaginary "meningitis". They forced me into a hot bath, poured ice water on my head, and then did not let me get dressed. Leeches were placed under the writer's nose to increase bleeding, and if he resisted, then his hands were wringed, 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 around except for 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 of 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. On the basis of these factors, his mental illness began to worsen, 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 the 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 of highly nutritious foods, the introduction of saline solutions under the skin, and also to force a person to drink plenty of water. Another factor is the intake of antidepressants, but given the year Gogol died, we can say that this was impossible. By the way, one of the doctors, Tarasenkov, insisted on precisely such methods, in particular, on the fact that Nikolai Vasilyevich was forced to eat. However, most doctors rejected this prescription - they began to treat non-existent meningitis ...

Afterword

We briefly reviewed all the circumstances of the death of the famous writer and playwright - Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. It was he who, with his works, won the hearts of ordinary readers and directors, children and adults. You can read his works excitedly 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 were his last years. And most importantly, we tried to at least a little understand how this genius died and why there are so many rumors around his death.

"Wonders and Adventures" 11/95

GOGOL DID NOT STARVE HIMSELF, DID NOT GO CRAZY, DID NOT DIE 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 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 rescued the writer in life's difficulties. When one day Gogol asked Pletnev to openly express his opinion about him as a person, this oldest and most helpful friend of his wrote: "A secretive, selfish, arrogant, distrustful creature, and sacrificing everything for glory ..."

And Gogol, who lived and breathed only 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 financial aid.

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

He was compelled to do so by the great goal set before himself: the completion of the second volume of Dead Souls, the main work of his life, which he decided to fulfill according to the ideal revealed as a result of religious quests. Labor, in which he decided to invest the whole truth about Russia, all his love for her, 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 treat those widespread conjectures 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 THE 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 Nikolai Vasilievich occupied, 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 Tolstyy at the end of the 30s, the acquaintance grew into a close friendship, and the count and his wife did everything to make the writer live freely and comfortably in their house. “Here Gogol was looked after like a child,” recalled one contemporary. “He cared about absolutely nothing. Lunch, breakfast, tea, supper were served where he ordered. His underwear was washed and put into chests of drawers by invisible spirits... In addition to the numerous servants at home, he was served in his rooms by his own man from Little Russia named Semyon, a very young, meek and extremely devoted fellow to his master. The silence in the wing was extraordinary. Gogol either walked around the room from corner to corner, or sat and wrote, rolling balls of white bread, about which he told his friends that they help to solve the most complex and difficult problems. It was in this house on Nikitsky Boulevard that the final drama of Gogol was played out.

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

On Wednesday, January 30, after a memorial service ordered by him for Ekaterina Mikhailovna in the church of Simeon the Stylite, on Povarskaya, he went to the Aksakovs, where, among other things, he 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, complaining of being tired from reading the proofs of the collection of his works that was being prepared for publication. And already on Monday, February 4, he was seized by a breakdown: he told S. Shevyrev, who came to see him, that he now had no time for proofreading, because he felt bad and decided to fast and talk. The next day, February 5, Gogol complained to the same Shevyrev about "an upset stomach and the too strong effect of the medicine that was given to him."

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

On the night from Friday to Saturday (February 8-9), after another vigil, he, exhausted, dozed off on the couch and suddenly saw himself dead and heard some mysterious voices. The next morning he called the parish priest, wanting to take unction, but he persuaded him to wait.

On Monday, February 11, Gogol was exhausted to such an extent that he could not walk and went to bed. He received friends who came to him reluctantly, spoke little, dozed off. But he also found the strength to defend the service in the house church of Count Tolstoy. At 3 o'clock in the morning from February 11 to 12, after a 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 a candle. Semyon begged him on his knees 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 had burned down, got up, crossed himself, kissed Semyon, returned to his room, lay down on the sofa and wept.

“That's 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 strong the evil one is - that's what he moved me to! And I was there a lot of practical clarified and outlined ... I thought to send to friends as a keepsake from a notebook: let them do what they wanted. Now everything is gone."

AGONY

Stunned by what had happened, the count hurried to call the famous Moscow doctor F. Inozemtsev to Gogol, who at first suspected the writer had typhus, but then abandoned 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 February 13 on Wednesday. “You must leave me,” he said to the count, “I know that I must 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 dined with him; he seemed to me a man of flourishing health, cheerful, strong, fresh, and now before me was a man, as if exhausted to the extreme with consumption or brought by some kind of prolonged exhaustion to extraordinary exhaustion. He seemed dead to me at first sight. Tarasenkov urged Gogol to start eating normally in order to restore his strength, but the patient was indifferent to his exhortations. At the insistence of the doctors, Tolstoy asked Metropolitan Philaret to influence Gogol, to strengthen his confidence in the doctors. But nothing had an effect on Gogol; to all persuasions, he answered quietly and meekly: “Leave me; I'm 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 a dressing gown and boots and did not get up again. In bed, he proceeded to the sacraments of repentance, communion and unction, listened to all the gospels in full consciousness, holding a candle in his hands and crying. “If it pleases God that I live still, I will live,” he said to friends who urged him to be treated. On this day, the doctor A. Over, invited by Tolstoy, examined him. He gave no advice, rescheduling the conversation for the next day.

Moscow 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, who stood in silence 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,” Tarasenkov recalled. “Against his face is the image of the Mother of God; in the hands of a rosary; beside him is a boy and another attendant. He did not answer my quiet question... I took his hand to feel his pulse. He said, "Don't touch me, please!"

Soon M. Pogodin brought Dr. Alfonsky, who offered to resort to the services of a "magnetizer", and in the evening Dr. Sokologorsky, known for his psychic abilities, appeared at Gogol's bedside. But as soon as he, putting his hands on the patient's head, began to make passes, Gogol twitched his body and said irritably: "Leave me!" At this the session ended, and Dr. Klimenkov appeared on the stage, striking those present with rudeness and insolence. He shouted his questions to Gogol, as if in front of him was a deaf or unconscious person, trying to feel for a pulse by force. "Leave me!" Gogol told him and turned away.

Klimenkov insisted on active treatment: bloodletting, wrapping in wet cold sheets, etc. But Tarasenkov suggested that everything be postponed 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 strangeness 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?” Auvers asked. “Yes, you need to force-feed him,” Evenius said importantly.

After that, the doctors went to the patient, began to question him, examine, feel. Moans and cries of the patient were heard from the room. "Don't disturb me, for God's sake!" he finally shouted. But they no longer paid attention to him. It was decided to put two leeches to Gogol's nose, to do a cold dousing on his head in a warm bath. Klimenkov undertook to perform all these procedures, and Tarasenkov hurried to leave, "so as not to be a witness to the suffering of the sufferer."

When he returned three hours later, Gogol was already taken out of the bath, six leeches were hanging 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, ordered to keep 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 treatment was inexorable,” Tarasenkov recalled, “they ordered like a madman, shouted in front of him, as in front of a corpse. Klimenkov molested him, crushed, tossed, poured some kind of 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 around on his own, lay quietly and calmly when he was not being treated. Tried to drink. By evening he began to lose his memory, muttering indistinctly: “Come on, come on! Well, what is it? At eleven o'clock he suddenly shouted loudly: "Ladder, hurry, give me a ladder!" He made an attempt to get up. He was lifted out of bed and placed on a chair. But he was already so weak that his head could not hold and fell like a newborn baby. 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 run into the medical executioner Klimenkov, who, as they later said, tortured the dying Gogol all night, giving him calomel, covering his body with hot bread, which made Gogol groan and scream piercingly. He died without regaining consciousness at 8 am on February 21 on Thursday. When at ten o'clock in the morning Tarasenkov arrived at Nikitsky Boulevard, the deceased was already lying on the table, dressed in a frock coat, in which he usually walked. A memorial service was served over him, a plaster mask was removed from his face.

“For a long time I looked at the deceased,” wrote Tarasenkov, “it seemed to me that his face did not express suffering, but calmness, a clear thought carried into the coffin.” "Shame on him who is attracted to rotting dust..."

Gogol's ashes were buried at noon on February 24, 1852 by parish priest Alexei Sokolov and deacon John Pushkin. And after 79 years, he was secretly, thievishly removed from the grave: the Danilov Monastery was being transformed into a colony for juvenile delinquents, in connection with which its necropolis was subject to liquidation. It was decided to transfer only a few of the most dear to the Russian heart burials to the old cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent. Among these lucky ones, along with Yazykov, Aksakovs and Khomyakovs, was Gogol ...

On May 31, 1931, twenty to thirty people gathered at Gogol's grave, among whom were: historian M. Baranovskaya, writers Vs. Ivanov, V. Lugovskoy, Yu. Olesha, M. Svetlov, V. Lidin and others. It was Lidin who became almost the only source of information about the reburial of Gogol. With his light hand, terrible legends about Gogol began to walk around Moscow.

The coffin was not found right away, - he told the students of the Literary Institute, - for some reason it turned out not to be where they were digging, but somewhat at a distance, to the side. And when they pulled it out of the ground - flooded with lime, seemingly strong, from oak boards - and opened it, bewilderment was added to the heart trembling of those present. In the fobo lay a skeleton with a skull turned to one side. No one has found an explanation for this. Someone superstitious, probably, then thought: “Well, after all, the publican - during his lifetime, as if not alive, and after death not dead, this strange great man.”

Lidin's stories stirred up old rumors that Gogol was afraid of being buried alive in a state of lethargic sleep and, seven years before his death, bequeathed: “My body should not be buried until clear 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 testament had not been fulfilled, that he was buried in a lethargic state, he woke up in a coffin and experienced nightmarish minutes of a new death...

In fairness, it must be said that Lidin's version did not inspire confidence. Sculptor N. Ramazanov, who took off Gogol's death mask, recalled: “I did not suddenly decide to take off the mask, but the prepared coffin ... finally, the incessantly arriving crowd of people who wanted to say goodbye to the dear deceased forced me and my old man, who pointed out signs of destruction, to hurry ... .” There was also an explanation for the rotation of the skull: the side boards at the coffin were the first to rot, the lid falls under the weight of the soil, presses on the dead man’s head, and it turns to its side on the so-called “Atlantean vertebra”.

Then Lidin launched a new version. In his written memoirs of the exhumation, he told a new story, even more terrible and mysterious than his oral stories. “This is what Gogol's ashes were like,” he wrote, “there was no skull in the coffin, and Gogol's remains began with the cervical vertebrae; the entire skeleton of the skeleton was enclosed in a well-preserved tobacco-colored frock coat... When and under what circumstances Gogol's skull disappeared remains a mystery. At the beginning of the opening of the grave at a shallow depth, much higher than the crypt with a walled coffin, a skull was found, but archaeologists recognized it as belonging to a young man.

This new invention of Lidin required new hypotheses. When could Gogol's skull disappear from the coffin? Who could need it? And what kind of fuss is raised around the remains of the great writer?

They remembered that in 1908, when a heavy stone was installed on the grave, a brick crypt had to be erected over the coffin to strengthen the foundation. It was then that the mysterious intruders could steal the writer's skull. As for interested parties, it was not without reason that rumors circulated around Moscow that the skulls of Shchepkin and Gogol were secretly kept in the unique collection of A. A. Bakhrushin, a passionate collector of theatrical relics ...

And Lidin, inexhaustible in inventions, amazed the listeners with new sensational details: they say, when the ashes of the writer were taken from the Danilov Monastery to Novodevichy, some of those present at the reburial could not resist and took some relics for themselves as a keepsake. One allegedly pulled off Gogol's rib, the other - the tibia, the third - the boot. Lidin himself even showed the guests a volume of a lifetime edition of Gogol's works, in the binding of which he inserted a piece of fabric, torn off by him from the coat of Gogol, who was lying in the coffin.

In his will, Gogol shamed those who "will be attracted by some kind of attention to rotting dust, which is no longer mine." But the windy descendants were not ashamed, violated the writer's testament, with unclean hands began to stir up "rotting dust" for fun. They did not respect his covenant not to erect any monument on his grave.

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

The day before the opening of the Gogol burial, these stones and the cross were taken away somewhere and sunk into oblivion. It was not until the early 1950s that Mikhail Bulgakov's widow accidentally discovered Gogol's Golgotha ​​stone in a cutters' shed and managed to install it on the grave of her husband, the creator of The Master and Margarita.

No less mysterious and mystical is the fate of the Moscow monuments to Gogol. The idea of ​​the need for such a monument was born in 1880 during the celebrations for the opening of the monument to Pushkin on Tverskoy Boulevard. And 29 years later, on the centenary of the birth of Nikolai Vasilyevich on April 26, 1909, a monument created by the sculptor N. Andreev was opened on Prechistensky Boulevard. This sculpture, depicting a deeply dejected Gogol at the moment of his heavy thoughts, caused mixed reviews. Some enthusiastically praised her, others furiously condemned her. But everyone agreed: Andreev managed to create a work of the highest artistic merit.

Disputes around the original author's interpretation of the image of Gogol did not continue to subside even in Soviet times, which could not bear the spirit of decline and despondency even among the great writers of the past. Socialist Moscow needed a different Gogol - clear, bright, calm. Not Gogol of Selected Places from Correspondence with Friends, but Gogol of Taras Bulba, The Government Inspector, Dead Souls.

In 1935, the All-Union Committee for Arts under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR announced a competition for a new monument to Gogol in Moscow, which laid the foundation for developments interrupted by the Great Patriotic War. She slowed down, but did not stop these works, in which the largest masters of sculpture participated - M. Manizer, S. Merkurov, E. Vuchetich, N. Tomsky.

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

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

IT LOOKS LIKE GOGOL WAS ACCIDENTALLY POISONED BY DOCTORS!

Although the gloomy mystical halo around Gogol's personality was largely generated by the blasphemous destruction of his grave and the absurd inventions of the irresponsible Lidin, much remains mysterious in the circumstances of his illness and death.

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

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

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

The version that Gogol died of starvation is not confirmed either. An adult healthy person can do without food for 30-40 days. Gogol, on the other hand, fasted for only 17 days, and even then he did not refuse food completely ...

But if not from madness and hunger, then could some infectious disease cause death? In Moscow in the winter of 1852, an epidemic of typhoid fever raged, from which, by the way, Khomyakova died. That is why Inozemtsev, at the first examination, suspected that the writer had typhus. But a week later, a council of doctors, convened by Count Tolstoy, announced that Gogol did not have typhus, but meningitis, and prescribed that strange course of treatment, which cannot be called anything other than "torture" ...

In 1902, Dr. N. Bazhenov published a small work, Gogol's Illness and Death. After carefully analyzing the symptoms described in the memoirs of the writer's acquaintances and the doctors who treated him, Bazhenov came to the conclusion that it was precisely this wrong, weakening treatment for meningitis that killed the writer, which in fact did not exist.

It seems that Bazhenov is only partly right. The treatment prescribed by the council, applied when Gogol was already hopeless, aggravated his suffering, but was not the cause of the disease itself, which began much earlier. In his notes, Dr. Tarasenkov, who first examined Gogol on February 16, described the symptoms of the disease as follows: “... the pulse was weakened, the tongue was clean, but dry; the skin had a natural warmth. For all reasons, it was clear that he did not have a feverish condition ... once he had a slight bleeding from the nose, complained that his hands were chilly, his urine was thick, dark-colored ... ".

One can only regret that Bazhenov, when writing his work, did not think of consulting a toxicologist. After all, the symptoms of Gogol's disease described by him are practically indistinguishable from the symptoms of chronic poisoning with mercury - the main component of the very calomel that everyone who started the treatment of Aesculapius stuffed Gogol with. In fact, in chronic calomel poisoning, thick dark urine and various kinds of bleeding are possible, more often gastric, but sometimes nasal. A weak pulse could be a consequence of both the weakening of the body from burnishing, and the result of the action of calomel. Many noted that throughout his illness, Gogol often asked for water: thirst is one of the characteristics of signs of chronic poisoning.

In all likelihood, the start of the fatal chain of events was an upset stomach and that "too strong effect of the medicine" about which Gogol complained to Shevyrev on February 5. Since gastric disorders were then treated with calomel, it is possible that the medicine prescribed for him was calomel and prescribed it by Inozemtsev, who, a few days later, fell ill himself and stopped observing the patient. The writer passed into the hands of Tarasenkov, who, not knowing that Gogol had already taken a dangerous medicine, could prescribe him calomel again. For the third time, Gogol received calomel from Klimenkov.

The peculiarity of calomel is that it does not cause harm only if it is relatively quickly excreted from the body through the intestines. If it lingers in the stomach, then after a while it begins to act as the strongest mercury poison of sublimate. This, apparently, happened to Gogol: significant doses of the calomel he took were not excreted from the stomach, since the writer was fasting at that time and there was simply no food in his stomach. The gradually increasing amount of calomel in his stomach caused chronic poisoning, and the weakening of the body from malnutrition, discouragement and Klimenkov's barbaric treatment only accelerated death ...

It would not be difficult to test this hypothesis by examining the mercury content of the remains using modern means of analysis. But let us not be like the blasphemous exhumers of the year 1931, and for the sake of idle curiosity we will not disturb the ashes of the great writer a second time, we will not again throw off the tombstones from his grave and move his monuments from place to place. Everything connected with the memory of Gogol, let it be preserved forever and stand in one place!

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

What really happened

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

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

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

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

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

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

What was said after

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

Photo of Gogol in Italy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Death mask of Gogol

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

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