Famous writers mental illness
6 Famous Writers with Mental Health Issues
Brilliant creativity often comes with turmoil, and many artists claim they do their best work when they’re struggling mental health-wise. Probably the most well-known example of this is Vincent van Gogh, who cut off his left ear while arguing with fellow artist Paul Gauguin. Today, it’s widely accepted that Van Gogh struggled with mental health issues.
This theme applies to writers as well. Many great authors who produced fantastic literature have also suffered from various mental health issues, including these six.
Six Famous Authors With Mental Illness
1. Ernest Hemingway
When famous writers with mental illness are mentioned, Ernest Hemingway is often the first name to come to mind. Hemingway was a brilliant American novelist, short story writer and journalist. Some of his most famous books include “The Old Man and the Sea” and “A Farewell to Arms.” Hemingway gained great recognition during his lifetime, earning a Nobel Peace Prize in Literature.
Today, his works are considered classics that everyone should read.
Hemingway achieved his success despite lifelong mental health issues. He was known as a heavy drinker all his life and likely had an alcohol addiction. As Hemingway said, “An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with fools.”
Along with alcoholism, Hemingway suffered from severe depression, and his family had a history of depression; his father, brother and sister all committed suicide. In 1961, Hemingway received electroshock therapy to treat his mental health conditions. Unfortunately, this archaic treatment did nothing to help him, and he died by suicide just a few days later.
2. Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf was a famous English novelist, essayist and publisher. She’s given credit popularizing the stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Some of the more well-known Woolf novels include, “The Voyage Out,” “Mrs. Dalloway” and “Flush: A Biography.” Woolf is primarily known as a 20th-century female rights advocate, writing about the oppression of women.
She once wrote, “As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.” Woolf’s work is still taught and studied today in literature classes around the world.
Woolf didn’t have an easy childhood, and it resulted in some lifelong mental health issues. In 1895, Woolf’s mother died suddenly, and she suffered a mental breakdown. Just a few years later, her half-sister died. She also experienced sexual abuse from her half-brothers during her childhood.
All of this led to Woolf suffering from severe depression and mental breakdowns throughout her life. Despite becoming a successful writer, Woolf often saw herself as a failure. At the age of 59, she committed suicide by filling her pockets with stones and walking into a river.
3. Edgar Allen Poe
Edgar Allen Poe is a classic American short story author and poet. Some of his most famous works include, “The Raven” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Poe is often credited with creating the detective genre and frequently wrote dark, beautiful pieces.
In a letter to a fan, Poe once wrote, “I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
Sadly, Poe’s mental illness struggles included chronic depression, possibly bipolar disorder, alcoholism and substance abuse. At one point, he reportedly tried to commit suicide by overdosing on laudanum. One year later, Poe died in a hospital from complications related to alcohol abuse.
4. Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath is considered one of the greatest American female writers of all time. She wrote short stories and novels but is perhaps most well-known for her poetry. Plath is credited with making “confessional poetry” famous. Her work often featured her own life experiences and illustrated her struggles with mental illnesses, such as depression. Plath’s two most popular poetry collections are “The Colossus” and “Ariel.”
Plath began suffering from clinical depression at the age of 19 while in college. The depression continued for years despite medications and electroshock therapy.
Plath tried to commit suicide several times before finally succeeding at age 30 when she put her head into an oven with the gas running.
In 2001, psychologist James C. Kaufman coined the term “The Sylvia Plath Effect,” which suggests that poets are more likely than other creative writers to suffer from mental illnesses, such as depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia.
5. Leo Tolstoy
Russian author Leo Tolstoy is considered one of the greatest writers of all time. From 1902 to 1906, he received nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize in Literature each year. Tolstoy’s two most well-known books, “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina,” have unbelievable character development, detailed plots and realistic writing that grips the reader from the start.
Tolstoy came from a wealthy family, and his skills were recognized by everyone during his lifetime. Still, he had his struggles. In his book “The Confessions,” Tolstoy discusses his alcohol abuse, depression and thoughts of suicide.
He writes, “I did not myself know what I wanted: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it.”
He died at the age of 82 from pneumonia.
6. F. Scott Fitzgerald
Author of “The Great Gatsby” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” F. Scott Fitzgerald published many books, short stories and essays during his lifetime. Interestingly, though, he became significantly more well-known after his death.
The author once stated, “The world only exists in your eyes. You can make it as big or as small as you want.” He and his wife Zelda lived a fast-paced life full of parties and luxury, similar to his character Jay Gatsby. Zelda was also an author and was diagnosed with schizophrenia in the 1930s. Fitzgerald suffered from depression, alcoholism and substance abuse. He died at the young age of 44 from a heart attack.
Creatives Should Seek Help if They Need It
Unfortunately, some artists affected by mental health issues have the misconception that the condition is the source of their creativity.
In reality, authors struggling with mental illnesses should seek help.
Some of the famous writers on this list succumbed to an early death because they didn’t get the help they needed. In contrast, authors who get help can live long lives and enjoy successful careers. Stephen King, J.K. Rowling and Anne Rice are a few examples of authors who’ve publicly spoken about their mental health issues. Whether dealing with depression or substance addiction, these authors sought help and have thrived.
FHE Health
If you’re struggling with mental health issues, reach out to us at FHE Health today by calling (833) 596-3502 and learn how you can get the help you need and retain your creativity.
Writers With Mental Illness | Banyan Boca
Want to read a story? Did you know that at the age of four, the famous writer, Stephen King, witnessed a friend of his get hit by a train? The sight of the horrible event stuck with the well-known writer his entire life. Often famous writers experienced trauma in their lives that influenced their writing style or inspired them to pick up the pen in the first place.
Please keep reading to learn about writers who witnessed trauma and writers with mental illness and how these conditions affected their careers.
You may be surprised to learn some of these great writers struggled with mental health conditions. For instance, Ernest Hemingway was an American novelist, and many of his short stories were favored by people all over the country. The man even earned a Nobel Peace Prize in Literature. No matter his successes, Heminway struggled with severe depression and alcoholism.
Another famous author includes Edgar Allen Poe, whose literature is often taught in civics or English classes. You may know his works like To Helen, The Raven, and The Tell-Tale Heart. The short story writer and poet had several conditions such as chronic depression, bipolar disorder symptoms, alcoholism, and substance abuse. Unfortunately, he died due to alcohol abuse-related circumstances.
Famous English writers with mental illness included Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, and Ezra Pound.
These authors were influenced by a specific way of thinking and used writing as a way to manage their emotions and thoughts inflicted by their mental health conditions. Many struggled with depression and substance abuse.
The effects of bipolar disorder and writing depend on the severity of the episodes the person experiences. Physical effects include shaking, blurred vision, and foggy memory or cognitive impairment. Bipolar inflicts depression or depressive episodes as well as extreme irritation or aggression, depending on the form of bipolar disorder. These intense mood swings can cause writer's block, which makes even the most basic of words hard to comprehend or think of.
Although many complications may arise from the mental health disorder, writers may be influenced by their excessive thoughts and extreme emotions. These feelings and thoughts can inspire stories, poems, and novels. Still, a person may struggle with low confidence and self-esteem issues, and this results in writing as a coping mechanism, producing memorable pieces of literature enjoyed by many.
Although people with bipolar disorder and most other mental health conditions feel irritable, the effects can also lead to feeling sociable or artistic. Creativity is sparked through these emotions and overthinking, as well as feeling energized to write. Depressed poets like Sylvia Plath, one of the greatest female writers, were well known by psychologists like James C. Kaufman, who coined the term “The Sylvia Plath Effect.”
He suggested that poets are more likely to be more creative writers when suffering from illnesses like depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. From past writers to famous authors today, like Stephen King, people with mental illness do not succumb to their condition but have proven that it can enhance their creativity and inspiration.
Mental Health Recovery at Banyan Treatment Center BocaFrom schizophrenia treatment to bipolar treatment, the medical staff at Banyan Boca is prepared to guide patients through the process to equip them with the skills they need to reduce symptoms.
We understand that mental health side effects affect everyone on a different level which is why we take the time to design a treatment plan that best fits your needs and goals. We establish crisis intervention techniques for mental health conditions so people can recognize the problem and get the help they deserve.
Contact a member at Banyan’s Boca Behavioral Health Center by calling 888-280-4763 today! Ask about our unique services like biofeedback therapy to get started!
Related Readings:
Dopamine Dressing: How to Dress For Your Mental Health
Phases of Schizophrenia
7 Russian writers and poets who suffered from mental disorders
Geniuses or madmen?
No one knows where the line between reason and insanity lies. And for creative people, the line separating genius from madness becomes almost invisible. An unusual upsurge in moments of inspiration is suddenly replaced by apathy and indifference.
Between these two states there are hundreds of magnificent works left for the edification of posterity.
Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov
Petr Efremovich Zabolotsky. Portrait of the poet Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov. / Photo: www.artchive.ru
The literary heritage left by the poet is truly priceless. However, his mental and emotional state from childhood was influenced by a rather heavy heredity and very contradictory relationships in the family.
Kirill Gorbunov, M.Yu. Lermontov in the form of the Tengin Infantry Regiment. / Photo: www.vsdn.ru
As you know, Lermontov's grandfather, who suffered from severe depression all his life, voluntarily passed away by taking poison. Mikhail Yurievich's mother had very poor health and increased nervousness. The father had the fame of a far ambiguous personality, however, biography researchers agree that he was a frivolous player and reveler, on the one hand, and cruel, suffering from outbursts of causeless anger, on the other.
There was also a grandmother, imperious and tough, constantly in conflict with the poet's father.
F. Budkin. Portrait of M. Yu. Lermontov in the uniform of the Life Guards Hussar Regiment, 1834. / Photo: www.ya-russ.ru
Mikhail Yuryevich seems to have taken everything he could from each ancestor. He suffered from depressions and was engaged in self-discipline, considering himself invaluable. Mikhail Lermontov was both kind and cruel. He could be very venomous and bilious in his statements, often fell into depression, was capricious, irritable and stubborn.
The poet was very amorous, but women did not reciprocate his feelings. They were repulsed by the anger and arrogance of the young genius. According to contemporaries, he seemed to be looking for his early death. Researchers of the poet's biography are inclined to believe that the poet had all the signs of schizoid psychopathy.
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol
Fedor Antonovich Moller.
Portrait of N.V. Gogol. / Photo: www.twitter.com
The brilliant writer suffered all his life from schizophrenia, aggravated by periodic psychoses. He had auditory and visual hallucinations, apathy and a depressed state could abruptly change to activity and an extreme degree of arousal.
Unknown artist. Portrait of N. V. Gogol. / Photo: www.domgogolya.ru
All his life, Nikolai Gogol was haunted by the fear of being buried alive, he was terribly afraid of closed spaces and incurable diseases. As a result, he began to refuse food and actually brought himself to exhaustion, which was the cause of his death.
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
Mikhail Viktorovich Rundaltsov. Portrait of the writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. / Photo: www.artchive.ru
Biographers associate the illness of the author of world-famous works with the tragic death of his father, with whom the writer had a rather difficult relationship.
Dostoevsky himself wrote that for the first time an attack of epilepsy happened to him during his stay in hard labor. Subsequently, the disease manifested itself quite often: from once a month to twice a week. After each attack, he became angry and irritable, constantly looking for a reason to quarrel with others.
Vasily Grigorievich Perov. Portrait of Dostoevsky. / Photo: www.artchive.ru
In addition to epilepsy, Dostoevsky was ill with gambling, sometimes he lost everything at roulette. He was afraid of being buried alive, and therefore wrote notes that tomorrow he would fall into a lethargic sleep.
Sergey Alexandrovich Yesenin
Sergey Yesenin. / Photo: www.skolkolet.com
The poet's beloved Isadora Duncan spoke openly about his ill health and even took him for consultations to the best psychiatrists in the world. Unfortunately, the treatment was not effective.
Sergei Yesenin. / Photo: www.
esenin-s.ru
Biographers and researchers of the poet's work tend to assert that Yesenin has a manic-depressive psychosis, aggravated by alcoholism. He suffered from the mania of persecution by the authorities, and his fits of unbridled rage were suddenly replaced by periods of complete pacification. As a result, Sergei Yesenin, according to the official version, voluntarily left this world by hanging himself in a hotel.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky
Vladimir Mayakovsky. / Photo: www.fotocdn.net
The mouthpiece of the revolution was an odious and ambiguous personality. Modern psychiatrists would call him a psychopathic personality. One of the poet's most famous phobias is the fear of getting infected and dying from blood poisoning, like his father. At the same time, he constantly talked about suicide, literally blackmailing those around him.
Vladimir Mayakovsky. / Photo: www.sputnik-georgia.com
Nervous disorders, anxious suspiciousness, clinical depression eventually forced Mayakovsky to commit suicide on April 14, 1930 years.
Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov
“Portrait of N.A. Nekrasov. 1856, Makovsky Konstantin Egorovich. / Photo: www.stene.ru
The great Russian poet suffered from gambling and depression all his life. He saw the negative example of his father, who lost almost the entire fortune, but could not learn any lessons from this. He played just as recklessly and passionately.
Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov, I. D. Zakharov. 1843. / Photo: www.liveinternet.ru
Against the backdrop of depression, Nekrasov often had thoughts of suicide. He often even thought about which way to choose in order to part with life. Nevertheless, the poet was able to cope with the craving for suicide and lived to be 56 years old, having died from intestinal oncology.
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy
Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy. Portrait of Leo Tolstoy. 1873. / Photo: www.aria-art.ru
In the last years of his life, the writer decided to turn the whole family into asceticism, but this idea did not find understanding among his relatives.
Psychiatrist Grigory Rossolimo was summoned to see Tolstoy, who diagnosed him with "Degenerative double constitution: paranoid and hysterical, with a predominance of the former."
Ilya Efimovich Repin. Plowman. L. N. Tolstoy on arable land. 1887. / Photo: www.aria-art.ru
Modern psychiatrists, who studied the personality and character of the writer, added depressive and hysterical features to the diagnosis of the well-known healer of souls at that time. Many agree that the last journey that Leo Tolstoy went on was nothing more than a subconscious approach to the end of life, that is, a delayed suicide.
Various types of phobias can also be attributed to the types of mental disorders. Sometimes they are associated with childhood experiences, or in adulthood, severe stress left a lasting impression.
Peter I and Joseph Stalin ruled a huge country, modern stars collect entire stadiums, but they failed to get rid of their obsessive phobias.
Like this article? Then support us, press :
Like
Sixth Chamber of Russian Literature. Part 1
It's no secret that many Russian writers suffered from mental illness - and even if this experience was not decisive for their work, you can't call it unimportant either. "Gorky" tried to understand the mental disorders of famous writers. In the first part of the material, we will talk about Batyushkov, Gogol, Dostoevsky and Gorky.
Once, while discussing with my attending psychiatrist the exacerbation of mental illness in the spring, I asked: they say, is Pushkin's “... I'm sick in the spring; blood ferments; feelings, the mind is constrained by melancholy” is also a clinical case? The answer I received was that many literary works of genius would not have been born if it were not for the mental illness of their authors - an idea not new, but entertaining.
When you plunge into the world of mental disorders with their multifaceted symptoms, then at a certain moment you stop seeing healthy people around and involuntarily begin to make diagnoses for everyone: well, how can you get around literary characters and their creators.
1. Konstantin Batyushkov
“Two weeks ago he cut his throat with a razor, but the wound was not fatal - he was saved... Trying to lead him to religion, I invited a priest, but all in vain. He claims that God himself calls him to death, that all the cares of supervision are useless, because there are thousands of ways to die. It's a shame, but all this testifies to the continuation of a disorder of the mind ... ”So the Tauride governor Nikolai Perovsky wrote about the thirty-six-year-old poet Konstantin Nikolayevich Batyushkov, who was in the Crimea in 1823 for treatment. In addition, Batyushkov “tried to strangle his man three times,” and assured the priest in confession that he “had some kind of enemies who were pursuing him everywhere, who had formed a secret council against him.
” Since 1824, the poet was treated near the city of Pirna, located on the territory of modern Germany. Batyushkov's attending physician, Dr. Anton Dietrich, in the course of observing his patient, made notes in which he gave him a very eloquent description:
“Everyone unanimously tells (about K. N. Batyushkov) that he was a most noble person, a most faithful friend, a most tender brother, a most conscientious servant of the state, a pure, devoutly poetic nature. Now this is a monster that you do not dare to approach without fear: it imagines itself to be a deity, but curses its father, mother and relatives; does not recognize a friend in anyone and does not have love for any of the living beings; whatever he does, he does it in such a way as to cause care and sorrow to his well-wishers, without rewarding anyone for it. And, nevertheless, this is a martyr, a sufferer who endures the most terrible of all horrors possible for a person, who, with the full solidity of hopes for earthly happiness, cannot but renounce every, even the slightest joy - whom nature has renounced and abandoned , while he cannot renounce her, this beautiful creature, generously endowed by her, this object of joy and praise for the best among people, now lives in a state of the most ferocious and nothing but gloomy expectations does not excite destruction and desolation.
A monster and an innocent martyr, worthy of the deepest universal compassion and pity!”
2. Nikolai Gogol
In 1845, Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol wrote a will, which was then included in the "Selected passages from correspondence with friends":
"Being in the full presence of memory and common sense, I state here my last will .
I. 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 ... To intervene my body in the earth, not sorting out the place where it should lie, not to connect anything with the remaining ashes; ashamed of the one who is attracted by some attention to the rotting finger, which is no longer mine: he will bow to the worms that gnaw it; I ask you to pray more strongly for my soul, and instead of any funeral honors, treat me to a simple dinner for a few who do not have daily bread.
II. I bequeath not to erect any monument over me and not to think about such a trifle, an unworthy Christian ... Whoever, after my death, grows higher in spirit than he was during my lifetime, will show that he, for sure, loved me and was my friend, and this will only erect a monument to me ... no one ... in moments of his anguish and sadness did not see a dull look on me, although my own moments were difficult, and I yearned no less than others.
III. I bequeath to no one to mourn me at all, and the one who begins to regard my death as some significant or general loss will take sin on his soul ... We should not indulge in despondency at any sudden loss, but look back strictly at ourselves, thinking no longer about the blackness of others and not about the blackness of the whole world, but about your own blackness. The blackness of the soul is terrible, and why is it seen only when inexorable death is already in front of our eyes!
IV. I bequeath to all my compatriots .
.. I bequeath to them the best of everything that my pen has produced, I bequeath to them my work, entitled “Farewell Tale” ... It was a source of tears, invisible to anyone, even from the time of my childhood ... I swear
V. I also declare publicly that, apart from what has hitherto been printed, nothing of my works exists: everything, what was in the manuscripts, I burned, as powerless and dead, written in a painful and forced state ...
... My will immediately after my death must be published in all magazines and journals, so that, due to ignorance of it, no one would become innocently guilty before me and thus would not reproach his soul.
The “Farewell Tale” mentioned by the writer has not reached us, but there is an assumption that Gogol had in mind exactly “Selected passages from correspondence with friends”. From the text of the will it is clear that the writer has long been tormented by mental anguish. But even more the morale of Nikolai Vasilyevich was undermined by the flurry of criticism that fell upon him after the publication of "Selected Places .
..". In 1847, Gogol wrote to Aksakov: “My soul is sad, relations have become difficult with all my friends and with those who, not recognizing me, hastened to make friends with me. How did I not go crazy from stupidity. My heart is broken and activity has stopped. It's hard to be in a whirlwind of misunderstandings. I should give up my pen and withdraw from everything.” A little later, he wrote to the artist Alexander Ivanov: ““Selected Places” is the fruit of pathological creativity. The attacks on my book are partly justified. I released her very soon after my morbid condition, when neither my nerves nor my head were in proper order.
Doctor Aleksey Terentyevich Tarasenkov described the writer's condition in his last days in the following way: “... in front of me was a man, as it were, exhausted to the extreme with consumption or brought to extraordinary exhaustion by some prolonged exhaustion. His whole body had become extremely thin; the eyes became dull and sunken, the face was completely haggard, the cheeks were sunken, the voice weakened, the tongue moved with difficulty, the expression of the face became indefinite, inexplicable.
He seemed dead to me at first sight. He sat with his legs stretched out, not moving, not even changing the straight position of his face; his head was somewhat tilted back and rested on the backs of the chairs. When I approached him, he raised his head, but could not hold it straight for long, and even then with noticeable effort. Although reluctantly, he allowed me to feel the pulse and look at the tongue: the pulse was weakened, the tongue was clean, but dry; the skin had a natural warmth. From all considerations, it was clear that he did not have a feverish state, and not eating food could not be attributed to a lack of appetite. And further: “Going up to him, with apparent composure, but with full warmth of heart, I used all my efforts to influence his will. I expressed to him the idea that doctors in illness resort to the advice of their fellows and obey them; it is all the more necessary for a non-physician to follow medical instructions, especially those taught with conscientiousness and complete conviction; and whoever does otherwise commits a crime against himself.
Saying this, I turned all my attention to the face of the sufferer in order to peep what was going on in his soul. The expression of his face did not change at all - it was as calm and as gloomy as before: no annoyance, no chagrin, no surprise, no doubt, not even a shadow appeared. He watched as a man for whom all tasks are solved, all feeling is silenced, all words are in vain, hesitation in decision is impossible. However, when I stopped talking, he answered distinctly, with a pause, and although languidly, lifelessly, but with all the fullness of confidence: “I know doctors are good: they always wish good”; but after that he again bowed his head, whether from weakness or as a sign of farewell - I do not know.
3. Fyodor Dostoevsky
Perhaps this is the first name that comes to mind when talking about writers with mental disorders. They were probably present in Dostoevsky from early childhood. In the autobiographical story “Muzhik Marey”, he recalls how, as a nine-year-old boy, “among the deep silence, he clearly and distinctly heard the cry:“ The wolf is running! The cry turned out to be a hallucination, which the writer himself later admits: “I finally realized that there was no wolf and that the cry:“ The wolf is running ”was imaginary to me.
The cry was, however, so clear and distinct, but such cries (not about wolves alone) had already seemed to me once or twice before, and I knew about it.
In the January issue of the Writer's Diary for 1881, brief biographical information was published, dictated shortly before his death by the writer A. G. Dostoevskaya. From them you can get information about the onset of Dostoevsky's epileptic seizures: "In 1859, being in an epileptic illness, acquired while still in hard labor, he was dismissed." Sofia Kovalevskaya recalled the following words of the writer: “All of you, healthy people, do not suspect what happiness is, the happiness that we, epileptics, experience a second before an attack. Mohammed assures in his Qur'an that he saw paradise and was in it. All smart fools are convinced that he is just a liar and a cheat! But no! He doesn't lie! He really was in paradise in a fit of epilepsy, which he suffered, like me. I don’t know if this bliss lasts seconds, or hours, or months, but, believe the word, all the joys that life can give, I would not take for it!
Dostoevsky endowed the protagonist of the novel The Idiot with epilepsy.
Here is how Myshkin (and, consequently, the writer himself) reflected on his illness:
“He thought, among other things, that in his epileptic state there was one degree almost before the attack (if only the attack came in reality), when suddenly, in the midst of sadness, spiritual darkness, pressure, for moments, his brain seemed to ignite, and with an unusual impulse all his vital forces were strained at once. The feeling of life, self-consciousness almost multiplied tenfold in these moments, which lasted like lightning. Mind, heart lit up with an extraordinary light; all his worries, all his doubts, all his worries seemed to be appeased at once, resolved into some kind of higher calmness, full of clear, harmonious joy and hope, full of reason and final reason. But these moments, these glimpses, were still only a premonition of that final second (never more than a second) from which the attack itself began. This second was, of course, unbearable. Thinking about this moment later, already in a healthy state, he often said to himself: that all these lightning bolts and glimpses of higher self-awareness and self-consciousness, and therefore of “higher being”, are nothing but a disease, a violation of the normal state.
, and if so, then this is not the highest being at all, but, on the contrary, must be ranked among the lowest. (...) That this is really “beauty and prayer”, that this is really the “highest synthesis of life”, he could not doubt this, and he could not allow doubts. After all, it wasn’t visions that he dreamed of at that moment, as from hashish, opium or wine, degrading the mind and distorting the soul, abnormal and non-existent? He could reasonably judge this after the end of the disease state. These moments were just one extraordinary intensification of self-consciousness - if one had to express this state in one word - self-consciousness and at the same time self-sensation in the highest degree of directness. If at that second, that is, at the very last conscious moment before the seizure, he happened to have time to clearly and consciously say to himself: “Yes, for this moment you can give your whole life!” - then, of course, this moment in itself was worth a lifetime. However, he did not stand for the dialectical part of his conclusion: stupidity, spiritual darkness, idiocy stood before him as a vivid consequence of these “highest moments”.
4. Maxim Gorky
In 1889-1890, Maxim Gorky was forced to see a psychiatrist. About this case, as well as about previous events, he wrote in the essay "On the dangers of philosophy." What happened to the writer? At that time, he was listening to lectures on philosophy from a chemistry student friend of his. After one of the lectures, the following happened:
“Nicholas unfolded before me a terrible picture of the world, as Empedocles imagined it. This strange world must have especially attracted the sympathy of the lecturer: Nikolai drew it for me with enthusiasm, witty, convex, and more often than usual, smacked deliciously.
Just like the day before, it was late evening, and in the afternoon it was pouring with rain. It was damp in the garden, the wind was sighing, shadows were wandering, black wisps of clouds were rushing across the sky, revealing blue abysses and stars running swiftly.
I saw something indescribably terrible: inside a huge, bottomless bowl, overturned on its side, ears, eyes, palms of hands with spread fingers are rushing about, heads without faces are rolling, human legs are walking, each separately from the other, something clumsy and hairy is jumping, resembling a bear , the roots of trees move, like huge spiders, and branches and leaves live separately from them; multi-colored wings fly, and the eyeless muzzles of huge bulls look at me mutely, and their round eyes jump in fright over them; here the winged foot of a camel runs, and after it the horned head of an owl rushes swiftly - the whole interior of the bowl that I see is filled with the whirlwind movement of individual members, parts, pieces, sometimes connected to each other ironically ugly.
In this chaos of gloomy disunity, in a silent whirlwind of torn bodies, Hate and Love majestically move, opposing each other, indistinguishably similar to one another, a ghostly, bluish radiance pours from them, reminiscent of the winter sky on a sunny day, and illuminates everything moving deadly monotonous light.
I did not listen to Nikolai, absorbed in the contemplation of the vision and, as it were, also slowly rotating in this world, broken into pieces, as if blown up from the inside and falling in a spiral into a bottomless abyss of blue, cold radiance. I was so overwhelmed by the visible that, in a daze, I could not immediately answer Nikolai's questions.
Soon Nikolai left for the university, advising Gorky "not to study philosophy until he returns." Well, then it began:
“I was left with an anxious chaos in my head, with an indignant soul, and after a few days I felt that my brain was melting and boiling, giving rise to strange thoughts, fantastic visions and pictures.
A feeling of melancholy, sucking out life, seized me, and I began to fear madness. But I was brave, I decided to go to the end of fear - and that is probably what saved me.
I experienced terrible nights. You used to sit on the Otkos, looking into the muddy distance of the trans-Volga meadows, into the sky, showered with golden dust of stars, and suddenly you begin to expect that right now, in the night blue of the sky, a round, black spot will appear, like the opening of a bottomless well. And a fiery finger will stick out of it and threaten me.
Or — across the sky, sweeping away and extinguishing the stars, a thick gray snake in ice scales will crawl and forever leave behind it an impenetrable stone darkness and silence. It seemed possible that all the stars of the Milky Way would merge into a fiery river, and now - now it would fall to the ground.
Suddenly, in the place of the Volga, a bottomless gap opened its gray mouth, and streams of children ran into it from everywhere, playing, endless lines of soldiers rolled with orchestras of music in front, in procession, crowds of people flowed with many priests, banners, icons, innumerable people rode wagon trains, millions of peasants walked, with sticks in their hands, knapsacks behind their backs - all on the same face; clouds were sucked into this crack, the sky was drawn in, the broken moon rolled like a wheel and stars fell in a whirlwind like copper snowflakes.
I expected that the wide plane of the meadows would begin to roll up into a scroll, like a sheet of paper, this scroll would roll across the river, suck up water, then the high bank of the river would also roll up like birch bark or a piece of leather on fire, and when everything visible turned black scroll, - someone's snow-white hand will take it and carry it away.
Big black people with copper heads could come out of the mountain on which I was sitting, they walk in a tight crowd through the air and fill the world with a deafening ringing - trees, bell towers fall from it, as if cut by an invisible saw, trees, bell towers, houses are destroyed; and now - everything on earth turned into a column of greenish-burning dust, only a round, smooth desert remained, and in the middle - I, alone for four eternities. Precisely - for four, I saw these eternities - huge, dark gray circles of fog or smoke, they slowly rotate in impenetrable darkness, almost not differing from it in their ghostly color.
I saw God, this is Sabaoth, exactly the same as he is depicted in icons and paintings: handsome, gray-bearded, with indifferent eyes, sitting alone on a large, heavy throne, he sews a monstrously long white shirt with a golden needle and blue thread, it falls to the ground in a transparent cloud. There is a void around God, and it is impossible to look into it without horror, because it is constantly and limitlessly expanding and deepening.
Across the river, on a dark plane, grows, almost to the sky, a human ear - an ordinary ear, with thick hair in a shell - grows and listens to everything that I think.
With a long, two-handed sword of a medieval executioner, flexible as a whip, I killed countless people, they came towards me from right and left, men and women, all naked; They walked in silence, bowing their heads, obediently stretching their necks. An unknown creature stood behind me, and it was by its will that I killed, and it breathed cold needles into my brain.
A naked woman on bird legs instead of feet came up to me, golden rays came from her breasts; so she poured handfuls of burning oil on my head, and, flaring up like tufts of cotton wool, I disappeared.
Night watchman Ibragim Gubaidullin, several times picked me up on the upper alley of the Otkos and took me home, gently persuading me:
— Is your goulash sick? Sick - lie at home nada ... ".
It is not possible to give here all the colorful hallucinations of Alexei Maksimovich, since there are quite a few of them described in this essay. In the end, the writer realized the need for medical assistance:
“From these visions and nightly conversations with various faces that, unknown how, appeared in front of me and elusively disappeared, as soon as the consciousness of reality returned to me, from this too interesting life on the border of madness it was necessary get rid of. I have already reached such a state that even in the daytime, in the light of the sun, I was tensely expecting miraculous events.
The psychiatrist's advice was very amusing:
“... A small, black, hunchbacked psychiatrist, a lonely man, clever and skeptic, asked for two hours how I was living, then, slapping my knee with a terribly white hand, said:
- You, my friend, first of all need to throw books to hell and in general all the rubbish that you live by. According to your complexion, you are a healthy person - and you are ashamed to dismiss yourself like that. You need physical labor. As for women, how? Well! This doesn't work either. Leave abstinence to others, and get yourself a wench who is more greedy in the game of love - this will be useful.
He gave me some more advice, equally unpleasant and unacceptable, wrote two recipes, then said a few phrases that I remember very well:
— I heard something about you and — I beg your pardon if you don't like it. You seem to me a man, so to speak, primitive. And among primitive people, fantasy always prevails over logical thinking.
