The famous writer Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was very afraid of being buried alive. In his posthumous work “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends”, he requested: “Do not bury my body until there are clear signs of decomposition.”
Meanwhile, it is known that Gogol actually took his own life. How did this happen and why did the writer decide to end his life at the age of just 43? The memoirs of Gogol’s friend, the classic writer and pharmacist Boris Yablonsky, who noted in his diary that “Nikolai Vasilyevich had prophetic dreams,” have been preserved.
In these dreams, the writer saw himself being buried alive, awakening to imagine how those around him regarded him as dead, placed in a coffin, and buried deep underground. And Nikolai Vasilyevich, upon waking and realizing what had happened, began to call for help from inside the coffin, banging on the lid, and ultimately died for real due to lack of oxygen.
Nikolay Vasilyevich Gogol was a writer, poet, playwright, and critic of Russian origin with Ukrainian and Polish roots.
Pharmacist Yablonsky, after listening to the writer’s depressed thoughts, advised him to take sedatives and not to think about death.
However, in 1931, when the remains of the classic writer were exhumed from the cemetery of St. Danilov Monastery at Novodevichy, and Gogol’s coffin was opened, all present noted the unusual position of his body.
Perhaps the writer’s dreams had truly come to pass, and on that fateful day for him, he did not die but merely fell into a coma. What really happened? In 1839, while traveling in Italy, Gogol contracted malaria. The illness evidently progressed to encephalitis due to malaria, characterized by seizures and fainting, as well as drowsiness, severe hypotension, respiratory failure, and decreased body temperature.
In “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends,” the classic work mentions that during his illness, he experienced moments of paralysis, and his heart and pulse stopped. Many noted that the writer frequently fainted.
One of the late symptoms of the illness was severe headaches and loss of mental acuity. Realizing he could no longer create and suffering from excruciating pain, Gogol fell into a state of depression.
It is known that he refused food for an extended period and lay motionless, wishing for his own death, but immediately and painlessly. Accounts from contemporaries have been preserved, stating that Nikolai Gogol, who was initially not particularly religious, at some point in his life began to speak continuously about the Day of Judgment.
It turned out he had met some members of the Christian club “The Martyrs,” who proclaimed their own methods for calling upon the powers of heaven.
To do this, they tortured themselves with hunger and prayed day and night to achieve a state of hallucination, while “The Martyrs” did not disdain various types of “interesting” drinks to communicate “with the angels.” One of the revelations they received was that the apocalypse was imminent, and to save their souls, they needed to go to the Holy Land, in Jerusalem, at the Holy Sepulchre.
The writers traveled to this land starting in February 1848. Only the apocalypse did not occur, but the leaders of “The Martyrs” vanished, along with all the money.
To this day, the vague assumptions of the writer and other members who were abandoned abroad before the mercy of fate exist, and there remains a hypothesis that at the time of the “apocalypse,” the entire group ingested poison. But only alcohol was involved, and the tragic deaths turned into prolonged stomach pains that they had to endure.
But this truth only further plunged the writer into a state of depression. Returning to Russia, he lost interest in life and work and soon declared to those around him that he intended to die. He passed away four years later.
