Diagnosing Literary Genius: A Cultural History of Psychiatry in Russia, 1880-1930

1 Gogol, Moralists, and Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry

o n e Gogol, Moralists, and Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry People are under the misapprehension that the human brain is situated in the head: nothing could be further from the truth. It is carried by the wind from the Caspian Sea. —N.V. Gogol Until recently, the psychiatrist thought about mental illness as a phenomenon . . . caused by deep changes in the anatomy of a handicapped brain, and he sought for con- firmation of his statements and assumptions there.This search . . . for physical alterations, which cannot yet be found, leads the psychiatrist to a theory of functional, molecular, chemical, and other changes . . . [but it] does not allow the study of the phenomenon from the point of view from which he has the best chance to learn something about it—from the mental or psychological point of view. —I. D. Ermakov Nikolai Gogol’s contemporaries were puzzled by what they saw as an extraordinary turn in his life when,at the height of his career,admired for his talent as well as for his social criticism, he stopped writing fiction and became exceedingly religious. “The enigma of Gogol” mystified his contemporaries until they explained it by illness, which supposedly transformed a brilliant writer and ardent patriot into a religious maniac.¹ They made the judgment on moral grounds,and it did not require a medical certificate.Following radical literary critics,Gogol’s contemporaries believed that a writer,in order to produce good and sound work, should devote himself to a social cause. But psychiatrists, whose voice in society was growing stronger, eventually intervened . Fifty years after Gogol’s death the psychiatric profession became involved in an intense discussion of the writer’s supposed illness. In 1902 two pathographies,by N.N.Bazhenov and V.F.Chizh,offered authoritative con- firmation of the prevalent nineteenth-century opinion that Gogol suffered from a mental disorder.The two psychiatrists used medical resources to endorse the popular opinion that art ought to have a social mission. Chizh was especially forceful in suggesting a medical underpinning for the moral evaluation of Gogol. In his life project as a moralist, Chizh integrated his writing about Gogol with psychiatry and experimental psychology . With the beginning of the new century, however, literary critics’ opinion of Gogol shifted. On the eve of the 1905 revolution against autocracy, they perceived him as a victorious genius, not as someone confused in his purposes and mistaken in his commitments. Subsequently, Chizh’s views came under attack from his younger colleagues, who were eager to reconsider the moral project of “the long nineteenth century” and to reassess Gogol’s supposed insanity in the light of the new, revolutionary vision.They brought into the discussion of Gogol new conceptual resources—the idea that geniuses were advancing the development of human beings rather than revealing signs of degeneration—and they called for the replacement of the psychiatric labeling of geniuses by studies of their psychology. NikolaiVasilievich Gogol Although there are as many versions of Gogol’s life (1809–52) as there are biographers, the most widespread version sharply divides his life into two parts. Gogol’s first books gained him wide popularity and his readers’ genuine love. Full of light humor, in contrast to the usual Russian seriousness, they described peasant and gentry life in Gogol’s native Ukraine.During the first part of his literary career, he also wrote a comedy, The Inspector General (1836), in which he aimed to render the official life in Russia contemptible and ludicrous and to portray the corruption universal in the civil service and the alternating arrogance and servility of men in office.This comedy brought him great success with the public and criticism from the authorities; hence the liberal opposition regarded him as a leader. In order to escape from official criticism,Gogol went to Italy.Here he continued to work on Dead Souls (1842),his main novel,in which he told the story of an adventurer who travels around Russia making fictitious purchases of “dead souls,” that is, of serfs Gogol, Moralists, and Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry 15 who have died since the last census, in order to pledge his imaginary property to the government.The novel, seen as a polemic on Russian provincial life, enhanced Gogol’s reputation as a satirist who attacked social problems, made people laugh at them, and in this way brightened the dark sides of Russian life...