Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin (1855-1888) - Russian prose writer and poet, art critic. The writer is of Ukrainian origin. He was born on February 2 (14), 1855 in the Pleasant Dolina estate, located on the territory of the modern Donetsk region. His colleagues, including Anton Pavlovich Chekhov and Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, spoke warmly about the writer’s works. They said that Vsevolod could live and create for a long time if they could protect him from world injustice and pain and reduce his sensitivity.
Noble family
The parents of the future writer were nobles. According to legends, their family descended from Murza Garshi, who came from the Golden Horde. Garshin's mother was an intellectual, she was interested in literature and politics, and spoke several languages. The boy's father, Mikhail Yegorovich, was a military man. Colleagues often came to him, they shared stories about the defense of Sevastopol. It was in such an environment that Seva spent her childhood.
At the age of five, the boy experienced a family drama. His mother fell in love with the teacher P.V. Zavadsky, who was a famous revolutionary. Peter was also involved in organizing a secret political society. His mother ran to him, but Mikhail Yegorovich complained to law enforcement agencies. The lover was arrested and exiled to Petrozavodsk. The woman moved to St. Petersburg to be closer to her loved one.
Seva took the incident acutely due to early mental development, his health and psyche deteriorated. Subsequently, the writer often experienced attacks of nervous breakdown. After his parents separated, Garshin remained to live with his father, but in 1864 his mother took him and sent him to the St. Petersburg gymnasium.
Start
He was born on February 2 (14), 1855 in the Yekaterinoslav province.
His father was an officer, a participant in the Crimean War, his mother, the daughter of a naval officer, participated in the revolutionary democratic movement in the sixties. It was with her that Garshin’s first drama was connected, which influenced both his character and his health. When the boy was five years old, his mother left the family to join the teacher of the older children, P. Zavadovsky, who was also a member of a secret revolutionary society. A few years later, in 1864, she took Vsevolod to her place in St. Petersburg. This story could not help but influence the impressionable boy, who was already extremely nervous growing up. In addition, early mental development also did its job: a child who at the age of 7 read “Notre Dame Cathedral”, at 8 - “What is to be done?”, and at 9 who read “Contemporary”, simply could not grow up to be an ordinary person.
However, Garshin the high school student, as a rule, gave the impression of a cheerful and purposeful person. He was interested in literature, social problems, and natural science. But the social life of the mid-sixties often had a painful effect on him, which periodically led to exacerbations of mental illness, which began to develop in childhood. His acquaintances noted that he could suddenly become gloomy and begin to argue how little good there is in this life, sometimes expressing rather strange ways of how to make humanity happy. Many said that Vsevolod began to strive too early to fight some kind of world evil. This struggle would later become one of the key themes of his work.
Youth and first works
Since 1864, the prose writer studied at gymnasium No. 7 in St. Petersburg. In 1874 he graduated and became a student at the Mining Institute. There he became interested in literature and began writing essays and articles on art history. But Seva never managed to get a diploma. During his training in 1877, the Russian-Turkish war began, and the young man voluntarily joined the army. There he managed to rise to the rank of officer, but then was wounded, as a result of which he resigned.
It was after the army that Garshin took up literature in earnest. His first story was called "Four Days", it became available to readers in 1876, and immediately gained popularity. In this work, Vsevolod Mikhailovich defended his views, protested against war and the destruction of people by each other. Subsequently, this topic was often raised in the writer’s stories. Sometimes evil and injustice were considered not against the backdrop of war, but in ordinary essays about peaceful life.
In 1883, the prose writer’s second work, entitled “Red Flower,” was published. In this work, he tried to explore the role of art in the life of humanity and criticized the theory of “pure art.” It is “The Red Flower” that is considered one of the first examples of the short story genre. This genre was later developed by Anton Chekhov.
War experience
On the very first day, the student signed up as a volunteer and in one of the first battles fearlessly rushed into the attack, receiving a minor wound in the leg. Garshin received the rank of officer, but did not return to the battlefield. The impressionable young man was shocked by the images of war; he could not come to terms with the fact that people were blindly and mercilessly exterminating each other. He did not return to the institute, where he began to study mining: the young man was powerfully attracted to literature. For some time he attended lectures as a volunteer at the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg University, and then began to write stories. Anti-war sentiments and the shock he experienced resulted in works that instantly made the aspiring writer famous and desirable in many editorial offices of that time.
Last years
Like many creative people, Vsevolod reacted emotionally to any shock. Social injustice caused him great pain. In 1880, the prose writer witnessed the death penalty of the revolutionary Mlodetsky. This death was a blow for the writer also for the reason that he had previously tried to stand up for the young man. For two years he was treated in a psychiatric hospital after such stress. But he never managed to completely get rid of the impressions.
After treatment, Garshin continued to have seizures. During one of them, he jumped from a flight of stairs, receiving many injuries. From March 31 to April 1, 1888, the writer remained unconscious, after which he died. Vsevolod Mikhailovich was buried on the Literary Bridges, a museum-necropolis located in St. Petersburg.
Garshin Vsevolod Mikhailovich
(1855-1888) Russian writer
Even during his lifetime, the name of Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin among the Russian intelligentsia, the concept of “a man of the Garshin type” became widespread. What did it include? First of all, what was bright and attractive was what the contemporaries who knew the writer saw and what the readers guessed, recreating the image of the author from his stories. The beauty of his internal appearance was combined with external beauty. Garshin was alien to both asceticism and dull moralism. During a period of mental and physical health, he keenly felt the joy of life, loved society, nature, and knew the joy of simple physical labor.
The thirst for life, the ability to feel and understand everything beautiful in it was one of the reasons for that heightened rejection of evil and ugliness, which Garshin expressed in deep sadness and almost physical suffering. This deep sadness about the imperfection of the world and people, the ability to feel someone else’s pain, someone else’s suffering as if it were one’s own, was the second feature of the “Garshin type of person.”
Vsevolod Garshin was born on the estate of his maternal grandmother, which was called Pleasant Valley and was located in the Bakhmut district of the Yekaterinoslav province. His early years were spent in the small town of Starobelsk. Garshin's father, Mikhail Egorovich, was an officer. A humane, gentle man, he had a reputation as a kind and fair commander. True, in everyday life he was not without some oddities and was unable to establish his family life. Vsevolod Garshina's mother, Ekaterina Stepanovna, became infatuated with her sons' tutor P. Zavadsky and left her husband. But he managed to take revenge on her and his rival. According to his denunciation, P. Zavadsky, a member of the Kharkov revolutionary circle, was arrested and exiled. Searches were carried out at Ekaterina Stepanovna’s place several times. The situation in the house was very difficult. “Some scenes,” Garshin later recalled, “left an indelible memory in me and, perhaps, marks on my character. The sad expression that predominates on my face probably originated in that era.”
He was then in his fifth year. The mother and her eldest sons left for St. Petersburg, and Vsevolod remained in the village with his father. Much later, in the story “Night,” he wrote several autobiographical lines about this time, which his mother could never forgive him. In them, he lovingly addressed the memory of his father, writing that he wanted to be transported back to his childhood and caress this downtrodden man.
In the summer of 1863, my mother took Vsevolod to St. Petersburg. From a secluded, quiet environment, the boy ended up in a not at all rich, but noisy, never empty St. Petersburg apartment: Ekaterina Stepanovna loved people and knew how to gather them around her. Vsevolod Garshin entered the gymnasium. His mother soon left for Kharkov, leaving him first in the care of his older brothers, and then, after the gymnasium boarding school, in a family of friends.
Vsevolod Garshin spent ten years at the gymnasium, of which he was ill for two years (even then he began to show symptoms of mental illness) and once remained in the same class for another year.
As a high school student, Vsevolod Garshin began writing feuilletons and poems, and was published in high school publications. In the last year of the teenager’s stay at the gymnasium, it was transformed into a real school, and those who graduated from a real school, according to the laws of that time, could only study further in an engineering specialty. Garshin was fond of natural sciences and wanted to enter the Medical-Surgical Academy, but a new decree deprived him of this opportunity. In 1874 he became a student at the Mining Institute.
This was a time of social activity among student youth unprecedented in Russia. Almost all higher educational institutions were engulfed in revolutionary ferment, which was brutally suppressed. And yet, young people actively fought for their rights and responded sensitively to all the most important social and political problems.
Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin was aloof from these events; for him it was a period of painful search for his path in life. In November 1874, shortly after the unrest at the Mining Institute, in connection with which two hundred students were expelled and one hundred and fifty exiled in stages, Vsevolod wrote to his mother: “On the one hand, the government, which seizes and exiles, looks at you as a beast, and not on a person, on the other - a society busy with its own affairs, treating it with contempt, almost with hatred... Where to go, what to do? The vile ones walk on their hind legs, the stupid ones crowd into the Nechaevites, etc. to Siberia, the smart ones are silent and suffer. They are the worst. Suffering from without and from within. I feel bad, my dear mother.”
However, Garshin's creative work became more intense during his student years. He writes poetry, and in 1876 his essay “The True History of the Ensky Zemstvo Assembly” appeared in print for the first time. It painted a caustic satirical picture of the morals of zemstvo liberals.
In those same years, Vsevolod Garshin became close to a group of young artists. An ardent and interested attitude towards issues of art prompted him to write a number of articles on painting, in which he reflected on the essence of the artist’s activity and the purpose of art. One of the strongest artistic impressions of those years was the exhibition of paintings by the Russian battle painter Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin. Garshin was shocked by the depiction of war scenes. And soon he himself had to take part in what caused him such horror and disgust.
In April 1877, Russia declared war on Turkey, and Vsevolod Garshin volunteered to serve in the army. “I cannot,” he writes to his mother, “hide behind the walls of an institution when my peers expose their foreheads and chests to bullets.” He was enlisted as a private in an infantry regiment. Here, in the war, he deeply comprehended the character of the ordinary Russian man, his heroism and selfless service to the ideals of brotherhood. During the war, the social contradictions of Russian reality became even more clear to Garshin.
In the battle of Ayaslar, he was wounded in the leg, was treated for a long time, and upon recovery retired. This is what Garshin’s short military career looked like from the outside. But her internal result was much more significant. The war and the impressions it caused became one of the main themes of Garshin’s work. While still in the army, he begins to write the story “Four Days”, finishes it in Kharkov during his recovery and sends it to the magazine “Otechestvennye zapiski”. The story was a stunning success and immediately made the name of its author widely known.
A year later, Vsevolod Garshin publishes a new story called “A Very Short Novel.” Here, as in other works of the writer, the same motives are heard: pain for a person, grief over the hopelessness of this pain, endless compassion. Already in Garshin’s first stories, the heightened sense of humanity inherent in his work was revealed, and the peculiarity of his talent that was noted by Chekhov was revealed. In his short story “The Seizure” about the student Vasilyev, whose prototype was Garshin, we read: “He has talents for writing, acting, and art, but he has a special talent - human. He has a subtle, excellent sense of pain in general. Just as a good actor reflects someone else’s movements and voice, so Vasiliev knows how to reflect someone else’s pain in his soul. Seeing the tears, he cries; near a sick person he himself becomes sick and groans; if he sees violence, then it seems to him that violence is being committed against him...” This property of Garshin’s talent forced him to turn to one of the most pressing social topics - prostitution.
The story “The Incident,” which appeared in print in 1878, was not the first in Russian literature to reflect this problem. Writers have already created a certain tradition in their approach to this “social ulcer.” Vsevolod Garshin generally remains in line with the same tradition. However, his heroine is not a typical product of her environment; she is much higher than her. The fate of this woman is the tragedy of an extraordinary person who found herself in more than ordinary circumstances. In essence, as Garshin shows and as the heroine herself thinks, there is not much difference between prostitution and many marriages that are not concluded for love.
Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin does not give his heroes the opportunity to correct mistakes and be happy. He places the highest demands on them. The words of G. Uspensky about writing are applicable to Garshin: “I want to torment and torment the reader because this determination will give me over time the right to talk about the most urgent and greatest torments experienced by this very reader...” But Garshin himself suffered no less than what says his own confession: “The writer suffers for everyone he writes about.”
He published many of his works in the journal Otechestvennye zapiski, headed by M.E. in those years. Saltykov-Shchedrin. Garshin did not always share his ideas, but nevertheless felt his spiritual closeness to this magazine, on the pages of which the problems of modern public life were truthfully and honestly covered.
Meanwhile, the writer’s mental state deteriorated, and attacks of melancholy came upon him more and more often. In the winter of 1880, he wrote the story “Night,” in which he expresses the moods and feelings of many of his contemporaries.
By the beginning of the 80s, Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin became one of the most popular Russian writers. The younger generation considers him the ruler of thoughts. After every student evening, if Garshin was present, he was inevitably rocked in his arms. When he appeared at the theater or at a public lecture, murmurs of approval ran through the hall. Portraits of the writer could be found in the albums of students, students and high school students.
Vsevolod Garshin wrote slowly and difficultly. But each of his stories left an indelible mark on the minds of his readers. Meanwhile, his personal and creative life was already on the verge of a severe crisis, which was explained by both external and internal reasons.
The social situation in the country remained difficult, unrest among young people continued, and workers went on strike. In 1880, Count M. Loris-Melikov was appointed head of the Supreme Administrative Commission. A few days after his appointment, Narodnaya Volya member I. Mlodetsky shot at him. The count remained alive, but Mlodetsky was arrested and sentenced to death. Garshin was shocked by both the assassination attempt and the verdict. He writes a letter to Loris-Melikov asking him to “forgive” Mlodetsky and delivers it himself. Garshin came to Loris-Melikov’s house late at night, they didn’t want to let him in, then they searched him, but in the end the count still accepted him.
There is no exact information about the content of their conversation. It is only known that Loris-Melikov promised Garshin to reconsider the case and did not keep his word. Mlodetsky was hanged, after which Garshin finally lost his peace of mind and peace. He left for Moscow, then rushed to Rybinsk, then returned to Moscow again, visited Tula, Yasnaya Polyana with L.N. Tolstoy, with whom he spoke about the reconstruction of life, about saving people from injustice and evil, headed to Kharkov, but did not get there. Relatives, alarmed by Garshin’s disappearance, found him in the Oryol province, where the writer was already in a semi-insane state. Garshin's severe mental illness forced his relatives to place him first in a Kharkov hospital for the mentally ill, and then in a St. Petersburg private hospital. The patient's condition improved somewhat, and he settled on his uncle's estate, where he began to recover.
The life of Vsevolod Garshin in recent years has not been rich in external events. Literary work did not provide sufficient livelihood, and the writer was forced to serve.
The charm of his personality was so great that he easily found friends. One of them was the wonderful Russian artist Ilya Repin, who based Vsevolod Garshin on the son of Ivan the Terrible for his famous painting “Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan.” Repin said that he was always struck by the stamp of doom on Garshin’s face. And he was not wrong.
Mental illness attacked the writer again, he plunged into depression and experienced insurmountable melancholy. On March 19, 1888, Garshin threw himself down a flight of stairs, and a few days later, on March 24, he died. His death became a public event; thousands of people came to bury the writer.
The fate of Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin seemed to personify the fate of an entire generation. After his tragic death, in order to honor the memory of the writer and create a fund for the construction of a monument to him, it was decided to publish a collection of his memory. At the request of A.N. Pleshcheev to write a story for this collection Anton Pavlovich Chekhov replied: “...I love people like the late Garshin with all my soul and consider it my duty to sign my sympathy for them.” Chekhov said that he had a theme for a story, the hero of which would be “a young man of Garshin origin, remarkable, honest and deeply sensitive.”
Other facts from life
From childhood, the prose writer absorbed democratic ideas thanks to his teacher P. Zavadsky. He had special respect for the works of the Sovremennik publishing house. Because of his views, Garshin often encountered misunderstandings. His depressive writings were used as an example on the theme of the “hard life of the intelligentsia.”
Vsevolod Mikhailovich was often criticized, but he received real recognition after the war. Ten years after its completion, the portrait of the prose writer was printed on stamps. After some time, his fairy tales were added to the school curriculum. Now they are studied in the fourth grade of secondary school.
The writer always supported painting, especially the Wanderers. It was he who posed for several of Repin’s paintings, including the famous work “Ivan the Terrible Kills His Son.” The artist also painted a portrait of Vsevolod. He managed to accurately convey not only Garshin’s facial features, but also Garshin’s emotions. The sad but gentle eyes especially stood out.
In 1883, the writer married N.M. Zolotilova, at that time she was a student of women’s medical courses. The years spent with the woman he loved were the happiest in Garshin’s life. It was then that his best stories were born.
Garshin’s most famous works were the stories “The Orderly and the Officer,” “Nadezhda Nikolaevna,” “The Coward,” and “The Incident.” Children loved his fairy tales, including “That Which Wasn’t There” and “The Frog Traveler.” A cartoon was even made based on the latter work. The book "Signal" became the basis for the first children's film released in the USSR.
Creativity of V. M. Garshin. Anti-militarist theme
A lively interest in the inner world of a person surrounded by an unmerciful reality is the central theme in Garshin’s works. This charm of sincerity and empathy in the author’s prose is undoubtedly fed from the source of great Russian literature, which, since the book “The Life of Archpriest Avvakum,” has demonstrated a deep interest in the “dialectics of the soul.”
Garshin the narrator first appeared before the reading public with the work “Four Days.” The soldier lay with broken legs on the battlefield for so long until his fellow soldiers found him. The story is told in the first person and resembles the stream of consciousness of a person exhausted by pain, hunger, fear and loneliness. He hears groans, but realizes with horror that it is he himself who is groaning. Near him, the corpse of the enemy he killed is decomposing. Looking at this picture, the hero is horrified by the face on which the skin has burst, the grin of the skull is terribly exposed - the face of war! Other stories breathe similar anti-war pathos: “The Coward,” “The Orderly and the Officer,” “From the Memoirs of Private Ivanov.”
Biography 3
Vsevolod Garshin is a wonderful Russian poet, writer, and prose writer, who wrote many interesting works that, one way or another, influenced both the worldview of readers and the entire literary world in particular. In his works one can often see events that, one way or another, affected the life of the writer himself, since his life is very tragic and difficult.
This literary figure was born in 1855, into a fairly well-known aristocratic family of that time. Throughout his virginity, they protected him and took care of the boy as best they could, which he later got used to, and which became one of the aggravating factors in his mental problems. At the age of five, the boy, who until then had lived a calm life, is overtaken by a terrible misfortune. There is a disagreement in his family, and his mother, having fallen in love with another person, goes to him, which Vsevolod’s father finds out, and decides to go to the police, and after long legal proceedings, the conflict is resolved, and the mother leaves the family. As the boy grows up, he becomes an increasingly private young man, but he also begins to be interested in literature. After reaching a certain age, his father sends him to study at a mining institute, but, unfortunately, the young man is more interested in literature and poetry than science and discoveries, and young Vsevolod decides to devote himself completely to this matter. After graduation, the guy begins to write many different works, which are subsequently noticed by large literary publications, which, promising the guy untold popularity and wealth, take him under their publishing house. Thus, the young, then not yet very accomplished Vsevolod, writes a large number of works, which, under the auspices of the publishing house, are gaining, although not great, popularity.
The writer also took part in the Turkish War. When the war just began, Vsevolod’s first decision was to go to the front as a volunteer. Spurred on by his enthusiasm and courage, he leads the squad, but in the first battle he is wounded in the leg. The wound is not critical for the guy’s possible military career, but he decides not to return to the front anymore due to fear of death.
Later, the writer’s mental illnesses, to which he did not attach much importance, surface, after which he is sent for treatment to a psychiatric hospital. After some time, he is released from it, but his psychological illness remains uncured, and in one of the attacks he commits suicide.
4th grade. Summary. 5th grade. For children.
Biography by dates and interesting facts. The most important.
