Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin

Abstract

This article provides an overview of Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin's life. From the publication of his short story 'Four Days" after war, to his struggle with mental illness, and his days committed to an asylum. Garshin's bipolar episodes frequently rendered him incapable of writing; but on recovering his energy he would pick up the pen and carve out more brooding tales. Garshin extended Russia's tradition of 'lunatic-asylum' tales with 'The Red Flower', which features a psychotic protagonist who has taken it upon himself to vanquish the world's evil; this colossal evil is concentrated within a certain flower blooming triumphantly in the courtyard garden of the narrator's mental hospital. In 1888, at the age of 33, Garshin exited his fifth-floor St Petersburg room and threw himself down the building's stairwell. Gravely injured, he languished in a semi-conscious state, expiring after 5 days at a Red Cross hospital. Though his name is less known, certain elements of Garshin's work have been linked to those of the ubiquitous Russian masters; his solemn compassion for mangled bodies and shattered hearts has been compared to Dostoevsky, and his description of grim venues to Chekhov. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).