Vadim Markovich Rozin*

Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

*Corresponding Author: Vadim Markovich Rozin, Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia.

Received: August 03, 2026; Published: September 30, 2026

The article examines two fundamentally different approaches to explaining the tragedy of N.V. Gogol: the socio-cultural one (in A. Davydov’s book) and the psychiatric one (in V.F. Chizh’s work). Davydov sees the cause of the writer’s death in his inability to overcome an internal schism between archaic and modern values, which he views as a projection of a fundamental contradiction inherent in all of Russian culture. Chizh, conversely, insists on the primacy of mental illness (paranoia, depressive neurosis), which, developing over time, led to a creative crisis, religious quests, and, ultimately, death. The author of this article, criticizing both approaches for reducing the living personality to abstract schemes (whether sociological or clinical), offers his own version. In his view, Gogol’s tragedy lies not in a passive collision of “cultural poles” nor in a fatal disease, but in an active yet failed project of self-construction. Being a brilliant artist but not an integral personality (unlike Swedenborg, Augustine, or Florensky), Gogol could not bear the discrepancy between his own intentions and the public’s perception. Fleeing from this, he began to construct a new reality for himself — first as a piece of fiction, and then as an actual fact of life, which aggravated his illness and led to the tragic finale.

Keywords: Disease; Society; Contradiction; Life; Personality; Mediation

References

1. Davydov AP. Gogol's soul. M., (2008): 115, 46, 44, 45, 146.
2. Page 33.
3. Page 27.
4. Page 28.
5. Page.
6. Page. 170-171.
7. Chizh VF. N.V. Gogol / Biography / Illness of N.V. Gogol. (2007).
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Voropaev V. "Thy Will Be Done". On the Causes of Gogol's Death. Online Journal of the Sretensky Monastery.
14. Cit. op.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
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20. Jorge Luis Borges. “Thinking Out Loud”. Borges. Collected Works. St. Petersburg 3 (2005): 520-521.
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22. Florensky PA. “The Pillar and Ground of Truth (I)”. Moscow, 1 (1990): 162.
23. Cit. op.
24. Bakhtin M. “Aesthetics of Verbal Creativity”. Moscow, (1979): 116.
25. Cit. op.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. Gogol NV. “Letter to A.O. Smirnova”. Gogol N.V. Collected Works. In 9 volumes. Moscow, 9 (1994): 288.
29. Afterlaw. Collected Works in 4 Volumes. Moscow, 4 (1994): 458.

Citation

Citation: Vadim Markovich Rozin. “A Sociocultural Contradiction or a Mental Illness? (An Explanation of the Fate of Nikolai Gogol, the Great Russian Writer of the 19th Century)". Acta Scientific Medical Sciences 10.10 (2026): 03-13.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2026 Vadim Markovich Rozin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.