The classic of world literature Anton Pavlovich Chekhov always said that he did not believe in everything beyond. Meanwhile, there were several cases in his life that he could not explain.
The future writer was born in Taganrog in the family of a merchant, a former serf, owner of a grocery store. His father also sang in the church choir, often leaving his son to guard the shop.
Once, when Anton was alone, an attack was made on the trading premises: an unknown man burst in with a knife and demanded to give him all the money.
Despite the fact that the robber was several times larger than the boy and was holding a weapon, the boy pounced on him, twisted, disarmed and only then began to call for help. As Chekhov himself later explained, he was afraid that his father would scold him because of the theft, and where he suddenly woke up remarkable strength, he simply did not understand.
The adults did not understand this either. In the criminal chronicles of that time, newspapers wrote about this unprecedented miracle: "the criminal was about two meters tall, had a soldier's bearing and was incredibly strong, and a boy who was no taller than the attacker's navel coped with him."
Someone from the entourage of Chekhov's father started a rumor that the boy was possessed by a demon who dozed until then, until he sensed danger. Realizing that he could die if a bandit attacked his "carrier" - a boy, he appeared and rushed to the attack.
It sounds, of course, ridiculous, but the gossipers convinced the child's father of this so much that he brought Anton to church to conduct an exorcism ritual. However, the priest refused to do the ritual, saying that he did not see signs of obsession in the child, which was recorded in the church archives, which miraculously survived to this day.
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EXPERIMENTS ON THE DYING
In 1879 Chekhov graduated from high school in Taganrog, moved to Moscow and entered the medical faculty of Moscow University.
In 1881, Anton Pavlovich accidentally met the head of the hospital in Voskresensk near Moscow and got a job helping the hospital doctors when receiving patients.
The head physician of the hospital, Pavel Arkhangelsky, will write in his memoirs about Chekhov that, together with other doctors, the young doctor was interested in issues of the human soul and life after death.
He paid special attention to patients who were near death. More than once Chekhov remained at the bedside of the dying man and even waited for the moment when the person dies in order to see how the soul leaves the body. But all his observations did not lead to anything, and repeated vain attempts to save seriously ill people who both drank medicine, prayed to God, and turned to healers, but ended up in the other world, led him to the idea that there is no God, no life after death.
“There are no miracles, there is no God, there is no other world, life is short and one, he died - and into the earth, nowhere else,” Chekhov was convinced.
While working in the hospital, Chekhov at his leisure wrote and sent a couple of his stories to the editorial office of the Dragonfly magazine - "A Letter to a Learned Neighbor" and "What is Most Frequently Found in Novels, Novels, etc." This was his debut in print. He was so inspired that he began to write a lot and everywhere.
Stories, feuilletons, humoresques were published under the pseudonyms Antosha Chekhonte and Man without a Spleen in the Moscow magazines "Alarm", "Spectator", in the St. Petersburg weeklies "Oskolki", "Strekoza". Soon, fame came to him - readers began to recognize him, letters were written to him, his publications were expected …
FEARED THE DEATH OF A BROTHER
Soon, in 1888, a second mystical incident happened in Chekhov's life. One night Anton woke up in a cold sweat and told his relatives that he had a bad dream. As if his older brother Nikolai went to the bed, bent over it, kissed Anton on the head and said: "You sleep, sleep, but I have to go, we will not see you again." In the evening of the same day, the tragic news came - the writer's brother died suddenly.
Chekhov was very worried about the death of his brother, and soon after the funeral he left for Odessa, where he toured the Maly Theater.
There he met a certain young artist named Panova, but the romance did not end with a wedding. As historians wrote, after a passionate night of love, the writer literally pushed her out the door, not even allowing her to completely put on her clothes.
The girl was at a loss, to which the writer said: “I had a vision: if I don’t kick you out now, I will not part with you until the end of my days, and I don’t want to live with you until old age”. Modern psychologists would attribute this behavior to depression.
At the same time (largely with the light hand of Panova), secular circles began to gossip about the writer's mental deviations. Legends circulated about his ability to see prophetic dreams, and some sincerely believed in this, while others called him schizophrenia.
PROPHETIC DREAMS
According to rumors that were popular in those days in secular circles, the young writer and playwright often amused himself by making predictions based on his dreams. This happened most often in the following way: after sitting in a cafe in the theater lobby and having a good drink, he began a conversation with random visitors to the establishment who were nearby - even those with whom he did not know.
As a rule, he confessed that he had prophetic dreams, and told what would happen in the city and in the country in a week, in a month. And sometimes he completely surprised the interlocutors with surprisingly accurate prophecies. For example, he could say to a stranger:
"I saw you in a dream, you will break your arm." He, of course, did not believe it, but a few days later, with a plaster cast on his arm through a garcon in a cafe, he himself was looking for "that drunkard" in order to listen to his predictions.
However, Chekhov did not call himself a clairvoyant, did not conduct mystical sessions, did not release books with predictions, and was completely shy of his gift when sober. However, if you believe the notes of the writer of everyday life Vladimir Gilyarovsky, stories about Chekhov's dreams are nothing more than Moscow legends - he could not find confirmation of them.
FORECAST FORECAST
In the 1890s, Chekhov was the most widely read writer in Russia. At the peak of his popularity, he makes a strange decision: to go to Sakhalin, the island of convicts. He travels across the country, studying the life of convicts and exiles.
On Sakhalin, Chekhov even conducts a population census, it is about 10 thousand statistical cards. During the census, he meets a woman who has gained fame as a fortune-teller, and is fond of her prophecies. At least twice a week, he begins to visit her and ask her to spread the cards.
The fascination with these sessions ends as soon as the fortune-teller makes an unpleasant prediction for the writer: she predicts that he will become impoverished and will live in poverty in a crumbling old house.
Things really went badly for the writer. There were no orders for books, almost all savings were over. Then he decides to buy an estate in Melikhovo with his last money. Chekhov gets a job as a zemstvo doctor and serves 25 villages during a cholera epidemic.
Soon, Anton Pavlovich's tuberculosis worsened, he was forced to change the climate and move to live in Yalta. Relatives - sisters, a mother with a father and a younger brother, who move with him, begin to notice that Anton is talking in his sleep.
At first they laughed at him, and then they began to write down what he said. Later, years later, it will become known that, being in the arms of Morpheus, he predicted many events from his life.
For example, he told about the meeting with Maxim Gorky (which will take place several years later), described his lady of the heart - a girl whom he would meet only two years later.
She will be the leading actress of the Moscow Art Theater Olga Knipper, and with her the writer will finally decide to start a family.
"Child! The child will be dead! " - all at the same time, during night vision, the writer uttered. And this prophecy came true: in 1902, the writer's wife suffered a miscarriage.
In May 1904, exhausted from tuberculosis, Chekhov and his wife went to rest in Badenweiler, a famous resort in southern Germany. The couple rested for about 20 days, after which one evening, after dinner, Anton Pavlovich said: "I feel bad, maybe it's time to die?" - and told his wife to bring champagne with the words: "To die - so with fun in my soul."
Without haste, he drained a glass of frothy drink, lay down, turned on his left side, and soon fell asleep forever.