The work of many writers is permeated with fantasy and mysticism. But the most surprising thing is that mysticism often breaks into the life of the authors themselves. Prophetic dreams, visions, predictions - what happens to the "engineers of human souls"!
IMPRESSIVE NATURE
The famous playwright Alexander Sergeevich Griboyedov was a lively, receptive person.
A close friend of the writer, historian Stepan Nikitich Begichev, told the following about Griboyedov: “In April 1823 he was my best man at my wedding and stood next to me. Before the service began, the priest decided to give us a speech.
The witty Griboyedov, with his usual gaiety in his youth, commented on this speech in my ear, and I forcibly refrained from laughing. Then he fell silent, but when he held the crown over me, I noticed that his hands were shaking, and I, looking back, saw him pale with tears in my eyes.
At the end of the service to my question: "What happened to you?" - he answered: "Stupidity, it seemed to me that they were burying me and buried." And before his last trip to Tehran, he was unusually sad and said that he felt that he would never return from there. And so it happened.
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Everyone noted the melancholy, dreaminess and increased nervous excitability of Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol. Once he was walking along Nikitsky Boulevard in the direction of Tverskaya. Even from a distance he noticed a man walking towards him. It seemed to Gogol that he saw him somewhere, but could not remember who he was, what his name was, when and where he met him.
The stranger was delighted with him, greeted him cordially and took him home. At dinner a conversation began. Gogol felt that he had not experienced such peace of mind for a long time. The stranger took him by the hand and led him to the icon: “Let's pray together. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit …"
Suddenly Gogol clearly heard someone call his father by name: "Vasily Afanasyevich …" But who said that?..
Then they sat side by side, prayed in front of the icon of the Mother of God and cried. The stranger accompanied Gogol to the door and took from him a promise to return the next day.
Gogol did not remember how he found himself at home. It was there that the insight came to him that this stranger had been sent to him from his long-dead father and that he would hardly ever find himself in his house, if only because he would not find him in the intricacies of the alleys and streets of Moscow.
Since then, the image of this man haunted Gogol, he often said that he would not live long, because they “came” for him.
DOUBTING THOMAS
The famous poet Pyotr Andreevich Vyazemsky was an unbeliever in his youth and was constantly refined in ridicule of religion.
But one incident forced him to change his beliefs. This was around 1823. Late in the evening Vyazemsky returned to his apartment on Nevsky Prospekt, near Anichkov Bridge.
To his surprise, the poet noticed that the windows of his study were brightly lit. Running upstairs, he asked the valet who was in the office. He replied that he locked the office with a key and handed it over to the prince.
Opening the door, Pyotr Andreevich saw that in the back of the room a man was sitting with his back to him and, bending over the writing table, was writing something. Vyazemsky went up to him and read what had been written over his shoulder. What was there forever remained a secret, but only Vyazemsky screamed loudly, grabbed his chest and fell unconscious.
When he woke up, the stranger had already disappeared, and the candles were extinguished. The poet told everyone that he saw himself, but did not admit what he had read. Since then, Vyazemsky has become a deeply religious person.
A WHITE MAN
After graduating from the Lyceum, Pushkin turned to his sister Olga with a request to tell fortunes in the palm of her hand (she was fond of palmistry).
Olga became obstinate, not wanting to bewitch her brother. And when she yielded to his request, she suddenly burst into tears and said: “Why, Alexander, are you forcing me to say what I’m afraid to say? You are threatened with a violent death, and not yet in your old years.
While in Odessa, the poet met with a famous soothsayer from Greece, who took him to a field on a moonlit night. There, having uttered a spell, he made a terrible prophecy that Alexander would die from a horse or a white-haired man in white on a white horse.
Subsequently, Pushkin confessed to his friends that after this meeting with the Greek magician, each time he put his foot in the stirrup with disgust. The Greek was not mistaken: Pushkin's killer Dantes was blond, wore a white uniform and rode a white horse …
Premature death seemed to be prepared for him by fate. Known throughout Europe, the German fortune teller Kirchhoff arrived in St. Petersburg in the winter of 1817, and the capital ladies' men went to her to find out their fate. Among them is Pushkin, whom she was the last to guess. Seeing Pushkin, Kirchhoff exclaimed that he would become famous. The witch also warned him that he would be exiled twice.
The last prophecy sounded like this: "Perhaps you will live a long time, but in the thirty-seventh year, beware of a white horse, a white head or a white man." Therefore, a different fate could await Pushkin, listen to the soothsayers and be careful.
Pushkin, however, tried with all his might to avoid an evil fate. Having joined the Freemasons and learned about the involvement of a man whose name in translation means "white head", he left them.
He also refused to travel to Poland as a military man when he heard that one of the leaders of the uprising, with whom he would have to fight, was named Weisskopf ("white head"). But he managed to protect himself from one misfortune. Alexander Sergeevich was in exile in the village of Mikhailovskoye when the news of the death of Emperor Alexander I reached him.
He decided to immediately go to Petersburg and stay with a friend, the poet Ryleev. Pushkin ordered to prepare the carriage for the journey and went to say goodbye to the neighbors. But then a hare crossed his path, and another one on the way back (in those days it was a bad sign). The ominous signs did not end there. The servant suddenly collapsed in a fever, and when the harnessed cart finally started from the porch, the priest blocked her way.
A sudden meeting with a church minister was also considered a bad omen. And then the superstitious Pushkin decided to cancel the trip. And as if looking into the water! In the house where he was going to go, gathered those who would later be called the Decembrists. Many of them will be hanged after the uprising on Senate Square, while others will be sent to Siberia for trying to destroy the tsar.
LETTER FROM NEW ZEALAND
The writer Yevgeny Petrov, one of the authors of The Twelve Chairs and The Golden Calf, had a strange and rare hobby: collecting envelopes from his own letters. He wrote a letter to some country at a fictitious address, and after a while the letter returned to him with a bunch of different stamps and an indication: "The addressee was not found."
In April 1939, Petrov decided to send a letter to New Zealand in the fictional city of Hydebirdville, on the fictional 7 Reitbeach Street, addressed to Merrill Ogin Weisley.
His letter read: “Dear Merrill! Please accept our sincere condolences on the passing of Uncle Pete. Be strong, old man. Forgive me for not writing for a long time. Hope Ingrid is okay. Kiss my daughter for me. She's probably already quite big. Your Eugene."
Two months passed, but the letter with the corresponding mark was not returned. The writer decided that it was lost, and began to forget about it, when suddenly he received … an answer. The envelope read: 7 New Zealand, Hydebirdville, Wrightbeach, Merrill Ogin Weisley.
A person unknown to him wrote: “Dear Eugene! Thanks for the condolences. Uncle Pete's ridiculous death unsettled us for six months. I hope you will forgive the delay in the letter. Ingrid and I often remember those two days that you were with us. Gloria is very big and will go to the 2nd grade in the fall. She still keeps the bear that you brought her from Russia."
Petrov never traveled to New Zealand and did not know any New Zealander. And from the picture, a man of strong build was looking at him. The date on the back of the photo was October 9, 1938.
Since then, the writer abandoned his hobby, became withdrawn and unhappy. He wanted to send a response letter to New Zealand, but World War II broke out, and Petrov began working as a war correspondent. In 1942, the satirist flew by plane from Sevastopol to Moscow, in the Rostov region the plane was shot down by the Germans.
On the same day, a letter came to the writer from New Zealand. In it, Merrill Weisley admired Soviet soldiers and worried about Petrov's life. Among other things, the letter contained the following lines: “Remember, Eugene, I got scared when you started swimming in the lake. The water was very cold. But you said you were destined to crash on a plane, not drown. Please, be careful - fly as little as possible."
Lyubov SHAROVA