Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin
Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin was a notable Russian writer born on February 2, 1855, in the Bakhmut district of Ukraine. He faced a tumultuous early life, marked by family upheaval, including his mother’s elopement, his father's death, and the suicide of a brother, which deeply affected his mental health. After completing high school, Garshin studied at the St. Petersburg Institute of Mining, where he began to write and connect with artistic circles. He enlisted in the army during the Russo-Turkish War, and his experiences there inspired his acclaimed short story "Chetyre dnia," which resonated with readers for its antiwar sentiment and exploration of violence.
Garshin's literary career flourished with the publication of his first collection, "Rasskazy," in 1882, which established his reputation. His works often reflected existential themes and the struggles of the human condition, as exemplified by stories like "Noch': Rasskaz," praised by literary giants such as Leo Tolstoy. Garshin's final significant work, a novella about war entitled "Iz vospominanii riadovogo Ivanova," is regarded as one of his masterpieces. Tragically, he succumbed to his mental health struggles, dying in 1888 after a fall, but his literary contributions remain impactful for their empathetic portrayal of suffering and the human experience.
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Subject Terms
Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin
Author
- Born: February 2, 1855
- Birthplace: Bakhmut, Ekaterinoslav, Ukraine
- Died: March 24, 1888
- Place of death: St. Petersburg, Russia
Biography
Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin was born on February 2, 1855, in the Bakhmut district of the Ekaterinoslav province in Ukraine. He was the last of three sons born to Mikhail Egorovich Garshin, an army officer, and Ekaterina Stepanovna Garshina, née Akimova. Garshin’s early childhood proved traumatic. Before 1872, Garshin’s mother, a progressive woman who had tired of provincial life, eloped with a radical student; family financial troubles dictated that Garshin be shuttled around amongst various family members; his father died; he suffered a nervous breakdown; and his brother committed suicide. In 1874, upon completing his high school education, Garshin enrolled in the St. Petersburg Institute of Mining, where he met artists and started to write. He composed poetry but eventually turned a more serious hand to prose. In 1877, after Russia declared war on Turkey, Garshin enlisted as a voluntary private in the army. His short story “Chetyre dnia” (four days), based upon his experiences in the war, appeared in the October, 1877 issue of Otechestvennye zapiski (notes of the fatherland) and was an instant success. Readers responded to the fast-paced, episodic narrative development and the antiwar sentiment of the story, which presents the hard-won realization that an act of valor—the killing of one’s enemy on the battlefield—is also an act of unnecessary violence. Garshin continued to publish short stories, as well as art reviews, aligning himself with the Peredvizhniki (itinerants), a group of iconoclastic artists who believed that art should be about life as it really was and brought to commoners in traveling exhibits.
In 1878 Garshin met Nadezhda Mikhailovna Zolotilova, a medical student; they married in 1883, the same year that Garshin became secretary at the congress of representatives of Russian railways in St. Petersburg. In the interim he wrote several short stories and fairy tales, moved in St. Petersburg’s artistic circles, and experienced recurring bouts of dread and depression for which he was institutionalized. In 1882 Garshin’s first collection of stories, Rasskazy (stories), was published and helped to solidify his reputation as a man of letters. Among these stories was “Noch’: Rasskaz” (night: a story), originally published in Otechestvennye zapiski, 1880), a contemplation on the meaning of life by a suicidal character which was lauded by both Leo Tolstoy and Ivan Turgenev. In 1883 Garshin composed what many consider to be his finest work and one of the most accomplished Russian works on the experience of war, a novella entitled Iz vospominanii riadovogo Ivanova (from the reminiscences of private Ivanov). He also published a number of translations from French. Garshin’s last fictional work, the ironic fable “Liagushka-puteshestvennitsa” (the traveling frog), was published in the children’s journal Rodnik (the spring) in 1887. The following year, Garshin, in a state of utter despondency, threw himself down a stairwell and died. It was perhaps his familiarity with mental suffering that allowed him to feel—and to explore in fiction so successfully—the pain of others.