The Black Monk
1 hr. 28 min.
Description
The main hero of the works by the great Russian writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904) is an ordinary person with his everyday concerns and worries. A subtle psychologist, a master of subtext, Chekhov combines humor and lyricism in a distinctive way; in his stories and plays he reaches the heights of social and artistic generalization.
The meaning of his work was instructive and important for readers all over the world, because when Chekhov spoke about Russia, he was speaking about all of the modern humanity of his time—its contradictions and hopes, its present and its future. The sixth volume of the Collected Works includes novellas and stories written by A. P. Chekhov between 1889 and 1894.
I love Chekhov’s creations, after all. A magnificent manner of writing, plots that are not hackneyed. “The Black Monk” is a novella about a man who finds happiness only in his own mental illness. Of course, some joy existed in his life too, thanks to intellectual work, but true ecstasy, the fullness of existence, came to him with the appearance of the Black Monk. For the feelings granted by this hallucination, he was ready to lose everything and voluntarily destroy all that was real in his life.
Society, in the main, does not understand and does not accept mentally ill people. But I can’t definitively say that his hallucinations brought only harm. Yes, they harmed the people around Kovrin—but didn’t they give him a real sense of life? Perhaps these visions were the connecting thread that linked this man to the true enjoyment of existence…
The meaning of his work was instructive and important for readers all over the world, because when Chekhov spoke about Russia, he was speaking about all of the modern humanity of his time—its contradictions and hopes, its present and its future. The sixth volume of the Collected Works includes novellas and stories written by A. P. Chekhov between 1889 and 1894.
I love Chekhov’s creations, after all. A magnificent manner of writing, plots that are not hackneyed. “The Black Monk” is a novella about a man who finds happiness only in his own mental illness. Of course, some joy existed in his life too, thanks to intellectual work, but true ecstasy, the fullness of existence, came to him with the appearance of the Black Monk. For the feelings granted by this hallucination, he was ready to lose everything and voluntarily destroy all that was real in his life.
Society, in the main, does not understand and does not accept mentally ill people. But I can’t definitively say that his hallucinations brought only harm. Yes, they harmed the people around Kovrin—but didn’t they give him a real sense of life? Perhaps these visions were the connecting thread that linked this man to the true enjoyment of existence…
1:28:27
monax
