Narrative
The Red Flower
Красный цветок
Vsevolod Garshin · 1883
Opening lines
— Именем его императорского величества, государя императора Петра Первого, объявляю ревизию сему сумасшедшему дому!
“In the name of His Imperial Majesty, the Sovereign Emperor Peter the First, I declare this madhouse subject to inspection!”
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from ru.wikisource.org
Synopsis
A man is brought by force to a madhouse: on the train his fit grew worse and he was put in a straitjacket. On arrival, he proclaims in the name of Emperor Peter I an inspection of the establishment. Yet he understands that he is ill, and with what illness. Tormented by the evil that reigns in the world, he hardly sleeps any more and grows thin despite the food he is given. One summer, in the hospital garden, he notices three poppies of a dazzling red and becomes convinced that all the evil in the world has become incarnate in them: he resolves to destroy them.
Context
The story, written in 1883, appeared in October of the same year in the tenth issue of the Otetchestvennye zapiski, with a dedication to the memory of Ivan Turgenev. The author drew on his own experience of illness: he had stayed in 1880 at the Saburova Dacha, the psychiatric institution of Kharkov, and the setting of the story bears its trace. Regarded as its author's masterpiece, the text was a great success with readers of the 1880s.
Who it is for
About forty pages, belonging to a Russian tradition of the asylum story, between Gogol and Chekhov.
Prizes and reception
His author's best-known text, and the one that critics regard as his best; it can be read in French in several translations.
Sources for this page 7
The pages consulted to check this page.