Literature and psychopathology. A writer’s questionnaire

Abstract

The study analyzes the writer’s questionnaire by a few renowned modern Russian writers, critics, and philologists: Anatoly Korolyov (Moscow), Aleksandr Melikhov (St. Petersburg), Sergey Nosov (St. Petersburg), Aleksandr Snegiryov (Moscow), Igor Smirnov (Baden-Baden), and Sergey Fokin (St. Petersburg). The questionnaire draws on the ‘psychopathographical text’ of 19th–21st centuries’ Russian literature which serves as a backdrop for respondents’ own literary work or research. As can be expected, very diverse in their form and contents, the responses confirm that, having revised traditional Russian literary psychopathography, 21st-century Russian literature proves to be an accurate indicator of social sentiment and a helpful guide for escaping modernity’s many dead-ends. The foreword summarizes the role of mental illness in the life of several Russian writers of the 19th and 20th centuries and the treatment of the topic of madness in various genres and by different movements of Russian literature.