Diary of a Madman (short story)

Records of a madman (Russian Записки сумасшедшего ) is a narrative in the form of diary entries of the Russian poet Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol from the year 1835.

This work is one of the most famous of Gogol (along with the nose and the coat), and is also used by his Russian colleagues as a reference ( Fyodor Dostoevsky: Notes from Underground hole ).

Action

Suppress and tormented at work and hopelessly in love, is titular Poprischtschin refuge in his own world. The acquired at the beginning of the narrative impression of a healthy person, is changing rapidly in the image of a hopeless dreamer and madman. During initial fantasies involve only talking dogs, the protagonist falls in the course of his illness in ever greater delusions. He reads in the newspaper from the Spanish King Ferdinand VII, who had died without a male heir apparent death, and falls into the belief that he himself would be the next King of Spain.

Even the dating begins to change dramatically with increasing disorder. It converts from normal data, for example, " October 4 " to abstruse forms, such as "Da 34 date, year, 349 in February ."

Due to his illness, announces Poprischtschin in the course of the narrative his job and finally announced pathetic - in the presence of others - he was the king of Spain. So he is, although this is not open herauszulesen, placed in a psychiatric hospital, which holds the protagonist for the Inquisition.