“A thousand years ago a monk, dressed in black, wandered about the desert, somewhere in Syria or Arabia…. Some miles from where he was, some fisherman saw another black monk, who was moving over the surface of a lake, this second monk was a mirage.”
the black monk
Imagine, you think you are a genius. You think you are a luminary in all respect. The people around you do not have such an opinion, or they may have this thought that you have a talent but not a very prominent one. One day you are sitting alone in your courtyard, near your garden, sipping your cup of tea, very much like a protagonist of a Russian middle-class novel. There is a row of pines ahead. Then you notice one thing. From the horizon, there rises up to the sky a waterspout, a long black column, not standing still, moving with a gruesome rapidity, coming straight towards you… when this turbulence reaches near you, it becomes distinct and you see a monk, dressed in black, his hands crossed over his breast, his bare feet not touching the earth, and he smiles in front of you. His face is fearfully pale, and a moment later he rustles through the pines and vanishes noiselessly, like smoke.
Would you have an intense desire to tell the people what you had just seen?
Or would a thought frighten you that they will take your words as the ravings of delirium?
Was this the same legend that you had heard about? Was this a mirage? Was this the product of your excited imagination, a phantom? What if this black monk keeps coming to you and reminds you that you are one of those few who are justly called as the chosen of God. He keeps telling you that you are a genius and thus eligible for eternal life. How will you react?
The hero of this story Kovrin faces this. He enjoys seeing the black monk. After talking to him, he dances in delight and feels satisfied. What the monk says to him flatters not his vanity, but his whole soul, his whole being. But the people around him when identifying it, see the behavior of Kovrin with amazement and horror. His wife Tanya says to him, “You are ill… you are mentally ill.” Kovrin takes the advice of the doctor and slowly leaves off seeing the black monk. This story now takes the route of typical Chekhov’s realistic line. There is no happy ending. Things go from bad to worse and there remains a sense of atonement and a lesson. I had read this story 3 years back and since then I always wanted to share my thoughts on it. It had created an impact on me. A long-lasting one!
I also feel that through this story Anton Chekhov has validated insanity to a great extent. It gives you another dimension of thinking about ravings and mental excitements. Do you feel seeing phantom is an illness? Do you believe in the saying mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a healthy body)? Chekhov will contradict you here. This normalcy is for the common herd. Your being normal will question your genius.
“ And are you sure that the men of genius, whom all men trust, did not see phantoms, too? the learned say now that genius allied to madness. My friend, health and normal people are the only herd. Reflections upon the neurasthenia of the age, nervous exhaustion and degeneracy, etcetera can only seriously agitate those who place the object of life in the present- that is the common herd.”
The protagonist of this story feels gloomy after recovering from illness. He was happy with his delirium. He says miserably to his wife;
“Why have you cured me? I went out of my mind, I had megalomania; but then I was cheerful, confident, and even happy. I was interesting and original. Now I have become more sensible and stolid, but I am just like everyone else: I am – mediocrity; I am weary of life…oh, how cruelly you have treated me!
This is a story with morals. If you think you are hallucinated. If you think, you frequently fall into a delirium. Read this story swiftly. There are high chances that you are a genius. The black monk validates it.
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