Genius, Multiple Personality, and Visual Hallucinations in “The Black Monk” by Anton Chekhov: a short story about pseudopsychosis in the creative process.

The protagonist, Andrei Vassilyich Kovrin, who is a rising star at the university—“I teach psychology, but I’m generally concerned with philosophy”—is the one who hallucinates the black monk and aspires to be a genius. But it is Yegor Semyonych Pesotsky (now an old man, who had raised the orphaned Kovrin as a child) who is the one that is actually famous (for his gardens) and considered a genius (in horticulture). So Chekhov’s portrayal of the old man will be considered first.

“Yegor Semyonych…It was now as if two persons were sitting in him: one was the real Yegor Semyonych…and the other not the real one…The unreal Semyonych sighed and, after a pause went on…But here the real Yegor Semyonych would recollect himself, make a terrible face, clutch his head, and shout…” (1, p. 241).

To repeat, this old man is the only character who has actually achieved genius status, and there is never any question of his sanity. Chekhov had no reason to include the above about the old man’s “two persons” except to establish the link between multiple personality and genius, free and clear of any question of madness.

As to the monk that Kovrin hallucinates and converses with, it is repeatedly emphasized that Kovrin recognizes him as unreal. Indeed, the monk himself says so: “I exist in your imagination” (1, p. 237). Since by definition a hallucination is perceived as real, not imaginary, this is a pseudohallucination (the same as when a novelist converses with his characters). And as the monk tells Kovrin, “how do you know that people of genius, whom the whole world believes, did not also see phantoms?” (1, p. 238).

Search “visual hallucinations” for past posts about their relationship to multiple personality.

Readers should not be misled by the fact that Kovrin, himself, accepts the idea that he is mad and needs treatment. He regrets the treatment, which he feels has made him a “mediocrity…How lucky Buddha and Mohammed and Shakespeare were that their kind relations did not treat them for ecstasy and inspiration!” (1, p. 246).

1. Anton Chekhov. Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York, Modern Library, 2000.