For a long time it was believed that gluttony was the cause of the death of the classic of Russian literature. Such a version sometimes appears in social networks now. We decided to check if this is so.

About Krylov's death from overeating They wrote a lot His contemporaries. But even now in social networks, two versions of the death of the writer often arise. By One of them, the cause of Krylov’s death was grouse abundantly watered with oil. By anotherHe crossed pancakes. In social networks every now and then Appear Both these “classic” hypotheses and others - for example, about the fact that moldy became fatal for Krylov Pies with cabbage.

Legends went about the gluttony of Ivan Krylov. “On Shrovetide, at the venison ... half -grocery pancakes were served with the size of a plate and thickness in a finger. Such pancakes, usually with Cavia, Ivan Andreevich ate up to thirty pieces in a sitting ” - I remembered Professor of the Imperial Academy of Arts Fedor Solntsev. “If he was asked what word in Russian seems to him the most tender, then I am sure that he would answer: my breadwinner. What to do! Apparently, his heart is in his stomach; From this source he gathered most of his thoughts, and, it was necessary to tell the truth, he was not inspired by him " - so Described Krylova in his “Notes” memoirist Philip Vigel.

Krylov, despite his passion for food, did not complain about health until the last years of his life. Publicist Thaddey Bulgarin dedicated him Essay In his newspaper Northern Bee. In particular, he wrote that Krylov “was a legible gastrona, loved a good table and a glass of good wine, but did not indulge in excess and, being very strong and healthy addition, was very rarely subjected to ailments.” However, further in the same essay, Bulgarin says that back in 1824, the writer during the bear hunting "was subjected to an apoplexy impact, from which he gritted the lower part of his face." However, by that time Krylov had a sixth dozen. Writer Pyotr Pletnev in the essay "Life and works of Ivan Andreevich Krylov" toldthat in the last years of his life, the writer had to moderate his appetite somewhat: “A few years before his last illness, having experienced a paralysis seizure, however, in the rest of the years he strictly observed so that there were not many different Kushanes, but with two or three dishes it was not moderation.”

Krylov died in November 1844 at the age of 75. How testified Pletnev, all the last days at the bed of the fabulist was his close friend General Yakov Rostovtsev. Contemporaries learned from him and learned some details. In particular, about indigestion and about Krylov's joke on this subject. “He died in an axm hour in the morning, November 9, 1844, from the indigestion of food in the stomach. A few hours before the death, he compared himself to the peasant, who, having piled on the WHO of an exorbitantly large luggage of fish, did not think to excessively burden his weak horse only because the fish was dried, ” - He wrote The first biographer of the fabulist Mikhail Lobanov in 1847 in his book “Life and Works of Ivan Krylov”. For the first time, the mention of the hazel grouse has been found for the first time: “On dying days, eating for the last time some porridge with grated hazel grouse, he stopped dining and dinner. To know, his stomach, an unchanging servant of his whole life, could not serve the last service and thereby deprived us of the unforgettable Ivan Andreevich. ” Pletnev added culinary details: "He ordered to serve the mowed hazel grouse and doused them with oil." His essay was printed In the same 1847 in the first volume of the collected works of Krylov.

Obviously, both biographers (by the way, knew Krylov closely) willingly believed this version, although they themselves were not witnesses to the last days of the writer. They did not write directly about gluttony, the amount of food did not specify that evening, but did not hide that this meal was superfluous. The advanced age of Krylov (75 years) was mentioned in passing. The story of the hazel grouse soon became a common place. In those biographies of Krylov, where at least some details of his death slipped, the hazel grouse were certainly mentioned-for example, in Book of 1886 "Ivan Andreevich Krylov and his fables." Often You can meet The assertion that the “progenitor” of the myth of Krylov’s death from gluttony was Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich Romanov. But he was born only in 1859, and his brief biography of Krylov saw the light only in 1905 as part collection "Russian portraits of the XVIII and XIX centuries." There, however, about the cause of death It is said Pretty dry: Krylov died, "becoming a victim of ordinary immodesty in food."

The version of overeating was the main until the second half of the 20th century. But in the 1960s, researchers found an official document that put an end to legend about hazel grouse. In 1967 in the journal "Russian Literature" An article came out under the name "New materials for the biography of I. A. Krylov" and the subtitle "Truth about Krylov's death." The historian Nikolai Moreene discovered in the Central State Archive among the papers of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra a Krylov death certificate issued by his attending physician, doctor of medicine Ferdinand Galler. The document states: “This is given that the actual state adviser and cavalier Ivan Andreevich Krylov, which consisted on my use, really suffered from inflammation of the lungs (Pneumonia nota) and by the will of the 9th of this 1844, died from paralysis in the lungs. What is the verification. S. Petersburg, November 11th day of 1844. "

Thus, the official cause of the death of Ivan Krylov is not at all overeating and not inversion of the intestines, but lung paralysis, which developed due to pneumonia.

The image on the cover: Wikipedia

Not true

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