Nikolai Pomyalovsky (Никола́й Помяло́вский) (1835-1863)

Death: 17th October 1863
Location:  Literatorskie Mostki, Volkovskoye Memorial Cemetery, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Cause of death: Gangrene
Photo taken by:  Triumphato
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Russian novelist and short story writer. As a result of the success of his first novel, Мещанское счастье / Bourgeois Happiness, he attended many parties, and drank heavily, which eventually landed him in hospital with delirium tremens. His novel Molotov (1861), the sequel to Bourgeois Happiness, secured his reputation, and brought him into the company of writers like Ivan Turgenev and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The two novels tell the story of a poor young intellectual's search for self-realisation and his place in the world. The protagonist Molotov, an orphan raised by a university professor, doesn't feel that he belongs anywhere or to any particular social class.
Pomyalovsky had hoped to find solidarity and fellowship in the Saint Petersburg literary circles, but found only backbiting, and what he saw as condescension from the established gentry writers. He rebelled by getting drunk often and acting in a way that alienated his friends and literary connections. He began disappearing for weeks at a time, living in the Saint Petersburg slums among prostitutes and criminals, and continuing to feed his addiction to alcohol. His binges usually led to his being jailed or hospitalised.  Pomyalovsky attempted suicide several times, and spent the winter of 1862-63 in the hospital. In 1863 he moved to the country with his brother and two student acquaintances in an effort to find sobriety. Another binge nearly killed him and a few days into his recovery he noticed a sore on his leg. When doctors opened the sore, they found gangrene, which he soon died from, aged 28.

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