Vsevolod Garshin

Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin (Russian: Все́волод Миха́йлович Гаршин); (14 February 1855 – 5 April 1888) was a Russian author of short stories. Garshin was the son of an officer. He attended secondary school and then the Saint Petersburg Mining Institute. He volunteered to serve in the army at the start of the Russo-Turkish War in 1877. He participated in the Balkans Campaign as a private, and was wounded in action. He was promoted to the rank of an officer at the end of the war. He resigned his commission soon after in order to devote his time to literary efforts. He had previously published a number of articles in newspapers, mostly reviews of art exhibitions. His experiences as a soldier provide the basis for his first stories, including the very first, "Four Days" (Russian: "Четыре дня"), based on a real incident. The narrative is organized as the interior monologue of a wounded soldier left for dead on the battlefield for four days, face to face with the corpse of a Turkish soldier he had killed. Garshin's empathy for all beings is already evident in this first story. Despite early literary success, he had periodical bouts of mental illness. At the age of 33, Garshin committed suicide by jumping from the fifth floor of his apartment building and died five days later at a Red Cross hospital.