The Black Monk

Genuinely the best short story I’ve ever read, the only story I’ve read four times in one year, and I doubt anything will ever top it. Every time I read this it cements its meaning deeper and deeper in my psyche and I’m always the better for it, I really should keep it on me at all times in case I’m having a crisis. As someone who’s been afflicted with “Mental illness” and dealt with many things I struggle to understand; the story of the black monk always makes me realise how a person like myself should go through life, how they should perceive it, and what they should prioritise.

It's a question of faith and perception.

What is real? How can we truly quantify what exists and what doesn’t? As René Descartes's once said “Cogito, ergo sum.” = “I think, therefore I am.” This is his basis for his philosophy and it’s the closest anyone has ever gotten to establishing a foundation for the evidence of “the self”. Our lives are entirely lived through our senses and perceptions, we cannot import ourselves into the brain of a bird, nor another person, and we certainly aren’t omnipotent; therefore our understanding of life can only be our opinion, but as our opinion, the self, is the only thing we can truly understand as being “real”, anything we believe in, anything we choose to perceive, is as real as anything else. True proof of anything apart from “I am, I think, I exist”, is a fallacy. Language is limiting, we all understand that, but we often don’t stop to realise that our senses are also limited, our brains are also limited. Science is the field of attempting to understand every aspect of the universe through the lens of the human brain, as the human brain does not possess the ability of omniscience, we will never understand the universe. So, how do you process all of this without having a complete existential crisis? Well, you go back to Descartes’s axiom, you build a foundation upon that.

It’s a philosophy of: The only thing I know to be real is my own opinion, and my opinion is entirely up to me, therefore reality is whatever I want it to be.

The story of the black monk is incredible in of itself. It tells the tale of an overly conscious and nervous man called Kovrin trying to find his way through life, he visits friends in a rural estate to recover his mental stability but in the process begins to see the figure of a monk dressed in black who offers him guidance. The man knows the monk is a hallucination, and the monk himself admits he is purely a figment of the imagination, but he also offers this little nugget of metaphysical philosophy. “I exist in your imagination, and your imagination is part of nature, which means that I too, exist in nature.”

The protagonist is filled with happiness and hope by his encounters with the monk, but he also understands that other people would think him crazy for his beliefs and experiences, so hekeeps it hidden from them all. Everyone else does notice an incredible change in Kovrin however, he’s happier, has more purpose and seems entirely content with life. This continues on for a long time, He sees the monk regularly, has an incredibly happy relationship, his friends like him, he sees purpose in his work and imagines greater things for himself and the world, but unfortunately his wife wakes up in the middle of the night and sees Kovrin talking to nothing. She immediately panics, calls him insane, convinces him he’s insane and then takes him to a doctor. From this point in the story we see a sharp decline in Kovrin’s happiness, technically in psychological and scientific terms he’s more mentally sane, but he also despises life now. When Kovrin loses his faith, his spiritual companion and his purpose in life, he becomes a very angry and irritable person, unfortunately his friends and family blame him for this negative change.

There’s a quote I love around here. “How lucky Buddha and Muhammed and Shakespeare were that their kind relations and doctors did not treat them for ecstasy and inspiration!”

In the modern day, so called “genius” is often associated closely with madness, and the story asks… what of it? If that person is happy, has purpose, has a goal, their family and friends love them…then why try to change that? Why call them mad?

An interesting observation brought up in the story is also this; We all strive for consistent happiness, and yet if we ever run into someone who is consistently happy, we view them as being unnatural in some way. Why do we assume someone’s smile is fake? Or that their ecstasy is forced, their inspiration hollow. A state of perpetual wholeness is the key to a perfect life, and yet we call those who achieve that state as weird and insane.

“Is joy a supernatural feeling? Should it not be the normal state of man? The higher man is in his mental and moral development, the freer he is, the greater the pleasure that life affords him.

The apostles say: ‘Rejoice evermore.’”

Moral of the story; Believe whatever you want so long as it makes you happy and benefits those around you, sanity is an absurd scientific theory anyway, our perceptions are all we can truly base anything off, and in the end if you find true wholeness in your soul; don’t let others' opinions dissuade you from your inner ecstasy.

A review by oofym The Black Monk by Anton Chekhov

The Black Monk

A review by oofym
The Black Monk by Anton Chekhov