"The Black Monk" (1894)

This story by Anton Chekhov seems to have a certain unwillingness to commit to its own reality, which is what I think I like about it. On the one hand it's almost ridiculously straightforward about a man, Kovrin, who is succumbing to mental illness, a carefully constructed tale of woe verging on tragedy. On the other hand, the delusion that defines Kovrin's madness, the encounters with a mysterious monk in black, are so seductively believable I have a hard time writing them off as the workaday madness of so much fiction—the cheap device. Certainly that's how the story appears to work. His madness makes no sense. Kovrin is an orphan but much beloved by a creative, interesting, and somewhat kooky family, into which he eventually marries. We see the seeds of Kovrin's delusion when he is fascinated by a legend whose source he cannot recall, about a monk in black who has wandered the world for centuries. Not long after, Kovrin sees him in a strange vision, and not long after that the monk engages Kovrin in conversation, telling him he has been uniquely chosen. "I exist in your imagination, and your imagination is part of nature, so I exist in nature," he explains himself to Kovrin, who is continually questioning his reality. 'You are a phantom, an hallucination," Kovrin says. "So I am mentally deranged, not normal?" "What if you are?" the monk soothes him. "Why trouble yourself?" The classic words of a devil's imp sitting on your shoulder. Meanwhile, as the years go by, the view from outside Kovrin is increasingly clear. His life is going to hell. He is cold and alienating to his wife, who at one point catches him talking to empty air. As she confronts Kovrin, the monk soon disappears. She and her father attempt to "cure" his mental illness and he improves some, but grows increasingly bitter and paranoid, believing they are betraying his genius for mediocrity. Things get worse and they never get better. Kovrin is curious in that he doesn't deny his mental illness but indeed seems to prefer it. The illusion of the monk in this story is the most interesting part. No one denies what it is, but Kovrin likes having him around—it's a bit like the "we need the eggs" joke—and the reader tends to agree. Is it angel or demon? It doesn't seem to matter much. I'm not sure whether it's just the monk's soothing words but something about him is attractive. At story's end I'm pretty much in perfect sympathy with Kovrin, even though he is insane.

Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov