Mikhail Zoshchenko, whom many know only as a satirical writer, created one of the most significant books on the verge between artistic and scientific study of the human psyche. Why do people sometimes suffer unbearably when there seems to be no objective reason? Today, everyone knows the word "depression", but in the first half of the 20th century, much less was known to science. Many decades before the boom in popular psychology, Mikhail Zoshchenko became interested in the scientific method of Ivan Pavlov, a physiologist and creator of the science of higher nervous activity. He tried to set up an experiment on himself: to overcome his own terrible illness, which haunted Zoshchenko from adolescence. In the autobiographical story "Before Sunrise", the author goes through dramatic memories of his early years, trying to understand what exactly damaged his psyche, explores the nature of human suffering and tells how he was looking for a way to overcome fears and take control of the mind and feelings.< p> The first two parts of the story were published in the magazine "October" in 1943, but censorship did not let it go further, and the writer was subjected to public harassment and persecution. In the Soviet press, the story was branded "harmful" and smashed for the fact that Zoshchenko writes about "petty fuss of subjective feelings" - about those very depths of our subconscious, travel through which is so interesting for modern man.Copyright

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