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In 1892, when Anton Chekhov was 32 years old, he had a nightmare in which a black monk rushed at him out of a whirlwind. The dream was worked into one of his longer stories, The Black Monk.
At 32, Chekhov was already a famous author in Russia. He was also a physician, spending a part of every working day practising medicine on his estate. He was unmarried, but very popular with women and had had many affairs. He was the head of a large household and the chief support of his parents, sister, and brothers. From his eighteenth year he had had symptoms of the tuberculosis that would finally kill him at 44, and he had in recent years been in worse health, suffering haemorrhages from the lungs so that he had increasingly great need to deny the diagnosis he must have known. (He always refused to be examined by another physician.) The tuberculosis was in the family on his mother's side—her sister and her brother had died of consumption. During the months before his dream, Chekhov had not been well, suffering from severe coughing fits. He had been summoned from St Petersburg to his estate because his father was gravely ill. His sister Maria too was ill. It was at this time that his dream occurred.
Chekhov's father Pavel was a freed serf, and had made his way in life by dint of hard and humiliating work. At home he was a petty tyrant—selfish, inflexible, beating his children unmercifully for real or fancied disobedience. He was obsessively interested in church music, organized family services, insisted that the child Anton take his place in his amateur church choir until late at night although the boy sometimes desperately needed sleep. There was no Sunday or holiday rest for the children.
As Anton grew up, he took over his father's role as family head. At 21 he became the real support of the family. Although usually kind, he could become a stubborn tyrant like his father and insist on his own way.
The hero of the story The Black Monk, Andrey Kovrin, is in a state