Mikhail Zoshchenko’s "Before Sunrise," a summary

Mikhail Zoshchenko’s autobiographical study, "Before Sunrise," was written from 1937 to 1943 during evacuation, amid the harsh trials of the Great Patriotic War. This book is both a scientific and artistic exploration of the causes of the severe neurosis that had plagued the author since his youth. The author based his work on Ivan Pavlov’s theory of conditioned reflexes, testing the formulas for higher nervous activity against his own life experience.

The work is not part of a literary series, although the author considered it an ideological development of his 1933 story "Returned Youth." Due to a lack of understanding from critics, publication of the story was interrupted in 1943, and the full text was published only decades later.

The origins of painful melancholy

The narrative begins with the author’s recollections of his youth, when, for no apparent reason, he was overcome by a profound melancholy. Neither changing cities nor frequently changing professions helped. In 1914, Zoshchenko dropped out of university and joined the army at the front during World War I, where, commanding a company in the Mingrelian Regiment, he received five medals, survived a gas attack near Smorgon, and developed a heart defect. The melancholy temporarily receded during the war, but after returning to Petrograd in 1917, the melancholy returned.

In his search for healing, the writer changed twelve cities and a dozen jobs over the course of three years: he served as a post office superintendent, a shoemaker, an accountant, a criminal investigation agent, a poultry instructor, and a border guard telephone operator. Doctors prescribed medications, resorts in Yalta and Sochi, and hydrotherapy, but these water treatments only worsened his condition. A study of the diaries of classic writers — Gogol, Edgar Allan Poe, Maupassant, and Nekrasov — revealed that many great figures suffered from similar unreasonable melancholy, often leading them to contemplate suicide.

Analysis of conscious life and childhood memories

To identify the precise event that triggered his illness, Zoshchenko decided to systematically analyze his past years. He recalled 63 vivid episodes from the period from 1912 to 1926. This list included his youthful love for Nadya V. and Tata T., dramas at the front, his mother’s death in 1920 from Spanish flu, his funeral at the Smolensk Cemetery, the famine years in Petrograd, and meetings with Blok, Yesenin, Gorky, and Mayakovsky. Realizing that the difficult events of his adult life occurred on top of his existing neurosis, the author turned to his childhood.

The writer recalls 38 episodes between the ages of 5 and 15. Among them are a fright from a running dog, a severe thunderstorm in a field, a fall into water, the death of his artist father from a heart attack, and school problems due to grades below average. Analysis shows that these childhood experiences were quite common for any child. They do not explain the all-consuming anxiety that haunted the author as an adult.

Zoshchenko then delves into the memories of his infancy — the period between the ages of two and five. Fragmentary scenes flash before his eyes: swallowing matches, being frightened by a rooster and an elephant at the zoo, milk foam smeared across the table, fear of a dark towel. Realizing that his memory of his earliest years is fuzzy, the writer turns to Ivan Pavlov’s laws of physiology and his research on dreams.

The mechanism of conditioned reflexes and the decoding of dreams

Zoshchenko relies on the physiological law of temporal associations, formulated by Ivan Pavlov in experiments on dogs. The coincidence of a random conditioned signal — light, the ticking of a metronome, or sound — with food or pain creates a persistent source of excitation in the cerebral cortex. The body begins to respond to the neutral signal in the same way as to a real stimulus.

Studying the mechanism of sleep, the author concludes that at night, the higher regions of the cerebral cortex sleep, while the subcortical centers remain awake. Suppressed childhood fears come to life in dreams, expressed not in words but through primitive images and symbols. Analyzing his recurring nightmares, Zoshchenko identifies key symbols: black water, beggars entering the room, and wild tigers.

The symbol of black water turned out to be associated with childhood fears of drowning and with bathing rituals, where a small child was immersed in a trough. However, water itself would not have evoked such intense terror if it had not been linked with other stimuli into a single system of temporal associations.

The writer breaks down the image of a beggar or a thief breaking down a door into its simple components. It turns out that it’s not the person themselves that evokes fear, but the outstretched hand. In infancy, this hand was associated with the removal of the mother’s breast, deprivation of food, and punishment. This was a defensive reflex of the infant, fearing the loss of the source of life.

Uncovering Trauma and Exposing the Tiger Symbol

Analyzing the image of a tiger with a crimson mouth, the author recalls a nightmare in which he is being chased by a man with a knife. This memory helped uncover the source of his fear: at the age of two, Zoshchenko underwent surgery without anesthesia due to the onset of blood poisoning. In the two-year-old’s mind, the image of a surgeon with a knife was combined with images of brute force, a thunderstorm, and the taking of food, forming an anxiety complex.

While she was breastfeeding, another shock occurred: a thunderclap from the nearby dacha, and the mother, startled, dropped the baby, injuring him. As a result, a false conditioned association formed in the cerebral cortex between feeding, a woman’s breast, water, thunder, and a punishing hand. Each of these objects triggered a chain of painful reactions: spasms, a pulse rate of up to forty beats per minute, heart attacks, and an aversion to food.

Zoshchenko argues against Freudianism, which skews the search for causes to sexual subtext. The author argues that the root cause of neurosis was the instinct for self-preservation and the fear of death, not sexual trauma. Sexual motives were superimposed on faulty reflexes later, as the author matured.

The Victory of Reason and the Physiological Analysis of History

By understanding the mechanical nature of his fears, the writer breaks false temporal connections. The realization that water, food, or a woman’s breasts pose no mortal threat lifts his inhibitions. The symptoms of the disease subside, and normal stomach and heart function are restored. The writer overcomes years of depression and regains vitality.

From a physiological perspective, Zoshchenko examines the fates of famous cultural figures. He demonstrates that the tragedies of Gogol, Edgar Allan Poe, Maupassant, and Balzac arose not from an "excess of reason," but from unconscious infantile phobias and faulty conditioned connections. Gogol starved himself because he conditioned food to be associated with the fear of death, while Balzac was struck with paralysis before his marriage due to his flight from danger.

Overcoming suffering, fear of death and aging

In the final sections of the book, the author demonstrates how reason helps a person overcome the fear of physical suffering, illness, old age, and death. The author cites examples of the courageous behavior of Lomonosov, Suvorov, Napoleon, Repin, as well as Soviet soldiers at the front, whose conscious service to an idea and society completely suppressed the animal instinct for self-preservation.

Zoshchenko demonstrates that old age and physical decline are accelerated by a panicky fear of fading. Systematic control of the cerebral cortex over subcortical impulses allows one to maintain clarity of thought and freshness of feeling until the last days.

In the epilogue and afterword, written in Moscow on an autumn night in 1943, to the sound of fireworks celebrating the liberation of the Dnieper, the writer expresses confidence in the victory of human reason over barbarism. The author asserts that higher consciousness and science are the most beautiful values created by humanity.