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According to common stereotypes, people who are in prison live by their own laws. They have their own range of interests, and it does not include the works of world classics of literature.
But our life is much more interesting and diverse, and does not fit into stereotypical thinking. Many famous writers have been behind bars and written books in prison that later became classics.
10 Thomas Malory
Not much is known about his life. He lived in the 15th century. Born into a noble family, he was a knight and participated in the War of the Scarlet and White Roses. Thomas spent the last 20 years of his life in prison on a number of charges. There he wrote all his books.
It is not known whether he collected all the material himself, or whether he relied on the manuscripts of his predecessors. Malory wrote books based on numerous legends and tales about King Arthur and other knights. He took French chivalric novels as a model, but English flavor is felt in his works.
He wrote 21 books, which were later published and are still considered works that contain all the known legends about King Arthur.
9. Tommaso Campanella
The future writer was born into the family of an illiterate shoemaker. A boy with extraordinary abilities was noticed, he was able to receive a spiritual education. But he did not like the monastic rules, besides, he became interested in magic and mysticism. Tommaso decided to leave the monastery and began to wander around Italy.
He was arrested more than once, and because of suspicions of heresy, he was sentenced to abdication. But he did not calm down, he tried to raise an uprising against the Spanish authorities. He was again arrested, tortured and wanted to be executed, but Campanella pretended to be insane.
The man was sentenced to life imprisonment. He spent 27 years in the prisons of Naples and wrote several treatises on astrology, philosophy, medicine, etc. His most famous book is The City of the Sun. Later, he was able to leave the prison, he was patronized by Pope Urban VIII and Resilier himself.
8. Marquis de Sade
He preached absolute freedom, believed that a person should satisfy all his desires all his life. From his name came the word “sadism”, which was first used as sexual satisfaction from pain and humiliation, and then acquired a broader meaning.
Despite the fact that he was rich and from a noble family, de Sade was tried and imprisoned for rape. After spending some time in prison, he left, paying a fine.
But he was soon convicted of the “Marseille case”, namely for sodomy and poisoning (the use of unhealthy exciting sweets) and sentenced to death, but was able to escape. He hid in his family estate. Soon he kidnapped 3 girls again to rape them.
After a series of similar scandals, he nevertheless ended up in prison, where he was treated very cruelly. De Sade began to write, created several pornographic novels and short stories. When the Bastille was taken, where this marquis once sat, all his manuscripts were destroyed, with the exception of “120 days of Sodom”, which was later published.
7. Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
He ended up in prison, because. was a member of a secret society that wanted to carry out a coup in Russia. After his arrest, he spent 8 months in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Dostoevsky denied his guilt, but was recognized as a criminal, after which he was sentenced to death.
Fedor and others were brought to the Semyonovsky parade ground and the verdict was read to them, after which they were informed of the pardon. The convicts were sent to hard labor.
Dostoevsky did not own any craft, so he did all the hard work in hard labor, for example, he carried bricks or unloaded barges, standing in icy water. Later, Dostoevsky admits that it was there that he overestimated his whole life and changed his attitude.
6. Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky
He was a convinced revolutionary and, like others, suffered for his ideas. For compiling one of the proclamations, he was arrested and kept in the Peter and Paul Fortress. The investigation dragged on for 1,5 years,
Chernyshevsky fought for his rights. In prison, he worked hard, wrote about 200 sheets of the author’s text. Later, Nikolai Gavrilovich was sentenced to hard labor for 14 years, but Alexander II reduced this period to 7 years. The writer had to stay in Siberia for the rest of his life.
5. Oscar Wilde
His book “The Picture of Dorian Gray” has become a classic, it has been read and re-read for several generations of lovers of good literature.
The writer was married, he had 2 sons in marriage. But, having met Alfred Douglas, he fell in love with him and could not refuse him anything. Oscar spent a lot of money on a young lover, paid blackmailers who threatened to expose him. He transferred his passion to paper, talking about it in a novel, poetry.
After several scandals, Wilde was charged with sodomy and violation of public morals. He was jailed. The court found the writer guilty and sentenced him to 2 years hard labor.
Initially, he served his sentence in a prison intended for repeat offenders, and only then was transferred to another. The conclusion broke him. All friends turned away from Oscar, and his young lover never visited him, selling the writer’s gifts and paying for his life abroad with this money.
The wife, in spite of everything, refused a divorce and visited him in prison. After her release, she gave him money and letters, but refused to meet with him. Wilde moved to France, where he continued to write, including articles suggesting improvements in prison conditions.
4. Osip Emilevich Mandelstam
The Russian poet and prose writer suffered because of his political views. He wrote an anti-Stalinist epigram. Pasternak believed that this was a real suicide. Mandelstam was arrested and sent into exile in 1934. After 3 years, the term of exile ends, he and his wife return to Moscow.
A year later, he was arrested again, put in Butyrka prison. He was accused of anti-Soviet agitation, as well as the fact that he moved to the capital, and after serving his sentence he was forbidden to appear in Moscow. He was sentenced to 5 years in prison and sent by stage to the Far East.
Mandelstam was greatly weakened, he had health problems, he was emaciated, he complained in letters that he was constantly freezing. In the same year, 1938, he died in a transit camp, he was 47 years old.
3. Danil Ivanovich Harms
Kharms’ books are still loved and read by children. But in 1931 he was arrested, because. he participated in the anti-Soviet group of writers. He was sentenced to 3 years in correctional camps, but then the sentence was commuted to deportation.
Danil Ivanovich moved to Kursk in the summer of 1932, but returned to Leningrad in the fall. In 1941, he was arrested for spreading defeatism. The text of the denunciation said that Kharms did not believe in the victory of the USSR. He wrote that Leningrad would starve to death or be bombed.
To avoid being shot, Kharms decided to feign insanity. He was transferred to the psychiatric hospital of the Kresty prison, where he starved to death in February 1942.
2. Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky
In Moscow, the young poet met revolutionary-minded students and read Marxist literature. From 1908 to 1909 he was arrested 3 times.
The first time in the case of an underground printing house. Then he was quickly released, because. he was a minor, passing under the guardianship of his parents. Then he was accused of having links with a group of archist-expropriators. And also in organizing the escape of convicts from Novinsky prison.
Mayakovsky was released due to lack of evidence. In Butyrka prison, he spent 11 months in solitary confinement. At this time he read a lot, tried to write. Later he said that it was the most important time for him.
1. Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn
The winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature suffered because of his political views. The hero of the war, who deserved many awards, Solzhenitsyn nevertheless did not hide the fact that he was critical of Stalin. He said that he distorted “Leninism” and created orders similar to serfdom. He wrote about this to an old friend.
Military censorship could not turn a blind eye to this. Alexander Isaevich was stripped of the rank of captain and sent to the Lubyanka prison. He was sentenced to 8 years in labor camps and sent into eternal exile.
He changed many prisons, worked in a closed design bureau (“sharashka”), and was in Butyrka prison. He was imprisoned from 1945 to 1953, during which time he became completely disillusioned with Marxism.