In a world filled with emotion, nobody is a stranger to the feeling of love. Love is something that can’t be fought, it’s a distinct feeling that brings us joy. Whether it be the thought of living your dream life, our favorite icecream flavor, or our family and friends, we all love something in some sort of way. A thought, a thing, or a person. Romantic love however, is a bit more tricky. Romantic love is an infatuation with a person, someone you feel makes your heart full. It is no doubt that this love is a powerful feeling, but what happens when it is not reciprocated? When we feel this intense emotion for someone and we find out they don’t feel the same? Or when we fixate on someone who isn’t at all who we want them to be? It could be classified as heartbreak, or rather lovesickness. Dated back to the seventeenth century, it has been thought that unconsummated love can make a person mentally and physically ill, this being defined as lovesickness. Throughout time, the definition of lovesickness is ever changing, but one thing certain is the distraught of a person caused by unreciprocated love. In Nikolai Gogol’s Nevsky Prospect,​ Piskarev’s longing for the untrue image of the prostitute leads him to succumb to lovesickness, making him spiral into insanity.

Piskarev’s first signs of lovesickness show through his actions after meeting the beautiful woman. Off the bat, we know his first impression of her, “His senses and thoughts were on fire… No, it was no dream … such a wonderful life of two minutes!” (Gogol 254). He was almost in a euphoric state when seeing her, he was so encaptured by her beauty. Like when many people are falling in love, they don’t think about anything but that one person, Piskarev’s emotions are more heightened, having not known this woman and being automatically swooned by her was where Piskarev started to lead himself into a downfall. Piskarev is automatically enchanted by the woman’s looks, because she was so physically attractive in his eyes, his ideology was that she would be everything he wanted inside out. This was not the case, he soon came to see that she was not the woman he envisioned in his head, and he ruined himself for it.

Piskarev falling lovesick is not because of the woman’s rejection, but rather from who she turned out to be. He first fell in love with her beauty, and then the person he imagined her to be. When Piskarev followed the woman around, the conditions she lived in and the truth that she was a prostitute were revealed to him. In the end, her beauty was still there but her true self was shown, and it was not at all what Piskarev expected, making it hard for him to cope with. He didn’t want her anymore because of who she was, he wanted the woman he envisioned in his dreams, both the physical looks and the perfect pure woman. He couldn’t deal with the fact that she was so beautiful and a prostitute. He fell lovesick because he was heartbroken that he had his hopes up so high, and was essentially let down. Piskarev demonstrates lovesickness in a way that was usually portrayed in the seventeenth century.

Piskarev’s tell tale signs of lovesickness were when he had first met the woman, his lack of sleep and appetite. Later on when he realizes she is not who he had imagined, his lovesickness becomes more severe. Lovesickness was a result of unfulfilled love, and this is what Piskarev had faced. He idealized the woman too much in the beginning, so he was let down in the end. Piskarev’s first signs of captivation relate to the medical idea explained by author Benedict Carrey, that when a person first shows signs of captivation the chemical level of dopamine (a bodily chemical responsible for people feeling happiness) skyrockets, “increased energy, less need for sleep or food, focused attention, and exquisite delight in the smallest details of this novel relationship” (Carey 401). This medical idea is similar to historical ideas on lovesickness, except switched around. When a person falls lovesick, they’re dopamine levels become low, resulting in a person with less energy, being in a depressed state. Piskarev shows this high in the beginning when he is falling for the woman, and shows an ultimate low when he is no longer captivated by her. Lovesickness can be broken down into many common mental illnesses, such as depression, which is what Piskarev faced towards the end. In this case, lovesickness could be thought as an overwhelming undesirable mix of emotions that are felt when love is unfulfilled, and depression can be the mental illness triggered by it. Piskarev is so distraught by the truth of the woman, he is in “Such a state unsettled his health, and his most terrible torment was that sleep finally began to desert him entirely. Wishing to salvage this his only possession, he used every means to restore it. He heard that there was a means of restoring sleep- one had only to take opium.” (Gogol 262). Piskarev is in such a depressed state he turns to a drug to salvage the only thing that can make him happy which are his dreams. His dreams are what led to his downfall, he dreamed of the beautiful woman being the perfect person for him and the harsh reality was that she was not.

Piskarev could not come to terms with the fact that his beloved was imaginary, his lovesickness lead him to taking his own life. Piskarev was in distraught, and could not bare the truth. Benedict Carrey says, “the highs don’t last but neither does the withdrawal. The craving and pain will go away and the brain returns to normal” (Carey 403). In Piskarev’s case, he did not give himself enough time to heal. “He did not think about anything, he even ate almost nothing, and impatiently, with a lover’s passion, waited for evening and the desired vision” (Gogol 264). Here Piskarev displays one of the historically known symptoms of lovesickness, a lack of appetite. He became an insomniac and relied on drugs to help him fall asleep, so he can dream about her. Piskarev was making himself go insane, he had become so consumed in the high he experienced when making himself fall in love that he couldn’t bear the thought that it was not true, “A bloody razor lay on the floor. From his convulsively spread arms and terribly disfigured appearance, it could be concluded that his hand had not been steady and that he had suffered for a long time before his sinful soul left his body.” (Gogol 266). Piskarev was never in the right state of mind from his first encounter with the beautiful lady, and from then on. Lovesickness is much similar to heartbreak, heartbreak feels like your heart hurts because the feeling of hurt is too much. Lovesickness can lead others like Piskarev into depression and more, because the feeling of despair and grief is overpowering.

All in all, Piskarev’s idealization of the woman led him to believe she is someone who she’s not. This ultimately breaks his heart and leads him to become mentally ill, or rather known as lovesick. His lovesickness is ultimately too overwhelming for him, resulting in him committing suicide. Piskarev’s character proves that lovesickness can be caused by oneself and their interpretation of their beloved.