Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a
UkrainianUkrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group primarily living in Ukraine, or more broadly—citizens of Ukraine...
-born
RussianThe Russian people are an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
novelist, humorist, and dramatist. His early works, such as
Evenings on a Farm Near DikankaEvenings on a Farm Near Dikanka is a collection of short stories by Nikolai Gogol, written from 1831-1832. They appeared in various magazines and were published in book form when Gogol, who had spent his life in the Ukraine up to the age of nineteen, was twenty two...
, were heavily influenced by his
UkrainianUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The city of Kiev is both the capital and the largest city of...
upbringing and identity.
He is considered the father of modern Russian
realismRealism in the visual arts and literature is the depiction of subjects as they appear in everyday life, without embellishment or interpretation...
. His writing satirised the corrupt bureaucracy of the Russian Empire, leading to his exile. On his return, he immersed himself in the Orthodox Church. The novels
Taras Bul'baTaras Bulba is a romanticized historical religious novel by Nikolai Gogol. It tells the story of an old Zaporozhian Cossack, Taras Bulba, and his two sons, Andrey and Ostap. Taras’ sons studied at the Kiev Academy and return home...
(1835; 1842 [revised edition]) and
Dead SoulsDead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, Russian writer, was first published in 1842, and is one of the most prominent works of 19th-century Russian literature. Gogol himself saw it as an "epic poem in prose", and within the book as a "novel in verse". Despite supposedly completing the trilogy's second part,...
(1842), the play
The Inspector-General (1836, 1842), and the short stories
Diary of a Madman"Diary of a Madman" is a farcical short story by Nikolai Gogol. Along with "The Overcoat" and "The Nose," "Diary of a Madman" is considered to be one of Gogol's greatest short stories. The tale centers on the life of a minor civil servant during the repressive era of Nicholas I...
,
The Nose and
The Overcoat"The Overcoat" is the title of a short story by Ukrainian-born Russian author Nikolai Gogol, published in 1842...
(1842) are among his best known works. With their scrupulous and scathing realism, ethical criticism as well as philosophical depth, they remain some of the most important works of world literature.
Provenance and early life
Gogol was born in the Ukrainian Cossack village of
SorochyntsiVelyki Sorochyntsi is a village in the Poltava Oblast of central Ukraine...
, in
Poltava GovernorateThe Poltava Governorate or Government of Poltava was a guberniya in the historical Left-bank Ukraine region of the Russian Empire, which was officially created in 1802 from the disbanded Malorossiya Governorate which was split between the Chernihiv Governorate and Poltava Govenorate with an...
of the
Russian EmpireThe Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia, and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
, present-day Ukraine. His mother was a descendant of
PolishThe Polish people, or Poles , are a Western Slavic ethnic group of Central Europe, living predominantly in Poland. Poles are sometimes defined as people who share a common Polish culture and are of Polish descent. Their religion is predominantly Roman Catholic...
nobilitySzlachta is the noble class in the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the increasingly polonized territories under their control . The nobility arose in the late Middle Ages and existed through the 18th century and into the 20th century...
. His father Vasily Gogol-Yanovsky, a descendant of Ukrainian Cossacks, belonged to the petty gentry, wrote poetry in Russian and Ukrainian, and was an amateur Ukrainian-language playwright who died when Gogol was 15 years old. As was typical of the left-bank Ukrainian gentry of the early nineteenth century, the family spoke Russian as well as Ukrainian. As a child, Gogol helped stage Ukrainian-language plays in his uncle's home theater.
In 1820 Gogol went to a school of higher art in
NizhynNizhyn is a city located in the Chernihiv Oblast of northern Ukraine, along the Oster River, 150 km north-east of the nation's capital, Kiev. It is the administrative center of the Nizhynsky Raion, though the city itself is also designated as a district in the oblast...
and remained there until 1828. It was there that he began writing. He was not very popular among his schoolmates, who called him their "mysterious dwarf," but with two or three of them he formed lasting friendships. Very early he developed a dark and secretive disposition, marked by a painful self-consciousness and boundless ambition. Equally early he developed an extraordinary talent for mimicry which later on made him a matchless reader of his own works and induced him to toy with the idea of becoming an actor.
In 1828, on leaving school, Gogol came to Petersburg, full of vague but glowingly ambitious hopes. He had hoped for literary fame and brought with him a Romantic poem of German idyllic life —
Ganz Küchelgarten. He had it published, at his own expense, under the name of "V. Alov." The magazines he sent it to almost universally derided it. He bought all the copies and destroyed them, swearing never to write poetry again.
Gogol was one of the first masters of the
short storyA short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format or medium tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels or books...
, alongside Alexander Pushkin,
Prosper MériméeProsper Mérimée was a French dramatist, historian, archaeologist, and short story writer. He is perhaps best known for his novella Carmen, which became the basis of Bizet's opera Carmen.-Life:...
, E. T. A. Hoffmann, and
Nathaniel HawthorneNathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hathorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and Elizabeth Clarke Manning Hathorne...
. He was in touch with the "literary aristocracy," had a story published in Anton Delvig's
Northern Flowers, was taken up by
Vasily ZhukovskyVasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky was the foremost Russian poet of the 1810s.He is credited with introducing the Romantic Movement to Russian literature. The main body of his literary output consists of free translations covering an impressively wide range of poets from Ferdowsi to Schiller...
and
Pyotr PletnyovPyotr Alexandrovich Pletnyov was a minor Russian poet and literary critic, who rose to become the dean of the Saint Petersburg University and academician of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences ....
, and (in 1831) was introduced to Pushkin.
Literary development
In 1831, he brought out the first volume of his Ukrainian stories (
Evenings on a Farm Near DikankaEvenings on a Farm Near Dikanka is a collection of short stories by Nikolai Gogol, written from 1831-1832. They appeared in various magazines and were published in book form when Gogol, who had spent his life in the Ukraine up to the age of nineteen, was twenty two...
), which met with immediate success. He followed it in 1832 with a second volume, and in 1835 by two volumes of stories entitled
MirgorodMirgorod is a collection of short stories by Nikolai Gogol meant to be a sequel of sorts to his two volumes of Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka...
, as well as by two volumes of miscellaneous prose entitled
Arabesques. At this time, contemporary Russian editors and critics such as
Nikolai PolevoyNikolai Alekseevich Polevoy was a controversial Russian editor, writer, and historian; his brother was the critic and journalist Ksenofont Polevoy and his sister the writer and publisher of folktales Ekaterina Avdeeva....
and
Nikolai NadezhdinNikolai Ivanovich Nadezhdin was a Russian literary critic and Russia's first ethnographer.Born in the Zaraisk District of Ryazan guberniya, Nadezhdin graduated from Ryazan Seminary in 1815 and Moscow Religious Academy in 1824...
saw in Gogol the emergence of a Ukrainian, rather than Russian, writer, using his works to illustrate the differences between Russian and Ukrainian national characters, a fact that has been overlooked in later Russian literary history. At this time, Gogol developed a passion for Ukrainian history and tried to obtain an appointment to the history department at
Kiev UniversityKiev University or officially the National Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv is the university located in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. It was founded in 1834 as the University of Saint Vladimir, and since then it has changed its name several times...
. Despite the support of Pushkin and
Sergey UvarovCount Sergey Semionovich Uvarov was a Russian classical scholar best remembered as an influential imperial statesman....
, the Russian minister of education, his appointment was blocked by a Kievan
bureaucratBureaucracy is the collective organizational structure, procedures, protocols, and set of regulations in place to manage activity, usually in large organizations and government...
on the grounds that he was unqualified. His fictional story
Taras BulbaTaras Bulba is a romanticized historical religious novel by Nikolai Gogol. It tells the story of an old Zaporozhian Cossack, Taras Bulba, and his two sons, Andrey and Ostap. Taras’ sons studied at the Kiev Academy and return home...
, based on the history of
Ukrainian cossacksThe Zaporozhian Cossacks were Cossacks who lived in Zaporozhia, in Central Ukraine. The Zaporozhian Host grew rapidly in the 15th century by serfs fleeing the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth....
, was the result of this phase in his interests. During this time he also developed a close and life-long friendship with another Ukrainian then living in Russia, the historian and naturalist
Mykhaylo MaksymovychMykhaylo Olexandrovich Maksymovych , was a famous Ukrainian naturalist, historian, and writer....
.
In 1834 Gogol was made Professor of Medieval History at the University of St. Petersburg, a job for which "he had no qualifications. He turned in a performance ludicrous enough to warrant satiric treatment in one of his own stories. After an introductory lecture made up of brilliant generalizations which the 'historian' had prudently prepared and memorized, he gave up all pretense at erudition and teaching, missed two lectures out of three, and when he did appear, muttered unintelligibly through his teeth. At the final examination, he sat in utter silence with a black handkerchief wrapped around his head, simulating a toothache, while another professor interrogated the students." This academic venture proved a failure and he resigned his chair in 1835.
Between 1832 and 1836 Gogol worked with great energy, and though almost all his work has in one way or another its sources in these four years of contact with Pushkin, he had not yet decided that his ambitions were to be fulfilled by success in literature. During this time, the Russian critics Stepan Shevyrev and
Vissarion BelinskyVissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky was a Russian literary critic of Westernizing tendency. He was an associate of Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin , and other critical intellectuals...
, contradicting earlier critics, reclassified Gogol from a Ukrainian to a Russian writer. It was only after the presentation, on April 19, 1836, of his comedy
The Government Inspector (
Revizor) that he finally came to believe in his literary vocation. The comedy, a violent
satireSatire is often strictly defined as a literary genre or form; although in practice it is also found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, or other methods,...
of Russian provincial bureaucracy, was able to be staged thanks only to the personal intervention of
Nicholas INicholas I , , was the Emperor of Russia from 1825 until 1855, known as one of the most reactionary of the Russian monarchs. On the eve of his death, the Russian Empire reached its historical zenith spanning over 20 million square kilometres.Nicholas I was born in Gatchina to Emperor Paul I and...
.
From 1836 to 1848 he lived abroad, travelling throughout Germany and Switzerland. Gogol spent the winter of 1836-1837 in Paris, where he spent time among Russian
expatriateAn expatriate is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing or legal residence...
s and Polish
exileExile means to be away from one's home , while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened by prison or death upon return...
s, frequently meeting with the Polish poets
Adam MickiewiczAdam Bernard Mickiewicz was a Polish-Lithuanian Romantic poet...
and Bohdan Zaleski. He eventually settled in Rome.
According to Simon Karlinsky (a
professor emeritusA Professor Emeritus is a full professor who retires in good standing. While technically this is the term for a male and women are known as Professor Emerita, women such as Germaine Greer are known by the masculine title. This title is also given to retired professors who continue to teach and to...
of
Slavic languagesThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
and
literatureSlavic literature refers to the literature in any of the Slavic languages:*Belarusian literature*Bosnian literature*Bulgarian literature*Croatian literature*Czech literature*Kashubian literature*Macedonian literature*Polish literature...
at UC Berkeley) Gogol fell in love there with the nobleman Iosif Vielhorsky and started a romantic relationship with him, this is the only documented love affair in his life.
Pushkin's death produced a strong impression on Gogol. His principal work during years following Pushkin's death was the satirical epic
Dead Souls. Concurrently, he worked at other tasks — recast
Taras BulbaTaras Bulba is a romanticized historical religious novel by Nikolai Gogol. It tells the story of an old Zaporozhian Cossack, Taras Bulba, and his two sons, Andrey and Ostap. Taras’ sons studied at the Kiev Academy and return home...
and
The PortraitThe Portrait is a short story by Nikolai Gogol, originally published in the short story collection Arabesques in 1835. It is the story of a young artist, Andrey Petrovich Chartkov, who stumbles upon a terrifyingly lifelike portrait in an art shop and is one of Gogols’ most demonic of tales,...
, completed his second comedy,
Marriage (
Zhenitba), wrote the fragment
Rome and his most famous short story,
The Overcoat"The Overcoat" is the title of a short story by Ukrainian-born Russian author Nikolai Gogol, published in 1842...
.
In 1841 the first part of
Dead Souls was ready, and Gogol took it to Russia to supervise its printing. It appeared in Moscow in 1842, under the title, imposed by the
censorshipCensorship is the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the government or media organizations as determined by a censor.-Rationale:...
, of
The Adventures of Chichikov. The book instantly established his reputation as the greatest prose writer in the language.
Creative decline and death
After the triumph of
Dead Souls, Gogol came to be regarded by his contemporaries as a great satirist who lampooned the unseemly sides of Imperial Russia. Little did they know that
Dead Souls was but the first part of a modern-day counterpart to
The Divine ComedyThe Divine Comedy , written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321, is widely considered the central epic poem of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem's imaginative and allegorical vision of the Christian afterlife is a...
. The first part represented the
Inferno; the second part was to depict the gradual purification and transformation of the rogue Chichikov under the influence of virtuous publicans and governors —
PurgatoryPurgatory is the condition or process of purification in which the souls of those who die in a state of grace are made ready for Heaven. This is an idea that has ancient roots and is well-attested in early Christian literature, while the conception of purgatory as a geographically situated place is...
.
From
PalestinePalestine is a conventional name used, among others, to describe a geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands.As a geographical term, Palestine can also refer to 'ancient Palestine,' an area...
he returned to Russia and passed his last years in restless movement throughout the country. While visiting the capitals, he stayed with various friends such as
Mikhail PogodinMikhail Petrovich Pogodin was a Russian historian and journalist who dominated the national historiography between the death of Nikolay Karamzin in 1826 and the rise of Sergey Solovyov in the 1850s. He is best remembered as a staunch proponent of the Normanist theory of Russian statehood...
and
Sergei AksakovSergei Timofeevich Aksakov was a 19th century Russian literary figure remembered for his semi-autobiographical tales of a landlord's family life, hunting, fishing, and butterfly collecting.According to the Velvet Book, the Aksakovs trace their male line to a...
. During this period of his life he also spent much time with his old Ukrainian friends, Maksymovych and Osyp Bodiansky. More importantly, he intensified his relationship with a
church elderA starets is an elder of a Russian Orthodox monastery who functions as venerated adviser and teacher. Elders or spiritual fathers are charismatic spiritual leaders whose wisdom stems from God as obtained from ascetic experience...
, Matvey Konstantinovsky, whom he had known for several years. Konstantinovsky seems to have strengthened in Gogol the fear of perdition by insisting on the sinfulness of all his imaginative work. His health was undermined by exaggerated ascetic practices and he fell into a state of deep
depressionIn psychology and psychiatry, depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity. While most often described as a disease or dysfunction, there are also strong arguments for seeing depression as an adaptive defense mechanism....
. On the night of February 24, 1852, he burned some of his manuscripts, which contained most of the second part of
Dead Souls. He explained this as a mistake — a practical joke played on him by
the DevilSatan is an embodiment of antagonism that originates from the Abrahamic religions, being traditionally considered an angel in Judeo-Christian belief, and a Jinn in Islamic belief...
. Soon thereafter he took to bed, refused all food, and died in great pain nine days later.
Gogol was buried at the
Danilov MonasteryDanilov Monastery, in full Svyato-Danilov Monastery or Holy Danilov Monastery , is a monastery on the right bank of the Moskva River in Moscow, Russia...
, close to his fellow
SlavophileSlavophilia is an intellectual movement originating from 19th century that wanted the Russian Empire to be developed upon values and institutions derived from its early history. Slavophiles were especially opposed to the influences of Western Europe in Russia...
Aleksey KhomyakovAleksey Stepanovich Khomyakov was a Russian religious poet who co-founded the Slavophile movement along with Ivan Kireevsky, and became one of its most distinguished theoreticians....
. In 1931, Moscow authorities decided to demolish the monastery and had his remains transferred to the
Novodevichy CemeteryNovodevichy Cemetery is the most famous cemetery in Moscow, Russia, situated next to the World Heritage Site, the 16th-century Novodevichy Convent, which is the city's third most popular tourist site...
.
His body was discovered lying face down, which gave rise to the story that Gogol had been buried alive. A Soviet critic even cut a part of his jacket to use as a binding for his copy of
Dead Souls. A piece of rock which used to stand on his grave at the Danilov was reused for the tomb of Gogol's admirer
Mikhail BulgakovMikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov was a Russian contemporary novelist and playwright active in the first half of the 20th century...
.
The first Gogol monument in Moscow was a Symbolist statue on Arbat Square, which represented the sculptor Nikolai Andreyev's idea of Gogol, rather than the real man Unveiled in 1909, the statue was praised by Ilya Repin and
Leo TolstoyLeo Tolstoy, or Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy , was a Russian writer widely regarded as among the greatest of novelists. His masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina represent in their scope, breadth and vivid depiction of 19th-century Russian life and attitudes, the peak of realist...
as an outstanding projection of Gogol's tortured personality. Stalin did not like it, however; and the statue was replaced by a more orthodox
Socialist RealismSocialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style of realistic art which has as its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
monument in 1952. It took enormous efforts to save Andreyev's original work from destruction; it now stands in front of the house where Gogol died.
Style
D.S. Mirsky characterized Gogol's universe as "one of the most marvellous, unexpected — in the strictest sense, original — worlds ever created by an artist of words".
The other main characteristic of Gogol's writing is his
impressionistImpressionism was a 19th-century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence in the 1870s and 1880s...
vision. He saw the outer world romantically metamorphosed, a singular gift particularly evident from the fantastic spatial transformations in his Gothic stories,
A Terrible VengeanceA Terrible Vengeance is a Gothic horror story by Nikolai Gogol. It was published in the second volume of his first short story collection, Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, in 1832, and it was probably written in late Summer 1831....
and
A Bewitched PlaceA Bewitched Place is the last story in the second volume of Nikolai Gogol's first collection of short stories, Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka ....
. His pictures of nature are strange mounds of detail heaped on detail, resulting in an unconnected chaos of things. His people are caricatures, drawn with the method of the caricaturist — which is to exaggerate salient features and to reduce them to geometrical pattern. But these cartoons have a convincingness, a truthfulness, and inevitability — attained as a rule by slight but definitive strokes of unexpected reality — that seems to beggar the visible world itself.
The aspect under which the mature Gogol sees reality is expressed by the untranslatable Russian word
poshlost', which is perhaps best rendered as "self-satisfied inferiority," moral and spiritual, widespread in some group or society, from rus. "poshlo"- eng. "went." Like Sterne before him, Gogol was a great destroyer of prohibitions and romantic illusions. It was he who undermined Russian Romanticism by making vulgarity reign where only the sublime and the beautiful had reigned. "Characteristic of Gogol is a sense of boundless superfluity that is soon revealed as utter emptiness and a rich comedy that suddenly turns into metaphysical horror." His stories often interweave pathos and mockery, while
The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich"The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich" , also known in English as The Squabble, is the final tale in the Mirgorod collection by Nikolai Gogol and is known as one of his most humorous stories.-Plot summary:...
begins as a merry farce and ends with the famous dictum:
It is dull in this world, gentlemen!
Influence and interpretations
Even before the publication of
Dead Souls, Belinsky recognized Gogol as the first realist writer in the language and the head of the Natural School, to which he also assigned such younger or lesser authors as
GoncharovIvan Alexandrovich Goncharov , Ivan Aleksandrovič Gončarov was a Russian novelist best known as the author of Oblomov . He was born in Simbirsk ; his father was a wealthy grain merchant...
,
TurgenevIvan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist and playwright. His novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century fiction.-Life:...
,
Dmitry GrigorovichDmitry Vasilyevich Grigorovich was a Russian writer....
, Vladimir Dahl, and
Vladimir SollogubCount Vladimir Alexandrovich Sollogub was a minor Russian writer, author of novelettes, essays, plays, and memoirs....
. Gogol himself seemed to be skeptical about the existence of such a literary movement. Although he recognized "several young writers" who "have shown a particular desire to observe real life," he upbraided the deficient composition and style of their works. Nevertheless, subsequent generations of radical critics celebrated Gogol (the author in whose world a nose roams the streets of the Russian capital) as a great realist, a reputation decried by the
Encyclopaedia Britannica as "the triumph of Gogolesque irony."
The period of
modernismModernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late...
saw a revival of interest in and a change of attitude towards Gogol's work. One of the pioneering works of
Russian formalismRussian formalism was an influential school of literary criticism in Russia from the 1910s to the 1930s. It includes the work of a number of highly influential Russian and Soviet scholars such as Viktor Shklovsky, Yuri Tynianov, Boris Eichenbaum, Roman Jakobson, Grigory Vinokur who revolutionised...
was
EichenbaumBoris Mikhailovich Eikhenbaum, or Eichenbaum was a Russian and Soviet literary scholar, and historian of Russian literature. He is a representative of Russian formalism.- Biography :...
's reappraisal of
The Overcoat. In the 1920s, a group of Russian short story writers, known as the
Serapion BrothersThe Serapion Brothers was a group of writers formed in Petrograd, Russia in 1921. The group was named after a literary group, Die Serapionsbrüder , to which German romantic author E.T.A. Hoffmann belonged and after which he named a collection of his tales...
, placed Gogol among their precursors and consciously sought to imitate his techniques. The leading novelists of the period — notably
Yevgeny ZamyatinYevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin was a Russian author, most famous for his 1921 novel We, a story of dystopian future which influenced George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, Ayn Rand's Anthem, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed and, indirectly, Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano.Zamyatin was born in...
and
Mikhail BulgakovMikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov was a Russian contemporary novelist and playwright active in the first half of the 20th century...
— also admired Gogol and followed in his footsteps. In 1926,
Vsevolod MeyerholdVsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold was a Russian and Soviet director, actor and producer whose provocative experiments dealing with physical being and symbolism in an unconventional theatre setting made him one of the seminal forces in modern theatre.-Life and work:Vsevolod Meyerhold was born Karl...
staged
The Government Inspector as a "comedy of the absurd situation," revealing to his fascinated spectators a corrupt world of endless self-deception. In 1934,
Andrei BelyAndrei Bely was the pseudonym of Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev , a Russian novelist, poet, theorist, and literary critic. His miasmal and profoundly disturbing novel Petersburg was regarded by Vladimir Nabokov as one of the four greatest novels of the twentieth century.Boris Bugaev was born into a...
published the most meticulous study of Gogol's literary techniques up to that date, in which he analyzed the colours prevalent in Gogol's work depending on the period, his impressionistic use of verbs, expressive discontinuity of his syntax, complicated rhythmical patterns of his sentences, and many other secrets of his craft. Based on this work, Vladimir Nabokov published a summary account of Gogol's masterpieces in 1944.
Gogol's impact on Russian literature has been enduring, yet his works have been appreciated differently by various critics. Belinsky, for instance, berated his horror stories as "moribund, monstrous works," while
Andrei BelyAndrei Bely was the pseudonym of Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev , a Russian novelist, poet, theorist, and literary critic. His miasmal and profoundly disturbing novel Petersburg was regarded by Vladimir Nabokov as one of the four greatest novels of the twentieth century.Boris Bugaev was born into a...
counted them among his most stylistically daring creations. Nabokov singled out
Dead Souls,
The Government Inspector, and
The Overcoat as the works of genius and dismissed the remainder as puerile essays. The latter story has been traditionally interpreted as a masterpiece of "humanitarian realism," but Nabokov and some other attentive readers argued that "holes in the language" make the story susceptible to another interpretation, as a supernatural tale about a ghostly double of a "small man." Of all Gogol's stories,
The Nose has stubbornly defied all abstruse interpretations: D.S. Mirsky declared it "a piece of sheer play, almost sheer nonsense."
Gogol's oeuvre has also had a large impact on Russia's non-literary culture, and his stories have been adapted numerous times into opera and film. Russian Composer
Alfred SchnittkeAlfred Garyevich Schnittke was a Russian and Soviet composer. Schnittke's early music shows the strong influence of Dmitri Shostakovich. He developed a polystylistic technique in works such as the epic First Symphony and First Concerto Grosso . In the 1980s, Schnittke's music began to become...
wrote the eight part Gogol Suite as
incidental musicIncidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, film or some other form not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as the "film score" or "soundtrack."...
to the
The Government Inspector performed as a play, and composer
Dmitri ShostakovichDmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Russian composer of the Soviet period and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
set
The Nose as his first opera in 1930, despite the peculiar choice of subject for what was meant to initiate the great tradition of Soviet opera.
Most recently, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Gogol's birth, Vienna's renowned
Theater an der WienThe Theater an der Wien is an opera house in Vienna.-Origin:The theater opened in 1801 and was the brainchild of the Viennese theatrical impresario Emanuel Schikaneder, who is best known to history as Mozart's librettist and collaborator on the opera The Magic Flute...
commissioned music and libretto for a full length opera on the life of Gogol from Russian composer and writer
Lera AuerbachLera Auerbach is one of the most widely performed composers of her generation.Auerbach continues the tradition of virtuoso pianist-composers of the 19th and 20th centuries...
.
In Marathi,
P. L. DeshpandePurushottam Laxman Deshpande was a Marathi writer from Maharashtra, India. He was popularly known by his initials पु. ल. ....
adapted his play "The Government Inspector" as "
Ammaldar" (literally 'the Government Inspector') in late 1950s, skillfully cladding it with all indigenous politico-cultural robe of
MaharashtraMaharashtra is a state located on the western coast of India. Maharashtra is a part of Western India. It is India's third largest state by area and second largest by population....
, while maintaining the comic satire of the original.
Some attention has also been given to Gogol's apparent
anti-SemitismAntisemitism is prejudice against or hostility towards Jews, often rooted in hatred of their ethnic background, culture, or religion....
in his writings, as well as those of his contemporary,
Fyodor DostoevskyFyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer, essayist and philosopher, known for...
. Felix Dreizin and David Guaspari, for example, in their
The Russian Soul and the Jew: Essays in Literary Ethnocentricis discuss "the significance of the Jewish characters and the negative image of the Ukrainian Jewish community in Gogol's novel "Taras Bulba," pointing out Gogol's attachment to anti-Jewish prejudices prevalent in Russian and Ukrainian culture." In Leon Poliakov's
The History of Antisemitism, the author mentions that "The 'Yankel' from
Taras Bulba indeed became the archetypal Jew in Russian literature. Gogol painted him as supremely exploitative, cowardly, and repulsive, albeit capable of gratitude. But it seems perfectly natural in the story that he and his cohorts be drowned in the Dniper by the Cossack lords. Above all, Yankel is ridiculous, and the image of the plucked chicken that Gogol used has made the rounds of great Russian authors."
Despite his problematic portrayal of Jewish characters, Gogol left a powerful impression even on Jewish writers who inherited his literary legacy. Amelia Glaser has noted the influence of Gogol's literary innovations on Sholem Aleichem, who "chose to model much of his writing, and even his appearance, on Gogol... What Sholem Aleichem was borrowing from Gogol was a rural East European landscape that may have been dangerous, but could unite readers through the power of collective memory. He also learned from Gogol to soften this danger through laughter, and he often rewrites Gogol’s Jewish characters, correcting anti-Semitic stereotypes and narrating history from a Jewish perspective."
Gogol in popular culture
- Gypsy punk
Gypsy punk is the term used to describe a hybrid musical genre that crosses traditional Roma music with punk rock and other brands of rebel music. The origin of the term is unknown, but bands playing Gypsy punk have existed at least since the 1990s...
band Gogol BordelloGogol Bordello is a multi-ethnic Gypsy punk band from the Lower East Side of New York City that formed in 1999 and is known for its theatrical stage shows. Much of the band's sound is inspired by Gypsy music, as its core members are immigrants from Eastern Europe...
is named after Gogol. Lead singer Eugene HützEugene Hütz is the Ukrainian-born singer and composer of the critically-acclaimed New York Gypsy punk rock band Gogol Bordello. He is also a DJ and an actor....
is UkrainianUkrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses the Cyrillic alphabet....
and wrote the introduction for the Subculture Books release of Taras BulbaTaras Bulba is a romanticized historical religious novel by Nikolai Gogol. It tells the story of an old Zaporozhian Cossack, Taras Bulba, and his two sons, Andrey and Ostap. Taras’ sons studied at the Kiev Academy and return home...
in 2008.
- James Bond ally Anatol Gogol
General Anatol Alexis Gogol is a fictional character in the James Bond films The Spy Who Loved Me, For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, A View to a Kill, and The Living Daylights. In the films, he is the head of the KGB. In his final appearance in The Living Daylights, he has transferred from the KGB to...
is named in celebration of Nikolai Gogol. The General appeared in all of Roger Moore'sSir Roger George Moore KBE is a English actor and film producer. He is perhaps best known for portraying two British action heroes, Simon Templar in the television series The Saint from 1962 to 1969, and James Bond in seven films from 1973 to 1985.-Early life:Moore was born in Stockwell, London...
James Bond films between The Spy Who Loved MeThe Spy Who Loved Me is the tenth spy film in the James Bond series, and the third to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. It was directed by Lewis Gilbert and the screenplay was written by Christopher Wood and Richard Maibaum...
and A View to a KillA View to a Kill is the fourteenth spy film of the James Bond series, and the seventh and last to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. Although the title is adapted from Ian Fleming's short story "From a View to a Kill", the film is the third Bond film after The Spy Who Loved Me...
, and in Timothy Dalton' sTimothy Peter Dalton is a Welsh born English actor. He is best known for portraying James Bond in The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill , as well as Rhett Butler in the television miniseries "Scarlett" , an original sequel to Gone with the Wind...
debut as Bond in The Living DaylightsThe Living Daylights is the fifteenth spy film in the James Bond series, and the first to star Timothy Dalton as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond...
; he was portrayed by late GermanGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
actor Walter GotellWalter Gotell was a German-British actor, known for his role as General Gogol, head of the KGB, in the James Bond film series....
, previously known as Morzeny in the second ConnerySir Thomas Sean Connery , best known as Sean Connery, is an Academy Award, Golden Globe, and BAFTA Award winning Scottish actor and producer....
Bond movie From Russia with LoveFrom Russia with Love is the second spy film in the James Bond series, and the second to star Sean Connery as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. The film was produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, and directed by Terence Young. It is based on the 1957 novel of the same name by Ian...
.
- His novel Dead Souls
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, Russian writer, was first published in 1842, and is one of the most prominent works of 19th-century Russian literature. Gogol himself saw it as an "epic poem in prose", and within the book as a "novel in verse". Despite supposedly completing the trilogy's second part,...
gave its name to the Joy DivisionJoy Division were an English rock band formed in 1976 in Salford, Greater Manchester. Originally named Warsaw, the band primarily consisted of Ian Curtis , Bernard Sumner , Peter Hook and Stephen Morris .Joy Division rapidly evolved from their initial punk rock influences,...
song.
- The main character in The Namesake
The Namesake is the second book by author Jhumpa Lahiri. It was originally a novella published in The New Yorker and was later expanded to a full length novel. It explores many of the same emotional and cultural themes as her Pulitzer Prize-winning short story collection Interpreter of Maladies...
is named after Gogol. The name is part of the central theme of the story.
- Jon Krakauer
Jon Krakauer is an American writer and mountaineer, well-known for outdoor and mountain-climbing writing.-Early life:Krakauer was born in Brookline, Massachusetts as the third of five children and was raised in Corvallis, Oregon from the age of two. His father introduced him to mountaineering as...
mentions in his book Into the WildInto the Wild by Jon Krakauer is a bestselling non-fiction book about the adventures of Christopher McCandless. It is an expansion of Krakauer's 9,000-word article, "Death of an Innocent", which appeared in the January 1993 issue of Outside....
that Christopher McCandlessChristopher Johnson McCandless was an American wanderer who adopted the name Alexander Supertramp and hiked into the Alaskan wilderness with little food and equipment, hoping to live a period of solitude. Almost four months later, he died of starvation near Denali National Park and Preserve...
carried a book by Gogol.
- In the "Charlie" episode from the first series of the British comedy series "The Mighty Boosh
The Mighty Boosh is a British comedy troupe featuring comedians Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding. Developed from three stage shows and a six episode radio series, it has since spawned a total of twenty television episodes for BBC Three and two live tours of the UK, as well as two live shows in the...
," character Howard Moon is seen holding Gogol's "Dead SoulsDead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, Russian writer, was first published in 1842, and is one of the most prominent works of 19th-century Russian literature. Gogol himself saw it as an "epic poem in prose", and within the book as a "novel in verse". Despite supposedly completing the trilogy's second part,...
" when talking about becoming a writer with Vince Noir, and later uses the book to spy on the keeper of the Reptile House, Mrs Gideon.
- On March 19, 2009 the National bank of Ukraine
National Bank of Ukraine is the central bank of Ukraine. Its headquarters building, constructed between 1902 and 1934, is located at no. 9 Institutska St., in Kiev-History:...
issued a commemorative coin dedicated to Nikolai Gogol.
- Gogol has featured on over 20 postage stamps, including Russia, Roumania, Germany, Ukraine see Gogol in philately entry of Russian wikipedia
- More than 35 films have been based on Gogol's work, the most recent was Taras bulba
Taras Bulba is a historical drama film, based on a novel of the same title by Nikolai Gogol. The movie has been filmed on different locations in Ukraine such as Zaporizhia, Khotyn and Kamianets-Podilskyi as well as in Poland...
released on April 2 2009.
- Russia and Ukraine have both issued commemorative coins.
- Streets have been named after Gogol in Moscow
Moscow is the capital and the largest city of Russia. It is also the largest metropolitan area in Europe, and ranks among the largest urban areas in the world. Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the world, a...
, LipetskLipetsk is a city located in the Central Federal District of Russia. It is the administrative center of Lipetsk Oblast. It is located on the banks of the Voronezh River in the Don basin, 438 km southeast of Moscow.-History:...
, MyrhorodMyrhorod is an ancient city in the Poltava Oblast of central Ukraine. Serving as the administrative center of the Myrhorodsky Raion , the city itself is also designated as a separate raion within the oblast, and is located on the picturesque river Khorol.The current estimated population is around...
, KrasnodarKrasnodar is a city in Southern Russia on the Kuban River. It is the administrative center of Krasnodar Krai .-Name:It was founded on January 12, 1794 as Yekaterinodar...
, VladimirVladimir is a city in Russia, located on the Klyazma River, to the east of Moscow along the M7 motorway. It is the administrative center of Vladimir Oblast. Population: Vladimir was one of the medieval capitals of Russia, and two of its cathedrals are a World Heritage Site...
, VladivostokVladivostok is Russia's largest port city on the Pacific Ocean and the administrative center of Primorsky Krai. It is situated at the head of the Golden Horn Bay not far from Russia's border with China and North Korea...
, PenzaPenza is a city in Russia, the administrative center of Penza Oblast in the Volga Federal District. It stands on the Sura River, 625 km south-east of Moscow. The city is served by Penza Airport. Population: 518,025 .-History:...
, PetrozavodskPetrozavodsk is the capital of the Republic of Karelia, Russia, with a population of 266,160 . It stretches along the western shore of the Lake Onega for some 27 kilometers. The city is served by Besovets Airport...
and many other towns and cities.
- The character Jozef Pronek in Aleksandar Hemon's novel Nowhere Man had a band named The Dead Souls
- Rory Gilmore, in the WB show "Gilmore Girls" (2000-2007), reads Dead Souls.
- In the 2009 film Adventureland
Adventureland is a 2009 comedy-drama film written and directed by Greg Mottola, director of Superbad. The film stars Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Margarita Levieva, Ryan Reynolds, Martin Starr, Bill Hader, and Kristen Wiig.- Plot :...
, the character Joel attempts to give his love interest, Sue, a copy of The Overcoat"The Overcoat" is the title of a short story by Ukrainian-born Russian author Nikolai Gogol, published in 1842...
.
External links