N.V. Gogol and Russian literature. IX Gogol readings. Gogol Nikolai Vasilievich - Great Russian writer, playwright, critic

Birth name:	Nikolai Vasilievich Yanovsky
Nicknames:	V. Alov; P. Glechik; N.G.; OOO; Pasichnik Rudy Panko; G. Yanov; N. N.; ***
Date of Birth:
Place of Birth:	The town of Bolshie Sorochintsy, Poltava Governorate, Russian Empire
Date of death:
A place of death:	Moscow, Russian Empire
Citizenship:	Russian empire
Occupation:	Novelist, playwright
	Drama, prose
Language of works:

Childhood and youth

Saint Petersburg

Abroad

Funeral and grave of Gogol

Addresses in St. Petersburg

Creation

Gogol and painters

Hypotheses about Gogol's personality

Some works of Gogol

Monuments

Bibliography

First editions

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol(surname at birth Yanovsky, since 1821 - Gogol-Yanovsky; March 20, 1809, Sorochintsy, Poltava province - February 21, 1852, Moscow) - Russian prose writer, playwright, poet, critic, publicist, recognized as one of the classics of Russian literature. Came from ancient noble family Gogol-Yanovskikh.

Biography

Childhood and youth

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was born on March 20 (April 1), 1809 in Sorochintsy near the Psel River, on the border of Poltava and Mirgorod districts (Poltava province). Nicholas was named after the miraculous icon of St. Nicholas. According to family legend, he came from an old Ukrainian Cossack family and was a descendant of Ostap Gogol, hetman of the Right Bank Army of the Zaporozhye Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. IN troubled times Ukrainian history, some of his ancestors pestered the nobility, and Gogol’s grandfather, Afanasy Demyanovich Gogol-Yanovsky (1738-1805), wrote in an official paper that “his ancestors, with the surname Gogol, of the Polish nation,” although most biographers tend to believe that he was still a “Little Russian”. A number of researchers, whose opinion was formulated by V.V. Veresaev, believe that the descent from Ostap Gogol could have been falsified by Afanasy Demyanovich to obtain the nobility, since the priestly pedigree was an insurmountable obstacle to acquiring a noble title.

Great-great-grandfather Yan (Ivan) Yakovlevich, a graduate of the Kyiv Theological Academy, “went to the Russian side”, settled in the Poltava region (currently the Poltava region of Ukraine), and from him the nickname “Yanovsky” came. (According to another version, they were Yanovskys, since they lived in the area of ​​Yanov). Having received a charter of nobility in 1792, Afanasy Demyanovich changed his surname “Yanovsky” to “Gogol-Yanovsky”. Gogol himself, being baptized “Yanovsky,” apparently did not know about the real origin of the surname and subsequently discarded it, saying that the Poles had invented it. Gogol's father, Vasily Afanasyevich Gogol-Yanovsky (1777-1825), died when his son was 15 years old. It is believed that the stage activities of his father, who was a wonderful storyteller and wrote plays for home theater in Ukrainian, determined the interests of the future writer - Gogol showed an early interest in theater.

Gogol's mother Maria Ivanovna (1791-1868), born. Kosyarovskaya, was married at the age of fourteen in 1805. According to contemporaries, she was exceptionally pretty. The groom was twice her age. In addition to Nikolai, there were eleven more children in the family. There were six boys and six girls in total. The first two boys were stillborn. Gogol was the third child. The fourth son was Ivan (1810-1819), who died early. Then a daughter, Maria (1811-1844), was born. All middle children also died in infancy. The last born were daughters Anna (1821-1893), Elizaveta (1823-1864) and Olga (1825-1907).

Life in the village before school and after, during the holidays, went on in the fullest atmosphere of Ukrainian life, both lordly and peasant. Subsequently, these impressions formed the basis of Gogol’s Little Russian stories and served as the reason for his historical and ethnographic interests; Later, from St. Petersburg, Gogol constantly turned to his mother when he needed new everyday details for his stories. The inclinations of religiosity and mysticism, which by the end of his life took possession of Gogol’s entire being, are attributed to the influence of his mother.

At the age of ten, Gogol was taken to Poltava to one of the local teachers to prepare for the gymnasium; then he entered the Gymnasium of Higher Sciences in Nizhyn (from May 1821 to June 1828). Gogol was not a diligent student, but had an excellent memory, prepared for exams in a few days and moved from class to class; he was very weak in languages ​​and made progress only in drawing and Russian literature.

Apparently, the gymnasium itself, which was not very well organized in the first years of its existence, was partly to blame for the poor teaching; for example, history was taught by rote learning; literature teacher Nikolsky extolled the importance of Russian literature of the 18th century and did not approve of the contemporary poetry of Pushkin and Zhukovsky, which, however, only increased the interest of schoolchildren in romantic literature. Moral education lessons were supplemented with the rod. Gogol got it too.

The shortcomings of the school were made up for by self-education in a circle of comrades, where there were people who shared literary interests with Gogol (Gerasim Vysotsky, who apparently had considerable influence on him at that time; Alexander Danilevsky, who remained his friend for life, as did Nikolai Prokopovich; Nestor Kukolnik, with whom, however, Gogol never agreed).

Comrades contributed magazines; They started their own handwritten journal, where Gogol wrote a lot in poetry. At that time, he wrote elegiac poems, tragedies, historical poems and stories, as well as the satire “Something about Nezhin, or There is no law for fools.” Along with literary interests, a love for the theater also developed, where Gogol, already distinguished by his unusual comedy, was the most zealous participant (from the second year of his stay in Nizhyn). Gogol's youthful experiences were formed in the style of romantic rhetoric - not in the taste of Pushkin, whom Gogol already admired, but rather in the taste of Bestuzhev-Marlinsky.

The death of his father was a heavy blow for the whole family. Concerns about business also fall on Gogol; he gives advice, reassures his mother, and must think about the future arrangement of his own affairs. The mother idolizes her son Nikolai, considers him a genius, she gives him the last of her meager funds to provide for his life in Nezhin, and subsequently in St. Petersburg. Nikolai also paid her all his life with ardent filial love, but there was no complete understanding and trusting relationship between them. Later, he would renounce his share of the common family inheritance in favor of his sisters in order to devote himself entirely to literature.

Towards the end of his stay at the gymnasium, he dreams of broad social activity, which, however, he sees not at all in the literary field; no doubt under the influence of everything around him, he thinks to advance and benefit society in a service for which in reality he was not capable. Thus, plans for the future were unclear; but Gogol was sure that he had a wide career ahead of him; he is already talking about the instructions of providence and cannot be satisfied with what ordinary people are content with, as he put it, which were the majority of his Nezhin comrades.

Saint Petersburg

In December 1828, Gogol moved to St. Petersburg. Here for the first time he was met with severe disappointment: his modest means turned out to be quite insignificant in the big city, and bright hopes did not materialize as quickly as he expected. His letters home at that time were a mixture of this disappointment and a vague hope for a better future. He had a lot of character and practical enterprise in reserve: he tried to enter the stage, become an official, and devote himself to literature.

He was not accepted as an actor; the service was so meaningless that he began to feel burdened by it; the more attracted he was to the literary field. In St. Petersburg, at first he kept to a society of fellow countrymen, which consisted partly of former comrades. He found that Little Russia aroused keen interest not only among Ukrainians, but also among Russians; experienced failures turned his poetic dreams to his native Ukraine, and from here the first plans for work arose, which was supposed to give rise to the need for artistic creativity, as well as bring practical benefits: these were plans for “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka.”

But before that he published under a pseudonym V. Alova the romantic idyll “Hanz Küchelgarten” (1829), which was written back in Nizhyn (he himself marked it with the year 1827) and the hero of which was given the ideal dreams and aspirations that he was fulfilled in last years Nizhyn life. Soon after the book was published, he himself destroyed its circulation when the critics reacted unfavorably to his work.

In a restless search for life's work, Gogol at that time went abroad, by sea to Lubeck, but a month later he returned again to St. Petersburg (September 1829) - and then explained his action by the fact that God showed him the way to a foreign land, or referred to hopeless love . In reality, he was running from himself, from the discord between his lofty and arrogant dreams and practical life. “He was drawn to some fantastic land of happiness and reasonable productive work,” says his biographer; America seemed like such a country to him. In fact, instead of America, he ended up serving in the III Division thanks to the patronage of Thaddeus Bulgarin. However, his stay there was short-lived. Ahead of him was service in the department of appanages (April 1830), where he remained until 1832. In 1830, the first literary acquaintances were made: Orest Somov, Baron Delvig, Pyotr Pletnev. In 1831, there was a rapprochement with the circle of Zhukovsky and Pushkin, which had a decisive influence on his future fate and on his literary activities.

The failure of Hanz Küchelgarten was a tangible indication of the need for a different literary path; but even earlier, from the first months of 1829, Gogol besieged his mother with requests to send him information about Ukrainian customs, legends, costumes, as well as to send “notes kept by the ancestors of some old family, ancient manuscripts,” etc. All this was material for future stories from Ukrainian life and legends, which became the beginning of his literary fame. He already took some part in the publications of that time: at the beginning of 1830, “The Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala” was published in Svinin’s “Notes of the Fatherland” (with editorial corrections); at the same time (1829) “Sorochinskaya Fair” and “May Night” were started or written.

Gogol then published other works in the publications of Baron Delvig “Literary Newspaper” and “Northern Flowers”, which included a chapter from the historical novel “Hetman”. Perhaps Delvig recommended him to Zhukovsky, who received Gogol with great cordiality: apparently, from the first time the mutual sympathy of people related by love of art, by religiosity inclined to mysticism was felt between them - after that they became very close friends.

Zhukovsky handed over the young man to Pletnev with a request to place him, and indeed, in February 1831, Pletnev recommended Gogol for the position of teacher at the Patriotic Institute, where he himself was an inspector. Having gotten to know Gogol better, Pletnev waited for the opportunity to “bring him under Pushkin’s blessing”: this happened in May of the same year. Gogol's entry into this circle, which soon recognized his great emerging talent, had a huge impact on Gogol's fate. Finally, the prospect of the broad activity that he had dreamed of opened before him, but not in the official field, but in the literary field.

In material terms, Gogol could have been helped by the fact that, in addition to a place at the institute, Pletnev provided him with the opportunity to conduct private classes with the Longinovs, Balabins, and Vasilchikovs; but the main thing was the moral influence that this new environment had on Gogol. In 1834, he was appointed to the post of adjunct in the department of history at St. Petersburg University. He entered the circle of people who stood at the head of Russian fiction: his long-standing poetic aspirations could develop in all their breadth, his instinctive understanding of art could become a deep consciousness; Pushkin's personality made an extraordinary impression on him and forever remained an object of worship for him. Serving art became for him a high and strict moral duty, the requirements of which he tried to fulfill religiously.

Hence, by the way, his slow manner of work, the long definition and development of the plan and all the details. The society of people with a broad literary education was generally useful for a young man with meager knowledge learned from school: his powers of observation become deeper, and with each new work his creative level reaches new heights. At Zhukovsky, Gogol met a select circle, partly literary, partly aristocratic; in the latter, he soon began a relationship that would play a significant role in his life in the future, for example, with the Vielgorskys; At the Balabins he met the brilliant maid of honor Alexandra Rosetti (later Smirnova). The horizon of his life observations expanded, long-standing aspirations gained ground, and Gogol’s high concept of his destiny became the utmost conceit: on the one hand, his mood became sublimely idealistic, on the other, the prerequisites for religious quests arose, which marked the last years of his life.

This time was the most active era of his work. After small works, some of which were mentioned above, his first major literary work, which marked the beginning of his fame, was “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka. Stories published by the pasichnik Rudy Panko”, published in St. Petersburg in 1831 and 1832, in two parts (the first contained “Sorochinskaya Fair”, “The Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala”, “May Night, or the Drowned Woman”, “The Missing Letter”; in the second - “The Night Before Christmas”, “Terrible Revenge, Ancient True Story”, “Ivan Fedorovich Shponka and His Aunt”, “Enchanted Place”).

These stories, depicting scenes of Ukrainian life in an unprecedented way, shining with gaiety and subtle humor, made a great impression on Pushkin. The next collections were first “Arabesques”, then “Mirgorod”, both published in 1835 and composed partly from articles published in 1830-1834, and partly from new works published for the first time. That's when Gogol's literary fame became undeniable.

He grew up in the eyes of both his inner circle and the younger literary generation in general. Meanwhile, events took place in Gogol's personal life that in various ways influenced the internal structure of his thoughts and fantasies and his external affairs. In 1832, he was in his homeland for the first time after completing a course in Nizhyn. The path lay through Moscow, where he met people who later became his more or less close friends: Mikhail Pogodin, Mikhail Maksimovich, Mikhail Shchepkin, Sergei Aksakov.

Staying at home initially surrounded him with impressions of his native, beloved environment, memories of the past, but then also with severe disappointments. Household affairs were upset; Gogol himself was no longer the enthusiastic young man he had been when he left his homeland: life experience taught him to look deeper into reality and see its often sad, even tragic basis behind its outer shell. Soon his “Evenings” began to seem to him like a superficial youthful experience, the fruit of that “youth during which no questions come to mind.”

Ukrainian life even at that time provided material for his imagination, but the mood was different: in the stories of “Mirgorod” this sad note constantly sounds, reaching high pathos. Returning to St. Petersburg, Gogol worked hard on his works: this was generally the most active time of his creative activity; At the same time, he continued to make life plans.

From the end of 1833, he was carried away by a thought as unrealizable as his previous plans for service were: it seemed to him that he could enter the scientific field. At that time, the opening of Kyiv University was being prepared, and he dreamed of occupying the department of history there, which he taught to girls at the Patriotic Institute. Maksimovich was invited to Kyiv; Gogol dreamed of starting classes in Kyiv with him, and wanted to invite Pogodin there too; in Kyiv, Russian Athens appeared to his imagination, where he himself thought of writing something unprecedented in universal history, and at the same time studying Ukrainian antiquity.

However, it turned out that the department of history was given to another person; but soon, thanks to the influence of his high literary friends, he was offered the same chair at St. Petersburg University. He actually occupied this pulpit; Several times he managed to give an effective lecture, but then the task turned out to be beyond his strength, and he himself refused the professorship in 1835. In 1834 he wrote several articles on the history of the Western and Eastern Middle Ages.

In 1832, his work was somewhat suspended due to domestic and personal troubles. But already in 1833 he worked hard again, and the result of these years were the two mentioned collections. First came “Arabesques” (two parts, St. Petersburg, 1835), which contained several articles of popular scientific content on history and art (“Sculpture, painting and music”; a few words about Pushkin; about architecture; about teaching general history; a look at the state of Ukraine; about Ukrainian songs, etc.), but at the same time also new stories “Portrait”, “Nevsky Prospekt” and “Notes of a Madman”.

Then in the same year “Mirgorod” was released. Stories that serve as a continuation of Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka" (two parts, St. Petersburg, 1835). A whole series of works were placed here, in which new striking features of Gogol’s talent were revealed. In the first part of “Mirgorod” “Old World Landowners” and “Taras Bulba” appeared; in the second - “Viy” and “The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich.”

Subsequently (1842) “Taras Bulba” was completely reworked by Gogol. Being a professional historian, Gogol used factual materials to construct the plot and develop the characteristic characters of the novel. The events that formed the basis of the novel are the peasant-Cossack uprisings of 1637-1638, led by Gunya and Ostryanin. Apparently, the writer used the diaries of a Polish eyewitness to these events - military chaplain Simon Okolsky.

The plans for some other works of Gogol date back to the early thirties, such as the famous “The Overcoat”, “The Stroller”, perhaps “Portrait” in its revised version; these works appeared in the “Contemporary” of Pushkin (1836) and Pletnev (1842) and in the first collected works (1842); a later stay in Italy includes “Rome” in Pogodin’s “Moskvityanin” (1842).

The first idea of ​​“The Inspector General” dates back to 1834. The surviving manuscripts of Gogol indicate that he worked on his works extremely carefully: from what has survived from these manuscripts, it is clear how the work in its completed form known to us grew gradually from the initial outline, becoming more and more complicated with details and finally reaching that amazing artistic completeness and vitality with which we know them at the end of a process that sometimes lasted for years.

The main plot of The Inspector General, as well as the plot of Dead Souls later, was communicated to Gogol by Pushkin. The entire creation, from the plan to the last details, was the fruit of Gogol’s own creativity: an anecdote that could be told in a few lines turned into a rich work of art.

“The Inspector” caused endless work of determining the plan and details of execution; There are a number of sketches, in whole and in parts, and the first printed form of the comedy appeared in 1836. The old passion for the theater took possession of Gogol to an extreme degree: comedy did not leave his head; he was languidly fascinated by the idea of ​​coming face to face with society; he took the greatest care to ensure that the play was performed in accordance with his own idea about characters and action; The production encountered various obstacles, including censorship, and finally could only be carried out by the will of Emperor Nicholas.

“The Inspector General” had an extraordinary effect: the Russian stage had never seen anything like it; the reality of Russian life was conveyed with such force and truth that although, as Gogol himself said, the matter was only about six provincial officials who turned out to be rogues, the whole society rebelled against him, which felt that it was a matter of a whole principle, a whole order life, in which it itself resides.

But, on the other hand, the comedy was greeted with the greatest enthusiasm by those elements of society who were aware of the existence of these shortcomings and the need to overcome them, and especially by the young literary generation, who saw here once again, as in the previous works of their favorite writer, a whole revelation, a new, the emerging period of Russian art and Russian public. Thus, “The Inspector General” split public opinion. If for the conservative-bureaucratic part of society the play seemed like a demarche, then for the seeking and free-thinking fans of Gogol it was a definite manifesto.

Gogol himself was interested primarily in the literary aspect, in socially he stood completely in line with the point of view of his friends in the Pushkin circle, he only wanted more honesty and truth in the given order of things, and that is why he was especially struck by the discordant noise of misunderstanding that arose around his play. Subsequently, in “Theatrical Tour after the Presentation of a New Comedy,” he, on the one hand, conveyed the impression that “The Inspector General” made in various strata of society, and on the other, expressed his own thoughts about the great importance of theater and artistic truth.

The first dramatic plans appeared to Gogol even before The Inspector General. In 1833, he was absorbed in the comedy “Vladimir of the 3rd Degree”; it was not completed by him, but its material served for several dramatic episodes, such as “The Morning of a Business Man,” “Litigation,” “Lackey” and “Excerpt.” The first of these plays appeared in Pushkin's Sovremennik (1836), the rest - in the first collection of his works (1842).

In the same meeting, “Marriage”, sketches of which date back to the same 1833, and “Players”, conceived in the mid-1830s, appeared for the first time. Tired of the creative tension of recent years and the moral anxieties that The Government Inspector cost him, Gogol decided to take a break from work by going on a trip abroad.

Abroad

In June 1836, Nikolai Vasilyevich went abroad, where he stayed, intermittently, for about ten years. At first, life abroad seemed to strengthen and calm him, giving him the opportunity to complete his greatest work, “Dead Souls” - but it also became the embryo of deeply fatal phenomena. The experience of working with this book, the contradictory reaction of his contemporaries to it, just as in the case of “The Inspector General,” convinced him of the enormous influence and ambiguous power of his talent over the minds of his contemporaries. This thought gradually began to take shape in the idea of ​​one’s prophetic destiny, and, accordingly, of using one’s prophetic gift by the power of one’s talent for the benefit of society, and not to its detriment.

He lived abroad in Germany and Switzerland, spent the winter with A. Danilevsky in Paris, where he met and became especially close to Smirnova and where he was caught by the news of Pushkin’s death, which shocked him terribly.

In March 1837, he was in Rome, which he fell in love with greatly and became like a second homeland for him. European political and social life always remained alien and completely unfamiliar to Gogol; he was attracted by nature and works of art, and Rome at that time represented precisely these interests. Gogol studied ancient monuments, art galleries, visited artists’ workshops, admired folk life and loved to show Rome and “treat” it to visiting Russian acquaintances and friends.

But in Rome he worked hard: the main subject of this work was “Dead Souls,” conceived in St. Petersburg in 1835; here, in Rome, he finished “The Overcoat”, wrote the story “Anunziata”, later remade into “Rome”, wrote a tragedy from the life of the Cossacks, which, however, after several alterations he destroyed.

In the fall of 1839, he and Pogodin went to Russia, to Moscow, where he was met by the Aksakovs, who were enthusiastic about the writer’s talent. Then he went to St. Petersburg, where he had to take his sisters from the institute; then he returned to Moscow again; in St. Petersburg and Moscow, he read the completed chapters of “Dead Souls” to his closest friends.

Having arranged his affairs, Gogol again went abroad, to his beloved Rome; He promised his friends to return in a year and bring the finished first volume of Dead Souls. By the summer of 1841, the first volume was ready. In September of this year, Gogol went to Russia to print his book.

He again had to endure the severe anxieties that he had once experienced during the production of “The Inspector General” on stage. The book was first submitted to the Moscow censorship, which was going to completely ban it; then the book was submitted to the St. Petersburg censorship and, thanks to the participation of Gogol’s influential friends, was, with some exceptions, allowed. It was published in Moscow (“The Adventures of Chichikov or Dead Souls, poem by N. Gogol,” M., 1842).

In June, Gogol went abroad again. This last stay abroad was the final turning point in Gogol’s state of mind. He lived now in Rome, now in Germany, in Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, now in Nice, now in Paris, now in Ostend, often in the circle of his closest friends - Zhukovsky, Smirnova, Vielgorsky, Tolstoy, and a religious -the prophetic direction mentioned above.

A high idea of ​​his talent and the responsibility that lay upon him led him to the conviction that he was doing something providential: in order to expose human vices and take a broad look at life, one must strive for internal improvement, which is given only by thinking of God. Several times he had to endure serious illnesses, which further increased his religious mood; in his circle he found favorable soil for the development of religious exaltation - he adopted a prophetic tone, self-confidently gave instructions to his friends and eventually came to the conviction that what he had done so far was unworthy of the high goal to which he considered himself called. If before he said that the first volume of his poem was nothing more than a porch to the palace that was being built in it, then at that time he was ready to reject everything he wrote as sinful and unworthy of his high mission.

Nikolai Gogol was not in good health since childhood. The death of his younger brother Ivan in adolescence and the untimely death of his father left their mark on his state of mind. Work on the continuation of “Dead Souls” was not going well, and the writer experienced painful doubts that he would be able to bring his planned work to the end. In the summer of 1845, he was overtaken by a painful mental crisis. He writes a will and burns the manuscript of the second volume of Dead Souls. To commemorate his deliverance from death, Gogol decides to go to a monastery and become a monk, but monasticism did not take place. But his mind was presented with the new content of the book, enlightened and purified; It seemed to him that he understood how to write in order to “direct the whole society towards the beautiful.” He decides to serve God in the field of literature. New work began, and in the meantime he was occupied by another thought: he rather wanted to tell society what he considered useful for him, and he decides to collect in one book everything he wrote in recent years to friends in the spirit of his new mood and orders the publication of this Pletnev's book. These were “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends” (St. Petersburg, 1847).

Most of the letters that make up this book date back to 1845 and 1846, the time when Gogol's religious mood reached its highest development. 1840s - the time of formation and demarcation of two different ideologies in contemporary Russian educated society. Gogol remained alien to this demarcation, despite the fact that each of the two warring parties - Westerners and Slavophiles - brought their own claims against Gogol. legal rights. The book made a grave impression on both of them, since Gogol thought in completely different categories. Even his Aksakov friends turned away from him. Gogol with his tone of prophecy and edification, preaching humility, because of which, however, one could see his own conceit; condemnations of previous works, complete approval of the existing social order was clearly discordant with those ideologists who hoped only for the social reorganization of society. Gogol, without rejecting the expediency of social reorganization, saw the main goal in spiritual self-improvement. Therefore, for many years the subject of his study became the works of the Church Fathers. But, not joining either the Westerners or the Slavophiles, Gogol stopped halfway, not completely joining spiritual literature - Seraphim of Sarov, Ignatius (Brianchaninov), etc.

The book’s impression on Gogol’s literary fans, who want to see him only as a leader “ natural school", was depressing. The highest degree of indignation aroused by “Selected Places” was expressed in Belinsky’s famous letter from Salzbrunn.

Gogol was painfully worried about the failure of his book. Only A. O. Smirnova and P. A. Pletnev were able to support him at that moment, but these were only private epistolary opinions. He explained the attacks on her partly by his mistake, by the exaggeration of the edifying tone, and by the fact that the censor did not miss several important letters in the book; but he could explain the attacks of former literary adherents only by calculations of parties and pride. The social meaning of this polemic was alien to him.

In a similar sense, he then wrote the “Preface to the second edition of Dead Souls”; “The Inspector's Denouement,” where he wanted to give the free artistic creation the character of a moralizing allegory, and “Pre-Notification,” where it was announced that the fourth and fifth editions of “The Inspector General” would be sold for the benefit of the poor... The failure of the book had an overwhelming effect on Gogol. He had to admit that a mistake had been made; even friends, like S. T. Aksakov, told him that the mistake was gross and pathetic; he himself confessed to Zhukovsky: “I swung such Khlestakov in my book that I don’t have the courage to look into it.”

In his letters since 1847, there is no longer the former arrogant tone of preaching and edification; he saw that it is possible to describe Russian life only in the midst of it and by studying it. His refuge remained a religious feeling: he decided that he could not continue work without fulfilling his long-standing intention to venerate the Holy Sepulcher. At the end of 1847 he moved to Naples and at the beginning of 1848 he sailed to Palestine, from where he finally returned to Russia through Constantinople and Odessa.

His stay in Jerusalem did not have the effect he expected. “I have never been so little pleased with the state of my heart as in Jerusalem and after Jerusalem,” he says. “It was as if I was at the Holy Sepulcher so that I could feel there on the spot how much coldness of heart I had, how much selfishness and pride.”

Gogol calls his impressions of Palestine sleepy; Once caught in the rain in Nazareth, he thought he was just sitting at a station in Russia. He spent the end of spring and summer in the village with his mother, and on September 1 he moved to Moscow; spent the summer of 1849 with Smirnova in the village and in Kaluga, where Smirnova’s husband was the governor; spent the summer of 1850 again with his family; then he lived for some time in Odessa, was at home again, and in the fall of 1851 he settled again in Moscow, where he lived in the house of his friend Count Alexander Tolstoy (No. 7 on Nikitsky Boulevard).

He continued to work on the second volume of Dead Souls and read excerpts from it from the Aksakovs, but the same painful struggle between artist and Christian that had been going on in him since the early forties continued. As was his custom, he revised what he had written many times, probably succumbing to one mood or another. Meanwhile, his health became increasingly weaker; in January 1852 he was struck by the death of Khomyakov’s wife, who was the sister of his friend Yazykov; he was overcome by the fear of death; he gave up his literary studies and began fasting at Maslenitsa; One day, when he was spending the night in prayer, he heard voices saying that he would soon die.

Death

From the end of January 1852, Rzhev Archpriest Matthew Konstantinovsky, whom Gogol met in 1849, and before that was acquaintance by correspondence, stayed in the house of Count Alexander Tolstoy. Complex, sometimes harsh conversations took place between them, the main content of which was Gogol’s insufficient humility and piety, for example, the demand for Fr. Matthew: “Renounce Pushkin.” Gogol invited him to read the white version of the second part of “Dead Souls” for review, in order to listen to his opinion, but was refused by the priest. Gogol insisted on his own until he took the notebooks with the manuscript to read. Archpriest Matthew became the only lifetime reader of the manuscript of the 2nd part. Returning it to the author, he spoke out against the publication of a number of chapters, “even asked to destroy” them (previously, he also gave a negative review of “Selected Passages ...”, calling the book “harmful”).

The death of Khomyakova, the conviction of Konstantinovsky and, perhaps, other reasons convinced Gogol to abandon his creativity and begin fasting a week before Lent. On February 5, he saw off Konstantinovsky and since that day he has eaten almost nothing. On February 10, he handed Count A. Tolstoy a briefcase with manuscripts to be handed over to Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, but the Count refused this order so as not to deepen Gogol’s dark thoughts.

Gogol stops leaving the house. At 3 a.m. from Monday to Tuesday 11-12 (23-24) February 1852, that is, on Great Compline on the Monday of the first week of Lent, Gogol woke up his servant Semyon, ordered him to open the stove valves and bring a briefcase from the closet. Taking a bunch of notebooks out of it, Gogol put them in the fireplace and burned them. The next morning he told Count Tolstoy that he wanted to burn only some things that had been prepared in advance, but he burned everything under the influence of an evil spirit. Gogol, despite the admonitions of his friends, continued to strictly observe fasting; On February 18, I went to bed and stopped eating completely. All this time, friends and doctors are trying to help the writer, but he refuses help, internally preparing for death.

On February 20, the medical council decided to compulsorily treat Gogol, the result of which was final exhaustion and loss of strength, in the evening he fell into unconsciousness, and on the morning of February 21, Thursday, he died.

An inventory of Gogol's property showed that he left behind personal belongings worth 43 rubles 88 kopecks. The items included in the inventory were complete cast-offs and spoke of the writer’s complete indifference to his appearance in the last months of his life. At the same time, S.P. Shevyrev still had more than two thousand rubles in his hands, donated by Gogol for charitable purposes to needy students of Moscow University. Gogol did not consider this money his own, and Shevyrev did not return it to the writer’s heirs.

Funeral and grave of Gogol

On the initiative of Moscow State University professor Timofey Granovsky, the funeral was held as a public one; Contrary to the initial wishes of Gogol's friends, at the insistence of his superiors, the writer was buried in the university church of the martyr Tatiana. The funeral took place on Sunday afternoon on February 24 (March 7), 1852 at the cemetery of the Danilov Monastery in Moscow. A bronze cross was installed on the grave, standing on a black tombstone (“Golgotha”), and on it was carved the inscription: “I will laugh at my bitter word” (quote from the book of the prophet Jeremiah, 20, 8).

In 1930, the Danilov Monastery was finally closed, and the necropolis was soon liquidated. On May 31, 1931, Gogol’s grave was opened and his remains were transferred to the Novodevichy cemetery. Golgotha ​​was also moved there, but the official examination report drawn up by the NKVD officers, now stored in TsGALI (f. 139, No. 61), is disputed by the unreliable and mutually exclusive memories of a participant and witness to the exhumation of the writer Vladimir Lidin. According to one of his memoirs (“Transferring the Ashes of N.V. Gogol”), written fifteen years after the event, and published posthumously in 1991 in the Russian Archive, the writer’s skull was missing from Gogol’s grave.

According to his other memories, transmitted in the form of oral stories to students at the Literary Institute when Lidin was a professor at this institute in the 1970s, Gogol’s skull was turned on its side. This, in particular, is evidenced by former student V. G. Lidina, and later senior researcher at the State Literary Museum Yu. V. Alekhin. Both of these versions are apocryphal in nature, they gave rise to many legends, including the burial of Gogol in a state of lethargy and the theft of Gogol’s skull for the collection of the famous Moscow collector of theatrical antiquities A. A. Bakhrushin. Of the same contradictory nature are numerous memoirs about the desecration of Gogol’s grave by Soviet writers (and Lidin himself) during the exhumation of Gogol’s burial, published by the media from the words of V. G. Lidin.

In 1952, instead of Golgotha, a new monument was installed on the grave in the form of a pedestal with a bust of Gogol by the sculptor Tomsky, on which is inscribed: “To the great Russian wordsmith Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol from the government of the Soviet Union.”

Golgotha, as unnecessary, was for some time in the workshops of the Novodevichy cemetery, where it was discovered by the widow of M.A. Bulgakov, E.S. Bulgakova, with the inscription already scraped off. She was looking for a suitable headstone for the grave of her late husband. According to legend, I. S. Aksakov himself chose the stone for Gogol’s grave somewhere in the Crimea (cutters called the stone “Black Sea granite”). Elena Sergeevna bought the tombstone, after which it was installed over the grave of Mikhail Afanasyevich. Thus, M. A. Bulgakov’s dream came true: “Teacher, cover me with your cast-iron overcoat.”

Currently - on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the writer's birth - on the initiative of members of the anniversary organizing committee, the grave has been given almost its original appearance: a bronze cross on a black stone.

Addresses in St. Petersburg

• End of 1828 - Trut apartment building - embankment of the Catherine Canal, 72;
• beginning of 1829 - Galibin apartment building - Gorokhovaya Street, 46;
• April - July 1829 - house of I.-A. Jochima - Bolshaya Meshchanskaya Street, 39;
• end of 1829 - May 1831 - Zverkov apartment building - embankment of the Catherine Canal, 69;
• August 1831 - May 1832 - Brunst apartment building - Ofitserskaya Street (until 1918, now - Dekabristov Street), 4;
• summer 1833 - June 6, 1836 - courtyard wing of the Lepen house - Malaya Morskaya Street, 17, apt. 10. Historical monument of Federal significance; Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation. No. 7810075000 // Site “Objects cultural heritage(historical and cultural monuments) of peoples Russian Federation" Verified
• October 30 - November 2, 1839 - P. A. Pletnev’s apartment in Stroganov’s house - Nevsky Prospekt, 38;
• May - July 1842 - P. A. Pletnev’s apartment in the rector’s wing of the St. Petersburg Imperial University - Universitetskaya embankment, 9.

Creation

Early researchers of Gogol’s literary activity imagined, wrote A. N. Pypin, that his work was divided into two periods: the first, when he served the “progressive aspirations” of society, and the second, when he became religiously conservative.

Another approach to the study of Gogol’s biography, which included, among other things, an analysis of his correspondence, which revealed his inner life, allowed researchers to come to the conclusion that, no matter how contradictory the motives of his stories, “The Inspector General” and “Dead Souls” may be, with on the one hand, and “Selected Places” - on the other, in the writer’s personality itself there was not the turning point that was supposed to be in it, one direction was not abandoned and another, opposite one was adopted; on the contrary, it was one integral inner life, where already at an early time there were the makings of later phenomena, where the main feature of this life did not cease - service to art; but this personal life was complicated by the internal mutual contestation of the idealist poet, the citizen writer and the consistent Christian.

Gogol himself said about the properties of his talent: “The only thing that worked out well for me was what I took from reality, from the data known to me.” At the same time, the faces he depicted were not simply a repetition of reality: they were entire artistic types in which human nature was deeply understood. His heroes more often than any other Russian writer became household names.

Another personal feature of Gogol was that from his earliest years, from the first glimpses of his young consciousness, he was excited by sublime aspirations, the desire to serve society in something high and beneficial; from an early age he hated limited self-satisfaction, devoid of internal content, and this trait was later reflected, in the 1830s, by a conscious desire to expose social ills and depravity, and it also developed into a high idea of ​​​​the importance of art, standing above the crowd as the highest enlightenment of the ideal ...

All of Gogol's fundamental ideas about life and literature were ideas of the Pushkin circle. His artistic sense was strong and appreciated Gogol’s unique talent; the circle also took care of his personal affairs. As A. N. Pypin believed, Pushkin expected great artistic merit from Gogol’s works, but he hardly expected their social significance, as Pushkin’s friends later did not fully appreciate him and as Gogol himself was ready to distance himself from him.

Gogol distanced himself from the understanding of the social significance of his works, which was invested in them by the literary criticism of V. G. Belinsky and his circle, social-utopian criticism. But at the same time, Gogol himself was no stranger to utopianism in the sphere of social reconstruction, only his utopia was not socialist, but Orthodox.

The idea of ​​“Dead Souls” in its final form is nothing more than showing the path to goodness for absolutely any person. The three parts of the poem are a kind of repetition of “Hell”, “Purgatory” and “Paradise”. The fallen heroes of the first part rethink their existence in the second part and are spiritually reborn in the third. Thus, the literary work was loaded with the applied task of correcting human vices. The history of literature before Gogol did not know such a grandiose plan. And at the same time, the writer intended to write his poem not just conventionally schematic, but lively and convincing.

After the death of Pushkin, Gogol became close to the circle of Slavophiles, or actually with Pogodin and Shevyrev, S. T. Aksakov and Yazykov; but he remained alien to the theoretical content of Slavophilism, and it had no influence on the composition of his work. In addition to personal affection, he found here warm sympathy for his works, as well as for his religious and dreamily conservative ideas. Gogol did not see Russia without monarchy and Orthodoxy; he was convinced that the church should not exist separately from the state. However, later in the elder Aksakov he also met resistance to his views expressed in “Selected Places”.

The most acute moment of the clash between Gogol’s worldview and the aspirations of the revolutionary part of society was Belinsky’s letter from Salzbrunn, the very tone of which painfully wounded the writer (Belinsky, with his authority, established Gogol as the head of Russian literature during Pushkin’s lifetime), but Belinsky’s criticism could no longer change anything in the spiritual makeup Gogol, and the last years of his life passed, as they say, in a painful struggle between the artist and the Orthodox thinker.

For Gogol himself, this struggle remained unresolved; he was broken by this internal discord, but, nevertheless, the significance of Gogol’s main works for literature was extremely deep. Not to mention the purely artistic merits of performance, which, after Pushkin himself, raised the level of possible artistic perfection among writers, his deep psychological analysis had no equal in previous literature and expanded the range of topics and possibilities of literary writing.

However, artistic merit alone cannot explain either the enthusiasm with which his works were received by younger generations, or the hatred with which they were met among the conservative masses of society. By the will of fate, Gogol became the banner of a new social movement, which was formed outside the sphere of the writer’s creative activity, but in a strange way intersected with his biography, since this social movement did not have any other figures of similar scale for this role at that moment. In turn, Gogol misinterpreted the hopes of readers placed on the ending of Dead Souls. The hastily published summary equivalent of the poem in the form of “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends” resulted in a feeling of annoyance and irritation among the deceived readers, since Gogol as a humorist had developed a strong reputation among readers. The public was not yet ready for a different perception of the writer.

The spirit of humanity, which distinguishes the works of Dostoevsky and other writers after Gogol, is already clearly revealed in Gogol’s prose, for example, in “The Overcoat,” “Notes of a Madman,” and “Dead Souls.” The first work of Dostoevsky is adjacent to Gogol to the point of obviousness. In the same way, the depiction of the negative aspects of landowner life, adopted by the writers of the “natural school,” is usually traced back to Gogol. In their subsequent work, new writers made independent contributions to the content of literature, as life posed and developed new questions, but the first thoughts were given by Gogol.

Gogol's works coincided with the emergence of social interest, which they greatly served and from which literature did not emerge until the end of the 19th century. But the evolution of the writer himself was much more complex than the formation of a “natural school.” Gogol himself had little overlap with the “Gogolian trend” in literature. It is curious that in 1852, for a small article in memory of Gogol, Turgenev was arrested in his unit and sent to the village for a month. For a long time, the explanation for this was found in the dislike of the Nikolaev government towards Gogol the satirist. It was later established that the true motive for the ban was the government’s desire to punish the author of “Notes of a Hunter,” and the ban on the obituary due to the author’s violation of censorship regulations (printing in Moscow an article banned by censorship in St. Petersburg) was only a reason to stop the activities of a socially dangerous person from the point of view of Nikolaev censorship of the writer. There was no single assessment of Gogol’s personality as a pro-government or anti-government writer among the officials of Nicholas I. One way or another, the second edition of the Works, begun in 1851 by Gogol himself and not completed due to his premature death, could only be published in 1855-1856. But Gogol’s connection with subsequent literature is beyond doubt.

This connection was not limited to the 19th century. In the next century, the development of Gogol's work took place at a new stage. Symbolist writers found a lot for themselves in Gogol: imagery, sense of words, “new religious consciousness” - F. K. Sologub, Andrei Bely, D. S. Merezhkovsky, etc. Later, M. A. Bulgakov established their continuity with Gogol , V.V. Nabokov.

Gogol and Orthodoxy

Gogol's personality has always been particularly mysterious. On the one hand, he was a classic type of satirist writer, an exposer of vices, social and human, a brilliant humorist, on the other, a pioneer in Russian literature of the patristic tradition, a religious thinker and publicist, and even an author of prayers. Its last quality has not yet been sufficiently studied and is reflected in the works of Doctor of Philology, Professor of Moscow State University. Lomonosov V.A. Voropaev, who is convinced that

Gogol was an Orthodox Christian, and his Orthodoxy was not nominal, but effective, believing that without this it is impossible to understand anything from his life and work.

Gogol received the beginnings of faith in his family. In a letter to his mother dated October 2, 1833 from St. Petersburg, Nikolai Gogol recalled the following: “I asked you to tell me about the Last Judgment, and you told me as a child so well, so clearly, so touchingly about the benefits that await people for a virtuous life, and they described the eternal torment of sinners so strikingly, so horribly, that it shocked and awakened all sensitivity in me. This sown and subsequently produced in me the highest thoughts.”

From a spiritual point of view, early work Gogol contains not just a collection of humorous stories, but an extensive religious teaching in which there is a struggle between good and evil and good invariably wins, and sinners are punished. Gogol’s main work, the poem “Dead Souls,” also contains deep subtext, the spiritual meaning of which is revealed in the writer’s suicide note: “Be not dead, but living souls. There is no other door except that indicated by Jesus Christ..."

According to V. A. Voropaev, satire in such works as “The Inspector General” and “Dead Souls” is only their upper and shallow layer. Gogol conveyed the main idea of ​​\u200b\u200b“The Inspector General” in a play called “The Denouement of “The Inspector General””, where there are the following words: “... the auditor who is waiting for us at the door of the coffin is terrible.” This, according to Voropaev, is the main idea of ​​the work: we need to fear not Khlestakov or the auditor from St. Petersburg, but “He who is waiting for us at the door of the coffin”; This is the idea of ​​spiritual retribution, and the real auditor is our conscience.

Literary critic and writer I. P. Zolotussky believes that the now fashionable debate about whether Gogol was a mystic or not is unfounded. A person who believes in God cannot be a mystic: for him, God knows everything in the world; God is not a mystic, but a source of grace, and the divine is incompatible with the mystical. According to I.P. Zolotussky, Gogol was “a Christian believer in the bosom of the Church, and the concept of the mystical is not applicable either to himself or to his writings.” Although among his characters there are sorcerers and the devil, they are just heroes of a fairy tale, and the devil is often a parodic, comic figure (as, for example, in “Evenings on the Farm”). And in the second volume of “Dead Souls” a modern devil is introduced - a legal adviser, a rather civilized person in appearance, but essentially more terrible than any evil spirit. With the help of circulating anonymous papers, he created great confusion in the province and turned the existing relative order into complete chaos.

Gogol repeatedly visited Optina Pustyn, having the closest spiritual communication with Elder Macarius.

Gogol completed his writing journey with “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends” - a Christian book. However, it has not yet been truly read, according to Zolotussky. Since the 19th century. It is generally accepted that the book is a mistake, a departure of the writer from his path. But perhaps it is his path, and even more so than other books. According to Zolotussky, these are two different things: the concept of the road (“Dead Souls” at first glance is a road novel) and the concept of the path, that is, the exit of the soul to the pinnacle of the ideal.

In July 2009, Patriarch Kirill blessed the release of the complete works of Nikolai Gogol in the publishing house of the Moscow Patriarchate during 2009. The new edition has been prepared at an academic level. The working group for the preparation of the complete works of N.V. Gogol included scientists and representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Gogol and Russian-Ukrainian connections

The complex interweaving of two cultures in one person has always made the figure of Gogol the center of interethnic disputes, but Gogol himself did not need to find out whether he was Ukrainian or Russian - his friends dragged him into disputes about this. Until now, not a single work of the writer written in Ukrainian is known, and few writers of Russian origin have made a contribution to the development of the Russian language commensurate with Gogol’s.

Attempts were made to understand Gogol from the point of view of his Ukrainian origin: the latter explained, to a certain extent, his attitude towards Russian life. Gogol’s attachment to his homeland was very strong, especially in the first years of his literary activity and right up to the completion of the second edition of Taras Bulba, but his satirical attitude towards Russian life, no doubt, is explained not by his national properties, but by the entire nature of his internal development.

There is no doubt, however, that Ukrainian features were also reflected in the writer’s work. These are considered the features of his humor, which remains the only example of its kind in Russian literature. Ukrainian and Russian principles happily merged in this talent into one, extremely remarkable phenomenon.

A long stay abroad balanced the Ukrainian and Russian components of Gogol’s worldview; he now called Italy the homeland of his soul. The late Gogol’s understanding of the peculiarities of Russian-Ukrainian relations was reflected in the writer’s dispute with O. M. Bodyansky, conveyed by G. P. Danilevsky, about the Russian language and the work of Taras Shevchenko. " We, Osip Maksimovich, need to write in Russian, we need to strive to support and strengthen one, master language for all our native tribes. The dominant for Russians, Czechs, Ukrainians and Serbs should be a single sacred thing - the language of Pushkin, which is the Gospel for all Christians, Catholics, Lutherans and Herrnhuters... We, Little Russians and Russians, need one poetry, calm and strong, imperishable poetry of truth, goodness and beauty. Russian and Little Russian are the souls of twins, replenishing each other, relatives and equally strong. It is impossible to give preference to one over the other" From this dispute it becomes clear that by the end of his life the writer was worried not so much about national antagonism as about the antagonism of faith and unbelief.

At the end of XX - beginning of XXI centuries, when relations between two states - Ukraine and Russia - were going through difficult times, the attitude towards Gogol in Ukraine was ambiguous. For some politicians, he was inconvenient precisely because he was born in Ukraine and wrote in Russian, although in Gogol’s time there was no Ukrainian statehood, the Ukrainian people were considered part of the Russian people, and the Ukrainian language was a Little Russian dialect.

Gogol and painters

Along with writing and an interest in theater, Gogol was passionate about painting from a young age. His high school letters to his parents speak about this. At the gymnasium, Gogol tried himself as a painter, book graphic artist (handwritten magazines “Meteor of Literature”, “Parnassian Manure”) and theater decorator. After leaving the gymnasium in St. Petersburg, Gogol continued his painting classes in evening classes at the Academy of Arts. Communication with Pushkin's circle, with K. P. Bryullov, makes him a passionate admirer of art. The latter’s painting “The Last Day of Pompeii” is the subject of an article in the collection “Arabesques”. In this article, as well as in other articles in the collection, Gogol defends a romantic view of the nature of art. The image of the artist, as well as the conflict between aesthetic and moral principles, will become central in his St. Petersburg stories “Nevsky Prospekt” and “Portrait”, written in the same 1833-1834 as his journalistic articles. Gogol’s article “On the Architecture of the Present Time” was an expression of the writer’s architectural predilections.

In Europe, Gogol enthusiastically indulges in the study of architectural monuments, sculpture, and paintings by old masters. A. O. Smirnova recalls how in the Strasbourg Cathedral “he drew with a pencil on a piece of paper the ornaments above the Gothic columns, marveling at the selectivity of the ancient masters, who made decorations above each column that were excellent from others. I looked at his work and was surprised at how clearly and beautifully he drew. “You draw so well!” I said. “But you didn’t know that?” answered Gogol.” Gogol’s romantic elation is replaced by a well-known sobriety (A. O. Smirnova) in his assessment of art: “Slimness in everything, that’s what’s beautiful.” Raphael becomes the most valued artist for Gogol. P. V. Annenkov: “Under these masses of greenery of Italian oak, plane tree, pina, etc. Gogol happened to be inspired as a painter (he, as you know, was a decent painter himself). Once he said to me: “If I were an artist, I would invent a special kind of landscape.” What kind of trees and landscapes they paint now!.. I would link tree to tree, mix up the branches, throw out light where no one expects it, that’s the kind of landscapes that should be painted!” In this sense, in the poetic depiction of Plyushkin’s garden in “Dead Souls,” the view, method and composition of Gogol the painter are clearly felt.

In 1837 in Rome, Gogol met Russian artists, boarders of the Imperial Academy of Arts: the engraver Fyodor Jordan, the author of a large engraving from Raphael’s painting “Transfiguration”, Alexander Ivanov, who was then working on the painting “The Appearance of the Messiah to the People”, F. A. Moller and others sent to Italy to improve their art. Especially close in foreign lands were A. A. Ivanov and F. I. Jordan, who together with Gogol represented a kind of triumvirate. The writer has a long-term friendship with Alexander Ivanov. The artist becomes the prototype of the hero of the updated version of the story “Portrait”. At the height of his relationship with A. O. Smirnova, Gogol gave her Ivanov’s watercolor “Groom Choosing a Ring for the Bride.” He jokingly called Jordan “Raphael of the first manner” and recommended his work to all his friends. Fyodor Moller painted a portrait of Gogol in Rome in 1840. In addition, seven more portraits of Gogol painted by Moller are known.

But most of all, Gogol valued Ivanov and his painting “The Appearance of the Messiah to the People.” He participated in the creation of the concept of the painting, took part as a sitter (the figure closest to Christ), and lobbied with whomever he could to extend the artist’s opportunity to work calmly and slowly above the painting, dedicated a large article to Ivanov in “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends” “The Historical Painter Ivanov”. Gogol contributed to Ivanov’s turn to writing genre watercolors and to the study of iconography. The painter reconsidered the relationship between the sublime and the comical in his paintings; in his new works, features of humor appeared that were previously completely alien to the artist. Ivanovo’s watercolors, in turn, are close in genre to the story “Rome”. On the other hand, Gogol was several years ahead of the initiatives of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts in the field of studying the Old Russian Orthodox icon. Along with A. A. Agin and P. M. Boklevsky, Alexander Ivanov was one of the first illustrators of Gogol’s works.

The fate of Ivanov had much in common with the fate of Gogol himself: on the second part of “Dead Souls” Gogol worked as slowly as Ivanov did on his painting, both were equally hurried from all sides to finish their work, both were equally in need, unable to tear themselves away from what you love for extra income. And Gogol meant himself and Ivanov equally when he wrote in his article: “Now everyone feels the absurdity of reproaching such an artist for slowness and laziness, who, like a worker, sat all his life at work and forgot even whether there was any kind of art in the world.” any pleasure other than work. The artist’s own spiritual work was connected with the production of this painting, a phenomenon that is too rare in the world.” On the other hand, A. A. Ivanov’s brother, architect Sergei Ivanov, testifies that A. A. Ivanov “never had the same thoughts with Gogol, he internally never agreed with him, but at the same time he never argued with him.” . Gogol’s article weighed heavily on the artist; the advance praise and premature fame fettered him and placed him in an ambiguous position. Despite personal sympathy and a common religious attitude towards art, the once inseparable friends, Gogol and Ivanov, towards the end of their lives become somewhat internally distant, despite the fact that correspondence between them does not stop until their last days.

Gogol in a group of Russian artists in Rome

In 1845, Sergei Levitsky came to Rome and met with Russian artists and Gogol. Taking advantage of the visit to Rome of the vice-president of the Russian Academy of Arts, Count Fyodor Tolstoy, Levitsky persuaded Gogol to appear in a daguerreotype together with a colony of Russian artists. The idea was connected with the arrival of Nicholas I to Rome from St. Petersburg. The Emperor personally visited the boarders of the Academy of Arts. More than twenty boarders were summoned to St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome, where, after Russian-Italian negotiations, Nicholas I arrived, accompanied by the vice-president of the Academy, Count F. P. Tolstoy. “Walking from the altar, Nicholas I turned around, greeted with a slight bow of his head and instantly looked at those gathered with his quick, brilliant gaze. “Your Majesty’s artists,” Count Tolstoy pointed out. “They say they are partying a lot,” the sovereign remarked. “But they also work,” answered the count.”

Among those depicted are architects Fyodor Eppinger, Karl Beine, Pavel Notbeck, Ippolit Monighetti, sculptors Peter Stawasser, Nikolai Ramazanov, Mikhail Shurupov, painters Pimen Orlov, Apollo Mokritsky, Mikhail Mikhailov, Vasily Sternberg. The daguerreotype was first published by critic V.V. Stasov in the magazine “Ancient and New Russia” for 1879, No. 12, who described those depicted as follows: “Look at these hats of the theatrical “brigants”, at the cloaks, as if unusually picturesque and majestic - what an unwitty and untalented masquerade! And yet, this is still a truly historical picture, because it sincerely and faithfully conveys a whole corner of the era, a whole chapter from Russian life, a whole strip of people, lives, and delusions.” From this article we know the names of those photographed and who is where. Thus, through the efforts of S. L. Levitsky, the only photographic portrait of the great writer was created. Later, in 1902, on the 50th anniversary of Gogol’s death, in the studio of another outstanding portrait painter, Karl Fischer, his image was cropped from this group photograph, retaken and enlarged.

Sergei Levitsky himself is present in the group of those photographed - second from left in the second row - without a frock coat.

Hypotheses about Gogol's personality

Gogol's personality attracted the attention of many cultural figures and scientists. Even during the writer’s lifetime, there were conflicting rumors about him, aggravated by his isolation, tendency to mythologize his own biography and mysterious death, which gave rise to many legends and hypotheses.

Some works of Gogol

• Dead Souls
• see also: Which Russian doesn’t like driving fast?
• Auditor
• Marriage
• Theater crossing
• Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka
• Mirgorod
• The story of how Ivan Ivanovich quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich
• Old world landowners
• Taras Bulba
• Petersburg stories
• Nevsky Avenue
• Overcoat
• Diary of a Madman
• Portrait
• Stroller
• Selected places from correspondence with friends

Influence on modern culture

Gogol's works have been filmed many times. Composers composed operas and ballets for his works. In addition, Gogol himself became the hero of films and other works of art.

Based on the novel “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka,” Step Creative Group released two quests: “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” (2005) and “Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala” (2006). The first game based on Gogol's story was Viy: A Story Told Again (2004).

Ukraine hosts the annual multidisciplinary contemporary art festival Gogolfest, named after the writer.

The writer's surname is reflected in the name of the musical group Gogol Bordello, whose leader, Evgeniy Gudz, is a native of Ukraine.

Images of Gogol can be found on postage stamps and coins.

Memory

• Streets in a number of cities in the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and other republics of the post-Soviet space, as well as in Harbin (China), are named after Gogol.
• A crater on Mercury and a steamship are named after Gogol.
• In Ukraine, N.V. Gogol’s birthday is celebrated by many citizens as a holiday of the Russian language and an occasion to remember the unity of the Slavic peoples

Monuments

• The first monument to Gogol in the empire by Parmen Zabila was erected in Nizhyn in 1881. Today there are two monuments to the writer in the city.
• In 1909, a monument to Gogol by sculptor N. A. Andreev was erected in Moscow, on Prechistensky Boulevard (now Gogolevsky). In 1951, the monument was moved to the Donskoy Monastery (currently located on Nikitsky Boulevard), and in its place a new one, created by N.V. Tomsky, was erected.
• In 1910, a bronze bust of Gogol by I. F. Tavbiy was installed on Elizavetinskaya Street in Tsaritsyn. Today it is the oldest monument in the city. The street was also renamed and became Gogolevskaya.
• In Dnepropetrovsk, on the corner of Gogol Street and Karl Marx Avenue, a monument to Nikolai Gogol was erected on May 17, 1959. Sculptors A. V. Sytnik, E. P. Kalishenko, A. A. Shrubshtok, architect V. A. Zuev.
• In Kyiv, at house No. 34 of Andreevsky Spusk, a monument to “The Nose” was erected, the prototype of which was the writer’s nose. Sculptor: Oleg Dergachev.
• There is a monument to Gogol in Poltava, a bust of the writer is installed in Zaporozhye, Mirgorod, Kharkov, Brest
• March 4, 1952, on the centenary of Gogol’s death, in the park on Manezhnaya Square Petersburg, a foundation stone was installed, the inscription on which read: “A monument to the great Russian writer Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol will be built here.” The foundation stone existed in this form until 1999, when a fountain was installed in its place. As a result, another location was chosen for this monument, on the street. Malaya Konyushennaya.
• In Veliky Novgorod on the Monument “1000th Anniversary of Russia” among 129 figures of the most outstanding personalities in Russian history (as of 1862) there is the figure of N.V. Gogol.
• On August 13, 1982, a monument to the writer Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was unveiled in Kyiv. In honor of the 1500th anniversary of the capital, a monument to the writer was erected on Rusanovskaya embankment in Kyiv.

Bibliography

Anthologies

• N.V. Gogol in Russian criticism: Sat. Art. / Prepare text by A.K. Kotov and M.Ya. Polyakov; Entry Art. and note. M. Ya. Polyakova.. - M.: State. published artist lit., 1953. - LXIV, 651 p.
• Gogol in Russian criticism: Anthology / Comp. S. G. Bocharov. - M.: Fortuna EL, 2008. - 720 p. - ISBN 978-5-9582-0042-9

First editions

• The first collected works were prepared by himself in 1842. He began preparing the second in 1851; it was already completed by his heirs: here the second part of “Dead Souls” appeared for the first time.
• In Kulish's publication in six volumes (1857), an extensive collection of Gogol's letters (the last two volumes) appeared for the first time.
• In the edition prepared by Chizhov (1867), “Selected passages from correspondence with friends” are printed in full, including what was not missed by the censor in 1847.
• The tenth edition, published in 1889 under the editorship of N. S. Tikhonravov, is the best of all published in the 19th century: it is a scientific publication with text corrected from manuscripts and Gogol’s own editions, and with extensive comments, which detail the history of each of Gogol's works based on surviving manuscripts, his correspondence and other historical data.
• The material of letters collected by Kulish and the text of Gogol’s works began to be replenished, especially since the 1860s: “The Tale of Captain Kopeikin” based on a manuscript found in Rome (“Russian Archive”, 1865); unpublished from “Selected Places”, first in the “Russian Archive” (1866), then in Chizhov’s edition; about Gogol’s comedy “Vladimir of the 3rd degree” - Rodislavsky, in “Conversations in the Society of Amateurs Russian literature"(M., 1871).
• Research of Gogol’s texts and his letters: articles by V. I. Shenrok in “Bulletin of Europe”, “Artist”, “Russian Antiquity”; Mrs. E. S. Nekrasova in “Russian Antiquity” and especially the comments of Mr. Tikhonravov in the 10th edition and in the special edition of “The Inspector General” (M., 1886).
• There is information about the letters in the book “Index to Gogol’s Letters” by Mr. Shenrok (2nd ed. - M., 1888), which is necessary when reading them in Kulish’s edition, where they are interspersed with blank, arbitrarily taken letters instead of names and other censorship omissions .
• “Letters from Gogol to Prince V.F. Odoevsky” (in the “Russian Archive”, 1864); “to Malinovsky” (ibid., 1865); "to the book P. A. Vyazemsky" (ibid., 1865, 1866, 1872); “to I. I. Dmitriev and P. A. Pletnev” (ibid., 1866); “to Zhukovsky” (ibid., 1871); “to M.P. Pogodin” from 1833 (not 1834; ibid., 1872; more complete than Kulish, V, 174); “Note to S. T. Aksakov” (“Russian Antiquity”, 1871, IV); letter to actor Sosnitsky about “The Inspector General” of 1846 (ibid., 1872, VI); Letters from Gogol to Maksimovich, published by S. I. Ponomarev, etc.

GOGOL, NIKOLAI VASILIEVICH(1809–1852), great Russian writer.

Born on March 20 (April 1), 1809 in the town of Velikiye Sorochintsy, Mirgorod district, Poltava province, in the family of a middle-income landowner Vasily Afanasyevich Gogol-Yanovsky (he later abandoned the second part of the surname because of its, as he believed, Polish origin). He spent his childhood years on his parents' estate Vasilyevka in the atmosphere of Little Russians. folk beliefs, folklore traditions and historical legends. Nearby was Dikanka, the former patrimony of Kochubey, to which Gogol set the action of his early stories. His first artistic and complex psychological experiences were associated with Kibintsy, the estate of a distant relative of D.P. Troshchinsky, a former minister and famous nobleman. Gogol's father served as Troshchinsky's secretary, wrote comedies and acted in the Kibintsy home theater. Gogol got the opportunity to use the rich library of the estate. Here he was faced with irrepressible manifestations of lordly permissiveness and humiliation of human dignity - jesters were kept on the estate in the old-fashioned way and were constantly pushed around. Gogol's consciousness early faced a complex interweaving of intellectual interests, a provincial desire to assert his cultural viability, and gross tyranny.

Gogol's penchant for writing was evident very early. As a child, he composed poems that received the approval of V.V. Kapnist, whose estate was located next door. Kapnist announced to Gogol’s parents: “He will be a great talent, only fate will give him the leadership of a Christian teacher.” Much of Gogol’s mental makeup was formed under the influence of his mother - a bright woman, prone to hysterics, suspicious and superstitious. She gave her son a special kind of religious education, in which the spiritual and moral side of faith was largely overshadowed by ecstatic experiences of apocalyptic prophecies, intense fear of the underworld and the hellish torments of retribution. The mother surrounded her son with adoration, and this could be one of the sources of his conceit, which, on the other hand, was early generated by the instinctive awareness of the genius power hidden within him. In literary criticism of the 20th century. Attempts arose to interpret in a psychoanalytic spirit the various metamorphoses of the “fantastic” character of the mother and the weak-willed father in Gogol’s artistic work.

From 1818 to 1821 he received his primary education at the Poltava district school and at the home of one of the teachers. From 1821 to 1828 he took a full course at the Gymnasium of Higher Sciences in Nizhyn. From this provincial educational institution There were many of Gogol’s peers who left their mark on Russian cultural and social life: A.S. Danilevsky, N.V. Kukolnik, P.G. Redkin and others. Here Gogol’s artistic talent seeks various forms of manifestation: he paints, plays in plays , writes literary works, mainly in the most serious genres (elegy, not preserved tragedy Robbers, historical poem Russia under the yoke of the Tatars, story Tverdislavich brothers and etc). At the same time, the young writer’s need to satirically start from the lofty is also manifested: he creates satire Something about Nezhin, or the law is not written for fools, ridiculing the pompous style of the works of Gogol’s classmate N.V. Kukolnik.

Gogol is not yet thinking about a professional writing career. A special ethic of duty, a reverent attitude toward higher authorities, and an idea of ​​his special social purpose are formed early in him. Gogol the high school student dreams of “public service”, secretly hatches plans to leave for St. Petersburg and work in the name of the highest good, the flourishing of which is drowned out by the vices and abuses poisoning society. Considers a legal career that will further his mission to eradicate evil.

In 1828, after graduating from high school, in the company of his closest friend A.S. Danilevsky, he went to St. Petersburg. The capital deeply disappoints him. He acutely senses the mechanistic, impersonal nature of this city, its alienation from people - all that later in the stories will be woven into the phantasmagoric fabric of St. Petersburg images. Instead of noble impulses to serve “not out of fear, but out of conscience,” Gogol met “little people” imbued with the spirit of veneration and self-interest. He joins the crowd of yesterday's provincials, wandering around the corners, fussing about a place and experiencing constant financial difficulties.

He made tests and in the spring of 1829, under the pseudonym V. Alov, published his first major work - “an idyll in pictures” Hans Kuchelgarten(with the note “written in 1827”). This poem still had an openly student character, was built on commonplaces of romantic aesthetics, permeated with borrowings from V.A. Zhukovsky, A.S. Pushkin and popular German romantics, and was distinguished by the roughness of verse and style reaching the point of curiosity. Critics greeted the appearance of the poem with caustic ridicule. Gogol experienced the fiasco very painfully. Having sent a servant to buy up all the copies on sale, he almost completely burned the unsold edition and hastily fled abroad, to Germany, from where, however, two months later he unexpectedly returned to St. Petersburg. Afterwards, Gogol mysteriously justified this strange trick by saying that God had shown him the way to a foreign land, or referred to some kind of hopeless love. In reality, he was probably running from himself, from the discord between his lofty dreams and practical life and, finally, from the painful failure with Hans Kuchelgarten. “He was drawn to some fantastic land of happiness and reasonable productive work,” says Gogol’s biographer V.I. Shenrok. America seemed like such a country to him. The proposed flight to America in search of a worthy career for Gogol was in many ways similar to leaving for St. Petersburg for the same purposes. These illusions were destined to be shattered by prosaic reality: having met a certain “citizen of the American States” in Germany and talked with him, he suddenly reconsiders his plans and returns to Russia.

Throughout 1829 he was haunted by failures: the failure of his literary debut was aggravated by the futility of attempts to enter the stage as a dramatic actor. At the end of the year, he still manages to get a job in the Department of State Economy and Public Buildings of the Ministry of Internal Affairs as a scribe, and then as an assistant clerk. This period played a dual role in Gogol's life. On the one hand, he is completely disillusioned with the civil service, on the other, he gains vivid impressions from office life and the psychology of the petty bureaucratic circle, which was echoed in subsequent “Petersburg stories.”

At the same time, Gogol served in the Department under the supervision of the famous poet V.I. Panaev, who introduced him to the capital’s literary circle and helped him begin to publish more or less regularly: in 1830, a story was published with editorial edits in Otechestvennye Zapiski The evening before Ivan Kupala; a little earlier, in 1829, stories were started or written Sorochinskaya fair And May Night, or the Drowned Woman. Gogol then published other works in the publications of A.A. Delvig, Literaturnaya Gazeta and Northern Flowers, where, in particular, a chapter from the historical novel was published Hetman(1830). Probably, Delvig recommended Gogol to V.A. Zhukovsky, who received the aspiring writer with great cordiality: apparently, at first sight, the mutual sympathy of people related by love of art and religiosity inclined to mysticism affected them. Zhukovsky asked P.A. Pletnev to assign Gogol to another, more appropriate service, and already in February 1831 Pletnev recommended Gogol for the position of teacher at the Patriotic Institute, where he himself was an inspector. Having gotten to know Gogol better, Pletnev waited for an opportunity to “bring him under Pushkin’s blessing”; this happened in May of the same year. Gogol's entry into this circle, which soon recognized his genuine talent, had a great influence on his entire fate. Finally, the prospect of the broad activity that he had dreamed of was revealed to him - but not in the official field, but in the literary field. In addition to a place at the institute, Pletnev provided him with private lessons in the houses of N.M. Longvinov, P.I. Balabin, A.V. Vasilchikov. Gogol entered the circle of people who stood at the head of Russian fiction: his long-standing poetic aspirations now had a chance to develop in their entire breadth, his instinctive understanding of art could be transformed into a conscious aesthetic system; Pushkin's personality made an extraordinary impression on him and forever remained an object of worship. Serving art became for him a moral duty, the requirements of which he tried to fulfill religiously. At Zhukovsky, Gogol met a select circle, partly literary, partly aristocratic; in the latter he began a relationship that later played a significant role in his life. In particular, at the Balabins he met the maid of honor A.O. Rosset, later Smirnova, who eventually became his confidant. The horizon of life observations expanded, long-standing aspirations gained ground, and Gogol’s concept of his destiny began to gradually fill with living meaning.

Immediately upon his arrival in St. Petersburg, Gogol discovered that Little Russia aroused genuine interest in the capital’s society and everything Little Russian was “in great fashion” here. The nature of this interest is the romantic mythologization of folk forms of life, widespread in Russia in the 1810s–1830s, the perception of Ukrainian culture as the living flesh of the ancient Slavs, not subject to rough trimming modern civilization. This romantic complex of ethnographic interests was inspired by German influence (I.G. Herder, J. Grimm’s school) and formed fertile ground for the artistic manifestation of Gogol’s Ukrainophilism. Since the first months of 1828, Gogol has been besieging his mother with requests to send him information about Little Russian customs, legends, costumes, as well as “notes kept by the ancestors of some old family, ancient manuscripts,” etc. All this provided material for stories from Little Russian life, which became the beginning of his literary fame and were published in 1831–1832 in two parts in St. Petersburg under the title Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka. Stories published by beekeeper Rudy Panko. The book aroused almost universal admiration. Criticism almost unanimously welcomed Evenings, noting their genuine cheerfulness and sincerity. “Everyone was delighted with this lively description of the singing and dancing tribe,” noted A.S. Pushkin. The theme of Ukraine did not remain here within the framework of limited ethnography, but was translated into the mainstream of a self-sufficient artistic world. The mythical world of the Little Russian Cossacks recreated here carried clear features of opposition to the world of St. Petersburg, unnatural, cold and too real, and opposition not only geographical and moral, but also historical. Dikanka embodied a kind of epic absolute past of the world, opposed to the absolute modernity of St. Petersburg. Therefore, the capital’s writers, committed to romantic aesthetics, enthusiastically perceived the features of Gogol’s boys and girls, old Cossacks and witches, so captivating in their exoticism, as fullness of feelings, naturalness, the power of experiences, free from affectation and stiffness. Sublime lyricism in descriptions of Ukrainian nature was combined with color “ genre scenes", and all this was permeated with fantasy, based on folklore and folk demonology. IN Evenings a special element of folk gaiety reigns, called “carnival laughter” by M.M. Bakhtin. Carnivalization and the spirit of ritual laughter are inspired by the motives for violating all sorts of rules - moral, ethical, social - the funny pranks of lovers, the debunking of otherworldly forces, etc. But at the same time, the comic here invariably turns out to be dual, the funny is fraught with the terrible. An ordinary “fun place” (for example, the Sorochinskaya Fair) turns into a “cursed” place. There are two stable interpretations of the image of the devil in Gogol. According to one of them, the devil is here, in accordance with the Ukrainian folk tradition, “domesticated”, “tamed”, he turns out to be a harmless villain, deceived by a deceiver. Another interpretation goes back to the work of D.S. Merezhkovsky Gogol and the devil. Its supporters point out that the plot of all stories Evenings is built as a variation of one theme - the invasion of the lives of people by the demonic principle, the fight against it and frequent defeat from it (in The evening before Ivan Kupala Basavryuk wins; V Terrible revenge everyone who touches the evil force is condemned to death, etc.). Even if evil spirits are in Evenings is put to shame, as, for example, in The Nights Before Christmas, the fear of her still does not completely disappear. In the second half of his life, Gogol, who subjected his previous experience to a religious revision, ardently regretted that he had once given life to the dark creations of his fantasy.

Gogol's literary reputation is finally established; many recognize in his talent the force that is destined to revolutionize Russian literature. Meanwhile, events took place in Gogol’s personal life that significantly influenced the internal structure of his thoughts and fantasies. In 1832, he visited his homeland for the first time since leaving St. Petersburg. Stopping along the way in Moscow, he met people who later became his close friends: M.P. Pogodin, M.A. Maksimovich, M.S. Shchepkin, S.T. Aksakov. Staying at home initially caused Gogol severe disappointment. Household affairs were upset; he himself was no longer the enthusiastic young man he had been when he left his homeland; life experience taught him to look deeper into reality and see its often sad, even tragic basis behind the outer shell. Soon Evenings began to seem to him like a superficial youthful experience, the fruit of that “youth during which no questions come to mind.” Little Russian life still provided material for his imagination, but the mood was already different: in subsequent works on the Ukrainian theme, a sad note sounded, reaching the point of high pathos.

Returning to St. Petersburg, Gogol works hard on his works. The most active time of his creative activity is coming. However, he continues to make life plans outside the literary sphere and from the end of 1833 he is captivated by the idea of ​​entering an academic field, studying history, and dreams of heading the department of history at the newly opened Kiev University. Kyiv seems to him to be “Russian Athens,” where he himself thought of writing something unprecedented in universal history, and at the same time studying Little Russian antiquity. In 1834 Gogol creates World History Teaching Plan And An excerpt from the history of Little Russia..., but the department of history was given to another person. Soon, thanks to the influence of eminent literary friends, Gogol was offered the department of history at St. Petersburg University. He took this place, but soon realized that this task was beyond his strength and in 1835 he refused the professorship.

Collections published in 1835 Arabesque And Mirgorod marked Gogol's departure from romanticism towards a new type of aesthetics, called “realism” somewhat later. The principles of the new aesthetics were formulated in the article A few words about Pushkin, included in Arabesque: “...The more ordinary the object, the higher the poet needs to be in order to extract the extraordinary from it and so that this extraordinary is, among other things, the perfect truth.” The desire for the ordinary meant a decisive change in the subject of the image: instead of strong and sharp romantic characters - the vulgarity and facelessness of the average person, instead of poetic and deep feelings - sluggish, almost reflexive movements. The ordinariness of life, however, in Gogol’s writings of this period is deceptive. For example, the “habit” of two elderly people in Old world landowners turned out to be stronger and more humane than the most ardent romantic passion. Gogol continues Pushkin’s theme of the “little man” and reveals its metaphysics. The “smallness” of the “little man” contains hidden abysses. Thus, a quarrel between two ordinary people over an insignificant issue consumed not only all their interests, but also life itself ( The story of how Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich quarreled).

In the stories from metropolitan life included in the collection Arabesque and subsequently united by criticism into the cycle of “Petersburg stories” ( Nevsky Avenue,Diary of a Madman,Portrait), the feeling of the extraordinary of the ordinary was raised to intense tragic pathos, filled with an alarming, catastrophic spirit of modern existence in a fantastic city on the verge of madness and diabolism. In the Mirgorod and St. Petersburg cycles, implicit, veiled, extremely grounded fiction, expressed in the small details of the life and behavior of the characters, increasingly asserted itself. The personified, “personal” bearer of evil (devil, sorcerer, etc.) was gradually eliminated. The irrational switched to the everyday, everyday, everyday plane, which greatly enhanced the effect, because life itself became illusory. This illusory quality manifested itself in an endless series of strange, illogical, internally inconsistent movements, facts and phenomena, from the contradictory actions of the characters to the isolation and autonomy of the things around them, toiletries and even bodily organs. Things that seem to belong to people begin to live a life independent of them. The pinnacle of purely Gogolian fiction of this kind is the “Petersburg Tale” Nose. The story of how Major Kovalev’s own nose left him, how this nose began independent life, obscuring the life of the previous owner, is an extremely bold grotesque that anticipated literary surrealism and expressionism of the 20th century.

The story became a contrast to the modern provincial and metropolitan worlds Taras Bulba(1835 – included Mirgorod; 2nd, revised edition - 1842). Immersion in the epic past, when the “people” (Zaporozhye Cossacks) defended their sovereignty (the time frame here is arbitrary - the action is riddled with anachronisms intertwining the historical realities of the 15th–17th centuries), contributed to the romanticization of the images of the main characters. The Cossacks are portrayed here as a single brave force that determined the character of European history. In the story, the stylization of the narrative under the poetics of Ukrainian folk songs and Russian epics plays an extremely important role. The spontaneous irrepressibility of the Cossacks is interpreted as a largely dual force. It is capable of clouding their distinction between basic spiritual and moral concepts and ultimately leads to a tragic, albeit highly heroic, ending: Andriy, Ostap and Taras Bulba die, the insurgent movement as a whole is defeated by the “Poles”, etc. Essentially an epic piece Taras Bulba depicts the disintegration of the single organic world of the Cossacks, due to its inability to rise from collective morality to an individually responsible experience of primary Christian moral categories.

In the autumn of 1835 Gogol began writing Inspector, the plot of which was suggested to him by Pushkin. The first dramatic plans appeared even earlier. In 1833 he was absorbed in comedy Vladimir 3rd degree. It was not finished, but the material served for several dramatic episodes - Morning of a business man, Litigation, Lakeyskaya And Excerpt. The first of these plays was published in Pushkin's Sovremennik (1836), the rest - in the first collected works of Gogol (1842). The play was published at the same meeting Marriage, the first sketches of which date back to 1833, and Players.

Work on Auditor progressed so quickly and successfully that already in January 1836 Gogol was reading the play at Zhukovsky’s home in the presence of Pushkin and P.A. Vyazemsky, and in February - March he was already busy staging it on the stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater.

Auditor became the first Russian comedy in which the author almost completely abandoned the love affair and combined the principles of comedic characters with a focus on a broad, universal generalization. In the play, the image of a provincial city is brought to life, symbolically embodying any larger social association up to all of Russia or even all of humanity (Gogol applied the definition of “prefabricated city” to this image). The potential critical power of such an image is almost limitless. This is how, on the one hand, Gogol’s passion for theater, which stemmed from his childhood, was realized, on the other hand, the civic aspiration that animated him from his youth and the idea of ​​​​the fight against social vices. The author found a special dramatic moment in the existence of this city - the moment of meeting with an auditor representing the highest hierarchical authorities, and a special general situation that unites all the characters. Gogol transferred the basic constructive principle he noticed in K. P. Bryullov’s film to comedic soil The last day of Pompeii, when “all phenomena” are united into “general groups” and “strong crises felt by the general mass are selected.” The expression of this commonality in comedy was the heroes’ fear of imminent punishment.

Gogol’s innovation also lay in the fact that for the first time the engine of intrigue was a person like Khlestakov, according to Gogol’s definition, “a phantasmagoric face,” “a lying personified deception.” Not being a conscious deceiver, but finding himself in the false role of an auditor, he becomes a fictitious engine of intrigue, unwittingly serving as an ideal center for the efforts of other characters. Gogol also retreated not only from the tradition of punishing vice (in the finale there is only an indication of the intervention of a higher, royal authority - a real auditor arrives “by personal command”, but its decision is not specified in any way), but he also abandoned the “final”, “permissive” » conflict, everything clarifying ending. The “silent scene” that crowns the picture, written under the influence of the same painting by Bryullov “The Last Day of Pompeii,” does not relieve the crisis situation, but, on the contrary, endlessly prolongs it. The center of gravity is shifted to the action itself, to the duration of numbness, which leaves room for broad symbolic interpretations.

The depth of the comedy was not reflected in its early productions and was overlooked by most critics. The first reviews were openly unkind: F. Bulgarin accused Gogol of slandering Russia, and O.S. Senkovsky stated in print that the comedy was devoid of a serious idea, and was not structured in plot and composition. A lack of understanding of the depth of comedy was also demonstrated by its “supporters,” who applauded the author as “the great comedian of real life” (words from N.I. Nadezhdin’s critical review).

Gogol felt the need, starting from Inspector, theoretically comprehend the foundations of comedy art and in the play 1836 Theater crossing after the presentation of a new comedy emphasized the ethical role of laughter as the only “honest, noble” face of comedy, revealed the painful drama of a comic writer, who is subjected to a barrage of abuse, misinterpretations and short-sighted judgments. In 1846 Gogol wrote dramatic scene Inspector's denouement, where in the spirit of the treatise of St. Augustine About the city of God gave a religious and allegorical interpretation of the images of the comedy (the setting is a “spiritual city”, officials are “human passions”, Khlestakov is a “flighty secular conscience”, and finally, “the Inspector who is waiting for us at the door of the coffin is terrible”). It is obvious that these meanings were initially laid down by the author in the play and set a special perspective for its interpretation, which was not felt by the public, in the spirit of the eschatological ideas of the Last Judgment (the Inspector General as the last Judge, the “silent scene” as the end of the world).

Having a hard time experiencing a lack of understanding of his comedy, Gogol left for Germany in June 1836 and spent a total of 12 years abroad, only periodically visiting Russia. From now on, in order to deeply comprehend what is happening in his homeland and nurture in himself those traits that are necessary to fulfill a high patriotic mission, Gogol will feel the need for an outside view “from Europe.”

In Europe, he continues work on a prose poem, begun back in 1835. Dead Souls . Its plot was also suggested by Pushkin. The idea of ​​the new book immediately acquired a wide scope: a “true novel” was supposed to embrace “all of Rus',” albeit “from one side,” that is, mainly from the comic side. In St. Petersburg, several chapters were read to Pushkin and aroused his warm approval and at the same time a depressing feeling, expressed in the words: “God, how sad our Russia is.” From the beginning of the trip abroad, the plan was restructured. Gogol sets for himself a universal task, not limited only to the comic angle. From now on, he hopes that “all of Rus' will respond” in the new book, in other words, he wants to create a grandiose national epic. But an epic of a new type, unlike the poems of antiquity, is focused not on the absolute past, but on an ideal future, in which the providence of Russia’s historical paths will be revealed and the new Russian man will appear in all his moral power.

Dead Souls were initially regarded by Gogol as his most significant work, which should strengthen his fame. However, as the idea expanded, the artistic meaning of the poem merged more and more closely with social, national and even religious meaning: the book, according to Gogol, should reveal something essential for the destinies of the country and people. In Gogol’s moods, the motives of high chosenness, messianism (“And now I feel that it is not earthly will that guides my path”), the anticipation of a feat that will at the same time become a patriotic feat (“I swear, I will do something that does not I’m an ordinary person. I feel the lion’s power in my soul...").

Continuing work on Dead souls, Gogol travels through Germany and Switzerland, spends the winter with A. Danilevsky in Paris, where he becomes especially close to A. O. Smirnova and where he receives the news of Pushkin’s death, which shocks him terribly. In March 1837 he came to Rome, which he fell in love with greatly and became his “second homeland.” European political and social life was alien and little known to Gogol; he was attracted by nature and works of art, and Rome could perfectly satisfy these interests. He studied ancient monuments, art galleries, visited artists’ workshops, admired people’s life and loved to show Rome and “treat” it to visiting Russian acquaintances and friends. In Rome, he worked hard on the poem and finished the story Overcoat, wrote a story Anunziata, later converted into Rome.

In the fall of 1839 he went to Russia, to Moscow, where he was greeted with delight, and to St. Petersburg to take care of the affairs of his sisters. In St. Petersburg and Moscow, Gogol reads completed chapters to his closest friends Dead souls. Having arranged his affairs, he again went abroad, to his beloved Rome, promising his friends to return in a year and with the finished first volume of the poem. By the summer of 1841 the first volume was ready. In September of the same year, Gogol went to Russia to print his book. Her fate did not go smoothly. The poem was first submitted to the Moscow censorship, which was going to completely ban it; then it was handed over to the St. Petersburg censorship and, thanks to the participation of Gogol’s influential friends, it was with serious bills (with the removal Stories about Captain Kopeikin) is cleared for printing. It was published in 1842 in Moscow under a changed title The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls, significantly obscured the complex symbolism of mental death by superficial similarity to the traditional titles of picaresque novels.

Even earlier, in the summer of 1840, Gogol was overcome by an attack of severe nervous illness. Having recovered from it, he experiences a restructuring of his internal value system, a deepening of religious and mystical moods reaching the point of exaltation. Gogol increasingly appreciates the messianic meaning of his poem. Moreover, in his eyes, not only the poem, but also his own life behavior and the word, independent of literary work, have a redeeming and healing effect. In one of his letters to Aksakov dated March 1841, he says: “My work is great, my feat is saving; I am now dead to everything petty.” The tone of his letters and public statements becomes instructive, not allowing for objections. Having focused on cultivating the “inner man” within himself, Gogol nevertheless begins to generously lavish instructions to friends and acquaintances. His religiosity evolves. According to the characterization of the theologian and historian of Russian Christian thought, Archpriest Georgy Florovsky, from “romantic emotion, sensitivity, tenderness,” religious fear of a particularly acutely experienced diabolism to a “pietistic”, largely Protestant in spirit, “humanism”, prone to building utopian social projects , which have little in common with a purely Orthodox approach to reality.

This mentality of Gogol entered into a complex interaction with the meaning of the already written book and influenced the content and poetics of some lyrical digressions - primarily those where we talk about the “three-bird”, about the coming and unclear revelation that Russia is destined to bestow on the world.

In general, the poem found a new expression of the main requirement of the established Gogol aesthetics - the extraction of the “extraordinary” from the “ordinary”. A proven technique for obtaining this effect was an exceptional situation - Chichikov was buying up not just the souls of serfs, registered in the documents of the latest revision, but dead souls. As a result, concrete social and general philosophical semantic plans overlap each other. At the social level, the poem exposed the ulcers of the existing serf-like way of life, based on the trade of “living goods.” But the substitution of moral categories revealed at the same time gives the poem the potential for philosophical generalization. The very concept of “dead soul” evolves from a specific semantic content to a symbolic-philosophical one. It contains a contradiction: the soul is immortal - they sell dead souls. We are talking, first of all, about the spiritual death of the souls of people who are apparently quite alive - landowners, residents of the city of N and, of course, Chichikov himself. The poem is built on a complex dialectic of the antithesis “alive - dead”: literally dead yesterday’s serfs turn out to be essentially alive, in contrast to all the actual living characters inhabiting the poem. The problem of mortification and revival human soul rose here to a universal scale. This is due to the unconventionality and complexity of the genre. Dead souls, where elements of a picaresque novel are fused with elements of a travel novel, a moral narrative and an everyday novel, and all this is elevated to a higher degree of symbolic storytelling. The designation "poem" was meant to indicate this complexity, as well as the direct and increasing participation in the narrative of the image of the author and the positive ideal of the author.

In Italy, Gogol finally decides that Dead Souls must have a three-part structure. In many ways, the writer served as a model The Divine Comedy Dante. Gogol's poem was supposed to realize the modern "comedy of the soul", the idea of ​​​​restoring the human spirit on the path of ascent from the "hellish" depths through "purgatory" to the "heavenly" light. In a schematic form, the first volume, depicting “although from one side all of Rus',” was correlated with Dante’s Hell, and the second and third volumes were supposed to be correlated with purgatory And Paradise respectively. In the first volume, Chichikov’s trips to the estates of landowners around the city of N are reminiscent of a descent through the circles of Dante’s “Hell”. Each new landowner carries within himself a greater measure of soul death than his predecessor. Gogol intended in the 2nd and 3rd volumes of the poem to bring Chichikov to spiritual resurrection.

These plans were not destined to be realized. In 1842–1845, Gogol worked hard on the 2nd volume of the poem. The writer associated the extremely difficult progress forward with his own mood of the soul, its direction towards truth and God. Recalling Gogol of these years, S.T. Aksakov wrote about “his constant desire... to improve himself as a spiritual person and the predominance of a religious direction, which subsequently reached... such a high mood that is no longer compatible with the physical shell of a person.” The process of writing a poem increasingly turned into a process of life-building for oneself, and through oneself, for everyone around.

In 1845, Gogol, whose strength had been undermined, began to show signs of a new mental crisis. He travels around France and Germany in search of doctors who can take him out of serious condition. At the end of June - beginning of July 1845, in a state of sharp exacerbation of his illness, Gogol burned the manuscript of the 2nd volume, explaining this step by the fact that the book did not show “paths and roads” to the ideal clearly enough.

Appearance of the 1st volume in print Dead souls caused in reading circles unprecedented excitement. Gogol is recognized by the “democratic” camp of Russian literature as the leading writer of our time. K.S. Aksakov in a brochure 1942 A few words about Gogol's poem: The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls pursued the radical idea that “in Dead Souls the ancient epic appears before us.” V.G. Belinsky, however, disputed the idea of ​​the dispassionate nature of Gogol’s writing and completely denied any connection between the poem and the Homeric epic. The critic was wrong: while working on Dead souls, Gogol specially studied Homer.

The creative failure to write the 2nd and 3rd volumes of the poem received a unique interpretation in 20th century criticism. In one of his letters to S.P. Shevyrev in 1847, Gogol says: “For a long time now, all I have been trying to do is ensure that after my composition, people laugh to their hearts’ content at the devil.” Reflecting on these words, D.S. Merezhkovsky notes that Gogol’s devil is “the nominal middle of existence, the negation of all depths and peaks - the eternal plane, the eternal vulgarity... among the “idleness,” emptiness, vulgarity of the human world, it is not man, but the devil himself, the “father of lies” in the image of Khlestakov or Chichikov, who weaves his eternal worldwide “gossip.” , to bring the hero on the wave of high lyricism of the digression about Rus' - the “troika bird” from “hell” to the “purgatory” of the 2nd volume receives a paradoxical interpretation from Merezhkovsky: “... like Khlestakov, he will rush off on his troika bird, “. like a ghost, like an embodied deception" into the immeasurable spaces of the future... Chichikov disappeared. But from the vast Russian expanse the Russian hero will also appear, the immortal Master of “dead souls” will appear again, in his final terrifying appearance. And only then will it be revealed that which is now still hidden not only from us, the readers, but also from the artist himself, - how scary this funny prophecy is: Chichikov is the Antichrist."

V.V. Nabokov, in his lectures on Gogol, having certified Chichikov as a “travelling salesman of the devil”, following Merezhkovsky, interprets the ending of the poem in this vein: “... Gogol had a double task: to allow Chichikov to avoid fair punishment and at the same time to distract the reader from a much more unpleasant conclusion - no punishment within the limits of human law can befall the messenger of Satan, hurrying home to hell.”

The logic of Russian critics is clear: for such a hero the path through “purgatory” to rebirth is prohibited.

After 1845, Gogol continues to work hard on the 2nd volume and at the same time feels the desire to explain to society why the book has not yet been written. In addition, he feels the need to publicly present his main teaching ideas and guide his contemporaries on the path of “true improvement.” All this forces him to publish some of his letters to loved ones in the form of a book. Selected places from correspondence with friends(1847). The book reflected the author’s painful doubts about the effective function of fiction and brought him to the brink of renouncing his previous creations, because, in his eyes, they did not meet the tasks of direct moral didactics. In search of a way out of the social and moral ills that have struck Russia, Gogol constructs an ideal program for the fulfillment of their duty by all “classes” and “ranks,” from the peasant to the highest officials and the tsar. He methodically and with full awareness of his undoubted right indicates to each of his addressees what actions he is obliged to take to fulfill the duty revealed to him (how a landowner manages the peasants, how to serve officials, etc.). In the spirit of Protestant social utopianism, Gogol associated the “ideal heavenly state” with the real bureaucratic authorities of contemporary Russia, which, from his point of view, should fulfill their high destiny.

The publication of this book brought upon the author a real critical storm from “democratic” literary circles, which perceived it as a manifestation of “priestly” renegade on the part of yesterday’s impartial “depicter of nature.” Escapades of this kind were most clearly heard in the famous public letter to Gogol by V.G. Belinsky dated July 15, 1847 from Salzbrunn. On the other hand, the book also caused obvious rejection in moderate public and church circles. It is significant that one of the most revered spiritual authorities of the era, bishop and future saint Ignatius (Brianchaninov), considered it harmful.

Gogol himself, who at the turn of the 1840s–1850s was experiencing a gradual movement from mystical exaltation to more sober forms of churched Christianity, admitted in one of his letters to Zhukovsky: “I have swung so much Khlestakov in my book that I don’t have the courage to look into it.”

The 1848 pilgrimage to Jerusalem to the Holy Sepulcher forces the writer to take a closer look at the spiritual path that he still has to travel. Gogol prays “to gather all our strength to produce the creations we cherish,” that is, to complete Dead souls.

January 1, 1852 Gogol informs one of his acquaintances that the 2nd volume is “completely finished.” But in last days months, signs of a new crisis of the disease haunting Gogol, which was never diagnosed by doctors, were clearly revealed. The impetus for this was the death of E.M. Khomyakova, a person spiritually close to Gogol, sister of N.M. Yazykov. The writer is tormented by a premonition of imminent death, aggravated by newly intensifying doubts about the beneficialness of his own literary field. At the end of January - beginning of February, he meets with his confessor, priest Matvey Konstantinovsky, who came to Moscow, a man of strict church spirit, who had a decisive influence on the last stage of the writer’s inner life. The content of their conversations remains unknown, but there is evidence that Fr. Matvey could have advised Gogol to destroy some of the chapters of the poem due to their potential harmful effect on readers. On February 7, Gogol confesses and receives communion, and on the night of 11 to 12 he burns the white manuscript of the second volume (only five chapters of different draft editions have survived). Last days Gogol spends his life in extremely strict fasting and prayer. On the morning of February 21, 1852 he dies in his last Moscow apartment in Talyzin’s house.

Gogol's death caused a deep shock in Russian society. From the university house church of St. Martyr Tatiana, where the writer was buried, the coffin was carried by university professors and students to the burial place. On tombstone Gogol was given a quotation from the biblical book of the prophet Jeremiah 20:8: “I will laugh at my bitter word.” Gogol was buried in the Danilov Monastery; in 1931 his remains were transferred to the Novodevichy Cemetery.

The originality of Gogol's creativity was determined by the combination of polar opposite principles. On the one hand, Gogol strives for extreme generalizations, thinks in all-Russian and universal human categories, on the other, his gaze penetrates into the lower layers of life, “with all the rubbish and squabbles,” “fractions and trifles.” In speech and stylistic terms, this was expressed in hyperbolic thinking, in a bizarre combination of elements of the highest syllable with lowered linguistic layers, in the coexistence of odic rhetoric and biblical tradition with vernacular, dialect and jargon. Looking from the heights of the ideal at “the whole enormously rushing life,” Gogol discovers its colossal fragmentation, crushing, and most importantly, the deadening and emasculation of meaning, which, in particular, is reflected in the characteristic image of boredom (“It’s boring in this world, gentlemen!” - the final The story of how Ivan Ivanovich quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich). The image of boredom is contrasted with the traditionally recognizable romantic motifs of melancholy and sadness: boredom is caused by “emptiness,” the absence of what usually leads to melancholy and sadness. However, this “emptiness” in Gogol is deeply dual, for primitiveness and vulgarity bizarrely reflect or replace higher psychological reactions and states. So, the hero's vain desire Inspector Bobchinsky to notify the capital and the sovereign about his existence is fraught with the natural desire of an “ordinary” person to prove his right to “be” in this world, albeit in comic forms, but to assert his “personal dignity.”

For all its comedy, Gogol's artistic world is encyclopedic, universal and deeply philosophical. His work is perhaps the only example of high religious comedy in new Russian literature.

Works:

Full composition of writings, vol. 1–14, M., 1937–1952; Collected works, vol. 1–7, M., 1984–1986; Collected works in 9 volumes. M., 1994–1996; Complete works and letters in 23 volumes, vol. 1, M., 2001.

Vadim Polonsky

Literature:

Gogol in the memoirs of his contemporaries. Literary heritage, vol. 58
Veresaev V.V. Gogol in life. M. – L., 1933
Bely A. Gogol's mastery. M., 1994
Mann Yu.V. Works of N.V. Gogol. M., 1998



Gogol's childhood and youth

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol is a great Russian writer, one of the creators of Russian artistic realism, was born on March 20, 1809 in the town of Sorochintsy (Poltava province, Mirgorod district) in the family of local poor Little Russian nobles who owned the village of Vasilyevka, Vasily Afanasyevich and Maria Ivanovna Gogol-Yanovsky.

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol’s belonging to the Little Russian nationality and the time of his birth from childhood had a significant influence on his worldview and writing activity. The psychological characteristics of the Little Russian people found in him, although he wrote his works in the Great Russian language, a vivid expression, especially in the early period of his activity; they were reflected in its content early works first period and on the peculiar artistic style of his speech. The time of the formation of Gogol's worldview and creative techniques - his childhood and youth - falls on the significant era of the revival of Little Russian literature and nationality (the time shortly after I. P. Kotlyarevsky). The situation created by this revival had a rather strong influence on Gogol, both in his early works and later.

Vasily Afanasyevich Gogol-Yanovsky, father of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol

The upbringing of young Gogol takes place in the south of Russia under the cross-influence of the home environment and the Little Russian environment, on the one hand, and all-Russian literature, known even in remote provinces far from the centers, on the other. The reviving Little Russian literature bears a clearly expressed interest in nationality, cultivates a living folk language, introduces folk life, folk-poetic antiquity into literary circulation in the form of legends, songs, thoughts, descriptions of folk rituals, etc.

In the second and third decades of the 19th century, this literature (not yet separating itself consciously and tendentiously from all-Russian literature) formed local centers, where it achieved special revival. One of its prominent figures was D.P. Troshchinsky, a former Minister of Justice, a typical Little Russian in his views. In his village of Kibintsy there was a huge library that contained almost everything published in the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th in Russian and Little Russian; In this circle, V. A. Gogol-Yanovsky, the father of the young writer, himself a writer in the field of Little Russian folk drama (“The Simpleton” and “The Vivtsa Dog”, c. 1825), a masterful narrator of scenes from folk life, an actor in dramatic folk -Little Russian plays (Troshchinsky had a separate theater building in Kibintsy) and a close relative of Troshchinsky. Gogol the son, studying in Nezhin, constantly takes advantage of this connection in his youth, receiving books and new literature from the rich Kibinets library.

In childhood, before the start of school, Nikolai Gogol lives with his parents that rural folk life of a medium-sized landowner, which in general differs little from the peasant life. Even the spoken language in the family remains Little Russian; Therefore, Gogol in childhood and youth (and even later) had to learn the Great Russian language and develop it. Gogol's early letters clearly show this process of gradual Russification of Gogol's language, which was then still very incorrect.

Ten years old, young Nikolai Gogol studied for some time in Poltava at the povet school, where the head was I.P. Kotlyarevsky himself, and in May 1821 he entered the newly opened Gymnasium of Higher Sciences in Nezhin. Beardless. This gymnasium (representing a combination of secondary and partly higher school) was opened on the model of those new educational institutions that were founded in the “days of Alexander’s happy beginning” (these included the Alexander (Pushkin) Lyceum, Demidovsky Lyceum, etc.). But despite the same programs, the Nizhyn gymnasium was lower than the capital ones both in terms of the composition of teachers and in the course of educational work, so that young Gogol, who stayed there until June 1828, could not endure much in the sense of general development and scientific development (in which he confessed himself). The stronger the effect on the gifted young man of the influences of the environment and trends, albeit belatedly, coming from the cultural centers of Russia. These trends and influences from the environment and family clarify individual features of the writing activity and spiritual appearance of the future great writer, which are then reflected in the writer’s works, in individual moments of his mood in adulthood. Gogol in his youth was characterized by great observation, interest in folk life and history of Little Russia(although not strictly scientific, but rather poetic-ethnographic), literary inclinations (discovered back in Nizhyn), dramatic talent and interest in the stage (prominent participation in school plays), inclinations of an everyday satirist (a play from the school era that has not reached us: “Something” about Nezhin, or the law is not written for fools"), as well as sincere religiosity, attachment to family and a desire for painting (even at school, Nikolai Gogol, judging by the surviving drawings, was not without success in drawing).

A careful study of Gogol’s biography during his childhood and youth, speaking only about the beginnings of Gogol’s future, does not, however, give a clear idea or indication of the magnitude and grandeur of the writer’s talent, the integrity of his worldview and the internal struggle that he subsequently experienced. However, the biographical information of this time, which came down from the contemporaries and comrades of the young Gogol, is rather scarce. The result of the school period that ended in 1828 was a weak scientific stock of knowledge, insufficient literary development, but at the same time, already a rich stock of observations, a desire for literature and nationality, a unclear consciousness of his strengths and his purpose (the goal of life for Gogol of this time is to benefit the fatherland, the confidence that he must do something unusual, extraordinary ; but in concrete form it is a bureaucratic “service”), along with observation and a sense of life - a tendency to assimilate romantic trends (the youthful poem “Hans Küchelgarten” 1827), although partly balanced by the influence of a more realistic direction of literature (Zhukovsky, Yazykov, Pushkin - subject of reading and hobby of young Gogol at school).

The beginning of Gogol's work

With such a vague mood, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol ends up in St. Petersburg, where he strives to “fulfill his purpose” (late 1828), and primarily through service, for which, due to his purely creative inclinations, he is least capable.

Gogol’s “Petersburg” period (December 1828 – June 1836) was a period of searching and finding his purpose (towards the end of the period), but at the same time, a period of his self-education and further development of the creative inclinations of youth, a period of great (and vague) unfulfilled and unrealizable hopes and bitter disappointments from life; but at the same time, this is the period of entering the real path of a writer with great social significance. The search for a “life task”, which is still depicted in the form of service, the struggle with material need goes interspersed, intertwined with broad literary plans, realized now or later, with the strengthening of the writer’s position in society and literary circles, with the continuation of self-education. Gogol tries, but unsuccessfully, to get a job as an artist in the theater, he is appointed by an official to the department, but also unsuccessfully, soon becoming convinced that “service,” unlike creativity, does not give him either satisfaction or security. He is trying to use his literary experience in a Nezhin direction; but the poem “Hans Küchelgarten,” the first printed work of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol (1829), has to be destroyed as completely outdated for modern literature. At this time, Gogol made other attempts to use the stock of knowledge acquired in Nizhyn: he tried to enter the Academy of Arts, attended drawing classes. An unsuccessful professorship in St. Petersburg (1835) finally forced Gogol to recognize as unsuccessful all attempts to define himself differently than his literary talent indicated to him. Everything that was inherent in Gogol’s very nature uncontrollably pushes him to true path- the path to starting creative writing. In this direction, Gogol progresses quickly and persistently. The beginning of literary creativity, so far solely for the purpose of material support, can be seen in Gogol already in 1829, soon after his arrival in St. Petersburg. Motivating that “everything Little Russian occupies everyone here,” Gogol strenuously asks Little Russian household and poetic folk materials from his mother and relatives. He already lives in poetic thoughts, reflected in his “Evenings,” which soon appear: for “Evenings” he needed this material. At the beginning of his work, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol turned to the nationality, artistic and real image home country, illuminating all this with a bright ray of his humor and romanticism, no longer dreamy, but healthy, folk.

The acquaintances Gogol simultaneously acquired with the literary circles of St. Petersburg completed his entry onto a new path. The sensitive Pushkin guesses the reason for the initial failures and the purpose of Gogol, forcing him to correctly develop his literary education through reading, which he himself leads. Zhukovsky, Pletnev not only support him with their connections, providing him with income, but also introduce Gogol to the top of the literary movement of that time (for example, into the circle of A. O. Rosset, later Smirnova, who was destined to play such a prominent role in Gogol’s life). Here too, Gogol, becoming more and more drawn into literary studies, makes up for his shortcomings in the provincial school and provincial literary education.

The results of these influences are felt quickly: Gogol’s talent made its way into the contradictory soul of its bearer: 1829–1830 were the years of his lively domestic literary work, still little noticeable to outsiders and society. Hard work on self-education, an ardent love for art become for Gogol a high and strict moral duty, which he wishes to fulfill sacredly, reverently, slowly bringing his creations to the “pearl”, constantly reworking the material and the first sketches of his works - a feature characteristic of Gogol’s creative manner and at all other times.

After several excerpts and editions of stories in “Notes of the Fatherland” (Svinin), in “Literary Newspaper” (Delviga), Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol releases his “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” (1831 - 1832). “Evenings,” which became the true beginning of Gogol’s writing, clearly defined his future purpose for himself. Gogol’s role became even clearer for society (cf. the review of Pushkin’s “Evenings”), but it was not understood from the side from which Gogol soon became visible. In “Evenings” we saw never-before-seen pictures of Little Russian life, shining with nationalism, gaiety, subtle humor, poetic mood - and nothing more. “Evenings” is followed by “Arabesques” (1835, which includes articles published in 1830 - 1834 and written during this time). From then on, Gogol's fame as a writer was firmly established: society sensed in him a great power that was destined to open new era our literature.

Gogol, apparently, is now convinced himself of what that “great field of his” should be, about which he has not ceased to dream since Nizhyn times. This can be concluded from the fact that already in 1832 Gogol began a new step forward in his soul. He is not satisfied with “Evenings”, not considering them a real expression of his mood, and is already planning (1832) “Vladimir of the 3rd degree” (from which later came: “Litigation”, “Lackey”, “Morning of a Business Man”), “ Grooms" (1833, later - "Marriage"), "The Inspector General" (1834). Next to them are his so-called “St. Petersburg” stories (“Old World Landowners” (1832), “Nevsky Prospect” (1834), “Taras Bulba” (1st edition - 1834), “Notes of a Madman” (1834), beginning “Overcoats”, “Nose”, as well as stories included in Mirgorod, published in 1835). In the same year, 1835, “Dead Souls” was started, “The Stroller” and “Portrait” (1st edition) were written. The initial period of Gogol's work ended in April 1836 with the publication and production of The Inspector General. “The Inspector General” finally opened the eyes of society to Gogol and to himself and became a facet in his work and life.

Among the external events of life that influenced the further evolution of Gogol’s mood, it is worth noting Gogol’s mysterious trip for a month in 1829 abroad (to Lübeck), probably the result of a restless search for “real” business at the beginning of the St. Petersburg period, a trip in 1832. to their homeland, so beloved by them and poetically immortalized in “Evenings.” However, this time, along with the bright memories of childhood, with the comfort of a home family circle, the homeland rewarded the writer with severe disappointments: household affairs were going badly, the romantic enthusiasm of Gogol the young man was erased by St. Petersburg life, behind the caressing charm of nature and the Little Russian everyday environment, Gogol already felt sadness , melancholy and even tragedy. It was not for nothing that, upon returning to St. Petersburg, he began to disavow “Evenings” and how his mood was determined by them in society. Gogol matured and entered a mature period of life and creativity. This trip also had another meaning: the path to Vasilievka lay through Moscow, where Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol first entered the circle of the Moscow intelligentsia, establishing relations with his fellow countrymen who lived in Moscow (M. A. Maksimovich, M. S. Shchepkin), and with people who soon became his lifelong friends. These Moscow friends did not remain without influence on Gogol in the last period of his life due to the fact that there were points of contact between the mood of the writer and them on the basis of religious, patriotic and ethical ideas (Pogodin, Aksakovs, perhaps Shevyrev).

Gogol abroad

In the summer of 1836, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol went on his first long trip abroad, where he stayed until October 1841. The reason for the trip was the painful condition of the writer, who was naturally weak (news of his illness have been going on since he entered the Nizhyn gymnasium), moreover who had greatly shaken his nerves in the everyday and spiritual struggle that led him to the real path. He was also drawn abroad by the need to give himself an account of his strengths, of the impression that “The Inspector General” made on society, which caused a storm of indignation and stirred up the entire bureaucratic and official Russia against the writer, but which, on the other hand, gave Gogol another new circle of admirers in the advanced part of Russian society. Finally, a trip abroad was necessary to continue that “life work” that was started in St. Petersburg, but required, in the words of Gogol himself, a look at Russian life from the outside - “from a beautiful distance”: to continue “Dead Souls” and new, more reworkings of what had begun corresponded to the mood of the writer renewed in spirit. Gogol, on the one hand, imagined himself completely crushed by the impression that ended the appearance of The Inspector General. He blamed himself for the fatal mistake of taking up satire. On the other hand, Gogol energetically continues to develop his thoughts about the great importance of theater and artistic truth, continues to rework “The Inspector General”, writes “Theatrical Travel” and works hard on “Dead Souls”, prints some of his previous sketches (Morning of a Business Man, 1836), reworks “Portrait” (1837 – 1838), “Taras Bulba” (1838 – 1839), finishes “The Overcoat” (1841).

N.V. Gogol. Portrait by F. Muller, 1841

During his first trip abroad, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol lives in Germany, Switzerland, and Paris (with his schoolmate and friend A. Danilevsky), where he partly receives treatment and partly spends time among Russian circles. In March 1837, he ends up in Rome, to which he sincerely becomes attached, enchanted by Italian nature and monuments of art. Gogol remains here for a long time and at the same time works intensively, mainly on “Dead Souls”, finishes “The Overcoat”, writes the story “Annunziata” (later “Rome”). In the fall of 1839, he came to Russia on family business, but soon returned to Rome, where in the summer of 1841 he finished the first volume of Dead Souls. In the fall, Gogol sent it from abroad to print in Russia: the book, after a number of difficulties (Moscow censorship did not let it through, St. Petersburg censorship hesitated greatly, but, thanks to the assistance of influential persons, the book was finally allowed through), was published in Moscow in 1842. Around “Dead Souls,” a literary noise of criticism “for” and “against” arose, as with the appearance of “The Inspector General,” but Gogol already reacted differently to this noise. By the time he finished Dead Souls, he had taken a further step in the direction of ethical-religious thinking; he was already presented with the second part, which was supposed to express a different understanding of the writer’s life and tasks.

In June 1842, Gogol was again abroad, where apparently that “turning point” in his spiritual mood had already begun, which marked the end of his life. Living either in Rome, or in Germany or France, he moved among people who more or less approached him in their conservative mood (Zhukovsky, A. O. Smirnova, Vielgorsky, Tolstoy). Constantly suffering physically, Gogol develops more and more in the direction of pietism, the beginnings of which he already had in childhood and youth. His thoughts about art and morality are increasingly colored by Christian-Orthodox religiosity. "Dead Souls" becomes Gogol's last work of art in the same direction. At this time, he was preparing a collection of his works (published in 1842), and continued to rework, introducing into them new features of the mood of that time, his previous works: “Taras Bulba”, “Marriage”, “Players”, etc., writes “ Theatrical Travel", the famous "Pre-Notice" to "The Inspector General", where he tries to give the interpretation of his comedy that was suggested by his new mood. Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol is also working on the second volume of Dead Souls.

Gogol's new look at the writer's tasks

Questions of creativity, talent, and the tasks of a writer continue to occupy him, but now they are resolved differently: the high idea of ​​talent as a gift of God, in particular of his own talent, imposes on Gogol high responsibilities that are depicted to him in some providential sense. In order to correct human vices by exposing them (which Gogol now considers his duty as a writer gifted by God, the meaning of his “messengership”), the writer himself must strive for inner perfection. It, according to Gogol, is accessible only through thinking about God, deepening into the religious understanding of life, Christianity, and oneself. Religious exaltation visits him more and more often. Gogol becomes in his own eyes a called teacher of life, in the eyes of his contemporaries and admirers - one of the world's greatest ethicists. New ideas increasingly deviate him from his previous path. This new mood forces Gogol to change his assessment of his previous writing activity. He is now ready to reject any significance of everything that he wrote before, believing that these works do not lead to the high goal of improving oneself and people, to the knowledge of God - and are unworthy of his “messengership.” He apparently already considers the just published first volume of “Dead Souls”, if not a mistake, then only the threshold to a “real”, worthy work - the second volume, which should justify the author, atone for his sin - an attitude towards his neighbor that is inconsistent with the spirit of a Christian in the form of satire, to give positive instruction to a person, to show him the direct path to perfection.

N.V. Gogol. Artist F. Muller, 1840

But such a task turns out to be very difficult. The emotional drama, complicated by a painful nervous illness, progressively and quickly directed the writer towards a denouement: Gogol’s literary productivity is weakening; he manages to work only in the intervals between mental and physical torment. Gogol's letters of this period are preaching, teaching, self-flagellation with rare glimpses of the former humorous mood.

The last years of Gogol's life

This period ends with two major disasters: in June 1845, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol burned the second volume of Dead Souls. He “brought, burning his work, a sacrifice to God,” hoping to give a new book of “Dead Souls” with content that was enlightened and cleansed of all sinful things. She, according to Gogol, was supposed to “direct the whole society towards the beautiful”, in a straight and right way. In the last years of his life, Gogol is burning with the desire to quickly give society what seems to him the most important for life; and this important thing was expressed by him, in his opinion, not in works of art, but in letters of that time to friends, acquaintances and relatives.

The decision to collect and systematize his thoughts from letters led him (1846) to the publication of “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends.” This was the second catastrophe in the history of the writer’s relationship with the liberal-Western society. Published in 1847, “Selected Places” caused whistles and hooting from avid liberals. V. Belinsky burst out with a famous letter in response to a touchy letter from Gogol, who was offended by Belinsky’s negative review of the book (Sovremennik, 1847, No. 2). Left radicals argued that this book by Gogol is filled with the tone of prophecy, authoritative teaching, and the preaching of external humility, which is in fact “more than pride.” They did not like the writer’s negative attitude towards certain features of his previous “critical-satirical” activity expressed in it. Westerners loudly shouted that Gogol in “Selected Places” allegedly abandoned his previous view of the tasks of the writer as a citizen.

Sincerely not understanding the reasons for such a sharp rebuke from the “liberals,” Gogol tried to justify his action, saying that he was not understood, etc., but did not deviate from the views he expressed in his last book. His religious and ethical mood remained the same throughout the last years of his life, but was painted in painful tones. The hesitations caused by liberal persecution increased Gogol’s need to preserve and support his faith, which, after the suffering he suffered, seemed to him not deep enough.

Exhausted both physically and mentally, Gogol's resumed work on the second volume of Dead Souls is going even worse. He strives to calm his soul in religious feat and in 1848 he travels from Naples to Jerusalem, hoping there, at the source of Christianity, to draw a new supply of faith and vigor. Through Odessa, Nikolai Vasilyevich returns to Russia, so as not to be absent from it again for the rest of his life. Since the autumn of 1851, he settled in Moscow with A.P. Tolstoy, his friend, who shared his religious-conservative views, tried again to work on the second volume of Dead Souls, even read excerpts from his friends (for example, the Aksakovs). But painful doubts do not leave Gogol: he constantly reworks this book and does not find satisfaction. Religious thought, further strengthened by the influence of Father Matvey Konstantinovsky, a stern, straightforward, ascetic Rzhev priest, wavers even more. The writer’s state of mind reaches the point of pathology. During one of his fits of mental anguish, Gogol burns his papers at night. The next morning he comes to his senses and explains this act as the tricks of an evil spirit, from which he cannot get rid of even by intense religious feats. This was at the beginning of January 1852, and on February 21, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was no longer alive.

Talyzin House (Nikitsky Boulevard, Moscow). N.V. Gogol lived and died here in his last years, and here he burned the second volume of “Dead Souls”

The significance of Gogol's work

A careful study of the activities and life of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, expressed in the extensive literature dedicated to the writer, showed the great importance of this activity for Russian literature and society. The influence of Gogol and the trends in Russian literary and social thought he created has not ceased to this day. After Gogol, Russian literature finally breaks its connection with “imitation” of Western models, ends its “educational” period, the time of its full blossoming, its full independence, social and national self-awareness comes; it acquires international, global significance. Modern literature owes all this to the foundations of its development that were developed in the middle XIX century; these are: national self-awareness, artistic realism and awareness of its inextricable connection with the life of society. The development of these foundations in the consciousness of society and literature was accomplished through the works and talents of writers of the first half of the century - Pushkin, Griboyedov, Lermontov. And Gogol among these writers is of the utmost importance. Even the radical Chernyshevsky called the entire period of Russian literature of the mid-19th century Gogolian. The subsequent era, marked by the names of Turgenev, Goncharov, Leo Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, is closely connected with the tasks posed to literature by Gogol. All of the listed writers are either his immediate followers (for example, Dostoevsky in “Poor People”), or the ideological successors of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol (for example, Turgenev in “Notes of a Hunter”).

Artistic realism, ethical aspirations, a view of the writer as public figure, the need for nationality, the psychological analysis of life phenomena, the breadth of this analysis - everything that is strong in Russian literature of subsequent times, all this was strongly developed by Gogol, outlined by him so definitely that his successors could only go further in breadth and depth. Gogol is the largest representative realism: he accurately and subtly observed life, capturing its typical features, embodied them in artistic images, deeply psychological, truthful; even in his hyperbolism he is impeccably truthful. The images created by Gogol amaze with their extraordinary thoughtfulness, originality of intuition, depth of contemplation: these are the features brilliant writer. Gogol’s spiritual depth found expression in the properties of his talent: these are “tears invisible to the world through the laughter visible to him” - in satire and humor.

The national characteristics of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol (his connection with Little Russian history and culture), introduced by him into Russian literature, provided a tremendous service to the latter, accelerating and consolidating the national self-awareness that had begun to awaken in Russian literature. The beginning of this awakening, very hesitant, dates back to the second half of the 18th century. It is visible in the activities of Russian satirical literature XVIII century, in the activities of N. I. Novikov and others. It found a strong impetus in the events of the early 19th century (the Patriotic War of 1812), and was further developed in the activities of Pushkin and his school; but this awakening culminated only in Gogol, who closely merged the idea of ​​artistic realism and the idea of ​​nationality. The great significance of Gogol’s work, in the social sense, lies in the fact that he directed his brilliant creativity not to abstract themes of art, but to direct everyday reality and put into his work all the passion for seeking the truth, love for man, protecting his rights and dignity, denunciation of all moral evil. He became a poet of reality, whose works immediately received high social significance. Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, as a moralist writer, is the direct predecessor of Leo Tolstoy. Interest in depicting the internal movements of personal life and in depicting social phenomena precisely from the angle of condemning social untruths, searching for a moral ideal - this was given to our subsequent literature by Gogol, and goes back to him. Subsequent public satire (for example, Saltykov-Shchedrin), “accusatory literature” of 1860 – 1870. without Gogol would have been unthinkable. All this testifies to the great moral significance Gogol's creativity for Russian literature and about his great civil service to society. This significance of Gogol was clearly felt by his closest contemporaries.

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol also took a prominent place in creating the world position of Russian literature: from him (before Turgenev), Western literature began to know Russian, take a serious interest in and take it into account. It was Gogol who “discovered” Russian literature to the West.

Literature about Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol

Kulish,"Notes on the life of Gogol."

Shenrok,“Materials for the biography of Gogol” (M. 1897, 3 vols.).

Skabichevsky, "Works" vol. II.

Biographical sketch of Gogol, ed. Pavlenkova.

Years of life: from 03/20/1809 to 02/21/1852

Outstanding Russian writer, playwright, poet, critic, publicist. The works are included in the classics of domestic and world literature. Gogol's works had and still have a huge influence on writers and readers.

Childhood and youth

Born in the town of Velikiye Sorochintsy, Mirgorod district, Poltava province, in the family of a landowner. The writer's father, V. A. Gogol-Yanovsky (1777-1825), served at the Little Russian Post Office, in 1805 he retired with the rank of collegiate assessor and married M. I. Kosyarovskaya (1791-1868), according to legend, the first beauty in the Poltava region. The family had six children: in addition to Nikolai, son Ivan (died in 1819), daughters Marya (1811-1844), Anna (1821-1893), Lisa (1823-1864) and Olga (1825-1907). Gogol spent his childhood years on the estate of his parents Vasilyevka (another name is Yanovshchina). As a child, Gogol wrote poetry. The mother showed great concern for the religious education of her son, and it is her influence that is attributed to the religious and mystical orientation of the writer’s worldview. In 1818-19, Gogol, together with his brother Ivan, studied at the Poltava district school, and then, in 1820-1821, took private lessons. In May 1821 he entered the gymnasium of higher sciences in Nizhyn. Here he is engaged in painting, participates in performances - as a decorative artist and as an actor. He also tries himself in various literary genres (writes elegiac poems, tragedies, historical poems, stories). At the same time he writes the satire “Something about Nezhin, or the law is not written for fools” (not preserved). However, he does not think about a literary career; all his aspirations are connected with “public service”; he dreams of a legal career.

The beginning of a literary career, rapprochement with A.S. Pushkin.

After graduating from high school in 1828, Gogol went to St. Petersburg. Experiencing financial difficulties, unsuccessfully fussing about a place, Gogol made his first literary attempts: at the beginning of 1829 the poem “Italy” appeared, and in the spring of the same year, under the pseudonym “V. Alov”, Gogol published the “idyll in pictures” “Ganz Küchelgarten”. The poem evoked very negative reviews from critics, which increased the difficult mood of Gogol, who throughout his life experienced criticism of his works very painfully. In July 1829, he burned unsold copies of the book and suddenly made a short trip abroad. Gogol explained his step as an escape from a love feeling that unexpectedly took possession of him. At the end of 1829, he managed to decide to serve in the department of state economy and public buildings of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (first as a scribe, then as an assistant to the chief clerk). His stay in the offices caused Gogol deep disappointment in the “public service,” but it provided him with rich material for future works. By this time, Gogol was devoting more and more time to literary work. Following the first story “Bisavryuk, or the Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala” (1830), Gogol published a number of works of art and articles. The story "Woman" (1831) was the first work signed real name author. Gogol meets P. A. Pletnev. Until the end of his life, Pushkin remained an indisputable authority for Gogol, both artistic and moral. By the summer of 1831, his relations with Pushkin's circle became quite close. Gogol’s financial position is strengthened thanks to his teaching work: he gives private lessons in the houses of P.I. Balabin, N.M. Longinov, A.V. Vasilchikov, and from March 1831 became a history teacher at the Patriotic Institute.

The most fruitful period of life

During this period, “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” (1831-1832) was published. They aroused almost universal admiration and made Gogol famous. 1833, the year for Gogol, was one of the most intense, full of painful searches for a further path. Gogol writes his first comedy, “Vladimir of the 3rd Degree,” however, experiencing creative difficulties and foreseeing censorship complications, he stops working. During this period, he was seized by a serious craving for the study of history - Ukrainian and world. Gogol is trying to occupy the department of general history at the newly opened Kiev University, but to no avail. In June 1834, however, he was appointed an associate professor in the department of general history at St. Petersburg University, but after conducting several classes he left this job. At the same time, in deep secret, he wrote the stories that made up his two subsequent collections - “Mirgorod” and “Arabesques”. Their harbinger was “The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich” (first published in the book “Housewarming” in 1834). The publication of “Arabesque” (1835) and “Mirgorod” (1835) confirmed Gogol’s reputation as an outstanding writer. The work on the works that later formed the cycle “Petersburg Tales” also dates back to the early thirties. In the fall of 1835, Gogol began writing “The Inspector General,” the plot of which (as Gogol himself claimed) was suggested by Pushkin; the work progressed so successfully that on January 18, 1836, he read the comedy at an evening with Zhukovsky, and in the same year the play was staged. Along with the resounding success, the comedy also caused a number of critical reviews, the authors of which accused Gogol of slandering Russia. The controversy that flared up had an adverse effect on the writer’s state of mind. In June 1836, Gogol left St. Petersburg for Germany and the writer’s almost 12-year period of stay abroad began. Gogol begins to write Dead Souls. The plot was also suggested by Pushkin (this is known from the words of Gogol). In February 1837, in the midst of work on Dead Souls, Gogol received the shocking news of Pushkin's death. In a fit of “inexpressible melancholy” and bitterness, Gogol feels the “present work” as the “sacred testament” of the poet. At the beginning of March 1837 he came to Rome for the first time, which later became one of the writer’s favorite cities. In September 1839, Gogol arrived in Moscow and began reading chapters of Dead Souls, which evoked an enthusiastic reaction. In 1940, Gogol left Russia again and at the end of the summer of 1840 in Vienna, he suddenly suffered one of the first attacks of a severe nervous illness. In October he comes to Moscow and reads the last 5 chapters of “Dead Souls” in the Aksakovs’ house. However, in Moscow, censorship did not allow the novel to be published, and in January 1842 the writer forwarded the manuscript to the St. Petersburg Censorship Committee, where the book was approved, but with a change in title and without “The Tale of Captain Kopeikin.” In May, “The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls” was published. And again Gogol’s work caused a flurry of the most controversial responses. Against the background of general admiration, sharp accusations of caricature, farce, and slander are heard. All this controversy took place in the absence of Gogol, who went abroad in June 1842, where the writer was working on the 2nd volume of Dead Souls. Writing is extremely difficult, with long stops.

Last years of life. Creative and spiritual crisis of the writer.

At the beginning of 1845, Gogol showed signs of a new mental crisis. A period of treatment and moving from one resort to another begins. At the end of June or beginning of July 1845, in a state of sharp exacerbation of the disease, Gogol burns the manuscript of the 2nd volume. Subsequently, Gogol explained this step by the fact that the book did not show the “paths and roads” to the ideal clearly enough. An improvement in Gogol’s physical condition began only in the fall of 1845; he began work anew on the second volume of the book, however, experiencing increasing difficulties, gets distracted by other things. In 1847, “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends” was published in St. Petersburg. The release of Selected Places brought a real critical storm upon its author. Moreover, Gogol also received critical reviews from his friends, V.G. was especially harsh. Belinsky. Gogol takes criticism very seriously, tries to justify himself, and his spiritual crisis deepens. In 1848 Gogol returned to Russia and lived in Moscow. In 1849-1850 he reads individual chapters of the 2nd volume of Dead Souls to his friends. The approval inspires the writer, who now works with renewed energy. In the spring of 1850, Gogol makes the first and last attempt to arrange his family life - he proposes to A. M. Vielgorskaya, but is refused. January 1, 1852 Gogol reports that the 2nd volume is “completely finished.” But in the last days of the month, signs of a new crisis were clearly revealed, the impetus for which was the death of E. M. Khomyakova, a person spiritually close to Gogol. He is tormented by a premonition of imminent death, aggravated by newly intensified doubts about the beneficialness of his writing career and the success of the work being carried out. At the end of January - beginning of February, Gogol meets Father Matvey (Konstantinovsky) who arrived in Moscow; the content of their conversations remained unknown, but there is an indication that Father Matvey advised to destroy part of the chapters of the poem, motivating this step by the “harmful influence” that they would have. The death of Khomyakova, the conviction of Konstantinovsky and, perhaps, other reasons convinced Gogol to abandon his creativity and begin fasting a week before Lent. On February 5, he saw off Konstantinovsky and since that day he eats almost nothing and stops leaving the house. At 3 a.m. from Monday to Tuesday, February 11-12, 1852, Gogol woke up his servant Semyon, ordered him to open the stove valves and bring a briefcase with manuscripts from the closet. Taking out a bunch of notebooks from it, Gogol put them in the fireplace and burned them (only 5 chapters, relating to various draft editions, were preserved in incomplete form). On February 20, a medical council decided to compulsorily treat Gogol, but the measures taken did not produce results. On the morning of February 21, N.V. Gogol died. The writer’s last words were: “Stairs, quickly, give me the stairs!”

Information about the works:

At the Nizhyn gymnasium, Gogol was not a diligent student, but had an excellent memory, prepared for exams in a few days and moved from class to class; he was very weak in languages ​​and made progress only in drawing and Russian literature.

It was Gogol, in his article “A few words about Pushkin,” who was the first to call Pushkin the greatest Russian national poet.

The morning after the burning of the manuscripts, Gogol told Count Tolstoy that he wanted to burn only some things that had been prepared in advance, but he burned everything under the influence of an evil spirit.

A bronze cross was installed on Gogol’s grave, standing on a black tombstone (“Golgotha”). In 1952, a new monument was erected on the grave instead of Golgotha, but Golgotha, as unnecessary, was for some time in the workshops of the Novodevichy cemetery, where it was discovered by the widow of E. S. Bulgakov. Elena Sergeevna bought the tombstone, after which it was installed over the grave of Mikhail Afanasyevich.

The 1909 film Viy is considered the first Russian “horror film.” Yes, the film has not survived to this day. And the film adaptation of the same Viy in 1967 is the only Soviet “horror film”.

Bibliography

Poems

Hanz Küchelgarten (1827)

attachments to the Auditor are partly of a journalistic nature
unfinished

Journalism

Film adaptations of works, theatrical productions

The number of theatrical productions of Gogol's plays throughout the world cannot be estimated. Only the Inspector General, and only in Moscow and St. Petersburg (Leningrad), was staged more than 20 times. A huge number of feature films have been made based on Gogol’s works. This is not a complete list of domestic film adaptations:
Viy (1909) dir. V. Goncharov, short film
Dead Souls (1909) dir. P. Chardynin, short film
The Night Before Christmas (1913) dir. V. Starevich
Portrait (1915) dir. V. Starevich
Viy (1916) dir. V. Starevich
How Ivan Ivanovich quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich (1941) dir. A. Kustov
May Night, or the Drowned Woman (1952) dir. A. Rowe
The Inspector General (1952) dir. V. Petrov
The Overcoat (1959) dir. A. Batalov
Dead Souls (1960) dir. L. Trauberg
Evenings on a farm near Dikanka (1961) dir. A. Rowe
Viy (1967) dir. K. Ershov
Marriage (1977) dir. V. Melnikov
Incognito from St. Petersburg (1977) dir. L. Gaidai, based on the play The Inspector General
The Nose (1977) dir. R. Bykov
Dead Souls (1984) dir. M. Schweitzer, serial
The Inspector General (1996) dir. S. Gazarov
Evenings on a farm near Dikanka (2002) dir. S. Gorov, musical
The Case of “Dead Souls” (2005) dir. P. Lungin, television series
The Witch (2006) dir. O. Fesenko, based on the story Viy
Russian Game (2007) dir. P. Chukhrai, based on the play Players
Taras Bulba (2009) dir. V. Bortko
Happy Ending (2010) dir. J. Chevazhevsky, modern version based on the story Nose

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol (surname at birth Yanovsky) - born on March 20, 1809 in the village of Sorochintsy, Poltava province. Russian prose writer, playwright, poet, critic, publicist, widely recognized as one of the classics of Russian literature.
N.V. Gogol- great Russian writer, author of immortal works " Auditor", "", "Taras Bulba", "Viy", "Dead Souls"and others. N.V. Gogol's talent manifests itself in these dissimilar works in different ways - either striking the reader with the richness of the language and the colorfulness of the Ukrainian theme, or captivating with the fantasy of St. Petersburg stories, or causing laughter in "The Government Inspector" and "Dead Souls" Gogol's life and creative path and his tragic fate are still a mystery that has been solved by more than one generation of researchers.

Biography
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol born March 19, 1809 in the village Great Sorochintsy Mirgorod district, Poltava province, in the noble family of Vasily Afanasyevich and Maria Ivanovna Gogol-Yanovsky. On March 22, he was baptized in the Transfiguration Church by the rector of the temple, Father John Belovolsky.
He was one of twelve children of Maria Ivanovna and Vasily Afanasyevich. He spent his childhood on the family estate Yanovshchina-Vasilievka. The writer’s father, a graduate of the Poltava Seminary, was engaged in literary creativity all his life: he wrote poetry and prose. The plays of V. A. Gogol were staged on the stage of the serf theater of Dmitry Prokopyevich Troshchinsky, a former minister, a wealthy nobleman, a distant relative of the Gogols, on his estate Kibintsy near Vasilyevka.
In 1818, Nikolai Gogol was sent by his father to the Poltava district school. After Ivan’s death, his father took young Gogol from this educational institution and, with the help of Troshchinsky, in 1821 he enrolled him in the Nizhyn Gymnasium of Higher Sciences - a lyceum, which the writer graduated from in 1828. Nikolai Gogol-Yanovsky took an active part in the life of the gymnasium: he published handwritten magazines, acted as a librarian, and played on the stage of the gymnasium theater. N.V. Gogol’s closest lifelong friends were his classmates at the gymnasium: A.S. Danilevsky and N.Ya. Prokopovich.
During his studies, Gogol created his first literary works: the poetic ballad “ Two fish", tragedy " Robbers», « Slavic story», « Tverdislavich brothers", idyll " Hanz Küchelgarten», « Something about Nezhin, or the law is not written for fools».
In 1828, the St. Petersburg period of N.V. Gogol’s life and work began. His first publications appeared in the publications “Son of the Fatherland” and “Northern Archive”. On February 12, 1829, Gogol’s poem “Italy” was published without indicating the author’s name. In 1829, in the February and March issues of the journal Otechestvennye zapiski, Gogol’s story “Bisavryuk, or the Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala” was published without the author’s name. Little Russian story from folk legend, told by the sexton of the Intercession Church." A little later, the following separate publications were published: “Hanz Küchelgarten”, “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka”, “Mirgorod”, “Arabesque”, “The Inspector General”.
Over his main work - the poem “ Dead Souls» N.V. Gogol worked from 1835 to 1852. The writer had to combine creative work with the public service in which he was at that time. Gradually, Gogol moved up the career ladder, receiving ranks and promotions, acquiring connections in all levels of society.
Everyone knows Gogol's love of travel. In 1836, after staging the comedy “The Inspector General,” he went abroad. This was his second trip abroad, which lasted two months. In Paris, the writer met and became friends with Count A.P. Tolstoy. They were bound by common religious and moral beliefs. Evidence of their deep and sincere friendship is provided by seven letters “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends” addressed to the count.
The room where he died was located on the first floor.
Doctor A. Tarasenkov recalls that N.V. Gogol was lying “on a wide sofa.” Both contemporaries mention the Image of the Mother of God “at the feet” of Gogol. According to the testimony of Tarasenkov and Arnoldi, Gogol categorically refused food, asking only for water. He was served wine diluted with water in a glass, or broth colored with wine.
The writer died in the arms of M. P. Pogodin’s mother-in-law, Elizaveta Fominichna Figner, at about eight o’clock in the morning, on Thursday, March 4, 1852. The reason for his early departure is unknown to this day, although various assumptions have been put forward: from typhoid fever to meningitis. However, one thing is clear: contrary to widespread rumors about Gogol’s madness, the writer died being completely sane and in an enlightened state of mind. The Tolstoys were so upset that soon after the sad event they went abroad, unable to stay in this house. And Count Alexander Petrovich Tolstoy outlived his brilliant friend by twenty years.

Writer's creative style
The creative style of N.V. Gogol is distinguished by his brilliant mastery of words, a high degree of harmony between content and form. th, the combination of the secular and spiritual sides in creativity, the inheritance of literary traditions from antiquity to romanticism, as well as innovations that became the starting points for the creation of literature of modern times. “Literature is not at all a consequence of the mind, but a consequence of feeling, in the same way as music, like painting,” believed N.V. Gogol, asserting the need to use artistic means in writing, borrowed from other types of art, which maximizes embodied in the literary works of modernism and the avant-garde. Integral features of Gogol's style are also a heightened sense of history, especially clearly manifested in late period his creativity, a combination of humor and satire with pervasive lyricism.
The main theme of creativity N. V. Gogol- the topic of Russia, about which he himself has repeatedly spoken: “ ...my thoughts, my name, my works will belong to Russia..."(from a letter from N.V. Gogol to V.A. Zhukovsky).
The popularity of N.V. Gogol’s work in our time is based on the classic’s affirmation of universal human values ​​- the ideas of love, kindness, brotherhood, justice.
A special place in N.V. Gogol’s literary heritage is occupied by his letters. The writer's epistolary heritage correlates with his spiritual prose. The thoughts expressed by Gogol in his letters became the basis for the appearance of the “Author's Confession”, “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends”, “Reflections on the Divine Liturgy”. Creator of the famous " Dead souls"believed that" art is reconciliation with life", a step on the path to God.

The writer's literary fame
In 1830, Gogol’s first story “Basavryuk” appeared in the journal “Otechestvennye zapiski”, which was later revised into the story “The Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala”. In December, Delvig's almanac "Northern Flowers" published a chapter from the historical novel "Hetman". Gogol becomes close to Delvig, Zhukovsky, Pushkin, friendship with whom was great importance for the development of social views and literary talent of the young Gogol. Pushkin introduced him into his circle, where Krylov, Vyazemsky, Odoevsky, the artist Bryullov were, and gave him plots for The Inspector General and Dead Souls. " When I was creating- Gogol testified, - I saw only Pushkin in front of me... His eternal and immutable word was dear to me".
Gogol's literary fame was brought " Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka", story" Sorochinskaya fair", "May Night", etc. In 1833 he decided to devote himself to scientific and pedagogical work and in 1834 he was appointed associate professor in the department of general history at St. Petersburg University and university. The study of works on the history of Ukraine formed the basis of the plan " Taras Bulba". In 1835 he left the university and devoted himself entirely to literary creativity. In the same year, collections of stories "Mirgorod" were published, which included "Old World Landowners", "Taras Bulba", "Viy", etc., and "Arabesques". Tale " Overcoat"was a significant work of the St. Petersburg cycle, a draft version was read to Pushkin in 1836, and completed in 1842. While working on the stories, Gogol tried his hand at drama. The theater seemed to him a great force, of exceptional importance in public education. In 1835 he wrote" The Inspector General" and already in 1836 it was staged in Moscow with the participation of Shchepkin.
Soon after the production" Inspector"Gogol went abroad, settling first in Switzerland. In Paris, he continued to work on" Dead souls", begun in Russia. The news of Pushkin's death was a terrible blow for him. In March 1837, Gogol settled in Rome. During his visit to Russia in 1839, he read to friends chapters from the first volume of Dead Souls, which he completed in Rome.
Work on the second volume" Dead souls“coincided with the writer’s deep spiritual crisis and, above all, reflected his doubts about the effectiveness of fiction, which brought Gogol to the brink of renouncing his previous creations.
In April 1848, after traveling to Jerusalem, to the Holy Sepulcher, he finally returned to Russia. Lives in St. Petersburg, Odessa, Moscow, and continues to work on the second volume of Dead Souls. He was increasingly possessed by religious and mystical moods, and his health deteriorated. In 1852, Gogol began meeting with Archpriest Matvey Konstantinovsky, a fanatic and mystic. On February 11, 1852, being in a difficult mental state, the writer burned the manuscript of the second volume of the poem.

Death of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol
From the end of January 1852, Rzhev Archpriest Matthew Konstantinovsky, whom Gogol met in 1849, stayed in the house of Count Alexander Tolstoy. Complex, sometimes harsh conversations took place between them, the main content of which was Gogol’s insufficient humility and piety, for example, the demand for Fr. Matthew: " Renounce Pushkin" Gogol invited him to read the white version of the second part “ Dead souls" for information, in order to listen to his opinion, but he was refused by the priest. Archpriest Matthew became the only lifetime reader of the 2nd part of the manuscript. Returning it to the author, he spoke out against the publication of a number of chapters, “even asked to destroy” them.
On February 5, Gogol saw off Konstantinovsky and since that day he has eaten almost nothing. On February 10, he handed Count A. Tolstoy a briefcase with manuscripts to be handed over to Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, but the Count refused this order so as not to deepen Gogol’s dark thoughts.
Gogol stops leaving the house. At 3 a.m. on Tuesday, February 11-12, 1852, that is, on Great Compline on the Monday of the first week of Lent, Gogol woke up his servant Semyon, ordered him to open the stove valves and bring a briefcase from the closet. Taking a bunch of notebooks out of it, Gogol put them in the fireplace and burned them. In the morning he told Count Tolstoy that he wanted to burn only some things that had been prepared in advance, but he burned everything under the influence of an evil spirit. Gogol, despite the admonitions of his friends, continued to strictly observe fasting. On February 18, he fell ill and stopped eating completely. All this time, friends and doctors tried to help the writer, but he refuses help, internally preparing for death.
On February 20, the medical council decided to compulsorily treat Gogol, the result of which was final exhaustion and loss of strength, in the evening he fell into unconsciousness, and on the morning of February 21, Thursday, the writer died.

Funeral and grave of the writer
On the initiative of Moscow State University professor Timofey Granovsky, the funeral was held as a public one. The funeral took place on Sunday, February 24, 1852 at the cemetery of the Danilov Monastery in Moscow. A bronze cross was installed on the grave, standing on a black tombstone, and on it was carved the inscription: “ I'll laugh at my bitter words"(quote from the book of the prophet Jeremiah).
In 1930, the Danilov Monastery was finally closed. On May 31, 1931, Gogol’s grave was opened and his remains were transferred to the Novodevichy cemetery.
According to memories conveyed in the form of oral stories to students at the Literary Institute when Lidin was a professor at the institute in the 1970s, Gogol’s skull was turned on its side. This is evidenced by senior researcher at the State Literary Museum Yu. V. Alekhin. This version is apocryphal in nature, they gave rise to many legends, including the burial of Gogol in a state of lethargic sleep and the theft of Gogol’s skull for the collection of the famous Moscow collector of theatrical antiquities A. A. Bakhrushin. Numerous reminiscences about the desecration of Gogol’s grave by Soviet writers during the exhumation of Gogol’s burial are of the same contradictory nature.
In 1952, a new monument was erected on the grave in the form of a pedestal with a bust of Gogol by the sculptor Tomsky, on which is inscribed: “ Words to the great Russian artist Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol from the government of the Soviet Union».