Nikolai Vasilyevich was born into a large family, Vasily and Maria, Gogol’s parents, had 12 children. Gogol’s father saw his wife in a dream, considering this dream a prophecy, his father was looking for the one he saw in a dream. He found it very close, since childhood he tenderly and reverently courted the neighbor's girl Maria. It was his mother who instilled in little Nikolai Gogol-Yanovsky a love of literature and mysticism; Gogol's father was a writer and playwright. It is interesting that Gogol's great-great-grandfather, Ostap, was the hetman of Right Bank Ukraine.
Nikolai studied poorly, he only drew well and knew Russian grammar, but his teacher denied the importance of the works of Pushkin and Zhukovsky, welcomed foreign literature, thereby interested Gogol in romanticism and the classics, aroused admiration for Pushkin and Zhukovsky.. Having graduated from the gymnasium,
Gogol moves to St. Petersburg, the city of his dreams. Not finding himself in the civil service, Gogol begins to write. Having published the first poem “Hanz Küchelgarten” under the pseudonym Alov, Gogol was criticized to smithereens. He bought the entire edition, burned it and went abroad, however, he returned a month later. After a while, Rudy Panko tells St. Petersburg about “Evenings on the Farm”, the Little Russian author was greeted by St. Petersburg with a “Hurrah!”, Gogol is recognizable in his pseudonym, Belinsky in print asks the author to show his face, not to hide behind masks. Gogol begins create under his own name, world masterpieces come from the pen of the writer: “The Inspector General”, “Marriage”, “Petersburg Tales”, “The Overcoat”, “Notes of a Madman”. Having complexes because of his appearance, Gogol writes “Nose”, and love “Viya”, “Ivan Kupala” give birth to miracles and mysticism.
Gogol is famous and recognized, he is part of the circle of Pushkin, Belinsky, Pletnev, Zhukovsky. The image of St. Petersburg is a symbol of new life in the writer’s work. Gogol does not leave his historical homeland, he is a patriot and passionately loves his people, dedicates many works to her, “Taras Bulba” is the most monumental. He asks his mother to send him all the news, folk songs and legends, costumes from Ukraine. Mirgorod was the name of his land classic.
His personal life did not work out, Gogol was rejected by his bride’s parents, but the brilliant work “Marriage” was born, and the writer himself gave up trying to arrange his personal life.
The uniqueness of writing, a special manner, truth-telling - all this makes the writer’s work unique. Gogol’s critical realism is a unique phenomenon of that time. Creative nature, a penchant for mysticism, belief in traditions and tales, all this made Gogol’s work and life mysterious, and his biography - controversial. Frequent mental breakdowns led the writer to depression and departures abroad. Negative reaction and criticism to the production of “The Inspector General” lead to another flight of the writer. Returning to Russia, Gogol works on the second volume of “Dead Souls,” but a mental crisis prevents him from finishing this work. The author burns the second volume, and 10 days later the writer died.
Gogol's biography causes more controversy than it illuminates the facts. There are more questions than answers about the life of the mysterious genius, about his work and descendants. In his will, Gogol asked not to erect a monument on his grave and not to bury him; immediately after his death, he suffered from bouts of lethargic sleep. But the will was violated, he was buried in the cemetery of the St. Daniel's Monastery, erecting a monument on the grave. Later, Gogol was reburied, the ashes were transferred to the Novodevichy cemetery, but the writer's skull disappeared from the coffin. Mysticism, vandalism, fans - history remains silent. This incident found reflected in Bulgakov in “The Master and Margarita”, in the form of the head of the writer Berlioz stolen from the coffin, cut off by a tram on the Patriarch's Ponds. Even after his death, Gogol excited the imagination of writers and provided food for their creativity.
“The Tale of Captain Kopeikin” is, in essence, the last of Gogol’s St. Petersburg stories. At the same time, his other story, also from St. Petersburg, “The Overcoat” (1839-1842) was published. Both stories are different versions of the same “plot” - the threat of open rebellion against the inhumanity of the bureaucratic regime of its victims driven to despair. “The Overcoat” was apparently the first option, as evidenced by its obvious connection with “Notes of a Madman.”
Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin is the same victim of man’s enslavement to rank, just like Poprishchin. But unlike Poprishchin, Bashmachkin is “completely satisfied with his lot,” the lot of the “eternal”, that is, forever condemned to be such, a “titular councilor” - a beggar, defenseless, despised and offended man of rank.
The meagerness of the rank and position of the “eternal titular adviser” depersonalized Bashmachkin, who identified himself, his human personality and his human dignity with the “position” of a copyist of government papers. The zealous, selfless performance of this mechanical, mind-numbing position constitutes Bashmachkin’s only interest and the all-consuming meaning of his existence.
Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin is by far the most insignificant of all Gogol’s spiritually insignificant heroes. But the mental and moral wretchedness of a petty official, which had been ridiculed more than once by Gogol himself and other writers of the 1930s, appeared in The Overcoat as the extreme degree of downtroddenness and humiliation of the “little man” by the hierarchy of rank and, appealing to compassion, exposed the monstrous absurdity of this hierarchy to everyone its social levels. Thanks to this, “The Overcoat” sounded for contemporaries as a defense and justification in the “little man” of a Man dehumanized by the intolerable conditions of his social existence.
The denunciation of these conditions by defending the human dignity of fallen man, which they violated, opened a new page in the history of Russian realism, filled with writers “ natural school", and anticipated its fundamental and dual artistic principle: “justification, according to Belinsky’s definition, of noble human nature” and “persecution of the false and unreasonable foundations of society, which distort a person, sometimes making him a beast, and more often an insensitive and powerless animal.”
Akaki Akakievich is as insensitive as he is powerless, but worthy not of ridicule, but of compassion. It was in this humanistic aspect that “The Overcoat” had a huge impact on the theory and practice of the “natural school.” But the problems of “The Overcoat” are by no means reduced to humanism alone.
In the first edition of the story (1839), it had a different title: “The Tale of an Official Stealing an Overcoat.” It indisputably follows from this that the innermost ideological core of the story reveals itself in its fantastic epilogue - in the posthumous rebellion of Akaki Akakievich, his revenge on the “significant person” who neglected the despair and tearful complaint of the robbed poor man.
And just like in “The Tale of Kopeikin,” the transformation of a humiliated man into a formidable avenger for his humiliation is correlated in “The Overcoat” with what led to December 14, 1825. In the first edition of the epilogue, the “short stature” ghost, recognized by everyone as the deceased Akaki Akakievich, “was looking for some lost overcoat and, under the guise of his own, tore off all sorts of overcoats from everyone’s shoulders, without distinguishing rank and title,” finally taking possession of the overcoat of a “significant person” ", "became taller and even [wore] an enormous mustache, but... soon disappeared, heading straight to the Semyonovsky barracks."
“An enormous mustache” is an attribute of a military “face,” and the Semenovsky barracks is an allusion to the rebellion of the Semenovsky regiment in 1820. Both lead to Captain Kopeikin and make us see in him the second version of the titular adviser Bashmachkin. In this regard, it becomes obvious that the overcoat itself is not just a household item, not just an overcoat, but a symbol of official society and rank.
What was Gogol’s attitude towards the “ghost” of the rebellion of the Bashmachkins and Kopeikins, which clearly disturbed his imagination? This question is of paramount importance for understanding the ideological evolution of the writer. But to answer it, it is necessary to dwell on another unrealized plan of the writer - a drama or tragedy from the history of Zaporozhye. Gogol conceived it in the same year as “The Overcoat,” 1839, and called it “a drama for a shaved mustache, like Taras Bulba.”
In 1841, Gogol read scenes of the drama to some of his friends, including V. A. Zhukovsky. Zhukovsky did not approve of them, and Gogol immediately threw everything he had written into the fire and never returned to this plan. But several working notes for him have survived. From them it is clear that indeed, the plot of the drama, which is in many ways common with Taras Bulba, is complicated by the motives of the social protest of the Ukrainian “men” against the serf-dominated oppression of their Polish landowners. “Men” constitute a special social category of characters, different from “Cossacks,” and the following “conversation” is planned between them: “Everything has gone up in price, it’s expensive.
For the land, by God, no longer than this finger - 20 quadruples, 4 pairs of chickens, for the Spiritual Day and for Easter - a couple of geese, and 10 from each pig, from honey, and after every three years a third ox. The thoughts of one of the military leaders also speak about the discontent of the peasants: “It seems there is no need to wait for war, because the peasant and Cossack knack for rebellion is impossible without rebellion.” damn people: So his hand itches, they eat freely and hang out in taverns and in the streets.” But the peasant-Cossack uprising is nevertheless approaching: “The people are seething and crowding in the square, near the house of both colonels, demanding that they take part in the matter, the authorities are over them.
The colonel goes out onto the porch, exhorts, persuades, imagines the impossibility.” It is noteworthy that this entry was made on the last page of one of the excerpts of the second edition of “The Overcoat”. Logically preceding the same entry, another indicates that the role of the organizer and leader of the Cossacks and men who rebelled against the Polish lords was assigned in the drama to a “young nobleman.” Here again Dubrovsky, thrown back into the past, “sticks out”, and with him the future Kopeikin, who became the chieftain of a gang of robbers that appeared in the Ryazan forests.
Based on the foregoing, it can be assumed that, having conceived a historical drama “like Taras Bulba,” Gogol was on the verge of “guessing” in the anti-serfdom “peasant” protest the original and beautiful feature of the Russian national character, combining it with the patriotic love of freedom of the Cossack people, poeticized in “Taras Bulba”.
We don’t know what Gogol read to Zhukovsky, - full text drama, or rather, its individual scenes written by that time. But be that as it may, the destruction of what was written solely for the reason that Zhukovsky “didn’t like it” is unlikely. It is more correct to assume that the openly anti-serfdom interpretation of the national-historical plot caused Zhukovsky to fear for Gogol’s fate and that, succumbing to this fear, at the insistence of Zhukovsky, Gogol immediately burned what he had written and forever abandoned his seditious, indeed at that time very dangerous, plan.
But its dull echo is heard in the second, created again in 1839-1841. editors of "Taras Bulba".
This reveals the commonality and deep essence of the problems of such seemingly disparate artistic endeavors of Gogol’s accomplishments as the second edition of “Taras Bulba”, the drama “in the style of Taras Bulba”, “The Overcoat”, and “The Tale of Captain Kopeikin”. All of them appear almost simultaneously, throughout 1839, and testify to the paramount importance that at this time the reality and power of the revolutionary potential of Russian life, which he only now realized, acquired for the writer.
Gogol's attitude towards him was deeply contradictory, and this is the root of it. spiritual crisis, everything that led to the burning of the second volume of “Dead Souls” and the publication of “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends.”
The people's revolution seemed to Gogol to be both destructive, disastrous for Russia, and a fair, justified act of popular retribution. And moreover: the longing for will, penetrating the oral poetic, passionately loved song creativity of the people by Gogol, retained an irresistible poetic “charm” for the writer until the end of his days, remaining his own longing and hope.
Having accepted the duality of his worldview as an objective national-historical contradiction of contemporary Russian reality, Gogol believed in the possibility and necessity of removing this contradiction through the religious, moral and civil self-education of serfdom and “the foundation of civil society on the purest Christian laws.”
This is how the author of “The Overcoat” and “Dead Souls” faced a historical alternative to the national future: either the all-destructive but just rebellion of the disadvantaged majority, in the terminology of the era - “lesser brothers,” or the Christian compassion and love of their masters and rulers for them. This is what first “The Overcoat” was written about, then “The Tale of Captain Kopeikin”.
The same alternative remains central problem of the writer’s entire subsequent work, the single and common problem of the burned second and unwritten third volume of “Dead Souls” and their journalistic equivalent, “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends.”
No matter how utopian the program for the religious and moral revival of feudal society, nakedly expressed in “Selected Places,” was, it did not mean the writer’s renegade reconciliation with feudal reality.
On the contrary, in the same “Selected Places” he literally cries out about the horrors of this reality, believing that the only panacea for them is a kind of “revolution of consciousness” (Tolstoy), i.e., the awareness by feudal society of all the abomination of its immorality and statelessness.
But directly, with an astonishing frankness for his time and a force unprecedented in himself, speaking in “Selected Places” about the real, concrete “horrors”, “abominations” of the lawlessness of Nicholas’ reality, Gogol immediately considers them not an essential expression of the autocratic-serf system, but a monstrous distortion of his national “idea”.
Having been cleansed of all its real filth, it, according to Gogol, was called upon to protect Russia from all the vices and contradictions of bourgeois civilization. The objective socio-historical content of this completely abstract, illusory idea and its deepest contradiction for its time was that it was both an anti-serfdom and anti-bourgeois idea.
But it was precisely in this historically insightful quality that she reflected the objective contradictions of the bourgeois development of Russia and outlined much of what was subsequently said by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. It is not for nothing that Tolstoy published in “The Intermediary” in an adapted, significantly purified form “Correspondence with Friends,” which, in his opinion, “contains extremely much that is precious next to something that is very bad and outrageous for that time.”
Belinsky’s famous letter to Gogol regarding “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends” was of great importance as an uncensored revolutionary-democratic declaration, the political testament of the great critic and publicist, which, as V.I. Lenin wrote in 1914, “was one from best works uncensored democratic press, which preserved the enormous living meaning and to this day."
However, it should be taken into account that Belinsky, like his other contemporaries outraged by this work of Gogol, knew the text of the first edition of “Selected Places” (1847), which was disfigured by censorship and was far from complete. In addition to many individual distortions and small denominations, five entire chapters were removed from it. Those very chapters for which, according to Gogol, the entire book was written, which, thanks to their removal, turned into a “strange remnant” of what it should have been.
It was in the removed chapters that Gogol expressed “something that both the sovereign himself and everyone in the state should read” as an edification to himself. And this “someone” in some places strikingly coincides with what Belinsky said in reproach to Gogol in his “Letter” to him. Here, for example, is what Gogol wrote in the chapter “Occupying an Important Place,” undoubtedly meaning the “place” of the sovereign of all Rus', although formally it was addressed to the governor general: “I know very well that now it is difficult to rule inside Russia - much more difficult than when -or before... There are many abuses, such covetousness has arisen that no human means can eradicate.
I also know that another illegal course of action has arisen outside the laws of the state and has already turned almost into a legal one, so that the laws remain only for show...” Don’t Gogol’s words echo the words of Belinsky about the need to fight for “the implementation of at least those laws that exist.”
Or in the same place: “Tell them (nobles and officials - E.K.) that Russia is definitely unhappy, that it is unhappy because of robbery and untruth, which have not yet raised their horn to such impudence; that the sovereign’s heart hurts in a way that none of them knows, hears or can know.”
Gogol did not know and could not know, but he called on the sovereign to do this, believing that “could it be otherwise at the sight of this [th] whirlwind of entanglements that arose, which shielded everyone from each other and took away from almost everyone the space to do good and true benefit our land, at the sight of widespread darkness and the general deviation of everyone from the spirit of their land, at the sight, finally, of these dishonest rogues, sellers of justice and robbers, who, like crows, swooped in from all sides to peck our still living body and muddy water to catch your despicable profit.”
This is written not by Belinsky, but by Gogol, not inferior to Belinsky in the passion of his indignation. This, of course, does not mean that Gogol took the same positions as Belinsky, but one should not talk about the reconciliation of the author of “Selected Places” with feudal reality. We need to talk about something else: about the reactionary utopianism of the socio-political ideal that confronts this reality in the late Gogol, and its mystical design, which clearly declared itself for the first time in “Selected Places.”
Objectively understanding this most controversial work of Gogol is one of the urgent tasks of studying his work.
Gogol's end was deeply tragic and accelerated by the writer's realized impossibility of fulfilling his artistic and civic duty as he understood it - to announce to the Fatherland the way of its salvation. However, to the extent possible, Gogol achieved his goal and fulfilled his historical mission.
In the words of Chernyshevsky, “he awakened in us consciousness about ourselves,” that is, he had a huge impact on the democratization of Russian public consciousness, including - but not only - literary and artistic consciousness on the way and during the period of its final realistic self-determination .
Gogol did not solve any of the questions he posed about Russian, much less Western European life. But these were the questions over which the thoughts of all the great Russian writers of the second century struggled. half of the 19th century- beginning of the 20th century All of them came from Gogol to the same extent as from Pushkin, and thus resolved the dispute about the Gogol and Pushkin directions in Russian literature.
History of Russian literature: in 4 volumes / Edited by N.I. Prutskov and others - L., 1980-1983.
Gogol was born on March 20 (April 1), 1809 in the town of Velikie Sorochintsy, Mirgorod povet (district) of the Poltava province, in the very heart of Little Russia, as Ukraine was then called. The Gogoli-Yanovskys were a typical landowner family, owning 1000 acres of land and 400 serfs. The future writer spent his childhood years on his parents' estate Vasilyevka. It was located in Mirgorod district next to the legendary Dikanka, whose name the writer immortalized in his first book.
In 1818, Gogol, together with his brother Ivan, studied at the Mirgorod povet school for a little over a year. After the death of his brother, his father took him out of school and prepared him to enter the local gymnasium. However, it was decided to send Gogol to the Gymnasium of Higher Sciences in the city of Nezhin in the neighboring Chernigov province, where he studied for seven years - from 1821 to 1828. Here Gogol first met modern literature, became interested in theater. His first literary experiences also date back to his time at the gymnasium.
The test of an immature pen was the “idyll in pictures” “Hanz Küchelgarten”, an imitative romantic work. But it was on him that the aspiring writer placed special hopes. Having arrived in St. Petersburg at the end of 1828 to “look for places” as an official, Gogol was inspired by a secret thought: to establish himself on the St. Petersburg literary Olympus, to stand next to the first writers of that time - A.S. Pushkin, V.A. Zhukovsky, A.A. Delvig.
Just two months after his arrival in St. Petersburg, Gogol published (without indicating his name) romantic poem“Italy” (“Son of the Fatherland and Northern Archives”, vol. 2, no. 12). And in June 1829, the young provincial, extremely ambitious and arrogant, published the poem “Hanz Küchelgarten” taken from his suitcase, spending most of his parents’ money on it. The book was published under the “talking” pseudonym V. Alov, which hinted at high hopes author. They, however, were not realized: reviews of the publication of the poem were negative. Shocked, Gogol left for Germany, but first took all copies of the book from bookstores and burned them. The literary debut turned out to be unsuccessful, and the nervous, suspicious, painfully proud debutant for the first time showed that attitude towards failure, which would then be repeated throughout his life: burning manuscripts and fleeing abroad after another “failure.”
Returning from abroad at the end of 1829, Gogol entered the public service- became an ordinary St. Petersburg official. The pinnacle of Gogol's bureaucratic career was as an assistant to the head of the Department of Appanages. In 1831, he left the hated office and, thanks to the patronage of new friends - V.A. Zhukovsky and P.A. Pletnev - entered the teaching field: he became a history teacher at the Patriotic Institute, and in 1834-1835. held the position of associate professor in the department of general history at St. Petersburg University. However, Gogol’s focus is on his studies. literary creativity, his biography, even during the years of bureaucratic and teaching service, is the biography of a writer.
Three periods can be distinguished in Gogol’s creative development:
1) 1829-1835 - St. Petersburg period. The failure (the publication of Hanz Küchelgarten) was followed by the resounding success of the collection romantic stories“Evenings on a farm near Dikanka” (1831-1832). In January-February 1835, the collections “Mirgorod” and “Arabesques” were published;
2) 1835-1842 — time spent working on two important works: the comedy “The Inspector General” and the poem “ Dead souls" The beginning of this period was the creation of the first edition of “The Inspector General” (December 1835, delivered in April 1836), the end was the publication of the first volume of “Dead Souls” (May 1842) and the preparation of “Works” in 4 volumes ( went out of print in January 1843). During these years, the writer lived abroad (from June 1836), visiting Russia twice to organize literary affairs;
3) 1842-1852 - the last period of creativity. Its main content was the work on the second volume of Dead Souls, which took place under the sign of intense religious and philosophical quests. Major events This period included the publication in January 1847 of the journalistic book “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends” and Gogol’s burning of personal papers in February 1852, including, apparently, the manuscript of the second volume of the poem.
The first period of Gogol's work (1829-1835) began with the search for his own theme, his own path in literature. On long lonely evenings, Gogol worked diligently on stories from Little Russian life. Petersburg impressions, bureaucratic life - all this was left in reserve. His imagination took him to Little Russia, from where so recently he tried to leave so as not to “perish in insignificance.” Gogol's literary ambition was fueled by his acquaintance with famous poets: V.A. Zhukovsky, A.A. Delvig, Pushkin’s friend P.A. Pletnev. In May 1831, the long-awaited acquaintance with Pushkin took place.
Revenge for the experienced bitterness of an unsuccessful debut was the publication in September 1831 of the first part of “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka.” Pushkin announced to the public about a new, “unusual for our literature” phenomenon, guessing the nature of Gogol’s talent. He saw in the young romantic writer two qualities that seemed far from each other: the first was “real gaiety, sincere, without affectation, without stiffness,” the second was “sensitivity,” poetry of feelings.
After the release of the first part of “Evenings...”, Gogol, inspired by success, experienced an extraordinary creative surge. In 1832, he published the second part of the collection, worked on the everyday story “The Scary Boar” and the historical novel “Hetman” (excerpts from these unfinished works were published in “ Literary newspaper"and the almanac "Northern Flowers") and at the same time wrote articles on literary and pedagogical topics. Note that Pushkin highly valued this side of Gogol’s genius, considering him the most promising literary critic 1830s However, it was “Evenings...” that remained the only monument to the initial period of Gogol’s work. This book, in the words of the writer himself, captures “the first sweet moments of young inspiration.”
The collection includes eight stories, differing in themes, genre and style features. Gogol used a term that was widespread in the literature of the 1830s. the principle of cyclization of works. The stories are united by the unity of the setting (Dikanka and its environs), the figures of the storytellers (all of them are well-known people in Dikanka who know each other well) and the “publisher” (beekeeper Rudy Panko). Gogol hid under the literary “mask” of a commoner publisher, embarrassed by his entry into the “ big light» literature.
The material of the stories is truly inexhaustible: these are oral stories, legends, tales of both modern and historical topics. “If only they listened and read,” says the pasichnik in the preface to the first part, “but I, perhaps, because I’m too damn lazy to rummage, can get enough of ten such books.” Gogol freely juxtaposes events and “confuses” centuries. The goal of a romantic writer is to understand the spirit of the people, the origins of the national character. The time of action in the stories “Sorochinskaya Fair” and “Ivan Fedorovich Shponka and His Aunt” is modern, in most works (“May Night, or the Drowned Woman”, “The Missing Letter”, “The Night Before Christmas” and “ Enchanted place") - XVIII century, finally, in "The Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala" and "Terrible Revenge" - XVII century. In this kaleidoscope of eras, Gogol finds the main romantic antithesis of his book - the past and the present.
The past in “Evenings...” appears in an aura of fabulousness and wonder. In him the writer saw a spontaneous play of good and evil forces, morally healthy people, not affected by the spirit of profit, practicality and mental laziness. Gogol depicts Little Russian folk festival and fair life. The holiday, with its atmosphere of freedom and fun, the beliefs and adventures associated with it, takes people out of the framework of their usual existence, making the impossible possible. Previously impossible marriages are concluded (“Sorochinskaya Fair”, “May Night”, “The Night Before Christmas”), all kinds of evil spirits become active: devils and witches tempt people, trying to prevent them. The holiday in Gogol's stories is all kinds of transformations, disguises, hoaxes, beatings and the revelation of secrets. Gogol's laughter in "Evenings..." is humorous. Its basis is rich folk humor, which is able to express in words comic contradictions and incongruities, of which there are many in the holiday atmosphere and in ordinary, everyday life.
Originality art world stories is associated, first of all, with the widespread use of folklore traditions: it was in folk tales, semi-pagan legends and traditions that Gogol found themes and plots for his works. He used the belief about a fern blooming on the night before the holiday of Ivan Kupala, legends about mysterious treasures, about selling the soul to the devil, about flights and transformations of witches... In many stories they act mythological characters: sorcerers and witches, werewolves and mermaids and, of course, the devil whose tricks folk superstition ready to attribute any evil deed.
“Evenings...” is a book of fantastic incidents. For Gogol, the fantastic is one of the most important aspects of the people's worldview. Reality and fantasy are intricately intertwined in people's ideas about the past and present, about good and evil. The writer considered the penchant for legendary-fantastic thinking to be an indicator of people’s spiritual health.
The fiction in “Evenings...” is ethnographically reliable. Heroes and storytellers incredible stories They believe that the entire region of the unknown is inhabited by evil spirits, and the “demonological” characters themselves are shown by Gogol in a reduced, everyday guise. They are also “Little Russians”, they just live on their own “territory”, fooling around from time to time ordinary people, interfering in their life, celebrating and playing with them. For example, the witches in “The Missing Letter” play fools, inviting the narrator’s grandfather to play with them and, if lucky, return his hat. The devil in the story “The Night Before Christmas” looks like “a real provincial attorney in uniform.” He grabs the month and gets burned, blowing on his hand, like a man who accidentally grabbed a hot frying pan. Declaring his love to the “incomparable Solokha,” the devil “kissed her hand with such antics as an assessor for a priest.” Solokha herself is not only a witch, but also a villager, greedy and loving for fans.
Folk fiction intertwines with reality, clarifying relationships between people, separating good and evil. As a rule, the heroes in Gogol's first collection defeat evil. The triumph of man over evil is a folklore motif. The writer filled it with new content: he asserted power and strength human spirit, capable of curbing the dark, evil forces that dominate nature and interfere in people's lives.
The “positive” heroes of the stories were ordinary Little Russians. They are depicted as strong and cheerful, talented and harmonious. Jokes and pranks, the desire to play pranks are combined in them with a willingness to fight evil spirits and evil for their happiness. In the story “Terrible Revenge,” a heroic-epic image of the Cossack Danila Burulbash, the predecessor of Taras Bulba, was created. His main features are love for his homeland and love of freedom. Trying to curb the sorcerer, punished by God for a crime, Danila dies like a hero. Gogol uses folk poetic principles of depicting a person. His characters are bright, memorable personalities; there are no contradictions or painful reflections in them. The writer is not interested in details, the particulars of their lives, he strives to express the main thing - the spirit of freedom, breadth of nature, pride living in the “free Cossacks”. In his depiction, this is, according to Pushkin, “a singing and dancing tribe.”
With the exception of the story “Ivan Fedorovich Shponka and His Aunt,” all the works in Gogol’s first collection are romantic. The author's romantic ideal manifested itself in the dream of good and fair relations between people, in the idea of national unity. Gogol created his poetic utopia based on Little Russian material: it expresses his ideas about what the life of the people should be, what a person should be. The colorful legendary fantasy world of “Evenings...” differs sharply from the boring, petty life of Russian ordinary people, shown in “The Inspector General” and especially in “Dead Souls”. But the festive atmosphere of the collection is disrupted by the invasion of sad “beings” - Shponka and his aunt Vasilisa Kashporovna. Sometimes the text of the stories also contains sad, elegiac notes: it is the voice of the author himself that breaks through the voices of the narrators. He looks at the sparkling life of the people through the eyes of a St. Petersburger, escaping from the cold breath of the ghostly capital, but he anticipates the collapse of his utopia and therefore is sad about joy, “a beautiful and fickle guest”...
“Evenings...” made Gogol famous, but, oddly enough, the first success brought not only joy, but also doubts. The year of crisis was 1833. Gogol complains about the uncertainty of his position in life and literature, complains about fate, and does not believe that he is capable of becoming a real writer. He assessed his condition as a “destructive revolution,” accompanied by abandoned plans and the burning of barely begun manuscripts. Trying to move away from the Little Russian theme, he conceived, in particular, a comedy based on St. Petersburg material, “Vladimir of the Third Degree,” but the plan was not realized. The reason for acute dissatisfaction with oneself is the nature of laughter, the nature and meaning of the comic in Little Russian stories. He came to the conclusion that he laughed in them “to amuse himself,” in order to brighten up the gray “prose” of St. Petersburg life. A real writer, according to Gogol, must do “good”: “laughing for nothing” without a clear moral goal is reprehensible.
He was intensely looking for a way out of the creative impasse. The first symptom of the important changes taking place in the writer was a story based on Little Russian material, but completely different from the previous ones - “The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich.” 1834 was fruitful: “Taras Bulba”, “Old World Landowners” and “Viy” were written (all included in the collection “Mirgorod”, 1835).
“Mirgorod” is an important milestone in Gogol’s creative development. The scope of artistic “geography” has expanded: the legendary Dikanka has given way to a prosaic county town, the main attraction of which is a huge puddle, and fantastic character- Ivan Ivanovich’s brown pig, who brazenly stole Ivan Nikiforovich’s petition from the local court. The very name of the city contains an ironic meaning: Mirgorod is both an ordinary provincial town and a special, closed world. This is a “through the looking glass” in which everything is the other way around: normal relationships between people are replaced by strange friendship and absurd enmity, things displace people, and pigs and ganders become almost the main characters... In an allegorical sense, “Mirgorod” is the world art, overcoming the district “topography” and “local” time: the book shows not only the life of the “sky smokers”, but also the romantic heroics of the past, and scary world natural evil, embodied in "Viy".
In comparison with “Evenings...” the composition of Gogol’s second collection of prose is more transparent: it is divided into two parts, each of which includes two stories, united by contrast. The antithesis of the everyday story “Old World Landowners” is the heroic epic “Taras Bulba”. The morally descriptive, permeated with the author's irony, "The Tale..." about the two Ivans is contrasted with the "folk legend" - the story "Viy", close in style to the works of the first collection. Gogol abandoned the literary mask of a “publisher.” The author's point of view is expressed in the composition of the collection, in the complex interaction of romantic and realistic principles of depicting heroes, and in the use of various speech masks.
All stories are permeated with the author’s thoughts about the polar possibilities of the human spirit. Gogol is convinced that a person can live according to the high laws of duty, uniting people into “comradery,” but he can lead a meaningless, empty existence. It takes him into the cramped world of an estate or city house, to petty worries and slavish dependence on things. In people's lives, the writer discovered opposite principles: spiritual and physical, social and natural.
Gogol showed the triumph of spirituality in the heroes of the story “Taras Bulba”, primarily in Taras himself. The victory of the physical, the material - in the inhabitants of the “old world” estate and Mirgorod. Natural evil, against which prayers and spells are powerless, triumphs in “Viy”. Social evil that arises among people as a result of their own efforts - in morally descriptive stories. But Gogol is convinced that social evil, in contrast to “earthly”, natural evil, is surmountable: in the subtext of his works one can discern the idea of the author’s new intentions - to show people the absurdity and randomness of this evil, to teach people how it can be overcome.
The hero of the story “Viy” Khoma Brut looked into the eyes of Viy, natural evil, and died from fear of him. World, opposed to man, scary and hostile - the more acute the task for people to unite in the face of world evil arises. Self-isolation and alienation lead a person to death, because only a dead thing can exist independently of other things - this is main idea Gogol, who was approaching his great works: “The Inspector General” and “Dead Souls”.
The second period of Gogol’s work (1835-1842) opens with a kind of “prologue” - the “St. Petersburg” stories “Nevsky Prospekt”, “Notes of a Madman” and “Portrait”, included in the collection “Arabesques” (1835; the author explained its title as follows: “confusion , mixture, porridge" - in addition to stories, the book includes articles on various topics). These works connected two periods of the writer’s creative development: in 1836 the story “The Nose” was published, and the cycle was completed by the story “The Overcoat” (1839-1841, published in 1842).
Gogol finally submitted to the St. Petersburg theme. The stories, different in plot, theme, and characters, are united by the location of action - St. Petersburg. But for a writer this is not just a geographical space. He created a vivid image-symbol of the city, both real and illusory, fantastic. In the destinies of the heroes, in the ordinary and incredible incidents of their lives, in the rumors, rumors and legends with which the very air of the city is saturated, Gogol finds mirror image Petersburg "phantasmagoria". In St. Petersburg, reality and fantasy easily change places. The daily life and destinies of the city's inhabitants are on the verge of the believable and the miraculous. The incredible suddenly becomes so real that a person cannot stand it and goes crazy.
Gogol gave his interpretation of the St. Petersburg theme. His Petersburg, unlike Pushkin’s (“ Bronze Horseman"), lives outside of history, outside of Russia. Gogol's Petersburg is a city of incredible incidents, ghostly and absurd life, fantastic events and ideals. Any metamorphosis is possible in it. The living turns into a thing, a puppet (such are the inhabitants of the aristocratic Nevsky Prospect). A thing, object or part of the body becomes a “face”, an important person in the rank of state councilor (the nose that disappeared from the collegiate assessor Kovalev, who calls himself a “major”). The city depersonalizes people, distorts their good qualities, highlights their bad ones, and changes their appearance beyond recognition.
Like Pushkin, Gogol explains the enslavement of man by St. Petersburg from a social perspective: in ghost life city, he discovers a special mechanism that is driven by the “electricity” of the rank. Rank, that is, a person’s place determined by the Table of Ranks, replaces human individuality. There are no people - there are positions. Without a rank, without a position, a St. Petersburger is not a person, but neither this nor that, “the devil knows what.”
Universal artistic technique which the writer uses when depicting St. Petersburg is synecdoche. Replacing the whole with its part is an ugly law by which both the city and its inhabitants live. A person, losing his individuality, merges with a faceless multitude of people just like him. It is enough to say about the uniform, tailcoat, overcoat, mustache, sideburns to give a comprehensive idea of the motley St. Petersburg crowd. Nevsky Prospekt, the front part of the city, represents the whole of St. Petersburg. The city exists as if by itself, it is a state within a state - and here the part crowds out the whole.
Gogol is by no means an impassive chronicler of the city: he laughs and is indignant, ironic and sad. The meaning of Gogol’s image of St. Petersburg is to point out to a person from a faceless crowd the need for moral insight and spiritual rebirth. He believes that in a creature born in the artificial atmosphere of the city, the human will still triumph over the bureaucratic.
In “Nevsky Prospekt” the writer gave a certain introduction to the entire cycle of “Petersburg stories”. This is both a “physiological essay” (a detailed study of the main “artery” of the city and the city “exhibition”), and a romantic short story about the fate of the artist Piskarev and Lieutenant Pirogov. They were brought together by Nevsky Prospekt, the “face”, “physiognomy” of St. Petersburg, changing depending on the time of day. He becomes either businesslike, or “pedagogical,” or “ main exhibition the best works of man." Nevsky Prospekt is a model of an official city, a “moving capital”. Gogol creates images of puppet dolls, bearers of sideburns and mustaches of various colors and shades. Their mechanical assembly marches along Nevsky Prospekt. The fates of the two heroes are details of St. Petersburg life that made it possible to tear off the city’s brilliant mask and show its essence: Petersburg kills the artist and is favorable to the official; both tragedy and an ordinary farce are possible in it. Nevsky Prospekt is “deceitful at all times,” just like the city itself.
In each story, St. Petersburg opens up from a new, unexpected side. In “Portrait” it is a seductive city that ruined the artist Chartkov with money and light, illusory fame. In “Notes of a Madman,” the capital is seen through the eyes of the titular councilor Poprishchin, who has gone mad. The story “The Nose” shows the incredible, but at the same time very “real” St. Petersburg “odyssey” of Major Kovalev’s nose. “The Overcoat” is the “life” of a typical Petersburger - a petty official Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin. Gogol emphasizes the illogicality of the ordinary, everyday and familiar. The exceptional is only an appearance, a “deception” that confirms the rule. Chartkov’s madness in “Portrait” is part of the general madness that arises as a result of people’s desire for profit. The madness of Poprishchin, who imagined himself as the Spanish King Ferdinand VIII, is a hyperbole that emphasizes the manic passion of any official for ranks and awards. In the loss of Major Kovalev’s nose, Gogol showed a special case of the loss of “face” by the bureaucratic masses.
Gogol's irony reaches deadly force: only the exceptional, the fantastic can bring a person out of moral stupor. In fact, only the insane Poprishchin remembers the “good of humanity.” If the nose had not disappeared from the face of Major Kovalev, he would still have been walking along Nevsky Prospect in a crowd of people like him: with noses, in uniforms or in tails. The disappearance of the nose makes it individual: after all, you cannot appear in public with a “flat spot” on your face. If Bashmachkin had not died after being scolded by a “significant person,” it is unlikely that this “significant person” imagined this petty official as a ghost tearing off the greatcoats of passers-by. St. Petersburg as depicted by Gogol is a world of familiar absurdity and everyday fantasy.
Madness is one of the manifestations of St. Petersburg absurdity. In every story there are madmen heroes: these are not only the crazy artists Piskarev (“Nevsky Prospekt”) and Chartkov (“Portrait”), but also officials Poprishchin (“Notes of a Madman”) and Kovalev, who I almost went crazy when I saw my own nose walking around St. Petersburg. Even the “little man” Bashmachkin, who has lost hope of finding his overcoat—the “bright guest” of his dull life—is seized by madness. Images of madmen in Gogol's stories are not only an indicator of illogicality public life. The pathology of the human spirit allows us to see the true essence of what is happening. The Petersburger is a “zero” among many “zeros” like him. Only madness can distinguish it. The madness of the heroes is their “finest hour”, because only by losing their minds do they become individuals, losing the automatism characteristic of a person from the bureaucratic mass. Madness is one of the forms of people's rebellion against the omnipotence of the social environment.
The stories “The Nose” and “The Overcoat” depict two poles of St. Petersburg life: absurd phantasmagoria and everyday reality. These poles, however, are not as far from each other as they might seem at first glance. The plot of “The Nose” is based on the most fantastic of all city “stories”. Gogol's fantasy in this work is fundamentally different from the folk poetic fantasy in the collection “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka.” There is no source of the fantastic here: the nose is part of St. Petersburg mythology, which arose without the intervention of otherworldly forces. This mythology is special - bureaucratic, generated by the omnipotent invisible - the “electricity” of the rank.
The nose behaves as befits a “significant person” who has the rank of state councilor: he prays in the Kazan Cathedral, walks along Nevsky Prospect, visits the department, makes visits, and plans to leave for Riga using someone else’s passport. Where it came from is of no interest to anyone, including the author. One can even assume that he “fell from the moon,” because, according to Poprishchin, the madman from “Notes of a Madman,” “the moon is usually made in Hamburg,” and is inhabited by noses. Any, even the most delusional, assumption is not excluded. The main thing is different - the “two-facedness” of the nose. According to some signs, this is definitely the real nose of Major Kovalev (his mark is a pimple on the left side), that is, a part that has separated from the body. But the second “face” of the nose is social.
The image of the nose is the result of an artistic generalization that reveals social phenomenon St. Petersburg. The point of the story is not that the nose became a man, but that he became a fifth-class official. To those around him, the nose is not a nose at all, but a “civilian general.” They see the rank - the person is not there, so the substitution is completely invisible. People for whom the essence of a person is limited to his rank and position do not recognize the mummer. Fantasy in “The Nose” is a mystery that is nowhere and is everywhere; it is the terrible irrationality of St. Petersburg life itself, in which any delusional vision is indistinguishable from reality.
The plot of “The Overcoat” is based on an insignificant St. Petersburg incident, the hero of which was “ little man", "eternal titular adviser" Bashmachkin. The purchase of a new overcoat turns into a shock for him, commensurate with the disappearance of the nose from the face of Major Kovalev. Gogol did not limit himself to a sentimental biography of an official who tried to achieve justice and died from “official scolding” by a “significant person.” At the end of the story, Bashmachkin becomes part of St. Petersburg mythology, a fantastic avenger, a “noble robber.”
Bashmachkin’s mythological “double” is a kind of antithesis to the nose. The official nose is a reality of St. Petersburg that does not confuse or terrify anyone. “A dead man in the form of an official”, “tearing off all sorts of overcoats from everyone’s shoulders, without distinguishing rank and title,” brings horror to living noses, “significant persons.” He eventually gets to his offender, “one significant person,” and only after that he forever leaves the bureaucratic Petersburg that offended him during his lifetime and was indifferent to his death.
In 1835, the plans for Gogol’s comedy “The Inspector General” and the poem “Dead Souls” arose, which determined the entire subsequent fate of Gogol the artist.
Gogol revealed the place of “The Inspector General” in his work and the level of artistic generalization to which he strove when working on a comedy in “The Author's Confession” (1847). The “thought” of the comedy, he emphasized, belongs to Pushkin. Following Pushkin’s advice, the writer “decided to collect everything bad in Russia in one pile... and laugh at everything at once.” Gogol defined a new quality of laughter: in “The Inspector General” it is “high” laughter, due to the height of the spiritual and practical task facing the author. The comedy became a test of strength before working on the grandiose epic about modern Russia. After creating The Inspector General, the writer felt “the need for a complete essay, where there would be more than one thing to laugh at.” Thus, work on “The Inspector General” is a turning point in Gogol’s creative development.
The first edition of the comedy was created in a few months, by December 1835. Its premiere, which was attended by Nicholas I, took place on April 19, 1836 on the stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg (the first edition was also published in 1836). The performance made a depressing impression on Gogol: he was dissatisfied with the acting, the indifference of the audience, and most of all, with the fact that his plan remained unclear. “I wanted to run away from everything,” the writer recalled.
However, it was not the flaws in the stage interpretation of The Inspector General that were main reason author's acute dissatisfaction. Gogol was inspired by an unrealistic hope: he expected to see not only a stage performance, but also a real effect produced by his art - a moral shock to the spectators-officials who recognized themselves in the “mirror” of the work. The disappointment experienced by the writer prompted him to “explain” to the public, comment on the meaning of the play, especially its ending, and take a critical look at his own work. Two commentaries were conceived: “An excerpt from a letter written by the author after the first performance of “The Inspector General” to a writer” and the play “Theatrical tour after the presentation of a new comedy.” Gogol completed these “explanations” with the public in 1841-1842. Dissatisfaction with the play led to its thorough revision: the second, revised edition was published in 1841, and the final edition of “The Inspector General,” in which, in particular, the famous epigraph “There is no point in blaming the mirror if your face is crooked,” was published in 1842 . in the 4th volume of "Works".
On June 6, 1836, after all the stormy emotions caused by the premiere of The Government Inspector, Gogol went abroad with the intention of “deeply thinking about his duties as an author, his future creations.” Gogol’s main work during his stay abroad, mainly in Italy, which lasted for 12 years (he finally returned to Russia only in 1848), was “Dead Souls.” The idea for the work arose in the fall of 1835, at which time the first sketches were made. However, work on the “true novel” (its plot, according to Gogol, belonged to Pushkin, like the “thought” of “The Inspector General”) was crowded out by other plans. Initially, he wanted to write a satirical adventure novel, showing in it “albeit from one side all of Rus'” (letter to A.S. Pushkin dated October 7, 1835).
Only after leaving Russia, the writer was able to seriously begin working on “ Dead souls" A new stage in the implementation of the plan began in the summer of 1836. Gogol thought over the plan of the work, redoing everything written in St. Petersburg. “Dead Souls” was now conceived as a three-volume work. Having strengthened the satirical principle, he sought to balance it with a new, non-comic element - lyricism and the high pathos of the author's digressions. In letters to friends, defining the scale of his work, Gogol assured that “all of Rus' will appear in it.” Thus, the previous thesis - about the depiction of Russia “albeit from one side” - was canceled. The understanding of the genre of “Dead Souls” gradually changed: the writer moved further and further from the traditions of various genre varieties novel - an adventurous picaresque, morally descriptive, travel novel. From the end of 1836, Gogol called his work a poem, abandoning the previously used designation of the genre - a novel.
Gogol’s understanding of the meaning and significance of his work changed. He came to the conclusion that his pen was guided by a higher predestination, which was determined by the significance of “Dead Souls” for Russia. A firm conviction arose that his work was a feat in the writing field, which he accomplished despite the misunderstanding and hostility of his contemporaries: only his descendants could appreciate it. After Pushkin’s death, the shocked Gogol perceived “Dead Souls” as a “sacred testament” of his teacher and friend - he became more and more convinced of his chosenness. However, work on the poem progressed slowly. Gogol decided to organize a series of readings of the unfinished work abroad, and at the end of 1839-beginning of 1840 in Russia, where he came for several months.
In 1840, immediately after leaving Russia, Gogol became seriously ill. After recovery, which the writer regarded as “ miraculous healing", he began to consider "Dead Souls" as a "holy work." According to Gogol, God sent him illness, put him through painful trials and brought him to the light so that he could fulfill his highest plans. Inspired by the idea of moral achievement and messianism, during 1840 and 1841. Gogol completed work on the first volume and brought the manuscript to Russia. The second and third volumes were being considered at the same time. Having passed through censorship, the first volume was published in May 1842 under the title “The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls.”
The last period of Gogol’s work (1842-1852) began with a sharp controversy around the first volume of “Dead Souls,” which reached its climax in the summer of 1842. Judgments about the poem were expressed not only in the press (the most striking episode was the dispute between V.G. Belinsky and K. S. Aksakov about the genre, and in fact about the meaning and meaning of “Dead Souls”), but also in private correspondence, diaries, in high society salons and student circles. Gogol closely followed this “terrible noise” raised by his work. Having gone abroad again after the publication of the first volume, he wrote the second volume, which, in his opinion, should have explained to the public general plan his work and remove all objections. Gogol compared the first volume with the threshold of the future " great poem", which is still under construction and will have to solve the riddle of his soul.
Work on the second volume, which lasted ten years, was difficult, with interruptions and long stops. The first edition was completed in 1845, but did not satisfy Gogol: the manuscript was burned. After this, the book “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends” was prepared (published on the eve of 1847). From 1846 to 1851, the second edition of the second volume was created, which Gogol intended to publish.
However, the book was never published: its manuscript was either not completely completed, or was burned in February 1852 along with other personal papers a few days before the writer’s death, which occurred on February 21 (March 4), 1852.
“Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends” is Gogol’s vivid religious, moral, social and aesthetic manifesto. This book, like other religious and moral works of the 1840s, summed up his spiritual development and revealed the drama of his human and literary fate. Gogol's word became messianic, prophetic: he created extremely sincere and merciless confessions and at the same time passionate sermons. The writer was inspired by the idea of spiritual self-knowledge, which was supposed to help him learn “the nature of man in general and the soul of man in general.” Gogol’s coming to Christ is natural: in him he saw “the key to the human soul,” “the height of spiritual knowledge.” In the “Author's Confession,” the writer noted that he “spent several years inside himself,” “educating himself like a student.” In the last decade of his life he sought to realize a new creative principle: First create yourself, then a book that will tell others how to create themselves.
However, the last years of the writer’s life were not only steps of climbing the ladder of high spirituality, which was revealed to him in civil and religious feats. This is the time of a tragic duel with himself: having written almost all of his artistic works by 1842, Gogol passionately desired, but was never able to transform the spiritual truths that had been revealed to him into artistic values.
Gogol's artistic world took shape by the early 1840s. After the publication of the first volume of “Dead Souls” and “The Overcoat” in 1842, there was essentially a process of transforming Gogol the artist into Gogol the preacher, striving to become the spiritual mentor of Russian society. This can be treated differently, but the very fact of Gogol’s turn and movement towards new goals that go far beyond artistic creativity, no doubt.
Gogol always, with the possible exception of early works, was far from “pure” art. Even in his youth, he dreamed of a civil career and, as soon as he entered literature, he realized his writing as a kind of civil service. A writer, in his opinion, should be not only an artist, but also a teacher, moralist, and preacher. Note that this feature of Gogol distinguishes him among his contemporary writers: neither Pushkin nor Lermontov considered the “teacher’s” function main task art. Pushkin generally rejected any attempts by the “rabble” to force the writer into any kind of “service.” Lermontov, an unusually sensitive “diagnostician” of the spiritual vices of his contemporaries, did not consider the writer’s task to “cure” society. On the contrary, everything mature creativity Gogol (from the mid-1830s) was inspired by the idea of preaching.
However, his sermon had a special character: Gogol is a comic writer, his element is laughter: humor, irony, satire. “Laughing” Gogol expressed in his works the idea of what a person should not be and what his vices are. The world of the writer’s most important works—“The Inspector General” and “Dead Souls” (excluding the second, unfinished volume)—is a world of “anti-heroes,” people who have lost those qualities without which a person turns into a useless “sky-smoker” or even a “hole in humanity.”
In the works written after the first collection “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka,” Gogol proceeded from the idea of a moral norm, a model, which is quite natural for a moralist writer. In the last years of his life, Gogol formulated the ideals that inspired him already at the beginning of his writing career. We find a remarkable imperative addressed both to “man in general” and to “Russian man”, and at the same time the writer’s credo of Gogol himself, for example, in the outlines of an unsent letter to V.G. Belinsky (summer 1847): “Man must remember that he not at all a material brute, but a high citizen of high heavenly citizenship. Until he lives at least to some extent the life of a heavenly citizen, until then earthly citizenship will not come into order.”
Gogol the artist is not a dispassionate “protocolist.” He loves his heroes even “little black ones,” that is, with all their shortcomings, vices, absurdities, he is indignant at them, sad with them, leaving them hope for “recovery.” His works have a pronounced personal character. The personality of the writer, his judgments, open or veiled forms of expression of ideals are manifested not only in direct appeals to the reader (“The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich,” “Petersburg” stories, “Dead Souls”), but also in how Gogol sees his heroes, the world of things that surround them, their everyday affairs, everyday troubles and “vulgar” conversations. “Objectivity”, love for things, a heap of details - the entire “physical”, material world of his works is shrouded in an atmosphere of secret teaching.
Like a wise mentor, Gogol did not tell readers what is “good”, but pointed out what is “bad” - in Russia, in Russian society, in Russian people. The firmness of his own convictions should have led to the negative example remaining in the reader’s mind, disturbing him, teaching him without lecturing. Gogol wanted the person he depicted to “remain like a nail in the head, and his image seemed so alive that it was difficult to get rid of him”, so that “insensitively” (our italics - Author) “good Russian characters and properties of people” became attractive, and the “bad” ones are so unattractive that “the reader will not even love them in himself if he finds them.” “This is where I believe my writing lies,” Gogol emphasized.
Note that Gogol treated his reader differently than Pushkin (remember the images of the reader? - “friend”, “enemy”, “buddy” of the Author - in “Eugene Onegin”) or Lermontov (the image of an indifferent or hostile contemporary reader, whom “spangles and deceptions entertain”, created in the poem “Poet”). For Gogol, a moralist writer, the reader of his books is a “student” reader, whose duty is to listen carefully to the “lesson” taught by a wise and demanding mentor in an entertaining way.
Gogol loves to joke and laugh, knowing how and with what to attract the attention of his “students.” But his main goal is that, after leaving the “class”, leaving Gogol’s “laughing room”, that is, closing the book written by him, a comic writer, the reader would think bitterly about the imperfections of the country in which he lives, people who are little different from himself, and, of course, about his own vices.
Please note: the moral ideal of a writer, according to Gogol, should be manifested “insensitively,” not in what he says, but in how he depicts. It is by depicting, capturing and enlarging in his heroes even the “infinitesimal”, “vulgar” (that is, everyday, familiar) traits of their characters that Gogol teaches, instructs, and preaches. His moral position is expressed in artistic expression, which has a dual function: it contains both sermon and confession. As Gogol never tired of emphasizing, when addressing a person, and even more so when instructing him, one must begin with oneself, with self-knowledge and spiritual self-improvement.
Gogol is often called the “Russian Rabelais”, the “Russian Swift”. Indeed, in the first half of the 19th century. he was the largest comic writer in Russia. Gogol's laughter, like the laughter of his great predecessors, is a formidable, destructive weapon that spared neither the authorities, nor the class arrogance of the nobility, nor the bureaucratic machine of the autocracy. But Gogol’s laughter is special - it is the laughter of a creator, a moralist-preacher. Perhaps none of the Russian satirists laughed at the social vices and shortcomings of people, inspired by such clear moral goals as Gogol. Behind his laughter are ideas about what should be - about what people should be, the relationships between them, society and the state.
From school, many applicants firmly know that Gogol “convicted”, “exposed” “officials, serfdom and serf-owners,” but often do not think about what inspired the writer, what “wonderful power” forced him to “look around at the whole enormously rushing life, look at it through laughter visible to the world and invisible, unknown to him tears” (“Dead Souls,” vol. first, chapter 7). Many modern readers of Gogol do not have a clear answer to the questions: what were civil and moral ideals writer, in the name of which he criticized serfdom and serf owners, what is the meaning of Gogol’s laughter?
Gogol was a convinced conservative, a monarchist, who never raised the question of change social order who did not dream of social upheaval or public freedom. The very word “freedom” is alien to Gogol’s dictionary. For the writer, the Russian monarch is * “God’s anointed,” the embodiment of the power of the state and the highest moral authority. He is able to punish any social evil, find and “cure” any distortion in human souls.
In Gogol's works, Russia appears as a country of bureaucratic officials. The image of the Russian bureaucracy created by the writer is an image of a clumsy, absurd government alienated from the people. The point of his criticism of the bureaucracy is not to “destroy” it with laughter - the writer criticizes “bad” officials who do not fulfill the duties assigned to them by the tsar, who do not understand their duty to the Fatherland. He had no doubt that any official who has “full knowledge of his position” and does not act “beyond the limits and boundaries specified by law” is necessary to govern a huge country. Bureaucracy, according to Gogol, is good for Russia if it understands the significance of the “important place” it occupies and is not affected by self-interest and abuse.
Vivid images of landowners - “sky smokers”, “lying stones” - were created in many of Gogol’s works: from the story “Ivan Fedorovich Shponka and His Aunt” to “Dead Souls”. Meaning satirical image landowners-serfs - in pointing out the nobles who own land and people to the “height of their rank”, to their moral duty. Gogol called the nobility a “vessel” containing “moral nobility, which should spread throughout the entire Russian land in order to give an idea to all other classes why the highest class is called the flower of the people.” The Russian nobility, according to Gogol, “is beautiful in its truly Russian core, despite the temporary growth of foreign husks, it is “the flower of our own people.”
A real landowner, in Gogoli’s understanding, is a good owner and shepherd of the peasants. In order to live up to his God-ordained destiny, he must spiritually influence his serfs. “Explain to them the whole truth,” Gogol advised the “Russian landowner” in “Selected Bridges from Correspondence with Friends,” “that the soul of a person is more valuable than anything in the world and that first of all you will see to it that one of them does not destroy his soul and did not betray it to eternal torment." The peasantry, thus, was considered by the writer as an object of touching care of a strict, highly moral landowner." Gogol's heroes - alas! - are far from this bright ideal.
For whom did Gogol, who “always stood for public enlightenment,” write, and to whom did he preach? Not to the peasantry, “farmers”, but to the Russian nobility, who had deviated from their direct destiny, who had left the right path - serving the people, the Tsar and Russia. In the “Author's Confession,” the writer emphasized that “before enlightening the people themselves, it is more useful to educate those who have a close encounter with the people, from whom the people often suffer.”
Literature, in moments of social disorder and unrest, should, according to Gogol, inspire the entire nation with its example. Setting an example and being useful are the main responsibilities of a true writer. This is the most important point of Gogol’s ideological and aesthetic program, the leading idea of his mature period of creativity.
The unusual thing about Gogol the artist is that not a single completed and published work of art he does not express his ideals directly, does not instruct his readers openly. Laughter is the prism through which his views are refracted. However, Belinsky rejected the very possibility of a straightforward interpretation of Gogol’s laughter. “Gogol depicts not strangers, but a person in general... the critic emphasized. “He is as much a tragedian as he is a comedian... he is rarely one or the other alone... but more often than not he is both.” In his opinion, “comicism is a narrow word to express Gogol’s talent. His comedy is higher than what we are used to calling comedy.” Having called Gogol’s heroes “monsters,” Belinsky astutely noted that they are “not cannibals,” “in fact, they have neither vices nor virtues.” Despite the whimsicality and comic incongruities, enhanced by laughter, are people quite ordinary, not only “ negative heroes"of their era, but also people "in general", recreated with extraordinary "largeness".
The heroes of Gogol’s satirical works are “failed” people, worthy of both ridicule and regret. Creating their most detailed social and everyday portraits, the writer pointed out what, in his opinion, “sits” in every person, regardless of his rank, title, class affiliation and specific life circumstances. Specific historical and eternal, universal traits in Gogol’s heroes form a unique fusion. Each of them is not only a “human document” of the Nicholas era, but also an image-symbol of universal human significance. After all, as Belinsky noted, even “the best of us are not alien to the shortcomings of these monsters.”
It is very difficult to describe briefly - it was too multifaceted literary heritage and significance for the development of Russian literature.
The Master's Path
It is difficult to divide a writer’s creative path into distinct stages characterized by general topics and genres of works. Materiality and mysticism, humor and tragedy, realism and romance always coexisted in his stories, novellas, and plays.
Conventionally, they try to divide Gogol’s work, like any other writer, into stages: the beginning of the path is the collections “”.
In this collection of stories on themes of Ukrainian folklore, supposedly retold from the words of an old Cossack, the writer in a fairy-tale and fantastic style describes the past and present of Ukrainian peasants, their way of life and prejudices, not forgetting social contradictions; youth - collections of stories "Mirgorod" and "Arabesques" combine works on various topics and in different genres.
They contain a real knightly romance "", the literary thriller "Viy" with a description of the life of the small nobility and officials, reflections on the topic of art, history, the complexity of human relationships; maturity - plays.
"", "Marriage", "Players", the plot of which not only sharply ridiculed contemporary writer reality, but to this day has not lost its relevance.
Exceptions to the rules
Despite this typical division for the work of any writer, many researchers of Gogol’s work believe that, in fact, only two works can be attributed to separate stages of development, namely, to the beginning of the path and to the pinnacle of creativity:
- 1. "Hanz Küchelgarten" - the beginning of creativity. The writer's first work. During the writer’s youth, all landowners and nobles whiled away their time by scribbling poetry on romantic themes. Gogol did not escape this either. His only rhymed work did not delight either his contemporaries or future generations.
- 2. " " - the crown of the great master's creation. The work, called a “poem” by the author, absorbed all of Gogol’s writing experience and combined all aspects of his work.
The story “The Overcoat” also stands out. A terrible story about the primitive dreams of a man in a harsh world, about his willingness to give his worthless life for a pathetic coat. This work is still relevant now, despite consumer abundance, no less than in the time of Gogol.
Separately, I would also like to say about mysticism, one way or another present in most of his works. In "Terrible Revenge" and "Dead Souls", in "The Night Before Christmas" and "The Overcoat" - mysticism not only frightens the reader, but also helps explain the worldview of the characters.
Significance in history
The writer's work had a huge influence on all Russian literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He was highly valued both during the life and after the death of the writer (probably the only example in history). Without Gogol there would be no a. The works of the great author are translated into all languages of the world. Many of them were filmed.
Such popularity of his characters and plots is explained by the fact that the problems raised in his works: veneration of rank, corruption, superstition, quarrelsomeness, poverty, exist to this day in all countries of the world and will exist for a long time. But even when they disappear, Gogol’s books will serve as a source of knowledge about these disgusting phenomena.
Perhaps the legacy of no other Russian writer makes such an eclectic impression as Gogol’s work. It seems to consist of three completely different spheres: colorful “Little Russian” stories with a vibrant atmosphere of folk festivals; crypt-like streets of St. Petersburg, killing every sprout of living life; the free running of the troika - and the rogue Chichikov carried away by it, just as free and just as homeless. Each of these topics contains enough material for inspiration. Each image is like a core on which you can string episodes, portraits, metaphors.
But how did all this come together in one creative work? Where is the area of their intersection and the principle of unity? And does it even exist?
In fact, the problems of Nikolai Gogol’s creativity, with all its diversity, are logical and tightly tied to certain circumstances of his everyday and creative life.
Gogol entered literature on the wave of pan-European interest in folk legends and everyday life, and here his Ukrainian origin served him well. Little Russian flavor and the inimitable simplicity of Rudy Panka, the narrator of stories from folk life- this is what made his writing style unique. From the pages of Gogol’s works, witches and devils, rural young women and beautiful Polish women poured out, and everyone spoke in such an original and vibrant language that this language itself became the main characteristic of his style. And it cannot be said that all these mythological and romantic motifs soon exhausted themselves; on the contrary, they gave rise to a wave of imitations.
But for Nikolai Gogol, another period of life has already begun - and a new theme in his work. A small, oppressed official, strangled by circumstances - this is who becomes the main character of the stories of the St. Petersburg period. A superficial glance sees nothing in common between him and the blacksmith Vakula - and is mistaken. Gogol's man remained the same, only the world around him changed. And if he could navigate the carnival colorfulness of Little Russian stories, because he had moral support in the form of strict faith and common sense, then everything is different here. A hostile world, where official relations reign, where there is no place for warmth, and every emotional movement takes exclusively ugly forms - this is what “Petersburg Tales” is. A person has enough courage to fight against the Poles in an unequal battle; you won’t scare them with a witch flying out of the chimney - but how can you resist a nose that has put on an bureaucratic uniform and is rapidly moving up the ranks? And the entire problematic is built on this contradiction: the living mind understands that buying up the dead is absurd, but absurdity has become the principle of this world - and we have nothing to object to
Here is the very unique feature by which we can measure the unique originality of Gogol’s work. He perfectly accurately sees every absurdity, every absurdity and knows how to emphasize it with one or two details that simply shout: listen to us, think about it, we are the key to this absurd reality. “Russian men” that attracted Chichikov’s gaze (as if there were Finnish or French men), a goat that screamed in an “inhuman voice”, lush metaphors in which the objects and phenomena being compared are lost - everything in Gogol’s language is too much, everything is excessive.
And in this excess, the carnival reality of Little Russian stories comes to life, shines through the gloomy veil that has covered the expanses of “Dead Souls” and all of Gogol’s later works. It continues to exist as an alternative, as a hint of another reality - beautiful and alluring, which Nikolai Gogol was looking for all his life, and not finding it, he simply created it in his fantastic stories.