“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 options 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.”
Akakiy 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 30s, 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 like protection and justification for contemporaries in “ little man"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 trampled upon, revealed new page in the history of Russian realism, filled with writers of the “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 feudal oppression of their Polish landowners. “Men” constitute a special social category, different from “Cossacks” characters, 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 dissatisfaction of the peasants is also indicated by the thoughts of one of the military leaders: “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 entire subsequent work of the writer, a single and common problem 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, in “Selected Places” speaking 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 one of the best works of the uncensored democratic press, which have retained enormous, living significance to this day.”
However, it should be borne in mind 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 far from complete, mutilated by censorship. 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 referring to 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 lifted 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.
The influence of Gogol’s creativity on the development of Russian literature.
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol - the most mysterious star in the firmament of Russian literature of the 19th and 20th centuries - still amazes the reader and viewer with the magical power of depiction and the most unusual originality of his path to the Motherland, to the solution and even... the creation of a future for it. A bias towards the Future... Gogol - let us remember once again Pushkin’s dream “The rumor about me will spread throughout Great Rus'”, and Mayakovsky’s bashful hope that sounded a hundred years later “I want to be understood” home country“- completed the idea of moving into the Future, into the alarming and, as many believed, into the “beautiful Dapyoko”, which will not only be cruel to people. And in this regard, it is closest to much in Russian folklore, in folk songs
“It is impossible to forget anything that Gogol said, even little things, even unnecessary things,” noted F. M. Dostoevsky. “Gogol had the chisel of Phidias,” wrote the philosopher and critic of the 20th century V.V. Rozanov. - How many words are dedicated to Petrushka, Chichikov’s lackey? And I remember no less than Nikolai Rostov. And Osip? In fact... The melancholy Osip, Khlestakov’s servant in “The Inspector General,” says just that, warning his master, the inspired writer of the poem about his own importance: “Leave from here. By God, it’s time,” and accepts gifts from merchants, including... a commemorative rope (“give me a rope, and the rope will come in handy on the road”). But this “string in reserve” was remembered by many generations of Russian viewers.
And with what supernatural completeness were combined in Gogol two of the most beautiful qualities that live separately in many, with the exception of Pushkin: exceptional vital observation and an equally rare power of imagination. If the artistic image as the main exponent of the spiritual life of Russia, the concentration of its spiritual life before Gogol was, as it were, distant from facts, from factuality, then in Gogol’s work - long before M. Gorky! — the fact seemed to have moved deeper into the image, sharpened the image, made it heavier.
From Gogol’s reality, incredibly wide trousers, the fatal pipe, Taras Bulba’s “cradle”, and the dried-out “singing doors” in the idyllic house of “old-world landowners” will forever appear in memory. And the mysterious melody of “a string ringing in the fog,” from Poprishchin’s St. Petersburg fantastic dreams (“Notes of a Madman”), which amazed even A. Blok.
To this day it is difficult to decide whether we “remember” in detail even the magical bird-three itself, this “simple, it seems, road projectile”? Or, each time, together with Gogol, do we “compose” this winged troika in our own way, “complement”, decipher the transcendental mystery of the indomitable, terrifying movement? The immense mystery of the “smoking road”, the secret of horses unknown to the world with incredible, but seemingly visible “whirlwinds in their manes”? Probably, Gogol’s contemporary I. Kireevsky was right when he said that after reading“Dead souls” give us “hope and thought about the great purpose of our fatherland.”
But to this day the unanswered question remains mysterious - the epigraph to all post-Gogol literature - “Rus, where are you rushing to? Give an answer. Doesn't give an answer! And what could be the answer if the Rus'-troika rushes “through Korobochek and Sobakevich” (P.V. Palievsky)? If two most famous writer beginning of the twentieth century, creating their own image of Gogol, close to symbolism, they made up this Rus'-troika “of the crazy Poprishchin, the witty Khlestakov and the prudent Chichikov” (D.S. Merezhkovsky) or?. “Gogol the rich: not one, but two troikas - Nozdryov - Chichikov - Manilov and Korobochka - Plyushkin - Sobakevich... Nozdryov - Chichikov - Manilov soar through the forests and mountains of life under the clouds - an airy troika. They don’t build life, but the owners - another trio: Korobochka - Plyushkin - Sobakevich.”
What did Gogol teach all subsequent Russian literature?
The usual answer is that he brought Laughter as an element of life to the fore, that viewers and readers in Russia have never laughed so much - after D. Fonvizin’s “The Minor” with his Prostakovs, Skotinins and Mitrofanushka, after A. Griboyedov’s “Woe from Wit”, - how they laughed along with Gogol, is hardly accurate in everything. Gogol’s laughter in “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” (1832) is still bright, light, and sometimes funny, although often the appearances of all kinds of sorcerers, sorcerers, and moon thieves alternate with continuous dances that are frightening in their automatism, with “hopak”, as if protecting this optimism . An uncontrollable surge of some kind of desperate mischief holds together the ideal and idyllic world.
And what is the laughter in the “Petersburg stories”, in the entire Gogolian demonology of Petersburg, this most fatal, deliberate city in Russia? Gogol removes in these stories the funny or scary figures of the bearers of evil, all the visual mischievous fantasy and devilry, removes somewhere Basavryuk, the witch lady, mermaids, sorcerers - but some kind of faceless, boundless evil reigns in his Petersburg. For the first time in Russian prose, that “diabolism” is born, that world evil, which will later be “disenchanted” by Bulgakov in “The Master and Margarita” with his Satan Woland, and Platonov in many plays, and of course, A. Bely in “Paterburg” ", F.K. Sologub in "The Little Demon" and even Shukshin in his phantasmagoria "Until the third roosters" and "In the morning they woke up...". Even Dostoevsky, and Sukhovo-Kobylin with his dramatic trilogy “The Wedding of Krechinsky”, “The Affair”, “The Death of Tarepkin”, as well as Gogol’s “The Nose” with its deceptive figurativeness, false concreteness, terrible ghostliness, came out of more than one “Overcoat”. fear of space, the desire to shield oneself from the encroaching emptiness... Squares of hypertrophied sizes in St. Petersburg... reflect incomplete habitability, little processing of space in early St. Petersburg (it is no coincidence that Shoes are not robbed in a wide square, whereas in Moscow this was done in narrow alleys). The fear of St. Petersburg, the evil itself in Gogol’s “Petersburg tales”, is no longer a nasty neighbor-devil, a sorcerer, or Basavryuk. The writer does not see the carriers of living evil, the carriers of witchcraft. The entire Nevsky Prospect is a continuous phantasmagoria, a deception: “Everything is a deception, everything is a dream, everything is not what it seems!” With this spell, Gogol concludes Nevsky Prospekt, an alarming story about tragic death the idealist artist Piskarev and the happy “enlightenment”, deliverance from the thirst for revenge of the vulgar lieutenant Pirogov, flogged by the German craftsmen. From this Petersburg, together with Khlestakov, it is fear, the companion and shadow of Petersburg, that will come to the prefabricated provincial city in The Inspector General.
Gogol “sang” (didn’t he sing the funeral service?) of St. Petersburg in such a unique way that many historians later unfairly blamed and reproached him: with him, Gogol, begins the well-known “tarnishing”, the darkening of the image of St. Petersburg, the clouding of its royal beauty, the protracted era of the tragic twilight of Petropol.
It was after Gogol that the tragic Petersburg of Dostoevsky appeared, and the entire disturbing silhouette of the ghost city in the novel “Petersburg” by A. Bely, and that city of A. Blok, where “Above the bottomless pit into eternity, / A trotter flies, gasping for breath...”. Gogol's Petersburg became in the twentieth century the prototype, the basis of that grandiose stage platform for the multi-act action of revolutions, became a city “familiar to tears” (O. Mandelstam), for A. Blok in the poem “The Twelve” and many others.
The scope and depth of contradictions in an artist are often evidence of the greatness of his quest, the transcendence of his hopes and sorrows. Did Gogol, who created the comedy “The Inspector General” (1836), together with the future Khlestakov (he was called Skakunov in the first edition) understand this new, mirage space, full of echoes of the future, did he understand the whole meaning of “The Inspector General,” his brilliant creation?
The funny heroes of “The Inspector General” are extremely distinct, like sculptured figures of officials, inhabitants prefabricated city- as if they were drawn into the field of action of forces alienated, even from the author, into a field of absurdity and delusion. They are wrapped up in some kind of impersonal carousel. They even burst onto the stage, literally squeezing out, tearing down the door, just as Bobchinsky burst into Khlestakov’s room, knocking down the door to the floor, from the corridor. Gogol himself seems to be alienated from comedy, where the element of laughter, the element of action and expressive language. Only at the end of the comedy does he seem to “come to his senses” and tries to attribute both to the audience and to himself a very edifying and sad doubt: “Why are you laughing? You’re laughing at yourself!” By the way, in the text of 1836 this significant remark, a signal to stop the “carousel”, to general petrification, the transformation of sinners into a kind of “pillars of salt”, was not there. Are they, the funny heroes of The Inspector General, really villainous? Such truthful, frank, trusting “villains”, as if begging to soften the punishment, rushing about with their vices, as if laying out everything about themselves in confession, did not exist before Gogol. They behave as if walking under God, convinced that Khlestakov (the messenger of the terrible, St. Petersburg higher power) knows their thoughts and deeds in advance...
“Dead Souls” (1842) is a lonely, even more difficult attempt by Gogol, the direct predecessor of Dostoevsky’s prophetic realism, to express in the most conceptual way the “Russian point of view” on the fate of man in the world, on all his irrational connections, to express through analysis the feelings of conscience and voice vices. The immortal poem is a synthesis of the entire artistic and spiritual experience of the writer and, at the same time, a sharp overcoming of the boundaries of literature, even foreshadowing Tolstoy’s future renunciation of the literary word. Leo Tolstoy, by the way, will speak almost like Gogol about the spiritual exhaustion, the supertension of the cognizing thought of the Russian writer, about his suffering conscience and the torment of the word: for him in later years, on the threshold of the twentieth century, all creativity is the knowledge of the Motherland “at the limit of thought and at the beginning of prayer.”
Gogol is the founder of a great series of grandiose ethical attempts to save Russia by turning it to Christ: it was continued in the sermons of L. Tolstoy, and in S. Yesenin’s often woeful attempts to understand the fate, the whirlwind of events, the actions of those who in Russia in 1917 only “ They sprayed it all around, piled it up / And disappeared under the devil’s whistle.” And even in some kind of sacrifice of V. Mayakovsky: “I will pay for everyone, I will pay for everyone”... The death of A. Blok in 1921 at the moment when music disappeared in the era is also a distant version of “Gogol’s self-immolation.” Gogol “gogolized” many of the decisions and thoughts of writers. It was as if he was trying to move the most motionless, petrified thing, to call everyone along the path of the Rus' Troika. And the mystery of “Dead Souls,” that is, the first volume, with Chichikov’s visits to six landowners (each of them is either “dead” or more alive than the previous one), with the wreckage of the second volume, is most often solved by focusing on the image of the road, on the motives movements. As in “The Inspector General,” Gogol’s thought in “Dead Souls” seems to be rushing through sinful Rus', past the pile of junk in Plyushkin’s house to holy, ideal Rus'. The idea of God-forsaken Rus' is refuted by many insightful, mournful views in the biographies of heroes, including Chichikov. Often the writer hears and sees something that comes to the aid of his despair, his melancholy: “It is still a mystery - this inexplicable revelry, which is heard in our songs, rushes somewhere past life and the song itself, as if burning with the desire for a better homeland.” . His Chichikov, who laughed at Sobakevich’s “comments” on the list of dead souls, suddenly himself creates entire poems about the carpenter Stepan Probka, about the barge hauler Abakum Fyrov, who went to the Volga, where “the revelry of a broad life” and a song “infinite as Rus'” reign.
Gogol's works
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was born on March 20, 1809 in the Poltava province into the family of a small landowner. Their family was quite large. In addition to Nikolai himself, he had six more children: four sisters and a brother."Early" Gogol
Nikolai Vasilyevich spent his childhood years on his parents’ estate, which was located near the village of Dikanka. This place, as the writer himself learned with age, was surrounded by many different legends, beliefs and mysterious traditions, which later resulted in the works of the creator. As expected, his father, Vasily, played a large role in Gogol’s upbringing. He was an ardent admirer of the most various types art, including poetry and funny comedies. As Nikolai and his brother Ivan grew older, they were sent to study at the Poltava district school.Nikolai began taking his first steps in the field of art in 1921. It was during this period of his life that he entered the gymnasium of higher sciences, which at that time was located in Nizhyn. By the way, Gogol was then engaged exclusively in painting, and also acted as an actor in various comedy scenes. He tries himself in many types of art, including literature. At this time, his satire was born, called “Something about Nezhin, or the law is not written for fools,” which, unfortunately, could not be preserved.
In 1828, he finished his studies at the gymnasium and moved to St. Petersburg. Of course, such a change turned out to be not the easiest in the author’s life. He experienced serious financial difficulties, but did not give up. At that time, he made his first attempts in the literary field, first the poem “Italy” appeared, and then under the pseudonym “V. Alov” Gogol prints “an idyll in paintings” “Hanz Küchelgarten”. Actually, such an experiment turned out to be a failure. Critics assessed this work in an extremely negative light, which only strengthened the writer’s difficult mood and existence. Throughout his life, the writer himself treated his creations extremely touchingly and paid attention to their criticism, for which he was very worried and worried.
This greatly touched the writer himself, which is why in 1829 he burned all unsold copies of his works and in July of the same year he went to live abroad - in Germany. However, fate worked out in such a way that the writer literally two months later returned to St. Petersburg again. At the end of 1829 he managed to get into service in the department of state economy and public buildings of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. This period of Gogol's life is perhaps fundamental. The thing is that thanks to such a position, he was able to gain certain experience, as well as the opportunity to capture bureaucratic life as it really is. The civil service disappointed Gogol, quite strongly, but later he passed on this experience to one of his works.
Gogol's works
After such service, he did not give up trying to write interesting works and in 1832 he published one of his most famous books, “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka.” It is based on the legends of the Ukrainian people, songs, fairy tales and beliefs and, naturally, on Gogol’s personal experience. This work created a huge sensation, many admired it, and Gogol himself has since become a very famous cultural figure. Even Pushkin noted that the appearance of this work is an extremely unusual phenomenon in Russian literature.In the same year, already famous Gogol arrives in Moscow. He begins to communicate with M.P. Pogodin, family S.T. Aksakova, M.N. Zagoskin, I.V. and P.V. Kireevsky, and they, in turn, have a great influence on him, on his worldview and development as a writer. Two years later, the writer was appointed associate professor in the Department of General History at St. Petersburg University. At this time, he closely studies the history of Ukraine and its people, which later becomes the basis for another famous and popular work by Gogol - “Taras Bulba”. He finishes another year at the university and comes to the conclusion that he should devote himself completely to creativity and literature.
Naturally, the writer had a lot of free time because of this decision taken, which allows him to devote all his energy only to writing his stories. The year 1835 becomes quite rich for him in creating the most various works. At this time, the collection of stories “Mirgorod” appeared, which included “Old World Landowners”, “Taras Bulba”, “Viy”, etc., and the collection “Arabesques” (on themes of St. Petersburg life).
Immediately after this, Gogol begins to write The Inspector General. As we already know, in writing this work, the writer was helped by his personal experience when he was on public service. Of course, it could not have happened without the help of other famous figures, for example, Pushkin, who gave him a little hint with the plot. The work was written very quickly, and already in January of the following year he read the comedy at an evening at Zhukovsky's (in the presence of Pushkin, P. A. Vyazemsky and some other famous writers). A month later, Gogol is producing on the stage of the Alexandria Theater, and the premiere took place in April of the same year. Indeed, “The Inspector General” created a huge stir among many famous cultural figures of that time and, of course, ordinary readers as well.
The enormous popularity of The Inspector General forced attention to Gogol great amount editors, he was invited to social events, but quite quickly the writer got tired of all this. He left Moscow and went to live abroad. At first he lived in Switzerland, then moved to Paris, but all this time he did not sit idly by, but was busy writing “Dead Souls.” Soon news of Pushkin’s death reached him, which was a real blow.
In the fall of 1839, the writer moved again to Moscow and demonstrated several chapters of Dead Souls. Of course they made an impression on the audience. But despite this, the work was not yet completed and Gogol again left his homeland. In 1840 in Vienna, the writer was overtaken by one of the first attacks of his mental illness. In October of the same year, he returns and reads the last five chapters of Dead Souls. Despite the fact that the public liked the work, it was not allowed to be published in Moscow. Then Gogol sends him to St. Petersburg, where they happily helped him, only on the condition that the name be changed. The work received great success, but from time to time there were negative reviews of the farce. It was an unnecessary caricature, but this did not affect the writer in any way, because he had already gone back to live abroad and work on the second volume of Dead Souls.
During this period of his life, he spends a lot of time preparing to create a collection of essays, but he also continues to work on the second volume. State of mind The writer's life deteriorates significantly, and he tries to find peace at the resorts, but this does not help him much. In 1845, as a result of an exacerbation of his illness, he burned the second volume of Dead Souls. The writer argued this by saying that his new work did not show the roads to the ideal clearly enough.
Last years
IN last years own life the writer traveled very often. In 1847, he published a series of articles written in the form of letters, “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends.” Here the censorship tried very hard, it was changed almost beyond recognition, and the result of its appearance was extremely negative - critics recognized it as weak in artistically. At the same time, the writer is also working on “Reflections on the Divine Liturgy,” which appears only after Gogol’s death. At this time of his life, he paid a lot of attention to religion, believed that he could not work until he bowed to the Holy Sepulcher and went there. In 1850, the writer proposed marriage to A.M. Vielgorskaya, but, unfortunately, is refused. In 1852, he regularly met with Archpriest Matvey Konstantinovsky, a real fanatic and mystic. February of the same year became fatal for Gogol. On the night of February 11-12, the writer orders his servant Semyon to bring a briefcase with his manuscripts. He puts all his notebooks and notes in the fireplace and simply burns them. Only a small part of the draft manuscripts remains, belonging to the various editions of Dead Souls. On February 20, a medical council decides to compulsorily treat Gogol, but, as it turns out, no treatment helps him. The next day the writer dies, and with the words: “The ladder, quickly, give me the ladder!”
Born in the town of Velikiye Sorochintsy, Mirgorod district, Poltava province, in the family of a landowner. They named him Nicholas in honor of the miraculous icon of St. Nicholas, kept in the church of the village of Dikanka.
The Gogols had over 1000 acres of land and about 400 serfs. The writer’s ancestors on his father’s side were hereditary priests, but his grandfather Afanasy Demyanovich left the spiritual career and entered the hetman’s office; it was he who added to his surname Yanovsky another - Gogol, which was supposed to demonstrate the origin of the family from a well-known Ukrainian history 17th century Colonel Evstafy (Ostap) Gogol (this fact, however, does not find sufficient confirmation).
The writer's father, Vasily Afanasyevich Gogol-Yanovsky (1777-1825), served at the Little Russian Post Office, in 1805 he retired with the rank of collegiate assessor and married Maria Ivanovna Kosyarovskaya (1791-1868), who came from a landowner family. According to legend, she was the first beauty in the Poltava region. She married Vasily Afanasyevich at the age of fourteen. In addition to Nikolai, the family had five more children.
Gogol spent his childhood years on his parents' estate Vasilievka (another name is Yanovshchina). Cultural center the region was Kibintsy, the estate of D. P. Troshchinsky (1754-1829), a distant relative of the Gogols, a former minister elected to the district marshals (district leaders of the nobility); Gogol's father acted as his secretary. In Kibintsi there was a large library, there was home theater, for whom Father Gogol wrote comedies, being also its actor and conductor.
In 1818-19, Gogol, together with his brother Ivan, studied at the Poltava district school, and then, in 1820-1821, took lessons from the Poltava teacher Gabriel Sorochinsky, living in his apartment. In May 1821 he entered the gymnasium of higher sciences in Nizhyn. Here he is engaged in painting, participates in performances - as a set designer and as an actor, and with particular success he plays comic roles. 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, the thought of writing has not yet “come to mind” for Gogol; all his aspirations are connected with “public service”; he dreams of a legal career. Gogol’s decision to make this was greatly influenced by Prof. N. G. Belousov, who taught a course in natural law, as well as a general strengthening of freedom-loving sentiments in the gymnasium. In 1827, the “case of freethinking” arose here, which ended with the dismissal of leading professors, including Belousov; Gogol, who sympathized with him, testified in his favor during the investigation.
Having graduated from the gymnasium in 1828, Gogol, together with another graduate A. S. Danilevsky (1809-1888), went to St. Petersburg in December. 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 harsh and mocking reviews from N. A. Polevoy and later a condescending and sympathetic review from O. M. Somov (1830), which intensified Gogol’s difficult mood.
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. From April 1830 to March 1831 he served in the department of appanages (first as a scribe, then as an assistant to the clerk), under the command of the famous idyllic poet V.I. Panaev. His stay in the offices caused Gogol deep disappointment in the “state service,” but it provided him with rich material for future works that depicted bureaucratic life and the functioning of the state machine.
During this period, “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” (1831-1832) was published. They aroused almost universal admiration.
The pinnacle of Gogol’s fiction is the “St. Petersburg story” “The Nose” (1835; published in 1836), an extremely bold grotesque that anticipated some trends in twentieth-century art. In contrast to both the provincial and metropolitan world was the story "Taras Bulba", which captured that moment in the national past when the people ("Cossacks"), defending their sovereignty, acted integrally, together and, moreover, as a force that determined the nature of pan-European history.
In the fall of 1835, he began writing “The Inspector General,” the plot of which was suggested by Pushkin; the work progressed so successfully that on January 18, 1836, he read the comedy at an evening with Zhukovsky (in the presence of Pushkin, P. A. Vyazemsky and others), and in February-March he was already busy staging it on the stage of the Alexandria Theater. The play premiered on April 19. May 25 - premiere in Moscow, at the Maly Theater.
In June 1836, Gogol left St. Petersburg for Germany (in total, he lived abroad for about 12 years). He spends the end of summer and autumn in Switzerland, where he begins to work on the continuation of Dead Souls. The plot was also suggested by Pushkin. The work began back in 1835, before the writing of The Inspector General, and immediately acquired a wide scope. In St. Petersburg, several chapters were read to Pushkin, causing him both approval and at the same time a depressing feeling.
In November 1836, Gogol moved to Paris, where he met A. Mickiewicz. Then he moves to Rome. Here in February 1837, in the midst of work on “Dead Souls,” he received the shocking news of Pushkin’s death. In a fit of “inexpressible melancholy” and bitterness, Gogol feels the “present work” as the poet’s “sacred testament.”
In December 1838, Zhukovsky arrived in Rome, accompanying the heir (Alexander II). Gogol was extremely educated by the poet's arrival and showed him Rome; I drew views with him.
In September 1839, accompanied by Pogodin, Gogol came to Moscow and began reading the chapters of “Dead Souls” - first in the Aksakovs’ house, then, after moving to St. Petersburg in October, at Zhukovsky’s, at Prokopovich’s in the presence of his old friends. A total of 6 chapters have been read. There was universal delight.
In May 1842, “The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls” was published.
After the first, brief, but very commendable reviews, the initiative was seized by Gogol’s detractors, who accused him of being a caricature, a farce and slandering reality. Later, N.A. Polevoy came up with an article that bordered on denunciation.
All this controversy took place in the absence of Gogol, who went abroad in June 1842. Before leaving, he entrusts Prokopovich with the publication of the first collection of his works. Gogol spends the summer in Germany; in October, together with N. M. Yazykov, he moves to Rome. He is working on the 2nd volume of Dead Souls, which apparently began back in 1840; He devotes a lot of time to preparing his collected works. “The Works of Nikolai Gogol” in four volumes was published at the beginning of 1843, since censorship suspended the two volumes that had already been printed for a month.
The three years (1842-1845), which followed the writer’s departure abroad, was a period of intense and difficult work on the 2nd volume of Dead Souls.
At the beginning of 1845, Gogol showed signs of a new mental crisis. The writer goes to Paris to rest and “recuperate”, but returns to Frankfurt in March. Is the streak of treatment and consultations with various medical celebrities, moving from one resort to another beginning? then to Halle, then to Berlin, then to Dresden, then to Carlsbad. 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 (in “Four Letters to Various Persons Regarding “Dead Souls” - “Selected Places”) Gogol explained this step by saying that the book did not show “paths and roads” to the ideal clearly enough.
Gogol continues to work on the 2nd volume, however, experiencing increasing difficulties, he is distracted by other matters: he composes a preface to the 2nd edition of the poem (published in 1846) “To the reader from the author”, writes “The Inspector's Denouement” (published 1856 ), in which the idea of a “prefabricated city” in the spirit of the theological tradition (“On the City of God” by St. Augustine) was refracted into the subjective plane of the “spiritual city” of an individual, which brought to the fore the requirements of spiritual education and improvement of everyone.
In 1847, “Selected Places from Correspondence with Friends” was published in St. Petersburg. The book performed a dual function - both an explanation of why the 2nd volume has not yet been written, and some compensation for it: Gogol proceeded to present his main ideas - doubt about the effective, teaching function fiction, a utopian program for all “classes” and “ranks” to fulfill their duty, from the peasant to the highest officials and the king.
The release of Selected Places brought a real critical storm upon its author. All these responses overtook the writer on the road: in May 1847, he headed from Naples to Paris, then to Germany. Gogol cannot recover from the “blows” he received: “My health... was shaken by this devastating story for me about my book... I marvel at how I was still alive.”
Gogol spends the winter of 1847-1848 in Naples, intensively reading Russian periodicals, new fiction, historical and folklore books - “in order to plunge deeper into the indigenous Russian spirit.” At the same time, he is preparing for a long-planned pilgrimage to holy places. In January 1848 he went to Jerusalem by sea. In April 1848, after a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Gogol finally returned to Russia, where he spent most of his time in Moscow, making visits to St. Petersburg, as well as in his native places - Little Russia.
In mid-October, Gogol lives in Moscow. In 1849-1850, Gogol reads individual chapters of the 2nd volume of Dead Souls to his friends. General approval and delight inspire the writer, who now works with redoubled energy. In the spring of 1850, Gogol makes the first and last attempt to organize his family life- makes an offer to A. M. Vielgorskaya, but is refused.
In October 1850 Gogol arrived in Odessa. His condition is improving; he is active, cheerful, cheerful; willingly gets along with the actors of the Odessa troupe, to whom he gives lessons in reading comedy works, with L. S. Pushkin, with local writers. In March 1851 he left Odessa and, after spending the spring and early summer in his native places, returned to Moscow in June. A new round of readings follows from the 2nd volume of the poem; In total, up to 7 chapters were read. In October he attended “The Inspector General” at the Maly Theater, with S. V. Shumsky in the role of Khlestakov, and was pleased with the performance; in November he reads “The Inspector General” to a group of actors, including I. S. Turgenev.
On January 1, 1852, Gogol informs Arnoldi that the 2nd volume is “completely finished.” But in last days month, signs of a new crisis were clearly revealed, the impetus for which was the death of E. M. Khomyakova, sister of N. M. Yazykov, a person spiritually close to Gogol. He is tormented by a premonition near death, aggravated by newly intensified doubts about the beneficialness of his writing career and the success of the work being carried out. On February 7, Gogol confesses and receives communion, and on the night of 11 to 12 he burns the white manuscript of the 2nd volume (only 5 chapters have survived in incomplete form, relating to various draft editions; published in 1855). On the morning of February 21, Gogol died in his last apartment in the Talyzin house in Moscow.
The writer's funeral took place with a huge crowd of people at the cemetery of the St. Daniel's Monastery, and in 1931 Gogol's remains were reburied at the Novodevichy cemetery.
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol (1809 - 1852) was born in Ukraine, in the village of Sorochintsy in the Poltava region. His father was from the landowners of the family of Bohdan Khmelnitsky. In total, the family raised 12 children.
Childhood and youth
Neighbors and friends constantly gathered at the Gogol family estate: the father of the future writer was known as a great admirer of the theater. It is known that he even tried to write his own plays. So Nikolai inherited his talent for creativity on his father’s side. While studying at the Nizhyn gymnasium, he became famous for his love of composing vivid and funny epigrams about his classmates and teachers.
Since the teaching staff of the educational institution was not highly professional, high school students had to devote a lot of time to self-education: they wrote out almanacs, prepared theatrical performances, published their own handwritten magazine. At that time, Gogol had not yet thought about a writing career. He dreamed of entering the civil service, which was then considered prestigious.
Petersburg period
Moving to St. Petersburg in 1828 and the much-desired public service did not bring moral satisfaction to Nikolai Gogol. It turned out that office work was boring.
At the same time, Gogol's first published poem, Hans Küchelgarten, appeared. But the writer is also disappointed in her. And so much so that he personally takes the published materials from the store and burns them.
Life in St. Petersburg has a depressing effect on the writer: uninteresting work, dull climate, financial problems... He increasingly thinks about returning to his picturesque native village in Ukraine. It was the memories of the homeland that were embodied in a well-represented national flavor in one of the writer’s most famous works, “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka.” This masterpiece was warmly received by critics. And after Zhukovsky and Pushkin left positive reviews of “Evenings...”, the doors opened for Gogol into the world of real luminaries of the art of writing.
Inspired by the success of his first successful work, Gogol later a short time writes “Notes of a Madman”, “Taras Bulba”, “The Nose”, “Old World Landowners”. They further reveal the writer's talent. After all, no one before in his works had so accurately and vividly touched upon the psychology of “little” people. No wonder famous critic At that time, Belinsky spoke so enthusiastically about Gogol’s talent. One could find everything in his works: humor, tragedy, humanity, poetism. But despite all this, the writer continued to remain not completely satisfied with himself and his work. He believed that his civic position was expressed too passively.
Having failed in public service, Nikolai Gogol decides to try his hand at teaching history at St. Petersburg University. But even here another fiasco awaited him. Therefore, he makes another decision: to devote himself entirely to creativity. But no longer as a contemplative writer, but as an active participant, a judge of heroes. In 1836, the bright satire “The Inspector General” came out from the author’s pen. Society received this work ambiguously. Perhaps because Gogol managed to very sensitively “touch a nerve”, showing all the imperfections of the society of that time. IN Once again The writer, disappointed in his abilities, decides to leave Russia.
Roman holiday
Nikolai Gogol emigrates from St. Petersburg to Italy. The quiet life in Rome has a beneficial effect on the writer. It was here that he began writing a large-scale work - “Dead Souls”. And again, society did not accept a real masterpiece. Gogol was accused of slandering his homeland, because society could not take the blow to the serfdom. Even the critic Belinsky took up arms against the writer.
Not accepted by society in the best possible way affected the writer's health. He made an attempt and wrote the second volume of Dead Souls, but he himself personally burned the handwritten version.
The writer died in Moscow in February 1852. Official reason death was called "nervous fever."
- Gogol was fond of knitting and sewing. He made the famous neckerchiefs for himself.
- The writer had the habit of walking along the streets only on the left side, which constantly disturbed passers-by.
- Nikolai Gogol loved sweets very much. You could always find candy or a piece of sugar in his pockets.
- The writer's favorite drink was goat milk, brewed with rum.
- The writer’s entire life was associated with mysticism and legends about his life, which gave rise to the most incredible, sometimes ridiculous rumors.