“He who is created to create in the depths of his soul,
live and breathe your creations,
he must be strange in many ways.”
N.V.Gogol
Nikolai Gogol - the most mystical writer, the brilliant creator of the encyclopedia Ukrainian life. There is no other writer in Russia whose death would be surrounded by so many legends, complete absence legends about life. In his world there is no line between reality and fantasy. Remember how “The Nose” ends? “Whatever you say, such incidents happen in the world - rarely, but they do happen”... And this is about the fact that the nose escaped from a person and led an independent life, and even while serving in a high rank. That’s how it was with Gogol himself - some kind of incredible thing always happened...
Gogol sincerely considered himself a genius, spoke and wrote a lot about his greatness, which greatly irritated the people around him. But he really was a genius. At the age of 22, Gogol composed “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka.” The writer was listed in Russian literature for quite a long time as a satirist, at first even as a humorist. He considered it the highest compliment (and Pushkin congratulated him on this) that the typesetters laughed while reading “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka.” But Gogol, at the same time, is a tragic and deep writer. And this is undoubtedly one of the most profound Russian thinkers.
The future writer was born in 1809 in the town of Velikiye Sorochintsy, Mirgorod district, Poltava province, into 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 a thousand 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 another one to his surname Yanovsky - Gogol, which was supposed to demonstrate the origin of the family from Colonel Evstafy (Ostap) Gogol, famous in Ukrainian history in the 18th century, a fact that, however, does not find sufficient confirmation.
Parents N.V. Gogol
In 1818-1819, 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. A frail, nervous boy who looked younger than his years, his ears were always leaking (a consequence of a history of early childhood scrofula) - this is how he entered into independent life. At the gymnasium, Gogol was not particularly diligent; according to teachers’ certification, he was “stupid, weak, harsh.” However, in the class he enjoyed the reputation of being a great wit. 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 poem, story. At the same time he wrote the satire “Something about Nezhin, or the law is not written for fools” which, unfortunately, has not been preserved.
However, the thought of writing has not yet occurred to Gogol; all his aspirations are connected with government service, he dreams of a legal career. Gogol’s adoption of this decision was greatly influenced by Professor N. G. Belousov, who taught a course on natural law, as well as the general strengthening of freedom-loving sentiments in the gymnasium.
After graduating from high school in 1828, Gogol went to St. Petersburg. Experiencing financial difficulties, unsuccessfully fussing about a place, he 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 prints the idyll in the paintings " Hanz Kuchelgarten" The poem was unsuccessful, completely childish, and poetry is not his, the great master of prose, elemental. But that wouldn’t be so bad, you never know how many bad poems there are. It’s bad that he also wrote the foreword himself. The inability to distinguish reality from fantasy once again played with him cruel joke: on behalf of the fictional publishers, Nikolai sang a bunch of praises for himself. Magazine criticism, trashing the poem to smithereens, she mocked the preface separately. His self-confidence was blown away like the wind. Gogol fell into a real panic and ran around the bookstores until he bought all six hundred copies of the ill-fated poem. For three days the would-be poet stoked the stove in his rented apartment with books.
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 government 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” was published. The audience was captivated by Gogol once and for all.
The pinnacle of Gogol’s fiction is the St. Petersburg story “The Nose,” an extremely bold grotesque that anticipated some trends in twentieth-century art. In contrast to both the provincial and metropolitan worlds was the story “Taras Bulba,” which captured that moment in the national past when the people, 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, Vyazemsky and others, and in February-March he was already busy staging it on stage 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 continue “ 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 Adam 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 “sacred testament” of the poet.
In December 1838, V. Zhukovsky arrived in Rome, accompanying the heir of Alexander II. Gogol was extremely happy about the poet’s arrival, showed him Rome, and drew views of the city with him.
In September 1839, Gogol arrived in Moscow and began reading chapters of Dead Souls 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" came out. After the first, brief, but very commendable reviews, the initiative was seized by Gogol’s enemies, who accused him of caricature, farce and slander of reality.
All this controversy took place in the absence of Gogol, who went abroad in June 1842. Before leaving, he entrusts Nikolai Yakovlevich Prokopovich with the publication of the first collection of his works. Gogol spends the summer in Germany and moves to Rome in October. 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, as censorship suspended the two volumes that had already been printed for a month.
The three years from 1842 to 1845 that followed the writer’s departure abroad were a period of intense and difficult work on the 2nd volume of Dead Souls.
At the beginning of 1845, Nikolai Gogol showed signs of a new mental crisis. The writer goes to Paris to rest and recuperate, but returns to Frankfurt in March. A period of treatment and consultations with various medical celebrities begins, moving from one resort to another: now to Halle, now to Berlin, now to Dresden, now 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, Gogol explained this step by saying that the book did not show the “paths and roads” to the ideal clearly enough.
Gogol spends the winter of 1847-1848 in Naples, intensively reading Russian periodicals, new fiction, historical and folklore books. At the same time, he is preparing for a long-planned pilgrimage to holy places. In January 1848, he headed to Jerusalem by sea. In April 1848, after a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Gogol finally returned to Russia, where most of spends time in Moscow, visits St. Petersburg, and also in his native places - Little Russia.
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 made his first and last attempt to organize his family life- proposes to Anna Mikhailovna Vielgorskaya. According to V. A. Sollogub, she “seems the only woman, with whom Gogol was in love,” but is refused.
In October 1850, Gogol arrived in Odessa. His condition is improving, he is active, cheerful, cheerful, willingly getting along with the actors of the Odessa troupe, to whom he gives lessons in reading comedy works, and 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 of 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 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 Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev.
On January 1, 1852, Gogol finishes the 2nd volume of Dead Souls. But in the last days of the month, signs of a new crisis clearly emerged. He is tormented by a premonition near death, aggravated by newly intensified doubts about the beneficialness of his writing. On February 7, Gogol confesses and receives communion, and on the night of February 11-12, Gogol woke up his serf boy Semyon and ordered the stove in his office to be lit. On the way there, Nikolai Vasilyevich stopped in every room and was baptized. At the same time, he kept a briefcase with manuscripts under his arm. When Gogol threw the notebooks rolled into a tube and tied with a ribbon into the fire, Semyon fell to his knees and tearfully begged the master to come to his senses. “None of your business!” - answered Nikolai Vasilyevich. The tight bundle still did not flare up, and Gogol pulled it out of the fire, untied it and sent it back into the inferno, turning the paper with a poker until only ashes remained. This is how the second volume of Dead Souls perished, with the exception of those few chapters that were not in the briefcase, but in the closet, and which Gogol forgot about.
Having destroyed his work, the patient returned to his room and lay down on the sofa. Gogol now had absolutely no reason to live. Another 10 days have passed. Gogol completely calmed down, although he was terribly weakened. Now he did not wash, did not dress, he just lay motionless on the sofa with an enlightened gaze and a clear face, and to all the pesterings of friends, doctors and priests he answered: “Leave me alone, I’m fine!”
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.
Interesting facts:
- Gogol had a passion for needlework. I knitted scarves, cut dresses for my sisters, wove belts, and sewed neckerchiefs for the summer.
- The writer loved to cook and treat his friends to dumplings and dumplings.
- One of his favorite drinks is goat's milk, which he boiled in a special way, adding rum. He jokingly called this concoction Gogol-Mogol, and often laughing, said: “Gogol loves Gogol-Mogol!”
- Nikolai Vasilyevich usually walked along the streets and alleys on the left side, so he constantly collided with passers-by.
- Gogol was very afraid of thunderstorms. According to contemporaries, the bad weather had a bad effect on his weak nerves.
- Gogol always had sweets in his pockets. Living in a hotel, he never allowed the servants to take away the sugar served with tea, he collected it, hid it, and then gnawed pieces while working or talking.
- A few years later, when Gogol became famous writer, the mother could not understand what exactly he became famous for, and told everyone she met that her son had invented the steamship, the telegraph and the railway.
- There are authentic photographs of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. They were taken in Rome, in 1845, by one of the pioneers of Russian photography, Sergei Lvovich Levitsky.
- IN theatrical performances Gogol had no equal as an actor. He had enormous talent and all the capabilities to play on stage. Gogol’s comrade later said: “I saw the play “The Minor” in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but I always retained the conviction that not a single actress succeeded in the role of Prostakova as well as the then sixteen-year-old Gogol played this role.”
- In the gymnasium, Gogol was known as the custodian of books subscribed to by pool, i.e. was a librarian. A high school student who received a book to read had to, in the presence of a librarian, sit decorously on a bench in the classroom, in the place indicated to him, and not get up from his seat until he returned the books. Also, the librarian personally wrapped the thumb and index finger of each reader in pieces of paper, and then only entrusted him with the book. Gogol treasured books like treasure, and especially loved miniature editions.
- Almost all of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol’s works have been filmed (since 1907, more than 60 film adaptations of Gogol’s works have been released), some even more than once.
It may seem strange question, put in the title - is there really such a question? Yes, I have. Turn to encyclopedic publications and look: most of them contain a date that does not correspond to the truth. All Soviet encyclopedias and dictionaries, as well as the works of Gogol scholars, for example, or Yuri Mann (I name the most famous names), inform us that Gogol was born in 1809 on March 20 - or April 1 according to the new style. However, if he was born on March 20, then we should celebrate his birthday on April 2 according to the new style. (In our century, when recalculating from the old style to the new, 13 days are added.) In addition, and this is the main thing, Gogol was born on March 19, not the 20th. There is irrefutable evidence on this matter.
According to Maria Ivanovna Gogol, the writer’s mother, “he was born in the 9th year on March 19.” Gogol’s cousin, Maria Nikolaevna Sinelnikova (née Khodarevskaya), wrote to Stepan Petrovich Shevyrev (Gogol’s friend and executor) on April 15, 1852: “His birthday is very memorable to me - March 19, on the same day as his younger sister Olga...”. Olga Vasilievna Gogol (married Golovnya) was born, as you know, on March 19, 1825 and more than once said that she was born on the same day as her brother. “He was sixteen years older than me,” she recalled, “he was born in the ninth year, and I in the twenty-fifth year, and note that on the same day, March 19, we were born: he, the first son, and I, last daughter in our family."
In 1852, shortly after Gogol’s death, the Department of Russian Language and Literature Russian Academy Sciences decided to publish his biography. Shevyrev was commissioned to write it. In the summer of 1852, he went to the writer’s homeland to collect material. In his travel diary, Shevyrev, from the words of Gogol’s relatives, made an entry: “Born 1809, March 19, at 9 o’clock in the evening. Trofimovsky’s words when he looked at the newborn: “There will be glorious son”» .
Yuri Mann claims that Gogol “was born on March 20, 1809 in Trakhimovsky’s house.” Meanwhile, Gogol, apparently, was born in a different place. According to the authoritative testimony of a fellow countryman and one of Gogol’s closest friends, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Maksimovich, Maria Ivanovna Gogol-Yanovskaya’s apartment in Sorochintsy “was in the house of General Dmitrieva, in which he was born March 19th Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol". And, let us note in parentheses, of course, Gogol’s mother vowed to name him Nikolai not “in honor of the miraculous image of Nikolai, kept in the Dikan church,” as Yu. Mann writes, but in honor, in front of whose miraculous image she prayed for the gift of a son to her . It was on March 19 that his friends celebrated Gogol’s birthday. The same Mikhail Maksimovich wrote to Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov on March 19, 1857: “Today is the birthday of our unforgettable Gogol, and I vividly remembered how in seven years we dined with you on this day of the capture of Paris! My God, how well I lived that month of March, and how often I spent time with you and Gogol then...” On March 19, 1849, Gogol celebrated his 40th birthday at S.T. Aksakova. The following year, 1850, he dined on this day with the Aksakovs along with M.A. Maksimovich and O.M. Bodyansky. Also present were A.S. Khomyakov and S.M. Soloviev. They drank to Gogol's health and sang Ukrainian folk songs.On March 19, Gogol’s relatives and congenial people congratulated him on his birthday. “Your letter (dated March 19) with congratulations came to me on the day when I was honored to partake of the Holy Mysteries,” Gogol informed his mother and sisters on April 3, 1849. Nadezhda Nikolaevna Sheremeteva, the aunt of the poet Fyodor Tyutchev, wrote to Gogol on February 12, 1843 from Pokrovsky near Moscow: “I wanted to write to you and did not receive your letter, so that by March 19 my congratulations would reach you. Congratulations, my dear friend, on your birth; This day is important for a Christian, we receive the right to inherit eternal bliss, just as we will receive if we go through this journey here, as a Christian should...”
Biographers of Gogol, primarily P.A. Kulish and V.I. Shenrock was considered the writer’s date of birth to be March 19. Doubts about this arose after the publication of an extract from the metric book of the Transfiguration Church in Sorochintsy, where Gogol was baptized. Here, under No. 25, the following entry was made: “On March 20, the landowner Vasily Yanovsky’s son Nikolai was born and baptized on the 22nd. The priest John Belovolsky prayed and baptized.” In the column about the receiver, “Mr. Colonel Mikhail Trakhimovsky” is indicated. An extract from the registry book was first published by A.I. Ksenzenko. Later (in 1908) a photocopy of it appeared. Yuri Mann believes that “the publication of these documents clarified the issue of Gogol’s date of birth – March 20, 1809...”. However, many researchers insisted that the date indicated in the church book was erroneous. For example, N. Lerner in the anniversary year of 1909, when the question of Gogol’s birthday was again raised, wrote: “In general, metric records, giving the correct date of baptism, are completely yes Some people make a mistake in the date of birth; the day of baptism is recorded by an eyewitness and participant in the ceremony itself, and the birth is dated on the basis of other people's words. Gogol was baptized on March 22, and it is quite possible that the testimony given to the church parable on that day by the relatives of the newborn that the child was born three days ago, that is, on March 19, was understood as the third day, that is, March 20. An example of exactly the same error in the date of birth is given by the metric book, which records the birth and baptism of Pushkin... It is known that Pushkin’s birthday is May 26. The poet himself knew this... Pushkin’s friends and acquaintances knew this day; so, Baron E.F. Rosen in 1831 sent Pushkin greeting poems entitled “May 26th,” where he said: “Like a triumph, like the best day of spring, we celebrate the birth of the poet...”... Meanwhile, in the church book, Pushkin’s birth is dated on the 27th... Believe after that, to the metric books! .Not all modern literary scholars who study Gogol agree with the unreliable version of the date of birth of the great Russian writer. Doctor of Philological Sciences Igor Alekseevich Vinogradov in a commentary on the new edition of the book by P.A. Kulisha writes: “Gogol’s birthday, according to the testimony of his mother, is precisely March 19, despite the erroneous entry about this in the registry book (March 20). Probably, since childhood, Gogol remembered that his birthday coincided with the day of the capture of Paris on March 19, 1814 (on that day he turned five years old), and therefore subsequently celebrated both of these events together ... ". The latest encyclopedic editions also correctly indicate Gogol's date of birth.
In the moral field, Gogol was brilliantly gifted; he was destined to abruptly turn all Russian literature from aesthetics to religion, to move it... onto the path of Dostoevsky. All the features characterizing the “great Russian literature”, which has become world literature, were outlined by Gogol...
Konstantin Vasilievich Mochulsky,
Russian critic and literary critic
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol is a writer, playwright, publicist, actor, historian, teacher, official, spiritual mentor, monk in the world.
Gogol as a writer, author of the works “The Night Before Christmas”, “Taras Bulba”, “Viy”, “The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich”, “Nevsky Prospekt”, “Nose”, “Overcoat”, “Portrait” ", "Dead Souls", "The Inspector General" is known to everyone who studies or has once studied at a Russian school. We get acquainted with the stories from the cycles “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka” and “Mirgorod” in high school, and later we turn to the poem “Dead Souls”. Gogol is an outstanding Russian writer. And almost everyone knows this. However... the versatility of his personality was not limited to literary creativity.
Having inherited a love of theater from his father, Vasily Afanasyevich Gogol-Yanovsky, Nikolai Vasilyevich enthusiastically participated in stage productions of the Nizhyn gymnasium, mainly performing comic roles. Gogol studied at the gymnasium from 1821 to 1828, and this period became very important for the formation of his writing and dramatic talent. It was during these years that the future writer created the first literary works. Nikolai Vasilyevich will rely on the stage experiments of this particular time later. Young Gogol - actor and beginner writer(although his earliest student creations have not survived).
Acting successes in the gymnasium theater, reviews from comrades who spoke about his remarkable acting talent were inspiring... and, leaving for St. Petersburg after finishing his gymnasium studies, Gogol decides to connect his life with the theater, becoming an actor. He makes an attempt to join the Russian troupe of the Imperial Theaters. “I would like to enter the theater,” Gogol says, addressing the secretary to the director of the Imperial Theaters (from the memoirs of N. P. Mundt). But Nikolai Vasilyevich did not become a professional actor: he was not accepted. A new one begins life stage. Gogol becomes official.
In 1829 
one day the writer begins his service: he becomes an assistant to the head of the office (the head of the office is an official who heads the table - the lowest structural part of the central or local government agency) to the department of appanages. And, although Gogol did not remain an official for long, his service experience was so useful that it was echoed in many of his subsequent works. Suffice it to recall the visit of Chichikov and Manilov to a “public place”: Our heroes saw a lot of paper, both rough and white, bowed heads, wide napes, tailcoats, frock coats of provincial cut, and even just some kind of light gray jacket, separated very sharply, which, turning its head to the side and laying it almost on the very paper, she wrote out, smartly and sloppily, some kind of protocol about the acquisition of land or the inventory of an estate seized by some peaceful landowner, who was quietly living out his life under court, who had acquired children and grandchildren under his protection…
The year 1829 can be considered the beginning of Gogol's writing period. This year, Nikolai Vasilyevich begins work on “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” (finished in 1832). The high appreciation of the stories included in this book by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, Evgeny Abramovich Baratynsky, Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky, Vladimir Fedorovich Odoevsky undoubtedly gave confidence to the young writer. In 1833, Gogol began writing “Nevsky Prospect”, “Portrait”, and later other works included in the collection called “Petersburg Tales”. Ahead lies a decade of fruitful works of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol - Russian writer.
At the beginning of his creative path writing activity Gogol combined his studies with teaching history at St. Petersburg University. In 1834, he was appointed to the position of adjunct in the department of history. There was great interest in his lectures, because during these years Nikolai Vasilyevich was known as the author of “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka.” At this time, the writer planned to take history seriously, wanting to become a professor at the department general history in Kyiv. However artistic designs, their embodiment (in 1835 work began on “Dead Souls”), awareness of oneself more as a writer than as historian, teacher root Gogol in the sphere of literary creativity.
Gogol - the great Russian playwright. This can hardly be disputed. His play “The Inspector General” has never left Russian theaters since its writing. theatrical stage. Catchphrases Many of us remember from this play, for example: Alexander the Great is a hero, but why break the chairs? How publicist And spiritual guide Gogol appears before us in “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends.” In it the reader sees a completely different, unknown writer...
However, the least known to the reader are those pages of the biography of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol that are associated with his visit to the Optina Hermitage, his correspondence with the Optina elders, and the study of patristic literature (the works of the Fathers of the Church - outstanding church writers of the past). Vladimir Alekseevich Voropaev wrote about the influence of patristic works on Gogol: “On one of his visits to Optina, he read a handwritten book - in Church Slavonic - by the Monk Isaac the Syrian... which became a revelation for him.” Could Gogol have taken monastic vows? Optina elder Barsanuphius, remembering Nikolai Vasilyevich, said: “There is a legend that shortly before his death he told his to a close friend: “Oh, how much I have lost, how terribly I have lost<...>that he did not become a monk. Oh, why didn’t Father Macarius take me to his skete?” In the last years of his life, Gogol treated creativity like monastic service. In the “Author's Confession” he says about his writing: “this was the only subject of all my thoughts, when I left everything else, all the best lures of life and, like a monk, broke ties with everything that is dear to man on earth, so that don’t think about anything else except your own work.” The crowning achievement of Gogol’s work is “Reflections on the Divine Liturgy” - truly a work monk in the world.
Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor
April 1, 2019 marks the 210th anniversary of the birth of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, a classic of Russian literature, author of “The Inspector General,” “The Overcoat,” “Dead Souls” and other brilliant works. The B. N. Yeltsin Presidential Library offers to get acquainted with his view of writing, “as a special kind of service to one’s land, equivalent to state service.”
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was born into the family of a poor landowner of the Poltava province, Vasily Afanasyevich Gogol, an inexhaustible storyteller. At the Nezhin Lyceum, the future classicist wrote essays better than anyone else, played on the school stage, edited the magazine “Star”, which was published by lyceum students, trying to write “in the most pompous style, full of rhetoric; only this kind of writing they considered a serious matter, real literature,” says A. N. Annenskaya in her work “N. V. Gogol" (1891), presented in the electronic collections of the Presidential Library. “Gogol was talented, but not recognized by the school,” quotes the opinion of one of the teachers, T. Zabolotsky, in the publication “An Experience in Reviewing Materials for the Biography of N.V. Gogol in His Youth” (1902).
Gogol’s dreams are revealed in “Letters of D. N. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky” (1907) from the collections of the Presidential Library: “He sought to realize his social value not in a certain narrow environment, but in a huge united all-Russian whole, the representative of which was the state. The expression of this desire was his thoughts about service and his view of literary activity... as a special kind of “service to one’s land”, equivalent to state service.”
After graduating from high school in 1828, Gogol went to St. Petersburg, where he began publishing under the pseudonym V. Alov. In 1829, “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” were published, then “The Nose”, “Taras Bulba”. A. S. Pushkin was the first to welcome “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” in print. He attracted Gogol to active collaboration in his Sovremennik. Pushkin, as is known, young talent The plots of “The Inspector General” and “Dead Souls” were suggested.
The history of the creation of another famous work- the story “The Overcoat” (1834) - says N. Kotlyarevsky in the book “Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol” (1909): it arose “from an office anecdote about some official, a passionate bird hunter, who, with his extraordinary economy and tireless hard work beyond his position, accumulated a sum sufficient to buy a good Lepage gun of 200 rubles. The first time he set off on his small boat across the Gulf of Finland for prey, putting the precious gun in front of him on the bow, he was, according to his own assurance, in some kind of self-forgetfulness and came to his senses only when, looking at his nose, he did not see his new thing. The gun was pulled into the water by the thick reeds through which he passed, and all efforts to find it were in vain. The official returned, went to bed and never got up; he had a fever. Only through the general subscription of his comrades, who learned about the incident and bought him a new gun, was he brought back to life.” The significance of this story in the history of our literature is special, notes Kotlyarevsky. “It is the first and one of the most complete experiments of this type of work, which was then very widespread and had great social value. This is a page from the history of the “humiliated and insulted,” the very same ones who, after Gogol, Dostoevsky took under his protection.”
After the publication of Gogol’s book “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends,” Kotlyarevsky in his book “Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol” laments that “the artist-writer of everyday life turned into a moralist-preacher”, that “the moment came when the embodiment of life in art began to interest Gogol less than the general religious and moral meaning of this life and its discovery in the practice of social phenomena.” His other colleagues did not mince words at all: N. Pobedinsky, in his rare study “The Religious and Moral Ideals of N.V. Gogol” (1900), writes that the quasi-liberal progressive critics of that time reacted with the greatest intolerance to the fact that Gogol, their great Gogol, “chapter natural school“, dares to believe in some kind of God... Belinsky even foreshadowed in panic: “On this path his inevitable fall awaits...”
And then for writing a balanced critical article Prince Pyotr Andreevich Vyazemsky, a friend of Pushkin, took over. His conclusion: some places in the book can be on par with the best examples Russian prose. “Everywhere you can see a person who, through spiritual research on himself and life, has found a lot and has come far,” notes Vyazemsky.
The article was published in St. Petersburg Gazette. Neither Slavophiles nor Westerners accepted it. However, Chaadaev took the side of Gogol’s defender, writing: “Perhaps with this article Vyazemsky tried to return to literature as one of the most prominent representatives of critical thought Russia XIX century, as it was in the 1820s."
Later, Apollo Grigoriev still considered the publication of the correspondence a courageous act, which had no equal in Russian literature. Gogol shows signs of a mental crisis, and in a state of sharp exacerbation of his illness, he burns the manuscript of the second volume of Dead Souls, on which he will continue to work after some time. On February 7, 1852, Gogol confesses and receives communion, and on the night of February 11-12, he burns the white manuscript of the second volume (only five chapters have survived in incomplete form). On the morning of February 21 (old style) 1852, 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.
The Presidential Library presents the collection “N. V. Gogol (1809–1852).” It consists of three extensive sections: “The Life and Work of N.V. Gogol”, “Creativity”, “Memory of the Writer”, which presents his lifetime publications on creativity, as well as research materials mid-19th- the beginning of the 20th century, who are trying to interpret the life of the writer, analyze his most famous and most controversial works. In addition, on the Presidential Library portal you can get acquainted with rare visual materials, such as the album “Portraits of N.V. Gogol” (1909), it is preceded by two sketches by Ilya Repin related to dramatic moments of life unsurpassed master words.
“Having ridiculed you with your “bitter laughter” negative aspects modern life, - reflects priest N. Pobedinsky in his study “The Religious and Moral Ideals of N.V. Gogol” (1900), “our writer is not seduced by the splendor of progress and material improvements in life. “Why this speed of messages?” he asks. Gogol also writes with pain that the laws of fashion and secular decency “are afraid to break more than moral and state laws, than the first laws of Christ...”. When looking at current state What strikes our writer’s society most of all is the decline in spiritual, moral strength, Christian love. And at the same time, the main task of every person, and especially those standing at the top of the social ladder, is the task of moral development.”
A. I. Shcheglov in the publication “The Ascetic of the Word: New Materials about N.V. Gogol” (1909) recalls: “Recently I found myself in Alexandrinsky Theater for the “four hundredth” performance of Gogol’s “The Government Inspector”... The best forces of the troupe, led by M. G. Savina, took part in the play, and the performance received a special brilliance. During the intermission there was deafening applause; at the end, the hall was filled with a real hurricane of delight; they waved handkerchiefs from the boxes, and when the gas was turned off, someone from the district shouted in a deep voice: “Author!”
The first of April is the 210th anniversary of the birth of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. There are many great ones in our literature, but not all of them can be considered so modern. Any reader will find around him quite advanced Khlestakovs and Chichikovs, dressed in the latest fashion. The virtual noses of the Kovalev majors are now legally registered on the worldwide Internet.
The series "Gogol" became the most successful film in history lately. In the role of the classic Alexander Petrov. Photo: Caroprokat
Let's talk about this with Gogol himself. The conversation, of course, will be “spiritualistic,” but this can be forgiven since it’s April 1st. Questions from the present time, and Nikolai Vasilyevich from the past will answer with exact quotes from his preface to “Dead Souls”, “Theatrical Travel”, “Author’s Confession”, “Selected passages from correspondence with friends”, as well as from letters of 1832-52.
Nikolai Vasilyevich, I’m tired of winter. I really want warmth. Spring, April is just around the corner. How are you?
Nikolai Gogol: Do you believe that there often comes a frantic desire to turn into one nose, so that there is nothing more - no eyes, no arms, no legs, except for just one huge nose, whose nostrils would be the size of good buckets, so that you can suck in as maybe more incense and spring.
But then you would have nothing to answer questions with. And we would like to hear from you...
Nikolai Gogol: And by the way, I’m no smarter than anyone. I know people who are several times smarter and more educated than me and could give advice several times more useful than mine; but they don't do it and don't even know how to do it.
We won't ask them. Let's ask you anyway. How do you manage to make others laugh and remain such a gloomy person?
Nikolai Gogol: Never did I think that I would have to be satirical writer and make my readers laugh. It is true that, while I was still at school, I at times felt inclined to be cheerful and annoyed my comrades with inappropriate jokes. But these were temporary fits; in general, I was rather of a melancholic character and inclined to think. Subsequently, illness and blues joined this.
Do you want to say that your completely harmless, but terribly funny “Inspector General” was the result of illness and blues?
Nikolai Gogol: My laughter was good-natured at first; I didn’t at all think of ridiculing anything for any purpose... I decided to collect everything bad that I knew and laugh at it at once - that’s the origin of “The Inspector General”! This was my first work, conceived with the goal of making a good influence on society, which, however, failed: in comedy they began to see a desire to ridicule the legal order of things and government forms, while I had the intention of ridiculing only the arbitrary deviation of some individuals from the formal and legalized order. The performance of The Inspector General made a painful impression on me.
Around us there are many advanced Khlestakovs and Chichikovs dressed in the latest fashion. The virtual noses of Major Kovalevs have been registered on the World Wide Web
A comedy for all ages, never leaves the stage - what are you talking about?
Nikolai Gogol: There is no need to worry about style or beauty of expressions; it's about the deed and the truth of the deed, and not about the style.
Doesn’t it bother you that Khlestakovism can easily be called a disease of the 21st century?
Nikolai Gogol: Everyone, at least for a minute, if not for several minutes, was or is becoming Khlestakov, but, naturally, he just doesn’t want to admit it; he even loves to laugh at this fact, but only, of course, in the skin of another, and not in his own. And a clever guards officer will sometimes turn out to be Khlestakov, and a statesman will sometimes turn out to be Khlestakov, and our brother, a sinful writer, will sometimes turn out to be Khlestakov. In a word, it is rare that someone will not be one at least once in their life - the only thing is that after that they will very cleverly turn around, and as if it were not him.
We have news almost every day about those who “turned cleverly.” Governors are removed, cases are started.
Nikolai Gogol: One of our statesmen defined this position this way: “The Governor-General is the Minister of the Interior, stopped on the road.” This position is more temporary than permanent.
What would you say to those governors who are now sitting on their bunks?
Nikolai Gogol: It was not necessary to care that everything would be fine only with you, but precisely that everything would be fine after you.
Now the whole world is complete fake news. We saw Prime Minister Theresa May dancing in Africa. Trump cuts off power to Venezuela. To envy Khlestakov, haven’t you read Twitter?
Nikolai Gogol: Khlestakov lies not at all coldly or in a fanfare theatrical manner; he lies with feeling, his eyes express the pleasure he receives from this. This is generally the best and most poetic moment of his life - almost a kind of inspiration.
By the way, you love the songs of Little Russia - “this flourishing part of Russia.” Have you heard any news from there for a long time? You wrote it down in notebooks miscellaneous - maybe some of the latter?
Nikolai Gogol:“- Why are you, matchmaker, coming to us... - I was that, my wife is melting, I’m just like that.”
Russia is under sanctions: following America, Europe, supposedly “in defense” of the Ukrainians, threatens with anathemas and cannot calm down. What's next?
Nikolai Gogol: Another ten years will pass, and you will see that Europe will come to us not to buy hemp and lard, but to buy wisdom, which is no longer sold in European markets.
“Thinking” in our time means getting on some Facebook or Telegram channel and drowning in a lot of crazy “likes” and “comments”. What remains in a person’s head after this?
Nikolai Gogol: There is an auditor in everyone's head. Everyone is busy with the auditor. Everyone's fears and hopes are swirling around the auditor. characters. Some have hope of getting rid of bad mayors and all kinds of grabbers. Others have a panicky fear at the sight of the most important dignitaries and leading people of society in fear. Others, who look at all the affairs of the world calmly, cleaning their own noses, have curiosity...
Again you're talking about the nose. What does a nose have in common with an auditor?
Nikolai Gogol: I am tired both in soul and body. I swear, no one knows or hears my suffering. God be with them all. I was disgusted with my play. I would like to run away now God knows where...
But don't run far from yourself. Not Khlestakovs - so Chichikovs. Do you think there are fewer of these? Or have you not heard how in our time they commit fraud with " dead souls"?
Drawing: Igor Virabov
Nikolai Gogol: In this book, much is described incorrectly, not as it is and as it really happens in Russian soil... At every step I was stopped by questions: why? what is this for? What should such and such a character say? What should such and such a phenomenon express? The question is: what should you do when such questions come? Drive them away? I tried, but irresistible questions stood before me... Everything came out strained, forced, and even what I laughed at became sad.
Why is it sad? What did you see that was incorrect and wrong?
Nikolai Gogol: Russia had to develop from its beginnings. It was necessary to look at Europe without becoming related, without becoming exhausted. If a house has already been built according to one plan, you cannot destroy it. You can remove the decorations and perfectly decorate every corner in a European way. But breaking the main walls of a building is absurd, it’s almost the same as correcting the work of God. From this it happened that the Russian proper in Russia has made little progress, despite 100 years of continuous corrections, alterations, troubles and fuss.
Apparently, you are afraid of today's Europe, in which, out of political correctness, minorities are subjugated by the majority and, in order not to offend refugees from the East, they are afraid to decorate Christmas trees?
Nikolai Gogol: In Europe, such turmoil is now brewing everywhere that no human remedy will help when it opens up, and the fears that you now see in Russia will be an insignificant thing in front of them. There is still light in Russia, there are still ways and roads to salvation, and thank God that these fears have come now and not later.”
What about the “yellow vests”? Many people sleep and see how they can dump some kind of “Maidan” on our heads?
Nikolai Gogol: Russia is not France; the elements are French - not Russian. You have even forgotten the uniqueness of each nation... The same hammer, when it falls on glass, crushes it into pieces, and when it falls on iron, it forges it.
But we, economists say, are sitting on a dollar needle. Global finance, “Swifts”, something will be turned off, arrested, blocked - and everything will immediately collapse for us?
Nikolai Gogol: Your thoughts about finances are based on reading foreign books and English magazines, and therefore are dead thoughts. Shame on you for being smart person, have not yet entered into one’s own mind, which could have developed in its own way, but have cluttered it with foreign manure.
We recently published a comic book about the siege of Leningrad. Judging by this book, it is not clear what to save, why then they saved their world, their city. Or I’ll ask this: why should Bagration die for Borodino, if all of St. Petersburg sighs for its idol Napoleon and speaks more readily in French? How can we fix this when we go in circles all the time?
Nikolai Gogol: Some people think that with transformations and reforms, with conversions in this and that way, the world can be corrected; others think that through some special, rather mediocre literature, which you call fiction, one can influence the education of society. But neither unrest nor ardent heads will bring the welfare of society to a better state. The fermentation within cannot be corrected by any constitution.
That's reassuring, thank you!
Nikolai Gogol: The Russian man has an enemy, an irreconcilable, dangerous enemy, without which he would be a giant. This enemy is laziness or, better to say, a painful sleepiness that overcomes the Russian. Many thoughts, not accompanied by embodiment, have already perished fruitlessly among us.
What can cure us of sleeping sickness?
Nikolai Gogol: How smart Pushkin was in everything he said in the last part of his life! “Why is it necessary,” he said, “for one of us to become higher than all of us... A state without a full-powered monarch is an automaton: many, many, if it achieves what the United States has achieved. And what is the United States? Carrion; a man they have weathered to the point that they are not worth a damn..."
You spoke about our common “spiritual city”, about how “our spiritual covetous people” are hindering us. That is, everything low and vulgar that sits inside. Can you tell me how to get rid of them?
Nikolai Gogol: There is a remedy, there is a scourge that can drive them out. Laughter, my noble compatriots! Laughter, which all our base passions are so afraid of! Laughter, which was created to laugh at everything that disgraces true beauty person. Let's return laughter to its true meaning! Let us take it away from those who turned it into frivolous secular blasphemy over everything, without discerning either good or bad!
Well, you're back to laughing again. What about love? Many people swear in love - how to distinguish who really loves Russia, who is her friend, who is her foe?
Nikolai Gogol: If only a Russian loves Russia, he will love everything that is in Russia... Without the illnesses and suffering that have accumulated in such abundance inside her and which are our own fault, none of us would feel compassion for her. And compassion is already the beginning of love.
In the State Public historical library The exhibition "Gogol's Pearls from the GPIB Collection: Autographs, Rare Lifetime and Illustrated Editions" opened. The exhibition can be visited free of charge until April 4. Learn about books that cannot be borrowed from the library, about rare facts creative life Nikolai Gogol will be useful for schoolchildren, teachers, students, as well as bibliophiles.
