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Nikolai Gogol

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Nikolai Gogol
For the James Bond ally, see General Gogol

Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol (Russian: Никола́й Васи́льевич Го́голь, Ukrainian: Мико́ла Вас́ильович Го́голь (Mykola Vasyliovych Hohol)) (April 1, 1809 - March 4, 1852) was a Ukrainian-born Russian writer. Although many of his works were influenced by his Ukrainian heritage and upbringing, he wrote in Russian and his works belong to the tradition of Russian literature. By his political convictions he was a patriot of Russia and considered Ukrainians as part of the Russian people. Perhaps his best known work is Dead Souls, seen by many as the first "modern" Russian novel.

Life and Death

Gogol was born in Sorochintsi of Poltava Guberniya (now Ukraine) to the family of Ukrainian (or rather Ruthenian) small-time nobility (dvoryanstvo). His first name in Ukrainian spells Mykola. Some of his ancestors associated themselves with Polish Szlachta (probably not by ethnicity but culturally, due to the continued polonization of Ruthenian upper class) and his grand-father Afanasiy Gogol wrote in census papers that "his ancestors, of the family-name Gogol, are of the Polish nation". However, his great-grandfather, Jan Gogol, after studying in Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, a deeply Ukrainian, or Ruthenian, and Orthodox Christian educational institution, moved to the Muscovy leaning Left-bank Ukraine (Malorossia) and settled in Poltava region, originating the Gogol-Janovsky family line. Gogol himself did not use the second part of his name considering it an "artificial Polish addition". Gogol's father died when the boy was 15 years old. The deep religiosity of his mother have likely influenced Gogol's world view as well as the time he spent in the mixed surrounding of local small-time nobility and everyday village life. Thoroughout his life, Orthodox Christianity was the dominant influence.

He moved to Saint Petersburg in 1828. In 1831, he met Aleksandr Pushkin, who supported him as a writer and became his friend. He later taught history at Saint Petersburg University from 1834 to 1835. He went on to write a number of short stories set in Saint Petersburg, including "Nevsky Prospekt", the Diary of a Madman, "The Overcoat", and "The Nose." Although the first volume of his Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka was his first true success, he fell into obscurity again after the publication of his Arabesques. It was his farce The Inspector General, produced in 1836, which once again drew him to the public attention as a writer. Its satirical tone, which it shares with much of his other work, caused some controversy, and Gogol fled to Rome.

Dead Souls and Death

File:Gogol.JPG
Memorial of Nikolai Gogol

Gogol spent almost 5 years living abroad in Germany and Italy. It was in this period that he wrote Dead Souls, with the first part published in 1842. (Gogol asked Pushkin for ideas about essential Russian stories; in response, Pushkin suggested the basic idea of Dead Souls.) Gogol decided that before he could continue his work on the novel and bring about the "spiritual regeneration of a crook like Chichikov" (Dead Souls' main character), he had to undergo a spiritual regeneration himself. He imposed upon himself a strict regime of prayer and fasting, and as one might expect, this hindered rather than helped the work on his novel. He declared, "the subject of Dead Souls has nothing to do with the description of Russian provincial life or of a few revolting landowners. It is for the time being a secret which must suddenly and to the amazement of everyone (for as yet none of my readers has guessed it) be revealed in the following volumes..." His inability to reveal this secret, however, drove him into a state of nervous collapse by the beginning of January 1845, and at the end of June he burnt all he had written of the second volume of Dead Souls. For the next seven years his resumed work on the novel was laborious and painful. In 1848, Gogol, who became even more deeply influenced by Orthodox Christianity made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. After his return, he fell under the influence of the priest, Father Matthew Konstantinovskii, who regarded his literary work as an abomination in the eyes of the Lord. Konstantinovskii apparently demanded that Gogol destroy the second volume of Dead Souls and "atone for his sin of writing the first volume by entering a monastery". Following a tremendous inner conflict, Gogol decided to carry out Father Konstantinovskii's wishes and burnt the complete second part of his novel on the night of February 24, 1852. He soon after took to his bed, refused all food, and died in great pain nine days later, on March 5, 1852. Some fragments of the work survived and have been published.

He was buried at the Donskoy Monastery, close to his fellow Slavophile Aleksey Khomyakov. In 1931, when Moscow authorities decided to demolish the monastery, his remains were transferred to the Novodevichy Cemetery. His body was discovered lying face down, which gave rise to the story that Gogol had been buried alive. One of Soviet critics even cut a part of his jacket to use as a binding for his copy of the Dead Souls. A piece of rock which used to stand on his grave at the Donskoy was reused for the tomb of Gogol's admirer Mikhail Bulgakov.

Interpretation

Gogol's literary life and works show convolutions of struggle between the Westernizer and Slavophile urges in Russian culture. Living in post-Napoleonic Russia, with liberal discontent against Czarist rule, reformers interpreted Gogol stories as validation. This is because some of Gogol's stories satirized situations particular to Russian society. Indeed, Gogol was motivated as a reformer in his own mind, but not necessarily as defined by the liberals of the time. Toward the end of his life, liberals saw him as a religious fanatic, strangely reactionary, and increasingly pathetic. Having seen him only as a "satirist", they failed to grasp the deeper spiritual meaning of his books and were understanbly annoyed when Gogol explicitly proclaimed his faith and convictions.

An urge to reform Russia impelled Dead Souls; but whether moral or political seems unclear at first. Part one of that book shows the errors of the protagonist, part two shows the corrections. Arguably, Gogol is more successful showing the errors than the corrections, perhaps because errors and immorality are more fun and interesting to write about, than to preach and show good by example.

Gogol's desire for the moral reformation of Russia became increasingly loud and non-liberal, leading to his publication of selected letters which had a conservative Christian character. His former liberal admirers looked upon this publication with horror and dismay. They had interpreted his earlier works superficially, failing to notice their deep religious message. Now they saw their mistake. Gogol resolutely distanced himself from the liberal camp whose philosophy was based on shallow materialism. He was worried that his literary work might have played in the hands of the liberals, for this reason he burnt the second volume of the Dead Souls. His health declined fatally.

Gogol wrote in the literary tradition of E.T.A. Hoffmann and Laurence Sterne, often involving elements of the fantastic and grotesque. In addition, Gogol's works are often outrageously funny. The mix of humor, social realism, the fantastic, and unusual prose forms are what readers love about his work.

Gogol wrote in a time of political censorship. The use of the fantastic is, like Aesophic storytelling, one way to circumvent the censor, as placing the supernatural into a realistic setting softens anything that offends the regime by making it also seem "not real". Some of the best Soviet writers also used the fantastic for similar reasons.

Gogol had a huge and enduring impact on Russian literature (Fyodor Dostoevsky famously claimed that 'we all [future generations of Russian novelists] came out from under his Overcoat'). In the 1920s, a group of Russian Writers consciously built on this thread, created the Serapion Brothers, naming the group after a character in a Hoffmann story. Writers as Yevgeny Zamyatin, Mikhail Bulgakov and Abram Tertz (Siniavsky) also consciously followed this tradition.

Works

References

  • Introduction by David Magarshack from the Penguin Classics English translation of Dead Souls
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