Unusual in the life of N. Gogol - about childhood, phobias, homosexuality and lethargic sleep

In this publication, we will consider the most important thing from the biography of N.V. Gogol: his childhood and youth, literary path, theater, the last years of his life.

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol (1809 - 1852) - writer, playwright, classic of Russian literature, critic, publicist. First of all, he is known for his works: the mystical story "Viy", the poem "Dead Souls", the collection "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka", the story "Taras Bulba".

Nikolai was born into a landowner's family in the village of Sorochintsy on March 20 (April 1), 1809. The family was large - Nikolai eventually had 11 brothers and sisters, but he himself was the third child. Education began at the Poltava School, after which it continued at the Nizhyn Gymnasium, where the future great Russian writer devoted time to justice. It is worth noting that Nikolai was strong only in drawing and Russian literature, but with other subjects it did not work out. He also tried himself in prose - the works turned out to be unsuccessful. It's hard to imagine now.

At the age of 19, Nikolai Gogol moved to St. Petersburg, where he tried to find himself. He worked as an official, but Nikolai was drawn to creativity - he tried to become an actor in the local theater, continued to try himself in literature. In Gogol's theater, things were not going very well, and the public service did not satisfy all the needs of Nikolai. Then he decided - he decided to continue to engage exclusively in literature, to develop his skills and talent.

The first work of Nikolai Vasilyevich, which was printed - "Basavryuk". Later, this story was revised and received the title "Evening on the eve of Ivan Kupala." It was she who became the starting point for Nikolai Gogol as a writer. This was Nicholas' first success in literature.

Gogol very often described Ukraine in his works: in May Night, Sorochinskaya Fair, Taras Bulba, etc. And this is not surprising, because Nikolai was born on the territory of modern Ukraine.

In 1831, Nikolai Gogol began to communicate with a representative of the literary circles of Pushkin and Zhukovsky. And this had a positive effect on his writing career.

Nikolai Vasilievich's interest in the theater did not fade away, because his father was a famous playwright and storyteller. Gogol decided to return to the theater, but as a playwright, not an actor. His famous work The Inspector General was written specifically for the theater in 1835, and a year later it was staged for the first time. However, the audience did not appreciate the production and spoke negatively about it, which is why Gogol decided to leave Russia.

Nikolai Vasilievich visited Switzerland, Germany, France, Italy. It was in Rome that he decided to take up the poem "Dead Souls", the basis of which he came up with back in St. Petersburg. After completing work on the poem, Gogol returned to his homeland and published his first volume.

While working on the second volume, Gogol was seized by a spiritual crisis, which the writer never managed to overcome. On February 11, 1852, Nikolai Vasilievich burned all his work on the second volume of Dead Souls, thereby burying the poem as a continuation, and 10 days later he himself died.

One of the greatest Russian writers, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, was born in 1809. His parents were poor provincial landowners who lived on their small estate near the village of Dikanka in the Poltava province. The work and life of Gogol was also influenced by the fact that his father, Vasily Afanasyevich, had a passion for art, was fond of the theater and had his own compositions.

The birth of Gogol as a writer

Gogol received the usual education at home. Later he enters the Nizhyn gymnasium. In the gymnasium future writer showed interest in the theater, participating in productions, learned to play the violin, and in 1828 he graduated. The first attempts to compose turned out to be a failure for him, and such stages of Gogol's life and work will periodically be repeated in his biography. In 1829, he received a job as a petty official, while he was fond of painting and continued to write. The craving for literature takes its toll, and already in 1830 Gogol published his first story - "Basavryuk" - in "Notes of the Fatherland". In the same year, the chapters of the novel "Hetman" were published, on which the writer began work. During this period of his life, he met Pushkin, which seriously influenced Gogol's work and life. The writer listened to the advice of Alexander Sergeevich and highly appreciated his works. Pushkin introduced Gogol to many writers and artists of that time, including Delvig, Vyazemsky, Bryullov, Krylov.

Reflection of history and life in the works of Gogol

Fame among writers brought Gogol a collection of stories "Evenings on a farm near Dikanka" (1830-1831). The village in which Gogol grew up was famous for beliefs and legends. Gogol transferred many of those legends to his work. The writer decides to devote himself to pedagogy, scientific activity, and in 1834 he was appointed professor of the history department of the University in St. Petersburg. In the same year, he begins work on Taras Bulba. A year later, Gogol leaves the service and completely goes into literature. In 1835, "Viy", "Taras Bulba" come out from under his pen. In addition, essays about life in St. Petersburg "Arabesques" are published, and sketches of "The Overcoat" are being created, which Gogol will finish only in 1842.

Theatrical period of Gogol's work

Writing was not the only hobby, Gogol's work and life were quite diverse. The appearance of the "Inspector General" in 1835 was the result of a passion theatrical performances. It was for the theater that this work was written, subsequently staged in one of the Moscow theaters with the participation of the famous Shchepkin. The production was sharply criticized, and the author decided to go abroad. Meanwhile, Gogol continues to work on next work, in which he ridicules the bureaucracy of that time, and in 1841, with the participation of Belinsky in St. Petersburg, the first volume of "Dead Souls" was published.

Creative and spiritual crisis

The second volume of Dead Souls had a completely different fate. Further work and life of Gogol are developing less successfully. Revision of life principles, disappointment in the influence fiction brought the writer to life to a complete spiritual crisis, to a serious mental illness. At one of the most critical moments, in 1852, Gogol completely burned the 2nd volume of Dead Souls. In the same year, the writer died. He was buried in the cemetery of the Danilov Monastery. The entire chronology of Gogol's life and work is reflected in his works.

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol is a name that is known not only to every Russian person, but also to many people abroad. Nikolai Vasilyevich was an excellent writer, playwright, critic and publicist. He is rightly called a classic of Russian literature.

The writer was born on March 20 (April 1, old style) in the village of Sorochnitsy, Poltava province. His mother, Maria Ivanovna, married at the age of fourteen Vasily Gogol-Yanovsky, a representative of an old noble family.

In total they had 12 children, it is a pity that not many were able to live long life. Nevertheless, the third son was Nikolai. The young publicist lived surrounded by Little Russian life, and later this will form the basis of his Little Russian stories, where peasant life. When the boy was ten, he was sent to Poltava, to a local teacher.

Youth and education

I must say that Gogol was far from a diligent student, but he was good at Russian literature and drawing. They also began to publish a handwritten journal. Then he wrote elegiac works, poems, novels, satire, for example, "The law is not written for fools."

After the death of his father, the young classic renounces a share of the inheritance in favor of his younger sisters and a little later goes to the capital to earn his own living.

Recognition: a success story

In 1828 the poet-writer moved to Petersburg. Gogol could not leave the dream of becoming an actor, but they did not want to take him anywhere. He also served as an official, but this work only weighed him down. And, when the enthusiasm completely disappeared, Nikolai Vasilyevich again tries himself in literature.

His first published work was Basavriuk, later renamed The Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala. It was this that brought him fame and recognition in literary circles. But Gogol did not stop. This story was followed by the world-famous "The Night Before Christmas", "Sorochinsky Fair", "Taras Bulba". There was also an acquaintance with Zhukovsky and Pushkin.

Personal life

In total, he had two loves in his life. Yes, and it is difficult to call it strong feelings. The fact is that the writer was too religious a person, he even intended to go to the monastery, and discussed all issues with the confessor. Therefore, his communication with the opposite sex did not work out, and the author, in principle, did not consider many ladies to be worthy companions of life.

His first love was the imperial maid of honor Alexandra Smirnova-Rosset. Once these two people were introduced by Zhukovsky. After that, they began to correspond. Unfortunately, Gogol believed that he would not be able to provide it. Life, to which she was accustomed, cost a lot of money, and obliged the writer to a lot. And, although their correspondence was filled with genuine tenderness, Alexandra married an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nikolai Smirnov.

The second lady of the heart was his cousin Maria Sinelnikova. The girl was struck by the character of Gogol, his tenderness and isolation. During the time that her family was visiting the estate of the writer's parents, she was constantly next to him. When the girl left, they began to correspond. But even here, Nikolai did not work out. Two years after they met, the classic was gone.

1. Gogol was not quite ordinary writer. That's the reason unusual character. For example, when new people appeared in the room, whom he did not know, Nikolai seemed to evaporate.
2. To solve complex life issues, he used bread balls. He loved to roll balls of bread and roll them on the table while he was thinking.
3. He was not gifted with literary talent initially, in childhood he wrote very mediocre works that did not even survive.
4. Well, it is impossible not to mention that in 1852 the writer burned the second volume of his main work in life - Dead Souls. There is evidence that he did this on the orders of his confessor.
5. There is a version according to which the writer was buried alive. His burial was opened, and traces of nails were found there, as if the man woke up and tried to get out. Apparently, Gogol could fall into a lethargic sleep, and then wake up in the grave.

Death

"How sweet it is to die" - the last words of the poet in the mind. And his death itself is rather confusing. There is no exact confirmation of any hypothesis. However, there is a sound assumption that the writer died due to fasting.

The fact is that Gogol, at the end of his life, began to exalt the significance of religion, observing all the rituals. But his body was not at all ready for a strict diet. And Nicholas died a month before his forty-third birthday, February 21, 1852.

Interesting? Save it on your wall!

Nikolai Vasilyevich was born in a large family, Vasily and Maria, Gogol's parents, had 12 children. Gogol's father saw his wife in a dream, considering this dream a prophecy, his father was looking for the one he saw in a dream. courted the neighbor's girl Maria. It was the mother who instilled in little Nikolai Gogol-Yanovsky a love of literature and mysticism, Gogol's father was a writer and playwright. It is interesting that Gogol's great-great-grandfather, Ostap, was the hetman of the Right-Bank Ukraine.
Nikolai studied poorly, he only drew well and knew Russian grammar, but his teacher denied the importance of the work of Pushkin and Zhukovsky, welcomed foreign literature, thereby interested Gogol in romanticism and classics, aroused admiration for Pushkin and Zhukovsky .. After graduating from high school,
Gogol moves to St. Petersburg, the city of his dreams. Not finding himself in the civil service, Gogol begins to write. Having published the first poem "Hanz Küchelgarten" under the pseudonym Alov, Gogol was criticized to smithereens. He bought up the entire circulation, burned it and went abroad, however, he returned a month later. After a while, Rudy Panko tells St. Petersburg about "Evenings on a Farm", the Little Russian author was met by St. Petersburg with "Hurrah!", Gogol is recognizable in his pseudonym, Belinsky in print asks the author to show his face, not to hide behind masks. Gogol begins create under his own name, world masterpieces come from the writer's pen: "The Government Inspector", "Marriage", "St. to miracles and mysticism they give birth to "Viya", "Ivan Kupala".
Gogol is famous and recognized, he is a member of the circle of Pushkin, Belinsky, Pletnev, Zhukovsky. The image of St. Petersburg is a symbol of new life in the writer's work. Gogol does not leave his historical homeland, he is a patriot and passionately loves his people, dedicates many works to her, "Taras Bulba" is the most monumental. He asks his mother to send him all the news, folk songs and legends, costumes from Ukraine. Mirgorod called his land so classic.
Personal life did not work out, Gogol was rejected by the bride's parents, but the brilliant work "Marriage" was born, and the writer himself abandoned attempts to arrange his personal life.
The uniqueness of writing, a special manner, spelling - all this makes the writer's work unique. Gogol's critical realism is a unique phenomenon of that time. controversial. Frequent mental breakdowns led the writer to depression and departures abroad. work. The author burns second volume, and 10 days later the writer died.
Gogol's biography causes more controversy than it illuminates the facts. There are more questions than answers about the life of the mysterious genius, about his work and descendants. But the will was violated, he was buried in the cemetery of the St. Danilov Monastery, placing a monument on the grave. Later, Gogol was reburied, the ashes were transferred to the Novodevichy cemetery, but the writer's skull disappeared from the coffin. Bulgakov’s reflection in The Master and Margarita, in the form of the head of the writer Berlioz stolen from the coffin, cut off by a tram on the Patriarch’s Ponds. Even after death, Gogol excited the imagination of writers, provided food for their creativity.

Childhood and youth

St. Petersburg

Abroad

Funeral and grave of Gogol

Addresses in St. Petersburg

Creation

Gogol and painters

Hypotheses about Gogol's personality

Some of Gogol's works

monuments

Bibliography

First editions

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

Biography

Childhood and youth

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was born on March 20 (April 1), 1809 in Sorochintsy near the Psel River, on the border of Poltava and Mirgorod counties (Poltava province). Nicholas was named after miraculous icon Saint Nicholas. According to family tradition, he came from an old Ukrainian Cossack family and was a descendant of Ostap Gogol the hetman Right-Bank Army of the Zaporozhian Commonwealth. AT troubled times Ukrainian history some of his ancestors molested the nobility, and even Gogol's grandfather, Afanasy Demyanovich Gogol-Yanovsky (1738-1805), wrote in an official paper that "his ancestors, with the surname Gogol, of the Polish nation", although most biographers tend to believe that he yet he was a "Little Russian". A number of researchers, whose opinion was formulated by V.V. Veresaev, believe that the origin from Ostap Gogol could be falsified by Afanasy Demyanovich in order to receive the nobility, since the priestly pedigree was an insurmountable obstacle to acquiring a noble title.

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

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

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

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

The high school of higher sciences itself, in the first years of its existence, was not very well organized, apparently, was partly to blame for the poor teaching; for example, history was taught by cramming, literature teacher Nikolsky extolled the importance of Russian literature XVIII century and did not approve of the contemporary poetry of Pushkin and Zhukovsky, which, however, only increased the interest of high school students in romantic literature. The lessons of moral education were supplemented by a rod. Got it and Gogol.

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

The comrades subscribed to magazines; started their own handwritten journal, where Gogol wrote a lot in verse. At that time, he wrote elegiac poems, tragedies, a historical poem and a story, as well as a satire "Something about Nizhyn, or the law is not written for fools." With literary interests, a love for the theater also developed, where Gogol, already distinguished by unusual comedy, was the most zealous participant (from the second year of his stay in Nizhyn). Gogol's youthful experiences developed in the style of romantic rhetoric - not in the taste of Pushkin, whom Gogol already admired then, but rather in the taste of Bestuzhev-Marlinsky.

The death of his father was a heavy blow to the entire family. Worries about affairs also fall on Gogol; he gives advice, reassures the mother, must think about the future organization of his own affairs. The mother idolizes her son Nikolai, considers him a genius, she gives him the last of her meager means to ensure his life in Nizhyn, and later in St. Petersburg. Nikolai also paid her all his life with ardent filial love, but there was no complete understanding and trusting relationship between them. Later, he will give up his share in the common family inheritance in favor of the sisters in order to devote himself entirely to literature.

By the end of his stay at the gymnasium, he dreams of a wide social activity, which, however, he does not see at all in the literary field; no doubt under the influence of everything around him, he thinks to come forward and benefit society in a service for which he was in fact incapable. Thus plans for the future were unclear; but Gogol was sure that a wide field lay ahead of him; he is already talking about the indications of providence and cannot be satisfied with what simple townsfolk are content with, in his words, which was the majority of his Nizhyn comrades.

St. Petersburg

In December 1828 Gogol moved to St. Petersburg. Here, for the first time, a cruel disappointment awaited him: modest means ended up in big city very insignificant, and brilliant hopes were not realized as soon as he expected. His letters home from that time are a mixture of this disappointment and a hazy hope for a better future. In reserve he had a lot of character and practical enterprise: he tried to enter the stage, become an official, surrender to literature.

He was not accepted as an actor; the service was so empty of content that he became weary of it; the more attracted his literary field. In Petersburg, for the first time, he kept to the society of fellow countrymen, which consisted partly of former comrades. He found that Little Russia aroused keen interest not only among Ukrainians, but also among Russians; experienced failures turned his poetic dreams to his native Ukraine, and from here arose the first plans for work, which was supposed to give an outcome to the need for artistic creativity, and also to bring practical benefit: these were the plans for Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka.

But before that, he published under a pseudonym V. Alova romantic idyll "Hanz Küchelgarten" (1829), which was written back in Nizhyn (he himself marked it in 1827) and whose hero is given those perfect dreams and aspirations, with which he was fulfilled in the last years of Nizhyn's life. Soon after the book was published, he himself destroyed its circulation, when criticism was unfavorable to his work.

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

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

Gogol published other works then in the publications of Baron Delvig "Literary Gazette" and "Northern Flowers", where a chapter from the historical novel "Hetman" was placed. Perhaps Delvig recommended him to Zhukovsky, who received Gogol with great cordiality: apparently, the mutual sympathy of people who were kindred in love for art, in religiosity, prone to mysticism, affected from the first time - after they became very close.

Zhukovsky passed young man into the hands of Pletnev with a request to attach him, and indeed, in February 1831, Pletnev recommended Gogol to the post of teacher at the Patriotic Institute, where he himself was an inspector. Having got to know Gogol better, Pletnev was waiting for an opportunity to “bring him under the blessing of Pushkin”: this happened in May of that year. Gogol's entry into this circle, which soon appreciated the great nascent talent in him, had a huge impact on Gogol's fate. Finally, the prospect opened before him. broad activities, which he dreamed of - but in the field not of service, but of literature.

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

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

This time was the most active era of his work. After small works, partly mentioned above, his first major literary work, which laid the foundation for his fame, was “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka. The stories published by the beekeeper Rudy Pank, published in St. Petersburg in 1831 and 1832, in two parts (the first included Sorochinskaya Fair, Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala, May Night, or the Drowned Woman, The Missing Letter; in the second - "The Night Before Christmas", "A Terrible Revenge, an Old True Story", "Ivan Fedorovich Shponka and His Aunt", "The Enchanted Place").

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then in the same year “Mirgorod. Tales that serve as a continuation of Evenings on a farm near Dikanka ”(two parts, St. Petersburg, 1835). Here was placed whole line works in which new striking features of Gogol's talent were revealed. In the first part of "Mirgorod" appeared "Old World Landowners" and "Taras Bulba"; in the second - "Viy" and "The Tale of how Ivan Ivanovich quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich."

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

By the beginning of the thirties, the plans of some other works of Gogol, such as the famous "Overcoat", "Carriage", perhaps "Portrait" in its reworked version, date back; these works appeared in Pushkin's Sovremennik (1836) and Pletnev (1842) and in the first collected works (1842); a later sojourn in Italy includes "Rome" in Pogodin's "Moskvityanin" (1842).

By 1834, the first concept of the "Inspector General" is attributed. The surviving manuscripts of Gogol indicate that he worked extremely carefully on his works: from what has survived from these manuscripts, it is clear how the work in its finished form known to us grew gradually from the original sketch, becoming more and more complicated with details and finally reaching that amazing artistic fullness and vitality, with which we know them at the end of a process that sometimes dragged on for years.

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

The "Auditor" caused an endless work of determining the plan and execution details; there are a number of sketches, in whole and in parts, and the first printed form of the comedy appeared in 1836. The old passion for the theater took possession of Gogol to an extraordinary degree: the comedy never left his head; he was tormented by the thought of being face to face with society; he took care with the greatest care that the play be performed in accordance with his own idea of ​​character and action; the production met various obstacles, including censorship, and finally could be realized only at the behest of Emperor Nicholas.

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

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

Gogol himself was interested, first of all, in the literary aspect; in public terms, he was completely on the point of view of his friends in the Pushkin circle, he only wanted more honesty and truth in the given order of things, and therefore he was especially struck by the discordant noise of misunderstanding that arose around his play. Subsequently, in the “Theatrical tour after the presentation of a new comedy”, on the one hand, he conveyed the impression that the “Inspector General” made in various sectors of society, and on the other hand, he expressed his own thoughts about the great significance of theater and artistic truth.

The first dramatic plans appeared to Gogol even earlier than The Inspector General. In 1833 he was absorbed by the comedy "Vladimir of the 3rd degree"; she was not finished by him, but her material served for several dramatic episodes, as “Morning of a Businessman”, “Litigation”, “Lakeyskaya” and “Excerpt”. The first of these plays appeared in Pushkin's Sovremennik (1836), the rest in his first collected works (1842).

In the same meeting appeared for the first time "Marriage", the outlines of which date back to the same year 1833, and "Players", conceived in the mid-1830s. Tired of the creative tension of recent years and the moral anxieties that The Inspector General cost him, Gogol decided to take a break from work, having gone on a trip abroad.

Abroad

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

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

In March 1837, he was in Rome, which he fell extremely fond of and became for him, as it were, a second home. European political and public life always remained a stranger and completely unfamiliar to Gogol; he was attracted by nature and works of art, and Rome at that time represented precisely these interests. Gogol studied antiquities, art galleries, visited the workshops of artists, admired the life of the people and liked to show Rome, "treat" them to visiting Russian acquaintances and friends.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nikolai Gogol from childhood did not differ in good health. The death in adolescence of his younger brother Ivan, the untimely death of his father left an imprint on his state of mind. Work on the continuation of "Dead Souls" did not stick, and the writer experienced painful doubts that he would be able to bring the planned work to the end. In the summer of 1845, he was overtaken by a painful mental crisis. He writes a will, burns the manuscript of the second volume of Dead Souls. To commemorate the deliverance from death, Gogol decides to enter a monastery and become a monk, but monasticism did not take place. But his mind presented the new content of the book, enlightened and purified; it seemed to him that he understood how to write in order to "direct the whole society towards the beautiful." He decides to serve God in the field of literature. started new job, but in the meantime another thought occupied him: he rather wanted to tell society what he considered useful to him, and he decides to collect in one book everything he had written in recent years to friends in the spirit of his new mood and instructs Pletnev to publish this book. These were "Selected passages from correspondence with friends" (St. Petersburg, 1847).

Most of the letters that make up this book date from 1845 and 1846, the time when Gogol's religious mood reached its peak. higher development. The 1840s is the time of the formation and demarcation of two different ideologies in the contemporary Russian educated society. Gogol remained a stranger to this demarcation, despite the fact that each of the two warring parties - the Westernizers and the Slavophiles, laid claim to Gogol's legal rights. The book made a heavy impression on both of them, since Gogol thought in completely different categories. Even his Aksakov friends turned their backs on him. Gogol with his tone of prophecy and edification, his preaching of humility, which, however, showed his own conceit; condemnation of previous works, the complete approval of the existing social order, clearly dissonant with those ideologists who relied only on the social reorganization of society. Gogol, without rejecting the expediency of social restructuring, saw the main goal in spiritual self-improvement. Therefore, on long years the subject of his study are the works of the fathers of the Church. But, without joining either the Westernizers or the Slavophiles, Gogol stopped halfway, without fully joining the spiritual literature - Seraphim of Sarov, Ignatius (Bryanchaninov), and others.

The impression of the book on Gogol's literary admirers, who wished to see in him only the leader of the "natural school", was depressing. The highest degree of indignation aroused by Selected Places was expressed in Belinsky's famous letter from Salzbrunn.

Gogol painfully experienced the failure of his book. Only A. O. Smirnova and P. A. Pletnev were able to support him at that moment, but those were only private epistolary opinions. He explained the attacks on her in part both by his own mistake, by exaggerating the didactic tone, and by the fact that the censors did not miss several important letters in the book; but he could explain the attacks of former literary adherents only by the calculations of parties and self-esteem. The public meaning of this controversy was alien to him.

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

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

The stay in Jerusalem did not produce the effect he expected. “Never before have I been so little satisfied with the state of my heart as in Jerusalem and after Jerusalem,” he says. “It was as if I was at the Holy Sepulcher in order to feel there on the spot how much coldness of the heart is in me, how much selfishness and pride.”

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

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

Death

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

The death of Khomyakova, the condemnation of Konstantinovsky, and, perhaps, other reasons convinced Gogol to abandon creativity and start fasting a week before Lent. On February 5, he sees off Konstantinovsky and has hardly eaten anything since that day. On February 10, he handed over to Count A. Tolstoy a briefcase with manuscripts for transfer to Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, but the count refused this order so as not to aggravate Gogol in gloomy thoughts.

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

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

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

Funeral and grave of Gogol

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

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

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

In 1952, instead of Calvary, a new monument was erected on the grave in the form of a pedestal with a bust of Gogol by the sculptor Tomsky, on which is inscribed: "To the great Russian artist, words to Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol from the government of the Soviet Union."

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

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

Addresses in St. Petersburg

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

Creation

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

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

Gogol himself said about the properties of his talent: “The only thing that came out well for me was what I took from reality, from the data known to me.” At the same time, the faces depicted by him were not just a repetition of reality: they were whole artistic types in which human nature was deeply understood. His heroes more often than any other of the Russian writers became common nouns.

Another personal trait of Gogol was that from the very early years, from the first glimpses of his young consciousness, he was excited by lofty aspirations, the desire to serve society with something lofty and beneficial; from an early age he was hatefully limited self-satisfaction, devoid of inner content, and this trait later, in the 1830s, showed itself as a conscious desire to expose social ulcers and corruption, and it also developed into a lofty idea of ​​the significance of art, standing above the crowd as the highest enlightenment of the ideal …

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

Gogol distanced himself from the understanding of the social significance of his works, which was put into them by the literary criticism of V. G. Belinsky and his circle, socio-utopian criticism. But at the same time, Gogol himself was not alien to utopianism in the sphere of social reconstruction, only his utopia was not socialist, but Orthodox.

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

After the death of Pushkin, Gogol became close to the circle of Slavophiles, or actually with Pogodin and Shevyrev, S. T. Aksakov and Yazykov; but he remained a stranger to the theoretical content of Slavophilism, and it did not affect the form of his work in any way. In addition to personal affection, he found here an ardent sympathy for his works, as well as for his religious and dreamy-conservative ideas. Gogol did not see Russia without a monarchy and Orthodoxy, he was convinced that the church should not exist separately from the state. However, later in the elder Aksakov, he also met with a rebuff to his views expressed in Selected Places.

The most acute moment of the collision of Gogol's worldview ideas with the aspirations of the revolutionary part of society was Belinsky's letter from Salzbrunn, the very tone of which hurt the writer painfully (Belinsky, with his authority, approved Gogol as the head of Russian literature during Pushkin's lifetime), but Belinsky's criticism could no longer change anything in the spiritual warehouse Gogol, and the last years of his life passed, as it was said, in a painful struggle between the artist and the Orthodox thinker.

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

However, some artistic merit it is impossible to explain either the enthusiasm with which his works were received by the younger generations, or the hatred with which they were met in the conservative masses of society. By the will of fate, Gogol was the banner of a new social movement, which was formed outside the scope of the writer's creative activity, but in a strange way intersected with his biography, because on this role there were no other figures of this magnitude at that moment in this social movement. In turn, Gogol misinterpreted the readers' hopes for the end of Dead Souls. The hastily published summary equivalent of the poem in the form of "Selected passages from correspondence with friends" turned into a feeling of annoyance and irritation of deceived readers, since Gogol's reputation as a humorist has developed among readers. The public was not yet ready for a different perception of the writer.

The spirit of humanity that distinguishes the works of Dostoevsky and other writers after Gogol is already clearly revealed in Gogol's prose, for example, in The Overcoat, Notes of a Madman, and Dead Souls. The first work of Dostoevsky is adjacent to Gogol to the point of obviousness. In the same way, the image of the negative aspects of landowner life, adopted by the writers of the "natural school", is usually erected to Gogol. In their subsequent work, the new writers already made an independent contribution to the content of literature, since life posed and developed new questions, but the first thoughts were given by Gogol.

Gogol's works coincided with the emergence of a social interest, which they greatly served and from which literature did not emerge until the end of the 19th century. But the evolution of the writer himself was much more complicated than the formation of the "natural school". Gogol himself little coincided with the "Gogol trend" in literature. It is curious that in 1852, for a small article in memory of Gogol, Turgenev was arrested in the unit and sent to the village for a month. The explanation for this was found for a long time in the hostility of the Nikolaev government to Gogol the satirist. It was later established that the real motive for the ban was the government’s desire to punish the author of the Hunter’s Notes, and the prohibition of the obituary due to the author’s violation of the censorship charter (printing in Moscow an article banned by censorship in St. Nikolaev censorship of a writer. There was no single assessment of Gogol's personality as a pro-government or anti-government writer among the officials of Nicholas I. One way or another, the second edition of the Works, begun in 1851 by Gogol himself and not completed due to his premature death, could only come out in 1855-1856. But Gogol's connection with subsequent literature is beyond doubt.

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

Gogol and Orthodoxy

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

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

Gogol received the rudiments of faith in the family circle. In a letter to his mother dated October 2, 1833 from St. Petersburg, Nikolai Gogol recalled the following: “I asked you to tell me about the terrible judgment, and you told me so well, so clearly, so touchingly about the blessings that await people for a virtuous life, and so strikingly, so terribly described eternal torment sinners, that it shocked and awakened all sensitivity in me. This planted and subsequently produced in me the highest thoughts.

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

According to V. A. Voropaev, satire in such works as "The Inspector General" and "Dead Souls" is only their upper and shallow layer. Gogol conveyed the main idea of ​​the "Inspector General" in a play called "Decoupling of the Inspector General", where there are such words: "... terrible is the auditor who is waiting for us at the door of the coffin." This, according to Voropaev, is the main idea of ​​the work: it is not Khlestakov and not the auditor from St. Petersburg that should be feared, but “The One who is waiting for us at the door of the coffin”; this is the idea of ​​spiritual retribution, and the real auditor is our conscience.

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

Gogol repeatedly visited Optina Hermitage, having the closest spiritual communion with Elder Macarius.

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

In July 2009, Patriarch Kirill gave his blessing for the release during 2009 of the complete works of Nikolai Gogol by the publishing house of the Moscow Patriarchate. The new edition is prepared at the academic level. The working group for the preparation of the complete works of N.V. Gogol included scientists and representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Gogol and Russian-Ukrainian Relations

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

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

There is no doubt, however, that Ukrainian features also affected the writer's work. These are considered the features of his humor, which remained the only example of its kind in Russian literature. Ukrainian and Russian beginning happily merged in this talent into one, most remarkable phenomenon.

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

At the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries, when relations between the two states - Ukraine and Russia - were going through hard times, the attitude towards Gogol in Ukraine was ambiguous. For some politicians, he was inconvenient precisely because he was born in Ukraine, and wrote in Russian, although at the time of Gogol there was no Ukrainian statehood, the Ukrainian people were considered part of the Russian, and the Ukrainian language was considered a Little Russian dialect.

Gogol and painters

Along with writing and interest in the theater from a young age, Gogol was fascinated by painting. This is evidenced by his high school letters to his parents. In the gymnasium, Gogol tries himself as a painter, book chart(handwritten magazines "Meteor of Literature", "Dung of Parnassus") and theater decorator. Already after leaving the gymnasium in St. Petersburg, Gogol continued painting in the evening classes of the Academy of Arts. Communication with Pushkin's circle, with K. P. Bryullov, makes him a passionate admirer of art. The painting of the last "The Last Day of Pompeii" is the subject of an article in the collection "Arabesques". In this article, as well as in other articles in the collection, Gogol defends a romantic view of the nature of art. The image of the artist, as well as the conflict of aesthetic and moral principles, will become central in his St. Petersburg stories "Nevsky Prospekt" and "Portrait", written in the same 1833-1834 as his journalistic articles. Gogol's article "On the architecture of the present time" was an expression of the writer's architectural passions.

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

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

But most of all, Gogol appreciated Ivanov and his painting “The Appearance of the Messiah to the People”, he participated in the creation of the concept of the picture, took part as a sitter (the figure closest to Christ), fussed with whom he could about extending the opportunity for the artist to work calmly and slowly above the picture, devoted a large article to Ivanov in Selected Places from Correspondence with Friends, “The Historical Painter Ivanov.” Gogol contributed to Ivanov's appeal to writing genre watercolors and to the study of iconography. The painter revised the ratio of the high and the comic in his paintings, in his new works features of humor appeared that were previously completely alien to the artist. Ivanovo watercolors, in turn, are similar in genre to the story "Rome". On the other hand, Gogol was several years ahead of the beginnings of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts in the field of studying ancient Russian Orthodox icons. Along with A. A. Agin and P. M. Boklevsky, Alexander Ivanov was one of the first illustrators of Gogol's works.

The fate of Ivanov had much in common with the fate of Gogol himself: on the second part of Dead Souls, Gogol worked as slowly as Ivanov on his painting, both were equally rushed from all sides with the completion of their work, both were equally in need, not being able to break away from your favorite business for extraneous earnings. And Gogol had in mind both himself and Ivanov when he wrote in his article: “Now everyone feels the absurdity of reproach for slowness and laziness to such an artist who, like a hard worker, has been sitting at work all his life and has even forgotten whether there is any kind of any pleasure other than work. The production of this picture was associated with the artist’s own spiritual work, a phenomenon that is too rare in the world.” On the other hand, the brother of A. A. Ivanov, architect Sergei Ivanov, testifies that A. A. Ivanov “never had the same thoughts with Gogol, he never internally agreed with him, but at the same time he never argued with him” . Gogol's article weighed on the artist, anticipatory praise, premature fame fettered him and put him in an ambiguous position. Despite personal sympathy and a common religious attitude towards art, once inseparable friends, Gogol and Ivanov, towards the end of their lives, somewhat internally move away despite the fact that the correspondence between them does not stop until the last days.

Gogol in a group of Russian artists in Rome

In 1845, Sergei Levitsky arrived in Rome and met with Russian artists and with Gogol. Taking advantage of the arrival in Rome of the vice-president of the Russian Academy of Arts, Count Fyodor Tolstoy, Levitsky persuaded Gogol to take part in a daguerreotype together with a colony of Russian artists. The idea was connected with the arrival in Rome from St. Petersburg Nicholas I. The emperor personally visited the pensioners of the Academy of Arts. More than twenty boarders were summoned to St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome, where, after Russian-Italian negotiations, Nicholas I arrived, accompanied by the vice-president of the Academy, Count F. P. Tolstoy. “Walking from the altar, Nicholas I turned around, greeted with a slight inclination of his head and instantly looked around the audience with his quick, with a brilliant look. “Artists of Your Majesty,” pointed out Count Tolstoy. “They say they walk very fast,” the sovereign remarked. “But they also work,” the count replied.

Among those depicted are architects Fyodor Eppinger, Karl Beine, Pavel Notbek, Ippolit Monighetti, sculptors Pyotr Stavasser, Nikolai Ramazanov, Mikhail Shurupov, painters Pimen Orlov, Apollon Mokritsky, Mikhail Mikhailov, Vasily Shternberg. The daguerreotype was first published by the critic V.V. Stasov in the journal Ancient and New Russia for 1879, No. 12, who described the images as follows: “Look at these hats of the theatrical“ brigantes ”, on raincoats, as if unusually picturesque and majestic - what a stupid and untalented masquerade! And meanwhile, this is still a truly historical picture, because it sincerely and faithfully conveys a whole corner of the era, a whole chapter from Russian life, a whole strip of people, and lives, and delusions. From this article, the names of those photographed and who is where is known. So, through the efforts of S. L. Levitsky, the only photographic portrait of the great writer was created. Later, in 1902, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Gogol's death, in the studio of another outstanding portrait painter, Karl Fischer, his image was cropped from this group photograph, re-shot and enlarged.

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

Hypotheses about Gogol's personality

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

Some of Gogol's works

• Dead Souls
• see also: Which Russian doesn't like to drive fast
• Auditor
• Marriage
• Theatrical tour
• Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka
• Mirgorod
• The story of how Ivan Ivanovich quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich
• old world landowners
• Taras Bulba
• Petersburg stories
• Nevsky Avenue
• overcoat
• Diary of a Madman
• Portrait
• Stroller
• Selected places from correspondence with friends

Influence on contemporary culture

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

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

In Ukraine, the annual multidisciplinary festival of contemporary art Gogolfest, named after the writer, is held.

The writer's surname is reflected in the name of the musical group Gogol Bordello, whose leader, Evgeniy Hudz, comes from Ukraine.

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

Memory

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

monuments

• The first monument to Gogol in the empire by Parmen Zabila was erected in Nizhyn in 1881. Today there are two monuments to the writer in the city.
• In 1909, a monument to Gogol by the sculptor N. A. Andreev was erected in Moscow, on Prechistensky Boulevard (now Gogolevsky). In 1951, the monument was moved to the Donskoy Monastery (currently located on Nikitsky Boulevard), and a new one, created by N.V. Tomsky, was erected in its place.
• In 1910, a bronze bust of Gogol by I.F. Tavbiy was installed on Elizavetinskaya Tsaritsyna Street. Today it is the oldest monument in the city. The street was also renamed and became Gogolevskaya.
• In Dnepropetrovsk, on the corner of Gogol Street and Karl Marx Avenue, on May 17, 1959, a monument to Nikolai Gogol was erected. Sculptors A. V. Sytnik, E. P. Kalishenko, A. A. Shrubshtok, architect V. A. Zuev.
• In Kyiv, on the house number 34 of Andreevsky Descent, a monument to the “Nose” was erected, the prototype of which was the writer’s nose. Sculptor: Oleg Dergachev.
• There is a monument to Gogol in Poltava, a bust of the writer is installed in Zaporozhye, Mirgorod, Kharkov, Brest
• On March 4, 1952, on the centenary of Gogol's death, a foundation stone was installed in the square on Manezhnaya Square in St. Petersburg, the inscription on which read: "A monument to the great Russian writer Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol will be erected here." The foundation stone existed in this form until 1999, when a fountain was installed in its place. As a result, another place was chosen for this monument, on the street. Malaya Konyushennaya.
• In Veliky Novgorod, on the Monument "1000th Anniversary of Russia" among the 129 figures of the most prominent personalities in Russian history (as of 1862), there is the figure of N.V. Gogol.
• On August 13, 1982, a monument to the writer Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was unveiled in Kyiv. In honor of the 1500th anniversary of the capital, a monument to the writer was erected on the Rusanovskaya embankment in Kyiv.

Bibliography

Anthologies

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

First editions

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