Gogol was born on March 20 (April 1), 1809 in the town of Velikie Sorochintsy, Mirgorod povet (district) of the Poltava province, in the very heart of Little Russia, as Ukraine was then called. The Gogoli-Yanovskys were a typical landowner family, owning 1000 acres of land and 400 serfs. The future writer spent his childhood years on his parents' estate Vasilyevka. It was located in Mirgorod district next to the legendary Dikanka, whose name the writer immortalized in his first book.
In 1818, Gogol, together with his brother Ivan, studied at the Mirgorod povet school for a little over a year. After the death of his brother, his father took him out of school and prepared him to enter the local gymnasium. However, it was decided to send Gogol to the Gymnasium of Higher Sciences in the city of Nezhin in the neighboring Chernigov province, where he studied for seven years - from 1821 to 1828. Here Gogol first became acquainted with modern literature and became interested in theater. His first literary experiences also date back to his time at the gymnasium.
The test of an immature pen was the “idyll in pictures” “Hanz Küchelgarten”, an imitative romantic work. But it was on him that the aspiring writer placed special hopes. Having arrived in St. Petersburg at the end of 1828 to “look for places” as an official, Gogol was inspired by a secret thought: to establish himself on the St. Petersburg literary Olympus, to stand next to the first writers of that time - A.S. Pushkin, V.A. Zhukovsky, A.A. Delvig.
Just two months after his arrival in St. Petersburg, Gogol published (without indicating his name) the romantic poem “Italy” (“Son of the Fatherland and the Northern Archive,” vol. 2, no. 12). And in June 1829, the young provincial, extremely ambitious and arrogant, published the poem “Hanz Küchelgarten” taken from his suitcase, spending most of his parents’ money on it. The book was published under the “talking” pseudonym V. Alov, which hinted at the author’s great hopes. They, however, were not realized: reviews of the publication of the poem were negative. Shocked, Gogol left for Germany, but first took all copies of the book from bookstores and burned them. The literary debut turned out to be unsuccessful, and the nervous, suspicious, painfully proud debutant for the first time showed that attitude towards failure, which would then be repeated throughout his life: burning manuscripts and fleeing abroad after another “failure.”
Returning from abroad at the end of 1829, Gogol entered the public service and became an ordinary St. Petersburg official. The pinnacle of Gogol's bureaucratic career was as an assistant to the head of the Department of Appanages. In 1831, he left the hated office and, thanks to the patronage of new friends - V.A. Zhukovsky and P.A. Pletnev - entered the teaching field: he became a history teacher at the Patriotic Institute, and in 1834-1835. held the position of associate professor in the department of general history at St. Petersburg University. However, Gogol’s focus is on literary creativity; his biography, even during his years of bureaucratic and teaching service, is the biography of a writer.
Three periods can be distinguished in Gogol’s creative development:
1) 1829-1835 - St. Petersburg period. The failure (the publication of Hanz Küchelgarten) was followed by the resounding success of the collection of romantic stories “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” (1831-1832). In January-February 1835, the collections “Mirgorod” and “Arabesques” were published;
2) 1835-1842 - time of work on two important works: the comedy “The Inspector General” and the poem “Dead Souls”. The beginning of this period was the creation of the first edition of “The Inspector General” (December 1835, delivered in April 1836), the end was the publication of the first volume of “Dead Souls” (May 1842) and the preparation of “Works” in 4 volumes ( went out of print in January 1843). During these years, the writer lived abroad (from June 1836), visiting Russia twice to organize literary affairs;
3) 1842-1852 - the last period of creativity. Its main content was the work on the second volume of Dead Souls, which took place under the sign of intense religious and philosophical quests. The most important events of this period were the publication in January 1847 of the journalistic book “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends” and Gogol’s burning of personal papers in February 1852, including, apparently, the manuscript of the second volume of the poem.
The first period of Gogol's work (1829-1835) began with the search for his own theme, his own path in literature. On long lonely evenings, Gogol worked diligently on stories from Little Russian life. Petersburg impressions, bureaucratic life - all this was left in reserve. His imagination took him to Little Russia, from where so recently he tried to leave so as not to “perish in insignificance.” Gogol’s literary ambition was fueled by his acquaintance with famous poets: V.A. Zhukovsky, A.A. Delvig, Pushkin’s friend P.A. Pletnev. In May 1831, the long-awaited acquaintance with Pushkin took place.
Revenge for the experienced bitterness of an unsuccessful debut was the publication in September 1831 of the first part of “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka.” Pushkin announced to the public about a new, “unusual for our literature” phenomenon, guessing the nature of Gogol’s talent. He saw in the young romantic writer two qualities that seemed far from each other: the first was “real gaiety, sincere, without affectation, without stiffness,” the second was “sensitivity,” poetry of feelings.
After the release of the first part of “Evenings...”, Gogol, inspired by success, experienced an extraordinary creative surge. In 1832, he published the second part of the collection, worked on the everyday story “The Scary Boar” and the historical novel “Hetman” (excerpts from these unfinished works were published in the “Literary Gazette” and the almanac “Northern Flowers”) and at the same time wrote articles on literary and pedagogical topics. Note that Pushkin highly valued this side of Gogol's genius, considering him the most promising literary critic of the 1830s. However, it was “Evenings...” that remained the only monument to the initial period of Gogol’s work. This book, in the words of the writer himself, captures “the first sweet moments of young inspiration.”
The collection includes eight stories, differing in themes, genre and style features. Gogol used a term that was widespread in the literature of the 1830s. the principle of cyclization of works. The stories are united by the unity of the setting (Dikanka and its environs), the figures of the storytellers (all of them are well-known people in Dikanka who know each other well) and the “publisher” (beekeeper Rudy Panko). Gogol hid under the literary “mask” of a commoner publisher, embarrassed by his entry into the “big light” of literature.
The material of the stories is truly inexhaustible: these are oral stories, legends, stories on both modern and historical topics. “If only they listened and read,” says the pasichnik in the preface to the first part, “but I, perhaps, because I’m too damn lazy to rummage, can get enough for ten such books.” Gogol freely juxtaposes events and “confuses” centuries. The goal of a romantic writer is to understand the spirit of the people, the origins of the national character. The time of action in the stories “Sorochinskaya Fair” and “Ivan Fedorovich Shponka and His Aunt” is modern; in most works (“May Night, or the Drowned Woman”, “The Missing Letter”, “The Night Before Christmas” and “The Enchanted Place”) - XVIII century, finally, in “The Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala” and “Terrible Revenge” - the 17th century. In this kaleidoscope of eras, Gogol finds the main romantic antithesis of his book - the past and the present.
The past in “Evenings...” appears in an aura of fabulousness and wonder. In him the writer saw a spontaneous play of good and evil forces, morally healthy people, not affected by the spirit of profit, practicality and mental laziness. Gogol depicts Little Russian folk festival and fair life. The holiday, with its atmosphere of freedom and fun, the beliefs and adventures associated with it, takes people out of the framework of their usual existence, making the impossible possible. Previously impossible marriages are concluded (“Sorochinskaya Fair”, “May Night”, “The Night Before Christmas”), all kinds of evil spirits become active: devils and witches tempt people, trying to prevent them. The holiday in Gogol's stories is all kinds of transformations, disguises, hoaxes, beatings and the revelation of secrets. Gogol's laughter in "Evenings..." is humorous. Its basis is rich folk humor, which is able to express in words comic contradictions and incongruities, of which there are many both in the holiday atmosphere and in ordinary, everyday life.
The originality of the artistic world of stories is associated, first of all, with the widespread use of folklore traditions: it was in folk tales, semi-pagan legends and traditions that Gogol found themes and plots for his works. He used the belief about a fern blooming on the night before the holiday of Ivan Kupala, legends about mysterious treasures, about selling the soul to the devil, about flights and transformations of witches... Many stories feature mythological characters: sorcerers and witches, werewolves and mermaids and, of course, the devil, to whose tricks popular superstition is ready to attribute every evil deed.
“Evenings...” is a book of fantastic incidents. For Gogol, the fantastic is one of the most important aspects of the people's worldview. Reality and fantasy are intricately intertwined in people's ideas about the past and present, about good and evil. The writer considered the penchant for legendary-fantastic thinking to be an indicator of people’s spiritual health.
The fiction in “Evenings...” is ethnographically reliable. Heroes and narrators of incredible stories believe that the entire region of the unknown is inhabited by evil spirits, and the “demonological” characters themselves are shown by Gogol in a reduced, everyday guise. They are also “Little Russians”, but they live on their own “territory”, from time to time fooling ordinary people, interfering in their life, celebrating and playing with them. For example, the witches in “The Missing Letter” play fools, inviting the narrator’s grandfather to play with them and, if lucky, return his hat. The devil in the story “The Night Before Christmas” looks like “a real provincial attorney in uniform.” He grabs the month and gets burned, blowing on his hand, like a man who accidentally grabbed a hot frying pan. Declaring his love to the “incomparable Solokha,” the devil “kissed her hand with such antics as an assessor for a priest.” Solokha herself is not only a witch, but also a villager, greedy and loving for fans.
Folk fiction intertwines with reality, clarifying relationships between people, separating good and evil. As a rule, the heroes in Gogol's first collection defeat evil. The triumph of man over evil is a folklore motif. The writer filled it with new content: he affirmed the power and strength of the human spirit, capable of curbing the dark, evil forces that dominate nature and interfere in people's lives.
The “positive” heroes of the stories were ordinary Little Russians. They are depicted as strong and cheerful, talented and harmonious. Jokes and pranks, the desire to play pranks are combined in them with a willingness to fight evil spirits and evil for their happiness. In the story “Terrible Revenge,” a heroic-epic image of the Cossack Danila Burulbash, the predecessor of Taras Bulba, is created. His main features are love for his homeland and love of freedom. Trying to curb the sorcerer, punished by God for a crime, Danila dies like a hero. Gogol uses folk poetic principles of depicting a person. His characters are bright, memorable personalities; there are no contradictions or painful reflections in them. The writer is not interested in details, the particulars of their lives, he strives to express the main thing - the spirit of freedom, the breadth of nature, the pride living in the “free Cossacks”. In his depiction, this is, according to Pushkin, “a singing and dancing tribe.”
With the exception of the story “Ivan Fedorovich Shponka and His Aunt,” all the works in Gogol’s first collection are romantic. The author's romantic ideal manifested itself in the dream of good and fair relations between people, in the idea of national unity. Gogol created his poetic utopia based on Little Russian material: it expresses his ideas about what the life of the people should be, what a person should be. The colorful legendary fantasy world of “Evenings...” differs sharply from the boring, petty life of Russian ordinary people, shown in “The Inspector General” and especially in “Dead Souls”. But the festive atmosphere of the collection is disrupted by the invasion of sad “beings” - Shponka and his aunt Vasilisa Kashporovna. Sometimes the text of the stories also contains sad, elegiac notes: it is the voice of the author himself that breaks through the voices of the narrators. He looks at the sparkling life of the people through the eyes of a St. Petersburger, escaping from the cold breath of the ghostly capital, but he anticipates the collapse of his utopia and therefore is sad about joy, “a beautiful and fickle guest”...
“Evenings...” made Gogol famous, but, oddly enough, the first success brought not only joy, but also doubts. The year of crisis was 1833. Gogol complains about the uncertainty of his position in life and literature, complains about fate, and does not believe that he is capable of becoming a real writer. He assessed his condition as a “destructive revolution,” accompanied by abandoned plans and the burning of barely begun manuscripts. Trying to move away from the Little Russian theme, he conceived, in particular, a comedy based on St. Petersburg material, “Vladimir of the Third Degree,” but the plan was not realized. The reason for acute dissatisfaction with oneself is the nature of laughter, the nature and meaning of the comic in Little Russian stories. He came to the conclusion that he laughed in them “to amuse himself,” in order to brighten up the gray “prose” of St. Petersburg life. A real writer, according to Gogol, must do “good”: “laughing for nothing” without a clear moral goal is reprehensible.
He was intensely looking for a way out of the creative impasse. The first symptom of the important changes taking place in the writer was a story based on Little Russian material, but completely different from the previous ones - “The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich.” 1834 was fruitful: “Taras Bulba”, “Old World Landowners” and “Viy” were written (all included in the collection “Mirgorod”, 1835).
“Mirgorod” is an important milestone in Gogol’s creative development. The scope of artistic “geography” has expanded: the legendary Dikanka has given way to a prosaic county town, the main attraction of which is a huge puddle, and the fantastic character is Ivan Ivanovich’s brown pig, who brazenly stole Ivan Nikiforovich’s petition from the local court. The very name of the city contains an ironic meaning: Mirgorod is both an ordinary provincial town and a special, closed world. This is a “through the looking glass” in which everything is the other way around: normal relationships between people are replaced by strange friendship and absurd enmity, things displace people, and pigs and ganders become almost the main characters... In an allegorical sense, “Mirgorod” is the world art, overcoming the county “topography” and “local” time: the book shows not only the life of the “sky smokers”, but also the romantic heroics of the past, and the terrible world of natural evil, embodied in “Viya”.
In comparison with “Evenings...” the composition of Gogol’s second collection of prose is more transparent: it is divided into two parts, each of which includes two stories, united by contrast. The antithesis of the everyday story “Old World Landowners” is the heroic epic “Taras Bulba”. The morally descriptive, permeated with the author's irony, "The Tale..." about the two Ivans is contrasted with the "folk legend" - the story "Viy", close in style to the works of the first collection. Gogol abandoned the literary mask of a “publisher.” The author's point of view is expressed in the composition of the collection, in the complex interaction of romantic and realistic principles of depicting heroes, and in the use of various speech masks.
All stories are permeated with the author’s thoughts about the polar possibilities of the human spirit. Gogol is convinced that a person can live according to the high laws of duty, uniting people into “comradery,” but can lead a meaningless, empty existence. It takes him into the cramped world of an estate or city house, to petty worries and slavish dependence on things. In people's lives, the writer discovered opposite principles: spiritual and physical, social and natural.
Gogol showed the triumph of spirituality in the heroes of the story “Taras Bulba”, primarily in Taras himself. The victory of the physical, the material - in the inhabitants of the “old world” estate and Mirgorod. Natural evil, against which prayers and spells are powerless, triumphs in “Viy”. Social evil that arises among people as a result of their own efforts - in morally descriptive stories. But Gogol is convinced that social evil, in contrast to “earthly”, natural evil, is surmountable: in the subtext of his works one can discern the idea of the author’s new intentions - to show people the absurdity and randomness of this evil, to teach people how it can be overcome.
The hero of the story “Viy” Khoma Brut looked into the eyes of Viy, natural evil, and died from fear of him. The world that confronts man is terrible and hostile - the more acute the task of uniting in the face of world evil faces people. Self-isolation and alienation lead a person to death, because only a dead thing can exist independently of other things - this is the main thought of Gogol, who was approaching his great works: “The Inspector General” and “Dead Souls”.
The second period of Gogol’s work (1835-1842) opens with a kind of “prologue” - the “St. Petersburg” stories “Nevsky Prospekt”, “Notes of a Madman” and “Portrait”, included in the collection “Arabesques” (1835; the author explained its title as follows: “confusion , mixture, porridge" - in addition to stories, the book includes articles on various topics). These works connected two periods of the writer’s creative development: in 1836 the story “The Nose” was published, and the cycle was completed by the story “The Overcoat” (1839-1841, published in 1842).
Gogol finally submitted to the St. Petersburg theme. The stories, different in plot, theme, and characters, are united by the location of action - St. Petersburg. But for a writer this is not just a geographical space. He created a vivid image-symbol of the city, both real and illusory, fantastic. In the destinies of the heroes, in the ordinary and incredible incidents of their lives, in the rumors, rumors and legends with which the very air of the city is saturated, Gogol finds a mirror reflection of the St. Petersburg “phantasmagoria”. In St. Petersburg, reality and fantasy easily change places. The daily life and destinies of the city's inhabitants are on the verge of the believable and the miraculous. The incredible suddenly becomes so real that a person cannot stand it and goes crazy.
Gogol gave his interpretation of the St. Petersburg theme. His Petersburg, unlike Pushkin’s (“The Bronze Horseman”), lives outside of history, outside of Russia. Gogol's Petersburg is a city of incredible incidents, ghostly and absurd life, fantastic events and ideals. Any metamorphosis is possible in it. The living turns into a thing, a puppet (such are the inhabitants of the aristocratic Nevsky Prospect). A thing, object or part of the body becomes a “face”, an important person in the rank of state councilor (the nose that disappeared from the collegiate assessor Kovalev, who calls himself a “major”). The city depersonalizes people, distorts their good qualities, highlights their bad ones, and changes their appearance beyond recognition.
Like Pushkin, Gogol explains the enslavement of man by St. Petersburg from a social perspective: in the ghostly life of the city, he discovers a special mechanism that is set in motion by the “electricity” of the city. Rank, that is, a person’s place determined by the Table of Ranks, replaces human individuality. There are no people - there are positions. Without a rank, without a position, a St. Petersburger is not a person, but neither this nor that, “the devil knows what.”
The universal artistic technique that the writer uses when depicting St. Petersburg is synecdoche. Replacing the whole with its part is an ugly law by which both the city and its inhabitants live. A person, losing his individuality, merges with a faceless multitude of people just like him. It is enough to say about the uniform, tailcoat, overcoat, mustache, sideburns to give a comprehensive idea of the motley St. Petersburg crowd. Nevsky Prospekt, the front part of the city, represents the whole of St. Petersburg. The city exists as if by itself, it is a state within a state - and here the part crowds out the whole.
Gogol is by no means an impassive chronicler of the city: he laughs and is indignant, ironic and sad. The meaning of Gogol’s image of St. Petersburg is to point out to a person from a faceless crowd the need for moral insight and spiritual rebirth. He believes that in a creature born in the artificial atmosphere of the city, the human will still triumph over the bureaucratic.
In “Nevsky Prospekt” the writer gave a certain introduction to the entire cycle of “Petersburg stories”. This is both a “physiological essay” (a detailed study of the main “artery” of the city and the city “exhibition”), and a romantic short story about the fate of the artist Piskarev and Lieutenant Pirogov. They were brought together by Nevsky Prospekt, the “face”, “physiognomy” of St. Petersburg, changing depending on the time of day. It becomes sometimes businesslike, sometimes “pedagogical,” sometimes “the main exhibition of the best works of man.” Nevsky Prospekt is a model of an official city, a “moving capital”. Gogol creates images of puppet dolls, bearers of sideburns and mustaches of various colors and shades. Their mechanical assembly marches along Nevsky Prospekt. The fates of the two heroes are details of St. Petersburg life that made it possible to tear off the city’s brilliant mask and show its essence: Petersburg kills the artist and is favorable to the official; both tragedy and an ordinary farce are possible in it. Nevsky Prospekt is “deceitful at all times,” just like the city itself.
In each story, St. Petersburg opens up from a new, unexpected side. In “Portrait” it is a seductive city that ruined the artist Chartkov with money and light, illusory fame. In “Notes of a Madman,” the capital is seen through the eyes of the titular councilor Poprishchin, who has gone mad. The story “The Nose” shows the incredible, but at the same time very “real” St. Petersburg “odyssey” of Major Kovalev’s nose. “The Overcoat” is the “life” of a typical Petersburger - a petty official Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin. Gogol emphasizes the illogicality of the ordinary, everyday and familiar. The exceptional is only an appearance, a “deception” that confirms the rule. Chartkov’s madness in “Portrait” is part of the general madness that arises as a result of people’s desire for profit. The madness of Poprishchin, who imagined himself as the Spanish King Ferdinand VIII, is a hyperbole that emphasizes the manic passion of any official for ranks and awards. In the loss of Major Kovalev’s nose, Gogol showed a special case of the loss of “face” by the bureaucratic masses.
Gogol's irony reaches deadly force: only the exceptional, the fantastic can bring a person out of moral stupor. In fact, only the insane Poprishchin remembers the “good of humanity.” If the nose had not disappeared from the face of Major Kovalev, he would still have been walking along Nevsky Prospect in a crowd of people like him: with noses, in uniforms or in tails. The disappearance of the nose makes it individual: after all, you cannot appear in public with a “flat spot” on your face. If Bashmachkin had not died after being scolded by a “significant person,” it is unlikely that this “significant person” imagined this petty official as a ghost tearing off the greatcoats of passers-by. St. Petersburg as depicted by Gogol is a world of familiar absurdity and everyday fantasy.
Madness is one of the manifestations of St. Petersburg absurdity. In every story there are madmen heroes: these are not only the crazy artists Piskarev (“Nevsky Prospekt”) and Chartkov (“Portrait”), but also officials Poprishchin (“Notes of a Madman”) and Kovalev, who I almost went crazy when I saw my own nose walking around St. Petersburg. Even the “little man” Bashmachkin, who has lost hope of finding his overcoat—the “bright guest” of his dull life—is seized by madness. The images of madmen in Gogol's stories are not only an indicator of the illogicality of social life. The pathology of the human spirit allows us to see the true essence of what is happening. The Petersburger is a “zero” among many “zeros” like him. Only madness can distinguish it. The madness of the heroes is their “finest hour”, because only by losing their minds do they become individuals, losing the automatism characteristic of a person from the bureaucratic mass. Madness is one of the forms of people's rebellion against the omnipotence of the social environment.
The stories “The Nose” and “The Overcoat” depict two poles of St. Petersburg life: absurd phantasmagoria and everyday reality. These poles, however, are not as far from each other as they might seem at first glance. The plot of “The Nose” is based on the most fantastic of all city “stories”. Gogol's fantasy in this work is fundamentally different from the folk poetic fantasy in the collection “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka.” There is no source of the fantastic here: the nose is part of St. Petersburg mythology, which arose without the intervention of otherworldly forces. This mythology is special - bureaucratic, generated by the omnipotent invisible - the “electricity” of the rank.
The nose behaves as befits a “significant person” who has the rank of state councilor: he prays in the Kazan Cathedral, walks along Nevsky Prospect, visits the department, makes visits, and plans to leave for Riga using someone else’s passport. Where it came from is of no interest to anyone, including the author. One can even assume that he “fell from the moon,” because, according to Poprishchin, the madman from “Notes of a Madman,” “the moon is usually made in Hamburg,” and is inhabited by noses. Any, even the most delusional, assumption is not excluded. The main thing is different - the “two-facedness” of the nose. According to some signs, this is definitely the real nose of Major Kovalev (his mark is a pimple on the left side), that is, a part that has separated from the body. But the second “face” of the nose is social.
The image of the nose is the result of an artistic generalization that reveals the social phenomenon of St. Petersburg. The point of the story is not that the nose became a man, but that he became a fifth-class official. To those around him, the nose is not a nose at all, but a “civilian general.” They see the rank - the person is not there, so the substitution is completely invisible. People for whom the essence of a person is limited to his rank and position do not recognize the mummer. Fantasy in “The Nose” is a mystery that is nowhere and is everywhere; it is the terrible irrationality of St. Petersburg life itself, in which any delusional vision is indistinguishable from reality.
The plot of “The Overcoat” is based on an insignificant St. Petersburg incident, the hero of which was the “little man,” the “eternal titular adviser” Bashmachkin. The purchase of a new overcoat turns into a shock for him, commensurate with the disappearance of the nose from the face of Major Kovalev. Gogol did not limit himself to a sentimental biography of an official who tried to achieve justice and died from “official scolding” by a “significant person.” At the end of the story, Bashmachkin becomes part of St. Petersburg mythology, a fantastic avenger, a “noble robber.”
Bashmachkin’s mythological “double” is a kind of antithesis to the nose. The official nose is a reality of St. Petersburg that does not confuse or terrify anyone. “A dead man in the form of an official”, “tearing off all sorts of overcoats from everyone’s shoulders, without distinguishing rank and title,” terrifies the living noses, “significant persons.” He eventually gets to his offender, “one significant person,” and only after that he forever leaves the bureaucratic Petersburg that offended him during his lifetime and was indifferent to his death.
In 1835, plans arose for Gogol's comedy "The Inspector General" and the poem "Dead Souls", which determined the entire subsequent fate of Gogol the artist.
Gogol revealed the place of “The Inspector General” in his work and the level of artistic generalization to which he strove when working on a comedy in “The Author's Confession” (1847). The “thought” of the comedy, he emphasized, belongs to Pushkin. Following Pushkin’s advice, the writer “decided to collect everything bad in Russia in one pile... and laugh at everything at once.” Gogol defined a new quality of laughter: in “The Inspector General” it is “high” laughter, due to the height of the spiritual and practical task facing the author. The comedy became a test of strength before working on a grandiose epic about modern Russia. After creating The Inspector General, the writer felt “the need for a complete essay, where there would be more than one thing to laugh at.” Thus, work on “The Inspector General” is a turning point in Gogol’s creative development.
The first edition of the comedy was created in a few months, by December 1835. Its premiere, which was attended by Nicholas I, took place on April 19, 1836 on the stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg (the first edition was also published in 1836). The performance made a depressing impression on Gogol: he was dissatisfied with the acting, the indifference of the audience, and most of all, with the fact that his plan remained unclear. “I wanted to run away from everything,” the writer recalled.
However, it was not the flaws in the stage interpretation of “The Inspector General” that were the main reason for the author’s acute dissatisfaction. Gogol was inspired by an unrealistic hope: he expected to see not only a stage performance, but also a real effect produced by his art - a moral shock to the spectators-officials who recognized themselves in the “mirror” of the work. The disappointment experienced by the writer prompted him to “explain” to the public, comment on the meaning of the play, especially its ending, and take a critical look at his own work. Two commentaries were conceived: “An excerpt from a letter written by the author after the first performance of “The Inspector General” to a writer” and the play “Theatrical tour after the presentation of a new comedy.” Gogol completed these “explanations” with the public in 1841-1842. Dissatisfaction with the play led to its thorough revision: the second, revised edition was published in 1841, and the final edition of “The Inspector General,” in which, in particular, the famous epigraph “There is no point in blaming the mirror if your face is crooked,” was published in 1842 . in the 4th volume of "Works".
On June 6, 1836, after all the stormy emotions caused by the premiere of The Government Inspector, Gogol went abroad with the intention of “deeply thinking about his duties as an author, his future creations.” Gogol’s main work during his stay abroad, mainly in Italy, which lasted for 12 years (he finally returned to Russia only in 1848), was “Dead Souls.” The idea for the work arose in the fall of 1835, at which time the first sketches were made. However, work on the “true novel” (its plot, according to Gogol, belonged to Pushkin, like the “thought” of “The Inspector General”) was crowded out by other plans. Initially, he wanted to write a satirical adventure novel, showing in it “albeit from one side all of Rus'” (letter to A.S. Pushkin dated October 7, 1835).
Only after leaving Russia, the writer was able to seriously begin working on Dead Souls. A new stage in the implementation of the plan began in the summer of 1836. Gogol thought over the plan of the work, redoing everything written in St. Petersburg. “Dead Souls” was now conceived as a three-volume work. Having strengthened the satirical principle, he sought to balance it with a new, non-comic element - lyricism and the high pathos of the author's digressions. In letters to friends, defining the scale of his work, Gogol assured that “all of Rus' will appear in it.” Thus, the previous thesis - about the depiction of Russia “albeit from one side” - was canceled. The understanding of the genre of “Dead Souls” gradually changed: the writer moved further and further away from the traditions of various genre varieties of the novel - adventure-picaresque, morally descriptive, travel novel. From the end of 1836, Gogol called his work a poem, abandoning the previously used designation of the genre - a novel.
Gogol’s understanding of the meaning and significance of his work changed. He came to the conclusion that his pen was guided by a higher predetermination, which was determined by the significance of “Dead Souls” for Russia. A firm conviction arose that his work was a feat in the writing field, which he accomplished despite the misunderstanding and hostility of his contemporaries: only his descendants could appreciate it. After Pushkin’s death, the shocked Gogol perceived “Dead Souls” as a “sacred testament” of his teacher and friend - he became more and more convinced of his chosenness. However, work on the poem progressed slowly. Gogol decided to organize a series of readings of the unfinished work abroad, and at the end of 1839-beginning of 1840 in Russia, where he came for several months.
In 1840, immediately after leaving Russia, Gogol became seriously ill. After his recovery, which the writer regarded as a “miraculous healing,” he began to consider “Dead Souls” as a “holy work.” According to Gogol, God sent him illness, put him through painful trials and brought him to the light so that he could fulfill his highest plans. Inspired by the idea of moral achievement and messianism, during 1840 and 1841. Gogol completed work on the first volume and brought the manuscript to Russia. The second and third volumes were being considered at the same time. Having passed through censorship, the first volume was published in May 1842 under the title “The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls.”
The last period of Gogol’s work (1842-1852) began with a sharp controversy around the first volume of “Dead Souls,” which reached its climax in the summer of 1842. Judgments about the poem were expressed not only in the press (the most striking episode was the dispute between V.G. Belinsky and K. S. Aksakov about the genre, and in fact about the meaning and meaning of “Dead Souls”), but also in private correspondence, diaries, in high society salons and student circles. Gogol closely followed this “terrible noise” raised by his work. Having gone abroad again after the publication of the first volume, he wrote the second volume, which, in his opinion, should have explained to the public the general concept of his work and removed all objections. Gogol compared the first volume with the threshold of the future “great poem,” which is still under construction and will have to solve the riddle of his soul.
Work on the second volume, which lasted ten years, was difficult, with interruptions and long stops. The first edition was completed in 1845, but did not satisfy Gogol: the manuscript was burned. After this, the book “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends” was prepared (published on the eve of 1847). From 1846 to 1851, the second edition of the second volume was created, which Gogol intended to publish.
However, the book was never published: its manuscript was either not completely completed, or was burned in February 1852 along with other personal papers a few days before the writer’s death, which occurred on February 21 (March 4), 1852.
“Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends” is Gogol’s vivid religious, moral, social and aesthetic manifesto. This book, like other religious and moral works of the 1840s, summed up his spiritual development and revealed the drama of his human and literary fate. Gogol's word became messianic, prophetic: he created extremely sincere and merciless confessions and at the same time passionate sermons. The writer was inspired by the idea of spiritual self-knowledge, which was supposed to help him learn “the nature of man in general and the soul of man in general.” Gogol’s coming to Christ is natural: in him he saw “the key to the human soul,” “the height of spiritual knowledge.” In the “Author's Confession,” the writer noted that he “spent several years inside himself,” “educating himself like a student.” In the last decade of his life, he sought to implement a new creative principle: first create yourself, then a book that will tell others how to create themselves.
However, the last years of the writer’s life were not only steps of climbing the ladder of high spirituality, which was revealed to him in civil and religious feats. This is the time of a tragic duel with himself: having written almost all of his artistic works by 1842, Gogol passionately desired, but was never able to transform the spiritual truths that had been revealed to him into artistic values.
Gogol's artistic world took shape by the early 1840s. After the publication of the first volume of “Dead Souls” and “The Overcoat” in 1842, there was essentially a process of transforming Gogol the artist into Gogol the preacher, striving to become the spiritual mentor of Russian society. This can be approached in different ways, but the very fact of Gogol’s turn and movement towards new goals, far beyond the boundaries of artistic creativity, is undeniable.
Gogol has always, with the possible exception of his early works, been far from “pure” art. Even in his youth, he dreamed of a civil career and, as soon as he entered literature, he realized his writing as a kind of civil service. A writer, in his opinion, should be not only an artist, but also a teacher, moralist, and preacher. Let us note that this feature of Gogol distinguishes him from his contemporaries: neither Pushkin nor Lermontov considered the “teacher” function to be the main task of art. Pushkin generally rejected any attempts by the “rabble” to force the writer into any kind of “service.” Lermontov, an unusually sensitive “diagnostician” of the spiritual vices of his contemporaries, did not consider the writer’s task to “cure” society. On the contrary, all of Gogol's mature work (from the mid-1830s) was inspired by the idea of preaching.
However, his sermon had a special character: Gogol is a comic writer, his element is laughter: humor, irony, satire. “Laughing” Gogol expressed in his works the idea of what a person should not be and what his vices are. The world of the writer’s most important works—“The Inspector General” and “Dead Souls” (excluding the second, unfinished volume)—is a world of “anti-heroes,” people who have lost those qualities without which a person turns into a useless “sky-smoker” or even a “hole in humanity.”
In the works written after the first collection “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka,” Gogol proceeded from the idea of a moral norm, a model, which is quite natural for a moralist writer. In the last years of his life, Gogol formulated the ideals that inspired him already at the beginning of his writing career. We find a remarkable imperative addressed both to “man in general” and to “Russian man”, and at the same time the writer’s credo of Gogol himself, for example, in the outlines of an unsent letter to V.G. Belinsky (summer 1847): “Man must remember that he not at all a material brute, but a high citizen of high heavenly citizenship. Until he lives at least to some extent the life of a heavenly citizen, until then earthly citizenship will not come into order.”
Gogol the artist is not a dispassionate “protocolist.” He loves his heroes even “little black ones,” that is, with all their shortcomings, vices, absurdities, he is indignant at them, sad with them, leaving them hope for “recovery.” His works have a pronounced personal character. The personality of the writer, his judgments, open or veiled forms of expression of ideals are manifested not only in direct appeals to the reader (“The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich,” “Petersburg” stories, “Dead Souls”), but also in how Gogol sees his heroes, the world of things that surround them, their everyday affairs, everyday troubles and “vulgar” conversations. “Objectivity”, love for things, a heap of details - the entire “physical”, material world of his works is shrouded in an atmosphere of secret teaching.
Like a wise mentor, Gogol did not tell readers what is “good”, but pointed out what is “bad” - in Russia, in Russian society, in Russian people. The firmness of his own convictions should have led to the negative example remaining in the reader’s mind, disturbing him, teaching him without lecturing. Gogol wanted the person he depicted to “remain like a nail in the head, and his image seemed so alive that it was difficult to get rid of him,” so that “insensitively” (emphasis added) “the good Russian characters and properties of people” would become attractive, and the “bad” ones are so unattractive that “the reader will not even love them in himself if he finds them.” “This is where I believe my writing lies,” Gogol emphasized.
Note that Gogol treated his reader differently than Pushkin (remember the images of the reader? - “friend”, “enemy”, “buddy” of the Author - in “Eugene Onegin”) or Lermontov (the image of an indifferent or hostile contemporary reader, whom “spangles and deceptions entertain”, created in the poem “Poet”). For Gogol, a moralist writer, the reader of his books is a “student” reader, whose duty is to listen carefully to the “lesson” taught by a wise and demanding mentor in an entertaining way.
Gogol loves to joke and laugh, knowing how and with what to attract the attention of his “students.” But his main goal is that, after leaving the “class”, leaving Gogol’s “laughing room”, that is, closing the book written by him, a comic writer, the reader would think bitterly about the imperfections of the country in which he lives, people who are little different from himself, and, of course, about his own vices.
Please note: the moral ideal of a writer, according to Gogol, should be manifested “insensitively,” not in what he says, but in how he depicts. It is by depicting, capturing and enlarging in his heroes even the “infinitesimal”, “vulgar” (that is, everyday, familiar) traits of their characters that Gogol teaches, instructs, and preaches. His moral position is expressed in artistic words, which have a dual function: it contains both sermon and confession. As Gogol never tired of emphasizing, when addressing a person, and even more so when instructing him, one must begin with oneself, with self-knowledge and spiritual self-improvement.
Gogol is often called the “Russian Rabelais”, the “Russian Swift”. Indeed, in the first half of the 19th century. he was the largest comic writer in Russia. Gogol's laughter, like the laughter of his great predecessors, is a formidable, destructive weapon that spared neither the authorities, nor the class arrogance of the nobility, nor the bureaucratic machine of the autocracy. But Gogol’s laughter is special - it is the laughter of a creator, a moralist-preacher. Perhaps none of the Russian satirists laughed at the social vices and shortcomings of people, inspired by such clear moral goals as Gogol. Behind his laughter are ideas about what should be - about what people should be, the relationships between them, society and the state.
From their school days, many applicants know for sure that Gogol “convicted”, “exposed” “officials, serfdom and serf-owners,” but often do not think about what inspired the writer, what “wonderful power” forced him to “look around the whole enormously rushing life, to look at it through laughter visible to the world and invisible, unknown to him tears” (“Dead Souls”, volume one, chapter 7). Many modern readers of Gogol do not have a clear answer to the questions: what were the civil and moral ideals of the writer, in the name of which he criticized serfdom and serf owners, what is the meaning of Gogol’s laughter?
Gogol was a convinced conservative, a monarchist, who never raised the question of changing the social system, did not dream of social upheavals, or of public freedom. The very word “freedom” is alien to Gogol’s dictionary. For the writer, the Russian monarch is * “God’s anointed,” the embodiment of the power of the state and the highest moral authority. He is able to punish any social evil, find and “cure” any distortion in human souls.
In Gogol's works, Russia appears as a country of bureaucratic officials. The image of the Russian bureaucracy created by the writer is an image of a clumsy, absurd government alienated from the people. The point of his criticism of the bureaucracy is not to “destroy” it with laughter - the writer criticizes “bad” officials who do not fulfill the duties assigned to them by the tsar, who do not understand their duty to the Fatherland. He had no doubt that any official who has “full knowledge of his position” and does not act “beyond the limits and boundaries specified by law” is necessary to govern a huge country. Bureaucracy, according to Gogol, is good for Russia if it understands the significance of the “important place” it occupies and is not affected by self-interest and abuse.
Vivid images of landowners - “sky smokers”, “lying stones” - were created in many of Gogol’s works: from the story “Ivan Fedorovich Shponka and His Aunt” to “Dead Souls”. The meaning of the satirical depiction of the feudal landowners is to point out to the nobles who own land and people the “height of their rank” and their moral duty. Gogol called the nobility a “vessel” containing “moral nobility, which should spread throughout the entire Russian land in order to give an idea to all other classes why the highest class is called the flower of the people.” The Russian nobility, according to Gogol, “in its truly Russian core is beautiful, despite the temporary growth of foreign husks, it is “the flower of our own people.”
A real landowner, in Gogoli’s understanding, is a good owner and shepherd of the peasants. In order to live up to his God-ordained destiny, he must spiritually influence his serfs. “Explain to them the whole truth,” Gogol advised the “Russian landowner” in “Selected Bridges from Correspondence with Friends,” “that the soul of a person is more valuable than anything else in the world and that first of all you will see to it that one of them does not destroy his soul and did not betray it to eternal torment." The peasantry, thus, was considered by the writer as an object of touching care of a strict, highly moral landowner." Gogol's heroes - alas! - are far from this bright ideal.
For whom did Gogol, who “always stood for public enlightenment,” write, and to whom did he preach? Not to the peasantry, “farmers”, but to the Russian nobility, who had deviated from their direct destiny, who had left the right path - serving the people, the Tsar and Russia. In the “Author's Confession,” the writer emphasized that “before enlightening the people themselves, it is more useful to educate those who have a close encounter with the people, from whom the people often suffer.”
Literature, in moments of social disorder and unrest, should, according to Gogol, inspire the entire nation with its example. Setting an example and being useful are the main responsibilities of a true writer. This is the most important point of Gogol’s ideological and aesthetic program, the leading idea of his mature period of creativity.
The unusual thing about Gogol the artist is that in not a single completed and published work of art does he express his ideals directly or openly instruct his readers. Laughter is the prism through which his views are refracted. However, Belinsky also rejected the very possibility of a straightforward interpretation of Gogol’s laughter. “Gogol depicts not strangers, but a person in general... the critic emphasized. “He is as much a tragedian as he is a comedian... he is rarely one or the other separately... but more often than not he is both.” In his opinion, “comicism is a narrow word to express Gogol’s talent. His comedy is higher than what we are used to calling comedy.” Having called Gogol’s heroes “monsters,” Belinsky astutely noted that they are “not cannibals,” “in fact, they have neither vices nor virtues.” Despite the whimsicality and comic incongruities, enhanced by laughter, people are quite ordinary, not only “negative heroes” of their era, but people “in general”, recreated with extraordinary “largeness”.
The heroes of Gogol’s satirical works are “failed” people, worthy of both ridicule and regret. Creating their most detailed social and everyday portraits, the writer pointed out what, in his opinion, “sits” in every person, regardless of his rank, title, class affiliation and specific life circumstances. Specific historical and eternal, universal traits in Gogol’s heroes form a unique fusion. Each of them is not only a “human document” of the Nicholas era, but also an image-symbol of universal human significance. After all, as Belinsky noted, even “the best of us are not alien to the shortcomings of these monsters.”
N.V. Gogol saw St. Petersburg not only as a flourishing capital, whose life is full of magnificent balls, not only as a city where the best achievements of art in Russia and Europe are concentrated. The writer saw in him a concentrate of depravity, poverty and cowardice. The collection “Petersburg Tales” was dedicated to identifying the problems of society in northern Palmyra, and at the same time throughout Russia, and searching for ways of salvation. This cycle includes “Portrait,” which will be discussed in our article.
The writer came up with the idea for the story “Portrait” in 1832. The first edition was published in the collection "Arabesques" in 1835. Later, after writing “Dead Souls” and traveling abroad, in 1841 Gogol subjected the book to significant changes. In the third issue of Sovremennik, a new version was published. In it, the epithets, dialogues, and rhythm of presentation were changed, and the surname of the leading character became “Chartkov” instead of “Chertkov,” which was associated with the devil. This is the story of "Portrait".
The motif of an image possessing ominous power was inspired by Gogol’s then-fashionable novel by Maturin “Melmoth the Wanderer.” In addition, the image of a greedy moneylender also makes these works similar. In the image of the greedy businessman, whose portrait turns the life of the main character upside down, one can hear echoes of the myth of Agasphere - the “Eternal Jew” who cannot find peace.
The ideological concept of the work lies in its title – “Portrait”. It is no coincidence that Gogol names his brainchild this way. It is the portrait that is the cornerstone of the entire work, which allows you to expand the genre range from a story to a detective story, and also completely changes the life of the main character. It is also filled with special ideological content: it is the symbol of greed and depravity. This work raises the question of art and its authenticity.
In addition, this title of the story makes the reader think about the problems that the writer reveals. What else could the title be? Suppose, “The Death of the Artist” or “Greed”, all this would not carry such a symbolic meaning, and the ominous image would remain only a work of art. The title “Portrait” focuses the reader on this particular creation, forces him to always keep in mind, and subsequently, see in it more than the captured face.
The direction of fantastic realism set by Gogol showed up relatively little in this work. There are no ghosts, animated noses or other humanized objects, but there is a certain mystical power of the moneylender, whose money brings people only grief; The painting, completed at the end of his life, continues the terrible mission of the man depicted in it. But Gogol gives a simple explanation for all the terrifying phenomena that happened to Chartkov after acquiring the canvas: it was a dream. Therefore, the role of fiction in “Portrait” is not great.
The story in the second part receives elements of a detective story. The author gives an explanation of where the money could have come from, the discovery of which at the beginning of the work seemed magical. In addition, the fate of the portrait itself has the features of a detective: it mysteriously disappears from the wall during the auction.
The portrayal of the characters of Chartkov's capricious clients, his naive craving for tasteless pomp - all these are comic techniques embodied in the book. Therefore, the genre of the story is correlated with satire.
The story “Portrait” consists of two parts, but each of them has its own compositional features. The first section has a classic structure:
The second part can be perceived as an epilogue or some kind of author’s commentary on the above. The peculiarity of the composition of “Portrait” is that Gogol uses the technique of a story within a story. The son of the artist who painted the ominous portrait appears at the auction and claims ownership of the work. He talks about the difficult fate of his father, the life of a greedy money lender and the mystical properties of the portrait. His speech is framed by the auctioneers' bargaining and the disappearance of the very subject of the dispute.
The action takes place in St. Petersburg. The young artist Chartkov is in extreme need, but with his last pennies he buys a portrait of an old man in a shop on Shchukin’s yard, whose eyes “stroking as if they were alive.” Since then, unprecedented changes began to occur in his life. One night the young man dreamed that the old man came to life and stuck out a bag of gold. In the morning, gold chervonets were discovered in the frame of the picture. The hero moved to a better apartment, acquired all the things necessary for painting in the hope of devoting himself entirely to art and developing his talent. But everything turned out completely differently. Chartkov became a fashionable popular artist, and his main activity was painting commissioned portraits. One day he saw the work of his friend, which awakened in the young man his former interest in real creativity, but it was too late: the hand does not obey, the brush performs only memorized strokes. Then he goes berserk: he buys up the best paintings and brutally destroys them. Soon Chartkov dies. This is the essence of the work: material wealth destroys a person’s creative nature.
During the auction, when his property is being sold, one gentleman claims rights to the portrait of an old man, which was bought by Chartkov at Shchukin’s yard. He tells the background and description of the portrait, and also admits that he himself is the son of the artist, the author of this work. But during the auction, the painting mysteriously disappears.
We can say that each part of the story has its own main character: in the first it is Chartkov, and in the second the image of a moneylender is vividly presented.
This relatively short story touches on many topics relating to quite diverse areas of human life.
Always remember about your soul, and not chase wealth - this is the main idea of the story “Portrait”. All the possibilities for achieving a goal, finding happiness in a person already exist - Gogol talks about this. Later, Chekhov would turn to this idea in his drama “Three Sisters,” where the girls will believe that the path to joy is Moscow. And Nikolai Vasilyevich shows that it is possible to reach the goal, in this case, to comprehend art, without any special material costs. The main thing is not in them, but in the inner strength of a person.
The narrator in the second part talks about the fatal effect of the moneylender's money, but is it fair to attribute all the troubles to mysticism? A person who puts money first is vulnerable to envy and depravity. That is why wild jealousy awoke in the happy spouse, and despair and vindictiveness awoke in Chartkov. This is the philosophical meaning of the story “Portrait”.
A person with a strong spirit is not subject to such low qualities; she is able to cope with them and get rid of them. This illustrates the life path of the artist, the author of the portrait of a moneylender.
The story “Portrait” warns about the danger of exalting money. The conclusion is simple: wealth cannot be set as the goal of life: this leads to the death of the soul. It is important to note that the image of a little man is characterized not only by material poverty, but also by spiritual poverty. This can explain the troubles of Chartkov and the moneylender’s borrowers. But Gogol does not give a single positive example where money would be beneficial. The author's position is clearly expressed: the writer sees the only correct path in spiritual improvement, in renouncing secular temptations. The main character understands this too late: he did not heed the warnings of his teacher, for which he was severely punished.
In this story, Gogol is closest to Hoffmann in style and method of correlating the fantastic and the real. Here, every unusual thing can be explained rationally, and the characters are as close as possible to the society of St. Petersburg. Such persuasiveness alarmed the reader of the story and made “Portrait” a relevant work both for Gogol’s contemporaries and for his heirs.
Literary criticism of the author's contemporaries was varied. Belinsky disapproved of this story, especially the second part, he considered it an addition in which the author himself was not visible. Shevyrev also adhered to a similar position, accusing Gogol of a weak manifestation of the fantastic in “Portrait”. But Nikolai Vasilyevich’s contribution to the development of Russian classical prose can hardly be overestimated, and “Portrait” also makes its contribution here. Chernyshevsky talks about this in his articles.
When considering critics' assessments, it is important to keep in mind that the final edition of "Portrait" took place during the late, critical period of Gogol's work. At this time, the writer is looking for a way to save Russia, mired in bribery, greed and philistinism. In letters to friends, he admits that he sees an opportunity to correct the situation in teaching, and not in introducing any newfangled ideas. From these positions one should consider the validity of the criticism of Belinsky and Shevyrev.
Interesting? Save it on your wall!The influence of Gogol’s creativity on the development of Russian literature.
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol - the most mysterious star in the firmament of Russian literature of the 19th and 20th centuries - still amazes the reader and viewer with the magical power of depiction and the most unusual originality of his path to the Motherland, to the solution and even... the creation of a future for it. A bias towards the Future... Gogol - let us remember once again Pushkin’s dream “Rumor about me will spread throughout all of Great Rus'”, and Mayakovsky’s bashful hope that sounded a hundred years later “I want to be understood by my native country” - completed the idea of moving into the Future, into the alarming and, as many believed, in the “beautiful Dapyoko”, which would not only be cruel to a person. And in this regard, it is closest to much in Russian folklore, in folk songs
“It is impossible to forget anything that Gogol said, even little things, even unnecessary things,” noted F. M. Dostoevsky. “Gogol had the chisel of Phidias,” wrote the philosopher and critic of the 20th century V.V. Rozanov. - How many words are dedicated to Petrushka, Chichikov’s lackey? And I remember no less than Nikolai Rostov. And Osip? In fact... The melancholy Osip, Khlestakov’s servant in “The Inspector General,” says just that, warning his master, the inspired writer of the poem about his own importance: “Leave from here. By God, it’s time,” and accepts gifts from merchants, including... a commemorative rope (“give me a rope, and the rope will come in handy on the road”). But this “string in reserve” was remembered by many generations of Russian viewers.
And with what supernatural completeness were combined in Gogol two of the most beautiful qualities that live separately in many, with the exception of Pushkin: exceptional vital observation and an equally rare power of imagination. If the artistic image as the main exponent of the spiritual life of Russia, the concentration of its spiritual life before Gogol was, as it were, distant from facts, from factuality, then in Gogol’s work - long before M. Gorky! — the fact seemed to have moved deeper into the image, sharpened the image, made it heavier.
From Gogol’s reality, incredibly wide trousers, the fatal pipe, Taras Bulba’s “cradle,” and the dried-out “singing doors” in the idyllic house of “old-world landowners” will forever appear in memory. And the mysterious melody of “a string ringing in the fog,” from Poprishchin’s St. Petersburg fantastic dreams (“Notes of a Madman”), which amazed even A. Blok.
To this day it is difficult to decide whether we “remember” in detail even the magical bird-three itself, this “simple, it seems, road projectile”? Or, each time, together with Gogol, do we “compose” this winged troika in our own way, “complement”, decipher the transcendental mystery of the indomitable, terrifying movement? The immense mystery of the “smoking road”, the secret of horses unknown to the world with incredible, but seemingly visible “whirlwinds in their manes”? Probably, Gogol’s contemporary I. Kireevsky was right when he said that after reading “Dead Souls” we have “hope and thought about the great destiny of our fatherland.”
But to this day the unanswered question remains mysterious - the epigraph to all post-Gogol literature - “Rus, where are you rushing to? Give an answer. Doesn't give an answer! And what could be the answer if the Rus'-troika rushes “through Korobochek and Sobakevich” (P.V. Palievsky)? If the two most famous writers of the early twentieth century, creating their own image of Gogol, close to symbolism, made up this Rus'-troika “of the crazy Poprishchin, the witty Khlestakov and the prudent Chichikov” (D.S. Merezhkovsky) or? “Gogol the rich: not one, but two troikas - Nozdryov - Chichikov - Manilov and Korobochka - Plyushkin - Sobakevich... Nozdryov - Chichikov - Manilov soar through the forests and mountains of life under the clouds - an airy troika. They don’t build life, but the owners - another trio: Korobochka - Plyushkin - Sobakevich.”
What did Gogol teach all subsequent Russian literature?
The usual answer is that he brought Laughter as an element of life to the fore, that viewers and readers in Russia have never laughed so much - after D. Fonvizin’s “The Minor” with his Prostakovs, Skotinins and Mitrofanushka, after A. Griboyedov’s “Woe from Wit”, - how they laughed along with Gogol, is hardly accurate in everything. Gogol’s laughter in “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” (1832) is still bright, light, and sometimes funny, although often the appearances of all kinds of sorcerers, sorcerers, and moon thieves alternate with continuous dances that are frightening in their automatism, with “hopak”, as if protecting this optimism . An uncontrollable surge of some kind of desperate mischief holds together the ideal and idyllic world.
And what is the laughter in the “Petersburg stories”, in the entire Gogolian demonology of Petersburg, this most fatal, deliberate city in Russia? Gogol removes in these stories the funny or scary figures of the bearers of evil, all the visual mischievous fantasy and devilry, removes somewhere Basavryuk, the witch lady, mermaids, sorcerers - but some kind of faceless, boundless evil reigns in his Petersburg. For the first time in Russian prose, that “diabolism” is born, that world evil, which will later be “disenchanted” by Bulgakov in “The Master and Margarita” with his Satan Woland, and Platonov in many plays, and of course, A. Bely in “Paterburg” ", F.K. Sologub in "The Little Demon" and even Shukshin in his phantasmagoria "Until the third roosters" and "In the morning they woke up...". Even Dostoevsky, and Sukhovo-Kobylin with his dramatic trilogy “The Wedding of Krechinsky”, “The Affair”, “The Death of Tarepkin”, as well as Gogol’s “The Nose” with its deceptive figurativeness, false concreteness, terrible ghostliness, came out of more than one “Overcoat”. fear of space, the desire to shield oneself from the encroaching emptiness... Squares of hypertrophied sizes in St. Petersburg... reflect incomplete habitability, little processing of space in early St. Petersburg (it is no coincidence that Shoes are not robbed in a wide square, whereas in Moscow this was done in narrow alleys). Petersburg fear, evil itself in Gogol’s “Petersburg tales” is no longer a nasty neighbor-devil, a sorcerer, not Basavryuk. The writer does not see the carriers of living evil, the carriers of witchcraft. The entire Nevsky Prospect is a continuous phantasmagoria, a deception: “Everything is a deception, everything is a dream, everything is not what it seems!” With this spell, Gogol concludes Nevsky Prospekt, an alarming story about the tragic death of the idealist artist Piskarev and the happy “enlightenment”, deliverance from the thirst for revenge of the vulgar lieutenant Pirogov, flogged by German craftsmen. From this Petersburg, together with Khlestakov, it is fear, the companion and shadow of Petersburg, that will come to the composite provincial city in The Inspector General.
Gogol “sang” (didn’t he sing the funeral service?) of St. Petersburg in such a unique way that many historians later unfairly blamed and reproached him: with him, Gogol, begins the well-known “tarnishing”, the darkening of the image of St. Petersburg, the clouding of its royal beauty, the protracted era of the tragic twilight of Petropol.
It was after Gogol that the tragic Petersburg of Dostoevsky appeared, and the entire disturbing silhouette of the ghost city in the novel “Petersburg” by A. Bely, and that city of A. Blok, where “Over the bottomless pit into eternity, / A trotter flies, gasping for breath...”. Gogol’s Petersburg became in the twentieth century the prototype, the basis of that grandiose stage platform for the multi-act action of revolutions, became a city “familiar to tears” (O. Mandelstam), for A. Blok in the poem “The Twelve” and many others.
The scope and depth of contradictions in an artist are often evidence of the greatness of his quest, the transcendence of his hopes and sorrows. Did Gogol, who created the comedy “The Inspector General” (1836), together with the future Khlestakov (he was called Skakunov in the first edition) understand this new, mirage space, full of echoes of the future, did he understand the whole meaning of “The Inspector General,” his brilliant creation?
The funny heroes of “The Inspector General” - extremely distinct, like sculptured figures of officials, inhabitants of a prefabricated city - seem to be drawn into the field of action of forces alienated, even from the author, into a field of absurdity and delusion. They are wrapped up in some kind of impersonal carousel. They even burst onto the stage, literally squeezing out, tearing down the door, just as Bobchinsky burst into Khlestakov’s room, knocking down the door to the floor, from the corridor. Gogol himself seems to be alienated from comedy, where the element of laughter, the element of action and expressive language reigns. Only at the end of the comedy does he seem to “come to his senses” and tries to attribute both to the audience and to himself a very edifying and sad doubt: “Why are you laughing? You’re laughing at yourself!” By the way, in the text of 1836 this significant remark, a signal to stop the “carousel”, to general petrification, the transformation of sinners into a kind of “pillars of salt”, was not there. Are they, the funny heroes of The Inspector General, really villainous? Such truthful, frank, trusting “villains”, as if begging to soften the punishment, rushing about with their vices, as if laying out everything about themselves in confession, did not exist before Gogol. They behave as if walking under God, convinced that Khlestakov (the messenger of the terrible, St. Petersburg higher power) knows their thoughts and deeds in advance...
“Dead Souls” (1842) is a lonely, even more difficult attempt by Gogol, the direct predecessor of Dostoevsky’s prophetic realism, to express in an extremely conceptual way the “Russian point of view” on the fate of man in the world, on all his irrational connections, to express through analysis the feelings of conscience and voice vices. The immortal poem is a synthesis of the entire artistic and spiritual experience of the writer and, at the same time, a sharp overcoming of the boundaries of literature, even foreshadowing Tolstoy’s future renunciation of the literary word. Leo Tolstoy, by the way, will speak almost like Gogol about the spiritual exhaustion, the overstrain of the cognizing thought of the Russian writer, about his suffering conscience and the torment of the word: for him in his later years, on the threshold of the twentieth century, all creativity is the knowledge of the Motherland “at the limit of thought and at the beginning of prayer."
Gogol is the founder of a great series of grandiose ethical attempts to save Russia by turning it to Christ: it was continued in the sermons of L. Tolstoy, and in S. Yesenin’s often woeful attempts to understand the fate, the whirlwind of events, the actions of those who in Russia in 1917 only “ They sprayed it all around, piled it up / And disappeared under the devil’s whistle.” And even in some kind of sacrifice of V. Mayakovsky: “I will pay for everyone, I will pay for everyone”... The death of A. Blok in 1921 at the moment when music disappeared in the era is also a distant version of “Gogol’s self-immolation.” Gogol “gogolized” many of the decisions and thoughts of writers. It was as if he was trying to move the most motionless, petrified thing, to call everyone along the path of the Rus' Troika. And the mystery of “Dead Souls,” that is, the first volume, with Chichikov’s visits to six landowners (each of them is either “dead” or more alive than the previous one), with the wreckage of the second volume, is most often solved by focusing on the image of the road, on the motives movements. As in “The Inspector General,” Gogol’s thought in “Dead Souls” seems to be rushing through sinful Rus', past the pile of junk in Plyushkin’s house to holy, ideal Rus'. The idea of God-forsaken Rus' is refuted by many insightful, mournful views in the biographies of heroes, including Chichikov. Often the writer hears and sees something that comes to the aid of his despair, his melancholy: “It is still a mystery - this inexplicable revelry, which is heard in our songs, rushes somewhere past life and the song itself, as if burning with the desire for a better homeland.” . His Chichikov, who laughed at Sobakevich’s “comments” on the list of dead souls, suddenly himself creates entire poems about the carpenter Stepan Probka, about the barge hauler Abakum Fyrov, who went to the Volga, where “the revelry of a broad life” and a song “infinite as Rus'” reign.
Russian literature has given the world a constellation of brilliant names. One of them was Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. An entire era separates us from the writer, but his work amazes and delights us to this day.
Gogol's artistic word is figurative, expressive and original. He did not copy life, but inspired it with his own idea. The depth and accuracy of the realistic sketches and the humorous portrayal of the characters fascinate the reader.
In 1835 it was published >. A book consisting of two parts, and which the author himself considered as a kind of continuation >. > occupies a special place here.
The main idea of the work is the exposure of the provincial landowner-noble society, the revelation of its spiritual and moral emptiness: > Two respectable people in the eyes of the entire Mirgorod turned out to be ordinary smokers!
The plot > is quite simple. The content unfolds in just seven chapters. But the composition of the work is quite interesting. It plays an important role, as it connects the content and language of the story into one whole.
The main compositional techniques are repetition, antithesis, comparison and hyperbole.
Moreover, repetition is based on the principles of parallelism. And this is what I will try to prove in this work.
The story begins with a huge number of repetitions and exclamations:
Ivan Ivanovich has a nice bekesha! excellent! And what smiles! Oh wow, what a joke! A wonderful person, Ivan Ivanovich! What a house he has in Mirgorod! What apple and pear trees he has right next to his windows! A wonderful person, Ivan Ivanovich!
Ivan Ivanovich is also a very good person. His yard is near the yard
Ivan Ivanovich.
Here's another repeat example:
Ivan Ivanovich has an extraordinary gift of speaking extremely pleasantly. Ivan Ivanovich, on the contrary, is more silent, but if he slaps a word, then just hold on: he will shave it off better than any razor. Ivan Ivanovich is thin and tall; Ivan Nikiforovich is a little lower, but extends in thickness. Ivan Ivanovich's head looks like a radish with its tail down; Ivan Nikiforovich's head on a radish with his tail up.
If in the first example we see a simple repetition, then in the second case the repetition is built on the principles of parallelism. His goal is to compare the heroes, but this comparison gives rise to an antithesis.
Let's take another example:
Ivan Ivanovich gets very angry if a fly gets into his borscht: then he loses his temper and throws the plate, and the owner gets it. Ivan Nikiforovich is extremely fond of swimming and, when he sits up to his neck in water, he orders that a table and a samovar also be placed in the water, and he really loves drinking tea in such coolness. Ivan Ivanovich is of a somewhat timid nature. Ivan Nikiforovich, on the contrary, has trousers with such wide folds that if they were inflated, the entire yard with barns and buildings could be placed in them.
As we see, the structure of the text sets up a comparison (cf. on the contrary), but in terms of meaning it diverges. In this case, the comparison is meaningless, which is precisely why it gives rise to irony. In addition, Gogol masterfully uses hyperbole techniques here.
If Ivan Ivanovich treats you with tobacco, he will always lick the lid of the snuff box with his tongue first, then click on it with his finger and, holding it up, will say, if you know him: >, if you don’t know him, then > Ivan Nikiforovich gives you his horn directly into your hands and will only add:
>. Both Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich really dislike fleas.
However, despite some differences, both Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich are wonderful people.
Compositional parallel repetition permeates the entire text of the story. For example, the entire fourth chapter is built on it: Ivan Ivanovich’s coming to court with a claim (call) - the judge’s extreme surprise - reading the petition - amazement of the entire court; the same thing with Ivan Nikiforovich - coming to court with a claim - extreme surprise of the judge - reading the petition - amazement of the entire court.
“I, Demyan Demyanovich,” said Ivan Ivanovich, finishing his last sip, “I have necessary business with you: I am sending a call.
Who is this for?
At these words the judge almost fell out of his chair.
After filing the lawsuit, Ivan Ivanovich left, >.
What destinies! What and how? How is your health, Ivan Nikiforovich?
With a request. - Ivan Nikiforovich could only say.
With a request? With which one?
With a call.
Here the shortness of breath made a long pause:
Oh!. with a call to the scammer. Ivan Ivanovich Pererepenkin.
The judge crossed himself.
After reading the request, Ivan Nikiforovich crawled through the door, closed it behind him, >.
The story of two Ivans ends with a parallel repetition:
Ivan Nikiforovich. said:
Don't worry, I have good news that the matter will be decided next week, and in my favor.
Ivan Ivanovich turned to me with a cheerful smile. said:
Shall I notify you of good news?
What news? - I asked.
Tomorrow my case will certainly be decided. The House said probably.
Throughout > the tone of the story changes. If at the beginning there was joy, then at the end one feels melancholy. The antithesis of the two outwardly dissimilar Ivanovs is removed: it gives way to the dull internal monotony of the two sky-smokers.
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. Gogol’s work and life were also influenced by the fact that his father, Vasily Afanasyevich, had a passion for art, was fond of theater and had his own compositions.
Gogol received a regular education at home. Later he enters the Nizhyn gymnasium. At the gymnasium, the future writer showed interest in the theater, participating in productions, learning to play the violin, and in 1828 he completed his studies. His first attempts to compose turned out to be a failure, and such stages of Gogol’s life and work will be periodically repeated in his biography. In 1829, he received the position of a minor official, at the same time he became interested in 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, chapters of the novel “Hetman”, on which the writer began work, were published. 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 valued 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
Gogol became famous among writers for his collection of stories “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” (1830-1831). The village where Gogol grew up was famous for its beliefs and legends. Gogol transferred many of those legends into his work. The writer decides to devote himself to pedagogy and scientific activity, and in 1834 he was appointed professor at the department of history at the University of St. Petersburg. In the same year he begins work on Taras Bulba. A year later, Gogol left the service and completely went into literature. In 1835, “Viy” and “Taras Bulba” came out from his pen. In addition, essays about life in St. Petersburg, “Arabesques,” were published, and sketches of “The Overcoat” were created, which Gogol would complete only in 1842.
Writing was not his only hobby; Gogol’s work and life were quite diverse. The appearance of The Inspector General in 1835 was the result of a passion for theatrical productions. It was for the theater that this work was written, which was 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 his next work, in which he ridicules the bureaucracy of that time, and in 1841, with the participation of Belinsky, the first volume of Dead Souls was published in St. Petersburg.
The second volume of Dead Souls had a completely different fate. Gogol's further work and life developed less successfully. A revision of life's principles and disappointment in the influence of fiction on life led the writer 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. That same year the writer passed away. He was buried in the cemetery of the Danilov Monastery. The entire chronology of Gogol’s life and work is reflected in his works.
