The Ukrainisation of European Romanticism: First Attempts in Prose: Fragments

Chapter two from Gogol's Art : A Search for Identity by Laszlo Tikos

Gogol's Art was published in paperback in 1997 by Bati Publishers, PO Box 263, Leverett, MA 01054. (Price $15). You can reach the author at that address or by email at Tikos@slavic.umass.edu.

Permission is granted to make and distribute complete verbatim electronic copies of this text for non-commercial purposes provided the copyright information and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. All other rights reserved.

The book CD "Gogol and Russian Literature" is built around Gogol's Art: a Search for Identity by Laszlo Tikos, the best book ever written about Russia's most enigmatic and intriguing author. Nikolay Gogol (1809-1852) created a new direction in Russian letters, which was further developed in the 19th century by writers like Dostoyevsky and Rozanov, and in the 20th century by Bely, Bulgakov and Sinyavsky. In addition to Gogol's Art, this CD includes the full text of Dead Souls, Tara Bulba, The Inspector General, and St. John's Eve by Gogol, plus great books by Dostoeyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Pushkin, Turgenev, Andreyev, Gorky, Kuprin, and Lermontov, plus works on Russian history, plus two "Country Studies" -- Russia and Belarus (birthplace of Gogol) -- which were originally published as printed books by the Library of Congress between 1987 and 1995. For details, see our online store http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat/russian.html

Chapter Two --

The Ukrainisation of European Romanticism: First Attempts in Prose: Fragments

The Jan. 1 issue of the Literaturnaya Gazeta published the strange, lyrical "Woman". ¹ In five pages of passionately overblown Romantic prose, Gogol presents an allegorical love-affair between a young man named Telekles, described as a disciple of Plato, and a young woman called Alcyone. The story begins in media res with raving tirades by Telekles who complains that both God and men -- meaning both Zeus and his teacher Plato -- have deceived him. Zeus distills "all the poison of creation" in a single drop and poisons his entire creation by fashioning woman. Man (here the male part of mankind), able to praise God before the creation of Woman, now can only curse Him. Inquiring into God's possible motives, Telekles surmises that God must have become envious of human happiness. But Plato, the teacher, also receives his share of the blame for he has taught his disciples that woman is godlike, heavenly creature, the ideal of beauty.

When Plato is challenged, namely for his statement that "Woman is hell's creation" ,he forces his young disciple to retreat step by step and to realize the erroneous nature of his views. His first question is whether Telekles is capable of love. The question is almost an insult to Telekles: of course he is, more than anyone in the world. Further questions lock the youth deeper and deeper into his own contradictions until he has to admit that both Zeus and the teacher were correct in praising and having created Man.

As the plot unfolds, we begin to understand that the purported love story is an allegory of the artist and his art, or rather an ars poetica. The Gods have created Woman (i.e. art) in order to soften Man's heart, in order to turn his gaze beyond the face of his fellow-man and so that he can see God in his fellow-man through Woman.

This may sound like a confused argument, partly because we are missing the intensely gender-related references in the Russian text. While the word "Man" does not imply the immediate specifics of gender in English, (especially not as mankind), in Russian ( chelovek ) it is masculine. Woman, and all the pronouns which refer to her are feminine. The impression is created in Gogol's text, therefore, that Telekles is talking literally about a love story and about his disappointment with the fickle nature of his beloved Alcyone. But Plato's meaning is different: it emphasizes the general principle embodied in the particular love story and is able to make clear to Telekles that Alcyone's love is the singularly ennobling factor in human relations and that therefore no single man can claim possession of her. Once we understand the underlying idea of this seemingly straightforward love story, it becomes obvious how well Gogol's idea about the meaning of art has been thought out. The example he presents through Plato is a portrait of a man (in the masculine sense) who is only the external appearance of an idea. Both words, Idea and Woman, are feminine in Russian. Only through this double presentation of the real face of humankind (both male and female) can we reach divinely inspired art. Otherwise, art is just a picture and a false one at that, with no inspiration behind it. And lo and behold, as soon as Plato's arguments reach and convince the young man, Alcyone appears. It is not quite clear, however, whether she is a living person. She appears like a goddess, and at least in the adjective, used to describe her , she has "marble" arms (mramornaya ruka ) and she may actually be a statue.

Finally, Telekles throw himself at the feet of the "godlike creature": when she bends over the young man, a teardrop falls on his inflamed cheek. ( Does this indicate that she feels compassion for him? Is he forgiven? And from now on will his newly won understanding of "Woman -- that is, of Art -- not hinder but further the unequal love affair ? )

Considering that Gogol was only twenty and a beginning artist, it is appropriate to recognize in this "Greek" allegory the complex inter-relationship between art and the artist. In many respects, it is a revealing picture with continued relevance for Gogol in his future writing. The formulation that art is unattainable when it is pursued with a misdirected "love", but returns willingly when man approaches it (her) humbly and with a genuine, "real" love, enables the artist to produce God-inspired art. This fundamental idea, in its variations, becomes the essential theme with which Gogol was to wrestle throughout his life as an artist.

This is the first formulation of his ars poetica (the divine inspiration of art). It merges readily with another aspect of his philosophy of art: "the eternal Wanderlust" (restless desire to roam) as it is expressed earliest in the narrative poem: "Hanz Kuekhelgarten". This story has been treated lightly by most commentators as an exercise in youthful derivation from German idealism, or as an awful example of Gogol's syrupy romanticism. But a closer look reveals Gogol's ars poetica as an allegorical investigation into the meaning of art. It is a passionate plea for a joyous recognition of a high-minded art, comparable to other great examples from world-literature -- Dante's Beatrice, Goethe's Graetchen in the concept of the "eternal feminine" (" das ewig Weibliche ").

For this reason, we have to disagree with Karlinsky's interpretation ² which reads here homosexual passion into this story. Instead of homosexuality, Gogol has presented a quasi-Greek, classical allegory about the meaning of art, cloaked as a love fable: "Art is the homeland of the soul, the beautiful striving of man to see beyond the transitory, the return to man's innocence before the fall " : in other words, the place where "everything is home" ( vse rodina).

It is also interesting that Gogol has chosen the allegory of a Greek legend, or what resembles a Greek legend, for the love of Telekles and Alcyone is unknown to Greek mythology. ³ Alcyone is the heroine of a different myth, as Ovid tells us: She is the daughter of Aeolus, king of the winds, and the wife of Ceyx. To pursue his "Wanderlust", Ceyx leaves his wife and perishes in a storm at sea. The gods listen to the bereaved Alcyone's request to become a bird and turn her into a kingfisher so that she may join her husband in the waves.

The name Telekles does not appear in any ancient legend, unless Gogol had Teleclydes in mind, the Athenian comic poet who lived ca. 445 BC. Whether Gogol intentionally or not changed the name to Telekles is hard to say, but its etymology seems to make sense in Greek as the "distant flame". Did Gogol think of himself as a "distant flame", in love with the goddess of poetry and artistic inspiration?

A final comment on this "Greek" legend: throughout his literary life, Gogol takes well-known stories, fables and anecdotes and turns them into his own. In most cases, his renditions are somewhat baffling, often acting merely as the starting point rather than as the continuation or imitation of the original. " Vii " is a case in point, as is the story of " The Overcoat ", both of which will be discussed below.

But we should note here that the alleged "Greek" legend, with all its distortions of chronology -- Teleclydes could hardly have been a disciple of Plato -- nor does Telekles exist in Greek mythological, or for that matter, in historical literature, the invention is entirely Gogol's.

Another curious work of a similar nature is from the same period (dated late in 1830, except that it remained unpublished): "Boris Godunov " (Pushkin's Drama )" ⁴ which he dedicated to P.A.Pletnev. This short piece, consisting of about five printed pages, purports to be review of Pushkin's Boris Godunov which was published in 1831 (Gogol's dating of the article is probably a mistake). From the outset, it is obvious that the "review" is not so much an analysis of Pushkin's drama as it is a sort of short story and "legend" about the meaning of art.

It begins strangely as a fictional narrative greatly resembling the later Petersburg Tales. A medley of voices in a bookstore with people talking about Pushkin's Boris Godunov sets the stage. Much of the dialogue is clearly Gogol's ironic commentary on the banality of people's views on art and foreshadows a similar exercise some six years later in which Gogol will describe the reaction of the theatergoing public to his play,"The Inspector General" ("After the Theater"). Characteristically, the bookseller is the last person to say something; he praises the poem as one written with "feelings", since "4,000 copies were sold in two hours!" -- a nice Gogolian comment.

At this point, two other browsers enter the conversation: a certain Elladi and his friend Pollior. Elladi is the naive art-lover, while his friend Pollior seems to be an artist, or rather, a poet. Elladi wants to know what his friend thinks of Pushkin's work. Instead of a simple answer, he receives a lecture about the meaning of art. Gogol adds further refinements to some of the ideas, already expressed in "Woman", about how preposterous it is for the uninitiated to express an opinion about art. It is meaningless to rank artists; one can judge art only by the effect it has upon the recipient: real art is like "fire in one's veins", and the true artist is "God's incarnation".

The best way to test this effect is to read a work together with a "trusted friend": if the reading strengthens the friendship, if the friends' souls "merge" as the result of the artistic experience to the point that " man disappears and the soul enters a magnificent, unfathomable building, on the decaying debris of the body", then there is no more need to talk about the effect or the meaning of art.

Throughout this high-flying and passionate presentation, Pollior begins to sound more and more like the later Gogol, who gives practical advice to friends and readers on just about anything, from how to say their prayers to the best methods of farm management (e.g. Tententnikov's lectures in Dead Souls).

The same can also be said of the anticipated results: Gogol's advice will not lead to a better understanding of art, but provides the actual transformation of life in an instant. (A. Sinyavsky notes in his book In Gogol's Shadows , that from youth on, Gogol believed in and portrayed the possibility of a "miraculous" transformation of the world through a touch of "magic" ) . Here Gogol suggests that the result of this common reading of great literary works will be "so much goodness, so much profit, and so much mutual happiness to the world." ⁵

Especially interesting is the use of the word "profit", ( pribyl' ) i.e. a "tangible material gain". This remains an important consideration throughout Gogol's life until his unsuccessful attempts to turn the second volume of Dead Souls (through magic, of course) into a work beneficial to his "fellow citizens" ( sootechestvenniki ) body and soul.

The actual "review" of Pushkin's work is left to the very end. Here Gogol's text becomes breathlessly adulatory, clearly indicative of his high opinion of Pushkin's drama: "Oh, how great is the regal martyr (Boris Godunov)! He could have brought so much goodness, profit , happiness to the world -- and nobody understood him. Fate's decision hangs above his head .Past life, as if summoned by the sad pealing of a bell, surrounds him! The dead come alive ... and your [Pushkin's] wondrous images strike a sparkle and echo infinity, growing incessantly." ⁶

The "review" ends with a panegyric to the "wonderful poet" (divny poet ). Gogol addresses him here almost as a demigod. Talking to a demigod evidently calls for highly ceremonial language, and young Gogol apparently considered this an obligatory requirement for good art. His style becomes encumbered to the point of incoherence, and in an almost religious trance, the final paragraphs become an "oath " to " follow the holy example": "Like a man in fetters, surrounding reality ceases to exist, who does not hear, does not listen, does not understand anything. I am devouring your pages, wondrous poet." Then he speaks of the effect Boris Godunov has had on him: it makes history come alive, and in a moment like this, he continues," I would give anything to see a copy of myself in my fellow man What kind of treasures would I not sacrifice to acquire such a blessing! I would address heaven with raised arms: here, take everything, everything from me, but send this being who understands me! ... Oh, Almighty! Why did you give me an incomplete soul? Complete it now, or take back the other half!" ⁷

The urgency of some of these expressions becomes part of Gogol's permanent style, in fact, the very fabric of his art. Andrei Sinyavsky notes that the Selected Passages is permeated with this sort of breathlessness, which began as stylistic device in Gogol's youth. ⁸ Interestingly enough, this can best be seen in the comedies: in "The Inspector General", (Bobcinsky and Dobcinsky, the sc. the "homunculi", according to Nabokov ⁹) or in the high-pitched rhetoric of the tragic Ukrainian epic, the Taras Bul'ba.

Another example of this pattern of youthful leitmotifs is Gogol's treatment of history as a subject-matter for art. Referring to the historicity of Pushkin's drama, Gogol underlines the fact that Pushkin's work makes "history come alive" -- a feature so important to Gogol's own attempts to write about Ukrainian History. History for him is not a "science" (in terms of the Russian "nauka", or the German "Wissenschaft"); what interests him is that "the dead come alive" -- and is this not an uncanny foreshadowing of Dead Souls wherein Gogol "resurrects" the dead serfs by trading them as if they were alive? History is fiction, narration, a psychological drama. (Given that sort of understanding of history, it is easy to see why Gogol during the curious interlude in his career as a professor of History had great difficulties , in convincing the University authorities or his students, for that matter, that he was a disinterested scholar of history.)

Further on, Gogol uses an "oath" to express his "holy obligation" and to follow in Pushkin's footsteps: he swears that he is still "clean", unspoiled by the "abominable feeling of profit mindedness", fawning and petty egotism:, and therefore is still able to follow the "sacred standards of art" set by Pushkin. He swears to "die a horrible death" if he veer leaves this road. This sounds like the high-minded, lofty Cossaks in the Dikanka stories -- Danilo, for example -- swearing eternal faithfulness to their beloved.

Finally, it is interesting to note that the two interlocutors in this review have Greek-sounding names: Elladi and Pollior. The impression is created that they are taken from Greek mythology, perhaps Castor and Pollux, that is, to judge by the friendship they display and the lofty speeches they make. But the more one searches for the source of the "legend", the more it becomes obvious that Gogol has created his own mythology, or rather has cloaked his characters in mythological garb. Elladi is simply the Greek word for a Hellene, a citizen of ancient Greece, while the name of his partner, the poet Pollior, means a "rich man". Knowing that Gogol's financial situation was rather strained at the time, to say the least -- all his letters to his mother are variations on the same basic message, send money -- it is hard to imagine that Gogol, in applying the name Pollior to himself, would have meant richness in financial terms. It is rather spiritual richness that he is talking about. The other name, Elladi, is probably a reference to a friend, perhaps the professor of History, to whom this piece is dedicated. Gogol's application of a Greek name and his formula of a dialogue between two Greek learned men is a leftover from his classicist period and, judging by similar incidence in his later works (in Dead Souls, for example, Manilov's sons have Greek names), becomes a permanent feature of Gogol's art.

Looking further at the fragments and short stories of the period not included in the Dikanka cycles, the stories "the Terrible Boar" and "The Hetman" deserve mention. Both were published in the literary weekly, Literaturnaya Gazeta, in 1831, the first chapter called "The Teacher", in January 1, and second called "The Messenger", on March 22. ¹⁰

The stories, two chapters from an uncompleted novel, deal with the arrival of a new teacher in the Ukrainian village Mandryk, and describe the reaction of the villagers to the new- comer as well as this reaction to them. The second chapter continues a scheme that the new teacher and his freshly acquired friend , Kukhmister, " cook up": to obtain the hand of the beautiful young daughter of the village Cossack chieftain. The proposal is made on behalf of the teacher by his friend, a cook in the house of a middle-aged widow, where the teacher has found lodging. During the matchmaking, however, the matchmaker falls in love with the beautiful Catherine and proposes to her himself. The proposal quickly turns to kissing until it is interrupted by the wife of the local pub-keeper, Mrs. Simonikha, whose name is obviously Jewish. At this point, the story stops.

It has the same atmosphere as the tales in the Dikanka cycle. It is well written and humorous. Gogol is here at his best in stylistic and logical non-sequiturs, writing delightfully in a quaint Russian-Ukrainian language. The characters themselves are the typical Gogolian puppet-theater-like characters. The teacher, Ivan Osipovic (we do not know his surname), is freshly out of a seminary, or teacher's college.

He is not exactly a scholarly type, or, as Gogol puts it: "He was frightened by the abyss of wisdom." ¹¹ He is the sort of scholar that many Ukrainian peasant Cossack sons probably were in the Latinized, Polish-oriented schools so well portrayed by Gogol in "Vii " and in Taras Bul'ba. He is the butt of needling and pranks by his fellow "scholars", very much like Gogol himself of Akaki Akakievic later in "The Overcoat". Since Ivan Osipovic was "not in a great hurry to graduate from the school", the incoming freshman classes taunted him for lack of progress. Further distinguishing features of this character include such remarkable possessions as his overcoat, which was light blue, with large, black bone buttons, which absolutely made him the seventh wonder of the universe among the villagers. Furthermore, his entire figure looked "like a bottle", ending with the narrow part, where his head was. In retrospect, some of Gogol's later characters are shaped here in this early Cossack "intellectual". Other remarkable qualities includeamong other things his "extreme fondness for eating" and tasting all kinds of home brew and cooking. A veritable Gogolian feast is presented to the reader -- just as in " The Old World Landowners ". The person providing him with all these worldly delights is a familiar Gogolian figure: the middle-aged woman: Anna Ivanovna, a widow, who may or may not be beyond sexual interests, even though there are hints that Ivan Osipovic was "fondly looking at the barrel-shaped" figure of his landlady. But, interestingly enough, the teacher is not greatly interested in the taunting and flirting village beauties. Instead, he strikes up a friendship with Anna Ivanovna's cook, identified only by his professional designation as "the Cook" (Kukhmister, probably from the German "Kochmeister "). But before we come to any wrong conclusions, such as of homosexual leanings, we discover that other passions join these two young men, "like Orestes and Pilad in the ancient world". The comparison is Gogol's --in a typical combination of the mock-classicist style in which low topics or characters are compared to well-known heroic situations or characters from classical Greek and Latin literature. Thus it is not sex, but rather another passion, for alcohol, that has united these two Ukrainian heroes. Curiously, later A. Sinyavsky, in his collection of aphorisms, Thoughts Unaware ¹² speaks of the two basic passions of the Russian character, for sex and alcohol. He points out, however, that for the "real" Russian, sex is of secondary importance; the black magic of sex is usually left for "Frenchmen" and other non-Russian "foreigners", while "for the Russian", the "white magic" of alcohol is temptation number one.

Not surprisingly, Gogol quotes the Latin dictum, Homo proponit, Deus disposit (Man proposes but God disposes). The unexpected happens: Ivan Osipovic falls inadvertently in love with the beautiful Catherine after having glanced at her "lily-white body" as she was taking a bath in the local brook.

Now he sends his friend Kukhmister to act as a matchmaker. The matchmaker's falling in love with the intended match is a typical Gogolian topsy-turvy situation, a reversal of roles important to his fiction. How the story would have continued, and how the title, "The Terrible Boar", would have been played out, we do not know; but elements from the story will return in the Dikanka stories, for instance, the matchmaking by and to the wrong person in the " May Night"; and, of course, the entire fairy-tale Ukrainian village, with its "typical" characters, will come back in the Ukrainian tales and further down the road, even in certain features of Dead Souls.

Another fragment from the same period also deals with a Ukrainian theme from the history of the mid-17th Century, when the Ukraine was under Polish occupation following the "Time of the Troubles". For Gogol, this period of Ukrainian history takes place amidst a magnificent natural world, full of heroic deeds, superhuman heroes and splendid battles. The love affairs of the young are contrasted with graver concerns of the older generation. One of Gogol's best-loved themes was that history is an epic poem, surpassing in proportions and significance any ordinary narration. It was sustained and supported by his admiration for Homer's Iliad, his favorite of all heroic epics. One might ask whether he was first drawn by his love of the Iliad or by his interest in a heroic vision of Ukrainian history. Judging by other stories to be discussed later, it is tempting to say that Gogol's interest in the Iliad led to his interest in an heroic presentation of the Ukraine, and not the other way around. It should also be noted that in the Selected Passages he enthusiastically reviewed Zhukovsky's translation of the Iliad.

In this fragment, called " The Hetman " (Ataman) ¹³ Gogol portrays the beginning of the struggle for independence against Polish rule in the Ukraine. The Cossack troops, concentrating in the area of Zaporozhye, spread out to the occupied territories in order to attack the Polish Ulan units there. In the extant excerpt, the Cossack officer Taras Ostranitsa (apparently an early version of Taras Bul'ba ) visits the midnight mass in the village of Komyshna during the Easter celebration in April of 1645. The description of the Ukrainian night, the village church, the Cossacks' celebrating, all will become familiar images in Gogol's Ukrainian fiction, as will the elements of conflict: the thensions between the Roman-Catholic Poles and the Eastern Orthodox Ukrainians; and the feeling on the side of the Ukrainians that the Poles, like all Catholics -- are engaged in sacrilegious violation of their religion, their inherited faith. Gogol here reflects the voice of insulted national and religious sensibilities by portraying the Poles as employing Jewish tax-collectors. They collected taxes on the food brought for consecrationinto the church by the Cossacks during the Easter service to be consecrated as is the custom during Easter in the Orthodox Church. This insult is tolerated-grudgingly -- by most of the Ukrainians present, until a Jew bodily insults an old Cossack. When the help of a Polish soldier is sought, who behaves in a rude and insulting manner, the tolerance ends and the Ukrainians lynch the Jew. The same fate would have befallen the Polish Ulan as well, had the Cossack Captain from Zaporozhye (Taras Ostranitsa ) not intervened. He is at the Easter celebration incognito, and tells them that it is beyond the dignity of the Cossacks to fall upon "one single soldier".

Ostranitsa is followed by an old Cossack, Pudyko, who gives further details to Taras about the insulted national feelings, and presses the question (which was apparently the question of the entire Ukrainian nation) as to when the uprising against the Poles is to begin. Instead of an uprising, however, Gogol presents a love story: Ostranitsa secretly visits the beautiful eighteen year-old Galina(Galya) who, we discover, is not just his beloved, but also the daughter of a Cossack siding with the Poles.

Obviously the conflict between love and loyalty, leading to conflict between father and son inTaras Bul'ba , is being prepared here. We are also introduced to another element of Gogol's treatment of the topic: Galya's tortuous choice between her mother and her beloved Taras. Taras' predicament is also significant: he must decide whether Galya's hesitation to go with him is a sign of strong filial devotion to her mother, or of weak devotion to him. The other question here addressed is of the "proper place" ( svoe mesto ) for a hero. Is he to pursue family happiness (here, the love of Galya) or is he to forgo personal happiness for the sake of a sacred battle for the Fatherland? Under the direct influence of Galina's beautiful eyes, Taras considers leaving the Cossack camp or asking for pardon from the Polish King -- or from the Turkish Sultan with whom the Cossacks have also been on a war footing. The story ends with a colorful description of the Cossacks' celebration of Easter. There Taras has the opportunity to talk to his commanding officer, the Ataman, and asks him for some leave so that he can make a side-trip to Warsaw. It is not quite clear what he wants to do there, but the implication is that he wants to see if his personal plans will work out even though he lets the Ataman understand that he plans to go to reconnoiter the Polish forces. The Ataman's response is non-committal. At that point, the fragment ends.

The fragment is a masterpiece: a bittersweet, broad picture of "historical" Cossack life as Gogol has imagined it. Superhuman heroes permeate the tale with a sort of supernatural machismo . Similar portraits of such supernatural egos reappear in others of Gogol's Ukrainian tales (e.g. in Taras Bul'ba ) and have led some critics to the unjust accusation that Gogol is preaching these values as admirable, as positive. Gogol is no more chauvinistic than any other author of epic or historical work which depict an imaginary heroic world and not an actual historical reality. One has only to look at the seemingly contradictory attitude of the Cossacks to women: on the one hand, Taras adores his Galya; on the other, women are a curse, an aberration within God's creation, since they distract men from their "sacred obligation" to devote themselves exclusively to the "Holy Cause", be it the Fatherland, the "true" religion, manly camaraderie, or any other abstract notion demanding unconditional loyalty from the dedicated male. In portraying this machismo, Gogol is able to convey the notion of a "fated place" ( svoe mesto ) for the male in history, in a tragic determinism which in most cases leads to great personal and national tragedies -- as we shall see in Taras Bul'ba and in other pieces of fiction as well.

A further proof of Gogol's understanding of this tragic determinism implicit in gender is visible in his portrayal of older women who are mothers, nannies of the warrior Cossacks, or the wives of the older men. Gogol portrays them with astonishing tenderness and compassion as the ultimate tragic heroines, sufferers victimized by men's blind devotion to abstract causes. For this reason, this fragment drawn ostensibly from the heroic Ukrainian struggle against the Polish oppressors as seen through the romance of Taras and Galya, ends not with an exhortation on national causes nor a celebration of romantic love, but rather with a tragic understanding that human history's contradictions are born out on the aged backs and broken hearts of old women: "One had only to glance at the unhappy remains of a person, at this personified suffering, in order to feel in one's soul an indescribable and agonizing feeling. Imagine for yourself, an elongated, withered, passionless face, eyes black as coals, many years ago the very center of a fiery storm of passion, now staring ahead fixedly: lips the color of a dead body, which many years ago were as fresh as the radiant red of a ripe apple. And who could have imagined that these dry, withered ruins, these features, were many years ago so devilishly seductive, that the movement of these formerly proud and magnificent eyebrows granted a happiness unknown on earth! But everything has passed, passed unnoticed; and in its place has finally appeared only a passionless tolerance and boundless obedience." ¹⁴

With these youthful experiments and fragments, Gogol prepared the road for his entrance into literature which finally occurred with the publication of two volumes of short stories dealing with Ukrainian topics: Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka.

Footnotes to Chapter Two.

1. N.V. Gogol': Sochineniya (isd. 14-oye. St. Ptbr. 1898) t. 1. str. 53-114. (Yunosheskiye opyty) str. 67: (Zhenshchina.) See also : N.Gogol: Hanz Kuechelgarten et al. ed. R. Meyer op.cit. p. 95

2. Simon Karlinsky: op.cit. p.28

3. Edith Hamilton: Mythology. Little Brown, N.Y.1942.

4. N.V. Gogol': Sochineniya (izd. 14-oe. St. Ptbr. 1898) t. 1. str. 72

5. N.V. Gogol': Sochineniya (izd. 14-oye St. Ptbr. 1898) t. 1 str. 78.

6. N.V. Gogol': op.cit.p.73. The word Gogol uses is : pribyl ', i.e. profit .

7. .ibid.p.73

8. .ibid.p.75.

9. Abram Terts: V teni Gogolya, op.cit.p.35

10. .Vladimir Nabokov:N.V.Gogol.op.cit. p.58.

11. N.V. Gogol': op.cit.p.80 ( Ataman)

12. N.V. Gogol': op.cit.p.82 ( Ataman)

13. Abram Terts: Mysli vrasplokh. Rausen Publishers.N.Y.1966.p.79.

14. N.V. Gogol': op.cit.p.102.

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Epilogue, Bibliography

The book CD "Gogol and Russian Literature" is built around Gogol's Art: a Search for Identity by Laszlo Tikos, the best book ever written about Russia's most enigmatic and intriguing author. Nikolay Gogol (1809-1852) created a new direction in Russian letters, which was further developed in the 19th century by writers like Dostoyevsky and Rozanov, and in the 20th century by Bely, Bulgakov and Sinyavsky. In addition to Gogol's Art, this CD includes the full text of Dead Souls, Tara Bulba, The Inspector General, and St. John's Eve by Gogol, plus great books by Dostoeyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Pushkin, Turgenev, Andreyev, Gorky, Kuprin, and Lermontov, plus works on Russian history, plus two "Country Studies" -- Russia and Belarus (birthplace of Gogol) -- which were originally published as printed books by the Library of Congress between 1987 and 1995. For details, see our online store http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat/russian.html

What do Balzac, Dumas, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Gogol, Machiavelli, Tasso, Luther, Ibsen, and Goethe have in common? They are all on the same World Literature CD with over 600 books, in plain text, with software that lets you listen as well as read.

Return to Writers' Showcase
Return to The Reader's Room

Return to B&R Samizdat Express

<