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Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol; uk, link=no, Мико́ла Васи́льович Го́голь, translit=Mykola Vasyliovych Hohol; (russian: Яновский; uk, Яновський, translit=Yanovskyi) ( – ) was a Russian novelist, short story writer and
playwright A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays. Etymology The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English ...
of Ukrainian origin. Gogol was one of the first to use the technique of the grotesque, in works such as " The Nose", " Viy", " The Overcoat", and " Nevsky Prospekt". These stories, and others such as " Diary of a Madman", have also been noted for their proto-surrealist qualities. According to Viktor Shklovsky, Gogol's strange style of writing resembles the "ostranenie" technique of defamiliarization. His early works, such as '' Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka'', were influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing, Ukrainian culture and folklore. His later writing satirised political corruption in the Russian Empire ('' The Government Inspector'', ''
Dead Souls ''Dead Souls'' (russian: «Мёртвые души», ''Mjórtvyje dúshi'') is a novel by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842, and widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th-century Russian literature. The novel chronicles the travels and adv ...
''). The novel '' Taras Bulba'' (1835), the play '' Marriage'' (1842), and the short stories " The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich", " The Portrait" and " The Carriage", are also among his best-known works. Many writers and critics have recognized Gogol's huge influence on Russian,
Ukrainian Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe * Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine * So ...
and world literature. Gogol's influence was acknowledged by
Mikhail Bulgakov Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov ( rus, links=no, Михаил Афанасьевич Булгаков, p=mʲɪxɐˈil ɐfɐˈnasʲjɪvʲɪtɕ bʊlˈɡakəf; – 10 March 1940) was a Soviet writer, medical doctor, and playwright active in the fir ...
,
Fyodor Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (, ; rus, Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский, Fyódor Mikháylovich Dostoyévskiy, p=ˈfʲɵdər mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ dəstɐˈjefskʲɪj, a=ru-Dostoevsky.ogg, links=yes; 11 November 18219 ...
,
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa , art name , was a Japanese writer active in the Taishō period in Japan. He is regarded as the "father of the Japanese short story", and Japan's premier literary award, the Akutagawa Prize, is named after him. He committed suicide at the age of ...
, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Flannery O'Connor, Franz Kafka and others.


Early life

Gogol was born in the
Ukrainian Cossack The Cossacks , es, cosaco , et, Kasakad, cazacii , fi, Kasakat, cazacii , french: cosaques , hu, kozákok, cazacii , it, cosacchi , orv, коза́ки, pl, Kozacy , pt, cossacos , ro, cazaci , russian: казаки́ or ...
town of
Sorochyntsi Velyki Sorochyntsi ( uk, Великі Сорочинці; russian: Вели́кие Соро́чинцы or , translit. ''Velyki Sorochyntsi''; formerly referred to simply as Sorochyntsi) is a village in Myrhorod Raion of Poltava Oblast (province ...
, in the Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire. His mother was descended from Leonty Kosyarovsky, an officer of the Lubny Regiment in 1710. His father
Vasily Gogol-Yanovsky Vasyl Panasovych Hohol-Yanovsky ( uk, Василь Панасович Гоголь-Яновський; 1777 – 31 March (11 April) 1825) also known as Vasily Gogol-Yanovsky was an author of a number of theater pieces in Russian and in Ukrainian a ...
, who died when Gogol was 15 years old, was supposedly a descendant of Ukrainian Cossacks (see
Lyzohub family Lyzohub ( ua, Лизогуби; Russian: ''Лизогубы''; also spelled as ''Lizohub, Lisohub, Lizogub'') was a Ukrainian family of the Cossack Hetmanate. For years many members of the family had high offices in the Ukrainian government. Ori ...
) and belonged to the 'petty gentry'. His father wrote poetry in Ukrainian as well as Russian, and was an amateur playwright in his own theatre. As was typical of the left-bank Ukrainian gentry of the early nineteenth century, the family spoke Ukrainian as well as Russian. As a child, Gogol helped stage plays in his uncle's home theater. In 1820, Nikolai Gogol went to a school of higher art in
Nezhin Nizhyn ( uk, Ні́жин, Nizhyn, ) is a city located in Chernihiv Oblast of northern Ukraine along the Oster River. The city is located north-east of the national capital Kyiv. Nizhyn serves as the capital city, administrative center of Niz ...
(Nizhyn) (now
Nizhyn Gogol State University Nizhyn Gogol State University ( uk, Ніжинський державний університет ім. Миколи Гоголя) is an academic institution in Ukraine, located in Nizhyn, Chernihiv Oblast. It is one of the oldest institutions ...
) and remained there until 1828. It was there that he began writing. He was not popular among his schoolmates, who called him their "mysterious dwarf", but with two or three of them he formed lasting friendships. Very early he developed a dark and secretive disposition, marked by a painful self-consciousness and boundless ambition. Equally early he developed a talent for mimicry, which later made him a matchless reader of his own works and induced him to toy with the idea of becoming an actor. On leaving school in 1828, Gogol went to Saint Petersburg, full of vague but ambitious hopes. He desired literary fame, and brought with him a
Romantic Romantic may refer to: Genres and eras * The Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement of the 18th and 19th centuries ** Romantic music, of that era ** Romantic poetry, of that era ** Romanticism in science, of that e ...
poem of German idyllic life – ''Hans Küchelgarten'', and had it published at his own expense, under the pseudonym "V. Alov." The magazines he sent it to almost universally derided it. He bought all the copies and destroyed them, swearing never to write poetry again.


Literary development

In 1831, the first volume of Gogol's Ukrainian stories ('' Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka'') was published, and met with immediate success. A second volume was published in 1832, followed by two volumes of stories entitled '' Mirgorod'' in 1835, and two volumes of miscellaneous prose entitled ''Arabesques''. At this time, Russian editors and critics such as
Nikolai Polevoy Nikolai Alekseevich Polevoy ( rus, Никола́й Алексе́евич Полево́й, r=Nikoláy Alekséevich Polevóy, ― ) was a controversial Russia, Russian editor, writer, translator, and historian; his brother was the critic and jou ...
and
Nikolai Nadezhdin Nikolai Ivanovich Nadezhdin (russian: Николай Иванович Надеждин) ( – ) was a Russian literary critic and Russia's first ethnographer. Biography Born in Beloomut, Ryazan Governorate, Nadezhdin graduated from Ryazan Se ...
saw Gogol as a regional Ukrainian writer, and used his works to illustrate the specific of Ukrainian national characters. The themes and style of these early prose works by Gogol, as well as his later drama, were similar to the work of Ukrainian-language writers and dramatists who were his contemporaries and friends, including Hryhory Kvitka-Osnovyanenko. However, Gogol's satire was much more sophisticated and unconventional. At this time, Gogol developed a passion for Ukrainian Cossack history and tried to obtain an appointment to the history department at Saint Vladimir Imperial University of Kiev. Despite the support of Alexander Pushkin and Sergey Uvarov, the Russian minister of education, the appointment was blocked by a bureaucrat on the grounds that Gogol was unqualified. His fictional story '' Taras Bulba'', based on the history of Zaporozhian Сossacks, was the result of this phase in his interests. During this time, he also developed a close and lifelong friendship with the historian and naturalist Mykhaylo Maksymovych. In 1834, Gogol was made Professor of Medieval History at the
University of St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg State University (SPBU; russian: Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет) is a public university, public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Founded in 1724 by a de ...
, a job for which he had no qualifications. The academic venture proved a disaster:
He turned in a performance ludicrous enough to warrant satiric treatment in one of his own stories. After an introductory lecture made up of brilliant generalizations which the 'historian' had prudently prepared and memorized, he gave up all pretence at erudition and teaching, missed two lectures out of three, and when he did appear, muttered unintelligibly through his teeth. At the final examination, he sat in utter silence with a black handkerchief wrapped around his head, simulating a toothache, while another professor interrogated the students.
Gogol resigned his chair in 1835. Between 1832 and 1836, Gogol worked with great energy, and had extensive contact with Pushkin, but he still had not yet decided that his ambitions were to be fulfilled by success in literature. During this time, the Russian critics Stepan Shevyrev and Vissarion Belinsky, contradicting the earlier critics, reclassified Gogol from a Ukrainian to a Russian writer. It was only after the presentation of his comedy '' The Government Inspector'' (''Revizor'') at the Saint Petersburg State Theatre, on 19 April 1836, that he finally came to believe in his literary vocation. The comedy, a violent satire of Russian provincial bureaucracy, was staged thanks only to the intervention of the emperor, Nicholas I. From 1836 to 1848, Gogol lived abroad, travelling through Germany and Switzerland. Gogol spent the winter of 1836–37 in Paris, among Russian expatriates and Polish
exile Exile is primarily penal expulsion from one's native country, and secondarily expatriation or prolonged absence from one's homeland under either the compulsion of circumstance or the rigors of some high purpose. Usually persons and peoples suf ...
s, frequently meeting the Polish poets Adam Mickiewicz and Bohdan Zaleski. He eventually settled in Rome. For much of the twelve years from 1836, Gogol was in Italy, where he developed an adoration for Rome. He studied art, read Italian literature and developed a passion for opera. Pushkin's death produced a strong impression on Gogol. His principal work during the years following Pushkin's death was the satirical epic ''Dead Souls''. Concurrently, he worked at other tasks – recast '' Taras Bulba'' (1842) and '' The Portrait'', completed his second comedy, '' Marriage'' (''Zhenitba''), wrote the fragment '' Rome'' and his most famous short story, " The Overcoat". In 1841, the first part of ''
Dead Souls ''Dead Souls'' (russian: «Мёртвые души», ''Mjórtvyje dúshi'') is a novel by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842, and widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th-century Russian literature. The novel chronicles the travels and adv ...
'' was ready, and Gogol took it to Russia to supervise its printing. It appeared in Moscow in 1842, under a new title imposed by the censorship, ''The Adventures of Chichikov''. The book established his reputation as one of the greatest prose writers in the language.


Later life and death

After the triumph of ''Dead Souls'', Gogol's contemporaries came to regard him as a great satirist who lampooned the unseemly sides of Imperial Russia. They did not know that ''Dead Souls'' was but the first part of a planned modern-day counterpart to the '' Divine Comedy'' of Dante. The first part represented the '' Inferno''; the second part would depict the gradual purification and transformation of the rogue Chichikov under the influence of virtuous publicans and governors – '' Purgatory''. In April 1848, Gogol returned to Russia from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and passed his last years in restless movement throughout the country. While visiting the capitals, he stayed with friends such as Mikhail Pogodin and
Sergey Aksakov Sergey Timofeyevich Aksakov (russian: Серге́й Тимофе́евич Акса́ков) (—) was a 19th-century Russian literary figure remembered for his semi-autobiographical tales of family life, as well as his books on hunting and fi ...
. During this period, he also spent much time with his old Ukrainian friends, Maksymovych and
Osyp Bodiansky Osip Maksimovich Bodyansky (russian: Осип Максимович Бодянский, uk, Осип Максимович Бодянський; 1808–1877) was a notable Russian Empire, Russian Imperial Slavist of Ukrainian Cossack descent who st ...
. He intensified his relationship with a starets or spiritual elder, Matvey Konstantinovsky, whom he had known for several years. Konstantinovsky seems to have strengthened in Gogol the fear of perdition (damnation) by insisting on the sinfulness of all his imaginative work. Exaggerated ascetic practices undermined his health and he fell into a state of deep depression. On the night of 24 February 1852 he burned some of his manuscripts, which contained most of the second part of ''Dead Souls''. He explained this as a mistake, a practical joke played on him by the Devil. Soon thereafter, he took to bed, refused all food, and died in great pain nine days later. Gogol was mourned in the Saint Tatiana church at the Moscow University before his burial and then buried at the Danilov Monastery, close to his fellow
Slavophile Slavophilia (russian: Славянофильство) was an intellectual movement originating from the 19th century that wanted the Russian Empire to be developed on the basis of values and institutions derived from Russia's early history. Slavoph ...
Aleksey Khomyakov Aleksey Stepanovich Khomyakov (russian: Алексе́й Степа́нович Хомяко́в; May 13 ( O.S. May 1) 1804, Moscow – October 5 (O.S. September 23), 1860, Moscow) was a Russian theologian, philosopher, poet and amateur artist. H ...
. His grave was marked by a large stone (Golgotha), topped by a Russian Orthodox cross. In 1931, Moscow authorities decided to demolish the monastery and had Gogol's remains transferred to the
Novodevichy Cemetery Novodevichy Cemetery ( rus, Новоде́вичье кла́дбище, Novodevichye kladbishche) is a cemetery in Moscow. It lies next to the southern wall of the 16th-century Novodevichy Convent, which is the city's third most popular tourist ...
. His body was discovered lying face down, which gave rise to the story that Gogol had been buried alive. The authorities moved the Golgotha stone to the new gravesite, but removed the cross; in 1952 the Soviets replaced the stone with a bust of Gogol. The stone was later reused for the tomb of Gogol's admirer
Mikhail Bulgakov Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov ( rus, links=no, Михаил Афанасьевич Булгаков, p=mʲɪxɐˈil ɐfɐˈnasʲjɪvʲɪtɕ bʊlˈɡakəf; – 10 March 1940) was a Soviet writer, medical doctor, and playwright active in the fir ...
. In 2009, in connection with the bicentennial of Gogol's birth, the bust was moved to the museum at Novodevichy Cemetery, and the original Golgotha stone was returned, along with a copy of the original Orthodox cross. The first Gogol monument in Moscow, a
Symbolist Symbolism was a late 19th-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts seeking to represent absolute truths symbolically through language and metaphorical images, mainly as a reaction against naturalism and realis ...
statue on
Arbat Square Arbatskaya Square or Arbat Square () is one of the oldest squares of Moscow, located on the junction of Gogolevsky Boulevard, Znamenka Street and Arbat Gates Square (in 1925–1993 – part of Arbatskaya Square). The square is home to the Arbats ...
, represented the sculptor
Nikolay Andreyev Nikolay Andreyevich Andreyev (russian: Николай Андреевич Андреев; – 24 December 1932) was a Russian sculptor, graphic artist and stage designer. As a young man Andreyev studied with Sergey Volnukhin and in 1902 became ...
's idea of Gogol rather than the real man. Unveiled in 1909, the statue received praise from
Ilya Repin Ilya Yefimovich Repin (russian: Илья Ефимович Репин, translit=Il'ya Yefimovich Repin, p=ˈrʲepʲɪn); fi, Ilja Jefimovitš Repin ( – 29 September 1930) was a Russian painter, born in what is now Ukraine. He became one of the ...
and from Leo Tolstoy as an outstanding projection of Gogol's tortured personality. Joseph Stalin did not like it, however, and the statue was replaced by a more orthodox Socialist Realist monument in 1952. It took enormous efforts to save Andreyev's original work from destruction; it stands in front of the house where Gogol died.


Style

D. S. Mirsky D. S. Mirsky is the English pen-name of Dmitry Petrovich Svyatopolk-Mirsky (russian: Дми́трий Петро́вич Святопо́лк-Ми́рский), often known as Prince Mirsky ( – c. 7 June 1939), a Russian political and lit ...
characterizes Gogol's universe as "one of the most marvellous, unexpected – in the strictest sense, original – worlds ever created by an artist of words". A characteristic of Gogol's writing is his 'impressionist' vision of reality and people. He saw the outer world strangely metamorphosed, a singular gift particularly evident from the fantastic spatial transformations in his Gothic stories, "
A Terrible Vengeance "A Terrible Vengeance" (russian: Страшная месть, Strashnaya mest') is a short Gothic horror story written by Russian author Nikolai Gogol. It was published in the second volume of his first short story collection, ''Evenings on a Farm ...
" and "
A Bewitched Place "A Bewitched Place" is the last story in the second volume of Nikolai Gogol's first collection of short stories, ''Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka'' (1832). Like the concluding tale of the first volume, "The Lost Letter: A Tale Told by the Sexto ...
". His pictures of nature are strange mounds of detail heaped on detail, resulting in an unconnected chaos of things: "His people are caricatures, drawn with the method of the caricaturist – which is to exaggerate salient features and to reduce them to geometrical pattern. But these cartoons have a convincingness, a truthfulness, and inevitability – attained as a rule by slight but definitive strokes of unexpected reality – that seems to beggar the visible world itself." According to Andrey Bely, Gogol's work influenced the emergence of Gothic romance, and served as a forerunner for
absurdism Absurdism is the philosophical theory that existence in general is absurd. This implies that the world lacks Meaning of life, meaning or a higher purpose and is not fully intelligible by reason. The term "absurd" also has a more specific sense ...
and impressionism. The aspect under which the mature Gogol sees reality is expressed by the Russian word ''
poshlost' ''Poshlost'' or ''Poshlost' '' ( rus , по́шлость , p= ˈpoʂləsʲtʲ) is a Russian word for a particular negative human character trait or man-made thing or idea. It has been cited as an example of a so-called untranslatable word, as ...
'', which means something similar to "triviality, banality, inferiority", moral and spiritual, widespread in some group or society. Like Sterne before him, Gogol was a great destroyer of prohibitions and of romantic illusions. He undermined Russian Romanticism by making vulgarity reign where only the sublime and the beautiful had before. "Characteristic of Gogol is a sense of boundless superfluity that is soon revealed as utter emptiness and a rich comedy that suddenly turns into metaphysical horror." His stories often interweave pathos and mockery, while " The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich" begins as a merry farce and ends with the famous dictum, "It is dull in this world, gentlemen!"


Politics

It stunned Gogol when critics interpreted '' The Government Inspector'' as an indictment of tsarism despite Nicholas I's patronage of the play. Gogol himself, an adherent of the
Slavophile Slavophilia (russian: Славянофильство) was an intellectual movement originating from the 19th century that wanted the Russian Empire to be developed on the basis of values and institutions derived from Russia's early history. Slavoph ...
movement, believed in a divinely inspired mission for both the House of Romanov and the Russian Orthodox Church. Like Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Gogol sharply disagreed with those Russians who preached constitutional monarchy and the disestablishment of the Orthodox Church. After defending
autocracy Autocracy is a system of government in which absolute power over a state is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject neither to external legal restraints nor to regularized mechanisms of popular control (except perh ...
, serfdom, and the Orthodox Church in his book ''Selected Passages from Correspondence with his Friends'' (1847), Gogol came under attack from his former patron Vissarion Belinsky. The first Russian intellectual to publicly preach the economic theories of Karl Marx, Belinsky accused Gogol of betraying his readership by defending the ''status quo''.


Influence and interpretations

Even before the publication of ''Dead Souls'', Belinsky recognized Gogol as the first Russian-language realist writer and as the head of the Natural School, to which he also assigned such younger or lesser authors as
Goncharov Goncharov (russian: Гончаро́в) is a Russian surname, an equivalent of the English "Potter" (derived from the Russian word ''gonchar'' which means potter), shared by the following people: * Alexander Goncharov, mathematician ** Goncharov ...
, Turgenev,
Dmitry Grigorovich Dmitry Vasilyevich Grigorovich (russian: Дми́трий Васи́льевич Григоро́вич) ( – ) was a Russian writer, best known for his first two novels, '' The Village'' and '' Anton Goremyka'', and lauded as the first author ...
, Vladimir Dahl and Vladimir Sollogub. Gogol himself appeared skeptical about the existence of such a literary movement. Although he recognized "several young writers" who "have shown a particular desire to observe real life", he upbraided the deficient composition and style of their works. Nevertheless, subsequent generations of radical critics celebrated Gogol (the author in whose world a nose roams the streets of the Russian capital) as a great realist, a reputation decried by the '' Encyclopædia Britannica'' as "the triumph of Gogolesque irony". The period of literary modernism saw a revival of interest in and a change of attitude towards Gogol's work. One of the pioneering works of Russian formalism was Eichenbaum's reappraisal of "The Overcoat". In the 1920s a group of Russian short-story writers, known as the
Serapion Brothers The Serapion Brothers (or Serapion Fraternity, russian: Серапионовы Братья) was a group of writers formed in Petrograd, Russian SFSR in 1921. The group was named after a literary group, ''Die Serapionsbrüder'' (The Serapion Brethr ...
, placed Gogol among their precursors and consciously sought to imitate his techniques. The leading novelists of the period – notably Yevgeny Zamyatin and
Mikhail Bulgakov Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov ( rus, links=no, Михаил Афанасьевич Булгаков, p=mʲɪxɐˈil ɐfɐˈnasʲjɪvʲɪtɕ bʊlˈɡakəf; – 10 March 1940) was a Soviet writer, medical doctor, and playwright active in the fir ...
– also admired Gogol and followed in his footsteps. In 1926 Vsevolod Meyerhold staged '' The Government Inspector'' as a "comedy of the absurd situation", revealing to his fascinated spectators a corrupt world of endless self-deception. In 1934 Andrei Bely published the most meticulous study of Gogol's literary techniques up to that date, in which he analyzed the colours prevalent in Gogol's work depending on the period, his impressionistic use of verbs, the expressive discontinuity of his syntax, the complicated rhythmical patterns of his sentences, and many other secrets of his craft. Based on this work, Vladimir Nabokov published a summary account of Gogol's masterpieces. Gogol's impact on Russian literature has endured, yet various critics have appreciated his works differently. Belinsky, for instance, berated his horror stories as "moribund, monstrous works", while Andrei Bely counted them among his most stylistically daring creations. Nabokov especially admired ''Dead Souls'', ''The Government Inspector'', and " The Overcoat" as works of genius, proclaiming that "when, as in his immortal 'The Overcoat', Gogol really let himself go and pottered happily on the brink of his private abyss, he became the greatest artist that Russia has yet produced." Critics traditionally interpreted "The Overcoat" as a masterpiece of "humanitarian realism", but Nabokov and some other attentive readers argued that "holes in the language" make the story susceptible to interpretation as a supernatural tale about a ghostly double of a "small man". Of all Gogol's stories, "The Nose" has stubbornly defied all abstruse interpretations:
D.S. Mirsky D. S. Mirsky is the English pen-name of Dmitry Petrovich Svyatopolk-Mirsky (russian: Дми́трий Петро́вич Святопо́лк-Ми́рский), often known as Prince Mirsky ( – c. 7 June 1939), a Russian political and lit ...
declared it "a piece of sheer play, almost sheer nonsense". In recent years, however, "The Nose" became the subject of several postmodernist and postcolonial interpretations. Some critics have paid attention to the apparent
anti-Semitism Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...
in Gogol's writings, as well as in those of his contemporary, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Felix Dreizin and David Guaspari, for example, in their ''The Russian Soul and the Jew: Essays in Literary Ethnocentrism'', discuss "the significance of the Jewish characters and the negative image of the Ukrainian Jewish community in Gogol's novel ''Taras Bulba'', pointing out Gogol's attachment to anti-Jewish prejudices prevalent in Russian and Ukrainian culture." In Léon Poliakov's ''The History of Antisemitism'', the author mentions that
"The 'Yankel' from ''Taras Bulba'' indeed became the archetypal Jew in Russian literature. Gogol painted him as supremely exploitative, cowardly, and repulsive, albeit capable of gratitude. But it seems perfectly natural in the story that he and his cohorts be drowned in the Dniper by the Cossack lords. Above all, Yankel is ridiculous, and the image of the plucked chicken that Gogol used has made the rounds of great Russian authors."
Despite his portrayal of Jewish characters, Gogol left a powerful impression even on Jewish writers who inherited his literary legacy. Amelia Glaser has noted the influence of Gogol's literary innovations on Sholem Aleichem, who
"chose to model much of his writing, and even his appearance, on Gogol... What Sholem Aleichem was borrowing from Gogol was a rural East European landscape that may have been dangerous, but could unite readers through the power of collective memory. He also learned from Gogol to soften this danger through laughter, and he often rewrites Gogol's Jewish characters, correcting anti-Semitic stereotypes and narrating history from a Jewish perspective."


In music and film

Gogol's oeuvre has also had an impact on Russia's non-literary culture, and his stories have been adapted numerous times into opera and film. The Russian composer Alfred Schnittke wrote the eight-part ''Gogol Suite'' as
incidental music Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, or some other presentation form that is not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as t ...
to '' The Government Inspector'' performed as a play, and
Dmitri Shostakovich Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, , group=n (9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his Symphony No. 1 (Shostakovich), First Symphony in 1926 and was regarded throug ...
set ''The Nose'' as his first opera in 1928 – a peculiar choice of subject for what was meant to initiate the great tradition of Soviet opera. More recently, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Gogol's birth in 1809, Vienna's renowned Theater an der Wien commissioned music and libretto for a full-length opera on the life of Gogol from Russian composer and writer Lera Auerbach. More than 135 films have been based on Gogol's work, the most recent being '' The Girl in the White Coat'' (2011).


Legacy

Gogol has been featured many times on Russian and Soviet postage stamps; he is also well represented on stamps worldwide. Several commemorative coins have been issued from Russia and the USSR. In 2009, the National Bank of Ukraine issued a commemorative coin dedicated to Gogol. Streets have been named after Gogol in various towns, including Moscow, Sofia, Lipetsk,
Odessa Odesa (also spelled Odessa) is the third most populous city and municipality in Ukraine and a major seaport and transport hub located in the south-west of the country, on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. The city is also the administrativ ...
,
Myrhorod Myrhorod ( uk, Ми́ргород, ) is a city in the Poltava Oblast (province) of central Ukraine. Serving as the administrative center of the Myrhorod Raion (district), the city itself is administratively incorporated as a city of oblast s ...
, Krasnodar, Vladimir, Vladivostok, Penza, Petrozavodsk,
Riga Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the Ba ...
,
Bratislava Bratislava (, also ; ; german: Preßburg/Pressburg ; hu, Pozsony) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Slovakia. Officially, the population of the city is about 475,000; however, it is estimated to be more than 660,000 — approxim ...
, Belgrade,
Harbin Harbin (; mnc, , v=Halbin; ) is a sub-provincial city and the provincial capital and the largest city of Heilongjiang province, People's Republic of China, as well as the second largest city by urban population after Shenyang and largest ...
and many other towns and cities. Gogol is mentioned several times in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's '' Poor Folk'' and '' Crime and Punishment'' and Chekhov's '' The Seagull''.
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa , art name , was a Japanese writer active in the Taishō period in Japan. He is regarded as the "father of the Japanese short story", and Japan's premier literary award, the Akutagawa Prize, is named after him. He committed suicide at the age of ...
considered Gogol along with
Edgar Poe Edgar Allan Poe (; Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widel ...
his favorite writers.


Adaptations

BBC Radio 4 made a series of six Gogol short stories, entitled ''Three Ivans, Two Aunts and an Overcoat'' (2002, adaptations by Jim Poyser) starring
Griff Rhys-Jones Griffith Rhys Jones (born 16 November 1953) is a Welsh comedian, writer, actor, and television presenter. He starred in a number of television series with his comedy partner, Mel Smith. Rhys Jones came to national attention in the 1980s for h ...
and Stephen Moore. The stories adapted were " The Two Ivans", " The Overcoat", "
Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt "Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt" (Иван Фёдорович Шпонька и его тётушка, ''Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka i yevo tyotushka''; 1832) is part of the collection ''Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka'' by Nikolai Gogol. Orig ...
", " The Nose", " The Mysterious Portrait" and " Diary of a Madman". Gogol's short story "
Christmas Eve Christmas Eve is the evening or entire day before Christmas Day, the festival commemorating the birth of Jesus. Christmas Day is observed around the world, and Christmas Eve is widely observed as a full or partial holiday in anticipation ...
" (literally the Russian title «Ночь перед Рождеством» translates as "The Night before Christmas") was adapted into operatic form by at least three East Slavic composers. Ukrainian composer
Mykola Lysenko , native_name_lang = uk , birth_name = Mykola Vitaliyovych Lysenko , birth_date = 22 March 1842 , birth_place = Hrynky, Poltava Governorate, Russian Empire , death_date = 6 November 1912 (aged 70) , death_place ...
wrote his ''Christmas Eve'' («Різдвяна ніч», with libretto in Ukrainian by
Mykhailo Starytsky Mykhailo Petrovych Starytsky ( uk, Михайло Петрович Старицький; 14 December 1840 – 27 April 1904), in English Michael Starycky, was a Ukrainian writer, poet, and playwright.Tchaikovsky composed his version under the title '' Vakula the Smith'' (with Russian libretto by Yakov Polonsky) and revised it in 1885 as '' Cherevichki (The Tsarina's Slippers)''. In 1894 (i.e., just after Tchaikovsky's death), Rimsky-Korsakov wrote the libretto and music for his own opera based on the same story. "Christmas Eve" was also adapted into a film in 1961 entitled The Night Before Christmas. It was adapted also for radio by
Adam Beeson Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as " ...
and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 24 December 2008 and subsequently rebroadcast on both Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra on Christmas Eve 2010, 2011 and 2015. Gogol's story "Viy" was adapted into film by Russian filmmakers four times: the original '' Viy'' in 1967; the horror film ''Vedma'' (aka ''The Power of Fear'') in 2006; the action-horror film '' Viy'' in 2014; and the horror film ''Gogol Viy'' released in 2018. It was also adapted into the Russian FMV video game ''Viy: The Story Retold'' (2004). Outside of Russia, the film loosely served as the inspiration for Mario Bava's film '' Black Sunday'' (1960) and the South Korean horror film ''Evil Spirit: Viy'' (2008). Gogol's short story "The Portrait" is being made into a feature film '' The Portrait'' by fine artists Anastasia Elena Baranoff and Elena Vladimir Baranoff. The Russian TV-3 television series ''Gogol'' features Nikolai Gogol as a lead character and presents a fictionalized version of his life that mixes his history with elements from his various stories. The episodes were also released theatrically starting with ''
Gogol. The Beginning ''Gogol. The Beginning'' (russian: Гоголь. Начало, Gogol. Nachalo) is a 2017 Russian fantasy- horror film directed by Yegor Baranov loosely based on works by Nikolai Gogol from the 1832 collection ''Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka''. ...
'' in August 2017. A sequel entitled '' Gogol: Viy'' was released in April 2018 and the third film '' Gogol: Terrible Revenge'' debuted in August 2018. In 1963 an animated version of Gogol's classic surrealist story "The Nose" was made by
Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker Alexandre Alexandrovitch Alexeieff (Russian: Александр Александрович Алексеев;Alternative transcriptions include Alexander Alexeieff or Alexander Alexeïeff or Alexandre Alexieff 18 April 1901 – 9 August 1982) was ...
, using the pinscreen animation technique, for the National Film Board of Canada. A definitive animated movie adaptation of Gogol's '' The Nose'' released in January 2020. '' The Nose or Conspiracy of Mavericks'' has been in production for about fifty years.


Bibliography


Notes


Citations


References


Townsend, Dorian Aleksandra, ''From Upyr' to Vampire: The Slavic Vampire Myth in Russian Literature'', Ph.D. Dissertation, School of German and Russian Studies, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, University of New South Wales, May 2011.
*


External links

* * * * *
Gogol : Magical realism
*
Nikolay Gogol
in '' Encyclopædia Britannica'' *
''Мертвыя души [Dead Souls]''
From the Collections at the Library of Congress
A quiz on Gogol at Goodreads

Gogol House at Google Cultural Institute
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gogol, Nikolai 1809 births 1852 deaths People from Poltava Oblast People from Mirgorodsky Uyezd Eastern Orthodox writers Magic realism writers Mythopoeic writers Dramatists and playwrights from the Russian Empire Russian male dramatists and playwrights Monarchists from the Russian Empire Russian male novelists Russian male short story writers Russian writers of Ukrainian descent 19th-century short story writers from the Russian Empire 19th-century writers from the Russian Empire Nizhyn Gogol State University alumni Saint Petersburg State University alumni Burials at Novodevichy Cemetery