Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol ({{lang-ru|???????? ??????????? ???????}}) (March 31, 1809 - March 4, 1852) was a Ukrainian-born Russian writer. Although many of his works were influenced by his Ukrainian heritage and upbringing, he wrote in Russian and his works belong to the tradition of Russian literature. Perhaps his best known work is Dead Souls, seen by many as the first "modern" Russian novel.

Interpretation

Gogol's literary life and works show convolutions of struggle between the Westernizer and Slavophile urges in Russian culture. Living in post-Napoleonic Russia, with liberal discontent against Czarist rule, reformers interpreted Gogol stories as validation. This is because some of Gogol's stories satirized situations particular to Russian society. Indeed, Gogol was motivated as a reformer in his own mind, but not necessarily as defined by the liberals of the time. Toward the end of his life, liberals saw him as a religious fanatic, strangely reactionary, and increasingly pathetic.

Related Topics:
Westernizer - Slavophile - Napoleonic - Liberal - Czarist - Reformers - Reactionary

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

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Gogol's desire for the moral reformation of Russia became increasingly loud and non-liberal, leading to his publication of selected fanatical letters. His former liberal admirers looked upon this publication with horror and dismay. It may be the contradictions and failures of Gogol's embodiment of both "Westernizer" and "Slavophile" urges that lead him to burn his draft of part two of Dead Souls, and for his health to fatally decline.

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

Related Topics:
E.T.A. Hoffmann - Laurence Sterne - Fantastic - Grotesque - Humor - Social realism

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

Related Topics:
Censorship - Aesophic - Soviet writers

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

Related Topics:
Seripian Brethren - Yevgeny Zamyatin - Mikhail Bulgakov - Abram Tertz - (Siniavsky)

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