| Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol-Yanovski | |||||
| 尼古拉·瓦西裏耶維奇·果戈裏-亞諾夫斯基 | |||||
閱讀果戈理 Nikolai Gogol在小说之家的作品!!! | |||||
果戈理1831年夏，果戈理結識普希金，從此過往甚密，在創作思想上受到重大影響。此後發表《狄康卡近鄉夜話》第一集和第二集。這兩部小說集展現了富有詩意的烏剋蘭民族生活。作品裏占主導地位的是浪漫主義傾嚮。
1834年秋開始，果戈理在聖彼得堡大學任世界史副教授，對烏剋蘭史和世界中世紀史進行過研究。次年底離職，從此專事創作。同年發表的中篇小說集《米爾戈羅德》和《小品集》表明果戈理批判現實主義創作方法已開始形成。
在寫作中篇小說的同時，果戈理於1833年開始從事諷刺喜劇的創作。1836年4月，《欽差大臣》首次在聖彼得堡亞歷山德拉劇院公演。劇作以普希金所提供的一個趣聞為情節基礎，將俄國官僚社會的全部醜惡和不公正的事物集中在一起，“淋漓盡致地進行了嘲笑”。故事發生在俄國某偏僻城市。以市長為首的一群官吏聽到欽差大臣前來視察的消息 ，驚慌失措，竟將一個過路的彼得堡小官員赫列斯達科夫當做欽差大臣，對他阿諛、行賄。正當市長將自己的女兒許配給這位“欽差”、做着升官發財的美夢時，傳來了真正的欽差大臣到達的消息，喜劇以啞場告終。果戈理以卓越的現實主義藝術手法，刻畫了老姦巨猾的市長、玩忽職守的法官、不顧病人死活的慈善醫院院長、愚昧的督學、偷拆信件的郵政局長——所有這些形象都異常真實地反映出俄國官僚階層貪贓枉法、諂媚鑽營、卑鄙庸俗等本質特徵。赫列斯達科夫是一身染上彼得堡貴族官僚習氣的外省青年，輕浮淺薄，愛慕虛榮，自吹自擂，厚顔無恥，在當時俄國社會具有典型意義。它對俄國戲劇的發展産生了重要影響。
果戈理
《欽差大臣》上演後，遭到以尼古拉一世為首的俄國官僚貴族社會的攻擊和誹謗 。1836年6 月，果戈理離開俄國到了德國和瑞士， 寫作上一年開始的長篇小說《死魂靈》。1837年3月遷居羅馬。1842年5月，《死魂靈》第一部問世 ，繼《欽差大臣》之後再次“震撼了整個俄羅斯”(赫爾岑語)。書中主人公乞乞科夫是19世紀30～40年代俄國社會中從小貴族地主嚮新興資産者過渡的典型形象。他在官場中混跡多年，練就了投機鑽營、招搖撞騙的“天才”。當時俄國每10年進行一次人口登記，而在兩次登記之間死去的農奴在法律上仍被當做活人，有的地主曾經拿他們做抵押品嚮國傢銀行藉款。乞乞科夫决計到偏僻的省份，收購“死魂靈”來謀取暴利 。隨着小說情節的發展。展現出一個又一個地主形象，如懶散的夢想傢瑪尼羅夫，愚昧、貪財的柯羅博奇卡，喜愛撒謊打架的酒鬼、賭棍諾茲德列夫，粗魯、頑固的索巴剋維奇以及愛財如命的吝嗇鬼普柳什金（潑留希金）等等。果戈理以辛辣的諷刺手法，對這些人物的生活環境、外表、嗜好、言談、心理等等進行了極為出色的描繪，使他們成為俄國批判現實主義文學中不朽的藝術典型。小說又通過殘廢軍人戈貝金大尉反抗沙皇政府的插麯，反映了人民反對專製農奴製統治的情緒。在小說的抒情插敘中，果戈理把俄羅斯比做一架飛奔的三駕馬車 ，以表達對祖國光明前途的信心。
果戈理
《死魂靈》第一部發表後，果戈理在繼續寫作第二部的同時，發表了中篇小說《外套》和喜劇《婚事》等等。《外套》描寫彼得堡一個小官吏的悲慘遭遇，發出了保護“小兄弟”的人道主義呼籲，對俄國文學中的人道主義思潮産生過強烈影響。
果戈理在《死魂靈》出版時曾暫時回國 ，1842年6月重又出國，大多住在羅馬，但經常往來於意大利、法國與德國之間，主要為了治病。他始終希望通過人道主義、通過道德的改進來改造社會，晚年更陷入博愛主義和宗教神秘主義 。他在《死魂靈》第二部中雖然繼續對專製農奴製社會作了一些批判，卻塑造了一些理想的、品德高尚的官僚、地主以及虔誠的包稅商人形象。作為一個現實主義藝術傢，果戈理感到這些正面形象蒼白無力後將手稿燒毀。1847年發表《與友人書簡選》，宣揚君主制度、超階級的博愛和宗教神秘主義，為專製農奴製的俄國辯護。同年，別林斯基寫了《給果戈理的一封信》，嚴肅地批判了果戈理的思想錯誤。1848年春 ，果戈理在朝拜耶路撒冷之後回國，定居莫斯科。
1852年3月4日，果戈理因精神病痛發作而在莫斯科逝世，終年42歲。
果戈理同普希金奠定了19世紀俄國批判現實主義文學的基礎，是俄國文學中自然派的創始者，是當時俄國文壇的盟主。果戈理對俄國小說藝術發展的貢獻尤其顯著。車爾尼雪夫斯基稱他為“俄國散文之父”。屠格涅夫、岡察洛夫、謝德林、陀思妥耶夫斯基等傑出作傢都受到果戈理創作的影響。自20世紀初葉起，果戈理的創作相繼被翻譯介紹到中國。魯迅稱贊果戈理的作品“以不可見之淚痕悲色，振其邦人”；1935年他翻譯了《死魂靈》 。20～30 年代 ，中國左翼劇團屢次演出喜劇《欽差大臣》（當時譯為《巡按》），曾引起廣泛的反響。果戈理的創作對五四以後的中國新文學産生過較大的影響。
果戈理-作品簡介
果戈理
《欽差大臣》的情節是這樣的：
劇本一開始，縣長就召集手下大大小小的官吏開會，他的第一句話就是：“欽差大臣要來了。”於是這些人個個心驚膽戰，因為他們平時作惡多端，唯恐被戳穿後受到處罰。這時，有個彼得堡的小官吏赫列斯達可夫路過小縣城。官僚們以為他就是欽差大臣，爭先恐後地奉迎巴結。縣長把他請進傢裏，甚至把女兒許配給他。赫列斯達可夫當初莫名其妙，後來索性假戲真唱，官吏們排着隊嚮他行賄。赫列斯達可夫撈了一筆錢之後偷偷溜了，縣長明白自己上了當，正要派人追趕赫列斯達可夫，這時真正的欽差大臣到了。官僚們聽了這個消息面面相覷，個個呆若木雞。《欽差大臣》無情地揭露了俄國官僚的醜惡。縣長是外省官僚的典型代表，他當官當了３０年，老姦巨滑，貪污成性。他自己說他騙過三個省長，騙子中的騙子都上過他的當。他用各種名目敲榨勒索老百姓的錢財，從不放過任何一次撈取錢財的機會，縣裏的其他官吏沒一個是好東西，法官一貫貪贓枉法，行賄受賄；慈善醫院的院長陰險毒辣；教育局長是個酒鬼，每天喝得爛醉；郵政局長專門偷看別人的信件。赫列斯達可夫則是厚顔無恥的騙子，他吹牛撒謊，說自己當過局長，每天都能見沙皇，明天就要當元帥了。等等。他吹牛吹得漫天漫地，連自己都相信自己的話是真的。《欽差大臣》通過藝術形象全面批判了俄國社會中的醜惡，所以纔遭到沙皇的痛恨。果戈理逃到意大利之後，在羅馬住了很長一段時間，並在那裏完成了他的代表作長篇小說《死魂靈》的第一部。《死魂靈》的基本情節是六等文官乞乞科夫企圖利用購買“死魂靈”牟取暴利的故事。俄國地主把農奴叫做“魂靈”，當時俄國地主不僅擁有土地，而且擁有農奴，主人可以任意買賣他們。每10年，國傢進行一次人口調查，調查後死掉的農奴在國傢戶口花名册上仍然存在，地主照樣為他們納稅，直到下次註銷為止。乞乞科夫想趁新的人口調查沒有進行之前，買進1000個死魂靈，再到救濟局抵押，每個魂靈200盧布，就可以賺20萬。他拜訪了不少地主，買了許多死農奴，但最後事情敗露，乞乞科夫逃之夭夭。
果戈理
《死魂靈》刻畫了俄國地主的醜惡群像。乞乞科夫拜訪的第一個地主叫瑪尼洛夫。他是個精神極端貧乏，空虛無聊，無所事事，整天沉溺在毫無邊際的幻想之中的地主。他沒有個性，對任何事情，任何人都非常滿意。瑪尼洛夫經常抽着旱煙管，坐在屋門口幻想在自己莊園的池塘上架一座橋，橋上可以開商店。他幻想在河邊建造一幢大宅子，修築一座高高的塔樓，從那兒甚至可以看見莫斯科。他相信自己很有學問，可是書房裏的一本書看了兩年纔看到第14頁。他非常醉心於“優美的禮節”，可他的禮貌讓人覺得虛假而可笑。當乞乞科夫來到他傢門口時，兩人誰也不願先進門，互相謙讓了兩個小時，結果兩人側着身子稍微擠了一下，同時走了進去。總之，瑪尼洛夫的思想感情畸形發展，是個百無聊賴、毫無價值的廢物。潑留希金是乞乞科夫拜訪的最後一個地主。他又貪婪又吝嗇。潑留希金有萬貫傢財，上千個農奴，但他仍然不滿足，滿腦子都想着搜刮更多的財物。他每天在村子裏轉來轉去，東瞅瞅西看看，凡是他眼睛看見的，能拿得動的東西，他都撿回傢扔在自己的院子裏。什麽銹鐵釘、碎碗片、舊鞋跟，女人用過的破布等等他都要，以至於他走過的路根本用不着打掃。他吝嗇到令人難以想象的程度。他自己吃的穿的比一個乞丐還不如，傢裏幾十個農奴衹穿一雙靴子。兒子和女兒都受不了他，從傢裏跑掉了，而他一文錢也不給兒女。有一次女兒帶着他的小外孫回來看他，他把小外孫抱在膝蓋上玩了半天，臨走時衹給小外孫一枚舊鈕扣做禮物，女兒氣得發誓再不回傢了。總之，通過這些地主形象，果戈理深刻揭露了俄國專製農奴製的反動和腐朽。接着，果戈理着手寫《死魂靈》的第二部。他想在第二部裏寫幾個好地主，樹立俄國地主的正面形象，把乞乞科夫寫成棄惡從善。但他寫了很長時間，仍然不滿意，因為沒有現實基礎，他無法憑空寫出好地主來。最後，他一氣之下把第二部的手稿扔進壁爐燒掉了。
果戈理-死亡
果戈理
死於：1852年2月21日
死因：營養不足，體虛
地點：莫斯科托爾斯泰傢
葬於：莫斯科修道院公墓
臨終前，果戈理在精神上已經完全為嚮他施加不良影響的馬蒂厄神甫所控製。馬蒂厄神甫是他的神師，曾成功地說服果戈理放棄文學，獻身上帝。果戈理聽從馬蒂厄神父的旨意焚燒了《死魂靈》第二捲手稿，在封齋期以常人忍受不了的方式守齋，每天衹吃幾調羹燕麥湖和一片面包。夜裏，為了不讓自己做夢，他努力剋製自己不睡覺。守齋的惡果接踵而來，他終天大病一場。在生病期間，他非但沒有放棄苦修，反而變本加厲。他成天穿着睡袍，既不洗涮又不剃須，拒不飲食也不服藥，給周圍的人的印象是：他不是在自然死亡，而是在慢性自殺。醫生不得不試圖對他進行強製治療：在個身上噴灑冷水；洗溫水浴；鼻孔裏放螞蟥。他雙手被捆綁，嘴裏尖聲大叫，要別人放開他，讓他清靜：“看在上帝的份上，請你們別折磨我！” 2月20日，果戈理終於生命垂危。他忽然一聲大叫：“梯子，快，把梯子給我搬來！”人們從一封信裏找到上答案：“一架梯子從天而降，已為我們準備就緒，一隻手嚮我們伸來，幫助我們嚮上攀登。”果戈理渾身冰冷，傢人用熱的大圓面包敷在他骨瘦如柴的身體上。他開始低聲譫語：“快去，拿走，給磨坊上料。”第二天上午，果戈理停止了呼吸。
果戈理-主要作品
《果戈理短篇小說選》共收入作品11篇，是從《狄康卡近鄉夜話》、《密爾格拉德》和《小品集》（即《彼得堡故事》）中精選出來的。《索羅欽集市》（1831）、《五月之夜（或：女落水鬼）》（1831）、《聖誕節前夜》（1832）、《伊凡·費多羅維奇·什邦卡和他的姨媽》（1832）分別選自《狄康卡近鄉夜話》的第一部與第二部；《舊式地主》（1835）和《伊凡·伊凡諾維奇和伊凡·尼基福羅維奇吵架的故事》（1834）是《密爾格拉德》小說集中的名篇；而《涅瓦大街》（1835）、《鼻子》（1836）、《畫像》（1842）、《外套》（1842）則合成一組描寫京城生活的《彼得堡故事》；衹有《馬車》（1836）是單獨成篇的。
果戈理-作品特點
果戈理畫像
果戈理是19世紀偉大的國作傢中最有魅力的，同時又是最難捉摸的作傢之一。他的作品貫串着一種獨特的諷刺幽默風格。他對現實生活中的一切醜惡現象都給予尖刻的諷刺和嘲笑，但嘲笑之中總透出一種溫和的幽默和痛惜的淚水。特別在對待小人物的悲慘命運上，更是哀其不幸，怒其不爭，“含淚的笑”溢於言表。
他的作品常常采用極度的誇張之法，以奇趣非凡的反常之形逗人發笑，這是他用神奇筆法精心勾勒的結果。譬如，地主的一條燈籠褲被描寫成“吹脹起來，可以裝得下整個院子外帶𠔌倉和雜房”，一個大煙鬼比喻為“從房頂上移下地來的大煙囪”等等。在果戈理的筆下，地主、官僚、貴族、高利貸者一個個行為乖張，滑稽可笑，又奇醜無比。作傢以漫畫的手法加以誇飾，賦以變形，抒言外之情，寓褒貶之意。這種誇飾之法是構成果戈理作品諷刺幽默風格的重要手段。
他的作品藝術手法十分繁富，璀璨多姿。在他的小說中，傳說、故事、夢境、幻想、譫妄、獨白、對話、思緒、素描、抒情、議論融為一體，自然天成。他常常以講故事的人或第一人稱的說話人的身份出現在作品中，自然而然地說出大段的抒情插話或哲理議論（偶而有過於放縱或迷醉之虞），跟讀者進行面對面的心靈交流。他喜歡對人物的外表和姿勢作詳細的描寫，以刻畫性格，深化主題。他描畫人物的鼻子或嘴唇生得怎樣，一筆就畫全了，而且非常細膩突出。
他的作品的文體別具一格，語言豐富而華麗，極度的流暢和接近自然。他的文筆富有節奏和音樂感，音調明快激越而餘音不絶，同時又色調絢麗多彩而富有變化。誠如別林斯基所說：“果戈裏不是在寫，而是在描畫；他的描寫洋溢着現實的生動的色彩。你能看見並且聽見它們。”無怪乎有人稱他為“語言的畫傢”。
He is considered the father of modern Russian realism, but at the same time, his work is very much in the genre of romanticism. His early works, such as Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, were heavily influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing and identity. His more mature writing satirised the corrupt bureaucracy of the Russian Empire, leading to his exile. On his return, he immersed himself in the Orthodox Church. The novels Taras Bul'ba (1835; 1842 [revised edition]) and Dead Souls (1842), the play The Inspector-General (1836, 1842), and the short stories Diary of a Madman, The Nose and The Overcoat (1842) are among his best known works. With their scrupulous and scathing realism, ethical criticism as well as philosophical depth, they remain some of the most important works of world literature.
Provenance and early life
Gogol was born in the Ukrainian Cossack village of Sorochyntsi, in Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire, present-day Ukraine. His mother was a descendant of Polish nobility. His father Vasily Gogol-Yanovsky, a descendant of Ukrainian Cossacks, belonged to the petty gentry, wrote poetry in Russian and Ukrainian, and was an amateur Ukrainian-language playwright who died when Gogol was 15 years old. As was typical of the left-bank Ukrainian gentry of the early nineteenth century, the family spoke Russian as well as Ukrainian. As a child, Gogol helped stage Ukrainian-language plays in his uncle's home theater.
In 1820 Gogol went to a school of higher art in Nizhyn and remained there until 1828. It was there that he began writing. He was not very 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 an extraordinary talent for mimicry which later on made him a matchless reader of his own works and induced him to toy with the idea of becoming an actor.
In 1828, on leaving school, Gogol came to Petersburg, full of vague but glowingly ambitious hopes. He had hoped for literary fame and brought with him a Romantic poem of German idyllic life — Ganz Küchelgarten. He had it published, at his own expense, under the name of "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.
Gogol was one of the first masters of the short story, alongside Alexander Pushkin, Prosper Mérimée, E. T. A. Hoffmann, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. He was in touch with the "literary aristocracy", had a story published in Anton Delvig's Northern Flowers, was taken up by Vasily Zhukovsky and Pyotr Pletnyov, and (in 1831) was introduced to Pushkin.
Literary development
Cover of the first edition of The Government Inspector (1836).
In 1831, he brought out the first volume of his Ukrainian stories (Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka), which met with immediate success. He followed it in 1832 with a second volume, and in 1835 by two volumes of stories entitled Mirgorod, as well as by two volumes of miscellaneous prose entitled Arabesques. At this time, contemporary Russian editors and critics such as Nikolai Polevoy and Nikolai Nadezhdin saw in Gogol the emergence of a Ukrainian, rather than Russian, writer, using his works to illustrate the differences between Russian and Ukrainian national characters, a fact that has been overlooked in later Russian literary history. At this time, Gogol developed a passion for Ukrainian history and tried to obtain an appointment to the history department at Kiev University. Despite the support of Pushkin and Sergey Uvarov, the Russian minister of education, his appointment was blocked by a Kievan bureaucrat on the grounds that he was unqualified. His fictional story Taras Bulba, based on the history of Ukrainian cossacks, was the result of this phase in his interests. During this time he also developed a close and life-long friendship with another Ukrainian then living in Russia, the historian and naturalist Mykhaylo Maksymovych.
In 1834 Gogol was made Professor of Medieval History at the University of St. Petersburg, a job for which "he had no qualifications. 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 pretense 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." This academic venture proved a failure and he resigned his chair in 1835.
Commemorative plaque in his house in Rome
Between 1832 and 1836 Gogol worked with great energy, and though almost all his work has in one way or another its sources in these four years of contact with Pushkin, he 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 earlier critics, reclassified Gogol from a Ukrainian to a Russian writer. It was only after the presentation, on April 19, 1836, of his comedy The Government Inspector (Revizor) that he finally came to believe in his literary vocation. The comedy, a violent satire of Russian provincial bureaucracy, was able to be staged thanks only to the personal intervention of Nicholas I.
From 1836 to 1848 he lived abroad, travelling throughout Germany and Switzerland. Gogol spent the winter of 1836-1837 in Paris, where he spent time among Russian expatriates and Polish exiles, frequently meeting with the Polish poets Adam Mickiewicz and Bohdan Zaleski. He eventually settled in Rome. According to Simon Karlinsky (a professor emeritus of Slavic languages and literature at UC Berkeley) Gogol fell in love there with the nobleman Iosif Vielhorsky and started a romantic relationship with him; this is the only documented love affair in his life.
Pushkin's death produced a strong impression on Gogol. His principal work during years following Pushkin's death was the satirical epic Dead Souls. Concurrently, he worked at other tasks — recast Taras Bulba 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 was ready, and Gogol took it to Russia to supervise its printing. It appeared in Moscow in 1842, under the title, imposed by the censorship, of The Adventures of Chichikov. The book instantly established his reputation as the greatest prose writer in the language.
Creative decline and death
Church of Simeon Stylites on New Arbat in Moscow, in which the great writer was mourned before his burial.
"Golgotha"
After the triumph of Dead Souls, Gogol came to be regarded by his contemporaries as a great satirist who lampooned the unseemly sides of Imperial Russia. Little did they know that Dead Souls was but the first part of a modern-day counterpart to The Divine Comedy. The first part represented the Inferno; the second part was to depict the gradual purification and transformation of the rogue Chichikov under the influence of virtuous publicans and governors — Purgatory.
Gogol, painted in 1840.
From Palestine he returned to Russia and passed his last years in restless movement throughout the country. While visiting the capitals, he stayed with various friends such as Mikhail Pogodin and Sergei Aksakov. During this period of his life he also spent much time with his old Ukrainian friends, Maksymovych and Osyp Bodiansky. More importantly, he intensified his relationship with a church elder, Matvey Konstantinovsky, whom he had known for several years. Konstantinovsky seems to have strengthened in Gogol the fear of perdition by insisting on the sinfulness of all his imaginative work. His health was undermined by exaggerated ascetic practices and he fell into a state of deep depression. On the night of February 24, 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 buried at the Danilov Monastery, close to his fellow Slavophile Aleksey Khomyakov. In 1931, Moscow authorities decided to demolish the monastery and had his remains transferred to the Novodevichy Cemetery.
Gogol's grave at the Novodevichy Convent
His body was discovered lying face down, which gave rise to the story that Gogol had been buried alive. A Soviet critic even cut a part of his jacket to use as a binding for his copy of Dead Souls. A piece of rock which used to stand on his grave at the Danilov was reused for the tomb of Gogol's admirer Mikhail Bulgakov.
The first Gogol monument in Moscow was a Symbolist statue on Arbat Square, which represented the sculptor Nikolay Andreyev's idea of Gogol, rather than the real man Unveiled in 1909, the statue was praised by Ilya Repin and 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 Realism monument in 1952. It took enormous efforts to save Andreyev's original work from destruction; it now stands in front of the house where Gogol died.
Style
Among the illustrators of Dead Souls were Pyotr Sokolov and Marc Chagall.
D.S. Mirsky characterized Gogol's universe as "one of the most marvellous, unexpected — in the strictest sense, original — worlds ever created by an artist of words".
The other main characteristic of Gogol's writing is his impressionist vision of reality and people. He saw the outer world romantically metamorphosed, a singular gift particularly evident from the fantastic spatial transformations in his Gothic stories, A Terrible Vengeance and A Bewitched Place. 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.
The aspect under which the mature Gogol sees reality is expressed by the untranslatable Russian word poshlost', which is perhaps best rendered as "self-satisfied inferiority", moral and spiritual, widespread in some group or society, from rus. "poshlo"- eng. "went." Like Sterne before him, Gogol was a great destroyer of prohibitions and romantic illusions. It was he who undermined Russian Romanticism by making vulgarity reign where only the sublime and the beautiful had reigned. "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
Gogol was stunned when The Inspector-General came to be interpreted by many, despite Nicholas I's warm reception, as an indictment of Russian social institutions. Gogol himself was a political and religious conservative in the vein of Dostoyevsky.
Influence and interpretations
Statue of Gogol at the Villa Borghese, Rome.
Bust of Nikolai Gogol in St. Petersburg.
Even before the publication of Dead Souls, Belinsky recognized Gogol as the first realist writer in the language and the head of the Natural School, to which he also assigned such younger or lesser authors as Goncharov, Turgenev, Dmitry Grigorovich, Vladimir Dahl, and Vladimir Sollogub. Gogol himself seemed to be 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 Encyclopaedia Britannica as "the triumph of Gogolesque irony."
The period of 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, placed Gogol among their precursors and consciously sought to imitate his techniques. The leading novelists of the period — notably Yevgeny Zamyatin and Mikhail Bulgakov — 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, expressive discontinuity of his syntax, 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 in 1944.
The house in Moscow where Gogol died. The building contains the fireplace where he burned the manuscript of the second part of the Dead Souls.
Gogol's impact on Russian literature has been enduring, yet his works have been appreciated differently by various critics. Belinsky, for instance, berated his horror stories as "moribund, monstrous works", while Andrei Bely counted them among his most stylistically daring creations. Nabokov singled out Dead Souls, The Government Inspector, and The Overcoat as the works of genius and dismissed the remainder as puerile essays. The latter story has been traditionally interpreted as a masterpiece of "humanitarian realism", but Nabokov and some other attentive readers argued that "holes in the language" make the story susceptible to another 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 declared it "a piece of sheer play, almost sheer nonsense."
Gogol's oeuvre has also had a large impact on Russia's non-literary culture, and his stories have been adapted numerous times into opera and film. Russian Composer Alfred Schnittke wrote the eight part Gogol Suite as incidental music to The Government Inspector performed as a play, and composer Dmitri Shostakovich set The Nose as his first opera in 1930, despite the peculiar choice of subject for what was meant to initiate the great tradition of Soviet opera. Most recently, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Gogol's birth, 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.
Gogol burning the manuscript of the second part of Dead Souls by Ilya Repin
Some attention has also been given to the apparent anti-Semitism in Gogol's writings, as well as those of his contemporary, Fyodor Dostoevsky. Felix Dreizin and David Guaspari, for example, in their The Russian Soul and the Jew: Essays in Literary Ethnocentricis 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 Leon 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 problematic 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."
Gogol in popular culture
Postage stamp, Russia, 2009. See also: Gogol in philately, Russian Wikipedia
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. On March 19, 2009, the National Bank of Ukraine issued a commemorative coin dedicated to Gogol.
Streets have been named after Gogol in Moscow, Lipetsk, Odessa, Myrhorod, Krasnodar, Vladimir, Vladivostok, Penza, Petrozavodsk, Riga, Bratislava and many other towns and cities.
Gogol is referenced multiple times in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment and Chekhov's The Seagull.
More than 35 films have been based on Gogol's work, the most recent being Taras Bulba (2008).
BBC Radio 4 made a series of six Gogol short stories entitled Three Ivans Two Aunts and an Overcoat (2002, adaptations by Jim Poyser).
In music, the gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello is named lovingly after Gogol. A song by Joy Division, "Dead Souls" (1980), is named after his novel.
In popular fiction, James Bond's unreproachable yet unlovable competitor (and occasional ally) is lent a distinguished air by his name, Anatol Gogol.
A main character is evocatively named Gogol in "The Namesake" (2003) by Jhumpa Lahiri.
Gogolfest is the annual multidisciplinary international festival of contemporary art held in Kiev, Ukraine.
Gogol is mentioned in Adventureland_(film) as one character's favorite novelist.