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果戈理1831年夏，果戈理结识普希金，从此过往甚密，在创作思想上受到重大影响。此后发表《狄康卡近乡夜话》第一集和第二集。这两部小说集展现了富有诗意的乌克兰民族生活。作品里占主导地位的是浪漫主义倾向。
1834年秋开始，果戈理在圣彼得堡大学任世界史副教授，对乌克兰史和世界中世纪史进行过研究。次年底离职，从此专事创作。同年发表的中篇小说集《米尔戈罗德》和《小品集》表明果戈理批判现实主义创作方法已开始形成。
在写作中篇小说的同时，果戈理于1833年开始从事讽刺喜剧的创作。1836年4月，《钦差大臣》首次在圣彼得堡亚历山德拉剧院公演。剧作以普希金所提供的一个趣闻为情节基础，将俄国官僚社会的全部丑恶和不公正的事物集中在一起，“淋漓尽致地进行了嘲笑”。故事发生在俄国某偏僻城市。以市长为首的一群官吏听到钦差大臣前来视察的消息 ，惊慌失措，竟将一个过路的彼得堡小官员赫列斯达科夫当做钦差大臣，对他阿谀、行贿。正当市长将自己的女儿许配给这位“钦差”、做着升官发财的美梦时，传来了真正的钦差大臣到达的消息，喜剧以哑场告终。果戈理以卓越的现实主义艺术手法，刻画了老奸巨猾的市长、玩忽职守的法官、不顾病人死活的慈善医院院长、愚昧的督学、偷拆信件的邮政局长——所有这些形象都异常真实地反映出俄国官僚阶层贪赃枉法、谄媚钻营、卑鄙庸俗等本质特征。赫列斯达科夫是一身染上彼得堡贵族官僚习气的外省青年，轻浮浅薄，爱慕虚荣，自吹自擂，厚颜无耻，在当时俄国社会具有典型意义。它对俄国戏剧的发展产生了重要影响。
果戈理
《钦差大臣》上演后，遭到以尼古拉一世为首的俄国官僚贵族社会的攻击和诽谤 。1836年6 月，果戈理离开俄国到了德国和瑞士， 写作上一年开始的长篇小说《死魂灵》。1837年3月迁居罗马。1842年5月，《死魂灵》第一部问世 ，继《钦差大臣》之后再次“震撼了整个俄罗斯”(赫尔岑语)。书中主人公乞乞科夫是19世纪30～40年代俄国社会中从小贵族地主向新兴资产者过渡的典型形象。他在官场中混迹多年，练就了投机钻营、招摇撞骗的“天才”。当时俄国每10年进行一次人口登记，而在两次登记之间死去的农奴在法律上仍被当做活人，有的地主曾经拿他们做抵押品向国家银行借款。乞乞科夫决计到偏僻的省份，收购“死魂灵”来谋取暴利 。随着小说情节的发展。展现出一个又一个地主形象，如懒散的梦想家玛尼罗夫，愚昧、贪财的柯罗博奇卡，喜爱撒谎打架的酒鬼、赌棍诺兹德列夫，粗鲁、顽固的索巴克维奇以及爱财如命的吝啬鬼普柳什金（泼留希金）等等。果戈理以辛辣的讽刺手法，对这些人物的生活环境、外表、嗜好、言谈、心理等等进行了极为出色的描绘，使他们成为俄国批判现实主义文学中不朽的艺术典型。小说又通过残废军人戈贝金大尉反抗沙皇政府的插曲，反映了人民反对专制农奴制统治的情绪。在小说的抒情插叙中，果戈理把俄罗斯比做一架飞奔的三驾马车 ，以表达对祖国光明前途的信心。
果戈理
《死魂灵》第一部发表后，果戈理在继续写作第二部的同时，发表了中篇小说《外套》和喜剧《婚事》等等。《外套》描写彼得堡一个小官吏的悲惨遭遇，发出了保护“小兄弟”的人道主义呼吁，对俄国文学中的人道主义思潮产生过强烈影响。
果戈理在《死魂灵》出版时曾暂时回国 ，1842年6月重又出国，大多住在罗马，但经常往来于意大利、法国与德国之间，主要为了治病。他始终希望通过人道主义、通过道德的改进来改造社会，晚年更陷入博爱主义和宗教神秘主义 。他在《死魂灵》第二部中虽然继续对专制农奴制社会作了一些批判，却塑造了一些理想的、品德高尚的官僚、地主以及虔诚的包税商人形象。作为一个现实主义艺术家，果戈理感到这些正面形象苍白无力后将手稿烧毁。1847年发表《与友人书简选》，宣扬君主制度、超阶级的博爱和宗教神秘主义，为专制农奴制的俄国辩护。同年，别林斯基写了《给果戈理的一封信》，严肃地批判了果戈理的思想错误。1848年春 ，果戈理在朝拜耶路撒冷之后回国，定居莫斯科。
1852年3月4日，果戈理因精神病痛发作而在莫斯科逝世，终年42岁。
果戈理同普希金奠定了19世纪俄国批判现实主义文学的基础，是俄国文学中自然派的创始者，是当时俄国文坛的盟主。果戈理对俄国小说艺术发展的贡献尤其显著。车尔尼雪夫斯基称他为“俄国散文之父”。屠格涅夫、冈察洛夫、谢德林、陀思妥耶夫斯基等杰出作家都受到果戈理创作的影响。自20世纪初叶起，果戈理的创作相继被翻译介绍到中国。鲁迅称赞果戈理的作品“以不可见之泪痕悲色，振其邦人”；1935年他翻译了《死魂灵》 。20～30 年代 ，中国左翼剧团屡次演出喜剧《钦差大臣》（当时译为《巡按》），曾引起广泛的反响。果戈理的创作对五四以后的中国新文学产生过较大的影响。
果戈理-作品简介
果戈理
《钦差大臣》的情节是这样的：
剧本一开始，县长就召集手下大大小小的官吏开会，他的第一句话就是：“钦差大臣要来了。”于是这些人个个心惊胆战，因为他们平时作恶多端，唯恐被戳穿后受到处罚。这时，有个彼得堡的小官吏赫列斯达可夫路过小县城。官僚们以为他就是钦差大臣，争先恐后地奉迎巴结。县长把他请进家里，甚至把女儿许配给他。赫列斯达可夫当初莫名其妙，后来索性假戏真唱，官吏们排着队向他行贿。赫列斯达可夫捞了一笔钱之后偷偷溜了，县长明白自己上了当，正要派人追赶赫列斯达可夫，这时真正的钦差大臣到了。官僚们听了这个消息面面相觑，个个呆若木鸡。《钦差大臣》无情地揭露了俄国官僚的丑恶。县长是外省官僚的典型代表，他当官当了３０年，老奸巨滑，贪污成性。他自己说他骗过三个省长，骗子中的骗子都上过他的当。他用各种名目敲榨勒索老百姓的钱财，从不放过任何一次捞取钱财的机会，县里的其他官吏没一个是好东西，法官一贯贪赃枉法，行贿受贿；慈善医院的院长阴险毒辣；教育局长是个酒鬼，每天喝得烂醉；邮政局长专门偷看别人的信件。赫列斯达可夫则是厚颜无耻的骗子，他吹牛撒谎，说自己当过局长，每天都能见沙皇，明天就要当元帅了。等等。他吹牛吹得漫天漫地，连自己都相信自己的话是真的。《钦差大臣》通过艺术形象全面批判了俄国社会中的丑恶，所以才遭到沙皇的痛恨。果戈理逃到意大利之后，在罗马住了很长一段时间，并在那里完成了他的代表作长篇小说《死魂灵》的第一部。《死魂灵》的基本情节是六等文官乞乞科夫企图利用购买“死魂灵”牟取暴利的故事。俄国地主把农奴叫做“魂灵”，当时俄国地主不仅拥有土地，而且拥有农奴，主人可以任意买卖他们。每10年，国家进行一次人口调查，调查后死掉的农奴在国家户口花名册上仍然存在，地主照样为他们纳税，直到下次注销为止。乞乞科夫想趁新的人口调查没有进行之前，买进1000个死魂灵，再到救济局抵押，每个魂灵200卢布，就可以赚20万。他拜访了不少地主，买了许多死农奴，但最后事情败露，乞乞科夫逃之夭夭。
果戈理
《死魂灵》刻画了俄国地主的丑恶群像。乞乞科夫拜访的第一个地主叫玛尼洛夫。他是个精神极端贫乏，空虚无聊，无所事事，整天沉溺在毫无边际的幻想之中的地主。他没有个性，对任何事情，任何人都非常满意。玛尼洛夫经常抽着旱烟管，坐在屋门口幻想在自己庄园的池塘上架一座桥，桥上可以开商店。他幻想在河边建造一幢大宅子，修筑一座高高的塔楼，从那儿甚至可以看见莫斯科。他相信自己很有学问，可是书房里的一本书看了两年才看到第14页。他非常醉心于“优美的礼节”，可他的礼貌让人觉得虚假而可笑。当乞乞科夫来到他家门口时，两人谁也不愿先进门，互相谦让了两个小时，结果两人侧着身子稍微挤了一下，同时走了进去。总之，玛尼洛夫的思想感情畸形发展，是个百无聊赖、毫无价值的废物。泼留希金是乞乞科夫拜访的最后一个地主。他又贪婪又吝啬。泼留希金有万贯家财，上千个农奴，但他仍然不满足，满脑子都想着搜刮更多的财物。他每天在村子里转来转去，东瞅瞅西看看，凡是他眼睛看见的，能拿得动的东西，他都捡回家扔在自己的院子里。什么锈铁钉、碎碗片、旧鞋跟，女人用过的破布等等他都要，以至于他走过的路根本用不着打扫。他吝啬到令人难以想象的程度。他自己吃的穿的比一个乞丐还不如，家里几十个农奴只穿一双靴子。儿子和女儿都受不了他，从家里跑掉了，而他一文钱也不给儿女。有一次女儿带着他的小外孙回来看他，他把小外孙抱在膝盖上玩了半天，临走时只给小外孙一枚旧钮扣做礼物，女儿气得发誓再不回家了。总之，通过这些地主形象，果戈理深刻揭露了俄国专制农奴制的反动和腐朽。接着，果戈理着手写《死魂灵》的第二部。他想在第二部里写几个好地主，树立俄国地主的正面形象，把乞乞科夫写成弃恶从善。但他写了很长时间，仍然不满意，因为没有现实基础，他无法凭空写出好地主来。最后，他一气之下把第二部的手稿扔进壁炉烧掉了。
果戈理-死亡
果戈理
死于：1852年2月21日
死因：营养不足，体虚
地点：莫斯科托尔斯泰家
葬于：莫斯科修道院公墓
临终前，果戈理在精神上已经完全为向他施加不良影响的马蒂厄神甫所控制。马蒂厄神甫是他的神师，曾成功地说服果戈理放弃文学，献身上帝。果戈理听从马蒂厄神父的旨意焚烧了《死魂灵》第二卷手稿，在封斋期以常人忍受不了的方式守斋，每天只吃几调羹燕麦湖和一片面包。夜里，为了不让自己做梦，他努力克制自己不睡觉。守斋的恶果接踵而来，他终天大病一场。在生病期间，他非但没有放弃苦修，反而变本加厉。他成天穿着睡袍，既不洗涮又不剃须，拒不饮食也不服药，给周围的人的印象是：他不是在自然死亡，而是在慢性自杀。医生不得不试图对他进行强制治疗：在个身上喷洒冷水；洗温水浴；鼻孔里放蚂蟥。他双手被捆绑，嘴里尖声大叫，要别人放开他，让他清静：“看在上帝的份上，请你们别折磨我！” 2月20日，果戈理终于生命垂危。他忽然一声大叫：“梯子，快，把梯子给我搬来！”人们从一封信里找到上答案：“一架梯子从天而降，已为我们准备就绪，一只手向我们伸来，帮助我们向上攀登。”果戈理浑身冰冷，家人用热的大圆面包敷在他骨瘦如柴的身体上。他开始低声谵语：“快去，拿走，给磨坊上料。”第二天上午，果戈理停止了呼吸。
果戈理-主要作品
《果戈理短篇小说选》共收入作品11篇，是从《狄康卡近乡夜话》、《密尔格拉德》和《小品集》（即《彼得堡故事》）中精选出来的。《索罗钦集市》（1831）、《五月之夜（或：女落水鬼）》（1831）、《圣诞节前夜》（1832）、《伊凡·费多罗维奇·什邦卡和他的姨妈》（1832）分别选自《狄康卡近乡夜话》的第一部与第二部；《旧式地主》（1835）和《伊凡·伊凡诺维奇和伊凡·尼基福罗维奇吵架的故事》（1834）是《密尔格拉德》小说集中的名篇；而《涅瓦大街》（1835）、《鼻子》（1836）、《画像》（1842）、《外套》（1842）则合成一组描写京城生活的《彼得堡故事》；只有《马车》（1836）是单独成篇的。
果戈理-作品特点
果戈理画像
果戈理是19世纪伟大的国作家中最有魅力的，同时又是最难捉摸的作家之一。他的作品贯串着一种独特的讽刺幽默风格。他对现实生活中的一切丑恶现象都给予尖刻的讽刺和嘲笑，但嘲笑之中总透出一种温和的幽默和痛惜的泪水。特别在对待小人物的悲惨命运上，更是哀其不幸，怒其不争，“含泪的笑”溢于言表。
他的作品常常采用极度的夸张之法，以奇趣非凡的反常之形逗人发笑，这是他用神奇笔法精心勾勒的结果。譬如，地主的一条灯笼裤被描写成“吹胀起来，可以装得下整个院子外带谷仓和杂房”，一个大烟鬼比喻为“从房顶上移下地来的大烟囱”等等。在果戈理的笔下，地主、官僚、贵族、高利贷者一个个行为乖张，滑稽可笑，又奇丑无比。作家以漫画的手法加以夸饰，赋以变形，抒言外之情，寓褒贬之意。这种夸饰之法是构成果戈理作品讽刺幽默风格的重要手段。
他的作品艺术手法十分繁富，璀璨多姿。在他的小说中，传说、故事、梦境、幻想、谵妄、独白、对话、思绪、素描、抒情、议论融为一体，自然天成。他常常以讲故事的人或第一人称的说话人的身份出现在作品中，自然而然地说出大段的抒情插话或哲理议论（偶而有过于放纵或迷醉之虞），跟读者进行面对面的心灵交流。他喜欢对人物的外表和姿势作详细的描写，以刻画性格，深化主题。他描画人物的鼻子或嘴唇生得怎样，一笔就画全了，而且非常细腻突出。
他的作品的文体别具一格，语言丰富而华丽，极度的流畅和接近自然。他的文笔富有节奏和音乐感，音调明快激越而余音不绝，同时又色调绚丽多彩而富有变化。诚如别林斯基所说：“果戈里不是在写，而是在描画；他的描写洋溢着现实的生动的色彩。你能看见并且听见它们。”无怪乎有人称他为“语言的画家”。
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.