The Presidential Library tells about St. Petersburg through the fate of Nikolai Gogol

April 1, 2024 marks the 215th anniversary of the birth of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. He lived for almost 43 years, seven of them in St. Petersburg. And it was during these years that he “managed to write almost all of his works and gain fame as a first-class writer”.

According to literary critic Dmitry Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky in the book Gogol (1907), St. Petersburg became not just the city where Gogol lived, but also one of the heroes of many of his works.

Gogol dreamed of St. Petersburg almost from childhood. He complained about boring life in Nezhin, Chernigov province.

Thus, 8 years later, in December 1828, when Gogol was 19 years old, he and his friend Alexander Danilevsky went to St. Petersburg. The friends decided to take the Belarusian road. As they approached St. Petersburg, the impatience and curiosity of the travelers increased every hour. Finally, countless lights appeared from afar, signaling their approach to the capital. The young people were overcome with delight: they forgot about the frost, every now and then they leaned out of the carriage and rose on their tiptoes to get a better look at the capital.

St. Petersburg in reality turned out to be completely different than in Gogol’s dreams. The search for work was delayed.

A year after moving to St. Petersburg, he managed to decide to serve in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and in April 1830 he began to serve in the Department of Appanages - first as a scribe, then as an assistant to the chief clerk. However, according to the writer’s first biographer Panteleimon Kulish in Notes about Gogol's Life (1856), Nikolai Vasilyevich “was a bad official, and, in his own words, the only benefit he gained from serving in this institution was that he learned how to sew paper”.

Cherishing dreams of a literary career, Gogol asks his mother to send him information about Little Russian morals, customs, beliefs, and various stories.

“Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” published in the early 1830s, aroused universal admiration. One of the first to welcome the fresh fiction of the young author, shimmering with all colors, was Pushkin.

According to Kulish, “Gogol was first introduced to the circle of writers as the author of Evenings on a Farm on February 19, 1832 at the famous dinner of A. F. Smirdin, on the occasion of the transfer of his bookstore from the Blue Bridge to Nevsky Prospekt”. The guests presented the host with various plays that made up the almanac “Housewarming”, which included “The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivanov Nikiforovich” by Nikolai Gogol.

St. Petersburg is not only a city of “gentlemen in cloth-covered fur coats” but also the smug lieutenant Pirogov, the poor artist Piskarev, the lost nose of Major Kovalev, the petty official Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin, whose life goal was a new overcoat, the titular councilor Aksentiy Ivanovich Poprishchin, imagining himself the “King of Spain”. St. Petersburg is not only a city of ceremonial facades, but also of dirty streets.

Even in Gogol’s comedy “The Inspector General” which takes place in a small provincial town, the image of St. Petersburg appears. They fear him, imitate him, talk about him, admire him. The Inspector General mentions specific addresses related to the life of the comedy author in St. Petersburg.

The plot of “The Inspector General” was suggested to the writer by Pushkin. Gogol began working on the play in the fall of 1835, and already on April 19, 1836, its premiere took place on the stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater.

At the beginning of June 1836, Nikolai Vasilyevich left St. Petersburg and Russia.

On the eve of Gogol’s departure abroad, Pushkin sat in his apartment on Malaya Morskaya all night long. The poet read the works begun by Nikolai Vasilyevich - at this time Gogol was working on the novel “Dead Souls”, the plot of which was also suggested to him by Pushkin. This was their last date...

On the occasion of the 215th anniversary of the writer’s birth, the Presidential Library's electronic collection Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852) was entered with new materials. Among them are lifetime editions of Gogol’s works, Works and letters of Nikolai Gogol in 6 volumes (1857), Illustrated complete works of Nikolai Gogol in 8 volumes (1913); memoirs of contemporaries and studies of the writer’s work, archival documents (for example, The case of installing a bronze bust of Gogol in the foyer of the Alexandrinsky Theater in honor of the 50th anniversary of the production of the comedy “The Inspector General”, a photograph from the original manuscript of Gogol’s comedy “Marriage”) and others.