En
Ru
Birth of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, Russian Writer, Classic of Russian Literature
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was born on March 20 (April 1), 1809 in the village of Velikiye Sorochintsy, Mirgorod District, Poltava Governorate, in the family of landowner Vasily Afanasyevich Gogol-Yanovsky (1777-1825) and Maria Ivanovna Gogol-Yanovskaya (1791-1868), nee Kosyarovskaya. Gogol’s father wrote poems and comedies in Russian and Ukrainian. Under his influence, the future writer showed an early interest in art and theatre in particular.
In 1818-1819, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol studied at the Poltava Uezd School, in 1820 – early 1821 he practiced Latin, and in 1821-1828 he attended the Gymnasium of Higher Learning in Nezhin. During this period, Gogol’s artistic talent manifested itself: in addition to the first experiments in writing prose and poetry, he drew and performed in plays. In 1828, he moved to St. Petersburg, where he hoped to enter the civil service and build a legal career. In 1829, he began to serve in the Department of State Economy and Public Buildings of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and from 1830 – in the Department of Estates. In his spare time, he was engaged in literary activities and published in magazines. In 1831, in Issue 4 of Literaturnaya gazeta (Literary Gazette), the first work was published with the signature of N. Gogol – essay Woman. The acquaintance of the novice writer with Vasily Zhukovsky, Pyotr Pletnyov and Alexander Pushkin dates back to this time.
On the wave of interest “in everything Little Russian”, the first cycle of stories Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka (parts 1-2, 1831-1832) got Nikolai Gogol a lot of publicity. From St. Petersburg, Gogol turned to his mother for everyday details for his works. Then, the cycles Mirgorod (1835) and Arabesques (1835) were released. In the latter, Petersburg themes were added (the stories Nevsky Prospect, The Portrait, Diary of a Madman), which were continued by other so-called “Petersburg stories”: The Nose (1836) and The Overcoat (1842).
In 1834-1835, Nikolai Vasilyevich taught history at St. Petersburg University as an adjunct professor and unsuccessfully tried to get a spot at the history department of Kiev University. An active interest in history was manifested in the unfinished drama Alfred (1835) based on the Western European Middle Ages and in the story Taras Bulba from Ukrainian history, included in the cycle Mirgorod (1835). The peak of the writer’s creativity was the satirical play The Government Inspector (1836) and the novel-poem Dead Souls (1842). The underlying grotesque motifs were also developed by such plays of Gogol as Marriage (1842), The Gamblers (1842).
From 1836 to 1841, he lived abroad – in Baden-Baden, Geneva, Paris, Rome. Most of Dead Souls were written in Italy. In June 1842, he went abroad again, lived in France, Germany, but mainly in Italy: Rome and Naples. During this period, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was experiencing a painful mental crisis associated with critical reflections on his work and the purpose of the writer. He was possessed by religious, mystical moods. The crisis was aggravated by the hard work on the 2nd volume of Dead Souls, the manuscript of which was burned in the summer of 1845. In 1847, Selected Excerpts from Correspondence with Friends were published. The publication was based on Gogol’s letters to his friends and acquaintances, representing spiritual instructions.
In April 1848, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol returned to Russia from a trip to Jerusalem to the Holy Sepulchre and continued working on the 2nd volume of Dead Souls. Under the influence of the Rzhev Archpriest Matvey Konstantinovsky, who critically commented on some chapters of the work, Gogol burned the manuscript of the 2nd volume on a February night in 1852 in Moscow. Despite the fact that by this time the writer’s mental and physical strength were exhausted, he continued to observe strict fasting, practically refusing food, and did not accept the help of friends and doctors.
On February 21 (March 4), 1852, the writer died. From the university church, where the funeral service took place, to the burial place in St. Daniel’s Monastery, the coffin with the body of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was carried by students and professors of Moscow University (in 1931, the remains were transferred to the Novodevichy Cemetery).
Lit.: Гончаров С. А. Творчество Гоголя в религиозно-мистическом контексте. СПб., 1997; Манн Ю. В. Гоголь Н. В. Большая российская энциклопедия; Орлов А. С., Георгиева Н. Г., Георгиев В. А. Исторический словарь. 2-е изд. М., 2012. С. 124; Шенрок В. И. Материалы для биографии Гоголя. Т. 1–4. М., 1892–1897.
Based on the Presidential Library's materials: