Gogol and his oeuvre reflected in the Presidential Library’s materials

April 1, 2019 marks the 210th anniversary of the birth of Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol - a classic of Russian literature, the author of "The Inspector General", "The Overcoat", "Dead Souls" and other brilliant works. The Presidential Library features anniversary collection “Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852)”. It consists of three sections: “The Life and Work of Nikolai Gogol”, “Oeuvre”, “The Memory of the Writer”, which presents his lifetime publications on creativity, as well as research materials from the mid-19th – early 20th centuries, which try to interpret the life of the writer, analyze the most famous and most controversial of his works. In addition, the Presidential Library’s portal provides access to rare graphic materials, such as the album “Portraits by Nikolai Gogol” (1909), it is preceded by two sketches by Ilya Repin, associated with the dramatic minutes of the life of the unsurpassed master of the word.

I. Shcheglov in the publication “Ascetic of the Word: New Materials about Nikolai Gogol” (1909) recalls: “I recently went to the Alexandrinsky Theater for the “400th” performance of the “The Inspector General” by Gogol... The best forces of the troop with M. G Savina participated in the play and the performance received a special brilliance”.

“Poor, long-suffering author of “The Inspector General”! ”The author exclaims and recalls what happened on the same stage 65 years ago ...

“It was an unbearably painful evening for the unfortunate author! According to P. V. Annenkov, already after the first act, bewilderment was written on all faces, as if no one knew how to think about the performance, just presented. Perplexity increased with each act. Finding a relative calm in the assumption that a farce is given, the majority of viewers, beaten out of all theatrical expectations and habits, settled on this assumption with unshakable determination. However, in this farce there were features and phenomena filled with a great life truth. A timid laugh, immediately disappearing, intense attention, sometimes a dead silence showed that the affair that took place on the stage passionately captured the hearts of the audience. In the final, the previous bewilderment was reborn in almost universal indignation. Elected public resented: "This is - the impossibility, slander and farce ...""

Not the best fate, as known, fell to the lot of Gogol's “Marriage” at the first performance on the stage of the same theater... The then audience, brought up on Kukolnik's s, Obodovsky and Kotzebue works, was frankly shocked by the unusual realism of the stage dialogue.

N. N. Strakhov in his critical articles repeatedly mentions the “insult of incomprehension” in relation to Pushkin; but on Gogol, this tormenting writer's yoke — a recognition that had been removed in time — lay down with particular weight.

Gogol’s thoughts and dreams are revealed in Letters by D. N. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky (1907) from the Presidential Library’s collections: “He sought to realize his social value not in a certain narrow environment, but in a huge unified All-Russian space, the representative of which was the state. The expression of this aspiration was his thoughts about service and his view on literary activity ... as a special kind of "serving his land", equivalent to the state".

“From early youth”, - writes Gogol, “I had one road along which I am going. I was only hidden, because I was not stupid: that's all! ”He intends to begin his literary rise in St. Petersburg.

After graduating from high school in 1828, Gogol went to St. Petersburg, where he was printed under the pseudonym V. Alov. In 1829 “Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka” were published, then “Nose”, “Taras Bulba”. Pushkin was the first in the press to greet "Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka". He attracted Gogol to active cooperation in his "Sovremennik". Pushkin, as you know, the young talent was prompted by the plots of "The Inspector General" and "Dead Souls".   

The story “The Overcoat” (1834) turned out to be a case in life, the story of which N. Kotlyarevsky tells in the book “Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol” (1909): it originated “from a clerical anecdote about an official, a passionate bird hunter, who is an extraordinary he saved a sum, sufficient for the purchase of a good Lepazhev gun, 200 rubles by saving and tirelessly intensified labor. For the first time, as on his little boat, he set off across the Gulf for his loot, putting the precious gun in front of him on his nose, he was about his own assurance, in some self-oblivion, and came to himself only then, having looked at his nose, did not see his new dress. The rifle was pulled into the water by a thick reed through which he passed, and all efforts to find him were in vain. The official returned, lay down in bed and did not get up; he seized a fever. Only a general subscription of his comrades, who learned about the incident and bought him a new gun, he was returned to life”.

The significance of this story in the history of our literature is special, notes Kotlyarevsky. “It is the first in time and one of the most complete experiments of this kind of works, which were then very common and had great social value. This is a page from the history of “humiliated and offended”, the very ones that after Gogol took under his protection Dostoevsky”.  

After the publication of Gogol’s book “Selected Places from Correspondence with Friends” Kotlyarevsky in the book “Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol” laments that “the artist-writer turned into a moral preacher”, that “the moment came when Gogol was less interested in the embodiment of life in art than the general religious and moral meaning of this life and its discovery in the practice of social phenomena".

His other colleagues were not at all shy about expressions: N. Pobedinsky in a rare study "The religious and moral ideals of Nikolai Gogol" (1900) writes that the quasi-liberal advanced critics of that time with the greatest intolerance reacted to the fact that Gogol, their great Gogol, "the head of the natural school" dares to believe in some kind of God ... Belinsky predicted: "On this path, his awaits for inevitable fall..."

Gogol shows signs of mental crisis, and in a state of sharp exacerbation of the disease, he burns the manuscript of the second volume of "Dead Souls", which he will continue to work on after some time. On February 7, 1852, Gogol confessed and received communion, and on the night of February 11-12, he burns the white manuscript of the second volume (only five chapters remain incomplete). On the morning of February 21 (old style) of 1852, Gogol died in his apartment in the Talyzin house in Moscow. The funeral of the writer took place at a huge gathering of people at the cemetery of the St. Daniel Monastery, and in 1931 the remains of Gogol were reburied at the Novodevichy cemetery.