The Presidential Library - to Nikolai Gogol’s birthday

April 1, 2018 marks the 209th anniversary of the birth of the author of “The Inspector General”, “Dead Souls" and other immortal works of the writer Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol. Unique rare editions, electronic copies of which are stored in the Presidential Library collections will help to get familiar with many forgotten, as well as little-known facts from the life of the classic

From the very childhood and throughout life, the classic was surrounded by aura of mystery. V. V. Kalash in the collected works of 1909 "N. V. Gogol in his memoirs of contemporaries and correspondence" from the Presidential Library's collections, referring to the children's years of Nikolai Vasilievich, notes that "he is the one who hears some voices in the garden, at times it covers a spontaneous horror, an unreasonable yearning". A. N. Annenskaya in her work "N. V. Gogol", published in St. Petersburg in 1891 and presented in the electronic fund, writes: "Since childhood he has not seen simple-hearted frankness and communication, he was always somehow strangely secretive, always in his heart there were corners where I did not dare to look at anyone's eyes. Often even about the most ordinary things, he spoke with an ulterior motive, clothed them with some mystery or concealing his true thought under the guise of joking, jokers. With the discernment peculiar to children, the lyceum students soon noticed this trait in the character of Gogol, and for a long time he had the pen name "the mysterious Carlo". 

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol from the earliest years was deeply religious. Evidence of this is his mother's letters, published in 1900 in the collected works "Religious and moral ideals of N. Gogol: by his correspondence and author's confession", which are available  on the Presidential Library portal. In 1833, Gogol wrote: "I vividly remember now this case: I asked you to talk about the terrible trial, and you, my child, so well, so clearly, so touchingly told about the benefits that await a virtuous life, and so strikingly, so terribly described the eternal torment of sinners, that it shocked me and awakened in me all the sensibility, this subsequently produced in me the highest thoughts".

Every year, religious ideas strengthened in the mind of Nikolai Vasilyevich, the style of his works gradually changed. "The artist-bytopisatel turned into a moralist-preacher", - notes N. A. Kotlyarevsky in the publication “N. V. Gogol”. The author continues: "This transformation was prepared long ago, almost from the first steps of Gogol in the literary field: no sharp change, no crisis, his creativity did not feel, but his general character imperceptibly and gradually changed. There came a time when the embodiment of life in art became less interesting for Gogol than the general religious and moral meaning of this life and its discovery in the practice of social phenomena".

The writer in his future works wanted to create an image of a spiritually beautiful person in a direct, positive image, and for this purpose even made a special trip to the Holy Land. He thought "to beg for himself moral enlightenment to create the second volume of his cherished work", we learn from the speech of A. I. Voskresensky, uttered in memory of the writer in 1902.

It is known that not all contemporaries who observed these changes approved them. So, in particular, the writer Sergei Aksakov noted that "Gogol begins to interfere with his religious direction. Gogol, immersed incessantly in moral reflections, began to think that he could and should teach others". Later he wrote to Gogol himself: "It's been a long time since I began to like your religious direction. Not because I, being a bad Christian, did not understand him well and therefore was afraid; but because the manifestation of Christian humility seemed to me a manifestation of your spiritual pride ... Instead of the former, friendly warm outpourings, the preacher's instructions began to appear, mysterious, sometimes prophetic, always cold, and, worst of all, full of pride in the rags of humility".

The reader may wonder whether such religiosity contradicts mystical and supernatural motives passing through many of Gogol's works, and how could such a deeply religious person, even in his own fantasies, admit the existence of fairy-tale characters? But Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol had a great talent: he could deliver his word, his morality, his idea to the reader through the most effective tool of any writer - through laughter. He ridiculed the vices of people and society, putting them in the image of grotesque fairy-tale characters. Perhaps this simple, but not subject to every author, the reception allowed him to always be heard and find the way to the reader's heart.

More facts about the life of the author of the greatest Russian comedies, the history of the creation of famous works, the analysis of Gogol's works and many other interesting information are kept by rare editions from the Presidential Library collections. In addition, you can find here rare visual materials. For example, the album of 1909 "Portraits of N. V. Gogol" included numerous images of a writer who, according to the authors of the collection "can really serve as a material for acquaintance with the personality of Gogol".