Nikolai Gogol

About me:

A Russia that only in the middle of the eighteenth century began to free itself from the deep darkness of isolation, timid and embarrassed. Alien to political and philosophical ideas of Europe, the field is open, vast and contradictory, filled with political, social and aesthetic advances and setbacks. A pleiad of intellectuals who had not suffered from a regular European influence, earlier than all their continental peers will achieve a desired aesthetic.

On the political-social aspect, Russia lived a feudalist regime characterized by the terrible efficiency of the system of slavery, extreme people poverty, the nobility ostentation. The French Revolution and associated movements in Europe so episodically influence the slav nation.

At a time, when in Europe, Romanticism it the most important literature current, in Russia it was almost fail to exist. If it is true that some writers may be considered Slavs romantics, is no less true that, on the other hand, they are the epitome of realistic current. In this case, Aleksandr Pushkin and Gogol.

After a innacurate Romanticism follow up reactions supported by Pushkin, Gogol, and later by Bielinsky, a young critic who grouped around him liberal writers as Turguenev, Gontcharov, Dostoiewsky, etc..

If Pushkin is still regarded as a romantic who «rejects the old conventions to inspire himself», in fact, Gogol - without realizing it completely because of their contradictory moral and intellectual structures - is moving permanently to the realism, both in his work of fiction and in drama.

Nicholas Vassillievitch Gogol was born in Poltava, Ukraine, in 1809. With 20 years of age goes to St Petersburg, where he knows Pushkin, the greatest writer of the time, who will devote Gogol a great friendship and encouragement to publish the work of debut - Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka -, and Gogol gets its greatest success. But Gogol early shows a complex personality.

Ardent lover of the «truth», of satirical nature, Gogol is a man full of moral, mystical and patriotic concerns. This initially led him to fall in love with History and hold a history of Russia (perhaps you are remembered Dead Souls) and a universal history. After a public employment as a funcionary - from where he get to manage his great knowledge of the environment - to a Chair of Professor of History at the University of Kiev. But soon quit; his temperament is not in line with the scientific method that is required from teaching History.

He returns to the literature and writes Arabesque, Diary of a MadMan and The Overcoat. In 1832, Gogol, for various reasons which should not have been unrelated to his experience as an actor - where the extreme accuracy and minuteness of his dramatic items -, and lack of money, decides to write drama.

Gogol begins to attempt a satirical comedy against the bureaucracy of St. Petersburg. But then repairs that can never be represented, given the rigor of the censorship. To prevent the problem, Gogol compose the first version of The Marriage and The Players, and he only will complete them in 1842.

In 1835, Pushkin, to whom Gogol trusted all his literary attempts, suggests the idea for The Inspector-General. Seeing it as a realization of his dream, a criticism to bureaucracy, it lead Gogol to work, and in 1836 he read the piece before a group of important personalities of the Tsar Nicholas I social environment.

From 1837 to 1843 Gogol live in Rome. He returns to Russia, ill. A strong religious mysticism induced them to abandon their old liberal ideas to become a supporter of autocracy, to recant their previous works. This mystique crisis will exacerbate after a trip to Palestine in 1849. In 1852, Gogol dies in Moscow.

Who had to wait for this hour of immense and beautiful world? There are cases of fortuitous horizons in the province where entire families bathe in these peaceful lights. Looking at these vegetations - as they were devoid of life - we are led to believe that it was the painter who gave them that color, but we are certain that our spirit is healthy enough to supposed the chaos in this magnificent life.

Who has not felt a great hope in a procession, accompanied by a large lethargy? These men go towards a temple, where they throw the evil spirit for a good soul. Everybody wants to forget the bickering of the trip, everyone wants a generous solicitude from God.

Dead Souls

Dead Souls was concieved by Nicholas Gogol as «the big book» of his life and the "big book" about Russia: an epic, to which he gave the name of poem, imagined, according to M. Bakhtin, like a Divine Comedy manner, that is structured in three volumes (the Inferno, the Purgatory and Paradise). This spirit of mission, with his components of religious redemption and purification of Man and Russia major sins is related to Gogol's writting. It's also realted to his disturbed life, his spiritual crisis, his nervous diseases, his existential journey; from the corrosive «humorist» to reactionary defender of the «divine power» of the Czar, from the ascetic to the frenzied social critic.

Taras Bulba

Taras Bulba tells the epic struggle of the Ukrainian resistance against invading Polish, which traces the figure marked in the character of a valiant and old Cossack and his two sons.

Throughout the narrative we are transported through descriptions alluding to cossacks traditions, to the fantastic world of their existence.

In order to prepare his sons for the mission that the cossacks have for institution, the brave Cossack leave home behind and, with thirst for battle, went with them to establish in the Cossack training fields of the Zaporojie.

The Nose

The Nose had such a success in the contemporary art, that Aleksandr Pushkin wrote in publication a note about the work: "Nicholas Gogol could not publish this joke for a long time, but we saw so much of the unexpected, so much imagination, real and original, that we convinced the author to share with the public the pleasure that the manuscript has given to us."

Gogol's work had a dream as an approach, but Aleksandr Pushkin suggested Gogol to amend the first version of Major Kovaliov's adventures, in wich occured in a dream.

This happens in a context where the superstition reported in publications had as main target the degeneration of the individual.

What characterizes this work is the special way that we find in a puzzling environment: what we have known about the magic of a disappeared nose - as a cause that hit the major Kovaliov -, is immediately rejected by the aesthetics of the author about the event; an aesthetic manipulation.

The Portrait

The main character is a painter who finds an old picture in a shop for antiques, and whose eyes, as transferred from a living body, constantly questions the artist... The painter has only one afflicting exclamation: "He is looking at me, he is looking at me!" Finally - the rest of the story carries the reader to worlds that exist in this World.