All mystical works of Gogol. Mystical motifs in the works of H

1. Folklore as a source of mystical images in Gogol’s works.
2. Evil spirits in collections of stories.
3. Mysticism in the story “Portrait”.

In dictionaries you can find several definitions of the concept “mysticism,” but they all agree that this word means beliefs in another reality inhabited by supernatural beings, as well as in the possibility of people communicating with them. The folklore tradition of different peoples has preserved stories about various creatures of another world, both kind and bright, benevolently disposed towards people, and evil, hostile to God and people.

In the works of N.V. Gogol, it is mainly malicious entities that penetrate into the world of people, and their accomplices also act - evil sorcerers and witches. Only occasionally do people encounter benevolent creatures from another world. And yet, in the works of writers there are much more evil people from another world than good ones. Perhaps this “distribution of forces” reflected people’s wary attitude towards the mysterious world, contact with which can lead to unpredictable consequences.

In the collection “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka,” mystical motifs are heard in almost all the stories, with the exception of one, “Ivan Fedorovich Shponka and his Aunt.” In other stories, the degree of contact between people and the other world is different. In the story “Sorochinskaya Fair” the story about the mysterious red scroll can still be considered a joke, successfully picked up by a young man in love. But the superstitious Cossack Solopiy Cherevik has no doubt that the ill-fated red sleeve that he keeps coming across is nothing more than a sleeve from the devil’s chopped up scroll! However, in this story it is not the evil spirits themselves that act, but the human belief in their existence, and this “shadow” of the evil spirits brings much more benefit than harm. Solopiy suffered and was shaken up, but everything turned out well, his daughter and the Cossack Gritsko received Cherevik’s consent to the marriage, and he himself successfully sold the goods brought to the fair.

A meeting with a mermaid - a lady who drowned herself due to the oppression of her stepmother-witch - unexpectedly changes the life of the boy Levko and his beloved Ganna. The mermaid generously rewards the young man for helping her find her stepmother. Thanks to the power of the drowned woman, Levko and Ganna finally become husband and wife despite the objections of the young man’s father.

In the stories “The Missing Letter”, “The Night Before Christmas”, “The Enchanted Place” the evil spirits are very active and unfriendly towards people. However, she is not so powerful that she cannot be defeated. We can say that the heroes of the stories “The Missing Letter” and “The Enchanted Place” got off easy. The evil spirits played a joke on them, but also let them go in peace, each one left to his own. And in the story “The Night Before Christmas,” the meeting with the devil turned out to be even useful for the blacksmith Vakula - having scared the devil, the blacksmith used him as a vehicle and fulfilled the order of his capricious lover, bringing her the Tsarina’s slippers.

But in the stories “The Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala” and “Terrible Revenge”, as well as in the story “Viy”, included in another collection, “Mirgorod”, the evil spirits and their assistants - evil sorcerers - are truly terrible. No, it’s not even the evil spirits that are the most terrible, with the possible exception of the creepy Viy. Much more terrible people: the sorcerer Basavryuk and the sorcerer from the story “Terrible Revenge”, who killed all his loved ones. And the sinister Viy appears for a reason.

He comes to the witch's body to destroy the man who killed her.

“The devil is not as terrible as he is painted,” says a common expression. Indeed, we can agree that in Gogol’s works, evil spirits often do not turn out to be so terrible if the person himself is not afraid of them. Sometimes she even looks quite comical (remember the devil put in a bag by the witch Solokha and beaten by her son Vakula). Much more terrible and dangerous is the person who contributes to the penetration of evil into our world...

Mystical motives are also heard in the story “Portrait”, included in the collection of “Petersburg Tales”. However, in it they acquire an even deeper philosophical meaning. A talented artist unwittingly becomes the culprit of the fact that evil penetrates the souls of people. The eyes of the moneylender, whose portrait he painted, have a sinister effect on people. However, the artist did not have bad intentions, like those sorcerers who, of their own free will, helped the evil spirits rampage. Having realized what he had done, this man experiences deep remorse. And the work itself was not a joy to him - he felt something mysterious and terrible in a man who at all costs wanted to be captured on the canvas: “He threw himself at his feet and begged him to finish the portrait, saying that from this his fate and existence in the world depend on the fact that he has already touched its living features with his brush, that if he conveys them correctly, his life will be retained in the portrait by supernatural force, that through this he will not die completely, that he needs to be present in the world. My father felt horror from such words...”

How can one not remember Viy’s creepy, deathly gaze! Who exactly was this moneylender? Gogol does not give a direct answer to this question. The artist, who painted the portrait and became a monk in repentance, speaks about it to his son: “To this day I cannot understand what that strange image was from which I painted the image. It was definitely some kind of devilish phenomenon... I wrote it with disgust...” Yes, the eyes of the moneylender depicted in the portrait became a kind of doors through which evil entered the world of people: and the artist, who carelessly allowed these doors to remain open, asks his son, if the opportunity arises, to destroy the ominous image, to block the path to the evil obsession that cripples human souls and fate. However, evil, having penetrated the human world, does not want to leave it: a strange portrait suddenly disappears from the hall where the auction is being held, and the son is deprived of the opportunity to fulfill the will of his father. What other troubles will an ominous look cause?..

So, we can summarize all of the above. Gogol's interest in mysticism is undeniable: the writer repeatedly developed plots in which a significant place was devoted to evil spirits and their assistants. Gogol also showed various results from a person’s collision with supernatural forces - from a completely harmless joke to a terrible tragedy, while emphasizing the role of the human factor in the activities of people from another world.

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The amazing mysterious world of N. Gogol has surrounded many since childhood: delightful images of “The Night Before Christmas”, vibrant folk festivities at the “Sorochinskaya Fair”, creepy stories about “May Night”, “Viya” and “Terrible Revenge”, from which the whole body is covered small goosebumps. This is just a small list of the famous works of N.V. Gogol, who is considered the most mystical Russian writer, and abroad his stories are equated to the gothic stories of Edgar Allan Poe. In this article, you will learn interesting facts from Gogol’s biography, which are considered mysterious and mystical. Get ready to be amazed!

Gogol was born into a rural Ukrainian family with many children, he was the third child of twelve. His mother is a woman of rare beauty - she was 14 years old when she became the wife of a man twice her age. They say that it was the mother who developed a religious and mystical worldview in her son. Maria Ivanovna was distinguished by her natural view of religion; she told her son about ancient Russian pagan traditions and Slavic mythology. Gogol's letters to his mother dating back to 1833 have been preserved. In one of them, Gogol writes that in childhood, the mother told the child in vivid colors what the Last Judgment was, what would await a person for virtuous deeds, and what fate would befall sinners.

Childhood, adolescence and youth

From an early age, Nikolai Gogol was a closed and uncommunicative person; even his close relatives had no idea what was going on in his head and soul. The boy lived separately, had little contact with his brothers and sisters, but spent a lot of time with his beloved mother.

Gogol later said that at the age of five he first experienced panic fear

“I was about 5 years old. I was sitting alone in Vasilyevka. Father and mother left... Dusk was falling. I pressed myself to the corner of the sofa and, in the midst of complete silence, listened to the knocking of the long pendulum of an ancient wall clock. There was a noise in my ears, something was approaching and going somewhere. Believe it or not, it already seemed to me then that the knock of the pendulum was the knock of time going into eternity. Suddenly the faint meow of a cat disturbed the peace that was weighing me down. I saw her meowing and carefully sneaking towards me. I will never forget how she walked, stretching, her soft paws weakly tapping her claws on the floorboards, and her green eyes sparkling with an unkind light. I felt terrified. I climbed onto the sofa and pressed myself against the wall. “Kitty, kitty,” I muttered and, wanting to cheer myself up, I jumped off and, grabbing the cat, which easily gave itself into my hands, ran into the garden, where I threw it into the pond and several times, when it tried to swim out and go ashore, I pushed it away. her pole. I was scared, I was trembling, and at the same time I felt some kind of satisfaction, perhaps revenge for the fact that she scared me. But when she drowned, and the last circles on the water ran away, complete peace and silence reigned, I suddenly felt terribly sorry for the “kitty.” I felt remorse. It seemed to me that I had drowned a man. I cried terribly and calmed down only when my father, to whom I confessed my act, whipped me.”

Since childhood, Nikolai Gogol was a sensitive person, susceptible to fears, worries, and life’s troubles. Any negative situation affected his psyche, when another person could withstand something like that. The child drowned the cat out of fear; he supposedly conquered his fear through cruelty and violence, but realized that panic could not be conquered this way. It can be assumed that the writer was left alone with his fears, since his conscience again did not allow him to use violence.

This situation is very reminiscent of the moment in the work “May Night, or the Drowned Woman,” when the stepmother turned into a black cat, and the lady, in fear, hit and cut off her paw.

It is known that Gogol drew as a child, but his drawings seemed mediocre and incomprehensible to those around him. Such an attitude towards his art could again have a negative impact on self-esteem.

At the age of 10, Nikolai Gogol was sent to the Poltava gymnasium, where the boy became a member of a literary circle. It is not known why Gogol developed such low self-esteem, but it was precisely self-isolation that provoked mental illness in adulthood.

The first attempt to bring my work to public court

Nikolai Gogol began to create, he wrote a lot, but he risked showing his work “Hanz Küchelgarten”. It was a failure, criticism was unfavorable to the story, then Gogol destroyed the entire circulation. Before becoming a writer, Gogol tried to become an actor and enter the bureaucratic service. But the love of literature still captured the young man, who was able to find a new approach to this type of art. It was Gogol who touched on a different side of life and showed how they live in Little Russia! The collection “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” created a sensation! His mother Maria Ivanovna helped the writer collect material and develop plots. For many years, Gogol successfully worked in the literary field, corresponded with Pushkin and Belinsky, who were delighted with his works. Despite his fame, Gogol never became an open person; on the contrary, over the years he led an increasingly reclusive lifestyle.

By the way, Pushkin gave Gogol a pug Josie; after the death of the dog, Gogol was overcome with melancholy, because the writer definitely had no one closer to Josie.

Question about the writer's homosexuality

Gogol's personal life is surrounded by guesses and assumptions. The writer was never married to a woman, and perhaps did not even have intimacy with them. There is mention in a letter to his mother that Gogol wrote about a beautiful divine person whom he did not want to relate to an ordinary woman. Contemporaries say that it was unrequited love for Anna Mikhailovna Vielgorskaya. After this incident, there were no more women in Gogol’s life, as well as men. But researchers believe that letters to men are highly emotional. In the unfinished work “Nights at the Villa” there is a motive of love for a young man suffering from tuberculosis. The work is autobiographical, which is why researchers have a hunch that perhaps Gogol had feelings for men.

Semyon Karlinsky argued that Gogol is a very religious person, fearing God, and therefore could not include any intimate relationships in his life.

But Igor Kon believes that it was fear of God that did not allow Gogol to accept himself as he is. Therefore, depression developed, fears of being incomprehensible appeared, as a result, the writer completely fell into religion and brought himself to death by starvation - these were attempts to cleanse himself of sinfulness.

Candidate of Philological Sciences L. S. Yakovlev calls attempts to determine Gogol’s sexual orientation “provocative, shocking, curious publications.”

Gogol-mogol

Nikolai Gogol was madly in love with goat's milk combined with rum. The writer jokingly called his amazing drink “mogol-mogol.” In fact, the dessert “mogol-mogol” appeared in ancient times in Europe, it was first made by the German confectioner Köckenbauer. So the famous beaten egg yolk with sugar has nothing to do with the famous writer!

Writer's phobias

• Gogol was terribly afraid of thunderstorms.
• When a stranger appeared in society, he would leave so as not to run into him.
• In recent years, he stopped going out and communicating with writers altogether and led an ascetic lifestyle.
• I was afraid of looking ugly. Gogol really didn’t like his long nose, so he asked artists to depict a nose that was close to ideal in their portraits. Based on his complexes, the writer wrote the work “The Nose”.

Lethargic sleep or death?

Gogol constantly thought about being buried alive and was terribly afraid of such a fate. Therefore, 7 years before his death, he drew up a will, where he indicated that he should be buried only when visible signs of decomposition appeared. Gogol died at the age of 42, after fasting for 15 days before Lent. On the night of February 11–12, a week before his death, the writer burns the second volume of “Dead Souls” in the oven, explaining that he was beguiled by an evil spirit. The writer was buried on the third day after death. In 1931, the necropolis where Gogol was buried was liquidated and a decision was made to move the writer’s grave to the Novodevichy cemetery. After opening the grave, they discovered that Gogol’s skull was missing (according to Vladimir Lidin); later a rumor appeared that there was a skull in the grave, but turned on its side. This information was not made public for many years, and only in the 90s they started talking again about whether Gogol was accidentally buried in a state of lethargic sleep?

There are some facts confirming that Gogol could have been buried alive. I present what I managed to find.

After suffering from malarial encephalitis in 1839, Gogol often fainted, which led to many hours of sleep. Based on this, the writer developed a phobia that he could be buried alive while he was unconscious.

But there is no official evidence that in 1931, during the opening of the grave, a skull was found turned on its side. Witnesses to the exhumation give different testimonies: some say that everything was in order, others claim that the skull was turned to the side, and Lidin did not see the skull in its proper place at all. The presence of a death mask completely debunks these myths. It cannot be done on a living person, even if he is in a lethargic sleep, because the person will still react to the high temperature during the procedure and begin to suffocate from filling the external respiratory organs with plaster. But this did not happen; Gogol was buried after a natural death.

Among the geniuses of Russian literature there are those whose names all readers associate with something otherworldly and inexplicable, awe-inspiring to the average person. Such writers undoubtedly include N.V. Gogol, whose life story is undoubtedly intriguing. This is a unique personality; As a legacy from him, humanity has received an invaluable gift of works, where he appears either as a subtle satirist, revealing the ulcers of modernity, or as a mystic, making goosebumps run down the skin. Gogol is a mystery of Russian literature, never fully solved by anyone. Gogol's mysticism continues to intrigue its readers today.

Much mystery is connected both with the work and with the life of the great writer. Our contemporaries, philologists and historians, trying to give answers to numerous questions related to his fate, can only guess about how everything really happened and build numerous theories.

Gogol: life story

The appearance of Nikolai Vasilyevich’s family was preceded by a rather interesting story. It is known that his father, as a boy, had a dream in which the Mother of God showed him his betrothed. After some time, he recognized in the neighbor’s daughter the features of his destined bride. The girl was only seven months old at that time. Thirteen years later, Vasily Afanasyevich proposed to the girl, and the wedding took place.

Many misunderstandings and rumors are associated with Gogol's date of birth. The exact date became known to the general public only after the writer’s funeral.

His father was indecisive and rather suspicious, but undoubtedly a gifted man. He tried his hand at writing poems, comedies, and took part in staging home plays.

Nikolai Vasilyevich’s mother, Maria Ivanovna, was a deeply religious person, but at the same time she was interested in various predictions and signs. She managed to instill in her son fear of God and faith in premonitions. This influenced the child, and he grew up, from childhood having an interest in everything mysterious and inexplicable. These hobbies were fully embodied in his work. Perhaps this is why many superstitious researchers of the writer’s life had doubts about whether Gogol’s mother was a witch.

Thus, having absorbed the traits of both his parents, Gogol was a quiet and thoughtful child with an irrepressible passion for everything otherworldly and a rich imagination, which sometimes played cruel jokes on him.

The story of the black cat

Thus, there is a known case with a black cat, which shook him to the core. His parents left him at home alone, the boy was minding his own business and suddenly noticed a black cat sneaking up on him. An inexplicable horror attacked him, but he overcame his fear, grabbed her and threw her into the pond. After that, he couldn’t shake the feeling that this cat was a converted person. This story was embodied in the story “May Night, or the Drowned Woman,” where the witch had the gift of transforming into a black cat and doing evil in this guise.

Burning of "Hans Kuchelgarten"

While studying at the gymnasium, Gogol simply raved about St. Petersburg, he dreamed of living in this city and doing great things for the benefit of humanity. But the move to St. Petersburg did not live up to his expectations. The city was grey, dull and cruel to the bureaucratic class. Nikolai Vasilyevich creates the poem “Hans Küchelgarten”, but publishes it under a pseudonym. The poem was destroyed by critics, and the writer, unable to withstand this disappointment, bought out the entire circulation of the book and set it on fire.

Mystical “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka”

After the first failure, Gogol turns to a topic close to him. He decides to create a series of stories about his native Ukraine. Petersburg puts pressure on him, his mental state is aggravated by poverty, which seems to have no end. Nikolai writes letters to his mother, in which he asks her to tell in detail about the beliefs and customs of Ukrainians; some lines of these messages are blurred by his tears. He gets to work, having received information from his mother. The result of long work was the cycle “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka”. This work simply breathes with Gogol’s mysticism; in most of the stories in this cycle, people encounter evil spirits. It’s surprising how colorful and lively the author’s description of various evil spirits is; mysticism and otherworldly forces rule the roost here. Everything down to the smallest detail makes the reader feel involved in what is happening on the pages. This collection brings popularity to Gogol; the mysticism in his works attracts readers.

"Viy"

One of Gogol's most famous works is the story "Viy", which was included in the collection "Mirgorod", published by Gogol in 1835. The works included in it were enthusiastically received by critics. As the basis for the story “Viy,” Gogol takes ancient folk legends about the terrifying and powerful leader of evil spirits. It is surprising that researchers of his work have not yet been able to discover a single legend similar to the plot of Gogol’s “Viy”. The plot of the story is simple. Three students go to work part-time as tutors, but, having gotten lost, ask to stay with an old woman. She reluctantly lets them in. At night, she sneaks up to one of the guys, Homa Brutus, and, riding him, begins to rise into the air with him. Khoma begins to pray, and it helps. The witch weakens, and the hero begins to beat her with a log, but suddenly notices that in front of him it is no longer an old woman, but a young and beautiful girl. He, overwhelmed by unspeakable horror, flees to Kyiv. But the witch’s hands reach there too. They come for Khoma to take him to the funeral service for the centurion’s dead daughter. It turns out that this is the witch he killed. And now the student must spend three nights in the temple in front of her coffin, reading the funeral prayer.

The first night made Brutus turn gray, as the lady got up and tried to catch him, but he circled himself, and she did not succeed. The witch was flying around him in her coffin. On the second night the guy tried to escape, but he was caught and brought back to the temple. This night became fatal. Pannochka called on all the evil spirits for help and demanded that Viy be brought. When the philosopher saw the lord of the dwarves, he shuddered in horror. And after Viya’s eyelids were raised by his servants, he saw Khoma and pointed out the ghouls and ghouls at him, the unfortunate Khoma Brutus died on the spot from fear.

In this story, Gogol depicted the clash of religion and evil spirits, but, unlike “Evenings,” here demonic forces won.

A film of the same name was made based on this story. It is secretly included in the list of so-called “cursed” films. The mysticism of Gogol and his works took with them many people who took part in the creation of this film.

Gogol's loneliness

Despite his great popularity, Nikolai Vasilyevich was not happy in matters of the heart. He never found a life partner. There were periodic crushes, which rarely developed into something serious. There were rumors that he once asked for the hand of Countess Vilegorskaya. But he was refused due to social inequality.

Gogol decided that his whole life would be devoted to literature, and over time his romantic interests completely faded away.

Genius or crazy?

Gogol spends 1839 traveling. While visiting Rome, something bad happened to him; he contracted a serious illness called “swamp fever.” The illness was very serious and threatened the writer with death. He managed to survive, but the disease affected his brain. The consequence of this was mental and physical disorder. Frequent fainting spells, voices and visions that visited Nikolai Vasilyevich’s consciousness, inflamed by encephalitis, tormented him. He sought somewhere to find peace for his restless soul. Gogol wanted to receive a true blessing. In 1841, his dream came true; he met with the preacher Innocent, about which he had long dreamed. The preacher gave Gogol an icon of the Savior and blessed him to travel to Jerusalem. But the trip did not bring him the desired peace of mind. The deterioration of health progresses, creative inspiration exhausts itself. The work becomes more and more difficult for the writer. More and more often he talks about how evil spirits influence him. Mysticism always had its place in Gogol’s life.

The death of a close friend, E. M. Khomyakova, completely crippled the writer. He sees this as a terrible omen for himself. Gogol increasingly thinks that his death is close, and he is very afraid of it. His condition is aggravated by the priest Matvey Konstantinovsky, who frightens Nikolai Vasilyevich with terrible afterlife torments. He blames him for his creativity and lifestyle, bringing his already shaken psyche to the point of breakdown.

The writer's phobias become incredibly worse. It is known that more than anything else he was afraid of falling into a lethargic sleep and being buried alive. To avoid this, in his will he asked that he be buried only after all signs of death had become apparent and decomposition had begun. He was so afraid of this that he slept exclusively sitting in chairs. The fear of mysterious death constantly haunted him.

Death is like a dream

On the night of 11 November, an event occurred that still troubles the minds of many Gogol biographers. While visiting Count A. Tolstoy, that night Nikolai Vasilyevich felt extremely worried. He couldn't find a place for himself. And so, as if having decided on something, he took out a stack of sheets from his briefcase and threw it into the fire. According to some versions, this was the second volume of Dead Souls, but there is also an opinion that the manuscript survived, but other papers were burned. From that moment on, Gogol's illness progressed with inexorable speed. He was increasingly haunted by visions and voices, and he refused to eat. Doctors called by his friends tried to treat him, but it was all in vain.

Gogol left this world on February 21, 1852. Doctor Tarasenkov confirmed the death of Nikolai Vasilyevich. He was only 43 years old. The age at which Gogol died was a big shock for his family and friends. Russian culture has lost a great man. There was some kind of mysticism in Gogol’s death, in its suddenness and swiftness.

The writer's funeral took place with a huge crowd of people at the cemetery of the St. Daniel's Monastery; a massive tombstone was erected from a single piece of black granite. I would like to think that he found eternal peace there, but fate decreed something completely different.

Posthumous “life” and mysticism of Gogol

St. Danilovskoye Cemetery did not become the final resting place of N.V. Gogol. 79 years after his burial, a decision was made to liquidate the monastery and place a reception center for street children on its territory. The grave of a great writer stood in the way of rapidly developing Soviet Moscow. It was decided to rebury Gogol at the Novodevichy cemetery. But everything happened completely in the spirit of Gogol’s mysticism.

An entire commission was invited to carry out the exhumation, and a corresponding act was drawn up. It is strange that practically no details were indicated in it, only information that the writer’s body was removed from the grave on May 31, 1931. There was no information about the position of the body and a medical examination report.

But the weirdness doesn't end there. When they began to dig, it turned out that the grave was much deeper than usual, and the coffin was placed in a brick crypt. The writer's remains were recovered when dusk fell. And then the spirit of Gogol played a kind of joke on the participants of this event. About 30 people attended the exhumation, including famous writers of the time. As it turned out later, the memories of most of them were very contradictory to each other.

Some claimed that there were no remains in the grave; it turned out to be empty. Others claimed that the writer was lying on his side with his arms outstretched, which supported the version of lethargic sleep. But the majority of those present claimed that the body lay in its usual position, but the head was missing.

Such different testimonies and the very figure of Gogol, which is conducive to fantastic inventions, gave rise to many rumors about the mysterious death of Gogol, the scratched lid of the coffin.

What happened next can hardly be called an exhumation. It was more like a blasphemous robbery of the grave of a great writer. Those present decided to take “souvenirs from Gogol” as souvenirs. Someone took a rib, someone took a piece of foil from the coffin, and the director of the cemetery, Arakcheev, pulled off the boots of the deceased. This blasphemy did not go unpunished. All participants paid dearly for their actions. Almost each of them joined the writer for a short time, leaving the world of living people. Arakcheev was pursued in which Gogol appeared to him and demanded that he give up his boots. On the verge of madness, the unfortunate director of the cemetery listened to the advice of the old prophetic grandmother and buried the boots near the new one. After this, the visions stopped, but clear consciousness never returned to him.

The Mystery of the Missing Skull

Interesting mystical facts about Gogol include the still unsolved mystery of his missing head. There is a version that it was stolen for the famous collector of rarities and unique things, A. Bakhrushin. This happened during the restoration of the grave, dedicated to the centenary anniversary of the writer.

This man collected the most unusual and creepy collection. There is a theory that he carried the stolen skull with him in a suitcase with medical instruments. Later, the government of the Soviet Union, represented by V.I. Lenin, invited Bakhrushin to open his own museum. This place still exists and has thousands of the most unusual exhibits. Among them there are also three skulls. But it is not known for certain who they belonged to.

The circumstances of Gogol's death, the scratched coffin lid, the stolen skull - all this gave a huge impetus to human imagination and fantasy. Thus, an incredible version appeared about the skull of Nikolai Vasilyevich and the mysterious express. It suggests that after Bakhrushin, the skull fell into the hands of Gogol’s great-nephew, who decided to hand it over to the Russian consul in Italy, so that part of Gogol would rest in the soil of his second homeland. But the skull fell into the hands of a young man, the son of a sea captain. He decided to scare and amuse his friends and took the skull with him on a train trip. After the express train on which the young people were traveling entered the tunnel, it disappeared; no one could explain where the huge train with passengers had gone. And there are still rumors that sometimes different people in different parts of the world see this ghost train, which carries Gogol’s skull across the borders of the worlds. The version is fantastic, but has a right to exist.

Nikolai Vasilyevich was a man of genius. As a writer he was fully accomplished, but as a person he did not find his happiness. Even a small circle of close friends could not unravel his soul and penetrate his thoughts. It so happened that Gogol’s life story was not very joyful; it was filled with loneliness and fears.

He left his mark, one of the brightest, in the history of world literature. Such talents appear very rarely. Mysticism in Gogol's life was a kind of sister to his talent. But, unfortunately, the great writer left us, his descendants, more questions than answers. Reading Gogol's most famous works, everyone finds something important for themselves. He, like a good teacher, continues to teach us his lessons through the centuries.

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol is one of the greatest classics of Russian literature. His biography is shrouded in secrets and mysteries.

Perhaps this affected the writer’s work, because his works are also full of mystical images and motifs. Gogol's life was eventful and full of tragic moments. Even during his lifetime, the writer encountered rumors, often embellished. There were many reasons for this; Gogol was known as a reclusive person; he consciously avoided society, maintaining relationships with only a few friends. And even though more than a century and a half has passed since the writer’s death, to this day practically nothing is known about his life.

According to biographers, Gogol’s mother, Maria Ivanovna, gave birth to dead children before the appearance of Nikolai Vasilyevich. In those days, throughout Dikanka there was fame about miracles through prayers in front of the icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in St. Nicholas Church. This icon was revealed in the forest on an oak stump; local residents moved it to the nearest church, but the next day they discovered it again on a piece of oak. The icon was returned to the church three times, but each time it was found in its original place. Then it was decided to build a church on this site and make a cross from a stump, which ended up in the altar. In front of the icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker of Dikansky, Marya Ivanovna prayed a lot and made a vow that if she had a son and lived, she would name him in honor of the saint.

On the day of remembrance of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker (May 22), we met with Olga Shtygasheva, Associate Professor of the Department of Russian and Foreign Literature of the Faculty of Philology of NEFU, to tell our readers whether the role of mysticism in the life of the great writer is so great, or is it still mostly myths , based on unverified facts, legends and traditions.

Prediction of the Virgin Mary

One day, on the way to a pilgrimage, young Vasily Afanasyevich, Nikolai Vasilyevich’s father, had a dream in which he saw the Mother of God. The Queen of Heaven pointed him to the girl who would be his future wife. After some time, Vasyuta was visiting his neighbors and saw their seven-month-old daughter Masha, in whom he recognized the baby whom the Mother of God had pointed out to him in a dream. Vasily Afanasyevich was then 14 years old, and he began to wait until his chosen one turned the same age to ask for her hand.

As soon as Masha reached the specified age, Vasily Afanasyevich proposed to his chosen one, but was refused. This did not break Vasyuta’s persistence, and he stole her. They secretly got married and appeared to their parents, who had no choice but to bless the newlyweds. However, according to another version, Mary’s parents immediately agreed to the marriage, and the young people became engaged, and a year later they got married. This version is questionable, because it is known that at the time of her marriage, Maria Ivanovna was 14 years old, while getting engaged at the age of thirteen was prohibited in Russia. And what sane parents would marry their child at that age?!

Of course, this is just a legend, but Gogol’s mother was indeed barely 16 years old at the time of his birth, and the circumstances of the writer’s birth are also shrouded in oddities and coincidences, again not documented. However, what is the debate among biographers about the exact date of birth of Nikolai Vasilyevich!

It turns out that some otherworldly intervention or, more correctly, God’s Providence in Gogol’s life manifested itself long before his birth, which gave rise to many implausible and simultaneously true conjectures and rumors. Perhaps Gogol is one of the only writers in Russia whose life and death are surrounded by such a huge number of legends.

Indelible mark

From childhood, Nikolai Vasilyevich was distinguished by great religiosity, which was instilled in him by his mother Maria Ivanovna, a deeply religious woman herself and almost fanatically devout. After several stillborn children in front of the icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, she vowed to spend the rest of her life in godly deeds and prayers if a son was sent to her. After some time, God made her dream come true, and a healthy baby was born into the Gogol family, named after Nikolai Ugodnik.

Maria Ivanovna truly kept her vow until the end of her days, teaching her children to do the same. As in any other family of that time, the religious side of life was given great importance: they sacredly revered all Christian traditions, sincerely believed in the existence of hell and heaven, observed fasts and remained spiritually faithful to Orthodox customs.

But thanks to Maria Ivanovna’s fanatical faith, excesses certainly happened. Most likely, this is why we will not see a transparent attitude towards religious issues in Gogol’s works; he was permanently intimidated in childhood in order to consciously master Christian postulates and bring them to the pages of his works. In religion, he was more attracted to the mystical principle, the otherworldly struggle between good and evil, which was more impressive because it gave incomparably vivid emotions, impressions that excite the imagination and frighten with their closeness to reality.

In the Gogol house, a painting of the Last Judgment hung in the most prominent place. Marya Ivanovna constantly cited her as an example of what could happen to atheists and sinners. Of course, this frightened the impressionable little Nikolenka: “If you sin, after death you will go to hell, and you will suffer the same torments as those depicted in this picture.” “I remember: I didn’t feel anything strongly as a child, I looked at everything as things created to please me. I didn’t particularly love anyone, except for you, and only because nature itself breathed in this feeling... - I remember this incident vividly, as now, - I asked you to tell me about the Last Judgment, and you told me, a child, so “It’s clear, they talked so touchingly about the benefits that await people for a virtuous life, and they described the eternal torment of sinners so horribly that it shocked and awakened all the sensitivity in me, it seeded and subsequently produced in me the highest thoughts,” wrote Nikolai Vasilyevich then mothers.

There is a legend that the Old Testament stories about original sin also left a deep imprint on Gogol’s consciousness. It is a well-known fact that his relationship with women is more than cool. Although researchers of his biography suggest the true reason for his sudden departure to Italy, allegedly for a mysterious stranger from high society, about whom he wrote to his mother in hints. But I’ll make a reservation, this is just the biographers’ guess.

In confirmation of this, we can say that in his works there are practically no positive female images endowed with not only physical, but also moral beauty. We will not find anyone like Natasha Rostova or Tatyana Larina in his works! The “women’s” issue was very acute at that time, and Gogol could not help but see this and react artistically... Only beautiful witches, capricious Oksana, provoking a deal with evil spirits, and Korobochki live on his brilliant pages.

In general, the motif of death in Gogol’s work is very developed, and developed almost on an intuitive level. From the point of view of paganism, a deceased person can bring evil into the real world; from the point of view of Christianity, he can be called to God and receive eternal grace. Are there many such future “blessed dead” in his works? Yes, they don’t exist at all! His heroes live here and now, not thinking about the Day of Judgment, not fearing the torments of hell, not caring about the Almighty's forgiveness. Only Gogol can make fun of vice with deliberate good nature and light irony, and even with lyrical accompaniment! Frivolous deceivers, greedy drunkards, ordinary people who do not believe in virtue, gluttons and arrogant officials against the backdrop of folklore coloring turned into unforgettable and intricate images... What cannot be said about Nikolai Vasilyevich himself, who probably still believed in death as an other existence. Death as a post-earthly existence of a person, of course, frightened Nikolai Vasilyevich; most likely, he did not imagine anything majestic and divine in the process of dying. But, tormented by religious dogmas, the sincere faith of a Christian and the blasphemous from the point of view of Orthodoxy thought about the impossibility of existence after death, he sometimes fell into deep despondency, aggravated by creative downtime and troubles in life. The fear of dying and bringing evil, whether physical or creative, into the world of the living became his constant companion over the last few years of the life of the rebellious genius of Russian literature...

The burden of fear. Lethargy

Towards the end of Nikolai Vasilyevich’s life, he began to be haunted by the fear of being buried alive. Gogol said in letters to friends that sometimes he has attacks when he does not feel his body, the pulse cannot be felt and the heartbeat is almost impossible to notice. In his will, contained in “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends,” he bequeathed that he should be buried only when signs of decomposition appeared. In the same will, he asked that no monuments be erected on his grave.

It has now become fashionable to diagnose many famous people after a lapse of time. Nikolai Vasilyevich did not escape this fate. Doctors now call Gogol’s fear of being buried in a lethargic sleep taphiphobia, which has given rise to a huge number of ridiculous rumors and speculations. According to these same doctors, this phobia of Gogol was caused by manic-depressive psychosis. What caused this depression? There may be several factors at play here.

Firstly, it is a well-known fact that Nikolai Vasilyevich’s mother was not entirely mentally healthy. Deep religiosity seemed to tear her away from the real world. Maria Ivanovna suffered from frequent mood swings, fervently believed in prophetic dreams, which, according to her, she constantly dreamed, and fell into a state of deep thoughtfulness, sometimes lasting for several hours. She had an extremely impressionable nature. It is quite possible that, along with religiosity, Gogol in childhood also received some amount of maternal mysticism. Nikolai Vasilyevich was accustomed from a young age to trust his mother and rely on her opinion in everything. Moreover, Maria Ivanovna was perhaps the only source of replenishment of the writer’s knowledge of folklore stories and Little Russian traditions.

Secondly, after returning from abroad, Gogol was ill for the last few years. Moreover, he felt so bad that he asked his mother in a letter to order a prayer service for his recovery. In 1845, in a letter to N.M. Yazykov, Gogol wrote: “My health has become rather poor... Nervous anxiety and various signs of complete disintegration throughout my body frighten me.” It should also be noted that the enormous influence of his confessor, Fr., on the writer has recently increased. Matthew (Konstantinovsky), who considered Gogol’s illness to be a disease of more spiritual origin than physical. In this regard, he demanded from Nikolai Vasilyevich strict and strict observance of religious actions (prayer, fasting) for bodily and spiritual purification. Literary creativity, as the frantic confessor believed, was also one of the unrighteous activities, as were its fruits. In this regard, Fr. Matthew strongly recommended that Gogol give up his writing for a while, so as not to aggravate Nikolai Vasilyevich’s already worsening condition every day. We cannot now say to what extent the role of the confessor in the fate of the genius of literary thought turned out to be fatal. Perhaps truly concerned about Gogol's mental illness to a greater extent than his physical illness, Fr. Matvey believed that the writer’s brain was under extreme stress, and his internal resources were depleted. A break was needed... To which Nikolai Vasilyevich reacted in his own way, however, as always...

It is also worth mentioning the fact that in January 1852, the wife of Gogol’s friend E. Khomyakov died, who was treated with calomel, which was popular at that time (a mercury-containing substance used in small quantities for disorders of the digestive system). This death made an indelible impression on Nikolai Vasilyevich. Ekaterina Mikhailovna was one of the only women whom Gogol trusted unconditionally! At the funeral service (again, according to legend), the writer heard a mysterious whisper calling him by name, it was unclear where it came from. Nikolai Vasilyevich was completely horrified and, upon returning home, fell into a feverish state, from which he did not recover for almost the next four weeks... The death of Khomyakova, conversations about calomel, which Gogol was also treated with at that time, a memorial service, a mysterious whisper, his own even more shaken state, mental and physical torment - all this led to the tragedy that happened two weeks later.

On the night of February 11-12, 1852, Gogol burned the second volume of Dead Souls. Moreover, not everyone knows that he is burning it for the second time. The first time he burned drafts of the poem was in 1845, seven years earlier. There is a legend that the second volume of “Dead Souls” was saved by someone, but not published. Perhaps his servant Semyon, who was next to Gogol throughout the last years of his life and treated him with extraordinary devotion and love. In this case, the question arises, where did the manuscript go? A draft version of the first few chapters of the second volume was found two months after Gogol's death. And again the question. If Gogol wanted to completely destroy his creation, then why did he leave drafts that give an idea of ​​Chichikov’s further fate? These questions provoked the birth of another amazing version that there was no second volume! That the writer burned something else that night, confusing it with the manuscript of “Dead Souls.” And the poem itself was only begun shortly before his mental crisis. But there are no facts to support this assumption. Only the question of why the pages of the draft of the second volume were preserved remains, and, perhaps, will remain unanswered...

The painful existence, and there is no other way to describe it, continued for another ten days, during which doctors tried to determine the reason for such a rapid decline of the great writer’s body. The cause of his death also still exists at the level of versions, which has also given rise to many fantastic assumptions. One thing is certain. The fatal mistake made by Nikolai Vasilyevich on the night of February 12 activated all the irreversible processes in his body. Gogol became so weak physically and spiritually that he almost joyfully awaited the approach of death as deliverance from earthly suffering. He took communion and, despite the efforts of the doctors, eagerly and humbly awaited the transition to another world, which he was no longer afraid of. The fear of the Last Judgment no longer haunted the sufferer, because he did everything according to God’s command - he lived, he worked, and he died with prayer... And he always believed so much in his heavenly patron Nicholas the Wonderworker!

To be continued...

edited news LjoljaBastet - 23-10-2016, 08:07

MAOU "Labazinskaya Secondary School"

Research

literature project:

"Mysticism in life and creativity

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol.

Performed: 9th grade student

Rozhnova Marina

Supervisor: teacher of Russian language and literature

Zakharova Lyudmila Semyonovna

2017

1. Introduction.

1. Main part.
   1. Childhood. Formation of religiosity.
   2. Gogol's arrival in St. Petersburg. First publication.
   3. A difficult path to literature.
   4. Folk fiction in “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka.”
      • The image of the devil in "The Night Before Christmas".
      • The mystical image of a cat in “May Night or the Drowned Woman” and in “Old World Landowners.”
      • Fantastic plot in "Terrible Revenge".
      • God's Retribution in “The Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala”
   5. “Viy” is Gogol’s most mystical and terrible story.
   6. Gogol's passion for practical jokes and hoaxes.
   7. The mystery of the writer's death.
2. Conclusion.

IV . Bibliography

Much time will still pass before the full deep and strict significance of Gogol, this monk-artist, Christian satirist, ascetic and humorist, this martyr of sublime thought and insoluble task, is fully understood.

I. S. Aksakov

Nikolai Gogol is one of the most original Russian writers; his fame has gone far beyond the Russian cultural space. His books are interesting throughout his life, each time he manages to find new facets in them, almost new content.

There is no more mysterious figure in Russian literature than Gogol. There are more myths about his life and death than about any other writer.

Why was Gogol never married? Why did he never have his own home? Why did he burn the second volume of Dead Souls? And, of course, the biggest mystery is the mystery of his illness and death.

Here is how the Russian religious philosopher and literary critic Konstantin Mochulsky wrote: “Gogol’s life is a complete torture, the most terrible part of which, which took place in the mystical plane, is beyond our sight. A man who was born with a feeling of cosmic horror, who saw quite realistically the interference of demonic forces in human life, who fought with the devil until his last breath - this same man “burned” with a passionate thirst for perfection and an indefatigable longing for God.”

The relevance of research.

Mystical motives are widespread

spread in Russian classical, as well as modern

literature.

Being much older than the written word, these motives go their own way

roots in folklore and mythological systems of Slavic and

other peoples.

It is in the works of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol that we meet

frequent appeals to mystical motives, and an example of this

his collection “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka” can serve as a reference. Like

every writer who rethinks in the course of creative work

the original material taken as a basis, Gogol is not just

transfers folk tales to paper (although the writer himself

claimed that he did not change the Little Russian legend), but creates on their

basis - and on the basis of the reality he saw - new, truly

piece of art.

To understand the essence of mystical motifs in the works of N.V. Gogol, it is necessary to trace their connections with folk art itself, with the objective reality that surrounded the writer, to identify the place of each of the two worlds in the holistic system of each of the works under consideration.

To consider this topic, I chose the works of N.V. Gogol “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” and “Petersburg Tales”.

In this work, mystical motifs in the works of N.V. Gogol is studied from three points of view:

Goal of the work:

The purpose of the study is to consider the specifics of mystical motifs in the works of N.V. Gogol.

In this regard, I set myself the following research objectives:

Comparison of literary mystical images created by N.V. Gogol, with their folklore prototypes, identifying similarities;

Consideration of the specifics of Gogol’s mystical characters;

A study of the reasons for the introduction of a mystical line in the works being studied, their value for the plot and ideological content.

In my work, I used research on this topic by scientists such as V.B. Sokolov, E. Dobin, A.N. Kozhin.

According to the Russian philosopher N. Berdyaev: “Gogol is the only Russian writer who had a sense of magic, he artistically conveys the action of dark, evil magical forces...”.

Gogol's fiction is often compared with the fiction of a number of foreign writers - mainly Hoffman. Indeed, similar features can be found in the works of Gogol and Hoffmann. Nevertheless, the very nature of fantasy and its place in Gogol are distinguished by their characteristics, first of all, by their realistic basis. In Gogol's works, everyday attributes always retain their essence and contribute to the understanding of the motives and meaning of a number of fantastic persons and events. According to V. Belinsky: “The perfect truth of life in Gogol’s stories is closely connected with the simplicity of fiction.”

V.Ya. Bryusov emphasized: “The desire for extremes, for exaggeration, for hyperbole was reflected not only in Gogol’s work, not only in his works: the same desire permeated his whole life. He perceived everything that happened around him in an exaggerated form, easily mistook the ghosts of his fiery imagination for reality, and lived his entire life in a world of changing illusions.”

G lava I. Childhood. Formation of religiosity.

First of all, the writer’s life path, starting from his first steps, is marked by mystery.

N.V. Gogol was born in the town of Velikiye Sorochintsy, Mirgorod district

Poltava province in the family of a middle-income landowner, who had 400 serfs and 1000 acres of land. For a long time they did not know the exact date of his birth - it was called

March 19, 1809, then March 20, 1810 Only almost forty years after the writer’s death, it was established from the publication of metrics that he was published on March 20, 1809.

This gave Vladimir Nabokov the basis to end his book about Gogol with a spectacular phrase: “It is true that Gogol was born on April 1.” The phrase hints at the fact that Gogol’s entire subsequent life passed as if under the sign of an April Fool’s hoax.

Well, if not all of life, then many of its events...

The writer's childhood was spent on his parents' estate Vasilyevka (Yanovshchina) in Ukraine, in a land covered in legends, beliefs and traditions. Nearby was a famous

now the whole world is Dikanka, where in those days they showed the shirt of an executed man

Kochubey, as well as the oak tree where Maria and Mazepa met.

Gogol came from an ancient

Little Russian family; in troubled times

times of Little Russia some of

his ancestors were also pestered by the Polish

nobility. Gogol's grandfather Afanasy

Demyanovich Yanovsky (1738-early 19

Descended from priests

graduated from Kyiv Theological

Academy,

rose to the rank of second major and,

having received hereditarily

nobility, came up with a mystical

pedigree going back to

mythical Cossack colonel

Andre Gogol, who supposedly lived in

mid-eighteenth century. He

wrote in an official document that “his ancestors, with the last name Gogol,

Polish nation,” although he himself was a real Little Russian, and others

They considered him the prototype of the hero of “Old World Landowners.”

Great-grandfather, Yan Gogol, a graduate of the Kyiv Academy, “having graduated

Russian side", settled in the Poltava region, and from him

the nickname "Gogol-Yanovsky" came into being. Gogol himself, according to

apparently did not know the origin of this increase and

subsequently discarded it, saying that the Poles had made it up.

Father N.V. Gogol, Vasily Afanasyevich Gogol - Yanovsky, was an employee of the Little Russian Post Office, and also wrote Ukrainian comedies, which were successfully staged at the D.P. Theater. Troshchinsky, a famous nobleman and patron of the arts; his estate was located nearby and was the cultural center of the region. The poetic element of folk life, the literary and theatrical environment very early developed in the boy a passion for writing. The writer's mother, Maria Ivanovna, was a deeply religious, nervous and impressionable woman. Having lost two children who died in infancy, she waited with fear for the third.

The couple often went to the neighboring Dikan Church, where the miraculous icon of St. Nicholas of Myra. The boy was named Nicholas in honor of the saint.

Very early, his mother began to bring Nikolai to church. At first he felt only boredom, and with disgust the smell of incense. But one day, looking closely at the painting depicting heaven and hell, he asked his mother to tell him about the Last Judgment. She told the boy about the death of the world and the Last Judgment, about the hellish torment of sinners.

Mother instructed that it is necessary to maintain moral purity in the name of salvation. The stories about the ladder that angels lower from heaven, giving their hand to the soul of the deceased, were especially memorable and impressed the child. There are seven measures on this ladder; the last seventh raises the immortal soul of man to the seventh heaven, to the heavenly abodes. The souls of the righteous go there - people who spent their earthly life “in all piety and purity.” The image of the staircase will then pass through all of Gogol’s thoughts about the fate and calling of man to spiritual ascent and moral growth, to self-improvement.

Since then, Gogol has constantly lived “under the terror of retribution from beyond the grave.”

From his mother, Gogol inherited a subtle mental organization, a penchant for mystical contemplation and God-fearing religiosity. In the deep silence, he imagined that he heard voices from beyond the grave, calling out to him, chilling his soul. “You, no doubt, have ever heard a voice calling you by name,” Gogol described these childhood sensations in “Old World Landowners,” “which common people explain this way: that the soul yearns for a person and calls him; after which death inevitably follows. I confess that I am always afraid of this mysterious call. I remember that in childhood I often heard it: sometimes suddenly behind me someone clearly pronounced my name... I usually then ran with the greatest fear and caught my breath from the garden, and then I only calmed down when some person came towards me, the sight of which drove away this terrible desert of the heart.”

The inclinations of religiosity, which later took possession of Gogol’s entire being, are attributed to the influence of his mother, as well as the shortcomings of his upbringing: his mother surrounded him with real adoration, and this could be one of the sources of his conceit, which, on the other hand, was early generated by the instinctive consciousness of the genius power hidden within him.

The boy's imagination was influenced in childhood by popular beliefs in brownies, witches, merman and mermaids. The mysterious world of folk demonology was absorbed by Gogol’s impressionable soul from childhood.

N. Gogol was thin and short from his youth, which in no way corresponded to his idea of ​​​​the heroic Cossack nature. But in his soul he felt growing strength. And he was, as his schoolmates said, inexhaustible in mischievous jokes and pranks; he had a predilection for playing pranks on his friends, noticing their funny features; he knew how to “guess a person” (Pushkin’s expression), but he himself did not trust his plans, his innermost dreams to anyone. His passion for reincarnation, unexpected changes of masks, and practical jokes often perplexed his friends.

Those who saw Gogol on the gymnasium stage and - later - heard him read, retained the conviction that he could become a great comic actor. It is curious that he was most successful in female roles; for example, he inimitably played Mrs. Prostakova in Fonvizin’s comedy “The Minor.”

Gogol's inner spiritual world was very complex and contradictory.

He knew that some of his comrades considered him a freak, small, frail, ugly, unkempt and unkempt. He could not help but be vulnerable from the tricks of his comrades. Harmless ridicule tormented him all night long. The awareness of his inferiority humiliated him, but at the same time stimulated him to rise to success and dignity.

He never opened up to anyone about his aspirations and plans - everyday and especially creative. He liked to mystify his friends and mislead him about his own, even the most innocent, intentions. Any successful hoax gave him the greatest joy.

These inclinations of Gogol were fully determined already in the Nizhyn gymnasium. Since childhood, no simple-minded frankness or sociability was noticed in him; he was always somehow strangely secretive, there were always corners in his soul where no one’s eyes dared to look. Often he spoke even about the most ordinary things for a reason, investing them with some kind of mystery or hiding his real thought under the guise of a joke or buffoonery.

He saw God's will in all the smallest events of life. A rude shout in class, a bad grade, or a runny nose was considered by him as supernatural attention. He was tormented by inexplicable premonitions that forced him to obey the Divine will.

In the gymnasium of higher sciences in the city of Nezhin, where the future writer studied and lived from 1821 to 1828, he was called Mysterious Carlo - after one of the characters in Walter Scott’s novel “Black Dwarf”. A few months before graduating from high school, he wrote to his mother: “True, I am considered a mystery to everyone, no one has completely solved me.”

While studying at the Nizhyn gymnasium, still in the lower grades, N. Gogol somehow did something wrong, so that he ended up in the “criminal category”. “It’s bad, brother,” one of the comrades said: “they’ll flog you!” - "Tomorrow!" - answered Gogol. But the verdict was confirmed and the perpetrators came for it. Gogol suddenly screams so shrilly that everyone was scared - and “goes crazy.” There is a commotion and Gogol is taken to the hospital. The director visits him twice a day. His schoolmates go to see him secretly and return sadly. I'm crazy, really crazy! Gogol pretended so skillfully that everyone was convinced of his insanity. After two weeks of successful treatment, he was released from the hospital, but everyone still looked at him with doubt and apprehension for a long time.

Towards the end of his stay at the gymnasium, he dreams of broad social activity, which, however, he sees not at all in the literary field; no doubt, under the influence of everything around him, he thinks to advance and benefit society in a service for which in fact he was completely incapable. Thus, plans for the future were unclear; but it is curious that Gogol was possessed by a deep confidence that he had a wide career ahead of him; he is already talking about the instructions of providence and cannot be satisfied with what simple “existents” are content with, as he put it, which were the majority of his Nezhin comrades.

He dreamed of government activity that would allow him to accomplish something great “for the common good, for Russia.”

Chapter II. Petersburg. First publications

At the end of December 1828 Gogol ended up in St. Petersburg. Ideas about St. Petersburg life changed the appearance of Nikolai Gogol to such an extent that from an unkempt schoolboy he turned into a real dandy. Without well-tailored clothes, he could not achieve, as it seemed to him, social prosperity.

But his first impressions stunned him.

In his dreams, St. Petersburg was a magical land, where people enjoy all material and spiritual blessings, where they do great things, wage a great fight against evil - and suddenly, instead of all this, a dirty, uncomfortable furnished room, worries about how to have a cheap lunch, anxiety at the sight of the wallet being emptied, which seemed inexhaustible in Nizhyn!

Things got even worse when he began to work hard to realize his cherished dream - to enter the civil service.

ABOUT he brought with him several letters of recommendation to various influential persons and, of course, was sure that they would immediately open up the path to useful and glorious activities for him; but, alas, here again bitter disappointment awaited him.

Gogol tried to find his calling in acting and teaching, and meanwhile the idea of ​​writing grew stronger in his mind. In 1829 He published, under the pseudonym V. Alov, the poem “Hans Küchelgarten,” which he began in high school.

Constantly communicating with friends, he did not open up to them about his intentions and did not want to take their advice. None of them knew about his plans to publish Gantz. All this was explained not by his timidity, but by his desire to assume some kind of mystery. He fantasized that Pushkin himself would read this poem and, enchanted by the music of the poems, demand to introduce him to the mysterious author. This kind of fantasies so fired up his crazy imagination that he sometimes pulled himself together so as not to really believe that he was already a close friend of the poet.

Critics noticed the author's abilities, but considered this work immature; it did not attract readers. Gogol was so shocked by the failure that he bought all the unsold copies of the book in stores and burned them. This was the beginning of acts of self-immolation, which Gogol repeated more than once and ended with the destruction of the second volume of Dead Souls.

The failure of the poem was also associated with another feature of behavior, which later also turned out to be constant for Gogol: having experienced a shock, he rushed out of Russia. Later, such departures at times of crisis, at the height of controversy surrounding published works, became more frequent and longer lasting.

Suddenly Gogol took off and went abroad by ship, to the seaside city of Germany - Lubeck.

To prevent his mother from reproaching him for wasting money, he invents a mysterious friend who supposedly wanted to pay for the trip, but suddenly died.

In his letters to his mother, he writes about the reasons for his flight, each time coming up with new mystical justifications. First, he justified his departure by the need to treat a severe scrofulous rash that appeared on his face and hands (but never took advantage of the water treatment in Travemund), then by “the order of the Almighty” (as if God had shown him the way to a foreign land), then by meeting a woman with "a face of astonishing brilliance." As a result, Maria Gogol brought together two stories - about illness and about love passion - and concluded that her son had become infected with a venereal disease. This conclusion plunged Gogol into deep horror. His lies turned against him. Just as the hero of his poem Gogol fled from the world to find himself face to face with himself, he fled from himself, from the discord between his lofty dreams and practical life. Life in a foreign land turned out to be even worse than in Russia. Gogol did not stay here long. Soon, however, letters from his mother and his own prudence made him come to his senses, and after a two-month absence he returned to St. Petersburg.

The explanation for this strange act suggests itself: Gogol fails to get a job; the poem “Hanz Küchelgarten” he published did not bring the expected fame, but aroused sharp criticism.

However, Gogol himself spoke about a completely different reason: that “he met a woman of extraordinary beauty and, in order not to die, not to burn in the fire of passion, he had to run away...”.

Back in 1829, Gogol described a meeting with a woman on Nevsky: “but I saw her... no, I won’t name her... she is too tall for anyone, not just me. I would call her an angel, but this expression is low and inappropriate for her. An angel is a creature with neither virtues nor vices, without character, because it is not a person, and living with thoughts in the same sky. This is a deity dressed slightly in human passions. A face whose astonishing brilliance is imprinted on the heart in an instant; eyes that quickly pierce the soul. But their radiance, burning, passing through everything, cannot be endured by any person... Oh, if you had looked at me then... it’s true, I knew how to hide myself from everyone, but did I hide from myself?

Hellish melancholy with possible torment boiled in my chest...

no, it wasn’t love, at least I haven’t heard anything like it

love. In a fit of rage and terrible mental anguish

I was thirsty, seething to drink in just one look, just one

I was hungry for a glance. Look at her again - that's what happened

the only desire growing stronger and stronger with

the inexpressible causticity of melancholy...

I saw that I needed to run away from myself if I wanted to save my life, to bring at least a shadow of peace into my tormented soul...

No, this creature that he sent to deprive me of peace, to upset my precariously created world, was not a woman. If she had been a woman, she would not have been able to produce such terrible impressions with all the power of her charms. It was a deity created by him, a part of himself! But, for God's sake, don't ask her name. She's tall, too tall."

His friend from school, A.S. Danilevsky, was perplexed: they say, he lived with Nikolai in the same city and in the same apartment and did not notice anything... And yet Gogol’s extraordinary secrecy in front of his comrades is known. In addition, the experiences of the loving heroes of his stories (for example, Vakula from “The Night Before Christmas”) are so reminiscent of the confusion when meeting a beauty that the thought suggests itself: all this was familiar to the writer firsthand. Also indicative is Gogol’s later mute admission that, thanks to his willpower, he was twice kept on the edge of the “abyss.”

Did he mean the episode with the beautiful stranger?

It must be said that the secret remained a secret. What actually happened is unknown. And this is not the last mysterious event in Gogol’s biography.

Gogol was seized by a new dream - theater. He remembered his successes on stage at the Nezhin gymnasium and decided to become an actor. Gogol came to the director of the imperial theaters, Prince Gagarin, and offered his services. He was given a monologue from the tragedy “Dmitry Donskoy” to read. In the minds of old-school theatergoers, the dramatic actor had to play his role with affectation. The words did not have to be spoken, but recited with pathos. Gogol read simply, without howls and “dramatic hiccups.” His manner of performance clearly contradicted the tastes of the examiners. In a word, Gogol did not pass the test.

He almost fell into despair. After the death of the father, life for the family became difficult. Debts appeared. Help from the mother became less and less regular. The small estate had to be mortgaged several times. So several painful months passed until, finally, happiness smiled. Gogol received service in one of the departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It was an unenviable place: the work of a petty clerical worker, boring and tiring. It turned out that here one must spend one’s life “rewriting the old nonsense and nonsense of the gentlemen-heads” (from a letter to his mother).

At the same time, Gogol carefully looked at the life and everyday life of his fellow officials. These observations later formed the basis of his famous stories “The Nose”, “Notes of a Madman”, “The Overcoat”. After serving for a year, Gogol decided to put an end to the idea of ​​a bureaucratic career forever. In February 1831 he resigned.

Chapter III. A difficult path to literature.

Gradually, however, the conviction begins to mature in him that literary creativity is his main calling. The bitterness of failure with “Hans Kuchelgarten” was forgotten, and Gogol began to write again, devoting all his leisure time to this work. By the way, until the end of his life Gogol never admitted to anyone that V. Alov was his pseudonym.

Gradually Gogol finds his way and achieves success. The doors to a select literary society opened for Gogol: he met V. A. Zhukovsky, P. A. Pletnev, and in May 1831. at the latter's party he was introduced to Pushkin. Another two or three months passed, and Gogol became a literary celebrity. In an atmosphere of communication with them - in Tsarskoe Selo - Gogol completes the work that made him famous in Russia: “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka.”

In letters to his mother, Gogol often hints at the “extensive work” on which he works hard and hard. After his arrival in St. Petersburg, he begins to pester his relatives with requests: to regularly send him information and materials about the customs and morals of “our Little Russians”, samples of Ukrainian folk art - songs, fairy tales, as well as all kinds of antiques - hats, dresses, costumes. “A few more words,” he writes to his mother, “about carols, about Ivan Kupala, about mermaids. If there are, in addition, any spirits or brownies, then more about them with their names and actions; a lot of people are running around

between the common people of beliefs, terrible legends,

various jokes, and so on, and so on, and so on. All this will happen

It’s extremely interesting for me.”

These materials are in addition to our own

life impressions were used by Gogol in

a large series of stories published under the general title

"Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka". According to Pletnev’s advice

Gogol published both parts of this collection under the intriguing

pseudonym of a naive and crafty beekeeper storyteller

Rudogo Panka.

Chapter IV. Folk fiction in “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka.”

The first part of “Evenings” was published in September 1831.

It included four stories: “Sorochinskaya Fair”,

“The Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala”, “May Night” and

"The Missing Letter." Six months later, at the beginning of March

In 1832, the second part appeared (“The Night Before Christmas”, “Terrible Revenge”,

“Ivan Fedorovich Shponka and his aunt”, “Enchanted Place”).

The world that opened up in “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” had little in common with the reality in which Gogol lived. It was cheerful, joyful,

the happy world of a poetic fairy tale, in which the light major principle predominates. In “Evenings,” elements of Ukrainian folk fiction and legends are abundantly introduced. Witches, mermaids, sorceresses, and devils act alongside people. Real life and the legend were perceived by the readers of “Evenings” as a single whole.

The stories seem to be woven from Ukrainian fairy tales, songs, and stories. Here, as Belinsky said, a special world of “poetic reality arises, in which you never know what is in it and what is a fairy tale, but you inevitably take everything for true.” 1

The story “The Night Before Christmas” begins with the witch flying out of the chimney on a broom and hiding the stars in her sleeve, and the devil steals the Moon and, getting burned, hides it in his pocket. But the witch, it turns out, is the mother of the blacksmith Vakula, a clever coquette who knows how to “bewitch sedate Cossacks to herself.” A person not only is not afraid of “evil spirits,” he forces them to serve him. The devil, although he came straight from Hell, is not so scary: riding on the devil, Vakula flies to St. Petersburg to bring the wayward beauty Oksana the same slippers as the queen herself. The whole story goes in this spirit, the interweaving of fairy tales and tales. The fantastic and the real are mixed in Gogol in some kind of bizarre grotesque. Not only the reader, but also the characters themselves are surprised by the fantastic twists and turns. So, Vakula looks in bewilderment at the art of Patsyuk, swallowing dumplings, which are first coated in sour cream.

In the early cycles (“Evenings on a farm near Dikanka”, “Mirgorod”) the devil has real typological features. He has a “narrow muzzle, constantly spinning and sniffing whatever comes his way, ending, like our pigs, with a round snout”, “a sharp and long tail.” This is a small demon, conceptualized in folklore traditions.

In general, “Evenings” “follow two heterogeneous traditions: German romantic demonology (witches, devils, spells, witchcraft) and the Ukrainian fairy tale with its primordial dualism, the struggle between God and the devil.” A demon is a creature in which the denial of God and eternal vulgarity are concentrated.

Gogol “in the light of laughter explores the nature of this mystical essence”, which forces people “to do something similar to human, like the mechanic of his lifeless machine gun” or pushes the bride into the arms of “a terrible black cat with iron claws,” that is, into the arms of a witch.

Gogol’s devil is “an underdeveloped hypostasis of the unclean; a shaking, frail imp; the devil is one of the breed of small devils that seem to haunt our drunkards.” The invasion of demonic forces into human life becomes the cause of the emptiness in the world where God has been forgotten, which gives birth to death. In this unreal world, even beauty becomes something terribly piercing, accompanied not only by a demonically sweet feeling, but also by panic horror.

Thus, one of the hypostases of Gogol’s demon lies in the phenomenon of “immortal human vulgarity,” which must be “hit in the face without being embarrassed.” This vulgarity is “the begun and unfinished, which presents itself as beginningless and infinite,” it denies God and is identified with universal evil.

The evil devilish evil spirits, who personified the dark forces in “Evenings,” are in most cases put to shame, and all her attempts to fool and mock a person turn against her.

But great troubles and misfortunes were brought by the forces of hell when, through deceit and demonic promises, they managed to blind people and make them, at least for a moment, doubt that they were right.

As in Gogol’s previous works, a large place in the story “Terrible Revenge” is occupied by a fantastic plot. But behind the fantastic features and events in the story, the real historical and moral theme of crime and betrayal, and the inevitability of the most severe punishment for this, is revealed.

The bloody atrocities of the evil sorcerer-traitor from this story are terrible, but inevitable retribution will overtake him in due course.

The story of Vasily Gogol’s marriage to Maria Ivanovna Kosyarovskaya was also shrouded in mysticism. As a boy, Vasily Gogol went with his mother on a pilgrimage to the Kharkov province, where there was a wonderful image of the Mother of God. Staying overnight, he saw in a dream this temple and the heavenly queen, who predicted his fate: “You will be overcome by many illnesses (and for sure, he suffered from many illnesses), but everything will pass, you will recover, you will get married, and here is your wife.” Having uttered these words, she raised her hand, and he saw at her feet a small child sitting on the floor, whose features were engraved in his memory.

At home Vasily forgot his dream. His parents, not having a church at that time, went to the town of Yareski. There he saw a seven-month-old child in the nurse’s arms; he looked at him and stopped in surprise: he remembered the very features of the child that he had seen in his dream.

Without telling anyone about this, he began to watch the girl and amused her with toys. Thirteen years later, he saw the same dream, and in the same temple the gates opened, and a maiden of extraordinary beauty came out and, pointing to the left, said: “Here is your bride!” He saw a girl in a white dress with the same facial features. After a short time, Vasily Gogol wooed thirteen-year-old Maria Kosyarovskaya.

The plot of the story “The Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala” is based on the Slavic pagan holiday of Ivan Kupala, dedicated by the Russian Orthodox Church to the Nativity of Ivan the Baptist (June 24, old style).

In Little Russia there is a belief that the fern blooms only once a year, precisely at midnight before Midsummer, with a fiery color. The one who manages to pick it, despite all the ghosts that prevent him from doing so, finds the treasure. The treasure in the story becomes a devilish temptation that Petrus, who killed an innocent child and extracted the gold at this terrible price, cannot withstand.

Therefore, severe punishment is inevitable for a bloody crime that did not bring happiness to the young. After all, wealth acquired through dishonest means is so illusory and short-lived.

A.K. Vronsky writes in his book “Gogol”: “The fantastic in Gogol is by no means an external device, not accidental and not superficial. Remove the devil, the sorcerer, the witches, the disgusting pig snouts, the stories will fall apart not only in plot, but also in their meaning, in their idea.

An evil, extraneous force, unknown, coming from somewhere, destroys the quiet, serene, ancient way of life with the help of chervonets and all sorts of things - that’s the meaning. There is something demonic in wealth, in money, in treasures: they beckon, entice, tempt, push people into terrible crimes, turn people into fat cattle, into carnivorous gluttons, and deprive them of the image and likeness of humanity.

Things and money sometimes seem alive, moving, and people become like dead things; like Chub, godfather, clerk, thanks to the devil’s intrigues, they turn into coolies.”

Chapter V. “Viy” is Gogol’s most mystical and terrible story.

In the collection of stories "Mirgorod" one of

the most mystical and terrible is

story "Viy".

The story was begun by Gogol in 1833.

Viy, the name of a fantastic underground spirit,

was invented by Gogol as a result

connecting the name of the ruler of the underworld in

Ukrainian mythology of “Iron Niy” and

Ukrainian words “viya” - eyelash and “poviko”

Eyelid. Hence the long eyelids of Gogol’s character.

In the note to Viy, Gogol points out,

that “this whole story is folk

tradition" and that he conveyed it exactly as he heard it,

changing almost nothing. However, not a single piece of folklore has yet been discovered with a plot that exactly resembles the story. Only certain motifs of “Viy” are comparable to some folk tales and legends.

Khoma Brut dies from fear, but at the cost of his life he destroys the evil spirit that rushed at the philosopher and did not hear the rooster’s cry in time - after his third cry, the spirits who did not have time to return to the underground kingdom of the dead die.

Gogol brilliantly displays a whole range of mythical moods in the scene of Khoma’s magical jump and flight over the water with a witch on his shoulders. Khoma Brut saw a mermaid swim up from behind the sedge, her back and leg flashed - convex, elastic, all created from brilliance and trembling... “Her cloudy breasts, matte, like porcelain, not covered with glaze, shone through before the sun the edges of its white elastic circle...Water in the form of small bubbles, like beads, showered them. She is shaking and laughing in the water. Does he see it or not? Is this real or is it a dream? "What is this?" - thought the philosopher, looking down, rushing at full speed. Sweat rolled off him like a hail, he felt a devilishly sweet feeling, he felt some kind of piercing, some kind of painfully terrible pleasure. It often seemed to him that he no longer had a heart at all, and he clutched at it with fear.” Critics greeted Viy rather coldly at first, not appreciating the author's true virtuosity and the depth of his philosophy. In Viya, fantasy is intricately intertwined in the story with real-life details and descriptions.

We can say that “Viy” is the first real thriller

in Russian literature. Gogol skillfully builds tension

living with every night that Khoma Brut must spend

at the tomb of Pannochka the Witch. At the same time truly folk

humor only sets off the horror of what is happening.

For example, in the following characterization of Khoma: “After

At lunchtime the philosopher was completely in good spirits. He managed to go around

all the villages, get to know almost everyone; from two huts

he was even kicked out; one cute girl grabbed him

quite a shovel on the back, when he decided to feel

I wonder what material her shirt and scarf were made of.”

And Khoma wouldn’t mind sleeping with the old witch,

if she were a little younger.

Next to this, these are truly soul-chilling

serious lines that do not cause even a shadow of a smile,

despite the fantastic nature of what is happening: “The corpse

was already standing in front of him on the very line and staring at him dead,

green eyes. Bursak shuddered, and a cold sensation ran through his entire body. She began to grumble dully and began to utter terrible words with dead lips; They sobbed hoarsely, like the bubbling of boiling tar. What they meant, he could not say, but there was something terrible in them. The philosopher, in fear, realized that she was casting a spell.”

Osip Senkovsky said: “In Viy there is no end, no beginning, no idea - there is nothing except a few terrible, incredible scenes. Anyone who copies a folk legend for a story must also give it meaning - only then will it become an elegant work. It is likely that the Little Russians Viy have some kind of myth, but the meaning of this myth has not been solved.”

Who is Viy? There are two versions, and neither of them can be strictly preferred. Many researchers believe that the name Viy, a fantastic underground spirit, was invented by Gogol as a result of the contamination of the names of the ruler of the underworld in Ukrainian mythology, “Iron Niy,” who is capable of killing people with his gaze and burning cities (probably this property of his was identified with volcanic eruptions and earthquakes), and the Ukrainian words “viya”, “viyka” - eyelash. In the “Little Russian Lexicon” compiled by Gogol, for example, we read: “Virlooky - goggle-eyed.” Hence the long eyelids of Gogol’s character. If we accept this version, it turns out that Viy in the form in which we recognize him today is entirely the fruit of Gogol’s fantasy - an iron creature with long eyelids reaching to the ground. Indeed, in famous fairy tales, as well as in other folklore works of Ukrainians and other Slavic peoples, there is no character named Viy. With one remarkable exception. True, the famous collector and researcher of folklore A.N. Afanasyev in his book “Poetic Views of the Slavs on Nature” argued that in Slavic mythology not only there is a similar image, but also the very name of the fantastic creature - Viy - was considered as quite traditional.

Gogol's Viy is the ruler of the underground kingdom, the master of the earth's bowels. No wonder he has an iron face and iron fingers. In the popular consciousness, the bowels of the earth were associated, first of all, with iron ore - it was this mineral that people began to mine first. For Gogol, Viy's power is hidden behind extra-long eyelids, and he cannot use it without outside help. The writer combined the Belarusian Koshchei with the Ukrainian iron Niy. One of the other evil spirits must lift Viyu’s eyelids. Allegorically, this can be interpreted in the sense that the person himself must help the evil spirits - with his fear. It is Khoma's fear that ultimately destroys him. Viy takes his soul to himself, to the kingdom of the dead.

Khoma's story also allows for a realistic explanation. Viy's vision can be imagined as the fruit of the delirium tremens of a great lover of vodka, from which he dies.

Gogol thoroughly prepared to write his mystical stories. The author carefully collected all folklore information regarding evil spirits. The writer wanted complete similarity with popular ideas about evil spirits. And for this he wrote to his mother: “...A few more words about carols, about Ivan Kupala, about mermaids. If there are, in addition, any spirits or brownies, then about them in more detail with their names and deeds; There are a lot of superstitions, terrible tales, legends, various anecdotes, and so on floating around among the common people. and so on. and so on. All this will be extremely interesting for me.”

Gogol: “Viy is a colossal creation of simply the people’s imagination - this is the name given to the Little Russians for the chief of the gnomes, whose eyelids go all the way to the ground. This whole story is a folk legend. I didn’t want to change it in any way and I tell it almost in the same simplicity as I heard it.” Indeed, it cannot be ruled out that the legend about Viya that Gogol heard was not recorded by any other folklorist, and only Gogol’s story has preserved it to this day.

“Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” opened, not counting Gogol’s first works, the romantic period of his work. At the same time, it is obvious that the stories alternate in tone. After the cheerful “Sorochinskaya Fair”, in its fantastic part going back to the motifs of folk demonology, where evil spirits are ultimately put to shame, there followed the story with a tragic end “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka”, in which evil (devilishness) was presented as irreversible, fitting more into the traditions of German romantic fiction.

However, if you take a closer look, it becomes obvious that despite the certain dominant tonality that prevails in all the stories of the cycle, sometimes joyful and cheerful, sometimes tragic and terrible, Gogol already within each text constantly balances on the concepts of scary and funny.

As mentioned earlier, Gogol tries to fully comply with folklore regarding evil spirits. One of these characters is the mermaid in the story “May Night, or the Drowned Woman”: “She was all pale, like a sheet; but how wonderful, how beautiful! Levko looked at the shore: in the thin silver fog, light, like shadows, girls in shirts white, like a meadow covered with lilies of the valley, flashed; golden necklaces, monists, ducats shone on their necks; but they were pale; their body seemed to be sculpted from transparent clouds and seemed to shine through and through during the silver moon.” This is exactly what mermaids look like in folk tales. They are often confused with sea maidens, who have tails instead of legs. But mermaids have legs, and they love to dance in circles along the river bank, which is shown in the story. Gogol also says that this mermaid is a girl who threw herself into the water. And here the author did not sin against folklore truth. The following become mermaids: a) drowned women who voluntarily went to the bottom of the river; b) girls who bathed without a cross or entered the water without crossing themselves; c) girls who died unbaptized or were stillborn; d) those girls whom the mermaids lured into their round dance.

Chapter VI.

Fiction "Petersburg Tales". Hoaxes in the stories “The Nose” and “The Overcoat”.

“In Viya,” noted A.K. Vronsky, “sweet

sensuality, the earthly, the essential fight against

mortal charms, with dark souls

pleasures, with a pernicious world, but melting

inexplicable pleasures."

From the end of 1833 he became interested in the idea of

unrealistic, as were his previous plans for the service:

it seemed to him that he could enter the scientific field. At that

the opening of the Kyiv University was being prepared, and he

dreamed of occupying the history department there, which he taught to girls

at the Patriotic Institute.

Maksimovich was invited to Kyiv; Gogol thought to found

together with him in Kyiv, he wanted to invite Pogodin there; in Kyiv to him

Finally, he imagined Russian Athens, where he himself thought of writing something unprecedented in universal history, and at the same time studying Little Russian antiquity.

To his chagrin, it turned out that the department of history had been given to another person; but soon he was offered the same chair at St. Petersburg University, thanks to the influence of his high literary friends.

He actually took this chair: once or twice he managed to give a spectacular lecture, but then the task turned out to be beyond his strength, and he himself refused the professorship in 1835.

At the same time, Gogol presented the manuscript of the two-volume “History of Little Russia” to St. Petersburg University. But then I took it back for revision. . Whether Gogol burned this manuscript, as he often did with works that did not satisfy him, or whether it was preserved is unknown.

"Nose"

Vladimir Nabokov tied

the main character of the story with features

appearance of Gogol himself: “His big and

the sharp nose was so long and mobile that

in his youth he knew how to pester

its tip is the lower lip; the nose was the most

a sensitive and noticeable feature of his appearance.

The nose runs like a leitmotif through it

essays: it is difficult to find another writer,

who would describe smells with such gusto,

sneezing and snoring. Increased sensation in the nose

eventually resulted in the story “The Nose” -

truly a hymn to this organ. Whether his imagination created his nose or whether his nose awakened his fantasy does not matter.”

The hero of the story “The Nose” could not always control himself, which

a person into someone unlike those around him and due to his dissimilarity

no longer able to live the same life. In order for something like this

the transformation has taken place, it takes very little: to take one

one of its most insignificant parts is the nose. A victim like this

the hoax was the collegiate assessor Kovalev, who did nothing

he was different from other “collegiate assessors”, he only liked for everyone to call him major. “It is for this very reason that we will henceforth call this collegiate assessor major.”

So, one morning, Major Kovalev “woke up quite early” and, “to his greatest amazement, he saw that instead of a nose he had a completely smooth place!” “I woke up quite early” and the barber Ivan Yakovlevich found in the bun he was cutting the nose of Major Kovalev. How Ivan Yakovlevich was able to cut off his nose, and even more so how this nose ended up in a bun, remains unclear, but it is known for sure that from the hands of the barber the nose went to the Neva from the St. Isaac's Bridge. It is from this moment that the major’s torment begins, during which he realizes that “a man without a nose is the devil knows what!” If Kovalev’s actions after this unfortunate incident can be explained, then the actions of the nose cannot be explained in any way. Instead of floating in the Neva, the bow, in the most incredible way, ended up in a carriage in the center of St. Petersburg. “He was in a uniform embroidered with gold, with a large stand-up collar; he was wearing suede trousers; there's a sword at my side." Kovalev “almost went crazy from such a spectacle.” His own nose travels around St. Petersburg with the rank of state councilor (which is much higher than the rank of Kovalev himself), he prays in the Kazan Cathedral, goes on visits, and even responds to Kovalev’s statements that he (the nose) “decidedly does not understand anything.”

Due to a seemingly insignificant change in the major's appearance, the whole world was turned upside down. Not only did the nose acquire all human properties and characteristics, it became more powerful than its owner, thereby demonstrating the insignificant role of man in this city, in this world.

After losing his nose, Kovalev is not free in his actions, the range of his possibilities has decreased almost to a point, and all his efforts are aimed at one thing - to return such a “noticeable part of the body” to its original place.

Things play a very important role in Gogol's works; people dissolve in this world of things. Therefore, it is not surprising that the world of objects - the city - suppresses a person, makes

its existence is mechanistic and inertial.

"Overcoat"

The thought of a man whose soul was breathed in by God, and whose fate

often determines the devil, apparently, did not leave Gogol. Hero

the story “The Overcoat” Akakiy Akakievich Bashmachkin in everything

offended by fate, even given a name at birth

cacophonous. But Bashmachkin does not complain: he is already over

rank higher than titular councilor; he has no family, friends,

he doesn’t go to the theater, or to visit, or just for a walk: all of him

spiritual needs are satisfied by copying

Gogol describes in great detail how

The old overcoat, repaired many times, has finally worn out

Akakiy Akakievich, how he childishly tried to convince

tailor Petrovich, that the cloth is still new, I should supply

patches; how Bashmachkin is trying to get the missing forty rubles, how to save money. Finally, the coveted overcoat is acquired, but soon it is stolen. Akakiy Akakievich uselessly walks around the officials, trying to find the missing overcoat and... dies, unable to withstand the indifference on the part of the “significant person.”

Death, it would seem, put an end to the history of Akaki Akakievich. But Gogol presents the reader with another surprise. He talks about a dead man who was looking for his overcoat at night, so he tore off everyone’s overcoat, without regard to rank or title. The dead man did not calm down until he reached the “significant person” and tore the greatcoat off his shoulders.

This fantastic turn of events is reminiscent of the dark wonders of Viy. But in “The Overcoat,” the description of the dead man’s actions is seasoned with humor and presented in such a way that it is impossible to say for sure what really happened and what was born in the fevered imagination of ordinary people. Gogol, however, reports in the very last lines that when the watchman tried to detain the ghost, it stopped and asked: “What do you want?” - and showed such a fist that you won’t find among the living. In addition, the ghost was much taller than Akaki Akakievich and wore an “enormous mustache.” However, at the moment of meeting with the dead robber, the general recognized Akaki Akakievich and even heard his voice: “... it’s your overcoat that I need! you didn’t bother about mine, and even scolded me - now give me yours!” However, in a state of horror, it is no wonder to hear the words that the voice of conscience has been repeating for a long time. And without that, almost every day the general was presented with “pale Akakiy Akakievich, who could not stand the official scolding.”

Gogol leaves the reader in the dark: whether it was a ghost or something else. In any case, if there were rumors in St. Petersburg about an avenger official rebelling after death, this showed the anger that Bashmachkin felt while still alive. In a feverish delirium, he “blasphemed” and, following the words “Your Excellency,” uttered some other, “terrible words.”

After the publication of new collections “Mirgorod” and “Arabesques”, Gogol’s fame increased even more. V.G. Belinsky in the article “On the Russian story and the stories of Mr. Gogol” proclaimed him “the head of literature, the head of poets” - and this was during Pushkin’s lifetime!

In 1836, the premiere of The Inspector General took place at the Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. But soon Gogol leaves abroad again. He leaves unexpectedly for his acquaintances and friends, deeply traumatized by critical reviews: “I’m going abroad, there I unlock the melancholy that my compatriots inflict on me every day.” Many biographers have come to the conclusion that the reason for the sudden departure was the public reaction to the comedy...

But, as it turned out, Gogol made the decision to leave even before the premiere of The Government Inspector, and it is not so easy to explain this action.

Gogol had been abroad since June 1836. to April 1848, but visited his homeland twice during this time: in 1839-1840 and in 1841-1842.

He traveled almost all of Western Europe, living the longest in his beloved Italy - a total of about four and a half years.

Gogol also sailed in the Mediterranean Sea, and before his final return to Russia, he made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, to the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. According to Gogol’s sister Anna Vasilievna: “When Gogol was getting ready to travel abroad, he certainly wanted to receive an image from someone in the form of a blessing.

He waited for a long time in vain, but suddenly he received the image of the Savior from the preacher Innocent. This fulfillment of his desire seemed miraculous to him and was interpreted by him as a command from above to go to Jerusalem and, having cleansed himself with prayer at the Holy Sepulcher, ask for God’s blessing for his planned literary work.”

His stay abroad in the “beautiful distance” for the first time strengthened and calmed him, gave him the opportunity to complete his greatest work, “Dead Souls,” but it also became the embryo of deeply fatal phenomena. Disunion with life, an increased withdrawal into oneself, the exaltation of religious feeling led to a “pietistic” exaggeration, which ended with his last book, which amounted to a kind of negation of his own artistic work...

In March 1837, Gogol was in Rome. The Eternal City made a charming impression on him. The nature of Italy delighted and enchanted him. Under the life-giving rays of the Italian sun, Gogol's health strengthened, although he never considered himself completely healthy.

His acquaintances made fun of his suspiciousness, but back in St. Petersburg he said quite seriously that doctors did not understand his illness, that his stomach was structured completely differently from that of other people, and this caused him suffering that others did not understand.

Living abroad, he spent almost every summer on some kind of water, but rarely withstood the full course of treatment; It seemed to him that he himself knew better than all the doctors how and with what to be treated. In his opinion, travel and life in Rome had the most beneficial effect on him. This is what Gogol said about his beloved Rome: “It seemed to me that I saw my homeland, which I had not been to for several years, and in which only my thoughts lived. But no, this is not all that: not my homeland, but the homeland of my soul, where my soul lived before me, before I was born.”

In May 1840, Gogol left for Italy and promised his friends to bring the first volume of Dead Souls, ready for printing.

S. T. Aksakov, Pogodin and Shchepkin saw him off and stood on the street in Perkhushkovo until the crew disappeared from sight. Suddenly, out of nowhere, terrible, black clouds stretched out and very quickly covered half of the sky, it became dark, and some kind of ominous feeling took possession of Gogol’s friends.

They talked sadly, referring to the dark clouds that had eclipsed the sun for Gogol’s future fate, but half an hour later the horizon suddenly changed: a strong wind tore into shreds and dispersed the terrible clouds, the sky soon cleared, the sun appeared in its brilliance and a joyful feeling filled the hearts of those seeing them off.

Thus, in a mystical way, nature accompanied Gogol abroad.

Chapter VII. Gogol's passion for practical jokes and hoaxes.

But it was in Rome that the poet’s weak body could not withstand the nervous tension that accompanies intense creative activity. He caught a severe swamp fever. An acute, painful illness almost brought him to the grave and left marks for a long time, both on his physical and mental state. Her seizures were accompanied by nervous suffering, weakness, and loss of spirit. N.P. Botkin, who was in Rome at that time and looked after Gogol with brotherly love, says that he told him about some visions that visited him during his illness. The “fear of death” that tormented Gogol’s father in the last days of his life was passed on to his son.

From an early age, Gogol was distinguished by suspiciousness and always attached great importance to his ill health; the painful illness, which did not immediately respond to medical help, seemed to him the threshold of death, or at least the end of an activity full of life.

Before this, the religious feelings that had been dormant in him begin to acquire ever greater proportions. He also begins to regard inspiration, which periodically leaves and returns to the writer, as divine overshadowing.

Serious, solemn thoughts, which the proximity of the grave suggests to us, gripped him and did not leave him until the end of his life. Having recovered from physical suffering, he again set to work, but now it acquired a different, very important meaning for him. Partly under the influence of reflections inspired by illness, partly thanks to Belinsky's articles, he developed a more serious view of his duties as a writer and of his works.

He, who almost from childhood was looking for a field in which he could become famous and benefit others, tried to become an official, an actor, a teacher, and a professor, finally realized that his real calling was literature, that the laughter excited by his creations , has a deep educational meaning. “The further continuation of Dead Souls,” he says in a letter to Aksakov, “becomes clearer, more majestic in my head, and now I see that I will do, perhaps over time, something colossal, if only my weak strength allows.” "

At the same time, religiosity, which had distinguished him since childhood, but had hitherto rarely manifested itself, began to be expressed more often in his letters, in his conversations, in his entire worldview. Under her influence, he began to give his literary work a kind of mystical character, began to look at his talent, at his creative ability as a gift sent to him by God for a good purpose, at his writing activity as a calling predetermined from above, as a duty, entrusted to him by providence.

A high idea of ​​his talent and the responsibility that lies within it led him to the conviction that he was doing something providential: in order to expose human vices and take a broad look at life, one must strive for internal improvement, which is given only by thinking of God.

Several times he had to endure serious illnesses, which further increased his religious mood;

in his circle he found favorable soil for the development of religious exaltation - he adopted a prophetic tone, self-confidently gave instructions to his friends and, in the end, came to the conviction that what he had done so far was unworthy of the high goal to which he now considered himself called.

If before he said that the first volume of his poem was nothing more than a porch to the palace that was being built in it, now he was ready to reject everything he wrote as sinful and unworthy of his high mission. One day, in a moment of heavy thought about fulfilling his duty, he burned the second volume of “Dead Souls”, sacrificed it to God, and the new content of the book, enlightened and purified, was presented to his mind; It seemed to him that he now understood how to write in order to “direct the whole society towards the beautiful.”

“A wonderful creation is happening and taking place in my soul,” he wrote in 1841, “and now my eyes are more than once filled with grateful tears. Here the holy will of God is clearly visible to me: such a suggestion does not come from a person; he would never invent such a plot.”

Gogol has so far expressed this mystical, solemn view of his work to very few of his acquaintances. For others, he was his former pleasant, although somewhat silent interlocutor, a subtle observer, and a humorous storyteller.

Chapter VIII. The mystery of the writer's death.

Gogol's tragic end was accelerated by conversations with the fanatical priest Matvey Konstantinovsky, Gogol's confessor, in the last months of the writer's life.

Instead of reassuring and reassuring the suffering person, he pushed him, seeking spiritual support, further towards mysticism. This fateful meeting ended the crisis. This limited man adamantly reproached Gogol for his imaginary sinfulness, demonstrated the horrors of the Last Judgment, and portrayed the writer’s previous activities as a satanic temptation. Konstantinovsky’s conversations shocked Gogol so much that he, unable to control himself, once interrupted his speech with words that he could not listen any longer, that it was too scary.

During the winter of 1851-52, he did not feel entirely healthy, constantly complaining of weakness, nerve disorders, and fits of melancholy, but none of his acquaintances attached any importance to this, everyone knew that he was suspicious, and had long been accustomed to his complaints about various illnesses . In the circle of close friends, he was still cheerful and playful, willingly read his own and other people’s works, sang Little Russian songs in his “goat” voice, as he himself called it, and listened with pleasure when they were sung well. By spring, he planned to go to his native Vasilievka for several months in order to strengthen his strength there, and promised his friend Danilevsky to bring a completely finished volume of Dead Souls.

In 1850, Nadezhda Nikolaevna Sheremeteva died, she was a close friend of Gogol, they agreed on the basis of piety and became very close. This death strengthened Gogol's desire to reunite with her soul in heaven and brought his martyrdom closer.

In 1852, the sudden death of Khomyakov’s wife, née Yazykova, greatly shocked Gogol. Mixed with his natural grief over the loss of a loved one was the horror of an open grave. He was gripped by that painful “fear of death” that he had experienced more than once before. He admitted this to his confessor, and he tried to calm him down, but in vain. On Shrovetide Gogol began to fast and stopped all his literary pursuits; He visited his friends and seemed calm, only everyone noticed that he had become very thin and pale.

His tragic death - a kind of suicide, when the writer deliberately starved himself to death, was caused by the realization of the impossibility of reconciling aesthetics and morality.

The thought of imminent death did not leave him. The second volume of Dead Souls, his cherished work, was already ready for printing, and he wanted to leave it as a souvenir for his friends.

D. A. Obolensky said about the circumstances of the burning of the second volume of Dead Souls: “Gogol finished Dead Souls abroad and burned them. Then I wrote again and was pleased with my work.

But a religious frenzy began to visit him in Moscow, and then the idea of ​​burning this manuscript also fermented within him. Gogol called Count A.P. Tolstoy and told him: “Please take these notebooks and hide them. Hours come upon me when I want to burn it all. But I myself would be sorry. There seems to be some good stuff here." Count Tolstoy, out of false delicacy, did not agree, so as not to show the patient, so as not to confirm his hypochondriacal fears.

Three days later, the count came to Gogol again and found him sad.

“But,” Gogol told him, “the evil one has misled me: I burned “Dead Souls.” He said more than once that he had some kind of vision. Three days before his death, he was sure of his imminent death.”

M. P. Pogodin recalls the circumstances of the burning of the second volume of “Dead Souls” somewhat differently: “On the Sunday before Lent, he called A. P. Tolstoy to him and, as if preparing for death, instructed him to give some of his works to the disposal of a spiritual person (Metropolitan Philaret), and print others. He tried to cheer up his fallen spirit and ward off any thought of death from him.

He prayed for a long time with tears; then at three o'clock in the morning he woke up the servant, ordered him to open the chimney in the fireplace, took papers from the briefcase, tied them into a tube and put them in the fireplace. The boy threw himself on his knees in front of him and begged him not to burn the papers. The corners of the notebooks were burned, and the fire began to go out. Gogol ordered the ribbon to be untied and he himself turned over the papers, crossing himself and praying until they turned to ashes. The servant cried and said: “What have you done!”

"Don't you feel sorry for me?" - said Gogol, hugged him, kissed him and began to cry. “Some things should have been burned,” he said, after thinking, “but for others they would have prayed to God for me; but, God willing, I will recover and everything will be fine.” In the morning he said to Count Alexander Petrovich Tolstoy: “Imagine how strong the evil spirit is. I wanted to burn papers that had long been determined for this purpose, but I burned the chapters of Dead Souls, which I wanted to leave to my friends as a souvenir after my death.” This is what is known so far about the destruction of our unappreciated treasure.”

That night, left alone, Gogol again experienced the sensations that he described in his “Correspondence with Friends.”

His soul “froze in horror at the mere representation of the greatness beyond the grave and those spiritual highest creations of God, before which dust all the greatness of his creations, here visible to us and amazing us; its entire dying composition groaned, sensing the gigantic growths and fruits whose seeds we sowed in life, without seeing or hearing what monsters would rise from them.”

His work seemed to him, as it had often seemed before, as the fulfillment of a duty entrusted to him by the Creator; he was gripped by fear that his duty was not fulfilled as the Creator, who had endowed him with talent, had intended, that his writing, instead of being useful, instead of preparing people for eternal life, would have a bad, corrupting influence on them.

According to A. O. Smirnova, “Gogol looked at “Dead Souls” as something that lay outside of him, where he had to reveal the secrets commanded to him. “When I write, my eyes open with unnatural clarity. And if I read what I have written, not yet finished, to anyone, the clarity leaves my eyes. I've experienced this many times. I am sure that when I have served my duty and finished what I am called to do, I will die. And if I release into the world what is immature or share the little that I have accomplished, then I will die before I fulfill what I am called into the light.”

This is probably the key to Gogol's death. “Having shared a little of the unripe,” reading the chapters of the second volume to M. A. Konstantinovsky and receiving sharply critical feedback from him, the writer became convinced that he had violated the covenant given from above and now must die.

From that time on, he fell into a gloomy despondency, did not allow friends to visit him, or, when they came, asked them to leave under the pretext that he wanted to sleep; he said almost nothing, but often wrote texts from the Gospel and short sayings of religious content with a trembling hand. He stubbornly refused any treatment, assuring that no medicine would help him. This is how the first week of Lent passed. On Monday, the second, the confessor invited him to receive communion and receive unction.

He happily agreed to this, during

ritual, prayed with tears, held the Gospel

a candle with a weak hand. On Tuesday he felt like

it seemed easier, but on Wednesday he had it

a terrible attack of nervous fever, and on Thursday,

The news of Gogol's death shocked everyone

friends, until the last days, who did not believe

terrible premonitions. His body is like

honorary member of Moscow University,

was moved to the university church, where it remained until the funeral.

Present at the funeral were: Moscow Governor-General Zakrevsky, trustee of the Moscow educational district Nazimov, professors, university students and the mass of the public. The professors carried the coffin out of the church, and the students carried it in their arms all the way to the Danilov Monastery, where it was lowered into the ground next to the grave of their friend, the poet Yazykov.

From the memoirs of the Russian artist F.I. Jordan: “The flow of people over the course of two days was incredible. Richter, who lives near the university, wrote to me that there was no traffic on Nikitskaya Street for two days. Gogol lay in a frock coat, probably of his own free will, with a laurel wreath on his head, which was removed when the coffin was closed and brought in a lot of money from the sale of the leaves of this wreath. Everyone wanted to enrich themselves with this monument.”

Conclusion.

A peasant woman who met near the estate of G.P. Danilevsky two months after Gogol’s death stated: “It is not true that they interpret that he died. It was not he who was buried, but the poor old man; He himself, it is heard, went to pray for us in Holy Jerusalem. He left and will soon return here again.” On February 21, 1852 (old style), the greatest Russian writer Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, who had fallen into a lethargic state, was counted among the dead. “I bequeath my body not to be buried,” he wrote in his Will, “until obvious signs of decomposition appear. I mention this because even during the illness itself, moments of vital numbness came over me, my heart and pulse stopped beating...” Not heeding these words, they still buried him, so to speak, alive. It is difficult not to agree that Gogol was a great mystic. What happened in his works not only reflected on the author’s life circumstances, but also spread to his posthumous fate.

Thus, one famous writer, who was present at the reburial, took for himself a piece of well-preserved fabric from Gogol’s frock coat and boots. He bound the volume of “Dead Souls” with a piece of his frock coat, and put his boots on a shelf in his office. A mysterious story happened to them. At night, Gogol appeared to the writer and demanded that his boots be returned to him. The same thing happened on the second and third nights...

Worried, without further explanation, he gave the boots to his fellow writer. But Nikolai Vasilyevich did not leave the other owner of the ill-fated shoes alone. The story continued until one of the next owners of the boots thought of taking them to the cemetery. Isn’t it true that this non-fictional story is reminiscent of Gogol’s “The Overcoat”?

The very circumstances of Gogol's death reek of the mystical horror of the last page of Viy. Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol is one of the most mysterious, enigmatic Russian writers, a deeply religious, Orthodox man, he was no stranger to mysticism and believed that the devil led people after him, forcing them to commit evil deeds. Well, his compatriots, Ukrainians, have lived for centuries according to the principle: “Love God, but don’t anger the devil.”

The words of the prophet Jeremiah are carved on Gogol’s tombstone: “I will laugh at my bitter word.”

Conclusion.

In 1839, Gogol’s remains were transferred to the cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent, which gave rise to many mystical assumptions that Gogol did not die, but was buried in a lethargic sleep. The spirit of Gogol will continue to disturb our earthly borders for a long time, and, apparently, these assumptions are not accidental.

The great writer died, and with him the work that he created for so long, with such love, died. Whether this work was the fruit of fully developed artistic creativity or the embodiment in images of those ideas that are expressed in “Selected Passages of Correspondence with Friends” is a secret that he took with him to the grave.

V. A. Rozanov in his work “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor F. M. Dostoevsky” stated: “He called his main work “Dead Souls” and, beyond any prediction, expressed in this title the great secret of his creativity and, of course, himself .

He could not find or express the ideal; he, a great artist of forms, burned with an impotent desire to put some living soul into at least one of them. And he burned with a helpless thirst to touch the human soul, something unclear speaks of his last days, about some kind of madness, about the terrible pangs of repentance, about fasting and starvation.”

“He died a victim of the lack of his nature - and the image of an ascetic burning his writings is the last that he left from his entire strange, so extraordinary life. “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay,” these words seem to be heard from behind the crackling of a fireplace, into which a brilliant madman throws his brilliant and criminal slander against human nature.”

The passages found in his papers and published after his death belong to earlier editions of the poem and do not give an idea of ​​what form it took after the author’s final processing.

As a thinker, as a moralist, Gogol stood below the progressive people of his time, but from an early age he was animated by a noble desire to benefit society, living sympathy for human suffering, and found poetic language, brilliant humor, and living images to express them. In those works in which he surrendered to the direct attraction of creativity, his powers of observation and his powerful talent penetrated deeply into the phenomena of life and, with their vividly truthful pictures of human vulgarity and baseness, contributed to the awakening of social self-awareness.

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, who could not bear it and looked openly at the outrages that were happening around him, was buried according to all church canons in the courtyard of the St. Daniel's Monastery. There he woke up and turned over, shuddering with horror, in the darkness of the cramped coffin. And how can you not turn over in your grave at what is happening in Rus'?

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