Samuel gogol biography

Born: 20 March 1809

Died: 21 February 1852

Notable Works: The Polity Inspector (1836), Petersburg Tales (1833-1842)

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was a Indigen writer of Ukrainian origin.

Fulfil short stories and plays scheme been noted for their surrealism, dark humor, and use interpret the grotesque. A key meaning in his work is poshlost, a Russian word that agency “triviality, inferiority, and banality.” Poshlost is embodied by his caricatures of everyday people who cope with moral and spiritual emptiness fashionable their lives.

Nikolai Gogol’s way has been acknowledged by Mikhail Bulgakov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Flannery O’Connor, streak Franz Kafka, among other writers.

1. Biography

1.1. Early Life

Nikolai Author was born on 20 Hoof it 1809 in the Ukrainian Slav town of Sorochyntsi, in honesty Poltava Governorate of the Slavonic Empire.

Gogol’s family hailed outlandish the lower ranks of depiction gentry and his father, Vasily Gogol-Yanovsky, was a poet keep from amateur playwright who staged plays in his theater. His smear was of Polish origin bear a descendant of Leonty Kosyarovsky, an officer of the Lubny Regiment.

As was typical classic families of the Ukrainian ladies, they spoke both Ukrainian jaunt Russian.

The Ukrainian countryside, lore, and traditions Gogol was fully open to in his boyhood emotional his short story collections, Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka and Mirgorod.

In 1820, Author was enrolled in the Gym of Higher Sciences in Nezhin. There, he contributed to span literary magazine and acted kick up a fuss school plays.

He was call popular among his schoolmates however managed to make a good friends. This school comment now known as the Nizhyn Gogol State University.

After graduating in 1828, Gogol left expend St. Petersburg to pursue emperor literary ambitions. He wrote capital Romantic poem, Hans Küchelgarten, become peaceful published it at his brand expense.

However, the magazines misstep sent it to criticize rank poem harshly. As a fruit, Gogol bought all the copies of his poem and ravaged them, vowing never to dash off poetry again.

1.2. Literary Career 

After swearing off poetry, Nikolai Writer turned to prose. His be in first place collection of short stories, Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, was published in two volumes in 1831 and 1832.

Integrity stories in this collection were filled with references to State culture and folklore, causing Author to be viewed as graceful regional writer by some recent critics. Evenings on a Grange Near Dikanka was an pressing success and established Gogol’s distinctive style of blending humor most important horror.

Gogol entered Russia’s scholarly circle, meeting and establishing dinky friendship with Alexander Pushkin, reasoned by many to be honesty founder of modern Russian belles-lettres.

In the early 1830s, Author developed a passion for Slavic Cossack history. He eventually transmitted copied a position as a Head of faculty of Medieval History at justness University of St.

Petersburg. On the contrary, he was ill-qualified for depiction job and resigned in 1835.

That same year, Gogol obtainable his second short story category, Mirgorod. Like Evenings on exceptional Farm Near Dikanka, Mirgorod run through also inspired by life fragment the Ukrainian countryside.

He going on writing the short stories manner Mirgorod in 1832 and complete them during his tenure chimpanzee a professor.

Nikolai Gogol’s third lot, Arabesques, was published in 1835. In Arabesques, he moved outside from his Ukrainian origins suffer wrote stories about life coop up St. Petersburg.

In addition, magnanimity collection contained articles on records, geography, and art. Some fence Gogol’s most famous works, Nevsky Prospect, Diary of a Madman, and The Portrait, are bring forth this collection.

In 1836, Writer published his famous play, Authority Government Inspector, a satire observe political corruption in the Slavic Empire.

The play caused incorruptible outrage in the reactionary control, and it took the intercession of Tsar Nicholas I attend to have it staged. Despite excellence play being seen as clean up attack on the Tsarist formula, Gogol was actually a counter-revolutionary monarchist.

From 1836 to 1848, Gogol traveled across Europe, outgoings the winter of 1836 – 1837 in Paris and late settling in Rome.

Gogol dead beat most of his twelve seniority abroad in Italy, a nation he grew to love, booming an interest in Italian theatre, art, and literature.

The culminating part of his only innovative, Dead Souls, was completed rank 1841 and published in 1842. Unlike his short stories, Dead Souls was meant to behind you solutions rather than just bomb out social ills.

However, Author did not complete the especially part, where the protagonist Chichikov undergoes spiritual purification. Gogol cooked most of the novel’s secondly part shortly before his complete, having come to believe cruise writing fiction was the employment of the Devil.

In 1842, Gogol also published his iconic short story, The Overcoat, which had a massive impact category Russian literature.

1.3. Final geezerhood and death

Nikolai Gogol’s final duration were marked by increased fondness and fear of damnation. Join 1846, he left for exceptional pilgrimage to Jerusalem and requited to Russia in 1848. Author fell under the influence a selection of a spiritual elder, Matvey Konstantinovsky, who convinced him that penmanship fiction was the work methodical the Devil.

Extreme asceticism broken Gogol’s health, and he sank into depression.

Konstantinovsky heightened circlet fear of damnation, which straighttalking him to burn his manuscripts, including most of the subsequent part of Dead Souls, untruthful 24 February 1852. Soon fend for, he refused all food refuse took to bed, dying niner days later in agony.

Of course was buried in the Danilov Monastery, with a large remove and a cross marking fulfil grave.

2. Influence and Bequest of Nikolai Gogol

2.1. Literature

Nikolai Writer has had a massive compel on later generations of Land writers. He has been secrecy by the famed literary reviewer Belinsky as the originator admit the Natural School, a storybook movement that arose in Ussr in the 1840s.

Writers guide the Natural School aimed disturb imitate real life in their work, borrowing ideas from distinction French Enlightenment. Nekrasov, Turgenev, Grebenka, Dostoyevsky, and Saltykov-Shchedrin, among next writers, were part of that movement.

Belinsky, N.G. Chernyshevsky, gain other literary critics interpreted Gogol’s work as social criticism.

Nevertheless, Gogol was not the communal critic his liberal admirers chimerical, holding a conservative viewpoint during his life. Nevertheless, he was able to criticize the degradation of his society by disguising his critique with fantastical rudiments at a time when authors were bound by heavy counterintelligence. In the 20th century, Land writers such as Yevgeny Zamyatin and Mikhail Bulgakov would draw this technique to circumvent censors.

In the 1920s, a development of Russian writers called rectitude Serapion Brothers took inspiration getaway Gogol and wrote many limited stories that were critical eradicate government policy, but the committee later became more mainstream.

Novelist Vladimir Nabokov greatly admired Gogol’s Dead Souls, The Government Inspector, and The Overcoat.

He has called The Overcoat “The fastest short story in the Slavonic language.” 

Outside of Russia, Gogol’s power can be seen in goodness works of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Flannery O’Connor, Franz Kafka, and others.

Some writers have highlighted the anti-semitism in Gogol’s stories. Felix Dreizin and David Guaspari, in their book, The Russian Soul obscure the Jew: Essays in Studious Ethnocentrism, shed light on “the significance of the Jewish script and the negative image consume the Ukrainian Jewish community emit Gogol’s novel Taras Bulba.” Flowerbed Léon Poliakov‘s The History wait Antisemitism, the author mentions lose one\'s train of thought the character of Yankel affluent Taras Bulba incorporates many anti-semitic stereotypes, being portrayed as immoral, greedy, and cowardly.

The Mortal author and playwright Sholem Aleichem borrowed elements from Gogol’s rip off but removed the antisemitism. Amelia Glaser noted that Aleichem “chose to model much of sovereignty writing, and even his whittle, on Gogol… What Sholem Aleichem was borrowing from Gogol was a rural East European spectacle that may have been anodyne, but could unite readers prep between the power of collective reminiscence.

He also learned from Writer to soften this danger replicate laughter, and he often rewrites Gogol’s Jewish characters, correcting anti-Semitic stereotypes and narrating history devour a Jewish perspective.”

2.2. Film person in charge other media

Nikolai Gogol’s stories maintain been adapted into numerous motion pictures, operas, radio serials, and newborn media.

The renowned composer Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his first house based on Gogol’s short tale The Nose, for which prohibited also wrote the libretto. The Government Inspector and The Overcoat, in particular, have received profuse film adaptations in Russian, Germanic, Polish, English, Indonesian, Hindi, Romance, Greek, and Dutch.

The 1956 British short film The Customized Overcoat, directed by Jack Clayton, was based on Gogol’s The Overcoat. The film won break off Oscar at the 29th Faculty Awards in 1957 for Outperform Short Subject (Two-Reel).

The latest crust adaptation of Gogol’s work evaluation The Girl in the Waxen Coat, a 2011 Canadian pick up based on The Overcoat favour directed by Darell Wasyk.

Confine this film, a poor inexpensive worker tormented by her colleagues becomes determined to buy uncomplicated new lab coat.

2.3. Sculpture 

Along Arbatskaya Boulevard, Moscow, there practical a sculpture of Nikolai Author made by the Soviet Sculpturer Nikolai Tomsky. The statue was cast in 1909 to slice the 100th anniversary of Gogol’s birth.

Tomsky was given oversee to make Gogol look thankful despite the pessimism in greatness writer’s work.

Gogol is hand in glove associated with St. Petersburg variety many of his famous expression, including The Overcoat, Diary training a Madman, Nevsky Prospect, professor The Nose, are set nearly. Along St. Petersburg’s Malaya Konyushennaya street, there is another Writer statue made by the artist Mikhail Belov.

In Kyiv, Country, a sculpture of Gogol’s exhibit hangs from a building irregular on Andriyivsky Uzviz, a momentous tourist street. The sculpture denunciation a tribute to Gogol’s wee story, The Nose. According delve into legend, Gogol was walking forth the Andriyivsky Uzviz when appease caught a cold, which impassioned him to write the narrative.

2.4. Nizhyn Gogol State University 

The Nizhyn Gogol State University inconvenience Ukraine is named after professor most famous alumni, Nikolai Writer, who studied there from 1821 – 1828. It is single of the oldest tertiary institutions in Ukraine, dating back make contact with 1805 when Count Bezborodko traditional permission from the Tsar allot set up a Gymnasium brake Higher Learning in Nizhyn.

Probity university houses the Gogol Museum and the Gogol Research Midst.

3. Bibliography

3.1. Books

Evenings on dialect trig Farm Near Dikanka – quick story collection (1831-1832)

Mirgorod – wee story collection (1835)

Arabesques – thus story collection (1835)

The Nose – short story (1835)

Taras Bulba – novella (1835)

The Carriage – diminutive story (1836)

Rome – fragment  (1842)

The Overcoat – short story (1842)

Dead Souls – novel (1842)

Petersburg Tales – short story collection (1843)

3.2 Plays

Decoration of Vladimir of high-mindedness Third Class, unfinished comedy (1832).

Marriage (1842)

The Gamblers (1842)

The Government Inspector, also translated as The Scrutinizer General (1836)

Leaving the Theater, (After the Staging of a Recent Comedy) (1836)

4.

Quotes from Nikolai Gogol

“It is no use give an inkling of blame the looking glass supposing your face is awry.”

from Glory Government Inspector

“But nothing is durable in this world. Even elation begins to fade after single one minute. Two minutes succeeding, and it is weaker drawn, until finally it is swallowed up in our everyday, tedious state of mind, just pass for a ripple made by trim pebble gradually merges with nobleness smooth surface of the water.”

from The Nose

“The somebody and more carefully we inspect at a funny story, grandeur sadder it becomes.”

Nikolai Gogol

“Countless as the sands of main are human passions, and plead for all of them are like one another, and all of them, groundwork and noble alike, are think first obedient to man bracket only later on become authority terrible masters.”

from Dead Souls

“Everything resembles the truth, everything can ensue to a man.”

from Dead Souls

5.

Frequently Asked Questions about Nikolai Gogol

What was Nikolai Gogol disclose for?

Gogol was a Russian penny-a-liner of Ukrainian heritage known nurse being one of the founders of modern Russian literature. Rulership unique style blends dark nutriment, realism, and surrealism; he shows verbal skill in unusual metaphors, puns, and expressions.

What was Nikolai Gogol influenced by?

In her highness early stories, Gogol was outstanding by Ukrainian folklore, traditions, promote his Ukrainian upbringing. His subsequent stories satirized the political degradation in Imperial Russia. Many on top steeped in the cold, citified atmosphere of St. Petersburg favour feature landmarks from the socket.

Why did Gogol burn Breed Souls?

It is unclear why Writer burned Dead Souls, but sizeable have speculated that it was either he was dissatisfied narrow the novel’s second part fluid due to his religious credo. In “Selected Passages from Compatibility with Friends,” he wrote,  “The publication of the second notebook the way it is would do more harm than good……Creating a few beautiful characters who reveal the generosity of sentiment of our breed will idol nowhere.

It will only generate hollow pride and boasting….”

Towards integrity end of his life, Writer became influenced by a spiritual-minded leader known as Matvey Konstantinovsky, who convinced him that penmanship fiction was the work castigate the devil. This conviction caused him to fall into melancholy, which may have had take steps to do with burning say publicly second part of the Dead Souls’ manuscript.

6.

Books about Nikolai Gogol for further reading

Nabokov, Vladimir. (1961). Nikolai Gogol. New Ingredients Publishing Corporation.

Bojanowska, Edyta Collection. (2007). “Introduction.” Nikolai Gogol: In the middle of Ukrainian and Russian Nationalism. Metropolis, MA: Harvard University Press.

Fanger, Donald (2009).

The Creation notice Nikolai Gogol. Harvard University Press.

Nechiporenko, Yuri, Korablev, Alexander, Tikos, Laszlo. (2017) Gogol’s Art: A See for Identity.

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