Awareness of the responsibility of talent for his own destiny led Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol to the conviction that it was given to him to look at human vices and dignities from above, and his genius must realize all this in words.
Awakened my sensitivity …
Gogol, as a magnitude, needs no introduction. We are introduced to his work at school. Pushkin appreciated Nikolai Vasilyevich so much that he presented him with the plot of The Inspector General and the idea of Dead Souls. Bulgakov considered him a teacher. And, probably, there is not a single person in Russia who would be indifferent to Gogol.
But, like any star, even after his death his admirers “get hold of” Gogol: they manage to dig in his grave to see if the coffin has been torn off, whether the writer was buried alive: whether his skeleton lies flat or is turned to one side. And someone does, they say, stole the skull of a genius from the burial.
But it is not only the remains of Gogol that haunt his “admirers”: they are trying to reshape his worldview by “correcting” “Taras Bulba”, modernizing the staging of his plays to such an extent that authorship becomes unrecognizable, and so on.
More than 150 years have passed since the death of Gogol, and the passions around his personality, his fate and his works have not subsided. As if the forces of darkness themselves are fighting for his name, reminding us of themselves.
Even taking into account the time in which Gogol lived (1809-1852), he had a strange attitude to faith, experienced an agonizing fear of the afterlife and tried to expunge this fear with a word, creating “The Lost Letter”, “Viy”, “May Night, or The Drowned Woman "," Sorochinskaya Yarmarka "and other similar works.
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Gogol was the first child in the family, and in total six boys and six girls were born in her. Only a few survived, which, naturally, was greatly experienced by Kolya's mother, Maria Ivanovna.
There were Orthodox priests in the Gogol family, while Maria Ivanovna was more likely to have a pagan outlook based on "miracles" and infernal fears. Gogol's letter to his mother in 1833 contains the following lines: “… Once, - I vividly, as now, I remember this incident, - I asked you to tell me about the Last Judgment, and you, a child, are so good, so understandable, so They spoke touchingly about the blessings that await people for a virtuous life, and so strikingly, so terribly described the torments of sinners that it shook and awakened my sensitivity, it planted and subsequently produced the highest thoughts in me. " So, one might say, thanks to the mother in little Kolya, vague sensations of the miraculous and the sublime and the desire to realize them on paper began to wander.
The knock of time passing into eternity …
However, there were many of the most serious fears in his childhood. Gogol recalls one incident from his own life: “I was five years old. I was sitting alone in Vasilyevka. Father and mother were gone … Dusk was falling. I clung to the corner of the sofa and, in the midst of complete silence, listened to the sound of the long pendulum of an antique wall clock. There was a noise in my ears, something was advancing and disappearing somewhere. Believe me, it already seemed to me then that the beat of a pendulum was the beat of time that was going off into eternity. Suddenly the faint meowing of a cat broke the rest that weighed on me. I saw her, meowing, cautiously crept towards me. I will never forget how she walked, stretching, and soft paws gently tapped on the floorboards with claws, and green eyes sparkled with an unkind light. I felt creepy. I climbed onto the sofa and pressed myself against the wall. "Kitty, kitty," I muttered and, wanting to cheer myself up, jumped down and grabbing the cat,easily surrendered into my hands, he ran into the garden, where he threw her into the pond and several times, when she tried to swim out and go ashore, pushed her away with a 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 frightened me. But when she drowned, and the last circles on the water scattered, complete peace and silence settled down, 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 deed, whipped me. "that she scared me. But when she drowned, and the last circles on the water scattered, complete peace and silence settled down, 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 deed, whipped me. "that she scared me. But when she drowned, and the last circles on the water scattered, complete peace and silence settled down, 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 deed, whipped me."
Obviously, the “embryo of a writer” in Gogol not only reflected an unconsciously cruel act, but also made Kolya incredibly worry and execute himself. Most likely, it was this incident from childhood that inspired Gogol with the episode with his stepmother, who turned into a black cat, with which the lady cut her paw ("May Night, or the Drowned Woman").
Know what the crowd likes …
Any genius wants to be understood by his contemporaries. Gogol in this sense was no exception.
In his article "A few words about Pushkin" (1834) Nikolai Vasilyevich drew attention to the fact that the "trial" of spectators over his children's drawings was painful for him: "… As a child, I was annoyed to hear such a court, but after learned the wisdom: to know what the crowd likes and dislikes …”It was the knowledge and study of readers' tastes, to which Gogol devoted a lot of time, along with his literary genius, that allowed Nikolai Vasilyevich to achieve deafening literary success.
Arriving in St. Petersburg, Gogol unexpectedly felt here an atmosphere of deep interest in Ukrainian culture. He informs his mother that "… in St. Petersburg everything that is Little Russian occupies everyone," and asks her to recall as many details of "Little Russian life" as possible for "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka." The novels, being published, receive condemned praise not only from readers and critics, but also Pushkin himself.
Will
Gogol writes "Mirgorod", "Petersburg Stories", plays, the poem "Dead Souls" - some critics still consider it the most accurate penetration into the Russian character. The second volume of Dead Souls could not be worse than the first! And the scandals spreading around the poem wounded Gogol's delicate internal organization. Fears piled up with renewed vigor, moreover, hard writing, personal hesitation, and pressure from public opinion did not contribute to peace of mind. The only thing that Gogol has no doubt about is the power of his word.
In 1847, Gogol published the book Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends. It opens with the chapter "Testament". This is the real testament of Nikolai Vasilyevich, where, in addition to orders for burial and all sorts of instructions to friends and admirers, Gogol writes: “I am a writer, and the duty of a writer is not only a delivery of a pleasant occupation to the mind and taste; it will be strictly exacted from him if some benefit to the soul does not spread from his writings and nothing remains of him In teaching people."
And … "Selected places …" began to scold everyone who could. "How it happened that every one in Russia was angry with me, I still cannot understand this myself," Gogol wondered, answering Belinsky to his devastating article. It is surprising that, being a mystic, Gogol did not immediately understand: having published the Testament (which is normally read out after death), he really … should have died.
Death of a writer
The decision to "surrender" did not come overnight. It took a long time to think. And Gogol played along with the crowd, which was not difficult, after cultural Russia did not proclaim him its Messiah, and Belinsky practically declared him crazy (and all the criticism immediately supported, because then everything was explained).
And then the genius played everything at the highest level (it was not for nothing that Gogol loved theater and was himself an excellent actor). The writer just … starved himself to death. And already on the verge of death he put an exclamation mark - he burned the second volume of "Dead Souls".
Maintaining outward humility, Gogol took revenge on everyone. And those who did not intercede for him in time, and those who doubted his genius even for a moment. Russia was crying.
"Gogol is not in the world, Gogol is dead … Strange words that usually do not make an impression," wrote Sergei Aksakov in "A Letter to Gogol's Friends," and through a sentence: "But Gogol burned Dead Souls … these are terrible words!" To deprive readers of Russia of the result of ten years of work! But even in this strange, at first glance, act of a “mentally ill” person, signs of genius are visible. For the Gogol-genius is alien to momentary human suffering, he thinks on the scale of centuries, arranging the death of Gogol the man so that even after a century and a half they would argue and think about it, and the writer's works were read and discussed. But the most important thing: we are not given to know what Gogol burned before his death: his defeat or triumph - the answer is open, everyone is free to puzzle over it on their own. After all, Gogol knew for sure what the crowd needed.
Olga Volgina
Source: Magazine "Secrets of the XX century" № 30