The influence of Gogol's creativity on the development of Russian literature.

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol - the most mysterious star in the sky of Russian literature of the 19th and 20th centuries - still amazes the reader and viewer with both the magical power of pictoriality, and the extraordinary originality of his path to the Motherland, to the solution and even ... to create a future for it. A bias to the Future ... Gogol - let us once again recall Pushkin's dream “The rumor about me will spread throughout all of Russia,” and Mayakovsky's bashful hope, “I want to be understood by my native country,” which sounded a hundred years later, completed the idea of ​​moving into the Future, into the alarming and, as many believed, in the "beautiful Dapeko", which will not only be cruel to a person. And in this regard, he is closest to many things in Russian folklore, in folk song

“It is impossible to forget anything of what Gogol said, even the little things, not even necessary,” noted F.M.Dostoevsky. "Gogol had a cutter Phidias" - wrote the philosopher and critic of the twentieth century VV Rozanov. - How many words are dedicated to Petrushka, Chichikov's lackey? And I remember no less than Nikolai Rostov. And Osip? " Indeed ... Melancholy Osip, Khlestakov's servant in The Inspector General, only says, warning his master, the inspired writer of the poem about his own significance: “Get out of here. Honestly, it's time already, ”- yes, he accepts gifts from merchants, including ... a commemorative rope (“ give me a rope, and the rope will come along in the road ”). But this "string in reserve" was remembered by many generations of Russian viewers.

And with what supernatural completeness, it was in Gogol that the two most beautiful qualities that live separately in many, with the exception of Pushkin, were combined: exceptional vital observation and an equally rare power of imagination. If the artistic image as the main exponent of the spiritual life of Russia, the concentration of its spiritual life before Gogol was, as it were, distant from facts, from factuality, then in Gogol's work - long before M. Gorky! - the fact seemed to have advanced into the depths of the image, sharpened the image, made it heavier.

From Gogol's reality, incredibly wide trousers, a fatal pipe, Taras Bulba's "cradle", dry "singing doors" in the idyllic house of "old-world landowners" will forever arise in memory. And the mysterious melody of “a string ringing in the fog”, from the Petersburg fantastic dreams of Poprishchina (“Notes of a madman”), which amazed even A. Blok.

It is still difficult to decide - do we even “remember” in detail the magic bird-three itself, this “simple, it seems, road projectile”? Or every time together with Gogol we “compose” this winged troika in our own way, “supplement”, decipher the transcendent riddle of the indomitable, horror-guiding movement? An immense mystery of the "smoke of a steaming road", the secret of horses unknown to the world with incredible, but, as it were, visible "whirlwinds In the manes"? Probably, a contemporary of Gogol, I. Kireevsky, was right when he said that after reading Dead Souls, we have “hope And the thought of the great purpose of our fatherland”.

But to this day the unanswered question is mysterious - the epigraph to all post-Holocaust literature - “Rus, where are you rushing? Give an answer. Doesn't give an answer "! And what could be the answer if Russia-troika rushes "through the Korobochka and the Sobakevichs" (P.V. Palievsky)? If two famous writers of the beginning of the twentieth century, creating their image of Gogol, close to symbolism, made up this Rus-troika “from the mad Poprishchyn, the witty Khlestakov and the prudent Chichikov” (DS Merezhkovsky) or ?. “Gogol is rich: not one, but two triplets - Nozdrev - Chichikov - Manilov and Korobochka - Plyushkin - Sobakevich ... Nozdryov - Chichikov - Manilov through forests and mountains life under the clouds soar - air troika. It is not the owners who build life, but another trio: Korobochka-Plyushkin-Sobakevich. "

What did Gogol teach all subsequent Russian literature?

The usual answer is that he brought Laughter as an element of life to the fore, that viewers and readers never laughed so much in Russia - after the "Minor" by D. Fonvizin with his Prostakovs, Skotinins and Mitrofanushka, after "Woe from Wit" by A. Griboyedov, - how they laughed together with Gogol, is hardly accurate in everything. Gogol's laughter in Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka (1832) is still bright, light, sometimes amusing, although often the manifestations of all kinds of sorcerers, sorcerers, moon thieves alternate with continuous dances frightening with their automaticity, with a "hopak", as if guarding this optimism ... An unrestrained tide of some desperate mischief holds together an ideal and idyllic world.

And what is the laugh in the "Petersburg stories", in the entire Gogol demonology of Petersburg, this most fatal, willful city in Russia? Gogol removes in these stories the funny or scary figures of the carriers of evil all the obvious mischievous fantasy and devilry, removes Basavryuk, the little witch, mermaids, sorcerers somewhere, but some faceless, boundless evil reigns in his Petersburg. For the first time in Russian prose, that "devil" is born, that world evil, which will then be "disenchanted" by Bulgakov in The Master and Margarita with his Satan Woland, and Platonov in many plays, and of course, A. Bely in Paterburg ", FK Sologub in" Small demon "and even Shukshin in his phantasmagorias" Until the third roosters "and" In the morning they woke up ... ". Even Dostoevsky came out of more than one "Overcoat", and Sukhovo-Kobylin with his dramatic trilogy "The Wedding of Krechinsky", "Deed", "Death of Tarepkin", as well as from Gogol's "Nose" with its deceptive figurativeness, false concreteness, terrible illusion, the fear of space, the desire to hide from the oncoming emptiness ... The squares of hypertrophied sizes in St. Petersburg ... reflect the incomplete habitation, small processing of space in early St. Petersburg (it is no coincidence that Shoes do rob on a wide square, whereas in Moscow it was done in narrow lanes). Petersburg fear, the very evil in Gogol's "Petersburg stories" - this is no longer a nasty devil neighbor, a sorcerer, not Basavryuk. The writer does not see the bearers of living evil, bearers of witchcraft. The entire Nevsky Prospect is a lasting phantasmagoria, deception: - Everything is deception, everything is a dream, everything is not what it seems! " With this incantation, Gogol concludes "Nevsky Prospect", a disturbing story about the tragic death of the idealist artist Piskarev and the happy "enlightenment", getting rid of the thirst for revenge of the vulgar lieutenant Pirogov, whipped by the Germans-artisans. From this Petersburg, together with Khlestakov, it is precisely the fear, the companion and the shadow of Petersburg that will come to the prefabricated provincial city in the "Inspector General".

Gogol so peculiarly “glorified” (didn’t he celebrate?) Petersburg that many historians later unjustly blamed and reproached him: with him, Gogol, began the well-known “tarnishing”, the darkening of the image of Petersburg, the clouding of its regal beauty, the protracted era of the tragic twilight of Petropolis.

It was after Gogol that Dostoevsky's tragic Petersburg, and the entire alarming silhouette of a ghost town in the novel Petersburg by A. Bely, and the city of A. Blok, where “Above the bottomless hole into eternity, / Gasping, flies a trotter ...” appeared. Gogol's Petersburg became in the twentieth century the prototype, the basis of that grandiose stage for the multi-act action of revolutions, became a city “familiar to tears” (O. Mandelstam), for A. Blok in the poem “The Twelve” and many others.

The scope and depth of contradictions in the artist are often evidence of the greatness of his searches, the transcendence of hopes and sorrows. Did Gogol, who created the comedy The Inspector General (1836), together with the future Khlestakov (he was called Skakunov in the first edition) understand this new, mirage space, full of echoes of the future, did he understand the whole meaning of The Inspector General, his brilliant creation?

The funny heroes of "The Inspector General" - extremely distinct, as if sculptured figures of officials, inhabitants of the prefabricated city - seem to be drawn into the field of action of forces alienated, even from the author, in the field of absurdity and delusion. They are wrapped in some kind of impersonal carousel. They even burst into the stage, literally squeezing out, breaking off the door, as Bobchinsky burst into Khlestakov's room, bringing down the door from the corridor to the floor. Gogol himself seems to be alienated from comedy, where the element of laughter, the element of action and expressive language reigns. Only at the end of the comedy does he seem to “come to his senses”, trying to attribute both to the audience and to himself a very edifying and painful doubt: “Why are you laughing? You are laughing at yourself! " By the way, in the text of 1836 there was no such significant remark, a signal to stop the "carousel", to general petrification, to turn sinners into a kind of "pillars of salt". Are they, the funny heroes of The Inspector General, villainous? Before Gogol there were no such truthful, frank, trusting "villains", as if begging to soften the punishment, rushing about with their vices, as if in confession spreading everything about themselves. They behave like walking under God, convinced that Khlestakov (the messenger of a terrible, Petersburg higher power) knows their thoughts and deeds in advance ...

"Dead Souls" (1842) is a lonely, even more difficult attempt by Gogol, the direct predecessor of Dostoevsky's prophetic realism, to express in an extremely conceptual way the "Russian point of view" on the fate of man in the world, on all his irrational connections, to express feelings of conscience and voice through analysis vices. The immortal poem is a synthesis of the entire artistic spiritual experience of the writer and, at the same time, a sharp overcoming of the boundaries of literature, foreshadowing even Tolstoy's future renunciation of the artistic word. By the way, Leo Tolstoy, by the way, will speak almost in Gogol's way about the spiritual exhaustion, overstrain of the cognitive thought of the Russian writer, about his suffering conscience and the pangs of speech: for him in his later years, on the threshold of the twentieth century, all creativity is the knowledge of the Motherland “at the limit of thought and at the beginning of the prayer. "

Gogol is the founder of a great series of grandiose ethical attempts to save Russia by turning her to Christ: it was continued in the sermons of L. Tolstoy, and in the often painful attempts of S. Yesenin to realize the fate, the whirlwind of events, the deeds of those that in Russia in 1917 only “ Sprayed around, dug up / And disappeared under the devil's whistle. " And even in some kind of sacrifice of V. Mayakovsky: “I will pay for everyone, I will pay for everyone” ... The death of A. Blok in 1921 at the moment when music disappeared in the era is also a distant version of “Gogol's self-immolation”. Gogol "gogolized" many of the decisions and thoughts of writers. He seemed to be trying to move the most motionless, petrified, to call everyone along the path of Russia-Troika. And the riddle of "Dead Souls", that is, the first volume, with Chichikov's visits to six landowners (each of them is now "deader", now more alive than the previous one), with the fragments of the second volume, is most often solved by focusing on the image of the road, on the motives movement. As in The Inspector General, Gogol's thought in Dead Souls seems to be torn through sinful Russia, past a heap of old stuff in Plyushkin's house to holy, ideal Russia. The idea of ​​the God-forsakenness of Russia is refuted by many shrewd sorrowful views in the biographies of heroes, including Chichikov. Often the writer hears and sees what goes to help his despair, his melancholy: "It is still a mystery - this inexplicable revelry, which is heard in our songs, rushes somewhere past life and the song itself, as if burned by the desire for a better homeland" ... His Chichikov, who laughed at Sobakevich's "comments" on the list of dead souls, suddenly creates whole poems about the carpenter Stepan Probka, about the barge haule Abakum Fyrov, who went to the Volga, where "a rampant wide life" and a song "endless like Russia" reign.

Nikolai Gogol arrives. His books are familiar to everyone. Films and performances are made based on his works. The work of this writer is very diverse. It contains both romantic stories and works of realistic prose.

Biography

Nikolai Gogol was born in Ukraine into the family of a regimental clerk. The satirist's talent manifested itself in him early. Gogol showed an indefatigable thirst for knowledge already in childhood. Books played a big role in his life. At the Nizhyn school, where he received his education, he was not given sufficient knowledge. Therefore, he subscribed to additional literary magazines and almanacs.

Back in his school years, he began to compose witty epigrams. Teachers were the subject of ridicule of the future writer. But the lyceum student did not attach much importance to such creative research. After completing the course, he dreamed of leaving for St. Petersburg, believing that there he would be able to get a job on civil service.

Office service

The dream came true, and the lyceum graduate left his native land. However, in St. Petersburg he was able to get only a modest position in the chancellery. In parallel with this work, he created small but they were bad, and almost all copies of the first poem, which was called "Hans Kuchelgarten", he bought in a bookstore and burned with his own hand.

Longing for a small homeland

Soon failures in creativity and material difficulties plunged Gogol into despondency. northern capital began to cause melancholy in his soul. And more and more often the employee of the small office recalled the Ukrainian landscapes dear to his heart. Not everyone knows which book made Gogol famous. But there is no schoolchild in our country who would not know the work "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka." The creation of this book was inspired by the longing for a small homeland. And it was this literary work that brought fame to Gogol and allowed him to gain recognition from his fellow writers. Gogol was awarded a laudatory review of Pushkin himself. The books of the great poet and writer in his youth had a decisive influence on him. Therefore, the opinion of the leading figure of literature was especially valuable for the young author.

"Petersburg Tales" and other works

Since then, Gogol has been well-known in literary circles. He communicated closely with Pushkin and Zhukovsky, which could not but affect his work. From now on, writing became the meaning of life for him. He began to take this matter very seriously. And the result was not long in coming.

During this period, the most famous books Gogol. Their list suggests that the writer worked in an extremely intense mode and did not give particular preference to one or another genre. His works have caused a resonance in the world of literature. Belinsky wrote about the talent of the young prose writer, who is distinguished by his amazing ability to recognize unique abilities at an early stage. The realistic direction laid down by Pushkin developed at a worthy level, as evidenced by Gogol's books. Their list includes the following works:

• "Portrait".
• "Diary of a Madman".
• "Nose".
• "Nevsky Avenue".
• "Taras Bulba".

Each of them is unique in its own way. In a sense, Nikolai Gogol became an innovator. His books were distinguished by the fact that for the first time in the history of Russian literature the topic was touched upon.This was done superficially, but before that the fate of thousands ordinary people depicted in fiction only in passing.

But no matter how strong and unique the talent of the creator of "The Overcoat" was, he nevertheless made a special contribution to literature thanks to the writing of "The Inspector General" and "Dead Souls".

Satire

Early works brought success to Gogol. However, the writer was not satisfied with this. Gogol did not want to remain just a contemplator of life. The realization that the mission of the writer is extremely great was growing stronger in his soul. The artist is able to convey to his readers his vision of modern reality, thereby influencing the consciousness of the masses. From now on, Gogol worked for the good of Russia and its people. His books testify to this good aspiration. Poem " Dead Souls"Became the greatest work in literature. However, after the release of the first volume, the writer was severely attacked by adherents of conservative views.

The difficult situation that developed in the life and work of the writer led to the fact that he did not succeed in completing the poem. The second volume, which was written shortly before his death, was burned by the writer.

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was born on March 20, 1809 in the Poltava province in the family of a small landowner. Their family was quite large. In addition to Nikolai himself, he had six more children: four sisters and a brother.

"Early" Gogol

Nikolai Vasilyevich spent his childhood at his parent's estate, which was located near the village of Dikanka. This place, as the writer himself learned with age, was embraced by many different legends, beliefs and mysterious traditions, which later resulted in the works of the creator. As expected, his father, Vasily, played an important role in the upbringing of Gogol. He was an ardent admirer of the most different types arts, including poetry and funny comedies. With age, Nikolai and his brother Ivan were sent to study at the Poltava district school.

Nikolai began to take his first steps in the field of art in 1921. It was during this period of his life that he entered the gymnasium. higher sciences, which at that time was located in Nizhyn. By the way, Gogol was then engaged exclusively in painting, and also entered as an actor in various comedy scenes. He tries himself in many types of art, including literature. At this time, his satire was born, called "Something about Nezhin, or the Law is not Written to Fools," which, unfortunately, could not be preserved.

In 1828 he finished his studies at the gymnasium and moved to St. Petersburg. Of course, such a change was not the easiest one in the life of the author. He experienced serious financial difficulties, but did not give up his own hands. At that time, he makes his first attempts in the literary field, first the poem "Italy" appears, and then under the pseudonym "V. Alov "Gogol prints" idyll in pictures "" Gantz Kuchelgarten ". Actually, this experience turned out to be a failure. Critics assessed this work in an extremely negative light, which only strengthened the heavy mood and existence of the writer. The writer himself, throughout his life, treated his creations extremely touchingly and paid attention to their criticism, for which he was very worried and worried.

This very much touched the writer himself, which is why in 1829 he burns all unsold copies of his works and in July of the same year he goes to live abroad - to Germany. Nevertheless, fate developed in such a way that the writer, literally two months later, returned to St. Petersburg. At the end of 1829 he manages to get into the service in the Department of State Economy and Public Buildings of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. This period of Gogol's life is perhaps fundamental. The thing is that thanks to such a position, he was able to gain some experience, as well as the opportunity to capture the bureaucratic life in the form that it really is. Government service disappointed Gogol, and quite strongly, but later, he passed on this experience to one of his works.

Gogol's creativity

After such a service, he did not abandon his attempts to write interesting works and in 1832 published one of his most famous books - "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka". It is based on the legends of the Ukrainian people, songs, fairy tales and beliefs and, naturally, on the personal experience of Gogol. This work created a huge sensation, many admired him, and Gogol himself has since become a very famous cultural figure. Even Pushkin noted that the appearance of this work is an extremely unusual phenomenon in Russian literature.
In the same year, the already famous Gogol arrives in Moscow. He begins to communicate with M.P. Pogodin, the family of S.T. Aksakova, M.N. Zagoskin, I.V. and P.V. Kireevsky, and they, in turn, have a great influence on him, on his worldview and becoming a writer. Two years later, the writer was appointed Adjunct Professor in the Department of General History at St. Petersburg University. At this time, he closely studies the history of Ukraine and its people, which later becomes the basis for another famous and popular work of Gogol - "Taras Bulba". He is finalizing another year at the university and comes to the conclusion that he should completely devote himself to creativity and literature.

Naturally, the writer had a lot of free time because of such the decision, which allows him to give all his strength only to writing his stories. The year 1835 becomes quite rich for him in the creation of a variety of works. At this time appeared: a collection of stories "Mirgorod", which included "Old World Landowners", "Taras Bulba", "Viy" and others, and a collection of "Arabesques" (on the themes of St. Petersburg life).

Immediately after this, Gogol begins to write The Inspector General. As we already know, in writing this work, the writer was helped by his personal experience when he was in the public service. Of course, it was not without the help of other famous figures, for example, Pushkin, who gave him a little hint with the plot. The work was written very quickly, and already in January of the next year he reads a comedy at an evening with Zhukovsky (in the presence of Pushkin, P.A.Vyazemsky and some other famous writers). A month later, Gogol is staging on the stage of the Alexandria Theater, and the premiere took place in April of the same year. Indeed, "The Inspector General" made a huge stir among many famous cultural figures of that time and, of course, ordinary readers as well.

The immense popularity of "The Inspector General" made a huge number of editorial boards pay attention to Gogol, he was invited to social events, but the writer got tired of all this pretty quickly. He left Moscow and went to live abroad. At first he lived in Switzerland, then moved to Paris, but all this time he did not sit with folded hands, but was engaged in writing "Dead Souls". Soon the news of the death of Pushkin reached him, which was a real blow.

In the fall of 1839, the writer moved back to Moscow and showed several chapters of Dead Souls. Of course, they made an impression on the public. But despite this, the work was not yet completed to the end and Gogol again leaves his homeland. In 1840, in Vienna, the writer was overtaken by one of the first attacks of his mental illness. In October of the same year, he returns and reads the last five chapters of Dead Souls. Despite the fact that the public liked the work, it is not allowed to be published in Moscow. Then Gogol sent him to St. Petersburg, where he was gladly helped, only with the condition of changing the name. The work was a great success, but from time to time there were negative reviews about the farce. Excessive caricature, but this did not hurt the writer in any way, for he had already gone to live abroad and work on the second volume of Dead Souls.

During this period of his life, it takes him a lot of time to prepare for the creation of a collection of essays, but he also continues to work on the second volume. The writer's state of mind deteriorates significantly, and he tries to find peace in the resorts, but this does not help him much. In 1845, as a result of the aggravation of his illness, he burns the second volume of Dead Souls. The writer argued that in his new work the roads to the ideal were not clearly shown.

Last years

In the last years of his own life, the writer traveled very often. In 1847 he published a series of articles in the form of letters "Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends." Here the censorship tried very hard, it was changed almost beyond recognition, and the result of its appearance was extremely negative - critics recognized it as artistically weak. At the same time, the writer is also working on Reflections on the Divine Liturgy, which appears only after the death of Gogol. At this time of his life, he paid a lot of attention to religion, believed that he could not work until he bowed to the Holy Sepulcher and went there. In 1850, the writer makes a marriage proposal to A.M. Vielgorskaya, but, unfortunately, she is refused. In 1852, he regularly meets with Archpriest Matvey Konstantinovsky, a real fanatic and mystic.

February of the same year became fatal for Gogol. On the night of February 11-12, the writer orders his servant Semyon to bring a portfolio with his manuscripts. He puts all his notebooks and notes in the fireplace and simply burns them. Only a small portion of the draft manuscripts remain, relating to the various editions of Dead Souls. On February 20, the medical council decides to compulsory treatment Gogol, but, as it turns out, no treatment helps him. The next day the writer dies, moreover, with the words: "Ladder, hurry up, let's ladder!".

Born on March 20 (April 1), 1809 in the village of Sorochintsy, Poltava province, in the family of a landowner. Gogol was the third child, and there were 12 children in the family.

Training in the biography of Gogol took place at the Poltava School. Then in 1821 he entered the class of the Nizhyn gymnasium, where he studied justice. During his school years, the writer did not differ in special abilities in his studies. Only drawing lessons and the study of Russian literature were good for him. He could write only mediocre works.

The beginning of the literary path

In 1828, in the life of Gogol, there was a move to St. Petersburg. There he served as an official, tried to get a job in the theater as an actor and studied literature. The acting career did not go well, and the service did not bring pleasure to Gogol, and sometimes even burdened him. And the writer decided to prove himself in the literary field.

In 1831, Gogol met with representatives of the literary circles of Zhukovsky and Pushkin, undoubtedly these acquaintances strongly influenced his future fate and literary activity.

Gogol and theater

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol's interest in the theater manifested itself in his youth, after the death of his father, a wonderful playwright and storyteller.

Realizing the full power of the theater, Gogol took up drama. Gogol's work "The Inspector General" was written in 1835 and staged for the first time in 1836. Due to the negative reaction of the public to the production of "The Inspector General", the writer leaves the country.

last years of life

In 1836, in the biography of Nikolai Gogol, he traveled to Switzerland, Germany, Italy, as well as a short stay in Paris. Then, from March 1837, work continued in Rome on the first volume of Gogol's greatest work, Dead Souls, which was conceived by the author back in St. Petersburg. After returning home from Rome, the writer publishes the first volume of the poem. While working on the second volume, Gogol suffered a spiritual crisis. Even a trip to Jerusalem did not help to rectify the situation.

At the beginning of 1843, Gogol's famous story "The Overcoat" was published for the first time.

Chronological table

Other biography options

• The writer was fond of mysticism and religion. The most mysterious work of Gogol is considered the story "Viy", created, according to the author himself, on the basis of the Ukrainian folk legends. However, literary scholars and historians still cannot find evidence of this, which indicates the exclusive authorship of the mystifier writer.
• It is also believed that a few days before his death, the great writer burned the second volume of Dead Souls. Some scientists consider this to be an unreliable fact, but no one will ever know the truth.
• It is still not known for certain exactly how the writer died. One of the main versions says that Gogol was buried alive. The proof of this was the change in the position of his body during the reburial.
• see all

Gogol was born on March 20 (April 1), 1809 in the town of Velyki Sorochintsy, Mirgorodsky district (district), Poltava province, in the very heart of Little Russia, as Ukraine was then called. The Gogoli-Yanovskys were a typical landlord family that owned 1,000 acres of land and 400 serfs. The future writer spent his childhood at his parents' estate Vasilyevka. It was located in Mirgorodsky district next to the legendary Dikanka, whose name the writer immortalized in his first book.

In 1818, Gogol, together with his brother Ivan, studied for a little over a year at the Mirgorod district school. After the death of his brother, his father took him out of the school and prepared him for admission to the local gymnasium. However, it was decided to send Gogol to the Gymnasium of Higher Sciences in the town of Nizhyn in the neighboring Chernigov province, where he studied for seven years - from 1821 to 1828. Here Gogol first met modern literature, became interested in theater. His first literary experiments also belonged to the time of his stay in the gymnasium.

The breakthrough of the immature pen was the "idyll in pictures" "Ganz Küchelgarten", an imitative romantic work. But it was on him that the novice writer pinned special hopes. Arriving at the end of 1828 in St. Petersburg to "look for places" for an official, Gogol was inspired by a secret thought: to establish himself on the St. Petersburg literary Olympus, to stand next to the first writers of that time - A.S. Pushkin, V.A. Zhukovsky, A.A. Delvig.

Two months after his arrival in St. Petersburg, Gogol published (without specifying the name) the romantic poem "Italy" ("Son of the Fatherland and the Northern Archives", v. 2, no. 12). And in June 1829, a young provincial, extremely ambitious and arrogant, published the poem "Ganz Küchelgarten" taken out of his suitcase, spending most of his parents' money on it. The book was published under the “talking” pseudonym V. Alov, hinting at the author's high hopes. However, they did not materialize: the reviews for the publication of the poem were negative. Shaken, Gogol left for Germany, but first took all copies of the book from bookstores and burned them. The literary debut turned out to be unsuccessful, and the nervous, suspicious, painfully proud debutant for the first time showed that attitude to failures, which will then be repeated all his life: burning manuscripts and fleeing abroad after another “failure”.

Returning from abroad at the end of 1829, Gogol entered the civil service - he became an ordinary Petersburg official. The pinnacle of Gogol's bureaucratic career was the assistant clerk in the Department of Appanages. In 1831 he left the hated office and thanks to the patronage of new friends - V.A. Zhukovsky and P.A. Pletnev - entered the pedagogical field: he became a history teacher at the Patriotic Institute, and in 1834-1835. served as Adjunct Professor at the Department of General History at St. Petersburg University. However, in the foreground for Gogol is literary work, his biography, even during the years of bureaucratic and pedagogical service, is the biography of the writer.

IN creative development Gogol can be divided into three periods:

1) 1829-1835 - Petersburg period. The failure (publication of "Gantz Küchelgarten") was followed by the resounding success of the collection of romantic stories "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka" (1831-1832). In January-February 1835, the collections Mirgorod and Arabesques were published;

2) 1835-1842 - the time of work on two major works: the comedy "The Inspector General" and the poem "Dead Souls". The beginning of this period - the creation of the first edition of "The Inspector General" (December 1835, delivered in April 1836), completion - the publication of the first volume of "Dead Souls" (May 1842) and the preparation of "Works" in 4 volumes ( came out of print in January 1843). During these years, the writer lived abroad (from June 1836), twice visiting Russia to organize literary affairs;

3) 1842-1852 - the last period of creativity. Its main content was the work on the second volume of Dead Souls, which took place under the sign of intense religious and philosophical searches. The most important events of this period were the publication in January 1847 of the publicistic book "Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends" and the burning of personal papers by Gogol in February 1852, which apparently included the manuscript of the second volume of the poem.

The first period of Gogol's work (1829-1835) began with a search for his own theme, his own path in literature. On long, lonely evenings, Gogol worked hard on stories from Little Russian life. Petersburg impressions, bureaucratic life - all this was left in reserve. His imagination transported him to Little Russia, from which until recently he tried to leave so as not to "perish in insignificance." Gogol's literary ambition was fueled by his acquaintance with famous poets: V.A. Zhukovsky, A.A. Delvig, Pushkin's friend P.A. Pletnev. In May 1831, the long-awaited acquaintance with Pushkin took place.

A revenge for the experienced bitterness of an unsuccessful debut was the publication in September 1831 of the first part of Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka. Pushkin announced to the public about a new, "unusual for our literature" phenomenon, guessing the nature of Gogol's talent. He saw in the young romantic writer two seemingly distant qualities: the first - "real gaiety, sincere, without pretense, without stiffness", the second - "sensitivity", poetry of feelings.

After the release of the first part of "Evenings ..." Gogol, elated by his success, experienced an extraordinary creative enthusiasm. In 1832, he published the second part of the collection, worked on the everyday story The Terrible Boar and the historical novel Hetman (excerpts from these unfinished works were published in Literaturnaya Gazeta and the almanac Northern Flowers) and at the same time wrote articles on literary and pedagogical themes. Note that Pushkin highly appreciated this side of Gogol's genius, considering him the most promising literary critic of the 1830s. However, it was "Evenings ..." that remained the only monument of the initial period of Gogol's creativity. In this book, according to the writer himself, "the first sweet moments of young inspiration" are captured.

The collection includes eight stories, differing in terms of problems, genre and style features. Gogol used the widely spread in the literature of the 1830s. the principle of cyclization of works. The stories are united by the unity of the scene (Dikanka and its environs), the figures of the storytellers (all of them are well-known people in Dikanka, who know each other well) and the "publisher" (Rudy Panko's pasichnik). Gogol disappeared under the literary "mask" of a commoner publisher, embarrassed by his entry into the "big world" of literature.

The material of the stories is truly inexhaustible: these are oral stories, legends, tales on both modern and historical topics. “If only they listened and read,” says the pasichnik in the preface to the first part, “and I, perhaps, are just damned lazy to rummage around,“ I’ll have enough for ten such books. ” Gogol freely juxtaposes events, "confuses" the centuries. The goal of the romantic writer is to know the spirit of the people, the origins of the national character. The time of action in the stories "Sorochinskaya Fair" and "Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt" is modernity, in most of the works ("May Night, or the Drowned Woman", "The Lost Letter", "The Night Before Christmas" and "The Enchanted Place") - XVIII century, finally, in the "Evening on the eve of Ivan Kupala" and "Terrible revenge" - the 17th century. In this kaleidoscope of eras, Gogol finds the main romantic antithesis of his book - the past and the present.

The past in "Evenings ..." appears in a halo of fabulous and miraculous. In it, the writer saw a spontaneous play of good and evil forces, morally healthy people, not touched by the spirit of profit, practicality and mental laziness. Gogol depicts Little Russian folk festive and fair life. The holiday with its atmosphere of freedom and fun, beliefs and adventures associated with it take people out of the framework of their usual existence, making the impossible possible. Previously impossible marriages are concluded ("Sorochinskaya Fair", "May Night", "The Night Before Christmas"), all evil spirits are activated: devils and witches tempt people, trying to prevent them. A holiday in Gogol's tales is all sorts of transformations, disguises, hoaxes, beatings and disclosure of secrets. Gogol's laugh in "Evenings ..." is humorous. Its basis is juicy folk humor, which is able to express in words comic contradictions and incongruities, of which there are many in the atmosphere of a holiday and in ordinary, everyday life.

The originality of the artistic world of stories is associated, first of all, with the wide use of folklore traditions: it was in folk tales, semi-pagan legends and traditions that Gogol found themes and plots for his works. He used the belief about a fern blooming on the night before the holiday of Ivan Kupala, legends about mysterious treasures, selling souls to the devil, about flying and transforming witches ... In many stories mythological characters act: sorcerers and witches, werewolves and mermaids and, of course, the devil, to whose tricks the popular superstition is ready to ascribe any unkind deed.

Evenings ... is a book of fantastic incidents. The fantastic for Gogol is one of the most important aspects of the people's world outlook. Reality and fantasy are intricately intertwined in people's ideas about the past and the present, about good and evil. The writer considered the penchant for legendary and fantastic thinking to be an indicator of people's spiritual health.

Science fiction in "Evenings ..." is ethnographically reliable. Heroes and storytellers of incredible stories believe that the entire area of ​​the unknown is inhabited by evil spirits, and the "demonological" characters themselves are shown by Gogol in a reduced, everyday, guise. They are also "Little Russians", they only live on their "territory", from time to time they are a fool ordinary people interfering with their lives, celebrating and playing with them. For example, the witches in "The Missing Letter" play fools, inviting the narrator's grandfather to play with them and return, if they're lucky, his hat. The devil in the story "The Night Before Christmas" looks like "a real provincial solicitor in uniform." He grabs a month and burns, blowing on his hand, like a man who accidentally grabbed a hot frying pan. Explaining his love to the "incomparable Solokha", the devil "kissed her hand with such antics as the assessor at the priest's." Solokha herself is not only a witch, but also a villager, greedy and loving admirers.

Popular fiction intertwines with reality, clarifying the relationship between people, separating good and evil. As a rule, the heroes in Gogol's first collection defeat evil. The triumph of man over evil is a folk motif. The writer filled it with new content: he affirmed the power and strength of the human spirit, capable of curbing the dark, evil forces that rule in nature and interfere in people's lives.

Ordinary Little Russians became the "positive" heroes of the stories. They are depicted as strong and cheerful, talented and harmonious. Jokes and pranks, the desire to be mischievous are combined in them with a willingness to fight evil and evil for their happiness. In the story "Terrible Vengeance", the heroic-epic image of the Cossack Danila Burulbash, the predecessor of Taras Bulba, was created. Its main features are love for the homeland and love of freedom. In an effort to curb the sorcerer, punished by God for the crime, Danila dies as a hero. Gogol uses the folk-poetic principles of depicting a person. His characters are bright, memorable personalities, there are no contradictions and painful reflection in them. The writer is not interested in details, the particulars of their lives, he seeks to express the main thing - the spirit of freedom, the breadth of nature, pride, living in the "free Cossacks". In his depiction, according to Pushkin, it is "a singing and dancing tribe."

With the exception of the story "Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt", all the works in Gogol's first collection are romantic. The author's romantic ideal manifested itself in the dream of good and fair relations between people, in the idea of ​​national unity. Gogol created his poetic utopia based on Little Russian material: it expresses his ideas about what the life of the people should be like, what a person should be. The colorful legendary and fantastic world of "Evenings ..." sharply differs from the boring, petty life of Russian inhabitants, shown in "The Inspector General" and especially in "Dead Souls". But the festive atmosphere of the collection is violated by the invasion of dull "creatures" - Shponka and his aunt Vasilisa Kashpo-equal. Sometimes sad, elegiac notes sound in the text of the stories: it is through the voices of the narrators that the voice of the author breaks through. He looks at the sparkling life of the people through the eyes of a Petersburger, fleeing the cold breath of the ghostly capital, but he foresees the collapse of his utopia and therefore grieves about the joy, "a beautiful and inconstant guest" ...

Evenings ... made Gogol famous, but, oddly enough, the first success brought not only joy, but also doubts. The year of the crisis was 1833. Gogol complains about the uncertainty of his position in life and literature, complains about his fate, does not believe that he is capable of becoming a real writer. He assessed his condition as a "destructive revolution" accompanied by abandoned plans and the burning of barely begun manuscripts. Trying to move away from the Little Russian theme, he conceived, in particular, a comedy based on St. Petersburg material "Vladimir of the third degree", but the plan was not realized. The reason for acute dissatisfaction with oneself is the nature of laughter, the nature and meaning of the comic in Little Russian stories. He came to the conclusion that he laughed in them "for the amusement of himself", in order to brighten up the gray "prose" of Petersburg life. A real writer, according to Gogol, should do “good”: “laughing for free,” without a clear moral goal is reprehensible.

He was intensely looking for a way out of the creative impasse. The first symptom of important changes taking place in the writer was a story based on Little Russian material, but completely different from the previous ones - "The Story of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich." 1834 was fruitful: "Taras Bulba", "Old World Landowners" and "Viy" were written (all were included in the collection "Mirgorod", 1835).

Mirgorod is an important milestone in Gogol's creative development. The scope of artistic "geography" expanded: the legendary Dikanka gave way to a prosaic district town, the main attraction of which is a huge puddle, and a fantastic character - Ivan Ivanovich's brown pig, who brazenly stole Ivan Nikiforovich's petition from the local court. The very name of the city contains an ironic meaning: Mirgorod is both an ordinary provincial city, and a special, closed world. This is “through the looking glass”, in which everything is the other way around: normal relations between people are replaced by strange friendship and ridiculous enmity, things oust a person, and pigs and ganders become almost the main characters ... In an allegorical sense, Mirgorod is the world art, overcoming the county "topography" and "local" time: the book shows not only the life of "nebokopteteli", but also the romantic heroics of the past, and the terrible world of natural evil, embodied in "Wii".

Compared to "Evenings ...", the composition of Gogol's second collection of prose is more transparent: it is divided into two parts, each of which includes two stories united by contrast. The antithesis of the everyday story "Old World Landowners" is the heroic epic "Taras Bulba". Moralistic, permeated with the author's irony "Tale ..." about the two Ivans is contrasted with "folk legend" - the story "Viy", close in style to the works of the first collection. Gogol gave up the literary mask of the "publisher". The author's point of view is expressed in the composition of the collection, in the complex interaction of romantic and realistic principles of depicting heroes, in the use of various speech masks.

All stories are permeated with the author's thoughts about the polar capabilities of the human spirit. Gogol is convinced that a person can live according to the high laws of duty that unite people in a "partnership", but he can lead a meaningless, empty existence. It takes him to the cramped world of a manor or city house, to petty worries and slavish dependence on things. In the life of people, the writer discovered opposite principles: spiritual and physical, social and natural.

The triumph of spirituality Gogol showed in the heroes of the story "Taras Bulba", primarily in Taras itself. The victory of the bodily, material - in the inhabitants of the "old-world" estate and Mirgorod. Natural evil, before which prayers and spells are powerless, triumphs in Viy. Social evil that arises among people as a result of their own efforts - in moralistic stories. But Gogol is convinced that social evil, in contrast to the "earthly", natural, is surmountable: in the subtext of his works, the idea of ​​the author's new intentions is guessed - to show people the absurdity and randomness of this evil, to teach people how to overcome it.

The hero of the story "Viy" Homa Brut looked into the eyes of Viy, a natural evil, and died of fear of him. The world opposed to man is terrible and hostile - the more acute is the task for people to unite in the face of world evil. Self-isolation, alienation lead a person to death, because only a dead thing can exist independently of other things - this is the main idea of ​​Gogol, who approached his great works: The Inspector General and Dead Souls.

The second period of Gogol's work (1835-1842) opens with a kind of "prologue" - the "Petersburg" stories "Nevsky Prospect", "Notes of a Madman" and "Portrait", included in the collection "Arabesques" (1835; the author explained its name as follows: "confusion , mixture, porridge ”- in addition to stories, the book includes articles on various topics). These works connected two periods of the writer's creative development: in 1836 the Nose story was published, and the Overcoat completed the cycle (1839-1841, published in 1842).

At last the Petersburg theme was subdued to Gogol. Stories, different in plots, themes, heroes, are united by the place of action - St. Petersburg. But for a writer, this is not just a geographic space. He created a vivid image-symbol of the city, both real and ghostly, fantastic. In the fates of the heroes, in the ordinary and incredible incidents of their lives, in the rumors, rumors and legends with which the very air of the city is saturated, Gogol finds a mirror image of the Petersburg “phantasmagoria”. In St. Petersburg, reality and fantasy easily change places. Everyday life and fates of the inhabitants of the city are on the verge of believable and miraculous. The incredible suddenly becomes so real that a person can not stand it and goes crazy.

Gogol gave his own interpretation of the Petersburg theme. His Petersburg, in contrast to Pushkin's ("The Bronze Horseman"), lives outside of history, outside of Russia. Gogol's Petersburg is a city of incredible incidents, a ghostly absurd life, fantastic events and ideals. Any metamorphosis is possible in it. The living turns into a thing, a puppet (such are the inhabitants of the aristocratic Nevsky Prospect). A thing, object or part of the body becomes a "person", an important person in the rank of a state councilor (a nose that disappeared from the collegiate assessor Kovalev, who calls himself a "major"). The city depersonalizes people, distorts their good qualities, sticks out bad ones, changes their appearance beyond recognition.

Like Pushkin, Gogol explains the enslavement of man by St. Petersburg from a social standpoint: in the ghostly life of the city, he discovers a special mechanism that is set in motion by the "electricity" of the rank. Chin, that is, the place of a person determined by the Table of Ranks, replaces human individuality. There are no people - there are positions. Without a rank, without a position, a Petersburger is not a person, but neither this nor that, "the devil knows what."

A universal artistic device that the writer uses when portraying St. Petersburg is synecdoche. Replacing the whole with its part is an ugly law by which both the city and its inhabitants live. A person, losing his individuality, merges with the faceless multitude of people like him. Suffice it to say about the uniform, tailcoat, greatcoat, mustache, sideburns to give an exhaustive picture of the motley Petersburg crowd. Nevsky Prospect - the front part of the city - represents the whole of St. Petersburg. The city exists as if by itself, this is a state within a state - and here the part crowds out the whole.

Gogol is by no means an impassive chronicler of the city: he laughs and is indignant, ironic and sad. The meaning of Gogol's depiction of St. Petersburg is to point out to a person from a faceless crowd the need for moral insight and spiritual rebirth. He believes that in a creature born in the artificial atmosphere of the city, the human will nevertheless prevail over the bureaucratic.

In "Nevsky Prospekt" the writer gave a kind of intro to the entire cycle of "Petersburg stories". This is a "physiological sketch" (a detailed study of the main "artery" of the city and the city "exhibition"), and a romantic story about the fate of the artist Piskarev and Lieutenant Pirogov. They were brought together by Nevsky Prospect, the "face", "physiognomy" of St. Petersburg, which changes depending on the time of day. It becomes now businesslike, now "pedagogical", now "the main exhibition of the best works of man." Nevsky Prospect is a model of a bureaucratic city, a “moving capital”. Gogol creates images of puppets, bearers of sideburns and mustaches of various stripes and shades. Their mechanical assembly is marching along Nevsky Prospekt. The fates of the two heroes are details of St. Petersburg life, which made it possible to tear off the brilliant mask from the city and show its essence: Petersburg kills the artist and is supportive of an official, both tragedy and an ordinary farce are possible in it. Nevsky Prospect is “lying at all times,” like the city itself.

In each story, Petersburg opens from a new, unexpected side. In "The Portrait" it is a seductive city that ruined the artist Chartkov with money and light, ghostly glory. In the "Notes of a Madman" the capital is seen through the eyes of the mad titular adviser Poprishchina. The story "The Nose" shows an incredible, but at the same time very "real" Petersburg "odyssey" of Major Kovalev's nose. "The Overcoat" is the "life" of a typical Petersburger - a petty official Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin. Gogol emphasizes the illogism of the ordinary, everyday and familiar. Exceptional - only an appearance, a "deception" that confirms the rule. Chartkov's madness in "The Portrait" is part of the general madness that arises as a result of people's desire for profit. The madness of Poprishchina, who imagined himself to be the Spanish king Ferdinand VIII, is a hyperbole in which the maniacal passion of any official for ranks and awards is emphasized. In the loss of the nose by Major Kovalev, Gogol showed a special case of the loss of the bureaucratic mass of their "face".

Gogol's irony reaches a deadly force: only the exceptional, the fantastic is capable of bringing a person out of moral stupor. Indeed, only the insane Poprishchin recalls the "good of mankind." If the nose had not disappeared from the face of Major Kovalev, he would have walked along Nevsky Prospekt in a crowd of people like him: with noses, in uniforms or in tailcoats. The disappearance of the nose makes it an individuality: after all, with a “flat spot” on your face, you cannot appear in front of people. Do not die Bashmachkin after being scolded by a "significant person", it is unlikely that this "significant person" in the ghost ripping off the overcoat of passers-by, this petty official. Petersburg as depicted by Gogol is a world of the usual absurdity, everyday fantasy.

Madness is one of the manifestations of the Petersburg absurdity. Every story has heroes-madmen: these are not only the crazy artists Piskarev (Nevsky Prospekt) and Chartkov (Portrait), but also the officials Poprishchin (The Diary of a Madman) and Kovalev, who almost went crazy when he saw his own nose, walking around St. Petersburg. Even the "little man" Bashmachkin, who has lost hope of finding an overcoat - the "bright guest" of his sad life, is seized by madness. The images of madmen in Gogol's stories are not only an indicator of the illogism of public life. The pathology of the human spirit allows you to see the true essence of what is happening. Petersburger - "zero" among many similar "zeros". Only madness can highlight it. The madness of the heroes is their "finest hour", because, only having lost their minds, they become personalities, lose the automatism inherent in a person from the bureaucratic masses. Madness is one of the forms of people's rebellion against the omnipotence of the social environment.

The novellas "The Nose" and "The Overcoat" depict two poles of Petersburg life: the absurd phantasmagoria and everyday reality. These poles, however, are not as far apart as it might seem at first glance. The plot of "Nose" is based on the most fantastic of all urban "stories". Gogol's fiction in this work is fundamentally different from the folk poetry fiction in the collection Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka. There is no source of the fantastic here: the nose is a part of Petersburg mythology, which arose without the intervention of otherworldly forces. This mythology is special - bureaucratic, generated by the omnipotent invisibility - the "electricity" of the rank.

The nose behaves as befits a "significant person" with the rank of state councilor: prays in the Kazan Cathedral, walks along Nevsky Prospekt, calls into the department, makes visits, and is going to go to Riga with someone else's passport. Where it came from, nobody, including the author, is interested. One can even assume that he "fell from the moon", because, according to Poprishchyn, a madman from "Diary of a Madman," "the moon is usually done in Hamburg," and is inhabited by noses. Any, even the most delusional, assumption is not excluded. The main thing is different - in the "two-faced" nose. According to some indications, this is definitely the real nose of Major Kovalev (his sign is a pimple on the left side), that is, a part that has separated from the body. But the second "face" of the nose is social.

The image of the nose is the result of artistic generalization that reveals the social phenomenon of St. Petersburg. The meaning of the story is not that the nose became a man, but that he became a fifth-grade official. For others, the nose is not a nose at all, but a "civilian general". They see the chin - there is no person, so the substitution is completely invisible. People for whom the essence of a person is limited to his rank and position do not recognize the mummer. The science fiction in The Nose is a mystery that is nowhere and everywhere; it is the terrible irrationality of Petersburg life itself, in which any delusional vision is indistinguishable from reality.

The plot of "The Overcoat" is based on an insignificant St. Petersburg incident, the hero of which was the "little man", the "eternal titular adviser" Bashmachkin. Buying a new overcoat turns out to be a shock for him, commensurate with the loss of a nose from Major Kovalev's face. Gogol did not confine himself to a sentimental biography of an official who tried to achieve justice and who died of "official reprimand" by a "significant person." In the finale of the story, Bashmachkin becomes a part of Petersburg mythology, a fantastic avenger, a “noble robber”.

The mythological "double" of Bashmachkin is a kind of antithesis to the nose. The bureaucratic nose is a reality of St. Petersburg, which does not bother anyone and does not horrify anyone. "A dead man in the form of an official", "ripping off all sorts of greatcoats from all shoulders, without disassembling rank and rank," terrifies living noses, "significant persons." In the end, he gets to his offender, "one significant person", and only after that does the bureaucratic Petersburg who offend him during his lifetime and indifferent to his death leave forever.

In 1835, the ideas of Gogol's comedy "The Inspector General" and the poem "Dead Souls" arose, which determined the entire subsequent fate of Gogol as an artist.

The place of the "Inspector General" in his work and the level of artistic generalization to which he strove while working on a comedy, Gogol revealed in "The Author's Confession" (1847). The "thought" of the comedy, he stressed, belongs to Pushkin. Following Pushkin's advice, the writer "decided to put together everything bad in Russia ... and laugh at everything at once." Gogol defined a new quality of laughter: in The Inspector General it is a "high" laugh, conditioned by the height of the spiritual and practical task facing the author. The comedy became a test of strength before working on a grandiose epic about modern Russia... After the creation of The Inspector General, the writer felt “the need for a complete composition, where there would be more than one thing to laugh at”. Thus, work on The Inspector General is a turning point in Gogol's creative development.

The first version of the comedy was created in a few months, by December 1835. Its premiere, attended by Nicholas I, took place on April 19, 1836 on the stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg (the first edition was also published in 1836). The play made a depressing impression on Gogol: he was dissatisfied with the actors' play, the indifference of the audience, and most of all with the fact that his plan remained incomprehensible. “I wanted to run away from everything,” the writer recalled.

However, the flaws in the stage interpretation of The Inspector General were not the main reason sharp discontent of the author. Gogol was inspired by an unrealizable hope: he expected to see not only the stage performance, but also the real action produced by his art - a moral shock to the spectators-officials who recognized themselves in the “mirror” of the work. The disappointment experienced by the writer prompted him to "explain" to the public, comment on the meaning of the play, especially its finale, and take a critical look at his own work. Two comments were conceived: "An excerpt from a letter written by the author after the first presentation of" The Inspector General "to one writer" and the play "Theatrical patrol after the presentation of a new comedy". Gogol completed these "explanations" with the public in 1841-1842. Dissatisfaction with the play led to its thorough revision: the second, revised edition was published in 1841, and the final revision of The Inspector General, in which, in particular, the famous epigraph "There is no reason to blame the mirror, if the face is crooked", was published in 1842 in the 4th volume of the "Works".

On June 6, 1836, after all the tumultuous experiences caused by the premiere of The Inspector General, Gogol went abroad with the intention of “deeply considering his duties as an author, his future creations”. The main work of Gogol during his stay abroad, mainly in Italy, which lasted for 12 years (he finally returned to Russia only in 1848), was "Dead Souls". The idea of ​​the work arose in the fall of 1835, at the same time the first sketches were made. However, the work on the "pre-long novel" (its plot, according to Gogol, belonged to Pushkin, like the "thought" of the "Inspector General") was crowded by other ideas. Initially, he wanted to write a satirical adventure novel, showing in it "at least from one side all of Russia" (letter to A.S. Pushkin dated October 7, 1835).

Only after leaving Russia, the writer was able to seriously get down to work on " Dead souls". A new stage in the implementation of the idea began in the summer of 1836. Gogol thought about the plan for the work, reworking everything written in St. Petersburg. Dead Souls were now thought of as a three-volume work. Strengthening the satirical beginning, he strove to balance it with a new, non-comic element - lyricism and high pathos of the author's digressions. In letters to friends, defining the scale of his work, Gogol assured that "all Russia will appear in him." Thus, the previous thesis - about depicting Russia "at least from one side" - was canceled. The understanding of the Dead Souls genre was also gradually changing: the writer moved further and further from the traditions of various genre varieties of the novel - the adventurous-rogue, moral-descriptive, travel novel. From the end of 1836, Gogol called his work a poem, abandoning the previously used designation of the genre - the novel.

Gogol's understanding of the meaning and significance of his work has changed. He came to the idea that his pen was guided by the highest predestination, which is due to the significance of "Dead Souls" for Russia. There was a firm conviction that his work was a feat in the literary field, which he accomplishes despite the misunderstanding and hostility of his contemporaries: only descendants can appreciate him. After the death of Pushkin, the shocked Gogol perceived "Dead Souls" as a "sacred testament" of a teacher and friend - he became more and more strengthened in the thought of his chosenness. However, work on the poem progressed slowly. Gogol decided to arrange a series of readings of the unfinished work abroad, and in late 1839 and early 1840 in Russia, where he came for several months.

In 1840, immediately after leaving Russia, Gogol fell seriously ill. After his recovery, which the writer regarded as a "miraculous healing", he began to regard Dead Souls as a "holy work." According to Gogol, God sent a disease to him, led him through painful trials and brought him out to the light in order for him to fulfill his higher destinies. Inspired by the idea of ​​moral heroism and messianism, during the years 1840 and 1841. Gogol completed work on the first volume and brought the manuscript to Russia. The second and third volumes were being pondered at the same time. Having passed through the censorship, the first volume was published in May 1842 under the title "The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls."

The last period of Gogol's work (1842-1852) began with a sharp polemic around the first volume of Dead Souls, which reached its climax in the summer of 1842. Judgments about the poem were expressed not only in print (the most striking episode was the dispute between V.G. Belinsky and K. S. Aksakov about the genre, and in fact about the meaning and meaning of "Dead Souls"), but also in private correspondence, diaries, in high society salons and student circles. Gogol closely followed this "terrible noise" raised by his work. Having gone abroad again after the publication of the first volume, he wrote the second volume, which, in his opinion, was supposed to explain to the public the general idea of ​​his work and remove all objections. Gogol compared the first volume with the threshold of the future "great poem", which is still under construction and will have to solve the riddle of his soul.

The work on the second volume, which lasted ten years, was difficult, with interruptions and long stops. The first edition was completed in 1845, but did not satisfy Gogol: the manuscript was burned. After that, the book "Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends" was prepared (out of print on the eve of 1847). From 1846 to 1851, the second edition of the second volume was created, which Gogol intended to publish.

However, the book was never published: its manuscript was either not fully completed, or burned in February 1852 along with other personal papers a few days before the writer's death on February 21 (March 4) 1852.

"Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends" is Gogol's vivid religious, moral, social and aesthetic manifesto. This book, like other religious and moral works of the 1840s, summed up his spiritual development, revealed the drama of his human and literary fate. Gogol's word became messianic, prophetic: he created extremely sincere and merciless confessions to himself and at the same time passionate sermons. The writer was inspired by the idea of ​​spiritual self-knowledge, which was supposed to help him learn "the nature of man in general and the soul of man in general." Gogol's coming to Christ is natural: in him he saw "the key to the soul of man", "the height of the cognition of the soul." In the "Author's Confession" the writer noted that he "spent several years inside himself", "raised himself as a student." In the last decade of his life, he strove to realize a new creative principle: first create yourself, then a book that will tell others how to create yourself.

However, the last years of the writer's life were not only steps in climbing the ladder of high spirituality, which opened up to him in civil and religious deeds. This is the time of a tragic duel with himself: having written almost all of his works of art by 1842, Gogol passionately desired, but was never able to melt the spiritual truths revealed to him into artistic values.

Gogol's artistic world took shape by the early 1840s. After the publication of the first volume of Dead Souls and The Overcoat in 1842, there was essentially a process of transformation of Gogol the artist into Gogol the preacher, striving to become the spiritual mentor of Russian society. This can be treated in different ways, but the very fact of Gogol's turn and movement towards new goals that go far beyond artistic creation, no doubt.

Gogol has always, with the possible exception of early works, was far from "pure" art. In his youth, he dreamed of a civilian career and, having barely entered literature, he realized his writing as a kind of civil service. A writer, in his opinion, should be not only an artist, but also a teacher, moralist, and preacher. Note that this feature of Gogol sets him apart from contemporary writers: neither Pushkin nor Lermontov considered the “teacher's” function the main task of art. Pushkin generally rejected any attempts by the "rabble" to force the writer to any "service". Lermontov, an unusually sensitive "diagnostician" of the spiritual vices of his contemporaries, did not consider the writer's task to "cure" society. On the contrary, all of Gogol's mature work (from the mid-1830s) was inspired by the idea of ​​preaching.

However, his sermon had a special character: Gogol is a comic writer, his element is laughter: humor, irony, satire. “Laughing” Gogol expressed in his works the idea of ​​what a person should not be and what his vices are. The world of the most important works of the writer - "The Inspector General" and "Dead Souls" (excluding the second, unfinished volume) - the world of "antiheroes", people who have lost those qualities without which a person turns into a useless "non-smoker" or even a "hole in humanity."

In the works written after the first collection, Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, Gogol proceeded from the idea of ​​a moral norm, a model, which is quite natural for a moralist writer. In the last years of his life, Gogol formulated the ideals that inspired him at the beginning of his career as a writer. A remarkable imperative addressed both to “man in general” and to the “Russian man” and at the same time Gogol's own writer's credo is found, for example, in the outline of an unsent letter to V.G. Belinsky (summer 1847): “We need to remember the person that he not a material brute at all, but a high citizen of high heavenly citizenship. As long as he does not live the life of a heavenly citizen at least to some extent, until then earthly citizenship will not come in order. "

Gogol the artist is not a dispassionate "recorder". He loves his heroes even "black ones", that is, with all their flaws, vices, absurdities, he is indignant at them, grieves with them, leaving them hope for a "recovery." His works are highly personalized. The personality of the writer, his judgments, open or veiled forms of expression of ideals are manifested not only in direct appeals to the reader ("The Tale of how Ivan Ivanovich quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich", "Petersburg" stories, "Dead Souls"), but also in that how Gogol sees his heroes, the world of things that surround them, their everyday affairs, everyday troubles and "vulgar" conversations. “Objectivity”, love for things, heap of details - the entire “corporeal”, material world of his works is shrouded in an atmosphere of secret teaching.

Like a wise mentor, Gogol did not tell his readers what “good” was, but pointed out that “bad” is in Russia, in Russian society, in a Russian person. The firmness of his own convictions should have led to the fact that the negative example remained in the mind of the reader, worried him, taught without preaching. Gogol wanted the person he depicted "to remain like a nail in his head, and his image seemed so alive that it was difficult to get rid of him," so that "insensitive" (our italics - Auth.) "Good Russian characters and properties of people" became attractive, and "bad" - so unattractive that "the reader will not love them even in himself, if he finds them." “This is where I believe my writing is,” Gogol emphasized.

Note that Gogol treated his reader differently from Pushkin (remember the images of the reader? - "friend", "enemy", "friend" of the Author - in Eugene Onegin) or Lermontov (the image of an indifferent or hostile contemporary reader who "Glitter and deceptions amuse", created in the poem "The Poet"). For Gogol, a moralist writer, the reader of his books is a “student” reader, whose duty is to listen carefully to the “lesson” taught by a wise and demanding mentor in an entertaining way.

Gogol loves to joke and laugh, knowing how and with what to attract the attention of his "students". But his main goal is that, leaving the "class", leaving Gogol's "room of laughter", that is, closing the book written by him, a comic writer, the reader bitterly thought about the imperfections of the country in which he lives, people who differ little from himself, and, of course, his own vices.

Pay attention: the moral ideal of a writer, according to Gogol, should be manifested "insensitively", not in what he says, but in how he portrays. It is precisely portraying, grasping and enlarging in his heroes even the “infinitely small”, “vulgar” (that is, everyday, familiar) features of their characters that Gogol teaches, instructs, and preaches. His moral position is expressed in the artistic word, which has a double function: it contains both preaching and confession. As Gogol never tired of emphasizing, addressing a person, and even more so instructing him, you need to start with yourself, with self-knowledge and spiritual self-improvement.

Gogol is often called "Russian Rabelais", "Russian Swift". Indeed, in the first half of the nineteenth century. he was the largest comic writer in Russia. Gogol's laughter, like the laughter of his great predecessors, is a formidable, destructive weapon that spared neither the authorities, nor the arrogance of the nobility, nor the bureaucratic machine of the autocracy. But Gogol's laughter is special - it is the laughter of a creator, a moralist-preacher. Perhaps not a single Russian satirist laughed at the social vices and shortcomings of people, inspired by such clear moral goals as Gogol. Behind his laughter are ideas about what should be - about what people should be like, the relationship between them, society and the state.

From school, many applicants firmly know that Gogol "denounced", "exposed" "officials, serfdom and serfdom," but often do not think about what inspired the writer, what "wonderful power" life, to look at it through the laughter visible to the world and invisible, unknown to him tears "(" Dead Souls ", volume one, ch. 7). Many modern readers of Gogol do not have a clear answer to the questions: what were the writer's civic and moral ideals, in the name of which he criticized serfdom and serfdom, what is the meaning of Gogol's laughter?

Gogol was a convinced conservative, a monarchist who never raised the question of changing the social system, never dreamed of social upheavals and social freedom. The very word "freedom" is alien to Gogol's vocabulary. The Russian monarch for the writer - * - is the "anointed of God", the embodiment of the power of the state and the highest moral authority. He is able to punish any social evil, to find and "heal" any distortion in human souls.

In the works of Gogol, Russia appears as a country of bureaucratic officials. The image of the Russian bureaucracy, created by the writer, is the image of a clumsy, absurd government alienated from the people. The point of his criticism of the bureaucracy is not to "destroy" it with laughter - the writer criticizes the "bad" officials who do not fulfill the duties assigned to them by the tsar, who do not understand their duty to the Fatherland. He had no doubts that any official who had “full knowledge of his position”, who did not act “from the limits and boundaries specified by law,” was necessary to govern a huge country. The bureaucracy, according to Gogol, is good for Russia if it understands the importance of the "important place" it occupies, and is not stricken with self-interest and abuse.

Vivid images of landowners - "nebokopteteli", "lying stones" - are created in many of Gogol's works: from the story "Ivan Fedorovich Shponka and his aunt" to "Dead Souls". The meaning of the satirical depiction of feudal landlords is to point out the nobles who own land and people to the "height of their rank", to their moral duty. Gogol called the nobility "a vessel" containing "moral nobility, which should spread across the face of the entire Russian land in order to give a concept to all other estates, why the higher estate is called the color of the people." The Russian nobility, according to Gogol, “is beautiful in its truly Russian core, despite the temporarily growing foreign husk, it is“ the flower of our own people ”.

A real landowner, in the understanding of Gogoli, is a good owner and shepherd of peasants. In order to live up to his divine destiny, he must spiritually influence his serfs. “Tell them the whole truth,” Gogol advised the “Russian landowner” in “Selected Bridges from Correspondence with Friends,” “that the human soul is dearer than anything in the world and that first of all you will see to it that someone does not destroy your soul and did not betray her to eternal torment "The peasantry, thus, was viewed by the writer as an object of touching care of a strict, highly moral landowner." Gogol's heroes - alas! - are far from this bright ideal.

For whom did Gogol write, who “always stood for the education of the people,” to whom did he preach? Not to the peasantry, "farmers", but to the Russian nobility, who deviated from their direct destiny, left the right path - serving the people, the Tsar and Russia. In the "Author's Confession" the writer emphasized that "before the enlightenment of the people themselves, it is more useful to enlighten those who have a close encounter with the people, from which the people often endure."

Literature in moments of social disorder and disorder should, according to Gogol, inspire the whole nation with its example. Leading by example and being helpful are the main duties of a true writer. This is the most important point of Gogol's ideological and aesthetic program, the leading idea of ​​the mature period of creativity.

The unusualness of Gogol the artist is that in no completed and published work of art he does not express his ideals directly, does not instruct his readers openly. Laughter is the prism through which his views are refracted. However, even Belinsky rejected the very possibility of a straightforward interpretation of Gogol's laughter. “Gogol portrays not vulgar people, but a person in general ... the critic emphasized. "He is as much a tragedian as a comedian ... he rarely happens to be one or the other separately, ... but most often he is one and the other." In his opinion, “comic is a narrow word for expressing Gogol's talent. His comedy is higher than what we used to call comedy. " Calling Gogol's heroes "monsters", Belinsky shrewdly remarked that they were "not cannibals," "in fact, they have no vices or virtues." Despite the whimsicality and comic incongruities, reinforced by laughter, are people quite ordinary, not only "negative heroes" of their era, but also people "in general", recreated with an extraordinary "size".

The heroes of Gogol's satirical works are "failed" people, deserving both ridicule and regret. Creating their most detailed social and everyday portraits, the writer pointed out what, in his opinion, “sits” in every person, regardless of his rank, rank, class, and specific circumstances of life. Specific historical and eternal, universal human traits in Gogol's heroes form a unique fusion. Each of them is not only a "human document" of the Nikolaev era, but also an image-symbol of universal human significance. Indeed, according to Belinsky, even "the best of us are not alien to the shortcomings of these monsters."