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(1809-1852)
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Russian Author
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The founder of Russian critical realism
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Native of Sorochintsi, Ukraine, Ianovskii Gogol was
alltogether a novelist, dramatist, satirist, playwright and
short-story writer. His father was a poet and a
playwright.
Gogol started to write while
he was attenging Nezhin high school. In 1829 he settled in
St. Petersburg, where he became a modest civil servant,
writing occasionally for periodicals. Between 1831 and
1834 he was a teacher of history at the Patriotic Institute,
making his living on private lessons.
This
was a time where he met Pushkin, who greatly influenced him.
Their friendship lasted until the great poet's death.
After his failure as a assistant lecturer of
world history at the University of St. Petersburg (1834-35),
Gogol become a full-time writer. In 1836 he published
several stories in Pushkin's journal Sovremennik, and in the
same year appeared his famous play, The Inspector General.
The first performance was given in the presence
of the tsar, but Gogol fled to Western Europe, upset by the
mixed critics of his play. He settled in Rome after a
visiting Germany, Switzerland, and France and made a
pilgrimage to Palestine in 1848.
With the
edition of Gogol's collected works in 1842, he became one of
the most popular Russian writers. Gogol is best known for
Tarass Bulba (1835) and Dead Souls(1842)
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It was in Rome that Gogol wrote Dead Souls, one of his
major works, and the story of the rogue Pavel Ivanovich
Chichicov, who arrives in a provincial town to buy the 'dead
souls' of serfs. Chicicov's plan was to use their
names, still existing in their masters lists, to resell them
together with inexpensive estates, pretending they were
still alive, and making thereby a tremendous profit. The
gifts of Gogol for caricature and picturesque are
culminating in this novel. Unfortunately, In 1842 the first
edition of was published. It made him one of the most
popular Russian writers. Extremely sensible
throughout his life to adverse criticisms, and under the
influence of a fanatical priest, Father Konstantinovskii,
Gogol burned the sequels of a second part of Dead Souls,
just ten days before he died, on the edge of madness, in
March 1852.
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Gogol's grandfather had taken the name 'Gogol' to claim a nobel Cossack ancestry.
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Taras Bulba is a colourful description of the adventures of
a 17th century Cossack.
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