| Name | Gogol, Nikolai Vasilevich (1809 - 1852) | |
| Biography | A novelist and dramatist who believed himself a genius destined for greatness. | SourcesGogol, Dead Souls, Magarshack, p1,Gogol, Taras Bulba, Cournos, ppxiii-xvi. |
| Was influenced by Aleksandr Pushkin, and in turn influenced such writers as Sergei Aksakov to write. |
| Some important examples of Gogol's work include: |
| The Overcoat (also translated as The Cloak or The Great Coat), a pathetic tale which underlines the misery of the lower ranks of the civil service; Dostoyevsky once said of his colleagues in Russian literature, "we all of us came out from under Gogol's Overcoat" | |
| Revizor (The Government Inspector), a play which satirises provincial town gentry, and is an indication of the truth of the observation that Tsarist authority was strong in theory, weak in practice - an observation which would apply as readily to today's Russia. | |
| The Government Inspector has been imitated, consciously or otherwise, in several more recent works, such as J. B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls. | |
| Taras Bulba is an Odysseyian historical epic coloured by Gogol's Ukrainian, cossack heritage. | |
| Gogol's dark, incomplete masterwork, Dead Souls, was to become an obsession which consumed the latter decades of his life. Only Part One of three projected parts remains: Part Three was never written, and most of Part Two was burnt by Gogol himself. | |
| | |
|
| |
| Bibliography |
Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls (translated by David Magarshack), Penguin, London, 1961.
Nikolai Gogol, Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Gogol (introduction by John Cournos), E.W. Cole/Everyman’s Library (#740), Melbourne/London, undated (1922 or earlier).
| |
| Selected Works |
The Overcoat
Dead Souls
Taras Bulba
The Government Inspector (play)
Diary of a Madman
Evening on a Farm Near Dikanka
Mirgorod
St. John's Eve
The Mysterious Portrait
The Story of the Quarrel Between Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich/How the Two Ivans Quarrelled
The Nose | |
| Buy Gogol Books |
Click the links to purchase books through Amazon.co.uk. Sales contribute to the running of PWHCE.
Dead Souls
The Overcoat
Taras Bulba
The Government Inspector
Diary of a Madman
Petersburg Tales
The Nose
The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol
| |
| See Also | Sergei Aksakov, Aleksandr Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoyevsky | |
