Mikhail Gogol

“ His main endeavour was to sharpen the sight of his readers, whether they looked without or within; for not even the greatest physician can remedy an evil, unless he knows what the evil Gogol is the great pioneer in Russian fiction. He had the essential temperament of all great pioneers, whether their goal is material or spiritual. He had vital energy, resolute courage, clear vision, and an abiding faith that he was travelling in the right direction. Such a man will have followers even greater than he, and he rightly shares in their glory. ”

“ Rather, before his eyes there floated ever a vision of life and its amenities and advantages--a vision of carriages and an elegantly furnished house and recherche dinners; and it was in the hope that some day he might attain these things that he saved every kopeck and, meanwhile, stinted both himself and others. Whenever a rich man passed him by in a splendid drozhki drawn by swift and handsomely-caparisoned horses, he would halt as though deep in thought, and say to himself, like a man awakening from a long sleep: "That gentleman must have been a financier, he has so little hair on his brow." ”

“ Alexandr Petrovitch had the gift of divining the nature of the Russian, and knew in what language to speak to him. No boy ever left his presence downcast; on the contrary, even after the sternest reprimand he felt buoyed up and eager to efface his nasty or mischievous action. The mass of his pupils were on the surface so full of mischief, so lively and free and easy in their manners, that one might have taken them for a disorderly gang under no control, but one would have been mistaken; the authority of one man was too powerful in that gang. ”

“ At one moment would he crack some one's fingers in half, and at another would he raise a bump on somebody's nose; so that both at home and abroad every one and everything--from the serving-maid to the yard-dog--fled on his approach, and even the bed in his bedroom became shattered to splinters. Such was Mofi Kifovitch; and with it all he had a kindly soul. But herein is not the chief point. "Good sir, good Kifa Mokievitch," servants and neighbours would come and say to the father, "what are you going to do about your Moki Kifovitch? We get no rest from him, he is so above himself." ”

“ Is it not here there should be giants where there is space for them to develop and move freely. And thy mighty expanse enfolds me menacingly, with fearful force reflected in the depths of me; with supernatural power light dawns upon my eyes. ... Ah, marvellous, radiant horizons of which the earth knows nothing! Russia!
'Steady, steady, you fool!' Tchitchikov shouted to Selifan.
'I'll hang you,' shouted a courier with moustaches a yard long, who was galloping towards them. 'Don't you see a government carriage, the devil flay your soul?' and the troika vanished amid dust and rattle. ”

“ While others expended their energies in spreading political ideals in their novels, Gogol was content to give the social element in Russian its prominent and dominating position. He is the living proof, if proof were needed, that realism does not connote a mere anatomy of society, a dwelling upon revolting details, a love of defying convention by fluttering over cesspools and bringing to light, the hidden lower things of life. ”

“ The sense of intense living, “living dangerously”—to use a phrase of Nietzsche’s, the recognition of courage as the greatest of all virtues—the God in man, inspired Gogol, living in an age which tended toward grey tedium, with admiration for his more fortunate forefathers, who lived in “a poetic time, when everything was won with the sword, when every one in his turn strove to be an active being and not a spectator.” Into this short work he poured all his love of the heroic, all his romanticism, all his poetry, all his joy. Its abundance of life bears one along like a fast-flowing river. ”

“ Do they not presage that one day, when again you shall have room for their exploits, there will spring to life the heroes of old? How the power of your immensity enfolds me, and reverberates through all my being with a wild, strange spell, and flashes in my eyes with an almost supernatural radiance! Yes, a strange, brilliant, unearthly vista indeed do you disclose, O Russia, country of mine!
"Stop, stop, you fool!" shouted Chichikov to Selifan; and even as he spoke a troika, bound on Government business, came chattering by, and disappeared in a cloud of dust. ”

“ Gogol excels not only in picturing the grand aspects of the Ukraïne landscape. He has sketches filled in with adorable detail; and nothing is more curious than the contrast between the lyricism with which he celebrates the seductions of the Malo-Russian sky, and the fine, discreet, restrained tone of so many familiar impressions. The feeling for nature finds in Gogol all manner of expression: he passes in turn through every gradation. ”

“ It was always the grand and melancholy symphony of the Russian land; but this time the interpretation by the artist was quite [Pg 395] different. No longer were seen Gogol’s sharp humor, the frankly popular character of his paintings, his warm outbursts of enthusiasm suddenly checked by touches of irony: in Turgénief, no jests or enthusiasm; a soberer note, a more subdued emotion; landscapes and men are seen in the pale twilight, through an idealizing mistiness, yet clearly outlined and focussed, as it were, under the eyes of the ever watchful observer. ”

“ He pulled a twenty-kopek piece from his pocket, gave it to the merchant, took the portrait under his arm, and carried it home. On the way thither, he remembered that the twenty-kopek piece he had given for it was his last. His thoughts at once became gloomy. Vexation and careless indifference took possession of him at one and the same moment. The red light of sunset still lingered in one half the sky; the houses facing that way still gleamed with its warm light; and meanwhile the cold blue light of the moon grew brighter. Light, half-transparent shadows fell in bands upon the ground. ”

“ Henceforth, in order to make his life most fruitful unto men, which is his constant purpose, he is to write. But write what? Gogol gazes into his heart, and there finds the memories of the steppe, of the valiant Cossaks, their prowess and their freedom. His soul is filled at the sight of these with a tenderness and beauty which give him no rest until he pours them out over the pages of his book, and “Taras Bulba” is covered with a glory well-nigh unattained in any language since the days of Homer. ”

“ Gogol has written in “Taras Bulba” his own reproach to the nineteenth century. It is sad and joyous like one of those Ukrainian songs which have helped to inspire him to write it. And then, as he cut himself off more and more from the world of the past, life became a sadder and still sadder thing to him; modern life, with all its gigantic pettiness, closed in around him, he began to write of petty officials and of petty scoundrels, “commonplace heroes” he called them. But nothing is ever lost in this world. Gogol’s romanticism, shut in within himself, finding no outlet, became a flame. ”

“ If you know Gogol through his Dead Souls, the “humorous” classic of Russia, you will read in amazement his Taras Bulba. It is Rabelais with a sword. Through its pages ring the shouts of battle and Gargantuan manhood—Homo Monstrosus....
Once or twice the pale face of a woman peeps out of them and Gogol kicks it back into place with his kazak boot.
“Do you want fire, Ostap? Do you want mad blood in your heart? Come ride with me over the steppe to the tents of the Zaporozhe....” ”

“ At this point Gogol, first of all, became the victim of this state of things.
The enthusiasm stirred up by his works and by the immense hopes that he had evoked suddenly elevated him to such a height in the minds of his contemporaries that he felt real anguish. Artist he was, and now he forced himself to become a moralist; he rushed into philosophical speculations which led him on to a nebulous mysticism, from which his talent suffered severely. When he realized what had happened, despair seized him, his ideas troubled him, and he died in terrible intellectual distress. ”

“ It was difficult to make out precisely what was in the heap, for the dust lay on it so thick that the hands of any one who touched it at once looked like gloves; the most conspicuous objects in the heap were a piece of a broken wooden spade and the old sole of a boot. It would have been impossible to say that a living being was inhabiting this room, if a shabby old skull-cap lying on the table had not testified to his existence. While Tchitchikov was examining his strange surroundings, a side-door opened, and the same housekeeper that he had met in the yard walked in. ”

“ He could not have used them all in his lifetime, even if his estate had been twice the size it was, but all this was not enough for him. Not satisfied with it, he used to go every day about the streets of his village, peeping under bridges and planks, and everything he came across, an old sole, a peasant woman's rag, an iron nail, a bit of broken earthenware, he dragged home with him, and added to the heap that Tchitchikov had noticed in the corner. 'Yonder is the old angler at his sport again!' the peasants used to say when they saw him in search of booty. ”

“ Tchitchikov had never felt so merry, he imagined himself already a genuine Kherson landowner, talked of various improvements he meant to make, of the three-field system of cropping, of the bliss and happiness of two kindred souls, and began repeating to Sobakevitch Werther's letter in verse to Charlotte, on which the latter merely blinked as he sat in an armchair, for after the sturgeon he felt a great inclination for sleep. Tchitchikov perceived himself that he had begun to be a little too expansive: he asked for his carriage, and accepted the offer of the prosecutor's racing droshky. ”

“ Tchitchikov went splash on his hands and knees into the mud. Selifan stopped the horses, however; though they would have stopped of themselves for they were exhausted. This unforeseen mishap completely bewildered him. Clambering off the box he stood facing the chaise with his arms akimbo, while his master was floundering in the mud, trying to scramble out of it, and said after some pondering: 'Well, I never did! it has upset, too!'
'You are as drunk as a cobbler!' said Tchitchikov.
'No, master, how could I be drunk! I know that it is not the right thing to be drunk. ”

“ Can't one be at a fair and yet buy land? I was at the fair and while I was away my steward bought it for me.'
'But how could the steward?' said his brother-in-law; but at that moment he looked dubious and shook his head.
The visitors returned to the house by the same disgusting road. Nozdryov led them to his study, in which however there was nothing commonly seen in studies, such as books or papers; on the walls there hung swords and two guns, one that had cost three hundred and the other eight hundred roubles. The brother-in-law after examining them merely shook his head. ”

“ Petro stood petrified, without moving from the spot, when the innocent child lisped out Pidorka's words to him. "And I, unhappy man, thought to go to the Crimea and Turkey, win gold and return to thee, my beauty! But it may not be. The evil eye has seen us. I will have a wedding, too, dear little fish, I too; but no ecclesiastics will be at that wedding. The black crow will caw, instead of the pope, over me; the smooth field will be my dwelling; the dark blue clouds my roof-tree. The eagle will claw out my brown eyes: the rain will wash the Cossack's bones, and the whirlwinds will dry them. ”

“ The refuse from fish was flung on my bank for six years together; well, what was I to do with it? I began making glue of it and get forty thousand for it. Everything is like that with me, you know.'
'What a devil!' thought Tchitchikov, looking him full in the face. 'What a paw for raking in the roubles!'
'And I don't build edifices for it; I have no grand buildings with columns and façades. I don't send abroad for workmen, and I don't take the peasant off the land for any consideration; all my hands are men who come for the sake of bread in a famine year. ”

“ Herein shines forth all the power of Gogol’s talent. He paints egotism for us, double egotism: but he paints it with such delicate shades that the picture excites something more than admiration; it arouses a sort of sympathy.
Gogol knows well that happy people are the best people; that their joy radiates out, as it were, and that it warms, lightens, enlivens, just as sadness, even though legitimate, chills, wounds, warns away, every thing that approaches it. ”

“ What is in the wind?"
"How could I have hatched such a scheme as you say? One could not very well hatch a scheme out of such a trifle as this."
"Then for what purpose do you want the serfs?"
"Oh, the curiosity of the man! He wants to poke his fingers into and smell over every detail!"
"Why do you decline to say what is in your mind? At all events, until you DO say I shall not move in the matter."
"But how would it benefit you to know what my plans are? A whim has seized me. That is all. Nor are you playing fair. You have given me your word of honour, yet now you are trying to back out of it." ”