In which work of Gogol there is no mysticism. Unusual in the life of N. Gogol - about childhood, phobias, homosexuality and lethargic sleep. Difficult path to literature

1. Folklore as a source of mystical images in Gogol's work.
2. Evil spirits in collections of short stories.
3. Mysticism in the story "Portrait".

In dictionaries, you can find several definitions of the concept of "mysticism", but they all agree that this word means beliefs in a different reality inhabited by supernatural beings, as well as in the possibility of people communicating with them. folklore tradition different peoples preserved stories about various creatures of the other world, both kind and bright, benevolent towards people, and evil, hostile to God and people.

In the works of N.V. Gogol, mainly malevolent entities penetrate into the world of people, and their accomplices also act - evil sorcerers and witches. Only occasionally do people meet benevolent creatures from another world. And yet, in the works of the writer, there are much more evil people from another world than good ones. It is possible that such a “distribution of forces” reflected the wary attitude of people towards mysterious world, contact with which can lead to unpredictable consequences.

In the collection Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka, mystical motifs are heard in almost all stories, with the exception of one - Ivan Fedorovich Shponka and his aunt. In other stories, the degree of contact between people and the other world is different. In the story “Sorochinsky Fair”, the story about the mysterious red scroll can still be considered a joke, successfully picked up by a young man in love. But after all, the superstitious Cossack Solopiy Cherevik has no doubt that the ill-fated red sleeve, on which he now and then stumbles, is nothing more than a sleeve from a chopped-up scroll of the devil! However, in this story, it is not the evil spirit itself that acts, but the human belief in its existence, and this “shadow” of evil spirits brings much more benefit than harm. Solopy hesitated, shook himself, but everything turned out well, his daughter and the Cossack Gritsko received Cherevik's consent to the marriage, and he himself successfully sold the goods brought to the fair.

A meeting with a mermaid, a lady who drowned herself because of the oppression of her stepmother, a witch, unexpectedly changes the life of the lad Levko and his beloved Hanna. Mermaid generously rewards young man for helping her find her stepmother. Thanks to the power of the drowned woman, Levko and Hanna finally become husband and wife despite the objections of the young man's father.

In the stories "The Missing Letter", "The Night Before Christmas", "The Enchanted Place" evil spirits are very active and unfriendly towards people. However, she is not so powerful that she cannot be defeated. We can say that the heroes of the stories "The Missing Letter" and "The Enchanted Place" got off lightly. The evil spirits played a joke on them, but they also let them go in peace, each remained with his own. And in the story "The Night Before Christmas", the meeting with the devil for the blacksmith Vakula turned out to be even useful - intimidating the devil, the blacksmith used him as vehicle and fulfilled the order of his capricious lover, brought her the Tsar Tsyn's little boots.

But in the stories "The Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala" and "Terrible Revenge", as well as in the story "Viy", included in another collection, "Mirgorod", evil spirits and their assistants - evil sorcerers are truly terrible. No, not even evil spirits are the worst of all, with the possible exception of the terrible Viy. People are much more terrible: the sorcerer Basavryuk and the sorcerer from the story "Terrible Revenge", who killed all his loved ones. And the sinister Viy appears for a reason.

He comes to the witch's body to destroy the person who killed her.

“The devil is not as scary as he is painted,” says the common expression. Indeed, one can agree that in the works of Gogol, evil spirits often do not turn out to be so terrible, if the person himself is not afraid of it. Sometimes she even looks very comical (remember the devil, planted in a bag by the witch Solokha and beaten by her son Vakula). much scarier and more dangerous man which contributes to the penetration of evil into our world ...

Mystical motifs are also heard in the story "Portrait", included in the collection "Petersburg Tales". However, in it they acquire an even deeper philosophical meaning. A talented artist unwittingly becomes the culprit of the fact that evil penetrates into the souls of people. The eyes of the usurer, whose portrait he painted, have an ominous effect on people. However, the artist did not have bad intentions, like those sorcerers who, of their own free will, helped evil spirits to act outrageously. Realizing what he has done, this person feels deep remorse. And the work itself was not a joy to him - he felt something mysterious and terrible in a man who at all costs wanted to be captured on the canvas: “He threw himself at his feet and begged to finish the portrait, saying that from this depends on his fate and existence in the world, that he has already touched his living features with his brush, that if he conveys them correctly, his life will be retained by supernatural power in the portrait, that he will not die completely through that, that he needs to be present in the world. My father was horrified by such words…”.

How can one not remember the terrible, deadly look of Viy! Who, really, was this usurer? Gogol does not give a direct answer to this question. The artist, who painted the portrait and became a monk in repentance, tells his son about it this way: “To this day I cannot understand that there was that strange image from which I painted the image. It was, for sure, some kind of diabolical phenomenon ... I wrote it with disgust ... ". Yes, the eyes of the usurer depicted in the portrait became a kind of door through which evil entered the world of people: and the artist, who imprudently allowed these doors to remain open, asks his son, if the opportunity arises, to destroy the ominous image, block the path to the evil delusion that cripples human souls and fate. However, evil, having penetrated into the world of people, does not want to leave it: a strange portrait suddenly disappears from the hall where the auction is held, and the son is deprived of the opportunity to fulfill the will of his father. What other troubles will the ominous look do? ..

So, we can summarize all of the above. Gogol's interest in mysticism is undeniable: the writer has repeatedly developed plots in which a significant place is given to evil spirits and their helpers. Gogol also showed various results from a human encounter with supernatural forces - from a completely harmless joke to a terrible tragedy, while emphasizing the role of the human factor in the activities of people from another world.

April 1 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. It is difficult to find a figure more mysterious in the history of Russian literature. The ingenious artist of the word left behind dozens of immortal works and as many secrets that are still beyond the control of researchers of the life and work of the writer.

Even during his lifetime, he was called a monk, a joker, and a mystic, and his work intertwined fantasy and reality, the beautiful and the ugly, the tragic and the comic.

Many myths are associated with the life and death of Gogol. For several generations of researchers of the writer's work, they cannot come up with an unambiguous answer to the questions: why Gogol was not married, why he burned the second volume of "Dead Souls" and whether he burned it at all, and, of course, what ruined the brilliant writer.

Birth

The exact date of birth of the writer for a long time remained a mystery to his contemporaries. At first it was said that Gogol was born on March 19, 1809, then on March 20, 1810. And only after his death, it was established from the publication of the metrics that the future writer was born on March 20, 1809, i.e. April 1, new style.

Gogol was born in a land full of legends. Near Vasilievka, where his parents' estate was, there was Dikanka, now known to the whole world. In those days, an oak tree was shown in the village, near which Mary's meetings with Mazepa took place, and the shirt of the executed Kochubey.

As a boy, Nikolai Vasilyevich's father went to a church in the Kharkov province, where there was a miraculous image of the Mother of God. Once he saw in a dream the Queen of Heaven, who pointed to a child sitting on the floor at Her feet: "...Here is your wife." Soon he recognized in the seven-month-old daughter of his neighbors the features of the child whom he had seen in a dream. For thirteen years, Vasily Afanasyevich continued to follow his betrothed. After the vision recurred, he asked for the girl's hand. A year later, the young people got married, writes hrono.info.

Mysterious Carlo

After some time, the son Nikolai appeared in the family, named after St. Nicholas of Myra, before miraculous icon whom Maria Ivanovna Gogol made a vow.

From his mother, Nikolai Vasilyevich inherited a fine mental organization, a penchant for God-fearing religiosity and an interest in foreboding. His father was inherently suspicious. It is not surprising that from childhood Gogol was fascinated by secrets, prophetic dreams, fatal signs, which later appeared on the pages of his works.

When Gogol studied at the Poltava School, his younger brother Ivan died suddenly, in poor health. For Nikolai, this shock was so strong that he had to be taken away from the school and sent to the Nizhyn gymnasium.

In the gymnasium, Gogol became famous as an actor in the gymnasium theater. According to his comrades, he tirelessly joked, played pranks on friends, noticing their funny features, and performed tricks for which he was punished. At the same time, he remained secretive - he did not tell anyone about his plans, for which he received the nickname Mysterious Carlo after one of the heroes of Walter Scott's novel "The Black Dwarf".

First burnt book

In the gymnasium, Gogol dreams of broad social activities that would allow him to accomplish something great "for the common good, for Russia." With these broad and vague plans, he arrived in Petersburg and experienced his first severe disappointment.

Gogol publishes his first work - a poem in the spirit of the German romantic school "Hans Küchelgarten". The pseudonym V. Alov saved Gogol's name from the heavy criticism, but the author himself took the failure so hard that he bought up all the unsold copies of the book in stores and burned them. Until the end of his life, the writer did not admit to anyone that Alov was his pseudonym.

Later, Gogol received a service in one of the departments of the Ministry of the Interior. "Rewriting the stupidities of the clerk gentlemen," the young clerk carefully looked at the life and life of his fellow officials. These observations will be useful to him later to create the famous stories "The Nose", "Notes of a Madman" and "The Overcoat".

"Evenings on a farm near Dikanka", or childhood memories

After meeting Zhukovsky and Pushkin, the inspired Gogol begins to write one of his best works - Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka. Both parts of "Evenings" were published under the pseudonym of the beekeeper Rudy Panka.

Some episodes of the book, in which real life intertwined with legends, were inspired by Gogol's childhood visions. So, in the story "May Night, or the Drowned Woman", the episode when the stepmother, who turned into a black cat, tries to strangle the centurion's daughter, but as a result loses her paw with iron claws, recalls real story from the writer's life.

Somehow, the parents left their son at home, and the rest of the household went to bed. Suddenly Nikosha - that's what they called Gogol in childhood - heard a meow, and in a moment he saw a crouching cat. The child was scared half to death, but he had the courage to grab the cat and throw it into the pond. “It seemed to me that I had drowned a man,” Gogol later wrote.

Why was Gogol not married?

Despite the success of his second book, Gogol still refused to consider literary work as his main task. He taught at the Women's Patriotic Institute, where he often told young ladies entertaining and instructive stories. The fame of a talented "teacher-storyteller" even reached St. Petersburg University, where he was invited to lecture at the Department of World History.

In the personal life of the writer, everything remained unchanged. There is an assumption that Gogol never intended to marry. Meanwhile, many of the writer's contemporaries believed that he was in love with one of the first court beauties, Alexandra Osipovna Smirnova-Rosset, and wrote to her even when she left St. Petersburg with her husband.

Later, Gogol was fascinated by Countess Anna Mikhailovna Vielgorskaya, writes gogol.lit-info.ru. The writer met the Vielgorsky family in St. Petersburg. Educated and kind people cordially received Gogol and appreciated his talent. The writer especially made friends with the youngest daughter of the Vielgorsky Anna Mikhailovna.

In relation to the Countess, Nikolai Vasilyevich fancied himself a spiritual mentor and teacher. He gave her advice on Russian literature, tried to keep her interested in everything Russian. In turn, Anna Mikhailovna was always interested in Gogol's health, literary success, which supported in him the hope of reciprocity.

According to the Vielgorsky family tradition, Gogol decided to propose to Anna Mikhailovna in the late 1840s. "However, preliminary negotiations with relatives immediately convinced him that the inequality of their social position excludes the possibility of such a marriage," says the latest edition of Gogol's correspondence with the Vielgorskys.

After an unsuccessful attempt to arrange family life Gogol wrote to Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky in 1848 that he should not, as it seems to him, bind himself with any ties on earth, including family life.

"Viy" - "folk legend" invented by Gogol

Passion for the history of Ukraine inspired Gogol to create the story "Taras Bulba", which was included in the 1835 collection "Mirgorod". He handed over a copy of Mirgorod to the Minister of Public Education Uvarov for presentation to Emperor Nicholas I.

The collection includes one of the most mystical works of Gogol - the story "Viy". In a note to the book, Gogol wrote that the story "is a folk tradition," which he conveyed exactly as he heard it, without changing anything. Meanwhile, researchers have not yet found a single piece of folklore that would exactly resemble "Viy".

The name of the fantastic underground spirit - Viya - was invented by the writer as a result of combining the name of the ruler of the underworld "iron Niy" (from Ukrainian mythology) and the Ukrainian word "viya" - eyelid. Hence - the long eyelids of Gogol's character.

Escape

The meeting in 1831 with Pushkin was of crucial importance for Gogol. Alexander Sergeevich not only supported the novice writer in the literary environment of St. Petersburg, but also presented him with the plots of The Government Inspector and Dead Souls.

The play The Government Inspector, first staged on stage in May 1836, was favorably received by the Emperor himself, who presented Gogol with a diamond ring in exchange for a copy of the book. However, critics were not so generous with praise. The disappointment experienced was the beginning of a protracted depression of the writer, who in the same year went abroad "to open his longing."

However, the decision to leave is difficult to explain only as a reaction to criticism. Gogol was going on a trip even before the premiere of The Government Inspector. He went abroad in June 1836, traveled almost all of Western Europe, spending the longest time in Italy. In 1839, the writer returned to his homeland, but a year later he again announced his departure to his friends and promised to bring the first volume of Dead Souls next time.

In one of May days In 1840, Gogol was seen off by his friends Aksakov, Pogodin and Shchepkin. When the crew was out of sight, they noticed that black clouds covered half the sky. It suddenly became dark, and gloomy forebodings about Gogol's fate took possession of the friends. As it turns out, it's no coincidence...

Disease

In 1839, in Rome, Gogol caught the strongest swamp fever (malaria). He miraculously managed to avoid death, but a serious illness led to a progressive mental and physical disorder of health. As some researchers of Gogol's life write, the writer's illness. He began to experience seizures and fainting, which is characteristic of malarial encephalitis. But the most terrible for Gogol were the visions that visited him during his illness.

As Gogol's sister Anna Vasilyevna wrote, abroad the writer hoped to receive a "blessing" from someone, and when the preacher Innocent gave him the image of the Savior, the writer took it as a sign from above to go to Jerusalem, to the Holy Sepulcher.

However, the stay in Jerusalem did not bring the expected result. “Never before have I been so little satisfied with the state of my heart, as in Jerusalem and after Jerusalem,” said Gogol. and selfishness."

Only for a short time the disease receded. In the autumn of 1850, once in Odessa, Gogol felt better, he again became cheerful and cheerful as before. In Moscow, he read individual chapters of the second volume of "Dead Souls" to his friends, and, seeing universal approval and enthusiasm, began to work with redoubled energy.

However, as soon as the second volume of Dead Souls was completed, Gogol felt empty. More and more he began to take possession of the "fear of death", which his father once suffered from.

The difficult condition was aggravated by conversations with a fanatical priest - Matvey Konstantinovsky, who reproached Gogol for his imaginary sinfulness, demonstrated the horrors of the Last Judgment, thoughts about which tormented the writer from early childhood. Gogol's confessor demanded to renounce Pushkin, whose talent Nikolai Vasilievich admired.

On the night of February 12, 1852, an event occurred, the circumstances of which are still a mystery to biographers. Nikolai Gogol prayed until three o'clock, after which he took a briefcase, removed several papers from it, and ordered the rest to be thrown into the fire. Crossing himself, he returned to bed and wept uncontrollably.

It is believed that on that night he burned the second volume of Dead Souls. However, later the manuscript of the second volume was found among his books. And what was burned in the fireplace is still unclear, writes Komsomolskaya Pravda.

After that night, Gogol went deeper into his own fears. He suffered from taphophobia, the fear of being buried alive. This fear was so strong that the writer repeatedly gave written instructions to bury him only when there were clear signs of cadaveric decomposition.

At the time, doctors couldn't recognize him. mental illness and treated with drugs that only weakened him. If the doctors had begun to treat him for depression in a timely manner, the writer would have lived much longer, writes Sedmitsa.Ru, citing M. I. Davidov, associate professor of the Perm Medical Academy, who analyzed hundreds of documents while studying Gogol's illness.

skull mystery

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol died on February 21, 1852. He was buried in the cemetery of the St. Danilov Monastery, and in 1931 the monastery and the cemetery on its territory were closed. When Gogol's remains were transferred to, they discovered that a skull had been stolen from the coffin of the deceased.

According to the professor of the Literary Institute, writer V.G. Lidin, who was present at the opening of the grave, Gogol's skull was removed from the grave in 1909. That year, Alexei Bakhrushin, a patron and founder of the theater museum, persuaded the monks to get Gogol's skull for him. “In the Bakhrushinsky Theater Museum in Moscow there are three skulls belonging to unknown persons: one of them, according to the assumption, is the skull of the artist Shchepkin, the other is the skull of Gogol, nothing is known about the third,” wrote Lidin in his memoirs “Transferring the Ashes of Gogol”.

Rumors about the stolen head of the writer could later be used by Mikhail Bulgakov, a great admirer of Gogol's talent, in his novel The Master and Margarita. In the book, he wrote about the head of the chairman of the board of MASSOLIT stolen from the coffin, cut off by tram wheels on the Patriarch's Ponds.

The material was prepared by the editors of rian.ru based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources

Probably, there is no more mysterious and mystical writer than Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. Rereading his biography, many ask questions. Why Gogol never married? Why has he never had his own house? Why did he burn the second volume of Dead Souls? And, of course, the biggest mystery is the mystery of his illness and death.

Gogol's life is sheer torture, the most terrible part of which, proceeding on a mystical plane, is beyond our sight. A person who was born with a sense of cosmic horror, who saw quite realistically the intervention of demonic forces in a person’s life, who fought the devil to the last breath, this same person “burned out” with a passionate thirst for perfection and an indefatigable longing for God.

The great Ukrainian and Russian writer, Gogol, like no one else, had a sense of magic, conveying in his work the actions of dark, evil magical powers. But Gogol's mysticism is inherent not only in his works, but also in his life, starting from the moment of birth.

The story of the marriage of his parents, father Vasily Gogol, to mother Maria Kosyarovskaya was also covered with mysticism. As a boy, Vasily Gogol went with his mother on a pilgrimage to the Kharkov province, where there was a wonderful image of the Mother of God. Having stayed overnight, he saw in a dream this temple and the heavenly queen, who predicted his fate: “You will be obsessed with many diseases (and it was so, he suffered from many diseases), but everything will pass, you will recover, get married and here is your wife.” Having uttered these words, she raised her hand, and he saw at her feet a small child sitting on the floor, whose features were engraved in his memory. Soon, Vasily, while visiting a nearby town, saw a seven-month-old girl in the nanny's arms, which resembled the features of a girl from a dream. 13 years later, he again had a dream in which the gates opened in the same temple, and a girl of extraordinary beauty came out and, pointing to the left, said: “Here is your bride!”. He saw a girl in a white dress with the same features. After a short time, Vasily Gogol got married to thirteen-year-old Maria Kosyarovskaya.

Some time after the marriage, the son Nikolai appeared in the family, named after St. Nicholas of Myra, in front of whose miraculous icon Maria Ivanovna Gogol made a vow. Nicholas grew up in a God-fearing religious family, and his mother constantly took him to church from an early age. On the other hand, he was surrounded by Ukrainian culture, rich in legends, beliefs about otherworldly demonic forces. In addition, he grew up as a very sickly boy, and right up to the gymnasium he often had incomprehensible nervous attacks.

At the end of the gymnasium, Nikolai Gogol, having moved to St. Petersburg, begins his work with mystical stories, which brought him great popularity. According to his confession, he took all the plots from folk art. His characters - Viy, the Devil, the Witch - are so organic in his works, as if they really existed, Gogol's mysticism literally permeates them.

Nevertheless, Gogol considered Dead Souls to be the main book of his life. He looked at this work as something that lay outside his power, where he had to reveal the secrets bequeathed to him. “When I write, my eyes open with an unnatural clarity. And if I read what I have written as yet unfinished to anyone, the clarity leaves my eyes. I have experienced this many times. I am sure that when I have done my service and finished what I am called to do, I will die. And if I let out the unripe into the world or share the small things that I do, then I will die before I fulfill what I was called into the world for, ”he told his friends.

It is believed that it was the second volume of Dead Souls that he burned that night. However, later the manuscript of the second volume was found among his books. And what was burned in the fireplace is still unclear.

N. V. Gogol died on February 21, 1852 in Moscow, he was buried at the St. Danilov Monastery. In 1931, after the closure of the monastery and the cemetery, the remains of Nikolai Gogol were transferred to the cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent. It was then that it was discovered that a skull had been stolen from the deceased. According to many witnesses, the skeleton of the deceased was turned upside down, so there is reason to believe that Nikolai Vasilyevich's fears of being buried alive were not in vain.

Gogol Nikolai Vasilyevich's awareness of the responsibility of talent for his own destiny led to the conviction that he can look at human vices and virtues from above, and his genius is obliged to realize all this in a word.

"Awakened my sensitivity"

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, as a magnitude, needs no introduction. His work is taught to us at school. A. S. Pushkin appreciated Gogol so much that they were presented with the plot of The Inspector General and the idea of Dead Souls. Bulgakov considered him his teacher. And, most likely, in Russia there is not a single person who would treat Gogol indifferently.

However, like any star, even after his death, Nikolai Vasilyevich is “gotten” by fans: they manage to dig into his grave in order to consider whether the lining from the coffin has been torn off, whether the genius was buried alive: whether his skeleton lies flat or turned to one side . And someone even, they say, stole the skull of the writer from the burial.

And not only the remains of Gogol do not give rest to his "fans": they do not leave attempts to reshape his worldview, "correct" "Taras Bulba", modernizing the production of his plays to such an extent that the authorship becomes unrecognizable, and so on.

More than 150 years have passed since the death of N.V. Gogol, and the passions around his personality, his fate and his works do not subside. As if the forces of darkness themselves are fighting for his name, reminding us of themselves. Even taking into account the time in which Gogol lived (1809–1852), he had a strange attitude towards faith, experienced an excruciating fear of the afterlife and tried to get rid of this fear with a word, creating “The Lost Letter”, “Viya”, “May Night, or the Drowned Woman”, “Sorochinsky Fair” and other similar works.

Gogol was the first child in the family, and in total 6 boys and 6 girls were born in it. Few survived, which Kolya's mother, Maria Ivanovna, naturally, was very worried about. There were Orthodox priests in the Gogol family, while Maria Ivanovna was distinguished by a rather pagan worldview based on "miracles" and infernal fears.

Gogol's letter to his mother in 1833 contains the following lines: "... Once - I vividly, as now, remember this incident - I asked you to tell me about the Last Judgment, and you, a child, are so good, so understandable, so touchingly spoke about the benefits that await people for a virtuous life, and so strikingly, so terribly described the torments of sinners that it shocked and awakened sensitivity in me, it inspired and subsequently produced in me the highest thoughts. So, it can be said that it was thanks to his mother that vague sensations of the miraculous and sublime and the desire to realize them on paper began to wander in little Kolya.

"The sound of time passing into eternity..."

But it was in his childhood and many of the most serious fears. Gogol recalled one incident from his life: “I was about 5 years old. I was sitting alone in Vasilievka. Father and mother left ... Twilight descended. I clung to the corner of the sofa and, in the midst of complete silence, listened to the sound of the long pendulum of the old wall clock.

There was a buzzing in my ears, something approaching and leaving somewhere. Believe me, it already seemed to me then that the knock of the pendulum was the knock of time passing into eternity. Suddenly, the faint meow of a cat broke the peace that weighed on me. I saw her, meowing, cautiously creeping towards me. I will never forget how she walked, stretching, and her soft paws weakly tapped her claws on the floorboards, and her green eyes sparkled with an unkind light. I got scared. I climbed onto the couch and leaned against the wall.

"Kitty, kitty," I muttered, and, wanting to encourage myself, I jumped off and, grabbing the cat, which easily surrendered to my hands, ran into the garden, where I threw it into the pond and several times, when it tried to swim out and go ashore, pushed her sixth. I was scared, I was trembling, but at the same time I felt some satisfaction, maybe revenge for the fact that she scared me. But when she drowned, and the last circles on the water fled, complete peace and silence settled in, I suddenly felt terribly sorry for the “kitty”. I felt remorse. I felt like I drowned a man. I cried terribly and calmed down only when my father, to whom I confessed my deed, whipped me.

Obviously, the “germ of the writer” in Gogol not only reflected on an unconsciously cruel act, but also made Kolya incredibly worried and executed himself. Most likely, it was this incident from childhood that inspired Gogol with the episode with his stepmother, who turned into a black cat, whose paw was cut off by the lady ("May Night, or the Drowned Woman").

"Know what the crowd likes..."

Any genius wants to be understood by his contemporaries. And Gogol is no exception in this sense.

In his article “A few words about Pushkin” (1834), Nikolai Vasilievich drew attention to the fact that the “trial” of the audience over his children's drawings was painful for him: “... As a child, I was annoyed to hear such a trial, but after I learned wisdom: to know what the crowd likes and dislikes ... ”It was the knowledge and study of the tastes of readers, to which Gogol devoted a lot of time, along with writer's genius, that allowed Nikolai Vasilyevich to achieve a resounding success as a writer.

Arriving in St. Petersburg, Gogol unexpectedly felt here an atmosphere of deep interest in Ukrainian culture. He informs his mother that "... in St. Petersburg everyone is interested in everything Little Russian", and asks her to recall as many details of "Little Russian life" as possible for "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka". The stories, being published, receive condemned praise not only from readers and critics, but also from Pushkin himself.

"Will"

Gogol writes "Mirgorod", "Petersburg Tales", plays, the poem "Dead Souls" - some critics still consider it the most accurate penetration into the Russian character. The second volume of "Dead Souls" could not be worse than the first! And the scandals spreading around the poem hurt Gogol's subtle internal organization. Fears piled up new force, besides, the hard work of a writer, his own hesitation, and the pressure of public opinion did not contribute to peace of mind. One thing that Gogol had no doubts about was the power of his word.

In 1847, Gogol published the book Selected passages from correspondence with friends. It opens with the chapter "Testament". This is the real testament of Nikolai Vasilyevich, where, in addition to burial orders and all sorts of instructions to friends and admirers, Gogol writes: “I am a writer, and the duty of a writer is not just delivering a pleasant pastime to the mind and taste; he will be severely punished if some benefit to the soul does not spread from his writings and nothing remains of him to instruct people.

And ... "Selected places ..." everyone who could only began to scold. “How it happened that everyone in Russia was angry with me, I still cannot understand this myself,” Gogol was surprised, answering Belinsky to his devastating article. It is surprising that, being a mystic, Gogol did not immediately understand: having published the "Testament" (which is normally announced after death), he really ... had to die.

Writer's death

The decision to “surrender” did not come suddenly. It took a lot of time to think. And Gogol played along with the crowd, which was not difficult after cultural Russia did not proclaim him her Messiah, and Belinsky practically declared him crazy (and all the critics immediately supported, because then everything was explained). And then the writer played everything to the highest standard (it was not for nothing that Gogol loved the theater and was himself an excellent actor). The genius just…starved himself to death. And already on the threshold of death he put an exclamation mark - he burned the second volume of Dead Souls.

Keeping outward humility, Gogol took revenge on everyone. And those who did not stand up for him in time, and those who doubted his genius even for a moment. Russia sobbed.

“Gogol is not in the world, Gogol is dead… Strange words that usually do not produce an impression,” Sergei Aksakov wrote in his “Letter to Gogol’s Friends,” and through a sentence: “But Gogol burned Dead Souls… these are terrible words!” To deprive the readers of Russia of the result of decades of work!

But even in this strange, at first glance, act of a “mentally ill” person, signs of a genius are visible. For Gogol the genius is alien to momentary human suffering, he thinks in terms of centuries, arranging the death of Gogol the man in such a way that even after a century and a half they argue and think about it, and read and discuss the writer's works. However, the most basic thing: we are not given to find out what a genius burned before his death: his defeat or triumph - the answer is open, everyone is free to puzzle over it on their own. After all, Gogol knew exactly what the crowd needed.

The fate of the great

1. Folklore as a source of mystical images in Gogol's work.
2. Evil spirits in collections of short stories.
3. Mysticism in the story "Portrait".

In dictionaries, you can find several definitions of the concept of "mysticism", but they all agree that this word means beliefs in a different reality inhabited by supernatural beings, as well as in the possibility of people communicating with them. The folklore tradition of different peoples has preserved stories about various creatures of the other world, both good and bright, benevolent towards people, and evil, hostile to God and people.

In the works of N.V. Gogol, mainly malevolent entities penetrate into the world of people, and their accomplices also act - evil sorcerers and witches. Only occasionally do people meet benevolent creatures from another world. And yet, in the works of the writer, there are much more evil people from another world than good ones. It is possible that such a "distribution of forces" reflected the wary attitude of people towards the mysterious world, contact with which can lead to unpredictable consequences.

A meeting with a mermaid, a lady who drowned herself because of the oppression of her stepmother, a witch, unexpectedly changes the life of the lad Levko and his beloved Hanna. The mermaid generously rewards the young man for helping her find her stepmother. Thanks to the power of the drowned woman, Levko and Hanna finally become husband and wife despite the objections of the young man's father.

In the stories "The Missing Letter", "The Night Before Christmas", "The Enchanted Place" evil spirits are very active and unfriendly towards people. However, she is not so powerful that she cannot be defeated. We can say that the heroes of the stories "The Missing Letter" and "The Enchanted Place" got off lightly. The evil spirits played a joke on them, but they also let them go in peace, each remained with his own. And in the story “The Night Before Christmas”, the meeting with the devil turned out to be even useful for the blacksmith Vakula - after scaring the devil, the blacksmith used him as a vehicle and fulfilled the order of his capricious lover, brought her Tsarina-tsyna cherevichki.

He comes to the witch's body to destroy the person who killed her.

“The devil is not as scary as he is painted,” says the common expression. Indeed, one can agree that in the works of Gogol, evil spirits often do not turn out to be so terrible, if the person himself is not afraid of it. Sometimes she even looks very comical (remember the devil, planted in a bag by the witch Solokha and beaten by her son Vakula). Much scarier and more dangerous is a person who contributes to the penetration of evil into our world...