His person is surrounded by a halo of secrets and mysticism. He noted: “I am considered a riddle for everyone ...”. But no matter how unsolved the life and creative way writer, only one thing is indisputable - an invaluable contribution to the development of Russian literature.
Childhood
The future writer, whose greatness is not subject to time, was born on April 1, 1809 in the Poltava region, in the family of the landowner Vasily Afanasyevich Gogol-Yanovsky. His ancestors were hereditary priests, belonged to an old Cossack family. Grandfather Afanasy Yanovsky, who spoke five languages, himself achieved the gift of a family noble status. My father served at the post office, was engaged in dramaturgy, was familiar with the poets Kotlyarevsky, Gnedich, Kapnist, was the secretary and director of the home theater of ex-senator Dmitry Troshchinsky, his relative, descendant of Ivan Mazepa and Pavel Polubotko. 
Mother Maria Ivanovna (nee Kosyarovskaya) lived in the Troshchinskys' house until she was married at the age of 14 to 28-year-old Vasily Afanasyevich. Together with her husband, she participated in performances in the house of her uncle-senator, was known as a beauty and talented person. The future writer became the third child of the couple's twelve children and the oldest of six survivors. He received his name in honor of the miraculous icon of St. Nicholas, which was in the church of the village of Dikanka, located fifty kilometers from their town.
A number of biographers have noted that:
Interest in art in the future classic was largely determined by the activities of the head of the family;
for religiosity, creative imagination and mysticism was influenced by the deeply pious, impressionable and superstitious mother;
Early acquaintance with samples of Ukrainian folklore, songs, legends, carols, customs affected the themes of the works.
In 1818, the parents sent their 9-year-old son to the Poltava district school. In 1821, with the assistance of Troshchinsky, who loved his mother like his own daughter, and him like his grandson, he became a student at the Nizhyn Gymnasium higher sciences(now - Gogol State University), where he showed creative talent, playing in performances and trying the pen. Among classmates, he was known as a tireless joker, he did not think about writing as a matter of his life, dreaming of doing something significant for the benefit of the whole country. In 1825 his father died. This was a big blow to the young man and his entire family.
In the city on the Neva
After graduating from the gymnasium at the age of 19, the young genius from Ukraine moved to the capital Russian Empire made big plans for the future. However, in a foreign city, many problems awaited him - lack of funds, unsuccessful attempts in search of a worthy occupation. 
Literary debut- the publication in 1829 of the work "Hanz Kühelgarten" under the pseudonym V. Akulov - brought a lot of critical reviews and new disappointments. In a depressed mood, having weak nerves from birth, he bought up its circulation and burned it, after which he left for Germany for a month.
By the end of the year, he nevertheless managed to get a job in the civil service in one of the departments of the Ministry of the Interior, where he subsequently collected valuable material for his St. Petersburg stories.
In 1830 Gogol published a number of successful literary works(“Woman”, “Thoughts on Teaching Geography”, “Teacher”) and soon became one of the elite word artists (Delvig, Pushkin, Pletnev, Zhukovsky, began teaching at educational institution for orphans of officers of the Patriot Institute, to give private lessons. In the period 1831-1832. appeared "Evenings on a farm near Dikanka", which received recognition thanks to humor and a masterful arrangement of the mystical Ukrainian epic.
In 1834, he moved to the department of history at St. Petersburg University. On the wave of success, he created and published the essay “Mirgorod”, where he included the historical story “Taras Bulba” and the mystical “Viy”, the book “Arabesques”, where he outlined his views on art, wrote the comedy “Inspector General”, the idea of which was suggested to him by Pushkin.
Emperor Nicholas I attended the premiere of The Inspector General in 1836 at the Alexandrinsky Theatre, presenting the author with a diamond ring as a compliment. Pushkin, Vyazemsky, Zhukovsky were in complete admiration for the satirical work, but unlike most critics. In connection with their negative feedback the writer fell into depression and decided to change the situation by going on a trip to Western Europe.
Development of creative activity
The Great Russian writer spent more than ten years abroad - he lived in different countries and cities, in particular, in Vevey, Geneva (Switzerland), Berlin, Baden-Baden, Dresden, Frankfurt (Germany), Paris (France), Rome, Naples (Italy).The news of the death of Alexander Pushkin in 1837 left him in a state of deepest grief. He took his work begun on " Dead souls as a "sacred testament" (the idea of the poem was given to him by the poet).
In March, he arrived in Rome, where he met Princess Zinaida Volkonskaya. In her house, Gogol organized public readings of The Inspector General in support of Ukrainian painters who worked in Italy. In 1839, he suffered a serious illness - malarial encephalitis - and miraculously survived, a year later he went briefly to his homeland, read excerpts from " dead souls". Enthusiasm and approval were universal.In 1841, he again visited Russia, where he busied himself with the publication of the poem and his "Works" in 4 volumes. From the summer of 1842 abroad, he continued to work on the 2nd volume of the story, conceived as a three-volume essay.
By 1845, the writer's strength was undermined by intense literary activity. He had deep syncope with numbness of the body and slowing of the pulse rate. He consulted with doctors, followed their recommendations, but there was no improvement in his condition. High demands on himself, dissatisfaction with the level of creative achievements and a critical public reaction to "Selected passages from correspondence with friends" aggravated the artistic crisis and the author's health problems.
Winter 1847-1848. he spent in Naples, studying historical works, Russian periodicals. In an effort for spiritual renewal, he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, after which he finally returned home from abroad - he lived with relatives and friends in Little Russia, in Moscow, in Northern Palmyra.
Personal life of Nikolai Gogol
An outstanding writer did not create a family. He has been in love several times. In 1850, he proposed to Countess Anna Villegorskaya, but was refused due to inequality of social status. 
He loved sweets, cooking and treating friends to Ukrainian dumplings and dumplings, he was embarrassed by his big nose, he was very attached to the pug Josie, presented by Pushkin, he liked to knit and sew.
There were rumors about his homosexual inclinations, as well as that he was allegedly an agent of the tsarist secret police. Death mask of Nikolai Gogol
However, having finished work on the 2nd volume of the poem in January 1852, he felt overworked. He was tormented by doubts about success, health problems, a premonition of an imminent death. In February, he fell ill and burned everything on the night of the 11th to the 12th. recent manuscripts. On the morning of February 21 outstanding master the pen is gone.
Nikolay Gogol. Mystery of death
The exact cause of Gogol's death is still a matter of debate. The version of a lethargic dream and being buried alive was refuted after the dying cast of the writer's face. It is widely believed that Nikolai Vasilievich suffered from a mental disorder (the psychiatrist V.F. Chizh became the founder of the theory) and, therefore, could not serve himself in everyday life and died of exhaustion. A version was also put forward that the writer was poisoned by a medicine for a gastric disorder with a high content of mercury.
Nikolai Gogol was born on April 1, 1809 in the town of Velikie Sorochintsy, Mirgorod district, Poltava province. He grew up in a landowner's family. The Gogol family had a large property, about a thousand acres of land and about four hundred souls of peasants.
Gogol spent all his childhood in the Yanovshchina estate, which belonged to the parents of Nikolai Vasilyevich. His mother tried very hard to instill in her son a love of religion. Gogol was interested in this, but not so much religion as a whole, as prophecies about the Last Judgment and about the idea of the afterlife retribution. Also in childhood, Gogol began to write poetry.
Nikolai Vasilyevich began to study in Poltava county school, then private lessons, and then Nikolai Vasilievich enters the gymnasium of higher sciences in Nizhyn. Here he begins to try himself in different literary genres, but he is not going to associate himself with this, because he dreams of a legal career.
After graduating from the gymnasium in 1828, Gogol went to St. Petersburg, but there he met with failure. The poem "Idyll in Pictures" written by him causes laughter and indulgence. Then Nikolai Vasilievich suddenly leaves for Germany, and just as suddenly he returns. But here again, failure, he does not enter the stage as a dramatic actor.
At the end of 1829, he served in the Department of State Economy and public buildings ministries of the interior. In the interval from 1830 to 1831, he served in the department of appanages.
This experience gave Gogol a disillusionment with public service and a craving for literature. He begins to spend a lot of time on this matter. Gogol begins to spend a lot of time in the circle of Pushkin and Zhukovsky. And, finally, in 1831 - 1832, "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka" was published. After the release of the second part of this work, Gogol becomes famous, he goes to Moscow. But then he begins to have difficulties with censorship.
Gogol became more and more interested in history, and several times tried to teach at universities, but he was not accepted. A little later he became an adjunct professor at the department world history. In parallel with this, he writes stories that had their own style, a vivid example of this was the work "The Nose" and "Taras Bulba".
When Gogol wrote The Inspector General, the reaction to his work was ambiguous. The fact is that already two months after the completion of writing the comedy, Gogol already put it on stage. But after a while, criticism rained down on Nikolai Vasilyevich, which greatly upset Gogol. The deterioration of relations with Pushkin also added fuel to the fire.
Nikolai Vasilyevich begins to spend a lot of time abroad. He goes to Germany, then to Switzerland. And at the same time he is working on the work “Dead Souls”, the idea of which, as the idea of the “Inspector General”, was suggested by Pushkin. And being in France, Gogol learns about his death. Then Nikolai Vasilievich decided that this work was like a kind of "sacred testament" of the poet. Since 1837, Gogol has been on the road again: Rome, Turin, Geneva and again Rome.
Nikolai Vasilyevich begins the first spiritual crisis, he is being treated, and only by the autumn of 1845 did he feel better. He breaks again to the second volume of "Dead Souls", but still difficult. Gogol is distracted a lot by other things. After writing the book "Selected passages from correspondence with friends", Gogol receives another blow. He is getting heavily criticized. This had a very bad effect on Nikolai Vasilyevich. After that, he reads a lot and decides to go on a pilgrimage to holy places. In 1849 - 1850, Nikolai Vasilyevich decided to read some chapters of the second volume of "Dead Souls" and Gogol's friends liked them. Then he decides to finally think about family life and makes an offer to Anna Mikhailovna Vielgorskaya, but she refuses the writer.
Gogol continues to work on the second volume of Dead Souls. He leads a fairly active lifestyle, and in 1852 he completes the second volume, but Gogol begins a crisis. He meets with Father Matthew, and on February 19 he confesses and takes communion. On the night of February 24, he burns the entire second volume, leaving only drafts of five chapters.
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol died on March 4, 1852 in a house on Nikitsky Boulevard in Moscow. The burial took place at the cemetery of the St. Danilov Monastery in Moscow, and in 1931 the ashes of the writer were transferred to the Novodevichy cemetery.
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol
Born in the town of Velikie Sorochintsy, Mirgorod district, Poltava province, in the family of a landowner. They named him Nicholas in honor of the miraculous icon of St. Nicholas, which was kept in the church of the village of Dikanka.
Velikie Sorochintsy, Mirgorod district, Poltava province
Gogol spent his childhood on the estate of his parents Vasilievka (another name is Yanovshchina). cultural center the edges were Kibintsy, the estate of D. P. Troshchinsky (1754-1829), a distant relative of the Gogols, a former minister, elected to the district marshals (to the county marshals of the nobility); Gogol's father acted as his secretary. There was a large library in Kibintsy, there was home theater, for whom Father Gogol wrote comedies, being also his actor and conductor.
Yanovshchina
In 1818-19, Gogol, together with his brother Ivan, studied at the Poltava district school, and then, in 1820-1821, took lessons from the Poltava teacher Gabriel Sorochinsky, living in his apartment. In May 1821 he entered the gymnasium of higher sciences in Nizhyn. Here he paints, participates in performances - as a decorator and as an actor, and with particular success performs comic roles. He also tries himself in various literary genres (writes elegiac poems, tragedies, a historical poem, a story). Then he wrote the satire "Something about Nizhyn, or the law is not written for Fools" (not preserved).
Poltava district school
After graduating from the gymnasium in 1828, Gogol in December, together with another graduate A. S. Danilevsky (1809-1888), went to St. Petersburg. Experiencing financial difficulties, unsuccessfully fussing about the place, Gogol makes the first literary tests: at the beginning of 1829, the poem "Italy" appears, and in the spring of the same year, under the pseudonym "V. Alov", Gogol prints "an idyll in pictures" "Hanz Küchelgarten". The poem evoked sharp and mocking reviews from N. A. Polevoy and later a condescendingly sympathetic review from O. M. Somov (1830), which intensified Gogol's heavy mood.
A. S. Danilevsky
At the end of 1829, he managed to find a job in the Department of State Economy and Public Buildings of the Ministry of the Interior. From April 1830 to March 1831 he served in the department of destinies (at first as a clerk, then as an assistant to the clerk), under the supervision of the famous idyllic poet V.I. Panaev. Staying in the offices caused Gogol a deep disappointment in the "service of the state", but it provided rich material for future works, depicting bureaucratic life and the functioning of the state machine.
The pinnacle of Gogol's fantasy is the "Petersburg story" The Nose (1835; published in 1836), an extremely bold grotesque that anticipated some of the art trends of the 20th century. The story “Taras Bulba” acted as a contrast in relation to both the provincial and metropolitan world, capturing that moment of the national past, when the people (“Cossacks”), defending their sovereignty, acted as a whole, together and, moreover, as a force that determines the nature of common European history.
In the autumn of 1835, he takes up writing, the plot of which was prompted by Pushkin; the work progressed so successfully that on January 18, 1836, he read the comedy at the evening at Zhukovsky's (in the presence of Pushkin, P. A. Vyazemsky and others), and in February-March he was already busy staging it on the stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater. The play premiered on April 19. May 25 - premiere in Moscow, at the Maly Theatre.
In June 1836, Gogol left St. Petersburg for Germany (in total, he lived abroad for about 12 years). He spends the end of summer and autumn in Switzerland, where he takes up the continuation. The plot was also prompted by Pushkin. The work began as early as 1835, before the writing of The Inspector General, and immediately acquired a wide scope. In St. Petersburg, several chapters were read to Pushkin, evoking in him both approval and at the same time a depressing feeling.
The three-year period (1842-1845) that followed after the writer's departure abroad was a period of intense and difficult work on the 2nd volume of Dead Souls.
At the beginning of 1845, Gogol showed signs of a new mental crisis. The writer goes to rest and "recuperate" in Paris, but in March he returns to Frankfurt. A period of treatment and consultations with various medical celebrities begins, moving from one resort to another in Halle, then in Berlin, then in Dresden, then in Karlsbad. At the end of June or at the beginning of July 1845, in a state of sharp exacerbation of his illness, Gogol burned the manuscript of the 2nd volume. Subsequently (in Four Letters to Various Persons Concerning "Dead Souls" -) Gogol explained this step by the fact that the "paths and roads" to the ideal were not clearly shown in the book.
Gogol continues to work on the 2nd volume, however, experiencing increasing difficulties, he is distracted by other things: he composes a preface to the 2nd edition of the poem (published in 1846) "To the reader from the writer", writes (published 1856), in which the idea of a “prefabricated city” in the spirit of the theological tradition (“On the City of God” by Blessed Augustine) was refracted into the subjective plane of the “spiritual city” of an individual, which brought to the fore the requirements of spiritual education and improvement of everyone.
In October 1850 Gogol arrived in Odessa. His condition is improving; he is active, cheerful, cheerful; willingly converges with the actors of the Odessa troupe, to whom he gives lessons in reading comedies, with L. S. Pushkin, with local writers. In March 1851 he left Odessa and, having spent the spring and early summer in his native places, returned to Moscow in June. A new circle of readings of the 2nd volume of the poem follows; I read up to 7 chapters in total. In October, he is present at The Inspector General at the Maly Theater, with S. V. Shumsky in the role of Khlestakov, and is satisfied with the performance; in November, he reads The Inspector General to a group of actors, and I. S. Turgenev was among the listeners.
S. V. Shumsky
January 1, 1852 Gogol informs Arnoldi that the 2nd volume is "completely finished." But in the last days of the month, signs of a new crisis were clearly revealed, the impetus for which was the death of E. M. Khomyakova, the sister of N. M. Yazykov, a person spiritually close to Gogol. He is tormented by a premonition imminent death, exacerbated by renewed doubts about the beneficence of his writing career and the success of his work. On February 7, Gogol confesses and takes communion, and on the night of 11 to 12 he burns the white manuscript of the 2nd volume (only 5 chapters relating to various draft editions have been preserved in incomplete form; published in 1855). On the morning of February 21, Gogol died in his last apartment in Talyzin's house in Moscow.
The funeral of the writer took place with a huge gathering of people at the cemetery of the St. Danilov Monastery, and in 1931 Gogol's remains were reburied at the Novodevichy cemetery.
Chapter Two
Dearest Grandmother... I humbly thank you for sending me a gift... Rejoice Papinka and Maminka that I managed in the sciences what I did in the first grade of the gymnasium, and the teacher is pleased with me.
Gogol - T. S. Gogol-Yanovskaya. Poltava, 1820
Almost all Gogol's heroes remember their school. Remembers her - in a negative way - Ivan Fedorovich Shponka. Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov remembers. He also remembers Tentetnikov.
The Poltava district school left almost no memories of Gogol. But the "gibberish letter" of the catechism, about which he writes in a letter to his mother, was learned precisely here.
The course of sciences, consisting of thirteen disciplines, was based primarily on the reading of the Holy Scriptures and on various rules - the rules of style, calligraphy, and spelling. In addition to this, the students were taught some information from geography, a brief general history and arithmetic with grammar. In those years, they strongly pressed on the explanation of the gospel - by order of the Minister of Spiritual Affairs and Public Education A. N. Golitsyn, the Holy Scriptures were introduced as compulsory reading almost before every lesson. They hollowed out the "lengthy Catechism", memorized whole pages from the Bible, but this did not help in religious education, on the contrary, as H. M. Karamzin wrote, only more hypocrites divorced in Russia than before. At the lessons of the law of God there was no solemnity, there was no reverence - they played "baba", exchanged knives, homemade toys, notes. Among those who studied in the first grade, there were also overgrown children - children of twelve or fourteen years old, who did not safely get off for several years from one desk.
Unwashed windows, dark classrooms, coldness in the classrooms, coldness in the eyes of teachers who reluctantly climbed up to the pulpit to deliver their next lesson - that's what Gogol remembered about this teaching. A nine-year-old boy, who had previously basked in the warmth of his parents' house, found himself in strange walls - and lived in an apartment with strangers - he felt uncomfortable. The Cases of the Poltava District School for 1819, which have survived to this day, indicate that the Gogol brothers were often late for classes, and even more often missed them.
Nothing good has been said about the abilities of Nikoshi and Ivan either. According to the certification of teachers, Nikolai Yanovsky is "stupid ... weak ... cuts", and his brother is "stupid, weak and quiet." In the records for the second half of 1819 about the abilities of the brothers, it was noted that they were "mediocre", and both boys were "modest" in their behavior.
However, there was no big difference between the assessments of behavior and diligence of students. Grades were given at random - they confused both the names of the pupils and their age. So, the Gogol brothers sometimes turned out to be older in the list, sometimes younger. The duties of the teachers boiled down to giving assignments, and the superintendent of the school - the permanent Ivan Nikitich Zozulin - to "visit classes" as often as possible. Sometimes he did this not alone, but accompanied by the director of the schools of the Poltava province, Mr. Ognev.
These visits were accompanied by a special severity. A dead silence hung in the classroom; it seemed that a fly would fly by, and that was audible. The teacher flashed menacingly with his eyes at the respondents, the respondents hesitated, fearing the rod, babbled something, the teacher was nervous, the class too.
Fear of punishment, punishment for any reason and without any justification, hung over everyone in the school. Or a "book for success", or a rod - there was no middle ground between encouragement and punishment, and the expectation of reprisal was even worse than the reprisal itself.
The classrooms were rarely cleaned, a one-eyed disabled soldier appeared with a bucket and a rag once every two days. It was unclean under the desks, in the corridors, it was also unclean in the relations between the students: they taunted, told nasty things about teachers, about girls who studied in another department, the elders beat the younger ones, took away the gifts brought from home. The teachers, who received 200-250 rubles a year and lived in rented apartments, wore shabby frock coats, looked poorer than many children.
The school environment of Nikoshi and Ivan was motley. Here a mixture peeped out - a democratic mixture of all sorts and ranks. The children of priests, cornets, lieutenants, peasants, merchants were in the school. There were sons of military and civilian colonels and lieutenant colonels, there were also pillar and newly minted nobles who had just come out of nicknames and nicknames, such as Antip Gnilokishkov, Apollo Matrix or Tit Levenets. There were the Mokritskys, the Tsimbalistovs, and the Zhukovskys, and Andrei Zoshchenko, the son of the titular adviser Nikolai Zoshchenko.
As Yu. Tomashevsky, a researcher of M. M. Zoshchenko's work, established, N. Zoshchenko is the great-grandfather of the famous writer.
Gogol did not get along with any of these boys. We know very little about his only Poltava friend of that time - the son of the landowner Gerasim Vysotsky. Those who saw him no longer young told that he was a joker, loved a sharp word, and the neighbors were afraid of his caustic characteristics.
Brother Ivan was sick all the time, his parents even wanted to take him away ahead of time to Vasilievka, but then thunder struck - my brother died.
That was the first death that took place near Gogol. Later he wrote a poem about his brother called "Two Fishes". One of these fish was Nikosha himself, the other was his beloved Ivan. No one suspected these lofty feelings in him. No one guessed the depth of his affection for his brother. The shock was so strong that Vasily Afanasyevich was forced to take his son from the school. As early as the beginning of 1819, he wrote to A. A. Trentinsky: “Moreover, with the opening of spring, I will have to go with my children to Catherine: (Slavl), and maybe to Odessa, because I no longer intend to keep them in Poltava ..."
Archive Central scientific library Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, Gogoliana, III, No 8790.
The death of the younger changed his intentions. He did not dare to take Nikosha alone to Odessa or Yekaterinoslavl. The search for a way of teaching began again, the search for a suitable person who could prepare his son for entering the gymnasium. Such a person was found, and again in Poltava. It turned out to be a certain Gavriil Sorochinsky. Vasily Afanasyevich this time gave his son "to the people": Nikosha settled in the teacher's house, classes were also held there. He also ate with the Sorochinsky family.
Therefore, payment for his teaching was made mainly in kind. From Vasilievka they sent bacon, honey, buckwheat and millet, flour, barrels of cucumbers. The teacher used to reprimand Gogol's father for the untimely delivery of provisions and, in a somewhat commanding tone, asked him to be more obliging. "Send ... - he writes to Vasilyevna, listing measures of cereals and flour, pounds of honey and pounds of bacon, the number of barrels. - Now give 300 money and the rest for the previous time"; when Vasily Afanasyevich is late, he remarks: "I humbly ask you to order the provisions to be released as soon as possible." Nothing is reported about Nikoshi's successes in these messages. Nikosha, according to the assurance of the teacher, is "in the arms of friendship" - that says it all.
Gogol's first handwritten letters from Poltava to "Papinka and Maminka" confirm these words. It is felt that Nikosha is free and that is why he is pleased with the teacher, although it may be that these letters were written under the dictation of the latter. Gavriil Sorochinsky did not really load the "volunteer" - that was the name of the children preparing to enter the gymnasium. He let him go for a walk around the city alone, went with him on behalf of Vasily Afanasyevich to visit the right people, among which Gogol himself in a letter names the prosecutor - a person very important in the province.
“Teaching at the gymnasium will begin in a week,” Nikosha wrote to his father, “and until that time I am a little engaged in repetition ...” This “slightly” is quite eloquent.
At the same time, there is no fear of the teacher, fear of papa, in him, it is felt that the author of the letter has himself, has time, and time is perhaps the most precious thing that his guardian could give to a boy greedy for observations.
Gogol did not waste this time in vain. In addition to dinners with the prosecutor, in addition to acquaintances with officials with whom his father had dealings, with the top of the province, where he no longer penetrated with a teacher, but with his father, or with Andrey Andreyevich Troshchinsky, who often came to Poltava, the trips around the city themselves gave him something which no school and no teacher could give.
Poltava stood on the high bank of the Vorskla, all white, in the greenery of countless orchards, which by the end of summer covered it with apples, cherries, pears, apricots. The spirit of wine hovered over her ravines and gardens, turning her head; little white thatched huts crowded along the streets, whose names reminded her of the Poltava victory that had changed her fate.
When they chose the capital of Little Russia, they first settled on Lubny - more ancient city. But Poltava took over - more precisely, the Battle of Poltava. Monuments and obelisks in honor of this battle stood here at almost every intersection and every square. One tradesman even erected such a monument near his house - his amateur initiative was not surprising.
They came to Poltava from abroad, they also came from the capitals. Each next tsar or heir considered it his duty to mark himself on this page of Russian history. There was not a year that one of the most august guests did not visit the city. Prepare for these visits. Buildings spoiling the view were demolished, streets were leveled, entrances to memorable places. Firefighters pumped mud out of puddles with a fire pipe.
In the days autumn rains the fat black soil became limp - it sucked in carts, carts, carriages, people. The eagle gazed sadly at the Victory Monument in the central square, how the water splashed at its foot, how greasy sprays flew from the crews to the cannons that had once been recaptured from the Swedes.
P. A. Vyazemsky, who visited Poltava twenty years after Gogol lived there, wrote:
Brothers!.. Isn't it a sin to see a stranger, God save, How the City, glorious in Russia, is floundering in a puddle?
There were no bridges in the city. In autumn, the brave Poltava ladies were forced to get to the places of balls and dinners on carts pulled by oxen.
The city was especially lively during noble elections or fairs. Then the whole province gathered here - camisoles and dresses were taken out of old chests, local dandies showed their curls and outfits, mothers - daughters of marriageable age, fellows of a bygone age - regalia and wounds. Exchanges and deals were made, contracts were concluded, serf souls, and even estates, were put at stake. Balls alternated with lunches, lunches with dinners, Boston with whist, whist with a bank. Eat and drink a lot of all kinds of food and drinks. The generosity of revelry, throwing money and some kind of oblivion in fun, redundancy - so many dogs divorced in the city from the abundance of food that they were caught with nets - were replaced by boredom, emptiness.
Then the creaking of feathers, the clicking of knuckles on the abacus, was heard more strongly from the windows of government institutions, and the prose of weaving the provincial web - the web of clerical production, grinding petitions, complaints, denunciations, circulars, decrees, orders came into play.
A year before Gogol's arrival in Poltava, Emperor Alexander Pavlovich visited her. He arrived here accompanied by a large retinue, which included the hero of 1812, Barclay de Tolly. The inspection of the shrines ended with a ball given in honor of the Tsar by the Poltava nobility. In the evening the city was illuminated. On this occasion, three thousand glass bowls and cups were bought, which, as the local wits slandered, "burned out from the fire" after the celebration. Someone warmed their hands at the royal feast.
Poltava contrasts were striking.
In the houses where Gogol visited, they talked about bribes, lawsuits, and squabbles. Vasily Afanasyevich was also burdened with litigation, either suing his neighbors who appropriated his fugitive peasants, or with a defaulter of debts - a merchant, or with distant relatives of his wife, who seized her share in the inheritance.
Krivosudovs and hvatails, about whom Vasily Vasilyevich Kapnist wrote in the preface to his Yabed that they were faces of times that no longer exist (as if justifying himself for having brought them out), Nikosha met on the streets, many of them bowed to him , as with the son of the "right man."
Poltava was a city of gamblers and merchants, masters of cheating the treasury and geniuses of paper business, a city where millions of wine-farming operations (remember the millionaire Murazov in the second volume of "Dead Souls") side by side with innocent offerings in the form of a box of cigars, several bales of Turkish tobacco or hares shot in the nearby forest.
Zaitsev and tobacco were brought even to Gogol's father when they wanted to enlist his support from the all-powerful Dmitry Prokofievich.
It was impossible to appear in courts and chambers without a titmouse, krasula or little white (five-, ten- and twenty-five-rouble notes) - depending on the size of the case that had to be decided. Vasily Afanasyevich also gave, and his acquaintances gave, and the boy Gogol saw how they give. And I saw how these gifts were taken, or favors, as they were called out of modesty.
Inspectors from St. Petersburg came to Poltava, scolded, terrified the bribe-takers, but for some reason they left peaceful, somehow fattened at the waist - either having fattened themselves on hearty Poltava bread, or stuffed their pockets with banknotes. It was impossible to buy a governor-general, a provincial marshal of the nobility (V.V. Kapnist was in those years), a few more people were unavailable in this respect, but they took the rest - and they took them willingly. The police chief of Poltava in front of Nikoshi walked around the shops, accompanied by a soldier of the police team, and he put pieces of linen, heads of sugar, balyki and salmon wrapped in oiled paper, jars of lipstick into his immense bag.
No matter how small Gogol was then, it was enough for him to see and hear all this. The wife of the son of M. S. Shchepkin, who met Gogol at the end of his life, wrote: "It is completely imperceptible that there was great person, only the eyes are quick, quick. "These eyes were already in the eleven-year-old son of Vasily Afanasyevich.
His father thought that he was sending him to the city to study spiders, but the only science Gogol received in Poltava was the science of reality itself.
Not only his eyes, but also his hearing - his extraordinary flair for live speech - developed in Poltava.
The capital of the Little Russian province was a bustling, noisy city. Roads went through it to St. Petersburg, Kharkov, Moscow, the rich Kremenchug fair, Kyiv, Saratov, Voronezh, Chisinau, Yekaterinoslav and Kherson provinces, abundant in free lands. These lands attracted adventurers, businessmen, cheaters, betting on chance, on happiness, able to lose everything and get everything in an hour, experienced people, hardened, who had seen a lot, speaking all dialects of the empire - from the semi-thieves, semi-muzhik language of fugitive serfs to mixed with French words speeches of degraded aristocrats or professional rogues. In hotels and inns, of which there were many in the city, they sometimes healed for a long time, not being able to leave, as they were completely lost. Here their carriages stood, their servants lived here, sleeping right in the britzkas and carriages, here they fought, argued, told jokes and various unusual stories, discussed world events, pulling them on their own, provincial, arshin. Here, the element of the sounding word spilled without restrictions - the word is free, impudent, not fitting into the rules of versification and spelling, and as capricious as the human sea. The speech of a secular woman and a drunken coachman, the speech of a delinquent officer exiled to the wilderness, the speech of a merchant adapting to the character of the buyer, and the dead syntax of the clerk, sticking out in the middle of the multicolored language of the street, like a dry sap, - everything was imprinted in the memory.
It was impossible to get around Poltava in a day. From the Panyanka ravine, where, according to stories, the pannochka committed suicide because of unhappy love, to the old fort - the place where the city was defended from the troops of Charles XII - there were several miles. If in the shopping malls, on the Round Square (where the governor's house stood and administrative buildings were located) life was in full swing, then on the slope of the Vorskla bank, near which the district school was located, it - especially in the hot summer hours - was more nibbled: chickens walked here, fluff swam dandelions, the women took out their plakhtas and skirts and hung them on ropes.
There was no library in the city, but there was a theater. Poltava people liked to have fun - the sounds of the Cossack bagpipes and the singing of the kobzar were heard on the streets. In the evenings, on the outskirts of the city - Kobishchi and Krivokhatki - boys and girls gathered to sleep and dance. And the thick clicking of nightingales resounded the Poltava gardens on May nights.
At that time, the governor-general of Little Russia was Prince Nikolai Grigorievich Repnin. He was an educated and honest boss. Appearing in Ukraine in 1818, he had previously lived in Europe, participated in the war against Napoleon, was taken prisoner near Austerlitz, and after the end of the campaign of 1812-1814 he was in the rank of Viceroy of the Kingdom of Saxony. High birth (Repnin was the grandson of Petrovsky field marshal N.V. Repnin) and personal authority created for him in Poltava the glory of an incorruptible and humane person, which the rulers of provincial provinces rarely were.
Under Repnin, the theater that had died out completely in Poltava came to life. The theater building, built by the prince's predecessor, was mostly empty. For the summer, it was inhabited by wandering troupes that wandered from city to city. Repnin ordered Stein's troupe from Kharkov, in which the then unknown, but promising serf actor Mikhailo Shchepkin performed.
Later, when Gogol and Shchepkin met, they did not need mediation in friendship: Poltava became a pass to Shchepkin's house for Gogol. According to the stories, Gogol entered the dining room, where the Shchepkin family was sitting at dinner, with the words of the Ukrainian song "A garmelon walks around the city." The friendship between the "countrymen", as they called each other, remained for life, and it was Schepkin who closed Gogol's coffin with a lid when he was carried out of the church of Moscow University to the cemetery.
The fact that Shchepkin and Gogol (still a boy) lived at the same time in the same city is a coincidence. But it is no coincidence that this city turned out to be Poltava. Here, in this capital of Little Russia, stretched all the best that was then on the lands of the former Left-bank Ukraine. And the Poltava land itself, famous for its garden and garden products, as Gogol liked to say, produced not only them, but also talents that were destined to immortalize it.
G. Skovoroda, I. I. Khemnitser, M. M. Kheraskov, the author of "Darling" I. F. Bogdanovich, V. V. Kapnist, V. T. Narezhny, E. P. Grebenka were born in the Poltava region. The future translator of the "Iliad" N. I. Gnedich and the creator of "Natalka Poltavka" I. I. Kotlyarevsky studied at the Poltava Theological Seminary. From here he went to St. Petersburg and became a famous portrait painter, the former Bogomaz from Mirgorod, Luka Lukich Borovikovsky.
Kotlyarevsky (with whom he studied together at the seminary and was briefly acquainted with V. A. Gogol) was the chief director of the Poltava theater. Fonvizin's Undergrowth, Kapnist's Yabeda, Krylov's Lesson to Daughters, Natalka Poltavka, and translated operas and vaudevilles were played on its stage. Performed in interludes and Ukrainian folk songs, and composed on hastily fakes for them, and foreign verses. Shchepkin, who did not have a voice, sang in "Natalka Poltavka", where he played a cart, and in "A Rare Thing" by Cherubini, and in the opera "Luck from failure, or an adventure in a Jewish tavern." In the latter, he skillfully copied the head of Poltava Zelensky. When Shchepkin appeared in front of the hall in make-up, they shouted from there: "Here is our Zelensky!"
The head was offended, he even wanted to bribe the actors so that they would no longer play this play, but Prince Repnin ordered that it be left in the repertoire. He even ordered Zelensky to go to performances.
The theater tried to resemble life. He sometimes mimicked her, sometimes fawned over her, adjusted to her moods and tastes, to the simple whims of Poltava spectators, and sometimes tickled her painfully, alluding to city abuses. Replicas were freely inserted into the text of the plays, which were composed right there, on the go, depending on the situation, on the composition of the hall, which had to be stirred up, excited. Along with the blasphemy, there were also praises. In Natalka Poltavka, one of her heroes, Mi-kola, said, referring to the activities of the Repnin administration: “There is no time for new things in the city now; that yakis pishego go shy, schob in the mud is good, bach, go bulo pishki, so marvel at cute ... yes, and the city will be - mov poppy bloom. know Poltavi..."
Under Repnin, a religious school, an institute for noble maidens, and a house of education for poor nobles were opened in Poltava. Repnin owes the historiography of Ukraine the appearance of the work of D. N. Bantysh-Kamensky (who later studied Gogol) "History Little Russia". And none other than Prince Repnin rescued Mikhail Semenovich Shchepkin from serfdom.
It happened just when Nikosha Gogol was studying at the district school. Shchepkin was bought from the Kursk landowner A. Volkenstein, who did not want to sell him, since she needed him "for her knowledge of land surveying science." So she wrote to Repnin in response to his request to sell Shchepkin. The deal nevertheless took place, the landowner received eight thousand net. Of these, seven thousand were given by a subscription - one landowner donated to this good deed a card debt that the Poltava police chief Kishchenkov owed him, - the rest were attached by the prince. Shchepkin and his family were first ransomed and then released.
The features of N. G. Repnin look through in the guise of a prince - the hero of the second volume of "Dead Souls". The governor-general of one of the provinces, he, like Repnin, seeks to eradicate abuses, to call on officials to live according to the law of conscience. And he, like Repnin, can do nothing with the Russian confusion that is overcoming him.
Repnin became a victim of it in 1835. Even during the construction of the Institute for Noble Maidens, which was patronized by the wife of the Governor-General, Princess V. A. Repnina, money and materials were stolen. Time passed, the shortage was discovered, and the Poltava Kokhtins (Kokh-tin is a character in Yabeda) blamed the prince and his family for it. Repnin, by personal order, was recalled to St. Petersburg, and part of his Little Russian estates was described to the treasury.
This story was well known to Gogol, who later became closely acquainted with the prince, princess and their children.
Poltava did not become the hero of Gogol's prose, like Mirgorod or Petersburg. But its anonymous features are scattered in the appearance of many cities reproduced by Gogol, and above all in the image of the city that he created in Dead Souls. And the action of the poem is related to the time when Nikosha Gogol lived in the apartment of Gabriel Sorochinsky. “It must be remembered,” writes Gogol, “that all this happened after the glorious expulsion of the French. At this time, all our landowners, officials, merchants, inmates and every literate and even illiterate people became, at least for eight whole years, sworn politicians” .
This time - 1820 - the time of Gogol's first acquaintance with the city. Never before or since had he lived so long in a provincial town, never had a chance to observe him so intently. What he remembered in childhood was later replenished with new impressions of Gogol the young man and Gogol, the author of "Evenings on a Farm" and "Mirgorod", who came from time to time to his homeland. His way to Vasilievna lay through Poltava. Here he stopped by to his close acquaintances - the family of Sofya Vasilievna Skala, the daughter of Kapnist, here, when leaving for Moscow and St. Petersburg, he noted his travellers.
Of course, he also visited Kyiv, Kharkov, Orel, Kursk. But what he saw there was captured by the gaze of a traveler, a traveler, and not a resident. He received a fundamental idea of the city, of the mechanism of its internal relations, of the threads stretching from one part of the mechanism to another, in Poltava.
It was precisely the city - with all the features of the way of the provincial city, with the system of connections penetrating its parts, with the copying of the all-Russian state model, which was most reflected in the cities (rural life liberated a person and put him in different conditions), or rather, in the cities of the Russian province, about which Gogol said that she is the true Russia among Russia.
In the autumn of 1820, Vasily Afanasyevich took his son from Poltava. Nikosha, who never entered the gymnasium, was assigned another road, and it lay not to the south, as his father had previously assumed, but to the north, to the Chernigov province, to Nizhyn, where on September 20 the lyceum of Prince Bezborodko was opened.
House of Dr. M.Ya. Trokhimovsky in Sorochintsy,
Where was Gogol born?
Gogol Nikolai Vasilyevich, Russian writer, publicist.
Born into the family of a middle-class landowner. Childhood years spent in the parental estate Vasilievka.
In 1818 - 19 Gogol studied at the Poltava district (district) school; in 1820 - early 1821 he studied with the teacher of the Latin language G.M. Sorochinsky, in 1821 - 28 he studied at the Gymnasium of Higher Sciences in Nizhyn. During these years, Gogol's versatile artistic talent manifested itself: he painted (landscapes, drawings; later he made sketches of cities, sketches for covers, etc.), performed in performances, wrote various works of art. Gogol, however, connected his future primarily with public service dreaming of a legal career.
In 1828, Gogol moved to St. Petersburg, where he unsuccessfully tried to get a job.
At the beginning of 1829, the poem "Italy" appeared, and in the spring of that year, under the pseudonym V. Alov separate edition the "idyll in pictures" "Hans Küchelgarten" was released. The poem evoked a sharp critical response from N.A. Polevoy, Gogol burned the unsold copies of the book and went abroad, to Northern Germany.
In September 1829 he returned to St. Petersburg and at the end of the year entered the Department of State Economy and Public Buildings of the Ministry of the Interior; and in April 1830 - to the department of destinies (at first as a clerk, and then as an assistant to the clerk). At the same time, his literary activity intensified.
In 1830 Gogol met V.A. Zhukovsky, P.A. Pletnev and, possibly, A.A. Delvig, and in May 1831, at an evening at Pletnev's, he was introduced to A.S. Pushkin. The first cycle of stories "Evenings on a farm near Dikanka" brought Gogol wide recognition. After the appearance of "Evenings ..." Gogol became a literary celebrity: in the summer and autumn of 1832 he was enthusiastically met in Moscow by S.T. Aksakov and K.S. Aksakov, M.S. Shchepkin, I.V. Kireevsky, S.P. Shevyrev, M.P. Pogodin. In 1835, he again visited Moscow, where he first met with V.G. Belinsky.
The cycles "Mirgorod" and "Arabesques" that followed Gogol's first prose book expanded the range of his work.
In 1834-35 Gogol was an adjunct professor at St. Petersburg University; He also applied (unsuccessfully) for a chair of history at Kiev University. History classes went in parallel with the development of artistic and historical ideas, of which the most significant is the unfinished drama "Alfred" (1835) on the plot of the Western European Middle Ages, as well as the story "Taras Bulba" from Ukrainian history. Gogol's historicism led him to The Government Inspector, a comedy with an exceptionally deep, truly philosophical content (staged for the first time on April 19, 1836 at the Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg; in the same year it came out as a separate edition).
In June 1836, Gogol went abroad, lived in Baden-Baden, Geneva, Vevey (Switzerland), in Paris, where he met A. Mickiewicz; here he received the shocking news of the death of A.S. Pushkin.
In March 1837, Gogol visited Rome for the first time, where he met Russian artists working there. Most of Dead Souls was written in Rome, work on which began as early as 1835.
In 1839-40 Gogol came to Russia, read chapters of "Dead Souls" to his friends; at the end of 1841 - the first half of 1842 Gogol was again at home, busy printing the first volume (it came out in May 1842); in 1842 - in early 1843 Gogol's "Works" were published in 4 volumes. From June 1842 Gogol lived abroad (in France, Germany, Italy), continuing to work on the 2nd volume of the poem. In the first half of 1845 Gogol's health deteriorated sharply; his strength was undermined by intense and, as it seemed to him, inefficient work. In the summer of 1845, Gogol burned the manuscript of the 2nd volume in order to start work over again. In January 1847, while in Naples, he experienced the news of the death of N.M. Yazykov, one of his closest friends. In the same year, "Selected passages from correspondence with friends" came out - a work that Gogol considered almost his first "efficient book", since it presented his main ideas in a direct, journalistic form. Gogol proceeded from the position that no social progress would be lasting without the education and re-education of everyone in the spirit of peasant ethics. The release of "Selected Places ..." brought on Gogol a real storm of criticism, including from his friends (S.T. and K.S. Aksakov, S.P. Shevyreva, and others).
In April 1848, after traveling to Jerusalem to the Holy Sepulcher, Gogol finally returned to his homeland; lived in Vasilievka, Odessa, St. Petersburg.
From December 1848 he lived with A.P. Tolstoy in Moscow, continuing work on the 2nd volume of the poem and other works (including "Reflections on the Divine Liturgy" begun in 1845 in Paris).
At the end of January 1852, signs of a new spiritual crisis were revealed: Gogol took the death of E.M. Khomyakova, sisters N.M. Yazykov.
On February 7, Gogol confessed and took communion, and on the night of February 11-12, he burned the white manuscript of the 2nd volume (5 chapters were preserved in an incomplete form).
The former grave of N.V. Gogol
at St. Daniel's Monastery in Moscow
Gogol's death caused a deep shock in Russian society. From the university church, where the funeral service took place, to the burial place in the St. Danilov Monastery, students and university professors carried the coffin in their arms (in 1931, Gogol's remains were transferred to the Novodevichy cemetery).
Gogol's influence on subsequent literature is enormous: his work contributed to realistic styles, from the natural school to the Russian novel; stimulated the strengthening and enrichment of the grotesque-fantastic direction. At the same time, Gogol's religious and moral quest largely determined ontological issues how in fiction, and in Russian religious philosophy late XIX- the first half of the XX century. In the 20th century, Gogol's influence, overcoming national boundaries, spread to the entire world culture.
Great Russian Encyclopedia: In 30 volumes - M., 2007.
Images taken from the site