Nikolay Gogol is one of the most famous Russian writers of the early 19th century. While his earliest literary creations reflected his interest in the history and culture of his native Ukraine, Gogols most famous works, such as The Government Inspector, Dead Souls, and The Overcoat, are known for their satire of the Russian provincial government. Although he acquired a reputation as a critic of tsarist corruption and inefficiency, Gogol presented himself as a conservative Slavophile who supported both the tsar and the Russian Orthodox Church during his final years.Nikolay Gogol: A Ukrainian in St. PetersburgStatue of Nikolay Gogol in Moscow, photograph by Jimmy Chen, 2015. Source: Jimmy ChenNikolay Gogol was born in 1809 in the town of Sorochyntsi, Ukraine, into a gentry family descended from Ukrainian Cossacks. His father, Vasily Gogol-Yanovsky, was a landowner and amateur playwright. As a child, Nikolay learned Ukrainian, Russian, and Polish. In 1820, the 11-year-old Gogol went to the college at Nizhyn. After spending eight years at the school, in 1828, Gogol went to St. Petersburg seeking employment.Gogol arrived in the Russian capital with literary aspirations and published a Romantic poem entitled Hans Kchelgarten at his own expense. It received such humiliating reviews that he bought back all the copies and destroyed them. Despite the humbling experience, he still dreamed of a literary career and befriended the poet Vasily Zhukovsky in 1830. Zhukovsky was a close friend of Alexander Pushkin, whom Gogol first met in 1831.Pushkin was impressed by a collection of Ukrainian tales Gogol published in 1831 under the title Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka. Gogol exploited the collections success by publishing a second volume in 1832.Illustration for the novel Taras Bulba, by Pyotr Fyodorovich Sokolov, 1841. Source: Wikimedia CommonsGogols literary creations during the first half of the 1830s were inspired by his interest in Ukrainian history. This was partly encouraged by the Polish Uprising of 1830, which was ruthlessly suppressed by tsarist forces. While Gogol was accustomed to publishing under a pseudonym, the anti-Polish sentiment in St. Petersburg encouraged him to abandon the Polish-sounding Yanovsky (Janowski) from his double-barreled surname.In 1835, Gogol published another two-volume collection of short stories entitled Mirgorod. Among the tales contained within was the historical novella Taras Bulba. Inspired by events during the Khmelnytsky Uprising against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the mid-17th century, the novellas hero is an old Ukrainian Cossack who goes to battle against the Poles with his sons. His hatred for the Poles is such that he shoots his son Andriy after seeing him in a Polish uniform. Gogol revised the story in 1842, introducing a new ending in which Taras is burned at the stake after being captured by the Poles.During the first half of the 1830s, Gogol had taken a series of odd jobs in government administration. In 1834, he set upon the idea of becoming professor of Ukrainian History at the new university in Kyiv but was refused. Instead, he was appointed professor of Medieval History at the University of St. Petersburg. He had no qualifications for the job and neglected his students to focus on his own writing. He quickly recognized his shortcomings and resigned from the post in 1835.The NoseIllustration for the short story The Nose, by Sergei Alimov, 1960s. Source: PolkaThe Polish scholar Edyta Bojanowska argues that in 1835, Gogol began reinventing himself as a Russian writer to achieve greater recognition in the Russian literary world (Bojanowska, p. 161). In 1836, his short story The Nose was published in Pushkins journal, The Contemporary.The tale opens with the barber Ivan Yakovlevich discovering, to his horror, that the nose of a client, Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov, has been baked into a loaf of bread made by his wife. The barber tries to throw the nose into the Neva River but is apprehended by a policeman. After realizing his nose is missing, Kovalyov sees that the nose is pretending to be a human and dressing as a high-ranking official. Kovalyov struggles to obtain police assistance, and while the nose is eventually returned to him, it refuses to be reattached to his face until several days later.Gogols venture into the realm of fantasy and the grotesque would be emblematic of his best work. The fantastical plot serves to sharpen Gogols satire of the Russian bureaucracy. It is already bad enough for Kovalyov to lose his nose, but what is even more humiliating is that his nose outranks him. In Kovalyovs mind, the fact that the nose is masquerading as a senior government official is sufficient grounds for police attention.The 20th-century writer Vladimir Nabokov notes that Gogols work regularly references noses, whether through smells, sneezes, snoring, or snuff-taking. Gogol himself had a particularly prominent nose, which was the distinguishing feature of his face (Nabokov, p. 4).The Government InspectorA commemorative stamp from Gogols bicentennial year depicting his play The Government Inspector, 2009. Source: Wikimedia CommonsDespite praise from the likes of Pushkin, Gogol was not yet a household name in the Russian literary world. This changed with the performance of his comedy The Government Inspector at St. Petersburgs Alexandrinsky Theater on April 19, 1836.The plot may have been inspired by Pushkin, who claimed to have been mistaken for a government official in Nizhny Novgorod while returning to St. Petersburg. The play is set in an unnamed Russian town, where the mayor and his officials receive the news that a government inspector is due to arrive incognito. As the officials frantically seek to hide evidence of their corruption, they are alerted to the presence of an individual named Khlestakov, who has been in the town for two weeks and refuses to pay his hotel bill.The officials conclude from this insolent behavior that Khlestakov must be the government inspector in question and compete to bow and scrape before him. After some initial confusion, Khlestakov exploits the mistaken identity and weaves fantastical tales about being intimately acquainted with Pushkin and the tsar. All the while, he demands loans from officials and merchants alike and flirts outrageously with the mayors wife and daughter.Tsar Nicholas I of Russia by Franz Krger, 1852. Source: State Hermitage Museum, St. PetersburgAfter making a promise to the merchants to dismiss the mayor and exile him for corruption and securing an engagement from the mayors daughter, Khlestakov leaves for St. Petersburg, afraid of being unmasked once the real inspector arrives. When the mayor finally learns of Khlestakovs true identity from an intercepted letter, he is enraged and blames his officials before famously turning to the audience to ask, What are you laughing at? Youre laughing at yourselves! While the recriminations fly around the group, the mayor receives an urgent summons from the real government inspector.Gogols merciless satire of the Russian bureaucracy naturally caught the attention of government censors who refused to stage it, and it took the personal intervention of Tsar Nicholas I to allow the performance to go ahead. The tsar attended the premiere and thoroughly enjoyed the show, allegedly remarking while leaving his box, What a play! Everybody got his due, I most of all! (Nabokov, p. 36)Gogols play was praised by the critic Vissarion Belinsky for highlighting real problems in Russian society rather than presenting an idealized image of the Russian Empire and its people. Others saw the Ukrainian Gogol slandering the Russian people. Gogol was horrified by such interpretations. He claimed that he had no intention of challenging the foundations of the Russian state but was rather highlighting humanitys corrupt tendencies in general, which would be corrected by the real government inspector.Dead SoulsPortrait of Nikolay Gogol, by Otto Friedrich Theodor von Mller, 1840. Source: Wikimedia Commons/State Tretyakov Gallery, MoscowIn the wake of the scandal he had inadvertently caused, Gogol left Russia for Paris, where he met and befriended the Polish writer Adam Mickiewicz. Edita Bojanowska suggests that this casts doubts on Gogols Russian nationalism and indicates that Gogol was more willing to associate himself with anti-Russian sentiments outside of Russia. Between 1839 and 1841, Gogol was working on a tragedy that returned to Ukrainian themes. When he gave a reading to a small circle of friends during a brief return to Russia, Zhukovsky fell asleep, and Gogol burned the manuscript (Bojanowska, pp. 164-165).By 1838, Gogol had established himself in Rome, where he worked on his novel Dead Souls. He had been planning the novel since 1835. Gogol claimed that the idea came from Pushkin, and prior to his departure from Russia, he had shown the novels opening to Pushkin a few months before the latters death following a duel in February 1837.The plot of Dead Souls revolves around the attempts by a financial speculator, Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, to exploit a loophole in Russian serfdom. Under the system, serfscommonly referred to as soulsare valuable financial assets who generate income by working the land, but can also be bought and sold and used as collateral for loans. Serfs are also a source of government revenue since their owners are obliged to pay poll taxes on them. Since government censuses are carried out infrequently, landowners have to continue paying taxes for their dead serfs.A commemorative plaque at the apartment building in Rome where Gogol lived between 1838 and 1842, photograph by Remi Jouan. Source: Wikimedia CommonsChichikovs scheme sees him traveling around provincial Russia seeking to buy dead serfs from landowners to take them off their books and reduce their tax burden. By the time Chichikov acquires 1,000 such soulsphysically dead but officially alivehe intends to use them as collateral for a large loan, which he can then use to buy an estate with living serfs to generate the income to pay off his loan. The novel follows Chichikovs interactions with various landowners who respond to his offer with varying levels of confusion and understanding. In some cases, they are willing to transfer their dead souls to Chichikov for free, while others demand impossibly high prices.While Chichikov is an unscrupulous financial speculator, at first glance, it appears that there are no victims to his fraud. The landowners are better off after selling their dead souls to Chichikov, and the government continues to receive taxes from Chichikov. The absurdity of the plot both distracts from and accentuates the tragic reality that living people can be bought and sold. The novel is less a critique of the Russian people as of the institutional factors that motivate human behavior.Dead Souls was published in 1842 when Gogol briefly returned to Russia and organized a new edition of his previous work, which included major updates to Taras Bulba and other Ukrainian tales to make them more appealing to a Russian audience. Dead Souls brought accusations that Gogol was again defaming the Russian character. Gogol responded by explaining that the novel was merely the first part of a trilogy based on the structure of Dantes Divine Comedy, and Chichikov would eventually be redeemed. Although he would spend much of the next decade working on the second part, it would never see the light of day.The OvercoatA commemorative stamp from Gogols bicentennial year depicting his short story The Overcoat, 2009.Source: Wikimedia CommonsThe year 1842 also witnessed the publication of Gogols most famous and influential short story, The Overcoat. Set in St. Petersburg, the story follows the life of Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin, a bureaucrat who makes a living copying government documents. He has been in the same grade for as long as anyone can remember. Once, his superior had asked him to make minor changes to a document by changing the first person into the third person, but even this proved too challenging for him. His longevity in the same job makes him the target of mockery by younger colleagues, as does his torn and threadbare overcoat. When Akaky takes the overcoat to the tailor Petrovich and asks him to repair it, the latter sees that the garment is in no condition to be patched.After painstakingly saving up his money, Akaky pays Petrovich to make him a fine new overcoat from the finest materials he can afford. He is delighted and proudly shows it off to his colleagues, who decide to throw a party to honor Akaky and his overcoat. As Akaky walks home late at night after the party, he is attacked by two bearded assailants who wrestle him to the ground and run off with his pride and joy.Soviet-era commemorative stamp depicting the literary critic Vissarion Belinsky, by Post of USSR, 1957. Source: Wikimedia CommonsA distraught Akaky relates the tale to his landlady, who encourages him to inform the police. After the local police chief refuses to help, a colleague advises him to bring his case to an important personage.This individual, a recently promoted general, not only refuses to help Akaky but shouts at him for wasting his time over such a trivial matter. The generals abuse causes Akaky to faint and fall mortally ill. After Akakys death, the St. Petersburg police receive a series of reports of people having their overcoats stolen by a ghost resembling Akaky. These thefts suddenly come to an end, and the ghost gets hold of the generals overcoat.As a portrayal of the Russian bureaucracy, The Overcoat bears many similarities to The Nose. However, stylistically, the tale shifts from comedy to tragedy as the reader stops laughing at Akaky and starts sympathizing with him. The tale received a positive appraisal from Belinsky, but The Overcoat also had a major influence on Fyodor Dostoevskys novel Poor Folk, in which the lowly civil servant becomes a purely tragic figure.Belinsky praised Dostoevsky for surpassing Gogol in his realistic depiction of Russian society. However, he criticized him for doubling down on Gogolian fantasy in his next novel, The Double, in which the protagonist encounters a doppelganger who exhibits social traits that he would like to emulate but is incapable of doing so on the grounds of morality and propriety. The influence of The Overcoat on Dostoevsky is such that he is believed to have remarked, We all came out from under Gogols Overcoat. In fact, this quote appears in The Russian Novel by French diplomat and literary critic Eugne-Melchior de Vog and is attributed to an unnamed Russian writer (de Vog, p. 110).Nikolay Gogols Last Years: Depression and DeathGogol burning the manuscript of the second part of Dead Souls, painting by Ilya Repin, 1909. Source: State Tretyakov Gallery, MoscowBetween 1842 and 1848, Gogol traveled restlessly while maintaining a base in Rome. He worked on the second volume of Dead Souls but struggled to make progress as he began questioning the purpose of his craft. Increasingly influenced by Christian mystics, he concluded that the absurd and grotesque elements of his work had been inspired by the Devil. Thus, he faced the challenge of abolishing these aspects in the second part while maintaining a stylistic coherence with the first part.In 1847, Gogol published his Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends to communicate his newfound belief that art should have a didactic purpose. In apparent contradiction to much of his previous work, Gogol argued that the cure for Russias social ills lay in the State and the Church. The books publication caused a scandal and prompted a famous reply from Belinsky, who attacked Gogols defense of Church and State via an eloquent attack on serfdom.In January 1848, Gogol made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, seeking to restore his physical and spiritual health. After returning to Russia, he remained restless and traveled frequently between Moscow, St. Petersburg, and his mothers estate in Ukraine. His health continued to deteriorate, and on February 24, 1852, he burned the manuscript for Dead Souls Part Two. He took to his bed, refused to eat, and died in Moscow on March 4, 1852, at the age of 43.Gogols body was initially buried at Danilov Monastery in Moscow. After suppressing the monastery in 1931, the Soviet authorities moved his remains to the Novodevichy Cemetery, where they remain to this day. He leaves behind a complex legacy that continues to attract scholarly interest.BibliographyBojanowska, E. (2012). Nikolay Vasilievich Gogol (1809-1852). In S. Norris, W. Sunderland (Ed.) Russias people of empire: life stories from Eurasia, 1500 to the present (pp. 159-168). Indiana University Press.Nabokov, V. (1961). Nikolai Gogol. New Directions.de Vog, E.-M. (1913). The Russian Novel. Chapman and Hall. (Original work published 1886).