March 27, 2022

Gogol: A Surrealist Author between Russia and Ukraine


Gogol: A Surrealist Author between Russia and Ukraine
Gogol: Expert writer, amateur facial hair grower. Too bad we left him off our list. Moller's famous portrait of Gogol, public domain.

In my time writing for Russian Life, I haven't been shy about my general disdain for Russian literature. I find most of it bleak and dull; I have little patience for Tolstoy's ramblings or Dostoyevsky's fraught debates. I love Russian history and art, but whenever I've had the chance to dive into these great works, I've given up after the first few hundred pages, letting Wikipedia, Sparknotes, or my classmates' summaries fill me in. That's always been good enough for me. 

The exception for me, however, is Gogol.

Nikolai Gogol was a Russian writer active between the 1830s and 1852. This was the beginning of Russia's art scene: a century after Peter the Great had created his new European-style capital and his descendants had begun patronizing the arts, Russian literature, music, and visual art hit its stride and began producing original works that can stand proudly alongside anything else from the time. 

Alexander Pushkin was perhaps the first great Russian writer, active just before Gogol. But Pushkin is squarely a romantic: his stories focus on pastoral romances, patriotic sacrifice, and melodramatic honor, all imbued with traditional Russian mores and folkloric motifs. It's all a bit saccharine, even if his skills are outstanding. Take, for instance, his novel Eugene Onegin, which is made up of one hundred sonnets. It takes a veteran poet to pull that off.

Nikolai Gogol is no Pushkin, but that's to his benefit.

Gogol’s work, mostly novels and short stories, is at the same time surreal, biting, and very humorous. While Gogol supported tsarism and was himself a patriot, he found a good deal of fodder for his work in officious, middle-class St. Petersburg civil servants, whose overeducation, self-importance, and menial work duties take center stage in Gogol’s stories.

Four of Gogol’s works are very well remembered. The Nose sees a Peterburg administrator’s schnoz jump off his face one day and assume his role at a government office, apparently doing a pretty good job. In the humorous ghost story The Overcoat, a low-paid and impoverished clerk saves for months to buy a new overcoat, and his life instantly improves thanks to it. Almost immediately, he is mugged late at night, and his precious overcoat is taken. He soon dies, and his spirit haunts the streets of St. Petersburg, taking innocent people’s coats from them.

While these stories are bleak, tragicomic, and creative in their own right and in a way that is somehow uniquely Russian, two of Gogol’s books truly stand out and have become undisputed classics. The Government Inspector (which is actually a play, of course) takes place in an anonymous provincial town, one of countless others throughout the Russian Empire. The town’s self-assured mayor and his overly-serious cronies are anxiously anticipating the arrival of an imperial inspector any day, so when a cosmopolitan-looking man arrives at the town’s boarding house, they assume him to be the high-ranking official they were waiting for. As the eager townsfolk put the visitor through lavish ceremonies, balls, feasts, and tours, each more lavish and ridiculous than the last, the visitor plays along, even as the reader knows he’s nothing but a rookie civil servant who just happened to be in the area. As the interloper leaves, the actual government inspector arrives. The impostor makes a fool of the townsfolk and sticks them with a lengthy bill.

One of Gogol’s later works, Dead Souls, is perhaps his most subversive. In it, a young businessman, Chichikov, seeks to make a fortune through an ingenious and creative scheme. Chichikov goes to several low nobles and offers to purchase the title to any dead serfs from landowners for a small fee, as, until the next census would occur (likely not for years), the serfs were, legally, still alive, and therefore taxable as an asset. The landowners, eager to get rid of a tax burden and happy to take some of Chichikov’s cash, eagerly agree, and Chichikov soon accumulates hundreds of serfs, becoming extremely well-to-do while not actually being any better off than before. Dead Souls is not only a mockery of the archaic feudal system in imperial Russia and a humorous poke at bureaucratic rigidity and self-promoting entrepreneurs; it also stereotypes Russian landowners, as each of Chichikov’s customers is a caricature of a Russian archetype. Who, then, are the dead souls: the unfortunate serfs, or the frittering nobles? There’s a question for a literature class.

In a way, Gogol laid the groundwork for twentieth-century absurdist and surrealist authors, like Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, and Tom Stoppard, whose stories mixed bureaucratic boredom with whimsical fantasy to show just how strange our everyday world really is. His humorous satires and ridiculous plots were far ahead of their time, and, unlike other stars of Russian literature, his work is extremely readable and usually relatively brief. I can recommend him wholeheartedly.

But Gogol's legacy isn't all in the domain of literature classes. Russia's recent invasion of Ukraine has demonstrated that he has a political side, too.

Gogol was born in 1809 in Poltava, then part of the Russian Empire. Today, however, that land is part of Ukraine. And even though Gogol moved in the high literary circles of St. Petersburg and Moscow, Ukraine has been eager in recent years to highlight his birthplace, even as Russia has sought to keep his memory for themselves.

Fortunately, Gogol's wit is universal, and you don't have to be neither Russian nor Ukrainian to appreciate his work.  And I'd be willing to bet that Gogol would find some humor in the debate over who he truly belongs to.

You Might Also Like

Understanding Gogol
  • March 01, 2009

Understanding Gogol

Recognized soon after his first publication as a writer of great promise, Gogol went on to prove the critics right, and to create a body of work that has no equal in the Russian pantheon. This April (or March, depending on your calendar) is his bicentenary.
Happy Birthday, Gogol and Olesha!
  • March 19, 2016

Happy Birthday, Gogol and Olesha!

Two writers, two different centuries, one number in common. Actually, Yuri Olesha and Nikolai Gogol have more in common than you think!
A Memory Battle for Lubyanka Square
  • March 14, 2021

A Memory Battle for Lubyanka Square

The hoopla surrounding a new monument at a controversial location in central Moscow highlights the importance of history for Russia – and ourselves.
Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of Our Books

The Best of Russian Life

The Best of Russian Life

We culled through 15 years of Russian Life to select readers’ and editors’ favorite stories and biographies for inclusion in a special two-volume collection. Totalling over 1100 pages, these two volumes encompass some of the best writing we have published over the last two decades, and include the most timeless stories and biographies – those that can be read again and again.
Murder at the Dacha

Murder at the Dacha

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin has a problem. Several, actually. Not the least of them is the fact that a powerful Soviet boss has been murdered, and Matyushkin's surly commander has given him an unreasonably short time frame to close the case.
Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka

Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka

In this comprehensive, quixotic and addictive book, Edwin Trommelen explores all facets of the Russian obsession with vodka. Peering chiefly through the lenses of history and literature, Trommelen offers up an appropriately complex, rich and bittersweet portrait, based on great respect for Russian culture.
Driving Down Russia's Spine

Driving Down Russia's Spine

The story of the epic Spine of Russia trip, intertwining fascinating subject profiles with digressions into historical and cultural themes relevant to understanding modern Russia. 
White Magic

White Magic

The thirteen tales in this volume – all written by Russian émigrés, writers who fled their native country in the early twentieth century – contain a fair dose of magic and mysticism, of terror and the supernatural. There are Petersburg revenants, grief-stricken avengers, Lithuanian vampires, flying skeletons, murders and duels, and even a ghostly Edgar Allen Poe.
Fish: A History of One Migration

Fish: A History of One Migration

This mesmerizing novel from one of Russia’s most important modern authors traces the life journey of a selfless Russian everywoman. In the wake of the Soviet breakup, inexorable forces drag Vera across the breadth of the Russian empire. Facing a relentless onslaught of human and social trials, she swims against the current of life, countering adversity and pain with compassion and hope, in many ways personifying Mother Russia’s torment and resilience amid the Soviet disintegration.
A Taste of Chekhov

A Taste of Chekhov

This compact volume is an introduction to the works of Chekhov the master storyteller, via nine stories spanning the last twenty years of his life.
Jews in Service to the Tsar

Jews in Service to the Tsar

Benjamin Disraeli advised, “Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.” With Jews in Service to the Tsar, Lev Berdnikov offers us 28 biographies spanning five centuries of Russian Jewish history, and each portrait opens a new window onto the history of Eastern Europe’s Jews, illuminating dark corners and challenging widely-held conceptions about the role of Jews in Russian history.
Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Stargorod is a mid-sized provincial city that exists only in Russian metaphorical space. It has its roots in Gogol, and Ilf and Petrov, and is a place far from Moscow, but close to Russian hearts. It is a place of mystery and normality, of provincial innocence and Black Earth wisdom. Strange, inexplicable things happen in Stargorod. So do good things. And bad things. A lot like life everywhere, one might say. Only with a heavy dose of vodka, longing and mystery.
Murder and the Muse

Murder and the Muse

KGB Chief Andropov has tapped Matyushkin to solve a brazen jewel heist from Picasso’s wife at the posh Metropole Hotel. But when the case bleeds over into murder, machinations, and international intrigue, not everyone is eager to see where the clues might lead.
The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas

The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas

This exciting new trilogy by a Russian author – who has been compared to Orhan Pamuk and Umberto Eco – vividly recreates a lost world, yet its passions and characters are entirely relevant to the present day. Full of mystery, memorable characters, and non-stop adventure, The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas is a must read for lovers of historical fiction and international thrillers.  

About Us

Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
PO Box 567
Montpelier VT 05601-0567

802-223-4955