Word: gogol
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Dealer in Dead Souls. For twelve years Gogol traveled restlessly about the Continent, from Germany to France, to Italy, to Switzerland, to France again, and always back to Rome-his favorite city. ("Europe exists in order to watch," he said, "and Italy in order to live.") All the while, Gogol worked at his novel, Dead Souls, also based on one of Pushkin's ideas. In 1842 it was published and, as the Journalist-Historian Alexander Herzen records, "shook the whole of Russia...
...census. Once he has accumulated a large enough roster of these imaginary people, Chichikov intends to raise a huge mortgage on them, invest the money somehow or other and make himself a rich man. It is at once an uproariously funny story and a sulphuric satire on Russian society. Gogol was able to sound the deepest and most secret of men's motives as surehandedly as a peasant pawing up his potato crop...
...knew about other people, Gogol knew nothing about himself. After the tremendous success of Dead Souls, he had a vision of "Russia . . . turning upon me eyes full of expectation." He felt a sudden strength, and a longing to "climb that ladder." In his exaltation he began to wonder if his "great task" was not, after all, to save his generation. He took up a sequel to Dead Souls, in which he sought to illumine good as in the first volume he had exposed evil. His feet had left the ground; he could not push the work to completion...
Bellows & Fire. Next, he put his thought into a religious and social tract a book which he assured his friends was "needed by all." When it was published a pious and disjointed tirade, his friends turned on him with angry reproaches. Gogol, whose bravado was the thinnest garment of self-loathing, broke and piteously begged forgiveness. "One drop of your pity," was all he asked. Few gave it Gogol lost his grip on the ladder...
...fell into the ministry of a fanatical Orthodox priest, Father Konstantinovsky who called him a "swine," and plied the bellows to Gogol's visions of hell fire. Poor Gogol was always chilly now, a twisted little man with a long fox nose, big close-set eyes, a loose little mouth full of bad teeth. For two years before his death, he was often without the power of connected thought. One day he burned most of the manuscript of Part II of Dead Souls. Then he refused to eat. On March 4, 1852, at the age of 43, he died...