Word: gogol
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...Nikolai Gogol, Letter on Jerusalem...
...Gogol's time, three centuries of Ottoman rule had reduced the City of God to a crumbling Levantine village of no more than 15,000 inhabitants (slightly fewer than half of them Jews). "Jerusalem is mournful and dreary and lifeless," Mark Twain wrote in Innocents Abroad. "Everything in it is rotting," said Gustave Flaubert, "the dead dogs in the streets, the religions in the churches." Today, after a turbulent sequence of British, Jordanian and Israeli conquests, after years of sporadic bombings and gunfire, this beautiful and richly diverse city is vibrant with growth and prosperity...
...NABOKOV THE NOVELIST has a special affinity with Gogol. They are both obsessed with words, with the curious and beautiful poetic possibilities of their languages. They both love a story for its own sake; they shy away from messages and morals. They twist the literary conventions. Above all, they challenge the imagination. Nabokov treats Gogol lovingly; it makes for a delightful and intelligent opening chapter...
...describes. Indeed, he has written in two languages, he has translated the works of others, he has translated his own works, and he has seen his own works translated by others. Even in this essay, however, Nabokov exudes a conceited pedantry, inventing some silly translations of names and titles. Gogol's story "The Overcoat," for example, becomes "The Carrick." Memoirs from a Mousehold, rather than Notes from Underground. And the nickname of Prince Stepan Rkadyevich Oblonsky. One cannot help but wonder whether Nabokov is more concerned with shock value than accuracy...
...will probably last: Lolita is already available in an annotated critical edition. Still, there is something missing in all of Nabokov's work. His starchy aestheticism comes through as cold, crystalline, and almost inhuman. We wait in vain for that warm human glow that pervades all the works of Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov. And his work lacks the psychological or emotional depth that might have compensated for the limited range of characters and situations. Nabokov must have been a fiery lecturer, but somehow the fire chills...