The Charming Town of Myrhorod

The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich, a 60-page-long novelette, concludes Nikolai Gogol’s famous collection Mirgorod (1835). (First printed in the fall of 1834 in Novoselye, an almanac put out by the well-known book publisher A. Smirdin). There are reasons to assume that this work by Gogol was “unlucky” in a way. In the minds of many contemporaries, this novelette was seen as a “spicy anecdote,” a funny story, notwithstanding the slightly gloomy epilogue that contrasts with an otherwise jovial mood. The author was reproached for having focused his attention on down-to-earth, if not sordid, sides of life. The St. Petersburg newspaper Severnaya Pchela fumed with indignation, “Why show us these tatters, these dirty rags, no matter how smartly they are being presented? Why paint a repugnant picture of life’s and humankind’s backyard for no apparent reason?” So, on the one hand, we see funny “triviality,” and on the other, a “repugnant” picture. To what extent is this true? Let us try to examine this question.

First of all, it should be noted that this is a profoundly Ukrainian work, one of Gogol’s most Ukrainian-minded works. The novelette is rife with local Poltava examples of everyday life, beginning with the famous description of Myrhorod’s “incredible puddle,” “the only one you have ever seen! It spreads almost over the entire place. A beautiful puddle! Big and small houses that you can mistake for haystacks from afar surround the puddle and gaze at it with admiration,” and ending with the heroes’ “loaded” last names, Dovhochkhun (“one who sneezes too long”) and Holopuz (“bare-bellied one”). The story is very subtly inscribed into an ethnic historical context and brings a number of colorful Ukrainian characters to the fore. Anyone familiar with Ukraine’s past can draw many interesting conclusions from this.

The plot, which begins with the notorious, ill-fated quarrel, is very precisely localized in time: the story is set in the summer of 1810. The two protagonists — Ivan Ivanovich Pererepenko and Ivan Nikiforovich Dovhochkhun — are hereditary nobles who are very proud of this and often emphasize their “honor” and “title” (the day Ivan Ivanovich was born is recorded in a special birth-and-death book at the Church of Three Saints, as is the day he was baptized). As the plot unfolds, the author shows us Ivan Nikiforovich’s old uniform coat (“one befitting a nobleman,” “with armorial buttons” and a “moth-eaten collar”) and then a “blue Cossack bekesha (fur-lined half coat — Ed.) that Ivan Ivanovich procured twenty years ago, when he was going to join the militia and even let a mustache grow.” In the same sequence is a good but slightly rusted shotgun that belonged to the aforesaid Mr. Dovhochkhun (the ill-fated quarrel broke out over this very shotgun that Ivan Ivanovich had offered to exchange for a brown pig and two sacks of oats).

The plot is woven unobtrusively, laconically, and very neatly into the tissue of history. We see the descendants of ancient Cossack clans, petty gentry, and loyal subjects of the Russian Empire. From the era of Catherine II onward, thousands of such rags-to-riches nobles (Cossacks until recently) reveled on the lush lands of Poltava, Sumy and Chernihiv regions. How does Gogol describe the age-old traditional setting of Myrhorod?

First of all, this setting ascribes an unusually large role to such things as property (small-scale in this story) and envy. The first-person narrator, Myrhorod’s ordinary man in the street, so masterfully invented by Gogol, does not even hide his literally frenzied envy of Ivan Ivanovich, the owner of a “gorgeous, excellent” bekesha (“Good Lord! St. Nicholas the Miracle Worker! Why don’t I have a bekesha like this?”) Ivan Ivanovich Pererepenko quarrels with his bosom friend Ivan Nikiforovich Dovhochkhun, the owner of the above-mentioned shotgun, after failing to make a deal on the purchase or exchange of this weapon. Moreover, he soon files a lawsuit against his former friend, requesting that the latter “be heavily fined as one guilty of arson and predatory seizure of property and, above all, of criminally adding the name ‘gander’ to my good name, as well as be put in fetters and sent to the city jail as befits a true offender.” They fail to divide the property (i.e., the shotgun). Ivan Nikiforovich is also up to the mark, demanding that his erstwhile friend be deported to nowhere else but Siberia.

Gogol’s story is “funny” in that envy of things overshadows reason. This involuntarily offers food for thought: if we assume that a similar psycho-social situation could crop up today, the modern Ivan Nikiforovich would perhaps not waste any time on a lawsuit but would simply “put out a contract” on his enemy (he may be more well-heeled than his Gogolian prototype, but the range of thought patterns is the same even if the question concerns a handsome sum of money, not a shotgun, while malice and hatred remain immutable). But let us return to the “charming” town of Myrhorod, with the “two venerable gentlemen” being its “honor” and “attraction.” What else can we say about it?

Although the inhabitants of Myrhorod revere enlightenment and science, here is a shining example of their way of thinking, as recounted by the narrator: “Word spread like fire that Ivan Nikiforovich was born with a tail behind him. But this is so bizarre, gross and obscene an allegation that I do not even think it necessary to deny it for my enlightened readers who are undoubtedly aware that only witches — and very few at that — have a tail. Besides, these creatures are of the female, rather than male, gender.” It is easy to laugh at this kind of “enlightenment.” But what about some of our contemporaries, who believe in magic, extrasensory abilities, poltergeists, and other paranormal phenomena?

In Myrhorod, even the most trivial court cases are not solved without “presents” (read: bribes); the town is rife with corruption. But what unsurpassed irony lies behind Gogol’s descriptions! “There is a porch (of the Myrhorod district court — Author) on the town square with hens often running on it, because the porch is almost always strewn with grain or some other edibles that are not dropped on purpose, though, but merely through plaintiffs’ oversight.” It is clear that bribers go to court in droves, “reinforcing” their complaints with all kinds of incentives, such as food, grain, etc. But the Gogolian narrator seems to be indifferent to this: he is ready just to reproach plaintiffs for an “oversight,” while bribery itself is a natural occurrence.

Or take the mayor of Myrhorod. Every day he asks police officers walking the beat if they have found his tunic’s ninth button that was torn off two years ago. But the main thing is that this preoccupies him no less than the problem of municipal management. So, is the more than twenty-year- long litigation of Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich so absurd against such a backdrop? It will be recalled that after reading this novelette by Gogol, Aleksandr Pushkin became very serious and said, “My God, what an eyesore our Russia is!” It should be noted, however, that the story is set in the Ukrainian town of Myrhorod, in Poltava province, Gogol’s homeland — not in Russia proper. The writer is thus teaching us an object lesson: any nation can and must look at itself from the outside and see its worst traits “in the mirror of laughter.” Is it so important then that the events under discussion occurred almost 200 years ago?

Nikolai Gogol wrote, “Laughter is a great thing: it never robs you of your life or estate, but you always feel cornered like a bound rabbit.” And the tragic-cum-farcical story of “charming Myrhorod’s” two venerated residents is ample proof of this.