Against Gogol
What do I have to write about him? In the tidal wave of texts (written, filmed, pictured, or painted) that is coming at us through every informational channel, it is difficult to pick a topic not hackneyed by numerous commentators, from literature critics to bureaucrats. One is forced to apply the exclusion principle. So, this is what I don’t want to know about Nikolai Gogol (Mykola Hohol) and what I am not going to write about him.
I don’t care if he was mean-spirited and vain, or, on the contrary, generous and kind-hearted; whether he was a heavy eater and drinker or observed strict austerity. I am not interested in his intimate life or religious and political views. His relationships with his contemporaries, his confessors, friends, habits, and inclinations are not my business. I am deeply indifferent to whether he had any psychic or physical disabilities. And it is the same for me (sic!) if he was a Russian or Ukrainian writer. Enough about that. My position is quite clear, I guess.
For me Gogol means a certain set of literary works. No more, no less. These pieces are always fine; they often speak of his talent and sometimes of his genius. My Gogol is the one who wrote The Overcoat, which was the source of inspiration for all the prominent writers in this part of the world. He is the author who was able to create a new character and describe his entire life by inserting a few words in the middle of the sentence that talked about something else, and this without losing the thread of the main plot.
Gogol is the man that subjected madness to a description like no one else. He is an ironic prophet, who modeled the Last Judgment in his Inspector-General no less convincingly than in the Bible. He was the father of the revolution that broke out in literature only a century later, and was called, for some unknown reasons, avant-gardism, even though Kafka, Becket, and Joyce mostly sharpened and used the techniques worked out by our Gogol. I am not saying that there were borrowings—someone was first, while the others came later.
By the way, the attitude to James Joyce in Ireland, his historical motherland, may be the answer to the question about the culture that Gogol belongs to. A recognized classic of modern prose, Joyce did not write a single line in Gaelic, the native tongue of the Irish. He wrote only in English, the language of the empire, so deeply hated by the Irish. Moreover, one day he left the Emerald Isle and his relationship with his homeland remained strained until the end of his life. Despite all this, every year Ireland marks Bloomsday (in reference to Joyce’s world-famous novel Ulysses). A veritable tourist and souvenir industry capitalizes on the names of famous writers: for Ireland the rebellious writer remained Irish, no matter where he lived, what he said, or who he quarreled with. But I am repeating myself.
Gogol has to become an absolute benchmark for our literature, the one and only foundation on which can attempt to build something new. There is enough room for everybody in his overcoat—conservatives, radicals, experimenters, scandalmongers, moralists, the anxious young, and the unhurried old. The main thing is to rebel against the Gogol of the school textbooks, ministerial instructors, and political invocations. Then, instead of lifeless bronze and stone monuments, we will obtain a garden of artistic delights, where the devil of mediocrity will be shown his place.
