Gogol and The Affinity of Tragedy

The enigmatic Russian writer of the 19th century left an indelible mark on the world of literature through his unique narrative structures and styles. Born in 1809 in the Ukrainian village of Sorochyntsi, he published several novels and dozens of famous stories which influenced generations of writers including Tolstoy, Turgenev, Dostoevsky and Kafka. He was mocked by his contemporaries, but deeply beloved by them as well. The world of the golden age of Russian literature mourned his passing. He lived with and was close to Tolstoy while in Moscow, argued with Dostoevsky while in St. Petersburg, delighted Turgenev and rubbed basically everyone the wrong way at some point.

Ukrainian-Russian Parallax

Gogol is the greatest of the Ukrainian novelists. His writings are deeply marked by his Ukrainian heritage and his fascination with the supernatural, particularly the folk superstitions. He drew inspiration from the Ukrainian folklore he grew up in, imbuing his works with the mystical and the grotesque. " Gogol's fascination with the absurd is evident in his masterpiece, "The Nose," where a man's nose inexplicably detaches itself and takes on a life of its own. This “absurdity” (to use Camusian terminology) serves as a lens through which Gogol explores the inherent strangeness of the human condition. Kafka and a host of other authors owe Gogol their careers.

As it is impossible to deracinate Dostoevsky's art from the city he loved, it is impossible to rip Gogol out of Ukraine. He was a Cossack in a Russian's world. Just like Kafka's variation of Gogol's Surrealism was influenced by his Jewishness in Germany, Gogol's Surrealism in part emerged from his Zaporozhian Cossack origins. He was an amateur historian who commented extensively on the complex Ethnogenesis of Ukraine. Gogol refers to his native Ukraine with the ethnonym "Little Russia" here in Dead Souls, and wrote a non-fiction account of Ukrainian history titled "History of Little Russia”. But he considers the spirit of "Little Russia" and "White Russia" (Belarus) to be essentially different from the Russian spirit. Gogol's fictional Ukrainian-Nationalist epic Taras Bula exhibits the pride of the Zaporozhian Host and their ancestral land, the Zaporozhian Sich. The hero of that novel kills his son for falling in love with a Pole.

Hence, he had difficulty being fully accepted into the literary scene of St. Petersburg, or at least, they found him eccentric and someone boy-ish. But after several successful novels which captured the 'Russian Soul' so well, this wandering Cossack was finally fully accepted as a true Russian novelist, and became a beloved eccentric of the core intelligentsia, including Tolstoy. But when his Russian contemporaries did acknowledge the unique nature of the Ukrainian spirit, it was only through an offended tone. The closeness of the Cossacks to the Russians was viewed as nearly an attack on 'Russianness' itself. The similarities were seen as appropriation, and the distinctions were viewed as a sort of reproach of Russia. 'Ukrainianness' is unwittingly occupying the same ethno-nationalist ethos that Russianness does. And even though it bears no cultural nor military threat, Cossack identity threatens 'Russianness' itself.

Gogol's Inverted Pygmalion Ethos: Self-Deception in the Act of Creation

Gogol's absurdist, surrealist, and unique Tragi-Comic style would be picked up by Dostoevsky for some of his works, and Kafka for all of his works. You see the beginnings of Dostoevsky's deep and autonomous psychological portraiture here in Gogol, albeit chaotic, absurd, caricatured, and underdeveloped. As he watched his characters develop and deepen, they took on a life of their own and mimicked reality to such a degree it unnerved Gogol and contributed to internal crises of identity.

Gogol's characters developed simplistic explanations of the realities they encountered to define their relation to it. Am I doing the same? Am I a pawn in a story who resorts to self-deception to maintain emotional and narrative homeostasis? Gogol's art displays that the divide between Words and Actuality is Chaos. Thus, is not authorship of Art without Action an act of destruction? Dostoevsky, in The Adolescent, likewise notes how arrogant and self-serving being a writer is: "I'm not a writer, nor do I want to be one, and I would consider it indecent and vulgar to drag the innermost workings of my soul and a fine description of my feelings out into the literary marketplace." This divide between the Word and the Act terrifies Gogol- is his literature immoral, an affront to the Holy God? His Surrealism seeks to merge the aesthetic to the moral; his 1845 essay "Meditations on the Divine Liturgy" speaks to this fixation he has on the actualization of the divine within the material experience of the world.

Gogol's philosophy, though not explicitly articulated, revolved around the themes of identity, isolation, and the search for authenticity. Gogol's work can be seen as a precursor to existentialism and absurdism. The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre argued, "Gogol's characters are prototypes of the 'absurd hero,' confronting the meaningless and chaotic nature of existence."  Gogol’s surrealism, absurdist grotesque style and other literary contributions paved the way for Fyodor Dostoevsky and Franz Kafka. Gogol's exploration of the human psyche and the moral dilemmas faced by his characters laid the groundwork for Dostoevsky's profound examinations of human nature in works like "Crime and Punishment" and "The Brothers Karamazov”, including borrowing some metaphors.

Gogol's characters, in their futile quests and surreal encounters, embody the absurdity of life, a central theme in the works of existentialist philosophers like Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre once contended, "Gogol's characters confront the anguish of existence, torn between their true selves and the masks they wear in society." This existential struggle, exemplified by characters like Chichikov in "Dead Souls," mirrors the broader existentialist concern with the individual's quest for authenticity in a world filled with societal pressures. Gogol's characters, such as Akaky Akakievich in "The Overcoat," grapple with the absurdity of material existence and the search for meaning in a world that often seems materialistic, cold and indifferent. This existential dimension in his work foreshadows the existentialist movement that would later emerge in the 20th century.

The third part of the Dead Souls trilogy was destroyed along with many of his other works by Gogol when, shortly before his death after his spiritual pilgrimages to Jerusalem, he flew into a frenzy and destroyed many of his works, convinced of their imaginative sinfulness and fearing for his perdition in the hereafter. This wasn't the first time he burned his works; in 1845 and 1852 he gathered as many copies of Part II of Dead Souls and had a personal bonfire with them. He wrote after the first attempt" "No sooner had the flames consumed the final pages of my book than its contents were suddenly resurrected in a purified and bright form, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, and I suddenly saw how chaotic was everything that I had regarded as already having achieved order and harmony" Gogol did not fall in love with his creation, rather, the face of her terrified him.

Tolstoy & Gogol

The writer's relationship with his contemporaries was complex. He was both admired and criticized by figures like Alexander Pushkin and Tolstoy. Pushkin, often regarded as the father of Russian literature, praised Gogol's talent, stating, "Gogol has the gift of laughter, but at the same time, he has a profound sense of the tragic." However, their friendship was not without its tensions, as Gogol's evolving style and themes sometimes clashed with Pushkin's more traditional literary sensibilities. Gogol published an essay on Pushkin which was largely critical. Turgenev, another prominent writer of the era, had a more ambivalent view of Gogol's work. He remarked, "Gogol's stories are like dark labyrinths; one can easily get lost in their depths." Turgenev recognized Gogol's ability to delve into the human psyche and reveal its complexities, but he also found his narratives disorienting, reflecting the polarizing nature of Gogol's literary impact.

Gogol's contemporaries recognized his genius, including Tolstoy who both praised and criticized Gogol (who was at one point, his housemate). He wrote an entire essay in 1909 on Gogol, where he penned:

Gogol is a huge talent, a wonderful heart and a small, timid, timid mind.

He gives himself up to his talent - and wonderful literary works come out, such as "Old World Landowners", the first part of "Dead Souls", "The Government Inspector" and, in particular, the top of perfection in its kind - "The Carriage". He surrenders to his heart and religious feeling - and in his letters, as in the letter "On the Significance of Diseases", "On What the Word Is" and in many, many others, touching, often deep and instructive thoughts come out. But as soon as he wants to write works of art on moral-religious themes or to give already written works a moral-religious instructive meaning that is not characteristic of them, terrible, disgusting nonsense comes out, as it manifests itself in the second part of Dead Souls, in the final scene to the Inspector General, and in many letters.

This happens because, on the one hand, Gogol ascribes to art a lofty significance unusual for it, and, on the other hand, a low ecclesiastical significance even less characteristic of religion, and wants to explain this imaginary high significance of his works by this ecclesiastical faith. If Gogol, on the one hand, simply loved to write novels and comedies and did this without attaching to these studies a special, Hegelian, clerical significance, and, on the other hand, would simply recognize church teaching and state structure as something with which he has no need to argue and which there is no reason to justify, then he would continue to write his very good stories and comedies and, on occasion, would express in letters, and perhaps in separate essays, their often very deep moral religious thoughts coming out of the heart.

But, unfortunately, while Gogol entered the literary world, especially after the death of not only a huge talent, but also a vigorous, clear, uncomplicated Pushkin, reigned in relation to art - I can’t say otherwise - that incredibly stupid teaching of Hegel, according to which it came out that building houses, singing songs, drawing pictures and writing stories, comedies and poems is a kind of sacred rite, “service to beauty”, which is only one degree lower religion. Simultaneously with this teaching, another, no less absurd and no less confused and pompous teaching of Slavophilism was spread at that time about the special significance of the Russians, that is, the people to which the reasoners belonged, and at the same time the special significance of that perversion of Christianity, which was called Orthodoxy.

Gogol, although unconsciously, assimilated both doctrines: he naturally assimilated the doctrine of the special significance of art, because it ascribed great importance to his activity, while another, Slavophile doctrine, also could not fail to attract him, since, justifying everything that exists, he reassured and flattered self-esteem.
And Gogol mastered both teachings and tried to combine them in application to his writing. From this attempt came those amazing absurdities that are so striking in his recent writings.

Dead Souls: A Tragi-Comic Necrology

The circular structure reflects The Divine Comedy, particularly Inferno. Solz would later utilize a parallel metaphor to Dante in The First Circle, but with a much more serious tone. Gogol considered Dead Souls an epic poem in prose form, but the third-person narration constantly breaking the fourth wall with absurd, comedic asides makes it hard to read it like one. Taras Bulba is much closer to an epic poem- mimicking Beowulf. The odd hero's journey undertaken by the would-be protagonist Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov parallels a Homeric, Dantean journey but without the noble abstraction. At one point while directly talking to the reader about his writing style, Gogol explicitly refers to Chichikov as a "Don Quixote" character. Unlike Dante, his portraits of every single character are Surrealist and exaggerated to the point of humor. He fixates on absurd topics for pages that have nothing to do with the plot.

The sweeping and Oceanic nature of the journey is in mimicry of the broad, nearly mystical understanding of human historicity of the German Romantics. Dead Souls is filled with long Romantic interludes about Russia, just like Taras Bulba is filled with monologues on the glory of Ukraine. Chichikov makes his way through Czarist Russia in a plot to buy the deceased serfs' names from their landlords' poll tax lists, which are still alive according to the census, and re-create himself as a Lord in charge of a massive estate, he engages with a range of personalities. There's a duality to the "Dead Souls" Chichikov is collecting- he is buying the stewardship of Serfs who have died, but is also encountering along his Quixote-esch journey a series of "dead souls"- people who have descended in a sort of 'platonic transmigration' of the soul to a kind of living dead by succumbing to Poshlost. These characters embody various caricatured neurotic, surrealist, hyperbolized traits- Greed, Apathy, Gossip, and the like, and Chichikov nearly escapes being pulled in by these. In some instances, it is Chichikov who is the corruptive influence- for instance on the young noble intellectual and "Star-gazer" Tientietnikov. Chichikov is the pilgrim Dante, walking his way through the living land of the dead. But unlike Dante, Chichikov is unaware of any transcendent meaning to his travels. It is a macabre Metaphysical horror - tragic, comedic, and surreal simultaneously. And it is rife with an absolute, immutable fixture of Russian literature: insulting the French and Germans.

Dead Souls isn't a political commentary criticizing Serfdom. Gogol was a Tsarist, a supporter of the Slavophile movement and autocratic serfdom. He was quite pro-autocracy and opposed social change. The default analysis of reading Gogol as a "devastating satire on social hypocrisy" is demonstrably false, but that doesn't stop the unwitting acolytes of Lyotard, Foucault, Deleuze, and Derrida from trying to shove it all into this box. Gogol was chaotically struggling with Existentialist themes, and as Camus rightfully asserted, one cannot be a postmodern progressive and be an Existentialist. His internal strife over his own motivations, his own authenticity, his part in the broader meta-narratives he inhabits, would literally tear him apart. Postmodernism, in a move of moral cowardice, merely denies the Actual to solve this. There is no longer truth, there is only your truth and my truth; "little truths" with nothing to tie them together. Gogol certainly had a deep feeling of responsibility to improve society (this plagued his later years), but this was internalized, not externalized, and displaced into proxy social issues like it is for modern-day social justice warriors. The drama between light and shadow is still located within the individual. One of the core morals of the story expressed by the monologues of the Prince is the restoration of individual duty through a profound sense of patriotism.

Integral to Gogol's psychological portraiture is the force of "Poshlost". Poshlost is one of the untranslatable words that is broadly used in pre-soviet literature and philosophy that has no English equivalent. It is "petty evil"- a vulgar, banal tendency towards complacency and moral/ spiritual denigration. Dostoevsky used it to describe the Devil's moral deconstructivism and flippancy, and Solzhenitsyn used it to describe the weak, collectivist lack of moral convictions of western liberals who looked the other way during the Soviet genocides because they contradicted their anti-capitalist worldview. It is a self-satisfied, self-referent replacement of spirituality with sexuality (confusing and intertwining the two) through self-deceptive pseudo-intellectualism. Personally, I would accuse Freud and Camus of Poshlost (and many Russian intellectuals have). But it's a difficult accusation to levy on Western thinkers considering the concept doesn't exist in other European languages. But Postmodern Progressivism absolutely fits the bill of по́шлость. A postmodern analysis is essentially this exact same intellectualized self-deception that strategically deconstructs everything but its nature to avoid any internal moral and spiritual processing. The purpose of Social Progressivism is to avoid personal introspection or accountability for one's potentiality for evil- which is why trying to read Gogol, Tolstoy, Solz, or Dostoevsky as social commentaries are so ironic. It's perpetuating a worldview that these authors absolutely despised.

Taras Bulba: A Ukrainian Epic

Taras Bulba is a grand, sweeping romantic war novel that ends in a Gogolesque comi-tragedy. It hinges around Taras Bulba- a Zaporozhian (Central-Eastern Ukrainian) Cossack- and his two sons as they oppose the "unbelieving Lyakhs" (the Polish) in defense of their Cossack ethos. Taras is a monocolor icon of "the old, peaceable Slav spirit that was fired with warlike flame". He is the last of his kind; a sort of Ukrainian Natty Bumppo- emblematic of the Cossacks who lived free under the infinite blue of the open Eurasian Steppes. Written in third person omniscient narration where Gogol sometimes contradicts the views of the characters and inserts historical monologues, it is an ode to this nomadic spirit that was being crushed by the rise of cities in Small Russia. It would be Propagandistic and Nationalistic if it didn't end so brutally for Taras- our heroic Cossack is nailed to a tree and burnt alive, and he is not a pure protagonist- he is fanatically blinded by hate and murders his son without hesitation. And this is characteristic of Gogol- his narratives twist the romantic and idealistic into the grotesque- a forerunner of Gothic Romance, Absurdism, Impressionism, and a direct influence on Kafka's Surrealism. Ultimately I read Taras Bulba as eulogic. It mourns the raw, authentic Cossack mode of life - "idlers having neither relatives nor home nor family, nothing, save the free sky and the eternal revel of their souls". Upon this Eulogy, Gogol builds his warning and reproach of the dawning 19th century.

Gogol is very explicit that the Ukrainian spirit is fundamentally different from the Russian spirit, despite the feeling of brotherhood against common enemies. In Taras' speeches, he talks about the Cossack spirit being a part of the larger Russian spirit. Gogol was himself a Cossack who grew up bilingual in Russian/ Ukrainian in Zaporozhian Cossack town, learned German in his youth, and in his later years French and Italian. He published both in Ukrainian and Russian and infused Ukrainian folklore into Russian literature. Now he is regarded as one of the greatest Russian Novelists, but at the time he had to fight for inclusion in Russian literary circles as he was branded a Ukrainian writer, not a Russian one.

Gogol lived in St. Petersburg and knew Tolstoy, Pushkin and Dostoevsky personally. He was frenemies with Dost; Dost loved his surrealism and mysticism and also warned Russian society against the invasion of central European ideologies into the North. Both saw the tremendous ability people have towards self-deception. But Dostoevsky decried his reactionary conservative Slovophilialism and support for the brutal Czarist regime (which Dostoevsky was imprisoned by at one point), which he viewed as pouring gasoline on the revolutionary flames. To Dost, mere conservatism simply sparks the opposite liberalism in an equal but opposite manner; they need and feed off of each other. Rather, to genuinely move society forward, deeply spiritual care for one's neighbor needed to be restored based on the individual experience of the divine- and this would undermine the genocidal social equity ideologies invading from the south. Gogol stayed in Slavophilism and eccentric artistic rebellion, but Dostoevsky moved beyond to Existentialism. And you see this here in Taras Bulba- the enemies are the Lyakhs, the Turks, the Jews, the Tartars- but in Dostoevsky, the enemy is that which lies within.

Academics noted that all modern Russian authors write under the shadow of Gogol's "Greatcoat" (a metaphor referencing his novel by the same name). The young Dostoevsky was writing in the shadow of the great Gogol and published The Double as a reply to Dead Souls. He struggled to differentiate his works from Gogol's; everything he wrote was talked about in reference to Gogol's works. This tension between them early in their career would deepen into meaningful philosophical differences later in their lives. Even though they agreed with each other on the impending threat of the Bolsheviks, Dostoevsky would disagree with the Tsarist dogmatism of Gogol and argue, primarily through his novel Demons, that Socio-Political Ideology utterly fails as a source of morality. Literature is indebted to his poetic, colorful range of characters that began to exist independently of their creator. 

Gogol uses his third-person narration to fill in pages of historical analysis. He was a historian, but never published purely historical works- it is all woven into his novels. He dialogues on the origins of this clan-like bellicose Cossack nature and how it views itself. Cossacks are fiercely loyal- a characteristic forged by necessity with the constant threat of invasion. They have their own brutal social code and take the war functions more seriously than anything. The Cossack punishment for murder was to be buried alive in the coffin along with the person they murdered. They are externally fiercely loyal to their Orthodox faith (in the Greek tradition) and are respectful of the Russian Tradition of Orthodoxy and Russian folk in general, but are sickened by the very sight of the heretic "unbelieving" Catholics. The Church does not look at them with the same fondness, however- the Cossack men would gladly lay down their life for the church, but never for a moment their drunken pleasures. They wouldn't enter a church to save their life but would defend it with their dying breath- much to the chagrin of the clergy. The loyalty to the Cossack identity trumps all; when seduced by a beautiful Lyakh, Taras kills his traitor son Andriy (although it was the Lyakhs who killed his son's soul in Taras' eyes). He watches his other son Ostap publicly tortured and executed- refusing to make a sound and defiant to the end. It seems Andriy and Ostap are metaphors of the dual death of the Ukrainian-Russian spirit: it is betrayed from within by the intelligentsia who despise their Russian origins, while those who remain loyal are snuffed out. The decline of the ancient spirit worried Gogol- he saw the new Europeanized Russia as deeply inauthentic and satirized it with his Absurdism.

Gogol's Legacy

In Beyond Good and Evil (Jenseits von Gut und Böse) Nietzsche references Gogol:

Success has always been the greatest liar, and the "work" itself is a success; the great statesman, the conqueror, the discoverer is disguised in his creations, to the point of unrecognizability; the "work," that of the artist, of the philosopher, first invents him who has created it, is supposed to have created it; the "great men," as they are revered, are little bad poems on the side; in the world of historical values, forgery reigns.

These great poets, for example, these Byron, Musset, Poe, Leopardi, Kleist, Gogol, - just as they are, perhaps must be: Men of moments, enthusiastic, sensual, childish, in distrust and confidence reckless and sudden; with souls in which some breach is usually to be concealed; often with their works taking revenge for an inner defilement, often with their flights seeking oblivion before an all-too-faithful memory, often lost in the mud and almost in love, until they become like the will-o'-the-wisps around the marshes and disguise themselves as stars. 

The people probably call them idealists then -, often struggling with a long disgust, with a recurring spectre of unbelief that chills and compels them to pine for gloria and eat "faith itself" out of the hands of intoxicated flatterers: - what torture are these great artists, and higher men in general, to him who has once guessed them!

Turgenev, in his 1869 article "Gogol", co-published by a who's-who of Russian academics and writers, carefully recorded his relationship with Gogol and gives us fascinating accounts of him. This work ends with an appendix mourning his passing:

The late Mikhail Semenovich Shchepkin brought me to Gogol. I remember the day of our visit: October 20, 1851. Gogol then lived in Moscow, on Nikitskaya, in Talyzin’s house, with Count Tolstoy. We arrived at one o'clock in the afternoon; he received us immediately. His room was located near the entryway, to the right. We entered it - and I saw Gogol standing in front of the desk with a pen in his hand. He was wearing a dark coat, a green velvet vest and brown trousers. A week before that day, I saw him in the theater, at a performance of “The Inspector General”; He sat in a box on the first floor, right next to the door, and, craning his head, looked with nervous anxiety at the stage, over the shoulders of two stalwart ladies, who served him as protection from the curiosity of the public. F, who was sitting next to me, pointed him out to me. I quickly turned around to look at him; he probably noticed this movement and moved back a little, in the corner. I was struck by the change that had taken place in him since he was 41 years old. I met him twice then at Avdotya Petrovna E-noy’s. At that time he looked like a squat and dense Little Russian; Now he seemed like a thin and wasted man, whom life had already managed to wear out. Some kind of hidden pain and anxiety, some kind of sad anxiety were mixed with the constantly penetrating expression of his face

Shchepkin told me in advance that Gogol was not talkative: in reality it turned out differently. Gogol spoke a lot, with animation, measuredly repelling and emphasizing each word - which not only did not seem unnatural, but, on the contrary, gave his speech some kind of pleasant weight and impressionability.

Gogol is dead! “What Russian soul would not be shocked by these two words?” - He died. Our loss is so cruel, so sudden that we still don’t want to believe it. At the very time when we could all hope that he would finally break his long silence, that he would delight and exceed our impatient expectations - this fatal news came! “Yes, he died, this man whom we now have the right, the bitter right given to us by death, to call great; a man who, with his name, marked an era in the history of our literature; a man whom we are proud of as one of our glories! “He died, struck down in the prime of his life, at the height of his strength, without finishing the work he began, like the noblest of his predecessors... His loss renews grief over those unforgettable losses, just as a new wound awakens the pain of ancient ulcers. Now is not the time or place to talk about his merits - that is a matter for future criticism; one must hope that she will understand her task and evaluate him with that impartial, but full of respect and love, court by which people like him are judged in the face of posterity; we have no time for that now: we only want to be one of the echoes of that great sorrow that we feel spread all around us; We don’t want to appreciate it, but to cry; we are now unable to speak calmly about Gogol... the most beloved, most familiar image is unclear to eyes watered with tears... On the day when Moscow buries him, we want to extend our hand to her from here - to unite with her in one feeling of common sadness.

It is hardly necessary to talk about those few people to whom our words will seem exaggerated, or even completely inappropriate... Death has a cleansing and reconciling power; slander and envy, enmity and misunderstandings - everything falls silent before the most ordinary grave; they will not speak over Gogol's grave. Whatever the final place that history will leave behind him, we are confident that no one will refuse to repeat now after us:

Peace to his ashes, eternal memory of his life, eternal glory to his name!

Leo Tolstoy's summary of Gogol's work in Path of Life is a eulogy for his friend and the beauty he saw in his eccentric stories:

It was only through suffering that I came to know the affinity of human souls with each other. It is only when you suffer well, that all those who suffer become clear to you. This is not enough - the mind itself becomes clear: hitherto hidden positions and areas of people become known to you, and it is clear what is needed. Great is God, who makes us wise. And what does He do? The very grief from which we flee and want to hide. Through suffering and sorrow, we are determined to obtain bits of wisdom that cannot be found in books.