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The fat man in spectacles presented himself again; despite his serious appearance he imagined that he was a comic artist and read a scene from Gógol, this time without evoking a single token of approbation.
He has at times that combination of the absolutely real with the absolutely fantastic that is so characteristic of Gogol: one of his best stories, "The Black Monk," might have been written by the author of "The Cloak" and "The Portrait." He is like Dostoevski in his uncompromising depiction of utter degradation; but he has little of Dostoevski's glowing sympathy and heartpower.
Gogol wrote to a friend: "On the opening night I felt uncomfortable from the very first as I sat in the theatre. Anxiety for the approval of the audience did not trouble me. There was only one critic in the house myself that I feared. I heard clamorous objections within me which drowned all else. However, the public, as a whole, was satisfied.
Gogol followed this amazingly powerful romance by two other works, which seem to have all the marks of immortality the comedy "Revizor," and a long, unfinished novel, "Dead Souls." This latter book is the first of the great realistic novels of Russia, of which "Fathers and Children, "Crime and Punishment," and "Anna Karenina" are such splendid examples.
Russian culture is still so comparatively recent that it has not yet passed out of the imitative stage; and, in spite of the work of Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoieffsky, the books that are read and studied in Russia are for the most part translations from foreign authors.
Syme alone had even a glimmering, and such as it was it froze him to the bone. If the last words of the President meant anything, they meant that he had not after all passed unsuspected. They meant that while Sunday could not denounce him like Gogol, he still could not trust him like the others.
From 1836 until his death in 1852, Gogol lived mainly abroad, and spent much time in travel. His favourite place of residence was Rome, to which city he repeatedly returned with increasing affection. In 1848 he made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, for Gogol never departed from the pious Christian faith taught him by his mother; in fact, toward the end of his life, he became an ascetic and a mystic.
The effect of this figure was not terrible like that of the President, but it had every diablerie that can come from the utterly grotesque. If out of that stiff tie and collar there had come abruptly the head of a cat or a dog, it could not have been a more idiotic contrast. The man's name, it seemed, was Gogol; he was a Pole, and in this circle of days he was called Tuesday.
"Not a bit," answered Gogol; and with one finger he ripped off the whole of his shaggy head-covering, emerging with thin red hair and a pale, pert face. "It was hot," he added. "I will do you the justice to say," said Sunday, not without a sort of brutal admiration, "that you seem to have kept pretty cool under it. Now listen to me. I like you.
Just at the moment when I received this letter my sister went softly into the painter's room, sat down beside him and began reading aloud. She read to him every day, Ostrovsky or Gogol, and he listened, staring at one point, not laughing, but shaking his head and muttering to himself from time to time: "Anything may happen! Anything may happen!"
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