United States or Mexico ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
They say that was the marked characteristic of Gogol, among the writers." "Yes, of Gogol." "Yes, of Gogol.... I shall look forward to meeting you." "So shall I." Raskolnikov walked straight home. He was so muddled and bewildered that on getting home he sat for a quarter of an hour on the sofa, trying to collect his thoughts.
At this point Gogol, first of all, became the victim of this state of things. The enthusiasm stirred up by his works and by the immense hopes that he had evoked suddenly elevated him to such a height in the minds of his contemporaries that he felt real anguish.
He left the University in 1847. From his fourteenth to his twenty-first year the books that he read with the most profit were Sterne's "Sentimental Journey," under the influence of which he wrote his first story, Pushkin, Schiller's "Robbers," Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev's "A Sportsman's Sketches;" and to a less degree he was affected by the New Testament, Rousseau, Dickens's "David Copperfield," and the historical works of the American Prescott.
So was it also with the lofty thoughts of the philosopher Soloviev, the macâbre tales of Dostoïevsky, the realistic narratives of Gogol, or the popular epics of Gorky and Ouspensky. The doctrines of Marx took some strange shapes in the Russian milieu. Eminently materialistic, they were there reclothed in an abstract and dogmatic idealism in fact, Marxism in Russia was transformed into a religion.
At this point the literary tastes of the family appear to have died out, for the succeeding literature is represented exclusively by Kryloff's Fables, a farmer's manual, a handbook of family medicine, and a series of calendars. There are, however, some signs of a revival, for on the lowest shelf stand recent editions of Pushkin, Lermontof, and Gogol, and a few works by living authors.
But where is there a man of original genius? What is our famous poet Zhukofski? A translator. What is Pushkin? A clever pupil of the romantic school. What is Lermontoff? A feeble imitator of Byron. What is Gogol?" At this point Alexander Ivan'itch invariable intervenes.
In the senior classes they were reading aloud Gogol or Pushkin's prose works, and that made him sleepy; people, trees, fields, horses, rose before his imagination, and he would say with a sigh, as though fascinated by the author: "How lovely!"
What wrong of his had not been, in some phase or other, a wrong of theirs? How many of them had lost children well beloved, had known starvation and the sweater's block? Such sympathy as they had to give was rather the cold systematical pity of their order which ever made the individual's cause its own. This unknown Maxim Gogol, if he were indeed in London so much the worse for him.
Why, you are a landed proprietor yourself!" cried Prince S. hotly. "I suppose you'll say there is nothing national about our literature either?" said Alexandra. "Well, I am not a great authority on literary questions, but I certainly do hold that Russian literature is not Russian, except perhaps Lomonosoff, Pouschkin and Gogol."
There was no need to cry out to Syme, who had never taken his eyes off it. He saw the great luminous globe suddenly stagger in the sky, right itself, and then sink slowly behind the trees like a setting sun. The man called Gogol, who had hardly spoken through all their weary travels, suddenly threw up his hands like a lost spirit. "He is dead!" he cried.
Word Of The Day