United States or United States Virgin Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
'Where is my youth, where is my golden youth? Who was it said that, Colia?" "It was Gogol, in Dead Souls, father," cried Colia, glancing at him in some alarm. "'Dead Souls, yes, of course, dead. When I die, Colia, you must engrave on my tomb: "'Here lies a Dead Soul, Shame pursues me. "Who said that, Colia?" "I don't know, father." "There was no Eropegoff?
The red-haired detective who had masqueraded as Gogol rose to his feet without a word, and walked out of the room with an air of perfect nonchalance. Yet the astonished Syme was able to realise that this ease was suddenly assumed; for there was a slight stumble outside the door, which showed that the departing detective had not minded the step.
But it is clear that no new writer has appeared in Russia since the death of Dostoevski in 1881 who can compare for an instant with the author of "Anna Karenina," and that the great names in Russian fiction are now, as they were forty years ago, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoi, and Dostoevski.
Short as it is, it has been called an epical poem in the manner of Homer, and a dramatisation of history in the manner of Shakespeare. Both remarks are just, though the influence of Homer is the more evident; in the descriptive passages, the style is deliberately Homeric, as it is in the romances of Sienkiewicz, which owe so much to this little book by Gogol.
Paklin noticed that people of the Subotchev type usually went into fits of laughter over quotations from Gogol, but as his object at the present moment was not so much in amusing them as in showing them off to his friends, he changed his tactics and soon managed to put them in an excellent humour.
"I shall soon be dead," he sadly predicted, "and people will say that Tolstoy taught men to plough and reap and make boots; while the chief thing that I have been trying so hard to say all my life, the thing I believe in the most important of all, they will forget." Let us believe that Gogol, Pushkin, Lermontov, Nekrasov, Dostoïevsky, Turgenieff, and Tolstoy are classics.
With the exception of "The Cloak," Gogol had by 1840 written little to indicate the direction that the best part of Russian literature was to take. It was not until the publication of "Dead Souls" that Russia had a genuine realistic novel.
On his side, also, the man who had impersonated Professor de Worms was not less communicative. His own story was almost as silly as Syme's. "That's a good get-up of yours," said Syme, draining a glass of Macon; "a lot better than old Gogol's. Even at the start I thought he was a bit too hairy." "A difference of artistic theory," replied the Professor pensively. "Gogol was an idealist.
Like Gogol and Artsybashev, Chekhov was a man of the South, being born at Taganrog, a seaport on a gulf of the Black Sea, near the mouth of the river Don. The date of his birth is the 17 January 1860. His father was a clever serf, who, by good business foresight, bought his freedom early in life.
At home there is poverty, hunger, cold, his grumbling father, scoldings, and here it is so quiet and unruffled, and interest even is taken in his tarantulas and birds. The man of learning looks at his watch and takes up a book. "So you will give me Gogol? says Ivan Matveyitch, getting up. "Yes, yes! But why are you in such a hurry, my dear boy? Sit down and tell me something . . ."
Word Of The Day