Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (surname at the birth of Yanovsky, since 1821 - Gogol-Janovsky, March 20 [April 1] in 1809, Sorochintsy, Mirgorodsky district, Poltava province - February 21 [March 4], 1852, Moscow) - Russian novelist, playwright , Poet, critic, publicist, recognized as one of the classics of Russian literature. Descended from the old noble family of Gogol-Yanovsky.
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was born on March 20 (April 1) in 1809 in Sorochintsy near the Psyol River, on the border of Poltava and Mirgorod Uyezds (Poltava Province). Nicholas it was named in honor of St. Nicholas. According to family tradition, he came from an ancient Cossack family and was presumably a descendant of Ostap Gogol - hetman of the Right-Bank Troops of Zaporozhye Commonwealth.
In December 1828, Gogol moved to St. Petersburg. Here, for the first time, his cruel disappointment was waiting for him: modest means turned out to be completely inadequate in the big city, and brilliant hopes did not come about as soon as he expected. His letters home at the time are mixed up with this disappointment and a vague hope for a better future. In reserve he had the strength of character and practical enterprise: he tried to enter the stage, become an official, give himself to literature.
In June 1836, Nikolai Vasilevich went abroad, where he stayed with interruptions for about ten years. At first life abroad seemed to strengthen and calm him, gave him the opportunity to complete his greatest work - "Dead Souls", but became an embryo for deeply fatal phenomena. The experience with this book, the contradictory reaction of contemporaries to it, just as in the case of the "Inspector", convinced him of the enormous influence and ambiguous power of his talent over the minds of contemporaries. This thought gradually began to form in the notion of its prophetic purpose, and accordingly, about the use of its prophetic gift by the power of its talent for the benefit of society, and not to its detriment.
Nikolai Gogol was not very healthy from childhood. Death in the adolescence of his younger brother Ivan, untimely death of his father left a mark on his state of mind. Work on the continuation of the "Dead Souls" did not come together, and the writer was tormented by doubts that he would be able to bring the intended work to the end. In the summer of 1845 he was overtaken by a painful spiritual crisis. He writes a testament, burns the manuscript of the second volume of "Dead Souls." In commemoration of the deliverance from death, Gogol decides to go to the monastery and become a monk, but monasticism did not take place. But his mind was presented with a new content of the book, enlightened and purified; It seemed to him that he understood how to write, "to set the whole society to the beautiful." He decides to serve God in the field of literature. A new work began, and in the meantime he was taken by another thought: he had to say that he was considered useful for him, and he decides to collect in one book everything written by him in recent years in the spirit of his new mood and instructs to publish this book to Pletnev. These were "Selected places from correspondence with friends"
From the end of January 1852 in the house of Count Alexander Tolstoy visited the Rzhev archpriest Matthew Konstantinovsky, whom Gogol met in 1849, and before that was a sign by correspondence. Between them there were complex, sometimes harsh conversations, the main content of which was the insufficient humility and piety of Gogol, for example, the demand of Fr. Matthew: "Renounce Pushkin." Gogol invited him to read the white version of the second part of the "Dead Souls" for review, in order to listen to his opinion, but was denied the priest. Gogol insisted on his, until he took a notebook with a manuscript for reading.
He died 21 of February.
