Ievhen Sverstiuk - Gogol, a Guest on Christmas

7/30/2019 Ievhen Sverstiuk - Gogol, a Guest on Christmas

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Gogol, a Guest on Christmasby Yevhen SverstyukSomeone invisible is standing in front of me and writing with a

huge wand. I know that my name after Im gone will be happier

than me, and maybe the descendants of my country fellows will,with their eyes wet with tears, reach reconciliation with myshadow.In this brilliant metaphor Gogol expressed the essence of his

conflict with his contemporaries. Gogols country fellows wereUkrainians, and it is his conflict with them that tormented Gogolparticularly badly. Yes, he was a Ukrainian who was constantlyreminded of being benefited by benefiting a foreign land.And he himself was sure that he all his life was devoted to God.

Thats my fate to be at loggerheads with my countrymenFor people around him, Gogol was a Ukrainian, a little khokhol(khokhol derogatory Russian term for a Ukrainian tr.),headstrong khokhol from Poltavshchyna. Never did Gogol,under any circumstances tergiversate on his being a Ukrainian,never did he try to hide his links with Ukraine with hisUkrainian ancestry, with the Ukrainian people.It is well known that Russia was always jealous of other nations

which put forward remarkable people; even before the Bolshevik

coup, there existed a standard in Russia which was not as hardas the standards of socialist realism but which neverthelesswere aimed at levelling everything up.It is but natural that Gogol was at the beginning of the line

continued by Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. Gogols works, evenduring his lifetime, went into the foundation of new Russianliterature. His genius impregnated the avant-garde literarymovements in the west. But Gogol cannot be privatized eitherby the east or by the west. There are no viable reasons to try to

catch this bird, to pluck the feathers from his wings and put himin a cage in your own yard.In the Soviet times, Gogol was dressed in a Russian garb and,

metaphorically speaking, made to reside in Moscow.How did it come about that the literary teacher of the arch-

reactionary Dostoyevsky (that was the way Lenin called him), apreacher of the Evangelical wisdom, a mystic, an opponent ofthe revolutionary radicalism and eulogizer of his native land, wasturned into a supporter of revolutionary forces? A great butcontradictory and controversial writer was reduced to a satiristwho criticized the bourgeois-landowners system. Gogol wasrejected as a religious mystic and preacher, the first of such kind


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in Russian literature, of returning to the original Christianprecepts. He was hollowed out, simplified and taken on by theSoviets as nothing more than a satirist, a Russian satirist at that.It was this tamed and crippled Gogol that the Soviets erected amonument to in Moscow in 1952. And the pedestal carries an

absurd dedication: To the great Russian master of the word, N.V. Gogol from the Soviet government.

In the times past and present we see various reactions ofUkrainians to Gogol, their countryman, being privatized by theRussians. There are those who want to return Gogol back toUkraine and make him a Ukrainian writer. Some wish to do itby carrying out textological research, others by studying Gogolslife in the minutest details. All of them discover things which are

well known but which have been obscured by trivial writings andhackneyed views.The thing is that Gogol must not be returned to Ukraine careful reading of his works reveals that, in fact, he never leftUkraine. The winds of the time he lived in prevented him frommooring at his native bank, and his seeking the spiritual heightsand cultural milieu kept pushing him towards the obviouscultural centre to the Russian capital. Similar things happenedwith so many intellectuals in so many countries in different

times. Serhiy Yefremov, a notable Ukrainian cultural figure of the1920s (at the end of the 1920s he was arrested and executed bythe Stalin regime) addressed himself to the controversies ofGogol in his article Mizh dvoma dushamy (Between TwoSouls). Yefremov notes with some regret that Gogol writingsencourage some readers to embrace the Ukrainian mentality,and give others arguments against such mentality. Soon after Ibecame literate, I, still a small boy, happened to read Vecherana khutore bliz Dikanki (Nights at a Hamlet Not Far fromDikanka) and Mirgorod. I will not relate here all of myimpressions from what I read then, but I must say that afterreading these stories by Gogol, I felt for the first time in mylife! I was a native son of my native land, and it was afterreading Taras Bulba that a sparkle of national awarenessbegan to glow in my soul, and later other authors fanned thisglow into a fire. However, Yefremov unexpectedly goes througha change of mood and turns his back on his new feeling andunderstanding, coming to an unanticipated conclusion: Gogolsurely had two souls one Ukrainian, and the other oneRussian. He goes on to substantiate this statement by quotingfrom a letter Gogol wrote to his friend, A. Smirnova-Rosset: I


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dont know myself which soul I have Khokhlyatska (Ukrainian)or Russian. Gogol says it in reply to a touchy question and hisanswer is dignified, avoiding untruth and evasiveness, and at thesame time demonstrating that the term she used Khokhlyatska in her own letter to him is hardly acceptable for

him.Not everything is so clear and so simple in Gogols double

soul. Firstly, Gogol addresses not just a great friend but alady-in-waiting at the Imperial Court who will ask the Tsar foranother grant for Gogol, and who will tell Count Orlov, head ofthe Gendarmerie, in the presence of other people, You dontknow anything about Gogol, because you are a crass ignoramusand dont read anything except the tall tales and rumours in thereports of your subordinates. In fact, most of the letter is

dedicated to his request to speak for him with the tsar about thegrant; Gogol asks her to use all her talents and charm andsecure the help of Zhukovsky (Russian poet, translator and tutorto the heir to the throne tr.) in getting that considerable grantfor him.After he is done with his request, Gogol turns to the answer to

the question about his soul, and writes with pride about twodifferent peoples, Ukrainians and Russians, who were given twodifferent histories by Providence. Gogol insists on their being

equal in everything.Gogol has long been relegated to Russian literature and it iswidely believed that he abandoned his Ukrainian nationality infavour of Russian. Such a belief is a result of our incompleteknowledge.Gogol never tried to hide his ethnic background. Neither did he

advertise it. Gogol was never a timeserver, never temporized asso many did in Russia in general and in Moscow in particular. StPetersburg was somewhat different in this respect. In a way, itwas like an island in the sea of the Russian Empire.The son of Mikhail Shchepkin, the famous Russian actor of thefirst half of the nineteenth century, in his memoirs describedGogols first visit to Moscow which took place in 1832, soon afterthe release of Vechera na khutore bliz Dikanki made thebudding author famous. The dinner which Gogol came to wasattended by about 25 people, most of them, obviously,Muscovites: We usually had many people coming for a party.

The table was laid in the biggest room to seat all the guests,with the doors open to the hall for the convenience of theservants. In the middle of the dinner a new guest appeared,whom apparently nobody knew. He began slowly taking off his


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overcoat and everybody, including my father and I, was staringat him in consternation. Standing at the threshold of the bigroom, the new arrival took a quick look round, and then herecited the words from a well-known Ukrainian song

Round the garden went a pumpkinLooking for his kin,

Asking how they were doing,Alive and kicking,Was the din.

Then he introduced himself, adding that he had come over topay respects to my father, who was, like Gogol himself, ofUkrainian descent.

Be natural, be what you are, say what you think but talk aslittle as possible, he advises his friend Maksymovych in a letter.In another letter to Maksymovych, written after he had landed a

job (with someones help) at the Patriotichesky (Patriotic)Institute where he was to deliver lectures on Russian history,Gogol complained: Damn it all! Id rather teach botany orpathology than Russian history.One of the entries in the diary of A. Smirnova-Rosset, the lady-

in-waiting, written at about the same time, reads: I want to seethis stubborn Khokhol (Ukrainian) no matter what, I want to talkto him about Ukraine, about all those things that are so dear tome. I asked Pletnyov to tell him that I am a Khokhlachka too! Alater entry says: At last Cricket and Bull Calf, my two littleArzamas animals, have brought Gogol-Yanovsky to my place!

These two little animals were Pushkin and Zhukovsky. Withoutwhose help and protection Gogol would have hardly made hisway to the literary Olympus, and he would hardly be able to gethis writings through the censorship. But it did not mean thatGogol abandon his old friends.For information, we have many letters of Gogol written to

various correspondents and a lot of memoirs which allow us tosee him in all kinds of everyday situations, and which show hispriorities.N. Berg, a poet and translator, reminisces: Most of the time

Gogol preferred to be all by himself. When at a social gathering,somebody would come over to where he was sitting to askwhether he was writing anything new, he hardly answeredanything, pretending he was dozing or staring blindly intonothingness, or he would just get up and leave. But when among


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the guests there was at least one person from Little Russia (theusual way Ukraine was referred to in Russia tr.), he behavedquite differently They seemed to be pulled to each other as ifby a magnet; they would sit in a corner and talk all the eveninglong, passionately and heart-to-heart. I never saw Gogol talk like

this to any of the Velikorosy (Great Russians, that is Russians, asopposed to Little Russians, Ukrainians tr).We could suspect Berg said it because he was biased or out of

jealousy but there were many other witnesses whose storiescorroborate evidence of such behaviour of Gogol. Writes L.Arnold, Smirnova-Rossets brother: When Gogol was talkingabout Little Russia and about the character of Little Russians hegot into such a good mood that he began telling very funny

jokes, one wittier than the other, unfortunately all of them

unprintable.The next quotation comes from a March 20 1850 letter writtenby Sergei Aksakov to his son, in which he described a partycelebrating Gogols name-day. Three lads Gogol,Maksymovych and Bodyansky were wonderful they sang acappella, Gogol recited the wise thoughts of some Khokhol(Ukrainian) Homer. While Gogol was delivering his recitation, thetwo others were gesticulating in a funny way and making allkinds of whooping noises. Khomyakov, Solovyov and me, we

thoroughly enjoyed these manifestations of the Ukrainiannational spirit, but without any particular sympathy there wasa hint of disdain in Solovyovs smile and in Khomyakovslaughter one could discern good-natured derision, and I found itfunny and cheerful just to be looking at them. Like one wouldwatch the antics of the Chuvash or Cheremis ethnics nothingmore.There is hardly any comment needed here. We should only addthat as we can see, neither Gogol nor his friends paid muchattention to a rather reserved reaction of the people who werenot evidently their friends and did not care for things Ukrainian.Gogol behaved the way he found natural and did not care whatothers thought about it.Did he feel their aloofness? What would his reaction be if he

had learnt of the contents of that letter? He did not have to readit to know what these people thought of him their attitude wasall too clearly expressed on their faces. It was in full evidencesplashed all over their countenances.It should be reminded here that those three lads were

cultural luminaries, scholars of high repute and high socialstanding. And if they were asked the question about their


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souls the same question Smirnova-Rosset asked Gogol theywould have laughed a good, hearty Cossack laugh.The more we read and analyze the documentary evidenceabout Gogol, the more Gogol becomes a living figure, fully awareof his ancestry, cultural traditions and spirituality, and the less

he looks the officially sanctioned Russian writer. In people ofgenius, their links with their ancestral land, tradition and spiritare stronger than in people merely talented.The way Gogol behaved and made his nationality known toothers would require a separate article, and only a couple offacts will be mentioned. In 1846, when he was in Karlsbad, Gogolwrote down in the guest book, Nicolas de Gogol, Ukrainien,etabli a Moscou (Nikolay Gogol, Ukrainian, living in Moscow).He was known as Ukrainian to the French literati. Prosper

Merimee (18031870, French writer of romantic stories andnovels, such as Carmen, on which Bizets opera is based tr.)who knew Gogol personally (Gogol was fluent in French) and wasaware of a controversial attitude to him, wrote: I was told thathe was accused of displaying provincial patriotism. Being a LittleRussian, he, as some people say, shows much affection for hisLittle Russia to the detriment of faithfulness to the rest of theEmpire. Facts like these are little known, since the Russianliterary critics and historians did not want to reveal them.

Of a great significance were Gogols meetings with AdamMickiewicz (17981855, Polish romantic poet and patriot whosemost famous work is the epic Master Thaddeus) in Paris, whereMickiewicz lived as a political emigrant. A. Danilevsky, a friend ofGogols who was with him on that trip to Paris, reminisced:Gogol stayed in Paris for so long only because he could beseeing Mickiewicz who lived in Paris then, but not yet in thecapacity of a professor of College de France, and one otherPolish poet, Zaleski. Gogol did not know Polish and they talkedeither in Russian or more often in Little Russian (Ukrainian).What did they talk about? Bohdan Zaleski, the Polish writer

born in Ukraine, who was mentioned by Danylevsky, was awitness and participant of these meetings: About twenty fiveyears ago, Gogol, a poet (sic) famous in Muscovy, came to Pariswhere he met Mickiewicz of blessed memory and me, and westruck up a close friendship Naturally, we talked mostly aboutthe Moskals (Moskal derogatory term for a Russian tr.),toward whom both we and he had animosity. Over and overagain we kept returning to the discussion of their having beengreatly influenced by the Finns and their culture. Gogol, with allthe passion of a Little Russian, insisted that the Finnish impact


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had been very considerable, and quoted [to substantiate hisarguments] from collections of folk songs in several Slavictongues, of which he had quite a few with him. He wrote abrilliant essay about the Finnish impact on Moskal culture andread this essay to us. He argued that the spirit, customs and

morality of the Moskals were strikingly different from the rest ofthe Slavonic brethren, quoting from the Czech, Serbian,Ukrainian and other Slavic songs, and making comparisons. Forevery human feeling there was a song our, Slavic songs weregentle and soft, while the Moscow songs were wild, gloomy,even cannibalistic at times in other words, typically Finnish.No wonder, as you can imagine, that our hearts rejoiced at thatlittle essay of Gogols In the collection of Gogols workspublished posthumously, the essay does not appear. What

happened to it? It would have come in handy in support of sucharguments. Anyway, whether this essay will appear eventually inany of the collections of Gogols works or not, it would be not sodifficult to write a comparative article of this sort even now,though, unfortunately, it will lack all those pertinent, revealingand witty jokes about the Moskals, which Gogol, a great withimself, knew in such an abundance, and which he could retell inhis inimitable manner.One of Gogols friends in St Petersburg, N. Pogodin perceptively

wrote in the obituary after Gogols death: His was anexceptional personality and after his death he became evenmore mysterious and difficult to understand than during hislifetime, he cannot be measured or assessed by our usualstandards, and we should not even try to do it What was partof his physiology, part of his nationality, or his upbringing, or hislife and experience, what was inborn in him, and what grew upin him without his being conscious of it all of it is hardlypossible to comprehend, and hardly anyone will have enoughmental strength to get all these things sorted out.A clearer light falls on Gogol from his Poltava side, the side that

brought him into this world his parents, his sisters whom heloved so dearly, and for whom he so touchingly cared. There wasa streak of mysticism in Gogols family and ancestors, and thecandle of faith burned with a steady flame. In the moving wordsof Yury Shevelyov, a prominent Ukrainian literary critic, thiscandle was almost extinguished at the tragic crossroads;Gogol was caught in a tragic dilemma, and even his sanity wasput to test when in a fit of despair, feeling he was misused andmisunderstood he burned the manuscript of the sequel to DeadSouls; he seemed to have willed himself to die or was helped


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to die by the doctors? in February of 1852. Significantly hisdeath occurred in an apartment situated close to Maroseyka, aplace where Ukrainian arriving in Moscow stayed, and wherethey were abused and mistreated; no less significant was thefact that his death almost coincided with the two-hundredth

anniversary of the Pereyaslavska Treaty, signed in 1654, whichhad led to Ukraines loosing her independence fifty years later.Back at the time when he was still a civil servant in St

Petersburg, Mykola Gogol wrote, mining for the right words in hissubconscious, and celebrating the feast of the soul: A clearwinter night descended. The stars peered down. The moonmajestically sailed into the sky to give light to all the goodpeople around the world, so that they could sing Christmas

carols cheerfully and raise glory to Christ.

Ievhen Sverstiuk - Gogol, a Guest on Christmas

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