Biography and Life
ChildhoodNikolai Gogol was born March 19, 1809, in Sorochintsy, Poltava Oblast, in Ukraine. Since Ukraine at the time, had yet to earn independence, it made him a vulnerable influence to the socio-political changes being made in Russia. He grew up reading the likes of Vasily Narezhny and Alexander Pushkin, which inspired him much in his early writings as a humorist, dramatist, and novelist.
Gogol went to the Gymnasium of Higher Sciences in Nezhin at the age of twelve, and was described as a quiet but insightful student, who excelled in his prose and poetry rather than oral proclamatory. In 1828, he travelled to the idyllic St. Petersburg to continue with big dreams for fame but found himself without a penny in his wallet amidst a fast-paced city. He auditioned for the Imperial Theaters to become an actor and was met with crushing rejection, and he made his first publishment, a collection of amateur poems from his youth –the Hans Kuchelgarten (1828); the humiliating backlash and public ridicule from in a devastating review in the Moscow Telegraph drove him to burn all copies he had, and swear to never write poetry again. This incident left him exclusively writing in prose for the remainder of his life. |
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Gaining TractionIn June 1836 up to 1840, he left Russia abruptly to begin his life abroad, transiting in Lubeck, Germany, and finally settling in Rome, saying he needed a distant perspective in order to write about Russia. In those years, he battled himself constantly, as his mind was strained under psychological and religious torment, and this fight would follow him to the steps leading to his grave. And deeply disgusted by the state of the country he was in, he exposed the tyranny and incompetence of the Russian government through The Government Inspector (1836), which made a mockery of the procedures of the policeman authorities, and Dead Souls (1842), which called out the ironic and corrupted exploitation of serfs for embezzlement even after their death. Despite having several close relationships with women, one of the closest being one of his close and endearing confidants Alexandra Osipovna Smirnova, Gogol was never married. Critics argued that his lack of authentic relationships with women contributed to the shallow and inaccurate depictions of women in his works. Fellow Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov once termed himself ‘depressed and puzzled’ by Gogol’s ‘inability to describe young women.’ Gogol, in his riper years, showed no interest in exploring his sexual life; many women who did enter his life were met with shameless indifference. Some posited that he may have been a homosexual, but none of these suggestions were confirmed. |
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Before he died, with the second and third sequels to his greatest work Dead Souls (1842) in hand, he casted the books into flame in hopes of beginning anew, saying “It is first necessary to die in order to be resurrected.” That opportunity did not come, and only sheets of those collections survived. Upon a fellow novelist and playwright Turgenev’s visit, Turgenev commented that Gogol seemed like he was “suffering from some secret sorrow, preoccupation or morbid anxiety.” He fell into a deep depression on the back half of his life, convincing himself that he was spiritually unworthy. Gogol was driven by paranoia and his priest to go on a fasting period in order to “purge the devil from his soul” and rid the risk of damnation. During this period of penitence, Gogol developed that illness that left him bed-ridden and violently ill, and with self-starvation on top of a speculated typhus-like disease, this agonizing year drove him to his least breath, and he passed away on March 4th, 1852 at the age of forty-two. |
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