This is a continuation of the essay by Professor Ivan Andreev on the life and religious development of one of Russia’s greatest authors, Nikolai Gogol. You can read part one here.
In May 1831, Pletnev introduced Gogol to Pushkin. This was the single most important moment in Gogol’s literary life. Under the influence of Pushkin’s brilliant genius, Gogol realized both the ultimate goal of art and the meaning of his own work. Service to art took on the character of a moral duty and that great service to mankind that Gogol had dreamed of even in the Lyceum, under the influence of Prof. Belousov.
Pushkin revealed the true meaning of art to Gogol, especially as it refers to poetry in particular. Pushkin’s beliefs—“Genius and evil are incompatible,” “The beautiful must be majestic,” “Service to the muses cannot bear distractions,” “Poets are born for inspiration, for sweet sounds and prayer”—were deep revelations for Gogol. He understood that aesthetics without ethics is nothing; that Beauty without Good is not Beauty at all, but only prettiness; that to be a great poet one must first become a good man. And then service to art will become a high moral calling: loving one’s neighbor. Before his acquaintance with Pushkin, the aesthetic and moral aspects of Gogol developed separately. Now the service of Beauty and Good became intertwined in him.
When Pushkin died (1837), Gogol wrote: “My life, my greatest enjoyment died with him. When I created, I saw Pushkin before me. All purposes, all goals were as nothing . . . all I treasured was his eternal and inviolable word. I did nothing, I wrote nothing without his counsel. All the good that is in me is thanks to him. ”
No less important (though less evident) was the influence of the personality and opinions of Zhukovsky. Slowly, gently, kindly, and subtly, Zhukovsky continued and deepened those good seeds that Pushkin sowed in Gogol’s heart. Zhukovsky’s beliefs—“Poetry is God in the holy dreams of the earth,” “Everything in life is a means toward the Ultimate,” “In life there are many more wonderful things than just happiness,”—revealed to Gogol’s spiritual eyes that religious truth, moral good, and the beauty of art are a trinity, a triune image of perfection, thanks to which it is possible to align a life of service to art with service to God and one’s neighbor. Zhukovsky, the friend of Pushkin, became also the friend of Gogol.
But such a simultaneous service to religion, morality and art, so easily attainable for the harmonious soul of Pushkin and even more perfectly realized in the harmony of Zhukovsky’s soul, turned out to be tragically difficult for the discordant and sickly soul of Gogol.
The uniqueness of Pushkin and Zhukovsky’s theory of art was that it simultaneously denounced the theory of “art for art’s sake” and the so-called utilitarian theory of art. The main idea of this theory of Pushkin and Zhukovsky (never formally systematized, but scrupulously followed in both the life and work of these great poets) is the following: the poet must be completely free during the process of his creation. Not a single social, moral, nor even religious expectation may be demanded of him. But the poet, as a person, must forever grow spiritually; in other words, perfect himself in the religious and moral sense, keeping in mind the ideal of Christian morality: “Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.” And if he will grow himself, his creation will grow with him.
The foundation for this new theory of art was laid in Gogol’s soul by his entire previous life and work. His soul at its core was deeply religious, moral questions of his youth always clamored for answers, while his aesthetic development moved ever onward, untrammeled by any other force. The tremendous gift of creativity was given Gogol from Above—on the one hand, as the proverbial talent that must be increased to be fully realized; on the other, as an exclusive treasure, an obstacle to gaining the kingdom of heaven.
Even before coming into contact with Pushkin and Zhukovsky’s theory of art, Gogol created in complete freedom, not giving himself any utilitarian goals, not requiring anything specific of himself, rather giving himself up to inspiration. He lived and breathed art and quickly improved his artistry. But while continuously tending to his aesthetic needs, he was abandoning his religious and moral “spiritual housekeeping.” His personal acquaintance with Pushkin and Zhukovsky forced Gogol to think deeply about himself, especially after he saw, understood, and appreciated their moral outlook and heard from them a new meaning for art. Even more clearly and vividly he noticed in himself that “frightening mixture of contradictions” that had tortured him since his youth.
In a letter to Pogodin (1833), Gogol wrote: “Do you understand the horrible feeling of being unsatisfied with yourself? Oh, may you never know it! The person in whom this hell-feeling inhabits turns completely into anger. . . . The feeling of personal incompleteness, together with humility and repentance, calls down the Grace of God. But in the presence of pride, it brings a person to self-pity and anger ” This “hell-feeling” that turned Gogol into pure “anger” obviously shows how far he was from true humility and what a terrible contradiction reigned in his soul.
The year 1836 Gogol himself called a “great threshold,” a “great epoch” in his life. In his Author’s Confession (1847), he divides his life into two periods: the first, when he “created, not worrying at all why I did, never considering who or what would benefit from my work,” and the second, when “Pushkin forced me to look at the matter seriously.”
As is well known, Pushkin inspired Gogol with the stories of both The Inspector General and Dead Souls. In a letter to Zhukovsky (1847), Gogol wrote, remembering this period of his writing: “I decided to collect all the bad that I knew, and in one fell swoop to laugh at it all—that was the genesis of The Inspector General! It was my first work written specifically for the improvement of society.”
The first performance of The Inspector General, attended by Emperor Nicholas I, inspired a mixed response from society; on the one hand, a storm of accolades, but on the other, of protests. But Gogol himself was deeply disillusioned. According to his own words, no one (neither the admirers nor the detractors) understood the meaning that Gogol intended for the comedy. He expressed these intentions in his essays “Theatrical Journey” and “Untangling the Inspector General.”
If one is to appreciate Gogol’s strange disillusionment, one must keep in mind Gogol’s own interpretation of the play. The town where all the events take place is a symbol for the human soul, the town officials are symbols of human passions, Khlestakov is the symbol of a vacillating conscience, while the actual Inspector General represents the imminent questioning of the human soul by God Himself. If one is to firmly stick to these images while watching or reading the play, then the comedy inevitably turns into an utterly unique tragedy, probably the only one of its kind in all of world literature.
An interesting attempt to stage the comedy in this way is mentioned in the book Ascetic of the Word: New Research on Gogol by I. Scheglov (1909), published for the centennial celebration of Gogol’s birth. In the chapter “Midnight Inspector,” the author describes a production of the comedy performed at night for the monks of a certain monastery in the deep country. The abbot, as he was blessing the director Blazhevich after the end of this unusual production, said, “Remember, my son, in your heart the ‘midnight inspector,’ and take care of the town of your soul, for no one knows when He will come to inspect what you have done.”
Another director who attempted to perform The Inspector General in the “Gogol interpretation” was Meyerholdt, who in his time presented a “mystical” version of the comedy. But the production was not a successful one. The Inspector General is brilliant in nearly every respect. Its general composition, its vivid scenes, its language, its uninhibited humor, the deep psychological truth of the types he describes, especially the type of Khlestakov, is remarkable. The play was doubtless written by the author completely freely, with no ulterior motives of a social, moral, or religious nature. But Gogol was right to give it an especially religious undertone later, as any ideological thinker or critic is right to interpret even the most realistic literature in a symbolic way. One can here recall similar interpretations of Pushkin’s “Bronze Horseman,” Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Ostrovsky’s The Woods, Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, and many others. The only unreasonable aspect of Gogol’s interpretation was that he insisted that his own, highly subjective, personal, and deeply idiosyncratic interpretation was the only correct one, especially considering that this interpretation came to Gogol after he finished writing his play.
Gogol’s extremely sharp, personal, and lengthy reaction to the “failure” of The Inspector General (a dubious event in itself) explains the beginning of a serious mental crisis. Shortly after the opening of The Inspector General, a shaken Gogol traveled abroad, to “walk off his sorrow.” Having traveled through Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, Gogol calmed down and came to the conclusion that he was himself to blame for everything because he was listless, lazy, thoughtless, not serious towards his writer’s calling, careless in his use of humor, and generally not attentive enough toward his God-given talent.
Thus he continued, with great spiritual energy and artistic inspiration, a work already begun in St Petersburg: Dead Souls. Gogol had already found time to read the first chapter of his “poem” to Pushkin in St Petersburg. Although he was laughing at the beginning, Pushkin gradually got quieter, and by the end of the reading he exclaimed in a sorrowful voice, “Oh, God! How sad is our Russia!” This exclamation of Pushkin was the most truthful response to Gogol’s “poem.” In our own day we can only deepen and strengthen Pushkin’s thought: “Oh, God! How frightening, how tragically depraved is the whole world of men.”
In his Author’s Confession, Gogol described his initial intentions in continuing his work on Dead Souls abroad: “I wanted my book to bring forward primarily those highest qualities of human nature that are not yet appreciated by everyone, and primarily those lowest qualities that are not yet sufficiently laughed at and reviled. . . . I thought that my overflowing lyrical ability would help me describe these honorable qualities in such a way that a Russian person would be inflamed with love for them, while my ability to make someone laugh, which I also have in excess, would help me so vividly present those human failings that the reader would despise them, even if he were to find them within himself. But at the same time I felt that I would be able to do all this only if I came to understand fully that our human nature has both honorable qualities and failings. I must not raise up sins to the level of virtues, or instead destroy with laughter those virtuous qualities together with the sins. . . .” As these quotes show, Gogol’s intentions were in the highest degree serious, deeply and honestly thought out, and very beneficial to the Russian society of “Belinsky’s era.”
In March 1837, Gogol ended up in Rome, his self-professed “Altar of Beauty.” Gogol’s inborn, endless, and insatiable aesthetic searching was fed plentifully, giving him exalted and pure enjoyment. For a short time this calmed him, because secular art in its purest form is the steppingstone for heavenly religion. In the atmosphere of Italian Beauty, Gogol wrote of his own beloved, distant Russia. He was content with his work on Dead Souls. In a letter to Zhukovsky (October1837), he informs his friend: “I am happy. My soul is full of light. I work and I hurry with all my strength to finish my work.” “Heaven and Paradise are in my soul,” he wrote to Danilevsky in February 1838.
In 1839, Gogol returned to Russia and read the finished chapters of his “poem” to a select group of close friends. In June 1840, he once again left for Europe. At the end of 1841, he returned once again to Russia to publish his work. In 1842, the first volume of Dead Souls was published in Moscow. During this time (1839–1842), Gogol’s mood changed drastically several times; either he was taken up by an ecstasy of inspiration, impressing everyone with his work ethic, or he was plunged into “a disease of sorrow, which has no description.” His friends in Russia noticed a dramatic difference in him. “On the surface, he became thin, pale, and a quiet resignation to the will of God was obvious in his every word,” said his friend S. T. Aksakov.
However, this quiet peacefulness lasted only a short time. Annoyed by difficulties in publishing his book during the summer of 1842, he left Russia in a huff, only to return in 1847. “The terrible mix of contradictions” in Gogol’s soul, of which he wrote even in his youth (1829), only became more pronounced with the passing years.
The summer of 1842 he spent in Germany; in the fall he moved in with N. M. Yazykov in Rome. Gogol’s Roman friends (Yazykov, the artist Ivanov, F. V. Chizhov, and others), like his friends in Russia, also noticed the dramatic difference in him. He had become pensive, silent, introspective, pointedly religious. But at times all this disappeared, and he would become animated, talkative, and (according to Chizhov) he would tell stories that amused everyone.
In 1843, Gogol’s visitor A. O. Smirnova noticed his intensely religious mood. “He would separate himself usually from the others and was so absorbed in prayer, that it seemed he noticed no one near him.” When he visited Smirnova’s apartment, Gogol brought a thick note-book full of excerpts from the Holy Fathers.
Although previously Gogol did not bother with philosophy and theology, now he began to supplement his knowledge greedily and to study like a schoolboy. Gradually spiritual books replaced the worldly. Gogol began to order books from Russia and read the works of the Holy Fathers, the Philokalia, the works of St Dmitry of Rostov, Bishop Innocent, Lazar Baranovich, Stefan Yavorsky, “Christian Teachings,” and other spiritual journals. Simultaneously with Orthodox literature, he read The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis and even recommended reading one chapter of this book a day in a letter to S. T. Aksakov.
The indiscriminate reading of spiritual literature, without prior preparation or guidance, brought the vacillating and easily swayed Gogol more harm than good. Often, having attended Church services and fulfilled all the ritual requirements, he demanded the same from those around him and quarreled with them. Having frequent recourse to the mysteries of Confession and Communion, he demanded the same from others, sharply and angrily condemning them if they didn’t listen to him. Having taken on ascetic feats of prayer, he began to think that he had already reached a high spiritual state, and even hinted that his prayer could heal the sick and convince the skeptics. He began to create other “rules” of behavior for himself, including mandatory daily readings and ascetic labors.
While battling his own sinfulness, he would ask his friends and acquaintances to help him uncover his weaknesses. The Gogol who always gave himself completely to every new impression began to revel in his own “repentant feelings,” underneath which was forming a self-abasement worse than pride. “The more you find and expose my limitations and sins,” he wrote to Shevyrev (1842), “the more I will be grateful to you. Perhaps there is not another person in all of Russia who thirsts to know all of his sins and limitations.”
“My soul now desires and thirsts for sins, for the uncovering of sins,” he wrote in an exalted state to Zhukovsky. “If you only knew what kind of a feast is happening inside me when I uncover a sin in myself that I didn’t notice before!”
When he fell prostrate in repentance, his distorted self-consciousness told him, almost from the side: “How beautifully you fell!” Humility was unnoticeably turning into a feeling of pride in his own humility and compunction, even into a compunctionate feeling towards his own compunction. Love for his neighbor was expressed in cold, pedantic preaching, often accompanied by irritability and frustration; ascetic labors were accompanied by self-satisfaction. But behind all the excesses, in the deepest parts of Gogol’s unhappy soul smoldered a true and unwavering love for Christ, and many hidden, pure tears of genuine repentance fell to the ground, unseen by the world.
All the psychopathological traits of Gogol—reactionaryism, emotional brittleness, an uncontrolled inclination to affectation, pathos, theatrical posing, hyperbole—got mixed in with his new religious mood. Like the proverbial tares, they prevented true, genuine, gentle spiritual feelings from taking deep root in his tortured heart. This new and extreme “frightening combination of contradictions,” where humility and pride, sincerity and affectation, chastity and cynicism, openness and theatrical posing were all mixed together, negatively affected his friends and loved ones. In such a heavy moral state, Gogol wrote the second volume of Dead Souls.
Keeping in mind Pushkin and Zhukovsky’s theory of art, Gogol tried to emulate them in his behavior and his writing. He insisted that a true artist must also be a highly moral person, his life must be perfect, because the service of art is a religious and moral labor. The logical conclusion of all these thoughts was obvious: in order to worthily complete Dead Souls, the author needed to become a saint. In 1843, Gogol wrote to Shevyrev: “I can now work with more confidence, firmness, deliberation, thanks to those ascetic feats that I undertook for my training.” In a letter to Pletnev (1844), Gogol wrote: “I know that I need purity of soul and a better inner disposition and almost a heavenly beauty in my behavior. Without that, one can defend neither art itself, nor anything holy to which it may lead.”
Often in the correspondence of this period one can find truly and profoundly ascetic thoughts and feelings, but the pedantic tone of these letters only reveals the author’s pride, the passionate nature of his enthusiasm, and sometimes his outright posing. His sickly, extroverted, psycho-pathological nature, like a crooked mirror, often twisted beyond recognition any beauty and truth he touched.
When he fell prostrate in repentance, his distorted self-consciousness told him, almost from the side: “How beautifully you fell!” Humility was unnoticeably turning into a feeling of pride in his own humility and compunction, even into a compunctionate feeling towards his own compunction. Love for his neighbor was expressed in cold, pedantic preaching, often accompanied by irritability and frustration; ascetic labors were accompanied by self-satisfaction. But behind all the excesses, in the deepest parts of Gogol’s unhappy soul smoldered a true and unwavering love for Christ, and many hidden, pure tears of genuine repentance fell to the ground, unseen by the world.
Continued in Part Three…