Having a Gogol Week.

First I read his most famous play, „The Government Inspector“. It was alright, an archetypal story of mistaken identity. I liked especially that it didn’t really have any moral characters. Everybody is crooked as hell and everyone knows it and rationalises their own corruption. But overall I kinda expected more from one of Russias most famous authors.

So then I got into his Petersburg Stories (The Nevski Prospect, The Portrait, The Nose, The Overcoat and Diary of a Madman). There are five of them, and I really thought they were all great and some even brilliant. I enjoyed most „The Overcoat“ and „Diary of a Madman“. These are in many ways similar stories about Bureaucrats ignored and forgotten by society, but they develop into quite different resolutions. The others were also great to pretty good at least.

From what I hear a lot of Gogols signature style, the so called Skaz, gets lost in translation, but what remains was still pretty beautiful writing. It helps to get some background on Russian bureaucracy, names, status symbols at the time and a concept called „poshlost“ (Nabokov defines it as corny trash, vulgar clichés and bogus profundity, amongst others), as well as Skaz itself to enhance the reading, but I’m sure it’s also enjoyable to just read and see what you get from it without all that.

Next I’ll probably get to „Lost Souls“. This was supposed to be part 1 of three in his magnum opus, but in his later live he got very christian and never got around to finishing it, burning the second volume and never even starting with the third. From what I hear volume one is a closed story tho, and it might be better he didn’t finish it after getting very religious…

Anybody here read it? What was your experience with Gogol?

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