[1] In La Nouvelle Heloise, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
GOGOL, THE FIRST RUSSIAN REALIST
Professor William Lyon Phelps has noted that the year 1809 gave many great men to literature, among them Darwin, Tennyson, Poe, Lincoln, Gladstone, Holmes, and Gogol. Thus in a period of expanding ideas the Russian genius was born, March 19 (March 31), of a small land-owner’s family, at the town of Sorotchintzi, government of Poltava, in the land of the Cossacks—in Little Russia, or the Ukraine, as it is variously called.
When the lad of twelve was sent to school at Niéjine, a town near Kiev, he found that the pupils prided themselves upon having their own college journal. In this he soon published an early novel, “The Brothers Tviérdislavitchy,” and later a tragedy, “The Robbers.” He also contributed certain satires and ballads—all equally sophomoric. Certainly in these beginnings there were no deep marks of genius. To record that Gogol was a poor student is to bring to mind amusingly the number of great littérateurs who were either dismissed from college or showed no genius for application. I have often wondered how, in the face of such alluring evidence, professors of literature succeed in convincing ambitious young quill-drivers that their better course would be conscientious devotion to the curriculum. At all events, Gogol really derived more benefit from the training he secured while writing for the school theatre than from his mathematical and linguistic studies.
Upon leaving college, in 1828, the young enthusiast—romantic, dreaming of great deeds for his country, and taking himself much too seriously—went to the inevitable St. Petersburg, thinking that he could easily secure employment there. But he was disillusionized, for his talent excited no interest whatever. So, taking some hardly-saved money which his mother had sent him for another purpose, he embarked for foreign parts—some say for America. But his heart failed him, and he got no farther than Lübeck, where he left the boat, and, after three days’ wandering about the city, returned to St. Petersburg and secured employment as a copying clerk in the Ministry of Domain. Let us not forget this experience as we read “The Cloak.”
In this billet he remained for a year, chafing under the grinding routine, whose pressure at length compelled him to resign. He took up acting next, but his voice was not considered to be strong enough, and he then became a tutor in the families of the nobility in the Russian capital. Eventually he was appointed to a professorship of history in the University. His opening address was altogether brilliant, but, never a thorough student, he soon sounded the depths of his knowledge, and his students complained that he put them to sleep. That ended his teaching.
All these successive failures—for such they really were—drove him to the one means of self-expression: literature. He now published a few modest essays in the leading journals. These attracted some attention and brought about his introduction to Pushkin, who received him warmly, and advised him to write of the land and people that he knew so well. This wise counsel resulted in a collection of brilliant fictional sketches entitled “Evenings at a Farm Near Dikanka” (1828-1831).
The most important of these is probably “St. John’s Eve.” It is instinct with the superstitious beliefs of his native province. The story is soon told, how that a young man, finely favored of body, falls in love with the daughter of his farmer-employer. His attentions having been discovered, he is flatly dismissed, whereupon a certain Mephistophelian character who has been doing tricksy things about the village offers to procure for the youth a plentiful supply of gold wherewith to win the favor of the girl’s father. This leads to a night meeting with a witch, accompanied with all the traditional manifestations. Under an incantation, the young man digs, finds a coffer, and is about to take out the gold, when the witch admonishes him that he first must perform a duty—thrust a knife into a large bag which stands before him. He refuses, and tears open the bag, when to his horror the form of his sweetheart’s little brother is disclosed. The demon-man pictures all that the youth is about to lose by his unwillingness to murder the child; and, thus tempted, he plunges in the knife.
Thereafter all things go according to promise—he has plenty of gold, wins the favor of the father, and marries the girl, but he can never get over his settled melancholy as he thinks upon his terrible deed. Eventually—quite in the manner of all the tales which involve the sale of the soul to the devil—he disappears and goes to his Master.
The whole story is told with a remarkable handling of the weird. Perhaps no tale of witchcraft was ever more vividly and brilliantly handled—it is typical, both in matter and manner, of the Ukraine.