But when they took him to the last deadly tortures, it seemed as though his strength were failing. He turned his eyes about.
Oh, God! all strangers, all unknown faces! If only some of his relatives were present at his death! He would not have cared to hear the sobs and anguish of his feeble mother, or the unreasoning cries of a wife, tearing her hair and beating her white breast; he would have liked to see the strong man who could refresh him with a wise word, and cheer his end. And his strength failed him, and he cried in the weakness of his soul, “Father, where are you? Do you hear all?”
“I hear!” rang through the universal silence, and all that million of people shuddered in concert.
Force is its prime quality—physical, mental, religious. “In this story,” writes Professor Phelps, “the old Cossacks, centuries dead, have a genuine resurrection of the body. They appear before us in all their amazing vitality, their love of fighting, of eating and drinking, their intense patriotism, and their blazing devotion to their religious faith. Never was a book more plainly inspired by passion for race and native land. It is one tremendous shout of joy”—which even tragedy cannot silence.
Gogol was a stylist of no mean order, as “Taras Bulba” well demonstrates. It is full of Homeric passages, whose pungent vigor even survives translation. And for sheer beauty what can surpass this, the opening passage of “Night in May”?
Do you know the beauty of the nights of Ukraine? The moon looks down from the deep, immeasurable vault, which is filled to overflowing and palpitating with its pure radiance. The earth is silver; the air is deliciously cool, yet almost oppressive with perfume. Divine, enchanting night! The great forest trees, black, solemn, and still, reposing as if oppressed with thought, throw out their gigantic shadows. How silent are the ponds! Their dark waters are imprisoned within the vine-laden walls of the gardens. The little virgin forest of wild cherry and young plum-trees dip their dainty roots timidly into the cold waters; their murmuring leaves angrily shiver when a little current of the night wind stealthily creeps in to caress them. The distant horizon sleeps, but above it and overhead all is palpitating life; august, triumphal, sublime! Like the firmament, the soul seems to open into endless space; silvery visions of grace and beauty arise before it. Oh, the charm of this divine night!
Suddenly life, animation, spreads through forest, lake, and steppe. The nightingale’s majestic trill resounds through the air; the moon seems to stop, embosomed in clouds, to listen. The little village on the hill is wrapt in an enchanted slumber; its cluster of white cottages gleams vividly in the moonlight, and the outlines of their low walls are sharply clear-cut against the dark shadows. All songs are hushed; silence reigns in the homes of these simple peasants. But here and there a twinkling light appears in a little window of some cottage, where supper has waited for a belated occupant.
Gogol’s reputation as a humorist is strongly supported by his comedy “Revizor” (“The Inspector-General”). It is held to be the best comedy in the Russian language, and, while it brought out no immediate followers, it did arouse an immense amount of amused discussion at the time of its production.
The plot is simple enough. The officials of a provincial government office are looking for the arrival of an inspector, who is supposed to be coming incognito to inspect their accounts. A traveller happens to arrive at the inn, and him they all suppose to be the dreaded official. Made anxious by their guilty consciences, each attempts to plead his own cause with the supposed judge, and no one hesitates to denounce a colleague in order to better his own standing. The traveller is at first amazed, but he is astute enough to accept the situation and pocket the money. The confusion grows until the crash of the final thunderbolt, when the real inspector arrives upon the scene.
In his “Confessions of an Author,” Gogol says: “In the ‘Revizor,’ I tried to present in a mass the results arising from the one crying evil of Russia, as I recognized it in that year; to expose every crime that is committed in those offices, where the strictest uprightness should be required and expected. I meant to satirize the great evil. The effect produced upon the public was a sort of terror; for they felt the force of my true sentiments, my real sadness and disgust, through the gay satire.”