Published: 2024-12-15

Gaito Gazdanov on Nikolai Gogol: two texts, two visions, one final

GRZEGORZ MICHAŁ OJCEWICZ Logo ORCID

Abstract

The author analyses two articles by Gaito Gazdanov (1903–1971) in which he attempted to assess the life and creative output of Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852). The first text was written in 1929, while the second one was created in 1960. There is a 31 year-long gap between them, which created several opportunities for the Russian first wave migrant to look at the biography of the author of Dead Souls from various perspectives. While in his 1929 article Gazdanov highlighted the fantasy aspect of Gogol's word art as a highly original feature which distinguishes him significantly from writers who focused on social issues, such as Victor Hugo (1802–1885), Émile Zola (1840–1902), Nikolai Nekrasov (1821–1878) or Ivan Turgenev (1818–1883), in his 1960 essay the author of Night Roads exposed the existential approach in the process of interpretation of Gogol's works and emphasised the existence of multiple crucial contradictions in him as a human being and in his works, where – in his last years of life – didactics and a prophetic approach were voiced and visible especially in Selected Passages from Correspondence with My Friends (1947). At that time Gazdanov negated the meaning and value of Gogol's preaching and mentoring practices, however, at the end of his creative life he himself started to write texts with educational and remedial message of literature. The researcher points out the fact that Gazdanov's existential point of view of Gogol ties him closely to Vasily Rozanov (1856–1919) and to Lev Shestov (1866–1938), which on one hand visibly lowers the originality of the concepts of the author of The Spectre of Alexander Wolf, but, on the other hand, it solidifies his insight into the best Russian tradition of existential approach to word art.

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Citation rules

OJCEWICZ, G. M. (2024). Gaito Gazdanov on Nikolai Gogol: two texts, two visions, one final. Przegląd Rusycystyczny [Russian Studies Review], (4 (188), 60–89. https://doi.org/10.31261/pr.18005

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No. 4 (188) (2024)
Published: 2024-12-19


ISSN: 0137-298X
Ikona DOI 10.31261/pr

Publisher
Polskie Towarzystwo Rusycystyczne oraz Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego

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