N.V. Gogol is not only the pride of Russian literature, but also its great mystery. He left behind hundreds of pages of brilliant works and dozens of secrets, which many researchers of his life and work are trying to solve. However, how deep is the meaning of his amazing prose, the vast secrets surrounding the writer during his lifetime and a fantastic flair enveloped his posthumous fame.
However, the latter is not surprising. While still a student at the Nezhin gymnasium, Gogol received the nickname “mysterious Carlo” from classmates for secrecy, unwillingness to share secret plans for the future, dreams of great fame, a dizzying career, and exploits for the glory of the Motherland. And, of course, a thirst for literary recognition, a desire to write something so significant, significant that it would put him on a par with the great Masters of the word - the idol A.S. Pushkin, beloved A.A. Zhukovsky and other venerable writers of that time.
Gogol pseudonyms
Gogol’s work is a striking fusion of cruel realism and breathtaking fantasy, soulful, touching lyricism to tears and making satire laugh as well, with deep, anguishing soul and bitterness behind it. Beauty and ugliness, tragedy and comedy (everything, as in life) - all this we find in “Dead Souls” and “Examiner”, in “Marriage” and “Nevsky Prospect”. Satirical writer, mystic writer, lyric writer, who stands at the origins of the “natural” school - all this, he, N.V. Gogol.
Gogol's works, each line of them bear the imprint of his great talent. The writer possessed tremendous ability in a few words, in two or three speaking details to describe the essence of his characters, to expose, as if in the palm of your hand, with all their secret corners of the soul, hidden thoughts. This feature of Gogol's skill was highly appreciated by Pushkin. It was not for nothing that he presented his friend with two amazing ideas - the ideas of The Inspector General and Dead Souls, realizing that no one else could cope with these anecdotal stories better than the young Little Russian with a mild reprimand.
However, the activities in the literary field of Nikolai Vasilievich began far from cloudless. The poem "Ganz KĂĽchelgarten" is now a bibliographic rarity. Its author is a certain V. Alov, and few people know that this is Gogol's pseudonym. The first alias.
The poem was created in the spirit of the school of German romantics and reflected the mood and thoughts of a novice writer at that time. He was full of hopes and dreams of poetic fame when the Northern Bee and the Moscow Telegraph released copies of his brainchild. And even Gogol's pseudonym, romantic and poetic, was associated with his spiritual upsurge: after all, Alov is a red dawn, the coming morning, the birth of a new day, bright and clear.
Alas, the criticism was inexorably cruel, and the writer, fearing shame, bought up all copies of the poem, rented a room in one of the hotels in St. Petersburg and burned all two bags of the Ganza ... edition. Why he did this, because no one knew his literary name, it is unknown to us. Most likely, Gogol felt a responsibility to art, to readers and did not want to stain himself with obviously weak works. And in front of contemporaries who knew him and his family in Little Russia, they did not want to blush either.
Gogol's second pseudonym is a completely realistic literary hoax. Rudy Panko, the beekeeper, on whose behalf “Evenings on a Farmhouse ...” was written and published, is the real literary debut of Nikolai Vasilyevich, which brought him his first bright fame and popularity, which opened the doors for him to the best houses in St. Petersburg. Panko himself, as an eyewitness and storyteller of the collection, is outlined so masterfully vividly that you can easily imagine his appearance, lifestyle, even his voice. And he invites his readers to visit as well as a completely existing person! In addition, Gogol’s new pseudonym alludes to the writer himself. "Rudy" in translation from Ukrainian, then Little Russian, means "red" (association with hair color). And “Panko” is the name Panas, a Little Russian version of the Russian Athanasius, the writer's grandfather by father.
However, this is not all. "P. Glechik "," G. Yanov ”and even the abbreviation“ O.O.O.O. ” (Gogol-Yanovskaya), each of the signatures is also another pseudonym for Gogol, which he used in the early stages of his work. During the life of the author, a narrow circle of people knew about them: a few friends and publishers. And only later, with a systematic in-depth study of the author’s heritage and his biography, did these interesting details come to the attention of researchers.
Interest in the work of the Master does not wane over time. Films are made about him and his works, research articles and scientific works are written, he is one of the most widely read Russian authors. And this is also a manifestation of the mysterious phenomenon of N.V. Gogol!