A NEW STUDY OF GOGOL

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28262, 27 April 1957, Page 3

A NEW STUDY OF GOGOL

Gogol. A Life. By David Magarshack. Faber and Faber. 329 pp. Index.

Of the five great figures m nineteenth century Russian literature—Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoievsky and Tolstoy—in the English speaking world possibly the novelist and playwright Nicolai Vasilievich Gogol (1809-1852) is the least known. Yet his masterpiece “Dead Souls,’* satirising the provincial Russian society, and his play, “The Inspector-General,” satirising Russian Government officials, exerted an astonishing influence on the political life of his country in his day, and both works have appeared' in English translations. Savants in America, England and France during the last 50 years have produced a steady trickle of books concerning Gogol; and in Russia the keen demand for his work has resulted in the publication of two new editions of his collected works since, 1952. The list of biographies and biographical studies which forms the appendix to this new life occupies no less than seven full pages. Enthusiasts will no doubt welcome this new biography, yet the demand for it in New Zealand is likely to remain limited.

Gogol was a creative literary genius of the first rank, and a master of the use of words. In making this new assessment of his life and work, David Magarshack has used much new material that has recently been made available in Russia, and he quotes extensively from the dozens of letters that Gogol wrote to his friends in the course of his short life. Gogol’s personality had many different facets. A profound egoist and a hypochondriac, he was at the same time a humorist and a man with a mission, a moralist and a man of many moods. His temperament was mercurial, subject to periods of extreme elation and the deepest despondency. When in search of creative inspiration his dejection was pathetic. During the last 10 years of his life, disappointment with the apparent lack of appreciation of his work led to long fits of morbid introspection, and these eventually led to a tragic death.

David Magarshack is a scholar who has already produced standard biographies of Turgenev and Chekhov, and he is thus thoroughly familiar with the Russian background. Although this new comprehensive study tends to verbosity and sometimes wearisome repetition, his portrait of Gogol is clear-cut and obviously reliable and authoritative. Shortly before his death, Turgenev met Gogol, and remarked, “What a clever, queer and sick creature you are!” This biography enables the reader to realise the truth of Turgenev’s impression, and at the same time enables us to understand what Gogol means to the Russians themselves. No student of Russian literature can afford not to read this book.