Research|On Gogol (О Гоголе) — close-read

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On Gogol (О Гоголе) — close-read

Last modified 10 August 2026 · view source

Theme dive: Art & aesthetics satellites (Tolstoy applying the What Is Art? religious-art test to specific cases). Piece: two texts both titled «О Гоголе» — a late article of 1909 (PSS Tom 38, pp. 50–53) treated as the main one, and an earlier unfinished note (PSS Tom 26, pp. 648–651) of 1888 folded in.

Source extracts (all under docs/research/art-aesthetics-satellites/extracts/): - 1909 article: v38_050_053_O_Gogole.txt - Earlier (Tom 26) piece: v26_648_651_O_Gogole.txt - 1909 variants: v38_280_280_O_Gogole_Varianty.txt - 1909 commentary (Mishin, V. S.): _comm_v38_498_498_O_Gogole.txt - Tom-26 commentary (Sreznevsky, V. I.): _comm_v26_874_877_O_Gogole.txt

PSS edition citation: Толстой Л. Н. Полное собрание сочинений: в 90 тт. (Юбилейное издание). Тома 26, 38. М.: Гос. изд. «Художественная литература», 1936.

1. Composition windows

Two distinct texts, twenty-one years apart. TEI header years (1936) are the PSS publication year, not composition — both windows below are pinned from the commentaries.

1909 article (Tom 38) — the main piece

Written March 1909 in Yasnaya Polyana on commission, occasioned by the centenary of Gogol’s birth (born 1809; “100-летие со дня рождения,” the commentary states) — the so-called “гоголевские дни” (Gogol days) of that month.

Dated stages from the commentary (Mishin) and Gusev’s diary: - 4 March 1909 (OS) — V. A. Posse asked Tolstoy to write on Gogol for his journal «Жизнь для всех» (Life for All), in view of the upcoming jubilee. Tolstoy begins re-reading Gogol, including the Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends. - 5 March 1909 (OS) — Tolstoy’s own diary carries the note that became the article’s opening («Гоголь — огромный талант»…); copied into the diary by A. L. Tolstaya from the notebook. - 7 March 1909 (OS) — Tolstoy again dictated a Gogol article to Gusev. - 22 March 1909 (OS) — diary: a correspondent of Русское слово (S. P. Spiro) visited; “О Гоголе написал и дал” (“Wrote on Gogol and gave it”). - 24 March 1909 (OS) — first publication in Русское слово No. 68 under the title “Толстой о Гоголе.” On Gusev’s note on the manuscript: “Март 09.”

OS→NS offset in 1909 is 13 days: the writing window of 4–22 March 1909 (OS) corresponds to roughly 17 March – 4 April 1909 (NS); the Русское слово publication of 24 March (OS) = 6 April 1909 (NS).

The PSS prints the article from the Русское слово text, correcting газетную (newspaper) errors against Tolstoy’s authorial manuscript; the list of Tolstoy’s marginal grades on the Selected Passages is likewise printed from Русское слово. The manuscript (ГТМ, АЧ, папка 120, 6) is a typescript heavily corrected by Tolstoy in pencil and ink, 4 leaves; leaf 1 is a fragment of an earlier redaction (the source of variants Nos. 1 and 2).

Earlier note (Tom 26) — folded in

An unpublished, unpolished, unfinished piece (the PSS section is headed «НЕОПУБЛИКОВАННОЕ, НЕОТДЕЛАННОЕ И НЕОКОНЧЕННОЕ 1886—1889»). Per the commentary (Sreznevsky), the idea was sparked in October 1887 by Tolstoy’s third re-reading of the Correspondence with Friends; the article itself was written in Moscow 24 January and around 8–9 February 1888 (OS) (S. A. Tolstaya dated the manuscript “1888 январь”). After 9 February 1888 there is no further mention — it was left unfinished.

OS→NS offset in the 1880s is 12 days: composition 24 Jan – 9 Feb 1888 (OS) = roughly 5–21 February 1888 (NS).

Reason it stalled (commentary, citing N. Timkovsky’s memoir «Душа Л. Н. Толстого», 1913): Tolstoy left it unfinished because “Льву Николаевичу… не хотелось вступать в полемику с Белинским” — he did not want to enter into polemic with Belinsky.

2. Genesis & the people

Why Tolstoy wrote on Gogol in 1909. Direct commission: V. A. Posse asked for a piece for «Жизнь для всех» tied to the Gogol birth-centenary. The trigger to re-read was domestic — per Spiro’s introductory note, “Одна моя приятельница… недавно говорила со мной о «Старосветских помещиках», и после этого я стал перечитывать их” (a lady friend had spoken to him of Old-World Landowners, prompting the re-reading). Gusev’s diary (4 March 1909) records Tolstoy’s delight: “Как я рад, что перечитываю Гоголя! … Рядом с пошлостями такие глубокие религиозные истины” — beside the banalities, such deep religious truths.

People named. - N. V. Gogol (Николай Васильевич Гоголь, 1809–1852) — the central person entity; the writer of genius whose late religious turn Tolstoy reads sympathetically. - V. A. Posse (В. А. Поссе) — editor of «Жизнь для всех», the 1909 commissioner. - S. P. Spiro (С. П. Спиро) — Русское слово correspondent who collected the piece (24 March 1909) and later printed it in «Беседы с Л. Н. Толстым» (1911). - N. N. Gusev (Н. Н. Гусев) — Tolstoy’s secretary, to whom he dictated; diarist of the genesis. - A. L. Tolstaya (Александра Львовна Толстая) — copied the diary note. - V. G. Belinsky (В. Г. Белинский) — the radical critic whose 1847 letter savaged the Correspondence; Tolstoy’s named antagonist in both texts (“апостол невежества и мракобесия” quoted from Belinsky in the Tom-26 text). - A. S. Pushkin (Пушкин) — invoked in the 1909 article as the “bodryi, yasnyi, nezaputannyi” (vigorous, clear, untangled) counter-figure whose death (1837) preceded the Hegelian/Slavophile climate that, in Tolstoy’s reading, ensnared Gogol. - Hegel / Kant — Hegel as the aesthetic doctrine Tolstoy blames (“служение красоте”); Kant invoked in variant No. 3 and in the 1888 letters as the parallel figure (the master who recognised the misplaced status given to his own field — Kant to science, Gogol to art). - The Slavophiles — Khomyakov and especially the Aksakovs (Хомяков, Аксаковы) — named in variant No. 3 as the source of the “софизмы” Gogol absorbed. - In the 1888 genesis (Tom-26 commentary): P. I. Biryukov and V. G. Chertkov (Tolstoy’s correspondents on the plan to reprint the Selected Passages through Посредник); N. N. Strakhov and F. N. Berg (further correspondents); and “Orlov,” whose article on Gogol Tolstoy meant to preface (“Гоголь, как учитель жизни” — “Gogol as a teacher of life,” the Посредник brochure).

Tolstoy’s lifelong relation to «Выбранные места». Documented across the 1880s letters quoted in the Tom-26 commentary: Tolstoy says he re-read the Correspondence with Friends a third time in October 1887 (to Strakhov: “в 3-й раз в моей жизни”), each time with growing force of impression. He repeatedly calls Gogol “наш Паскаль” / “наш русский Паскаль” (our Pascal / our Russian Pascal) and the Correspondence “удивительное житие” / “чудесное житие” (a wondrous / marvellous saint’s-life), planning to publish selected passages with a short biography through Посредник “для народа.” In 1909 he re-read it once more (the article’s appended grading list documents that re-reading, March 1909). So the 1909 article is the public surfacing of a conviction held privately for at least 22 years.

3. Keystone passages

Verbatim RU substrings copied exactly from the extract .txt files. Each carries a labelled (working English) translation and a one-line significance.

K1 — the threefold verdict on Gogol (1909 article)

[v38_050_053]

Гоголь — огромный талант, прекрасное сердце и небольшой, несмелый, робкий ум.

(working English) “Gogol — an enormous talent, a fine heart, and a small, timid, fearful mind.”

Significance: the article’s organising thesis — Gogol’s gift and his moral feeling are affirmed; only the mind that tried to systematise them is faulted. The religious-art test does not condemn the religious turn, it condemns the bad theory laid over it.

K2 — when art serves the heart vs. when it preaches (1909 article)

[v38_050_053]

Отдается он своему таланту — и выходят прекрасные литературные произведения, как «Старосветские помещики», первая часть «Мертвых Душ», «Ревизор» и в особенности — верх совершенства в своем роде — «Коляска». Отдается своему сердцу и религиозному чувству — и выходят в его письмах, как в письме «О значении болезней», «О том, что такое слово» и во многих и многих других, трогательные, часто глубокие и поучительные мысли. Но как только хочет он писать художественные произведения на нравственно-религиозные темы или придать уже написанным произведениям несвойственный им нравственно-религиозный поучительный смысл, выходит ужасная, отвратительная чепуха, как это проявляется во второй части «Мертвых Душ», в заключительной сцене к «Ревизору» и во многих письмах.

(working English) “When he gives himself to his talent, fine literary works come out — Old-World Landowners, the first part of Dead Souls, The Inspector General, and especially — the height of perfection of its kind — The Carriage. When he gives himself to his heart and his religious feeling, there come, in his letters such as the letter On the Meaning of Illnesses, On What the Word Is, and many, many others, touching, often profound and instructive thoughts. But the moment he wants to write artistic works on moral-religious themes, or to lend already-written works a moral-religious didactic sense not proper to them, out comes terrible, repulsive nonsense, as appears in the second part of Dead Souls, in the closing scene of The Inspector General, and in many of the letters.”

Significance: the precise calibration of the test. Tolstoy does not despise Gogol’s preaching — the religious letters are praised. What fails is the fusion: art bent to didactic purpose, or doctrine inflated into a false “high significance.” This is the What Is Art? line (sincerity, fitness of form to feeling) applied at fine grain — and it cuts against the autonomy-of-art doctrine, not against the religious content.

K3 — the diagnosis: false-high art + false-low (church) religion (1909 article)

[v38_050_053]

Происходит это от того, что, с одной стороны, Гоголь приписывает искусству несвойственное ему высокое значение, а с другой — еще менее свойственное религии низкое значение церковное, и хочет объяснить это воображаемое высокое значение своих произведений этой церковной верой.

(working English) “This comes about because, on the one hand, Gogol ascribes to art a high significance not proper to it, and on the other a still-less-proper low significance to religion — the church significance — and wants to explain this imagined high significance of his works by that church faith.”

Significance: the diagnosis is symmetrical and is pure What Is Art? doctrine — art was over-valued (the Hegelian “служение красоте” cult), true religion under-valued (collapsed into “православие,” “извращение христианства”). Gogol’s error is doctrinal mis-placement, not the religious turn as such.

K4 — the establishment despises the reborn Gogol (Tom-26 note)

[v26_648_651]

Гоголь для нашей публики есть только тот, который забавляет нас. Гоголь же тот, который отрекается от своих ошибок и кается в них, того Гоголя мы не хотим знать и называем его сумашедшим. Отчего случилось такое необыкновенное дело?

(working English) “For our public, Gogol is only the one who entertains us. But the Gogol who renounces his errors and repents of them — that Gogol we do not wish to know, and we call him a madman. Why did so extraordinary a thing come to pass?”

Significance: the core grievance, stated as defence. The literary public keeps the comic Gogol and discards the penitent one — exactly the verdict the religious-art test reverses. (sic: “сумашедшим” / “Отчего” per source.)

K5 — what the establishment celebrates vs. condemns (Tom-26 note)

[v26_648_651]

Всех учат тому, что Гоголь был велик, когда он писал свои повести, как Тарас Бульба, в которой восхваляются военные подвиги — убийство, и когда писал ревизора, в котором осмеиваются все без исключения люди целого города, но что Гоголь, пишущий о том, что ему открыло учение Христа, есть падший, сумашедший Гоголь.

(working English) “Everyone is taught that Gogol was great when he wrote his tales, such as Taras Bulba, in which military exploits — murder — are extolled, and when he wrote The Inspector General, in which all the people of a whole town without exception are mocked; but that the Gogol who writes of what the teaching of Christ revealed to him is the fallen, mad Gogol.”

Significance: the inversion the religious-art test performs. By the moral-religious measure, the celebrated works glorify killing or mere mockery; the despised late writing is the one touched by “учение Христа.” The literary canon and the religious-art canon point opposite ways. (sic: “сумашедший” per source.)

K6 — Gogol as the man “reborn,” forty years under a bushel (Tom-26 note)

[v26_648_651]

Сорок лет уже лежит под спудом тот Гоголь, каким он стал после возрождения, и все то, что он сказал людям об этом своем возрождении сорок лет в печати, в историях литератур, в разговорах с кафедр⁴⁸³ представляется людям, как бред сумашедшего.

(working English) “For forty years now there has lain hidden under a bushel that Gogol as he became after his rebirth, and everything he told people about that rebirth of his — for forty years, in print, in literary histories, in talk from the lecturer’s rostrum — is presented to people as a madman’s raving.”

Significance: the “под спудом” (hidden under a bushel) figure ties the 1888 note to the private letters’ refrain (“40 лет лежит под спудом наш Паскаль”). The religious rebirth, not the comic gift, is the thing buried — Tolstoy’s self-recognition is loudest here. (The “⁴⁸³” is a PSS footnote marker carried over in the extract; “сумашедшего” sic.)

K7 — Belinsky named as the low moral level (Tom-26 note)

[v26_648_651]

«Как на низком нравственном уровне? Белинский на низком нравственном уровне?»—слышу я крик толпы. Белинский первый осудил Переписку и сказал: Проповедник кнута, апостол невежества и мракобесия, панегирист татарских нравов и т. п.

(working English) “‘How — at a low moral level? Belinsky at a low moral level?’ I hear the crowd cry. Belinsky was the first to condemn the Correspondence and said: a preacher of the knout, an apostle of ignorance and obscurantism, a panegyrist of Tatar mores, and so on.”

Significance: names the antagonist directly. Tolstoy sets the religious-art test explicitly against the radical-critic consensus (Belinsky’s 1847 letter); the crowd’s reverence for Belinsky is itself, for Tolstoy, the symptom. This is the polemic he later (per the 1888 commentary) declined to finish.

K8 — the early note’s universal frame: the moral turn as rebirth (Tom-26 note)

[v26_648_651]

Внутреннее событие это —освобождение от соблазна и зла, покаяние в нем, стремление к возвращению на путь добра и признание своих грехов и указание того пути, которым человек избавляется от них, есть нетолько неизбежное, но и самое важное событие в жизни человека — есть рождение к истинной жизни.

(working English) “This inner event — liberation from temptation and evil, repentance of it, the striving to return to the path of good, and the acknowledgement of one’s sins and the pointing-out of the path by which a man frees himself from them — is not only the inevitable but the most important event in a man’s life; it is birth into true life.”

Significance: the 1888 note universalises Gogol’s case — every person passes through childhood-purity → temptation → repentance; Gogol’s “rebirth” is the normal and highest human event. The defence is not special pleading for a genius but the application of Tolstoy’s own conversion-pattern. (sic: “нетолько” per source.)

4. Redaction notes (1909 variants)

The variants file (v38_280_280) preserves three fragments, two of them (Nos. 1–2) from leaf 1 of the manuscript — a fragment of an earlier redaction otherwise lost.

  1. Variant No. 1 is an aphoristic compression of K2, the talent/heart split stated in one line:

    Лучшее произведение его таланта — Коляска, лучшее произведение его сердца — некоторые из писем.

(working English) “The best work of his talent is The Carriage; the best work of his heart, some of the letters.” — The published article expands this into the fuller K2 list; the variant shows the thesis existed first as a single antithesis.

  1. Variant No. 3 carries a Kant attribution and names the Slavophiles that the published text drops to a generic “славянофильство”:

    Гоголь же был даже не самобытным софистом, а усвоил все сложные и искусственные софизмы славянофилов того времени: Хомякова и особенно Аксаковых.

(working English) “Gogol was not even an original sophist, but absorbed all the complex, artificial sophisms of the Slavophiles of that time: Khomyakov and especially the Aksakovs.” — The same variant invokes Kant: a man who keeps into adulthood a false religious teaching instilled in childhood, lacking the strength to free himself, “становится софистом своих убеждений” (becomes a sophist of his own convictions). The published 1909 article generalises the charge and removes the named targets — softening the polemic, consistent with Tolstoy’s 1888 reluctance to fight Belinsky head-on.

(Variant No. 3 opens with an angle bracket < in the source, marking a cancelled/struck passage in the PSS apparatus; the superscripts ⁵⁷ ⁵⁸ in No. 2 are PSS textual-note markers.)

5. The two-texts relation

They are two independent attempts at the same defence, twenty-one years apart, on the same body of Gogol’s work — chiefly the Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends (1847) and the renounced second part of Dead Souls / the moralising epilogue to The Inspector General.

So: same subject, same sympathy, same target (the radical-critic consensus); the later text trades the 1888 note’s biographical-conversion frame for the matured aesthetic theory and trims the personal polemic. The Tom-26 commentary itself flags the kinship: “Существует другая статья Толстого о Гоголе, относящаяся к 1909 г.” (There exists another article of Tolstoy’s on Gogol, of 1909.)

6. Publication & translation

1909 article (Tom 38). First publication: Русское слово, No. 68, 24 March 1909 (OS) = 6 April 1909 (NS), under the editorial title “Толстой о Гоголе,” with Spiro’s framing note; reprinted in S. P. Spiro, «Беседы с Л. Н. Толстым» (Moscow, 1911, pp. 13–19). The PSS (1936) prints from the Русское слово text corrected against the authorial manuscript, and appends Tolstoy’s March-1909 grading marks on the Selected Passages.

Earlier note (Tom 26). Not published in Tolstoy’s lifetime — it appears in the PSS section of “unpublished, unpolished, unfinished” pieces. First printing is the PSS Tom 26 (1936) itself.

English translation status — flag as UNKNOWN / likely untranslated. Neither commentary records an English translation, and no English version was identified within the extracts provided. The 1909 newspaper article is a brief occasional piece; the 1888 fragment is an unfinished posthumous draft. Treat both as likely untranslated into English pending a dedicated translation check (the dive’s translation-gaps ledger should carry both as candidate gaps; do not assert “translated” without a source). Note: Gogol’s own Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends — the work under discussion — is available in English (Jesse Zeldin, 1969), but that is the object, not Tolstoy’s two articles.

7. Triangulation note

Hypothesis (to test): CONFIRMS + EXTENDS. Gogol is the case where Tolstoy’s religious-art test vindicates the writer the literary establishment condemned for abandoning art for preaching.

CONFIRMS. The What Is Art? machinery is applied verbatim and lands as predicted. The criterion is not aesthetic accomplishment but fitness of art to sincere moral-religious feeling (K2, K3). By that criterion the celebrated comic works are downgraded where they “glorify murder” or mere mockery (K5), and the despised religious letters are upgraded as “touching, often profound and instructive” (K2). The radical-critic consensus (Belinsky, K7) is named as the very symptom the test exposes — “пошлость царствует” (banality reigns), from the 1887 letters. The test does exactly what the hypothesis says: it reverses the establishment’s verdict on Gogol’s turn.

EXTENDS. Two genuine extensions of the What Is Art? record. (a) The test is here applied to a fellow religious-turn writer read as a self-portrait — Gogol as “наш Паскаль,” the man “reborn” and buried “под спудом” (K6), forty years before Tolstoy’s own excommunication-era marginalisation. This is the religious-art doctrine turned into a tool of self-recognition and self-defence. (b) The 1888 note universalises the case (K8): the moral turn is not a genius’s aberration but “рождение к истинной жизни,” the highest event in any life — extending the aesthetic test into a general theory of why moral conversion is socially despised.

Where the case STRAINS the theory. The strain is real and worth recording: Tolstoy does not vindicate Gogol’s late writing as art. He vindicates the religious feeling in the letters while judging the attempt to fuse art and doctrine “ужасная, отвратительная чепуха” (K2) — the second part of Dead Souls and the Inspector General epilogue are condemned as failed art. So the hypothesis needs a qualifier: the test vindicates Gogol the penitent man and the sincere religious correspondent, not “Gogol who abandoned art for preaching” as a successful artistic programme. Tolstoy’s defence is against the contempt (the “madman” verdict, K4), not a claim that the moralising fiction is good art. If anything, Tolstoy’s own line — praise the heart, fault the preachy fiction — is more discriminating than a flat “religious art good, autonomous art bad” reading of What Is Art? would predict, which is itself a mild complication: the test, applied to a kindred case, refuses to rubber-stamp the religious fiction and rescues only the religious feeling.

Net: confirms + extends, with a documented strain on the word “vindicates” — it is the writer and his moral turn that are defended, not the moral-didactic art-works, which Tolstoy still judges failures by the same test.

Open items / cautions for ingestion