Nikolai Gogol
by Vladimir Nabokov
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This biography begins with Gogol's death and ends with his birth, an inverted structure typical of both Gogol and Nabokov. The biographer proceeds to establish the relationship between Gogol and his novels, especially with regard to "nose-consciousness", a peculiar feature of Russian life and letters, which finds its apotheosis in Gogol's own life and prose. There are more expressions and proverbs concerning the nose in Russian than in any other language in the world. Nabokov's style in this show more biography is comic, but as always leads to serious issues--in this case, an appreciation of the distinctive "sense of the physical" inherent in Gogol's work. Nabokov describes how Gogol's life and literature mingled, and explains the structure and style of Gogol's prose in terms of the novelist's life. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Absolutely fantastic reading; my only regret is that I read the Danish translation. I'll have to get my hands on the original. This is the kind of biography I can actually read - in reality hardly a biography or a systematic examination of Gogol's works, but nevertheless more informative and enlightening than any of those would have been. It's really Nabokov's interpretation and appraisal of Gogol, both very convincing. There are wonderful little passages that just deserve threefold rereading because they are so clever and beautiful.
I read this as an introduction to Gogol, before I plunged into the murky waters of Gogol's prose, and while the book often left me more confused than anything else, I feel like I now know what to show more expect.
Really enjoyable reading, can't really say much more. If you're interested either Nabokov or Gogol this is worth checking out. show less
I read this as an introduction to Gogol, before I plunged into the murky waters of Gogol's prose, and while the book often left me more confused than anything else, I feel like I now know what to show more expect.
Really enjoyable reading, can't really say much more. If you're interested either Nabokov or Gogol this is worth checking out. show less
The universe is unfolding as it should. Just read my copy of Dead Souls, on my shelf since 1981, with keen enjoyment; have now followed up with Nabokov’s study of Gogol, which I purchased in 1971. Its time come round, it was a quite wonderful read.
Can't rate this book highly enough! Full review here:
http://kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2012/11/21/recent-readsrussian-read...
http://kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2012/11/21/recent-readsrussian-read...
Beginnt recht spannend, das erste Kapitel über Gogols Jugend uns seinen Tod sind interessant und in der abwechslungsreichen und blumigen Sprache Nabokovs geschrieben. Die Ausführungen in den weiteren Kapiteln über die Werke Gogols wirken aber eher langfädig, besonders wenn man sie nicht auch gelesen hat.
May 13, 2009German
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ThingScore 75
Mr. Nabokov is himself a poet who has developed a complicated imagery and a novelist of the non-realistic sort, and he has written the kind of book which can only be written by one artist about another—an essay which takes its place with the very small body of first-rate criticism of Russian literature in English. Nobokov’s Gogol must be henceforth read by anybody who has any serious show more interest in finding out about Russian culture. Not only has he shifted the lighting on the conventional picture of Gogol in such a way as to bring out his real genius as no other writer in English has done, but he has labored to give the reader some accurate impression of Gogol’s style—a feature of his art which has come off badly in most of the English translations...
The effort to apply to Gogol the usual methods of the Nabokov portraiture has resulted in a certain amount of violence to the subject’s career and work; large areas of both are skipped over, and the aspects that have been treated at length seem sometimes rather capriciously chosen. The reader is also annoyed by the frequent selfindulgence of the author in poses, perversities and vanities that sound as if he had brought them away from the St. Petersburg of the early nineteen-hundreds and piously preserved them in exile; and, along with them, a kind of snapping and snarling on principle at everything connected with the Russian Revolution that sometimes throws the baby out with the blood bath—to be guilty of a species of witticism to which Mr. Nabokov is much addicted and which tends, also, a little to disfigure his book. His puns are particularly awful. show less
The effort to apply to Gogol the usual methods of the Nabokov portraiture has resulted in a certain amount of violence to the subject’s career and work; large areas of both are skipped over, and the aspects that have been treated at length seem sometimes rather capriciously chosen. The reader is also annoyed by the frequent selfindulgence of the author in poses, perversities and vanities that sound as if he had brought them away from the St. Petersburg of the early nineteen-hundreds and piously preserved them in exile; and, along with them, a kind of snapping and snarling on principle at everything connected with the Russian Revolution that sometimes throws the baby out with the blood bath—to be guilty of a species of witticism to which Mr. Nabokov is much addicted and which tends, also, a little to disfigure his book. His puns are particularly awful. show less
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Author Information
427+ Works 96,000 Members
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nobokov was born April 22, 1899 in St. Petersburg, Russia to a wealthy family. He attended Trinity College, Cambridge. When he left Russia, he moved to Paris and eventually to the United States in 1940. He taught at Wellesley College and Cornell University. Nobokov is revered as one of the great American novelists of the show more 20th Century. Before he moved to the United States, he wrote under the pseudonym Vladimir Serin. Among those titles, were Mashenka, his first novel and Invitation to a Beheading. The first book he wrote in English was The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. He is best know for his work Lolita which was made into a movie in 1962. In addition to novels, he also wrote poetry and short stories. He was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction seven times, but never won it. Nabokov died July 2, 1977. show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Gogol
- Original title
- Nikolai Gogol
- Original publication date
- 1944
- People/Characters*
- Gogol
- First words
- Nikolai Gogol, the strangest prose-poet Russia ever produced, died Thursday morning, a little before eight, on the fourth of March, eighteen fifty-two, in Moscow.
- Quotations
- Inversely the first ‘o’ is as big as the plop of an elephant falling into a muddy pond and as round as the bosom of a bathing beauty on a German picture postcard.
Here you have poshlust in its ideal form, and it is clear that the terms trivial, trashy, smug and so on do not cover the aspect it takes in this epic of the blond swimmer and the two swans he fondled. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Desperate Russian critics, trying hard to find an Influence and to pigeonhole my own novels, have once or twice linked me up with Gogol, but when they looked again I had untied the knots and the box was empty.
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, Literature Studies and Criticism, Biography & Memoir
- DDC/MDS
- 891.78309 — Literature & rhetoric Literatures of other languages East Indo-European and Celtic literatures Russian and East Slavic languages Authors, Russia and Russian miscellany 1800–1917
- LCC
- PG3335 .N3 — Language and Literature Slavic languages and literatures. Baltic languages. Albanian language Slavic. Baltic. Albanian Russian literature Individual authors and works 1800-1870 Gogol'
- BISAC
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- 13 — Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 25
- ASINs
- 7
