Three Masters - Part II on Gogol

IN HIS LATE years Gogol made the following significant statement about himself: “I came to Christ rather by a Protestant than by a Catholic way.” At the time Gogol was residing in Rome, and his friends in Moscow suspected that his new religious views had been derived from Catholic sources. He was prompted to deny the charge sharply and emphatically. His phraseology, however, is rather obscure. Indeed, there is no evidence of any interest taken by Gogol at that time in the Protestant Reformation, with its specific and distinctive issues and options. Gogol, on the whole, had little interest in doctrine and doctrines. Probably he should have said that he came to Christ by an “evangelical” or even by a “pietistic” way, which, it seems, is precisely what he meant to say. In fact, he continued: “His analysis of the human soul, in a manner in which others do not make it, was the reason that I came to Christ, being struck in Him first by His human wisdom and unprecedented knowledge of the soul, and only then proceeding to worship His Divinity.” Gogol elaborated on this testimony in his Confession of an Author, 
a kind of apology. Here, he stressed once more the fact that his primary and initial interest was in man, in the human soul. He was searching for those “eternal laws” by which man is governed. He was studying human documents of all kinds. And by this road, “imperceptibly, almost without himself knowing how,” he came to Christ and found in Him “the key to the soul of man.” In other words, Gogol came to know Christ by way of a peculiar psychological analysis. He did not expect to meet Christ on this road. In fact, he came to Christ by way of that pietistic humanism which was typical of the epoch of Alexander I. He was himself a belated representative of that age. He seemed archaic to his own generation, wrestling alone in his own peculiar universe of discourse.

Gogol was well acquainted with romantic literature. But he was hardly touched by the philosophical movements of his time. His first stories were written in a romantic way that was not an imitation and was much more than just a literary manner. His own vision was romantic; he had “romantic experience.” The world of men was sharply divided for him in a distinctly “romantic” manner: there were strong men, with clearly defined personalities, and there were “common men.” He was never really interested in the strong men, or heroes; his occasional attempts to depict such men were never successful. But he was desperately concerned with those ordinary people who fill the whole stage of human life. If these people are amusing or picturesque, their existence is nonetheless meaningless, monotonous, and futile. They are trivial and petty, and they dwell in their own narrow and secluded little worlds without any perspective. Although Gogol was ready to sympathize with poverty and hardship, with sorrow and misfortune, he could be only frightened and shaken by this vision of empty life – almost subhuman and, at its worst, even beastly. In this stagnant world there are “passions,” but these “little passions” or ambitions only reveal the utter corruption and debasement of human nature. It may seem that Gogol took pleasure in drawing his comical, grotesque, and ridiculous figures or, better, figurines. There was, of course, some epic charm in his early stories. Yet even in these stories, allegedly humorous and sentimental, there is often heard a strongly tragic note – a note of boredom. As Gogol matured, this feeling grew in him, until it overwhelmed him completely by the end of his life. In this connection, it has been suggested that Gogol apprehended life sub specie mortis, which does not mean simply that death is the inevitable end of each individual life. Rather, it means that life itself is deadly and deadening, a sort of impasse or illusion. Life stands under the sign of frustration – not because hopes are not fulfilled, but because there are no hopes. “The earth is already inflamed with incomprehensible melancholy. Life is becoming more and more hardhearted. Everything is getting smaller and smaller. Only the gigantic image of boredom is growing in the sight of all, reaching day by day beyond all measure. Everything is hollow, and graves are everywhere.” The wording is hyperbolic indeed! But these words are well chosen to render the real vision of Gogol, a vision that was apocalyptic. Merezhkovsky used to compare Gogol with the hero of one of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales who had the misfortune to get a piece of an accursed mirror into his eye, with the effect that he could see only distorted and disfigured things. But was the sight of Gogol really distorted? Or was it not sharpened to enable him to perceive reality beneath the veil of conventions, to grasp the impending catastrophe beneath the veil of stagnation? Gogol described fallen men; and his “caricatures,” like those of Goya, are utterly “realistic” in this perspective. Professor Viktor Vinogradov has recently contended that in Gogol’s writings men are presented as things, that they are, as it were, “reified.” And Rozanov suggested that the human figures in Gogol are not actually living persons; instead, they are marionettes, “wax figurines” moved on the stage by the hidden hand of a skillful master who is able, by certain devices, to create the impression that they are alive. They have no spontaneous motion – they are static and fixed. The question remains: was this striking peculiarity of Gogol’s art a symptom of his distorted sight or a sign of his deep insight? Indeed, he never dwelt on the surface – he was always digging and sounding in depth. Under the veil of banality he detected the dark underworld. Emptiness itself was an obvious evil. But it was more than just a human defect or failure: a great Adversary could be discerned behind his victims. 

The demonology of Gogol’s early stories was probably not quite serious, being derived from the Western romanticists, including Hoffmann, and from folklore. The devils here are only grotesque and amusing. Still, in The Terrible Revenge and even more so in Vij, the intrusion of evil spirits into human life is presented with tragic sobriety. In the major works of Gogol evil spirits do not appear in person, but their presence is assumed. They are operating everywhere, if usually in disguise. By the end of his life he was overwhelmed with the feeling that evil, or the Evil One, was omnipresent, as it were. Satan, he thought, had been unbound and released so that he might appear in the world without even a mask. Although one may be embarrassed by Gogol’s phraseology, there can be no doubt that evil was for him a super-human reality charged with enormous power which could be conquered only “by the mysterious power of the unfathomable Cross,” the sole hope of Gogol in his later years. 

In spite of his grim vision of reality, Gogol was, except in his very last years, optimistic. He believed in the possibility of conversion, of renewal and regeneration. Moreover, he expected it shortly. Over this very point his difficulties began. In his early years he believed in the redemptive power of art and felt that man could be awakened by a vision of beauty. This hope was frustrated. He soon discovered the ambiguity of aesthetic emotions, the ambiguity of beauty itself. In this respect he was followed by Dostoevsky and also by Vladimir Soloviev, who, with him, believed that Aphrodite is ambiguous and unprotected against corruption. And still the hope for conversion was not lost. Strangely enough, Gogol expected that when his famous play The Inspector General was performed on the stage it would effect widespread awakening and conversion. He believed that people would be moved by the vision of human misery, of human nothingness, of human absurdity. And he was once more grievously disappointed. The play was received as an entertaining comedy, as an invitation to laugh. It did not evoke any deep moral emotions; it did not move people’s hearts. Gogol’s later attempt to explain the moral significance of the play and to interpret it symbolically was hardly convincing. Yet he firmly believed that he had been called from above to ministry of persuasion. In this mood he conceived the plan of his greatest work, a “poem,” Dead Souls. 

The title Dead Souls was chosen for its symbolic connotation. In this work Gogol intended to deal with the deadly condition of man. The poem was to be in two parts: the “dead souls” depicted in the first part were expected to come to life in the second. The internal pivot of the poem was the concept of “conversion.” There was to be a confrontation: “Dead Russia” and “Russia Alive.” Only the first part was published by Gogol, who was rather disappointed with the response of readers – they did not understand his intention. And probably their inability to understand was inevitable: the first part could not be properly assessed before it was supplemented by the second, in which the true meaning of the story was to be disclosed. Indeed, Gogol engaged in a description of human pettiness and vice only in order to demonstrate finally that even misers and crooks could be saved or healed. He wanted to show the transformation of the human soul. Although the second part was to be much more important than the first, unfortunately it was never completed, and Gogol was unable to achieve his purpose. He wrote his Paradise Lost but failed completely with his Paradise Regained. He worked on it intensively, obstinately, desperately, but he was increasingly dissatisfied with the results. The story of his work is still rather obscure; the published text of the second part is only one of the versions of the poem. In it no “conversion” has taken place. Instead, some new persons are introduced to illustrate the way of goodness. They are the least convincing of all Gogol’s figures. For Gogol this failure was more than a disappointment: it was a terrible shock. Awakening or conversion proved to be a much more complicated matter than he had expected. Man could not be moved to conversion simply by aesthetic emotions or by moralistic reasoning. He could not be moved by any of his own resources; he could be moved only by the grace of God. In order to become a “new man,” the old man had to turn to God, Gogol concluded. The whole problem had to be thought over afresh. But there was another difficulty of which Gogol himself was not fully aware. In spite of his intensive study of the human soul, he was not a master of psychological analysis. His men and women were simply marionettes, which could not be brought to life by any device. 

The last book which Gogol published, Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends, was probably his greatest “human document.” And yet it was an unfortunate book. It was unfavorably received even by his most intimate friends and was violently attacked from all sides, as evidenced by Belinsky’s famous letter. In any case, it was not understood by anyone at the time of its publication. Later on, however, it was heartily appreciated by Leo Tolstoy, when he was himself engaged in a religious quest – the book was, in fact, a program of social Christianity. Conceived as a kind of ideological preface to the second volume of Dead Souls, it describes in advance what Gogol sought to prove by the images of his still unfinished poem. (“To prove” is his own wording: artistic images were regarded as proofs.) It was by sheer misunderstanding that the book was interpreted as an essay on personal piety; its pathos is practical, even utilitarian. On the whole, it is a call to social and public action: the basic category of Gogol is service. He does not call for retreat and seclusion; the monastery is now Russia itself. Gogol is still frightened by her present situation; he does not try to defend it. Those who are not yet in service must take jobs. Only by doing so can one be saved, for salvation depends upon service. Service itself is understood as work within the state structure. But the state itself has been transformed. Therefore, one has to serve as a member of “another heavenly State, or Kingdom, the head of which is Christ himself”; no one can serve as he would have served in “the former Russia.” Gogol’s phrase is striking: “the former Russia” is already unreal for him; he finds himself in “another world,” in a new theocratic dimension. The phrase reminds us of the Holy Alliance: it was, in fact, a solemn invitation to realize that earthly kingdoms have been fused to constitute a new Celestial and Sacred Kingdom of which the only Sovereign is Christ. Accordingly, the state assumes all the functions of the church. Christian work must be done more by laymen than by the clergy; and the laity must guide the clergy, Gogol emphatically insisted. The monarch himself must understand that he is and must be “an image of God on earth.” Gogol’s peculiar biblicism reminds us of the epoch of the Biblical Society in Russia: the Bible must be read as a contemporary book. In it all current events can be found, as well as the Last Judgment, which is already going on. On the other hand, the Bible is a book for kings: the pattern of contemporary kingship is set in the story of the ancient theocracy of Israel. The king’s vocation is to be on earth an image of Him Who is Love. The same paradoxical and Utopian image of the theocratic Tsar dominated the mind of Alexander Ivanov, who was quite close to Gogol at the time of their stay in Rome and who was going through his own religious crisis. Much later one hears echoes of the same conception in Vladimir Soloviev: the Tsar’s vocation is to forgive and to heal by love. All these motifs should be traced back to the time of the Holy Alliance and its popularity in Russia. It is significant that Gogol’s friends of that old generation did actually welcome the book. His own generation would not follow him; even the Slavophiles’ concept of theocracy was quite different, as was also their idea of the state. 

Gogol regarded the Eastern Church as the church of the future. Up to the present she had been hiding herself, “like a chaste virgin.” Now she was called to meet the needs of the world. (The church in the West was hardly prepared, in his opinion, for new historical tasks.) Everyone, in his own place, was called to action. Indeed, Gogol even had practical advice to offer and often went into minor details. Most of this advice seems naive and casuistic. That he tended to treat all problems as moral problems, without much attention to their other aspects, is especially true of his new economic utopia,” to use a phrase of Father Zenkovsky’s. Still, the moral aspect of the economic problem cannot be disregarded. Gogol continued to believe that social renovation could be achieved by preaching alone. But now, more than ever before, he was stressing the power of Christian love. He was deeply distressed by the fact that the contemporary world had lost the spirit of brotherhood. At this point he was close to early French socialism and to Lamennais, who believed that brotherhood had been forgotten for the sake of equality and freedom. Gogol further remarks, “Christians! Christ has been expelled to the streets, to infirmaries and hospitals, instead of being invited into private homes – and people still think that they are Christians.” Such words express more than philanthropy or sentimental truisms: to recognize Christ in all one’s neighbors, the true name of every man to be simply “brother,” was for Gogol the first step on the road to perfection. First of all one had to learn love for one’s brethren, and only then was one enabled to love God. There is no trace of personal piety in this sharp claim. It is true that Gogol took no interest in social or political reforms and that he was therefore attacked as “a reactionary” by Belinsky. But in no sense was he an apologist for the current situation; he was sharp and pathetic on that point. The world, which he saw crumbling, stood under an apocalyptic sign. Nonetheless, there were bright omens: youth were striving now to embrace all men as brothers and to reform mankind. It was suggested that everything must be owned in common, even houses and land – a daring viewpoint in Gogol’s time. 

Various and often discordant motifs were intertwined in Gogol’s last book, which may be regarded as his spiritual testament, his last will. Apocalyptic alarm and Utopian expectation of a speedy resurrection of Russia and the coming of a Sacred Kingdom of Christ on earth could not be easily reconciled, although this paradoxical combination is not quite unusual in the history of human thought: it was rather a typical phenomenon in the pietistic age. Fear and love were strangely synthesized in Gogol’s own religious experience. Above all, he was at the same time sincerely humble, even inclined to an excessive self-denigration, and intolerably ambitious, almost intransigently proud – and this odd mixture irritated his best friends in Moscow. From his early years Gogol regarded himself as an instrument of Providence. He was certain that he had been chosen for some high and exceptional mission in the world, that he was predestined for some high task. To an extent, this feeling was characteristic of all people in the romantic epoch. In Gogol self-confidence grew at times into a real obsession: “The invisible One is writing before me with a mighty rod.” Gogol often claimed a kind of infallible authority for his words. “My word is now charged with supernal power,” he exclaimed on one occasion, “and woe to any one who will not listen to it.” It is for that reason that Gogol expected so much, too much, from his writings; and, for the same reason he apprehended painfully his failures. He wanted to act as an authoritative counselor of friends and acquaintances through pretentious imposition and claimed infallible authority for himself even in private affairs. This inner contradiction, this unresolved tension, was the root of his personal tragedy and collapse. By nature Gogol was an extrovert, although he used to mix together dreams and reality. On the other hand, he claimed to be a student of the human soul, of man's inner life, which was precisely his weakest point. His prophecy was often little more than sheer rhetoric. And yet he had genuine prophetic insight. In his own generation he was one of the few who were able to perceive and to understand that the whole historical world was on the eve of a crisis, and it was already entering into a “revolutionary situation” and was in a state of danger and impasse, a perception which was both a true prophecy and a timely warning. 

In spite of his glamorous literary fame, Gogol is a lonely figure in the history of the Russian mind; his literary heritage has been grievously misinterpreted. He is regarded mainly as a great humorist, although his laughter is always bitter, and as the pioneer in the realistic trend in literature. His religious ideas are commonly disregarded or dismissed as nonsense and superstition. It should not be forgotten, however, that Dostoevsky stood in direct succession to Gogol.

*Originally published in Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 (1966), pp. 119-137.