Gogol Mykola
Gogol’s first life path was his travel to Poltava where the writer-to-be had to study in the County School. However, he attended classes only for a year – due to the younger brother Ivan’s death he returned to his native village of
Vasylivka. But a few months later Nikolai came back to Poltava. Gogol was soon admitted to Nizhyn High School but never forgot Poltava. He stayed there at friends’ places, enshrined in his heart and embodied in the works his experiences from Poltava travels and acquaintances.
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Mykola Gogol (O.S. 20.03/1.04.1809, village of Sorochyntsi, Myrhorod county (present-day village of Velyki Sorochyntsi, Myrhorod district) — 21.02/4.03.1852, Moscow) — writer, classic of Russian literature.
Born into a wealthy landlord family possessing more than 400 serfs and about 1,100 arpents of land in the village of Vasylivka. The family first had 12 children, of whom only four daughters and one son survived. Since childhood Gogol was very unhealthy, which influenced his further life activity. He studied at the Poltava County School (1818-1819) and Nizhyn Gymnasium of Higher Learning (1819-1828). As a gymnasium pupil he started keeping his diary – Tutti-Frutti Book alias Expedient Encyclopedia to record songs, legends, stories, quotes from books. This was when Gogol wrote his first literary works (not preserved). After completion of the course he went to Petersburg where he engaged in literary activity.
In 1829 he published a poem Ganz Küchelgarten under an assumed name, but after negative assessment of the work given by critics he gathered all the unsold copies and burned. He tried to find an actor job but his acting was condemned during the first rehearsal. Between 1830 and 1831 Gogol was hired as a rewriter at the lot department. Then he was made Senior Teacher of History at women’s Patriotic Institute. Notwithstanding his first literary failure he kept writing. Gogol referred to well-known Ukrainian life and folklore of this time. At the son’s request his mother sent him lots of materials about folk beliefs, customs, way of life, all sorts of antiquities. The cycle of short novels "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka" (parts 1-2, 1831-1832) brought literary glory to Mykola Gogol. In 1834 he took up a position as a adjunct professor at Chair of General History of St. Petersburg University but his professorship failed and after only a year he resigned his chair. Longing for creative activities he enthusiastically got down to literary subjects: in 1835 his collections “Mirgorod” and “Arabesques” came out and epic novel “Taras Bulba”, in 1836 the short novel “The Nose” and comedy “Government Inspector” which famous Gogol’s “laughter through tears” got sounding in.
The critics stated that Russian society has got a great writer represented by Gogol. In 1836 he went abroad 
where he intermittently stayed to 1848. Gogol wrote the satirical epic "Dead Souls" (part I, 1842) abroad, which topped the writer’s creation. In 1847 he published the book entitled Selected Passages in Correspondence with Friends, which aroused varied assessments in the public. On return to Russia, Gogol obsessively worked on the second part of the Dead Souls but after 10 years he burned the manuscript. Generally, Nikolai Gogol was very demanding of himself. Writing was a great "soul’s matter" for him. Due to chronic illness and severe permanent state of mind he could never afford the luxury to wait for inspiration. Gogol said that if he cannot work someday, anyway he has to take a pen in hand and drop “Mykola Gogol, Mykola Gogol…” at least doing so as long as any idea wakened by hand wakes up. To realize your writing vocation he sacrificed his private life.
He was offish, keeps away from unfamiliar companies and, paradoxically, does not know the actual Russian reality. The researchers estimated he saw Russia for himself during his three trips from St. Petersburg to Poltava province and back within 27 days’ ride and 7 day long forced stay in Kursk before emergence of the Government Inspector, and in the period between the Government Inspector and going abroad where the Dead Souls were written within 20 days’ ride. Prototypes of characters by M. Gogol were mostly his fellow countrymen: Myrhorod landowners, officials and town residents. It was maybe the reason why Gogol was not liked in his homeland. Even half a century after his death people reluctantly mentioned the writer in his native land. In stead, there was a legend telling as if he had not burned the second volume of the Dead Souls but buried it along with countless riches in the barrow filled on a pond side in his native village of Vasylivka. There were several attempts to dig out the hill but the diggers never found “Gogol’s treasure”.
Since childhood, Mykola Gogol was a person with congenital neurotic constitution. He was neurotic for the first half of his life and hypochondriac for the second one. Over his last years, the writer had hypochondria while feeling fear of the death. He secluded himself, prayed, has nervous disorder resulted in a kind of religious turbidity. Doctors could not find some dangerous disease about him, but he did not trust the doctors and refused medication. His friends tried to comfort the diseased but he avoided to meet them or took refuge in silence. Having suggested to himself the bed to be his deathbed he continually sat in the armchairs but took his bed in the end to no longer get up. Till the day he died he believed in the miraculous intervention of God. Gogol died of so called periodic bouts of melancholy complicated by depletion and lack of blood to the brain. He was buried in St. Daniel Monastery. Unusual circumstances of the death gave rise to rumors as though he was buried alive. In Soviet time, after arrangement of the colony for juvenile delinquents in monastic buildings cemetery was demolished, and the remains of Gogol were transferred to the cemetery of the Novodevichy monastery in 1931. During the reburial of his remains it turned out the skeleton lay in the coffin facedown and had no skull; the latter was soon found nearby, but doubts about his belonging to M. Gogol remain up to this day.
