“...I’m Used to Considering It Something Close and Dear” (Patriotic Institute in N.V. Gogol’s Life)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-8297-2024-33-138-154
EDN:

https://elibrary.ru/QNSMGM
УДК / UDK: 821.161.1.0
Issue:

2024. no. 3 (33) 
Author: Irina A. Zaitseva
About the author:

Irina A. Zaitseva (1951–2024), PhD in Philology, Leading Research Fellow, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya St., 25A, bld. 1, 121069 Moscow, Russia.

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2984-3779
Abstract:

The article examines one of the fragments of N.V. Gogol’s St. Petersburg biography — his four-year service at the Patriotic Institute (1831–1835). A principle aspect of this topic, the documentary one (assignment to the Institute, registration of leave, payment of salaries, dismissal), is disclosed in sufficient detail (although not entirely due to the loss of sources) in ancient and modern publications. The purpose of this study is different — to try to find out what role a close connection with this educational institution played in the creative destiny and everyday life of Gogol in the first half of the 1830s, how organic the institute’s principles, traditions, and atmosphere turned out to be for him. The article considers “Regulation” — a document regulating the activities of the Institute of April 7, 1827. The research touches upon issues related to Gogol’s substantive and formal working conditions in correlation with the crucial creative component of his life. The article attempts to reconstruct Gogol’s circle of communication within the institute walls and briefly outlines the figures of the people with whom he communicated or could communicate. Among them are notable faces (N.M. Longinov, P.A. Pletnev) and little-known ones (L.F. Wistinghausen, G.P. Bliznetsov, P.N. Myslovsky and I.E. Yakovlev). An attempt to reconstruct the picture of Gogol’s many years of stay at the Patriotic Institute appears as one of the ways to study a significant period of his biography — in the unity of his everyday and creative sides.
Keywords: Gogol, biography, St. Petersburg, Patriotic Institute, teaching, atmosphere, social circle.
For citation:

Zaitseva, I.A. “ʽ...I’m Used to Considering It Something Close and Dear’ (Patriotic Institute in N.V. Gogol’s Life).” Literaturnyi fakt, no. 3 (33), 2024, pp. 138–154. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-8297-2024-33-138-154
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