‘Gogol’, also known as the common goldeneye in English, is a duck that prefers fresh water. It is highly manoeuvrable and flies swiftly. The 19th-century writer Mykola Gogol, whose literary ascents still puzzle the hunting literary scholars worldwide, was well aware of the ornithological etymology of his own surname. Also, he knew that he came from the heartland of Ukraine’s Cossack nobility (on his mother’s side, the Lyzohub family were even related to Ukraine’s Cossack Hetman Ivan Skoropadsky). Before his wedding, Gogol’s father, Vasyl Opanasovych, suffered from scurvy for two years, and his mother, Maria Ivanivna, was married off at the age of 14 — this could have been a reason for the high child mortality rate in their family. Out of the 12 children born, only four survived to adulthood (his son Ivan died in childhood). Nowadays, on the territory of the Gogol-Yanovsky estate, a birch tree grows, which has branched into five parts — this symbolism is often explained by guides as representing the number of offspring: as many children, as many ascents.
The successful birth of the future writer into the world was aided by Saint Nicholas of Myra, the miraculous Greek and the patron of the Dykanka village – or, to be precise, his icon on the oak slice, to which Gogol’s mother, Maria Ivanivna, prayed, and Mykhailo Trokhymovskyi, the physician and prominent figure from Velyki Sorochyntsi. His parents named the child Mukola in honour of the first, and the house of the latter heard his first cry. Velyki Sorochyntsi played a significant role in the life of Mykola Gogol — it was here that he wrote “The Fair at Sorochyntsi”, the famous story about the fair, presenting a colourful tapestry of Ukrainian rural life, filled with quirky characters, vivid scenes, and absurd situations. After all, a tradition of fairgoing was literally in Gogol’s blood: Vasyl Opanasovych, as the manager of the estate of the nobleman Dmytro Troshchynskyi, was also responsible for organising the annual Sorochyntsi Fair. So little Mykolka knew the ins and outs of this craft from an early age.
Yevhen Malaniuk, a Ukrainian writer and literary critic, in his essay on Gogol describes Gogol’s disillusionment with Russia, calling the ‘Ukrainian elements’ in his works Gogol’s ‘personal intoxicants.’ Despite this, even Gogol’s Ukrainian roots couldn’t ease his discontent with Russian life, from feeling out of place to the dreary St. Petersburg weather. He longed to return to Kyiv to teach history at Kyiv University of St. Volodymyr.
Notably, Dmytro Chyzhevsky, one of Gogol’s most renowned researchers, was also motivated to move from St. Petersburg University to Kyiv University by the lack of sunlight in St. Petersburg, which felt more akin to gloomy dampness. His friend from youth, Panas Fedenko, while contemplating the sphinxes on the banks of the Russian river Neva, mused about returning the sphinxes from the eternal gloom of the North to Egypt or at least to the Ukrainian town of Alexandria, well-known and familiar to Chyzhevsky — there, under the blazing southern sun, “they would feel right at home” (as in Alexandria the Egyptian).
Petersburg, however, was where Gogol aimed for recognition. In his collection “Myrgorod,” Gogol shifts from the batkivshchyna (Ukrainian for homeland) to otechestvo (Russian for homeland), embracing the idea of ubi panis ibi patria, or a Latin expression meaning “Where there is bread, there is (my) country”. He gathered strength for his conquest of imperial culture, even humorously rolling bread pellets to calm his nerves. Following “The Inspector General,” where he satirised bureaucracy, Gogol travelled abroad, writing about St. Petersburg and revising “Taras Bulba.” He began, but never completed, “The Annunciation” and worked on “Dead Souls.” Though Ukraine faded from his literary spotlight, Gogol’s essence remained deeply Ukrainian.
Literary critic Mikhail Weiskopf argues that the Ukrainian philosopher Hryhoriy Skovoroda, whose texts Gogol could have encountered in Troshchynsky’s library, shines through not only in Gogol’s “Myrhorod” collection but also in the “The Overcoat”, a Russians’ beloved short story. In “The Overcoat,” the contrast between the material and spiritual reflects Skovoroda’s themes.
Understanding Gogol throughout his life and works requires knowledge of Ukrainian Baroque. This influence speaks to him through the dramas “The Dog-Sheep” and “The Simpleton,” penned by his father Vasyl Gogol-Yanovsky. Gogol requested these works from his mother in a letter dated April 30, 1829, to be sent to him in Petersburg. It seems that even in his “The Will”, Gogol reaches for the heights of Skovoroda’s philosophy of “the world tried to catch me, but could not”. The writer, who struggled with his identity throughout his entire life for the sake of fame, in the agony of paradoxes, renounces earthly ties and asks not to be memorialised. This wish, of course, was ignored. Monuments to Gogol have multiplied all over the world, just like the numerous reprints of his texts.
Today, on the 215th anniversary of Gogol’s birth, his prose does not feel outdated in the least. After all, what are a few centuries to a sphinx? Just a fleeting moment, a sleepless dream of a distant and radiant homeland, which shines through like a sunbeam in his Ukrainian tales. Mykola Gogol’s Ukrainian world is worth rediscovering in our reading. And below are a few reasons why.
Reason One: To discover that in Ukraine, even the devil is not scary
In Gogol’s tales, Ukraine shines with such cheer, warmth, and brightness that it mocks and triumphs over the forces of darkness. The devil in Ukrainian folklore appears as a comical figure with a pig’s snout and stubby arms, attempting to deceive but often ending up as the butt of his own jokes. Even the evil spirits sent by witches are quickly dispelled with a simple sign of the cross. Take, for instance, in “Christmas Eve,” when Vakula threatens to turn the devil’s back into ink and draw a cross on the horned creature, “he became as gentle as a lamb” and allowed himself to be ridden. Similarly, in “The Lost Letter,” the Cossack outwits the powerless evil spirit during a game with the witch, crossing the cards under the table and thus saving his soul: the magical sixes transform into trumps, and nothingness gives way to existence.
Noteworthy in this context is the transitional story of “Viy.” When Khoma Brut (here, even his surname alludes to betrayal) first sees the lady in the coffin, his heart is torn. Singing along with the witch, he bids farewell to the “enslaved people.” Gogol always looks back when speaking about Ukraine, seeing its golden age in irretrievable bygone days. Hence the likeness of the grandmother into which the witch transforms and the bitter juxtaposition between past beauty and the image of the half-decomposed corpse. Becoming a Brute for his country, Gogol, for the first time, records his unfeigned fear.
The later period in Petersburg brims with clever devilry. Rostyslav Chopyk, a Ukrainian literary critic, highlights how Gogol plucks a comical devil from the Ukrainian nativity scene, dresses him in a frock coat, and sends him off in a troika [a traditional Russian harness using three horses pulling a sleigh – ed.] to wander Russia: “…what eluded this cunning character near Dykanka and Myrgorod was achieved a hundredfold in the ‘backwoods’; the devil, mocked and shamed under the clear stars and calm waters, was warmly embraced, endowed with great powers, in that markedly different land.” This sentiment resonates with the observations of another Ukrainian literary critic, Yuriy Barabash: Chichikov from ‘Dead Souls,’ with his ‘diabolical essence,’ evolves into not just a mere character but a ‘seasoned puppeteer.’ Across both Ukrainian and Russian narratives, the devil remains the same — it’s the people who vary. What is achieved by strong and cheerful Ukrainians is beyond the abilities of cunning and fearful Russians.
Reason Two: To behold the beauty of things familiar to us
Michele Tourneur once wrote that Rousseau “invented the beauty of mountains,” and Goethe, through “The Sorrows of Young Werther,” uncovered romantic love. This doesn’t mean that mountains were any less majestic, or love any less poignant, before them. Sometimes, it takes a skilled writer to adjust our focus to notice seemingly obvious things. For Ukrainian landscapes, that writer was Mykola Gogol. In his tales, the ordinary sky becomes a pause with cherry branches of a hut, where angels peer through starry windows (“May Night, or The Drowned Woman”). Green forests transform into the shaggy-haired head of a forest creature in “The Terrible Vengeance”, and the southern Ukrainian night “snuggles against the chests of hefty village women” in the “How Ivan Ivanovych Quarreled with Ivan Nykyforovych”. As rightly noted by Yuriy Barabash in his essay “Do You Know about the Ukrainian Night?”, among Ukrainian landscapes, Gogol treasured the vast steppe and the lush gardens the most. He approached gardening intuitively, tossing stones to decide where trees should grow, avoiding symmetry.
In Mykola Gogol’s texts, one can sense the genuine love the author has for his subjects, and this infectious passion instantly transfers to the readers. So much so that not only the vast Dnipro River or the expansive steppes but even the tiniest insects under his wondrous gaze grow into something immensely valuable and beautiful, as seen in “The Fair at Sorochyntsi”: “Emeralds, topazes, jacinths of ethereal insects shower over the colourful towns, blessed by stately sunflowers.”
Sure, one could accuse Gogol of painting Ukraine as a paradise on earth, seemingly ignoring the real needs and issues of the people inhabiting his fantastical landscapes. However, this criticism isn’t unique to him alone. The prevalence of the decorative over the socio-realistic can even be found in a brilliant landscape artist of Ukrainian literature like Ivan Nechui-Levytskyi. For example, Maxim Tarnawsky, a Canadian researcher of Ukrainian literature, describes Nechui-Levytskyi’s rural scenes more as the indulgence of “an opera singer on holiday rather than the practical perspective of a labourer who has tilled the earth all his life.”
So, while Gogol does indeed romanticise the landscape, he does it with such mastery that even the most extravagant details don’t feel excessive. Such paradoxes are what we often refer to as the strength of talent.
Reason Three: To become free in one’s own interpretations
The enigmatic and tangled nature of Mykola Gogol’s persona had a direct impact on his prose, transforming it into a puzzle and a constant subject of debate. Among the forefront of this layered complexity stands Gogol’s novella “Taras Bulba,” which has been a breeding ground for diverse interpretations for over three centuries. This masterpiece made its debut in 1835 in the collection Myrhorod and, according to Gogol himself, was artistically unfinished. Therefore, within seven years, by 1842, the second and significantly augmented edition of “Taras Bulba” was included in the second volume of “Mykola Gogol’s Works”: instead of 9 chapters, the revised version now boasted 12. Alongside deepening the narrative threads (such as Andriy and the Polish noblewoman), it presents shifted ideological emphases — so much so that Taras Bulba, once a Ukrainian colonel, evolves into a new symbol of Russian nationalism. In the era of Tsarist Russia, this text even found its way into the imperial army soldiers’ “march library”: its entirety distilled into a few pages, leaving untouched only the segment where Bulba slays his son Andriy for treason against the homeland.
In Ukraine, the reception of the updated “Taras Bulba” was mixed. Mykola Sadovsky’s translation omits Bulba’s prophetic line about the “tsar of the Russian land,” which felt (and still feels today) out of place in Gogol’s Ukrainian context. However, as noted by Petro Kraliuk in “The Secret Agent Mykola Gogol,” the emphasis on Rus and “Russianness” in the second edition can be seen not just as aligning with the empire but also as a dual play. In his article “View on the Formation of Little Russia,” Gogol referred to the territories of the Polianians and Severians, almost identical to the Hetmanate’s borders, as the “true homeland of Slavic peoples” (i.e., Rus), considering the Cossacks direct heirs of Kyivan Rus.
The character of Taras Bulba itself remains controversial due to the mix of styles. Evaluations of his actions vary widely: from a champion of faith and homeland to a tragically comical patricide and instigator of war among the Cossacks. Even his surname has diverse interpretations: from the literal “Potato,” symbolizing the stout colonel’s roundness and down-to-earth nature (as described by Edyta Bojanowska), to the simple bulb (Petro Kraliuk). Interestingly, Gogol initially wanted to name his hero Kulbaba [the Dandelion – ed.], likely to highlight the contrast between the hefty body and the small yellow flower, as well as to underscore the importance of women and femininity in the tale.
Reason Four: To feel the identity resistance of the old-world elites’
The depiction of old-world landlords in Mykola Gogol’s tale often presents a sleepy idyll, a stifling deadness, where Opanas Ivanovych and Pulcheria Ivanivna Tovstohubs, the elderly couple, seem to live amidst the clinking of spoons and the tinkling of cups. Secluded from the outside world, they quietly observe from the windows of their home as one historical epoch transitions to another. Surprisingly, it is within this poignant yet tranquil seclusion and inactivity that their nonconformity possibly lies.
As noted by Yuriy Barabash, a careful reading of the story reveals that in his youth, Opanas Ivanovych served “in the company regiments”. These regiments, known in the 17th and 18th centuries as “something between the Hetman’s guard and modern national guards and internal forces,” were essentially the last remnants of national autonomy in the military sphere (reformed in 1776 after the destruction of the Zaporizhian Sich).
As a second-major, part of the Cossack-noble class, Opanas Ivanovych could have easily embraced Russian nobility and continued in the Russian army, assimilating into the empire’s environment. However, Barabash highlights that Tovstohub retains his national dignity. He chooses a quiet, old-world life over ambitious career paths. This nuanced view, offered by a top Gogol scholar, shows a backbone in the characters’ lives — a rejection of foreign authority (notably, their home displays a portrait of Peter III, slyly murdered under Catherine II’s watch, the Russian Empress who abolished Hetmanate autonomy and destroyed the Sich). Thus, Gogol’s tales still hold the pride of the Ukrainian gentry.
In Mykola Gogol’s life, akin to a labyrinth, dreams of Ukraine were the golden thread that often led his lost soul out of the darkest corners. There is something remarkably life-affirming in his Ukrainian tales — something that can make you laugh, move you, frighten you, and later comfort you with a new joke, like a child with a fairground toy. Gogol’s two souls — Ukrainian and Russian — resonate with each other like deep breaths against the stiffness of stone. So as we read his works “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” and “Mirgorod,” the sphinx on the banks of the Neva does not succumb to a final freeze: under its stony shell, its mane will weave living dreams.
