43 Facts About Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Gogol's later writing satirised political corruption in contemporary Russia, although Gogol enjoyed the patronage of Tsar Nicholas I who liked his work.

Nikolai Gogol's influence was acknowledged by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Franz Kafka, Mikhail Bulgakov, Vladimir Nabokov, Flannery O'Connor and others.

Nikolai Gogol was born in the Ukrainian Cossack town of Sorochyntsi, in the Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire.

Nikolai Gogol's mother was descended from Leonty Kosyarovsky, an officer of the Lubny Regiment in 1710.

Nikolai Gogol knew that his paternal ancestor Ostap Hohol, a Cossack hetman in Polish service, received nobility from the Polish king.

Nikolai Gogol's father wrote poetry in Ukrainian as well as Russian, and was an amateur playwright in his own theatre.

In 1820, Nikolai Gogol went to a school of higher art in Nezhin and remained there until 1828.

Nikolai Gogol was not popular among his schoolmates, who called him their "mysterious dwarf", but he formed lasting friendships with two or three of them.

On leaving school in 1828, Nikolai Gogol went to Saint Petersburg, full of vague but ambitious hopes.

Nikolai Gogol bought all the copies and destroyed them, swearing never to write poetry again.

Nikolai Gogol's stay in St Petersburg forced Gogol to make a certain decision regarding his self-identification.

Nikolai Gogol even admonished his mother in a letter to address him only as "Gogol", as Poles had become "suspect" in St Petersburg.

In 1981, literary scholar George Grabowicz argues that Ukrainian literature of Nikolai Gogol's times was bilingual, with Ukrainian writers using Polish and Russian alongside Ukrainian.

Therefore Nikolai Gogol should be understood as both Russian and Ukrainian writer, especially in his early writings.

In 1834, Nikolai Gogol was made Professor of Medieval History at the University of St Petersburg, a job for which he had no qualifications.

Nikolai Gogol turned in a performance ludicrous enough to warrant satiric treatment in one of his own stories.

Between 1832 and 1836, Nikolai Gogol worked with great energy, and had extensive contact with Pushkin, but he still had not yet decided that his ambitions were to be fulfilled by success in literature.

From 1836 to 1848, Nikolai Gogol lived abroad, travelling through Germany and Switzerland.

For much of the twelve years from 1836, Nikolai Gogol was in Italy, where he developed an adoration for Rome.

Nikolai Gogol studied art, read Italian literature and developed a passion for opera.

In 1841, the first part of Dead Souls was ready, and Nikolai Gogol took it to Russia to supervise its printing.

Nikolai Gogol intensified his relationship with a starets or spiritual elder, Matvey Konstantinovsky, whom he had known for several years.

Nikolai Gogol explained this as a mistake, a practical joke played on him by the Devil.

Nikolai Gogol was mourned in the Saint Tatiana church at the Moscow University before his burial and then buried at the Danilov Monastery, close to his fellow Slavophile Aleksey Khomyakov.

Nikolai Gogol's grave was marked by a large stone, topped by a Russian Orthodox cross.

In 1931, with Russia now ruled by communists, Moscow authorities decided to demolish the monastery and had Nikolai Gogol's remains transferred to the Novodevichy Cemetery.

Nikolai Gogol's body was discovered lying face down, which gave rise to the conspiracy theory that Gogol had been buried alive.

Nikolai Gogol saw the outer world strangely metamorphosed, a singular gift particularly evident from the fantastic spatial transformations in his Gothic stories, "A Terrible Vengeance" and "A Bewitched Place".

Nikolai Gogol undermined Russian Romanticism by making vulgarity reign where only the sublime and the beautiful had before.

Nikolai Gogol saw his work as a critique that would change Russia for the better.

The first Russian intellectual to publicly preach the economic theories of Karl Marx, Belinsky accused Nikolai Gogol of betraying his readership by defending the status quo.

Nikolai Gogol was born in the Ukrainian Cossack town of Sorochyntsi.

Slavicist Edyta Bojanowska writes that Nikolai Gogol, after arriving in St Petersburg, was surprised to find that he was perceived as a Ukrainian, and even as a khokhol.

Nikolai Gogol was appropriated by an underdeveloped Russian literature, which downplayed his Ukrainian heritage and nationalism to bolster its own prestige.

Finally, Ilnytzkyj asserts that nothing Nikolai Gogol wrote after 1842 undermines his identity as a Ukrainian writer.

Nikolai Gogol himself appeared skeptical about the existence of such a literary movement.

The portrayals of Jewish characters in his work have led to Nikolai Gogol developing a reputation for antisemitism.

Nikolai Gogol painted him as supremely exploitative, cowardly, and repulsive, albeit capable of gratitude.

Above all, Yankel is ridiculous, and the image of the plucked chicken that Nikolai Gogol used has made the rounds of great Russian authors.

Nikolai Gogol learned from Gogol to soften this danger through laughter, and he often rewrites Gogol's Jewish characters, correcting anti-Semitic stereotypes and narrating history from a Jewish perspective.

Nikolai Gogol's oeuvre has had an impact on Russia's non-literary culture, and his stories have been adapted numerous times into opera and film.

Nikolai Gogol has been featured many times on Russian and Soviet postage stamps; he is well represented on stamps worldwide.

Nikolai Gogol is mentioned several times in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Poor Folk and Crime and Punishment and Chekhov's The Seagull.