GOGOL’S MYSTERY

Gogol was the author of a lot of great literary works. But one of his short novels, entitled “Christmas Eve Night”, stands out as a very special piece of national literature. It combines real world pictures with mysticism and wizardry.

Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on January 7th. Any holiday invariably amounts to merry-making and miracle-working. In Gogol’s novel miracles occur at night, the most mysterious time of the twenty-four hour period. It is on the Christmas Eve night that evil spirits try to do as much evil to people as they possibly can, to prevent the Holiday from ever coming. But in the long run good gets the upper hand over evil.

Nikolai Gogol was slightly over 20 when his short novel came off the press. But his young age played a trick on him. It was because Gogol was so young that many eminent critics questioned his authorship. They claimed that a person as young as Gogol could not write so beautifully. But the critics overlooked one point, namely that Gogol was a literary genius, and besides, it took him six years to study Ukrainian folklore and people’s life and ways before he came up with the book. And like is the case with all men of genius, Gogol’s fate was the one that bordered on mysticism. 

On Thursday, February 21st, 1852 the literary circles of Moscow were struck dumb with terrible news – Nikolai Gogol died at 8 in the morning that day. He was only 43. Three days later the great Russian writer was entombed, and several days after that everybody was surprised by the rumours to the effect that Gogol had not died at all but had only sunk into lethargy and was buried alive. Indirect evidence of that was that on the eve of his death the writer had repeatedly warned his friends to watch out for unusual developments after his death. He had allegedly sunk into lethargy in Rome several years before and it was a miracle that he was not buried alive then. The rumours kept providing increasingly more detail. It was held, for instance, that when his coffin was opened some time after the burial, Gogol was found lying in a prone position, rather than on his back, as he was initially buried. All signs were, Gogol came to his senses underground and tried to get out of the tomb, unfortunately to no avail. Evil tongues claimed he couldn’t have possibly died because he was actually a demon despite his religious zeal in the last years of his life. For his soul to leave the body one had to cut a hole in the ceiling of the room, in which he died. To corroborate the theory, as it were, those behind it pointed out that Gogol did not belong in this world since no other writer had been able to come up with such a vivid depiction of devils. 

It was a common belief for many years that Gogol had not died. Ordinary peasants from the villages around Sorochintsy, where Nikolai Gogol was born, insisted that since he had numerous enemies Emperor Nicholas I had sent him to Europe. Many used cartomancy in a bid to find out if he was alive, and it invariably turned out that he was. One of the more reliable methods was the following: if a spider, placed in the evening in an empty pot that was smooth inside, managed to get out of the pot by the morning, the person in question was alive. If the spider was still in the pot, the person was dead. In case of Gogol all spiders were gone by the morning. This was impressive enough to make one believe in the better world. That was actually the point made by Gogol’s contemporary and friend Vladimir Nabokov. According to him, the other world was Gogol’s true realm. Nabokov tried to sort things out. Once he told Alexander Pushkin about an amusing incident that Gogol bore witness to. A black cat that found itself on the red-hot roof of a house in flames made desperate jumps in a bid to rescue itself. Gogol associated it with the devil, who was forced into leaping by the pain he felt from the effects of the element, in which he usually tortures human souls. The writer, who feared Hell, thought the sight was comically paradoxical. 

Actually, this may hold the clue to the great writer’s mystery. Throughout the years of his literary work Gogol kept challenging the forces of evil, and every single victory, even if minor, over those forces sparked his excitement. A graphic illustration of this is “Christmas Eve Night”, where the author enables the protagonists to make short work of evil spirits and make people happy as a result. 

Nikolai Gogol’s life and creative effort were not rosy, rumours were continually spread about him when he was alive, while his death gave rise to many more of those. And yet the heritage of that literary genius will be called for by many generations to come…