Gogol's hybrid performance: The creation, reception and editing of Vechera na khutore bliz Dikanki (Evenings on a farm near Dikan'ka) (1831-1832)

PDF

Download

Open document

Flip pages

Summarize

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content GOGOL’S HYBRID PERFORMANCE: THE CREATION, RECEPTION AND
EDITING OF VECHERA NA KHUTORE BLIZ DIKANKI (EVENINGS ON A FARM
NEAR DIKAN’KA) (1831-1832)

by Yuliya Ilchuk

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(SLAVIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES)

December 2009

Copyright 2009 Yuliya Ilchuk
ii
Dedication
In loving memory of my parents, Pavel and Lidiia Radionovy

iii
Acknowledgments
First of all, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to Marcus Levitt for
advising me throughout dissertation writing and for providing intellectual stimulation,
professional opportunities, and financial support during my studies at USC. His
numerious readings of the many drafts and thoughtful comments have improved the
manuscript in so many ways that I could possibly enumerate. I am deeply greatful to
Thomas Seifrid for his constructive criticism and feedbacks that challenged me with
difficult questions and helped to keep focus on a larger context of Russian culture. I also
thank Sarah Pratt for reading the manuscript and offering valuable advice and
suggestions. I owe a debt of gratutide to Roberto Diaz who inspired me to study Gogol’s
oeuvre in a broader postcolonial perspective. I want also to thank Roman Koropeckyj
whose class on Gogol/Hohol provided me with insightful ideas for my dissertation at the
early stage of it. My special thanks to my professors in Ukraine: Tamara Hundorova and
Vladimir Zviniatskovskii for inculcating in me a lifelong scholarly interest in Russian-
Ukrainian cultural relations, in general, and in Gogol, in particular.
Finally, I express my gratitude to my husband Serhii whose continual support,
patience and encouragement helped me to pursue this undertaking.

iv
Table of Contents

Dedication ii
Acknowledgments iii
List of Tables vi
List of Figures vii
Abstract viii
Note on Transliteration x

Introduction 1

Chapter 1. Hybrid Identities in Early Nineteenth-Century Russian Culture 20
1.1. The Politics of Identity Formation in the Eighteenth-Early
Nineteenth-Century Russian Empire 21
1.2. Vasilii Narezhnyi 26
1.3. Orest Somov 30
1.4.The End of Multiethnic Empire and the Development of
Imperial-National Identity in the 1830s 35

Chapter 2. Gogol’s Self-Fashioning in the 1830s 43
2.1. Gogol’s Entry into Russian Culture and His Negotiation of Hybrid
Identity 47
2.2. Gogol as Colonial Other 61
2.3. Inventing the Fictional Persona of Rudy Pan’ko: Towards
Gogol’s Ideology of Self-Fashioning 68
2.4. Not a Russian/ Like a Russian: The Reception of Gogol by Russian
Society after the Publication of Vechera in the 1830s-1840s 77
2.5. Gogol’s Self-Fashioning in the 1830s: Between Imitation
and Alterity 83

v
Chapter 3. Performing Hybrid Identity through Language 98
3.1. Gogol’s Bilingualism or Why Gogol Made Mistakes in Vechera 100
3.2. Deterritorialization of Russian in the Tales 110
3.3. Strategies of Hybridization in Vechera 113
3.4. Regional Language, Regional Identity 119
3.5. The Reception of Gogol’s Language by Russian Critics in the
1830s - 1840s 121
3.6. Standardization of the Russian National Language and the Status
of Ukrainian “Dialect” in It 126
3.7. Imperial Language Ideology in the Late 1830s - 1840s 134
3.8. Language Ideology at Work: Editing Vechera 137
3.9. The Elimination of Editorial Corrections from Vechera 148
.
Chapter 4. National Identity and Narrative Performances in Vechera 153
4.1. Approaches to the Narrative Structure of Vechera 154
4.2. Narrative Performances in Vechera 164

Conclusion 212

Bibliography 218

vi
List of Tables
Table 1. Examples of Calquing from Ukrainian in Gogol’s Vechera 107

Table 2. 1830 and 1831 Versions of “Vecher nakanune Ivana Kupala” 156

vii
List of Figures
Figure 1. Portrait of Gogol by Goriunov (1835) 90

Figure 2. Portrait of Gogol by Venetsianov (1834) 93

Figure 3. Portrait of Gogol by Moller (1840) 95

viii
Abstract
This dissertation examines Nikolai Gogol’s fashioning of a hybrid national
identity during the creation, reception, and editing of his Vechera na khutore bliz Dikanki
during the 1830s-1840s. It challenges existing views of Gogol’s national identity in terms
of ethnic oppositions, emphasizing the importance of the mixture of linguistic, cultural,
political and class beliefs in his identity formation. Chapter One introduces the concept
hybridity to the study of the cultural and linguistic practices of Russian writers of
Ukrainian origin (such as Vasilii Narezhnyi, Orest Somov and Gogol) in the context of
Russian imperial culture. Chapter Two analyzes Gogol’s negotiation of his cultural and
ethnic alterity during the creation and after the publication of his tales. This chapter
focuses on Gogol’s use of mimicry and cross-cultural disguise for self-affirmation in the
dichotomous culture of Russian literary aristocrats. The chapter concludes with an
analysis of the changing reception of Gogol by Russian society in the 1830s-1840s, when
growing Russian nationalism threatened to brand Gogol as a potentially disloyal other.
Chapter Three examines Gogol’s self-fashioning via his hybridized Russian language in
the first edition of the tales (1831-1832) and its purification in subsequent editions (1836,
1842, and 1855). The changes in language and style that Gogol and his editors made in
these editions indicate how imperial ideology subjected Gogol’s works to monolingual
standardization. Chapter Four establishes a link between the narrative performance in
Vechera and hybrid national identity. Traditionally, the masquerade of narrative voices
presented in the tales has been reduced to an opposition between its two main narrators, a
Russified one and a local Ukrainian, thereby ignoring other narrators. This chapter
instead studies the performative function of storytelling in Vechera and demonstrates that
ix
the tales’ multi-narrative structure produces a different dynamic among the narrators; it
both narrates and reveals varying messages for two different audiences - imperial Russian
and colonial Ukrainian.

x
Note on Transliteration
The transliteration of Russian and Ukrainian names used in the dissertation conforms to
the Library of Congress transliteration system (without diacritical marks). The softness in
names like Даль, Дельвиг, etc. is reproduced with “',” with the exception of Гоголь,
which is transliterated as “Gogol” throughout the manuscript. Last names ending in –ий,
like Яновский, Вяземский, Сенковский, etc., are transliterated as Ianovskii,
Viazemskii, Senkovskii, etc. Geographical names are given according to the official form
accepted in the country where they are currently located. Thus, Warszawa appears in
Polish transliteration pattern, Kyiv, Nizhyn, etc. – in Ukrainian. However, in the
Bibliography I follow the Russian spelling “Kiev” as a place of publication if a book was
published before 1991. In quoting from Russian and Ukrainian I have used the Cyrillic
alphabet. In quoatitions from the first edition of Vechera, I have retained Gogol’s
idiosyncratic orthography. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Russian and
Ukrainian are my own.

1
Introduction
Works of literature do not simply reflect or are not
simply caused by their contexts. They have a
productive effect in history. This can and should also
be studied. To put this another way, the only thing
that sometimes worries me about the turn to history
now as an explanatory method is the implication that
I can fully explain every text by its pre-existing
historical context. But the publication of these works
was itself a political or historical event that in some
way changed history. I think that if you don’t allow
for this, literature is not much worth bothering with. –
J. Hillis Miller, Hawthorne and History, 152-3.

Gogol’s oeuvre is, by all accounts, full of gaps, discontinuities, and outright
contradictions, and the same is true for his national identity. He himself created a riddle
about what kind of national “soul” he had,
1
and ever since Gogol scholars all over the
world have been racking their brains over it. This study is not directly aimed at solving
the problem of Gogol’s national identity; it proposes to study Gogol’s identity as a hybrid
that resulted from his cultural and linguistic performances, realized throughout the
creation, reception and editing of his Vechera in the 1830s and 1840s. To this end, I
situate Gogol within the framework of practices, institutions and beliefs that constituted
Russian culture of the period and examine how his self-fashioning involved a remaking
of his national identity.
The history of the creation, production, reception and editing of Vechera presents
a wealth of material within which to delve into the issue of Gogol’s complex hybrid
identity. None of Gogol’s other texts experienced such reworkings and (self-)editing and

1
See Gogol’s famous letter to Aleksandra Smirnova in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii XII, 419.
2
also encapsulated the writer’s project of reinvention and negotiation of his regional
Ukrainian identity within Russian imperial culture. Throughout the process of the
creation and reworking of his Vechera, the writer was engaged in constant translations of
his self across the boundaries of two languages and cultures so that his identity appeared
to be nationally “unlocatable,” or hybrid. Gogol’s hybridity was the result not only of an
unconscious blending of Russian and Ukrainian cultures, but also of “colonial mimicry”
that disrupted the homogeneity of imperial culture. This mimicry manifested itself in
Gogol’s non-conventional cultural behavior, visual self-representation, and multiple
identifications with both his ethnic roots and Russian imperial culture. Throughout the
creation and reception of Vechera, Gogol’s identity was shaped simultaneously as svoi
(“ours”) and inoi (“alien”), becoming a site of both incorporation into and rejection by
hierarchical imperial culture. In the persona of a Ukrainian simpleton, Rudy Pan’ko,
Gogol encoded his authorial self-myth and became involved in the circulation of
stereotypical identification via colonial discourse. However, it is not sufficient to present
Gogol as one who merely internalized the stereotypical perception of himself as the
colonial other. In a sense, Gogol “returned a colonial gaze”, having created a hybrid
literary language in Vechera which mimicked and mocked the pretensions of imperial
culture to fix him in a monolingual, monocultural identity. Gogol’s Russian language,
“corrupted” and “deterritorialized” by the insertions of peculiar grammatical and lexical
Ukrainianisms, became another important channel through which his hybrid identity
operated. Yet the question of Gogol’s agency or free will in mimicking imperial power
and hybridizing his literary language cannot be clearly resolved. It is not a purpose of this
study to answer the question of whether Gogol chose to adopt mimicry as a deliberate
3
strategy or whether he was haunted by his own discourse. Instead this study focuses on
the very process of his identity formation as a constant negotiation and renegotiation of
his cultural and national hybridity, and the changes toward either Russianization or
Ukrainianization of the language in Vechera can elucidate this process.
Thus, the problem of identity formation is crucial for this dissertation. The
concept of identity I employ here is not an essentialist but a strategic and positional one.
Gogol’s case clearly demonstrates that the formation of cultural identity is not totally
determined by external influences, but is conditional and contingent. Therefore, it is
important to posit the problem of Gogol’s cultural identity as a subject for constant
reconsideration and change and at the same time as a critical projection of what was
demanded or imposed by society. Neither quite the same nor quite the other, Gogol’s
identity emerged through ambivalent, transgressive movements back and forth and
escaped identification in terms of “either” / “or,” which the writer creatively played out in
his public self-fashioning, the hybridized language and multi-layered narrative structure
of Vechera.
Review of the Critical Literature
Gogol’s national identity has become a separate field within Gogol studies. The
degree to which he should be considered a Russian or Ukrainian writer continues to be
argued by scholars on both sides of the issue, with a broad range of opinions and
arguments. In the following outline, I will present the most common approaches to the
issue of Gogol’s cultural and national identity that have been elaborated in twentieth-
century Gogol studies.
4
Gogol as a Russian Writer
When dealing with Gogol’s national identity, many scholars have claimed Gogol
as a solely Russian writer, disregarding the complexity of the writer’s national self-
identification. This is due to the fact that the Russian, then Soviet and nowadays post-
Soviet imperial ideologies have invested a lot in promulgating Vissarion Belinskii’s idea
about Gogol’s transition from the provincial Ukrainian author of Vechera to the “Russian
national poet,” the author of Revizor (The Inspector General) and Mertvye dushi (Dead
Souls) (e.g., Mashinsky 1959:91). It has become a general belief that by shedding all
traces of Ukrainianness from his texts around 1836, Gogol had achieved complete
metamorphosis into a Russian national writer.
In the beginning of the twentieth century, the idea of Gogol’s “Russianness” was
cloaked in the concept of “all-Russianness.”
2
First, Dmitrii Ovsianiko-Kulikovskii
attempted to secure for Gogol a special status within Russian imperial culture claiming
that the writer was “not a Little Russian [Ukrainian], but an all-Russian” (“ne maloross, a
obshcheruss”).
3
According to the scholar, Gogol’s “all-Russian identity” was a product
of incomplete assimilation of the non-Russian peoples of the empire, which left a tiny
possibility for the preservation of regional distinctiveness. To back up his argument,
Ovsianiko-Kulikovskii referred to Gogol’s famous letter to Smirnova in which the writer
publicly
4
acknowledged that he could not “give priority to the Ukrainian before the

2
Oleh Ilnytskyj has pointed to the reductionist quality of the very concept of “all-Russianness”: “this
model treats all intellectual labor in the Empire as if it could have only one result—the creation of a
Russian nationality and a Russian culture. It is through this simplistic form of discourse that Gogol, for all
his national and cultural complexity, can be constituted as the exclusive asset of Russians” (157-8).
3
See Dmitrii Ovsianiko-Kulikovskii’s article published in 1909 in Gogol’. Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1 (St.-
Petersburg: Prometei, 1910) 148.
4
Gogol insisted that his letter be publicly read in Rostopchina’s salon in front of those society people who
5
Russian, nor to the Russian before the Ukrainian” since both of his natures were “richly
endowed by God and each of them separately contained what the other lacked … a sure
sign that they should complement each other” (PSS XII, 419). Then, in the 1930s, Nikolai
Trubetskoi emphasized the word “Russian” in Gogol’s “all-Russianness”, arguing that it
was because the writer, like many other Ukrainian intellectuals, participated actively in
the development of Russian culture and “lost over time any specific Great Russian or
Ukrainian identification” (251).
5
Therefore, Trubetskoi denied any ethnic distinctiveness
of Gogol’s identity and replaced it with the homogenous imperial one that, in fact,
masked the pretensions of the imperial power to appropriate intellectual products created
in the empire as “Russian.”
Even when scholars discuss Gogol’s preoccupation with Ukrainian history and
culture, they usually explain it not by Gogol’s ethnicity and his internal connection to his
native land but by his purely pragmatic intention to capitalize on the literary fashion of
the time.
6
Therefore, Russian scholars have underestimated not only the significance of
Gogol’s Ukrainian interest, but also the complexity of his identity as such. In Soviet
literary scholarship, the study of Gogol’s Ukrainianness was legitimized only as the study
of folk Ukrainian sources in his works. This naturally led to the understatement of the
role that Ukrainian culture played in the development of Gogol’s regional identity. Thus,
Yurii Mann has claimed that the writer appealed not to Ukraine, but to the “authentic
national foundations of the Slavic world” (“korennym, natsional’nym pervoosnovam

accused him of hatred toward Russians.
5
See Trubetskoi’s article “The Ukrainian Problem” in The Legacy of Genghis Khan and Other Essays on
Russia’s Identity (1991).
6
Compare Victor Erlich, Gogol (1969); Vladimir Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol (1944); Vsevolod Setchkarev,
Gogol: His Life and Works (1965) and others.
6
slavianskogo mira”). The scholar has reduced “Ukraine” in Gogol’s early works Vechera
and Mirrored (1835) to the abstract notion of the “Slavic world” and has drawn parallels
between it and the Middle Ages in the perception of Western Romantics—that is, as a
way to restore the “authentic spirit” of modern European nations by idealizing distant
times and places. According to Mann, Ukraine was perceived by Gogol as an object of
interest rather than as a subject with its own historical and cultural space. One could
agree with Mann’s interpretation if it applied not to the Ukrainian tales Vechera and
Mirrored but to the “Russianized” version of Taras Bul’ba (1842) and to Mertvye dushi.
In these works, the concepts of “Rus’,” “svoi tsar’”(in Taras Bul’ba),
7
as well as “Rus’ –
ptitsa-troika” (in Mertvye dushi) signify not the actual Russian Empire, as many Russian
scholars including Mann believe, but a metaphysical all-Russian universe endowed with
historical attributes pertaining to Ukrainian culture.
In contemporary Russian scholarship there is still a strong tendency to politicize
the problem of Gogol’s national identity. Vladimir Voropaev, for example, has insisted
that Gogol had been always a Russian citizen and a staunch monarchist and has criticized
those scholars who try to study the influence of Ukrainian culture on Gogol’s legacy and
identity. Voropaev calls these scholars “separatist-traitors, Gogolian Andriis” (15).
Voropaev’s denial of the complexity of Gogol’s cultural identity reveals the insecurities
of many Russians nowadays about their own national identity, since much of this depends
on non-Russian territories and cultures, especially on Ukraine.

7
In his final word, Taras Bul’ba pronounced the appearance of “svoi tsar’” from “russkaia zemlia” in the
future. In his presentation at 2008 AATSEEL National Conference in San Francisco on “The Meaning of
russkii and svoi tsar in Gogol’s Taras Bul’ba (1842),” Oleh Ilnytzkyj provided a convincing analysis of the
universality of these concepts.
7
Not only Russian, but also some Western scholars have discounted the role of
Ukrainian ethnicity in Gogol’s identity formation. In his comprehensive study The
Creation of Nikolai Gogol (1979), Donald Fanger has avoided any discussion of the
significance of the writer’s Ukrainian origin for his texts and life, thereby placing Gogol
outside and above his historical and cultural context. Even Gogol’s vague mentioning in a
letter to his mother that he had written Vechera “in a foreign language” (PSS X, 150) is
interpreted by Fanger as the writer’s desire to create something “qualitatively new” for
the Russian public in prose fiction, something that embraced the whole stylistic spectrum:
“the comic narrative stance, the lively colloquialisms, blurring the boundaries between
popular speech and literary language” (89). Recently, another scholar, Anne Lounsbery,
has questioned the importance of the question of Gogol’s Ukrainianness and/or
Russianness, which in her opinion “reveal[s] much about the complex and sometimes
antagonistic relationship between two cultures in Gogol’s day” more than about Gogol’s
identity itself (39). She has gone even further by comparing Gogol’s “Ukrainianness”
with Pushkin’s “Africanness” and the similar roles they came to play in the formation of
their psychology (40).
Gogol as a Ukrainian Writer
In American Slavic studies, mostly among scholars of Ukrainian origin, Gogol
has arisen as a Ukrainian author making his way in a foreign Russian culture. One of the
first attempts to read Gogol as a Ukrainian writer was made by George Luckyj in his
book Between Gogol and Shevchenko (1971). Luckyj argued that “the substratum of
Gogol’s art and philosophy was exclusively Ukrainian.” Moreover, his humor and his
liking for poking fun at authority and petty careerism, according to Luckyj, “were the
8
products of his native soil” (1971:127). Similarly, Petro Holubenko has claimed
“Ukrainianness” not only in relation to Gogol’s ethnicity, but also at the core of his
“moral,” “psychic” and “creative” mindset. Gogol’s Ukrainian identity, in the scholar’s
opinion, was always a solid monolith without any admixture of “Little Russianness” or
“foreign” Russian influence. The scholar has defined Gogol as a “conscious” Ukrainian
nationalist whose entire oeuvre was devoted to “negating Russia” and “affirmating
Ukraine” (280). Another Ukrainian émigré scholar, Ostap Stromets’kyi, has also
discussed the “anti-colonial”, “national-liberational” strivings in Gogol’s works such as
“Strashnaia mest’” (The Terrible Revenge), Revizor and Mertvye dushi. Thus, the scholar
interprets the vicious sorcerer in “Strashnaia mest’” as a “Moscow agent” who came to
Ukraine to corrupt (“obasurmanit’”) his daughter Katerina’s Ukrainian soul.
In general, the attempts of these scholars to reclaim the neglected Ukrainian
elements in Gogol’s works and to locate Gogol within a Ukrainian resistance movement
result in a one-sided picture of the writer’s complex interactions within Russian culture.
This approach fails to appreciate not only Gogol’s contribution to Russian literature, but
also his inclusion in the “imperial sphere as an arena for ethnic (self)-expression in the
Empire” (Ilnytzkyj 158).
The Problem of Nikolai Gogol/Mykola Hohol
Recently, George Grabowicz,
8
George Luckyj,
9
and Edyta Bojanowska
10
have
proposed to resolve the problem of Gogol’s complex national identity by dividing the
writer into two personalities: “Mykola Hohol” from 1829 to 1836 and “Nikolai Gogol”

8
George Grabowicz, Do istoriї ukraїns’koї literatury (1997).
9
George Luckyj, The Anguish of Mykola Hohol a.k.a. Nikolai Gogol (1998).
10
Edyta Bojanowska, Gogol: Between Ukrainian and Russian Nationalism (2007).
9
from 1836 to 1852. Such a view conceptualizes Gogol’s national identity in terms of
ethnic oppositions, a writer who was more Russian at one period of his life and a more
Ukrainian at another. Thus, Bojanowska has emphasized a dominant discourse of
Ukrainian nationalism in Gogol’s creative works written in the 1830s, which disappeared
from his late works, indicating Gogol’s “promotion” as a Russian writer. The use of
quotation marks around “promotion” indicates that Gogol did not actively strive to be
integrated into Russian culture, but instead he became a passive object in his own
development as a Russian writer. Aiming to undermine the “Russocentric view of
Gogol,” Bojanowska has described Gogol’s national identity in terms of oppositions
between “Russianness” and “Ukrainianness” in Gogol’s correspondence, critical essays
and texts. If one can agree with the scholar that Gogol discovered his cultural difference
only when he immigrated to St. Petersburg, it is still doubtful that the writer perceived his
“otherness” solely in terms of his ethnicity. The factors of Gogol’s class and regional
difference, as well as his complex sexuality, seem to be completely disregarded in
Bojanowska’s argument. Even more ambiguous is the scholar’s claim about Gogol’s
constant vacillations between native Ukrainian and imperial Russian nationalisms in an
epoch when the very notions of “Russian” and “Ukrainian” existed in statu nascendi. In
contrast to Bojanowska, Grabowicz has steered a sensible middle course in the arguments
about Gogol’s dual national identity. The scholar has located Gogol on the border of
Russian and Ukrainian cultures: if in the aesthetic, psychological and existential aspects
Gogol belongs to (“prychastnyi”) Ukrainian culture, in historical and cultural terms he is
part of Russian literature and culture, since the language in which he chose to write was
exclusively Russian.
10
Although this approach seems legitimate, it poses two dangers: first, to reduce all
the complexity of Gogol’s national identity to an antinomy between two abstract entities
and, second, to disjoint the writer’s legacy by inscribing some aspects in a Russian
cultural field and others in a Ukrainian, which seems erroneous from a historical point of
view. Moreover, the very claim that Gogol turned into “a “Russian” writer simply by
addressing Russian or “universal” themes is unsupportable. As Ilnytzkyj has rightly
noticed, the idea of Gogol’s “Russianization” in the second half of his life suggests that
the intellectual product of Ukrainian intellectuals “was always provincial and that it can
be given … recognition only when it deals with strictly Ukrainian topics in the
vernacular” (164). The duality of Gogol’s national identity is a proven fact, yet it would
be more correct to present the problem not by dividing Gogol into Nikolai Gogol and
Mykola Hohol, but by viewing him as hybrid—Nikolai Hohol or Mykola Gogol.
Gogol as a Malorossiiskii
11
(Little Russian) Writer
Beginning with Panteleimon Kulish, Gogol’s first biographer, the view of the
writer as “malorossiiskii” has prevailed in Gogol scholarship both in the West and in
Ukraine. In his introduction to Chorna rada (Black Rada) (1843-1857), Kulish criticized
Gogol for his superficial portrayal of Ukrainian culture and history and for his
accommodation to hierarchical imperial structures. “Malorossiistvo”—that is, the
presentation of the Ukrainian ethos as something inferior and exotic, produced
exclusively for consumption by the imperial center—has been a workable concept with

11
In contemporary Ukrainian society, the term “malorossiiskii” is regarded as a derogatory, used to
describe identities corrupted by imperial power.
11
which to study Gogol. Many contemporary scholars, such as Anna Berehuliak,
12
Edyta
Bojanowska,
13
George Grabowicz,
14
Tamara Hundorova,
15
George Luckyj,
16
Myroslav
Shkandrij,
17
Oksana Zabuzhko,
18
and others have considered Gogol a Ukrainian colonial
writer whose professional advancement closely depended on imperial society. It has been
claimed that Gogol as a colonial writer embraced the imperial concept of “Malorossiia”
without any intellectual resistance and “sacrificed” himself on the altar of Russian
velikoderzhavnost’ (great-poweredness). The transformation of Hohol into Gogol was a
sui generis colonial contract that Gogol “signed” in order to get recognition as the
Russian national writer. This transformation was an inevitable consequence of Russia’s
linguistic and cultural colonization of Ukraine. Olga Andriewsky has also asserted that
Gogol’s Ukrainian tales fixed Ukrainians as a colonial people in the Russian imagination.
Because Gogol captured the imagination of the metropolitan reading public “with
colorful tales of Cossacks and good-natured country rubes”, he demoted Ukrainian
culture to the status of plebeian, reinforcing Ukraine’s colonial status in the empire
(Andriewsky 184).
Among American and Canadian scholars of Ukrainian origin, it has become
commonplace to explain Gogol’s malorossiistvo by his internal “slyness.” Thus, Luckyj

12
See Anna Berehuliak, “Gogolian Myth and the Colonial Ethos.”
13
Bojanowska, Nikolai Gogol (2007).
14
See Grabowicz, “Hohol’ i mif Ukraїny” (1994).
15
See Hundorova’s introductory article “Vechory na khutori bilia Dykan’ky: dyiavol’skyi kontrakt i
kul’turna initsiatsiia. Vstupne slovo” to the Ukrainian translation of Gogol’s tales Vechory na khutori bilia
Dykan’ky. Taras Bul’ba. Vii: Povisti (2004).
16
See Luckyj, Between Gogol and Shevchenko: Polarity in the Literary Ukraine: 1798-1847 (1971).
17
See Shkandrij, Russia and Ukraine: Literature and the Discourse of Empire from Napoleonic to
Postcolonial Times (2001).
18
See Zabuzhko, Shevchenkiv mif Ukraїny (1997).
12
applied Petr Pletnev’s (one of Gogol’s associates in the 1830s) characterization of
Ukrainians as sly careerists (“prolaza”) to Gogol, arguing that the writer sought “to cash
in on the Ukrainian vogue” as did most other Ukrainian writers of the period (Between
Gogol and Shevchenko 101). Similarly, Bojanowska has asserted that Gogol “fully
embraced” the classic Russian stereotype of Ukrainians as “sly malorossy” by “hiding
subversive actions or meanings behind a mask of naïve obtuseness” (77).
The idea of “Little Russian” identity could be a useful tool to study the identities
of nineteenth-century Ukrainian intellectuals working within the limits of Russian
imperial culture, especially that of Gogol. However, Gogol’s negotiation with imperial
discourse has been only superficially addressed in literary criticism. There are still major
gaps regarding his early self-fashioning as the colonial other. How accepting was Gogol
of the colonial stereotypes of Ukrainians? How was Gogol’s colonial identity constituted
in the first place? What part did Russian imperial culture play in the process of
constituting Gogol as colonial other, not just a stranger or different, but as a
fundamentally and ontologically inferior being? How did Gogol adjust his self-
representation and social performance and at the same time recognize himself as “the
same but not quite” (Bhabha)? These are the focal questions that this dissertation will
attempt to answer.
Gogol as a Postcolonial Writer
Another solution to the problem of Gogol’s dual national identity has been offered
by the Canadian scholar Oleh Ilnytzkyj.
19
He has described Gogol as a “post-colonial

19
See Ilnytzkyj, “Cultural Indeterminacy in the Russian Empire: Nikolai Gogol as a Ukrainian Post-
Colonial Writer” (2002).
13
writer” and situated him in a cultural space called the “Imperial.” According to the
scholar, Gogol as a writer emerged not from a “Russian” experience but from the
conjunction of three cultures—the imperial, the Russian, and the Ukrainian. Giving credit
to the scholar, Gogol’s cultural behavior can be indeed better understood not through
national categories but through the Imperial prism; it is hard, however, to agree that
Gogol was “constructed” as a “Russian” by imperial discourse, and did not himself
persistently and consciously pursue the path of the Russian national writer. Gogol
participated not only in an “imperial literary institution,” as the scholar has insisted, but
in “Russian” literature as well, and to deprive it of Gogol’s works would be unfair. It can
be said that any multiethnic empire aims to transplant the intellectual and creative
achievements produced within its limits into the state organism and at the same time to
make a national claim on this cultural capital. Nevertheless, Gogol’s evident inclination
toward Russian culture was subordinated not to a “transnational culture,” typified by a
multiethnic social group, but to a unified Russian national culture. Thus, Ilnytzkyj’s
attempt to re-read Gogol in the light of post-colonialism remains at the level of a colonial
discourse—i.e. a discourse supporting and reinforcing a colonial hegemony and ignoring
Gogol’s own complicity in it. The scholar’s references to Gogol’s “negative,”
“derogatory” attitude toward Russia somewhat detract from the overall originality of his
argument about Gogol as a postcolonial writer.
Another scholar, Peter Sawczak, has also contributed to conceptualizing Gogol as
a postcolonial writer.
20
He has applied the concept of “minority” practice, elaborated by

20
See Sawczak, “‘Noch’ pered Rozhdestvom’ Mykoly/Nikolaia Gogolia: k voprosu o ‘maloi literature’”
(2001).
14
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their analysis of Kafka, Proust, and Beckett, to the
problem of Gogol’s national identity. The effort to reconcile Gogol’s dual national
identity can be resolved, according Sawczak, by studying Gogol not as Russian or
Ukrainian or both but as a “minor” writer making his way in “major” Russian literature.
Therefore, in Vechera Gogol created a “minor” language that signaled the undecipherable
quality of becoming Ukrainian and becoming Russian. There are, however, certain
internal contradictions in Sawczak’s argument about Gogol’s “minor” positioning in
Russian literature. The scholar applies postcolonial concepts to study Gogol’s unique
status in Russian culture, but, they, in fact, mask a traditional anti-colonial view of him as
a “Little Russian” who worked to undermine the canon of imperial Russian culture. Even
though Gogol is presented as one who made the hierarchical purity of Russian language
unattainable, the transposition of linguistic hybridity onto national identity is not
straightforward and requires an integrated approach. Overall, Sawczak’s
conceptualization of Gogol’s oeuvre as postcolonial is limited to the effect that the use of
Ukrainian elements produced on the Russian language. In contrast, this study aims to
extend this problem to Gogol’s own postcolonial self-fashioning and the performative
quality of his narration.
Gogol as Hybrid
That Nikolai Gogol’s national identity can be defined as hybrid—that is, as
“Russian-Ukrainian” or/and “Ukrainian-Russian”—has been a less common idea in
Gogol studies than the other approaches discussed above. Articulated by the Soviet critic
Piksanov in the 1930s,
21
this idea has remained to a great extent unexamined. In the

21
See Piksanov, “Ukrainskie povesti Gogolia” 47.
15
1990s, the Russian-Ukrainian scholar Iurii Barabash attempted to avoid the vicious circle
of “either” / “or” of Gogol’s national identity. In his book Pochva i sud’ba (1995), the
scholar rejected the attempt to juxtapose the two natures of Gogol and articulated the idea
of Gogol as hybrid whose entire oeuvre constituted the “Russian branch of Ukrainian
literature” (82). Focusing on Gogol’s poetics in his entire body of work, Barabash has
persuasively demonstrated that Gogol’s literary language, style and rhetoric devices bear
a striking resemblance to those of Ukrainian baroque literature. Barabash’s observation
about the new quality of Gogol’s language marks a new stage in studying the problem of
Gogol’s national identity. He has corrected the previous claim that Gogol’s language is
based on the mechanical combination of heterogeneous language elements and connected
the hybrid Gogol’s language to his national identity, although he did not analyze how this
functioned. Moreover, Barabash has not developed his idea of Gogol’s bilingualism into
a detailed analysis of the hybrid language of Gogol’s works, nor has he studied the
negotiation of the writer’s identity within imperial culture. He has characterized the
duality of Gogol’s national identity as a tragic rupture between Gogol’s “pochva” (his
native land) and “sud’ba” (his destiny as a Russian national writer). According to
Barabash, in the course of his life, Gogol moved back and forth between Russian and
Ukrainian self-identifications, during which the vector toward Russian imperial
consciousness dominated. It could be said that Barabash remains an advocate of the
traditional view of Gogol as the exponent of an “all-Russian” identity. His belief that
Gogol, despite his lifelong bonds with Ukrainian culture, perceived himself a part of all-
Russian culture because he allegedly believed that Russian and Ukrainian cultures could
coexist on equal terms with each other without absorbing each other is rather wishful
16
thinking. Not only was Gogol aware of a tension between the two cultures, he
deliberately juxtaposed them within his language and manipulated the perception of his
personality and national identity by other people.
To sum up, Gogol’s national identity still poses a problem that cannot be resolved
within Russian pro-imperial, Ukrainian nationalist, anti-colonial or post-colonial
discourses alone. The recent celebration of Gogol’s 200th anniversary has demonstrated
how politicized the issue of Gogol’s national identity has become and how little has been
done by scholars on both sides of the Russian-Ukrainian border in applying contemporary
methodologies to the problem of Gogol’s national identity.
Method
The theoretical framework of this dissertation is informed by the theoretization of
hybridity as the impurity and mixing of cultures developed in the works of Franz Fanon,
Robert Young, and Homi Bhabha.
22
Since the 1990s, hybridity has become a central issue
to “middle-ground” theorists of postcolonialism. Bhabha and Young have claimed that
the view of colonial power as merely oppressive is not productive and have proposed to
consider the relationship between colonizers and colonized as one of exchange and
collaboration. To do so, Bhabha employed the term “hybridity” that he had developed out
of Fanon’s account of the psychological impact that French colonialism produced on
colonized Antilleans.
23

22
The notion of hybridity, however, has been frequently criticized for its relativism and idealism.
Foregrounding the transformative cultural and political impact on both the colonized and the colonizer,
hybridity is usually viewed as “replicating assimilationist policies by masking or ‘whitewashing’ cultural
differences” (Ashcroft, Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies 119). Despite all the relativism of the notion
of hybridity, there is nothing, in my view, in it that implies unequal exchange between cultures and negates
the hierarchical nature of imperial cultures.
23
As it is described in Fanon’s analysis, the black man, traumatized by recognition that a white colonizer
17
By challenging fixed views of cultural activity, Bhabha has foregrounded
contingent, unsettled sites where meaning is produced and cultural identities are
transformed into hybrids. Because the forces of differentiation and assimilation work
together in colonial mimicry, the colonial subject emerges as hybrid. At the site of the
encounter between colonizer and colonized, “a contingent, borderline experience opens
up in-between colonizer and colonized.” This in-between space of cultural and
interpretative undecidability “resists the binary opposition of racial and cultural groups
… as homogeneous polarized political consciousness” (Bhabha, Location 206-7).
Importantly, hybridity emerges not when “pure” cultures interact with each other, but on
the borderlines of cultures, in the liminal space. Privileging the liminal, hybridity
undermines pure, homogeneous cultures in favor of new cultural meaning.
Another Bhabha’s important proposition is that the process of identification is
ambivalent and any position in colonial fantasy is always open to inversion, so that the
representational mirror suggested by Lacan works by virtue of a spatial splitting. The
project of colonial self-identification, therefore, occurs in the interlocutory spaces
between self and Other. As Bhabha has described the process:
The question of identification is never the affirmation of a pre-given
identity, never a self-fulfilling prophecy—it is always the production of an
“image” of identity and the transformation of the subject in assuming that
image. The demand of identification—that is, to be for an Other—entails
the representation of the subject in the differentiating order of Otherness.
Identification … is always the return of an image of identity which bears
the mark of splitting in that “Other” place from which it comes (Location
45).

does not share his self-image, finds himself burdened by a state of “corporeal malediction” (Fanon 111).
This conflict is seen as a defining characteristic of both the white colonizer and the black colonized: just as
the colonized Antillean loses his/her sense of an inherent selfhood, the French colonizer depends on the
black man for his sense of superiority, civilization, and whiteness.
18
Bhabha has made an important correction to the representation of colonial identity in
classic colonial theory (Fanon), which emphasized an easy return of the colonial gaze by
the colonized. In contrast to this theory, Bhabha has stressed the internal conflict between
the subject’s narcissistic demand for virtual completeness and its avowal of difference,
which produces the split at the site of enunciation and prevents the completion of self-
identity. The incompleteness and indeterminacy of identities, therefore, are not something
that should be “solved,” but rather something that should be acknowledged.
When applied to the historical context within which Gogol’s identity was formed,
hybridity can be used as both a theoretical tool and as a way of describing the historical
and cultural conditions. Traditionally, these conditions have been discussed either in
terms of an equal relationship and unproblematic cross-cultural exchange between
Russian and Ukrainian cultures, or in terms of Ukraine’s colonization by Russia, which
entailed oppression and suppression of originary Ukrainian culture and identities.
However, in the early nineteenth century the reality in Russia, as well as in Ukraine, was
so amorphous and undefined that the processes of identity formation could
simultaneously follow substantially different scenarios and yield substantially different
results. Instead of treating Gogol’s national identity in terms of static and rigid
dichotomies, or in terms of indigenous ethnicities and enduring native cultures, I want to
stress its changing, contingent, and hybrid nature.
Gogol’s hybrid identity arose in a bilingual environment that shaped the
development of many Ukrainian writers in the first half of the nineteenth century. Only in
the 1840s did Ukrainian writers begin to realize the difference between Russian and
Ukrainian cultures and to encode their national identities in both languages. Existing on
19
the borderlines of cultures, ethnic groups and classes, Gogol developed a uniquely
dialectical cast of mind and possessed a heightened sensitivity to flux and transition. His
hybridity became a creative phenomenon.
24
Positioned on the “interstices” of two
cultures, Gogol existed in the in-between space of cultural ambivalence which diluted the
imaginary essence of the Russian nation through a distorted Russian language.
Gogol was quite unique in this hybridization, taking into account the fact that many non-
Russian migrants refashioned themselves, trying to eradicate their ethnic and social
difference by adopting imperial disguises and by writing in flawless Russian.
25

Unlike his other contemporaries Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnov’ianenko, Taras
Shevchenko, and Panteleimon Kulish, who built on their separate Ukrainian identities,
Gogol cultivated a transnational identity that did not oppose but was included into
Russian national identity. Of all nineteenth-century Ukrainian writers, Gogol was
especially engaged in colonial mimicry. The themes of reinvention of self within an
imperial context through mimicry and transgression come together in the person of Gogol
and his creative output. His fascination with the disguise of the Ukrainian fictional
persona of Pan’ko, his changes in his own appearance and social behavior in accordance
with his Ukrainian persona, revealed his desire to escape the confines of a fixed Russian
national identity.

24
Mikhail Bakhtin defined such hybrids as “profoundly productive historically: they are pregnant with
potential for new world views, with new ‘internal forms’ for perceiving the world in words …” (Dialogic
Imagination 360).
25
For example, Nestor Kukol’nik, Gogol’s classmate from Nizhyn Lyceé, presents a more typical case of
Romantic self-fashioning. Kukol’nik made the Renaissance Italian poet Torquato Tasso a role model in his
literary career. In tune with literary fashion, he often assumed the mask of Tasso, which later won him fame
in the top aristocratic salons. The mask of Tasso helped Kukol’nik become accepted into elite Russian
literary society despite his Ukrainian origin and provincial education.
20
Chapter 1. Hybrid Identities in Early Nineteenth-Century Russian
Culture
Recently in postcolonial studies, national identities have been revised from the
point of view of the blurred boundaries of dominant European nations. Russian national
identity has been no exception to this process. In particular, attention has fallen on the
variety of possibilities for Ukrainian intellectuals who in the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries could be simultaneously “gente Ukrainus” and “natione Russus”
(Wilson 87). Throughout the nineteenth century, when Russian society began to ignore
regional formations and to imagine itself as monolingual and monocultural, many
Ukrainian writers still thought of Russia and Ukraine as regional societies within one bi-
lingual, bi-cultural state.
26

The existence of dual Russian-Ukrainian identities in the nineteenth century may
challenge the common understanding of the effect that the incorporation of Ukraine into
the Russian empire produced on Ukrainian culture. This effect usually has been defined
in terms of cultural disaster. A common misconception of this view is that it attempts to
rediscover some “authentic” pre-colonial cultural reality in Ukraine in order to model the
negative impact of Russian imperialism. In my opinion, such a view of the cultural reality
in the early nineteenth-century Russian empire disregards the many ways in which
Ukrainian culture engaged and utilized the imperial one, and misconstrues the link
between culture and identity. Throughout their history of unequal and hierarchical

26
Even in the 1860s, during the rise of Ukrainian nationalism, the idea of the coexistence of a unified
Russian-Ukrainian culture and identity dominated among the Ukrainian intellectuals. Ivan Novyts’kyi
distinguished between ethnic (narodnyi) and state-national (natsional’nyi) identities. Mykola Kostomarov,
although pointing at their cultural distinctions, accepted the existence of “two Rus’ nationalities,” as did his
associate Panteleimon Kulish, who termed this formation a “two-in-one Rus’ nation” (dvoiedynyi ruskyi
narod) (Wilson 88).
21
relationships, both the Russian and Ukrainian nations underwent assimilation and
adaptation of cultural practices which can be seen as enriching and dynamic as well as
oppressive.
In this chapter, I will outline the historical changes in the identity formation
process in the Russian empire during the first half of the nineteenth century and
demonstrate how the participation of Ukrainians shaped and simultaneously modified it.
Although there were many Ukrainian intellectuals who tended toward an unequivocally
Russian identity, the larger picture of assimilation appears much more complicated.
Assimilatory tendencies that progressed throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries did not have a one-way trajectory of conversion to Russian identity. The
intersection of various political and cultural identities generated a range of different
responses to the issues of empire and nation. Some writers, like Vasilii Kapnist, Somov,
Narezhnyi and Gogol, maintained their regional Ukrainian identities while embracing
Russian national identities; some, like Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko, Mykola
Markevych, and Mykhailo Drahomanov, existed as “all-Russian;” and others, like Taras
Shevchenko, Panteleimon Kulish, Marko Vovchok and Mykola Kostomarov, enjoyed a
more or less separate Ukrainian identity.
1.1. The Politics of Identity Formation in the Eighteenth and Early
Nineteenth-Century Russian Empire
The history of Russian-Ukrainian relationships during the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries can elucidate the challenges that Ukrainian intellectuals faced in the
process of defining their national identities. These relationships cannot be described only
in terms of domination or oppression of the colonized by the colonizer. It was a complex
22
cultural interaction which resulted in national identities that were more ambivalent and
unstable than those proclaimed by post-Soviet Russian and Ukrainian historiographies.
Up till now there have been only two ways of telling the story of Russian-
Ukrainian relations of the seventeenth through twentieth centuries. One is the story of a
Ukrainian nation that, in defiance of all obstacles created by the anti-Ukrainian policies
of the empire, emerged as a full-fledged nation long before 1991. The other is the story of
how three Slavic tribes (Great Russians, Little Russians and White Russians), having
been broken apart by the Polish, German, and Austrian intervention, finally unified in the
Russian empire, merged into an “all-Russian” nation, and have remained a unified nation,
albeit “artificially” separated after 1991. There has been skepticism as to the
appropriateness of the term “colony” as applied to the politics and culture of Ukraine
within the Russian empire. A brief excursus into the history of Ukraine, especially in
reference to the nineteenth-century Little Russia, is necessary to shed light on the
appropriateness of postcolonial theory to the study of identity formation in imperial
Russian culture.
Between the beginning of the sixteenth and the end of the eighteenth century, in
the territory of modern Ukraine there had existed an autonomous Cossack polity, the
Zaporozhian Sich.
27
Neither Russian Empire nor Polish Kingdom could control this land.
As Andrew Wilson has suggested, in the mid-seventeenth century there had already
existed a modern Ukrainian identity, which was based on an idea of liberty and opposed
to monarchic autocracy (70). The enserfment of the peasantry by the Polish nobility and

27
Although some scholars (for example, Alexei Miller) are skeptical of defining the Zaporozhian Sich as a
“state” in the modern understanding of the term, others (such as Andrew Wilson) point at the clear political
and ideological integrity of the Cossack polity (Wilson 70).
23
the suppression of the Orthodox Church caused the uprising of 1648, when the hetman
Bohdan Khmel’nyt’skyi, aiming at the creation of an independent state, led the Cossacks
against the Poles. In his search for military support, Khmel’nyts’kyi turned to Orthodox
Muscovy and accepted the suzerainty of the Russian tsar, having signed the Treaty of
Pereyaslav in 1654. This resulted in a growing Russian expansion into Ukraine, which by
1796, as the result of the three partitions of Poland, came under Russian rule.
By and large, the loss of Ukraine’s autonomy and incorporation of its territory
into the empire proceeded without resistance. Moreover, throughout the eighteenth
century the development of the Russian imperial state was aided by the active
participation of the Ukrainian elite, which contributed to the establishment of the
religious, educational, cultural and intellectual institutions of the Russian empire.
28
Most
of the former Cossack elite and intelligentsia were slowly assimilated into the imperial
apparatus and eventually shed their Ukrainianness; others preserved their ethnic identity,
but all of them participated in the creation of the larger Russian nation, which at the time
was envisioned as a multiethnic entity.
29
Suffice it to say, the culture that is nowadays
known as “Russian” was created by a joint effort of the Russian and Ukrainian elites,
which has induced many historians to speak of the formation of an “all-Russian” national
identity. One of the most important steps on the way to that identity was Catherine II’s
plan of “Russifying” the Ukrainian elite. In December 1763, she issued a decree that
reformed the imperial bureaucratic system by doubling the number of government
officials recruited from former Cossack authorities (Plokhy 41). She agreed to give

28
Detailed discussion of the issue can be found in Kohut, Plokhy, Willson, Miller, and others.
29
Serhii Plokhy discusses this phenomenon in his recent book Ukraine and Russia (2008).
24
temporary preference to Russia’s former enemies in order to subjugate the entire territory
of the Hetmanate a few years later. Catherine II’s letter of 1764 to Prince Andrei
Viazemskii clearly indicates her cunning motives:
Little Russia, Livonia, and Finland are provinces which are governed by
confirmed privileges and it would be improper to violate them by
abolishing them all at once. However, to call them foreign and to deal with
them on that basis is more than a mistake; it would be sheer stupidity.
These provinces as well as Smolensk should be Russified in the easiest
way possible, so that they should cease looking like wolves to the forest.
The approach is easy if wise men are chosen as governors of the
provinces. When the hetmans are gone from Little Russia every effort
should be made to eradicate from memory the period and the hetmans, let
alone promote anyone to that office.
30

However, instead of the extension of traditional rights, the Ukrainians suffered a
significant reduction of their privileges. The abolition of the hetmancy, the establishment
of the imperial system of provincial administration, and the appointment of a Russian
governor-general as the monarch’s substitute in Ukraine followed.
31
Therefore, the
opportunities that the Russian empire presented for the Ukrainian elite were fraught with
danger. Andreas Kappeler and Serhii Plokhy have shown that the exchange of regional
autonomy for estate rights was uneven. “The ratio of gentry to the population of Ukraine
was at least twice as great as in Russia proper,” but between 1782 and 1785 not all former
Cossack officers “retained their status, as the two lowest Ukrainian ranks were excluded
from consideration” (Plokhy 43).
32
One way or another, this extension of rights, although
unequal, allowed many educated Ukrainians to come to St. Petersburg to pursue imperial

30
Quoted in Kohut, Russian Centralism 104.
31
On the incorporation of the Ukrainian nobles into the imperial society see D. Miller, Ocherki iz istorii i
iuridicheskogo byta staroi Malorossii (1897).
32
This was the case of Gogol’s great-grandfather Ostap Gogol, a Cossack officer who did not have
documented proof of his noble status.
25
careers. The obvious downside of this integration was the loss of political distinctiveness
by Ukrainians and the decline of the nation itself.
Despite the gradual fusion of Ukrainian and Russian social structures in the end of
the eighteenth century, it was still possible for the Ukrainian elite to retain a sense of
Little Russian identity within the Russian empire. Zenon Kohut has pointed at several
factors that stimulated its preservation: “(1) the Ukrainian gentry’s dominant role in the
imperial administration of Little Russia; (2) the survival of Ukrainian customary law; (3)
the occasional restitution of certain legal and military formations traditional to Little
Russia; and (4) an interest in the history and folklore of Ukraine that helped nurture the
idea of a Little Russian fatherland” (Russian Centralism 81).
Although by the early nineteenth century the Ukrainians were fully integrated into
the Russian Empire, there were still varying degrees of accommodation that varied from
complete assimilation to preservation of regional identity. An example of the former is
Viktor Kochubei (1768-1834), a chairman of the State Council and Committee of
Ministers, who became “plus royaliste que le roi” (Wilson 71). Examples of the latter are
Oleksandr Bezborod’ko (1747-99), Vasyl Kapnist, and Petro Zavadovs’kyi (1738-1812),
who promoted Ukrainian interests where possible. It could be said that the process of
Russification of the Ukrainian elite proceeded unevenly at the turn of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. Wilson has suggested that because of the weakness of the Russian
imperial “nation-building” project, Ukrainians were prevented “from becoming as fully
integrated or assimilated as they might otherwise have been” (78).
33
On the whole, there

33
On this issue see also Aleksei Miller “Rossiia i rusifikatsiia Ukrainy v XIX veke” in Rossiia-Ukraina:
istoriia vzaimootnoshenii (1997).
26
was much less scope for ambiguous identities or dual loyalties for Ukrainians in Russian
imperial service than there were, for example, in Victorian Scotland. Nevertheless, in the
early nineteenth century Ukrainian regional identity could still be fostered at the margins
of public life and in the private sphere.
The case of two Ukrainian writers, Vasilii Narezhnyi (1780-1826) and Orest
Somov (1793-1833), elucidates how Ukrainian intellectuals were engaged in
transforming Russian imperial culture and shaping their hybrid identities. In the 1810s,
Narezhnyi and Somov came from Ukraine to pursue literary careers in St. Petersburg.
Both writers capitalized on the use of Ukrainian plots and linguistic elements, which at
the time were welcomed in Russian literature since they increased its cultural capital.
Through their regional masks and their Russian contaminated with Ukrainian elements,
Narezhnyi and Somov transformed the idea of Russian national language and culture and
in many ways paved the way for the appearance of Gogol’s prose.
1.2. Vasilii Narezhnyi
In Narezhnyi’s prose fiction, the encounter between Russian and Ukrainian
cultural codes produces a “polyphonic” effect. This effect was first discovered by
Mikhail Bakhtin. According to Bakhtin, it was due to Narezhnyi’s excellent knowledge
of the “democratic literary traditions of Ukrainian baroque”: travesty, burlesque, fairy
tales, vertep, school interludes and oratsii.
34
The polyphonic quality of Narezhnyi’s prose
can be accredited not only to the incorporation of various Ukrainian baroque genres and
devices, but also to the use of Ukrainian words in the Russian literary language, which

34
See Mikhail Bakhtin, Tvorchestvo Francis Rabelais (Iskussvto slova i smekhovaia kul’tura) (1965) 486.
27
thanks to Narezhnyi came to be viewed in the early nineteenth century as a repository of
the genuine Slavic spirit. The hybridity of Narezhnyi’s literary discourse was the result of
the inclusion of various elements of Ukrainian grammar and lexicon, as well as various
dialects of Russian.
Ukrainian lexicon slips into the fabric of Narezhnyi’s novels Bursak (The
Seminarist), Dva Ivana (Two Ivans) and Garkusha and are accompanied with the
author’s translation and comments in the footnotes. These words embrace Ukrainian
terms and notions absent in Russian: professions (пасешник, шинкарь, крамарь, etc.);
social ranks (полупанок, повытчик, атаман, etc.); wedding traditions (боярин,
веселье
35
); clothes (очипок, свита, постолы, etc.); flora and fauna (коровьяк, бусел,
etc.), demons from Ukrainian folklore (упырь, ярчук, вовкулака, etc.) and others
(ховтур, хабар, оселедець, etc.). Another group of cross-cultural interactions is
presented by doublets in Russian and Ukrainian (домы – хаты – будинки (‘houses’), ад
– пекло (‘hell’), мать – мати (‘mother’), отец – батько (‘father’), понимаешь –
разумеешь ( to ‘understand’), спешить – поспешать (‘to hurry’), узнать – познать (‘to
recognize’), etc. Used within close proximity to one another, doublets expanded the
semantic resources of literary Russian. Even though the use of the Ukrainian words was
legitimate due to the demand for local color in the romantic novel, the effect they
produced on the Russian audience was rather unexpected. Russian critics criticized
Narezhnyi’s novels for containing too much “locality.” The anonymous critic of the
magazine Literaturnye listki (Literary Pages) points at the abundance of Ukrainian
calques as a significant flaw of Narezhnyi’s discourse:

35
“Веселье” is a Ukrainian word “весілля” (‘wedding’) transliterated in Russian.
28
Г. Нарежный употребляет в своем рассказе весьма много слов и
выражений, принадлежащих к областному Малороссийскому
наречию и почти непонятных для Великороссиян. Развернув на удачу
несколько книг Бурсака [Narezhnyi’s pen name], встречаю например
[…]: “крик и гомон разбудили меня.” Гомонить, по Малороссийски
значит шуметь, говорить громко, а по Руски успокоивать; см. Слов.
Акад. Часть I, стр. 1179. – Никто из Руских не скажет: “под вечер я
опять украдусь из дворца.”
In his story, Mister Narezhnyi employs so many words and expressions
pertaining to the regional Little Russian dialect, and almost
incomprehensible to Great Russians. I open at random some of Bursak’s
books and find for example: “krik i gomon razbudili menia.” “Gomonit’”
in Ukrainian means to make noise, whereas in Russian it has the meaning
“to pacify;” see the Dictionary of Academy of sciences. Part I, page 1179.
– No Russian would say: “pod vecher ia ukradus’ iz dvortsa.”
(Literaturnye Listki IV (1824)50).
In fact, this critique signaled that by using Ukrainian linguistic elements Narezhnyi
activated the process of language variation which entailed the insertion of the other into
the discourse. Narezhnyi was striving to represent regional culture in the metropolitan
language and at the same time to emphasize its difference from it. Therefore, glosses
functioned as a bridge between the center and periphery, simultaneously connecting them
and establishing their separation.
However, Ukrainian words per se do not make Narezhnyi’s language hybrid in a
strict sense. What makes it such are the various morpho-syntactic calques from Ukrainian
in the writer’s novels. As a result of calquing, Narezhnyi’s texts abound with lexical and
syntactic mistakes: the use of Ukrainian endings to make the plural form of nouns; the
verbs governed by the wrong preposition and case of the following noun; the use of
incorrect verbal aspects; the use of the reflexive form of verbs instead of non-reflexive.
The abundance of forms of the infinitive “иметь” (‘to have’) is governed by Ukrainian
grammar rather than by Russian. They are employed not only to indicate possession, but
29
in phrases meaning “there is/are,” whereas in Russian the verb “to be” is required:
“здание впереди имело пустырь” (‘the building had a vacant lot in front’) instead of
“впереди здания был пустырь” (‘there was a vacant lot in front of the building’). For
example, in the text of Dva Ivana “to be” appears only 11 times, whereas “to have” more
than 50 times. In most cases, “to have” is used idiomatically to mark the bureaucratic
mode of speech: “велели цыгану иметь попечение о лошадях” (‘the gypsy was ordered
to take care of the horses’), or “иметь его в почтении” (‘to respect him’). Sometimes it
functions as the auxiliary verb “must” (“остающийся рубль имеет быть выдан пану
Ивану” [‘the remaining rouble ought to be given to Mister Ivan’]). Although sounding
awkward in Russian, when translated into Ukrainian it becomes grammatical (‘має бути
виданий’); at other times, it has idiomatic connotations as in «они имели глаза»
meaning “they were surprised” which in Ukrainian sounds natural (“мати/зробити очі”).
Not only does the interference of Ukrainian morphology and syntax make Narezhnyi’s
language hybridized, new lexemes created as a result of semantic calques also enrich
standard Russian with regional lexicon: “достаточная невеста,” that is, “невеста с
достатком” (‘a wealthy bride’), or “некоштные паны,” that is, “паны без коштив”
(‘gentlemen without money’).
Another group of ungrammatical elements concerns mistakes in the category of
number. Narezhnyi applies the collective numbers «двое», «трое» not only in relation to
people or pairs, but with “days” (“по прошествии трое суток” instead of the
grammatically correct “по прошествии троих суток” [‘after three days’]). The same
occurs in age expressions: “мужчина лет в тридцать” (‘a thirty-year-old man’) which is
coordinated by incorrect use of the case (instead of “мужчина тридцати лет”). The
30
formation of participles and gerunds also violates the grammatical norms of the time.
Thus, Narezhnyi formed all active gerunds in the past tense from perfective infinitives by
adding the suffix –а/-я, whereas the norm of the time required using -в/-вши. The
examples are numerous in Narezhnyi’s texts: “предположа,” “назнача,” “схватя,”
“устроя,” “утоля,” “исключа,” and “потеря.” Similarly, the form of complex gerunds
(auxiliary gerund «быв» + passive participles): “быв рождены”, “быв
сопровождаемы”, “быв вскормлены” were no longer in use in the nineteenth-century
literary language.
Narezhnyi’s odd usage of Russian is marked not only in numerous ungrammatical
forms, but also in his heavy syntax based on the multiplications of adjectives. In a sense,
the ungrammatical elements disrupt the discursive conventions of the Russian literary
language by turning against the very forms, styles, structures and principles that it
inherits. By manipulating the linguistic standards of Russian and by enriching it with the
vocabulary and grammar of Ukrainian, Narezhnyi “split” the language of authority
(Bhabha) and created a unique hybrid discourse that targeted both audiences — Russian
metropolitan and Ukrainian colonial. Moreover, his hybridized language created a sense
of belonging simultaneously to different language communities and became one of the
channels through which Narezhnyi’s cultural identity was processed.
1.3. Orest Somov
Somov’s influence on Gogol’s negotiation of his hybrid cultural identity is
important as well. His self-fashioning as a Russian-Ukrainian writer in the 1810s-1820s
provides insight into Gogol’s identity economy. Orest Somov was born in Kharkivs’ka
province (Ukraine) and received his higher education at Kharkiv University. During his
31
years at the university Somov took an active part in launching the first Ukrainian journals
Khar’kovskii demokrit (The Kharkiv Democritus) and Ukrainskii vestnik (The Ukrainian
Herald) to which he continued to contribute even after his migration to St. Petersburg in
1817. In the capital, he immediately established contact with his Ukrainian fellows Prince
Nikolai Tsertelev and Vasilii Tumanskii and was introduced by them to elite St.
Petersburg society. Thanks to their recommendations, in May 1818 Somov was elected a
member of the Free Society of the Lovers of Russian Letters and began to ingratiate
himself into elite metropolitan society. In 1818, Somov shared his first impressions of
Russia’s capital in the poem “Pis’mo ukraintsa iz stolitsy” (Letter of a Ukrainian from the
Capital). In his letter, the 20-year-old Somov presented himself as a loyal citizen of the
Russian Empire, glorifying the military deeds of the Russian tsar and summoning his
Ukrainian fellows to follow their monarch’s example.
A few years later, however, Somov articulated his anxiety of assimilation in
another poem, “Toska po rodine” (Homesickness) (1821). The poem reflected the
psychological trauma of the lyrical subject after his encounter with the reality of his new
imperial “home.” The home envisioned by the lyrical subject is not an ideal place which
in the Romantic poems of the time was conventionally imagined as a utopia. It had the
very concrete profile of Somov’s actual homeland and was associated with a feeling of
security contrasting to his hostile perception of St. Petersburg. The home left behind was
nostalgically recreated by Somov from afar in such a way that no return to this place in
his lifetime was possible. A sense of displacement was created in the image of the new
dwelling, which became a symbolic place posing potential dangers to any notion of
“home.” Somov’s poem clearly exemplified the entrance of the migrant into a liminal
32
space, which Homi Bhabha has defined as the “third space of enunciation,” a space where
hybrid identity is formed.
36
Even after four years, Somov still experienced an acute sense
of dislocation. In his essay “Blazhenstvo zhizni bezvestnoi” (The Felicity of an Obscure
Life”) (1822), Somov described the opposition between the hectic life of a metropolitan
city and the peaceful country life of people who stay living in their native land.
In the second half of the 1820s, Somov was engaged in creating an artistic alter
ego, the fictitious Ukrainian writer Porfirii Baiskii,
37
whose name appeared on all his
prose works on Ukrainian topics. At the same time, Somov continued to sign his poetry
and criticism with his real name. Gradually, the image of the fictitious author took on
flesh: Baiskii appeared as a real person in Somov’s correspondence and imitated the main
aspects of Somov’s own biography. In a letter from 1829, Somov referred to Baiskii as
his fellow-townsman, who was currently engaged in publishing his almanac in
Volchansk, Somov’s home town near Kharkiv. In another letter, Baiskii was mentioned
as a fellow writer finishing his novel “Gaidamak.”
38
The image of Baiskii vacillated from
a complete identification with Somov to a clear dissociation from him.
39
In effect, this

36
Bhabha has described it using the Freudian term ‘das Unheimliche’, or the ‘unhomely’, and suggests that
the construction of hybrid identity is based upon an “estranging sense of the relocation of the home and the
world – the unhomeliness – that is the condition of extraterritorial and cross-cultural initiations” (Bhabha
9).
37
Somov’s need to hide under the mask of the simple Ukrainian narrator emerged right after Somov’s
arrest in 1826 for having had a close association with the Decembrists. During the first years after the
revolt, it was too risky for Somov to publish his works under his real name and he resorted to the mask of
Profirii Bogdanovich Baiskii.
38
See Somov’s letter to Maksymovych (June 23, 1829) (“Russkii arkhiv,” #10 (1908) 257).
39
In another letter to Maksymovych (December 24, 1830), Somov writes: “Земляку поклон от Байского,
он пришлет свою подать «Деннице», только не прежде февраля, бо діла багато, та іще й плюгава
холера в Волчанске (где живет Порфирий Богданович). Сомов тоже пришлет кое-что в течение
января”(Baiskii gives his countryman his regards, he will send his tribute to “Dennitsa,” only no earlier
than February, because he is so busy plus there is a damn cholera in Volchansk [the words in italics are in
Ukrainian – Yu. I.] (where Porfirii Bogdanovich lives). Somov will also send something during January)
(“Russkii arkhiv,” #10 (1908) 262-263).
33
literary game allowed Somov on the one hand to distance himself from various
confrontations in the literary circles of St. Petersburg and on the other to capitalize on the
persona of a Ukrainian provincial who explores the history and customs of his native land
and presents them in digestible form to the Russian audience.
It could be said that Somov retained his regional Ukrainian identity in private life
while simultaneously joining the public sphere of imperial Russian culture. This in-
between position of Somov allowed him to broaden the concept of the national. In his
famous essay “O romanticheskoi poezii” (On Romantic Poetry) (1823), Somov
distinguished between narodnost’ (nationality) and mestnost’ (locality) as the spirit and
body of the Russian nation. Although the term narodnost’ which signified both
“national” and “native” was widely used by Romantics in the 1820s, the term mestnost’
had just entered the Russian field of letters. Most Russian Romantics regarded locality as
a synonym for nationality and used it in connection with the demand for local color.
However, Somov emphasized both concepts as two inseparable facets of Russian culture.
When speaking of the rich history preserved in Russian chronicles, Somov categorizes
the Russian nation in terms of its multi-ethnic groups, all worthy of literary exploration:
And there are so many diverse peoples merged under the single name
Russian, or dependent on Russia, or not separated from us by other lands
or wide seas! There are so many diverse manners, mores, customs offering
themselves to a searching eye within the scope of Russia in the aggregate!
Without even mentioning those who are in the strictest sense Russian, we
have the Little Russians with their sensual songs, and the warlike sons of
the Quiet Don, and the courageous settlers of the Zaporozhian Sech – all
united by their faith and their fiery love for the fatherland, and bearing the
same distinctive features in mores and appearance. And what if we cast
our gaze to the outlying regions of Russia inhibited by the ardent Poles
and Lithuanians, the peoples of Finnish and Scandinavian origins, the
inhabitants of ancient Colchis, the descendants of the settlers who
witnessed the exile of Ovid, the remnants of the Tatars who once menaced
34
Russia, the variegated tribes of Siberia and the islands, the nomadic
descendants of Mongolians, Laplanders, and Samoyeds?...
40

Somov categorizes the Russian nation in terms of its multi-ethnic groups, all worthy of
literary exploration. What is striking in Somov’s description is his differentiation of
Russians in the strict sense of the word and other nations and tribes joined to the Russian
empire. Moreover, he establishes a certain hierarchy within the non-Russian ethnic
groups based on their geographical and political affiliations in the empire: first come
Ukrainians with their distinctive features in mores and appearance, then the people on the
western borders – Poles, Lithuanians, and Finns, and finally the numerous tribes in
eastern and southern Russia.
In the beginning of the 1830s, Somov received the opportunity to fashion himself
as a loyal Russian. The occasion was the 1830-1831 Polish Uprising, in response to
which he wrote a sixteen-page booklet entitled “Golos ukraintsa pri vesti o vziatii
Varshavy” (The Voice of a Ukrainian upon Hearing the News of the Taking of
Warszawa). The booklet was published almost at the same time as Pushkin’s so-called
“Anti-Polish Trilogy” and also included three poems. Somov developed Pushkin’s stance
towards nationalist patriotism even further. The first poem presented a fulsome
declaration of the Russian people’s love for the Tsar while the second, “Pesn’ na
usmirenie Varshavy” (A Song on the Pacification of Warszawa), exemplified a typical
chauvinistic verse. The last poem written in Ukrainian was accompanied by a four-page
glossary explaining the meaning of Ukrainian words for the Russian audience. It was the
moment when Somov was trying to ingratiate himself with the imperial authorities in

40
Quoted in English in Mersereau, Orest Somov: Russian Fiction Between Romanticism and Realism
(1989) 31.
35
order to secure special benefits for his Ukrainian fellows. As the result of his anti-Polish
trilogy Somov was able to get his fellow countryman Mykhailo Maksymovych a
professorship at the University of Petersburg in 1831 and three years later to obtain for
Maksymovych the position of a rector in the newly-founded University of Kyiv. Thus,
Somov’s career may be described in terms of colonial mimicry, for his strategic cultural
behavior allowed him to assume the position of “domesticated Other” who could assist
the colonial project by acting as intermediary between the imperial center and the
periphery. Porfirii Baiskii, Antonii Pogorel’skii (Aleksei Perovskii), Rudy Pan’ko
(Nikolai Gogol), Kozak Luganskii (Vladimir Dal’), and Hryts’ko Osnov’ianenko
(Hryhorii Kvitka) not only utilizied the voice of a folk persona in order to maneuver into
elite imperial society, but also revealed this society’s strong need for the exotic other.
That many ethnic Ukrainians maintained a double identification within Russian culture
indicated their need to negotiate cultural differences within the context of power
relations.
1.4. The End of Multiethnic Empire and the Development of Imperial-
National Identity in the 1830s
Over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the idea of Russian
national identity significantly changed. Between the early eighteenth century and the
1820s, the Russian empire welcomed many foreigners, especially Ukrainians, to
participate in the creation of the imperial nation-state. Imperial citizens needed only to
demonstrate their loyalty and readiness to fulfill state services. It was only in the last
years of the reign of Alexander I that the nationalist model began to emerge, solidifying
further under the rule of Nicolas I (1825-1855).
36
It is important to mention the doctrine of Official Nationality of 1834 that first
proclaimed the idea of a purely Russian identity as opposed to the “greater” Russian or
imperial one. The proponents of Russian nationalism were no longer preoccupied with
the empire’s ethnic, geographic, and cultural diversity, but concentrated on its native
Russian ethnic and linguistic component. According to Bojanowska,
[t]he nineteenth-century nationalist discourse concerned itself less with the
rossiiskii people …, than with the russkii people, which more narrowly
refers to ethnic Russians. This adjectival shift marked a moving away
from the conception of Russianness that was tied to the territorial span of
the empire toward a focus on it as an ethnic category… (25).
As far as imperial and national were fused in the idea of imperial-national Russian
identity, Russianness was no longer associated solely with Orthodoxy or loyalty to the
dynasty as it was in the eighteenth century. Instead, it denoted a whole complex of
requirements that ultimately excluded affiliation with regional and ethnic cultures. Under
Nicholas I, the Russian nation-building project began to differentiate between ethnic
Russians and inorodtsy (aliens), a term applied primarily to the Poles, who proved
indigestible and disruptive; to the Jews and Lithuanians; and eventually to Ukrainians.
41

In the cultural imagination of Russian Romantics of the time, Ukraine played the
role of the Orient for Russia, similar to that of other peripheries of the empire—the
Caucasus, Poland, and Siberia.
42
The same was true with regard to the Ukrainian people
who were perceived as inferior others. Many Russian writers created stereotypes of
uncivilized, stagnant, and lazy Ukrainians in their works (Shkandrij 71). The literary

41
For further discussion see Slocum, “Who, and When, Were the Inorodtsy? The Evolution of the Category
of “Aliens” in Imperial Russia” (1998).
42
Thompson’s book Imperial Knowledge: Russian Literature and Colonialism (2000) provides a complete
account of the issue.
37
representation of Ukraine, in fact, mirrored the colonial attitude of Russians toward
Ukrainians, which also imprinted on the imperial politics of identity. It could be said that
in the course of the nineteenth century Russia steadily moved from pragmatic tolerance
and cooperation with Ukrainian elites to a sense of superiority over them. This resulted in
the dismissive label of khokhol.
43
This ethnic stereotype was internalized by many
Ukrainians. The ethnic stereotypes in general, and of Ukrainians as “sly” and “lazy” in
particular, belong to the sphere of culture-specific beliefs and are the products of the
cultural encounter between two ethnic groups, rather than a direct consequence of
national politics. At the same time, these national stereotypes began to circulate in
Russian culture and media, affecting Russians’ colonial perception of Ukrainians as
khokhols. However, not all scholars are convinced that the postcolonial approach is
suitable for studying the Russian-Ukrainian relationship.
44
Despite the complexity of the
discourse of Ukraine in Russian culture, it can be said that Ukraine acquired a special
“domestic-foreign” status within it: it was viewed simultaneously as an organic part of
Russia and as mysterious, exotic and different.
So, in the 1830s the formation of Russian national identities was expedited due to
two historical events: Russia’s victory in the Napoleonic wars and the Polish Uprising of
1830-1831. As a result of the victory over Napoleon, the Russian empire gained Finland
and Bessarabia and control of the mouth of the Danube, and emerged as the strongest

43
In his article “Mazepintsy, Malorossy, Khokhly” (2003), Andreas Kappeler has discussed in detail three
racist labels applied to Ukrainians in the nineteenth century.
44
David Sanders, for example, believes that Russia has never “attempted deliberately to repress Ukrainian
culture” (873). He argues that the Russian tsars were less troubled by ethnic identities than they were by
loyalty to the dynasty and the state. Some scholars have questioned the strength of the link between
imperialism and nationalism in the early nineteenth-century Russia. Paul Austin has asserted that Russian
Romanticism was “surprisingly unnationalistic.”
38
power on the European continent. The Polish Uprising put an end to the multiethnic
policies of the monarchy and prompted many non-Russian intellectuals to re-establish
themselves as loyal subjects of the empire. It became evident that the new western
boundaries of the Russian empire were unstable and dangerous for those people in right-
bank Ukraine who, unlike people on the left bank, were still undergoing the process of
assimilation to imperial social structures. These people were less homogeneous in terms
of their religion, race and language
45
and slower in their conversion into the “all-Russian”
nation. Therefore, the national movement in Poland threatened to spread further into
right-bank Ukraine, provoking anxiety about the dilution of the Russian national identity
and the corruption of its underlying values. Despite the fact that the Polish Uprising was
crushed by the tsarist army, the Polish elite still remained dangerous for the as-yet-
unconsolidated Russian national identity. Likewise, the very possibility of Ukrainian
identity formation could threaten both imperial growth and the increasingly monolithic
conception of all-Russian nationality and culture. After the Polish Uprising it became less
acceptable to the monarch to tolerate the presence of non-Russians in the state
administration, and the policy known as Russification began to be implemented. The
Polish events of 1830 – 1831 also forced Russians to confront the question of their own
national identity and put pressure on Ukrainians to reconfirm their loyalty to the state.
The promotion of the “all-Russian” national identity among Ukrainians has been
described as the most urgent task of Russian state ideology. After that the participation of
Ukrainians in empire-building “was a complicated negotiation that involved some

45
There were large populations of Jews, Poles and, most importantly, Ukrainians who were converted to
Catholicism and did not always speak Russian.
39
complicity [on their part] in the interest of survival, while allowing ‘native’ resistance to
be inscribed into cultural production in a wide variety of ways” (Shkandrij 34).
In this context, Gogol’s changes to his last name, made around 1831, may serve
as a case study of Ukrainians’ complex response to the new imperial identity policy. The
transformation of Gogol’s name straddles the line between the demonstration of imperial
cultural citizenship that many Ukrainians made and the preservation of his Ukrainian
ethnic identity. It was common for many non-Russians of the time, especially after the
Polish Uprising, to Russify their peculiar ethnic names.
46
One of the most famous
examples of name-changing was made by a Pole, Faddei Bulgarin, who had received the
name Tadeusz at birth (in honor of Tadeusz Kosciuszko), but having arrived in Russia in
1820 not only Russified his compromising name, but also became a secret agent of the
tsarist police and published imperial propaganda commissioned by the government in his
periodicals.
Gogol’s manipulation of his last name can serve both as a point of contrast and
similarity to what Bulgarin had done with his first name. Born as Gogol-Ianovskii, Gogol

46
Thus, Ukrainians would change their names by adding the letter ‘v’ to the Ukrainian suffix –ko (for
example, Stepanenko became Stepanenkov in the Russian variant). This fact was satirically described by
Gogol in his tale “Starosvetskiie pomeshchiki” (Old-world landowners). The narrator mocks those Little
Russians who added Russian –ov ending to their Ukrainian last names, thereby disguising their origins:
“По ним [Afanasii Ivanovich and Pul’kheriia Ivanovna – the characters in the tale] можно было,
казалось, читать всю жизнь их ясную, спокойную жизнь, которую вели старые национальные,
простосердечные и вместе богатые фамилии, всегда составляющие противоположностьтем низким
малороссиянам, которые выдираются из дегтярей, торгашей, наполняют, как саранча, палаты и
присутственные места, дерут последнюю копейку с своих же земляков, наводняют Петербург
ябедниками, наживают наконец капитал и торжественно прибавляют к фамилии своей,
оканчивающейся на о, слог въ. Нет, они не были похожи на эти презренные и жалкие творения, так
же как и все малороссийские старинные и коренные фамилии” (In them you could read the entire story
of their lives, the cloudless and tranquil existence of the old landed gentry, simple-hearted but wealthy folk,
not to be likened to those mean Little Russians who begin as tar merchants and hawkers, droves of whom
can be found in council chambers and government offices, who squeeze every copeck they can out of their
fellow countrymen, flood St. Petersburg with denunciations, finally amass a fortune and solemnly add to
their surnames ending “o” the letter “v.” No, like all true members of the old landed classes of Little
Russia, there were not to be compared with these wretched and despicable creatures) (PSS II, 15).
40
during his school years in the 1820s used the second part of his last name. Ianovskii had
been the pragmatic invention of Gogol’s paternal great-grandfather, the village priest
Dem’ian, who constructed his last name from the Polish first name of his clergyman
father Ian by adding the Polish suffix –ovskii. At the end of the eighteenth century, his
son and Gogol’s grandfather, Opanas Dem’ianovych, added “Gogol” to his Polish last
name. According to family legend, the Gogols traced their Cossack origins back to the
sixteenth century, when the Colonel of Mogilev, Ostap Gogol, received noble status as a
reward for his exemplary service to the Polish King Ian-Kazimir. Gogol’s lineage from
Ostap Gogol had received official recognition in the late eighteenth century. Because the
Ianovskiis could not claim nobility and because clerical ancestry carried little social
prestige at that time, Opanas Dem’ianovych Ianovskii added his hypothetical forefather,
Gogol, to his last name in order to enhance his claim of nobility. His act was a response
to Catherine II’s edict “Zhalovannaya gramota dvorianstvu” (Letter of Grant to the
Nobles) (1785), which provided noble status only to those Little Russians who could
prove their aristocratic origins in the Polish szlachta. As a consequence, the falsification
of records became so customary among the Little Russians that more than a hundred
thousand families obtained noble status for a modest bribe.
47

During his school years at the Nizhyn Lyceé and his first two years (1828-1830)
in St. Petersburg, Gogol signed his correspondence “Gogol-Ianovskii,” while all his
works of the period were published anonymously, or under the pseudonyms Alov, Ianov,
Glechik, or Rudy Pan’ko. In January 1831, Gogol finally dropped “Ianovskii” and began

47
In the 1780s, about 25,000 Ukrainian families obtained noble status. Rumiantsev, the governor of Little
Russia, often overlooked the abundant evidence of falsification of documents that could prove the noble
origin of Little Russian families.
41
to use only “Gogol” in his works as well as correspondence with family and friends. He
was so persistent in this change that he even asked his mother stop addressing him as
“Ianovskii” because this part of his last name “had gone somewhere” (“кончик моей
фамилии я не знаю, где делся. Может быть, кто-нибудь поднял его на большой
дороге и носит, как свою собственность”)(PSS X, 219). Nestor Kukol’nik, Gogol’s
classmate, left a curious record of Gogol’s change of name:
Кстати замечу, что в гимназии Гоголь, как между товарищами, так и
по официальным спискам, Гоголем не назывался, а просто Яновским.
Однажды, уже в Петербурге, один из товарищей при мне спросил
Гоголя: “С чего ты это переменил фамилию?” – “И не думал.” – “Да
ведь ты Яновский.” – “И Гоголь тоже.”- “Да что значит гоголь?” –
“Селезень,” - отвечал Гоголь сухо и свернул разговор на другую
материю
By the way, in the gymnasium (both among the friends and in papers)
Gogol was not called Gogol, but Ianovsky. Once in St. Petersburg, in front
of me, one of my friends asked Gogol: “Why did you change your last
name?” – “No, I did not.” – “You are Yanovskii.” – “And Gogol as well.”
– “What does it mean “gogol’”?” – “A drake,” Gogol replied reservedly
and changed the topic of the conversation. (Veresaev 60)
While working as a tutor for Longinov’s children, Gogol informed them that “Ianovskii”
was a Polish invention (Veresaev 97) and asked the children to call him Mister Gogol-
Ianovskii. Gogol’s letter to his mother, dated April 16 1831, revealed his true motive for
getting rid of the Polish part of his last name: his sister Mariia was dating a Polish man.
In it, Gogol expressed his concern that and that “Poles had now become suspect” (PSS X,
196).
In fact, Gogol’s elimination of the Polish part of the name presents a peculiar
instance of his self-fashioning as a hybrid. On the one hand, Gogol wanted to
demonstrate his loyalty to the Russian empire by dropping the Polish part of his last name
and, on the other, he kept a Ukrainian part of it, which clearly suggested his Cossack
42
origin, intact. Retaining his Ukrainian name “Gogol,” which to the Russian ear sounded
odd, was, in fact, an assertion of his own cultural difference and preservation of his ethnic
identity, which can be treated as a performative act of retaining the voice of a Ukrainian.
The link between an author’s name and his/her writing has been especially important in
the context of postcolonial theory. The Ukrainian name reinforced Gogol’s “deep
attachment to his land … by the ties of historical distinction” (Luckyj, Between Gogol'
and Sevchenko 91) and began to refer not only to the concrete empirical person, but to a
historical mode of writing—that of the Cossack Ukraine. Gogol’s search for an
appropriate literary name demonstrates that unlike many non-Russians who became
passive subjects, unable to resist pressure to Russianize, Gogol appeared as a more active
subject who manipulated his own authorial myth.

43
Chapter 2. Gogol’s Self-Fashioning in the 1830s

Terms of cultural engagement, whether antagonistic
or affiliative, are produced performatively. The
representation of difference must not be hastily read
as the reflection of pre-given ethnic or cultural traits
set in the fixed tablet of tradition. The social
articulation of difference, from the minority
perspective, is a complex, on-going negotiation that
seeks to authorize cultural hybridities that emerge in
a moment of historical transformation. – Homi
Bhabha, The Location of Culture 2.

The early years of Gogol’s career were marked by the negotiation of his cultural
identity within Russian cultural space. This negotiation required continual changes and
adjustments of Gogol’s cultural performances and resulted in his ambivalent self-
representation during the first half of the 1830s. This chapter discusses the impact that
Gogol’s cultural migration from the periphery of the empire to its center produced on his
identity formation. The relocation, characterized both in terms of ethnic and class shift
shaped the multiplicity of Gogol’s identity positions and prompted him to engage in
“colonial mimicry.” Gogol’s marginal social status and his Ukrainian ethnicity created a
social hierarchy responsible for fashioning him as “an outsider within” imperial culture
and led to his ambivalent self-fashioning. This ambivalence was the result of the conflict
between becoming part of the imperial establishment with all its prestige and status and
retaining the culture of his origin.
The theoretical framework of this chapter is informed by Steven Greenblatt’s
notion of self-fashioning and Homi Bhabha’s theoretization of mimicry. Postcolonial
discussion of self-fashioning through the idea of mimicry provides an intriguing model
for a study of Gogol’s complex negotiation of his cultural identity during and right after
44
the publication of his Vechera na khutore bliz Dikan’ki (1831-1832). Gogol’s cultural
identity can be studied from many perspectives – as a conscious strategy of romantic self-
creation, as a product of discriminatory social discourses imposed by elite Russian
society, or as a result of the exchange and negotiation of cultural and symbolic currencies
between two agents.
The fashioning of the self, considered from Greenblatt’s perspective, always
involves an acute sense that identity can be manipulated in texts and society. Self-
fashioning necessarily entails the production of an other against which the self can be
defined. This production occurs “at the point of encounter between an authority and an
alien… What is produced in this encounter partakes of both the authority and the alien
that is marked for attack” and always entails “some experience of threat, some
effacement or undermining, some loss of self” (9). As concerns Gogol’s self-fashioning
in the early 1830s, it was a split between his striving to “pass” as a Russian man of
society and his desire to remain true to his origin and culture. In the development of
Gogol’s hybrid identity, the invention of the fictitious persona of a Ukrainian simpleton
Rudy Pan’ko in his Vechera played a crucial role. It revealed Gogol’s “otherness” which
became a powerful tool with which he manipulated his further public self-fashioning.
Neither entirely planned nor controlled by Gogol himself the mask of the Ukrainian jester
also had a strong impact on Gogol’s reception in and acceptance by Russian imperial
society.
Therein lays the problem of the autonomy of the fashioned self that Gogol’s case
so clearly exhibits. As a collective creation, inspired and orchestrated by Russian literary
aristocrats, the mask of Pan’ko reflected the desire of Russian society for a colonial other
45
and created a framework within which Gogol came to be perceived as such by the
imperial audience. At the same time, Gogol was trying to fashion a more socially
acceptable public self copying the attitudes, behavior and manners of Russian polite
society. However, once Gogol began to be closely associated with the image of the semi-
literate Ukrainian Pan’ko, his public self-fashioning became marked with ambivalence.
Here is where the concept of colonial mimicry comes in useful to understand Gogol’s
self-fashioning.
In recent postcolonial studies, mimicry has been widely used to describe the
assimilation of cultural attitudes and behaviors that have arisen from the relocation of
marginal subjects from an empire’s periphery to its center. Studied merely as a form of
colonial control by the dominant culture over the hierarchical subject, mimicry has been
regarded as a negative outcome of colonial power which always assimilates its subjects
by suppressing their ethnic, class, gender or other differences. As a result, the colonized
or marginal subject is prompted to adopt and internalize the values and norms of the
dominant culture, but can only imitate them imperfectly. This leads to the ambivalent
positioning of the subject in the dominant culture: the colonized appears to be “partial,”
“incomplete,” and “virtual” in its representation (Bhabha, Location 89, 90). Mimicry,
therefore, is the colonized’s response to the circulation of stereotypes. The comic nature
of mimicry is crucial to understand its potential to resist the power of the dominant
culture which posits itself as serious and directed to educate and improve its imperfect
colonized. Thus, the ultimate goal of mimicking is not to position oneself entirely outside
of the dominant culture, but to transform power configurations within it. “Almost the
same, but not quite,” the marginal subject uses his/her ambivalent position strategically
46
and transforms mimicry into mockery. In Bhabha’s view, mimicry itself becomes an
agency insofar it provides the colonized with the means to undermine the normalizing
knowledge and disciplinary power of the colonizer. The very imperfection of the
colonized’s representation allows it to disrupt the authority of colonial discourse. Bhabha
places the main emphasis on the ability of the colonized to resist colonial discourse by
undermining its authority.
In my application of mimicry to Gogol, however, I propose to consider not only
how he appropriated and distorted cultural values, attitudes and behaviors of the imperial
center, but also how his own identity was transformed into a hybrid as it engaged with the
colonial power. It could be said that Gogol became caught between the poles of the
mimicking process itself. His self-fashioning in the 1830s was manifested in two
concurrent self-representations, as a Russian society man and as a Ukrainian simpleton,
and may be conceived of as two sides of a self-ironic mimicry. Since neither his native
Ukraine nor imperial Russia could provide Gogol with a secure sense of identity, Gogol
was subject to a double demand: to be mimetically identical while being totally other. At
first, Gogol, like many writers from the colonial periphery, tried to “pass”
48
as a Russian
man of society by fashioning himself as a member of the literary aristocrats, imitating
their idiom and social behavior. The emergence of the mask of the semi-literate
Ukrainian narrator Pan’ko became for Gogol that “Other” which is required for the
interrogation of identity and its performative realization and through the gaze of which
Gogol derived his sense of identity. Tied up with a performance of ambivalence Gogol

48
The concept of passing is often used interchangeably with mimicry in postcolonial studies. Although
“passing” describes an American of African ancestry impersonating or “passing themselves off” as a white
American, it can be generally applied to any situation of shedding the identity of an oppressed group in
order to gain access to social and economic opportunities.
47
parodied the stereotypical conception of Ukrainians and created his own self-ironic
authenticity.
2.1. Gogol’s Entry into Russian Culture and His Negotiation of Hybrid
Identity
Viewing Gogol’s cultural identity within the framework of colonial mimicry may
help to overcome the essentialist approach to Gogol’s identity. Throughout the twentieth
century Gogol’s identity was interpreted as mysterious, and lacking a unified core. First,
the Russian Symbolists discovered that Gogol indeed was a “riddle.” In 1909, in his
speech on the occasion of Gogol’s one-hundredth anniversary, Andrei Belyi bitterly
admitted that “we do not yet know what Gogol is” (“Gogol’” 70). In the 1960s-1970s the
idea of Gogol’s unstable identity received a psychoanalytical interpretation as being
rooted in his fundamental fear of having his identity defined. Andrei Siniavsky linked
Gogol’s problematic identity with the inability to control his artistic creation. Victor
Erlich suggested “that Gogol was a thoroughly unspontaneous man who barricaded
himself behind a set of contrivances.” It was “his irrational fear of premature exposure, of
rebuff and ridicule” that prompted him “to hide his pathologically vulnerable self behind
a screen of rhetoric” (218). More recently, Alexsander Zholkovsky noted that Gogol’s
problematic sense of identity “has been related to [his] identification with his mother and
[a] desire to elude her control and his repressed homosexuality” (174).
In these studies of Gogol’s identity, the main focus has usually been placed on the
psychological aspects of the writer’s personality. However, the essentialist approach
which claims unlimited access to a writer’s psyche seems unproductive for studying the
multiplicity of Gogol’s cultural identities. Post-structuralist theory can better account for
48
the production of identities, which is never complete, always in process, and always
constituted within, not outside, representation. Relocation, social mobility, and strategies
of adaptation that were expedited with the development of capitalism in early nineteenth-
century Russia created conditions for multiple identifications of marginal subjects, in
general, and Gogol’s identity, in particular. It is important to consider the broad array of
social and ideological influences that contributed to Gogol’s self-fashioning as hybrid in
the early 1830s.
The years of 1828-1836 were the time of Gogol’s maximum engagement with the
life of St. Petersburg. Gogol spent his first three years (1828-1831) in the capital creating
and then maintaining contacts with three groups of people: his former Nizhyn classmates
and Ukrainian expatriates; middle-brow writers and editors of various literary journals;
and the so-called literary aristocrats. Each of these groups did its bit in shaping Gogol’s
hybrid identity. Although Gogol’s ultimate goal was to gain acceptance by the so-called
literary aristocrats, particularly with Pushkin, he could not fulfill his ambitious plans until
the fall of 1830. It was sheer accident that hindered him from entering the circle of the
literary aristocrats immediately. As Gogol himself described his first meeting with
Pushkin in a story that became perpetuated in his biographical legend, he turned up on the
great poet’s doorstep just after his arrival in St. Petersburg in the fall of 1828. He
approached Pushkin’s house in trepidation, having first stopped at a tavern to bolster his
courage. When Gogol finally made it to the door, a servant greeted him with the news
that his master was still asleep. “It was late in the afternoon. ‘Evidently, he worked all
night?’ Gogol asked with deep sympathy. ‘What do you mean worked? He played cards,’
49
answered the servant.” Thereby Gogol’s naïve desire to become acquainted with and
accepted by members of the Petersburg literary elite was disappointed.
At the same time, his frustration with the Russian capital was growing. In his first
letters to his mother, Gogol described himself as an alien in a capital that was lacking in
national character and did not correspond to the imaginary homeland that could provide
him a solid ground for a new identity:
49

Скажу еще, что Петербург мне показался вовсе не таким, как я
думал...Каждая столица вообще характеризуется своим народом,
набрасывающим на нее печать национальности, на Петербурге же нет
никакого характера: иностранцы, которые поселились сюда,
обжились и вовсе не похожи на иностранцев, а русские в свою
очередь обиностранились и сделались ни тем ни другим. Тишина в
нем необыкновенная, никакой дух не блестит в народе, все служащие
да должностные, все толкуют о своих департаментах да коллегиях,
все подавлено, все погрязло в бездельных, ничтожных трудах, в
которых бесплодно издерживается жизнь их.
I will tell you also that Petersburg seemed to me completely not as I
expected… In general, each capital is characterized by its people that casts
an imprint of nationality on it, but in Petersburg there is no character of
any kind: foreigners who settled here have become assimilated and no
longer resemble foreigners, whereas the Russians have been foreignized…
There is an unusual emptiness in it, there is no spirit in the people, all
around one sees only civil servants who are serving time, all talk about
their departments and ministries, everyone is depressed and buried in
insignificant occupations in which their life passes by uselessly. (PSS X,
136-137, 139)
50

Presumably, this feeling of disconnection from his native Ukraine made Gogol actively
seek a community of discourse in which to find ontological security. So, in 1829-1830

49
It is interesting to compare Gogol’s perception of St. Petersburg before and after his migration there. In a
letter to his school friend Gerasim Vysotskii who went to conquer the Russian capital a year before Gogol
himself, Gogol calls St. Petersburg “marvelous” and travels there in his imagination. At the same time, he
complains that in Nizhyn he feels himself like a foreigner wandering around trying to find that which may
only be found in the homeland alone (inozemets, zabredshii na chuzhbinu iskat’ togo, chto tol’ko
nakhoditsia v odnoi rodine) (PSS X, 97).
50
The English translation is mine.
50
Gogol established close connections with the St. Petersburg Ukrainian diaspora that
consisted mostly of his classmates, whom Gogol ironically called “odnokorytniki “
(troughmates) in a letter to his mother. It was a group of about twenty-five graduates
from the Nizhyn Lycée, which trained the offspring of Ukrainian noblemen for careers in
the imperial administration.
51
Gogol, Kukol’nik, Prokopovich, Danilevskii, Pashchenko,
Basili, Grebenka, Mokritskii and others came to St. Petersburg in the late 1820s and used
their family connections to seek positions in the state service, although only a few of
them were able to succeed.
52
As with many of his classmates Gogol had prepared himself
for state service. He arranged for his family protector Dmitrii Troshchinskii to provide
letters of recommendation to powerful Petersburg officials but they, according to Gogol,
seemed uninterested in the young provincial.
53

The former schoolmates held regular gatherings, which often included joint
reading of periodicals, criticism of new publications, and recounting literary anecdotes
and were spiced with Ukrainian dishes and songs. Often the young Ukrainian literati
mocked Petersburg’s salons to which they had no access. They spent time discussing the
latest trends in modern literature and art. But at the same time the gatherings bore the

51
In the 1830s, St. Petersburg witnessed a number of young Ukrainians who managed to advance in the
imperial institutions. Evegenii Grebenka shared his impressions of the omnipresence of fellow Ukrainians
in Petersburg’s institutions in a1834 letter to Nikolai Novitskii: “Petersburg is a colony of intelligent
Ukrainians. All institutions, academies, and the university are full of our fellow-countrymen. Applying for
a job a Ukrainian candidate compels everyone’s attention as an unhomme d’esprit” (Quoted in Malaniuk
62).
52
Nestor Kukol’nik, for example, had strong connections at court where he almost immediately received a
position and became a court playwright praising the tsar and his politics.
53
Loggin Kutuzov, the Minister of Culture, to whom Gogol had a letter of recommendation from his patron
Troshchinskii, was at first ill and unable to receive Gogol; then he made promises which, according to
Gogol, he did not keep. According to another version, Gogol did not give his letter of recommendation to
the Minister of Culture at all. More likely, Gogol himself changed his plans once he faced the reality of
working in a tedious bureaucratic job without the opportunity for quick advancement.
51
flavor of the communal friendly spirit they had shared in the Nizhyn Lycée, and in this
respect they were significantly different from Petersburg salons. Unlike Russian habitués
of salons, who cultivated good taste and manners in everything from how to pick up a
dropped handkerchief to how to write a poem, these Ukrainian literati appeared rather
ignorant of the concept of good taste. They named their mock almanac Parnasskii navoz
(Parnassus Manure) and collectively decided whose verses deserved to be published in it
and whose should be burnt.
54
They did not aim to impose unified aesthetic standards and
were, therefore, less confined by existing codes of literary and public behavior. Instead of
emulating the art forms and behavior of polite society, which were directed toward the
development of good taste and manners, they explored a wide range of literary topics and
masks.
Gogol appeared to be the driving force behind these meetings. He invented
literary nicknames – Balzac, Dumas, Hugo, and Jules Janin – for each participant who
imitated fashionable European poets and wrote funny couplets about them.
55
The all-male
company, which gathered at different apartments of its members, resembled the
Ukrainian bratiya, a brotherhood,
56
and professed a mock-monastic life-style. They were
more closely related to each other by the spirit of brotherhood than by societal ties.
Throughout his life Gogol maintained close connections with a few of these classmates,
particularly with Nikolai Prokopovich and Aleksandr Danilevskii. With the latter Gogol

54
See Liubich-Romanovich's recollection in Veresaev, Gogol v zhizni 83.
55
See Annenkov’s recollection in Veresaev, Gogol v zhizni 138.
56
Bratiya (a brotherhood) designates a group of poor students who earned their living performing
interludes and school dramas. This tradition emerged in seventeenth-century Ukrainian culture and was still
powerful in the end of the eighteenth – beginning of the nineteenth century when Gogol’s father wrote his
comedies.
52
established an intimate bond, referring to him as “brother” and sharing his secret plans
with him. Although Gogol’s circle preserved the spirit of the bratiya, with time their
differences in class became more pronounced. Those of the circle, namely Kukol’nik,
Bazili, and Liubich-Romanovich, who belonged to wealthy Ukrainian families with
established connections in the Russian capital, gradually distanced themselves from
Gogol. This differentiation within the circle was cloaked in the discourse of
dissimilarities in their literary tastes. Liubich-Romanovich’s record indicates the disdain
of those of the Ukrainian elite who managed to prove their nobility for those who like
Gogol did not have documented proof of his nobility: “it was difficult for him [Gogol] to
join in our secrets, not being sufficiently qualified to be an aristocrat with us, to share our
tastes, and to emulate our idols, who were Byron, Pushkin, etc.”
57
In fact, these habitués
of the gatherings, particularly Kukol’nik, Rodzianko, Borodin, and Bazili, fashioned
more conventional public selves by imitating European romantics, such as Byron,
Chenier, Schiller and others, and exploring hackneyed romantic topics in their works.
58

Kukol’nik, for example, who had a life-long interest in the Renaissance Italian poet
Torquato Tasso, made him a role model in his literary career.
59
Kukol’nik wrote several
dramatic works about the poet’s life which bore an obvious autobiographical imprint. In
tune with literary fashion, he often assumed the mask of Tasso, which later won him

57
Recorded by S. I. Glebov in Istoricheskii vestnik (1902) February, 551.
58
The literary tastes of Gogol’s classmates were carefully studied by Liudmila Suproniuk in her article
“Literaturnia sreda molodogo Gogolia.” The scholar has analyzed the professional careers of Gogol’s
classmates. Thus, Vasilii Liubich-Romanovich started his literary career as a translator of Mickiewicz and
Byron; later he became interested in Slavic history and wrote several articles on Russian medieval history.
Andrei Borodin became known for his translations of Shakespeare, Shelley, Byron, and Moore.
59
For many Romantics, Tasso, misunderstood by people for his art, exemplified an ideal poet who creates
not for the audience but for art’s sake.
53
fame in the top aristocratic salons. His self-fashioning to a large extent corresponded to
the elitist impulse to transform one’s self into another, more aesthetic personage. The
mask of Tasso both reflected Kukol’nik’s ambition for success and aided him in his to
drive to be accepted into elite Russian literary society despite his Ukrainian origin and
provincial education.
Obviously, Gogol was also aware that an apt literary persona could open many
doors for him. He also actively engaged in fashioning himself as a Romantic poet.
Advised by his schoolmates to write poetry instead of prose, Gogol published his
romantic idyll Hanz Küchelgarten in 1829, several months after arriving in St.
Petersburg, under the pseudonym “V.Alov.” Gogol pinned all his hopes on this poem,
and when the critics of Moskovskii telegraph (The Moscow Telegraph) and Severnaia
pchela (The Northern Bee) gave it unfriendly reviews, he purchased all of the available
copies from bookstores, destroyed them and undertook a rather puzzling trip to Lübeck in
the spring of 1829.
After his return from Germany, Gogol continued to seek guidance among the
popular middle-brow writers whose growing popularity obviously inspired Gogol’s
ambitions to reach a broad readership. Faddei Bulgarin, a successful author of picaresque
novels, publisher-editor, as well as agent of the secret police, was one of the middlebrow
authors who received a visit from Gogol at the end of 1829. Bulgarin, as opposed to the
“literary aristocrats,” appealed to middle-brow tastes and his success as a best-selling
author clearly fed Gogol’s own urge for popular recognition. If one is to believe Bulgarin,
Gogol came to him praising his literary works and hoping to get a post in the Third
54
Department (the secret police), for which Bulgarin himself was working (Veresaev 89).
60

Whether Gogol actually held such a position is a matter of dispute. The fact is impossible
to verify since all of the files of the Third Department were destroyed. Moreover,
according to many Soviet scholars, Bulgarin made up this “legend” after Gogol’s death
with an eye to “discrediting him in the minds of democratic readers.”
61
Vasilii Gippius,
having weighed the facts based on Gogol’s correspondence and records from his next
position at the Department of Crown Properties, came to the conclusion that “Bulgarin
probably did offer to set Gogol up in the Third Department, but Gogol had no desire to
heed his advice.”
62

Nevertheless, Bulgarin might have influenced Gogol in different ways. Born in
Poland to a family of Polish revolutionists as Tadeusz Bułharyn, Faddei Bulgarin spent
most of his life outside of Poland, “using his otherness to play one side off against the
other” (Frazier 174) and manifesting a striking adaptability to new political
circumstances. Bulgarin’s contemporaries were amazed at the ease with which Bulgarin
“crossed geographical and social spaces … from Poland to Russia, Germany, France, and
Spain, and from officer to prisoner, legal petitioner, writer and publisher” (Reitblat 6).
For his acceptance in the ranks of Russian writers Bulgarin was obliged to his
associations both with the future Decembrists and with Tsar Nicholas I who first arrested
him and then enlisted him to serve state interests. Beginning in 1826 Bulgarin worked as
a spy to monitor literary life in Russia. As a reward, he was permitted to publish his

60
According to Bulgarin, Gogol, with the help of Bulgarin’s supervisor, Maksimilian von Fok, was granted
a sinecure in the Third Department in which he only showed up to collect his wages.
61
See Gippus in Gogol’s PSS X, 422.
62
Ibid., 422.
55
journal Severnaia pchela. This rapid rise of an alien in the Russian capital apparently
attracted Gogol who was in a similar position. As Melissa Frazier has observed, just as
Bulgarin … used his own Polishness as a springboard into Russian
literature, beginning his literary career in St. Petersburg with the
publication … of “A Short Survey of Polish Literature” (1820), … so
Gogol used his well-researched Ukrainianness in much the same way, …
gaining acclaim in the of Russian literary world with his representation of
Ukrainian local color in Evenings on a Farm Near Dikan’ka (174-6).
So, during 1829-1830 Gogol intentionally sought associations with middlebrow writers
because the literary kon’iunktura (demand) was changing dramatically, offering young
provincial writers quick remuneration for their efforts.
The 19-year-old writer came to St. Petersburg at a time of important changes in
Russian literary institutions.
63
Gogol witnessed the development of commercial mass
printing accompanied by the expansion and diversification of Russian readership. Under
such conditions, literary salons and almanacs ceased to be the main locus of literary life.
Private gatherings of a tiny minority of cultured readers and writers could no longer meet
the demands of Russia’s new reading public. This new audience, which embraced
merchants, the petty bourgeoisie and professionals, consumed literary works in print
exclusively, and aristocratic writers, who presented their works orally in salons and in
manuscript or in small vanity publications such as almanacs, could not reach this
audience. Moreover, the differentiation of roles in the literary marketplace translated into
a new social status: from the hermetic network of familiar associations the writer
emerged as a public figure. These changes in literary institutions offered a defining
moment to Gogol who faced a choice of which career path to chose – that of a salon

63
This issue was thoroughly studied by William Mills Todd III in Fiction and Society in the Age of
Pushkin: Ideology, Institutions, and Narrative (1986).
56
writer whose audience was a tiny group of well-educated aristocrats or that of a writer for
the broad public consisting of middle-class readers. Gogol’s ambitious plan was to
address the entire reading public and he began to explore how he could possibly fit both
roles.
It is still unclear how Gogol met another Ukrainian expatriate, Orest Somov, but
his example of bridging the two literary communities, elite and middlebrow, apparently
determined Gogol’s literary fate. Presumably, Gogol was introduced to Somov through
his Ukrainian connections no earlier than the summer of 1830. Somov was one of the few
Ukrainian writers of the time who occupied an insider position within the circles of the
Petersburg literary aristocrats.
64
At the same time, he actively collaborated with the
Ukrainian expatriate community in St. Petersburg: he involved the Ukrainian writers Ivan
Kotliarevs’kyi and Mykhailo Maksymovych in the publication of the almanac Severnye
tsvety (Northern Flowers), which he edited; he collected and published Ukrainian
folksongs; and he helped to promote the young Gogol. To be sure, Gogol was impressed
by the way Somov capitalized on the Ukrainian topic, especially with the creation of his
Ukrainian alter-ego Porfirii Baiskii in his prose fiction. Somov’s fictional persona had a
strong impact on the development of Gogol’s fictitious editor-narrator Rudy Pan’ko, a
Ukrainian beekeeper awkwardly maneuvering in Petersburg culture, as well as on the
writer’s positioning inside the Russian literary aristocracy. Somov, who for young Gogol
exemplified a successful combination of the literary persona of the democratic story-

64
In the 1830s, Somov performed the duties of assistant editor both for Pushkin’s journal Literaturnaia
gazeta (The Literary Gazette) and for Baron Anton Del’vig’s almanac Severnye tsvety.
57
teller and the insider in the literary aristocracy, ushered Gogol into Petersburg’s elite
literary circles.
By the end of 1830 through Somov’s introduction, Gogol had become acquainted
first with Anton Del’vig, a poet and chief editor of Severnye tsvety, and then with Vasilii
Zhukovskii and Petr Pletnev. The last two immediately began to promote the promising
young author. In keeping with the customs of familiar associations, Zhukovskii and
Pletnev secured Gogol employment as a history teacher in the Patriotic Institute for
Noble Maidens and as a tutor in several aristocratic families, at the same time
encouraging him to pursue a literary career. These acquaintances tapped Gogol as one of
the leading new talents and provided him a place in the still-powerful networks of the
literary aristocrats. In particular, Zhukovskii demonstrated a genuine personal interest in
Gogol. Zhukovskii was a very open-minded mentor who welcomed and promoted many
Ukrainians (Gogol, Mikhail Glinka and Taras Shevchenko are the most well-known
examples of his patronage). Through Zhukovskii’s salon, located on the third floor of the
Shepelevsky Palace, Gogol entered the highest literary society.
65
Over three months (the
late 1830 - early 1831) Gogol published a pedagogical essay, a philosophical dialogue,
two fragments from the tale, “Strashnyi kaban” (The Terrible Boar), and an excerpt from
a projected historical novel, Get’man (The Hetman). Moreover, Gogol also wrote an
essay on Pushkin’s historical drama Boris Godunov (1830) with the hope of gaining

65
Throughout his life Gogol viewed Zhukovskii as his mentor. He expressed his gratitude to him in a later
letter: “I, a young man who had just entered the society, first came to you … half-way through this walk of
life (poprishche). This happened in the Shepelevsky Palace. That room does not exist anymore. But I see it
as now, every single detail of furniture and little things. You gave me your hand and were so full of desire
to help your future associate.”
58
Pushkin’s attention and submitted it to Pletnev, who did not publish the essay
66
but
recommended Gogol to Pushkin in a letter of March, 1831. Finally, on May 20, 1831, the
two writers met in Pletnev’s house.
Leaving aside the well-known history of interactions between Pushkin and
Gogol,
67
I only want to emphasize that there was no close friendship between them. The
two writers were connected mostly by professional interests and a common vision of the
development of Russian literature. Gogol’s dependence on Pushkin’s help has been
exaggerated by scholars. Gogol’s initial success as a professional writer was rather a
result of his social adaptability and cultural mimicry. Of course, Gogol as a provincial
Ukrainian of dubious nobility would have unlikely entered high society without the
support of its influential members. Yet, one fact that Gogol’s scholars often overlook is
that Gogol met Pushkin in May, 1831, when Book One of Vechera had already been
approved for publication. Moreover, there is another side to the problem. Pushkin and his
associates, Del’vig and Pletnev, also used Gogol for their purposes. In the beginning of
the 1830s when Gogol was entering the field of letters, Pushkin’s literary fortune was
rapidly declining. In lieu of them, Bulgarin and Senkovskii, or the so-called “literaturnye
kommersanty” (literary entrepreneurs) began to dominate the growing market for popular
literary journalism. The “literary aristocrats” and “literary entrepreneurs” had various
aesthetic and ethical issues to debate including decorum, taste, popularity, authority,

66
It appeared in print only in 1881.
67
See G. Fridlender and N. Petrunina “Pushkin i Gogol v 1831-1836-kh godakh” and Paul Debreczeny
Social Functions of Literature: Alexander Pushkin and Russian Culture (1997) on the history of Pushkin’s
and Gogol’s relationships.
59
reputation, and money.
68
In Pushkin’s view, Gogol with his orientation toward and
popularity among a broad audience could help the literary aristocrats reach this larger
audience and increase the circulation of journals and almanacs associated with the group.
Thus, in the 1830s Pushkin involved Gogol in both his journal Sovremennik
(Contemporary) and Literaturnaia gazeta. The relationship between Pushkin and Gogol
was based on mutual interest and calculation.
69

Gogol’s skill at social adaptability and successful self-promotion opened the
doors of many prestigious salons and associations both in St. Petersburg and Moscow.
Already in 1832, he made appearances in various fashionable Petersburg salons
(Khitrovo’s, Pletnev’s, Smirnova’s) where he made the acquaintance of major Russian
writers and artists such as Petr Viazemskii, Vladimir Odoevskii, Vladimir Sollogub, Karl
Briulov and others.
70
Gogol was noticed chatting with court noblemen and even with one
of the grand dukes.
71
However, his success as the author of Ukrainian tales did not grant
him a higher social status. This remained dubious for a couple of years after the
publication of Vechera, as Gogol, having no official job and no stable income, had to
reside in an attic and make his living by teaching private lessons for the wealthy Loginov
family, during which time he ate at a separate table together with other servants. In large
part, this prevented him from developing into a honnête homme of salon society despite
his simultaneous involvement in various literary and social circles. Moreover, Gogol

68
See William Mills Todd III, Fiction and Society 84.
69
“Calculation” (“raschet”) later became a key word which Gogol used to mask his desire to mimic
established social codes. In a letter to Smirnova, Gogol confessed that he had always tried to control “what
could and could not be said to each” of his friends and confreres (PSS XII, 433). Pavel Annenkov perceived
with admiration Gogol’s ability to use people for his own purpose.
70
See Istoricheskii vestnik I (1881) 136-8.
71
See Russkaia starina IV, 48 (1888) 333.
60
himself did not happily accept social conventions. In salon gatherings, he avoided idle
talk and preferred to have serious conversations with people of applied professions, such
as teachers, doctors, manufacturers, and businessmen, i.e., with the emerging social group
of raznochintsy – a new class of impoverished nobles who made their living by acquiring
professional skills.
Overall, Gogol had discontinuous, fractured, and irregular connections with the
members of Russian polite society and they offered him no tenable social position.
Gogol’s diverse connections with various intellectual and social groups affected his self-
fashioning. His self-presentation and social behavior were constantly changing from
chance confluences of expectations, codes, and social and cultural situations. Offering no
single, stable identity, Gogol’s connections with members of polite society offered no
sense of permanence and belonging. It could be said that non-belonging became an
ontological problem of Gogol’s existence in Russian society.
72
Commenting on his
“escape” from Russia after the harshly critical responses to his play Revizor in 1836,
Gogol formulated his ideal of a writer’s existence in society: “a poet …[l]ike a silent
monk … lives in the world without belonging to it.” The key phrase of the quote
“without belonging” epitomizes Gogol’s life-long tendency to avoid fixation as a certain
type of writer. As Michael Holquist has fairly suggested, Gogol “never quite overcame
the gap that separated the muddy Ukrainian village outside Poltava where he was born
from the glitter of Saint Petersburg. He always felt uncomfortable among the brilliant
circles…, in a place where hostile critics sometimes ascribed his outlandish style to his

72
Michael Holquist proposes to apply V. S. Naipul’s notion of the “anxiety of non-arrival” to Gogol. The
scholar interprets it in terms of the Freudien uncanny (das Unheimliche), that constitutes an “ultimate
desire … to overcome all difference and to return to a presumed state of wholeness where difference has no
power to legislate separation…” (127).
61
not being a native speaker of Russian” (127). Even after the tremendous success of his
novel Metrvyie dushi (1842), Gogol was thinking: “I am a stranger to everyone, and
everyone is a stranger to me.” According to Holquist, this can be only accounted for by
“the tyranny of difference” that “covets a return to an all-embracing oneness” – the
hallmark of Gogol’s life, as well as of his literary works (127).
It is important to recognize Gogol’s diverse connections and associations in the
literary and social life of the capital in the early 1830s. The fact that Gogol maintained
close connections with various social strata helped him assume the position of an
“outsider within” and provided him with a great degree of freedom in changing his
literary roles and personae.
2.2. Gogol as Colonial Other
In contemporary Gogol studies, the persona of the Ukrainian editor-narrator Rudy
Pan’ko, which Gogol created for Vechera, has been discussed within the framework of
the powerful tradition of “malorossiiskie povesti” (Ukrainian tales) written by Ukrainian
writers who played with the colonial stereotype of uneducated Ukrainians. These tales
utilized a variety of masks of simple-hearted Ukrainian narrators that helped Ukrainian
writers maneuver into Russian society.
73
By playing the fool through the mask of Pan’ko,
as Bojanowska has claimed, Gogol internalized this colonial “slyness.”
74
It has become a

73
Examples are Ivan Kotliarevs’kyi’s Malorossiiskaia Eneïda (Little Russian Aeneid, 1798; 1809; 1842)
and Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnov’ianenko’s Malorossiiskie povesti (Little Russian tales, 1834-1837).
Kotliarevs’kyi played a crucial role in establishing this tradition. In his travesty of Virgil’s Aeneid, he
developed a model of Ukrainian identity that allowed the author to mock the imperial center “without direct
risk.” For further reference see Grabowicz’s article “Between Subversion and Self-Assertion: The Role of
Kotliarevshchyna in Russian-Ukrainian Literary Relations.”
74
Bojanowska 206.
62
commonplace to consider Gogol “sly” by nature
75
and to think of the mask of Rudy
Pan’ko as merely a marketing strategy used by Gogol to promote his tales on the literary
market. Therefore, the responsibility for legitimization of the colonial stereotype has been
placed exclusively on Gogol himself. This view is based on the idea that there was
something fixed in Gogol’s identity. There is, however, another side to Gogol’s “slyness”
that has usually been overlooked by scholars. It concerns the collective nature of Gogol’s
representation as the colonial other initiated by Pavel Svin’in and developed further by
Pletnev, Pushkin, Aleksandra Smirnova and other of Gogol’s associates.
Let us first analyze how Russian society racialized Gogol as a colonial other.
First, Svin’in assumed the position of Gogol’s patron when, in 1830, the young author
submitted his first tale, “Bisavriuk, ili vecher nakanune Ivana Kupala” (Bisavriuk, or the
Eve of St. John the Baptist), to be published in Svin’in’s magazine Otechestvennyie
zapiski (Annals of the Fatherland). At the time, Svin’in worked as an editor of
Otechestvennye zapiski, which welcomed young provincial talents unspoiled by the tastes
of Europeanized Russian society. Aiming to present the various sides of Russian life,
Otechestvennye zapiski published roughly a dozen short stories about the customs of
various ethnic groups of the Russian empire over the course of 1826-1830.
76
Gogol’s
story “Bisavriuk” appeared in the February 1830 issue of the journal, due in part to
Gogol’s persistent efforts to please the “grandee” editor by presenting him with ancient

75
Alexander Zholkovsky has claimed that Gogol “slavishly adapted to the tastes of his ‘superiors’ (e.g.
[those of] Pushkin)” (174).
76
These include P. M. Kudriashev’s tales “Kirgizskii plennik” (1826), “Abdriash, bashkirskaia povest’”
(1827), “Darzha, Kalmytskaia povest’” (1829), “Iskak, tatarskaia povest’” (1830), and I. T. Radozhitskii’s
“Kyz-Brun, cherkesskaia povest’” (1828).
63
coins and curiosities.
77
In fact, Svin’in’s role in exoticizing Ukraine and Gogol as the
author of the Ukrainian tale is hard to overestimate. Svin’in was one of the first to
introduce Gogol to the Russian audience as the other. In his foreword to Gogol’s
“Bisavriuk,” Svin’in presented Gogol as a Ukrainian author by emphasizing the contrast
between Russian and Ukrainian people:
Malorossiiane [Ukrainians] more [than Russians] resemble a magnificent
Asian people...by their appearance, frame, slender stature, laziness and
carelessness… Malorossiiane … do not have such an ungovernable
character that the adherents of Islam have; their phlegmatic carelessness
protects them from blustering emotions, and often the fiery and audacious
European intellect sparkles from their bushy eyebrows; ardent love of their
Motherland clothed in the originary simplicity fills their breasts. (Quoted
in Zviniatskovskii, Nikolai Gogol 172)
Svin’in’s comparison of Ukrainians with Asians was symptomatic of nineteenth-century
Russian literature. In travelogues and literary texts of the 1810-1830s, Ukraine was
generally represented as a “violent and often degenerate place that constitutes the limits
of civilization and the boundary with Asia – a zone of dangerous cultural confrontation
and mingling.”
78
This image of Ukrainians helped the Russian elite overcome their sense
of inferiority vis-à-vis their European peers
79
and shape Russian national consciousness
against the background of an inferior other. To this end, Russians developed several
stereotypes that established a hierarchical relation between themselves as a civilized
nation and Ukrainians who were imagined as either “bucolic rustics” or “anarchic

77
In a letter to his mother (dated February 2, 1830), Gogol asked her to collect some antiquities, which
abounded in the vicinity, and send them to him. He gave the following reason for his request: “I want to
win the grace of a certain grandee, a passionate lover of native antiquity, upon whom it depends to better
my lot” (PSS X, 167).
78
Shkandrij 6.
79
Andrew Wachtel has claimed that in the beginning of the nineteenth century Russia occupied a colonized
position, the result of its modernization and Europeanization that “produced a strong case of culture shock
and a nagging sense of inferiority” (50).
64
bandits.”
80
One other popular colonial stereotype of Ukrainians, their “slyness,” was
systematically applied by Russian nobles to Ukrainian petty gentry because the latter had
unexpectedly been endowed with the same titles and benefits as the former.
81
As a
consequence, more than a hundred thousand families obtained noble status, making the
Russian gentry deeply unsatisfied. An offensive label “malorossiiskaia prolaza” (Little
Russian infestation) was applied to the newly-declared nobles.
82
Such a stereotype of
Ukrainians was widespread in the circle of literary aristocrats who promoted Gogol on
the literary market. Pletnev, for example, called “khitrost’ i prolaznichestvo” (slyness
and careerism) one of the defining qualities of Ukrainians.
83
Pushkin, in his poem “Moia
rodoslovnaia” (My Genealogy) (1830), also expressed his contempt of the fact that many
Ukrainians obtained quick promotion in government administration, saying that his
grandfather “did not jump from the ranks of khokhols to become a prince.”
84

In the framework of Russian aristocrats’ role in the colonial self-fashioning of
Ukrainian writers, Pushkin’s relationship with another Ukrainian poet, Vasilii
Tumanskii, is significant and can shed light on Pushkin’s attitude toward the young

80
Bojanowska 33.
81
This became possible due to Catherine’s II edict “Zhalovannaya gramota dvorianstvu” (1785) which
intended to provide noble status only to those Little Russians who could prove their aristocratic origins in
Polish szlachta. But the process of converting into Russian nobles could take years as happened in case of
the Gogols who managed to prove their noble status only by the end of the 1840s.
82
Quoted in S. Velychenko, “Empire Loyalism and Minority Nationalism in Great Britain and Imperial
Russia, 1707 to 1914: Institutions, Law, and Nationality in Scotland and Ukraine,”421.
83
Quoted in V. Gippius, N. V. Gogol: Materialy i issledovaniia, vol. 1, 170.
84
In general, Pushkin approved of keeping differentiation between classes in Russian society and was
protective toward the purity of the Russian nobility. He expressed his opinion on this topic on December
22, 1834, at Khitrovo’s salon: “Nobility … should be limited and inaccessible [to others - Yu. I.]… If any
other class can join nobles, climbing from one rank to another, … then soon it will cease to exist…”
(Dnevnik A.S. Pushkina: 1833-1835, 24). Therefore, Pushkin illustrates very well Greenblatt’s idea that
aristocrats, to a greater degree than members of other classes, have an identity that is so rooted in their
rank, so embedded in the structures of their culture, that they are ultimately incapable of turning against it
(Greenblatt 9).
65
Gogol. Like Gogol, Tumanskii arrived in St. Petersburg in the 1820s seeking a job and
recognition from Russian literary society. Luckily, he got acquainted with Pushkin, who
introduced the Ukrainian poet to Petersburg polite society. Taking the example from his
fellow poet Baratynskii, who at the time had appointed the minor poet Nikolai Konshin
to be his pageboy, Pushkin consecrated Tumanskii as one of his “vassals.” In a letter to
his brother (January 1825), Pushkin pejoratively described Tumanskii as “My Konshin”
and accused him of filching his verses. In another letter (January 12, 1824), Pushkin
complained to Aleksandr Bestuzhev that Tumanskii and his brother Andrei were
“stealing” from him.
85
Later, in 1831, Pushkin explained Tumanskii plagiarizing from
him by his Ukrainian origin. In his letter to Pletnev, Pushkin pointed to “plenty of
beautiful qualities in Tumanskii’s personality despite some peculiarities of his Ukrainian
character.”
86
Pushkin’s personal patronage of Tumanskii was presented as the rescue of a
potentially valuable human being from what would have been an otherwise worthless
life. A few years later Pushkin used the same logic, characterizing Gogol as a “sly Little
Russian” who had taken advantage of his best ideas for plots. The idea of Gogol
“stealing” from Pushkin appears in two different sources. First, in his memoirs of 1841,
Annenkov quoted Pushkin saying that he needed to be “careful with that Little Russian
[Gogol]” who “kept fleecing” him.
87
Then, in Pushkin’s sister’s memoirs, the poet

85
See Pushkin’s letter to Bestuzhev: “He is a great guy, but I do not like him as a poet… Vasilii does not
steal anything except verses, while Andrei steals everything except verses” (Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie
sochinenii i pisem X, 64).
86
See Pushkin’s letter to Pletnev (January 31, 1831) in Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie X, 262.
87
Annenkov in his recollections presented Pushkin’s view of the fact of “stealing”: “It is known that Gogol
borrowed from Pushkin an idea of Revizor and Mertvye dushi, but it is less known that Pushkin gave him
his property (“dostoianiie”) [the plots of the above works – Yu. I.] not quite willingly. However, in his
family circle, Pushkin said laughing: “I should be careful [dealing] with this maloross: he robs me without
scruple (chto i krichat’ nel’zia)” (Veresaev 179).
66
complained to his wife Natalia Goncharova that a “sly Little Russian [Gogol] used his
plot.”
88
Pushkin’s general attitude toward Gogol in the 1830s was by and large
determined by the colonial patronage that allowed Pushkin, as a privileged member of
Russian society, to exercise power over the subaltern Gogol. The myth of Gogol’s
“enlightening” by Pushkin was further perpetuated in the mid-1830s, when Gogol had
achieved great popularity and Pushkin, as the older poet, claimed credit for Gogol’s
professional success.
89

Not only Pushkin, but also Aleksandra Smirnova, a court lady and a close friend
of Gogol, racialized and presented him to Russian society in 1830 as a stubborn and sly
Ukrainian. In her diary and correspondence, she repeatedly referred to herself and to
Gogol as khokhlachka and khokhol. Smirnova’s first encounter with Gogol occurred in
1830 in the house of Princess Elizaveta Repnina (also known as Warette) while Gogol
was tutoring Repnina’s daughter Maria. Complaining that Repnina prevented her from
talking to the “shy khokhol,” Smirnova presents Gogol within the framework of colonial
proprietorship: “From a distance I saw Warette’s khokhol.”
90
Smirnova’s amusement at
seeing an “authentic khokhol” turns immediately into a desire to “tame” him. Her
repeated attempts to domesticate a “stubborn khokhol” are documented in her diary.
91

88
“My tongue is my enemy. Gogol is a sly maloross; he took advantage of my plot” (Quoted in Mashinskii,
Gogol v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov 630).
89
Pushkin’s associate, Pavel Nashchokin, for example, emphasized Pushkin’s patroniage saying that he
“set Gogol up in the world,” fostering Gogol’s professional development and promoting him as a writer
(Veresaev 179). According to Sollogub, Pushkin called himself “a god-father” of Gogol’s comedy Revizor
(Veresaev 178).
90
Quoted in Shenrok, A. O. Smirnova i N. V. Gogol v 1829-1852 godakh 52.
91
See excerpts from Smirnova’s diary in Shenrok, A. O. Smirnova i N. V. Gogol: “Сверчок очень добр, он
быстро приручил бедного хохла” (Sverchok [Pushkin’s nickname] is very kind, he immediately tamed a
poor khokhol [Gogol]) (54); “Они так дразнили Гоголя за его дикость и застенчивость, что он наконец
67
The passage quoted below presents the curious discussion that occurred in the 1840s
among Smirnova, Ivan Aksakov and Gogol:
[Aksakov asks] - Aleksandra Osipovna, tell us how you met with Nikolai
Vasil’evich.
[Smirnova says] – I am bored with you, Ivan Sergeevich! Leave me alone!
I do not remember at all. What does it matter to you?..
[Gogol says] – Well, listen to me. I taught a lesson to a lady, a very boring
lesson. I am not a good teacher… My poor student was yawning, when
Aleksandra Osipovna and the student’s sister came and immediately
recognized the khokhol in me. We [Ukrainians] are twins with Great
Russians, but apparently every khokhol has a special physiognomy, as well
as every Muscovite. Aleksandra Osipovna instantly noticed that the sky of
the Northern Palmyra burdens and depresses the khokhol. She already
knew that P. A. Pletnev welcomed me and that V. A .Zhukovskii and A. S.
Pushkin were favorably disposed toward the khokhol. The next day she
ordered Pletnev to take the khokhol to her… A. S. Pushkin said:
“Aleksandra Osipovna, shelter the khokhol and scold him when he
becomes depressed,” and Vasilii Andreevich mumbled [to me]: “Do you
see, brother, that Pletnev was right when he railed at you for your
foolishness: you did not want to come and now you are happy that you
came and will be grateful that we grabbed and brought you the khokhol.
92

At first glance, this account seems to show how Gogol “played up” to the
“domesticating” colonial discourse developed in the circle of Russian literary aristocrats.
But one should not ignore the fact that Gogol’s “recollection” in the passage above is
double-framed; it is Smirnova’s daughter who recorded her mother retelling Gogol’s
story of his entrée into the high Petersburg society. Although Smirnova’s accounts
proved to be a popular source of information about Gogol, her recollection of a
conversation that happened about thirty year earlier (the account was written in the
1850s) cannot be literally taken as the writer’s own perception of himself. Furthermore,

перестал стесняться” (They ) [Pushkin and Zhukovskii] teased Gogol so much for his wildness and
shyness that he eventually stopped being shy (55); “Великий князь говорил со мной о Гоголе; он
прозвал его ‘Малоросс, прирученный доньей Соль [Smirnova]’” (The Great Prince [Mikhail] talked
with me about Gogol; he called him “maloross [a Ukrainian] tamed by donna Sol [Smirnova’s nickname]”
(84).
92
Quoted in Shenrok, A. O. Smirnova i N. V. Gogol 46-48.
68
the ironic tone of Gogol’s indirect speech and the repetition of the word khokhol seven
times within a short paragraph suggest that Gogol both played up and mocked the
colonial stereotype.
93
In neither his literary texts nor essays and letters had Gogol ever
used the derogatory “khokhol.” Repeating “khokhol” after Smirnova Gogol mimicked
the colonial discourse, disrupted the colonial authority and transformed it into mockery.
Gogol’s response to the colonial stereotype clearly indicates the self/other
dichotomy created by postcolonial identification. As Bhabha has put it, individuals
rethink their sense of self not just in relation to the other, but also in how they behave
owing to the very existence of the other (Location 65). Russian society imposed its
stereotypical presumptions about Ukrainians as sly, lazy and stubborn people on Gogol
and involved him in relations of colonial patronage. In this process, Gogol’s identity was
subjected to its power through the discourses of colonial patronage that framed his self-
representation that became an arena of complexity and controversy.
2.3. Inventing the Fictional Persona of Rudy Pan’ko: Towards Gogol’s
Ideology of Self-Fashioning
The view of Gogol as colonial other by Russian society in 1830-1831 played a
crucial role in the development and later reception of his fictional mask of Pan’ko. When
scholars inquire into the problem of Gogol’s authorship in Vechera, they usually
emphasize the pragmatic reasons for Gogol to conceal his authorship and hide behind this
mask.
94
One should not underestimate the patronizing attitude of the literary aristocrats

93
Another stereotype about the laziness of Ukrainians became the occasion to ingratiate himself with
another Gogol’s literary idol, the Russian poet Ivan Dmitriev. In his letter to Dmitriev (November 30,
1832), Gogol blamed himself for “laziness” which he attributed to the place of his origin – Ukraine:
(“лень…, вывезенная мною из Малороссии”) (PSS X, 247).
94
Stephen Moeller-Sally views Gogol’s use of pseudonyms in 1830-1831as revelation of the anxiety as the
69
towards Gogol, which impacted the production of the tales and creation of a blabbering
Ukrainian narrator. There are several telling facts that Gogol was ready to publish the
tales under his real name before May 1831. First, Gogol had already established his
authorship having used his real name in the essay Zhenshchina (Woman) which was
published in early 1831 before the publication of Vechera. So, it is likely that, when
Gogol finished the tales in the spring of 1831, he was prepared to sign them with his own
name. Second, in the end of 1830 – beginning of 1831, Gogol had already finished Book
One of Vechera, but for some reason he did not publish any of the tales in Pletnev’s
Literaturnaia gazeta and Del’vig’s Severnye tsvety, reserving them for publication in a
separate book. Third, in March 1831 he requested a large amount of money from his
mother to finance the publication of his “porosia” (piglet), which in all likelihood
referred to the finalized manuscript of Vechera. Finally and most importantly, there is the
evidence of Panteleimon Kulish, Gogol’s first biographer, that Pletnev inspired and
orchestrated the creation of the fictitious mask:
By May 1831 he [Gogol] had completed several of the tales that were to
form the first volume of Evenings on a Farm near Dikan’ka. Not sure how
to go about publishing these tales, Gogol turned to P. A. Pletnev for
advice. Pletnev wanted to shield the young man from the pull of literary
parties and to protect him from the preconceived notions of people who
had met Gogol personally or had read his first literary experiments and
had not received a favorable impression. For these reasons he advised
Gogol to observe on this first occasion a strict incognito, and he invented a
subtitle for the tales that would arouse the public’s curiosity. Thus the
tales appeared as having been edited by the bee-keeper Rudy Pan’ko, who
was supposed to live near Dikan’ka, which belonged to Prince Kochubei.
(Veresaev 100)

author that Gogol felt “after the embarrassingly poor reception” of his first work, Hanz Kuechalgarten
(1829). See S. Moeller-Sally “0000; or, The Sign of the Subject in Gogol’s Petersburg” in Russian
Subjects; Empire, Nation and the Culture of the Golden Age (1998).
70
As follows from this account, Gogol initially did not conceive of the stories within the
framework of the fictitious editor Rudy Pan’ko. The title and the mask of Pan’ko was
suggested by Pletnev and served the interests of the “literary aristocrats” who aimed to
win over the reading audience from such middle-brow writers as Faddei Bulgarin and
Osip Senkovskii. The beginning of the 1830s saw a rapid decline of the literary
aristocrats’ popularity due to the emergence of a mass audience. Pletnev believed that
Gogol’s tales oriented toward this new audience could help the literary aristocrats
increase the circulation of their publications and used Gogol’s Rudy Pan’ko to prove that
literary aristocrats could also satisfy the tastes of a broader readership. Thus, as the
reward for serving the interests of his patrons, Gogol gained access to Russian literary
elite. The result of this mystification was quite unexpected both for the patron Pletnev
and for the patronized Gogol. What Pletnev helped to create became a brand name for
Gogol and affected his further identification as the other in Russian society. Gogol’s
“passing” as a blabbering Dikan’ka beekeeper was so successful that the difference
between the subject and the image became unrecognizable. To a certain extent, this was
due to the suggestive nature of the biographical legend behind the mask of Pan’ko.
Let us first consider the odd name, Rudy Pan’ko. “Rudy,” a Ukrainian word for
red-haired, is associated in folklore with secret knowledge possessed by people of certain
professions, particularly by beekeepers. “Pan’ko” (Pan-ko) was formed from Gogol’s
grandfather name Panas (in Ukrainian), attaching the suffix –ko to the contracted root:
this was in accord with the old Ukrainian and Russian tradition of taking a name based on
the grandfather.
95
Further, the use of the toponym “Dikan’ka” corresponded to the

95
For example, Russian Tsar Peter I, while traveling in Europe, used the fictitious name Mikhailov, which
71
widespread romantic tradition of marking the author’s place of origin in his/her book’s
title,
96
and Dikan’ka alludes to Gogol’s place of origin. Located near Vasil’evka, Gogol’s
family estate, Dikan’ka in the beginning of the nineteenth century had remained a
legendary place famous for its “dikii,” or wild, forest in which a remnant of Cossacks hid
from imperial forces. There were also other reasons to put Dikan’ka in the title. The
village belonged to the Kochubei family, which was conspicuously loyal to the Russian
Empire.
97
In the 1820s - early 1830s, Dikan’ka had often appeared in the press thanks to
its owner, Viktor Kochubei,
98
whose career had enjoyed a meteoric rise in St. Petersburg.
He had been appointed chairman of the State Council and Committee of Ministers, and in
the late 1820s was granted the title of Prince. In “Preface” to Book One, Pan’ko says that
Dikan’ka has already become a well-known village (“Про Диканьку же, думаю, вы
наслушались вдоволь” (About Dikan’ka, I think, you must have heard enough) (PSS I,
106)),
99
hinting at Kochubei, who had boasted about his grand estate in Dikan’ka, but
who at the same time who had lost all connection with his native culture.
100

referred to his grandfather Mikhail. On the formation of Ukrainian names and, particularly, Gogol’s family
name see Markevich, “Zametka o psevdonime N. V. Gogolia ‘Rudyi Pan’ko’.”
96
Many Ukrainian writers before and during Gogol’s career resorted to encoding their place of origin into
their pen names: for example, Hryhorii Kvitka (Hryts’ko Osnov’ianenko from the town of Osnova) and
Vladimir Dal’ (Kazak Luganskii from Lugan’).
97
One of Viktor Kochubei’s ancestors had warned Peter I about Mazepa’s treason.
98
As Zviniatskovskii discovered that in the early nineteenth century there was no more fashionable topic
for gossips in St. Petersburg high society than Kochubei’s wealth and power (Pushkin had even put it in
verse: “bogat i slaven Kochubei” (Kochubei is wealthy and famous).
99
“Велика важность, что Кочубей мерял нашу землю! Пусть он хоть всю ее поместит у себя на
плане! Мы можем поместить его Диканьку у себя на плане” (What does it matter that Kochubei
measured our land! Let him map it all on his plan! We can map his Dikan’ka at our plan) (PSS X, 270).
Gogol’s bold challenge was in some sense realized with the publication of his Vechera. English translations
of Gogol’s Vechera are quoted from Gogol, N. Village Evenings near Dikan’ka and Mirgorod. Transl.
Christopher English (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
100
In order to prove his loyalty to the Russian Empire, Kochubei announced that he had become “more
Russian than anyone in [his] principles, [his] circumstances, and [his] manners” and declared that he feared
72
Therefore, the name Rudy Pan’ko, formed like a Ukrainian prizvis'ko (a nickname
that reflects its bearer’s profession and/or origins), epitomized Gogol’s personal myth and
revealed the fusion of the social persona, the true author, and his literary projection in the
figure of the fictitious editor/narrator.
101
This blurring of boundaries was, according to
Grabowicz, a peculiar trade-mark feature of the nineteenth-century Ukrainian writers
working in Russian imperial culture (e.g. Kotliarevs’ky, Kvitka-Osnov’ianenko, Somov,
etc.). The narrative masks of simple-minded Ukrainian narrators, created by these writers,
enacted the stereotype of Ukrainian culture as “low” and suitable only for amusement of
the imperial audience, offering their authors marketable alter-egos. Capitalizing on this
tradition, Gogol created his Pan’ko who seems to be totally dependent on the
metropolitan audience, but at the same time distance himself from imperial reality and
canonical poetics. Contrary to the device of the suplika
102
used by many Ukrainian
writers who adapted “low” Ukrainian culture for the elevated taste of the Russian
audience, the opening lines of Pan’ko’s “Preface” to Book One of Vechera reproduce the
voice of a metropolitan reader indignant over the beekeeper’s decision to publish his
book:
103

the very thought of ending his life “vegetating in Ukraine” (Sanders 111, 107).
101
In general, the act of naming is a powerful device in literary forgeries and mystifications which serves
not so much to conceal but to highlight a writer’s personal legend. As Margaret Russet aptly notes, the
authority of the name is enhanced by its position as an object of desire: it “holds the place of a certain lack”
and therefore is “perceived as a point of supreme plentitude” (162).
102
The meta-literary device of the suplika (from Latin “supplico” [sub+plico], which literally means to
“kneel”, to “plead” with someone), emerged in Ukrainian baroque literature in the sixteenth century and
was used by a folk narrator speaking the Ukrainian vernacular with the intention of imagining and
constructing a community of writers and readers. Through the meta-literary sphere, the vernacular entered
the realm of familiar communication and familiar letters and in the beginning of the nineteenth century
expanded into other genres and channels of communication.
103
Importantly, the first line of Vechera reiterates the beginning of Somov’s tale “Oboroten’” (Werewolf),
“’What sort of title is this,’ you will say or think, my dear readers.” Cf. that of Gogol “What sort of oddity
73
Это что за невидаль: “Вечера на хуторе близ Диканьки”?
Что это за “Вечера”? И швырнул в свет какой-то пасечник! Слава
богу! еще мало ободрали гусей на перья и извели тряпья на
бумагу! Еще мало народу, всякого звания и сброду, вымарало
пальцы в чернилах! Дернула же охота и пасичника дотащиться
вслед за другими! Право, печатной бумаги развелось столько, что
не придумаешь скоро, что бы такое завернуть в нее.
What sort of oddity is this: Evenings on a Farm near Dikan’ka?... And
thrown into the world by some beekeeper? As though not enough geese
had been plucked for pens and rags made into paper! As though not
enough people of all classes have blackened their fingers with ink! A
beekeeper has to be seized by the desire to follow their example! Really,
there’s so much printed paper around these days that you can hardly think
what to wrap up in it. (PSS I, 103)
This paragraph creates a certain ironic frame for the perception of Pan’ko’s ingratiation
with the imperial audience. It seems that Pan’ko not so much assumes an apologetic
stance towards the elite reader but rather parodies the anxiety of a provincial
unsophisticated author who, from the viewpoint of the imperial audience, being a man of
the lower class, has nothing worthwhile to tell. Pan’ko’s ingratiation with metropolitan
readers is nothing but a mode of deception: Pan’ko assumes that readers will believe the
reverse of what he says about himself. That is, he is not a semi-literate bumpkin, a novice
in a literary enterprise, but a crafty writer finely manipulating readers’ expectations and
tastes. Applying Slavoj Žižek’s idea of ironic self-mimicry that “man is capable of
deceiving by means of truth itself” (73), it could be said that Pan’ko’s “slyness” is not a
mimetic representation of the colonial stereotype, but rather a representation of
Ukrainians representing themselves to the metropolitan Russian audience. Balancing
between differentiation from imperial society and inclusion into it, Pan’ko operates in the
“in-between” space of Ukrainian and imperial cultures and becomes one of those hybrid

is this, Evenings on a Farm near Dikan’ka? What sort of evenings are these?”
74
agents who find their “voice in a dialectic that does not seek cultural supremacy or
sovereignty” but “deploy the partial culture from which they emerge to construct visions
of community…” (Bhabha, “Culture’s In-Between” 58).
Taking into account Pan’ko’s manner of communication with the imperial
audience, one might be tempted to say that it echoed Gogol’s own concurrent self-
fashioning as a provincial Ukrainian making his way into elite society. This is precisely
the argument pursued by Bojanowska. She claims that throughout the production of
Vechera Gogol played out the role of an inferior Ukrainian writer totally dependent on
the imperial audience’s grace. However, it is difficult to say what Gogol’s primary task
was – to play the role of a Ukrainian jester aiming to entertain the metropolitan audience
with his awkward language and eccentric story-telling or to parody the expectations and
colonial stereotypes of this audience. The persona of Pan’ko simultaneously became
Gogol’s “second self,” which impersonated his originating consciousness, and his anti-
self, that is, an object of desire, which was intrinsically linked to Gogol’s complex
confrontation with his Ukrainian national identity. In other words, Gogol, as the
empirical man, could be regarded as a more or less persuasive imitation of his textual
self, Pan’ko. In the act of self-fashioning as Pan’ko, Gogol’s personality might itself be
considered a performance. This is exactly the argument about authorship that has been
made by poststructuralists since the 1970s. Subjecthood per se has been viewed as
something derived from social performance; the reward for “fitting in” promises nothing
less than personhood itself. Therefore, acting “like yourself” and acting “like someone
else” are seen as intricately linked.
104
Viewed within this theoretical framework, the mask

104
For Lacan, for example, camouflage is the very texture of subjectivity: it unravels the social masking
75
of Pan’ko was a strategic project of colonial mimicry that Gogol performed during the
1830s trying to “fit in” with the Russian literary elite. The mask of Pan’ko encapsulated
Gogol’s personal experience of the “domesticated Other,” but at the same time it allowed
Gogol to assert his ethnic and cultural difference. Because the persona of Pan’ko
actualized so many aspects of Gogol’s own identity, it produced an unexpected self-
recognition of that side of his identity that remained not-yet-recognized by him before the
publication of Vechera.
It is important to note that soon after the publication of Vechera the purely
fictional device of Pan’ko extended beyond the boundaries of the text and stimulated the
blurring of the boundaries between the fictional identity of Pan’ko and Gogol’s own
identity. The void that emerged between the absent author
105
and the text created space
for what Michel Foucault termed as “the author function,”
106
to which Gogol’s readers
reductively attributed the features of the text. For about three years (from the publication
of Book One in 1832 to the publication of Mirgorod in 1835), the actual name of the
author of Vechera was kept secret, and the reading public metonymically connected the

that all subjects assume. Similarly, Jean Baudrillard has observed that “the passion to become object” is
inherent in the subject itself (91). The cultural anthropologist Roger Caillois also studies “disguise” as a
“mode of sociability.” Thus, the scholar discerns in the “fascination with the Other” inherent in disguise a
fundamentally existential desire: being outside or beside oneself provides an inestimable source of psychic
pleasure and nourishment (87). In addition to the euphoria of self-displacement, invisibility also appears to
afford all kinds of subjective realizations, from physical to moral actualization. Self-erasure and self-
fulfillment fuse: the subject effects mimicry in order to lose itself and, in doing so, finds itself. Therefore,
for Caillois too, subjecthood and objecthood possess similar ontological purchases.
105
It is important to keep in mind that Rudy Pan’ko is presented only as the editor of the tales; he authors
only two prefaces to Book One and Two and the introductions to “Vecher nakanune Ivana Kupala” and
“Ivan Fedorovich Spon’ka i ego tetushka.”
106
In his essay “What is an Author?” (1969), Foucault claimed the ascription of an author’s name to
literary discourse rather than to a concrete real-life person, which makes authorship a contingent affair. If
the author-function, according to Foucault, is a social construct projected onto author’s verbal products and
serving some ideological purpose, then Gogol’s Rudy Pan’ko is not just a fictitious editor and narrator, but
a projection of the literary aristocrat’s colonial desire for the other.
76
fictional persona of Pan’ko to the real author. More informed readers like Vladimir
Odoevskii and Nikolai Iazykov learned the author’s identity from hearsay.
107
Less
informed readers, like the minor writer Nikolai Mukhanov, could not guess who was
hiding behind the guise of Pan’ko.
108
Even when the author of Vechera exposed himself
to the public, the book was still associated not with the real man, Nikolai Gogol, but with
the fictitious persona, Rudy Pan’ko. In the introduction to his own book Dosugi invalida
(Invalid’s Leisure) (1832-1835), Vladimir Ushakov jocularly referred not to Gogol, but to
Pan’ko asking him to “zasvidetel’stvovat’ pochtenie” (pay his respects) to Ivan
Fedorovich Shpon’ka and his aunt, Madam Tsupchevskaia, characters in “Ivan
Fedorovich Shpon’ka i ego tetushka” of Book Two of Vechera. Three years after the
publication of Gogol’s tales, Odoevskii still attributed the success of the book not to
Gogol, but to the “romanist” (novelist) Pan’ko, whose simple-hearted personality
corresponded to the spirit of the book in the best way (223). Moreover, popular print
books under the name “Rudy Pan’ko” continued to be widely circulated even in the
second-half of the nineteenth century.
109
Therefore, Gogol’s public persona, received by a
broad audience as Rudy Pan’ko, became reduced to a kind of object, alienated from his

107
In 1832, Odoevskii wrote to his friend Aleksandr Koshelev: «На сих днях вышли «Вечера на хуторе»
- Малороссийские народные сказки. Они, говорят, написаны молодым человеком, по имени
Гоголем» (Recently, “Vechera na khutore. Malorossiiskie skazki” came out from print. People say that a
young man named Gogol wrote them) (Quoted in Chicherin, “Neizvestnoe vyskazyvanie V. F. Odoevskogo
o Gogole” 72).
108
Mukhanov wrote to his brother: “Здесь вышли две книжоньки, вечера на Хуторе, не знаю кем,
которые очень хвалят” (Here appeared two books, evenings on a Farm, [I] do not know whose, but
everybody praises them). (Quoted in Dmitrieva, “Pozhiv v takoi tesnoi sviazi s ved'mami i koldunami”
138).
109
Abram Reitblat discusses the remaking of Gogol’s texts, primarily Vechera and Mirgorod, in lubochnyi
(popular print) editions in the second half of the nineteenth century. See Reitblat, Ot Bovy k Bal’montu
(1991). Damiano Rebecchini also presents an interesting account of transformations of the plots of some
tales (particularly, “Noch’ pered rozhdestvom” and “Strashnaia mest’”) by anonymous authors for peasant
readers. See Rebecchini “Kak krest’iane chitali Gogolia: popytka rekonstruktsii retseptsii.”
77
person. The publication of Vechera launched a mythopoetic process by which the
author’s personality was constructed in readers’ minds out of the projection of the literary
legend onto the biographical one.
Such a projection is evident in Sergei Aksakov’s impression of Gogol upon their
first meeting. Although Aksakov was informed by Mikhail Pogodin of “who Rudy
Pan’ko was,” he was confused at the moment of meeting with Gogol when instead of a
provincial simpleton he saw a young dandy: “May I introduce you to Nikolai Vasil’evich
Gogol! The effect was powerful. I became very embarrassed and ran to put on my frock
coat, mumbling empty words of trite introduction. At any other time I would not have
met Gogol in this way. All of my guests…were also somehow perplexed and silent” (10).
Aksakov’s reaction testifies to the fact that Gogol’s public appearance as a dandy was
quite out of harmony with the image of Pan’ko, a light-hearted folk narrator. This also
suggests the reductive identification of the author with his fictional persona: Gogol, as a
Romantic writer, needed an audience for his performance of selfhood, but audience
perception threatened to replace the author with the image it had created for itself by
extrapolating from the fictional text. The audience was expecting a public persona whose
biography and works appeared unified and continuous.
2.4. Not a Russian/ Like a Russian: the Reception of Gogol by Russian
Society after the Publication of Vechera in the 1830s-1840s
In order to understand Gogol’s ambiguous position in Russian culture, one should
consider the changing reception of Gogol’s tales in the 1830s-1840s. Gogol hoped that
the mask of Pan’ko would appeal to the Russians’ assumptions about Ukraine, securing
78
his entry into metropolitan culture, but instead it contributed to the myth of Gogol as a
colonial other.
Critics who were not initiated into the secret of Vechera’s authorship
reconstructed the author’s identity arbitrarily. One of the first who projected the
uniqueness of Ukrainian national spirit in Vechera onto the author’s image was Vasilii
Ushakov. In his review of Gogol’s book, Ushakov praised the efforts of Ukrainian writers
to maintain a living connection with their land of origin in contrast to the superficial and
derivative efforts of Russians.
110
Ushakov viewed Vechera as an integral part of a broader
project among Ukrainian intellectuals to preserve their national heritage. Similarly,
Nikolai Nadezhdin in his journal Teleskop (Telescope) praised the depiction of “national
Ukrainian life” in Vechera and considered its author a Ukrainian writer who strove to
reproduce the original “Ukrainian dialect.”
111
However, the author’s Ukrainianness was
later refuted by Andrei Tsarynnyi, Gogol’s childhood friend and a minor Ukrainian
writer. Deeply unsatisfied with the depiction of Ukrainian customs and history in
Vechera, Tsarynnyi pointed out numerous ethnographic errors in Pan’ko’s book,
criticizing him for his ignorance of Ukrainian culture and customs. Tsarynny’s
denunciation of Vechera misled another critic, Nikolai Polevoi. Polevoi, a rival of
Pushkin and other literary aristocrats, thought that the mask of Pan’ko concealed some
Russian writer from Pushkin’s circle, and declared Pan’ko a Muscovite who had never
been to Ukraine.
112
The critic reproached Pan’ko for not developing a distinctive style
and for failing in his attempt to perform a literary role. About a year later Polevoi was

110
Severnaia pchela (1831) 219-220.
111
Teleskop 5 (1831) 558-563.
112
Moskovskii telegraf 5 (1831) 91-95.
79
embarrassed for not having recognized an ethnic Ukrainian in the author of Vechera.
When Book Two of Vechera was published in 1832, Polevoi already knew the true
identity of its author and changed his position: now he discerned in Rudy Pan’ko a true
Ukrainian character.
In the mid-1830s, Russian society began to appropriate Gogol into the field of
Russian culture. Partially it was the consequence of Gogol’s switch from Ukrainian to
Russian topics in his new book Arabeski (Arabesques) in 1834 that brought him fame as
a Russian writer. Thus, Vissarion Belinskii in his article “O russkoi povesti i povestiakh
g. Gogolia” (On the Russian Tale and the Tales of Mr. Gogol) (1835) announced that
under the mask of a simple-minded narrator Gogol had concealed “purely Russian”
humor and suggested that the writer would soon shed his Ukrainianness.
Another cycle of Gogol’s Ukrainian tales, Mirgorod, prompted Stepan Shevyrev
to voice the Russian audience’s concerns about Gogol’s appropriateness to Russian
letters and demanded he forsake the topic of Ukraine that limited him to provincialism in
favor of topics of urgent importance to Russian society. Therefore, when the second
edition of Vechera appeared in print in 1836, Russian society had already formed an
opinion of Gogol as a Russian writer and urged him to abandon “insignificant” topics
associated with Ukraine.
The appropriation of Gogol as a Russian writer proceeded throughout the 1840s
and it became impossible for Gogol to assume an “in-between” position. If in the early
1830s Russian society appreciated Gogol’s otherness and affirmed his relevance to both
national cultures, in the 1840s the very existence of Ukrainian culture and Ukrainian
80
alterity were dismissed,
113
and Gogol became extremely anxious about being branded as
a light-hearted Ukrainian joker in the eyes of Russian society. Thus, introducing his first
collected works which appeared in 1842, Gogol seemed to be ashamed of his success as
the author of Vechera and apologized for republishing the tales in his Sochineniia
(Collected Works):
Всю первую часть следовало бы исключить вовсе: это
первоначальные ученические опыты, недостойные строгого
внимания читателя; но при них чувствовались первые сладкие
минуты молодого вдохновения, и мне стало жалко исключить их, как
жалко исторгнуть из памяти первые игры невозвратной юности.
Снисходительный читатель может пропустить весь первый том и
начать чтение со второго.
The entire first volume [of Vechera] should really have been omitted: it
consists of a pupil’s first experiments which are not worth the close
attention of the reader; yet when I wrote them, I felt sweet moments of a
youthful inspiration and I considered it a pity to omit them, just as it is a
pity to banish from memory the first youthful games which are never to
return. The sympathetic reader may skip the whole of the first part and
begin reading at the second. (PSS I, 25-26)
However, in Gogol’s Vechera the affirmation of Ukrainian identity was so powerful that
it became a challenge for the writer and his Russian audience to efface his ethnic and
cultural otherness. Because the actual identity of the author remained a secret until the
second edition of Vechera, signed as “sochinenie g-na Gogolia” (Mr. Gogol’s work),
came out in print in 1836 the boundaries between Pan’ko’s fictional identity and Gogol’s
personal identity had become blurred. Russian society not only transposed Gogol’s
strategic alterity realized under the mask of Pan’ko from the literary text onto his own

113
Claiming the impossibility for Ukrainian culture to have its own great poets, Belinskii wrote in 1841: “If
a great poet were to appear in Little Russia, then it would only be on condition that he be a Russian poet, a
son of Russia… Great poets appear only in great nations. And what kind of nation can there be without
great and independent political significance? Gogol is living proof of this: his poetry contains many purely
Ukrainian elements, which cannot possibly exist in Russian [poetry]; but who will call him a Ukrainian
poet? (Sobranie sochineniiV, 330)
81
personality and forward onto other Gogol’s texts,
114
but also enveloped it in colonial
discourse. Memoirs of Gogol after 1832 abound with descriptions of the writer’s
appearance and character in the spirit of colonial stereotypes about Ukrainians. Russian
society repeatedly portrayed Gogol according to stereotypical presumptions about their
slyness, laziness, and stubbornness.
One of the first mentions of Gogol’s ethnic appearance was made by Aleksandr
Nikitenko, an ethnic Ukrainian who would later become one of Gogol’s strictest censors.
He wrote on April 22, 1832:
[I] was at a party at the house of Gogol-Yanovskii, the author of the tales
of the beekeeper, Red-haired Pan’ko, which are quite entertaining,
especially for a Ukrainian. He is a young man about 26 years-old, of
pleasant appearance. However, there is some slyness in his physiognomy
which makes one distrust him. (Veresaev 126)
The “slyness” that Nikitenko discerned in Gogol’s physiognomy echoed the colonial
reception of Gogol as a crafty Ukrainian who encroached on the status of a Russian
writer. It seems quite odd to hear such a judgment from a native Ukrainian who had also
recently moved to the Russian capital to pursue an imperial career. This indicates yet
again that many Ukrainian intellectuals strove to repress their ethnic difference and to
assimilate into the imperial system. Nikitenko’s mistake in identifying Gogol’s age (in
1832 the writer was only 23 years old) is not accidental; it points to the fact that this
recollection was written retrospectively, at the end of the 1830s, when the image of a sly
Ukrainian had already become firmly attached to Gogol.

114
Reviewing Mirgorod, Polevoi noted that Gogol is inimitable in the “sly simplicity of his outlook on the
world and people” (“khitraia prostota vzgliada na mir i liudei”) (PSS II, 693).
82
Another of Gogol’s acquaintances, Nikolai Berg, anticipating his first meeting
with Gogol, immediately recognized the khokhol in his “cunning Ukrainian” look and
smile:
In Gogol’s entire figure there was something unfree and clenched in a
fist… His glances darted here and there were almost always glances from
under the brows, slantwise, in passing, as if cunningly… One who is
acquainted with the khokhol’s physiognomies a little bit could recognize
the khokhol immediately. At once I grasped that this was Gogol.
(Veresaev 438-39) [emphasis added].
The representation of Gogol as a sly Ukrainian (lukavyi khokhol) in accounts of the
Russian elite imprinted this stereotype in the consciousness of the audience. Branded as
‘khokhlik’ [Ukrainian] once Vechera appeared in print, Gogol in the 1840s was still
perceived as such by most Russian aristocrats. Sergei Aksakov recorded such a biased
opinion of Gogol’s personality among the Slavophiles, which was largely based on his
ethnic performance as Rudy Pan’ko:
After dinner Gogol had a long conversation with Grigorii Ivanovich about
art in general: about music, theater and the peculiarities of Ukrainian
poetry; he was talking surprisingly well! Everything [in his talk – Yu. I.]
was so new, original and true! And what was the result? Grigorii
Ivanovich, this intelligent, educated and insightful man, a man of high
moral standards, told me and Vera that Ukrainian people are shallow and
that Gogol himself is that kind of khokhol he presents in his tales
(Aksakov 26).
Gogol’s reception in Russian society, initiated by his literary game in Vechera, entailed
his own transformation through the act of cultural differentiation. Thanks to his masterful
play with the mask of Pan’ko, Gogol achieved the status of “outsider-within” in the circle
of Russian aristocrats. Discussions of his Ukrainian tales prompted Gogol to think of his
entire creative work in connection with his ethnic identity: how to place himself within
the field of Russian letters and how to make Russian society accept this placement as
83
right and proper. As Gogol moved between sameness and difference, he was continually
negotiating his in-between position in relation to both Russian and Ukrainian culture. If
Gogol’s representation of himself as the exotic other could be read as a deliberate
mockery of imperial discourse, then his integration into Russian society and
internalization of its stereotypes became dubious as well. The halo of otherness
surrounded Gogol throughout his entire life
115
especially in the second half of the 1830s -
1840s when Russian society became increasingly chauvinistic.
2.4. Gogol’s Self-Fashioning in the 1830s: Between Imitation and
Alterity
From roughly 1831 to 1834, Gogol’s self-representation and social performance
underwent a significant transition from mere reproduction of the cultural code of the
honnête homme to the visual coding of his ethnic alterity. Gogol’s self-fashioning right
after the publication of Vechera can be interpreted as colonial mimicry that created the
“uncertainty” of his representation as a Russian dandy and threatened the imperial subject
with a kind of resemblance.
Many of Gogol’s contemporaries testified that in social settings Gogol was not
only fond of playing roles and fashioning his own self, but of manipulating his image
depending on his artistic and ideological goals. These all might seem to correspond to the
theatricality of everyday behavior developed in the Romantic age “as an essentially moral
activity, one necessary for social harmony” because “members of society expected to

115
See Aksakov’s account on Gogol’s forty-first birthday party celebrated in 1850, which discloses the
overt racism in describing three “khokhols” – Gogol and his two friends Maksymovych and Bodianskii – in
whose performance Aksakov catches a resemblance to Russia’s Asiatic subjects (Gippius, Gogol 217).
84
maintain a variety of costumes, properties, personae, and literary styles.”
116
The role of
the Russian aristocracy in establishing the norms of cultural behavior of a society man
cannot be underestimated. In the 1830s, Russian culture was still bound to the “ideology
embedded in the language, behavior, self-image, art, and ethics of Russia’s cultural elite”
(Todd, Fiction and Society 44). Regardless of the increasing influence of the Slavophile
ideology that called for a return to national roots in language as well as in costumes,
Russian society still judged someone’s appearance and manners in accordance with the
code of the honnête homme. In keeping with the social and cultural code of his rank, a
Russian aristocratic self had to display a sufficient number of elements of the code in
order to be properly deciphered and identified as one, but at the same time each honnête
homme was supposed to create a unique personal performance. This performance
included fashioning a body, behavior (movements, gestures, manners), and speech; non-
verbal signs combined syntagmatically with verbal ones to produce a unified polysemic
text.
117

It could be said that Gogol fully embraced the power one has to impose a shape
on oneself, a power to control and negotiate one’s own identity. The writer’s letters and
the memoirs of his friends document how conscious he was about his clothes and
hairstyle and how rigidly he controlled the representation of his image in portraits.
However fond Gogol was of fashioning himself, his use of fashion and his self-

116
William Mills Todd III, “A Russian Ideology” 108.
117
In his analysis of Pushkin’s creative behavior, Yurii Lotman has demonstrated how Pushkin excelled at
switching from one behavioral code to another, or from the norm of the honnête homme, whose repertoire
of genres and styles depended on his audience, to the role of romantic hero, and finally to the role of a
dandy, who resisted society by shocking it with his dress, actions, and opinions (Pushkin 53-54). Ever since
Pushkin’s self-fashioning, a writer was required to “construct” his public self in a way to attract the reading
audience.
85
presentation reveal some discrepancies with the typical self-presentation of the time. His
desire to make himself visible as an exotic other disclosed Gogol’s participation in
colonial mimicry. At a very young age Gogol realized the provocative potential of
fashion and used it as both an adaptational and a differentiational strategy. The
combination of dandy-like attire together with an ambiguous hairstyle, which appeared in
Gogol’s dress around 1832, revealed Gogol’s desire to provoke the audience.
Let us first consider the role of imperial fashion in Gogol’s self-fashioning in
1828-1831, i.e. before the publication of Vechera. The 18-year-old graduate of a
provincial Ukrainian town began to inquire into Petersburg fashion even before his
migration to St. Petersburg in 1828. In a letter of 1827 to his older school friend Gerasim
Vysotskii, who had moved to the capital earlier, Gogol asked him about the latest fashion
trends in the capital and entrusted him to order a frock coat for him.
118
Upon his arrival in
St. Petersburg, Gogol began to smarten himself up with the necessary accoutrements of a
Russian dandy: a suit, a hat, a pair of gloves, and fur collar for his coat (Appendix 4). In a
letter to his mother of January 3, 1829, Gogol provided a detailed account of his
expenses:
В одной дороге издержано мною триста с лишком, да здесь покупка
фрака и панталон стоила мне двухсот, да сотня уехала на шляпу, на
сапоги, перчатки, извозчиков и на прочие дрянные, но необходимые

118
“Позволь еще тебя попросить об одном деле: нельзя ли заказать у вас в Петербурге портному
самому лучшему фрак для меня? Узнай, что стоит пошитье самое отличное фрака по последней
моде. Мне хочется ужасно как, чтобы к последним числам или к первому ноября я уже получил
фрак готовый. Напиши, пожалуйста, какие модные материи у вас на жилеты, на панталоны. Какой-
то у вас модный цвет на фраки? Мне очень бы хотелось сделать себе синий с металлическими
пуговицами; а черных фраков у меня много, и они мне так надоели, что смотреть на них не
хочется.” (May I ask you about a favour: could you order for me a tailcoat at the best tailor in St.
Petersburg? Find out how much an excellent custom tailored fashionable tailcoat costs. I am dying to have
my tailcoat done by the end of [October] or by November 1. Write to me, please, about fashionable fabrics
suitable for vests and trousers. What color of tailcoats is fashionable? I would like very much to make a
blue one with metal buttons; I have plenty of black tailcoats and I am bored of them) (PSS X, 102-3).
86
мелочи, да на переделку шинели и на покупку к ней воротника до 80
рублей.
On the way [to St. Petersburg] alone I spent more than three hundred
rubles, and here I paid two hundred for a suit and pants, one hundred for a
hat, and about 80 rubles for a pair of boots and gloves, for a cab and other
insignificant but necessary things, and also for the alteration of my
overcoat and for its fur-collar. (PSS X, 136)
Gogol maintained a great interest in new styles of clothing throughout his life and used
fashion to make statements, which were different at different stages of his oeuvre.
119
At
first, Gogol merely imitated the dress code of Russian dandies, which had changed
drastically since the beginning of the nineteenth century. If in the eighteenth century,
dress (official or civil) designated a certain social rank and prescribed a proper behavior,
in the 1830s, fashion, as well as everyday behavior and official rituals, was becoming
more free and symbolic.
Caught in a transition from middle-class Ukrainian milieu to high Russian society,
Gogol masked his lower class origin by incorporating some fashionable details into his
modest attire. He possessed only one frock coat whereas most of Russian gentlemen
owned three
120
and he emphasized his belonging to the caste of artists by wearing a huge

119
Pavel Annekov left an informative account of Gogol’s dress during the writer’s early years in St.
Petersburg. According to him, Gogol always aimed to impress society with his bizarre attire: “Usually, he
put on a bright motley tie, fluffed up a tall curly quaff, cloaked himself in some white, extremely short and
loose high-waisted flock-coat with puffed sleeves, that all made him look like a rooster” (Gogol v Rime.
Literaturnye vospominaniia 14-15). Smirnova and Pletnev indicated that even in the late 1840s, when
Gogol underwent his spiritual crisis and became a religious devotee, he got rid of many pleasures but not
his fashionable clothing. In 1848 Pletnev pointed out that Gogol’s “foppish appearance” (“naruzhnost’,
shchegolevataia do izyskannosti”) was in accord with his new image as a prophet-writer. While traveling
abroad Gogol liked to order new suits and vests, although, as he confessed to Smirnova, his wardrobe
included only a minimum of items (one suit, three ties and vests, and a change of underwear), “necessary to
be clean” (Quoted in Kulish, Zapiski o zhizni Gogolia 360).
120
As Olga Vainshtein in her comprehensive study of dandyism Dendi: moda, literatura, stil’ zhizni (2006)
notes, Russian dandies of the time usually had at least three different frock coats (or using the term of the
time “surtouts”) whose use depended on the social occasion: a green one for morning outings and
meetings; an indigo or azur de naples for afternoon outings; and finally a black coat for evening events,
such as balls, familiar gatherings etc (492).
87
golden chain on his vividly colored vests. Another fashionable detail that Gogol
incorporated into his wardrobe was a cheap fur collar (worth 80 rubles) that he attached
to his trench coat. More valuable fur coats or fur collars (usually made of marten, beaver,
or nutria), as well as the high-quality of coats’ fabric struck the French writer Théophile
Gautier as a sign of the unreasonable ostentation of Russian dandies.
121
It was one of the
national additions to European fashion to use valuable accessories (a golden chain, fancy
buttons, a brooch, and a seal ring) to indicate the wealth and the social status of a given
person, and although Gogol had no wealth to show off he decorated his wardrobe with
such artistic details as bright ties and vests.
Dandyism in Russian fashion had arisen as a consequence of the Napoleonic
Wars, and in particular with the Imperial Progress of Alexander I to London where
Russian officers became acquainted with new European fashions. English fashion
penetrated all ranks of Russian society and became especially popular among Russian
nobles released from mandatory state service. As the result of these changes, in the 1820s
Russian fashion was becoming more democratic, and the mundir, the traditional court
dress-coat, was gradually giving way to a fashionable siurtuk, a frock coat. Russian
intellectuals used this new dress code to express their liberal views: Pushkin, as a titular

121
Théophile Gautier, after his visit to Russia, was impressed with young Russians showing off their
wealth: «Молодые люди, не военные и не служащие, одеты в пальто на меху, цена на эти пальто
удивляет иностранца ... Мало того, что они сделаны из тонкого сукна на куньем или нутриевом
меху, на них пришиты бобровык воротники стоимостью от двухсот до трехсот рублей ... Пальто
стоимостью в тысячу не представляет собою чего-то из ряда вон выходящего ... Это и есть
незнакомая нам русская роскошь. В Санкт-Петербурге можно было бы придумать поговорку: скажи,
в какой мех ты одет, и я скажу, чего ты стоишь. Встречают по шубе» (Young men, not military
servants and not clerks, are dressed in fur-lined coats, the price of these coats impresses the foreigner …
Not only are they made of thin cloth backed with marten or nutria fur, 200- or 300-rouble collars are
attached to them… Thousand-rouble coats are not something unusual… This is Russian luxury that is
unknown to us [foreigners]. In St. Petersburg, one could make up a proverb: tell me in what fur you are
dressed and I will tell you how much you are worth. People greet each other according to the fur-coat [they
are wearing]) (Puteshestvie v Rossiiu, 43-44).
88
counselor in government administration, was compelled to wear a mundir decorated with
galloons inside and outside of court, but he often violated this code appearing in a frock
coat in high society. Ivan Panaev, another Gogol contemporary, tried to avoid wearing a
uniform and came to work in his state department wearing fashionable trousers
underneath his official uniform.
122
The changes in the fashion code liberated Russian
gentlemen and made them “personalities,” not the functions of their social positions. A
new aesthetic of theatricality manifested itself in the 1830s in the proliferation of all
kinds of fops and dandies. By means of fashion non-noble elements and members of poor
Ukrainian gentry, like Gogol himself, now had the opportunity to demonstrate their
membership with one or another social group, without necessarily belonging to it (Figure
1). Petits-maîtres (fops) and flaneurs (saunterers) invaded the Russian capital, imposing
new fashion codes on the rest of Russian society. In 1831, Gogol satirically depicted this
tendency in his story “Nevskii prospect”:
O Creator! What strange characters one meets on Nevskii Prospekt!
There is a host of such people as, when they meet you, unfailingly
look at your shoes, and, when you pass by, turn to look at your
coattails. To this day I fail to understand why this happens... At
this blessed time, from two to three in the afternoon, when Nevskii
prospekt may be called a capital in motion, there takes place a major
exhibition of the best products of humanities. One displays a foppish
frock coat with the best of beavers, another a wonderful Greek nose,
the third is the bearer of superb side-whiskers, the fourth of a pair
of pretty eyes and an astonishing little hat, the fifth of a signet

122
It is curious how civil servants reacted to Panaev’s experiments with fashion. As Panaev reported:
“Однажды я приехал в департамент в вицмундире и в пестрых клетчатых панталонах, которые
только показались в Петербурге. Я надел такие панталоны один из первых и хотел щегольнуть ими
перед моим департаментом. Эффект, произведенный моими панталонами, был свыше моего
ожидания. Когда я проходил через ряд комнат в свое отделение, чиновники штатные и нештатные
бросали свои занятия, улыбаясь, толкали друг друга и показывали на меня” (Once I came to the
department in a uniform but wearing a plaid trousers [underneath] which just had appeared in Petersburg. I
was one of the first who put on such trousers and wanted to show off in front of the department. The effect
that my trousers produced surpassed my expectations. When I was passing through the line of rooms
towards my division, the staff interrupted their work, tapped each other smiling and pointed at me) (61).
89
ring with a talisman on his smart pinkie, the sixth of a little foot
in a charming bootie, the seventh of an astonishment-arousing necktie,
the eighth of an amazement-inspiring mustache...
123

At that time imperial fashion epitomized the power of the commodity to circumscribe the
self; it also confirmed the fact that identity is something owned apart from one’s self,
something that must continuously be “put on” and displayed.
124
As early as 1830, Gogol
began to realize the power of imperial fashion. The motif of the totalizing power of dress
for social status already appears in Gogol’s unfinished tale Strashnyi kaban (A Terrible
Boar) (1830). In this tale, the frock coat metonymically signifies imperial power that
provokes fear and veneration in the locals. The story begins with the description of the
uniform of a new teacher, Ivan Osipovich, who arrives from the imperial center to the
Ukrainian countryside. The teacher’s frock-coat serves to establish a hierarchy of
imperial authority:
[С]юртук вообще (не говоря уже о синем), будь только он не из
смурого скуна, производит в селах ... удивительное влияние: где ни
показывается он, там шапки с самых неповоротливых голов
перелетают в руки, и солидные, вооруженные черными седыми
усами, загоревшие лица отмеривают в пояс почтительные поклоны.
Всех сюртуков, полагая в то число и хламиду дьячка, считалось в
селе три; ... сюртук нашего приятеля затемнял прочих собратьев
своих.
The frock coat in general (not mentioning the blue one), be it made only
not of a gloomy-colored cloth, produces a stunning effect in villages:
whenever it [the frock coat] shows up, hats from the most sluggish heads
fall into hands, and imposing faces, armed with black and gray mustaches,
reverently bow from the waist to it [the frock coat]. There were three frock
coats in the village, including the sexton’s chlamys, but our fellow’s
frock-coat outshined all the rest. (PSS III, 265)

123 The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol. Trans. Richard Peaver and Larisa Volokhonsky (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1998) 249.
124
See J. Comaroff, “Fashioning the Colonial Subject: The Empire’s Old Clothes” 220.
90
Figure 1.

Portrait of Gogol by Goriunov (1835)

In “Noch’ pered Rozhdestvom” (Christmas Eve), the ritual of exchanging indigenous
clothes for new imperial dress discloses the important ideological context. At the end of
the eighteenth century, when Ukrainian gentry, formed mostly from the former Cossack
military elite, were granted equality with Russian aristocrats, they were subject not only
91
to political subordination but also to the dress code of the Russian nobility.
125
In the tale,
this symbolic change of clothes is played out in the episode when the Cossacks, preparing
to meet with the tsarina, order Vakula to change from his peasant-like dress into the
appropriate court attire: “Надевай же платье такое, как и мы (Put on a dress similar to
that which we are wearing).”
126
Once Vakula is dressed in court attire, he wants to show
off his proficiency in “gramotnyi iazyk,” i.e. Russian. At the same time, the Cossacks,
who are also dressed in court dresses, intersperse their speech with Ukrainian words and
phrases
127
thereby making a political statement about their free spirit and demonstrating
their defiance to imperial authority, which is clear from the reaction of their “teacher,”
Count Potemkin.
128
That the Cossacks use hybrid language on purpose is corroborated
by Vakula.
129
The hybrid language of Vakula and the Cossacks mimics imperial
discursive conventions: by pretending to “fit in” with imperial authority, the Ukrainian
characters in fact turn against its forms and structures.

125
The tensions between the self-assertion of the Ukrainian gentry and their obedience to the imperial
dress code are thoroughly analyzed by Hundorova in her recent book Kitch i literatura.Travestii (2008).
126
PSS I, 234.
127
Potemkin asks the Cossacks in Russian: “Все ли вы здесь?” The Cossacks reply in Ukrainian: “Та вси,
батьку!” (PSS I, 235). Similarly, in the scene with the Catherine they speak Ukrainian (“Та спасиби,
мамо!” (Thank you, Mother!); “Як же, мамо!” (Judge for yourself, Mother!) (PSS I 236, 238)) or use the
Ukrainian forms (the vocative case, absent in Russian) speaking in Russian (“ведь человеку [In Ukrainian
“chelovik” refers to a gendered man and a husband, while in Russian it is genderless, meaning ‘a human
being’] сама знаешь, без жинки нельзя жить” (Man cannot do without a wife) (PSS I, 238)).
128
Potemkin remarks to himself during the Cossacks’ meeting with the empress that they “говорят
совершенно не то, чему он их учил” (speak not at all in the way he taught them) (PSS X, 236).
129
Listening to the Cossacks occasionally using Ukrainian phrases makes Vakula wonder why “этот
запорожец, зная так хорошо грамотный язык, говорит с царицею, как будто нарочно, самым грубым,
обыкновенно называемым мужицким наречием. “Хитрый народ!” подумал он сам себе: “верно, не
даром он это делает ” (The blacksmith was amazed to hear this Cossack, who could speak such good,
correct Russian, talking to the tsarina in the most uncouth language, just like peasant. ‘The wily fox!’ he
thought to himself, ‘I bet he has a special reason for doing that.’) (PSS I, 238).
92
Likewise, Gogol, by fashioning himself as a member of polite society, not merely
copies the colonizing culture’s language, behavior, manners and values but creates a
“blurred copy” of a Russian society man, which ultimately mimics and mocks colonial
authority. Gogol’s self-fashioning right after the publication of Vechera created
uncertainty concerning his representation as a Russian dandy, which threatened the
imperial subject with a kind of resemblance.
This manifests in two aspects of Gogol’s self-representation—his ambivalent
hairstyle and his provocative behavior in St. Petersburg salons. It was no mere chance
that around 1832, the year of the publication of Book Two, which secured for Gogol the
reputation of an entertaining, sly Ukrainian author, a curious detail appeared on Gogol’s
head - a tuft of hair elevated over his forehead, which Gogol’s contemporaries
unanimously labeled the “khokhol” (Figure 2).
130
This detail figured in the descriptions of
Gogol’s appearance, captured by Mikhail Longinov, Pavel Annenkov, and Sergei
Aksakov.
131
The khokhol was not only perceived as something exotic, deviating from
what was perceived as the “norm” in Russian society, but also came to be seen as a
pernicious mark of Ukrainian otherness. This is especially evident in Aksakov’s memoir
in which the khokhol is used both in its direct meaning (the hairdo) and metonymically as
the derogatory description of a Ukrainian.
132

130
The direct meaning of khokhol designates a long lock of hair left on top or on the front of an otherwise
clean shaven or shortly cut hairstyle – a hairstyle that was widely practiced by Ukrainian Cossacks. From
the eighteenth century forward, the word khokhol have been used metonymically toward any inhabitant of
Ukraine and gradually acquired a pejorative connotation.
131
Longinov recalled a “khokholok” on the top of Gogol’s head in 1832 when the writer was tutoring him
(Veresaev 118). Annenkov mentioned “the tall, curled and whipped up tuft of hair” on Gogol’s forehead,
making him look like a rooster (Veresaev 141). Aksakov retrospectively recorded his impression after his
first meeting with Gogol in 1832, emphasizing the khokhol in Gogol’s hairdo (Aksakov 10).
132
“Gogol’s appearance then was absolutely different and unattractive: a khokhol on his head, clean-cut
93
Figure 2.

Portrait of Gogol by Venetsianov (1834)

Richard Gregg has asserted that Gogol by fashioning his khokhol, or “quiff,”
made a statement about his ethnic allegiance (66). It is hard, however, to establish a direct
link between Gogol’s haircut and the traditional haircuts of Ukrainian Cossacks, or to
claim that his quiff was his conscious strategy of an ethnic disguise.
133
Gogol’s khokhol
was rather a discursive construct that cropped up in memoirs of his acquaintances in the

temples, shaven mustaches and chin, big and stiff collar – all imparted a completely different expression to
his face. We saw something khokhol-like and cunning in it” (Aksakov 10).
133
The portraits of a Russian poet Evgenii Baratynskii (made by Sheval’e in the 1820s) and of Gogol’s
Ukrainian friend Mykhailo Maksymovych captured them wearing very similar haircuts to that of Gogol’s
in the portrait by Venetsianov (See Firgure 2).
94
1840s-1850s, when Russian society had become extremely preoccupied with the question
of Gogol’s allegiance to Russian national identity. The khokhol betrayed a fantasy of
imperial society about cunning Ukrainians who only pretend to be loyal imperial
subjects. Russian society reconstructed Gogol’s appearance along recognizable “bodily”
lines: thanks to his ambiguous haircut Gogol was claimed to look and act as an eccentric
Ukrainian. Gogol’s urge to fashion himself “on the edge,” however, was evident only in
the first half of the 1830s. Neither in the years preceding the publication of Vechera nor
in the 1840s did Gogol wear such a culturally ambiguous hairdo. His classmates depicted
the young Gogol of the 1820s with his hair plastered closely to his head,
134
while already
in 1836 Vera Nashchokina recalled Gogol wearing a skobka, a kind of long bob, which
was traditional for Russian peasants (and which in the 1830s became very popular among
Slavophiles).
135
In 1842, Longinov, who ten years earlier had been impressed with
Gogol’s exotic haircut,
136
hardly recognized Gogol who now had a hair-cut “a la
muzhik.”
137
In the portraits of Gogol in the 1840s (for instance, by Fyodor Moller (Figure
3)), his appearance lacks any provocative detail; he is dressed in the black frock-coat
traditional for Russian intellectuals and has a mustache and longer hair. At that time,
Gogol’s appearance and fashion resembled that of the Russian Slavophiles, particularly
that of the brothers Aksakov, Shevyrev, Pogodin and others, with whom the writer began

134
See, for example, recollections of Gogol’s teacher Ivan Kul’zhynskii (Veresaev 76) and classmate
Vasilii Liubich-Romanovich (Veresaev 79).
135
Nashchokina wrote retrospectively about Gogol’s appearance at their first meeting in 1836: “[Гоголь]
носил довольно длинные волосы, остриженные в скобку, и часто встряхивал головой” ([Gogol] was
wearing long hair cut in skobka [a hairstyle similar to bob – Yu. I.] and often tossed his head) (Veresaev
175).
136
Veresaev 118.
137
Veresaev 339.
95
to share ideas concerning a renewal of Russian national identity.
138
Thus, it was only in
the early 1830s that Gogol sported an ambiguous haircut that differentiated him from the
rest of Russian literary elite.
Figure 3.

Portrait of Gogol by Moller (1840)

The ambivalence and marginality of Gogol’s position in Russian society was
conditioned not only by his exotic fashion and hairstyle, but also by his eccentric verbal
behavior and by the masterful oral performance of his stories, plays, and anecdotes.

138
Part of their ideological program was to heal the breach between the elite and peasantry, and to this end
Slavophiles proposed that the elite dress in less fashionable attire. Konstantin Aksakov, for example, wore
traditional Russian dress in salons in order to demonstrate his rejection of westernization and his solidarity
with the people. See Ruane, C. “Subjects into Citizens: the Politics of Clothing in Imperial Russia” in
Fashioning the Body Politic: Dress, Gender, Citizenship (2002).
96
Gogol remained a misfit in polite society because he did not take part in the free-flowing
exchange of repartee, gossip, and light verse (Todd, Fiction and Society 172-3).
Moreover, Gogol consciously intensified his marginality by refusing to master social
graces, particularly society “talk.” There are many records of Gogol’s contemporaries
who were shocked at his oral anecdotes, which were often considered too spicy for a
society man. Efim Kurganov has thoroughly examined Gogol oral novellas and anecdotes
which often were inappropriate in polite society and worked to “demolish” its
expectations (27). Gogol’s repertoire of oral anecdotes consisted of both Ukrainian
139
and
international
140
sources which the writer creatively reworked every time to fit the
situation. Many of Gogol’s contemporaries pointed at the fact that his oral stories were
“unique, but sometimes not entirely in good taste,”
141
“almost always quite obscene,”
142

and “never fit to print.” It should be noted, however, that spicy anecdotes were in fashion
among salons attendee at that time, and obviously Gogol imitated his older fellow poets,
particularly Zhukovskii, in his provocations of the idea of “good taste.” The difference
between Zhukovskii’s and Gogol’s oral performances was in the repertoire
143
and in the
inimitable natural tone of the latter.
144
Yet, Gogol’s obscene jokes and anecdotes were

139
Ivan Panaev mentioned how “Gogol’s Malorussian oral tales … made a strong impression on Belinskii”
in Gogol v vsopominaniiakh sovremennikov, 218. Sergei Aksakov attributed the originality of Gogol’s
anecdotes to the peculiarities of his Ukrainian mentality (“iskliuchitel’no osobennost’ malorossov”)
(Veresaev 134).
140
See, for example, the variation of Gogol’s anecdote about Khodzha Nasreddin recorded by Vladimir
Sollogub. See V.A. Sollogub, Povesti: Vospominaniia (1988) 551-52.
141
See A. F. Afanas’ev’s recollection in Veresaev, Gogol v zhizni 238.
142
See Fedor Chizhov’s memoir in Veresaev, Gogol v zhizni 353.
143
As Kurganov claims, Zhukovskii “offered his listeners always the same repertoire of stories and they
knew what to expect,” whereas Gogol “always took his listeners unawares and “employed a more subtle
and calculated strategy than Zhukovskii” in his oral performances (30).
144
See, for example, Gogol’s anecdote about a brothel, which he related to a stern lady Louisa Karlovna
97
tolerated not because he managed to shock society in an unexpected way
145
or because
Gogol was accepted into Russian high society not as a peer, but as a Ukrainian jester
(“malorossiiskii zhartovnik” as defined by Osip Senkovskii), and as such he was
“allowed” to transgress and was excused for jokes for which other society people could
not have been excused.
146

Gogol deliberately subverted the requirements imposed upon the honnête homme,
however composite that norm would seem. In a sense, Gogol became a burlesque model
of the honnête homme who strove to participate in polite society by simultaneously
imitating and ridiculing its codes. Gogol’s bizarre hair style, his non-conventional dress
and eccentric verbal behavior made him stand out from among the Russian aristocracy of
various ideological orientations and worked to shape his public image as the other in
imperial society. “Almost the same, but not quite,” Gogol took advantage of the
ambivalence of his position to transform mimicry of the imperial center into its mockery
and thereby to undermine its control over his self-fashioning. Thus, the colonial mimicry
that Gogol performed during and right after the publication of Vechera allowed him to
assert his ethnic and cultural difference and at the same time subverted the colonial
project for his being “domesticated.”

Vielgorskaia, neé Princess Biron, pretending it to be in unison with a serious conversation on a spiritual-
mythical topic. The whole situation is recorded in Sollogub, Povesti 441-2.
145
Kurganov 30.
146
Compare, for example, the reaction of the society to Odoevskii’s and to Gogol’s indecent anecdotes, as
recorded by Sollogub: “[Odoevskii] was distinguished by the peculiarity that he told ladies the most
indecent things in the most innocent way, completely sincerely and without any ulterior motive. In this
sense, he was not at all like Gogol, who had the gift of narrating the most salacious anecdotes, without
provoking anger from his female listeners, whereas poor Odoevskii was angrily cut short, Gogol,
meanwhile, always transgressed deliberately” (Sollogub 441-2).
98
Chapter 3. Performing Hybrid Identity through Language
In Chapter 2, I have discussed how Gogol engaged in manipulating his identity
which embraced both replicating and mimicking colonial stereotypes of the other. This
chapter will focus on the performative aspect of the hybrid Russian-Ukrainian language
in Vechera. I will explore how language itself transformed the way Gogol’s identity was
structured while interacting with the imperial authority that tried to impose a standard
form of the Russian literary language on Gogol’s texts. Viewed as a product of
negotiation of cultural meaning, Gogol’s idiosyncratic Russian in Vechera operated as an
agency that provided the writer with a space for performing his hybrid identity.
Gogol’s hybrid language was the product not only of the natural linguistic
interference between Russian and Ukrainian, but also the result of his deliberate self-
fashioning. That Gogol intentionally pidginized the Russian literary language can be
linked to his self-fashioning. Gogol’s bilingualism functioned in the framework of Pierre
Bourdieu’s idea of habitus
147
as the writer developed his regional variant of Russian. It is
important to differentiate between the mistakes caused by his innate bilingualism and the
mistakes that resulted from Gogol’s strategic use of language. In this chapter, I will
analyze the types of hybrid forms in the first edition (1831-1832) of Vechera which were
unanimously labeled as “mistakes” by Russian intellectuals in the 1830s-1840s. Many

147
According to Bourdieu, “habitus” is a system of dispositions, or acquired systems of perception, thought
and experiences, which the individual develops in response to the objective conditions it encounters. In
linguistic terms, habitus refers to the use of language by the individual agent not as an abstract system of
rules, but as a practice, that is as any other forms of everyday social activity. Through mere repetition
language shapes the individual’s way of being in the world, or habitus. However, the specific practices,
such as gender, class, age and other factors, in which individual agents engage and which form the habitus
are different. For further information see Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (1991).
99
Russian writers and critics were preoccupied with disclosing Gogol’s “mistakes” and
perpetuating the idea of Gogol as a semi-literate writer.
The harsh criticism of Gogol’s Russian (which definitely did not correspond with
the status of a leading Russian writer to which Gogol aspired) made the writer think of
his language as a personal weakness needed to be fixed. From 1835 through 1852, Gogol
became preoccupied with the task of addressing the imperial audience in perfect Russian
and began to edit the language of the tales, first by himself (for the second edition of
Vechera in 1836) and then with the help of Nikolai Prokopovich, Vissarion Belinskii, and
Mikhail Likhonin (for the 1842 and 1855 editions). Across these editings, the text of
Vechera underwent significant transformation. The text was successively revised and
replaced with new versions deemed more appropriate to the moment. The reworkings of
the language of Vechera shed light on the hybridization of Gogol’s national identity. The
history of editing of Vechera demonstrates how the hybrid language in the first edition of
the tales (1831-1832) was subdued in subsequent editions (1836, 1842, and 1851). The
collective editing of Vechera was nothing short of Gogol’s self-fashioning through the
use and manipulation of language. Throughout these editings Gogol realized a
“translation” of his self across the boundaries of two languages. The Russification of the
tales in the transition from the first edition to the second and Gogol’s revision of the text
in1842 for his Collected Works, which partially reconstructed the initial language, can be
treated as performative acts that constituted Gogol’s hybrid identity.

100
3.1. Gogol’s Bilingualism or Why the Writer Made “Mistakes” in
Vechera
When dealing with Ukrainianisms in Gogol’s texts scholars usually focus on his
use of Ukrainian lexicon for color locale and explain it by the increased value of exotic
languages during Romanticism.
148
There, however, have been two attempts to study
Gogol’s idiosyncratic Russian language not on the level of lexicon but on the level of
syntax made by Iosif Mandel’shtam in O kharaktere gogolevskogo stilia (1902) and by
Yurii Barabash in Pochva i sud’ba (1995). These scholars have recognized the
interference of Ukrainian grammar in Gogol’s Russian, but have not elaborated a
systematic analysis of the hybrid forms in Gogol’s texts. My study of Gogol’s language
fills this gap in this area and establishes the link between language and national identity
in Gogol’s texts, particularly in his Ukrainian tales.
So, why there so many grammatical mistakes in Gogol’s early texts, particularly
in Vechera? An answer immediately comes to mind: his linguistic consciousness was
developed in the bilingual environment that characterized the linguistic practice of many
Ukrainian nobles who in the early nineteenth century became increasingly
Russianized.
149
However, if one compares Gogol’s Russian with that of his classmates -

148
See P. Karpiuk, “Gogol’s Research on Ukrainian Customs for the Dikan’ka’s Tales.”
149
Strange as it might seem, bilingualism was not entirely untypical of the Russian cultural situation in the
early nineteenth century. The Russian literary elite commonly employed French for correspondence and
society talk. Their bilingualism was so clear-cut that, for instance, Andrew Wachtel has claimed that in the
beginning of the nineteenth century Russia itself was colonized because of the weak and derivative nature
of its own national culture. “[In] sharp contrast to other politically strong imperializing modern states,
Russia found itself in a culturally subordinate, one might even say colonized, position…” (50). However,
the bilingualism of native Russian writers was essentially different from that of Ukrainian writers. The
difference was first of all in the value and prestige of the second language. The “additive” bilingualism of
the Russian elite occurred in a situation in which both languages – Russian and French – were considered
equally valued and useful, whereas the “subtractive” bilingualism of Gogol indicated an unequal
relationship between the Russian Ukrainian which at the time was treated as Little Russian narechie (a
dialect). The bilingualism of Russian aristocrats and the social elite, thus, was considered natural and
101
the playwright Kukol’nik, the poet and translator Bazili, and the editor and professor of
Russian Prokopovich - Gogol’s bilingualism appears to be quite a unique phenomenon.
The explanation can be found in the way in which habitus operates within a speaking
community. If Gogol, Kukol’nik, Bazili, Prokopovich and others through their education
in the Nizhyn Lyceé were equally exposed to the standard form of Russian, how did it
occur that only Gogol demonstrated a striking ignorance of its rules and continued to
make grammatical mistakes even in his late texts? If through education all speakers are
exposed to the standard language, gaining an access to positions of power, then Gogol’s
unique regional form of Russian can be viewed as strategical.
150

Gogol’s bilingualism clearly reveals the cumulative nature of habitus, that is, all
of the experiences and determinations which it produced early in his life affected his later
acquisition of habitus. Thus, experiences received in the family influences the structuring
of school experience, and both produce their effect on further experiences. Thereby,
habitus allows for potentially rich linguistic variation as a dimension of social practice.
Considered in this light, Gogol’s variations in his Russian can be explained by the fact
that during his pre-school years Gogol was exposed to both Russian and Ukrainian
languages more than his other classmates. Hence the bilingual environment of his family
and the active use of the regional form of Russian pidginized by Ukrainian syntax and
lexicon were developmentally structured into Gogol’s linguistic consciousness. During

proper, something that Russian polite society required from every educated nobleman. Gogol’s subtractive
bilingualism was of different nature: it reflected a society in which one language was valued more than the
other, where one dominated the other, where one was rising and the other waning.
150
Gogol’s awkward Russian was a standing jest among his Nizhyn classmates. As Liubich-Romanovich,
one of his classmates recalled, Gogol persistently refused to improve his speech: “Gogol … gave up for lost
working on his conversational speech. He often used to say some of his words, and the whole class burst
out laughing. Once one of our teachers rebuked him about that, and Gogol responded, ‘How can you prove
that I speak incorrectly?’” (Veresaev, Gogol v zhizni 79).
102
his school years Gogol perceived his nonstandard idiom as the marker of his uniqueness
and used it for his self-fashioning.
Moreover, throughout his entire life Gogol operated within two languages –
Russian and Ukrainian. That Gogol maintained a good knowledge of conversational
Ukrainian was documented by many of Gogol’s contemporaries - his life-long servant
Iakym Nimchenko, his fellow Ukrainians (Shchepkin and Maksymovych), and his
Russian friends (Annenkov and Aksakov). His written proficiency in Ukrainian is
documented in his 1837 letter to the well-known Polish poet of Ukrainian origin Josef
Bogdan Zaleski. Written almost ten years after leaving his native Ukraine, Gogol’s letter
demonstrates that the writer had retained an excellent knowledge of Ukrainian (including
the use of idiomatic Ukrainian expressions):
Дуже, дуже було жалко що не застав пана земляка дома. Чував що на
пана щось напало не то соняшниця не то завійниця (хай присниться
їм лисий дідько) та тепер спасибі Богу пан буцімто кажуть зовсім
здоров. Дай же Боже, щоб на диво на славу усій козацькій землі й
давав би чернецького хліба всякій болезні і злидням. Хай і нас би не
забував, писульки в Рим слав. Добре було як би і сам туда коли-
небудь примандрував. Дуже, дуже близький земляк, а по серцю ще
ближчий чим по землі. Микола Гоголь.
What a great, great pity that I did not find you, my fellow countryman, at
home. I heard that you were attacked by some kind of illness, something
like sonyashnytsia or zaviinytsia (let them both see a bald-headed devil in
their dream), but now, thank God, according to what I heard, it looks like
you are already quite all right. I pray to God that you will be able for a
long time, and to the glory of Cossack land, to kick out all kind of illness
and misery. And I hope, as well, you will not forget us and will send us
some letters to Rome. It would be great if some day you might come there
personally. Your very, very close fellow countryman, and even more close
to you in heart than by country alone. Mykola Hohol’ (PSS X, 80).
[Gogol’s original orthography and punctuation are retained].
103
It would, certainly, be an exaggeration to claim that Gogol was an active speaker of
Ukrainian, but it is important to stress its role in his acquisition of Russian which
occurred in a bilingual environment and naturally affected his proficiency.
In the case of Gogol’s family, the bilingualism of its members was a cultural
rather than social phenomenon. Neither Gogol’s parents nor their relatives abandoned
Ukrainian; they operated in two languages, Russian and Ukrainian, during their entire
lives. His father, Vasilii Afanas’evich Gogol, wrote comedies in Ukrainian and poems in
Russian. Here is an excerpt from Vasilii Gogol’s Ukrainian comedy Roman i Paraska
transcribed and transliterated by Kulish into Russian. Kulish’s Russian text is italicized:
«Действие происходит в малороссийской хате, убогой, но
чистенькой. Параска сидит у печи и прядет. Входит мужик, хорошо
одетый, и говорит:
- Здорова була, кумо! А кум де?
Параска. – На печи.
Кум. – Упять на печи? Або, може, и не злазыв сёгодни?
Тут между кумом и кумою происходит секретный разговор. Она
выпрашивает у него зайца, чтоб подурачить мужа и выжить его на
время из хаты. Кум замечает ей: «Ты, кумо, у лыха граеш», однако
ж отдает ей свою добычу.
Когда гость удалился, Параска обращается к мужу с увещаниями:
- Ты б такы пишов хоть зайця пыймав, щоб мы оскоромылысь хоть
заячыною.
Роман (громко с печи). – Чим я ёго буду ловыть? У мене чортыма ни
собакы, ни рушници.
Параска. – Кум поросям зайця ловыть; а наше коване таке прудке!
Роман (радостно). – То-то й е! Я дывлюсь, а воно так швыдко
побигло до корыта!
Параска. – От бачиш! Уставай лыш та убирайся.
Роман. – Треба ж поснидаты.
Параска. – Ты знаешь, що у нас ничого нема. Я зроблю хыба
росольцю та накрышу сухарив; ты и попоисы (Qtd. Kulish Zapiski, 95-
6).
The constant code-switching is imprinted not only in Vasilii Gogol’s creative works but
also in his correspondence to his wife; his letters, written in a mix of Russian and
104
Ukrainian, abound with lexical, grammatical and orthographic forms peculiar to
Ukrainian. This is especially evident in Vasilii Gogol’s Ukrainian glossaries to his
comedies; Nikolai Gogol continued to add Ukrainian words and expressions to his
father’s glossaries in his school years and compiled them in his own “Leksikon
malorossiiskii” (Ukrainian Lexicon) which he brought with him to St. Petersburg. Even
translating Ukrainian words into Russian, Vasilii Gogol remained within the limits of
Ukrainian grammar. For example, his Russian explanations for Ukrainian glosses
“кучма” as “шапка, вся с овчины сделанная,” and “книш” as “пирог с одного теста,”
were both rendered with the preposition “с” (as in Ukrainian grammar) instead of “из”
(as in Russian). Vasilii Gogol’s experiments in glossing his Ukrainian-Russian lexicon
were especially important for the development of Nikolai Gogol’s hybrid language.
As concerns Gogol’s mother, Mariia Ivanovna, she also operated in two versions
of the Russian language – one, a to a large extent Ukrainianized version of Russian, and
the other, the standard Russian language. Her correspondence with family members
contain various Ukrainian elements: vocabulary (“копица”, “шинок”, “вечерял”,
“карбованець”, etc.); grammar (“с Лубен”, “за коровы”, “в тетинькы”, “негодяться
доробити”, etc.); and orthography (“нихто”, “несоветувала”, “пробувать”, “вже”, “в
Антошкы”, “болять”, “пишеш”, etc.). These ungrammaticalities were above all due to
the interference between two related languages that typically occurrs in a bilingual
environment. At the same time, Mariia Ivanovna’s correspondence with the Aksakov
family is written in standard Russian. This differentiation between Ukrainianized Russian
for colloquial usage and the more or less standard form of Russian for use in polite
105
society occurred in many Ukrainian families who had been recently admitted into
Russian noble society and aspired to assimilate into it as equals.
In the 1820s, Gogol’s correspondence with his family exhibited a high ratio of
Ukrainian elements and various hybridized Russian-Ukrainian form: (“сюды”,
“позычил”, “прыймете”, “влюблен у вас”, “разов”, “мета”, “халстухи”, “шлахбаум”
etc.), incorrectly formed neologisms (“уроченное время”, “не поразскажете ли чего-
нибудь животрепящаго”, “жить в разрознении”, “несбытодумие”, etc.) and various
orthographic mistakes.
151
Not only Gogol’s correspondence, the draft copy of Vechera
also abounds in all kinds of orthographic mistakes that occurred because of the
interference of Ukrainian phonological spelling patterns
152
(e.g., “неходится” instead of
“негодится,” “в испухе” instead of “в испуге,” “нашево” instead of “нашего,” “щоки”
instead of “щеки,” “щасливый” instead of “счастливый,” etc.).
Gogol’s Russian pronunciation was also significantly affected by the manner and
place of articulation characteristic of Ukrainian.
153
Gogol’s contemporaries noticed an
absence of vowel [o] reduction in unstressed positions in the writer’s speech. Ivan
Turgenev left an interesting record of Gogol’s Ukrainianized Russian pronunciation in
the 1830s: “Gogol talked a lot, with animation, rhythmically rapping out each word... He

151
For further reference on Gogol’s mistakes in his early correspondence see Nikolai Tikhonravov,
“Zametki o slovare, sostavlennom Gogolem” 197-98.
152
It is important to pinpoint the differences in the orthographical principles of Russian and Ukrainian.
Russian orthography, quite phonemic in practice, is based mostly on morphological (the spelling of
prefixes; suffixes and endings vary significantly from their pronunciation) and grammatical (it specifies
conventional orthographic forms to mark grammatical distinctions, gender, and participles vs. adjectives)
principles, rather than on phonetic one. Ukrainian orthography, however, is phonemic (all morphemes are
written as they are pronounced in isolation, without vowel reduction) and morphemic, although some
historical forms unrelated to its phonemic and morphemic structures have been retained.
153
The absence of vowel reduction in unstressed position is what differentiates Ukrainian phonology from
Russian in which the vowel [o] is reduced in unstressed positions to [ъ] or to [a].
106
spoke on o, [but] I did not notice other peculiarities of the Little Russian pronunciation,
unpleasant to the Russian ear” (Veresaev 524). Turgenev not only pointed to the
peculiarity of Gogol’s pronunciation but he also described it as an ethnic marker that
grated upon his ear as a native Russian speaker. Vera Nashchokina also caught the
influence of Ukrainian pronunciation in Gogol’s speech: “[Gogol] spoke [Russian] with a
Little Russian accent, slightly emphasizing o.” It could be also the case that Gogol
pronounced the fricative [ђ] (which was according to the norms of Ukrainian) in Russian
words where the plosive [g] was required. Although there is no documented evidence of
Gogol’s pronunciation of this phoneme, his spelling of the words like “халстухи,” “в
испухе,” “неходится,” etc. (instead of “галстуки,” “в испуге,” “не годится”) in his
correspondence of the period and in the drafts of Vechera may corroborate this
hypothesis.
154

Not only Gogol’s pronunciation and spelling deviated from the norms of Russian
language of the time, his syntax violated basic rules of Russian grammar. The first edition
of Vechera exhibited all variety of lexical and morphological loans from Ukrainian. The
first group of impure elements embraces Ukrainian words per se interspersed in the
Russian-language text without translations in the footnotes or in Pan’ko’s Ukrainian-
Russian glossaries. These are predominantly Ukrainian verbs and adverbs absent in
Russian:
1. Verbs: “спознаться с” (to get along) (Ukrainian ‘спізнатися с,’ Russian
‘сойтись с’); “захолонуло” (to be paralyzed from fear) (Ukrainian

154
Because it is not one of the sounds Russian uses to convey meaning, [ђ] sounds unnatural to native
speakers and often becomes the object of jokes about uneducated Ukrainians’ inability to pronounce [g].
107
‘захолонуло,’ Russian ‘похолодело’); “смерзнуть” (to get cold) (Ukrainian
‘змерзнути,’ Russian ‘замерзнуть’); “скидать” (to get off) (Ukrainian
‘скидати,’ Russian ‘снимать’); “сбираться” (to be going to) (Ukrainian
‘збиратись,’ Russian ‘собираться’); “накласть” (to put) ( Ukrainian
‘накласти,’ Russian ‘наложить’). Verbs with the prefix по-: “понапугали,”
“поприставали,” “пороняли,” “поразобрало,” “повлезали,” etc., which in
Russian belong to a low register, whereas in Ukrainian – to the neutral, constitute
a special category of verbs in the tales.
2. Adverbs and adverbial prepositions: “наперед” (first) (Ukrainian ‘наперед,’
Russian ‘в начале’); “нанизу” (Ukrainian ‘нанизу,’ Russian ‘внизу’);
“гуртом” (Ukrainian ‘гуртом,’ Russian ‘вместе’); “неначе” (Ukrainian
‘неначе,’ Russian ‘как будто’); “по-за” (Ukrainian ‘по-за,’ Russian ‘за’).
155

Calquing from Ukrainian also occurs as one-to-one morphemic substitution and
highlights the transposition of Ukrainian grammar onto Russian. This phenomenon can
be explained by the fact that the two languages often use the same part of speech but
differ in the way they put them together in the sentence. In the following examples, one
can see how Gogol was translating the Ukrainian model into Russian:
Table 1. Examples of Calquing from Ukrainian in Gogol’s Vechera
Vechera Ukrainian Russian
“темно, хоть в глаза
выстрели” (it is pitch-dark)

темно, хоч в око стрель темно, хоть глаз выколи

155
All examples from Gogol’s Vechera are taken from the latest Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem v
dvadtsati trekh tomakh. Vol. 1 (Moscow: Nasledie, 2001), unless otherwise noted.
108
Table 1: Continued

“запорожец...ничего не
работал” (The Zaporozhets
was not doing anything)
запорожець...ничого не
робив
запорожец...ничего не
делал
“хоронить
156
концы [в
воду]” (and no one is the
wiser)
ховати кінці [у воду] прятать концы [в воду]
“тут не можно пропустить
одного случая” (one
should not omit one
occurance)
тут не можна пропустити
одного випадку
тут нельзя пропустить
одного случая
“тетушка... имела лет
около пятидесяти” (the
auntie was about 50 years
old)
тітонька мала років майже
п’ятдесят
тетушке... было лет около
пятидесяти
“oзираясь на стороны” озираючись на сторони oзираясь по сторонам
“того ж году” (the same
year)
того ж року в том же году

The transposition of Ukrainian grammar onto Russian generated various grammatical
mistakes in the following categories:
a). Case or/and ending: “два дни” (Ukrainian ‘два дні,’ Russian ‘два дня’), “о
полночи” (Ukrainian ‘о півночі,’ Russian ‘в полночь’), “гостьми” (Ukrainian
‘гістьми,’ Russian ‘гостями’), “в церкве” (as declined from Ukrainian
‘церква’), “Вечер накануне Ивана Купала” (Ukrainian “Вечір напередодні
Івана Купала,” Russian “Вечер накануне Ивана Купалы”), “до царицы”
(Ukrainian ‘до цариці,’ Russian ‘к царице’), “моя доню” (Ukrainian ‘моя

156
“Khoronit’” in Russian has only one meaning ‘to bury,’ whereas in Ukrainian the equivalent “khovaty”
has two meanings - ‘to bury’ and ‘to hide.’ In this idiom, Gogol used “khoronit’” in the meaning of
Ukrianian ‘khovaty,’ i.e. ‘to hide.’
109
доню,’ Russian ‘моя дочка’), “давай магарычу” (instead of ‘давай магарыч’),
“вылить переполоху” (instead of ‘вылить переполох’);
b). Gender: обеим пленникам (instead of ‘обоим пленникам’), “под обеими
глазами” (instead of “под обоими глазами”);
c). Verb conjugation: “слышило” (instead of ‘слышало’), “исповедается”
(instead of ‘исповедуется’), “брезгает” (instead of ‘брезгует’);
d). Reflexivity: “вареник выплеснул из миски, шлепнул в сметану” (instead of
‘вареник выплеснулся из миски, шлепнулся в сметану’); “спокой себя”
(Ukrainian ‘заспокой себе,’ Russian ‘успокойся’); “зашелохнет” (instead of
‘зашелохнется’).
The confusion between two parallel forms (Russian and Ukrainian) also produced
mistakes in coordination between verb and/or preposition and/or case of the following
noun. Such collocation is permissible neither in Russian, nor in Ukrainian: “отправилась
для каких-нибудь причин” (instead of ‘отправилась по каким-нибудь причинам’),
“пошевелишься с места” (instead of ‘пошевелишься на месте’ or ‘тронешься с
места’), and “с радости побежала” (instead of ‘от радости побежала’).
As we have seen, Gogol’s language in Vechera was a product of interference of two
equally acquired languages – Russian and Ukrainian. However, it is important to
approach many of Gogol’s “mistakes” as an object of artistic representation that indicated
his radically innovative treatment of language.

110
3.2. The Deterritorialization of Russian in the Tales
Despite the fact that any linguistic consciousness is a product of a clash of various
idiolects and exists within the living practice of speech,
157
the linguistic consciousness of
a bilingual person is subject to a different logic. From the linguistic point of view, a
bilingual is not merely the sum of two monolinguals, but rather a unique and specific
linguistic configuration. As François Grosjean and Carlos Soares have suggested,
Bilinguals should be studied as such and not always in comparison with
monolinguals. Instead of being the sum of two monolinguals, bilinguals
are competent “native-speaker-hearers” of a different type; their
knowledge of two languages makes up an integrated whole that cannot
easily be decomposed into two separate parts. In addition, bilingual
language processing will often be different from that of the monolingual;
one language is rarely totally deactivated when speaking or listening to the
other (even in completely monolingual situations) and in a mixed language
mode, where the two languages interact simultaneously, bilinguals have to
use specific operations and strategies rarely, if ever, needed by the
monolingual (François Grosjean and Carlos Soares, 179).
Gogol’s bilingualism is unique not merely because of the interference between two
languages (Russian and Ukrainian), but because this interference generated a hybrid
language heretofore unprecedented in Russian literature. His bilingualism was not an
entente cordiale between two different languages but the “leap of one language” into the
“realm of the other,” executed as an operation within one and the same language (Bene &
Deleuze 107). The tension, then, was created not between Russian and Ukrainian, but
between the “normative” use of Russian and what Gogol’s “minor” language made of it.
Gogol created his own variant of Russian that truncated the “major” use of it on the

157
Voloshinov (Bakhtin) demonstrated that the linguistic consciousness of speakers of any language is not
influenced by the normative use of language, but is developed as a social practice: “A word presents itself
not as an item of vocabulary but as a word that has been used in a wide variety of utterances by co-speaker
A, co-speaker B, co-speaker C and so on, and has been variously used in the speaker’s own utterances”
(Dialogic Imagination 70). In other words, language is inseparable from ideological and social horizons
because an utterance exists in endless interactions with other utterances.
111
semantic, syntactic and stylistic levels. Gogol’s contribution to Russian literature lies first
of all in destabilizing, or to use Deleuze’s and Guattari’s term, “deterritorializing,” the
norms of the Russian literary language and appropriating it figuratively.
158
Gogol
inhabited the language of his new Petersburg territory, deterritorializing and decentering
the normative use of Russian through the introduction of his own language variant based
on a conglomerate of Ukrainian, Russian, Church Slavonic and the pidgin language of the
Russified Ukrainian gentry.
It might not be an exaggeration to say that Gogol, while working on Vechera in
1829-1831, felt himself a foreigner in Russian. In 1830, Gogol confessed to his mother
that he was writing a book in a foreign language:
Сочинение мое, если когда выйдет, будет на иностранном языке, и
тем более мне нужна точность, [чтобы] не исказить неправильными
именованиями существенного имени нации.
If my work is ever to be published, it will be in foreign language; and I
need to be even more precise in order not to distort the vital name of a
nation with incorrect naming (PSS X, 150).
Although the “foreignness” of Russian in Gogol’s letter has been treated as another of his
mystifications,
159
I propose to view it literally. In the early 1830s, Gogol participated in
Russian cultural discourse as one who was challenged to overcome the language barrier

158
The concepts of deterritorialization and “major” versus “minor” use of language were first applied by
Deleuze and Guattari to Kafka’s literary language in Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature (1986).
Deterritorialization can also be applied to any textual discourse that disrupts the “major literature” by its
marginal expressive potentiality. The “minor” status of such writers as Kafka, Joyce, and Beckett, who
were the subjects of Deleuze’s and Guattari’s analysis, was determined by the secondary status of their
mother tongues in the context of bilingualism or multi-lingualism. Instead of writing their literary works in
the languages of their ethnic groups, these writers inscribed certain foreignness within the “major
language,” that of the empires they inhibited. They created a “minor language,” that to a great extent
transposed or “deterritorialized” the traditional practice of signification operating in the major language.
159
Barabash, for example, has doubted that Gogol was referring to the Russian language in this letter, since
his entire letter was written in Russian. I propose to understand this puzzle as the partial presence of the
colonized in a colonial language. Proficiency in a “major” language does not exclude the capacity to use it
in a way that “localizes” it.”
112
between his own variant of Russian and the Russian of the Petersburg elite. As Andrei
Siniavsky noticed, Gogol could not even imitate contemporary writers, particularly
Pushkin, because he was “too provincial and burdened with a foreign, Little Russian
language element” (322).
Gogol’s approach to the language of the new “territory” is seen clearly in the
episode of Vakula’s meeting with the Cossacks in “Christmas Eve.” In it, Gogol mocks
Ukrainians’ attempts to use Russian as a means of self-affirmation as part of the imperial
elite. Trying to prove to each other their proficiency in Russian, Vakula and the Cossacks
speak it as a sort of a pidgin, which creates a defamiliarizing effect:
“Что ж, земляк,” - сказал приосанясь запорожец и желая показать, что
он может говорить и по-русски. “Што, балшой город?”
Кузнец и себе не хотел осрамиться и показаться новичком, притом
же, как имели случай видеть выше сего, он знал и сам грамотный
язык. “Гоберния знатная!” отвечал он равнодушно: «нечего сказать,
домы балшущие, картины висят скрозь важные. Многие домы
исписаны буквами из сусального золота до чрезвычайности. Нечего
сказать, чудная пропорция!” [emphasis added]
‘Now then, our fellow-countryman,’ said the Cossack, drawing himself up
and showing off his knowledge of the Russian tongue, ‘Big city, aren’t it?’
The blacksmith did not want to show himself up as a complete greenhorn,
and anyway, as we have already had occasion to see, he too could turn a
pretty phrase. ‘It’s a splendid precinct!’ he replied in a nonchalant manner.
‘There’s no denying it: the houses are mighty big, you see some decent
pictures hanging in them. Many of the houses are excessively adorned
with letters of gold leaf. But there’s no gainsaying it; the proportion is
marvelous!’ (PSS X, 233-4).
The inclusion of Ukrainianisms and non-normative idiomatic expressions into Russian in
the paragraph above corrupts it to the extent that it becomes foreign to the Russian
audience.
Therefore, Gogol’s mistakes in Russian operated according to a different
linguistic logic. Bearing no exclusive relation to either Russian or Ukrainian alone, they
113
were potentially the basis of a metaphoric mode in Gogol’s writing. The development of
Gogol’s creative language does not reflect a mere striving for competence in Russian, but
a striving towards appropriating it for his own artistic purposes. Gogol’s odd usage of the
Russian language produced not only ungrammatical forms, but also complicated syntax,
which, as opposed to Pushkin’s laconic style based on the multiplication of verbs, was
based on the multiplication of adjectives and the abuse of the pronominal. Such
innovative linguistic usage opened up new possibilities for language play that were not
available in Russian alone as a “major” language.
3.3. Strategies of Hybridization in Vechera
The mistakes in Vechera analyzed above might suggest that all of them were due
to the interference between two related languages, which occurred unconsciously in
Gogol’s mind. However, there is a stratum of language irregularities and grammatical
mistakes in the tales that can be accredited to Gogol’s deliberate strategy and that served
as a means of characterization, particularly that of the fictitious editor-narrator Pan’ko.
Mistakes in Russian occur mostly in “Preface” to Book One,
160
manifesting Pan’ko’s
ignorance of Russian grammar. As Pan’ko warns the audience, he is not very familiar
with reading and writing (“я грамоту ... кое-как знаю”). Here, Gogol cleverly
manipulated the stereotype of an uncivilized, uneducated Ukrainian:
161

160
Unlike Pan’ko’s “Preface” to Book One, his “Preface” to Book Two (which was published in 1832, a
year after the publication of Book One for the language of which Gogol was harshly criticized) is written
without any grammatical mistakes.
161
These examples are quoted from the first edition of Vechera na khutorie bliz Dikanki: poviesti: Pervaia
knizhka (Sanktpeterburg, Tip. dep. narod. prosveshcheniia, 1831).
114
1. Most of the verbs with the negative particle “не” are written together, breaking
the grammatical rules of the normative Russian of the time (“невидал,”
“неплачь,” “неизвольте,” “неносил”);
2. Adverbs, adjectives, and nouns are written together with the negative particle
“не” in words that should be written as separate words ( “неслишком,”
“нислова”);
3. Or vice versa, adjectives are separated from the particle “не,” whereas they
should be written as one word (“сладость не описанная”);
4. The spelling of adverbs is odd: some, such as “вовсе,” are written separately (as
“во все”) thereby becoming other parts of speech (a noun and a preposition); “во-
свояси,” “на-бекрень,” “на-стороже.”
Other misspelled words reflect the phonemic nature of Pan’ko’s regional language
(“слышило” instead of “слышало”; “раскащик” instead of “разсказчик”; “скрыпка”
instead of “скрипка”; “имянно” instead of “именно”; “к щастью” instead of “к
счастию”; “на щот этаго” instead of “на счет этого,” etc.).
162
Moreover, half of the
verbs in the second person present tense in Pan’ko’s text ends on ‘ъ’ (e.g. “расскажешъ,”
“упросишъ”) according to the Ukrainian spelling instead of ‘ь’ (“расскажешь,”
“упросишь”) according to Russian orthography. Evidently, the peculiarities of Pan’ko’s
spelling are due to his preference of sound over letter – the orthographic principle that
underlies Ukrainian rather than Russian but when used in Russian it indicates a typical
indication of illiterate writers.

162
All the examples of Gogol’s misspelling have been compared with the entries in Slovar’ Akademii
Rossiiskoi (1806-1822), which codified the new morphemic spelling.
115
Another strategy for hybridizing literary discourse is achieved by Pan’ko’s use of
glosses for Ukrainian words and idioms unknown to the Russian audience. Pan’ko
accompanies his prefaces to Book One and Two with two glossaries of Ukrainian words
(about 130 entries). This demonstrates not only that the text itself activates the process of
language variation, but also that the discourse is directed toward the other – Russian
metropolitan readers.
The hybridization of the speech of two major narrators in Vechera, Makar
Nazarovich, the narrator of “Sorochinskaia iarmarka” (Sorochintsy Fair) and “Maiskaia
noch’” (A Night in May), and Foma Grigorievich, the narrator of “Vecher nakanune
Ivana Kupala” (St. John’s Eve), “Propavshaia gramota” (The Lost Dispatch) and
“Zakoldovannoe mesto” (The Bewitched Place), deserves special discussion. Makar
Nazarovich, a gentleman (“panich”) from the town Gadiach, emblematizes a Russified
Ukrainian, whereas Foma Grigorievich, a Dikan’ka’s sexton, - a self-confident Ukrainian.
The competition between these two narrators for narrative and ideological authority is
also imprinted on their different use of Ukrainian.
Foma Grigorievich’s speech, incorporating various Ukrainian words and
idiomatic expressions, is the most hybridized among the narrators. As an oral folk
storyteller, he does not provide translations of Ukrainian expressions, assuming that his
audience belongs to the same speech community and will understand them without
reference. At the same time, Pan’ko serves as a mediator between the Ukrainian narrator
and the Russian audience, providing translations of Foma Grigorievich’s peculiar
Ukrainian expressions in the footnotes. In the examples below, one can see that Pan’ko’s
116
Russian translations are quite literal and not only create a comic effect, but also neutralize
the original connotation of the expressions in Ukrainian.
1. Да, расскажу я вам, как ведьмы играли с покойным дедом в
дурня* (I’ll tell you about the time the witches played Jackass with my
old grandfather) [emphasis in original].

*То есть в дурачки (That is, Fools) (PSS I, 181).

2. Люлька-то у меня есть, да того, чем бы зажечь ее, чорт-ма* (I’ve got
myself a pipe, but damn-all to light it with) [emphasis in original].

*Не имеется (Nothing) (PSS I, 187).

3. Дывысь, дывысь, маты, мов дурна, скаче.* (Look, look, Mama is
jumping about like a looney!) [emphasis in original].

*Смотри! Смотри! мать, как сумасшедшая, скачет! (Look, look,
Mama is jumping about like a looney!) (PSS I, 190).

The Ukrainian words and expressions penetrate Foma Grigorievich’s discourse during
code-mixing. The insertions of Ukrainian are usually italicized in Foma Grigorievich’s
text, as in this passage from “Vecher nakanune Ivana Kupala”: “Плюйте ж на голову
тому, кто это напечатал! бреше, сучий москаль. Так ли я говорил? Що то вже, як у
кого чорт-ма клепки в голові! Слушайте, я вам расскажу ее сейчас” (Damn the lying
Russian dog who printed it – I spit in his face! He hasn’t a scrap of wit in his head!
Listen and I’ll tell you the real story now) (PSS I, 138). The switching from one language
to another within a paragraph is used to differentiate between the audience which shares
Foma Grigorievich’s idiolect and the audience which does not.
In sharp contrast to Pan’ko and Foma Grigorievich, the gentleman narrator,
Makar Nazarovich, demonstrates his poor knowledge of local language and culture. In his
use of language, he remains within the cultural code that descends from the imperial
117
center. This code regulates, for example, the use of Ukrainian in the tale “Sorochinskaya
iarmarka,” in which all the epigraphs in Ukrainian are transliterated into Russian: “Що,
Боже ты мій, Господе! Чого нема на тій ярмарци! Колеса, скло, деготь, цыбуля,
крамари всяки ... так, що хоч би в кишени було рублив и с тридцять, то й тогди б
не закупыв усіеи ярмаркы” (Merciful Lord, the things they have at that market!
Wheels, glass, tar, tobacco, straps, onions, all sorts of wares ... and even if you had as
much as thirty rubles in your pocket you wouldn’t be able to buy up the whole of it) (PSS
I, 115).Within the Russian imperial literary code of the beginning of the century,
Ukrainian folklore and burlesque literature served to metonymically represent Ukraine,
and the transliteration of the epigraphs only reinforced the perception of Ukraine as a
colonial souvenir.
Makar Nazarovich’s arsenal of Ukrainian elements is limited to the use of
Russian-Ukrainian doublets: (кружка – кухоль (‘a mug’), ад – пекло (‘hell’), сорванец
– шибеник (‘scamp’), жена – жинка (‘wife’), девушка – дивчина (‘girl’), спешить –
поспешать (‘to hurry’), узнать – познать (‘to know’), любимый – любый (‘beloved’).
Because the original Ukrainian word and its Russian equivalent exist in close proximity
to each other the use of the Ukrainian words becomes redundant. They function only for
the sake of local color. In the examples below, translations in the text present functionally
undifferentiated lexical items, erasing the ontological hierarchy between the original and
its translation. The Ukrainian words retain their material texture but once they enter the
single, homogeneous cultural space, they lose their ontological essence.
Другой цыган, ворча про себя, поднялся на ноги, два раза осветил
себя искрами, будто молниями, раздул губами трут и, с каганцом в
руках, обыкновенною малороссийскою светильнею, состоящею из
118
разбитого черепка, налитого бараньим жиром, отправился, освещая
дорогу [emphasis added].
The other gypsy, grumbling away to himself, rose to his feet, struck two
bright showers of sparks, pursed his lips to blow on the tinder, and
brandishing a kaganets, the usual form of illumination in Little Russia,
consisting of a potsherd filled with melted mutton fat, set off on his way.
(PSS I, 128)
В мирской сходке, или громаде, несмотря на то что власть его
ограничена несколькими голосами, голова всегда берет верх и
почти по своей воле высылает, кого ему угодно, ровнять и гладить
дорогу или копать рвы [emphasis added].
At the village council, or gromada, where his power is limited to a couple
of votes, the headman somehow always gets the upper hand and sends out
whomever he wants to do jobs like leveling roads or digging ditches. (PSS
I, 160-61)
The various strategies of hybridization evident in Pan’ko’s, Foma Grigorievich’s, and
Makar Nazarovich’s discourses differ in one important aspect: while Pan’ko tends to
deterritorialize the grammatical norms of Russian as if they were processed through the
consciousness of a non-native speaker of Russian, Foma Grigor’evich corrupts Russian
with peculiar Ukrainian locutions, and Makar Nazarovich does not violate the Russian
grammar at all. In regard to the use of Ukrainian elements, Foma Grigorievich and Makar
Nazarovich are polar opposites: whereas the former uses them without explanation, the
latter exploits Ukrainian material for the sake of exoticism by providing translations,
thereby making it easier for the Russian metropolitan audience to process. It could be
said that the Ukrainian elements in Vechera function not only to lower the overall style,
but to create a metonymic gap between the Russian language, in which the tales are
written, and Ukrainian with its inserted unglossed words, phrases, and quotes that were
only vaguely known to the metropolitan reader. This shows a conscious linguistic
differentiation strategy on Gogol’s part.
119
3.4. Regional Language, Regional Identity
The way Gogol manipulates the language in his tales manifests a particular
identification strategy. Because the fashioned self is always positioned with reference to
its culture and coded mode of expression, its language, Gogol’s deliberate hybridization
and deterritorialization of Russian establishes a particular relationship between his
language and his national identity. The use of hybrid language in the tales was not the
result of an unconscious process; it revealed Gogol’s conscious and deliberate disruption
of the homogeneity of Russian imperial culture. Reproducing Ukrainian culture through
discursive performances in Vechera Gogol’s identity emerged as regional, i.e. one that
was indexed by symbols such as the use of Ukrainian and hybrid Russian-Ukrainian
forms. Viewing language variation as acts of identity, one can claim Gogol’s regional
identity as precisely “performative.”
The idea of regionalist/ethnic and gender identity in terms of “performative
discourse” as elaborated by Pierre Bourdieu and Judith Butler can elucidate the problem
of agency operating in Gogol’s hybrid language. Bourdieu has described at the political
dimension and subversive potential of regional languages:
Regionalist discourse is a performative discourse which aims to impose as
legitimate a new definition of the frontiers and to get people to know and
recognize the region that is thus delimited in opposition to the dominant
definition, …which does not acknowledge that new region. (223)
The important implication of Bourdieu’s theory is that although “regional” and “ethnic”
identities essentialize what are actually arbitrary divisions among peoples, and in this
sense are not “real,” once established on paper these identities exist as real as if they were
grounded in something “natural” (Bourdieu 221). At the same time, Bourdieu is skeptical
about speakers’ reflexive awareness and control in “doing style.” The very mechanism by
120
which habitus operates challenges the assumption that individuals can shake off the
ideological associations of their own ingrained ways of speaking since they result from a
slow process of being socialized into normative and acceptable language use. Butler, on
the other hand, has insisted on the performativity of speaking that can resist and
challenge social norms.
163
The “non-ordinary” meaning is a potential of speech
performance that can break with the social contexts in which it occurs. In any case, the
regional discourse performed in Gogol’s tales created a sense of belonging to his local
language and culture and provided some transitional space for his transformation into a
Russian national writer.
One must admit that the link between language and identity is extremely complex.
While in some contexts language may be a marker of identity, in others it is a means of
social control, and yet in others these two functions may be interconnected. I believe that
in Vechera the use of Ukrainian served to reinforce Gogol’s desire to emerge as other,
while the hybrid forms indicated his implicit desire to overcome the difference between
two languages.
164
Gogol’s speech repertoire in the tales indicates his creative agency in
making the social and ethnic variations of his language visible. The language of Vechera
exhibits not only a number of idiolects, but also blurred boundaries between Russian and
Ukrainian. The way Gogol manipulates his language and self-fashioning may be

163
In Excitable Speech, Butler argues that “the speech act, as a rite of institution, is one whose contexts are
never fully determined in advance, and that the possibility for the speech act to take on a non-ordinary
meaning, to function in contexts where it has not belonged, is precisely the political promise of the
performative” (161).
164
Later in his career, Gogol contemplated an ambiguous project to create Ob’edinitel’nyi slovar’ russkogo
iazyka (A unified dictionary of the Russian language) based on the variety of regional, social and
professional dialects of the Russian Empire. He believed that the compilation of such a dictionary would
lead to the creation of a shared Russian language and would let people of various ethnic groups of the
empire feel themselves members of the same cultural community.
121
compared to choosing items of dress from a closet containing various items that are
selected at one point to deviate from normative expectations (dressing “to be different”)
and at others – to match particular situations (dressing “to fit in”).
3.5. The Reception of Gogol’s Language by Russian Critics in the 1830s-
1840s
When the first edition of Vechera came out in 1831, it “amazed”
165
the Russian
audience not so much because of the exotic subject matter (there already existed a rich
tradition of Ukrainian tales written by such writers as Vasilii Narezhnyi and Orest
Somov), but mostly because of Gogol’s idiosyncratic language. The major Russian critics
responded favorably to Vechera. They espied in Gogol’s Ukrainian tales everything that
Russian culture lacked at the time: the expression of nationality, authentic folklore and a
taste of “local color.” However, the language of the tales was criticized for containing a
strange mixture of exotic Ukrainian, substandard speech and flashes of idiomatic Russian
that sounded odd to a Russian ear. Particularly, Ukrainian grammatical elements became
the subject of a fierce discussion among critics over the grounds for labeling Gogol semi-
literate. Both Gogol’s enemies (Polevoi, Bulgarin, Grech, Senkovskii, Masal’skii,
Zagoskin) and his associates (Pushkin, Dal’) accounted for the mistakes in his texts by
reference to his Ukrainian ethnicity and, as a consequence, his ignorance of Russian.
Polevoi meticulously listed examples of Gogol’s alleged ungrammaticalities in
Vechera. For example, he asserted that it is awkward to say “через трубу повалил
дым...,” and that one should say instead “из трубы повалил дым.” Other examples of
bad Russian, according to Polevoi, included “удивительно видеть чорта, пустившегося

165
See Pushkin’s letter to A. Voeikov of August 1831.
122
и себе туда же” and “очи твои так угрюмо надвинулись бровями.” He concluded that
“one could find hundreds of such mistakes in the bee-keeper’s book.”
166
In other articles,
Polevoi also criticized Gogol’s language and even later continued fishing out non-
Russian expressions.
167
Nikolai Masal’skii also compiled a long list of mistakes and
awkward phrases (“nepravil’nostei i nebrezhnostei“) from the speech of the characters in
Gogol’s texts and presented them as the author’s own, disregarding the fact that Gogol
used non-normative Russian as the means of his personages’ characterization.
168

Writers who were not the best connoisseurs of Russian or whose native tongue
was not Russian also engaged in denouncing Gogol’s incorrect use of the language.
Particularly, Bulgarin, Senkovskii, Zagoskin,
169
and Grech advanced the idea of Gogol’s
illiteracy, often with overt misrepresentations and falsifications. In 1842, Senkovskii
published a feuilleton in which he falsely accused Gogol of incorrect use of the genitive
form of nouns in the recently published Mertvye dushi:
In all Slavic languages that I know, the word “nose” has the form “nosa”
in the genitive case, whereas “shum”, “veter” and “dym” have “shumu”,
“vetru”, “dymu”. He [Gogol] has everything mixed up! … Indeed, he is a
strange philologist, you think to yourself. (97)
Belinskii immediately responded to Senkovskii defending Gogol. He argued that in
Russian, unlike in Polish, nouns in the genitive case can equally take endings ‘-a’ or ‘-u’
and there is no grammatical rule which regulates it. The only criterion is the “ear of a

166
Moskovskii telegraf (Moscow telegraph), 1832, part 44, #6, P. 266-7.
167
See his lists of Gogol’s mistakes in Mertvye dushi published in Russkii vestnik (Russian Herald).
168
Examples include: “вдали узрет,” “почтмейстер отступился,” “пересвистывались вдали
отдаленные петухи,” “носовая ноздря” etc. See Syn otechestva, part 3, #4, (1842) 1-30.
169
As Aksakov ironically wrote about Zagoskin’s criticism, “Zagoskin … detected incorrect language,
even illiteracy, everywhere [in Vechera]. [It] was very funny because Zagoskin himself did not display a
good knowledge of Russian (“gramotnost’”) (5).
123
native Russian which hears and cannot make a mistake” (Sobranie sochinenii VI, 354). In
his reviews of Gogol’s Mirgorod, Revizor, and Mertvye dushi, Bulgarin repeatedly
claimed that Gogol “corrupted” Russian by his use of colloquialisms and
Ukrainianisms.
170
Overall, the scrupulousness with which Gogol’s literary language was
analyzed to verify its conformity with the rules of Russian grammar was unprecedented.
The works of other nineteenth-century Russian authors, including those who were born
and educated in Ukraine, underwent such linguistic scrutiny. Gogol’s unique feeling for
language and his attempt to expand the limits of literary Russian by incorporating various
non-standard colloquial forms and expressions, including Ukrainianisms,
171
were all
attributed to his Ukrainian origin. One major reason for such an attitude to Gogol’s style
was common to the period concern about linguistic purity and conformity of the literary
language to the idea of Russianness. Later in the 1840s, Russian society became even

170
See Bulgarin’s view of Gogol’s language in his article “Nastoiashchii moment i dukh nashei literatury”
(The present moment and the spirit of our literature) in Severnaia pchela 12, 1836: “Among us, writers,
there are some writers who for the sake of originality corrupt and torture Russian … Let us take a look at a
book called Mirgorod, a book so much praised in the journals. There are such phrases that Oedipus himself
could not interpret. [Everything] is distorted and corrupted in the extreme.” See also his reviews of Gogol’s
Revizor “Rezko otritsatel’naia otsenka siuzheta, iazyka, dostovernosti p’esy” in Severnaia pchela 98,
1836; and of Mertvye dushi “Otritsatel’naia otsenka “Mertvykh dush”” (A Negative Review of Dead Souls)
in Severnaia pchela 119, 1842 (“Not a single work of Russian literature has such tasteless, dirty pictures
and examples of an absolute ignorance of Russian as this poem [Mertvye dushi].”
171
In this context, Gogol’s insights into what constitutes the Russian national language are relevant: “...сам
необыкновенный язык наш есть тайна. В нем все тоны и оттенки, все переходы звука от самых
твердых до самых нежных и мягких; он беспределен и может, живой как жизнь, обогащаться
ежеминутно, почерпая с одной стороны высокие слова из языка церковно-библейского, а с другой
стороны выбирая на выбор меткие названия из безчисленных своих наречий, рассыпанных по
нашим провинциям, имея возможность таким образом в одной и той же речи восходить до высоты,
недоступной никакому другому языку, и опускаться до простоты, ощутительной осязанию
непонятливейшего человека, - язык, который сам по себе уже поэт ...” (... our unique language is itself
a mystery. All tones and inflections are in it, all reverberations of sound from the most firm to the most
tener tones; alive like life itself, it has no boundaries and is enriched every minute, drawing elevated
lexicon from Church-Slavonic, on the one hand, and selecting apt names from its numberless dialects,
scattered in our provinces, on the other, thereby making it possible to reach heights inaccessible to any
other language and lower itself to the simplicity and tangible sensation of the least sensitive person – it is a
language which is a poet in itself. (PSS IV, 211-2)
124
more preoccupied with Gogol’s lack of Russianness, and his hybridized and
deterritorialized language was announced dangerous because it mocked the reality of
imperial Russia.
172

Not only Gogol’s enemies, but also his patron Pushkin spoke ironically of
Gogol’s proficiency in Russian. In his notes of 1830-1831, he wrote:
I have been printing [my works] for 16 years already and critics have
found only five grammatical mistakes in my poems (and they were right);
I have always been grateful to them and have always corrected the marked
mistake. I write much worse in prose, and speak even worse, almost as
badly as Gogol writes.
173

In 1836, promoting the second edition of Gogol’s Vechera, Pushkin again emphasized
Gogol’s imperfect literary language in the first edition: “Мы так были благодарны
молодому автору, что охотно простили ему неровность и неправильность его
слога...Автор оправдал таковое снисхождение” (We were so grateful to the young
author that we gladly forgave him his uneven and inaccurate language. The author has
justified our lenience) (VII, 237). In the 1840s, the writer and lexicographer of Ukrainian
origin Vladimir Dal’ described the effect that Gogol’s language produced on him in terms
of simultaneous delight and confusion: “Greedily you swallow up the whole [story] to the
end, then you read it again and still do not notice that he is writing in a wild language.

172
These never-ceasing attacks on Gogol’s language gradually grew into the claim that as much as Gogol
was ignorant of the rules of Russian grammar, he was unconversant with real life in Russia. Reviewing
Vybrannye mesta, Bulgarin wrote: “Gogol has a very poor knowledge of the Russian language, he writes in
the provincial idiolect which he admitted himself in his last book … he does not know Russia at all and
finally there are only depraved pictures [of Russia] in his works).” (“Po povodu stat’i Viazemskogo o
Gogole” in Severnaia pchela (1847) # 98).
173
Quoted in Tikhonravov, “Zametki o slovare” 198.
125
You try, pedantically, to figure out, and you see that one absolutely should not write or
talk like this. You try to correct it – you spoil it. You cannot touch a word.”
174

Throughout the 1830s-1840s Russian writers and critics perpetuated the notion of
Gogol as a semi-literate Little Russian incompatible with the status of a Great Russian
writer. This prompted Gogol to polish his texts by eliminating Ukrainian elements from
Vechera and Mirgorod. In the second half of the 1830s – 1840s, Gogol strove to shed his
regional identity and standardize his hybrid language. To what extent Gogol became
anxious about his imperfect Russian can be seen from his letter to Pletnev of December
1846 in which the writer complained that he had failed to improve his Russian style:
Я до сих пор, как ни бьюсь, не могу обработать слог и язык свой,
первые необходимые орудия всякого писателя: они у меня до сих пор
в таком неряшестве, как ни у кого даже из дурных писателей, так что
надо мной имеет право посмеятся едва начинающий школьник. Все
мною написанное замечательно только в психологическом значении,
но оно никак не может быть образцом словесности, и тот наставник
поступит неосторожно, кто посоветует своим ученикам учиться у
меня искусству писать.
However hard I have been trying to polish my style and language, a
writer’s foremost important tools; they are still more ungainly than the
worst writers have demonstrated, so that even an inexperienced schoolboy
has the right to laugh at me. All that has been written by me is remarkable
only from a psychological perspective, but can in no way serve as a model
of belles-léttres, and any teacher who advises his pupils to learn the art of
writing from my works would be insufficiently prudent. (PSS IV, 233)
Gogol’s confession reflects a typical bilingual perception of his own language - a sense of
“impurity,” of linguistic decadence and lack of confidence in his proficiency. Caught
between his regional language and the language of the dominant imperial culture, Gogol
was gradually grasping the pragmatic benefits of writing in standard Russian that after

174
Letter to M.P.Pogodin, April 1842, in Literaturnoe nasledie 58, p. 617.
126
1834 was perceived to have greater moral, aesthetic and intellectual worth than other
languages in the empire. This was to a large extent the result of the growing nationalist
ideology that prompted Russian intellectuals to change their attitude toward Ukrainian
culture.
3.6. Standardization of the Russian National Language and the Status of
Ukrainian “Dialect” in It
The 1830s-1840s polemics over Gogol’s literary language, particularly, around
the legitimacy of Ukrainianisms in his texts, in many respects continued the early-
nineteenth-century discussion about what kind of a national language Russian society
needed and how it should convey the spirit of the nation. The trajectory for the debates
over the national language was set in the early nineteenth century by the so-called
novatory (innovators) and arkhaisty (archaists) with Nikolai Karamzin and Aleksandr
Shishkov at their respective heads. The former emphasized that the modern Russian
language should be open to borrowings from western European languages, and took the
colloquial language of educated Russian nobility as model for the standard literary
language. With the development of Romanticism in the 1810s-1820s, many Russian
writers were dissatisfied with the conceptual monotony, social and stylistic limitations,
and lack of nationality of the salon language that the novatory advocated. For instance,
the poet Vilgel’m Kiukhel’beker complained that the rich Russian language was being
reduced to the polite language of the few, “un petit jargon de coterie.” Unlike the
novatory, the arkhaisty considered Old Church Slavonic and Russian folklore the main
sources for the vocabulary and style of the modern Russian language. For the arkhaisty,
the colloquial speech of middle-class Russians, particularly, non-Frenchified nobles,
127
clergy, landowners and petty bourgeois residing in the Western outskirts of the empire,
became a source for the nationalization of the Russian language.
The vernacular of the common people, however, was banned from the literary
language, by both camps, whose attitude toward it was equally derogatory. Russian
dictionaries at the beginning of the nineteenth century also stood guard against the
intrusion of “low” elements, as well as the use regional dialectisms, into the Russian
literary language. Nikolai Ostolopov, for example, differentiated between commonly
used colloquialisms and regional dialectisms, excluding the latter from literary texts:
By common words and expressions are understood those used in everyday
conversations and comprehensible to all the people of one nation of all
stations […]. The low words and expressions spoken by the vulgar herd
and belonging to some regional dialect […] cannot be used in the literary
works written in a common (simple) style (107).
Although the literary norm was becoming less restrictive toward folk elements, there still
existed disagreement regarding the appropriateness of the colloquial language of common
people in literary works. For example, Bulgarin censured the language of Zagoskin’s
novel Yurii Miloslavskii as “coarse,” “folkish,” and “tasteless.” Pushkin, on the other
hand, welcomed the folksiness of the novel’s style, but was upset by the fact that the
novel was infected by the language of “bad society” – that is, the speech of the city
intelligentsia, petty bourgeoisie, merchants, and bureaucracy. Vladimir Odoevskii
insisted that because of its “vulgar” sound, strong and vivid popular lexicon the
colloquial language of common people should be avoided in prose fiction, for the Russian
audience had a long way to go before it begins to understand. The literary elite rigorously
maintained the purity of the literary language from the encroachments of “low” elements.
128
In the 1820s with the emergence of the interest in folklore and regional dialects
the situation began to change, and the Russian literary language embraced a variety of
earlier inadmissible linguistic elements: colloquialisms, professional jargon, and regional
dialectisms (including Ukrainianisms) that were previously inadmissible enjoyed a
greater license. One of the reasons for the diversification of the Russian literary language
at this time was the birth of a middle-class reading public that demanded that literary
works be written in a more comprehensible style. The concept of the national language
was relatively broadened compared to that which had existed in the 1810-early 1820s.
The situation of cultural multilingualism that emerged in early nineteenth-century
Russian culture was, according to Viktor Zhivov, due to the continuing juxtaposition
between Europeanized culture developed since the Petrine reforms and adopted by the
imperial elite and traditional Russian culture preserved by the lower social classes, who
remained “cut off” from the educated elite. This social separation produced “the constant
semiotization and ideologization of linguistic and cultural behavior, and did not
contribute at all to the establishment of a single, universal literary language” (355-6).
Precisely because of this lack of uniformity of Russian culture, Russian Romantic
writers began actively incorporating the everyday spoken speech of different social strata
into the literary language. It was believed that folk language encapsulated that primordial
national spirit that was missing both from the bookish Church Slavonic as well as from
the Frenchified language of Europeanized Russian nobles. Old Russian chronicles, songs,
and legends were considered a repository of the genuine Russian spirit; many Romantic
writers of the time found exoticism and the charm of indigenous freshness in them.
Russian intellectuals celebrated the growing interest in collecting the dialects of the
129
Russian Empire.
175
Ukrainianisms acquired a special status in the Russian linguistic
consciousness of the time; they were associated with Slavic antiquity and gained a certain
currency for writers. It is important to note that Gogol made his literary debut just at the
moment when Ukrainianisms were welcomed in Russian literature.
This positive attitude of Russian intellectuals toward a moderate use of Ukrainian
(which was often required to be accompanied with Russian glosses) can still be traced in
the early reception of Gogol’s tales. In his 1831-1832 reviews of Vechera, Nadezhdin, for
example, defended the “citizenship [of Ukrainianisms] in the general Russian language.”
The liveliness and authenticity of the tales’ language, according to the critic,
distinguished Gogol’s work from other literary representations of the national character.
Curiously, Nadezhdin praised Gogol’s tales for offering the right amount of Ukrainisms,
contrasting them with those in Narezhnyi’s works, which had an insufficient number, and
Kvitka-Osnov’ianenko’s works, which had them in excess. The critic did not even notice
that the tales of the latter were written in a straightforward Ukrainian.
According to Stephen Moeller-Sally, the critics’ appraisal of Gogol’s Ukrainian
tales signaled the “ongoing frustration” of Russian intellectuals over the question of
Russian nationality. In this context, the Ukrainian language was seen as “a deeply rooted
plant onto which modern Russian identity could be grafted, and the vigorous efforts of
Ukrainian writers to sustain a living connection with their origins were held in sharp

175 Nikolai Grech wrote: “It is desirable that respected inhabitants of the provinces, especially the country
clergy and nobles who withdraw themselves from the vanity of society to their country estates, begin to
observe and collect regional dialects, special expressions, unusual grammatical forms, proverbs and other
unique linguistic elements in the various regions of the vast Russia… By doing this, they will help to
compile first a review, then a dictionary and the comparative grammar of Russian provincialisms” (Syn
otechestva LXI (1820) 269-271).
130
contrast to the superficial and derivative efforts of Russians in their own native field”
(21).
However, Ukrainian elements were allowed in Russian only insofar as they were
used to define the Russian national character. Nadezhdin, for example, primarily
emphasized Gogol’s talent of “translating the national motif of the Ukrainian dialect into,
so to speak, Muscovite notes, without losing its original physiognomy.” The “idiotismy”
(idiotic locutions) of the Ukrainian “dialect” had no significance as such, according to
Nadezhdin; only their translation into Russian made them appropriate for a literary work.
It should be noted, however, that despite the favorable attitude of Russian intellectuals
toward the inclusion of Ukrainianisms into the Russian literary language in the 1820s-
early 1830s, their attitude towards the status of the Ukrainian language itself was
equivocally negative. Ukrainian was rarely considered a separate language: it was called
variously a “Little Russian dialect” (malorossiiskoe narechie), a “spoiled Polish”
(isporchennyi pol’skii),
176
a deteriorated Old Slavic language that appealed to Herder’s
understanding of Ukraine as the “cradle of Slavic culture,”
177
or as a hybrid of Old
Slavonic “mixed with German, Latin and Polish words.”
178
Prince Tsertelev was one of a
few Russian intellectuals who defined Ukrainian as a separate language in his
introduction to the publication of Ukrainian folk songs in Ukrainskii zhurnal (The
Ukrainian journal) (1823).

176
In his Opyt kratkoi isorii russkoi literatury (An Attempt at Concise History of Russian Literature)
(1822), Nikolai Grech wrote: “Little Russian dialect originated from a lasting dominion of Polish people in
the south-west Russia, and may be called a regional Polish dialect” (12-13).
177
See, for example, Shevyrev’s review of Maksymovych’s collection of “Ukrainian folk songs” in
Moskovskii vestnik 23 (1827) 310-317.
178
See A. Levshin, “Otryvki iz pisem o Malorossii” (1816).
131
The idea of the Russian national language that emerged in the 1830s did not allow
such expanded use of Ukrainian in Russian texts. This occurred because the link between
language and national identity became more exclusive and Russianness began to be more
strictly associated with the standard use of the Russian language. Any deviation from
linguistic correctness, not to speak of the use of Ukrainian, was taken as a sign of a lack
of loyalty to the imperial idea of Russianness.
The literary language in Russia had always been subject to ideological
determination, but the stakes suddenly became much higher at the end of the 1830s.
Russian society expressed the danger of promoting Ukrainian and allowing
Ukrainianisms into Russian texts. If in the first half of the 1830s Ukrainian elements were
perceived as an embodiment of the true folk spirit of the Russian nation, in the the second
half of the 1830s they became inadmissible. First of all, this concerned Gogol’s
Ukrainian tales. In them, Belinskii detected a distinctly Ukrainian aspect, which,
according to him, was “inaccessible to us Muscovites” (Sobranie sochnenii I, 239). But
the critic asserted that the narodnost’ (nationality) of Gogol’s works “was not limited
solely to Ukrainian” (PSS I, 295) and he demoted the use of Ukrainian in Gogol’s works
to the level of “prostonarodnost” (uncultured commonplace) (Sobranie sochnenii V,
295). Only by combining the two elements, “narodnyi” and “prostonarodnyi,” Belinskii
claimed, could Gogol’s works reach the level of “art” (Sobranie sochnenii V, 308-9).
Therefore, the only path that Ukrainian-born writers could chose in the arena of Russian
literature was to write exclusively in Russian:
The literary language of Ukrainians should be the language of their
educated society: the Russian language. If a great poet can emerge in
Ukraine at all, then only under the condition that he will be a Russian
132
poet…A tribe can only have folk songs but cannot have poets, and
especially great ones. Great poets appear only in great nations, and what
sort of a nation is it if it does not have great, independent political
significance? … [Gogol’s] poetry features many purely Ukrainian
elements that do not and cannot exist in Russian, but who will call him a
Ukrainian poet? (Sobranie sochnenii IV, 163).
Thus Belinskii denied the very existence of Ukrainian culture as autonomous
phenomenon and appropriated Gogol’s entire legacy as Russian. The critic announced
that Gogol was the role-model not only of realism, but also and primarily of Russia’s
cultural supremacy over the minor languages and cultures of the Russian Empire.
In his other critical essays of the 1840s, Belinskii reinforced his argument about
the illegitimacy of Ukrainian for Russian literature due to Ukrainians’ backwardness and
lack of culture.
179
While classifying the Ukrainians as a backward people, along with
Asians and the Crimean Tatars, he described Russians as an “enlightened” nation.
Claiming that Ukrainian national aspirations were doomed, Belinskii suggested that the
only way for Ukraine to enter the era of organic unity and to attain civilization was to be
absorbed into Russia.
180
Belinskii’s view of the fate of the Ukrainian nation was projected
onto the future of the Ukrainian language.
Is there any Little Russian language or is it just a regional dialect? Little
Russian existed in the time of Little Russia’s independence and still exists
in the poetic relics of that time… Both a noble hetman and a poor Cossack
spoke the same language… However, with [the reign] of Peter the Great
the division of classes began. The [Little Russian] nobility by virtue of
historic necessity embraced the Russian language and Russian-European
customs into their lifestyles. The people’s language began to deteriorate…

179
Since Ukraine lacked any of the four factors that Belinskii attributed to nationhood (an educated elite, a
great leader, an orientation toward civilization, and a strong substance), it remained mired in the mentality
of base instinct, unable to ascend to the simplest exercise of rationality (Sobranie sochnenii VII, 62).
180
“Merging forever with consanguineous Russia, Little Russia opened the door of civilization,
enlightenment, art, science, from which it had previously been separated by the insurmountable barrier of
its semi-barbaric way of life. Together with Russia, it now stands before a great future.” (Sobranie
sochnenii VII, 64-65).
133
So, we have the right to say that there is no Little Russian language, but
there is a Little Russian regional dialect, like Belarusian, Siberian and
other dialects… So what is the difference between the Little Russian
dialect and the Russian language? A Russian novelist can depict characters
of all social ranks in his novels and make them speak their own language:
an educated man – the language of educated people, a merchant – a
merchant language, a soldier – a soldier language, and a peasant – a
peasant one. But the Little Russian dialect is all the same for all ranks – a
peasant one. (Sobranie sochnenii VI, 200, 202)
Therefore, beginning with the second half of the 1830s, the hierarchy established between
Russian and Ukrainian was used to define a uniquely Russian national identity. The
differentiation between the Russian and Ukrainian languages was based more on cultural
and political issues than on objective linguistic properties. The Ukrainian language was
designated as the Little Russian dialect (narechie); the word “dialect” was often used in a
pejorative sense, implying a “defective language.” Thus the epoch of liberal philo-
Ukrainian tendencies in Russian culture began to dwindle by the end of the 1830s giving
way to Great Russian chauvinism.
Senkovskii attacked philo-Ukrainianism on the grounds that Ukraine’s history
was one of stubborn resistance to all forms of legitimate political authority. In his 1836
review of Gogol’s Vechera, the critic sharply rebuked the author for his Ukrainian
plebeian theme. For Senkovskii, Ukrainian culture and history had no value, being
merely a history of anarchic resistance to authority.
181
Even liberal critics such as Pletnev
expressed doubts about the appropriateness of the Ukrainian literary language for
educated society. In his review of Izmaїl Sreznevs’kyi’s Ukrainskii sbornik (The

181
See O. Senkovskii, “Istoriia Malorossii, Nik. Markevicha” in Biblioteka dlia chteniia 56 (1843) 1-46.
134
Ukrainian Collection) (1838), Pletnev asserted that Ukrainian is a provincial dialect,
inappropriate for the educated classes of imperial society.
182

3.7. Imperial Language Ideology in the Late 1830s-1840s
In the imperial context, language and its standardization enacted by various
imperial institutions played a key role in the perpetuation of imperial power. In the
process of the construction of empire, the creation of a unified national language was an
integral part of nation-building. Throughout the eighteenth-early nineteenth centuries, the
Russian empire had become relatively multilingual so that a unified national language
was needed to consolidate its development. Russian emperors personally took an active
part in controlling the purity and unity of the national language through institutionalized
practices. Peter I was personally engaged in creating the first Russian civic alphabet.
Catherine II, herself speaking Russian with mistakes, helped to institutionalize standard
Russian by establishing the Russian Academy. She participated in discussions of
linguistic issues and supervised the creation of a comparative dictionary of world
languages. Pavel I banned the use of some words from Russian and worked on the
development of political lexicon missing from Russian. Nicholas I felt himself competent
enough to “Russify” the Polish alphabet and grammar.
183

During the reign of Nicholas I (1825-1855), the Russian language became a
renewed site of struggle over national identity and social values. This occurred due to the
new national doctrine of “Official Nationality” that imposed a dynastic vision of
nationality. Not the people inhabiting the Russian Empire but the monarch himself

182
See P. Pletnev, “Ukraiinskii sbornik I. Sreznevskogo” in Sovremennik 14 (1839) 31.
183
See B. Uspenskii, “Spory o iazyke v nachale XIX veka kak fakt russkoi kul’tury” 335.
135
became the embodiment of the nation and the guarantor of bringing the diverse
population of the empire together into a solid integral mass permeated with Russianness.
This formula for the unity of Russian nation provided new meaning to the monarch’s rule
and justified the subjugation of non-Russian nationalities and the effort to turn them into
Russians by bringing them into the sphere of Orthodox religion, imperial institutions,
and, most importantly, Russian culture and language (Wortman 297-332).
A utopian, messianic doctrine, Official Nationality proclaimed the mythical
oneness of Russia and espoused a vision of progress for those who would
unquestioningly join the Russian Empire by eradicating their historic memories and
effacing their ethnic, religious, linguistic and other differences. This national ideal
endorsed radical policies of Russification to enforce unity and to bring non-Russian
peoples into one national community, particularly those peoples on the Western outskirts
of the empire. After 1834, Russian intellectuals began to link the Russian language to
Russianness and advanced the idea of the superiority of Russian over other languages of
the empire. The tsarist grammarian Nikolai Grech proclaimed that “our language
[Russian] – one can say this confidently – is superior to all the modern European
languages” (290). For most Russian writers the hegemony of the nation-state made
monolingualism a symbol of “modernity.” Russian intellectuals promoted the idea of
Russian as the God-given language, a gateway to world culture. Bulgarin described a
future when “the Russian language, which without doubt holds first place in
melodiousness and in the richness and the ease of word construction, will be the language
of poetry and literature in all countries of the globe” (Sochineniia VI, 130).
136
Romantic nationalism, with its idea of Russia’s superiority, was used by the
imperial administration to justify policies of Russificaition,
184
which actively began to be
imposed in the western borderlands of Russian empire, especially in Ukraine, after the
Polish uprising of 1830. Russian began to be promoted as the only legitimate language
for education, publishing, and for getting access to high governmental positions. The
knowledge of Russian became an emblem of loyalty to the state, whereas multilingualism
implied political unreliability and disloyalty. In the 1830s, Minister of the Interior Lev
Perovskii (1792-1856) proposed to introduce Russian laws, administration, and municipal
institutions in Ukraine as well as to establish Russian as the official language of the local
administration and as the language of school instruction. In the 1840s, Minister of
Education Sergei Uvarov launched a wide-ranging program to propagate knowledge of
Russian in the western borderlands of the empire. The tsar himself stepped in to guard the
uniformity of the Cyrillic alphabet all over the empire. Nicholas I viewed the imposition
of the Russian alphabet, particularly in Polish, as a means of consolidating the Russian
nation.
185

The new language policy found full realization in the history of editing Gogol’s
Vechera. After 1834, the peculiarities of Gogol’s literary language were no longer
interpreted as the repository of the authentic Slavic spirit, but became the symbol of the
disloyalty to the national idea. The reception of the language in Gogol’s tales during the

184
Usually, scholars (Theodore Weeks, Darius Staliūnas, Mikhail Dolbilov, Andreas Kappeler and others)
study “Russification” policies with respect to late imperial Russia. However, many policies had been
initiated in Ukraine during the reign of Nicolas I.
185
Moreover, Nicholas I envisioned the Russification of Polish as a part of Russia’s civilizing mission to
make all other nations “happy” by subordinating them to Great Russian language and culture. In a 1833
letter to General Ivan Paskevich, Nicholas I defined this mission as following: “ they [Polish people] should
be made happy despite themselves and, if necessary, by force” (Uspenskii,“Nikolai I i pol’skii iazyk” 19).
137
1830s-1840s indicated Russian writers’ and critics’ heightened concern with correctness
and purity of the literary language. Once Gogol became the subject of harsh criticism for
his use of Ukrainian, he realized the necessity to purify his Russian from ungrammatical,
non-standard expressions and Ukrainian elements.
3.8. Language Ideology at Work: The Editing of Vechera
In his letter of April 20, 1834 to Maksymovych (a Ukrainian historian and folk
song collector), Gogol advised his Ukrainian colleague how to write for the Russian
audience:
Есть пропасть таких фраз и выражений, оборотов, которые нам,
малороссиянам, кажется будут понятны для русских, если мы
переведем их слово в слово, но которые иногда уничтожают
половину смысла подлинника. Почти всегда сильное лаконическое
место становится непонятным на русском, потому что оно не в духе
русского языка; и тогда лучше десятью словами определить всю
обширность его, нежели скрыть его ... Помни, что твой перевод для
русских, и потому все малорусские обороты и конструкции прочь.
There are loads of phrases, idioms and expressions which we, Little
Russians, think will be clear for Russians, if we translate them literally,
but which sometimes destroy half of the original meaning. Almost always
a strong laconic passage becomes unclear in Russian because it is not in
the spirit of the Russian language; in this case it is better to express it [the
Ukrainian word] with ten words, than to conceal it … Remember that your
translation is intended for Russians and therefore get rid of all Little
Russian idioms and phrases. (PSS X, 311-2)
This letter sheds light on the nature of the changes Gogol made in the second edition of
Vechera (1836). Several moments in the letter should be emphasized: first, Gogol
suggests that the Ukrainian expressions that Maksymovcyh (and by projection Gogol
himself) used in his collection are richer and more laconic than their Russian equivalents;
second, that direct Russian translation of Ukrainian words and idiomatic expressions is
138
not a solution because it kills the meaning; and third, Gogol admits that his audience is
Russian and in order to please it one should write in standard Russian.
By 1836, when the second edition of Vechera came out, Gogol had changed his
own attitude to his texts and began to correct his language and style, mainly by
eliminating ungrammatical elements and Ukrainianisms. For this edition, Gogol wanted
to publish both cycles of his Ukrainian tales, Vechera and Mirgorod,
186
in one book and
in order to emphasize the continuity between the two cycles he began to standardize his
language throughout according to the rules of Russian grammar.
It is interesting that in 1835 when Gogol was preparing his other work Arabeski
(Arabesques) for publication, he twice asked Pushkin (during January 1835) to proofread
the rough copy of his new book “mercilessly” (“сделайте милость, просмотрите и если
что, то поправьте и перемените тут же чернилами” (do me a favor, look through and
if there are some [mistakes], correct them in ink right away) (PSS X, 346); “никак не
останавливайте негодование при виде ошибок” (do not hold back your indignation
when you see mistakes) (PSS, X, 347)). Although it is unconfirmed that Pushkin was
involved in editing of Vechera, it is probable that Gogol was under the impression of
Pushkin’s corrections to Arabeski when he began to revise Vechera in 1835-1836.
For the second edition of his tales, Gogol himself made the following changes in
the text. He grouped together the tales from Vechera and Mirgorod, removing Pan’ko’s
afterword in which he begged editors for mercy and to ignore his misspellings and the list
of misprints. In both of Pan’ko’s Prefaces, Gogol eliminated all misspellings and

186
His new collection of tales Mirgorod, which were written in 1832-1833, right after the publication of
Vechera, had the subtitle “Повести, служащие продолжением “Вечеров на хуторе близ Диканьки”
(Tales Serving as Sequel to“Vechera on a Farm near Dikan’ka”).
139
grammatical mistakes (that were analyzed previously in this chapter). The correction of
the language of the tales, however, was unsystematic; the most intensive editing occurred
in the text of the first three tales of Book One. In these, the average number of corrections
per page was 2.5; in the fourth tale “Propavshaia gramota” —less than 2; and on average
for Book Two – less than 1.5. While working on the style of the tales, Gogol enhanced
the skaz elements in Foma Grigorievich’s speech and standardized Makar Nazarovich’s
language in accordance with the norms of standard Russian. In Makar Nazarovich’s tales,
Gogol replaced some Ukrainianisms and Russian dialectisms with normative lexicon:
“пьяненек” with “пьянехонек,” “анбар” with “амбар,” “чудеса деются” – “чудеса
делаются,” “чего ж вы перепугались” – “чего ж вы испугались,” ‘посереди” –
“посреди,” “сткло” – “стекло,” etc. The differentiation between the two forms of the
verb “слышать” (‘to hear’) – the normative “слышал” in Makar Nazarovich’s narrative
and “слыхал” in the headman’s speech (in the tale “Maiskaia noch’” narrated by Makar
Nazarovich) – indicated that Gogol’s corrections had an inner logic. Makar Nazarovich,
speaking in bookish language, cannot say “слыхал,” just as the village headman cannot
use “слышал,” and Gogol replaced them with the appropriate counterparts.
Another important correction that reflected Gogol’s religious crisis of 1836 was
the elimination of the last three words in the epigraph to “Maiskaia noch’.”
187
In the
second edition, Gogol dropped “ninache z neba” (‘as if from Heaven’) because he
realized the sinfulness of the analogy: the devil’s swindles could not be explained as a

187
“Ворог його батька знае! почнуть що-небудь робить люди крещенi, то мурдуютця, мурдуютця,
мов хорти за зайцем, а все щось не до шмигу; тiльки ж куди чорт уплетецця, то верть хвостиком -
так де воно й вiзмецця, ниначе з неба” (The devil knows what to make of it! God-fearing folks set their
mind on something, toil and moil away like hundreds after a hare, and not a jot of good comes of it; but the
moment that the devil pokes his nose in and flicks his tail – what do you know – things come raining down
as if from Heaven). (PSS I, 153)
140
gift from Heaven. For the same reason, Gogol eliminated the fragment of the text in
“Noch’ pered Rozhdestvom” in which Vakula teases the devil with the cross:
Его [Vakula] забавляло до крайности, как черт чихал и кашлял, когда
он снимал с шеи кипарисный крестик и подносил к нему. Нарочно
поднимал он руку почесать голову, а черт, думая, что его собираются
крестить, летел еще быстрее.
He was tickled pink by the way the devil sneezed and coughed whenever
he removed the cypress cross from his neck and held it out towards him.
He would ostentatiously lift his hand to scratch his head, and the devil,
thinking he was about to make the sign of the cross, would fly even faster.
(PSS I, 232)
The reason why Gogol removed this fragment had a religious explanation rather
than purely linguistic: as an Orthodox Christian Vakula could not take off his
cross to mock the devil. Both of these changes were ignored by twentieth-century
editors (first, by Tikhonravov, then by Vinokur), and restored only in the first
academic editions of Gogol’s tales.
The second attempt to “improve” the language of the tales was made when Gogol
prepared the publication of his Sochineniia in 1842, in which Vechera and Mirgorod
formed Volume One. Because Gogol did not feel himself sufficiently competent in
Russian to edit his works, he authorized his classmate from Nizhyn Lyceé, Nikolai
Prokopovich, to do it. By that time, Prokopovich was a professor of Russian and had the
reputation of being an expert in Russian grammar. Delegating enormous freedom to him
to correct the language and style of his works for his Sochineniia, Gogol wrote:
При корректуре второго тома прошу тебя действовать как можно
самоуправней и полновластней: в Тарасе Бульбе много есть
погрешностей писца. Он часто любит букву и; где она не у места, ее
там выбрось. В двух-трех местах я заметил плохую грамматику и
почти остутсвие смысла. Пожалуйста, поправь везде с такою же
свободою, как ты переправляешь тетради своих учеников. Если где
частое повторение одного и того же оборота периодов, дай им
141
другой, и никак не сомневайся и не задумывайся, будет ли хорошо –
все будет хорошо.
While correcting the second volume, I beg you to do it as brutally and
autocratically as you can: in Taras Bul’ba, there are many mistakes that a
copyist has made. He likes the letter ‘i’; get rid off it wherever it is
misplaced. In two or three places I have noticed bad grammar and almost
the complete absence of sense. Please, correct everywhere with as much
freedom as when you are correcting the notes of your students. If there is a
repetition of the same expression, find another one, and do not doubt or
think about it whether it will be good—everything will be good. (PSS XII,
84-5).
Prokopovich took the writer’s advice to heart to correct every mistake. The only problem
was that his definition of mistakes was too broad: he understood his task as correcting not
only Gogol’s orthography, grammar, and punctuation, but improving his overall style.
His standardization of the language proceeded in two directions: on the one hand,
peculiar Ukrainian lexicon, grammatical forms, and orthography were replaced with
Russian equivalents; and on the other, ungrammaticalities, misprints, colloquialisms, and
vulgarisms in Russian were neutralized. Prokopovich’s corrections included:
1. Elimination of inversions: in “Strashnaia mest’” instead of «...вышел
потихоньку из двора промеж спавшими своими козаками в горы» -
«...промеж спавшими своими козаками вышел потихоньку из двора в горы»
([Danilo]…walked quietly out of the yard, stepping between sleeping Cossacks,
and made for the hills” – [stepping between sleeping Cossacks [Danilo] walked
quietly out of the yard and made for the hills);
2. Insertion of new words whenever Prokopovich thought they were missing
(especially in dialogues between characters, which were often carried on in
incomplete sentences);
142
3. Replacement of ungrammatical elements that in fact served the purpose of the
personages’ characterization. All ungrammaticalities in the language of Rudy
Pan’ko were removed so that his writing conformed to modern grammar and
orthography. Vakula in “Noch’ pered Rozhdestvom” tries to speak Russian: «Но
Боже мой, от чево она так чертовски хороша» (Oh my God, why does she
have to be so devilish pretty?) Prokopovich corrected one word, “чево,” replacing
it with “чего” so that the phrase became grammatically correct, but the effect of
deterritorialization was lost. Similarly, in “Maiskaia noch’,” a village clerk reads
a letter from the district commissioners: “приказываю тебе сей же час […]
подчинить мосты на столбовой дороге” (I forthwith direct you … to subjugate
the bridges on the highway). Prokopovich thought that this was one of Gogol'’s
blunders and replaced it with “починить,” (‘to fix’) which logically fits better,
but neutralizes the clerk’s ridiculous bureaucratic manner of speech;
4. Elimination of grammatically marked Ukrainianisms, which were dubious from
the point of view of the linguistic purist: all nouns ending in –ць were replaced
with –ц (“голодрабець” – “голодрабец,” “оселедець” – “оселедец,” “хлопець”
– “хлопец”); Noun endings (“Купала” – “Купалы,” “Галю” – “Галя”), adverbs
and prepositions (“по-за селом” – “за селом,” “по-над самым провалом” –
“над самым провалом”) were standardized.
Moreover, Prokopovich combined the two glossaries of Ukrainian words from Book One
and Book Two and placed them at the end of Mirgorod, which established an initially
absent link between the two cycles. Trying to make Gogol’s texts more comprehensible
143
to the Russian metropolitan audience, the editor added about fifty new Ukrainian words
to the new glossary.
Corrections of Gogol’s language were also made to Mirgorod, especially in the
text of “Starosvetskie pomeshchiki” (The Old-World Landowners), which was initially
intended to reproduce the pidgin speech of Russianized Ukrainian gentry. Prokopovich
made the following changes in the tale:
1. Elimination of proper Ukrainian words: “хилый” instead of the original
“тендитный и маленький;” “среда” instead of “середа;” “за ужином” instead
of “за вечерею;” “точущий фонтан” instead of “текущий фонтан;”
“изготовленного” instead of “сготовленного;” “фартуками” instead of
“фартухами;”
2. Russianization of Ukrainian grammar: “и то хорошо” instead of “и то хороше;”
“мешков” instead of “мешечков;” “шнурочки” instead of “шнуречки;”
“маленькие, низенькие” instead of “маленьки, низеньки;” “смородиновым”
instead of “смородиным;”
3. Neutralization of peculiar colloquial forms and expressions that served to
reproduce Ukrainian landowners’ corrupted Russian: “ярмарке” instead of
“ярманке;” “кофе” instead of “кофий;” “закусывал” instead of “закушивал;”
“простолюдины” instead of “простолюдимы;” “английских” instead of
“англинских;” “блюдо” instead of “кушанье;” the plural form of the following
words “младенцы,” “воробушки,” “поросята” instead of “ребенки,”
“воробьенки,” “поросенки;” “не в состоянии повернуть языком” instead of
“не в состоянии повернуть языка.”
144
Not only Gogol’s Vechera and Mirgorod, but also the comedies Igroki (The Gamblers)
(1842) and Zhenit’ba (A Marriage) (1842) suffered the same editorial fate. While
revising the comedies Prokopovich doubted Gogol’s idiosyncratic feeling for language
and removed the professional jargon and colloquial idioms from the texts. The style of
Gogol’s comedy Zhenit’ba was neutralized by Prokopovich. Written in 1836, the comedy
was published only in 1842 in Gogol’s Sobranie sochinenii after being heavily edited by
Prokopovich. The editor replaced peculiar colloquial grammatical forms and lexicon with
those accepted in the literary Russian language of the time: “элтажах” was replaced with
“этажах,” “сподтишка” - “исподтишка,” “сенахтор” - “сенатор,” “губернахтор” -
“губернатор,” “аглицкие” - “английские,” “острамишься” – “осрамишься,”
“звестно” - “известно,” “физиогномия” - “физиономия,” “прибыточный” -
“прибыльный,” “поприглядистее” - “попригляднее,” etc.
Unsatisfied with the fact that Prokopovich removed some meaningful phrases
from Igroki, in his letter of November 26, 1842, Gogol insisted that Prokopovich restore
the original text:
Также в Игроках пропущено одно выражение довольно
значительное. Именно когда Утешительный мечет банк и говорит:
«На, немец, возьми, съешь свою семерку!». После этих слов следует
прибавить: «Руте, решительно руте! Просто карта фоска!» Эту фразу
включи непременно. Она настоящая армейская и в своем роде не без
достоинства.

Also in The Gamblers there is a very important phrase missing.
Particularly, when Uteshitel’nyi keeps the bank and says: “Here, German,
take and eat your seven!” After these words you should add: “Rute,
definitely rute. Just the card is foska!” By all means insert this phrase. It is
a real army [expression] and has its own charm. (PSS V, 472)
Reporting to Gogol about the results of his editing Prokopovich wrote: “ I can guarantee
the exactness of my editing of which I am proud: I have become a skilled hand (“nabil
145
ruku”) at this enterprise and read two proofs by myself; Belinskii read it one more time
after me.”
188
The involvement of Belinskii,
189
who was notorious for his negative attitude
to Ukrainian, may account for the large number of corrections: the ratio of them
drastically increased in the tales following “Maiskaia noch’” rising to 3.5 corrections per
page. Since Prokopovich’s corrections were sanctioned by the author himself, this
version of Gogol’s text may be acknowledged as the most valid text. However, as noted,
Gogol was not completely satisfied with Prokopovich’s work. In his letter to the editor,
the writer obscures his dissatisfaction in self-condemnation:
Издание сочинений моих вышло не в том вполне виде, как я думал, и
виною, разумеется, этому я, не распорядившись аккуратнее ...
Вкрались ошибки, но, я думаю, они произошли от неправильного
оригинала и принадлежат писцу или даже мне. Все, что от издателя,
то хорошо, что от типографии – то мерзко. Буквы тоже подлые. Я
виноват сильно во всем. Во-первых, виноват тем – ввел тебя в
хлопоты, хотя тайный умысел мой был добрый. Мне хотелось
пробудить тебя из недвижности и придвинуть к деятельности
книжной; но вижу, что еще рано ...
The publication of my works came out not as I intended it to be, and, of
course, I am the only one who should be blamed, because I did not give
accurate orders … Some misprints have crept into the text, but I think they
were there because of the bad original and belonged to the copyist, or even
to me. Everything that came from the publisher is good, everything from
the typography—bad. Letters are also mean. I am so guilty in everything.
First of all, I gave you so much trouble, although I meant well. I wanted
to awaken you from immobility and get you involved in book publishing;
but now I see it was too early. (PSS XII, 215-6)
Gogol was deeply dissatisfied with the publication of his Sochineniia in general and with
the edited text of Vechera in particular. In 1850, he initiated a new publication of his
works in five volumes and contracted Stepan Shevyrev as the editor. Shevyrev, as a

188
Quoted in Shenrok, Materialy dlia biografii Gogolia 54.
189
Aleksandr Slonimskii thoroughly analyzed Belinskii’s influence on Prokopovich’s editing of Gogol’s
texts. See Slonimskii, “Voprosy gogolevskogo teksta.”
146
Slavophile and a professor of Russian literature, was very concerned with polishing
Gogol’s Russian and convinced the writer to hire Mikhail Likhonin, a colleague from the
journal Muscovite, for the position of copy editor. Presumably, Likhonin was assigned to
the position because of his excellent knowledge of Russian; he had already published
textbooks on Russian grammar.
Technically, while correcting Gogol’s texts for the second edition of his
Sochineniia (1855) Shevyrev and Likhonin played the same role that Prokopovich had
played in the first edition of Gogol’s Sochineniia (1842). As Berg recalled:
Шевырев исправлял, при издании сочинений Гоголя, даже самый
слог своего приятеля, как известно, не особенно заботившегося о
грамматике. Однако, исправив, должен был все-таки показать
Гоголю, что и как исправил, разумеется, если автор был в Москве.
При этом случалось, что Гоголь скажет: “Нет, уж оставь по-
прежнему!” Красота и сила выражения иного живого оборота для
него всегда стояли выше всякой грамматики.
While editing Gogol’s works, Shevyrev corrected the very style of his
fellow writer who, as it is known, did not overmuch bothered about
[Russian] grammar. Having corrected, however, he [Shevyrev] ought to
have shown Gogol what and how he corrected, of course if the author had
been in Moscow [at that time]. Sometimes it happened that Gogol told
him: “No, leave it as it was before!” For him, the beauty and the power of
some vivid expression were more valuable than any grammar. (Veresaev
471)
This time, Gogol wanted to check the proofs with his own hand and was working on
them at the time of his death in February, 1852. He managed to proofread the first nine
sheets of the first volume (up to the middle of “Noch’ pered Rozhdestvom”), the first
nine sheets of the second volume (up to the middle of Taras Bul’ba), the first thirteen
sheets of the third volume (up to “Zapiski sumashedshego” (Madman’s Notes)), and the
first seven sheets of the forth volume (up to Revizor). Since Gogol’s corrections were not
complete, one cannot claim the edited texts as the new versions of Gogol’s works.
147
Because Gogol was unable to finish his proofreading, it is also hard to determine how
many changes were made by Shevyrev and Likhonin.
Compared to previous editions, the edition of 1855 has a smaller ratio of changes:
it was 2.5 per page for “Sorochinskaia iarmarka” and “Vecher nakanune Ivana Kupala,” 2
– for “Maiskaia noch’,” 1.5 – for “Propavshaia gramota,” and 0.5 - for the other tales.
The editors corrected awkward Russian forms and expressions, such as “ни с сего, ни с
того” – “ни с того, ни с сего,” “цаловать” – “целовать,” “околоток” – “околодок;”
as well as Ukrainisms, such as “спознается” – “зазнается,” “скирды” – “стога,”
“секира” – “топор,” etc. They also simplified the syntax in the following metaphorical
figures. They reduced “день и пленительно, и грустно, и ярко румянился, как щеки
прекрасной жертвы неумолимого недуга в торжественную минуту ее отлета на
небо” to “и угасающий день пленительно и ярко румянился” in “Sorochinskaia
iarmarka” and “чернел кленовый лес, обсыпаясь только на оконечности, стоявшей
лицом к месяцу, тонкою серебряною пылью” to “чернел кленовый лес, стоявшей
лицом к месяцу” in “Maiskaia noch’.”
190

Another distortion of Gogol’s tales occurred in the outward appearance of the
edition. It is well known that Gogol attached great importance to the graphics of his
printed text. In order to highlight Pan’ko’s significance as the editor, Gogol had ordered
that the typeface of Pan’ko’s Prefaces, his introductions to “Vecher nakanune Ivana
Kupala” and “Ivan Fedorovich Shpon’ka i ego tetushka,” and the afterword be in bigger
cursive typeface, unlike the texts of the stories themselves. The editions of 1836 and 1842

190
All existing editions reprint these fragments according to the edition of 1855.
148
retained Gogol’s original graphic design, whereas that of 1855 used one typeface all-
round, despite Gogol’s explicit instructions.
191

Furthermore, the correction of 1851 was made on top of Prokopovich’s correction
of 1842 so that all of the changes to Gogol’s text were layered on top of each other.
Because Gogol did not proof-read all of the changes in 1851, the text that came into print
in 1855 cannot be qualified as the authorized version. As a matter of fact, the modern text
of Gogol’s Vechera can be called a palimpsest in the sense that the authorized text that
existed only in the first (1831-1832) and second (1836) editions became overshadowed
by edited ones that aimed to demonstrate how Gogol had improved his Russian language.
3.9. The Elimination of Editorial Corrections from Vechera
Since the 1890s, editors and Gogol scholars have been engaged in rectifying the
text of Vechera, eliminating editorial corrections. First, Nikolai Tikhonravov compared
the original text with those in the 1842 and 1855 editions and compiled a list of
variations. For the tenth edition of Gogol’s Sobranie sochinenii (1889-1890), he relied on
the text of the 1855 edition, which he wanted to purify from Prokopovich’s corrections.
Tikhonravov oriented himself not at the first (1831-1832) or second (1836) editions of
Vechera, but on Gogol’s draft copies, thereby ignoring the author’s will as realized in the
changes he had made to the second edition. Such an approach contradicts modern

191
In his letter to Shevyrev (February 1851), Gogol wrote: “Все эти [Gogol meant the font, borders,
strings, and paper of the second edition of what became Sobranie sochinenii (1855)] обстоятельства так
важны, что если, паче чаяния, уже несколько листов отпечатано, то можно их бросить и начать
печатать снова” (All these things are so important that if, despite my hopes, several pages have been
printed already [without taking into account these instructions], then one can discard them and begin to
print anew) (PSS XIV, 221).
149
textological principles, especially if one takes into account that none of Gogol’s
manuscripts of the tales was a fair copy.
Nikolai Korobka criticized Tikhonravov for this loose treatment of Gogol’s texts.
Korobka pointed that Tikhonravov inserted new words and expressions from the draft of
Vechera which Gogol himself had discarded in the final text. Having rejected
Tikhonravov’s correction of the tales, Korobka proposed to consider the text of the 1836
edition with Gogol’s corrections made in 1851 as the last author’s will.
192
This seemed a
reasonable approach to Gogol’s text, however, when Gogol himself proof-read Vechera
for the edition of 1855, he used not the text of the 1836 edition, but the text of 1842
edition, which had been distorted significantly by Prokopovich. Therefore, the
textological formula that Korobka suggested could not have been realized in full. The
next editors, Konstantin Khalabaev and Boris Eikhenbaum, understood the limitations of
Tikhonravov’s and Korobka’s attempts to restore the original text of Vechera as they
began to compile the first academic edition of Gogol’s works in the 1920s. They decided
to follow the 1836 edition, which was edited by Gogol himself entirely. The editors
justified their rejection of the corrections made in 1842 and 1851 that were partially
approved by Gogol. These corrections, in their view, were stylistic and proofreading
rather than artistic (“ne khudozhestvennyi, a chisto stilisticheskii i grammaticheskii
[korrektorskogo tipa] kharakter”).
193

The next academic edition of Gogol’s works (1937-1952) took a similar approach
to the problem of the authorial text of Vechera. The chief editor, Boris Tomashevskii,

192
See N. Korobka’s introduction to Polnoe sobranie sochinenii N.V. Gogolia (1900).
193
See the editors’ note in Gogol, Sochineniia v trekh tomakh. Vol. 1 (Moscow-Leningrad, 1928), 416.
150
took the text of the 1836 edition as the basis for reconstructing the authorial text.
However, in reality this principle was not consistently sustained: Tomashevskii often
used the corrections made for the 1842 and 1855 editions, stressing that he accepted only
“those corrections which with certainty could be attributed to Gogol” (PSS I, 499).
The latest academic edition (2003-) has followed the rule established in modern
textual criticism – the principle of the author’s final corrections (i.e., 1851) made in the
text of the second edition (1836). Thus, the chief editor of volume One Elena Dmitrieva
has accepted only those changes of the text that were undoubtedly approved by Gogol
himself in 1851.
194
These corrections include: semantic transformations like “сатана, в
образине свиньи” instead of “сатана, в костюме ужасной свиньи,” “поставив себе в
ноги мешки с золотом” instead of “поставив себе в ноги мешки свои,” etc.; lexical
changes: “славная дивчина” instead of “славная девушка,” “речистого храбреца”
instead of “высокого бонмотиста-храбреца,” etc.; the elimination of inversions:
“подымали на тяжелые свои колеса” instead of “подымали на тяжелые колеса свои,”
“поглядывая на доски, накладенные под потолком” instead of “поглядывая на
накладенные под потолком доски,”etc.; lexical and stylistic ungrammaticalities:
“испытующих очей” instead of “испытательных очей,” “в непобедимом страхе”
instead of “в ничем не победимом страхе,” etc.; the elimination of Ukrainianisms:
“хватил топором” instead of “хватил секирою.” As concerns the typeface of the text of
Vechera, in this edition, the editors also made an attempt to reconstruct the graphic set-up
of the first edition of Vechera, but they used smaller print for Pan’ko’s “texts” and larger

194
See the editors’ note in Gogol, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem v dvadtsati trekh tomakh. V. 1
(Moscow: Nasledie, 2003), 621-626.
151
type for the rest of the texts, reversing the original design. Another problem occurs with
the reproduction of the Ukrainian texts in the epigraphs and in Foma Grigorievich’s
stories. All lifetime editions of the tales used Russian transliteration, since the use of the
Ukrainian alphabet (particularly those letters missing in Russian, “ї” and “є”) was
prohibited.
195
This led to the confusion between the use of the Ukrainian letter “и” in one
example and Russian “ы” in another (both reproduce the back vowel [y]). Thus, the
editors tried to balance between modern Ukrainian transcription and the hybrid Russian-
Ukrainian transcription of the epigraphs in the first edition, which results in significant
inconsistency. For example, in the epigraph to chapter V of “Sorochinskaia iarmarka,”
the word “хилися” is transliterated in Ukrainian, whereas “журыся” - in Russian; the
same mistake occurs in Levko’s song in “Maiskaia noch’,” in which “стелися низенько”
are transliterated in Ukrainian, while the next line “А ты, мылый, чернобрывый” are in
Russian. Examples of similar inconsistent transliteration abound in this latest academic
edition.
To conclude, since 1842 none of the editions of Vechera presents Gogol’s text as
the author intended it to be. Taking into account that all attempts to rectify Gogol’s text
have failed, the only way to redress the situation would be to reprint the second edition of
1836 together with the first one (1831-1832). It is important to do so not only because the
integrity of the author’s work needs to be maintained, but because the reprinting of the
early editions of Vechera can demonstrate what we have shown to be Gogol’s hybrid
language and identity. I believe that because of its hybrid nature Gogol’s language should
neither be transliterated in Russian nor translated into Ukrainian. No editions, including

195
Ibid., 625.
152
the last one initiated by the Academy of Sciences of Russia, faithfully reproduce Gogol’s
idiosyncratic Russian. Moreover, Ukrainian expressions and texts appear in the text either
in modernized Russian or transliterated in Ukrainian with adherence to modern Ukrainian
orthography. In order to understand how Gogol operated between the boundaries of the
two languages, it is important to reproduce Gogol’s text as it appeared in the first and
second editions.

153
Chapter 4. National Identity and Narrative Performance in Vechera
In cultural studies, national identity has been viewed as a form of imaginative
identification expressed in a text through symbols and discourses.
196
However, the
construction of national identity in a narrative text is not easy to define, especially when
it concerns Gogol’s Ukrainian tales. In Gogol studies, the issues of national identity and
narrative structure in Vechera have traditionally been studied as two separate problems.
On the one hand, the problem has been either discussed in connection with Gogol’s
troubled sense of Ukrainianness captured in the myth of a “cursed” Ukraine
197
or has
been reduced to the clash between the two major narrators, a Russified gentleman and a
Ukrainian villager, as between the Russian and Ukrainian loci of Gogol’s own national
identity. On the other hand, the problem of narrative organization of Vechera has been
reduced to an illusive succession of narrative masks, closely associated with the overall
folk spirit of the book but without reference to Gogol’s strategies of self-identification.
198

In his book The Creation of Nikolai Gogol (1979), Fanger established a connection
between the fragmented narrative composition of Vechera and Gogol’s attempts to “find
his ‘real’ voice” (13) but he did not conceive of this in terms of Gogol’s national identity.
This chapter elaborates a new approach to the issue of national identity through
the study of narrative performances in Vechera. Instead of focusing on the discourse of

196
See C. Barker, The Sage Dictionary of Cultural Studies 131.
197
Grabowicz concpetualizes the Ukrainian world in Gogol’s tales as deeply pessimistic: “[D]espite its
comedy and exuberant activity...It is a world, as we see from the story “Zakoldovannoe mesto,” that is
suspended in an abnormal state where almost everything is ultimately ‘ne tak.’ Taking the stories
cumulatively, it is a world that is ‘cursed,’ or more precisely, in the process of transition” (1983:184). Anna
Berehulak also suggests that between the two books of Vechera Gogol conceived a deep cultural pessimism
toward Ukrainian history as “accursed” and muted his comic and “affectionate” tone in Book Two (38).
198
See G. Gukovskii, “Vechera na khutore bliz’ Dikan’ki” and V. Vinogradov, Gogol and the Natural
School.
154
nationalism in the tales, I will study the narrative construction of nationality as a form of
textual affiliation. The narrative act itself in Vechera is culturally performative, that is, it
does not presuppose a dominant narrative voice and ideological position but rather
constitutes a dialogic, double-voiced discourse through the very act of narrating. My
analysis of the performative function of storytelling in Gogol’s tales will demonstrate
how their multi-leveled and multi-voiced structure creates a complex dynamic among the
narrators, conveying varying messages to imperial Russian and colonial Ukrainian
audiences while at the same time creating a unified community of readers. This
community can be classified in terms of Bhabha’s conception as “a form of living the
locality of culture.” This idea of community is more complex than that of “nation” as it is
“more hybrid in the articulation of cultural differences and identifications than can be
represented in any hierarchical binary structuring of social antagonism” (Location 139).
Before analyzing the relationship between the narrative performances and
national identity in Vechera, it is important to review the existing approaches to the
problem of narrative in the tales.
4.1. Approaches to the Narrative Structure in Vechera
The Play of Language Discourses
In the early twentieth century, Vasilii Rozanov claimed that “the real dynamics
and thereby even the composition of his [Gogol’s] things lie in the structuring of the skaz,
in verbal play,” making all of Gogol’s narrators “petrified figures.” The idea that
Gogol’s narrators are only verbal masks was further elaborated by the Russian Formalists
155
in the 1920-1930s.
199
Viktor Vinogradov’s Gogol’ i natural’naia shkola (Gogol and the
Natural School) (1925) was an important corrective to the Formalists’ approach and the
next step in understanding the complex relationship between the story and its
representation in Vechera. First, Vinogradov pointed out that the genre of “evenings”
determines the narrative organization of the entire cycle. “It is not so much plots and their
compositional formation that now engaged Gogol so much as the manner of the telling of
the tale, the construction of dialogue and stylistic forms” (Gogol and the Natural School
69). Basically, the style becomes the ground for differentiation between two types of
language discourses in Book One: “the dialectical and basically vulgar-conversational
common speech with its ‘coarse’ words, variegated, non-normative syntax,” on the one
hand, and “the lexical and syntactical clichés of the ‘Classical’ literary, bookish
language,” on the other (71). Second, Vinogradov asserted that Book One and Two of the
cycle essentially differ from each other in terms of stylistic variety. Book One is
structured around the opposition between two types of narrators: the Ukrainian village
narrators Pan’ko and Foma Grigorievich, on the one hand, and the Russified urban Makar
Nazarovich, on the other. They compete with each other on the discursive and ideological
levels: if Pan’ko and Foma Grigorievich belong to the world of democratic, non-
aristocratic, provincial Ukrainian culture, Makar Nazarovich, who is presented as a city
“aristocrat,” belongs to the “big world” of Russian culture.

199
In his article “Dostoevskii i Gogol: k teorii parodii” (1921), Iurii Tynianov called “verbal masks” as
Gogol’s main artistic device. Iliya Gruzdev in his article “Kharakter i maska” (1922) analyzed Gogol’s
tales to assert that “the artist is always a mask.” Aleksandr Slonimskii in his book “Tekhnika komicheskogo
u Gogolia” (1923) examined Gogol’s technique of “comic alogism” based on the destruction of logical and
causal connections between the signifier and the signified.
156
It is important to emphasize that this discursive antagonism between Pan’ko and
Foma Grigorievich and Makar Nazarovich was not part of Gogol’s initial design, but
developed in the process of reworking the earlier version of “Bisavriuk, ili vecher
nakanune Ivana Kupala” published by Svin’in in Otechestvennyie zapiski in 1830. In the
1830 version, Foma Grigorievich’s speech did not manifest any deviations from Makar
Nazarovich’s bookish language. To see how Gogol neutralized the bookish elements and
enhanced the folk skaz elements in Foma Grigorievich’s speech in Vechera, one can
compare two excerpts from the 1830 and 1831 versions of the same tale, “Vecher
nakanune Ivana Kupala”:
Table 2. 1830 and 1831 Versions of “Vecher nakanune Ivana Kupala”
The journal version (1830) The book edition (1831)

«Дед мой имел удивительное искусство
рассказывать...»
«Дед мой (Царство ему Небесное! чтоб
ему на том свете елись одни только
буханцы пшеничные да маковники в
меду!) умел чудно рассказывать»
«Но нам более всего нравились повести,
имевшие основанием какое-нибудь
старинное, сверхъестественное
предание...»
«Но ни дивные речи про давнюю
старину, про наезды запорожцев, про
ляхов,... не занимали нас так, как
рассказы про какое-нибудь старинное
чудное дело»
«Очнувшись от своего беспамятства,
первым делом его было снять со стены
дедовскую нагайку...»
«Очнувшись, снял он со стены
дедовскую нагайку»
«Девчата, в нарядном головном уборе из
желтых, синих и розовых стричек, сверх
коих повязывался золотой галун»
«Девчата, в нарядном головном уборе из
желтых, синих и розовых стричек,
поверх которых навязывался золотой
галун»

Thus, in Book One of Vechera (1831), Ukrainianisms,
200
Russian colloquialisms and
vulgarisms
201
are foregrounded as the feature that distinguished Pan’ko’s and Foma

200
In Chapter 3, I discuss the penetration of Ukrainian elements into all levels of Gogol’s literary language.
157
Grigorievich’s skaz manner. At the same time, Makar Nazarovich’s speech is almost free
of both Russian vulgarisms and Ukrainianisms, although the speech of the other
characters in the two tales – “Sorochinskaia iarmarka” and “Maiskaia noch’” still
contains a considerable number of these elements.
Unlike Book One, Book Two of Vechera demonstrates a greater variety of speech
styles, making an opposition between the folksy Ukrainian and the Russified narrators
problematic. The literary language of Book Two was significantly “urbanized” and lost
its local Ukrainian flavor. According to Vinogradov, the elements of chancellery and
business speech constitute a significant part of the discourse in “Noch’ pered
Rozhdestvom”
202
and “Ivan Fedorovich Shpon’ka i ego tetushka.”
203
This signified,
according to Vinogradov, new tendencies in Gogol’s prose - the development of skaz
with its familiar tone and the metamorphoses of speech masks into an image of a writer
(“knizhnika”) (Etiudy 41-42). Although Vinogradov deliberately ignored the invariable
quality of the speech of three other narrators – Foma Grigorievich, the author of
“Zakoldovannoe mesto,” and the two folk narrators of “Strashnaia mest’,” – his overall
observation of the changes in the discourse between Book One and Two can help us to

201
Examples of vulgarisms abound: in Pan’ko’s “Preface” to Book One (“дернула же охота и пасичника
потащиться вслед за другими;” “он вас всегда примет в балахоне;” “прошу однако ж не слишком ...
финтить,” and in Foma Grigor’evich’s tales (“настроил сдуру старого хрена отворить дверь хаты;” и
понес хрыч небывальщину;” “подпускали турусы;” “калякали о тем о сем” (“Vecher nakanune Ivana
Kupala”); “самзливые рожи;” “рожи на роже, как говорится, не видно;” “чертанье пошло снова
драть горло;” “турнули к нему ордою” (“Zakoldovannoe mesto”); etc.
202
Thus, the speech of the unnamed narrator of “Noch’ pered Rozhdestvom” contains primarily elements of
urban and chancellery styles: “сзади он был настоящий губернский стряпчий в мундире;”
“торжеством его искусства была одна картина;” “курить спокойно люльку и слушать сквозь
упоительную дремоту колядки;” “все домы устремили на него свои бесчисленные огненные очи;”
“на лице изображалась какая-то надменная величавость.”
203
For example: “эти дела более шли хуже, нежели лучше;” “долгом почитаю предуведомить;”
“прежней вашей комиссии, насчет семян пшеницы, сибирской арнаутки, не мог исполнить;” etc.
158
understand the complex nature of the relationship between the various narrators in the
tales and to challenge interpretations which reduce their dynamic and indeterminate
meanings to an opposition between Ukrainianness and Russianness.
Oral versus Written/Printed
In the 1970s, there appeared another approach to the narrative structure of
Vechera, based on the opposition of oral versus written/printed word.
204
In this
opposition, Foma Grigorievich and Rudy Pan’ko with their oral narratives signify the
supremacy of oral discourse, whereas Makar Nazarovich and Stepan Ivanovich Kurochka
with their written texts represent the literary tradition. Although the distinction between
oral and written is clear in Vechera, the construction of “orality” and “literacy” as
contrasts is not that unproblematic.
205
Anne Lounsbery has fairly claimed that the
division between the oral and the written in Vechera is often blurred:
The entire text of Evenings on a Farm near Dikan’ka sits uneasily on the
fence dividing oral and written (and printed) forms. The narrator and
editor, Rudy Pan’ko, acts as an intermediary between two cultures, the
scribe who transmits his fellow villagers’ oral tales … to the literary
world. The Dikan’ka tales are clearly skaz narratives … [h]owever, Gogol
does not try to obscure the fact that these tales, while ostensibly spoken
and often calling attention to the virtuosity of their pseudo-oral
performance, are being offered to the readers of a printed book…(38-9).

204
This issue is also discussed in G. Gukovskii, Realizm Gogolia (1959); Ie. Mushchenko, “Skazovoe
povestvovanie u N.V. Gogolia: (Iz nabliudenii za poetikoi “Vecherov na khutore bliz Dikan’ki”) (1972); D.
Fanger, The Creation of Nikolai Gogol (1979).This approach is still popular in contemporary Russian
Gogol studies. The articles on Gogol’s Vechera in the recent book Gogol' i narodnaia kul'tura: Materialy
dokladov i soobshchenii mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii (2008) evince that the tales have been still
studied from the point of view of the opposition between oral and written word, or literary and folk
traditions. See L A. Sapchenko, “Literaturnaia i fol’klorno-mifologicheskaia traditsii v “Vecherakh na
khutore bliz Dikanki” and E. A. Shraga, “Bylichka i svetskii razgovor kak strukturnaia osnova
prozaicheskoi tsiklizatsii: “Vechera na khutore bliz Dikanki” v kontekste traditsii.”
205
This distinction becomes even more complicated if one takes into account Jacques Derrida’s assertion
that speaking must be viewed as a form of writing and that the opposition between them must be discarded.
159
Any skaz narrative captured in print results in written discourse, but this by no means
downplays the significance of the oral nature of the narrative performances in Vechera.
The fact that several stories (“Vecher nakanune Ivana Kupala,” “Propavshaia gramota,”
and “Zakoldovannoe mesto”) are produced through orally performed narratives and
others are presented as already written (“Sorochinskaia iarmarka,” “Maiskaia noch’,”
“Noch’ pered Rozhdestvom,” and “Strashnaia mest’”)
206
or printed (“Shpon’ka”)
naturally presupposes an opposition between oral and written/printed discourses.
However, one should not ignore the fact that all of the stories, even those told by Foma
Grigorievich, are mediated by the implied author Pan’ko and presented by him to readers
as written texts.
207
He transcribes orally performed stories and adjusts them for a Russian
metropolitan audience, which is corroborated by his use of ethnographic commentary,
Ukrainian-Russian glossaries and translations of Ukrainian idiomatic expressions in
footnotes.
Needless to say, not all of the stories in Vechera originate, as works of folklore
do, in the anonymous oral tradition. Each of the stories has its own individual author,
grounding them in the domain of the written, yet the fact that some of them (like those
told by Foma Grigorievich - “Propavshaia gramota,” “Vecher nakanune Ivana Kupala,”
and “Zakoldovannoe mesto”) are produced as orally performed narratives make them
resonate with orality and contrast to the written ones. From the very beginning of
Vechera, the confrontation between the oral and the printed becomes the ground on

206
The written nature of the former narrators’ tales is confirmed by the use of epigraphs, footnotes and their
division into chapters (in “Maiskaia Noch’” each chapter has its own title).
207
The only exception is “Ivan Fedorovich Shpon’ka i ego tetushka” that Pan’ko received as a written text
from Kurochka.
160
which Pan’ko juxtaposes local Dikan’ka and metropolitan Petersburg culture. His
“Preface” to Book One delineates the borderline between official and folk carnivalesque
culture, as between one that freezes the living word in the form of printed books and one
that preserves it in its original form. The world of Dikan’ka is presented in its range of
different sounds and performances during village gatherings (“vechernitsy”):
...у нас на хуторах водится издавна: как только окончатся работы в
поле, мужик залезет отдыхать на всю зиму на печь и наш брат
припрячет своих пчел в темный погреб,.. - тогда, только вечер, уже
наверно где-нибудь в конце улицы брезжит огонек, смех и песни
слышатся издалека, бренчит балалайка, а подчас и скрипка, говор,
шум... Это у нас вечерницы! Они, изволите видеть, они похожи на
ваши балы; только нельзя сказать чтобы совсем. На балы если вы
едете, то именно для того, чтобы повертеть ногами и позевать в
руку; а у нас соберется в одну хату толпа девушек совсем не для
балу, с веретеном, с гребнями; и сначала будто и делом займутся:
веретена шумят, льются песни, и каждая не подымет и глаз в
сторону; но только нагрянут в хату парубки с скрыпачом -
подымется крик, затеется шаль, пойдут танцы и заведутся
такие штуки, что и рассказать нельзя. [emphasis added]
[T]hat’s how things have always been in our villages: as soon as the
work’s finished in the field, the peasant’s tucked up on his stove for the
whole winter and the beekeeper’s locked up his bees in a dark cellar, …
then as evening falls you’re sure to see a light shining at one end of the
street, and in the distance you’ll hear the merry sound of laughter and
song, the strumming of a balalaika, and sometimes even a fiddle and the
babble of voices… That’s our evening get-togethers! These get-togethers,
if you pardon me saying so, are like when you have a ball, only you
couldn’t say they’re exactly like that. When you set off for a ball, you
know you’re going to stamp your feet a bit and yawn behind your hand;
but with us when a crowd of girls collects in one of the cottages they’re
not there to dance: they bring their spindles and combs, and at first they
really get down to work: the spindlers whirr away, the room fills with song
and none of the girls so much as lifts her eyes from her task; but the
moment a few lads drop in with a fiddle there are shrieks of excitement
and hell breaks loose, everyone jumps up and dances and you wouldn’t
believe the things that go on. (PSS I, 104)
The authoritative word in the local Dikan’ka culture is collective, produced by the crowd
(as in the tale “Sorochinskaia iarmarka” where the noise of a fair reveals the emergence
161
of the collective body) or passed from an older generation to a younger (e.g., from a
grandfather to his grandson, as in Foma Grigorievich’s tales). Both Pan’ko and Foma
Grigorievich prioritize the oral word. Pan’ko further juxtaposes two types of storytellers -
those who, like Foma Grigorievich, an unnamed bandura-player, and himself, adhere to
traditional storytelling and those who, like Makar Nazarovich, experiment with literary
styles). It becomes clear that it is not so much the primacy of the oral word over the
written but rather the narrators’ proximity to the described events of the past is what is
foregrounded as the basis of the narrators’ authority.
Russian versus Ukrainian Narrators
In the last decade, the problem of narrators in Vechera has received a different
interpretation. Scholars have focused on the competition between two different narrators
(Makar Nazarovich and Foma Grigorievich) for narrative authority in order to inquire
into Gogol’s problematic sense of his own national identity. Thus, Koropeckyj and
Romanchuk have located Gogol’s “Russianness” in Makar Nazarovich’s fancy language,
incomprehensible for local Dikan’ka residents, while assigning “Ukrainianness” to Foma
Grigorievich who respectfully follows local traditions and linguistic codes (539).
However, the scholars’ definition of the “Russianness” and “Ukrainianness” of the
narrators is rather vague. They explain “the appearance of a retrospective first-person
narrator,” i.e. Makar Nazarovich, and “the elegiac register” in the opening passage of
“Sorochinskaia iarmarka” by “Gogol’s ritual Russianizing” (545). However, taking into
account that metanarrative digressions were in wide use in Russian prose fiction of the
time, it seems an oversimplification to demarcate Russian and Ukrainian cultures on the
basis of the use of the first-person narrative. Moreover, one should not ignore that Makar
162
Nazarovich also has superb knowledge of the Ukrainian literary tradition that he displays
in his epigraphs taken from folk and early nineteenth-century Ukrainian literary sources.
Another scholar, Edyta Bojanowska, goes further and transposes the confrontation
between the Russified narrator Makar Nazarovich and the local Ukrainian Foma
Grigorievich onto Gogol’s own national identity, as being shaped through the narrative
act as “a national contrast” between the two cultures. In this tension between the
Russified and Ukrainian narrators, Rudy Pan’ko is endowed with the intermediary
function. Just as Pan’ko tries to justify the legitimacy of the Dikan’ka tales as literature to
“foreign” Russian readers, Gogol himself aspires to win the Russian metropolitan
audience by assuming, in Boianowska’s words, “the persona of a more authentic, reliable
source from within Ukraine” (50). Although the scholar points to certain fluctuations of
the image of the author between the three narrators, she at the same time believes that
“the actual author of Evenings has more in common with Makar Nazarovich than with
any other person in the stories. Like Makar, he is a Russified nobleman from the Poltava
region” (49). The possible identification of the actual author with one of the narrators is
certainly legitimate, especially within the tradition of Romanticism. However, it seems
that reducing the narrative structure of the entire text of Vechera to the “absolute
disjunction between Ukrainian and Russian worlds” cannot explain the polyphonic nature
of the narrative. Moreover, pursuing her argument about the competition between the
“foreign” Russian and the local Ukrainian narrators for narrative authority, Bojanowska
misinterprets an important episode in Foma Grigorievich’s tale “Vecher nakanune Ivana
Kupala.” In this episode, Foma Grigorievich curses “some Muscovite” (“odin moskal’”)
for stealing and publishing his story without his permission. The scholar believes that the
163
“Muscovite” is Makar Nazarovich who “appears to Foma as a foreigner, a Russified lout”
(49). A close reading of the episode, however, reveals that the conflict exists not between
these two narrators, or between Russian and Ukrainian ways of storytelling, but between
the traditional mode of storytelling centered on oral performance and the written one
based on the primacy of the printed word. Let us consider the entire episode. The tale
begins with Pan’ko’s introduction in which he praises Foma Grigorievich’s unique
storytelling manner based on oral improvisation
208
and offers to readers the printed
version of one of Foma Grigorievich’s stories that was published by an unnamed
publisher without Foma Grigorievich’s approval.
209
The next thing we know is that
Makar Nazarovich has brought a book with Foma Grigorievich’s tale from Poltava. In
Gogol’s text, there is no sign of equation between the “profiteer” publisher and Makar
Nazarovich himself. Therefore, Foma Grigorievich’s curses (“he lies, son of a
Muscovite”) are addressed at the mercenary publisher, and the entire episode hints at the
relationship between the young author Gogol and his willful editor Svin’in who had
distorted Gogol’s tale for publication in Otechestvennye zapiski.
One needs to admit, however, that the clash between the two narrators in Book
One does denote a certain tension between Russian and Ukrainian cultures. The question

208
«За Фомою Григорьевичем водилась особенного рода странность: он до смерти не любил
пересказывать одно и то же. Бывало, иногда упросишь его рассказать что сызнова, то, смотри, что-
нибудь да вкинет новое, или переиначит так, что узнать нельзя» (Foma Grigorievich had one strange
quirk: he hated telling the same story more than once. If you really begged him to tell a story again you’d
hear something quite different or he’d rehash the story so much you couldn’t recognize it). (PSS I, 137)
209
«Раз один из тех господ ... писаки они не писаки, а вот то самое, что барышники на наших
ярмарках. Нахватают, напросят, накрадут всякой всячины, да и выпускают книжечки, не тольще
букваря, кажды месяц или неделю. Один из тех господ и выманил у Фомы Григорьевича эту самую
историю, а он вовсе и позабыл о ней (Once one of those gentry types … they may know how to push a
pen, but they’re no better than the horse-traders at our markets. They snatch, beg, and steal whatever they
can, and produce little books no bigger than an ABC book every month or even week – well, one of those
gents wheedled this story out of Foma Grigorievich, who went and forgot all about it). (PSS I, 137)
164
is whether these cultures can be conceived exclusively in terms of Russian and Ukrainian
nationalities and whether the opposition between them can be projected onto the entire
text of Gogol’s tales, as Bojanowska asserts. Evidently, the concepts of “competition”
and “national contrast” between the two narrators cannot account for the play of narrative
in the book. Moreover, the tales are authored by several different narrators: Book One
features Makar Nazarovich as the author of “Sorochinskaia iarmarka” and “Maiskaia
noch’” and Foma Grigorievich as the oral narrator of two tales, “Vecher nakanune Ivana
Kupala” and “Propavshaia gramota;” in Book Two, there are two identifiable authors
or/and narrators, the familiar Foma Grigorievich telling the story of “Zakoldovannoe
mesto” and a new one, Stepan Ivanovich Kurochka, the author and the narrator of “Ivan
Fedorovich Shpon’ka i ego tetushka,” plus two anonymous authors of “Noch’ pered
Rozhdestvom” and “Strashnaia mest’.” Therefore, even formally one cannot claim the
opposition between Makar Nazarovich and Foma Grigorievich as the organizing narrative
principle in the cycle of tales. The opposition between the “Russified” and the Ukrainian
narrators is only the surface of a more complex problem of narrative authority.
4.2. Narrative Performances in Vechera
As we have seen, previous studies of the narrative in Vechera have focused on
mapping various sets of oppositions between different narrators and/or their discourses
and overlaying them on the entire structure. In order to deconstruct this hierarchical view
of the narrators and in order to better understand Gogol’s hybrid performance, I propose
to approach the narrative in Vechera through the various kinds of narrative performances
that produce a multilayered structure. This approach is informed by application of speech
act theory to the study of narrative, as has been developed in the works of such scholars
165
as Judith Butler, Barbara Smith, and Terry Threadgold. The concept of performativity in
these studies derives from the work of John Austin’s How to Do Things with Words
(1976) who considered utterances not in terms of their meaning (words do not “constate”
things) but in terms of their effect (words are to “do things”), either those intended by the
speaker or those perceived by the listener. Narratives are indeed performative speech acts
since “[t]hey not only connote certain kinds of meanings …, but also they perform
identities and rehearse, enact and change social realities and norms” (Threadgold,
“Performing Theories of Narrative” 265). In the 1980s, Smith applied Austin’s analysis
of performative utterances to the study of narrative.
210
In her essay “Narrative Versions,
Narrative Theories” (1980), she proposed to shift the focus from narrative as a structure
to narrative as performative utterance which is not confined to and cannot be reduced to
specific “referents” or “signifieds.” According to Smith, “individual narratives would be
described not as sets of surface-discourse-signifiers that represent … sets of underlying-
story-signifieds but as the verbal acts of particular narrators performed in response to …
sets of multiple interacting conditions” (221). These conditions are:
1). an awareness of contextuality (cultural, social, and strictly “physical” settings
in which the tales are told);
2). a dynamic relationship between the narrative structure and the meaning;
3). a responsiveness to factors that constitute a particular narrative (such variables
as “the narrator’s motives for telling the tale and all the particular interests,

210
Since Smith’s application of Austin’s speech act theory to the reading of prose narrative, many scholars
have attempted to study narrative as intrinsically context-bound. See Shoshana Felman, The Literary
Speech Act: Don Juan with J. L. Austin, or Seduction in Two Languages (1980); Susan Lanser, The
Narrative Act: Point of View in Fiction (1981); Ross Chambers, Story and Situation: Narrative Seduction
and the Power of Fiction (1984).
166
desires, expectations, memories, knowledge, and prior experiences … that elicited
his telling it on that occasion, to that audience, and that shaped the particular way
he told it” (222).
If the traditional approach focuses on the study of narrative structure as a set of
relationships internal to a context-free text,
211
the approach elaborated by Smith stresses
the contextuality within texts, as distinct from the textuality of texts and the contextuality
around texts. Stories as narrative performances are not only contextualized and framed by
the context, they also contribute to the construction of wider social and cultural contexts.
The focus on the performative function of storytelling in Vechera may help to
avoid mapping its structure around a set of binary oppositions in which one narrator is
interpreted in terms of his counterpart. Moreover, it will bring back to the discussion the
categories of actual authors and readers, which from the point of view of contemporary
theory might seem outdated, but from the point of view of Gogol’s own understanding of
the narrative art is essential in order to understand his preoccupation with communicating
appropriately with his audience.
212
Not only does Vechera have a complex narrative
structure which operates according to a typically Gogolian play of deferral, when one
narrator alternates with another, parodying or subverting each other; but the tales
communicate knowledge about the Ukrainian past and translates difficult ideological
issues through the more manageable register of narrative.

211
See the works of Vladimir Propp, Algirdas Greimas, Claude Bremond, Tzvetan Todorov, Gerald Prince,
and others.
212
In his article “Gogol and His Reader,” Fanger has discussed Gogol’s unique relationship with his
readers. The writer always treated the readers as concrete people, which affected his attitude towards his
own texts and his authorship.
167
The performativity of Gogol’s tales is manifested on several levels: extratextual
(in the genre of “vechera”), metanarrative (in Pan’ko’s prefaces, introductions and
comments on the stories), and intratextual (in the acts of storytelling or dramatic
presentation). Let us first consider the genre of the book. “Vechera,” stories which are
told at evening gatherings, is a performative genre by its nature; it hinges on the “simple
interchange of storytellers” whose stories are being “framed by the introduction and
afterword … justifying the very occasion of their narration” (Eikhenbaum 259). This
genre, popularized in Russian literature in the early nineteenth century,
213
significantly
determined the narrative composition of Gogol’s tales, as well as the differentiation
between their two types of audiences. One is the local Dikan’ka community, the audience
which gathers together at Pan’ko’s house; the other is metropolitan readers who can
access only the written text of Vechera. The local Dikan’ka audience can directly relate
to the narrators and to each other by sharing common knowledge about their historical
past and cultural traditions, whereas the metropolitan readers can enjoy only the
entertaining side of Ukrainian folk culture.
Many other features of performance are also inscribed in Gogol’s skaz: remarks
and requests to the audience, the manner of performance (kind of voice, dialects, etc.),
and mentions of the particular place and time of the telling. In Gogol’s tales, places
function both setting of the stories and of their telling.
214
The unity of time is also

213
Adopted and translated by Karamzin from the French sources, particularly from Jean-François
Marmontel, the genre “vechera” became very popular in the 1810-1820s (e.g., Narezhnyi “Slavenskiie
vechera,” Pogorel’skii “Dvoinik, ili moi vechera v Malorossii,” Odoevskii “Russkiie Noch’i,” Levshin
“Vechernie sny, ili drevnie skazki slavian drevlianskikh,” Zhukova “Vechera na Karpovke,” etc.). The
principle of cyclization of stories suggested by the genre was as a first step towards the development of
large prose forms.
214
The events described in the tales happen either in Dikan’ka (“Noch’ pered Rozhdestvom” [with the
168
meaningful: the stories in Vechera are performed within the same chronotope as the
events in the stories, that is, “on the eve” (“nakanune”) of holidays (St. John’s Eve or
Christmas Eve)
215
or on the border between day and night when the demonic force
becomes active and penetrates the real world (as in Foma Grigorievich’s byli [old true
stories]). Manifested in the titles of two tales (“Noch’ pered Rozhdestvom,” “Vecher
nakanune Ivana Kupala”) the idea of the “eve” designates both the time of the event in
the story and the time of telling. For both Dikan’ka storytellers and listeners, this
produces a powerful synergy, which, at the same time, is unattainable to Petersburg
readers.
Another important aspect of performativity concerns the oral mode of the
narrative in the tales, which is, according to Koropeckyj and Romanchuk “situated …
somewhere between performance and lecture” (527). The scholars attribute it to the use
of a skaz narrative that “not only inscribes the transition from an ‘oral’ culture, the object
of an ethnographic gaze, to a ‘literate’ one, structured by the market”, but also “makes the
reader into the implicit or complicit subject of the prose, (retrospectively) constructing
the reader as the ‘proper’ audience” (527). In the analysis below, this view of Gogol’s
narrative in Vechera as performance will be applied to the entire text of the tales without
a distinction between the skaz-oriented and “literary”-oriented narrators/narratives.
Gogol’s tales, just like oral narratives, are not static, but are constructed out of the

exception of the scene in St. Petersburg], “Vecher nakanune Ivana Kupala,” “Zakoldovannoe mesto”) or in
the villages and towns located in close proximity: Sorochintsy (“Sorochinskaia iarmarka), Gadiach
(“Shpon’ka”), Glukhov (the part of “Strashnaia mest’”), Konotop (“Propavshaia gramota”).
215
“Бывало соберутся, накануне праздничного дня, добрые люди в гости в пасечникову лачужку,
усядутся за стол, - и тогда прошу только слушать” (On the eve of a holiday, the locals would gather at
my little beekeper’s hut, take their places round the table, and the stories just tumble out, one after the
other) (PSS I, 104).
169
dynamic interactions between narrators-narratees and the implied author-reader. The
manner of this interaction with the narratees/readers constitutes a point of differentiation
between several types of narrative performances and gestures. The narrative
performances of the following identified narrators: Pan’ko, Makar Nazarovich, Foma
Grigorievich, Stepan Ivanovich Kurochka, and the blind bandura-player will be analyzed
in order to demonstrate how their texts constitute two different audiences – “us,” those
who belong to the same cultural community as they do, and “them,” who are outside the
local Ukrainian community, sometimes juxtaposing the two and sometimes unifying
them in a universal community.
Pan’ko
Pan’ko’s role in the tales is not confined solely to editing and presenting oral
stories. His primary task is to lay the groundwork for the reception of the stories. In his
two entertaining “Prefaces,” Pan’ko not only introduces the narrators of the book, but
also provides his understanding of “good” narration and skillful storytelling, elucidates
the position of each storyteller, and construes his imagined audience. When Pan’ko
introduces the storytellers who gather in his house to share “wild and wonderful stories”
he emphasizes that their “elite” status is of a different kind than Petersburg readers know:
«И то сказать, что люди были вовсе не простого десятка, не какие-нибудь мужики
хуторянские. Да, может, иному, повыше пасичника, сделали бы честь посещением»
(I might point out here that my visitors aren’t your average bog-trotters and yokels. In
fact many people of higher station than a bee-keeper [Rudy Pan’ko – Yu. I.] would be
honored by their visit) (PSS I, 104). The order in which the storytellers appear in the
“Preface” to Book One is important to understand Pan’ko’s criteria of good storytelling.
170
Foma Grigorievich, the storyteller mentioned first, stands out against the background of
the other narrators as an authority among the villagers. Pan’ko provides a detailed
description of his appearance; his manners and habits locate him among the village elite
(he is not one of “average bog-trotters and yokels”). His status among fellow villagers is
defined by his personal qualities and his allegiance to local traditions and values, unlike
that of the next storyteller.
Tat storyteller - Makar Nazarovich - is portrayed by Pan’ko as Foma
Grigorievich’s absolute opposite. He is the only narrator who is defined by his social
status: he aspires to be an assessor or an officer (“хоть сейчас нарядить в заседатели
или подкомории” (he could easily have taken on the job of assessor or bailiff) (PSS I,
105) thanks to his uncle, a commissar in Poltava state service. Pan’ko mentions the name
Makar Nazarovich only once, instead referring to him as the “panich” (gentleman), that
is, “iz znati” (from the nobility),
216
thereby opposing him to the entire village
community. Pan’ko rejects his membership in the local community for two reasons. First,
the gentleman’s social status is granted by the imperial system and, second, the language
in which he addresses the local audience is too bookish and incomprehensible to it. Foma
Grigorievich casts a hint at Makar Nazarovich’s pretentious storytelling in the facetiae
about the student-“latinizer.”
217
When Makar Nazarovich demonstrably rises in the

216
It is significant that in the first edition of the tales he appears as Panich with the capital “p,” together
with other unnamed characters of his tales (e.g., Tsygan (a gypsy), Zhid (a Jew), Kum (a cousin, crony)
etc.), also the popular personages of the folk Ukrainian puppet theater. In both of Pan’ko’s “Prefaces,”
Makar Nazarovich’s from “panich v gorokhovom kaftane” (a gentleman in a pea-green coat) becomes
“gorokhovyi panich” (a pea gentleman) which sounds like “shut gorokhovyi” (a buffoon), which confirms
his disapproval of the local community.
217
Gavriel Shapiro discusses this episode in the context of Gogol’s use of the baroque genre of facetiae in
his works. See Nikolai Gogol and the Baroque Cultural Heritage (1993) 31.
171
middle of the facetiae and makes reference to pearls before swine, the confrontation
between the two storytellers is initiated.
According to Pan’ko, the main feature of good narration is appropriateness. This
mimics the same criterion valid in salons: storytelling must be performed at the right
place and time in a comprehensible language and about subject-matter appropriate to the
entire audience. As an instance of an inappropriate narration, Pan’ko demonstrates how
Makar Nazarovich violates these principles by telling his stories in a bookish language
incomprehensible to an uneducated village audience:
Бывало, поставит перед собою палец и, глядя на конец его, пойдет
рассказывать - вычурно да хитро, как в печатных книжках! Иной раз
слушаешь, слушаешь, да и раздумье нападет. Ничего, хоть убей, не
понимаешь.
It would happen that he would raise one finger, and looking at the end of it
would go on to relate elegantly and cunningly, as in printed books.
Another time one listens, listens, and a reflective mood sets in. One can’t
for the life of one understand. Where did he get hold of such words? (PSS
I, 105)
Makar Nazarovich’s pretentious language and attitude are the reason why Pan’ko
dismisses him from his list of narrators in Book Two. Thereby Pan’ko subverts the social
hierarchy of imperial society by privileging the art of storytelling over social rank.
As concerns Pan’ko’s own performance as a narrator, it is intended to provide the
Russian audience with ethnic entertainment. Throughout his “Prefaces” he assumes a
highly-stylized, self-ingratiating stance towards critical Russian readers and emulates an
inferior Ukrainian identity in accordance with their stereotypical perception of
“unrefined” and “sly” Ukrainian writers. The realization of these stereotypes is evident in
two narrative phenomena. First, Pan’ko pretends to be semi-literate (“я грамоту кое-как
знаю” (I know a bit of reading and writing)) and appends a list of misprints

to the text of
172
the tales. His note accompanying the list is written in the same apologetic mode as his
“Prefaces” and completes his performance as a semi-literate Ukrainian. Begging his
readers to excuse him for the abundance of mistakes and misprints in his book Pan’ko
says:
Не прогневайтесь, господа, что в кнжике этой больше ошибок, чем на
голове моей седых волос. Что делать? Не доводилось никогда еще
возиться с печатною грамотою. Чтоб тому тяжело икнулось, кто и
выдумал ее! Смотришь, совсем будто Иже; а приглядываешься, или
Наш или Покой.
Please don’t take it amiss, good sirs, if there are more mistakes in this little
book than there are grey hairs on my old head. What can I do? I’ve never
had much to do with book-learning and the like before. May the fellow
who dreamed it all up choke on his porridge! You look, and it’s an Izhe for
sure; but then you look closer, and it’s either Nash or Pokoi. (PSS I,
317)
218

Second, Pan’ko plays upon his bad memory when he forgets to provide his Petersburg
readers with information that his local audience knows for certain.
219
In his “Preface” to
Book One, Pan’ko invites his imagined Petersburg readers to Dikan’ka having almost
forgotten to give them directions to get there.
220
Also, in his introduction to “Ivan
Fedorovich Spon’ka i ego tetushka,” Pan’ko explains where he put the notebook with
Kurochka’s tale (“Положил я ее в маленький столик; вы, думаю, его хорошо знаете:
он стоит в углу, когда войдешь в дверь” (I put it away in my little table; I’m sure you
know the one: it stands in the corner, just as you come in the door) (PSS I, 283)), having
recalled suddenly that Petersburg readers have never been at his place (“Да, я позабыл,

218
Izhe, Nash and Pokoi are names of Cyrillic letters.
219
Peter Hodgson in his article “Paradox of Skaz” claims that this episode conceals a kind of
miscommunication, or “drama of abortive communication,” between Pan’ko and elite readers (111-12).
220
«Да вот было и позабыл самое главное: как будете, господа, ехать ко мне, то прямехонько берите
путь по столбовой дороге на Диканьку.» (Do you know, I’ve gone and forgotten the most important
thing: if you should be coming visit me, my good sirs, what you must do is take the high road straight to
Dikan’ka) (PSS I, 106).
173
что вы у меня никогда не были” (Well, I’d completely forgotten you’ve never ever
been to my place) (PSS I, 283)). The tone of his notes to the two glossaries of Ukrainian
words in Books One and Two also varies. If in Book One it is one of helpfulness and
deference (“На всякий случай, чтобы не помянули меня недобрым словом,
выписываю сюда, по азбучному порядку, те слова, которые в книжке этой не
всякому понятны” (Just in case, to be sure nobody thinks ill of me, I shall write out here,
in the order of the alphabet, the words in this little book which may be unfamiliar to
some) (PSS I, 107)), in Book Two it becomes cold and aloof (“В этой книжке есть
много слов, не всякому понятных. Здесь они почти все означены” (There are many
words in this little book which not every man will understand. Here are most of them and
what they mean) (PSS I, 197)). Pan’ko concludes on a sad note saying farewell to his
metropolitan readers:
Я, помнится, обещал вам, что в этой книжке будет и моя сказка. И
точно, хотел было это сделать, но увидел, что для сказки моей нужно,
по крайней мере, три таких книжки. Думал было особо напечатать
ее, но передумал. Ведь я знаю вас: станете смеяться над стариком.
Нет, не хочу! Прощайте! Долго, а может быть, совсем, не увидимся.
Да что? ведь вам все равно, хоть бы и не было совсем меня на свете.
Пройдет год, другой - и из вас никто после не вспомнит и не
пожалеет о старом пасичнике Рудом Паньке.
If I recall right, I promised to put one of my own stories in this book. And
it’s true, I was going to do so, but then I found that I would need at least
three books this size for one of my stories. I thought I might print it
separately, but I changed my mind. Because I know what you’re like:
you’d only laugh at me, old man that I am. No, I won’t stand for that!
Farewell! We won’t meet again for a long time, maybe never. What of it?
After all, little do you care. Give it a year or two and none of you will ever
remember or spare a thought for old Ginger [Rudy] Pan’ko, the bee-
keeper. (PSS I, 197)
It is important to note that Pan’ko’s promise to present his own tales remains unfulfilled
only for readers; for his listeners Pan’ko has a stock of stories in reserve. Therefore, the
174
inviting stance of his of apology to the elite Russian readers turns to be a sham, especially
on the background of his friendly attitude to his local Ukrainian audience. In his
“Preface” to Book Two he enumerates his local listeners, whom he calls “zemliaki moi”
(my fellow-villagers): Foma Grigorievich, Stepan Ivanovich Kurochka, Zakhar
Kirillovich Chukhopupenko, Taras Ivanovich Smachnen’kii, Kharlampii Kirilovich
Khlosta, and Osip (whose last name Pan’ko forgets due to his senile memory).
Pan’ko’s differentiation between his immediate listeners and the distant
metropolitan audience is important. It shifts the focus from the competition between the
narrators, suggested by Book One, to a dual-focused narrative. On one level, the tales
target imperial readers who can only read the performance of an exotic “singing and
dancing tribe” in them, whereas on the other, the tales deliver an encoded message to an
audience who beneath the seeming “cheerfulness” can read and recall the sad events of
the Ukrainian past. This narrative principle operates in all of the tales, regardless of their
“Russified” or “Ukrainian” storyteller/narrator.
Makar Nazarovich
Makar Nazarovich depicts a “dancing, singing” Ukraine in the tales
“Sorochinskaia iarmarka” and “Maiskaia noch’,” designed for imperial consumption. He,
“like the character of Mr. Interlocutor in the minstrel show, in blackface but dressed in
formal tails and without a trace of black dialect, … acts as something of a master of
ceremonies who quite literally brackets the show with his own introduction … and
epilogue...” (Romanchuk& Koropeckyj 542). In fact, it is the mismatching narrative and
discursive components of “Sorochinskaia iarmarka” that require such a master of
ceremonies. The plot of the story itself comprises elements of both Russian literary and
175
Ukrainian folk and popular traditions: a ribald sub-plot reminiscent of eighteenth-century
popular tales, theatrical performances, folk trickery, a satiric portrayal of the naive
superstitions of village inhabitants, an embedded tale of the supernatural, and broad
comic strokes. Both stories that he narrates are divided into short chapters,
221
most of
which are rendered like scenes in a play: a series of dialogues framed by an introductory
and/or a concluding note by the omniscient narrator.
222

Although Makar Nazarovich’s participation as a narrator is minimal in the story-
telling, his role in orchestrating the chapters like scenes in a play is crucial. Like a stage
director, he observes and provides remarks apropos of the scenes and actions of the
characters without being attached to the events. Makar Nazarovich’s comments
describing people and their habits sometimes take the form of stage directions to an actor
who will play the part. For example, the description of the golova’s (headman) habits,
speaking manner and visual appearance in Chapter 2 of “Maiskaia noch’” is presented in
the habitual present tense, whereas the rest of the chapter is rendered in the past récit:
Голова угрюм, суров с виду и не любит много говорить. Давно еще,
очень давно, … голова выучился раздумно и важно потуплять голову,
гладить длинные, закрутившиеся вниз усы и кидать соколиный
взгляд исподлобья... Голова любит иногда прикинуться глухим,
особливо если услышит то, чего не хотелось бы ему слышать. Голова
терпеть не может щегольства: носит всегда свитку черного
домашнего сукна, перепоясывается шерстяным цветным поясом, и
никто никогда не видал его в другом костюме... Голова крив; но зато
одинокий глаз его злодей и далеко может увидеть хорошенькую
поселянку...

221
In “Maiskaia noch’,” each chapter is titled, either by the personages’ names (for instance, “Ganna,”
“Golova,” “Neozhidannyi sopernik,” and “Utoplennitsa”) or by the main action (“Parubki guliaiut”).
222
This is especially visible in Chapter 4 of “Sorochinskaia iarmarka” which ends with the following cue of
the headman and the remark of the author: “- Дам я вам переполоху! … Чтоб я вас ... Чтоб вы мне ...”
Все разбежались.” (‘- I’ll give a little wax figure… You’re starting a riot … You make damn sure you…’
They all scurried off.) (PSS I, 173).
176
The headman is a surly, cross-looking fellow, a man of few words. Once
long ago, a very long time ago, … the headman learned the habit of
bowing his head in a thoughtful, portentous way, stroking his long
moustaches with their twisted ends, and casting hawkish looks from
beneath his eyebrows… The headman sometimes likes to pretend he’s
deaf, especially when he hears something he doesn’t like the sound of. The
headman doesn’t hold with showy dress: he always wears a plain black
homespun coat tied with a colored woolen belt, and no one can remember
ever seeing him in any other attire… The headman has only one eye; but
this one eye is a real devil and can spot a bonny lass from afar. (PSS I,
161)
The omniscient narrator intervenes in dialogues between characters with remarks about
their manner of speaking and facial and bodily movements: “- Слышал ли ты, что
поговаривают в народе? – продолжал с шишкою на лбу, наводя на него искоса свои
угрюмые очи” (‘- Have you heard what people are saying?’ continued the one with the
lump on his forehead, casting him a morose sideways look) (PSS I, 117); “’Ну что, если
не сбудется то, что говорил он? – шептала она с каким-то выражением сомнения.
– Ну что, если меня не выдадут?’” (‘And what if it doesn’t work, if he can’t do what he
said?’ she whispered doubtfully) (PSS I, 133-34); “’- На Покров, бьюсь об заклад, что
пан голова будет писать ногами немецкие крендели по дороге.’ По произнесении
сих слов глазки винокура пропали...” (‘I wager my last rouble that come the feast of the
Intercession we shall see you honor the headman wearing a route along the main street as
crooked as a German cracknel.’ As he pronounced this sentence the distiller’s little eyes
disappeared…) (PSS I, 165).
That Makar Nazarovich enjoys the prerogative of directing is clearly manifested
in his cues for the characters, which he often interrupts in mid-sentence with various
sound effects. In Chapter 1 of “Sorochinskaia iarmarka,” the elderly beauty’s swearing at
Gryts’ko is cut off by the noise of a cart: “Нечестивец! Поди умойся наперед!
177
Сорванец негодный! ... что у него молоко еще на губах...” Тут воз начал
спускаться с мосту, и последних слов уже невозможно было расслушать” (Impious
little pup! Go and wash out your mouth! You worthless scallywag! … And his mother’s
milk still wet on his lips…’ at this point the cart started its descent from the bridge, and
her concluding words were lost…) (PSS I, 114). For the same reason, the narrator uses
various sound effects right before or after dialogues to frame the entire scene: “Говор
приметно становился реже и глуше... – О чем загорюнился, Грицько? – вскричал
выскоий загоревший цыган” (The babble of conversation grew softer and fainter …
‘Why are you so down in the mouth, Hrytsko?’ called a tall, sunburned gypsy …) (PSS I,
120); “’Смотрите, братцы! .. какую шапку надел на себя этот добрый молодец!’
Увеличивающийся шум и хохот заставили очнуться наших мертвецов, Солопия и
его супругу” (’Look at this, good people! ... Look at the pretty hat this smart fellow is
wearing!’ The increased noise and laughter brought our two corpses back to life: Solopy
and his wife) (PSS I, 129); “Песни умолкли, Все тихо. Благочестивые люди уже спят.
Где-где только светятся узенькие окна. Перед порогами иных только хат
запоздалая семья совершает свой поздний ужин. ‘Да, гопак не так танцуется! ...’”
(The songs have died away. All is quiet. God-fearing people are fast asleep. Here and
there a sliver of light peeps through a narrow window. Before a few scattered cottages a
tardy family is lingering over a late supper. ‘Oh no, that’s not the way to dance the
hopak! …) (PSS I, 159). And finally, the last passages in “Sorochinskaia iarmarka” are
addressed not to a reader, but to a spectator (“zritel’”), and resemble the drop-scene in a
play in which the noise of the fair becomes quieter and quieter, like the final chord of the
orchestra, until silence envelops the space:
178
Странное, неизъсянимое чувство овладело бы зрителем при виде, как
от одного удара смычком музыканта ... все обратилось …к единству
и перешло в согласие ... Гром, хохот, песни слышались все тише и
тише. Смычок умирал, слабея и теряя неясные звуки в пустоте
воздуха. Еще слышалось где-то топанье, что-то похожее на ропот
отдаленного моря, и скоро все стало пусто и глухо.
A strange, unfathomable feeling would have overtaken the onlooker on
seeing how, with one stroke of the musician’s bow, … everything was
transformed … into harmony and unity ... Gradually the noise of laughter,
song and revelry abated. The fiddler’s bow grew faint, scattering blurred
notes on the empty air. For a while the sound of stamping feet could still
be heard far away, a noise like the rumble of waves breaking on a distant
shore, and then all was enveloped in a pall of silence. (PSS I, 135-36)
Since a dramatic effect seems especially desirable at the conclusion of a narrative
performance, this passage serves a useful purpose. Such a narrative frame creates a
necessary distance between the implied author and the depicted world. This distance, or
Romantic irony, also allows for poeticizing the Ukrainian landscape. In fact, Makar
Nazarovich’s lyrical description of Ukrainian nature, lacking concrete details, discloses
him as a conventional Romantic author. His discourse, in general, embraces locutions
that suggest a degree of formal education and familiarity with the “literary” conventions
peculiar to Sentimentalism. “Sorochinskaia iarmarka” contains all of the requisites of this
style: it opens up with comments on the Ukrainian landscape written in exalted emotional
vocabulary and ends with the narrator’s intimate reflections upon the cruelty and
loneliness of the passage of time - an ending quite inconsistent in tone and content with
the rest of the story. The lyrical digressions serve to provide an “appropriate” frame for
the tales as prescribed by the canon of malorossiiskie povesti (Little Russian tales). In the
opening to “Sorochinskaia iarmarka,” Makar Nazarovich “treats his reader from the ‘cold
North,’ as Petersburg and its environs were often regarded, to a poetic description of a
summer day in Ukraine” (Bojanowska 51):
179
Как упоителен, как роскошен летний день в Малороссии! Как
томительно жарки те часы, когда полдень блещет в тишине и зное и
голубой неизмеримый океан, сладострастным куполом нагнувшийся
над землею, кажется, заснул, весь потонувши в неге, обнимая и
сжимая прекрасную в воздушных объятиях своих! На нем ни облака.
В поле ни речи. Все как будто умерло; вверху только, в небесной
глубине, дрожит жаворонок, и серебряные песни летят по
воздушным ступеням на влюбленную землю… Изумруды, топазы,
яхонты эфирных насекомых сыплются над пестрыми огородами,
осеняемыми статными подсолнечниками. Серые стога сена и золотые
снопы хлеба станом располагаются в поле и кочуют по его
неизмеримости. Нагнувшиеся от тяжести плодов широкие ветви
черешен, слив, яблонь, груш; небо, его чистое зеркало - река в
зеленых, гордо поднятых рамах... как полно сладострастия и неги
малороссийское лето!
O, the intoxication, the luxuriance of a summer’s day in Little Russia! And
the unbearable swelter of the midday hours when the very air sparkles
with stillness and heat and the infinite ocean of the sky, arched into a
voluptuous dome over the earth, appears to have fallen asleep, sated with
sweetness, closed in an ethereal embrace with the beauty beneath it! There
is not a single cloud to be seen. No sound can be heard from the fields. It
is as if there is no life below; only from above can you hear the trilling of
a skylark, its silver-tongued song skipping down the staircase of heaven to
the enthralled earth … The emeralds, topazes, and rubies of airborne
insects hover over the brightly arrayed gardens, fringed by stately forms of
sunflowers. Dun haystacks and golden sheaves of wheat muster
gregariously about the fields and migrate across their vastness. The stout
branches of the cherry-trees, plum-trees, apple-trees, and pear-trees sag
under the weight of their fruit; above, the sky, gazing into its clear mirror
– the river, proudly framed in its embossed green banks… the Little
Russian summer is a sheer feast of voluptuous delights! (PSS I, 111-12)
As we have seen in the discussion of oral versus printed modes in Vechera, the
visualization of the discourse pertains to “official” literary culture and locates the author-
narrator in the realm where he is out of reach of his immediate audience, the local
Dikan’ka listeners, but from where he can address the implied readers - the educated
Petersburg reading public.
Makar Nazarovich’s tales are primarily intended for educated readers with
sophisticated literary tastes. In order to demonstrate his appreciation of the current prose
180
tradition (particularly, Sentimentalist and early Romantic prose fiction), he offers
metatextual commentaries on the plot development,
223
appeals to the reader’s
experience,
224
and asks his audience rhetorical questions. These conventional devices
reveal the power of the narrating subject, but they do not intend to provoke a response
from the audience. The detached tone and lack of information about the narrator as a
personality (which was quite unusual for Russian Romantic prose fiction of the time)
disclose a monologic author. Even when Makar Nazarovich tries to interact with readers,
his questions to them do not imply responses. In the famous lyrical digression “Знаете ли
вы украинскую ночь? О, вы не знаете украинской ночи!” (Do you know a Ukrainian
night? Oh, no you do not know it!) (PSS I, 159), his question does not only not require an
answer, but also supposes an audience that has no access to the authentic Ukrainian world
and must rely on the second-hand depiction presented by the narrator.
However, Makar Nazarovich’s monologic stance by no means indicates that his
tales lack communication on the intradiegetic level. In “Sorochinskaia iarmarka” and
“Maiskaia noch’,” there are several embedded oral, singing and ritual performances. In
the first tale, the kum (crony) tells Cherevik a legend about the devilish red smock. The
process of storytelling is organized as an interaction between the kum (as a narrator) and
his listeners, Cherevik, his wife Khivria and several other unnamed villagers.
225

223
“Но кто же этот голова...? ... Покамест Каленик достигнет конца пути своего, мы, без сомнения,
успеем кое-что рассказать о нем ... Но мы почти все уже рассказали, что нужно, о голове” (While
Kalenik continues on his journey we should have time to say a few words about him… Well, now we’ve
told you almost everything you need to know about the headman) (PSS I, 160-61).
224
“Вам, верно, случалось слышать где-то валящийся отдаленный водопад ... Не правда ли, не те ли
сам ые чувства обхватят вас в вихре сельской ярмарки” (I expect you will have heard at some time the
noise of a distant waterfall … Do you not agree that the very same effect is produced the instant you enter
the whirlpool of a village fair?) (PSS I, 115).
225
Cherevik asks the kum: “-Скажи, будь ласков, кум! вот прошусь, да и не допрошусь истории про
181
Similarly, in “Maiskaia noch’” Levko’s telling Ganna a legend about the sotnik (Cossack
lieutenant) and his second wife, a witch, terrorizing and leading her step-daughter to
suicide, is constructed as a dialogue between Levko and Ganna.
226

In these episodes, the immediacy of the narrative experience shared by both the
storyteller and his listeners is conveyed through their similar facial expressions and
gestures: “Тут в самом деле послышался какой-то неясный звук ...; все побледнели ...
Пот выступил на лице рассказчика” “’Что?’ произнес в испуге Черевик. ‘Ничего!..’
отвечал кум, трясясь всем телом” (At this point a strange noise could indeed be heard
…; everyone turned pale … Beads of sweat appeared on the narrator’s face. “What’s
that?” asked Cherevik in fright. “It’s nothing,” answered his cousin, shaking from head to
foot) (PSS I, 126). Beside the embedded narrative performances, there are also several
dancing and singing performances: in the happy-end finale of “Sorochinskaia iarmarka”
Paraska dances and sings a folk song for Gryts’ko; in Chapter 4 of “Maiskaia noch’,” the
bandura player mocks the golova in a song; and in Chapter 5, Levko has a dream in
which he performs a love song at a lake to summon the drowned sotnik’s daughter.
If on the extradiegetic level Makar Nazarovich’s narrative does not presuppose an
active role for the narratees, on the intradiegetic level the narratees are drawn into the

эту проклятую свитку. - Э, кум! оно бы не годилось рассказывать на ночь, да разве уже для того,
чтобы угодить тебе и добрым людям (при сем обратился он к гостям), которым, я примечаю,
столько же, как и тебе, хочется узнать про эту диковину. Ну, быть так. Слушайте ж!” (‘Do us a favor,
kum, tell us what it’s all about, will you, this cursed smock business.’ – ‘You know, kum, it’s not really a
tale to tell at night; but I shall tell it all the same, for the sake of all these good people’ (whereupon he
turned to the assembled company) (PSS I, 125). The following narrative is interrupted all the time by
Cherevik’s qualifying questions: “Как же, кум! ... как же могло это статься, чтобы чорта выгнали из
пекла?” (‘What’s that, cousin? … How can that be, now, that a devil was booted out of hell?’) (PSS I,
125).
226
Ganna tells Levko: “Я помню... давно, давно..., что-то страшное рассказывали про дом этот.
Левко, ты, верно, знаешь, расскажи!” (I remember once, long ago … I heard a
frightening story about that old house. Levko, you must know the story, please tell me it!) (PSS I, 156).
182
storytelling. The narrative representation in “Sorochinskaia iarmarka” and “Maiskaia
noch’” follows a dramatic-theatrical model: for the most part the narrating instance is
hidden behind its textual creation; the prevalence of dialogues over the narrator’s direct
speech and the abundance of oral performances by characters foreground performances in
which the narrator is not an active participant within his own ongoing performance.
Therefore, Makar Nazarovich emerges as an individualist subject detached from the
collective folk body. His overall performance as the narrator and as the author of his own
tales presupposes the audience that resides outside of the depicted Ukrainian world.
Furthermore, the extratextual material targets a competent reader who knows the
historical and cultural context. This concerns first of all the epigraphs, such as those in
“Sorochinskaia iarmarka,” which suggest the colonial status of Ukraine within the
empire. Although the action in the tale occurs in the present day (1830), the characters
allude to events of the turn of the century (1796), right after the second partition of
Poland when the left-bank Ukraine was annexed to the Russian Empire. The plot of
“Sorochinskaia iarmarka” centers on the mysterious appearance of the red svitka
(traditional Cossack attire) culminating in the episode of slashing the svitka into pieces
and then searching for them in order to put it back together. This legend, told by
Cherevik, finishes when all parts of the svitka are found except for the left sleeve
(“Теперь, говорят, одного только левого рукава недостает ему” (Now they say he’s
only missing the left sleeve) (PSS I, 127). The legend about the svitka encapsulates the
myth of dismembered Ukrainian nation. The historic subtext of the episode was
transparent for both the metropolitan and the Ukrainian readers of the time. Yet its
cultural context, manifested in the epigraphs, would be clear only to readers who knew
183
the sources from which the epigraphs were taken: Ivan Kotliarevs’kyi mock epic Eneїda
and Petro Hulak-Artemovs’kyi’s fable “Pan i sobaka” (Master and Dog). Both were
published in Ukrainian, the former - in 1798 in Petersburg in a small number of copies,
the latter - in the Kharkiv journal Ukrainian Herald in 1818 that circulated among the
Ukrainian intellectuals. The first source mockingly presents the abolition of the
Zaporizhian Sich through the prism of the history of the Trojan War. The second was
notorious for its allegorical subtext: the dog Riabko was standing guard of his master’s
property during the day, but when he got tired and fell asleep at night, Muscovites came
and began raiding the household.
227
Hulak-Artemovs’kyi’s fable had caused a sensation
not because of its plot alone, but also because of the accompanying suplika to the
journal’s editor Kvitka-Osnov’ianenko who had feared publishing the text in Ukrainian.
In his “Suplika do Hryts’ka Kvitky,” the author begged the editor not to Russify the
Ukrainian text: “Supliku zh siu moiu ty, Hryts’ku, sam chytai,/ Ledachomu її paskudyt’
ne davai:/ Bo iak pochne moskal’ po-svoemu skladaty, / Ta vot!.. Ta shot? Ta
kak?
228
…chytavshy promovliaty, / Todi khoch umykai iz khaty” (Hryts’ko, read this my
suplika by yourself, do not let the lazy one [the Russian translator – Yu. I.] spoil it.
Because if the Muscovite will start translating it “That is it!.. And what?...And how?”,
then give it up for lost.) These literary subtexts produce a layering of meaning that
acknowledges the dominant literary discourse while introducing elements that are native
and subversive.

227
“Riabku j ne snyt’sia, ne verzet’sia,/ Shcho vzhe moskalyky v komori i na dvori -/ Skriz’ nyshporiat’,
mov tut vony j hospodari” (Riabko is sleeping and cannot even imagine in his dreams that the Muscovites
are like owners rummaging in his master’s storeroom and yard)
228
These three questions are rendered in Russian.
184
Foma Grigorievich
Unlike Makar Nazarovich’s performance as author-narrator, Foma Grigorievich’s
storytelling reveals the dialogic nature of his narrative performance and of his
relationship with the Ukrainian past. What differentiates Foma Grigorievich as a narrator
from all others in the tales is that his storytelling is a one-time act. Foma Grigorievich
never tells a story in the same way twice not only because he favors the oral mode of
storytelling but also because he does not believe that there is any other reality outside of
storytelling. His indignation at his tales appearing in print (in the beginning of “Vecher
nakanune Ivana Kupala”) results from the impossibility of proving the authenticity of his
words to his audience. Interaction with the audience is the driving force of his
storytelling. It is not his own, but his audience’s active participation that makes him keep
telling his stories. The first occasion for his oral performance is incited by Pan’ko who
reminds Foma Grigorievich about a printed version of his story:
- Плюйте ж на голову тому, кто это напечатал! бреше, сучий
москаль. Так ли я говорил? Що то вже, як у кого черт-ма клепки в
голови! Слушайте, я вам расскажу ее сейчас.
‘Damn the lying Russian dog who printed it – I spit in his face! He hasn’t
a scrap of wit in his head! Listen and I’ll tell you the real story now.’ (PSS
I, 138)
At the onset of “Propavshaia gramota” Foma Grigorievich tries to please his audience
with another “old true story.” The active aesthetic response of his listeners inspires his
storytelling:
Так вы хотите, чтобы я вам еще рассказал про деда? Пожалуй,
почему же не потешить прибауткой? Эх, старина, старина! Что за
радость, что за разгулье падет на сердце, когда услышишь про то, что
давно-давно ... деялось на свете! ... Нет, мне пуще всего наши дивчата
и молодицы; покажись только на глаза им: "Фома Григорьевич! Фома
Григорьевич! а нуте яку-небудь страховинну казачку! а нуте, нуте!..
185
- тара-та-та, тата-та, и пойдут, и пойдут... Рассказать-то, конечно, не
жаль, да загляните-ка, что делается с ними в постеле. Ведь я знаю,
что каждая дрожит под одеялом, как будто бьет ее лихорадка, и рада
бы с головою влезть в тулуп свой. Царапни горшком крыса, сама как-
нибудь задень ногою кочергу - и боже упаси! и душа в пятках. А на
другой день ничего не бывало, навязывается сызнова: расскажи ей
страшную сказку, да и только. Что ж бы такое рассказать вам?
So you want me to tell you some more about my old grandfather? By all
means, why not amuse you with another of his little stories? Ah, yes, the
good old days! What exuberance fills the heart when you hear about the
things that went on long, long ago, longer than any of us can remember!
… No, the worst ones are the womenfolk, the young women and girls; the
moment they catch sight of you it’s all: “Foma Grigorievich! Foma
Grigorievich! Do tell us one of your scary stories about the old days! Go
on! Tell us, please! …’ and on, and on, and on…. Not that I mind telling
them, of course, but if only you could see them later on in their beds! I
know for a fact that every one of them will be a-tremble under her
blankets, just as if she’s in a fever, and ready at the drop of a pin to hide
her head in her sheepskin coat. All it needs is for a rat to scratch the
cooking pot, or for her to stumble on the poker – and Lord help us! She’s
scared clean out of her wits. The next day you’d think nothing had
happened, they’re at it again: tell us a scary story, go on, do. (PSS I, 181)
Further, in the beginning of his last story “Zakoldovannoe mesto,” he begs his listeners to
stop demanding stories from him:
Ей-богу, уже надоело рассказывать! Да что вы думаете? Право,
скучно: рассказывай, да и рассказывай, и отвязаться нельзя! Ну,
извольте, я расскажу, только, ей-ей, в последний раз.
Merciful Lord, I’m sick and tired of telling stories! Well, what do you
expect? It’s tiresome, it really is: you tell stories one after the other, and
they won’t give you a moment’s peace! Still, if you really insist I’ll tell
this one, only I swear it’s the very last. (PSS I, 276)
Here, Foma Grigorievich tries to argue with the audience, unlike Pan’ko who constantly
seeks ways to please his “dear readers.” Foma Grigorievich’s interaction with his
audience is maintained mostly through his use of questions addressed to it. This
introduces a dialogic element into his narration that would otherwise be a soliloquy.
Foma Grigorievich anticipates questions coming from his listeners (“Вы спросите,
186
отчего они жили так?” (You might ask why they lived like that?) (PSS I, 139)) and
reproaches them for being inattentive (“Добро бы по неволе, а то ведь сами же
напросились. Слушать так слушать!” (Nobody’s forcing you to listen, it was you who
begged me to tell the story. So you’d better listen properly!) (PSS I, 309); he responds to
listeners’ skepticism about the plot twist in “Vecher nakanune Ivana Kupala” (“Говорите
же, что люди выдумывают!” (Now don’t tell me people get such ideas into their heads
for no reason!) (PSS I, 148)); he anticipates loss of attention in his listeners (“Позвольте,
этим еще не все кончилось” (Wait a second, that wasn’t the end of the matter) (PSS I,
151)); he puts his listeners to shame for laughing at an inappropriate moment
(“Смейтесь; однако ж не до смеха было нашим дедам” (You may laugh, but let me
tell you it was no laughing matter for our forefathers) (PSS I, 151); and he refers to the
life experiences of his audience, which creates a sense of a shared community (“Ну, если
где парубок и девка живут близко один от другого... сами знаете, что выходит”
(Well, when a young man and a pretty girl live near one another … you don’t need me to
tell you what that leads to) (PSS I, 141); “Ну, известно, зачем ходят к отцу, когда у
него водится чернобровая дочка” (Well, there can only be one reason why anyone
should visit the father of a black-browed daughter) (PSS I, 142)). By asking brief
rhetorical questions (“И что же?” (And so what?); “Что за чудо?” (What kind of miracle
is this?); “Что теперь?” (And now what?); “Что бы это значило?” (What was this
supposed to mean?); “Что делать?” (What to do?); “Что прикажешь делать?” (What
can you do?)) in the course of the narration he also keeps his audience constantly
engaged in his storytelling.
187
Not only does Foma Grigorievich assume a dialogical position vis-a-vis his
listening public, he constantly expresses his opinions and judgment of the characters’
deeds. In “Vecher nakanune Ivana Kupala,” the narrator emphatically describes both
Korzh’s (Pidorka’s father) feelings about his daughter’s “inappropriate” behavior with
Petrus and Pidorka’s and Petrus’ suffering from unfulfilled love. The passage “Взяла
кручина наших голубков” (Great was the sorrow of our love-birds) shows the narrator’s
empathetic attitude towards the beloved “criminals” (the traces of Foma Grigorievich’s
speech are italicized):
Очнувшись, снял он со стены дедовскую нагайку и уже-хотел было
покропить ею спину бедного Петра, как откуда ни возьмись
шестилетний брат Пидоркин, Ивась, прибежал и в испуге схватил
ручонками его за ноги, закричав: “Тятя, тятя! не бей Петруся!” Что
прикажешь делать? у отца сердце не каменное: повесивши
нагайку на стену, вывел он его потихоньку из хаты: “Если ты мне
когда-нибудь покажешься в хате или хоть только под окнами, то
слушай, Петро: ей-богу, пропадут черные усы, да и оселедец твой
…” Сказавши это, дал он ему легонькою рукою стусана в затылок,
так что Петрусь, невзвидя земли, полетел стремглав. Вот тебе и
доцеловались! Взяла кручина наших голубков…
Coming to his senses he seized up his grandfather’s horsewhip, ready to
lash poor Petro’s back, when suddenly Pidorka’s little brother Ivas
appeared from nowhere and threw his arms round his father’s legs,
wailing: ‘Daddy, Daddy! Don’t beat Petro!’ What could the old man do?
His heart wasn’t made of stone. Hanging the whip back on the wall he
took Petro by the arm and quietly led him out of the house: ‘Now listen to
me, Petro: if I ever catch sight out of you in the house or even beneath the
window, I swear to God you can say goodbye to your black moustache
and to your topknot…’ Saying this he fetched him a hearty thump on the
back of his neck which sent Petro flying head over heels. That’s where
their kiss got them! Great was the sorrow of our love-birds. [emphasis
added] (PSS I, 142)
Foma Grigorievich’s dialogical relationship with his Dikan’ka listeners presupposes that
they both are situated on the same ontological plane. Moreover, Foma Grigorievich’s
superb skills of storytelling demonstrate that telling is not a simple act of revealing the
188
“truth” but is a performative act aimed at producing some effect in the listeners. Step by
step the narrator’s dialogical discourse shapes his audience. It is a circle of people
holding the same views and valuing the same cultural traditions. These values are
reflected in an idealized view of the Cossack past of Ukraine and in a belief in true
collective identity, unspoiled by modernity and individualism. At the same time, Foma
Grigorievich outlines the image of a “bad” audience, characterized as “non-believers”
(i.e. those who do not believe in the existence of the devil):
Знаю, что много наберется таких умников, пописывающих по судам
и читающих даже гражданскую грамоту, которые, если дать им в
руки простой Часослов, не разобрали бы ни аза в нем, а показывать
на позор свои зубы – есть уменье. Им все, что ни расскажешь, в смех.
Эдакое неверье разошлось по свету! Да чего, – вот не люби Бог меня
и Пречистая Дева! вы, может, даже не поверите: раз как-то заикнулся
про ведьм - что ж? нашелся сорвиголова, ведьмам не верит! Да,
слава Богу, вот я сколько живу уже на свете, видел таких иноверцев,
которым провозить попа в решете было легче, нежели нашему брату
понюхать табаку; а и те открещивались от ведьм. Но приснись им...
не хочется только выговорить, что такое, нечего и толковать об них.
I know that you get a lot of know-alls who scribble away in court houses
and who even read the modern script, fellows who wouldn’t know head
from tail of it if you gave them a simple church calendar to read, but who
are experts at scoffing and laughing. They’ll make fun of anything you tell
them. It’s terrible what heathen ways there are in the world! Well – and if
I lie may God strike me down and the Mother of God curse me – you may
not believe this, but once I happened to mention witches – and what do
you know? There was some madcap in the room who didn’t believe in
witches! Thanks be to God I’ve been long enough in the world, and I’ve
seen non-believers who would tell a lie in confession without batting an
eyelid; but even those would make the sign of the cross to keep witches
away. But who wants to talk about them, anyway? (PSS I, 139)
Foma Grigorievich’s critical portrayal of an audience spoiled by the state apparatus
(“пописывающих по судам и читающих даже гражданскую грамоту” (who scribble
away in court houses and who even read the modern script)) is echoed by his facetiae
about a student-“Latinizer” presented in Pan’ko’s “Preface” to Book One. This facetiae
189
debunks Makar Nazarovich who blindly imitates foreign culture and neglects his own
national roots.
229
If the narrative in Makar Nazarovich’s tales and in “Noch’ pered
Rozhdestvom” is addressed to a metropolitan audience, Foma Grigorievich’s tales
explicitly target the Ukrainian audience. That is why explanations of Ukrainian
phenomena and translations of Ukrainian expressions are absent in his tales (whereas in
Makar Nazarovich’s stories they are included in the texts). Russian translations of Foma
Grigorievich’s Ukrainian expressions are provided only in the footnotes and belong to
Pan’ko.
230
Highlighted in modern editions of the tales by the addition of the note
“primechanie N. V. Gogolia” (N.V. Gogol’s footnote) or “primechanie avtora” (the
author’s footnote) that was absent in the first edition, these translations can be classified
as one of Pan’ko’s “ingratiating” strategies. At these self-reflexive moments Pan’ko gives
Russian readers information that Foma Grigorievich, skeptical about the translatability of
Ukrainian culture, did not consider necessary to provide. Thus, by differentiating between
“foreign” and “local” audiences Foma Grigorievich establishes close bonds with his
immediate Dikan’ka listeners who are united in the communal act of storytelling. That is
why he rejects the printed version of his tale: the text printed mechanically and produced
for a mass reader nullifies the storyteller’s intimate relationship with his audience.
The genre of Foma Grigorievich’s tales, byl’ (an old true story) also casts Foma
Grigorievich as a communal storyteller. Byl’ reflects popular folk belief in demonology
(goblins, mermaids, ghosts, charmed treasures, etc.) and usually takes the form of
testimony of a participant, rendered in a skaz narration by the participant him/herself or a

229
This episode is discussed in Chapter 3 of this study.
230
Because Foma Grigor’evich is the only one who is explicitly defined as an oral storyteller in Pan’ko’s
“Preface”, these translations function as metatextual commentaries of the implied author.
190
storyteller who treats his/her testimony as a real fact.
231
This is precisely the attitude to
the fictional material that Foma Grigorievich demonstrates. He does not question his
grandfather’s adventures with the demonic in any way. In order to verify the truthfulness
of his own narrative art he refers to his grandfather’s fame as a storyteller: “Но главное в
рассказах деда было то, что в жизнь свою он никогда не лгал, и что, бывало, ни
скажет, то именно так и было” (But the main thing about my grandfather’s stories was
that he never once in all his life told a lie and you could take it that things happened
exactly as he said) (PSS I, 138). Often Foma Grigorievich’s appeals to his grandfather’s
authority takes form of swearing by God: “Дед мой (Царство ему Небесное! чтоб ему
на том свете елись одни только буханцы пшеничные да маковники в меду!) умел
чудно рассказывать” (My grandfather (God rest his soul in heaven! May he have all the
wheat loaves and poppy-seed rolls with honey he wants up there!) was a great storyteller)
(PSS I, 138) [emphasis added]. His references to the authoritative members of the village
– “chestnye starshiny” (honest elders), grandfather, his aunt, and the villagers
232
– have
an important function in demonstrating how the devil interferes in peoples’ lives. Foma
Grigorievich begins and ends all his stories by pointing at the real presence of the devil in
this world.
233

231
See E. Pomerantseva, Mifologicheskie personazhi 22.
232
The strange things in “Vecher nakanune Ivana Kupala” are seen by all of the villagers: “еще бы ничего,
если бы одному, а то именно всем” (and it wouldn’t be worth the mentioning if only one had seen it, but
they all saw it) (PSS I, 151).
233
In “Zakoldovannoe mesto,” for example, the story starts and concludes with the statement “Захочет
обморочить дьявольская сила, то обморочит...” (If the devil wants to bamboozle you, he’ll find a way
to do it…) (PSS I, 309). “Так вот как морочит нечистая сила человека!” (So you see how the Evil Spirit
bamboozles us mortals!) (PSS I, 316).
191
The next proposition might seem unrelated to the problem of the narrative
performance in Foma Grigorievich’s tales, but it is important to discuss here since it
connects the problem of the narrative with that of the national identity in Gogol’s texts.
The idea that Gogol envisioned his mission as a writer who wants “to make the devil look
foolish” (“kak chorta vystavit’ durakom”(PSS 13, 293)) was voiced by Dmitrii
Merezhkovskii in his famous article “Gogol’ i chert” (1906). In contemporary Gogol
studies, Vladimir Zviniatskovskii has proposed viewing Gogol’s unique laughter in the
context of Ukrainian smekhovaia culture.
234
According to the scholar, Gogol further
developed and completed (“do-tvoril”) the Ukrainian national tradition of the eighteenth-
century Ukrainian writers-moralists Paїsii Velychkovs’kyi, Hryhorii Skovoroda and
others whose philosophical and literary works aimed to disparage, discredit, and ridicule
the devil. That Gogol understood his mission as a comic writer within this Ukrainian
tradition is clear from his correspondence with Shevyrev. I present letters from Shevyrev
to Gogol and from Gogol to Shevyrev in order to understand the context of the issue:
Shevyrev:

Раз случилось мне говорить с одним русским, богомольным
странником, который собирался в Иерусалим и был у меня. Звали его
Симеон Петрович. Рыженький старичок. ... Весьма иронически и
всегда с насмещкой говорил он о дьяволе, называя его дураком... Вот
мысль русского и христианского комика: дьявол первый дурак в
свете и над ним надобно смеяться. Смейся, смейся над дьяволом:
смехом твоим ты докажешь, что он неразумен.
Once I happened to talk to a Russian holy wanderer who was preparing to
go to Jerusalem and visited me. His name was Simeon Petrovich. A red-
haired old man… He spoke about the devil very ironically and always
with gibes, calling him a fool… Here is the thought of a Russian and a

234
V. Zviniatskovskii, “V chem zhe nakonets sushchestvo “ukrainstva” Gogolia i v chem ego osobennost’”
41-50.
192
Christian comedian: the devil is the first fool in the world and one needs to
scoff at him. Laugh, laugh at the devil: with your laughter you will prove
that he is foolish. [emphasis added] (Perepiska Gogolia II, 352)

Gogol:

Слова твои о том, как чорта выставить дураком, совершенно попали
в такт с моими мыслями. Уже с давних пор только о том и хлопочу,
чтобы после моего сочинения насмеялся вволю человек над чортом.
Я бы очень желал знать, откуда происхожденьем тот старик, с
которым ты говорил. Судя по его отзыве о чорте, он должен быть
малороссиянин.
Your words about how to make the devil looks foolish coincided with my
ideas. For a very long time I have been concerned that after my work a
man would laugh to his heart content about the devil. I would like to know
where this old man to whom you talked is from. Judging by his opinion
about the devil he must be a Ukrainian. [emphasis added] (PSS XIII,
293).
235

Gogol’s curiosity about the old man’s origin and his assumption that the man is
Ukrainian (despite the fact that Shevyrev mentions him twice as Russian) indicate that
the writer himself perceived this laughter as a Ukrainian side of his creative art and
identity. That only Foma Grigorievich aims at deriding the devil who meddles in the
affairs of people elevates him above all the other narrators as one who in this sense fulfils
the intentions of Gogol as the real author. Both Foma Grigorievich’s treatment of the
supernatural and his living connection with the past of his land relate him to Gogol
himself.
236

235
Gogol’s original orthography is retained.
236
Compare for instance Gogol’s “Avtorskaia ispoved’” (An Author’s Confession) with Foma
Grigorievich’s introduction to “Propavshaia gramota.” “Avtorskaia ispoved’”: “Взять событие из
минувшего и обратить его к настоящему – какая умная и богатая мысль!...старина даст тебе краcки
и уже одной собой вдохновит тебя! Она так живьем и шевелится в наших летописях” (To take an
event from the past and to turn it to the present – what a wonderful and prolific thought!... antiquity will
provide you with colors and by itself will inspire you! It stirs alive in our chronicles) (PSS VIII, 278-79).
“Propavshaia gramota:” “Эх, старина, старина! Что за радость, что за разгулье падет на сердце, когда
услышишь про то, что давно-давно, и года ему и месяца нет, деялось на свете!” (Ah yes, the good
193
The affinity of the real author’s and Foma Grigorievich’s points of view on
Ukrainian history and traditions endows Foma Grigorievich with unlimited freedom to
cross the temporal and spatial distances between the past and the present and to revive
people’s memory about the heroic Cossack past. Because he positions himself as a
necessary link in the ancestral chain he narrates about the distant past as if it were
happening here and now: the past (“togdashnie vremena”) is experienced by him as the
present (“kak budto teper’ sluchilos’” (PSS I, 310)). This living connection with his own
history and tradition allows Foma Grigorievich to embed himself into his grandfather’s
narrative point of view so that the borderline between his own and his grandfather’s
discourse becomes blurred. In the introduction to “Propavshaia gramota,” Foma
Grigorievich warns his listeners about the confusion of narrative voices that may occur in
his discourse:
А как еще впутается какой-нибудь родич, дед или прадед, - ну, тогда
и рукой махни: чтоб мне поперхнулось за акафистом великомученице
Варваре, если не чудится, что вот-вот сам все это делаешь, как будто
залез в прадедовскую душу или прадедовская душа шалит в тебе.
And if one of your own kin should be mixed up in the story, your
grandfather, maybe, or great-grandfather – that really crowns it all: may I
choke next time I try and sing an akathistos to the holy martyr St. Barbara
if I lie, but I swear it feels as though you’re doing all those things yourself,
as if you’re crept inside your great-grandfather’s soul and it was getting up
to its tricks inside you … (PSS I, 181).
Reproduction of grandfather’s and grandfather’s aunt’s stories in first-person narrative
results in the mixing of omniscient third-person and first-person narrative. Examples of
the constant shift from the grandfather’s (and grandfather’s aunt’s) to Foma
Grigorievich’s perspective abound in the tales. The passage below is rendered in a skaz

old days! What exuberance fills the heart when you hear about the things that went on long, long ago,
longer than any of us can remember!) (PSS I, 181).
194
manner typical of Foma Grigorievich. His grandfather’s point of view is recreated in the
partially indirect discourse while the last sentence reproduces Foma Grigorievich’s own
nostalgic view of the irrevocable Cossack past:
Не успел пройти двадцати шагов – навстречу запорожец. Гуляка, и
по лицу видно! Красные, как жар, шаровары, синий жупан, яркий
цветной пояс, при боку сабля и люлька с медною цепочкою по
самые пяты – запорожец, да и только! Эх, народец! станет,
вытянется, поведет рукою молодецкие усы, брякнет подковами и –
пустится! Да ведь как пустится: ноги отплясывают, словно веретено в
бабьих руках; что вихорь, дернет рукою по всем струнам бандуры и
тут же, подпершися в боки, несется вприсядку; зальется песней –
душа гуляет!.. Нет, прошло времечко: не увидать больше
запорожцев!
He hadn’t gone more than twenty paces when he met this Zaporozhian
Cossack coming towards him. One look at his face and could see he was a
real carouser! Bright red trousers, a blue zhupan, a brightly-colored sash,
at his side a saber and a pipe on a bronze chain, reaching to his very heels
– every inch a Zaporozhian Cossack! What a race! Watch your Cossack
stand up, poker straight, twist his dashing moustache, stamp his heels, and
the next moment he’s away! His feet flying round like a spindle in a
woman’s hands; his hand hitting the strings of the bandura like a
whirlwind and the next thing you knew he’d be down on his heels with
arms akimbo; the air filled with song – you felt your own soul making
merry!... No those days are gone: you won’t see any more of those
Zaporozhians around now! [emphasis added] (PSS I, 182-3).
The tinting of Foma Grigorievich’s speech with his grandfather’s language not only
creates an illusion of “preserving” or “reproducing” aspects of chuzhaia rech’ (somebody
else’s speech), but also promotes an emphatic identification with the past on the part of
the local audience. Because of his embeddedness into the local Ukrainian tradition, the
grandfather “nativizes” imperial reality as seen by a Ukrainian subject (Bojanowska 67).
In the episode below from “Propavshaia gramota,” when his grandfather arrives in
Petersburg to deliver the letter to the empress, he perceives her as wearing a Ukrainian
195
vest (svitka) and red boots, eating Ukrainian dumplings (galushki), and granting him
“sinitsy” (a pidgin version of the Russian assignatsiia, or paper money).
Там нагляделся дед таких див, что стало ему надолго после того
рассказывать: как повели его в палаты, такие высокие, что если бы
хат десять поставить одну на другую, - и тогда, может быть, не
достало бы. Как заглянул он в одну комнату - нет; в другую - нет; в
третью - еще нет; в четвертой даже нет; да в пятой уже, глядь - сидит
сама, в золотой короне, в серой новехонькой свитке, в красных
сапогах, и золотые галушки ест. Как велела ему насыпать целую
шапку синицами, как... всего и вспомнить нельзя.
In the capital Grandfather saw such marvels that for years after he could
tell of nothing else: how he was led into the palace, as high as ten houses
placed one on top of the other, and even then they probably wouldn’t
reach its roof. How he looked first into one room, not there; into another,
not there either; into a third, not there; not even in a fourth; he stuck his
head in the fifth – and there she sat, in her golden crown, wearing a smart
new smock and red boots, and eating golden dumplings. How she ordered
that he be given a hatful of banknotes, how … well, there’s no
remembering all the things he told. (PSS I, 191)
As Bojanowska keenly suggests, the grandfather describes the tsarina “in the trappings of
Ukrainian material” which in fact is the reverse operation of Pan’ko’s “translating
Ukraine’s foreignness into Russian terms” (67). The grandfather (and Foma Grigorievich
himself because he reproduces his grandfather’s memories) “does not find equivalents; he
sees in equivalents his absolutely unified Ukrainian worldview allowing no dualities, no
multiplicities of codes” (67).
This narrative freedom that allows Foma Grigorievich to penetrate into his dead
relatives’ thoughts also helps him to nostalgically poeticize the past (“В старину свадьба
водилась не в сравненье с нашей! Тетка моего деда, бывало, расскажет – люли
только!” (There’re no comparing weddings today with those in the old days. You should
have heard the stories my grandfather’s aunt used to tell: what a lark!) (PSS I, 147)).
196
Overall, Foma Grigorievich’s narrative performance suggests a relational identity
determined by a social network and kinship within the Ukrainian village community that
still upholds ideals of freedom and heroism of the Cossacks. At the same time, Foma
Grigorievich’s storytelling performance involves readers in a sharing of national memory
that is never lost while there is someone who can tell about it.
Stepan Ivanovich Kurochka
“Ivan Fedorovich Shpon’ka i ego tetushka” is the only tale in the cycle in which the
author plays out the very process of transcribing oral speech into a written text (as
Pan’ko’s introduction suggests, Kurochka “vzial i spisal” [wrote down his own story]
and then gave it to him for publication in Vechera). From the beginning of his tale,
Kurochka emerges as an ambitious writer of a novel about his acquaintance, the
Vytreben’ki landowner Ivan Fedorovich Shpon’ka. The first five chapters of “Shpon’ka”
are intended to be only the beginning of his Bildungsroman.
237
This inclination to
reproduce every single detail of the protagonist’s life in a linear, sequential plot
transforms Kurochka into a chronicler. This also reduces his performative function in the
narrative to a minimum: he does not intrude into the plot with metanarrative comments,
frames, or embedded stories, and neither does he foreground the issue of narration.
Kurochka’s personal acquaintance with the characters
238
does not grant him,
however, full control over the protagonists’ thoughts or plot development. His

237
The story begins with Shponka’s childhood and school years, proceeds with his military service and
comes abruptly to an end during his years in the home village where he enjoys being a landowner.
238
Characterizing Shpon’ka’s aunt, the narrator says that “замужем она никогда не была и обыкновенно
говорила, что жизнь девическая для нее дороже всего. Впрочем, сколько мне помнится, никто и не
сватал ее” (She had never been married and was fond of saying that there was nothing she prized more
than her maiden state. Mind you, to my knowledge no one had ever actually asked for her hand) (PSS I,
293).
197
competence as a narrator is limited for the most of the time. The narrative proceeds
straightforwardly without any flashbacks or interruption by the narrator and serves to
highlight the dull, ordinary, degenerative life-style of Ukrainian landowners.
239
Because
of such an eventless narration, readers’ interest is shifted from the plot to the texture of
the language itself: the similes, metaphors, and stark juxtapositions of Kurochka’s style.
One such technique that the narrator uses to “impress” readers is the use of hyperbole: the
narrator elevates ordinary facts and things to the extraordinary. The eleven years that took
Shpon’ka to rise from cadet to second lieutenant is presented as an unusual occurrence.
The old carriage in which Shpon’ka and his aunt travel is described as a uniquely
priceless antique – the carriage of Adam himself.
Unlike Foma Grigorievich, who constantly juxtaposes the heroic past with the
present, Kurochka is firmly grounded in mundane reality and finds analogies between
Shpon’ka’s existence and the contemporary life of ordinary city-dwellers and clerks:
Книг он, вообще сказать, не любил читать; а если заглядывал иногда
в гадательную книгу, так это потому, что любил встречать там
знакомое, читанное уже несколько раз. Так городской житель
отправляется каждый день в клуб, не для того, чтобы услышать там
что-нибудь новое, но чтобы встретить тех приятелей, с которыми он
уже с незапамятных времен привык болтать в клубе. Так чиновник с
большим наслаждением читает адрес-календарь по нескольку раз в
день, не для каких-нибудь дипломатических затей, но его тешит до
крайности печатная роспись имен.
He was, generally speaking, not a great reader, and if occasionally he
glanced into a fortune-telling book it was because he liked to come upon
familiar passages, which he had already read several times. Thus too does
the city-dweller repair every day to his club, not so much to hear news as
to meet his old friends, whom since time immemorial he has been

239
Evhen Malaniuk described what lurked beneath the seemingly idyllic image of the Ukrainian
landowners in the tale: “Against the background of an exuberant sun-drenched landscape, amidst ruins of a
turbulent past, the farms and estates of former Ukrainian aristocracy, who now are members of a Pan-
Russian squirearchy demoralized by the policies of Petersburg, have fallen into a deathly slumber” (59).
198
accustomed to meeting and chatting with in the club. Thus too does the
official read a directory of addresses with enormous pleasure several times
a day, not with any diplomatic intrigue in mind, but for the wondrous
solace he receives from the sight of names in print. (PSS I, 288-89)
Confined within an all-absorbing poshlost’ the narrator becomes himself a subject of the
implied author’s irony. This irony is imprinted on the narrator’s attempts to present the
idle life-style of a Ukrainian landowner as an idyll. The narrator praises Shpon’ka’s
household (which according to him, “процветало в полном смысле слова” [was
thriving in every sense of the word] (PSS I, 294)) and his great managing skills, which, in
fact, turn out to be fake. In the passage below, the narrator’s lack of critical vision of
reality is suggested by the implied author:
Однако ж он неотлучно бывал в поле при жнецах и косарях, и
это доставляло наслаждение неизъяснимое его кроткой душе.
Единодушный взмах десятка и более блестящих кос; шум падающей
стройными рядами травы; изредка заливающиеся песни жниц, то
веселые, как встреча гостей, то заунывные, как разлука; спокойный,
чистый вечер, и что за вечер!...Трудно рассказать, что делалось тогда
с Иваном Федоровичем. Он забывал, присоединяясь к косарям,
отведать их галушек, которые очень любил, и стоял недвижимо на
одном месте, следя глазами пропадавшую в небе чайку или считая
копы нажитого хлеба, унизывавшие поле. В непродолжительном
времени об Иване Федоровиче везде пошли речи как о великом
хозяине.
Nonetheless, he assiduously attended the reaping and mowing in the field,
and this filled his meek soul with unutterable delight. The rhythmic sweep
of a dozen and more gleaming scythes, the swish of the grass falling in
even swathes, the occasional bursts of song from the girl reapers, at times
merry, like a gathering of guests, at others melancholy, like their parting;
the calm, pure evening air, and the evening itself! … It is hard to convey
Ivan Fedorovich’s state of mind at this time. When he joined the mowers
he would neglect to sample the galushki to which he was so partial, and
would stand rooted to the spot, gazing after a gull as it disappeared in the
sky or counting the ricks of corn dotted about the field. Soon Ivan
Fedorovich earned himself renown as a farmer of great skill. (PSS I, 294-
5) [emphasis added]
199
That the landowner’s household is degenerating is corroborated by Shpon’ka’s auntie
who has a more critical eye about the state of things than the narrator.
240

The author’s irony towards Kurochka’s tale is also manifested in the fact that it is
incomplete. Its incompleteness is presented as the result of an accident: Pan’ko’s wife
used its final pages to bake pies. As Pan’ko says, “посмотрел как-то на сподку
пирожка, смотрю: писаные слова. Как будто сердце у меня знало, прихожу к
столику – тетрадки и половины нет” (I happened to look at the bottom of one of these
pies, and what do I see but writing. I could feel it in my bones: I went over to the table –
and half of the notebook was gone!) (PSS I, 283). As a written text that is used to wrap a
pie, “Shpon’ka” becomes an “oral” text par excellence, suitable for public
consumption.
241
Although the story in written form is unfinished, it exists in the mind of
Stepan Ivanovich Kurochka, to whom Pan’ko sends Petersburg readers to find out the
dénouement. Pan’ko in his introduction to the tale explains how to find Kurochka in
Gadiach:
Впрочем, если кто желает непременно знать, о чем говорится далее
в этой повести, то ему стоит только нарочно приехать в Гадяч и
попросить Степана Ивановича. Он с большим удовольствием
расскажет ее, хоть, пожалуй, снова от начала до конца. Живет он
недалеко возле каменной церкви. Тут есть сейчас маленький
переулок: как только поворотишь в переулок, то будут вторые или
третьи ворота. Да вот лучше: когда увидите на дворе большой

240
“- Насчет гречихи я не могу вам сказать: это часть Григория Григорьевича… В старину у нас,
бывало, я помню, гречиха была по пояс, теперь бог знает что. Хотя, впрочем, и говорят, что теперь
все лучше. - Тут старушка вздохнула; и какому-нибудь наблюдателю послышался бы в этом вздохе
вздох старинного осьмнадцатого столетия” (‘With regard to the buckwheat I cannot tell you: that’s
Grigorii Grigor’evich’s department… I remember in the old days the buckwheat used to come up to your
waist, but it’s nothing like that anymore. Mind you, they say that everything is better these days.’ At this
end the old lady sighed; an observant person would have heard in this sigh the knell of the bygone
eighteenth century) (PSS I, 304).
241
Jenifer Presto in her article "Ivan Fedorovic Špon'ka i ego tetuška" as “Oral” Narrative, or “Food for the
Critics” (1996) discusses in detail the relationship between the discourse and food in the tale.
200
шест с перепелом и выйдет навстречу вам толстая баба в зеленой
юбке…, то это его двор. Впрочем, вы можете его встретить на базаре,
где бывает он каждое утро до девяти часов, выбирает рыбу и зелень
для своего стола и разговаривает с отцом Антипом или с жидом-
откупщиком. Вы его тотчас узнаете, потому что ни у кого нет, кроме
него, панталон из цветной выбойки и китайчатого желтого сюртука.
Вот еще вам примета: когда ходит он, то всегда размахивает руками.
Еще покойный тамошний заседатель, Денис Петрович, всегда,
бывало, увидевши его издали, говорил: “Глядите, глядите, вон идет
ветряная мельница!”
In fact, if anyone particularly wants to know what happens later on in this
story all he has to do is make a trip to Gadiach and a ask for Stepan
Ivanovich. He will be delighted to tell the story all over again from
beginning to end if you like. He lives near the stone church. There’s small
lane nearby: turn into the lane and his is the second or third gate. Or better
still: look for the yard with the bird-house on a tall pole, where a fat
serving woman in a green skirt comes out to meet you …: that’s his place.
You may also bump into him at the market, where he spends every
morning until nine o’clock, selecting fish and vegetables for his table and
chatting with Father Antip or one of the market Jews. You’ll recognize
him at once, because no one else has a pair of printed linen trousers and a
yellow nankeen coat. Another thing to watch for: he always swings his
arms as he walks. The late assessor of Gadiach, Denis Petrovich, would
always say when he saw him in the distance: ‘Look, look, there goes the
windmill!’ (PSS I, 284)
Therefore, the ending of the tale is unavailable only for Petersburg readers, while it exists
in oral form for the local Dikan’ka audience. Pan’ko’s detailed directions to Kurochka’s
place and depiction of his current life emphasize that the local community has the
preference in accessing Kurochka and getting the complete story.
The Blind Bandura
242
Player
The performance of a blind bandura player in the epilogue of “Strashnaia mest’” is a key
to understanding Gogol’s search for a unified narrative voice in the tales. Most scholars
(Aizenshtok, Gukovskii, Mann) have claimed that the tale is narrated by the anonymous

242
A bandura is a Ukrainian plucked string instrument used for performances of folk historical songs
(“dumy”) which became especially popular after the abolishment of the Hetmanate in Ukraine in the second
half of the eighteenth century.
201
storyteller whom Pan’ko singles out among the other storytellers for his mastery in telling
horror stories.
243
Pan’ko’s phrase following the reference to the horror storyteller (“Я
нарочно и не помещал их сюда” (I intentionally did not put them in this book)),
however, overturns this assumption. Until now the identity of the narrator in the tale has
remained unresolved. I suggest that this role can be ascribed to the blind bandura player –
the narrator of the embedded tale-within-a-tale at the end of “Strashnaia mest’.” Despite
the fact the bandura player is not explicitly registered as narrator of the entire “Strashnaia
mest’,” his narrative in the epilogue displays a close affinity with that of the rest of the
tale on the stylistic and poetic, as well as on the ideological level, and he may be
plausibly considered as narrator of the entire tale.
In favor of this possibility are the changes Gogol made in the fair copy during the
second half of 1831. The draft version of “Strashnaia mest’” written at the same time as
the other tales in Book One, i.e. no later spring 1831, indicates that Gogol initially
planned to attribute the tale to the fictitious editor Rudy Pan’ko.
244
There are several
pieces of evidence corroborating Pan’ko’s initial authorship. In the draft version,
“Strashnaia mest’” begins with Pan’ko’s introduction in which he refers to Dikan’ka
listeners Foma Grigorievich and Taras Ivanovich Smachnenkyi. The first line of his
introduction is rendered in the colloquial mode peculiar to Pan’ko, resembling that of his
two other “Prefaces:” “Вы слышали ли историю про синего колдуна?”(Have you

243
“Еще был у нас один рассказчик; но тот (нечего бы к ночи и вспоминать о нем) такие выкапывал
страшные истории, что волосы ходили по голове” (We had another storyteller, too, but he (and it’s not a
thing to mention with the night setting in) used to dig up such fearful stories it made your hair stand on end)
(PSS I, 106).
244
In favor of this suggestion serves Pan’ko’s promise in his “Preface” to Book One to publish two of his
own tales in the next book. For certain, in 1831 when Gogol published Book One of the tales, Pan’ko
functioned as one of the ethnic narrators. But later, during his work on Book Two Gogol began to develop a
unified narrator and Pan’ko could not fulfill this task anymore.
202
heard the story about a Blue Sorcerer?). This then is superseded by a more lyrical mode:
“Что ж, господа когда мы съездим в Киев? ... Будем молиться и ходить по святым
печерам. Какие прекрасные места там!” (Well, gentlemen, when are we going to visit
Kiev?…We will pray and visit the Holy Caves. How beautiful the places are there!).
Pan’ko’s unexpected invitation to the village dwellers to travel outside of Dikan’ka and
the very form of address (“gentlemen”) apparently sounded false to Gogol. Pan’ko could
not be an author of a romantic horror story because he had already declared his
groundedness in the patriarchal world of Dikan’ka.
245
Since Pan’ko’s introduction to
“Strashnaia mest’” is dissonant with the overall tone of the tale, Gogol dropped it for the
final version, and the tale came out without an identifiable author.
Although the text of the tale is divested of its author, the author-function remains
in operation, leaving ambiguity concerning who has narrative authority. This could have
remained the case with “Strashnaia mest’,” if only Gogol had not added the embedded
tale at the end, in which the blind bandura player, the folk narrator of the tale within the
tale, creates a mis-en-abîme reflective of the overarching narrative structure of the tale. It
is important to note that Gogol added the epilogue in which the bandura player performs
his song at a late stage. This also entailed some other important transformations in the
plot and narrative of the tale. Initially, “Strashnaia mest’” consisted of twelve chapters
ending with the appearance of the mysterious horse rider in the Carpathian Mountains
seeking to revenge the sorcerer’s murders. The finale in the draft version reveals the
voice of a personalized narrator grumbling at God for not punishing the villain:

245
In his “Preface,” Pan’ko swears that he would not dare “stick his nose out into the great world”
(“высунуть нос из своего захолустья в большой свет”).
203
“Перестал … Бог глядеть на грешную землю, или нет уже и казни такому
неслыханному злодейству?” (Did God stop looking at our sinful earth, or is there no
punishment for such an unprecedented crime?). For the final version, Gogol eliminated
this and all other traces of personal narration by enhancing the general narration, ended
the story with the mysterious horseman assassinating the villain and added the historic
song about two sworn brothers, performed by the blind minstrel in the epilogue. This
song reverses the order of the plot: now the bandura player’s story precedes the events in
the main story about the evil sorcerer and becomes its beginning. Thus the main story has
turned into an epilogue. The reversal causes the main story to be perceived through the
bandura player’s view of the Ukrainian past. The bandura player is not a typical
omniscient epic narrator who is located in universal time and space; he represents rather
the collective consciousness that is produced by a particular historical context and
represents a communal, consensual view of the described events. In this sense, the
bandura player can be viewed as a “nobody” narrator because he speaks from a
communal viewpoint and to a community of listeners.
Let us recall the content of the bandura player’s song. It is based on the Ukrainian
folk motif of zlopomsta (an evil revenge, i.e. strashnaia mest’) referring to the murder of
the Cossack Ivan by his sworn brother Petro. The events of the song describe an
identifiable period of Ukrainian Cossack history and involve concrete historical
figures.
246
During the rule of the Polish King Stephen, there were two Cossacks, Ivan and

246
In this seemingly Biblical myth about Cain and Abel Gogol incorporated actual historic figures (the
Hetmans Sagaidachnyi and Kmel’nitskii, the Polish King Stefan Batorii), battles (the battle of Sivash when
Cossaks went to war against the Crimean Khanate in 1620) and documents (Brest Union) , as well as
concrete national Ukrainian toponimy (Kyiv, Lemberg [L’viv], Glukhov, Zadneprov’e, the Carpathian
Mountains, etc.).
204
Petro, who “lived as brothers” and divided all their possessions equally. As a gift for
victory in a campaign against the Turks, the king granted Ivan land in the Carpathians
which he shared with his sworn brother Petro. The greediness of the latter led to the death
of Ivan and his son and at the same time initiated the decay of the Cossack Republic. The
song ends with the justice of Heaven when God calls Ivan to judge Petro’s great sin and
invites him to devise a punishment for his brother. Ivan requests that Petro’s descendants
never be happy, and that the greatest criminal in his lineage be thrown into the abyss
together with all his descendants. Shocked by such a request, God nevertheless satisfies
Ivan’s wish but for his vengefulness deprives him of entry into Heaven. Ivan must sit
eternally on his horse above the abyss and watch the terrible revenge take place.
The apocalyptic finale of the first part of “Strashnaia mest’,” in which a
mysterious horseman tortures the sorcerer to death and keeps frightening the people thus
serves as the dénouement of the story performed by the bandura player. The eternal
horseman in both stories appears to be the same figure, i.e. Ivan serving God’s visitation.
Moreover, by connecting the beginning of the decay of Cossack Ukraine in the song with
its aftermath in the main story the bandura player’s song sheds light upon the myth of the
“cursed” Ukraine. The song about the strife between the two Cossacks recapitulates the
history of the fall of Cossack Ukraine as outlined by Danilo in the first part of the tale.
247

Although the national Ukrainian myth created in the tale has concrete historic
contours, it is presented in the song as recurrent in history. This is conveyed in the

247
Danilo complains that “порядку нет в Украйне: полковники и есаулы грызутся, как собаки, между
собою. Нет старшей головы над всеми. Шляхетство наше все переменило на польский обычай,
переняло лукавство... продало душу, принявши унию” (there is no order in Ukraine: the lieutenants and
esauls fight among themselves like dogs. There is no superior authority. Our nobility has gone over to
Polish customs, taken up trickery … sold its soul, accepted the Uniate religion) (PSS I, 266).
205
bandura player’s manner of performance, reminiscent of Boyan, the folk narrator of the
“Slovo o polku Igoreve” (The Lay of the Host of Igor):
“Strashnaia mest’:”

Пел и веселые песни старец и повоживал своими очами на народ,
как будто зрящий; а пальцы, с проделанными к ним костями, летали
как муха по струнам, и казалось, струны сами играли …
The old man also sang cheerful songs and followed the people with his
eyes, as if he could see. His fingers, with ivory plectra attached to them,
were flitting about like a fly over the strings, which seemed to play by
themselves. (PSS I, 279)
“Slovo o polku Igoreve:”

Боянъ же, братие, не 10 соколовь на стадо лебедей пущаше, нъ своя
вещиа пръсты на живая струны въскладаше; они же сами княземъ
славу рокотаху.
Boyan did not [really] set ten falcons upon a flock of swans but he laid his
own vatic fingers on the live strings, which then twanged out by
themselves a paean to princes.
This striking similarity of Gogol’s bandura player with Boyan serves not only to embed
the main story in an epic framework, but also to recall the history of Rus’/ Cossack
Ukraine full of betrayals and intestine wars. The underlying message of the “Slovo” - to
forgive quarrels and to unite with coreligionists - runs through the entire song of the
bandura player. He sings about the glorious time in the history of Ukrainian Cossacks:
“про прежнюю гетьманщину, за Сагайдачного и Хмельницкого. Тогда иное было
время: козачество было в славе; топтало конями неприятелей, и никто не смел
посмеяться над ним” (the former Hetmanate at the time of Hetmans Sagaidachnyi and
Khmelnitskii …it was a different time: Cossackdom stood tall, trampled enemies with its
horses, and no one dared mock it) (PSS I, 279). Then he switches to the rule of Stephan
Batorii, the king of Poland and Transylvania who began to register Ukrainian Cossacks
206
and initiated strife among them. Juxtaposing two periods in Cossack history, the bandura
player hints that the internal division that plagued the Cossacks is the result of one
unforgivable sin that results in a terrible revenge.
In the concluding paragraph, which describes the effect the song produced on its
listeners,
248
the word “terrible” is repeated four times describing the event of the past and
reminds us of the promise of the title. Thus, the song figures as the mise-en-abime in the
tale in two senses: it paraphrases the outer work, the first part of the tale, and at the same
time it threads the disconnected events into a meaningful whole. Within the tale it has a
didactic and prophetic function illuminating latent connections between two distant
historical events and reflects the strategy of unifying the community by reviving its
historic memories (“а кругом народ, старые люди, понурив головы, а молодые,
подняв очи на старца, … раздумывая о страшном, в старину случившемся деле.”
[the people that gathered around – the old ones having hung their heads, the young one
having raised their eyes at the old man – … thinking about the terrible events of yore]
(PSS I, 279)). Moreover, the bandura player’s song also communicates a secret message
making readers draw connections between the “terrible events of yore” in Ukrainian
history and the imperial present:
“Уже слепец кончил свою песню; уже снова стал перебирать струны;
уже стал петь смешные присказки про Хому и Ерему, про Сткляра
Стокозу... ” (When the blind man came to the end of his song; he put his
fingers back to the strings of his bandura and started to sing comic songs
about Khoma and Eryoma, about Stkliar Stokoza …) (PSS I, 282)

248
“Страшна казнь, тобою выдуманная, человече!.. Пусть будет все так, как ты сказал, но и ты сиди
вечно там на коне своем, и не будет тебе царствия небесного, покамест ты будешь сидеть там на
коне своем!” (“Terrible is the punishment you have devised, O man!” said God. “May all be as you have
said, but you too shall sit there forever on your horse, and never shall you enter the Kingdom of Heaven
while you remain seated on your horse!”) (PSS 1, 282).
207
These satirical songs create a frame within which Vechera emerges as Pan’ko’s ethnic
performance. As Bojanowska has astutely noted, the bandura player’s comic songs have
the same function in his repertoire as Vechera in Gogol’s entire oeuvre: for the imperial
audience they create the illusion of humorous and light entertainment through which,
however, the memory of the painful national past shows through. These comic songs
about Khoma and Eryoma and about Stkliar Stokoza are also important to understand the
concrete political context in which the bandura player was singing about the Hetman’s
Ukraine. As Natalie Kononenko demonstrates in her book Ukrainian Minstrels: and the
Blind Shall Sing (1998), blind minstrels encoded hidden messages about the past in their
dumy (epic and historic songs). Usually their performances were accompanied by singing
Russian comic songs in the beginning and at the end of the performance, which served as
a diversionary move. The bandura player in Gogol’s tale performs two such songs. The
first song is a popular Russian comic song about the twin brothers Foma and Eryoma
who do things backward.
249
This song reveals a carnivalesque consciousness that
overturns the hierarchy of official culture. In the context of the bandura player’s
performance, this song is used to attune listeners to the hidden content of the historic
song. The second song about Stkliar (glass-cutter) Stokoza does not exist in either
Russian or Ukrainian folklore. Stokoza also does not figure as a character in Russian or
Ukrainian literary sources. Ivan Sen’ko has hypothesized that the glass-cutter Stokoza
alludes to Peter the Great who began colonizing Ukraine in the seventeenth century. The
scholar has discovered a popular legend circulating about the tsar got lost in a Glass

249
In Gogol’s tale, the name of one of the brothers, Foma, is Ukrainianized as Khoma.
208
Kingdom and now his place came to be occupied by the Anti-Christ who ruled Russia
from then on. (55)
There is one more performance in “Strashnaia mest’” - Katerina’s song of lament
in Chapter 12 - that also serves to provoke reflection in the audience. After her husband
Danilo and their son are slaughtered by her sinister father, a maddened Katerina sings her
lament “Bizhyt’ vozok kryvaven’kyi” based on a Ukrainian folk song from the Cossack
past. The song, especially the lament, is a communicative text that exposes the private
sphere of family matters in a public setting. But the way Katerina ends it presupposes the
presence of a physical audience. The three last lines of the song create a defamiliarizing
effect when the audience anticipating a conventional ending is perplexed and shocked by
its unexpected closure. Katerina changes the last three lines of the original replacing them
with nonsensical facetious lines that sound incongruous both with the overall tragic plot
of the song and within the context of the horrific events of her personal story:
Біжить возок кривавенький;
У тім возку козак лежить,
Постріляний, порубаний.
<…>
Та вже пісні вийшов кінець.
Танціовала рыба з раком ...
А хто мене не полюбить,
Tрясця его матерь!

Slowly winds the bloodstained wagon,/ Bearing home a brave young
Cossack, / Rent by bullets, hacked by sabres./ …/ Here we end our doleful
ballad. / Crabs and carps they went a-dancing, / And he who loves me not/
in hell will rot! (PSS I, 273-4)
Although the last three lines of Katerina’s song sound like mad gibberish, they
functionally play the same role in her performance as the two popular comic songs in the
bandura player’s performance. The first line “Та вже пісні вийшов кінець” is a slightly
209
modified typical ending of Russian fairy tales (“Вот и сказочки конец, а кто слушал
молодец”) serving to prepare listeners to the fact that the story is over. The second line
“Танціовала рыба з раком” is the first line of a popular Ukrainian song “Танцювала
риба з раком, а петрушка з пастернаком» which has the same purpose as the bandura
player’s comic songs – to butter up an angry audience demanding the continuation of the
show. The source of the last line is vague, but it may have been taken from popular songs
about a girl’s unhappy love. The most interesting part of the line is the expression
“трясця его матерь” (God damn his mother) which abruptly ends oral horror stories and
is usually accompanied with the unexpected clutching of the listener’s hand in order to
frighten her/him. Thus, these three lines significantly change Katerina’s performance: the
distance between her as a performer and the audience is minimal, so that the listener can
physically experience her state of sorrow and to some extent can relate to her. A similar
effect is produced by the bandura player’s performance: the contrast between the tragic
events in his song and the disharmoniously comic songs serves to shock the audience:
Уже слепец кончил свою песню; уже снова стал перебирать струны;
уже стал петь смешные присказки про Хому и Ерему, про Сткляра
Стокозу... но старые и малые все еще не думали очнуться и долго
стояли, потупив головы, раздумывая о страшном, в старину
случившемся деле.
When the blind man came to the end of his song; he put his fingers back to
the strings of his bandura and started to sing comic songs about Khoma
and Eryoma, about Stkliar Stokoza …But all his listeners, old and young,
remained spellbound, and stood there for a long time yet, their heads
bowed, pondering on this terrible tale of times long past. (PSS I, 284)
Therefore, the bandura player’s performance highlights the principle of selection of the
audience operating in all tales of the cycle. His song is addressed first of all to the
audience that can participate in shared communication about the meaning of the
210
Ukrainian past. Among all of the narrative performances presented in Vechera, the
bandura player’s relies on the shared communal experience in which listeners confirm the
veracity of the story itself. The bandura player with his collective folk voice symbolizes
Gogol’s ideal narrating subject. He appeals to the universal truth associated with
Christian Orthodox values and thereby provides an alternative to the opposition between
the bookish panich Makar Nazarovich, associated with Russian culture, and the village
storyteller Foma Grigorievich, denoting Ukrainian culture, as reaching beyond any ethnic
identification. Within this conceptual framework, the interpretation of Gogol’s
“Russianizing” tendency in Vechera becomes problematic.
In the various narrative performances analyzed in this chapter, the principle of
contextuality of narration is played out differently, yet always in accordance with the
expectations of the projected audience. Pan’ko’s performance is simultaneously
addressed to the metropolitan readers in the “big world” and to his local Dikan’ka
listeners and produces a two-level narrative structure. Makar Nazarovich, a sophisticated
urban narrator, interacts only with implied readers who belong either to Russian society
or to the Ukrainian literary elite. Foma Grigorievich makes his audience active
receptacles of his accounts by sharing with them common historical memory and
communal values. The quintessential moment in the entire book is the unifying act that
the bandura player’s performance produces on listeners. The final scene in “Strashnaia
mest’” describes the transformation of a crowd into people (“narod”).
250
The bandura
player’s performance emphasizes the contemporary significance and universality of the

250
The word “narod” is repeated four times in the final passage of “Strashnaia mest’.”
211
national myth for the people who are temporarily disunited but who have the potential to
revive as an Orthodox community.
If there is a correlation between Gogol’s self-fashioning in the 1830s and the
narrative organization of Vechera, then it should be conceived as culturally performative,
that is, revealing different messages to different audiences without any final resolution.
Gogol’s striving to develop an appropriate narrative voice to address metropolitan
Russian and colonial Ukrainian audiences simultaneously resulted in a complex
multileveled narrative structure. By mapping the “right” and “wrong” ways of telling
about Ukrainian history and culture in a language comprehensible for both audiences
Gogol offered imperial culture a new, transnational identity.

212
Conclusion
“На сочинениях моих не основывайтесь…” (Do not rely on my works), Gogol
warned in his last work, Vybranye mesta iz perepiski s druz’iami. An attempt to prevent
readers from reducing the writer’s personality to that of characters in his own works,
these words paradoxically epitomized the textual fate of Gogol’s Vechera, which in the
course of its 200-year existence in Russian culture became a sort of a postcolonial
palimpsest—a place that once had a range of indigenous expressions and meanings which
were overwritten through the process of imperial standardization. The history of
reworkings and editing of the tales is, in fact, the history of Gogol’s constant vacillations
between preserving the hybrid quality of his language and Russianizing it. Prompted by
Russian critics, Gogol himself became increasingly preoccupied with how to make his
literary language more standard and more comprehensible to the broad Russian audience.
In the second half of the 1830s and during the 1840s, Gogol and his editors became
engaged in Russianizing his texts, which resulted in the elimination of the peculiar
Ukrainian elements, the neutralization of regional Russian forms, and finally in Mertvye
dushi in the overuse of the modifier “russkii” [Russian].
251
The apparent “improvement”
of Gogol’s Russian language over the 1830s – 1840s inevitably involved the self-
translation of his identity, or his “discursive assimilation” to a new imperial ideology that
declared a monolingual, monocultural Russian nation.

251
In the text of Mertvye dushi, the adjective “russkii” appears 52 times, often redundantly (like in “russkii
voznitsa” (Russian coachman) or “russkii traktir” (Russian drinking house)), revealing the anxiety of the
author about his own Russian identity. This fact was immediately noticed by Russian readers, for whom the
use of “russkii” in most of the cases sounded insincere. Smirnova reported Russian society’s critique to
Gogol in details: “Tolstoy thinks that your lack of brotherly feeling involuntarily revealed itself when you
said of two conversing peasants “two Russian muzhiks” … Tiutchev also noted that Muscovites would
never say “two Russian muzhiks” (Perepiska N. V. Gogolia, vol. 2, 124).
213
The current text of Vechera has become a palimpsest because it comprises at least
three different texts: the initial text of the 1831-1832 edition, which Gogol partially
reconstructed in 1851 (it appeared in print after his death in 1855), the new text—the
product of numerous rounds of editing (1836, 1842 and all posthumous editions), and
their combination, in which the initial and the new texts are superimposed one upon
another, uncovering and rewriting different layers of meaning. The metaphor of a
palimpsest implies that although the initial text was erased and overwritten to make way
for another one, more appropriate to the dominant ideology, the traces of the previous
text still peep through. This overlaying produces an unexpected effect: because the older
text shows through the new one, the new text becomes an overlay of the old so that if one
tries to read the old text, one reads a little of the new as well. Similarly, despite the fact
that Gogol’s text had been polished to remove “mistakes” and “impurities,” in some
places the original use of Ukrainian grammatical forms remains legible and breaks
through the surface of the standard Russian discourse. This happens because imperial
language practice can not entirely conceal the traces of Gogol’s suppressed minor usage
of Russian. Even if it seems that “Gogol has ‘forgotten’ the Ukrainian language, it has
not forgotten him” (Koropeckyj&Romanchuk 539), and Ukrainianisms continued to slip
into the fabric of his late, so-called “Russian,” texts.
252

Taking into account that even Gogol’s late texts contain a considerable number of
Ukrainian elements, the division of Googol’s oeuvre strictly into Ukrainian (from 1830 to

252
For instance, in the title of Vybrannye mesta iz perepiski s druz’iami (Selected passages from the
correspondence with friends), “vybrannye” (selected) is a Ukrainiainism; the Russian word would be
“izbrannye.” In the texts of Gogol’s late works, Ukrainian elements penetrate not only the Russian lexicon
(“надыхаться,” “завгодно,” “досягнул,” “накласть,” “мармор,” “схватился со стула,” etc.) but also its
grammar (“послать по художнику” instead of “послать за художником” and “сшил с него мундир”
instead of “сшил из него мундир”).
214
1836) and Russian (from 1836 to 1852) periods becomes problematic. Almost all Gogol’s
texts present an unresolved tension between the standard Russian idiom toward which
Gogol consciously aimed for the sake of his fame as a Russian national writer and traces
of a deterritorialized Russian language. This tension continued to fuel the ambivalence of
relations between the Russian imperial culture and its others. The controversy concerning
Gogol’s public pronouncement of his commitment to Russian nationalism in the 1840s
and his continuous deterritorialization of the Russian language brings up the question of
resistance as a subtle, unconscious strategy. Gogol’s use of a hybrid Russian-Ukrainian
language demonstrates that not all forms of resistance are intentional and visibly
oppositional. That it was an unconscious resistance is, perhaps, more important than the
extent to which it was an actively pursued strategy. Gogol’s hybrid language displayed
continued resistance to imperial discourse, through which his cultural hybridity translated
and reinscribed the social imaginary of imperial culture.
In a sense, Gogol’s cultural identity became a form of “doing” on the borderline
of two cultures—Russian and Ukrainian—the difference between which was becoming
more apparent to him in the 1840s. Gogol’s hybrid identity was a local construction: by
appropriating standard Russian, its discursive forms, and its modes of representation,
Gogol was able to intervene more readily into the dominant discourse and to interpolate
his own regional and individual uniqueness. Throughout his entire oeuvre, Gogol’s
hybrid cultural identity operated in the contradictory and ambivalent space of Russian
imperial culture and made the hierarchical “purity” of Russian language and national
identity unattainable.
215
If Gogol’s texts became palimpsests in a literal sense, his national identity became
a palimpsest in a metaphorical sense. The highly charged ideological atmosphere of the
1840s forced Gogol to mollify his Ukrainianness and profess Russianness outwardly, but
the process of overpainting the Ukrainian identity with the Russian one only emphasized
his hybrid national identity. No matter how fervently Gogol tried to establish his
Russianness, Russian society never stopped questioning his loyalty to Russian imperial
culture. Moreover, it demanded that the writer express his Russianness straightforwardly.
In the 1840s, after the publication of Mertvye dushi, which produced indignation in much
of Russian society because of its negative portrayal of Russian reality and its still-
imperfect Russian language,
253
Gogol was accused of faking “Russianness.” In Countess
Rostopchina’s salon, Count Fedor Ivanovich Tolstoy pronounced Gogol an “enemy of
Russia” who deserved to be sent to Siberia in shackles. Finally, in 1844, Smirnova voiced
a common concern with Gogol’s demonstrative lack of love for Russia and on behalf of
Russian high society demanded that Gogol clarify his allegiance to Russian national
identity. In her famous letter (November 3, 1844), she asked Gogol: “Reach to the depth
of your soul and ask yourself, are you really a Russian, or are you the khokhlik?” Gogol,
however, avoided a direct answer, saying:
[С]ам не знаю, какая у меня душа, хохлацкая или русская. Знаю
только,что никак бы не дал преимущества ни малороссиянину перед
русским, ни русскому перед малороссиянином. Обе природы

253
Nikolai Grech condemned the novel in Severnaia pchela for these reasons. See N. Grech, “Review of
Pokhozhdenia Chichikova, ili Mertvye dushi (1842) by N. Gogol” in Severnaia pchela 137 (1842), p. 546.
Bulgarin reproached Gogol for his ignorance of Russian life, which he ascribed to the fact that Gogol,
being a Ukrainian, could not know it. See Bulgarin’s comments on Gogol’s novel in Severnaia pchela 135
(1843); 274 (1843); 288 (1846). Senkovskii accused Gogol of piling “tons of excess filth … against
Russian civil servants,” in which the critic discerned Gogol’s allegiance to the burlesque tradition of Little
Russian literature. See O. Senkovskii, “Review of Pokhozhdenia Chichikova, ili Mertvye dushi (1842) by
N. Gogol” in Biblioteka dlia chteniia 53 (1842), p. 32.
216
слишком щедро одарены Богом, и как нарочно каждая из них порознь
заключает в себе то, чего нет в другой ...
I myself do not know what soul I have: khokhlatskaya [Ukrainian – Yu. I.]
or Russian. I know only that I would grant primacy neither to a Ukrainian
over a Russian nor to a Russian over a Ukrainian. Both natures are too
generously endowed by God, and as if on purpose, each of them in its own
way includes in itself that which the other lacks…(PSS XII, 419).
This response has been traditionally interpreted as demonstration of Gogol’s “deep-seated
insecurity” about his national identity (Bojanowska 1). Taking into account that Gogol
and Smirnova were the closest friends,
254
it would be erroneous to question the writer’s
confession to her regarding his own national identity. Hence, the question arises: what
hindered Gogol from reconfirming his Russian identity to the most intimate friend?
Gogol’s response is another trick he played on Russian society that expected him to
proclaim his Russian identity straightforwardly but instead received another provocation.
Gogol himself insisted that his response be publicly read in Countess Rostopchina’s salon
in front of those society people who accused him of lacking Russianness. In such a way
Gogol undermined the pretensions of the imperial society to fix him as a Russian. Even
the word “khokhlatskaia,” which Gogol uses in relation to his soul, cannot serve as a
valid basis to claim his complete submission to the imperial drive to appropriate him as a
Russian, because Gogol mimicked Smirnova’s own wording in her question (“are you
really a Russian, or are you the ‘khokhlik’?”).
As I have tried to demonstrate in my study, Gogol’s negotiation with Russian
imperial culture in the 1830s – 1840s can be better conceived not in terms of his search

254
The context of Gogol’s relationship to Smirnova preceding this letter is important to note. Since 1830
Smirnova had been initiated into all of Gogol’s problems, including financial, and remained Gogol’s most
intimate friend throughout his entire life. In the fall of 1844, Gogol had asked Smirnova to vouch for him
with Nicholas I in order to secure him a government stipend so that he could continue his work on the
sequel to Mertvye dushi.
217
for a stable national identity but in terms of the writer’s desire for attachment to Russian
culture without positing his identity as a definite state or the complete loss of his
Ukrainian ties.
Through the discourse of mimicry and hybridity, Gogol contributed to the
creation of a “border culture,” which was further developed in the Russian texts of such
Ukrainian writers as Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnov’ianenko, Taras Shevchenko, Marko
Vovchok (Mariia Vilinskaia), Mykola (Nikolai) Kostomarov and Panteleimon Kulish. In
“border writing,” the two related cultures are presented not as static cultural models but
in their interaction, thereby providing readers with the opportunity to practice multi-
dimensional perception of texts and to appreciate the various creative possibilities that
arises from the imperial linguistic and cultural situation. Although this study focuses on
Gogol’s transformation of the imperial discourse in the 1830s – 1840s, a study of other
non-ethnic Russian writers of the time, particularly those of Ukrainian (Kvitka-
Osnov’ianenko, Shevchenko, and Kulish) and Polish (Bulgarin and Senkovskii) origin,
would offer a complex picture of hybrid cultural influences and hybrid identities that
played a significant role in shaping nineteenth-century Russian culture. With the revival
of the imperialist discourse in contemporary Russian society, such a study would be a
timely contribution to the field of Slavic studies, since it would address the complex
bundle of culture, religion, ethnicity and class relations that constitutes “Russian identity”
and that still remains largely terra incognita.

218
Bibliography
Primary sources:
Gogol, Nikolai Vasil’evich. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem v dvadtsati trekh tomakh
Ed. Iu. Mann. Vol. 1. Moscow: Nauka: IMLI RAN, 2003-.
Gogol, Nikolai Vasil’evich. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. 14 vols. Moscow: Izd-vo
Akademii nauk SSSR, 1937-1952.
Gogol, Nikolai Vasil’evich. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii N.V. Gogolia. Ed. N. I. Korobka.
Sankt-Peterburg Russkoe knizhnoe t-vo “Dieatel’,” 1900.
Gogol, Nikolai Vasil’evich. Vechera na khutore bliz Dikan’ki : povesti / Pervaia knizhka.
Sanktpeterburg: Tip. dep. narod. prosveshcheniia, 1831.
Secondary sources:
Ageeva, V. P., ed. Sorochyns’kyi iarmarok na Nevs’komu prospekti: Ukraїns’ka
retseptsiia Hoholia. Kyiv: Fakt, 2003.
Aizenshtok, I. Ia. "Khronologiia napisaniia 'Vecherov na khutore bliz Dikan’ki'" Izvestiia
akademii nauk SSSR. Otdelenie literatury i iazyka XXI (3) (1962). Pp. 252-62.
Akimova, N. "Bulgarin i Gogol’: literaturnaia biographiia i literaturnaia reputatsiia."
Russkaia literatura 3 (1996). Pp. 3-18.
Aksakov, S. T. Istoriia moego znakomstva s Gogolem. Akademia nauk SSSR.
Literaturnye pamiatniki. Moscow: Izd-vo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1960.
Altshuller, Mark. “The Walter Scott Motifs in Nikolai Gogol's Story 'The Lost Letter.'"
Oxford Slavonic Papers 22 (1989). Pp. 81-88.
Andriewsky, O. "The Russian-Ukrainian Discourse and the Failure of the 'Little Russian
Solution,' 1782-1917." Culture, Nation, and Identity: The Ukrainian-Russian
Encounter (1600-1945). Ed. Andreas Kappeler et al. Edmonton: Canadian
Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2003. Pp. 182-214.
Ashcroft, B., G. Griffiths, and H. Tiffin. Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in
Post-Colonial Literatures. London, New York: Routledge, 2002.
------------. Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies. London, New York: Routledge, 1998.
Austin, John. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962.
Bakhtin, M. M. "Rable i Gogol' (Iskusstvo slova i narodnaia smekhovaia kul'tura)."
Voprosy literatury i estetiki. Moscow: Khudozh. lit., 1965.
219
Bakhtin, M. M., M. Holquist, and C. Emerson. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981.
Bantysh-Kamenskii, D. "Istoriia Maloi Rossii so vremen prisoedineniia onoi k
rossiiskomu gosudarstvu pri Tsare Aleksee Mikhailoviche," 1822.
Barabash, Iu. Pochva i sud’ba: Gogol’ i ukrainskaia literatura. U istokov. Moscow:
Nasledie, 1995.
Barker, C. The Sage Dictionary of Cultural Studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2004.
Belinskii, V. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii 13 vols. Moscow: Akademiia Nauk USSR,
1953-1959.
Belyi, A. "Gogol'." Vesy 4 (1909).
------------. Masterstvo Gogolia. Moscow: MALP, 1996.
Bene, C., and Gilles Deleuze. Superpositions. Paris: Minuit, 1979.
Berehulak, A. "Gogolian Myth and the Colonial Ethos." Journal of Ukrainian Studies 20
(1-2) (1995). Pp. 33-42.
Bhabha, H. "Remembering Fanon: Self, Psyche and the Colonial Condition." Colonial
Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory. Eds. P. Williams and Laura Chrisman. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Pp. 112–23.
------------. "Culture’s In-Between." Questions of Cultural Identity. Ed. Stuart Hall and
Paul Du Gay. London: Sage, 1996. Pp. 53-60.
------------. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.
------------. "The Other Question." Contemporary Postcolonial Theory: a Reader. Ed.
Padmini Mongia. London, New York, Sydney, Auckland: Arnold, 1996. Pp. 37-
54
Bhatia, T. K., and W. C. Ritchie. The Handbook of Bilingualism. Malden, Mass:
Blackwell Publishing, 2004.
Bojanowska, E. M. Nikolai Gogol: Between Ukrainian and Russian Nationalism.
Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2007.
Bourdieu, Pierre, and Thompson John B. Language and Symbolic Power Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991.
Bulgarin, F. [Review of Vechera na khutore bliz Dikan'ki, 2nd ed.] Severnaia pchela 26
(1836).
220
---------. Sochineniia. Vol. 6. St. Petersburg: Tip. N. Grecha, 1830.
Burke, L., T. Crowley, and A. Girvin. The Routledge Language and Cultural Theory
Reader. London: Routledge, 2000.
Bushkovitch, P. "The Ukraine in Russian Culture, 1790-1860: The Evidence of the
Journals." Jahrbucher für Geschichte Osteuropas 39.3 (1991). Pp. 339-63.
Butler, J. Excitable Speech: a Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge 1997.
---------. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge,
1990.
Chambers, R. Story and Situation: Narrative Seduction and the Power of Fiction.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Chaplenko, Vasyl. Ukraїnizmy v movi M. Hoholia. Slavica. Pratsi Instytutu
slovianoznavstva. Vol. 2. Augsburg: Ukrainska vil'na akademiia nauk, 1948.
Chyzhevs'kyi, D. "The Unknown Gogol'." Slavonic and East European Review 30.75
(1952). Pp. 476-93.
Comaroff, J. "The Empire's Old Clothes: Fashioning the Colonial Subject." Cross-
Cultural Consumption: Global Markets, Local Realities. Ed. David Howes.
London, New York: Routledge, 1996. Pp. 19-38.
Cooper, F., and A. L. Stoler. Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois
World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
Davis, F. Fashion, Culture, and Identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Debreczeny, P. "Nikolai Gogol and His Contemporary Critics." Transactions of the
American Philosophical Society 56.3 (1966). Pp. 5-68.
---------. Social Functions of Literature: Alexander Pushkin and Russian Culture.
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.
Deleuze, G., and F. Guattari. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. Trans. Dana Polan.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986.
---------. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London, New York:
Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004.
Dmitrieva, E. E., and I. U. Mann, eds. Gogol’ kak iavlenie mirovoi literatury: po
materialam mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii, posviashchennoi 150-letiiu so
dnia smerti N.V. Gogolia, 31 oktiabria-2 noiabria 2002 g. Moscow: IMLI RAN,
2003.
221
Doroshenko, D. A Survey of Ukrainian Historiography. Annals of the Ukrainian
Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S. Vol. 5-6. New York, 1957.
Edgerton, W. B. "Laying a Legend to Rest: The Poet Kapnist and Ukraino-German
Intrigue." Slavic Review 30.3 (1971). Pp. 551-60.
Efimenko, A. "Natsional'naia dvoistvennost' v tvorchestve Gogolia." Vestnik Evropy
(1902). Pp. 229-44.
Eikhenbaum, B. Lermontov. Moscow-Leningrad: Akademiia nauk, 1961.
---------. O literature. Raboty raznykh let. Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel', 1987.
Erlich, V. Gogol. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969.
Fanger, D. The Creation of Nikolai Gogol. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1979.
---------. "Gogol and His Reader." Literature and Society in Imperial Russia, 1800-1914.
Eds. R. L. Belknap and W. M. Todd. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1978.
Pp. 61-95.
Fanon, F. Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann. London: Pluto
Press, 1986.
Foucault, M. "What is an Author?" Trans. D.F. Bouchard and Sh. Simon. Language,
counter-memory, practice: selected essays and interviews. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1977. Pp. 113-138.
Fuss, D. "Interior Colonies: Frantz Fanon and the Politics of Identification." Diacritics
23.2-3 (1994). Pp. 20-42.
Fylypovych, Pavlo. "Ukraїns'ka stykhiia v tvorchosti Hoholia." Sorochyns’kyi iarmarok
na Nevs’komu prospekti: Ukraїns’ka retseptsiia Hoholia. Ed. V. P. Ageeva. Kyiv:
Fakt, 2003.
Gasparov, B. "Alienation and Negation: Gogol’s View of Ukraine." Gogol: Exploring
Absence: Negativity in 19th Century Russian Literature. Bloomington, Ind.:
Slavica, 1999. Pp. 113-23.
Gautier, Th. Puteshestvie v Rossiiu. Moscow: Mysl', 1990.
Gippius, V.V. "'Vechera na khutore bliz Dikan’ki' Gogolia." Trudy otdela novoi russkoi
literatury In-ta literatury (Pushkinskii dom) AN SSSR 1. Leningrad, 1948. Pp. 9-
38.
---------, ed. Gogol’: vospominaniia, pis’ma, dnevniki. Moscow: Agraf, 1999.
222
---------, ed. N.V.Gogol: materialy i issledovaniia. Vol. 1. Moscow, Leningrad:
Izdatel'stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1936.
Gogol' v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov. Moscow: Gosud. izd. khudozh. literatury,
1952.
Grabowicz, G. "Between History and Myth: Perceptions of the Cossack Past in Polish,
Russian and Ukrainian Romantic Literature." International Congress of Slavists.
Vol. 2. Ed. Paul Debreczeny. Kiev, 1983. Pp. 173-88.
---------. "Between Subversion and Self-Assertion: the Role of Kotliarevshchyna in
Russian-Ukrainian Literary Relations." Culture, Nation, and Identity: the
Ukrainian-Russian Encounter (1600-1945). Edmonton: Canadian Institute of
Ukrainian Studies Press, 2003. Pp. 215-28.
Grabowicz, George. "Hohol’ i mif Ukraїny." Suchasnist’ 9-10 (1994). Pp. 77-92, 137-49.
Grech, N. Sochineniia. Vol. 3. St. Petersburg: Tip. Ia. Treia, 1855.
Greenblatt, S. Renaissance Self-Fashioning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1984.
Greenleaf, M., and S. Moeller-Sally, eds. Russian Subjects: Empire, Nation, and the
Culture of the Golden Age. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1998.
Gregg, R. "The Writer and His Quiff: How Young Gogol' Sought To Shape His Public
Image." Russian Review 63.1 (2004). Pp. 63-69.
Grosjean, F., and C. Soares. "Processing mixed languages: Some preliminary findings."
Language Processing in Bilinguals: Psycholinguistic and Neuropsychological
Perspectives. Ed. J. Vaid. Hillsdale, N. J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1986. Pp. 145–79.
Gukovskii, G. A. Realizm Gogolia. Leningrad: Gos. izd-vo khudozh. lit-ry
[Leningradskoe otd-nie], 1959.
Gukovskii, G.A. "Vechera na khutore bliz’ Dikan’ki." Vestnik Leningradskogo
universiteta 3 (1948). Pp. 98-117.
Hammarberg, G. "Sartor Resartus: Gogol's Overcoats." The Russian Review 67.3 (2008).
Pp. 395-414.
Hester, S., and W. Housley. Language, Interaction and National Identity: Studies in the
Social Organization of National Identity in Talk-in-Interaction. Burlington, VT:
Ashgate Publishing Company, 2002.
Hodgson, P. "The Paradox of Skaz." And Meaning for a Life Entire: Festschrift for
Charles A. Moser on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday. Eds. C. A. Moser and
P. Rollberg. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers, 1997. Pp. 113-17.
223
Hoisington, Sona Stephan. "Pushkin's Belkin and the Mystifications of Sir Walter Scott."
Comparative Literature 33.4 (1981). Pp. 342-57.
Holden, P. "Imagined Individuals: National Autobiography and Postcolonial Self-
Fashioning." Singapore: Asia Research Institute, National University of
Singapore, 2003.
Holquist, M. "The Tyranny of Difference: Gogol and the Sacred." Gogol: Exploring
Absence: Negativity in 19th-Century Russian Literature. Bloomington, Indianna:
Slavica Publishers, 1999. Pp. 125-37.
Hosking, G. Russia: People and Empire, 1552-1917. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1997.
Howes, David. Cross-Cultural Consumption: Global Markets, Local Realities. London
New York: Routledge, 1996.
Hryshko, Wasyl. "Nikolai Gogol' and Mykola Hohol'." The Annals of the Ukrainian
Academy of Arts and Sciences in the United States 12.1-2 (1969). Pp. 113-42.
Huggan, G. The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins. London, New York:
Routledge, 2001.
Hundorova, T. "'Vechory na khutori bilia Dykan’ky': dyiavol’skyi kontrakt i kul’turna
initsiatsiia. Vstupne slovo." Vechory na khutori bilia Dykan’ky. Taras Bul’ba.
Vii: Povisti. Ternopil’-Kyiv: B-ka “Svitovyd", 2004.
Hundorova, T. Kitch i literatura. Travestiї. Kyiv: Fakt, 2008.
Ilnytzkyj, O. "Cultural Indeterminacy in the Russian Empire: Nikolai Gogol as a
Ukrainian Post-Colonial Writer." A World of Slavic Literatures. Essays in
Comparative Slavic Studies in Honour of Edward Mozejko. Ed. Paul Duncan
Morris. Bloomington, Indiana: Slavica, 2002. Pp. 153-71.
Joseph, J. E. Language and Identity: National, Ethnic, Religious. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2004.
Kamanin, I. M. "Nauchnyie i literaturnyie proizvedeniia N. V. Gogolia po istorii
Malorossii." Pamiati Gogolia: Nauchno-Literaturnyi Sbornik 1 (1902). Pp. 75-
132.
Kappeler, A. "Mazepintsy, Malorossy, Khokhly: Ukrainians in the Ethnic Hierarchy of
the Russian Empire." Culture, Nation, and Identity: The Ukrainian-Russian
Encounter (1600-1945). Edmonton: Canadian Institue of Ukrainian Studies Press,
2003. Pp. 125-44.
224
Karlinsky, S. The Sexual Labyrinth of Nikolai Gogol. Cambridge, Mass.: University of
Chicago Press, 1992.
Karpov, A. A. and M. N. Virolainen, eds. Perepiska N.V. Gogolia. Vol. 2. Moscow:
Khudozh. lit-ra, 1988.
Karpuk, P. A. "Gogol's Research on Ukrainian Customs for the Dikan'ka Tales." Russian
Review 56.2 (1997). Pp. 209-32.
Kirby, Vicki. Judith Butler: Live Theory. London, New York: Continuum, 2006.
Kiselev, V. "'Arabeski' Gogolia i traditsii romanticheskoi tsiklizatsii." Izvestiia RAN.
Seriia literatury i iazyka 63.6 (2004). Pp. 16-17.
Knight, N. "Ethnicity, Nationality and the Masses: Narodnost’and Modernity in Imperial
Russia." Russian Modernity: Politics, Knowledge, Practices. Ed. David L.
Hoffmann and Yanni Kotsonis. New York: St. Martin’s Press, Inc., 2000. Pp. 41-
64.
Kohut, Z. "The Development of a Little Russian Identity and Ukrainian Nation-
Building." Harvard Ukrainian Studies 6.3-4 (1986). Pp. 559-76.
---------. The Question of Russo-Ukrainian Unity and Ukrainian Distinctiveness in Early
Modern Ukrainian Thought and Culture. Washington: Kennan Institute, 2001.
---------. Russian Centralism and Ukrainian Autonomy: Imperial Absorption of the
Hetmanate, 1760s-1830s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute,
1989.
Komarov, A. "Ukrainskii iazyk, fol'klor i literatura v russkom obshchestve nachala 19-go
veka." Uchenye zapiski Leningradskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta 47
(1939). Pp. 138-141.
Kononenko, N. O. Ukrainian Minstrels: and the Blind Shall Sing. Armonk, New York,
London: M.E. Sharpe, 1998.
Koropeckyj, R., and R. Romanchuk. "Ukraine in Blackface: Performance and
Representation in Gogol's" Dikanka Tales," Book 1." Slavic Review 62.3 (2003).
Pp. 525-47.
Krivonos, V. "Sub’ekt povestvovaniia v povestiakh Gogolia: ot 'Vecherov' k 'Mirgorodu'"
Problema avtora v khudozhestvennoi literature : mezhvuzovskii sbornik
nauchnykh trudov. Ed. B. I. Chulkov V. I. Osipov. Izhevsk: Udmurtskii
gosuniversitet, 1990. Pp. 62-70.
Krutikova, N. Ie. Hohol' ta ukraїns'ka literatura. Kyiv: Derzhavne vydavnytstvo
khudozhn'oї literatury, 1957.
225
Kulish, P. "Ob otnoshenii malorossiiskoi slovesnosti k obshcherusskoi (epilog k “Chernoi
rade”)." Tvory v 2-kh tomakh. Vol. 2. Kyiv, 1989.
---------. Zapiski o zhizni Nikolaia Vasil’evicha Gogolia: sostavlennye iz vospominanii
ego druzei i znakomykh i iz ego sobstvennykh pisem: v dvukh tomakh. Vol. 1.
Moscow: IMLI RAN, 2003.
Lacan, J. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New
York: Norton, 1978.
Levshin, A. "Otryvki iz pisem o Malorossii." Ukrainskii vestnik 4 (1816). Pp. 35-47.
Lockridge, K. A. "Colonial Self-Fashioning: Paradoxes and Pathologies in the
Construction of Genteel Identity in Eighteenth-Century America." Through a
Glass Darkly: Reflections on Personal Identity in Early America. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Pp. 279-87.
Losev, A. F. Iz rannikh proizvedenii. Iz istorii otechestvennoi filosofskoi mysli. Moscow:
Pravda, 1990.
Lotman, I. M. "Theatre and Theatricality in the Order of Early Nineteenth-Century
Culture." Semiotics and Structuralism: Readings from the Soviet Union. New
York: International Arts and Sciences Press, 1976.
Lotman, Iu. M. Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin. Leningrad: Prosveshchenie, 1982.
Lounsbery, A. Thin Culture, High Art: Gogol, Hawthorne, and Authorship in Nineteenth-
Century Russia and America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007.
Loxley, R. "Roles of the Audience: Aesthetic and Social Dimensions of the Performance
Event." Literature in Performance 3.1 (1983). Pp. 40-44.
Luc’kyj, G. The Anguish of Mykola Hohol a.k.a. Nikolai Gogol Toronto: Canadian
Scholars' Press, 1998.
---------. Between Gogol' and Sevchenko: Polarity in the Literary Ukraine: 1798-1847.
Munich: W. Fink, 1971.
Macherey, P. "Creation and Production." Authorship: from Plato to the Postmodern.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995.
Maguire, R.A. Exploring Gogol. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1994.
Malaniuk, Ie. " Hohol – Gogol." The Ukrainian Review 14.3 (1967). Pp. 55-69.
Mandel’stam, I. O charaktere gogolevskago stilja : glava iz istorii russkago literaturnago
iazyka. St. Peterburg: Gel’singfors, 1902.
226
Mann, Iu. Gogol': trudy i dni: 1809-1845. Moscow: Aspekt Press, 2004.
---------. Poetika Gogolia: Variatsii k teme. Moscow: Coda, 1996.
Markevich, A. I. "Zametka o psevdonime N. V. Gogolia "Rudyi Pan'ko"." Izvestiia
otdeleniia russkogo iazyka i slovesnosti Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk 3.4 (1898).
P. 1270.
Mashinskii, S. I. , ed. Gogol’ v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov. Moscow: Gos. izd-vo
khudozh. lit-ry, 1952.
Mersereau, J. Orest Somov: Russian Fiction Between Romanticism and Realism.
Woodstock, NY: Ardis Publishing, 1989.
Mikhailov, A. V. "Poetika barokko: zavershenie istoricheskoi epokhi." Iazyki kul’tury :
uchebnoe posobie po kul’turologii. Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul’tury, 1997. Pp.
112-75.
Miller, A. et al. Rossiia–Ukraina: istoriia vzaimootnoshenii. Moscow: Iazyki russkoi
kul'tury, 1997.
Miller, D. "Ocherki is istorii i iuridicheskogo byta staroi Malorossii: Prevrashchenie
malorusskoi starshiny v dvorianstvo." Kievskaia starina 1 (1897). Pp. 1-31.
Miller, J. H. Hawthorne and History: Defacing It. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.
Mink, L. O. "Narrative Form as a Cognitive Instrument." The Writing of History :
Literary Form and Historical Understanding. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press,
1978. Pp. 129-49.
Modzalevskii, B. L. et al. Dnevnik A.S. Pushkina: 1833-1835. Moscow: Izd-vo Tri veka,
1997.
Moeller-Sally, S. "0000; or, the Sign of the Subject in Gogol's Petersburg." Russian Sub
jects: Empire, Nation, and the Culture of the Golden Age. Eds. Monika Greenleaf
and Stephen Moeller-Sally. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998.
Pp. 325-6.
---------. Gogol's Afterlife: The Evolution of a Classic in Imperial and Soviet Russia.
Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2002.
Motorin, A. "K voprosu o nauchnom izdanii sochinenii Gogolia." N.V. Gogol’ i russkaia
literatura XIX veka : mezhvuzovskii sbornik nauchnykh trudov. Eds. Ia. S.
Bilinkis, E. I. Annenkova and S. A. Goncharov. Leningrad: Leningradskii gos.
pedagog. in-t im. A.I. Gertsena, 1989. Pp. 103-21.
227
Mushchenko, Ie. G. . "Skazovoe povestvovanie u N.V. Gogolia: (Iz nabliudenii za
poetikoi “Vecherov na khutore bliz Dikan’ki”)." Voprosy poeticheskoi literatury
i fol’klora. Voronezh, 1972. Pp. 62-72.
Mykhed, Pavlo. "Privatizatsiia Gogolia? Vozvrashchaias' k russko-urkainskomu
voprosu." Voprosy literatury 3 (2003). Pp. 94-112.
Nabokov, V. Nikolai Gogol. Norfolk, Connecticut: New Directions Books, 1944.
Nadezhdin, N. [Review of "Vechera an khutore bliz Dikan'ki", vol. 1]. Teleskop 5
(1831). Pp. 558-63.
Nechiporenko, Iu. D. "Iarmarka u Gogolia." Zhertvoprinoshenie: ritual v iskusstve i
kul’ture ot drevnosti do nashikh dnei. Ed. L. I. Akimova. Moscow: Iazyki russkoi
kul’tury, 2000.
Okhlobyn, O. "Ancestry of Mykola Gogol (Hohol)." Annals of the Ukrainian Academy
of Sciences in the U.S. 12 (1969-1973). Pp. 3-43.
Panaev, I. I. Literaturnye vospominaniia. Moscow: Pravda, 1988.
Parker, A., and E. K. Sedgwick. Performativity and performance. New York: Routledge,
1995.
Pavlyshyn, M. "The Rhetoric and Politics of Kotliarevsky's Eneїda." Journal of Ukrainian
Studies 10.1 (1985). Pp. 9-24.
Peace, R. The Enigma of Gogol: An Examination of the Writings of N. V. Gogol and
Their Place in the Russian Literary Tradition. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1981.
Pechêux, M. Language, Semantics, and Ideology. Trans. Harbans Nagpal. Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 1982.
Perets, V. "Gogol i malorusskaia literaturnaia traditsiia." Rechi posviashchennye ego
pamiati. St. Petersburg: Tip. Imperskoi Akademii Nauk, 1902. Pp. 47-55.
Petrunina, N. , and G. Fridlender. "Pushkin i Gogol’ v 1831-1836 godakh." Pushkin:
Issledovaniia i materialy, vol. 6. Realizm Pushkina i literatura ego vremeni.
Leningrad: Nauka, 1969.
Pieters, Jürgen. Moments of Negotiation: the New Historicism of Stephen Greenblatt.
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2001.
Piksanov, N. K. "Ukrainskie povesti Gogolia." O klassikakh. Moscow: Moskovskoe t-vo
pisatelei, 1933. Pp. 43-148.
228
Plokhy, S. Ukraine and Russia: Representations of the Past. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2008.
Polevoi, N. A. [Review of "Vechera na khutore bliz Dikan'ki" vol. 1] Moskovskii telegraf
5 (1831): 91-95.
---. [Review of "Vechera na khutore bliz Dikan'ki" vol. 2] Moskovskii telegraf 2 (1832).
Pp. 262-67.
Pomerantseva, E. V. Mifologicheskiie personazhi v russkom fol'klore. Moscow: Nauka,
1975.
Pratt, M. L. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. New York: Routledge,
1992.
Presto, J. "'Ivan Fedorovic Shpon'ka i ego tetushka' as 'Oral' Narrative, or 'Food for the
Critics'." Russian Literature 39.3 (1996). Pp. 359-72.
Pumpianskii, L. V. "Gogol." Klassicheskaia traditsiia : sobranie trudov po istorii russkoi
literatury. Iazyk, semiotika, kul’tura. Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul’tury, 2000.
Pushkin, A. S. Sobranie sochinenii v desiati tomakh. Moscow: Khudozh. lit., 1959-.
Radkovskaia, E.V. "Ukrainskie motivy poeticheskoi antropologii rannikh povestei N.
Gogolia." Voprosy literatury narodov SSSR 15 (1989). Pp. 169-77.
Ram, H. The Imperial Sublime: A Russian Poetics of Empire. Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 2003.
Rebecchini, Damiano. "Kak krest’iane chitali Gogolia: popytka rekonstruktsii retseptsii."
Novoe literaturnoe obozreniie 49 (2001). Pp. 508-525.
Reitblat, Abram. Ot Bovy k Bal’montu: ocherki po istorii chteniia v Rossii vo vtoroi
polovine XIX veka Moscow: Izd-vo MPI, 1991.
Riasanovsky, N.V. Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia, 1825-1855. Russian and
East European Studies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959.
Rowe, W. W. Through Gogol's Looking Glass: Reverse Vision, False Focus, and
Precarious Logic. New York: New York University Press, 1976.
Rozov, V. A. "Traditsionnye tipy malorusskogo teatra XVII-XVIII v. i iunosheskie
povesti N. V. Gogolia." Pamiati N. V. Gogolia. Sbornik rechei i statei. Kiev,
1911. Pp. 99-169.
229
Ruane, C. "Subjects into Citizens: the Politics of Clothing in Imperial Russia."
Fashioning the Body Politic: Dress, Gender, Citizenship. Ed. Wendy Parkins.
Oxford, New York: Berg, 2002. Pp. 49-70.
Rudnytsky, I. L., and P. L. Rudnytsky. Essays in Modern Ukrainian History. Edmonton:
Canadian Institute of Ukranian Study Press, 1987.
Russett, M. Fictions and Fakes: Forging Romantic Authenticity, 1760-1845. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Rutherford, A. "Vissarion Belinskii and the Ukrainian National Question." Russian
Review 54.4 (1995). Pp. 500-15.
Said, E. W. Culture and Imperialism. London: Chatto & Windus, 1993.
---------. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Penguin, 1978.
Samyshkina, A. "K probleme gogolevskogo fol'klorizma (Dva tipa skaza i literaturnaia
polemika v "Vecherakh na khutore bliz Dikan'ki")." Russkaia literatura 3 (1979).
Pp. 61-80.
Sapchenko, L. "Literaturnaia i fol’klorno-mifologicheskaia traditsii v “Vecherakh na
khutore bliz Dikan’ki”." Gogol' i narodnaia kul'tura: materialy dokladov i
soobshchenii mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii. Sed'mye gogolevskie
chteniia. Moscow: CheRo, 2008.
Saunders, D. The Ukrainian Impact on Russian Culture, 1750-1850. Edmonton: Canadian
Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Univ. of Alberta, 1985.
Sawczak, Peter. "'Noch’ pered Rozhdestvom' Mykoly/Nikolaia Gogolia: k voprosu o
'maloi literature'." Russian Literature 49 (2001). Pp. 259-70.
Schilder, P. The Image and Appearance of the Human Body. New York: International
Universities Press, 1970.
Sen'ko, I. Gogolivs'ka Dikan'ka na istorychnykh perekhrestiakh. Uzhgorod:
Uzhgorods'kyi Natsional'nyi Universytet, 2003.
Senkovskii, O. I. [Review of "Vechera na khutore bliz Dikan'ki" 2nd edition] Biblioteka
dlia chteniia 15 (1836). Pp. 3-4.
Setchkarev, V. Gogol: his Life and Works. New York: New York University Press, 1965.
Shapiro, G. Nikolai Gogol and the Baroque Cultural Heritage. University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.
230
Shelukhin, S. "Gogol i malorossiiskoe obshchestvo." Sbornik, izdavaemyi
Novorossiiskim universitetom po sluchaiu 100-letiia so dnia rozhdeniia N.V.
Gogolia. Odessa, 1909.
Shenrok, V. I. Materialy dlia biografii Gogolia. Moscow: Tip. A.I. Mamontova, 1892.
---------. A.O. Smirnova i N.V. Gogol’ v 1829-1852 gg. Petrograd, 1888.
Shkandrij, M. Russia and Ukraine: Literature and the Discourse of Empire from
Napoleonic to Postcolonial Times. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press,
2001.

Shraga, E. "Bylichka i svetskii razgovor kak strukturnaia osnova prozaicheskoi
tsiklizatsii: 'Vechera an khutore bliz Dikan’ki' v kontekste traditsii." Gogol' i
narodnaia kul'tura: materialy dokladov i soobshchenii mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi
konferentsii. Sed'myie gogolevskiie chteniia. Moscow: CheRo, 2008.
Shvedova, N. Yu. "Printsipy istoricheskoi stilizatsii v iazyke povesti Gogolia 'Taras
Bul'ba'." Materialy i issledovaniia po istorii russkogo literaturnogo iazyka. Vol.
3. Moscow: Izd-vo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1953. Pp. 45-67.
Slocum, J. W. "Who, and When, Were the Inorodtsy? The Evolution of the Category of
'Aliens' in Imperial Russia." Russian Review (1998). Pp. 173-90.
Slonimskii, A. "Voprosy gogolevskogo teksta." Izvestiia AN SSSR. Otd. lit. i iaz. 12.5
(1953). Pp. 401-16.
Slovar’ Akademii rossiiskoi po azbuchnomu poriadku razpolozhennyi. Sanktpeterburg,
Imperatorskaia Akademiia Nauk, 1806-1822.
Smirnova-Rosset, A. O. . Dnevnik, vospominaniia Literaturnye pamiatniki. Moscow:
Nauka, 1989.
---------. "Letter to Gogol of January 11, 1847." Russkaia starina 67 (1890). Pp. 282-84.
---------. "Letter to Gogol of March 11, 1845." Severnyi vestnik 1 (1893). Pp. 246-50.
---------. "Letter to Gogol of May 6, 1844." Russkaia starina 58 (1888). Pp. 603-07.
---------. "Letter to Gogol of September 26, 1844." Russkaia starina 59 (1888). Pp. 57-60.
Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. "Narrative Versions, Narrative Theories." On Narrative. Ed.
W. J. T. Mitchell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. Pp. 209-32.
231
Sokolov, B. V. Gogol': entsiklopediia. Moscow: Algoritm, 2003.
Stilman, L. Gogol. Tenafly, N.J.: Hermitage Publishers, 1990.
Storozhenko, A. [signed A. Tsarynnyi] "Mysli Malorossiianina po prochtenii povestei
pasichnika Rudogo Pan'ka." Syn Otechestva 25 (1832). Pp. 41-49, 101-15, 59-64,
223-42, 88-312.
Subtelny, O. Ukraine: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000.
Suproniuk, O.K. . "Literaturnaia sreda rannego Gogolia." Izvestiia AN SSSR. Ser. lit. i
iazyka 50.1 (1991). Pp. 58-68.
Szporluk, R. "Ukraine: From an Imperial Periphery to a Sovereign State." Russia,
Ukraine, and the Breakup of the Soviet Union. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Insttution
Press, 2000. Pp. 361-94.
Terts, Abram. V teni Gogolia. Moscow: Agraf, 2001.
Thompson, E. M. Imperial Knowledge: Russian Literature and Colonialism. Westport,
Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000.
Threadgold, T. "Performing Theories of Narrative: Theorizing Narrative Performance."
The Sociolinguistics of Narrative. Eds. J. Thornborrow and J. Coates. Amsterdam,
The Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2005.
Tikhonravov, N. . "Zametki o slovare, sostavlennom Gogolem." Sbornik Obshchestva
liubitelei rossiiskoi slovesnosti na 1891 god. Moscow: Tipo-lit. I.N. Kushnerev,
1891. Pp. 196-208.
Todd, W. M. Fiction and Society in the Age of Pushkin: Ideology, Institutions, and
Narrative. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986.
---------. "A Russian Ideology." Stanford Literature Review 1 (1984). Pp. 85-117.
Tolz, V. Russia: Inventing the Nation. London: Arnold, 2001.
Tret'iakova, N. P. . "Rabota Gogolia nad iazykom i stilem 'Tarasa Bul'by'." Materialy i
issledovaniia po istorii russkogo literaturnogo iazyka. Vol. 3. Moscow: Izd-vo
Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1953. Pp. 68-106.
Tynianov, Yurii. "Dostoevsky and Gogol': Towards a Theory of Parody. Part One:
Stylization and Parody." Dostoevsky and Gogol: Texts and Criticism. Eds.
Pricsilla Meyer and Stephen Rudy. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1977. Pp. 101-17.
Ushakov, V. A. [Review of "Vechera na khutore bliz Dikan'ki" vol. 1] Severnaia pchela
219, 220 (1831).
232
Uspenskii, B. A. "Spory o iazyke v nachale XIX veka kak fakt russkoi kul'tury."
Izbrannye trudy. Moscow: Gnozis, 1994. Pp. 331-467.
Vainshtein, O. Dendi: moda, literatura, stil' zhizni. Moscow: Izd-vo “Novoe literaturnoe
obozrenie”, 2006.
Velychenko, S. "Empire Loyalism and Minority Nationalism in Great Britain and
Imperial Russia, 1707 to 1914: Institutions, Law, and Nationality in Scotland and
Ukraine." Comparative Studies in Society and History 39.3 (1997). Pp. 413-41.
Veresaev, V. V. Gogol’ v zhizni : sistematicheskii svod podlinnykh svidetel’stv
sovremennikov. Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1990.
Viazemskii, P. Ostaf'evskii arkhiv kniazei Viazemskikh. Vol. 1. St. Petersburg, 1899.
Vikulova, V. P., ed. Gogol' i narodnaia kul'tura: materialy dokladov i soobshchenii
mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii. Moscow: CheRo, 2008.
Vinogradov, V. V. Etiudy o stile Gogolia. Leningrad: Academia, 1926.
---------. Gogol and the Natural School. New York: Ardis, 1987.
---------. The History of the Russian Literary Language from the Seventeenth Century to
the Nineteenth. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969.
---------. "Iazyk Gogolia i ego znachenie v istorii russkogo iazyka." Materialy i
issledovaniia po istorii russkogo literaturnogo iazyka. Vol. 3. Moscow: Izd-vo
Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1953. Pp. 4-44.
Voloshinov, V. N. "Marxism and the Philosophy of Language." Trans. L. Matejka, and I.
R. Titunik. New York: Seminar Press, 1973.
Voropaev, V. A. "Gogol' i 'russko-ukrainskii vopros'." Moskovskii zhurnal.1 (2002). Pp.
12-15.
Wachtel, A. "Translation, Imperialism, and National Self-Definition in Russia." Public
Culture 11.1 (1999). Pp. 49-73.
White, H. "The Narrativization of Real Events." Critical Inquiry 8 (1981). Pp. 793-98.
Wilson, A. The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation. New Haven: Yale University Press,
2002.
Wortman, R. S. Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.
Yekelchyk, S. Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2007.
233
Zhivov, V. M. Iazyk i kul’tura v Rossii XVIII veka. Moscow: Shkola "Iazyki russkoi
kul’tury", 1996.
---------. Language and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia. Trans. Marcus Levitt.
Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2009.
Zholkovsky, A. "Reading Gogol’s Miswritten Book: Notes on Selected Passages from
Correspondence with Friends." Essays on Gogol: Logos and the Russian Word.
Ed. S. Fusso and Priscilla Meyer. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University
Press, 1992. Pp. 172-84.
Žižek, S. Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture.
Cambridge, Mass.; London, England: The MIT Press, 1992.

Zviniatskovskii, V. "V chem zhe nakonets sushchestvo 'ukrainstva' Gogolia i v chem ego
osobennost'." Gogol' i narodnaia kul'tura: materialy dokladov i soobshchenii
mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii. Sed'mye gogolevskiie chteniia. Moscow:
CheRo, 2008. Pp. 41-50.
Zviniatskovskii, V.. Nikolai Gogol: tainy natsional'noi dushi. Kiev: Likei, 1994.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This dissertation examines Nikolai Gogol’s fashioning of a hybrid national identity during the creation, reception, and editing of his Vechera na khutore bliz Dikanki during the 1830s-1840s. It challenges existing views of Gogol’s national identity in terms of ethnic oppositions, emphasizing the importance of the mixture of linguistic, cultural, political and class beliefs in his identity formation. Chapter One introduces the concept hybridity to the study of the cultural and linguistic practices of Russian writers of Ukrainian origin (such as Vasilii Narezhnyi, Orest Somov and Gogol) in the context of Russian imperial culture. Chapter Two analyzes Gogol’s negotiation of his cultural and ethnic alterity during the creation and after the publication of his tales. This chapter focuses on Gogol’s use of mimicry and cross-cultural disguise for self-affirmation in the dichotomous culture of Russian literary aristocrats. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the changing reception of Gogol by Russian society in the 1830s-1840s, when growing Russian nationalism threatened to brand Gogol as a potentially disloyal other. Chapter Three examines Gogol’s self-fashioning via his hybridized Russian language in the first edition of the tales (1831-1832) and its purification in subsequent editions (1836, 1842, and 1855). The changes in language and style that Gogol and his editors made in these editions indicate how imperial ideology subjected Gogol’s works to monolingual standardization. Chapter Four establishes a link between the narrative performance in Vechera and hybrid national identity. Traditionally, the masquerade of narrative voices presented in the tales has been reduced to an opposition between its two main narrators, a Russified one and a local Ukrainian, thereby ignoring other narrators.

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Asset Metadata

Creator Ilchuk, Yuliya (author)

Core Title Gogol's hybrid performance: The creation, reception and editing of Vechera na khutore bliz Dikanki (Evenings on a farm near Dikan'ka) (1831-1832)

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Slavic Languages

Publication Date 11/22/2009

Defense Date 10/12/2009

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Evenings on a farm near Dikan'ka,Gogol, Nikolai Vasilevich, 1809-1852,hybridity,OAI-PMH Harvest,postcolonialism,self-fashioning,Вечера на хуторе близ Диканьки,Го́голь, Никола́й Васи́льевич

Place Name Russia (countries)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Levitt, Marcus (committee chair), Diaz, Roberto Ignacio (committee member), Pratt, Sarah (committee member), Seifrid, Thomas (committee member)

Creator Email jilchuk@gmail.com,jilchuk@hotmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m2755

Unique identifier UC1152059

Identifier etd-Ilchuk-3317 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-283554 (legacy record id),usctheses-m2755 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Ilchuk-3317.pdf

Dmrecord 283554

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Ilchuk, Yuliya

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu