The trouble is that bare facts do not exist in a state of nature, for they are never really quite bare: the white trace of a wrist watch, a curled piece of sticking plaster on a bruised heel, these cannot be discarded by the most ardent nudist. A mere string of figures will disclose the identity of the stringer as neatly as tame ciphers yielded their treasure to Poe. The crudest curriculum vitae crows and flaps its wings in a style peculiar to the undersigner. I doubt whether you can even give your telephone number without giving something of yourself. But Gogol in spite of all the things he said about wishing to know mankind because he loved mankind, was really not much interested in the personality of the giver. He wanted his facts absolutely bare—and at the same time he demanded not mere strings of figures but a complete set of minute observations. When some of his more indulgent friends yielded reluctantly to his requests and then warmed up to the business and sent him accounts of provincial and rural affairs—they would get from him a howl of disappointment and dismay instead of thanks; for his correspondents were not Gogols. They had been ordered by him to describe things—just describe them. They did so with a vengeance. Gogol was balked of his material because his friends were not writers whereas he could not address himself to those friends of his who were writers, because then the facts supplied would be anything but bare. The whole business is indeed one of the best illustrations of the utter stupidity of such terms as 'bare facts' and 'realism.' Gogol—a 'realist'! There are text books that say so. And very possibly Gogol himself in his pathetic and futile efforts to get the bits that would form the mosaic of his book from his readers themselves, surmised that he was acting in a thoroughly rational way. It is so simple, he kept on peevishly repeating to various ladies and gentlemen, just sit down for an hour every day and jot down all you see and hear. He might as well have told them to mail him the moon—no matter in what quarter. And never mind if a star or two and a streak of mist get mixed up with it in your hastily tied blue paper parcel. And if a horn gets broken, I will replace it.
His biographers have been rather puzzled by the irritation he showed at not getting what he wanted. They were puzzled by the singular fact that a writer of genius was surprised at other people not being able to write as well as he did. In reality what made Gogol so cross was that the subtle method he had devised of getting material, which he could no longer create himself, did not work. The growing conscience of his impotence became a kind of disease which he concealed from himself and from others. He welcomed interruptions and obstacles ('obstacles are our wings' as he put it) because they could be held responsible for the delay. The whole philosophy of his later years with such basic notions as 'the darker your heavens the more radiant tomorrow's blessing will be' was prompted by the constant feeling that this morrow would never come.
On the other hand, he would fly into a terrific passion if anybody suggested that the coming of the blessing might be hastened—I am not a hack, not a journeyman, not a journalist—he could write. And while he did all he could to make himself and others believe that he was going to produce a book of the utmost importance to Russia (and 'Russia' was now synonymous with 'humanity' in his very Russian mind) he refused to tolerate rumors which he engendered himself by his mystical innuendoes. The period of his life following upon the first part of Dead Souls may be entitled 'Great Expectations'
— from the reader's point of view at least. Some were expecting a still more definite and vigorous indictment of corruption and social injustice, others were looking forward to a rollicking yarn with a good laugh on every page. While Gogol was shivering in one of those stone cold rooms that you find only in the extreme South of Europe, and was assuring his friends that henceforth his life was sacred, that his bodily form must be handled with care and loved and nursed as the cracked earthen jar containing that wine of wisdom, (i.e., the second part of Dead Souls), the glad news was spread at home that Gogol was completing a book dealing with the adventures of a Russian general in Rome—the funniest book he had ever 35
Vladimir Nabokov: Lectures on Russian literature
written. The tragical part of the business was that as a matter of fact the best thing in the remnants of the second volume that have reached us happens to be the passages relating to that farcical automaton, General Betrishchev.
Rome and Russia formed a combination of a deeper kind in Gogol's unreal world. Rome was to him a place where he had spells of physical fitness that the North denied him. The flowers of Italy (of which flowers he said: 'I respect flowers that have grown by themselves on a grave') filled him with a fierce desire to be changed into a Nose: to lack everything else such as eyes, arms, legs, and to be nothing but one huge Nose, 'with nostrils the size of two goodly pails so that I might inhale all possible vernal perfumes.' He was especially nose-conscious when living in Italy. There was also that special Italian sky 'all silvery and shot with a satiny gloss but disclosing the deepest tone of blue when viewed through the arches of the Coliseum. ' Seeking a kind of relaxation from his own distorted and dreadful and devilish image of the world he pathetically endeavored to cling to the normality of a second rate painter's conception of Rome as an essentially
'picturesque' place: 'I like the donkeys too—the donkeys that amble or jog at full speed with half closed eyes and picturesquely carry upon their back strong stately Italian women whose white caps remain brightly visible as they recede; or when these donkeys drag along, in a less picturesque way, with difficulty and many a stumble, some lank stiff Englishman who sports a greenish brown waterproof mackintosh [literal translation] and screws up his legs so as to avoid scraping the ground ; or when a bloused painter rides by complete with Vandyke beard and wooden paintbox' etc. He could not keep up this kind of style for long and the conventional novel about the adventures of an Italian gentleman that at one time he contemplated writing happily remained limited to a few lurid generalizations 'Everything in her from her shoulders to her antique breathing leg and to the last toe of her foot is the crown of creation'—no, enough of that, or the hemmings and hawings of a wistful provincial clerk musing his misery away in the depths of Gogolian Russia will get hopelessly mixed up with classical eloquence.
Then there was Ivanov in Rome, the great Russian painter. For more than twenty years he worked at his picture 'The Appearance of the Messiah to the People.' His destiny was in many respects similar to that of Gogol with the difference that at last Ivanov did finish his masterpiece: the story is told that when it was finally exhibited (in 1858) he calmly sat there putting a few final touches to it—this after twenty years of work!—quite unconcerned by the crowd in the exhibition hall. Both Ivanov and Gogol lived in permanent poverty because neither could tear himself away from his life work in order to earn a living; both were constantly pestered by impatient people rebuking them for their slowness; both were highstrung, ill-tempered, uneducated, and ridiculously clumsy in all worldly matters. In his capital description of Ivanov's work Gogol stresses this relationship, and one cannot help feeling that when he spoke of the chief figure in the picture ('And He, in heavenly peace and divine remoteness, is already nearing with quick firm steps' . . .), Ivanov's picture got somehow mixed in his thoughts with the religious element of his own still unwritten book which he saw steadily approaching from the silvery Italian heights.
The letters he wrote to his friends while working on Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends did not include these passages (if they had, Gogol would not have been Gogol), but they much resemble them both in matter and tone. He thought some of them so inspired from above that he requested their being read 'daily during the week of Fast' ; it is doubtful however whether any of his correspondents were sufficiently meek to do this—to summon the members of their household and selfconsciously clear their throats— rather like the Mayor about to read the all-important letter in act one of The Government Inspector. The language of these epistles is almost a parody of sanctimonious intonation but there are some beautiful interruptions, as when, for instance, Gogol uses some very strong and worldly language in regard to a printing house which had swindled him. The pious actions which he plans out for his friends come to coincide with more or less bothersome commissions. He developed a most extraordinary system of laying penance on 'sinners' by making them slave for him—running errands, buying and packing the books he needed, copying out critical reviews, haggling with printers, etc. In compensation he would send a copy of, say, The Imitation of Jesus Christ with detailed instructions telling how to use it—and quite similar instructions occur in passages concerning hydrotherapy and digestive troubles—'Two glasses of cold water before breakfast' is the tip he gives a fellow sufferer.
'Set aside all your affairs and busy yourself with my own'—this is the general trend—which of course would have been quite logical had his correspondents been disciples firmly believing that 'he who helps Gogol helps God.' But the real people who got these letters from Rome, Dresden or Baden-Baden decided that Gogol was either going mad or that he was 36
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