![]() ![]() Following Pushkin, whom he idolised and became close to (although letters suggest their affections were not commensurate), these stories are rich in folk idioms. Essentially, Gogol was much too funny to succeed as a prophet, although this was a joke he was understandably incapable of appreciating.įollowing Hans Küchelgarten (1830), a self-published poem in the German Romantic style which received two unfavourable reviews (Gogol tracked down as many copies as he could find and, true to form, burned them), his next book, Evenings on a Farm Near Didanka (1831-2), received near universal acclaim.Ĭentred on life in Little Russia, as Ukraine was then known, the collection finds several of Gogol's key stylistic traits already in place. ![]() Gogol was too acute an observer of his fellow men (his women, disappointingly, are sketchy and marginal) to complete this self-appointed task he was too gifted at tweaking his flawed characters into outstanding, profoundly memorable grotesques. ![]()
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