The Strange, Wonderful Worlds of Nikolai Gogol (Selected Tales, Part 1)

In this episode of the Norton Library Podcast, we welcome translator Michael R. Katz and scholar of Russian literature Kate Holland to chat about one of the most celebrated figures in all of Russian literature: Nikolai Gogol. We discuss the influence of Gogol's Ukrainian background on his acclaimed short fiction as well as the challenges—and delights—of translating his singular comedic voice.

Michael R. Katz is C. V. Starr Professor Emeritus of Russian and East European Studies at Middlebury College. He has published translations of more than fifteen Russian novels, including Crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground, and The Brothers Karamazov.

Kate Holland is Associate Professor of Russian Literature in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Toronto. She is the author of The Novel in the Age of Disintegration: Dostoevsky and the Problem of Genre in the 1870s. She is President of the North American Dostoevsky Society.

To learn more or purchase a copy of the Norton Library edition of Selected Tales, go to https://seagull.wwnorton.com/selectedtales.

Learn more about the Norton Library series at https://wwnorton.com/norton-library.

Listen to our Spotify playlist inspired by Selected Tales: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0yzq1CO0wvOhq70CIk6Xar?si=6a4e9e7f261d470c.

Have questions or suggestions for the podcast? Email us at nortonlibrary@wwnorton.com or find us on Twitter @TNL_WWN.

Episode transcript at: https://seagull.wwnorton.com/selectedtales/part1/transcript.

Transcript

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[Mark:] You are listening to the Norton Library Podcast, where we explore classic works of literature and philosophy with the leading scholars of the Norton Library, a new series from W. W. Norton that introduces influential texts to a new generation of readers. I'm your host, Mark Cirino, with Michael Von Cannon producing, and today we present part one of our two episodes devoted to the Selected Tales of Nikolai Gogol, as we are joined by its editor, Kate Holland, and its translator, Michael Katz. In this first episode, we discuss who Nikolai Gogol was and what makes these short stories so significant to 19th-century Russian literature, the challenges of translation, Gogol’s Ukrainian background, the themes Gogol addresses, and the humor we find all throughout this volume. Kate Holland is Associate Professor of Russian Literature at the University of Toronto. She is the author of, among other works, “The Novel in the Age of Disintegration: Dostoevsky and the Problem of Genre in the 1870s.” Michael Katz is Professor Emeritus of Russian and East European Studies at Middlebury College. In addition to his writings on 19th-century Russian literature, he has translated over 15 Russian novels into English, including works by Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy. Kate Holland and Michael Katz, welcome to the Norton Library Podcast! 

[Michael:] Thank you. [Kate:] Thank you.  

[Mark:] Kate, maybe we can start with you. Who was Nikolai Gogol, and what can readers expect from these Selected Tales? 

[Kate:] Yeah! So, Nikolai Gogol is a, um, a writer from the Russian Empire in the 19th century. He is one of – regarded as one of the masters of the short story, um, in the Russian tradition and also beyond. He is from, uh, what is now Ukraine, so we can maybe talk a little bit more about that later. He was a master of several different genres, so people may know him for his novel “Dead Souls.” Um, but he also wrote a play, and then he, of course, was a master of the short story genre, which is what we're going to talk about today. And by about the mid-1830s, when most of the stories in this collection had already been, um, were published, um, he had already been acclaimed by two of Russia's most famous writers of the time. So, Alexander Pushkin, who's often seen as the father of Russian literature, the author of “Eugene Onegin,” which is often seen as, um, the first modern Russian novel, but written in verse, um, and another poet called Vasily Zhukovsky, both of them had kind of acclaimed him by this period. And so, he was a reasonably well-read writer of his time. But when we think about popularity, we also need to remember that actually, um, the Russian Empire in the first part of the 19th century was this vast space in which there was a tiny literate class. And, um, and so, the number of people who actually read his works was was quite small and it was concentrated in a few cities and larger states. Um, and Russian and Ukrainian literature of the time was mainly concentrated just around a few institutions and communities, so it was quite a small group. 

[Mark:] So, if he was acclaimed, at least critically and by other artists, but perhaps wasn't a best-selling author read by the masses, what was his life like? Was he able to live comfortably on his writing? 

[Kate:] He was sort of a grifter in certain ways. So, he grew up, um, on the Left Bank of the Niva River, so in the part of the Russian Empire which is now Ukraine, um, and he was descended from Ukrainian arist – Ukrainian Cossack nobles on one side and from Polish gentry on the other. Um, he went to school at the age of 12 and was very active at school in all kinds of creative endeavors, he was – he acted in plays, he wrote for the school magazine. And then he moved to St. Petersburg, and so that was kind of a significant move, um, because St. Petersburg, of course, was the capital of the Russian Empire, um, built by St. Peter – by Peter the Great in the beginning of the 18th century. And so, once he was there, he – that was kind of a place where he could establish himself. Um, and so, as a Ukrainian, he established himself by writing, uh, some stories about, kind of, Ukrainian folklore set in Ukraine, um, using quite a lot of Ukrainianisms. And, um, and actually, the first of the stories in the collection belongs to that period. So, “Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Auntie,” that sort of belongs to that period. Um, and then after the – after those stories were very successful, he used a lot of, sort of – he made reference to, um, many kind of Ukrainian folk traditions and Ukrainian voices. It was a time when there was a lot of interest in the Imperial centers like St. Petersburg in sort of, um, folkloric traditions and sort of colorful – I guess you might say it sound a bit condescending, but this was quite condescending, so. And interesting, kind of the Colonials and their way of life, you might say. Um, and so, he was able to use this to his advantage. And so, he, um, as a Ukrainian, was able to sort of give the Russians what they wanted in terms of, um, particular phrases, kinds of local color, sort of the way in which they thought Ukrainian women might be, and so on. But also, to kind of turn it in upon itself. So, um, he, you know, being a Ukrainian, was able to also, um, play with his identity. And actually, he plays with his identity in literary ways, so stylistically and linguistically, and Michael might be able to talk more about that. But also, even in terms of his mode of dress and his hairstyle, he sort of behaved and played like and sort of appeared as, um, he thought Russians might expect a Ukrainian to appear. But then, of course, um, his fame really rests on these stories which are set in St, Petersburg, in the Imperial capital. And so, he kind of moves away – once we get to the the stories like “Nevsky Prospekt” and, um, “The Overcoat” and “The Nose,” the sort of more famous stories from this period that are included in this collection, this is when he really kind of is – his gaze is focused on Russia itself, right? And on the Imperial capital. Um, and so, one of the things that people might find interesting about these stories is there're sort of, um, – he's, in many ways, a kind of one of the masters of the, um, the creation of the modern city in literature. So, St. Petersburg as a place which is full of all of these modern stimuli, where people are kind of tempted by, uh, by shopping or by being seen. Um, in “Nevsky Prospekt,” uh that story begins with the narrator cataloging the different kinds of people with their different kind of facial hair and their different kind of fashions as they walk down St. Petersburg main thoroughfare. Um, and so, um, and then in some of the other stories, “The Nose” and “The Overcoat,” we get sort of strange occurrences which take place. And because, um, the characters in his stories tend to be civil servants, they tend to be sort of cogs in the big machine, they tend to be people that kind of participate in city life but are sort of lost, uh, to the – sort of lost in their own sort of little corner of the city. Um, often the strangeness of those phenomena is apparent to the reader, but not necessarily to the characters. And so, um, you get this very interesting perspective in which the reader of these stories is sort of all-knowing. But at the same time, there's a lot of irony. So, Gogol, with the narrators of these stories, you never really know whether you're also the one that fun is being poked at, right?  

[Mark:] When we think of 19th-century Russian writers and Dostoevsky and Turgenev, Tolstoy, you mentioned Pushkin, where does Gogol fit in, not only during the 19th century, but as we look back here in the 21st century on – in terms of legacy and importance? Is it – Am I wrong that we don't talk about Gogol quite as much as some of the others? And is that maybe a mistake? How would you assess that relationship? 

[Kate:] Yeah, that is an interesting question. Um, so there's an erroneous quote which is attributed to Dostoevsky, which people may have heard of, uh, which is that “We all came from under Gogol’s overcoat.” “We” meaning Russian writers. Um, and actually this is – there's no evidence that Dostoevsky ever said this. But Gogol was very important and influential for Dostoevsky, and in terms of the… sort of, what we think of as the Dostoevskian Hero – so someone who is sort of, perhaps, has a divided sense of self, um, a sort of alienation within the modern city – um, that very much comes out of Gogol’s characters. And one other reason that he may be slightly sidelined is because of the genre that he worked in, right? Russian literature is often associated with the big novels. Um, the masterpieces of Dostoevsky and so on. Um, but Gogol was a master of the short story, right? And so, um – And I think that, you know, if you actually look at sort of contemporary short story writers, um, Gogol is often mentioned along with Chekhov as being sort of really up there, um, with the kind of architects of the genre. Um, and certainly, I think that nowadays, of course, there’s the extra interest in the fact that Gogol is really, um, one of the only significant names in Russian literature that people in the west might have heard of who's from the periphery, right? Who's actually not from, uh, Central Russia, but who's from Ukraine. And so, uh, nowadays, in the context of the, um, Ukrainian – of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, um, he’s very much a contested cultural property. So, um, you know, I, for instance, I read him and lots of our students read him in Russian literature courses, but he really is an important figure in Ukrainian literature. And actually, we were talking about him as Gogol, but of course, uh, in Ukrainian it's “Hohol,” right? And so, you will, you know, you will see him referred to more and more in the Ukrainian context in that way. Um, but his – but at the same time, um, his identity, I think, is better understood as a hybrid identity, as an identity in which he was able to pick and choose. 

[Mark:] Michael, as Kate is talking about the variety of 19th-century writers, um, it occurs to me that you've translated most of these writers, many of them. And I wonder, in your work in translating Gogol, how does that fit in? Does Gogol require a particular attention to something? How do you distinguish translating him versus the other writers you've worked with? 

[Michael:] The first thing I would say is with all those Ukrainianisms that Kate mentioned, his Russian is more difficult to translate. And I don't know Ukrainian, and, uh, my dictionaries aren't as good in Ukrainian as they are in Russian. So, I am really struggling when he's using Ukrainian words. Fortunately, the Russian editions of Gogol have translations from Ukrainian into Russian— [Mark:] Ah. [Michael:] —and that helps a great deal. 

[Mark:] Are they completely different languages, Michael? 

[Michael:] Well, they're cousins. It's like Spanish and Portuguese, perhaps? 

[Mark:] Right, okay. 

[Michael:] Um, they – A Russian can really understand a Ukrainian, but as a foreigner, I speak Russian but I can't understand when two Ukrainians are speaking. And the Russians can't believe that! They say, “Of course you understand.” No, I don't understand! Um, the other thing that I, you have to be concerned with with Gogol is his humor. Humor is very difficult to translate. Of all the great Russian writers, he really is the only funny one. And Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, these people aren't making a lot of jokes in their novels. There's occasional comic relief; Gogol is a riot! Every one of his works, including “Dead Souls” and “The Government Inspector,” has a great deal of humor. And humor is hard to translate and keep it funny. 

[Mark:] Does that humor come from puns or linguistic play, or is it situational? 

[Michael:] It comes from everything: puns, linguistic play, uh, irony, sarcasm, uh, caricature buffoons. You name it, he does it. I would say one other thing, to add to what Kate said before, and I think this is interesting to note. Dostoevsky’s first work, called “Poor Folk,” has a character who reads two short stories within the novel, and one of them is a Pushkin story, “The Station Master,” and the other one is a Gogol story, “The Overcoat.” And he loves the Pushkin story and he hates “The Overcoat.” “The Overcoat,” he says, “makes fun of me. Makes fun of people like me.” But the fact that a Dostoevsky hero is reading Pushkin and Gogol is really extraordinary in setting up the, uh, the lineage of great Russian writing. 

[Mark:] Kate talked about the different genres that readers will find in your edition of Gogol’s Selected Tales. And I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit from the translator's perspective, simply about Gogol’s variety. Was translating these, uh, seven stories – was it of a piece, or did you find – did you have different strategies and different challenges with each one? 

[Michael:] Well, Kate has mentioned that the first story really belongs to a different cycle, “Ivan Shponka,” that's part of his Ukrainian Tales. But after that, once you get into the Petersburg Tales, they really are similar. And there weren't different problems posed by different stories; they were really of a piece. 

[Mark:] You also talk in your brief introduction to this edition of Gogol’s fantastic originality. And I wonder if you can expand a little bit on that, about is his originality that it's fusing these genres, or that he has the humor? What do you find fantastic and original about Gogol’s work? 

[Michael:] Largely, it's the language. Uh, his playing with language. He – His plots are fairly simple. He's not really putting together intricate stories. Um, but his language is just remarkable and creates laughs at every stage. 

[Mark:] Is there a moment in this book that was, maybe, your favorite moment of translation, or a moment that you would point to as exemplary of your work and what you had to, uh, render when it comes to Gogol’s writing? 

[Michael:] Gogol ends the story of the man whose nose turns up in his bread at breakfast, and he has to go chasing all over Petersburg to reclaim his nose and get it back on his face, where he belongs. And Gogol ends the story by saying, “But what is strangest, most incomprehensible of all, is how authors can choose such subjects. I confess, this is beyond understanding! It's just – No! No, I just don't understand it. In the first place, there's definitely no benefit from it to the Fatherland. In the second place, well, there's no benefit to it at all! I simply don't know what it is. But still, having said all this, although, of course, you can posit the first thing, the second, the third, one can even – But where do absurd things not occur? Yet, when you think about it all, in this business, there really is something. No matter what anyone says, such strange things do occur. Rarely, but they do.” [Laughter] I think that wonderful. That's funny, but it's also the key to his stories: strange things occur in each one of his stories, and he writes about them. 

[Mark:] Even the way you were reading that, it shows almost kind of a stream of consciousness or conversational— [Michael:] Mhm! [Mark:] —He's interrupt – he's interrupting himself, there are ellipses, and hyphens. Is that consistent with Gogol’s rhetoric? 

[Michael:] Absolutely. Yes, indeed. In fact, uh, he comments about the hero Akaky Akakyevich in “The Overcoat”— [Mark:] Right. [Michael:] —and says, “The hero in “Overcoat” speaks only in broken sentences and adverbs and particles of speech.  

[Mark:] Yes!  

[Michael:] He never completes a sentence. [Mark:] That's right.  

[Michael:] He's creating the character and then commenting on the speech of the character. 

[Kate:] Yeah! I think that, also, one of the – one of the really original things about Gogol’s stories, which, um, then becomes important in the 20th century, is the way in which, um, speech is integrated into them. So, you know the idea – the kind of, um, the sort of ways in which characters would speak, the sort of patterns of speech, um, really are very significantly represented within the original Russian. So, I imagine that that's something that, probably, Michael needed to think about quite a lot when he was working on the translation. 

[Mark:] Of these seven stories, I'm wondering if each of you could choose one – I know it's an impossible task – but maybe one that you most enjoy to talk about or teach or write about or read. And Kate, is there one of the seven that you would choose above the others? 

[Kate:] Yeah, I really love “Nevsky Prospekt,” um, the story that's named after St. Petersburg’s main street. Um, it has a really pleasing structure. I already talked a little bit about the fact that, um, we begin with the narrator following these crowds of people going along St. Petersburg's main street at different times of day. So, uh, in the morning he kind of goes through which are the kind of people that walk down the street in the morning, who in the afternoon, who later at night, and then, of course, we get to the evening and he, um, follows two different characters – so, one tragic, one comic – who are, in turn, following two different women into the smaller streets that lie beyond the, um, the main street. So, you kind of get off the main thoroughfare into the sort of corners of St. Petersburg life. Um, and then what happens in each of the stories is that what seems, at first, to be the case turns out to be radically illusory. Um, and so, both of the stories kind of end up in very surprising ways. Um, and at the end of the story, the narrator kind of goes back to the beginning, and he talks about that it must be the Devil himself who is lighting the gas lights along the street, the Central Street. Um, and it's just such a great story to read and to teach. 

[Mark:] I was intrigued that you call it, in your introduction, a “physiological sketch.” [Kate:] Yeah. [Mark:] Now, we've heard of psychological sketches, but what's… how would you define that, and how does this story apply to that definition? 

[Kate:] Yeah, it's interesting because, um, city descriptions, sort of, at the time, um, borrowed metaphors from the sort of new science of physiology. So, in physiology, is about the study of organs and, sort of, what is the role that each organ plays in the body. And the physiological sketch is kind of a, um, an attempt to kind of replicate that process, um, on the level of a city. So, what is the – what's the sort of— [Mark:] Mhm. [Kate:] —it's often associated with a kind of flanner figure walking through the streets and giving a kind of detailed account of, sort of, what each part of the city – what's its function, akin to a kind of an organ of the body, and what makes a city function. So, I think that there's something very modern, um, although this is kind of a very, um, sort of a 19th-century genre, it's very still very modern and appropriate when we think about cataloging the city. 

[Mark:] We were talking about, in that story, you have one character go one way and one character go the other way, and that each of those stories takes on a different tone. Is that also emblematic of Gogol as a writer? Is that sort of – because you were talking earlier about the fusion or hybrid of forms. What genre does this story take, and is that consistent that we have a division there? 

[Kate:] He's been called a romantic realist, and he kind of fills this this transitional period between Romanticism. And you sort of find – absolutely find romantic elements in that story. Um, and the, sort of, the first, um, the first mini story is much more of a romantic tale and it has a tragic ending. And then the second story is kind of more of a, um, of a comic tale, and that sort of is more of a kind of entry into realism. So, um, it's much more of a kind of realistic plot and it's much more of a kind of snapshot of a sort of, um, a socially hierarchical St. Petersburg in which everyone has their place and so on. So, I think that you can really see there how he, um, is moving from the, sort of, romantic frame of mind and into a more realist, uh, mode of description. 

[Mark:] So, we’re usually pretty disciplined on the Norton Library Podcast not to spoil endings, but the sentence that really stuck out from that story is, in fact, the last sentence, which I think we can— [Kate:] Yeah. [Mark:] —talk about without spoiling the ending. Um, can you – This is on page 61 of your beautiful new Norton Library edition. Would you mind reading that sentence and explaining, or just suggesting, where we are – where Gogol leaves us at the end of this, uh, at the end of “Nevsky Prospekt.”  

[Kate:] Yes. “It lies at all times, this Nevsky Prospekt, but most of all it lies when night falls in thick masses of shadows, and you can see only the white and pale yellow walls of houses. And when the entire town is transformed into noise and brilliance, when myriads of carriages roll off bridges, postilions shout and jump on their horses, and the Devil Himself lights the street lamps, so as to show everything in an unreal aspect.” 

[Mark:] Fantastic. 

[Kate:] Yeah, I think that… the Brilliance of this sentence comes from – well, it's a nice, long sentence, and, um, the idea that deceit is one of the main modes of, kind of, city life. That everything – and that this deceit lies at the center of the central street in St. Petersburg, and that nothing is as it seems, which is sort of the, um, the moral of this story, right? And at the end of the day you – Gogol himself, he was actually a very religious writer. And you don't see that much. Um, and here, the devil could be just a rhetorical device, right? But I think that it’s probably more than just a rhetorical device, uh, here. 

[Mark:] Excellent. Michael, first of all, great job translating that last sentence of that story. But is there – what, of these seven stories in Selected Tales, what's the story that stands out to you? 

[Michael:] It's like my students asking me, when I teach Chekhov, which is my favorite play. And my answer is: whichever one I'm teaching at the moment. 

[Mark:] Exactly. There you go. 

[Michael:] I love all seven of these stories. I was going to say “The Overcoat,” which is an obvious choice, but then Kate got me thinking about “Ivan Shponka.” and Nabokov says, in his wonderful book on Gogol, that “Shponka” shows us the direction that Gogol was going to take. So, it's the last of his Ukrainian Tales, and the first really serious piece of literature that he wrote. And the dream at the end of “Shponka” is just magnificent. When all of the authority figures in his life – from his Latin teacher, to his commander in the army, to his auntie, who's trying to get him married – every single one of his, uh, authority figures commands his attention and tries to have power over him. And it's – he hallucinates that the world is full of geese, and that the geese are mean and nasty and trying to bite him. So, I don't want to say more, but reading that dream is just wonderful. 

[Mark:] Can you say more about the notion that it was the direction Gogol was going to take? 

[Michael:] Sure. He moves from the country, the Ukrainian countryside— [Mark:] Ah. [Michael:] —to the city. And, uh, let's see. In “Shponka,” it's still taking place in the countryside, but, um, the craziness, the insanity of that dream… [Mark:] Right. [Michael:] …is a strange ending for a story which is more or less realistic. So it's that same sort of humor that he's going to use in the other six stories. 

[Mark:] I saw your note to that story, and it says, “When the aunt thinks to herself, she does so in Ukrainian not in Russian.” [Michael:] Yes! [Laughter] [Mark:] Which is such an interesting detail that explains something about the consciousness of the characters. It's a – I guess, maybe the current events of the day have taught us not to just think of these people as blanket Russian writers, that there's a greater nuance to how these characters think and behave.  

[Michael:] It's a curious sentence, and I really didn't, uh, understand – I don't understand what distinction Gogol is getting at. Kate, do you have any thoughts on that? 

[Kate:] I mean, it's interesting, right, when we think about the fact that he – and recent work on Gogol, I think, does suggest that he, um, was actually much more consciously manipulating his national identity than we, than has previously been discussed. Um, and that maybe, you know, that the idea of, kind of, the language of our interiority might be different from the language of our, um, social, uh, interaction or social communication. That, you know, multilinguals, of which Gogol was one, um, have the choice of how to project their identity, linguistically speaking, depending on the audience. Um, but, you know, maybe there's always a language which is the language of your interiority, right? 

[Michael:] Mhm.  

[Mark:] Yeah. Is there a resurgence of interest in Gogol, or pride in Gogol from Ukrainians and those sympathetic to Ukrainians, based on the last several years? 

[Kate:] I would say definitely. Um, and, sort of – there's also the attempt to kind of… reclaim Gogol as a Ukrainian writer. Um, which is understandable, obviously, within the – because of the fact that, um, right now, there's a war on, right? There's an invasion. And so, you know, defining Ukrainian identity in opposition to what's, to what is Russian is completely understandable. But, of course, when we go back and think about the complexities of the linguistic and cultural context in which Gogol was writing, it's difficult to isolate either his Ukrainian-ness or his Russian-ness, right? They each kind of feed off each other. Um, and so, I think that we really have to conclude that he is both a Russian and a Ukrainian writer, and not one or the other in isolation. 

[Mark:] Kate Holland, Michael Katz, thank you so much for joining us on the Norton Library Podcast to discuss Nikolai Gogol’s Selected Tales. 

[Kate:] Thank you. [Michael:] You're welcome. 

[Mark:] The Norton Library edition of Selected Tales by Nikolai Gogol, with an introduction by Kate Holland and translated by Michael Katz, is available now in paperback and ebook. Check out the links in the description for this episode for ordering options and more information about the Norton Library, including the full catalog of titles. 

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