TWO NARRATIVES ON MYKOLA GOGOL: “Gogol: Artist and Thinker” (1952) by Dmytro Chyzhevskyi and “N. V. Gogol” (1961) by Vasyl Zenkovskyi

Abstract

The article examines two interpretations of the work of the outstanding writer of the 19th century Mykola Gogol (1809–1852) offered by the renowned philosophers of Ukrainian origin, Dmytro Chyzhevskyi (1894–1977) and Vasyl Zenkovskyi (1881–1962). Gogol’s literary legacy was the subject of their scholarly research for 50 years. The article devotes considerable attention to the similarities in the authors’ life and academic trajectories, which first intersected in 1915 at St. Vladimir’s University in Kyiv, as well as to their research interests and the history of their intellectual exchange, including discussions related to M. Gogol’s work. The analysis focuses on two publications: D. Chyzhevskyi’s article “Gogol: Artist and Thinker” (1952) and V. Zenkovskyi’s book “N. V. Gogol” (1961), both of which the authors themselves considered landmark works in their research on this topic. The concepts developed by both authors are presented in detail, with the similarities and differences between them highlighted. It is noted that both scholars defended the idea of the unity of the artist and thinker in M. Gogol, rejecting the claim of a fundamental distinction between different stages of the writer’s creative work. At the same time, the article points out certain differences between the researchers, both in terms of their ideas and research strategies. The article presents D. Chyzhevskyi’s interpretation of M. Gogol’s artistic work, based on an analysis of the specific features of the writer’s language and artistic techniques, as well as on the recognition of their aim to desacralize existing reality and demonstrate its distortion and unreality in relation to the world created by God. It is noted that this approach allowed D. Chyzhevskyi to challenge the commonly accepted views both on M. Gogol’s realism and on the semantic gap between Gogol the satirist and Gogol the preacher. Attention is drawn to the researcher’s thesis that Gogol’s satire, by rejecting the normality of sin and evil, paves the way for the assertion of the necessity to transform the existing world. The article examines the peculiarities of V. Zenkovskyi’s reconstruction of M. Gogol’s life and work. It is shown that, unlike D. Chizhevskyi, for whom Gogol appears as an artist and thinker, in Zenkovskyi’s interpretation the writer is presented in three dimensions—as an artist, thinker, and personality. It is demonstrated that, for Zenkovskyif, Gogol as an artist combined the traits of a realist and a romantic; Gogol as a thinker evolved from aesthetic criticism of culture to criticism of its secular nature, from aesthetic romanticism to a Christian worldview, and from non-denominationalism to Orthodoxy. It is noted that a central place in Zenkovskyi’s study is occupied by the exploration of Gogol’s significance as a personality, as someone who not only declared the necessity of transforming the world through the transformation of each individual, but also sought to realize this in his own life.