Features of the narration in N.V. Gogol’s story “The Overcoat”

FEATURES OF THE NARRATOR IN N.V.’S STORY GOGOL
"OVERCOAT"
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 3
1. Historical reference 4
2. Features of revealing the idea of ​​the story 5
3. Characteristics narratives 6
4. The image of a “significant person” in the story 9
CONCLUSION 12
REFERENCES 13
INTRODUCTION
Among the remarkable figures of Russian and world culture, a place of honor belongs to Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. Brilliant Master poetic word, he created great works that captivate with the depth and truthfulness of his images, the power of creative generalization of life, and artistic perfection.
It is known that the works of great writers, in terms of depth of content and meaning, artistic images go far beyond the historical time when they appeared. The largest artistic creations live for centuries and millennia, arousing the interest of many generations of readers, giving them aesthetic pleasure. This happens because creative generalizations outstanding artists words illuminate universal human problems, help people of different historical periods understand many very different phenomena of life.
Each new era judges the writer in her own way, perceiving in his work artistic principles that are close to her. Historical existence literary phenomena is very complex. Here, periods of widespread interest in a writer and his works are often followed by decades and even centuries of declining or fading interest in them. With all this, over time there is a process of gradual disclosure of the artistic potential of classical creations. In the emergence of this potential, the decisive role belongs to the talent, individuality of the artist, and his connections with reality. That is why clarifying the writer’s place in the movement of life, in the development of society and literature is very important not only for understanding his originality, but also for clarifying the fate of his work. Ignoring historical approach to the artistic heritage gives rise to subjectivism, all kinds of arbitrary judgments and “concepts”.
1. Historical background
The idea of ​​the “Overcoat” first appeared to Gogol in 1834 under the impression of a clerical anecdote about a poor official who, at the cost of incredible efforts, realized his long-standing dream of buying a hunting rifle and lost this rifle on his first hunt. Everyone laughed at the joke, P. V. Annenkov says in his memoirs. But in Gogol this story caused a completely different reaction. He listened to her and bowed his head thoughtfully. This anecdote sank deeply into the writer’s soul, and it served as an impetus for the creation of one best works Gogol.
Work on “The Overcoat” began in 1839 abroad and was roughly completed in the spring of 1841. The story was originally called "The Tale of an Official Stealing an Overcoat."
"The Overcoat" occupies a special place in the cycle of St. Petersburg stories. The story of an unhappy official overwhelmed by poverty, popular in the 30s, was embodied by Gogol in a work of art, which Herzen called “colossal.”
With his story, Gogol first of all distanced himself from the development of a plot about a poor official, characteristic of reactionary writers of the 30s, who was a target for ridicule and vulgar ridicule. The polemical address was indicated by Gogol quite clearly: Bashmachkin “was what is called an eternal titular adviser, on whom, as you know, various writers have worked hard and sharpened their wits, having the commendable habit of leaning on those who cannot bite.”
2. Features of revealing the idea of ​​the story
"The Overcoat", like Gogol's other stories about humiliated man, is in continuity with Pushkin’s “The Station Agent”. Based on the creative experience of Pushkin, Gogol created Petersburg stories deeply original artistic generalizations. Author's Spotlight" Stationmaster"was a depiction of sharp clashes between a "little" man and nobles, strongmen of the world this, clashes that resulted in the collapse of the hero’s happiness. Gogol more broadly reflected the social inequality of “little” people, showing not only their defenselessness, but also the harsh struggle for everyday existence. The depiction of the life fate of Gogol's heroes inextricably merges with the disclosure of constant social oppression, which, dooming the “little” person to suffering, mercilessly disfigures him, erasing living human individuality.
The deep drama with which “The Overcoat” is imbued is revealed, on the one hand, in the depiction of the everyday and-on the other-in showing the hero's "shocks". The development of the plot in the story is primarily based on this internal conflict. “This is how the peaceful life of a man flowed, who, with a salary of four hundred, knew how to be satisfied with his lot, and would have lasted, perhaps, to a very old age, if there had not been various disasters scattered throughout life's path not only titular, but even secret, active, court and all kinds of advisers." The story about the acquisition of an overcoat is everyday life, revealed in its dramatic tension. An ordinary, ordinary phenomenon appears in the form of a "disaster"; an insignificant event, as if in focus, concentrates in itself a reflection of the essential aspects of reality.
The tension and drama of these clashes make the ending of the story organic, into which the author introduces fantasy. Fiction in "The Overcoat" is a necessary element in revealing the main idea of ​​the story.
3. Characteristic features of the narrative
"The Overcoat" is one of those works in which the writer resorts to the technique of narration on behalf of the narrator. But the narrator in “The Overcoat” is not at all like Rudy Panka, who brings with him a special, sharply expressed manner of narration; He also doesn’t look like the narrator from the story about a quarrel, who is distinguished by his bright “characteristics.” In "The Overcoat" the narrator is not highlighted, but at the same time this image is clearly felt in the story. “Unfortunately, we cannot say where exactly the official who invited us lived; our memory is beginning to fail us greatly, and everything that is in St. Petersburg, all the streets and houses, have merged and mixed up so much in our heads that it is very difficult to get anything decent from there. form". While retaining the features of some external simplicity, the narrator in “The Overcoat” is far from the “spontaneity” of narrators belonging to the patriarchal world.
"The Overcoat" was by no means written in the techniques of skaz; nevertheless, in a number of places Gogol subtly notes the linguistic features of the narrator: “... Akaki Akakievich was born against the night, if memory serves, on March 23... Mother was still lying on the bed opposite the doors, and right hand stood the godfather, an excellent man, Ivan Ivanovich Eroshkin, who served as the head of the Senate, and the godfather, the wife of a quarterly officer, a woman of rare virtues, Arina Semyonovna Belobryushkova"; "in such a state, Petrovich usually very willingly gave in and agreed, every time he even bowed and thanked. Then, however, the wife came, crying that her husband was drunk and therefore took it cheaply; but sometimes you add one kopeck, and it’s in the bag.”
The image of the narrator carries a clearly expressed sympathy for the ignorant, to the common man. Along with this, the writer, in individual episodes of the narrative, expresses in a direct, immediate form his attitude towards the hero of the work. This determines the lyric pathetic flow of the story, which is revealed both in the words about cruel “inhumanity” and in the reflections in connection with the death of Akaki Akakievich (“the creature disappeared and hid itself”).
In creating "The Overcoat", Gogol relied on his enormous creative achievements in the use of wealth vernacular. Unlike a number of his other works, the writer in this story almost did not turn to a picturesque and concrete description of everyday life, the “environment” of the hero, which made it possible to clearly outline his psychological appearance. The most important creative task that Gogol set for himself in “The Overcoat” was, first of all, to clearly show the microscopic world of the humiliated hero, and then to characterize the relationship of the depressed person with the social world around him. Consistently implementing this creative task, Gogol achieved amazing concentration of verbal expression, extraordinary accuracy artistic word. “There, in this copying, he saw his own diverse and pleasant world. Pleasure was expressed on his face;
He had some favorite letters, which if he got to me, he was not himself: he laughed, and winked, and helped with his lips, so that in his face, it seemed, one could read every letter that his pen wrote."
The richness and accuracy of Gogol's metaphor is an integral feature of the description of the hero's actions and the events of his life. “Akaky Akakievich began to feel for some time that he was somehow feeling a particularly strong pain in his back and shoulder, despite the fact that he was trying to run across the legal space as quickly as possible. He finally thought whether there were any sins in his overcoat "Having examined it carefully at home, he discovered that in two or three places, namely on the back and on the shoulders, it had become an exact serpyanka." An aptly found word, an expressive metaphor very often seems to sum up an entire narrative episode. “He returned home in the happiest mood, took off his overcoat and hung it carefully on the wall, once again admiring the cloth and lining, and then deliberately pulled out, for comparison, his old hood, which had completely fallen apart. He looked at it and even laughed himself : such a far difference! And for a long time afterwards at dinner he kept grinning, as soon as the position in which the hood was located came to his mind."
Characterizing real place hero in public life, his attitude to reality, the writer widely uses the technique of internal comparisons, which becomes an organizing principle in the construction of the sentence itself, in the selection of its lexical composition. “If they had given him rewards in proportion to his zeal, he, to his amazement, might even have ended up as a state councilor; but he, as his comrades’ wits put it, earned a buckle in his buttonhole and acquired hemorrhoids in his lower back.”
Internal comparisons in narrative speech"Overcoats" are distinguished by great diversity; they are built on the collision of the imaginary and the real, the sublime and the prosaic. “Fire sometimes appeared in his eyes, the most daring and courageous thoughts even flashed in his head: should he just put a marten on his collar.” Or: “Thanks to the generous assistance of the St. Petersburg climate, the disease spread faster than could have been expected, and when the doctor appeared, he, having felt the pulse, could not find anything to do except prescribe a poultice, only so that the patient would not be left without a beneficial medical assistance
The use of internal comparisons in the structure of a sentence or a whole group of sentences is often combined with emphasizing, “playing on” one stressed word. “If Akaky Akakievich looked at anything, he saw his clean, even handwriting lines written out on everything, and only if, out of nowhere, a horse’s muzzle was placed on his shoulder and blew a whole wind into his cheek with its nostrils, then he only noticed that he is not in the middle of the line, but rather in the middle of the street."
4. The image of a “significant person” in the story
Gogol brilliantly uses the “play” of words to expressly characterize heroes, social phenomena, and reality. In this sense, the disclosure of various semantic shades of the word “significant”, which appears in the description of a “significant person,” is very interesting. "You need to know that one significant person recently became significant person, and until that time he was an insignificant person. However, his place even now was not considered significant in comparison with others, even more significant. But there will always be a circle of people for whom what is insignificant in the eyes of others is already significant. However, he tried to enhance the significance by many other means.” The comparison of “significant” with “insignificant” in various connections gives an ironic character to the story about a high-ranking person.
For satirical purposes, Gogol with great skill combines seemingly mutually exclusive semantic meanings of words and achieves a remarkable effect. “The police made an order to catch the dead man, at any cost, alive or dead, and punish him, as an example in another, most severe way.” The constant formula of the zealots of order about the capture and punishment of the guilty appears here in its comic absurdity.
The image of a “significant person” shows the cruelty of representatives of government and the law. Drawing the insults to which Akaki Akakievich was subjected in the department, Gogol showed “how much inhumanity there is in a person, how much ferocious rudeness is hidden in refined and educated secularism.”
Gogol creates a satirically generalized type of person - a representative of the bureaucratic power of Russia. His position is not significant, it is the boss in general. The way it behaves with Bashmachkin is how all “significant persons” behave.
The scene at the general's is the ideological culmination of the story. Shown most powerfully here social tragedy "little man"in the conditions of autocratic Russia.
It is characteristic that Gogol does not even give a name to this hero of his. Unlike Bashmachkin and Petrovich, the “significant person” is depicted in satirical colors: “The techniques and customs of the significant person were solid and majestic, but not polysyllabic. The main basis of his system was severity. “Severity, severity and severity,” he usually said and at last word he usually looked very significantly into the face of the one to whom he was speaking... His ordinary conversation with those below him was stern and consisted of almost three phrases: “How dare you? Do you know who you are talking to? Do you understand who is standing in front of you?”
In his relations with “inferiors”, in his social practice, a “significant person” expresses the prevailing “norms”; his personal qualities do not play any significant role in this. "He was in the shower a kind person, good with his comrades, helpful...", "but as soon as he happened to be in a society where there were people at least one rank lower than him, there he was simply out of hand."
The personification of brute and cruel force, the “significant person” cares only about the inviolability of the “foundations”, that there is not even a hint of free thoughts. Bashmachkin’s appeal to a “significant person” for help provokes the anger of a high-ranking person. When Bashmachkin timidly remarks: “...I dared to trouble your Excellency because the secretaries of that... are unreliable people...” - a storm of indignation falls on him. “What, what, what?” said a significant person. “Where did you get such a spirit? Where did you get such thoughts? What kind of riot has spread among young people against their bosses and superiors!”
Very strong impression The effect of this scolding on Bashmachkin causes the complete satisfaction of the “significant person.” He is intoxicated by the thought “that his word can even deprive a person of his feelings.”
Scenes depicting a “significant person” expand and generalize the impact of the social order, which predetermined the course of Akaki Akakievich’s entire life and led to his death. One of the editions of “The Overcoat” contains the following lines: “And we, however, completely ignored the main cause of all the misfortune, namely a significant person.” There is no doubt that this passage was modified by the writer under the pressure of censorship requirements; in the printed text it acquired a different edition. “But we, however, completely left out one significant person, who, in fact, was almost the reason for the fantastic direction, however, of a completely true story.”
Bashmachkin's meeting with a "significant person" is shown in "The Overcoat" as a clash not with a bad person, but with the "usual" order, with the constant practice of "those in power." Bashmachkin suffers not from the inhumanity of individual people, but from the lack of rights in which he is placed by his social status. Portraying a “little” man in “The Overcoat,” Gogol acted as a great humanist. His humanism was not abstract and contemplative, but effective, social character. The writer defended the rights of those people who are deprived of them in society. The words “I am your brother” reflected the ideas of social justice and social equality.
Akakiy Akakievich is drawn as a man who obediently carries his heavy cross in life, without raising a voice of protest against the cruelties of society. Bashmachkin is a victim who is not aware of the tragedy of his situation and does not think about the possibility of a different life. In the original edition of the epilogue of the story, the writer bitterly noted Bashmachkin’s submission to fate and resignation. “The creature disappeared and hid, not protected by anyone and not dear to anyone, not interesting to anyone, not even turning the gaze of a natural observer on itself and only obediently suffering clerical ridicule and never uttering a murmur about its fate in its entire life and not knowing “Is there a better fate in the world?”
The “humility” of the hero of “The Overcoat” did not at all mean Gogol’s reconciliation with reality. By showing the hero as an uncomplaining victim of society, the writer expressed his bold protest against the social order.
CONCLUSION
Based on the principles of realism and democratic humanism, works of art Gogol had a huge influence on the development of public self-awareness, spiritual culture of Russia and other countries. His work was a significant effective factor in the growth of advanced social thought
Gogol's literary activity was characterized by ideological and creative contradictions, especially strong in last period his life. These contradictions have often been used and are being used in our time in order to interpret Gogol’s life and literary path, his artistic heritage in the spirit of outright conservatism. However, this kind of interpretation comes into irreconcilable conflict with the truth. The main direction of Gogol’s creative activity had as its source not the false views that were somehow reflected in his works, but the progressive, liberating ideas so clearly expressed in them. It was not prejudices and misconceptions that determined the content, the essence creative creatures writer, and their deep life truth is wonderful artistic discoveries carried out by him.
Gogol's realistic masterpieces represent a major contribution to the treasury of Russian and world literature. The artistic generalizations created by the writer have become the property of all progressive humanity and arouse the keenest interest of readers different nationalities. Gogol boldly asserted new creative principles that had a wide influence on literature and received their further development in the works of outstanding Russian writers and writers from other countries.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Mashinsky S. Art world Gogol. M.: "Enlightenment", 1971
2. N.V. Gogol: History and modernity: To the 175th anniversary of his birth / Comp. V.V. Kozhinov, E.I. Osetrov, P.G. Palamarchuk. - M.: Sov. Russia, 1985.
3. Khrapchenko M. B. Nikolai Gogol. Literary path. The greatness of the writer. - M. Sovremennik, 1984.

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Gogol began his creative activity like a romantic. However, he turned to critical realism, opened a new chapter in it. As a realist artist, Gogol developed under the noble influence of Pushkin, but was not a simple imitator of the founder of new Russian literature.

Gogol’s originality was that he was the first to give the broadest image of the district landowner-bureaucratic Russia and the “little man”, a resident of the corners of St. Petersburg.

Gogol was a brilliant satirist who castigated the “vulgarity of a vulgar man,” who extremely exposed the social contradictions of contemporary Russian reality.

Gogol's social orientation is also reflected in the composition of his works. The plot and plot conflict in them are not love and family circumstances, but events public importance. At the same time, the plot serves only as an excuse for a broad depiction of everyday life and the disclosure of character types.

Deep penetration into the essence of the main socio-economic phenomena of contemporary life allowed Gogol, a brilliant artist of words, to draw images of enormous generalizing power.

For bright purposes satirical image Gogol's heroes are served by a careful selection of many details and their sharp exaggeration. For example, portraits of the heroes of “Dead Souls” were created. These details in Gogol are mainly everyday: things, clothes, homes of the heroes. If in romantic stories Gogol gives emphatically picturesque landscapes, giving the work a certain elation of tone, then in his realistic works, especially in “ Dead souls", landscape is one of the means of depicting types and characteristics of heroes.

The subject matter, social orientation and ideological coverage of life phenomena and people's characters determined the originality of Go-gol's literary speech. The two worlds depicted by the writer are - folk group and “existents” - determined the main features of the writer’s speech: his speech is sometimes enthusiastic, imbued with lyricism, when he talks about the people, about the homeland (in “Evenings ...”, in “Taras Bulba”, in lyrical digressions“Dead Souls”), then becomes close to live conversational (in everyday paintings and scenes of “Evenings...” or in stories about bureaucratic and landowner Russia).

The originality of Gogol's language lies in the wider use of vernacular speech, dialectisms, and Ukrainianisms than his predecessors and contemporaries. Material from the site

Gogol loved and had a keen sense of popular colloquial speech, skillfully using all its shades to characterize his heroes and phenomena of social life.

The character of a person social status, profession - all this is unusually clearly and accurately revealed in the speech of Gogol's characters.

Gogol's strength as a stylist lies in his humor. In his articles about “Dead Souls,” Belinsky showed that Gogol’s humor “consists in the opposition of the ideal of life with the reality of life.” He wrote: “Humor is the most powerful weapon of the spirit of negation, destroying the old and preparing the new.”

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Gogol's language, the principles of his stylistics, his satirical manner had an undeniable influence on the development of the Russian literary and artistic language since the mid-30s. Thanks to Gogol’s genius, the style of everyday speech was freed from “conventional constraints and literary cliches,” Vinogradov emphasizes.

Gogol’s extraordinary, surprisingly natural language and his humor had an intoxicating effect, notes Vinogradov. Absolutely appeared in Rus' new language, distinguished by its simplicity and accuracy, strength and closeness to nature; figures of speech invented by Gogol quickly came into general use, Vinogradov continues. The great writer enriched the Russian language with new phraseological units and words that originated from the names of Gogol’s heroes.

Vinogradov claims that Gogol saw his main purpose in “bringing the language closer together fiction with live and tag colloquial speech people."

One of characteristic features Gogol's style was Gogol's ability to skillfully mix Russian and Ukrainian speech, high style and jargon, clerical, landowner, hunting, lackey, gambling, petty bourgeois, the language of kitchen workers and artisans, interspersing archaisms and neologisms in his speech, like characters, and in the author's speech.

Vinogradov notes that the genre itself early prose Gogol is in the style of the Karamzin school and is distinguished by a high, serious, pathetic narrative style. Gogol, understanding the value of Ukrainian folklore, really wanted to become a “genuine national writer"and tried to involve a diverse oral folk speech into the Russian literary and artistic narrative system.

The writer connected the authenticity of the reality he conveyed with the degree of proficiency in the class, estate, and professional style of the language and dialect of the latter. As a result, Gogol's narrative language acquires several stylistic and linguistic planes and becomes very heterogeneous. gogol literature speech

Russian reality is conveyed through the appropriate linguistic environment. At the same time, all existing semantic and expressive shades of official business language are revealed, which, when ironically describing the discrepancy between the conventional semantics of social clerical language and the actual essence of phenomena, appear quite sharply.

Gogol's vernacular style is intertwined with clerical and business style. V. Vinogradov finds that Gogol sought to introduce into the literary language the vernacular of different strata of society (small and middle nobility, urban intelligentsia and bureaucrats) and, by mixing them with the literary and book language, to find a new Russian literary language.

As a business state language in Gogol's works, Vinogradov points out the interweaving of clerical and colloquial bureaucratic speech. In “Notes of a Madman” and in “The Nose,” Gogol uses clerical business style and colloquial official speech much more than other styles of vernacular.

Official business language ties together the various dialects and styles of Gogol, who simultaneously tries to expose and remove all unnecessary hypocritical and false forms of expression. Sometimes Gogol, to show the conventionality of a concept, resorted to an ironic description of the content put by society into a particular word. For example: “In a word, they were what is called happy”; “There was nothing else on this secluded or, as we say, beautiful square.”

Gogol believed that the literary and book language of the upper classes was painfully affected by borrowings from foreign, “foreign” languages, impossible to find foreign words, which could describe Russian life with the same accuracy as Russian words; as a result, some foreign words were used in a distorted sense, some were assigned a different meaning, while some original Russian words disappeared irrevocably from use.

Vinogradov points out that Gogol, closely linking the secular narrative language with the Europeanized Russian-French salon language, not only denied and parodied it, but also openly contrasted his narrative style with the linguistic norms that corresponded to the salon-lady language. In addition, Gogol also struggled with the mixed half-French, half-popular Russian language of romanticism. Gogol contrasts the romantic style with a realistic style, reflecting reality more fully and believably. According to Vinogradov, Gogol shows the confrontation between the style of romantic language and everyday life, which only naturalistic language can describe. “A mixture of solemn bookish with colloquial, with vernacular is formed. The syntactic forms of the former romantic style are preserved, but the phraseology and structure of symbols and comparisons sharply deviate from romantic semantics.” The romantic style of narration does not completely disappear from Gogol’s language; it is mixed with a new semantic system.

As for the national scientific language - a language that, according to Gogol, is intended to be universal, national-democratic, devoid of class limitations, the writer, as Vinogradov notes, was against abuse philosophical language. Gogol saw the peculiarity of the Russian scientific language in its adequacy, accuracy, brevity and objectivity, in the absence of the need to embellish it. Gogol saw the significance and strength of the Russian scientific language in the uniqueness of the very nature of the Russian language, writes Vinogradov, the writer believed that there was no language similar to Russian. Gogol saw the sources of the Russian scientific language in Church Slavonic, peasant and the language of folk poetry.

Gogol sought to include in his language the professional speech of not only the nobility, but also the bourgeois class. Attaching great importance to the peasant language, Gogol replenishes his vocabulary by writing down the names, terminology and phraseology of accessories and parts of peasant costume, equipment and household utensils peasant hut, arable farming, laundry, beekeeping, forestry and gardening, weaving, fishing, traditional medicine, that is, everything related to the peasant language and its dialects. The language of crafts and technical specialties was also interesting to the writer, notes Vinogradov, as was the language of noble life, hobbies and entertainment. Hunting, gambling, military dialects and jargon attracted Gogol's close attention.

Gogol especially closely observed the administrative language, its style and rhetoric, Vinogradov emphasizes.

IN oral speech Gogol was interested, first of all, in the vocabulary, phraseology and syntax of noble-peasant vernacular, colloquial urban intelligentsia and bureaucratic language, Vinogradov points out.

In the opinion of V. Vinogradov, Gogol's interest in the professional language and dialects of merchants is characteristic.

Gogol sought to find ways to reform the relationship between his contemporary literary language and the professional language of the church. He introduced church symbols and phraseology into literary speech, notes Vinogradov. Gogol believed that introducing elements of church language into literary language would bring life to the ossified and deceitful business and bureaucratic language. .

Composition

Gogol began his creative career as a romantic. However, he turned to critical realism and opened a new chapter in it. As a realist artist, Gogol developed under the noble influence of Pushkin, but was not a simple imitator of the founder of new Russian literature.

Gogol’s originality was that he was the first to give the broadest image of the district landowner-bureaucratic Russia and the “little man”, a resident of the corners of St. Petersburg.

Gogol was a brilliant satirist who castigated the “vulgarity of a vulgar man” and extremely exposed the social contradictions of contemporary Russian reality.

Gogol's social orientation is also reflected in the composition of his works. The plot and plot conflict in them are not love and family circumstances, but events of social significance. At the same time, the plot serves only as an excuse for a broad depiction of everyday life and the disclosure of character types.

Deep penetration into the essence of the main socio-economic phenomena of contemporary life allowed Gogol, a brilliant artist of words, to draw images of enormous generalizing power.

The purposes of a vivid satirical portrayal of the characters are served by Gogol’s careful selection of many details and their sharp exaggeration. For example, portraits of the heroes of “Dead Souls” were created. These details in Gogol are mainly everyday: things, clothes, homes of the heroes. If in Gogol’s romantic stories there are emphatically picturesque landscapes that give the work a certain uplifting tone, then in his realistic works, especially in “Dead Souls,” the landscape is one of the means of depicting types and characteristics of heroes. Subject matter, social orientation and ideological coverage of life phenomena and the characters of people determined the originality of Gogol’s literary speech. The two worlds depicted by the writer - the people's collective and the "existents" - determined the main features of the writer's speech: his speech is sometimes enthusiastic, imbued with lyricism, when he talks about the people, about the homeland (in "Evenings...", in "Taras Bulba ”, in the lyrical digressions of “Dead Souls”), then becomes close to live conversational (in everyday pictures and scenes of “Evenings...” or in stories about bureaucratic and landowner Russia).

The originality of Gogol's language lies in the wider use of common speech, dialectisms, and Ukrainianisms than that of his predecessors and contemporaries.

Gogol loved and had a keen sense of popular colloquial speech, skillfully using all its shades to characterize his heroes and phenomena of public life.

The character of a person, his social status, profession - all this is unusually clearly and accurately revealed in the speech of Gogol’s characters.

Gogol's strength as a stylist lies in his humor. In his articles about “Dead Souls,” Belinsky showed that Gogol’s humor “consists in the opposition of the ideal of life with the reality of life.” He wrote: “Humor is the most powerful weapon of the spirit of negation, destroying the old and preparing the new.”