10/11/2021
One of my favorite authors is Mykola V. Gogol, who talentedly sang about Ukraine-Little Russia in his time. And language is just a tool, the main thing is the content itself)
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Gogol loved Ukraine and Kiev as well.
His powerful voice induced the whole Europe to worship Ukraine and this baton was taken over by Mikhail Kotsyubinsky, whose works have been translated into many languages of the world.
Gogol went to Petkrburg for work after the Nizhynska Academy, and after eating bread from Petersburg, he was so excited to hear about the possibility of holding a chair at the newly opened St. Volodymyr's University in Kiev.
His words - "There, there! To Kiev! To ancient, beautiful Kiev! It's ours, it's not theirs, isn't it? There, or around it, the deeds of our antiquity were done... Yes, it will be glorious, if you and I take the cathedrals of Kiev. Much good could be done. And a new life in the midst of such a good land! There we can be renewed with all our strength. Isn't that a little?" - So he wrote in the spring of 1833 to his fellow countryman Mikhail Maksimovich, Ukrainian ethnographer, folklorist, historian and botanist, in the future - professor and first rector of the University of Kiev.
Gogol even has a prayer list for the new year 1834:
"Mysterious and inexplicable 1834! In my beautiful ancient promised Kyiv, crowned with multitudinous gardens, surrounded by my southern, beautiful wondrous sky ... I will mark you with great labors...?"
And here is what he wrote to Oleksandrivi Pushkin: "I admire in advance, when I imagine how my labors will boil over in Kiev. There I will unload many things, of which I have not yet read all to you. There I will finish the history of Ukraine and the south of Russia and write a general history.
It was not a trial. In spite of the complaints of influential friends (at that time Gogol was already a well-known young man from Ukraine, author of Vechory, publications on history) - he was refused by the Department of General History of the University of Kiev. The owners may have wondered: who knows what this patriot of Ukraine, a connoisseur of its glorious past, its heroic songs could find there.
However, if Mikhail Maksimovich's hobby was a success - in spring 1834 he was appointed professor of Russian literature at the University of Kiev - then instead of Gogol V. Tsikh was appointed to the chair of general philosophy. And instead of the disgraced Kiev Gogol was forced to wait for the position of associate professor at the chair of general history of the University of St. Petersburg.
Rome in Italy was destined to become for Gogol the motherland of his soul, good writing and the birth of world literary masterpieces "Dead Souls" and "Taras Bulba".
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Extract from the book "Signor Nicolo and Signor Michelangelo. Gogol's Rome and Capri Kotsyubinsky. - Author Oleksandr Balabko - 2006 year.
Your sister on the pillow,
Olena Klimova
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