“The most essential horrors revealed by Gogol are not of Russia, but of the soul...”

Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol (1809-1852) is one of the most important figures of Russian literature, initiating a prose tradition that influenced everyone who came after him. In this lecture from the Pushkin House salon at its old home in Ladbroke Grove, preeminent writer and critic Victor Erlich elucidates with characteristic wit and incision the elements of Gogol’s metaphors and plots which draw on the grotesque. In these surreal and bizarre images, Gogol reveals truths about our world and our selves which are always strikingly compelling.

This talk and discussion was recorded at some point between 1963 and 1968 — we know this to be the case as Erlich is mentioned as chair of the Yale department of Slavic languages and literature, a post he held between those dates — and likely near the end of that period, as his book Gogol (1969) is mentioned as upcoming. Erlich speaks about all of Gogol’s main works, including the Ukrainian Tales, the Petersburg Tales — Nevsky Prospect, The Nose and The Overcoat; Taras Bulba, Diary of a Madman, and his final controversial masterpiece, Dead Souls.

This episode was catalogued and digitised by Anastasia Koro and Andrey Levitskiy, and was edited and produced for Pushkin House by Rafy Hay.