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Taras Bulba, et. al
Nikolai Gogol

Page 2 of 557

Russian literature, so full of enigmas, contains no greater creative
mystery than Nikolai Vasil'evich Gogol (1809-1852), who has done for
the Russian novel and Russian prose what Pushkin has done for Russian
poetry.  Before these two men came Russian literature can hardly have
been said to exist.  It was pompous and effete with pseudo-classicism;
foreign influences were strong; in the speech of the upper circles
there was an over-fondness for German, French, and English words.
Between them the two friends, by force of their great genius, cleared
away the debris which made for sterility and erected in their stead a
new structure out of living Russian words.  The spoken word, born of
the people, gave soul and wing to literature; only by coming to earth,
the native earth, was it enabled to soar.  Coming up from Little
Russia, the Ukraine, with Cossack blood in his veins, Gogol injected
his own healthy virus into an effete body, blew his own virile spirit,
the spirit of his race, into its nostrils, and gave the Russian novel
its direction to this very day. 

More than that.  The nomad and romantic in him, troubled and restless
with Ukrainian myth, legend, and song, impressed upon Russian
literature, faced with the realities of modern life, a spirit titanic

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