About the author:
Natalia L. Vinogradskaya, PhD in Philology, Senior Researcher, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 a, 121069 Moscow, Russia.
E-mail:
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9669-2061
Abstract:
Gogol’s letters to his schoolmate G.I. Vysotsky are of great importance for Gogol’s biography research. Three of them were written in 1827, when Gogol was in the 8th form of the Nizhyn gymnasium, and Vysotsky, who graduated in 1826, served in Ministry of Finance in St. Petersburg. The letters have already reflected the peculiarities of Gogol’s literary style. The history of the letters’ autographs can be traced by means of marks and stamps on them, as well as by publications and archival materials. Two letters (dated January 17 and June 26, 1827) were first published in 1854 by P.A. Kulish, who then handed over autographs to O.M. Bodyansky, whose archive was later partially acquired by A.A. Titov. After his death the letters were received by the State public library, from where in 1929 they were transferred to the Institute of Archeology of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and in 1955 they were transferred to the Institute of Literature of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, where they are kept now. A copy of Gogol’s third letter to Vysotsky (dated March 19, 1827), now in the Russian state archive of literature and art, was sent to Gogol’s biographer V.I. Shenrok from Nizhyn by I.I. Tsekhmistrenko in 1887. However, it was published for the first time not by Shenrock, but by S. Manukhin in the newspaper “Russian Courier” on May 9, 1888. In April 1890 the manuscript got into the library of the University of St. Vladimir in Kiev. The professor of the University P.V. Vladimirov published and commented on the text of the letter, indicated the addressee, gave a paleographic description in the work From Gogol’s school years... (1890). Now the autograph is kept in the Institute of Manuscripts of Nat. library of Ukraine.