Information about the author:

Abstract:

This article examines literary quotations, parallels and allusions in Gogol’s early letters to his school friend A. Danilevsky. These letters discuss Danilevsky’s passion for the 16-year-old beauty Emilia Klingenberg, whom he met in the Caucasus. In one letter, Gogol quotes the words of the student Sinechdokhos, a character from Y. Knyazhnin’s comedy “The Unsuccessful Peacemaker” who falls in love with a maid. This play was staged by the students of the Nizhyn Gymnasium at the school theatre. Gogol and Danilevsky may well have taken part in this production. In another letter, Gogol quotes Pushkin’s epigram on R. Dorokhov — a brave officer, rake and bretteur, whom Danilevsky could have met in the Caucasus. This was no doubt an allusion to Danilevsky’s Caucasian romance, military past, and some of the other features of the brave cavalryman described in the epigram. Talking about different types of love, Gogol also resorts to literary analogies. These literary references and quotations in Gogol’s letters to Danilevsky show that literature in its different forms was a key part of the cultural environment in which Gogol grew up and developed.