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Аbstract:

The article is devoted to four unstudied and unpublished autographs of Gogol with extracts from the Psalter of the first half of the 1840s. One of the autographs was intended by Gogol for A.O. Smirnova; Gogol advised her to learn the psalms by heart. The manuscript is stored in the Manuscript Department of the Pushkin House; published in this edition for the first time. Three other autographs are associated with Gogol’s desire for an in-depth study of sacred poetry. The largest volume is made up of extracts made by Gogol based on a new translation of the Psalter by His Grace Ambrose (Zertis-Kamensky), one of the builders of the Moscow Novodevichy Convent. The translation was made by Vladyka in 1770 and was in circulation as a manuscript; it was first published only in 1878. Gogol’s autograph is stored in the Gogol fund of the Russian State Library; also published for the first time. In addition, two more Gogol’s autographs with extracts from the Psalter, in Greek and Latin, located in the same manuscript fund, are described. It is emphasized that along with the traditional attitude to the Psalter as the main book of prayer communication, Gogol, as an artist, treated the psalms in a special way. A direct connection is established between his reflections on the book of Holy Prophet-King David and ideas about the future of Russian poetry, set out in Gogol’s private letters to his friend, the poet N.M. Yazykov in 1844 and in two epistolary articles addressed to him in the same year, published in “Selected Places from Correspondence with Friends” under the general title “Subjects for a Lyric Poet at the Present Time.”

Keywords: Nikolai Gogol, Biography, Creativity, Psalter, Sacred Poetry, Russian Poetry, Spiritual Heritage.