Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol lived for a long time in Rome between 1837 and 1846. In total, he spent about four and a half years in Rome, returning to Rome nine times. I suggest you choose in the comments your favorite quote by Nikolai Vasilievich:
- “Moreover, in my very nature my ability is only to imagine the world alive when I retired from it. That's why I can write about Russia only in Rome. Only there she will appear to me all, in all her bulk. And here I died and mixed in a row with others. There is no open horizon before me. Moreover, here, apart from external causes that could confuse me, I feel a physical obstacle to writing. ... In Rome, I wrote in front of an open window, entwined with beneficial and miraculous air for me. But you yourself in your soul can feel how much I can sometimes suffer at a time when my suffering is not visible to anyone. ”
Letter to Pletnev from Moscow on March 17, 1842 - “Come someday, even at the end of the sunset, to Rome, to my grave, if you do not already become alive.” God what land! what a land of miracles! and how fresh it is to the soul! ”
Letter to M.A. Maksimovich on January 22, 1840 - “If only you knew with what joy I threw Switzerland and flew into my darling, to my beautiful Italy. She is mine! No one in the world will take it from me! I was born here. - Russia, Petersburg, snow, scoundrels, department, department, theater - all this I dreamed about. I woke up again at home and regretted only that the poetic part of this dream ... "
Letter to Zhukovsky on October 30, 1837 - “Everything gets in here together. An amazing liberty, from which you would truly be delighted ”
Letter to Danilevsky on February 8, 1838 about the Roman carnival, at which Gogol appeared for the first time in his life - “I do not know if I wrote to you about churches in Rome. They are very rich. We don’t have such churches at all. Inside, all marble is of different colors; whole columns of porphyry, of blue, of yellow stone. Painting, architecture - all this is amazing. But you still don’t know anything. ”
Letter to the sisters in October 1838 - “Speaking of forest terraces (foreigner traveler, author's note). All winter, a wonderful, amazing winter, a hundred times better than the summer of St. Petersburg, all this winter, to my great happiness, I did not see the forest; but now suddenly a bunch of them came running towards Easter, and between them a whole group of Russians. What an unbearable people! He came and is angry that in Rome there are unclean streets, there are no absolutely entertainments, there are a lot of monks, and repeats the phrases confirmed by the calendars and old almanacs back in the last century that the Italians are scoundrels, deceivers and so on. and so on. And as he carries the barracks from them, it’s just that there is no urine. However, they are punished for the stupidity of their souls by the fact that they are not able to enjoy, fall in love with their feelings and thoughts in the beautiful and high, not in the power to recognize Italy.» Letter to Balabina in April 1838
- “How many English do you have in Pisa, there are so many Russians in Rome. All of them, as usual, are very scolding Rome because there are no hotels and shops, such as in Paris, and the cardinals don’t give balls ”
Letter to Barbara Repnina in January 1839 - “Everything gets in here together. An amazing liberty from which you would truly be delighted ”.
Letter to A.C. Danilevsky on February 2, 1838 - “Have you met the transteverians (as Gogol calls the residents of the Trastevere district, author's note), that is, residents on the other side of the Tiber, who are so proud of their pure Roman origin. They alone consider themselves true Romans. Never has a transtverian married a foreigner (and everyone who is not in their city is called a foreigner), and never a transtverian married a foreigner. Have you ever heard their language and have you read their famous poem Il meo Patacca, for which Pinelli made drawings? But you really didn’t happen to read the sonnets of the current Roman poet Belli, which, however, you need to hear when he reads. In them, in these sonnets, there is so much salt and so much sharpness, completely unexpected, and so truly reflects the life of the present transteverians in them that you will laugh, and this heavy cloud, which often flies on your head, will fly away along with the bothersome and intolerable your headache. ”
Letter to Balabina in April 1838 - “But Rome, our wonderful Rome, a paradise in which, I think, and you live mentally in the best moments of your thoughts, this Rome carried me away and bewitched me. I can’t and only get out of it. ”
Letter to A.C. Danilevsky on June 30, 1838 - “... bright, with a lively soul I will go to my promised paradise, to my Romewhere I wake up again and finish my work (Dead souls, author's note)«
A letter from Moscow in January 1840 to Zhukovsky. - “If you only knew how painful my existence is here, in my own country! I can’t wait and wait for the spring and the time to go to my Rome, to my paradisewhere I will feel again the freshness and strength cooling off here ”
A letter from Moscow in January 1840 to M.A. Maksimovich - «Fall in love with Rome very slowly, little by little - and for life. In a word, all of Europe is in order to watch, and Italy is in order to live. It is said by all those who stayed here to live. ”
Letter to A.C. Danilevsky March 15, 1838 - «I miss you terribly without Rome. There only I was completely calm, healthy and could indulge in my studies ”
Letter from Geneva on September 19, 1837 to N.Ya. Prokopovich - “What a land of Italy! In no way can you imagine her. Oh, if you only looked at this blinding sky, all drowning in radiance! Everything is beautiful under this sky; whatever the wreck, the picture; a man has some kind of sparkling coloring; the structure, the tree, the work of nature, the work of art - everything seems to breathe and speak under this sky ”
Letter November 2, 1837 to Pletnev - «And when I finally saw Rome for the second time, oh, how it seemed to me better than before! It seemed to me as if I had seen my homeland, in which I had not been for several years, and in which only my thoughts lived. But no, this is not something, not their homeland, but I saw the homeland of my soul, where my soul lived before me, before I was born into the world. Again the same sky, now all silver, dressed in some kind of satin sparkle, then blue, as it likes to appear through the arches of the Coliseum (meaning Colosseum, author's note). Again, the same cypresses - these green obelisks, the tops of domed pines, which sometimes seem to float in the air. The same clean air, the same clear distance. The same eternal dome, so majestically circling in the air. ”
Letter in April 1838 to Balabina
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