Unknown lines in Nikolai Gogol’s notebook

Abstract

There is an unknown note by Nikolai Gogol in his pocket notebook. The reasons why it has remained unpublished for a long time are thoroughly highlighted. What is listed are similar – numerous – Nikolai Gogol’s texts of religious content, which also used to be inaccessible to the Soviet reader for a long time for ideological reasons. In the ninth volume of the academic Nikolai Gogol's Complete Works of 1937–1952, where a notebook was printed for the first time from an autograph, only one line in the notes was devoted to a note which had been entitled “To pray” by Nikolai Gogol himself. In addition to the title, the laconic information provided by the volume commentator Georgiy Fridlender, the content of Nikolai Gogol's recording was not disclosed in any way. In turn, the error made by the same commentator in the dating of the note is corrected. The data are given in favour of the fact that the record was made not in 1846, as the researcher believed, but three years earlier, in the summer of 1843. The connection of the 1843 note with the final religious-patriotic book of Nikolai Gogol "Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends" 1846, as well as the invariability of the political views of the writer.