Up the Dnepr: Discarding Icons and Debunking Ukrainian Cossack Myths in Gogol’s ‘Strashnaia mest’’

Abstract

Gogol’s ‘Strashnaja mest’’ is usually regarded as a grim tale of horror without a trace of humour. Focusing on two iconic passages – the would-be dramatic Cossack wedding scene with which the story opens and the description of the Dnepr that acts as a lyrical interlude half-way through – the present article aims to show that Strshnaia mest’; is a work of sustained narrative irony shot through with subtle and sophisticated humour. By allowing the narrator to be revealed as a foppish, neurotically squeamish individual who is both sentimentally romantic and obsessively religious, and by deploying an array of often intricate verbal devices, the author is able to continuously subvert the sinister, pathos-laden and myth-sustaining images of Ukrainian Cossack life and landscape the narrator aspires to create.