9 Gogol’s “Mistakes”

1. Dead Souls: Watermelons in Central Russia?

Waking up at Korobochka’s house, Chichikov looks out the window and observes her yard:

“There was no end to the turkeys and chickens; a rooster strutted among them with a measured stride, shaking its comb and turning its head sideways, as if listening to something; a sow with her family was there as well; there, raking through a pile of rubbish, she ate a chicken in passing and, without noticing it, continued to devour watermelon rinds in her usual manner.”

The action of the first volume of Dead Souls takes place in Central Russia, where watermelon rinds would not naturally be found right in the middle of a yard. Scholars note that the “watermelon rinds came from the yard of a Ukrainian manor. In Gogol’s imagination, brought from his distant childhood, these rinds are such an indispensable accessory of a country house that he transfers them to the yard of a Great Russian estate.”

2. The Nose: What was Staff-Officer’s Wife Podtochina’s name?

Major Kovalev, the protagonist of The Nose, often visits the staff-officer’s wife Podtochina. When preparing to place an advertisement for his missing nose, Kovalev names her:

“I have many acquaintances: Chekhtareva, the Collegiate Councillor’s wife, Palageya Grigoryevna Podtochina, the staff-officer’s wife…”

Later, suspecting the lady’s involvement in the disappearance of his nose, the protagonist writes her a letter beginning: “Gracious Sovereign Alexandra Grigoryevna!” The reply he receives is signed with the same name: “Alexandra Podtochina.” It is likely that the two different first names for the same character are an oversight due to inattentiveness.

3. Viy: What Years Does the Action Take Place?

Viy begins:

“As soon as the rather resonant seminary bell, hanging by the gate of the Brotherhood Monastery, struck in Kyiv in the morning, students and seminarians rushed in crowds from all over the city. Grammarians, rhetors, philosophers, and theologians, with notebooks under their arms, trudged to class.”

The Kyiv Seminary was founded in 1817, suggesting the setting is the late 1810s to 1820s. However, a later detail points to a completely different era:

“Meanwhile, rumors spread everywhere that the daughter of one of the richest Sotniks, whose farmstead was fifty versts from Kyiv, had returned from a walk one day beaten all over, barely having the strength to reach her father’s house, was on her deathbed, and before her final hour expressed the wish that the funeral prayers and prayers for three days after her death be read by one of the Kyiv seminarians: Khoma Brut.”

The detail is the rank of the deceased girl’s father: Sotniks (a military and administrative rank) existed in Ukraine only until 1782 and were then abolished. Thus, the Kyiv exposition of Viy, which sets the time reference for the entire narrative, and the chapters taking place at the Sotnik’s farmstead cannot coincide in the same historical period.

4. Viy: Where is the Sotnik’s Farmstead Located?

When the seminarian Khoma Brut first arrives, the farmstead is described as being on a wide, flat ledge of a mountain:

“From the north, everything was hidden by a steep mountain, and its base ended right at the courtyard. Looking up at it from below, it seemed even steeper… The philosopher stood on the highest spot in the courtyard, and when he turned and looked in the opposite direction, a completely different view presented itself. The village, along with the slope, rolled onto the plain. Boundless meadows opened up for a long distance…”

However, two nights later, when the frightened Khoma decides to flee, the terrain has changed:

“Beyond the wattle fence, which served as the garden’s boundary, was a whole forest of weeds… The philosopher slipped into the weeds and started running, constantly stumbling over old roots and crushing moles under his feet. He saw that, having got out of the weeds, he just needed to run across a field, beyond which a thick black thorn thicket loomed, where he considered himself safe and, having passed through it, he thought he would meet the road directly to Kyiv. He suddenly ran across the field and found himself in the thick blackthorn. He squeezed through the thorn, leaving pieces of his coat on every sharp thorn as payment, and found himself in a small ravine.”

The topography of the area seems to change completely in two days. This inconsistency is typical for Gogol. Literary scholars like Yuri Lotman noted that Gogol’s poetics juxtapose “time the same as ours” and “time different from ours,” as well as “everyday” and “cosmic” space. This allows such “lapses” to appear organically in the text and be accepted by readers.

5. Viy: When Did the Witch Die?

The Sotnik’s daughter is a witch controlled by an evil force. However, this hardly explains the discrepancy in the timing of her death. Initially, the events suggest a long period between the girl’s dying request and her death: the rumor that she sent for Khoma Brut reaches all of Kyiv, and the men sent for Khoma spend a long time drinking with him at a tavern. She dies only after Khoma arrives at the farmstead:

“Only in the evening did the whole company remember that they had to continue on their way… They drove on, urging their horses and singing a song whose words and meaning hardly anyone could make out. Having travelled more than half the night, constantly straying from the road they knew by heart, they finally descended from a steep mountain into a valley… It was already far past midnight; the heavens were dark, and small stars flickered here and there. Not a single hut showed a light. … When the philosopher woke up, the whole house was in commotion: the young lady had died in the night.”

Yet, later, the distraught father describes his daughter’s sudden death, which happened almost mid-sentence:

“‘Don’t let anyone read over me, but send this very hour to the Kyiv Seminary, and bring the seminarian Khoma Brut. Let him pray for my sinful soul for three nights. He knows…’ And what he knows, I did not hear. She, my darling, could only say that, and died.”

Thus, on one hand, rumors of the young lady’s dying wish manage to reach Kyiv at least a day before her death, but then it turns out she died immediately after uttering it.

6. Viy: What is the Role of Gnomes?

Gogol writes in a comment on the story:

“Viy is a colossal creation of popular imagination. This is the name given by the Little Russians to the chief of the gnomes, whose eyelids reach down to the ground. This whole story is a popular legend. I did not want to change anything in it and recount it in almost the same simplicity as I heard it.”

Gnomes are mentioned in the text: “A rooster’s crow sounded. This was the second crow; the gnomes had overheard the first.” However, there are no gnomes in Ukrainian folklore, to which Gogol appeals as the source of the plot. This is not the only instance where Gogol casually mentions gnomes in the context of his Ukrainian tales. In Sorochinsky Fair, the narrator compares gypsies to gnomes.

The mixing of this literary mythological tradition (gnomes, sylphs, salamanders came from German Romantic literature) with Ukrainian folklore may be irony, a mystification (no one has found the folklore plot about “Viy” to which Gogol refers), a deliberate tribute to literary fashion, or an unintentional error influenced by that fashion.

7. A Terrible Vengeance: Why is Right Where Left Should Be?

At the end of A Terrible Vengeance, a miracle is described: suddenly, many places become visible from Kyiv:

“…Suddenly, it became visible far to all ends of the world. In the distance, the Liman turned blue; beyond the Liman, the Black Sea spread. Experienced people recognized Crimea, rising like a mountain from the sea, and the swampy Syvash. To the left was visible the Galician land.”

If Crimea is visible from Kyiv, the viewers are facing south. Therefore, the Galician land (which is now partly in Western Ukraine and partly in Poland) should be to the right, not the left. However, this geographical error may be intentional: for the Russian medieval consciousness, the west was the devilish, inverted, “left” space.

8. The Lost Letter: How to Get to St. Petersburg from Baturin?

The protagonist of the story travels from the Ukrainian city of Baturin to St. Petersburg:

“The next day, before the rooster crowed for the fourth time, the grandfather was already in Konotop.”

A contemporary critic noted the geographical absurdity: “One only needs to look at the postal map, and anyone will see that the messenger to the Tsarina did not even know the road from Baturin to the north: for the evil one carried him to Konotop, which lies 30 versts backwards.”

Gogol was likely drawn to the town’s name, which echoes the story’s plot. In Konotop, the protagonist befriends a Zaporozhian Cossack who has sold his soul to the devil. The Cossack asks him not to sleep one night, as the devil will come for him. The protagonist falls asleep and wakes up to find neither the Cossack, his hat (in which the Hetman’s charter was sewn), nor his horse. Later, the evil spirits return only the horse’s bones. The town’s name, where the fantastical part of the plot begins, is thus rhymed with demonic, “swamp” motifs and the motif of losing the horse, and geographical accuracy was seemingly sacrificed for these evocative connections.

9. Dead Souls: Where Did Chichikov Meet Nozdryov?

Dead Souls begins with Chichikov entering the city of NN and settling into an inn. Chichikov quickly meets all the significant city officials and several landowners. At the Chief of Police’s dinner, Chichikov first meets Nozdryov:

“…Chichikov went to the Chief of Police’s for dinner and an evening, where they sat down to whist at three o’clock after dinner and played until two in the morning. There, among others, he made the acquaintance of the landowner Nozdryov…”

Later, during his journey, Chichikov stops to eat at a tavern and encounters Nozdryov again. The circumstances of their first meeting are described somewhat differently:

“Chichikov recognized Nozdryov, the very same with whom he had dined at the Public Prosecutor’s and who had, in a few minutes, become so familiar with him that he already began to use the informal ‘thou’…”

Chichikov visited and charmed all the significant city officials, dining with all of them—it is plausible that even the author began to forget where Pavel Ivanovich met whom.

Sources

Vaiskopf M. The Poetics of Gogol’s Petersburg Tales. In: Vaiskopf M. The Troika-Bird and the Chariot of the Soul. Moscow, 2003.

Vaiskopf M. Gogol’s Plot. Moscow, 2002.

Danilov V. V. Ukrainian Reminiscences in Gogol’s “Dead Souls”. Nizhyn State Pedagogical Institute named after M. V. Gogol. Naukovi zapiski (Scientific Notes). Vol. 1. Chernihiv, 1940.

Gogol N. V. Complete Collected Works. In 14 vols. Vol. 2. Commentary. Moscow — Leningrad, 1937.

Gogol N. V. Complete Collected Works and Letters. In 23 vols. Vol. 1. Commentary. Moscow, 2003.

Gogol N. V. Complete Collected Works and Letters. In 23 vols. Vol. 7. Book 2. Commentary. Moscow, 2012.

Lotman Yu. M. Artistic Space in Gogol’s Prose. In: Lotman Yu. M. In the School of Poetic Word: Pushkin. Lermontov. Gogol. Pp. 251–292. Moscow, 1988.

Lotman Yu. M., Uspensky B. A. The Role of Dual Models in the Dynamics of Russian Culture. Trudy po russkoi i slavyanskoi filologii (Works on Russian and Slavic Philology). XXVIII: Literary Studies. Pp. 3–36. Tartu, 1977.