Who Is Mikola Gogol? Posted by josefina on Apr 12, 2008 in Culture, History, language, News
This morning, while browsing through the main page of www.izvestia.ru for some appropriate piece of Russian news to comment on here, I came across this fascinating headline: «Микола Гоголь – нарезка в семи томах: украинские переводчики отредактировали и подправили “пророссийскую” повесть Гоголя “Тарас Бульба”» [Mikola Gogol – a slicing in seven volumes: Ukrainian translators edited and fixed up Gogol’s “pro-Russian” story “Taras Bul’ba”]. My first question was, naturally, who is this Mikola? A brother of the famous Nikolaj (remember the last post on the ‘Russian Nose’) perhaps? Or another relative, maybe not even in any way related to the great Ukrainian born writer? But then it hit me that “Taras Bul’ba” is written by Nikolaj Gogol, that I know this for a fact and have known it for quite some time. While continuing to read the article, it was explained to me that Mikola is the Ukrainian version of Nikolaj. Here’s the beginning of the article:
«К 200-летию со дня рождения Гоголя на Украине выпустят юбилейное собрание его сочинений в семи томах. В переводе на украинский». [For the 200th year anniversary since the birth of Gogol in Ukraine a collection of his works in seven volumes will be published.] «Русский текст повести для школьной программы не годится: что ни слово, то “русские”, что ни воин – то за “Русь” биться готов». [The Russian text of the story is not fit for the school program: every word has something to do with “Russian” and every soldier is ready to fight for “Rus’”.] «Ясно, что писатель заблуждался, ведь не довелось ему встретиться ни с Ющенко, ни с Тимошенко, ни с другими достойнейшими людьми». [Clearly the writer got lost, well he never got the chance to meet with Yushchenko, or Timoshenko, or with any other of the most worthy people.] «А раз так – не грех классика и поправить. Переводчики заменили противные патриотическому (и политическому) духу слова на “Украина”, “казацкий” и “наш”». [And if that’s the way it is – then it’s no sin to fix up the classic writer. The translators changed the words that go against the patriotic (and politic) spirit into “Ukraine” and “Cossack” and “our”.]
The rest of the article contains more information about this, as well as comparison between the changes made by the Ukrainian translators and the original Russia version. Though by some Gogol is considered a Ukrainian writer, since he was born in Ukraine, he did write his works in Russian and is in Russia considered a Russian writer. Myself I consider him more of a world writer, since his works, such as “Dead Souls” for example, clearly do not only belong to Russian or Ukrainian literature, but to world literature. The article is rather long, but interesting – the reporter asked a couple of famous Russians to guess the meaning of some Ukrainian proverbs. I’ve heard that to most Russians Ukrainian sounds funny, though they can understand it, and I’ve always imagined the situation being similar to the one between Swedish and Norwegian. And secretly I dream of spending a year in Odessa learning Ukrainian, where the smell of the Black Sea is sweet, the winds are soft and you can tone your thighs by walking up and down the Potemkin stairs…
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Comments:
A.:
Ukrainians would also write “Hogol”
John Baker:
Josefina,
Now that your “secret” is out, surely you must know that while Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarussian beling to the same “Russian” Culture, there are some fine but important distinctions that set them apart. The Kievan Rus’ are the Font and Root of Russian culture, and it is reported that they had help and influence from Scandiavian lands.
The leaders of Kievan Rus’, the present day Ukrainians, forfeited their political strength by murdering each other until there was no one strong enough to prevent unwanted intervention from the Muscovy, their cousins. After that Moscow was the center of Russian culture and power and they have alway treated their Mother with great disrespect if not oppression. Russians look at Ukrainians with suspicion because they love the Fredom best expressed by the Cossack Tradition. To Russians anyone who wants to be Free must be “Crazy,” and that is only one way they view Ukrainians. To an American the difference might be expressed as between the “Native tongues” of Massachusetts and Texas, except the spellings are the same. Keep up the good work, I enjoy your blog.
Alexander (Andreyewsky):
In one of his 1840’s letters from Koenigsberg
(citing from memory) Gogol wrote to his
mother in jest (?) that from this day on
he will write her in a “foreign” language – i.e,Russian. Nikolay / Mykola wrote mostly
about what is now considered Ukrainian lore
at a time when Ukranian was generally thought
to be a “dialect” of Russian. As Weinreich, a famous scholar of Yiddish, once said, a
laguage is a dialect that has an army and a navy. Some 150 years later Gogol’s “dialect” has become a language. and different norms apply? Some Mozart’s operas sound great in
German and Italian as does Smetena’s “Batrered Bride” soung great in German or Czech. Gogol,
is above all, a “poet” in prose as every schoolbay used to be able to recite his decriprion of the Dnieper (Chuden Dnepr…).
It seems that Gogol will survive as a classic
in either Russian or Ukrainian?