Rasskazhite Nam Skazki: Gogol’s Use of Skaz, Ukrainian, and Narration in Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka I

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Adrian Ferguson

The Birch Journal, Spring 2024, pp. 56-264.

Scholars have offered different interpretations of the relationship between representations of Russian and Ukrainian nationalism in Gogol’s works, with some finding pro-imperial or anti-imperial elements and others finding both. For exam- ple, Edyta Bojanowska uses the histories of Russian and Ukrainian constructions of national identity and Gogol’s non-canonical texts to argue that Gogol engaged with both Russian and Ukrainian nationalist move- ments and that his anti-imperial sentiments can only be fully understood by examining his private and redacted writings in com- bination with his final published works. Similarly, Yuliya Ilchuk, in her book Nikolai Gogol: Performing Hybrid Identity, explores how Gogol exhibited his dual national identities, both intentionally and otherwise, through his writing and portrayal of himself. Conversely, Roman Koropeckyj andRobert Romanchuk argue that Gogol’s rep- resentations of both himself and of Ukraine in Evenings can be viewed in conversation with the practice of American blackface min- strelsy, seen partially through his alternat- ing identification with and distancing from Ukrainian identity.

By examining the arguments of Bojanowska, Ilchuk, Koropeckyj, and Romanchuk, I contend that Gogol’s presen- tation of his country and people subvert but nonetheless abet the contemporary imperial narrative. Gogol’s narrators, along with his word and language choices in the short sto- ries collected in Evenings I, portray Ukraine as an exotic, “other” part of the Russian empire— reducing Ukrainians and their ways of life to digestible entertainment for Russian consumption. This paper is not intended to be a comprehensive analysis of all the subversive or pro-imperial elements present within Evenings I or an exhaustive account of every aspect of Gogol’s complex system of embedded narrators. Instead, I examine several instances where Gogol’s narrative style and use of Ukrainian language lend to his portrayal of Ukraine as a rustic and supernatural land in ways that flatten the country’s complexity in favor of Russo-centric entertainment value. I draw on Koropeckyj and Romanchuk’s comparison of Gogol’s works to blackface, while still recognizing Bojakowska’s and Ilchuk’s understandings of Gogol’s underlying subversive and normative elements. Through this, I situate my own observations within recent attempts to interpret Gogol holistically while also recognizing that his pro-imperial messages often undermined the subversive ones. Bojanowska’s and Ilchuk’s multifaceted frameworks for reading Gogol contend that Koropeckyj and Romanchuk’s views are relevant and, yet not the whole picture.