Author: John Cournos

Nikolai Gogol was born in 1809 in the Ukrainian Cossack village of Sorochintsy. Seeking literary fame, he went to St. Petersburg at 18 to self-publish an epic poem; it was so ridiculed he fled the city. He eventually returned and began writing stories influenced by Ukrainian folklore. Collected as Evenings on a Farm Near Dilanka, they were an enormous success. New friends including Pushkin encouraged him, and in stories such as “The Overcoat” and “The Nose, ” and novels such as Dead Souls, he developed a bitter realism mixed with ironic humor and surprisingly prescient surrealism. In 1836, fearing he”d offended the tsar with his satirical play The Inspector General, Gogol left Russia for a twelve-year European hiatus. Upon returning he published an essay collection supporting the government he”d always criticized, and was so mercilessly attacked by former admirers he became despondent. Falling into a state of questionable sanity, he renounced writing as an immoral activity, and in 1852 burned his last manuscript, a sequel to Dead Souls, just days before dying of self-imposed starvation. John Cournos (1881-1966) was born in Russia and immigrated to the U.S. as a child. In addition to translating, he gained some renown as a poet.