Portale della cultura italiana

Nikolai Gogol had both a literary and a biographical connection with Italy, and with Rome in particular. Two hundred years after the birth of this great Russian writer (Gogol was born in 1809 and died in 1852), the importance of his work beyond the context of Russia’s literary history has been established and his writings are now considered as some of the greatest works of international literature of all time. For several years Gogol lived in Rome, in a series of stays staggered over a period from 1837 to 1848. In what was then the capital of the Church State he wrote what is considered to be his masterpiece, the novel Dead Souls. Italy was present from the outset in Gogol’s writings as a mythological point of reference: his poem Ode to Italy dates back to 1829, whilst the fragment Rome concludes the collection of short stories that includes The Nose and The Overcoat. A very large part of his correspondence is dedicated to Italy.