A look at the composition of Little Russia is a historical article by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol , written in 1833 - 1834 . First published in the Journal of the Ministry of Public Education, 1834, No. 4 (under the title "Excerpt from the History of Little Russia. Volume I, Book I, Chapter I"). Entered the Arabesque collection (1835).
This article was supposed to precede the historical work of Gogol "History of Little Russia", unknown to this day. Gogol’s biographers could not find manuscripts or any materials indicating that the “History of Little Russia” was written at all [1] .
In a letter to Mikhail Maksimovich on November 9, 1833, Gogol wrote about his work: “Now I set about the history of our only poor Ukraine . Nothing calms so much as history . My thoughts begin to flow quieter and slimmer. It seems to me that I will write it, that I will say a lot of things that were not told to me ” [2] .
On January 30, 1834, Gogol placed an “Announcement on the publication of the history of Little Russia” in the Northern Bee , asking him to send him materials on the history of Ukraine for the great work he had begun. However, by early March 1834 (despite the fact that in a letter to M. A. Maksimovich on February 12, Gogol promised to write the entire “History of Little Russia” “from beginning to end”, “in six small or four large volumes”) Gogol began to gradually cool to the work begun. On March 6, 1834, Gogol wrote about the reasons for his cooling down to Izmail Sreznevsky , who expressed a desire to help with the materials: “I cooled off to our chronicles, in vain trying to find what I would like to find in them. Nowhere is anything about that time, which should have been richer than all events. A nation whose whole life consisted of movements, which involuntarily (even if it were completely non-existent by nature), neighbors, the situation of the earth, the danger of being brought to action and exploits, this nation ... I am dissatisfied with Polish historians, they say very little about these exploits ... And that’s why every sound of the song tells me more lively about the leaked, than our languid and short chronicles ” [2] .
Quotes
| This cluster gradually got completely one general character and nationality, and the closer to the end of the 15th century, the more it increased that came again. Finally, entire villages and villages began to settle with houses and families near this formidable stronghold in order to use its protection, subject to certain duties. And so the places near Kiev began to empty, and meanwhile, on the other side of the Dnieper became crowded. Family and married little by little from the treatment and relationship with them received the same warlike character. The saber and the plow became friends among themselves and were with every peasant. Meanwhile, rampant bachelors, along with chervonets, guilds and horses, began to abduct Tatar wives and daughters and marry them. From this confusion their facial features, at first diverse, got one general physiognomy, more Asian. And so a nation was formed that, by faith and place of residence, belonged to Europe, but meanwhile, in terms of lifestyle, customs, and costume, it was completely Asian, a people in which two opposing parts of the world so oddly encountered, two different elements: European caution and Asian carelessness, simple-mindedness and cunning, strong activity and the greatest laziness and bliss, the desire for development and improvement - and yet the desire to seem to neglect any improvement. |