Rome (Gogol, 1842)
Рим (Rim)
Také známý jako: Gogol, Rome de Gogol, Рим, notre Gogol, notre étoile humoristique
Overview
Rim ("Rome"), subtitled "a fragment", is an unfinished prose work by Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852), printed in the Moscow journal Moskvityanin, no. 3, 1842 (ru.wikisource). It grew out of an abandoned Italian novel, Annunziata, on which Gogol had worked in 1836-39; it was overshadowed by the first volume of Dead Souls, which came out at almost the same time. Its narrative is organized around the itinerary Rome-Paris-Rome, and its descriptions of the city were read as a prose hymn to Rome. (ru.wikisource; Milkova 2015, cited below.)
Marie and this work
Marie reads Gogol's Rome in Russian during her stay at Gavrontsi in the autumn of 1876, at the time when she is homesick for Italy.
- 9 November 1876 (067.0923-0924). "Et d'abord citons Gogol notre étoile humoristique." Her note (067.0924) says that "sa description de Rome m'a fait et pleurer et gémir et on ne peut en avoir une idée qu'en lisant. Demain ce sera traduit." The existing footnote 067.0923 calls the text Gogol's "novella Rome (1842)". No translated passage follows in the transcription.
- 10 November 1876 (067.0928). "J'ai bien passé une heure à traduire Gogol, mais cette photographie vivante de Rome m'excite trop pour que je puisse m'y appliquer. Le Rome de Mme de Staël paraît affectée et presque faible." She compares it with Corinne ou l'Italie.
- 24 May 1877, Naples (071.0438). Writing of the ecstasy Italy gives, which not even the wittiest mockery can touch, she says: "un de ces jours je vous donnerai une traduction de notre Gogol qui vous expliquera ce que je tâche de dire". The promised French translation of the passage is not otherwise preserved in the diary.
Notes
- The inventory also lists 066.0577 (1 October 1876); that paragraph speaks of Dikanka, the estate near Gavrontsi that Pushkin's Poltava made famous and that is the setting of Gogol's earlier Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka. It concerns a different work and is not a mention of Rome.
- Marie's French translation of the fragment, if it was ever made, is unknown; no published French version of the text was found in a quick search (the search turned up Spanish and Italian editions).
Sources
- ru.wikisource, "Рим (Гоголь)" (publication in Moskvityanin, no. 3, 1842, subtitle "Отрывок").
- Stiliana Milkova, "From Rome to Paris to Rome: Reversing the Grand Tour in Gogol's 'Rome'", Slavic and East European Journal 59.4 (2015), 493-516 (abstract read on Oberlin's repository; the genesis from Annunziata, 1836-39, and the reception after Dead Souls are from other studies surfaced in a web search and not read in full).
- Diary paragraphs as cited above.
The glossary has no earlier entry for this text.