Gogol’s Religious Views in His Book
“Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends”
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol (April 1, 1809–February 21, 1852). Artist V. Savenkov. Oil on canvas. Reproduction/RIA “Novosti”
Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was published on December 31, 1846. The author of this truly Christian book was a deeply religious man, a religious thinker and a publicist who authored several prayers. In his work, Gogol preached repentance and reconciliation between people of different worldviews. This book reflected Gogol’s concern for the fate of the people and the historical future of Russia. In his publicist collection, the great Russian writer came forward carrying the banner of Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality—the three pillars that upheld the Russian state.
In his letters to friends, N.V. Gogol offers practical advice of various kinds. Thus, A.O. Smirnova-Rosset, the wife of the Governor of Kaluga and an old friend from his days in St. Petersburg, was advised to learn in greater detail about the life of the provincial city to which her fate has delivered her, as well as the way of life of local government officials and their wives, and also suggests that she engage in charitable activities. To a newly minted landowner he advises to get closer to his peasants who, by the will of God, found themselves under his authority; and so on. His advice focuses on finding ways to use one’s God-given talents and circumstances so that everyone in their respective places can serve the common good. As he hands out worldly advice to his friends, he cites the Holy Scripture like a true Christian, considering it to be the true and faithful guide in every endeavor, be it charitable work or the creation of a literary work.
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol at work in his study. Artist: Vasily Volkov
In the preface, N.V. Gogol complains about his illness (in the spring of 1845 he had a bout of “nervous disorder”, or depression) and adds that he felt so bad that he even made a will in which he wrote:
“Compatriots! I loved you—I loved you with inexpressible love, the one I received from God, for which I thank Him as for the best blessing, because this love brought joy and comfort to me in the midst of the gravest of sufferings… The heavenly grace of God turned the hand of death away from me.”
This powerful bout of illness contributed to his spiritual rebirth as it made him see his past life and work in a different light
Gogol believes that the illness he had endured contributed to his spiritual rebirth and made him evaluate his past life and work in a different light. It became a major turning point in his life. The Church teaches us that sometimes the Lord sends afflictions to edify us, because illness truly gives a man the chance to get away from the vanity of this world, to analyze how one spent his life, and see the mistakes of the past; illness is a lesson in humility.
“Oh, how much we need our infirmities! Of the many benefits I have already derived from them, I’ll point out just one for you: Whoever I am now, I’m still a better man than I was before… I cannot find words to thank our Providential God enough for my illness,” Gogol writes.
After recovery, his religious feeling grew more intense.
In Gogol’s time, the Russian Church was being attacked by Western clergy who accused our Church of lifelessness. “They told lies, because our Church is life,” Gogol wrote. In his opinion, the Russian Orthodox clergy, with “dignified calm,” is preparing to give a worthy response to such attacks.
“I know full well that in the depths of the monasteries and in the silence of the cells, the compelling writings in defense of our Church are currently in the making… They take their time and, knowing what is required of such matter, they do their work with deep calm, in prayer and self-edification, driving out of their soul anything that is passionate, that resembles an ill timed, delirious fever, elevating their soul to the height of heavenly dispassion it was designed to have—all in order to be in a position to talk about such a subject…”
Based on some of the Gogol’s statements, it becomes obvious that already at the end of the first half of the nineteenth century, religion ceased to be a priority for the “enlightened” Russian society.
“The society (privileged circles—M.T.) is unable to meet directly with Christ. It is far removed from the heavenly truths of Christianity. It is frightened of them.”
After that, he continues with inspirational verses about the Orthodox Church:
“We possess a treasure that is priceless… Like a chaste virgin, this Church alone has been preserved without blemish in its original purity from the times of the Apostles. This Church alone, with its profound dogmas and even its slightest external rites, as if has descended directly from heaven for the Russian people, and She alone is capable of solving all of our points of confusion and answering all our questions. She alone can work an unheard-of miracle in the sight of all Europe, forcing every class, rank, and position in our country to enter their lawful bounds and limits, and, without changing anything in the state, enable Russia to astonish the whole world with the harmonious orderliness of the same system that up till now has frightened everyone—this is the Church that we fail to know!.. With our lives we must defend our Church, which is Life; with the fragrance of our souls we must proclaim its truth.”
The author of Selected Passages… speaks of the Church as the propitiator of all things in Russia
Gogol discusses this further in his letter to V.A. Zhukovsky, where the author of Selected Passages… speaks of the Church as the propitiator of all things in Russia.
“It is now preparing to come into its own and shine its light over the whole earth. It contains everything that is necessary for a truly Russian life through and through, from the affairs of the state to simple familial relations, giving energy and direction, and a lawful and true way to everything. For me, even any suggestion to introduce a new practice in Russia while bypassing our Church and without asking for Her blessing, is insane. It is absurd to implant European ideas even in our thoughts, until such time as She blesses them with the light of Christ.”
Pyotr Geller. Nikolai Gogol and Vasily Zhukovsky visit Alexander Pushkin in Tsarskoye Selo (fragment). 1910. Image: pouchkin.com
The society of the time voiced criticisms towards the clergy for their withdrawal from public and political issues and that the government limited their participation in public life. In his “Letter to Ct. A. P. T…” Gogol expresses his opinion on this issue: our priests are not to be a part of meetings and “promenades,” as
“The clergy are facing many temptations, even many more than us… Our clergy have two legitimate spheres where they meet us: Confession and sermons… It is good that they differ from us even in their clothing. Their garments are beautiful and dignified. This makes sense: they are made in the image and likeness of the garments worn by the Savior Himself. It is necessary that even by wearing those very clothes they should carry with them an eternal reminder of Him Whose image they are to present to us, so that even for a moment they don’t forget and lose it among the gaiety and vain demands of society; because of them will be required a thousand times more than of any of us. They are to hear unceasingly that they are akin to a different kind of people, and are superior, as well.”
In his “Letter to Sh…v,” entitled “A Christian Goes Forward” Gogol writes that a true Christian must struggle with his shortcomings to the end of his days, that “the further he goes, the smarter he becomes” (in other words, older—M.T.).” Only those “who have not neglected their inward education” possessed intelligence… As for wisdom, we “can receive it from Christ alone.” It “is the work of divine grace from heaven… and you can’t receive it in any other way than by praying about it day and night.” When man finally receives wisdom, the “heavenly life begins for him and he perceives all the wondrous sweetness of being a disciple.” Man becomes a disciple of everything and everyone, and “the whole universe will be before him like an open book of teaching.” Man must strive to find Christ through His Church, and, by way of repentance, to restore the image of God in himself.
“A Christian will show, above all, his humility, his chief banner, and by that alone one can learn he is a Christian,” Gogol writes in another letter.
He admonishes S.P. Shevyrev:
“I don’t even know if there exists a reproach that you wouldn’t reproach yourself with, if only you could look close enough… In any case, never take your eyes off yourself…. Take care of yourself first, and then others; become more pure in your spirit first, and only then try to make others more pure.”
This statement is in keeping with the famous revelation of St. Seraphim of Sarov about the acquisition of the Holy Spirit as the goal of Christian life.
Gogol believed that everything is founded on moral principles. Christ was his moral ideal. He wanted to bring people to Him by correcting their weaknesses by way of cleansing the soul of each individual from impure thoughts and deeds. In his letter on Dead Souls, Gogol wrote:
“So much is lurking at the bottom of our souls: all that nothingness, pitiful self-love, or our delicate, wretched ambition, that we should be constantly pierced, stricken, beaten by all available means, and yet we should continually thank the hand that strikes us.”
“Thanks to the heavenly love of God,” as Gogol himself put it, he was made worthy to see his own sinful passions with which he waged unceasing struggle.
“I am like a vessel that contains all kinds of filthy things, and in such a great number that I have not encountered in anyone else before. God made me an all-round person. He also planted several good qualities in my soul from birth, but the best one of them, for which I can’t thank Him enough, was the desire to be my absolute best.”
A lot of spiritual effort was spent by this true Christian to know his soul and to eradicate his passions
One can become his absolute best only if he joins in the church life in Christ. Much spiritual effort was spent by this true Christian to know his soul and to eradicate his passions. Gogol confesses to a friend:
“I love good, I am seeking it and I am dying for it; but I do not love my abominations… I do not love those abominations of mine that distance me from good. I am at war with them and will I keep up the fight, I will drive them away, and God will help me in this.”
Gogol seriously considered leaving the vanity of the world and retiring to a monastery.1
“There is no other rank so lofty as that of a monk, and may God someday make us worthy to put on the plain cassock of a monk, so desirable to my soul, and of which a mere thought gives me joy. But it cannot be done without the call of God. To have such right to abandon the world, one should know how to give up the world.”
The Optina elder Fr. Makary, known for his clairvoyance, did not bless him to step on this path.
No matter what Gogol wrote about, he always directed his reader’s attention to God. In a letter to V.A. Zhukovsky, “On the lyricism of our poets,” Gogol writes that our native poetry is all imbued with spirituality, because, like the Russian soul, it feels its connection with God.
“There is something special in the lyricism of our poets that poets of other nations do not possess; namely, something akin to biblical… to the supreme triumph of spiritual sobriety.”
This is especially evident when our poets write about their beloved Russia, as if they feel
“the supreme Providence, which is so clearly seen in the fate of our Motherland… Russia, more than others, feels the hand of God in everything that becomes a reality in it and senses the approach of another Kingdom.”
Gogol has his own vision of a writer’s vocation. He urges the poet N.M. Yazykov:
“Kneel before God and ask Him for wrath and love! Wrath against what destroys man and love for the wretched soul of man, which is being destroyed from all sides and which he is destroying himself.”
Gogol’s God-given talent as a writer and his religious gifts placed a great responsibility on him, which Gogol himself felt.
“God created me and He didn’t hide my predestination from me. I certainly wasn’t born to epoch-making work in the literary field… My job is the soul and the lasting work of life.”
However, he mistakenly considered art as a force capable not only of morally influencing life, but also of transforming the world. Towards the end of his life, Gogol had doubts about the usefulness of his writing profession and about the educational function of belles-lettres.
Gogol did not approve of revolutions, seeing in them only destruction and chaos. He recognized the legitimacy of the existing institution of government; for him, the legitimacy of autocratic power was indisputable. At the same time, he pinned his hopes on the wisdom and humanity of a Christian monarch.
“A state without a plenipotent monarch is the same as an orchestra without a bandmaster,” Gogol argues. “The monarch, as the Lord’s Anointed, is obliged to lead the people entrusted to him toward the light in which God dwells… Only there will the people be entirely healed, where the monarch fully perceives his supreme authority to be God’s representation on earth, as God is love Himself… No other Imperial House has ever been founded so remarkably as the House of Romanov. Its very founding was already a feat of love… Love has entered our blood and we have been made kinsmen of the Tsar.”
Gogol echoes the thought of the holy Apostle Paul that there is no power but of God (Romans 13:1) and so the Tsar is to be honored as the Lord’s Anointed who will be accountable to God for the country and its people entrusted to him. Elsewhere Gogol criticizes social ills: bribery, injustice, lawlessness—and calls on his countrymen to save Russia from them. He says that the government continues to issue decrees aimed at eradicating evil from society, but, as a rule, these decrees aren’t executed, because those who are called to serve the people care only about their personal interests, and the public good doesn’t interest them.
The main idea of his homilies was the necessity to build the life not only of every man, but also of the whole society and the state according to the commandments of God. It is impossible to solve a single problem of Russian life without Orthodoxy; it is the way to improve life on earth. Therefore, from the peasant to the highest officials and the Tsar himself—everyone must honestly and selflessly fulfill their duty towards Russia, working, each in his own field, for the good of the Motherland.
Society had a mixed reaction to the publication of the new book by Gogol, who considered it the most useful and the best of his works, “a truly practical book.” The Holy Hierarchs Philaret (Drozdov) and Innocent (Borisov), and Archimandrite Theodore (Bukharev) 2 spoke favorably about it. The writers F.V. Bulgarin, P.A. Vyazemsky, and A.A. Grigoriev expressed their appreciation. The democratic camp, led by the critic V.G. Belinsky, sharply condemned Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends detecting in it nothing but praise for the Tsar and serfdom. Belinsky first wrote a small review, published in Sovremennik (“The Contemporary”, 1847, Vol. 1, No. 2), in which, for censorship reasons, he only expressed his negative attitude toward Gogol’s work. In response, Gogol sent him a letter where he wrote that the critic had misunderstood him because he had not delved deeper into the content of the book. Then Belinsky, who was abroad at the time where he no longer feared censorship, wrote his famous “Letter to Gogol,” in which he excoriates the writer for his alleged apology of serfdom and autocracy.3
Boris Lebedev. Critic Vissarion Belinsky and Nikolai Gogol (fragment). Postcard from the series “V.G. Belinsky in drawings by B. Lebedev.” Moscow: Art, 1948
At the time of its writing, Belinsky was already a convinced atheist. Although he acknowledges the historicity of Christ and recognizes the Christian doctrine as “the doctrine of liberty, equality and fraternity,” he sharply criticizes the Russian clergy, far-removed, in his opinion, from true Christianity. Gogol replies:
“You separate the Church from Christ and Christianity, the very Church and the very shepherds who by their martyrdom have sealed the truth of every word of Christ, who died by the thousands under the knives and swords of murderers, praying for them. Finally, they exhausted their executioners, so that the victors fell at the feet of the vanquished and the whole world professed this word…”
“A preacher of the Eastern Church,” Gogol continues his thought, “must preach with his life and deeds… I have known many bad priests… But I have also met those whose holiness of life and deeds I marveled at, and I saw that they were the creation of our Eastern Church, not the Western one. Therefore, I certainly did not think of singing praises to the clergy who disgraced our Church, but those who exalted our Church.”
Belinsky considers Russians to be a deeply atheistic people. Gogol raises an objection to him; in his opinion, the Russian people are the most religious in the world, which
“is eloquently testified to by the thousands of churches and monasteries spread all over the Russian land. They are built not by the gifts of the rich, but by the poor mites of the needy, the very people who, as you describe it, speak disrespectfully of God, but who share their last kopecks with the destitute and with God, suffering the deep poverty of which we are so aware—in order to be able to bring eager repentance to God.”
Belinsky angrily scolds Gogol for allegedly praising autocracy in his book. Gogol replies to him:
“You thought you saw lies in my words to the Emperor, where I remind him of the sanctity of his rank and his high duties. What a stern answer will be required of him… He has received a difficult and terrible lot—to care for millions.”
He didn’t call to a struggle, but to self-improvement, preaching Orthodox humility and self-denial
In the eternal question of mankind about the eradication of world evil, Gogol stood on the position of spiritual absolution of human souls, seeing in it a pathway to change social existence for the better. Gogol, a true Christian, could not, like Chernyshevsky, exhort Russia to go “to the axe.” He called not to seek struggle, but self-improvement, preaching Orthodox humility and self-denial. “We all need more humility,” he wrote to Belinsky.
Gogol poured his heart into this legendary book and he took his critic’s merciless verdict on it very hard.
“You looked at my book with the eyes of an angry man and therefore accepted everything in a different way… Your mouth breathes bile and hatred… Why should you plunge into this abyss of politics, in these murky events of today…? You will burn down like a candle, and burn others.”
V.G. Belinsky found himself powerless to understand the novelty of many of the issues raised by the writer. He did not perceive the inspirational patriotic motives of the book, a passionate yearning for the spiritual renewal of man and the perfection of society on the basis of the commandments of the Gospel. Belinsky’s social-reformist views as a revolutionary critic were alien to Gogol, who believed that no social improvement was possible without Christian spiritual education and moral self-improvement. The writer gave advice to his friends in spiritual terms, whereas Belinsky criticizes Gogol from a socio-political standpoint. These opponents deliberated using differing languages. Many of Gogol’s precepts are significant for our time as well, and thus we can confidently assert that our brilliant Russian writer Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was proven right in this polemic.
4/1/2025
1 Gogol’s sister, Anna Vasilyevna, wrote to Vladimir Shenrok, the writer’s biographer, that her brother “dreamed about settling down in Optina Monastery.”
2 Holy Hierarch Ignatius (Brianchaninov) criticized Gogol for his excessive arrogance, excessive pretense to the role of preacher and teacher of life, seeing in this certain symptoms of prelest, or delusion.
3 In Soviet times, the school curriculum included “Belinsky’s Letter to Gogol” where V.G. Belinsky pounced on this classic of our literature in connection with the publication of his book, Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends. Schoolchildren studied this seething letter, but they never saw Gogol’s text at which it was aimed. Meanwhile, it is known for a fact that you cannot trust a one-sided opinion if you don’t know the opponent’s point of view. The Soviet atheistic authorities were afraid of letting the country’s young generation read the Gogol’s religious book. But even to this day, in my opinion, critics have not been able to seriously explore and comprehend this work by Gogol. This book awaits its researcher.
