Problems of commenting on the perception of Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends by contemporaries (1846–1847). Article I

It is a well-known fact that the publication of Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends (Selected Passages) made a tremendous noise in the society, and Gogol was attacked by a wave of negative assessments and personal claims against him as an author and as a person. Even Gogol's contemporaries tried to figure out the causes of the scandal that broke out in 1847, and the questions of who is to blame for what happened and who is right in the polemic about the book, are still being raised by the commentators. The traditional estimative approach has led to a simplified and schematized view of the situation, which has not been sufficiently investigated yet. The full volume of documentary data on the reaction of contemporaries to Selected Passages. has not been involved in the analysis, while it gives a different picture. An overview of the details - important and difficult to comment on - of the reader's situation in 1846-1847 is presented in two articles on the same topic. This article, the first in a two-part study, provides a comprehensive overview of the initial contemporary perception of Gogol's book, with a specific focus on the underexamined pre-publication period of late 1846. This period, often overlooked in Gogol scholarship, is precisely when the enduring myths about Gogol's later works, the book itself, and the contemporary reaction to it were formed. Historical interpretations of this perception varied: at times it was framed as a simple confrontation "for" and "against" Gogol; at others, as a debate between rival literary parties concerning Selected Passages, or reduced solely to the disagreement between Belinsky and Gogol. The frameworks for these interpretations, however, were largely derived from the opinions and assessments of the participants in the pre-print discussions themselves. This article draws scholarly attention to the genuine diversity of hearsay, rumors, and opinions that circulated about the still-unread book. It identifies the sources of these rumors and pinpoints the factors and timing behind the formation of a prejudiced attitude among the readership. Challenging the traditional view that blames the editor and censor of Selected Passages for spreading negative interpretations, the provided data demonstrate that responsibility was more widely shared and that prejudice developed much earlier than the first rumors emerged, within both friendly and hostile circles. Furthermore, the article highlights several important, yet overlooked, issues pertinent to commenting on this notorious episode. These include the fluidity of certain opinions alongside the stability of others, and the differing ideological bases that can lurk behind superficially similar negative or positive assessments of the book and its author. The article illustrates this with examples of how opinions evolved as readers became familiar with the actual text, as well as instances where opinions converged for purely external reasons. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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