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

It is widely known that the publication of Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends caused an incredible uproar in society, and Gogol was met with a wave of negative assessments and personal criticisms directed at him both as an author and as an individual. Gogol's contemporaries in 1847 were already attempting to understand the reasons for the ensuing scandal, and the questions of who was to blame for what happened and who was right in the dispute over the book are still posed by commentators to this day. The traditional evaluative approach has led to a simplified and schematic understanding of the situation, which remains insufficiently researched. The full scope of documentary data on the contemporary reception of Selected Passages... has not been brought to bear in analysis, yet it reveals a different picture. An overview of the important and complex details of the readerly situation of 1846-1847, which are difficult to comment on, is presented in two articles on the same topic. The first article analyzed the pre-print period of discussion surrounding Gogol's book and presented data on the variety of rumors, speculations, and biased opinions, as well as the sources of this bias and the factors influencing the subsequent reading of the book. The second article demonstrates another quality of the "turmoil" surrounding the book, which raised pressing and painful questions of the time: heightened emotionality led to a situation where many contemporaries not only failed to understand Gogol's statements but also regarded each other's judgments about the book with prejudice. Special attention is paid to the concept of "bias". The author points out the necessity of distinguishing its modern and historical semantic content, and notes its vagueness in this specific case, given the book's unique genre, which expresses the most diverse aspects of Gogol's worldview and convictions. The author of the article insists on the impossibility of a typological description of the reactions of the first readers and critics, as both among those who rejected the book and its author and those who positively assessed Gogol's statement were people of different generations, convictions, literary tastes, worldviews, and attitudes towards God, faith, and the church. Examples confirming this are examined in accordance with the different thematic vectors of Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends - Gogol's religious worldview and his attitude towards the church, his literary-critical views, his social and everyday understanding of one's "calling," etc. What unites almost all readers and critics is only a vivid personal experience: the book became a stumbling block and a life event for those who read it and for those who judged it by hearsay, raising questions - about the author, about life, and about themselves. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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