"A Revaluation of Gogol's "Selected Passages

HEN Nikolai Gogol published Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends in 1846 the shock to the reading public was profound. It is a matter of record that Belinsky, far from mitigating the controversy, stirred it up, but it is curious that so little has been said since, that so many commentators have simply followed Beliusky's lead and virtually ignored the m ost important subject of the book, Gogol's theory if literature.' For example, Schloezer has no more to say than that . . some letters show that the writer's perspicacity remains whole: those on Dead Souls . .. or the one entitled 'On the Theater,' in which the author defends dramatic art against Count A. P. Tolstoy, who had condemned it in the name of religion. Gippius says even less; she simply continues the split personality tradition, concentrating on the same opinions about religion and monarchy that Belinsky had attacked. Setchkarev, one of the more highly regarded of the recent writers concerned with Gogols life and works, devotes some fourteen pages to

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