Georgievsky G.P. “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends”: The Manuscript of N.V. Gogol with Censored Editing by A.V. Nikitenko

Abstract

The published article was written by the archivist G.P. Georgievsky, a keeper and later a consultant of the manuscripts department of the USSR State Library named after V.I. Lenin, soon after he discovered in 1939 among the papers of F.V. Chizhov the final manuscript of N.V. Gogol’s book Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends. Thus, Georgievsky’s work represents the first scholarly description of this manuscript and the history of its creation. Since the author’s manuscript of Selected Passages… contains a censorship revision by A.V. Nikitenko, the scholar also considered the peculiarities of the passage of Gogol’s book through censorship. In addition, Georgievsky was the first to compare the manuscript with the printed text without censorship deletions in 1867 by F.V. Chizhov. Two articles of the scholar have been preserved, which can be considered as two versions of the same text: the first (“Another Autograph of Gogol”) appeared in June 1939, immediately after the autograph manuscript was found; the second was intended for the next issue of the collection Notes of the Department of Manuscripts (1941), the publication of which was prevented by the outbreak of war. While the principal content is the same, the later version is more thoughtful and orderly, without minor inaccuracies and semantic repetitions. Georgievsky’s article is known only to those who have studied the creative and censorship history of Gogol’s book but is poorly available to a wider range of researchers. That determines the appropriateness of its publication.

Keywords

• g.p. georgievsky
• n.v. gogol
• p.a. pletnev
• a.v. nikitenko
• f.v. chizhov
• n.s. tikhonravov
• “selected passages from correspodence with friends
• final manuscript
• original manuscript
• creative history
• censorship history