Gogol the Schoolboy

The events in this story begin about twenty minutes before noon on December 12, 1823. The action takes place in Nizhyn, in the Chernihiv Governorate—in the Prince Bezborodko School of Higher Sciences, in the French language department, which was called the Grammarians’ department.

But what exactly were these “grammarians”? Although education in the Nizhyn gymnasium was organized into nine annual classes—six gymnasium and three university—this division applied only to academic subjects. Language training was arranged separately: students were assigned to six language departments that weren’t connected to scientific classes. These departments were named as follows: principi-sts (learning the foundations of the language), grammarians (studying etymology), syntacticians, rhetoricians, poets, and aesthetes (studying aesthetics based on classical examples). At the same time, to receive a certificate of completing the full course, students only needed to complete four of the language departments.