An Author's Confession

Everyone agrees on one point: no work before has ever prompted such a wide range of conflicting reactions as Nikolai Gogol’s “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends.” And what is especially striking is that this hardly ever happened in literature before: people discussed and condemned not so much the book itself as its author. Every word was examined with suspicion and distrust, and everyone was in a hurry to declare where, in their opinion, it came from and what prompted it. Over a living person—who was still alive—people carried out a brutal “autopsy,” at the very sight of which even the staunchest person feels uneasy. However harsh and humiliating for an noble and honest man many of the conclusions and accusations may be, I—gathering whatever small strength I had—decided to bear everything and accept it as a sign from above, so that I might look at myself more strictly and mercilessly…