Talk:Nikolai Gogol

The Dead Souls quote that is allegedly from Part I, Chapter VII is nowhere to be found in the Gutenberg text -- there's nothing in that chapter that could even be plausibly retranslated as "And for a long time yet, led by some wondrous power, I am fated to journey hand in hand with my strange heroes and to survey the surging immensity of life, to survey it through the laughter that all can see and through the tears unseen and unknown by anyone."

... I encourage anyone who thinks the quote is genuine and properly sourced to attempt to find it, and post their results here (specifically, post the paragraph number).

Though clear citations of sources is not immediately evident, only slightly differing in the final words of the passage is this translation quoted in "Nikolai Gogol" by Vladimir Nabokov, p. 106:

And for a long time yet, led by some wondrous power, I am fated to journey hand in hand with my strange heroes and to survey the surging immensity of life, to survey it through the laughter that all can see and through unknown invisible tears. And still far away is that time when with a gushing force of a different origin the formidable blizzard of inspiration will rise form my austere and blazing brow and, in a sacred tremor, humans will harken to the sublime thunder of a different speech.

I would do a bit more, but I have to attend to a few other things and soon must be leaving — I will probably resume some investigation of this within the next day or so. ~ Kalki (talk · contributions) 21:44, 18 April 2011 (UTC)