Evenings Near the Village of Dikanka
by Nikolai Gogol
Edited/Translated by Ovid Gorchakov
Illustrated by A. Kanevsky
Designed by Y. Krivinskaya
Publisher: Foreign Languages Press, Moscow, 1957
277 pages
This is a used hardcover book in Very Good condition with dust jacket in Fair condition. The dust jacket is wrinkled
and torn almost in rwo on the back, and is slightly tattered along the edges. The book binding is secure.
Pages are clean and unmarked.
The endpapers have a flower silhouette motif against a dark beige background.
The cover boards are tan. The front cover board is illustrated with a basket of orange flowers and the author's name and the title of the book. The frontispiece is an etching(?) with the caption "Nikolai Gogol Portrait by A. Venetsianov. 1834
Each story has an engraved illustration above the chapter title and a small engraved drawing
at story's end.
The translation is very well done. Here is an excerpt from the second story,
"Saint John's Eve."
It was a peculiarity of Foma Grigoryevich's that he had a mortal
aversion for repeating a story. Sometimes one persuaded him to
tell a story over again, but then he would throw in something
fresh, or would change it so that you hardly knew it for the same. ...
* * *
Then with a gnarled stick he parted a thorn bush
and a little hut -- a witch's hut, as they say in fairy tales --
stood before them. Basavryuk struck it with his fist and the wall
tottered. A big black dog ran out to meet them, and changing into
a cat, with a squeal flew at their eyes. ...
Here is what Wikipedia says about the book and this short story:
Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka (Russian: Вечера на хуторе близ Диканьки,
Vechera na khutore bliz Dikan'ki) is a collection of short stories by Nikolai Gogol,
written from 1831-1832. They appeared in various magazines and were published in
book form when Gogol, who had spent his life in the Ukraine up to the age of nineteen,
was twenty two. He put his early impressions and memories of childhood into these
pictures of peasant life.
Each of the segments were based on Ukrainian folklore and feature comedic elements and
a binding narrator, beekeeper Pan'ko-the-Redhaired, who is dictating the stories to the reader.
This was Gogol's groundbreaking work, though not his first, and formed the core of his
style, especially his sense of the macabre. It was this collection that proved he was a new
power in Russian literature with unique innovation and a carefully arranged mingling of the
horrifying and the humorous.
St. John's Eve (Russian: Вечер накануне Ивана Купала) is the second tale in the collection
Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka by Nikolai Gogol. It was written in 1831.
This short story was famously the main inspiration for the Russian composer Modest
Mussorgsky's tone poem, "Night on Bald Mountain", made famous by its use in Disney's Fantasia.
Contents
Part One
Preface
The Fair at Sorochintsi
Saint John's Eve
A May Night, or the Drowned Maiden
The Lost Letter
Part Two
Preface
Christmas Eve
A Terrible Revenge
Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and his Aunt
A Place Bewitched
