By mediating between Ukrainian and Russian culture in his language and writing, and migrating from one country to another in an attempt to resolve the question of his identity, Nikolaj Gogol&soft; would provide the contemporary Russian author in emigration with a productive literary and biographical archetype. A large number of authors who belong to the Third Wave of emigration have named Gogol&soft; as a major influence on their works. In my presentation, I will discuss some of the elements of Gogol&soft;'s method appropriated by émigré authors, then suggest possible motives for their selection of Gogol&soft; as a literary ancestor.
Emigré authors choose their literary ancestors in part to
demonstrate their affiliation with the native culture, but more
importantly, to recognize in them certain qualities consciously
overlooked or misinterpreted by Soviet literary critics and to
valorize those aspects of a writer's work that could not be recognized
within the Soviet context. Critical monographs by Andrej Belyj and
Vladimir Nabokov in which the authors challenge the representation of
Gogol&soft; as a Realist writer are examples of this tendency.
Authors of the Third Wave are similarly interested in distancing
Gogol&soft;'s works from previous interpretations, often doing so by
incorporating particular formal and narrative devices associated with
Gogol&soft; into their own works. Critics have interpreted this as
émigré authors' homage to Gogol&soft; as a satirist who
exposed corruption within state institutions; the use of carnival
inversions and aberrant language in contemporary émigré
writing has been often characterized as a strategy toward depicting a
destabilized official culture. However, the contexts in which Gogolian
devices and themes appear in émigré writing suggest
interpretations that concern issues of cultural identity. Works by
Vasilij Aksenov and Zinovij Zinik present variations on Gogol&soft;'s
lowly clerk existing as an émigré on the margins of
society in a new homeland, and Terc's study