Diary

Gogol's Government Inspector on medical treatment

"It would be better if there weren't so many [patients]. If there are a large number, it will instantly be ascribed to bad supervision or incompetent medical treatment.

"Our rule is: the nearer to nature the better. We use no expensive medicines. A man is a simple affair. If he dies, he'd die anyway. If he gets well, he'd get well anyway. Besides, the doctor would have a hard time making the patients understand him. He doesn't know a word of Russian."

- The Government Inspector, Nikolai Gogol

Dostoyevsky's Rant against Foreigners

"a Frenchman knows everything, even 
if he has learned nothing - but because, in the first place,
 he comes to our country in order to cast the most penetrating look at us, to pierce with his eagle eye all our
 secrets and then pronounce his final, categorical opinion 
of us; second, because he already knew in Paris what he 
was going to write about Russia; he may even write an 
account of his travels before he has even been to Russia and sell it to a publisher, and only then come to visit us
˜to show off, to captivate and to fly off.…"

Some of them arrive
 with serious, important intentions, staying for as long as
 28 days, an immense period, the number of
 days showing the great conscientiousness of the explorer, 
for in such a time he could carry out and even describe 
a voyage round the world. After snatching his first impressions of Petersburg, in the description of which he 
is not entirely unsuccessful, and, incidentally, casting a
 critical eye over the English institutions as well, teaching, in passing, the Russian boyars (les bayards) table-rapping
 or blowing soap bubbles, which is very charming and a
 great improvement on the majestic and swaggering bore
dom of our assemblies, he finally makes up his mind to
 make a thorough and detailed study of Russia, and leaves 
for Moscow. In Moscow he has a look at the Kremlin, 
gives a thought to Napoleon, praises the tea, praises the
 beauty and the health of the people, sheds a tear over 
their premature depravity, over the lamentable results of 
the attempts to inoculate them with European civilisation, 
over the disappearance of national customs, for which he 
will immediately find proof in the change of ten guitar-
shaped hackney cabs for one that is wagonette-shaped, 
resembling a European cabriolet"

"The most stupid and dissolute of
 them, having spent some time in Russia, leave us absolutely convinced that they have made the Russians happy
 and to some extent changed Russia."

 

Gogol's view of the Ukrainian steppe in Taras Bulba

“All that was dim and 
drowsy in the Cossacks’ minds flew away in a twinkling: their hearts fluttered like birds.
 The farther they penetrated the steppe, the more
 beautiful it became... The air was 
filled with the notes of a thousand different birds.
 On high hovered the hawks, their wings outspread,
 and their eyes fixed intently on the grass. The cries 
of a flock of wild ducks, ascending from one side,
 were echoed from God knows what distant lake.
 From the grass arose, with measured sweep, a gull, 
and skimmed wantonly through blue waves of air.
 And now she has vanished on high, and appears
 only as a black dot: now she has turned her wings, 
and shines in the sunlight. Oh, steppes, how beautiful you are!”

— Taras Bulba, Nikolai Gogol