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THE IMAGE OF PETERSBURG IN THE WORKS OF N.V. GOGOL:
TYPOLOGY, FUNCTIONS AND SYMBOLISM
Mushtariy Aliqulova
Assistant Lecturer
University of Economics and Pedagogy
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15705450
Annotation.
The article examines the artistic representation of St.
Petersburg in N.V. Gogol's "Petersburg Tales." It analyzes the complex and multi-
layered image of the city as a spatial and sociocultural phenomenon. The key
functions of Petersburg in the structure of Gogol's text are identified: social,
symbolic, and mythopoetic. The role of the city in shaping the inner world of the
characters and the author's philosophy is revealed. The conclusion is made that
Petersburg in Gogol's work becomes a metaphor for the crisis of personality,
bureaucratic alienation, and the absurdity of existence.
Keywords:
Gogol, Petersburg, artistic space, 'little man', phantasmagoria,
symbolism, bureaucratization.
Petersburg as an artistic image is one of the most significant themes in
Russian literature of the 19th century. Embodied in the mythologemes of
enlightened reason, imperial grandeur and administrative order, the city
becomes an arena of spiritual transformations and social suppression of the
individual. A special role in the formation of the poetics of Petersburg was
played by the work of N.V. Gogol, in whose "Petersburg Tales" the city appears
not just as a backdrop to events, but as a structure-forming component of the
artistic world.
The relevance of the appeal to the image of Petersburg in Gogol's works is
determined not only by the artistic significance of these works, but also by the
philosophical depth of the image of the city as a space of alienation, absurdity
and metaphysical fear. The purpose of this study is to determine the typological
features of the image of Petersburg in Gogol's works, to identify its artistic
functions and place in the system of Gogol's worldview.
Petersburg as a mythopoetic space In Gogol's Petersburg Stories,
Petersburg is presented as a space that has lost its stable ontological boundaries.
The city loses the signs of a realistic topos and turns into a mythopoetic
construction inhabited by ghosts, phantoms and abstract functions. This feature
is especially vividly manifested in the story Nevsky Prospect, where the author
openly declares the falsity and ambiguity of the urban space: "There is nothing
more deceptive than Nevsky Prospect".
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Petersburg becomes an image of a false civilization, where everything
outwardly brilliant turns out to be morally corrupt. As Yu. M. Lotman rightly
notes, the space of the city in Gogol is not neutral, it “has the ability to influence
the behavior and fate of the hero” [Lotman, 1970]. In this context, the
mythopoetics of Petersburg includes elements of the sinister: the streets become
labyrinths, the buildings become crushing blocks, and the residents themselves
become shadows deprived of will. The city acts as a subject that generates the
illusion of stability and simultaneously draws the hero into a whirlpool of
degradation. Petersburg deprives a person of support, splits consciousness and
deforms the perception of reality.
The Social Function of St. Petersburg: Representation of the Bureaucratic
Hierarchy St. Petersburg in Gogol performs an important social-critical function.
It represents a system of administrative suppression and bureaucratic
alienation. This theme is most fully revealed in the story "The Overcoat", where
the space of the city forms and simultaneously destroys the personality of the
protagonist. Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin exists in conditions of total
subordination to the logic of the social order, in which the "significant person"
has absolute power, and the "little man" - absolute powerlessness.
Gogol's urban bureaucracy not only devalues individuality, but also elevates
it to the absolute, becoming a new form of the sacred. In "The Overcoat," the
hero's spirituality is replaced by an external attribute - an overcoat, which
acquires mythical value. The bureaucratic structure of St. Petersburg, according
to B.M. Eikhenbaum, appears in Gogol as "a grotesquely exaggerated model of
society, in which a person loses his essence and turns into a conventional unit"
[Eikhenbaum, 1924].
Grotesque and phantasmagoria as a reflection of urban reality A feature of
Gogol's depiction of St. Petersburg is the fusion of the real and the fantastic, the
logical and the absurd. An example is the story "The Nose", in which the
violation of logical connections and causality does not surprise the characters.
The nose, separated from the div of an official, gains independence, retains its
rank and continues to function within the framework of the social hierarchy.
This indicates the irrationalization of the everyday, when reality itself ceases to
obey the laws of logic. Such phantasmagoria serves as a metaphor for the
absurdity of the bureaucratic structure and the devaluation of human content.
Gogol's St. Petersburg is a space where the impossible becomes ordinary, and
the irrational becomes part of the institutional norm.
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As V.V. Ivanov emphasizes, “Gogol’s city is a field of collision between the
real and the otherworldly, a zone of transgression” [Ivanov, 1998]. The
grotesque nature of urban space allows the author to reveal deep social and
anthropological contradictions and to identify the destructive principles of
modern culture.
The architectonics of space and the emotional perception of the city The
architectural and climatic characteristics of St. Petersburg play a key role in
creating an atmosphere of alienation and psychological pressure. Gogol's
descriptions of the city are dominated by gloomy, monotonous, cold images:
endless streets, identical houses, cloudy skies, piercing wind. These elements
form an emotional background that helps convey a sense of loneliness, fear, and
isolation. In "Notes of a Madman," the monotony of urban planning and the
atmospheric pressure of the city directly correlate with the progressive madness
of the protagonist.
Thus, St. Petersburg acts as a metaphysical agent, causing existential
anxiety and blurring the boundaries between reality and illusion. The spatial
organization of the city affects the mental state of the characters, distorting their
perception of the world and themselves. Street, building, institution - everything
becomes part of a single structure, subject to the logic of pressure, absurdity and
fear.
Petersburg as the destruction of the imperial myth Gogol's Petersburg
undermines the official imperial myth of the capital as the center of reason,
order and enlightenment. Chaos, alienation and fear are hidden behind the
external glitter. The city loses its "enlightening" function and becomes the
antithesis of a stable world. Gogol de-idealizes the space of the capital, turning it
into a scene of disintegration - social, moral, spiritual.
As A.B. Pugachev emphasizes, “in the Petersburg stories there is a symbolic
destruction of the myth of the city of Peter the Great as the crown of Russian
civilization, demonstrating the gap between the state project and human reality”
[Pugachev, 2003]. Petersburg becomes not the embodiment of a utopian ideal,
but a space of catastrophe, where moral guidelines disappear and the
boundaries between good and evil, between the real and the imaginary, are
violated.
The image of St. Petersburg in the works of N.V. Gogol is an integral part of
the author's model of the world. It performs many functions - from social
criticism to philosophical allegory, from a mythopoetic image to a grotesque
phantasmagoria. St. Petersburg in Gogol's stories is a space of moral and
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personal destruction, deprived of stable coordinates, a space in which the true
personality disappears and conventionality triumphs.
Gogol's artistic representation of the city became the basis of an entire
tradition in Russian literature, continued in the works of Dostoevsky, Andrei
Bely, Blok and others. Petersburg as a metaphor for the crisis of civilization,
depicted by Gogol, remains a relevant object of literary analysis to this day.
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