Nikolai Gogol

This biography begins with

Gogol's death and ends with his birth, an inverted structure typical of

both Gogol and Nabokov. The biographer proceeds to establish the

relationship between Gogol and his novels, especially with regard to

"nose-consciousness", a peculiar feature of Russian life and letters,

which finds its apotheosis in Gogol's own life and prose. There are more

expressions and proverbs concerning the nose in Russian than in any

other language in the world. Nabokov's style in this biography is comic,

but as always leads to serious issues—in this case, an appreciation

of the distinctive "sense of the physical" inherent in Gogol's work.

Nabokov describes how Gogol's life and literature mingled, and explains

the structure and style of Gogol's prose in terms of the novelist's

life.