N. V. Gogol is one of the most picturesque and "colorful" writers of the XIX century. He was the first person in Russian literature to use color so skillfully for pictorial purposes. The "color characteristic" is almost always present in it, whether it is a description of a character or just an object.
Gogol changed the attitude to color, V. V. Nabokov noted, destroyed old stereotypes and showed that the sky can be not only blue, " the dawn is scarlet, the foliage is green, the eyes of beauties are black, the clouds are gray, etc. Before the appearance of him and Pushkin, Russian literature was a little blind. The forms that she noticed were only outlines suggested by reason; she did not see color as such and only used the worn combinations of blind nouns and dog-like epithets that Europe inherited from the ancients. <...> Only Gogol (followed by Lermontov and Tolstoy) saw yellow and purple colors. The fact that the sky at sunrise can be pale green, the snow on a cloudless day is deep blue, about-
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it would sound senseless heresy in the ears of a so-called "classic" writer, accustomed to the unchanging, generally accepted color scheme of French literature of the XVIII century. < ... > I doubt that any writer, especially in Russia, has previously noticed such an amazing phenomenon as the trembling pattern of light and shadow on the ground under trees or color pranks sun on the leaves. The description of Plyushkin's garden struck Russian readers almost as much as Manet did the mustachioed philistines of his era" (Nabokov V. V. Lectures on Russian Literature, Moscow, 1999, p. 88; further - only p.).
Gogol's interest in color can be partly explained by the fact that he had an unrealized talent as an artist, constantly reminded of himself from the pages of his works.
"...Gogol's world of colors is an organ of the whole; light, color, color and paint are Gogol's backgrounds, from which the most pictorial style is branched... "(Bely A. Gogol's skill: Res ...
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