Notes of a Madman

"The Overcoat", "The Nose", "The Portrait" and other "Petersburg Tales" by Gogol still astonish the reader with their diversity. Realism is closely intertwined with fantasy, tragedy with playful humor. As we read and reread them, we involuntarily empathize with the pitiable clerk Akaky Akakievich, eagerly follow the phantasmagorical adventures of the nose that has taken on a life of its own and escaped its owner, experience the tragedy of the artist who was deceived in his "genius of pure beauty," - and again and again we discover Gogol's relevance, as he uniquely managed to see the eternal and the great behind the private and the petty.