Editing Nikolai Gogol (section)

==Early life==
Gogol was born in the [[Zaporozhian Cossacks|Ukrainian Cossack]] town of [[Velyki Sorochyntsi|Sorochyntsi]],<ref name="brittanica">{{cite encyclopedia|title=Nikolay Gogol|url=https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/237143/Nikolay-Vasilyevich-Gogol|access-date=31 December 2010|encyclopedia=[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]}}</ref> in the [[Poltava Governorate]] of the [[Russian Empire]]. His mother was descended from Leonty Kosyarovsky, an officer of the [[Lubny Regiment]] in 1710. His father [[Vasily Gogol-Yanovsky]], who died when Gogol was 15 years old, was supposedly a descendant of Ukrainian Cossacks (see [[Lyzohub family]]) and belonged to the 'petty gentry'. Gogol knew that his paternal ancestor {{Ill|Ostap Hohol|uk|Остап Гоголь}}, a Cossack hetman in Polish service, received nobility from the Polish king.{{Sfn|Bojanowska|2012|p=160}} The family used the Polish surname "Janowski" (Ianovskii) and the family estate in Vasilevka was known as Ianovshchyna.{{Sfn|Bojanowska|2012|p=160}}

His father wrote poetry in Ukrainian as well as Russian, and was an amateur playwright in his own theatre. As was typical of the [[Left-bank Ukraine|left-bank Ukrainian]] gentry of the early nineteenth century, the family was trilingual, speaking Ukrainian as well as Russian, and using Polish mostly for reading.{{Sfn|Bojanowska|2012|p=160}} Gogol's mother called her son Nikola, which is a mixture of the Russian [[Nikolai (disambiguation)|Nikolai]] and the Ukrainian [[Mykola]].{{Sfn|Bojanowska|2012|p=160}} As a child, Gogol helped stage plays in his uncle's home theater.<ref name="Bojanowska-78">{{Cite book|last=Bojanowska|first=Edyta M.|title=Nikolai Gogol: Between Ukrainian and Russian Nationalism|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=2007|isbn=9780674022911|location=Cambridge, MA|pages=78–88}}</ref>

In 1820, Nikolai Gogol went to a school of higher art in [[Nezhin]] (Nizhyn) (now [[Nizhyn Gogol State University]]) and remained there until 1828. It was there that he began writing. He was not popular among his schoolmates, who called him their "mysterious dwarf", but he formed lasting friendships with two or three of them. Very early he developed a dark and secretive disposition, marked by a painful self-consciousness and boundless ambition. Equally early he developed a talent for mimicry, which later made him a matchless reader of his own works and induced him to toy with the idea of becoming an actor.

On leaving school in 1828, Gogol went to Saint Petersburg, full of vague but ambitious hopes. He desired literary fame, and brought with him a [[Romantic era|Romantic]] poem of German idyllic life – ''Hans Küchelgarten'', and had it published at his own expense, under the pseudonym "V. Alov." The magazines he sent it to almost universally derided it. He bought all the copies and destroyed them, swearing never to write poetry again.