HOHOL
You probably know him better as Gogol – the Russian form of his name. He was Nicholas’s namesake too – Mykola, though he was better known by the Russian version of his name – Nikolai. Empires like black holes swallow up everything in their path or near them: nations, peoples, languages, lives, identities. The Russian Empire swallowed up Hohol. And he let it swallow him willingly to make a name for himself in his time.
Nicholas had read him in college in English in a Russian literature in translation class at Stony Brook taught by a Polish expatriate, who emphasized the Ukrainianness of Hohol in his class. Better to pronounce his name with a pharyngeal “h.” A sound that harsher guttural Russian doesn’t have. The horror tales of the farm near the village of Dikanka particularly etche
