Chernyshevsky on Gogol’s later works: a phenomenological aspect of critical reception

The research aims to identify and substantiate Chernyshevsky’s views on Gogol’s later works, which contradict Belinsky’s negative assessment (“Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends”). In the context of the journal discussion of Gogol’s posthumously published works (“Author’s Confession”, fragments of the second volume of “Dead Souls”, letters), Chernyshevsky’s reviews and articles from the 1850s related to Gogol are analyzed. The formation of the critic’s concept of the integrity of Gogol’s personality and work is considered. The phenomenological features of Chernyshevsky’s thinking are revealed, expressed in contradictions between the theoretical criteria for evaluating the work of the artist, substantiated by him in “The Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality”, a number of articles, and the direct personal aesthetic perception of Gogol. Scientific novelty is determined by the nature of scientific reception, which involves analyzing what Chernyshevsky wrote in a phenomenological projection: fixing the duality of the letter structure, which creates conditions for the manifestation of rational-logical thinking and the direct aesthetic impression contradicting it within the framework of one statement. As a result of the research, the need to correct the established idea in the history of criticism about Chernyshevsky’s solidarity with Belinsky in the approach to Gogol’s later works, as well as about the immutability of Chernyshevsky’s views on the nature and purpose of art within the framework of “real criticism” is substantiated.