"Nikolai Gogol excavated vocabulary from folktales and was a collector of new and arcane words: He was an anti-intellectual, in a way. The educated classes still regarded Russian as inferior to French. At the top girls' school in Moscow, a pupil heard speaking Russian had to wear a red bell and stand in the corner all day. Gogol was a great popularizer of the Russian language-and a pioneer when it came to the deployment of street terms. As a result, some regarded his prose wi...th contempt. One princess told her daughter that his books were for coachmen. But just as Pushkin set Russian poetry free, in the long run Gogol did the same for prose. He created Russian realism. He was poetic and lyrical-the original subtitle of Dead Souls was 'A Poem.'" ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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From MUD AND STARS: Travels in Russia with Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Other Geniuses of the Golden Age by Sara Wheeler, on sale today. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/…/mud-and-stars-by-sara…/