Gogol and Germany

France only got interested in Gogol thanks to indications provided by Circourt in 1838 and Marmier in 1843. The exhaustive survey by Claude De Greve in her 1984 PhD can only be equated with that of E. K. Tarasova, defended in 2002, a remarkable study of Gogol’s reception in Germany. German interest for Gogol’s tales dates back to Konig and Melgounov’s review, published in 1837. The first German review of The Revizor (performed in Saint-Petersburg in 1836) was reproduced in Reisner’s book (1970). This inquiry on Gogol’s reception goes on with Thomas Mann’s reflection on Gogolian grotesque, and with the remarks of Stadtke and H. J. Gerigk, who resort to a structural approach in order to better appreciate the fundamental modernity of the Russian writer.