Happy (possible) birthday to Nikolai Gogol!

His exact date of birth varies from March 19th to April 1st, so on, or around, today’s date Nikolai Gogol, one of Russia’s greatest artists, was born. So, happy 200th birthday to you Mr. Gogol!

Like all great artists, what makes Gogol so popular is his timelessness, his style was original when it debuted, and his voice remains as unique and refreshing now.

Gogol wrote that famed storyteller Alexander Pushkin said of him “…no other writer before me possessed the gift to expose so brightly life’s poshlust, to depict so powerfully the poshlust of a poshlusty man in such a way that everybody’s eyes would be opened wide to all the petty trivia that often escape our attention.”

The Russian word poshlust is not directly translatable to English, but it can be loosely defined as a self-satisified inferiority, or self-satisfied vulgarness. You’ll have to read some of Gogol’s works for yourself to get a true meaning of the word, and lucky for you they are available here in English, and here in Russian.