Nikolai Gogol museum opens in Moscow

A museum devoted to Nikolai Gogol opened in Moscow on Friday in the building where the writer spent the last four years of his life.

The museum includes a mock fireplace in the parlor, where the writer burnt the second volume of his satirical novel Dead Souls hours before his death.

The clock on the mantle shows 3 a.m., the time when the novel is believed to have been destroyed. The published first volume of Dead Souls spotlighted the unseemly sides of the 19th-century Russia, while the second volume reputedly showed the good side of life.

In the parlor, frequented by many literary dignitaries during Gogol`s lifetime, the writer also read his play The Inspector General, a violent satire of Russian provincial bureaucracy, to actors from the Maly Theater.

The decor was restored by museum creators based on the reminiscences of the writer`s contemporaries, as few of Gogol`s belongings have survived.

Exhibits in the six-room exposition feature a recently discovered original portrait of Gogol, as well as hand-written copies and printed editions of his writings.

The museum was unveiled ahead of the 200th anniversary, on April 1, of the Ukrainian-born Russian writer`s birthday.

Gogol`s other well-known works include satirical short stories Nose (1835-1836), which tells of an official whose nose leaves his face and lives its own life, and Overcoat (1842), a story of the life and death of an impoverished clerk extremely dedicated to his job.

sections: Culture