Age 42 And The Death Of Ivan

Gogol's strange character,his special psychosexual state,his change of thought in the last ten years,the burning to ashes of the second part of Dead Souls and his suicide by fast,all these unsolved problems and events constitute the enigma of Gogol in the Russian literature.Age 42 and the death of Ivan are two interrelated phenomena,relevant to the author's life and work.Gogol died at age 42,in his letters the age was related to death,and in his works the age was related to love and marriage.Throughout all his works,love and marriage mean destruction and death,which the hero either fell into or ran away from.This phenomenon means that the author in his early years had experienced some heart shocking events that are related to age 42,in this way age 42 was connected in the author's heart with the core meaning(love,marriage and destruction)of the events.Death of Ivan is probably the event,for when Ivan,the little brother of Gogol,died in 1819,the author's father Vasily happened to be 42 years old.While in Saint John's Eve and A Terrible Vengeance,two of the author's early works that related to fratricide and incest,there are three Ivans and they were all killed.The death of Ivan in stories seems to be related to the one in the reality,and it's the author's psychological crux.This dissertation uses the plot in the novels to construct the author's childhood experience,supposing that Gogol's brother Ivan took away some of the mother's love and attention on Gogol,in whose heart as the result generated jealousy and hatred,and who in his imagination and dreams killed his brother.With the maturation of the moral consciousness,Gogol realized his crime and felt guilty and desired to be punished and make up for his crime.Since then he got the psychological crux of crime and punishment,and this crux later on appeared in the form of subconscious feeling of guilt and brought the writer depression and gloom.Further,Gogol changed his attitude toward his brother,turning hatred to love and spreading this love to his male friends:this is a pessimistic self punishment In his attitude to his father,the author absorbed the authority of the father to strengthen the self punishment,and after the death of the father,he got a strong sense of mission,wishing to atone for the past crime,this is also a manifestation of pessimistic self punishment.In his attitude to his mother,because of the crime came from the love to the mother,so the author both desired and feared his mother.and spread this attitude to all woman,so he feared woman and cannot depict the beauty of woman in his creation.The relational network of the four people got tangled at the year of Ivan's death,so age 42(the father's age),love and marriage(the love to the mother),death and destruction(the father's punishment)interrelated in the author s subconscious and affected his whole life.Under the impact of the psychological crux,the author often felt inexplicable depression and gloom,which gave birth to the author s desire to pursue pleasure,in order to give vent to his depression.Under this desire the author created or designed in Petersburg most of his work.In 1836 the author went abroad after the performance of Inspect General,he formally made the writing his life's mission,which led to the collision between two inner forces,because the creation was always the most useful way to relieve his depression before and the mission is the pessimistic punishment toward himself:the former fought with the crux and the latter was controlled by the crux,the former aimed at pouring out individual depression and the latter aimed at benefiting his countryman.The two aims got tangled and became the fundamental reason of the author's creation crisis.After the publishing of the Dead Souls in 1842 the author's following creation was not well going,the failure of fulfilling his mission caused strong fear,which made his psychological crux outbroke recurrently.Before the author relieved the gloom by seeking pleasures,but at this time he thought his heart was not pure enough,so he forced himself to practise asceticism to over come all kinds of passion.At this time the psychological crux of crime and punishment has already overpowered his desire to seek pleasure.In his last ten years the author lingered about painfully in the above psychological circle.At the age 42,the author's psychological crux broke out again,and the psychological connection of 42 make him believe that this was his final year and the wish of death won out,so he burned his manuscripts and fasted to end his life.The aim of the author's creation is to relieve his depression,therefore to gain this end he perfused his soul into his works,giving the characters the features of his soul,and arranging them experience all kinds of situation that are related with evil passion in the text world.So all of the author's works could be grouped by different forms of the passion(cTpacTb)and the ending of heroes.The author's creation course is synchronized with his soul development course.His early creation reflects his mother complex before 5 years old;the passion manifests as burning love with the tone of incest;this group of works end with satisfactory marriage.Most of the works of 1829-1835 reflected the self punishment after the author's moral consciousness took shape;the passion manifests as burning love with the tone of incest,as sexual desire,as material desire and as all kinds of addictions;heroes who fall into love and lust either died or got insane.Most of the works after 1835 reflected his spiritual horror toward marriage when he came of age;the passion manifests as all kinds of small addictions;the heroes all get away from the possible marriage.And the last group runs through the whole course of Gogol's creation,including three unfinished works,reflecting his desire to make peace with his crime.In these four groups,the second one directly reflects the source of the author's psychological crux.It's the author's self reveal and the direct release of his gloom.At the time of deeply purfusing his own soul,Gogol also needs to keep a safe distance between himself and the characters,in fear of self-imposing in the characters,therefore Gogol needs to use all kinds of means to camouflage and hide himself.And these means become the main features of his creation.