Short Fiction

Short Fiction
By Nikolai Gogol.
Translated by Claud Field, Isabel  F. Hapgood, Vizetelly and Company, and George Tolstoy.




Imprint

This ebook is the product of many hours of hard work by volunteers for  Standard Ebooks, and builds on the hard work of other literature lovers made possible by the public domain.
This particular ebook is based on transcriptions produced for Project Gutenberg ( Taras Bulba, and Other Tales,  The Mantle, and Other Stories and  Cossack Tales), Wikisource ( Old-Fashioned Farmers), and on digital scans available at the Internet Archive ( Taras Bulba, and Other Tales,  The Mantle, and Other Stories,   St. John’s Eve, and Other Stories and  Cossack Tales).
The writing and artwork within are believed to be in the  U.S. public domain, and Standard Ebooks releases this ebook edition under the terms in the  CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. For full license information, see the  Uncopyright at the end of this ebook.
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Foreword
This edition of Nikolai Gogol’s Short Fiction was produced from various translations. “The Night of Christmas Eve” was translated by George Tolstoy and originally published in 1860. “Old-Fashioned Farmers” was translated by Isabel  F. Hapgood and originally published in 1886. “ St. John’s Eve,” “Taras Bulba,” “How the Two Ivans Quarrelled,” “The Mysterious Portrait,” and “The Calash” were translated by Vizetelly and Company and originally published in 1887. “A May Night,” “The Viy,” “Memoirs of a Madman,” “The Nose,” and “The Mantle” were translated by Claud Field and originally published in 1916.


Short Fiction

 

 St. John’s Eve
A Story Told by the Sacristan of the Dikanka Church

Thoma Grigorovitch had one very strange eccentricity: to the day of his death he never liked to tell the same thing twice. There were times when, if you asked him to relate a thing afresh, he would interpolate new matter, or alter it so that it was impossible to recognise it. Once upon a time, one of those gentlemen who, like the usurers at our yearly fairs, clutch and beg and steal every sort of frippery, and issue mean little volumes, no thicker than an A.B.C. book, every month, or even every week, wormed this same story out of Thoma Grigorovitch, and the latter completely forgot about it. But that same young gentleman, in the pea-green caftan, came from Poltava, bringing with him a little book, and, opening it in the middle, showed it to us. Thoma Grigorovitch was on the point of setting his spectacles astride of his nose, but recollected that he had forgotten to wind thread about them and stick them together with wax, so he passed it over to me. As I understand nothing about reading and writing, and do not wear spectacles, I undertook to read it. I had not turned two leaves when all at once he caught me by the hand and stopped me.
“Stop! tell me first what you are reading.”
I confess that I was a trifle stunned by such a question.
“What! what am I reading, Thoma Grigorovitch? Why, your own words.”
“Who told you that they were my words?”
“Why, what more would you have? Here it is printed: ‘Related by such and such a sacristan.’ ”
“Spit on the head of the man who printed that! he lies, the dog of a Moscow pedlar! Did I say that? ‘ ’Twas just the same as though one hadn’t his wits about him!’ Listen. I’ll tell the tale to you on the spot.”
We moved up to the table, and he began.

My grandfather (the kingdom of heaven be his! may he eat only wheaten rolls and poppy-seed cakes with honey in the other world!) could tell a story wonderfully well. When he used to begin a tale you could not stir from the spot all day, but kept on listening. He was not like the storyteller of the present day, when he begins to lie, with a tongue as though he had had nothing to eat for three days, so that you snatch your cap and flee from the house. I remember my old mother was alive then, and in the long winter evenings when the frost was crackling out of doors, and had sealed up hermetically the narrow panes of our cottage, she used to sit at her wheel, drawing out a