The Portrait

Nikolai Gogol

Newcomb Livraria Press

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This is a new translation from the original Russian manuscript of Gogol's famous story The Portrait (Портрет). This edition contains an Afterword by the Translator, a timeline of Gogol's life and works and an Index of Gogol's individual works. First Published in the collection Arabesques in 1835, The Portrait is one of Gogol's most supernatural works, with a tragic moral. Oscar Wilde's philosophic novel is templated off of this work, and has a similar point. "The Portrait" is the story of the artist Andrey Petrovich Chartkov, who stumbles upon a frighteningly lifelike portrait in an art shop and is compelled to buy it. The painting is magical and presents him with a dilemma - to struggle to make his own way in the world on the basis of his own talents, or to accept the magical painting's help to guarantee riches and fame. He chooses to become rich and famous, but when he comes across a portrait by another artist that is "pure, flawless, beautiful as a bride", he realises that he has made the wrong choice and he falls ill and dies of a fever. It is a re-telling of a Ukrainian fairy tale.

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A Russian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer, Gogol was a personal friedn of Dostoevsky, Turgenev and Tolstoy. He is considered the father of modern Russian realism. His works, including "Dead Souls" and "The Overcoat," are renowned for their satirical depiction of Russian society and bureaucracy. Gogol's blend of realism, grotesque, and absurdism had a profound influence on Russian and world literature.