Hohol, Mykola [Gogol, Nikolai Vasilevich]

Nich proty rizdva: opovidannia z “Vechoriv na hutori bilia Dikanki” [The Night Before Christmas: stories from Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka]

Munich: Yuri Gudim-Levkovych, 1945. Kuznetsov, K. [illustrator]. Original pictorial wrappers. Good condition. Item #139

Octavo (14 x 20 cm). 46 pages; illustrations. Text in Ukrainian. Cover design and illustrations by K. Kuznetsov. Light wear and foxing to wrappers. Several pages folded to top corners. Overall good.

It is the first story in the second volume of the collection Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka. Written in 1831, this dark tale relates the adventures of Vakula, the blacksmith, in his fight against the devil, who has stolen the moon above the village of Dikanka and is wreaking havoc on its inhabitants, all to win the love of the most beautiful girl in town. The basis for many film and opera adaptations, and still a story traditionally read aloud to children on Christmas Eve in Ukraine and Russia, The Night Before Christmas is the best holiday tale by the man whom Vladimir Nabokov called 'the greatest writer Russia has yet produced'.

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (Николай Васильевич Гоголь) was born in the Ukrainian Cossack village of Sorochyntsi, in Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire, present-day Ukraine. His mother was a descendant of Polish nobility. His father Vasily Gogol-Yanovsky, a descendant of Ukrainian Cossacks, was an amateur Ukrainian-language playwright who died when Gogol was 15 years old.

OCLC shows ten copies of the book as of July 2019.

Sold