plays. The Vladimir Cross, which was to deal with the
higher St. Petersburg functionaries in the same way as
the Revizor with the lesser town officials, was never concluded,
as Gogol realized the impossibility of placing
them on the Russian stage. A few strong scenes were
published. The comedy Marriage, finished in 1835, still
finds a place in the Russian theatrical repertoire. The
Gamblers, his only other complete comedy, belongs to a
later period.

After a stay abroad, chiefly in Italy, lasting with some
interruptions for seven years (1836-1841), he returned
to his native country, bringing with him the first part of
his greatest work, Dead Souls. The novel, published
the following year, produced a profound impression and
made Gogol's literary reputation supreme. Pushkin,
who did not live to see its publication, on hearing the
first chapters read, exclaimed, "God, how sad our Russia
is!" And Alexander Hertzen characterized it as "a
wonderful book, a bitter, but not hopeless rebuke of contemporary
Russia." Aksakov went so far as to call it
the Russian national epic, and Gogol the Russian Homer.

Unfortunately the novel remained incomplete. Gogol
began to suffer from a nervous illness which induced
extreme hypochondria. He became excessively religious,
fell under the influence of pietists and a fanatical priest,
sank more and more into mysticism, and went on a pilgrimage
to Jerusalem to worship at the Holy Sepulchre.
In this state of mind he came to consider all literature,