. The image of the author and his country in works by N.V. Gogol, H. Heine and J. Rizal
- Pages
- 56-73
Abstract
The article analyzes the typological connections between N. V. Gogol’s prose poem “The Dead Souls”, H. Heine’s poem in verse “Germany: A Winter Tale” and J. Rizal’s novel “Noli me tangere”. The author studies how, in all three works, the image of the author and of his country are interconnected. Each author sees himself as a patriot, and that is why he feels obliged to criticize the situation of his country. Each one of them is to a certain degree seen as a stranger by origin. Obviously, this assumes a mild form in the case of Gogol, the Ukrainian, in Russia. It is stronger with Rizal, who is a Filipino and yet a man with Chinese ancestors. But it is Heine who revels the strongest form of exclusion, antisemitism, who yet sees himself as a German patriot. The three works share the same feature, they were written while the authors were living abroad. Due to this, each of them viewed their countries from the outside. Through travel narration, which, to a high degree, is also the narration of a voyage through the kingdom of death, they describe the problems of their countries. All the above-mentioned factors help to establish the imagery connection to the works of Cervantes and Dante.