Of Kerfuffle,Gogol,The Moon,Noses and other. feelings.....

drawing by marguerita


"The moon is made by some lame cooper, and you can see the idiot has no idea about moons at all.
He put in a creosoted rope and some wood oil; and this has led to such a terrible stink all over the earth that you have to hold your nose.
Another reason the moon is such a tender globe it that people just cannot live on it any more,
and all that's left alive there are noses.
This is also why we cannot see our own noses -
they're all on the moon."
(from Diary of a Madman, 1835)

Nikolay Gogol was born in Sorochintsi, Ukraine, and grew up on his parents' country estate. His real surname was Ianovskii,
but the writer's grandfather had taken the name 'Gogol' to claim a noble Cossack ancestry.
Gogol's father was an educated and gifted man, who wrote plays, poems, and sketches in Ukrainian.