The Night Before Christmas: Or The Night of Christmas Eve - nicolas gogol

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Résumé :
One snowy night, Solokha, a witch, steals the stars and the Devil takes the moon, leaving the townspeople of Dikanka in pitch darkness. The Devil has orchestrated this because he is upset with the town blacksmith, Vakula, who paints religious pictures as a pastime.
A beautiful but very vain girl, Oksana, is the focus of young men of the village. Solokha is in league with the Devil to cause mischief in the lives of Vakula and Choub, Oksana's father. Solokha, wants to marry Oksana's wealthy widowed father. She does not want her son to marry Oksana and gain Choub's wealth. The Devil wants to cause hate between Vakula and Choub so that Choub will beat Vakula who would then be unable to paint religious pictures.
Later the moon slips back out of the Devil's pocket and restores...

Biographie:
Nikolay Gogol, the author of the first great Russian novel of the 19th century, Dead Souls, as well as two classic plays and some of the finest short stories written in any language, was a true literary oddity. His peculiar, unhappy life and his uniquely dark comic sensibility have been consistently misunderstood by posterity, with critics fiercely debating his nationality, his religious beliefs, and even his sexuality. What has never been in doubt, however, is his immense literary talent which, while essentially sui generis, provided a template for the absurdist, surreal streak in Russian literature that continues to bear fruit to this day. Along with Alexander Pushkin, he also established a literary pattern for the depiction of St. Petersburg as a city of ambiguity and even monstrosity, life in which proves untenable for many of his long-suffering protagonists.

Nikolay Vasilievich Gogol was born in Sorochyntsi, a Ukrainian Cossack village in what is now Ukraine's Poltava Oblast. His family were from the lower ranks of the gentry, his mother of Polish descent and his father a Ukrainian Cossack who wrote poetry and drama in Ukrainian. The family spoke both Ukrainian and Russian at home, and Gogol would later make a conscious choice to pursue a literary career in Russian rather than Ukrainian. He was educated at the Gymnasium of Higher Sciences in Nezhyn, a school founded as part of Alexander I's education reforms.