Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol-Yanovski (who later dropped the second part of his hyphenated name) was born in Russia in 1809. He was by all accounts a driven, moody individual. Extremely sensitive to the opinions of others, he could be crushed by the slightest negative criticism and then swell with confidence from positive feedback. Yet he was most strongly motivated, it seems, by his own search for spiritual meaning.

Gogol aspired to become a civil servant. At age 19 in 1828 he left his widowed mother on his family's modest farm in the Ukraine and made the journey to St. Petersburg in search of a government job. He found one in ten months, but by then young Gogol was already disenchanted with public service and set on pursuing a literary career. Using money from his mother and a pseudonym, Gogol arranged to publish a long poem ("Hans Kuechelgarten" ) he had written...