“Taras Bulba”: History and Textology

The article raises the fundamental problems of textual criticism of N. V. Gogol’s story “Taras Bulba.” The author of the article provides an analytical review of the translation and publishing practice of representatives of Ukrainian nationalism of the 19th–20th centuries, the features of the publications of Gogol’s story with textological “innovations” by P. A. Kulish, M. O. Lobodovsky, M. Sadovsky (N. K. Tobilevich), I. A. Malkovich. The distinctive feature of the listed cases is the ideological character of the violation of the fundamental scientific principle of choosing the final wording of the text. The preference for the publication of the early edition of Taras Bulba over the later one leads to the fact that Taras Bulba’s famous speech about partnership, the image of the path of the traitor Andriy to enemies, the words of the Cossacks before death about devotion to faith and homeland, Gogol’s prophecy about Russian tsar and the narrator’s exclamation about the irresistible Russian power became “an appendix” without author’s context. The paper clearly shows the need for a comprehensive, complex solution of textual problems and the inadmissibility of ignoring the last writer’s will.