What one reviewer at amazon said about Taras Bulba:
This is an epic novel in which the action takes place in the XIVth century. It is the first relevant novel written by Gogol, and he came up with it as he intended to write a history of Ukraine, the country where he was born. It narrates Ukraine's struggles against Asian invaders through the adventures of Taras Bulba, a tough, brave Cossack and his young sons.
Those readers who are fond of writers such as Dostoievsky, Turgueniev or Chejov may find that Gogol lacks the depth of other Russian writers when it comes to characters construction. Far from what we see in subsequent novelists, here the characters are merely outlined to serve the purposes of the saga. They are simple devices to depict what Ukraine's situation was at the time and to develop the feats of the Cossack army in the countless battles they held against Tartars, Poles, etc.
Resembling The Iliad or The Odyssey, the gory and scary scenes are abundant and the author uses no euphemisms. Yet, the novel misses the richness of characters and situations Homer builds in his epic poems. Taras, the Cossack lacks Ulysses sagacity and appears to be a brutish when he is put side by side with the Greek hero. However, I grant that I may be balancing things that have nothing to do but I am to blame since I haven't read much epic literature and I lack references to make good comparisons.
There are some details that confer the story its value, though: Cossack' disposition portray of towards war. The idea of granting life a sense: that of patriotism, or preserving national values. And how in a land where nothing but coldness, hunger or alcohol is left to its inhabitants, war arises as the only raison d'être for men who are confronted with their insignificant lives day after day. Dying for the sake of religion or the land is what makes a man a hero, as Taras himself says "Shall men end up their existences as dogs, without having served their country and Christianity? What do we live for then?".
Love also emerges as a conflictive element. Like Helena in Homer's Iliad, there is a Polish woman who is capable of giving birth to uncontrollable passions or mad actions, such as betraying blood and roots or even the murder of a son. And, fairly enough for a romantic character, her powers rely on her overwhelming beauty rather than on any other trait.
There are also beautiful metaphors and descriptions throughout the story, which taint the characters with nobility no common man would ever deserve, but suitable for an epic hero and to make the Slavic race immortal.
An understanding of Gogol's point of view gives the key to "Taras Bulba." For in this panoramic canvas of the Setch, the military brotherhood of the Cossacks, living under open skies, picturesquely and heroically, he has drawn a picture of his romantic ideal, which if far from perfect at any rate seemed to him preferable to the grey tedium of a city peopled with government officials. Gogol has written in "Taras Bulba" his own reproach to the nineteenth century. It is sad and joyous like one of those Ukrainian songs which have helped to inspire him to write it. And then, as he cut himself off more and more from the world of the past, life became a sadder and still sadder thing to him; modern life, with all its gigantic pettiness, closed in around him, he began to write of petty officials and of petty scoundrels, "commonplace heroes" he called them. But nothing is ever lost in this world. Gogol's romanticism, shut in within himself, finding no outlet, became a flame. It was a flame of pity. He was like a man walking in hell, pitying. And that was the miracle, the transfiguration. Out of that flame of pity the Russian novel was born.
JOHN COURNOS
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