Piazza di Spagna, Piazza Barberia — площади в Риме.

Appartements meublé<s> — меблированные квартиры. (Франц.).

46. Н. Я. ПРОКОПОВИЧУ.

Печатается по подлиннику (КАБ).

Впервые опубликовано в «Русском Слове» 1859, I, стр. 100–103.

Это — ответ Гоголя на несохранившееся «коротенькое» письмо Прокоповича, где тот, по-видимому, жаловался, что скучает по Гоголе.

Colonel - this is how Gogol jokingly called A. S. Danilevsky.

"A Guardian Friend..." A quote from E. A. Boratynsky's elegy "Disbelief"; quoted by Gogol from memory, not quite accurately.

… whether Zhukovsky has received my letter... Gogol is referring to his letter to Zhukovsky of April 18/6, 1837, with a request for material support (see No 44*).

Gogol's request to send him all his "handwritten books", without which he is "like without hands", may be connected not only with the expansion of work on "Dead Souls", but also with the proposed further processing of other previously prepared materials (cf. his words: "There I have extracts and materials of everything").

Gogol read it even before receiving the requested copy from Smirnova in Baden-Baden, where he was around mid-July 1837.

Gorchakov, A. M., kn. (1798–1883) — a famous Russian diplomat, a student of the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum; from 1833 he was a counselor of the Russian embassy in Vienna.

Pavel Ivanovich Krivtsov (d. 1844), brother of the Decembrist S. I. Krivtsov, was a Russian chargé d'affaires in Rome, i.e. chargé d'affaires ("secretary of the mission"); in 1840 he was appointed trustee of Russian artists in Rome (see M. Gershenzon. "Decembrist Krivtsov and His Brothers". Moscow, 1914).

… On July 10, 1836, Prokopovich was approved as a teacher of Russian language and literature in the First Cadet Corps in St. Petersburg, where he served until his death.

Povestochki, poems, kusonochki — see note. to No 27*.

… Visit the institute. Visit my sisters...—Anna and Elizabeth, who in 1832 were assigned by Gogol to the Patriotic Institute in St. Petersburg. The letter to them mentioned here has not been preserved.

Demidov, Pavel Nikolaevich — see note. to No 111*.

Lukashevich — see note. to No 36*.

… circle... of only three persons...—Gogol, Prokopovich, and Danilevsky.

The letter to Melentyeva has not been preserved. The letter "M" in front of her surname may indicate the beginning of the word "M-elle" (cf. in No 73). In the next letter to Prokopovich, dated July 21/9 of the same year (No 50), Gogol asks not to transfer the above-mentioned letters to the sisters and to Melentieva to the Institute.