The Fair at Sorochyntsi is the first story in the collection Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka by Ukrainian-born Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. Later in the 19th-century the story was adapted as an opera of the same name by Modest Mussorgsky (left unfinished by the composer, and completed by other hands).
This story opens with the novice narrator described in Panko's introduction providing an overly literary description of the beauty of Ukraine (the...
more
The Fair at Sorochyntsi is the first story in the collection Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka by Ukrainian-born Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. Later in the 19th-century the story was adapted as an opera of the same name by Modest Mussorgsky (left unfinished by the composer, and completed by other hands).
This story opens with the novice narrator described in Panko's introduction providing an overly literary description of the beauty of Ukraine (then known as Little Russia) and sets the date in August 1800. The main characters of the story, Solopy Cherevik, his wife Khavronya Nikiforovna, and his daughter Paraska, are traveling to the fair to sell some items, including their old mare.
A young man, called the "young man in the white jacket," finds Paraska beautiful and starts to flirt with her. When her father becomes agitated, the young man makes it known that he is the son of Cherevik's friend and wants to marry Paraska. Cherevik declines and the young man decides to figure out a way to...
less
