By now, the world of literature is used to hearing innumerable writers echo the legendary Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky’s extraordinary quote, “We all came out of Gogol’s overcoat.” The Night Before Christmas – a book all of 73 pages provides a magical testimony to the literary prowess that made the possessor of the proverbial overcoat, one of the most formidable forces to ever grace the global literary landscape.

The story takes place in the sparsely populated, cold and forbidding village of Dikanka on the night before Christmas. An incensed devil scheming in connivance with a scheming witch stealthily approaches the moon before stealing it and putting it in his pocket. An otherwise egregious, cheery and feisty village is plunged into a spell of spontaneous and unfathomable darkness. For good measure, the devil also kicks up a godawful blizzard that sends icy bursts of unforgiving snow careening into the faces of an unsuspecting populace.

The devil’s shenanigans is primarily an expression following the sculptural dexterities of a blacksmith named Vakula, whose art pieces exhibiting the devil in negative light irks the latter to no end. Ironically the devil’s accomplice, the witch happens to be Vakula’s mother. The witch leads an extraordinary life of deception, enjoying multiple affairs with a variegated populace in Dikanka, ranging from a rich Cossack named Tchub to the very sacristan himself! To give absurdism a run for its money, one of the witch’s patrons is the devil himself!

Tchub’s daughter Oksana, a maiden of indescribable beauty finds herself wooed in perpetuity by the blacksmith. In an incensed fit, she agrees to marry Vakula, if only he succeeds in obtaining a pair of slippers worn by the Tsaritsa in St Petersburg. The bulk of the story revolves around the exertions of Vakula in making the impossible, possible.

The Night Before Christmas is a stirring homage to the untrammelled depths of human imagination. It is absurd, yet arresting, trivial yet tantalising. It is a pre-cursor to an entire generation that churned some of the most memorable fantasies. Gogol is nothing short of an inspiration and a totem pole to a multitude of writers treading his path and aspiring to emulate his exploits.

Gogol’s Devil does not possess either the brutality or the remorselessness of Mephistopheles. He is a trivial and almost frivolous “village product” capable of both stealing the moon and wriggling himself into the confines of an uncomfortable sack in morbid fear of a commoner manning a smithy. The helplessness, nay, the ridiculousness of the Devil is a clever paean to “smallness.” In the rollicking and seemingly indifferent and even petty comedy of Gogol, lies a subtle albeit powerful tribute to David. An invisible slingshot always lurking in the shadows serving as an ominous warning to its rivals. There are times when the reader even inculcates a genuine burst of sympathy towards and for the Devil!

It is impossible to harbour the realisation that a man who penned such a wonderfully humorous tale led a life astonishingly incongruent with his writing. At the very pinnacle of his writing prowess, Gogol after coming under the influence of a church elder, set fire to the second and third parts of his magisterial work Dead Souls, before taking to his bed and refusing to eat. He succumbed to starvation nine days later. Gogol was all forty-three years old at the time of his demise.