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Nikolai Gogol museum opens in Moscow

MOSCOW, March 27 (RIA Novosti) - A museum devoted to Nikolai Gogol opened in Moscow on Friday in the building where the writer spent the last four years of his life. The museum includes a mock fireplace in the parlor, where the writer burnt the second volume of his satirical novel Dead Souls hours before his death.

The clock on the mantle shows 3 a.m., the time when the novel is believed to have been destroyed. The published first volume of Dead Souls spotlighted the unseemly sides of the 19th-century Russia, while the second volume reputedly showed the good side of life.

In the parlor, frequented by many literary dignitaries during Gogol's lifetime, the writer also read his play The Inspector General, a violent satire of Russian provincial bureaucracy, to actors from the Maly Theater.

The decor was restored by museum creators based on the reminiscences of the writer's contemporaries, as few of Gogol's belongings have survived.

Exhibits in the six-room exposition feature a recently discovered original portrait of Gogol, as well as hand-written copies and printed editions of his writings.

The museum was unveiled ahead of the 200th anniversary, on April 1, of the Ukrainian-born Russian writer's birthday.

Gogol's other well-known works include satirical short stories Nose (1835-1836), which tells of an official whose nose leaves his face and lives its own life, and Overcoat (1842), a story of the life and death of an impoverished clerk extremely dedicated to his job.