Plaque to Gogol's 'Nose' Imitates Original
By Claire Bigg
Staff Writer
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Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Police are trying to discover the fate of this imitation of Major Kovalyov's nose.
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A monument to Major Kovalyov's nose, one of Nikolai Gogol's most famous protagonists, may have been inspired by its literary model and is on the loose in St. Petersburg. In Gogol's famous short story, "The Nose," a Major Kovalyov wakes up one morning to discover that his nose has vanished and is wandering around St. Petersburg wearing his uniform. The monument to the nose was erected in 1994 as part of the "Zolotoi Ostap" festival of humor and satire. The festival was named after trickster Ostap Bender, the hero of Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov's "Twelve Chairs." The nose was reported missing from the wall at 11 Pr. Rimskogo-Korsakova on Tuesday. While the disappearance was reported to the police that day, the nose seems to have departed some time earlier. The St. Petersburg Times visited the site Thursday. A woman working in a shop in the building said the nose had been gone since the beginning of the month. "We noticed that it was missing about a week ago. We thought it could have been removed by workers," said Sofia Bukhayeva, the wife of the nose's sculptor, Vyacheslav Bukhayev, who could not be reached for comment Thursday. Bukhayeva said workers had been working on the facade of the building where the nose was mounted, but there was no sign of them Thursday. She and her husband were baffled by the theft, as the nose is made of marble, not metal, and therefore is of no interest to those who scavenge metal to sell for scrap. "It cannot have been stolen for its material," she said cheerfully. "The disappearance is probably the deed of some art lover," she said. Vladimir Timofeyev, the city's Sculpture Museum director, said vandals are likely responsible for the disappearance. "Sometimes acts of vandalism are committed without any particular motive. Hooligans have already stolen and broken a number of plaques and monuments in St. Petersburg." Meanwhile, the police are investigating the circumstances of the nose's disappearance. "We sent an inquiry to the St. Petersburg city government culture committee to find out if the sculpture had been taken down by the workers, and we are still waiting for an answer," police spokesperson Elmar Shakhirzayev said Wednesday. A second police spokesperson, Pavel Rayevsky, said Thursday that the police had no information on the nose, but suggested it had been stolen, most likely by a collector. Stealing the nose would require considerable organization and physical strength. Timofeyev said the sculpture weighed between 80 kilograms and 100 kilograms and was attached to the wall about 3 meters above the ground. The plot thickened as it became clear the nose had been reported missing on the same day that another sculpture by Bukhayev, which had been stolen some months ago, was restored to its location on the Fontanka Embankment next to the Summer Gardens. The monument to the brave sparrow Chizhik Pyzhik, a hero of Russian folk tales, was stolen several times and returned from a scrap-metal yard. This time, however, the five-kilogram metal bird vanished completely, and a copy of it was commissioned to replace the stolen one. A surveillance video-system was set up to protect the sparrow. While the Bukhayevs and the scultures' fans will have to wait for the results of the investigation to find out what fate the nose has met, Bukhayeva says there is a guaranteed way of returning the nose to its original location. "We still have a plaster copy of the nose at home, so we can always make another one" she said.
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