He ceased work entirely.

According to all accounts he spent his last days in praying and fasting.

Visions came to him.

His death, which came in 1852, was extremely fantastic.

His last words, uttered in a loud frenzy, were: "A ladder! Quick, a ladder!" This call for a ladder--"a spiritual ladder," in the words of Merejkovsky--had been made on an earlier occasion by a certain Russian saint, who used almost the same language.
"I shall laugh my bitter laugh" [3] was the inscription placed on Gogol's grave.
JOHN COURNOS Evenings on the Farm near the Dikanka, 1829-31; Mirgorod, 1831-33; Taras Bulba, 1834; Arabesques (includes tales, The Portrait and A Madman's Diary), 1831-35; The Cloak, 1835; The Revizor (The Inspector-General), 1836; Dead Souls, 1842; Correspondence with Friends, 1847.
ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS: Cossack Tales (The Night of Christmas Eve, Tarass Boolba), trans.