The story was first published in 1844, in Library for Reading journal (vol. 62, no. 1—2), with the signature ‘V. Lugansky’, and, in the same year, a separate edition of it ‘with a picture album of 51 pages by a famous Russian artist’ was issued.

This is what the author of the text said about his work on the book in one of his letters at the end of 1842: “A.P. Sapozhnikov and I are preparing a joke: first, he made 50 paintings on copper, perfectly outlined, masterful… And then, I wrote an explanation of them, like a story: The Adventures of Khristian Khristianovich Violdamur and his Arshet: the life of an imaginary artist, a musician, who suddenly set off in Genius. The publication is expensive; the pictures are excellent — I do not know how it will do”.

V. Dal was a great connoisseur of the Russian language and could play with words very gracefully. It starts with the names of characters. In the text of the story, the author explains in detail why the boy is being called so solemnly by name and patronymic — Khristian Khristianovich — and what his name indicates. His parents are of German origin, from Strasbourg, and the future Genius, as his parents and their entourage see him, should not be called simply by name. The main character himself, when he is left all alone and dreams about the glory of musician, will resolve the difficult question of his identity as follows: 

Being a child Alexandre Benois loved to leaf through this book from his father’s library. He could not yet cope with the text, but admired the pictures and wrote later: “Even before reading Gogol”s stories, having no idea about his times, I, thanks to this series of pictures, created a complete image of Gogol”s Petersburg, which had once been “dad”s” as well, when dad had been a young man’.