Heroes of "Dead Souls"

"Dead Souls" is a work of the writer N. V. Gogol. The plot of the work was suggested to him by Pushkin. At first, the writer was going to show Russia only partially, satirically, but gradually the idea changed and Gogol tried to portray the Russian order in such a way, "where there would be not one thing to laugh at," but more fully. The task of fulfilling this plan was pushed back by Gogol to the second and third volumes of Dead Souls, but they were never written. Only a few chapters of the second volume remained for descendants. So for more than a century and a half, Dead Souls have been studied on the basis of that first one. He is also discussed in this article.

Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov arrives in the provincial town N. Its goal is to buy from the neighboring landowners the dead, but still considered alive, serfs, thus becoming the owner of several hundred serf souls. Chichikov's idea was based on two positions. First, in the Little Russian provinces of those years (40s of the XIX century) there was a lot of free land, provided by the authorities to everyone. Secondly, there was a practice of "mortgaging": a landowner could borrow from the state a certain amount of money to secure his real estate - villages with peasants. If the debt was not paid, the village became the property of the state. Chichikov was going to create a fictitious settlement in the Kherson province, place peasants bought at a cheap price in it (after all, it was not noted in the deed that they were “dead souls”), and, having given the village in “mortgage”, receive “live” money.

“Oh, I am Akim-simplicity,” he said to himself, “I am looking for mittens, but both are in my belt! Yes, buy all these that have died out, have not yet submitted new revision tales, buy them, let's say, a thousand, yes, let's say, the board of trustees will give two hundred rubles per capita: that's two hundred thousand capital! ... True, without land cannot be bought or mortgaged. Why, I will buy for withdrawal, for withdrawal; now the lands in the Tauride and Kherson provinces are given away for free, just populate them. I’ll move them all there! to their Kherson! let them live there! And resettlement can be done legally, as it should be done in the courts. If they want to examine the peasants: perhaps I am not averse to this either, why not? I will also present a certificate signed by the captain-police officer. The village can be called Chichikova Slobodka or by the name given at baptism: Pavlovskoe village "

The stupidity and greed of the landlord sellers ruined Pavel Ivanovich's scam. Nozdryov blabbed out in the city about Chichikov's strange inclinations, and Korobochka came to the city to find out the real price of "dead souls", for she feared that Chichikov would be deceived

The main characters of the first volume of "Dead Souls"

— Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov

“Gentleman, not handsome, but not bad-looking, neither too fat nor too thin; one cannot say that he is old, but not that he is too young "

— Landowner Manilov

“From a glance he was a prominent person; his features were not devoid of pleasantness, but this pleasantness seemed to have been overly transferred to sugar; there was something ingratiating and acquaintance in his methods and turns. He smiled alluringly, was blond, with blue eyes. In the first minute of a conversation with him, you cannot help but say: "What a pleasant and kind person! "The next minute you won't say anything, and in the third you will say:" The devil knows what this is! "- and you will move away; if you do not move away, you will feel mortal boredom ... You cannot say that he is engaged in the economy, he never even I went to the fields, the farm went somehow by itself. When the clerk said: "It would be nice, sir, do this and that", - "Yes, not bad:" - he usually answered, smoking a pipe ... When a peasant came to him and, scratching the back of his head with his hand, he said: "Master, let me leave for work, but" let me earn money, "-" Go, "he said, smoking a pipe, and it did not even occur to him that the man was going to drink. from the porch to the courtyard and to the pond, he said how good it would be if suddenly an underground passage was made from the house or a stone bridge was built across the pond, on which there would be shops on both sides, and merchants would sit in them and sell various small goods needed for the peasants. ”At the same time, his eyes became extremely sweet and his face took the most satisfied expression; however, all these projects ended with only one word. There was always some book in his office, bookmarked on page fourteen, which he had been constantly reading for two years. "

With the "filing of Gogol" the concept of "manilovism" entered the Russian language, which has become synonymous with laziness, idle idle dreaminess

— Landowner Sobakevich

“When Chichikov glanced sideways at Sobakevich, this time he seemed to him very similar to an average size bear. To complete the resemblance, the tailcoat he wore was completely bearish, the sleeves were long, the pantaloons were long, he stepped with his feet at random and sideways and stepped incessantly on other people's legs. The complexion was red-hot, hot, as is the case on a copper dime. It is known that there are many such persons in the world, over whose decoration nature was not long wise, ... having said: "He lives!" Sobakevich had the same strong and marvelously stunning image: he held it more downward than upward, did not turn his neck at all, and due to such non-rotation he rarely looked at the one with whom he was talking, but always either at the corner of the stove or at the door ... Chichikov glanced at him sideways once more as they passed the dining room: bear! perfect bear! "

— Landowner Korobochka

“A minute later, the hostess came in, an elderly woman, in some kind of sleeping cap, put on hastily, with a flannel around her neck, one of those mothers, small landowners who cry for crop failures, losses and keep their heads a little to one side, and meanwhile are gaining a little money in variegated bags placed on the drawers with a chest of drawers. In one bag they take all the rubles, in the other half a ruble, in the third quarter, although it looks like there is nothing in the chest of drawers except linen, and night jackets, and thread hanks, and a ripped cloak, which then has to turn into a dress, if the old somehow burns out during the baking of holiday cakes with all sorts of yarn, or gets rid of itself. But the dress will not burn out and will not wear out by itself: the old woman is thrifty "

— Landowner Nozdryov

“He was of average height, a very well-built fellow with full, ruddy cheeks, teeth as white as snow, and jet-black sideburns. He was fresh as blood and milk; health seemed to sprinkle from his face. - Ba, ba, ba! he cried suddenly, spreading both arms at the sight of Chichikov. - What are the fates? Chichikov recognized Nozdryov, the same one with whom he had dined with the prosecutor and who in a few minutes got on such a short leg with him that he began to say "you", although, however, he, on his part, did not give any reason for this. - Where did you go? - said Nozdryov and, without waiting for an answer, continued: - And I, brother, from the fair. Congratulations: blown away! Do you believe that I've never been so blown out in my life ... "

— Landowner Plyushkin

“At one of the buildings, Chichikov soon noticed a figure who began to quarrel with a peasant who had arrived in a cart. For a long time he could not recognize what gender the figure was: a woman or a man. Her dress was completely indefinite, very much like a woman's bonnet, on her head was a cap, which is worn by village courtyard women, only one voice seemed to him somewhat husky for a woman ... Here our hero inevitably stepped back and looked ... intently. He happened to see a lot of all kinds of people; but he had never seen anything like it. His face was nothing special; it was almost the same as that of many thin old people, one chin only protruded very far forward, so that he had to cover it with a handkerchief every time so as not to spit; the little eyes had not yet gone out and were running from under the high-grown eyebrows, like mice, when, sticking their sharp muzzles out of the dark holes, pricking their ears and blinking their mustache, they look out for a cat or a mischievous boy hiding somewhere, and smelling suspiciously the very air. Much more remarkable was his attire: no means and diligence could have been able to get to the bottom of what his dressing gown was concocted: the sleeves and upper floors were so greasy and shiny that they looked like leather, which goes like boots; back and instead of two, four floors dangled, from which cotton paper clung in flakes. He also had something tied around his neck that could not be made out: whether a stocking, a garter, or a belly, but not a tie. In a word, if Chichikov had met him, so dressed up, somewhere at the church doors, he would probably have given him a copper penny "

In Russian, the concept of "Plyushkin" has become synonymous with stinginess, greed, pettiness, painful hoarding

Why is Dead Souls called a poem?

Literary scholars and literary critics answer this question vaguely, uncertainly and unconvincingly. Allegedly, Gogol refused to define Dead Souls as a novel, since it “does not resemble either a story or a novel” (Gogol's letter to Pogodin, November 28, 1836); and settled on a poetic genre - a poem. How “Dead Souls” are not like a novel, how they differ from works of about the same order of Dickens, Thackeray, Balzac, most likely the author himself did not know. Perhaps he was simply not allowed to sleep by the laurels of Pushkin, whose "Eugene Onegin" was a novel in verse. And here is a poem in prose.

The history of the creation of "Dead Souls". Briefly

• 1831, May - Gogol's acquaintance with Pushkin

  the plot of the poem was suggested to Gogol by Pushkin. The poet summarized the story of an enterprising man who sold dead souls to the board of trustees, for which he received a lot of money. Gogol wrote in his diary: "Pushkin found that such a plot of" Dead Souls "is good for me because it gives me complete freedom to travel with the hero all over Russia and bring out many different characters"

• 1835, October 7 - Gogol said in a letter to Pushkin that he began work on "Dead Souls"
• 1836, June 6 - Gogol left for Europe
• 1836, November 12 - a letter to Zhukovsky from Paris: “… I started working on the Dead Souls, which I started in St. Petersburg. I redid everything I had begun again, thought over the whole plan and now I am leading it calmly, like a chronicle ... "
• 1837, September 30 - letter to Zhukovsky from Rome: “I am cheerful. My soul is light. I work and I hasten with all my might to complete my work "
• 1839 - Gogol finished the draft of the poem
• 1839, September - Gogol returned to Russia for a short time and soon after his return read the first chapters to his friends Prokopovich, Annenkov

  "The expression of unfeigned delight, which was evidently on all faces at the end of the reading, touched him ... He was pleased .."

• 1840, January - Gogol read the chapters of Dead Souls in the Aksakovs' house
• 1840, September - Gogol left for Europe again
• 1840, December - the beginning of work on the second volume of "Dead Souls"
• 1840, December 28 - a letter to T. Aksakov from Rome: “I am preparing the first volume of“ Dead Souls ”for perfect cleansing. I change, clean up, recycle a lot at all ... "
• 1841, October - Gogol returned to Moscow and handed over the manuscript of the poem to the censorship. Censorship in Moscow banned the publication of the work.
• 1842, January - Gogol presented the manuscript of Dead Souls to censors in St. Petersburg
• 1842, March 9 - the St. Petersburg censorship gave permission to publish the poem
• 1842, May 21 - The book went on sale and was sold out; this event caused fierce controversy in the literary community. Gogol was accused of slander and hatred of Russia, but Belinsky stood up to defend the writer, praising the work.
• 1842, June - Gogol left for the West again
• 1842-1845 - Gogol worked on the second volume
• 1845, summer - Gogol burned the manuscript of the second volume
• 1848, April - Gogol returned to Russia and continued work on the unfortunate second volume. The work proceeded slowly.

  In the second volume, the author wanted to portray heroes different from the characters in the first part - positive ones. And Chichikov had to go through a certain ritual of purification, becoming on the right path. Many drafts of the poem were destroyed by order of the author, but some parts were still preserved. Gogol believed that life and truth were completely absent in the second volume, he doubted himself as an artist, hating the continuation of the poem

• 1852, winter - Gogol met with the Archpriest of Rzhev Matvey Konstantinovsky. who advised him to destroy some of the chapters of the poem
• 1852, February 12 - Gogol burned the white manuscript of the second volume of "Dead Souls" (only 5 chapters survived in incomplete form)

A great poem, a holiday of absurdity and grotesque, from which the history of Russian realism is paradoxically counted. Having conceived a three-part work based on the Divine Comedy model, Gogol managed to complete only the first volume - in which he introduced a new hero, businessman and rogue into literature, and created an immortal image of Russia as a bird-troika, rushing in an unknown direction.

comments: Varvara Babitskaya

What is this book about?

A retired official Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov arrives in the provincial town of N., a man devoid of distinctive features and to everyone's liking. Having charmed the governor, city officials and surrounding landowners, Chichikov begins to go around the latter with a mysterious goal: he buys up dead souls, that is, recently deceased serfs who have not yet been included in revision tale ⁠ and therefore are formally considered alive. Having visited successively caricatures, each in his own way, Sobakevich, Manilov, Plyushkin, Korobochka and Nozdrev, Chichikov draws up a deed of sale and prepares to complete his mysterious plan, but by the end of the first (and only completed) volume of the poem in the city of N. chthonic forces, a scandal erupts, and Chichikov, as Nabokov put it, "leaves the city on the wings of one of those delightful lyrical digressions ... which the writer places every time between the character's business meetings." Thus ends the first volume of the poem conceived by Gogol in three parts; the third volume was never written, and the second was burned by Gogol - today we only have access to its reconstructions based on the surviving excerpts, and in different editions, therefore, speaking about "Dead Souls", we mean in general only the first volume, completed and published by the author.

Nikolay Gogol. An engraving of a portrait by Fyodor Moller in 1841

When was it written?

In his famous letter to Pushkin in Mikhailovskoye dated October 7, 1835, Gogol asks the poet for a "plot for a comedy", for which there was a successful precedent - the intrigue also grew, told by the poet. By this time, however, Gogol had already written three chapters of the future poem (their content is unknown, since the manuscript has not survived) and, most importantly, the name Dead Souls was invented.

"Dead Souls" were conceived as a satirical roguish novel, a parade of evil caricatures, as Gogol wrote in The Author's Confession, "if anyone had seen those monsters that came out of my pen at first for myself, he would definitely shudder." In any case, Pushkin shuddered, who listened to the author's reading of the first chapters in an early version that did not come down to us, and exclaimed: “God, how sad our Russia!" 1 ⁠ ... Thus, although later Gogol's poem acquired a reputation as an angry verdict of Russian reality, in fact we are already dealing with kind, sweet "Dead Souls".

Gradually, Gogol's idea changed: he came to the conclusion that “many of the nasty things are not worth malice; it is better to show all their insignificance ... ", and most importantly, instead of random deformities, I decided to depict" some of those on which truly Russian, our fundamental properties are imprinted more noticeably and deeper, "showing precisely the national character in good and bad. Satire turned into an epic, a poem in three parts. Its plan was drawn up in May 1836 in St. Petersburg; On May 1, 1836, the premiere of The Inspector General took place there, and in June Gogol went abroad, where he spent the next 12 years with short interruptions. Gogol begins the first part of his main work in the fall of 1836 in the Swiss city of Vevey, rewriting everything he had begun in St. Petersburg; from there he writes to Zhukovsky about his work: "All Russia will appear in him!" - and for the first time calls him a poem. Work continues in the winter of 1836/37 in Paris, where Gogol learns about the death of Pushkin - since then, the writer sees in his work something like Pushkin's spiritual testament. Gogol read the first chapters of the poem to familiar writers in the winter of 1839/40, during a short visit to Russia. At the beginning of 1841, an almost complete edition of Dead Souls was completed, but Gogol continued to make changes until December, when he came to Moscow to seek publication (subsequent edits made for censorship reasons are usually not reflected in modern editions).

How is it written?

The most striking feature of Gogol is his wild imagination: all things and phenomena are presented on a grotesque scale, a random situation turns into a farce, a word dropped in passing gives an escape in the form of an expanded image, from which a more economical writer could make a whole story. Dead Souls owe much of its comic effect to the naive and important narrator, who, with imperturbable detail, describes sheer nonsense in great detail. An example of such a technique is “surprising in its deliberate, monumental stately idiocy, a conversation about wheel " 2 Adamovich G. Report on Gogol // Questions of literature. 1990. No. 5. S. 145. ⁠ in the first chapter of the poem (this technique, which terribly amused his friends, Gogol used in oral improvisations). Lyrical digressions sharply contrast with this manner, where Gogol turns to poetic rhetoric, which borrowed a lot from the holy fathers and is colored with folklore. It is believed that because of its richness, Gogol's language is “untranslatable by any other Russian prose " 3 Svyatopolk-Mirsky D.P. The history of Russian literature from ancient times to 1925. Novosibirsk: Svinin and Sons, 2006. P. 241. ⁠ .

Analyzing Gogol's absurdities and illogisms, Mikhail Bakhtin uses the term "kokalans" (coq-à-l'âne), literally meaning "from a rooster to a donkey," and in a figurative sense - verbal nonsense, which is based on the violation of stable semantic, logical, spatio-temporal connections (an example of a kokalan is “in the garden of an elder, and in Kiev there is a man”) Elements of the "kokalan style" - gods and curses, banquet images, laudatory nicknames, "unpublished speech spheres" - and indeed, such common expressions as "Fetuk, haberdashery, mouse foal, pitcher snout, babyoshka", many contemporary critics found Gogol incoherent; they were also insulted by the information that “the beast of Kuvshinnikov will not let a single woman down”, that “he calls it to use about strawberries”; Nikolay Polevoy Nikolai Alekseevich Polevoy (1796-1846) - literary critic, publisher, writer. From 1825 to 1834 he published the Moscow Telegraph magazine; after the authorities closed the magazine, Polevoy's political views became noticeably more conservative. Since 1841 he published the journal "Russian Bulletin". ⁠ complains about “the servant of Chichikov, who stank and everywhere carries with him a smelly atmosphere; on the drop that drips from the boy's nose into the soup; on fleas that have not been combed out by a puppy ... on Chichikov, who sleeps naked; on Nozdryov, who comes in a shirtless robe; on the plucking of hair from the nose by Chichikov. All this appears in abundance on the pages of Dead Souls - even in the most poetic passage about the bird-three, the narrator exclaims: "Damn it!" Examples of feast scenes are innumerable - like Sobakevich's dinner, Korobochka's treat, or Governor's breakfast. It is curious that in his judgments about the artistic nature of Dead Souls, Polevoy actually anticipated Bakhtin's theories (albeit in an evaluative-negative way): “If we admit crude farces, Italian buffoonery, epic poems inside out (travesti), poems like“ Elisha "Maikov, can you not regret that the wonderful talent of Mr. Gogol is spent on such creatures!"

The quill pen with which Gogol wrote the second volume of Dead Souls. State historical Museum

Fine Art Images / Heritage Images / Getty Images

What influenced her?

Gogol's work amazed his contemporaries with its originality - no direct pretexts were sought for him either in Russian literature or in the West, as noted, for example, by Herzen: “Gogol is completely free from foreign influence; he did not know any literature when he already made himself name" 4 Herzen A.I. Literature and public opinion after December 14, 1825 // Russian aesthetics and criticism of the 40-50s of the XIX century / Podgot. text, comp., entry. article and note. V.K.Kantor and A.L. Ospovata. Moscow: Art, 1982. ⁠ ... Both contemporaries and later researchers considered Dead Souls as an equal element of the world literary process, drawing parallels with Shakespeare, Dante, Homer; Vladimir Nabokov compared Gogol's poem with Laurence Stern's Tristram Shandy, Joyce's Ulysses and Henry James's Portrait. Mikhail Bakhtin mentions 5 Bakhtin M.M. Rabelais and Gogol (The art of words and folk culture of laughter) // Bakhtin M.M., Questions of literature and aesthetics. M .: Fiction, 1975.S. 484-495. ⁠ about "direct and indirect (through Stern and the French natural school) influence of Rabelais on Gogol", in particular, seeing in the structure of the first volume "an interesting parallel to the fourth book of Rabelais, that is, the journey of Pantagruel."

Svyatopolk-Mirsky Dmitry Petrovich Svyatopolk-Mirsky (1890-1939) - publicist and literary critic. Before emigration, Svyatopolk-Mirsky published a collection of poems, participated in the First World War and in the Civil War on the side of the White movement. In emigration since 1920; there publishes "History of Russian Literature" on english language, is fond of Eurasianism and founds the magazine "Versty". In the late 1920s, Svyatopolk-Mirsky became interested in Marxism and in 1932 moved to the USSR. After his return, he signs his literary works as “D. Mirsky ". In 1937 he was sent into exile, where he died. ⁠ notes in the work of Gogol the influence of the tradition of the Ukrainian folk and puppet theater, Cossack ballads ("dooms"), comic authors from Moliere to the vaudevilleists of the twenties, the novel of manners, Stern, German romantics, especially Tieck and Hoffmann (under the influence of the latter, Gogol wrote the poem "Ganz Kuchelgarten", which was destroyed by criticism, after which Gogol bought and burned all available copies), French romanticism led by Hugo, Jules Jeanin Jules-Gabrielle Jeanin (1804-1874) - French writer and critic. For more than forty years he worked as a theater critic for the Journal des Debats. In 1858, a collection of his theatrical feuilletons was published. Janin became famous for his novel "The Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman", which became the programmatic text of the French violent school. In a letter to Vera Vyazemskaya, Pushkin calls the novel "charming" and puts Zhanin above Victor Hugo. ⁠ and their common teacher Maturin Charles Robert Maturin (1780-1824) - English writer. From the age of 23 he served as a curate in the Irish Church, and wrote his first novels under a pseudonym. Became famous for the play "Bertrand", it was highly appreciated by Byron and Walter Scott. Maturin's novel Melmoth the Drifter is considered a classic example of English Gothic literature. ⁠ , "Iliad" translated by Gnedich. But all this, the researcher concludes, "is only the details of the whole, so original that this could not be expected." Russian predecessors of Gogol - Pushkin and especially Griboyedov (in Dead Souls there are many indirect quotes from, for example, the abundance of offscreen characters useless for the plot, directly borrowed situations, vernacular, which critics reproached both Griboyedov and Gogol).

The parallel of "Dead Souls" with Dante's "Divine Comedy" is obvious, the three-part structure of which, according to the author's intention, was to be repeated by his poem. Comparison of Gogol with Homer after fierce polemics became a commonplace already in Gogol's times, but here it is more appropriate to recall not the Iliad, but the Odyssey - a journey from chimera to chimera, at the end of which the hero is awaited, as a reward, by the hearth; Chichikov does not have his own Penelope, but he often dreams of "a woman, a nursery". According to the recollections of acquaintances, Gogol read the "Odyssey" in Zhukovsky's translation aloud to them, admiring every line.

The vulgarity that Chichikov personifies is one of the main distinguishing properties of the devil, in whose existence, I must add, Gogol believed much more than in the existence of God

Vladimir Nabokov

Not without censorship delays. In general, Gogol's relationship with the censorship was rather ambiguous - so, Nicholas I personally admitted to the production, whom Gogol later counted on in various senses - he even asked for (and received) material assistance as the first Russian writer. Nevertheless, we had to bother about Dead Souls: “Perhaps, Gogol never used so much worldly experience, heart-to-heart, ingratiating affection and feigned anger, as in 1842, when he started publishing Dead Souls, - later recalled the critic Pavel Annenkov Pavel Vasilievich Annenkov (1813-1887) - literary critic and publicist, the first biographer and researcher of Pushkin, the founder of Pushkin studies. He became friends with Belinsky, in the presence of Annenkov Belinsky wrote his actual testament - "Letter to Gogol", under Gogol's dictation, Annenkov rewrote "Dead Souls". The author of memoirs about the literary and political life of the 1840s and its heroes: Herzen, Stankevich, Bakunin. One of Turgenev's close friends - the writer sent all his last works to Annenkov before publication. ⁠ .

At a meeting of the Moscow censorship committee on December 12, 1841, "Dead Souls" were entrusted with the care of the censor Ivana Snegirev Ivan Mikhailovich Snegirev (1793-1868) - historian, art critic. From 1816 he taught Latin at Moscow University. He was a member of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature, served as a censor for over 30 years. Snegiryov was one of the first researchers of Russian folklore and popular prints, studied the monuments of ancient Russian architecture. He introduced the term "parsuna" into art history, meaning portrait painting of the 16th-18th centuries in the technique of icon painting. ⁠ , who at first found the work "completely well-meaning", but then for some reason he was afraid to let the book go to print on his own and handed it over to his colleagues for review. Here, difficulties were caused, first of all, by the name itself, which, in the opinion of the censors, meant atheism (after all, the human soul is immortal) and condemnation of serfdom (in fact, Gogol never meant either one or the other). They also feared that Chichikov's scam would set a bad example. Faced with a ban, Gogol took the manuscript from the Moscow censorship committee and sent it to St. Petersburg through Belinsky, asking him to plead with Prince Vladimir Odoevsky, Vyazemsky and his good friend Alexander Smirnov-Rosset ⁠ ... Petersburg censor Nikitenko Alexander Vasilievich Nikitenko (1804-1877) - critic, editor, censor. In 1824 Nikitenko, who came from peasants, received his freedom; he was able to go to university and make an academic career. In 1833 Nikitenko began working as a censor and by the end of his life he rose to the rank of privy councilor. From 1839 to 1841 he was the editor of the journal "Son of the Fatherland", from 1847 to 1848 - the journal "Sovremennik". The memoirs of Nikitenko, which were published posthumously, at the end of the 1880s, gained fame. ⁠ reacted to the poem enthusiastically, but found it completely impassable "The Tale of the Captain Kopeikin " 6 Russian antiquity. 1889. No. 8. S. 384-385. ⁠ ... Gogol, who treasured The Tale exclusively and saw no reason to print the poem without this episode, significantly altered it, removing all the dangerous passages, and finally received permission. “The Tale of Captain Kopeikin” was published before the revolution in a censored version; Of the significant censorship edits, one should also mention the name, which Nikitenko changed to "The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls", thus shifting the emphasis from political satire to a rogue novel.

The first copies of "Dead Souls" left the printing house on May 21, 1842, two days later Gogol departed for border 7 Shenrok V.I.Materials for the biography of Gogol. In 4 volumes. M., 1892-1898. ⁠ .

Title page of the first edition of the novel, 1842

Cover of Dead Souls painted by Gogol for the 1846 edition

How was she received?

With almost unanimous delight. Gogol in general had a surprisingly happy literary fate: no other classic was so fondled by the Russian reader. With the release of the first volume of Dead Souls, the cult of Gogol was finally established in Russian society, from Nicholas I to ordinary readers and writers of all camps.

Young Dostoevsky knew Dead Souls by heart. In The Writer's Diary, he tells how he “went ... to one of his former comrades; we talked with him all night about "Dead Souls" and read them, again I don’t remember. Then it happened between the youth; two or three will converge: "Shouldn't we, gentlemen, read Gogol!" - sit down and read, and perhaps all night. " Gogol's words came into fashion, young people cut their hair "like Gogol" and copied his vests. Music critic, art critic Vladimir Stasov recalled that the appearance of "Dead Souls" was an event of extraordinary importance for the students, who read the poem out loud in a crowd so as not to argue about the queue: “... For several days we read and re-read this great, incredibly original, incomparable , a national and ingenious creation. We were all as if drunk with delight and amazement. Hundreds and thousands of Gogol phrases and expressions were immediately known to everyone by heart and went into general use" 8 Stasov V.V.<Гоголь в восприятии русской молодёжи 30-40-х гг.> // N.V. Gogol in the memoirs of his contemporaries / Ed., Foreword. and comments. S. I. Mashinsky. M .: State. published. artist lit., 1952, pp. 401-402. ⁠ .

However, opinions differed regarding Gogol's words and phrases. Former publisher "Moscow Telegraph" An encyclopedic journal published by Nikolai Polev from 1825 to 1834. The magazine appealed to a wide range of readers and advocated the "education of the middle class." In the 1830s, the number of subscribers reached five thousand people, a record audience at that time. The magazine was closed by personal decree of Nicholas I due to negative reviews of the play by Nestor Kukolnik, which the Emperor liked. ⁠ Nikolai Polevoy was offended by expressions and realities that now look completely innocent: “On every page of the book, you hear: scoundrel, swindler, beast ... all the inn's sayings, abuse, jokes, everything that you can hear enough in the conversations of footmen, servants, cabmen ”; Gogol's language, Polevoy argued, “can be called a collection of errors against logic and grammar ... " 9 Russian Bulletin. 1842. No. 5-6. P. 41. ⁠ I agreed with him Thaddeus Bulgarin Faddey Venediktovich Bulgarin (1789-1859) - critic, writer and publisher, the most controversial character in the literary process of the first half of the 19th century. In his youth, Bulgarin fought in the Napoleonic detachment and even took part in the campaign against Russia; from the mid-1820s he was a supporter of Russian reactionary politics and an agent of the Third Section. The novel Ivan Vyzhigin, written by Bulgarin, was a great success and is considered one of the first rogue novels in Russian literature. Bulgarin published the Northern Archive magazine, the first private newspaper with a political section, Northern Bee, and the first theatrical anthology, Russian Talia. ⁠ : “Not a single Russian composition contains so much tastelessness, dirty pictures and evidence of a complete ignorance of the Russian language, as in this poem ... " 10 Northern bee. 1842. No. 119. ⁠ Belinsky objected to this that although Gogol's language "is definitely wrong, it often sins against grammar," but "Gogol has something that makes one not notice the negligence of his language - there is a syllable," and pricked the prim reader who is offended in print by those who which is characteristic of him in life, not understanding "a poem based on the pathos of reality as it is." At the suggestion of Belinsky, the literary legislator of the forties, Gogol was recognized as the first Russian writer - for a long time everything fresh and talented that grew after him in literature was automatically attributed by critics to the Gogol school.

Before the appearance of Dead Souls, Gogol's position in literature was still vague - “not a single poet in Russia had such a strange fate as Gogol: even people who knew him by heart did not dare to see him as a great writer creations " 11 Belinsky V.G. Chichikov's Adventures, or Dead Souls. // Notes of the Fatherland. 1842.T. XXIII. No. 7. Dept. VI "Bibliographic Chronicle". S. 1-12. ⁠ ; now he has moved from the category of comic writers to the status of an undoubted classic.

Gogol became, as it were, the progenitor of all new literature and a bone of contention for literary parties that could not divide the main Russian writer among themselves. In the year the poem was published, Herzen wrote in his diary: “Talk about“ Dead Souls ”. Slavophiles and anti-Slavs were divided into parties. Slavophiles No. 1 say that this is the apotheosis of Russia, the "Iliad" is ours, and they praise, next, others are furious, they say that this is an anathema to Russia and that they are scolded for that. The anti-Slavs also split in two. The dignity of a work of art is great when it can elude any one-sided view. " Sergei Aksakov, who left extensive and extremely valuable memoirs about Gogol and prompted others to do the same right after the writer's death, exaggerates Gogol's closeness to the Slavophiles and keeps silent about Gogol's relationship with Belinsky and his camp (however, Gogol himself tried not to inform Aksakov about this relationship). Belinsky did not lag behind: “Gogol's influence on Russian literature was enormous. Not only all young talents rushed to the path indicated to them, but some writers who had already gained fame followed the same path, leaving their old one. Hence the emergence of the school, which its opponents thought to humiliate with the name natural. " Dostoevsky, Grigorovich, Goncharov, Nekrasov, Saltykov-Shchedrin - it's hard to remember which of the Russian writers of the second half of the 19th century was not influenced by Gogol.

Following the descendant of the Ethiopians Pushkin, a native of Little Russia, Gogol for a long time became the main Russian writer and prophet. The artist Alexander Ivanov portrayed Gogol on the famous canvas "The Appearance of Christ to the People" in the form of a figure standing closest to Jesus. Already during Gogol's life and soon after his death, German, Czech, English, French translations of the poem appeared.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Dead Souls was adapted by Mikhail Bulgakov. In his feuilleton "The Adventures of Chichikov," the heroes of Gogol's poem found themselves in Russia in the 1920s, and Chichikov made a dizzying career, becoming a billionaire. In the early 1930s, Bulgakov's play Dead Souls was a success at the Moscow Art Theater; he also created a screenplay, which, however, was not used by anyone. Gogol's poem also resonated more indirectly in literature: for example, Yesenin's poem “I don’t regret, I don’t call, I don’t cry” (1921) was written under the impression of the lyrical introduction to the sixth - Plyushkin’s - chapter of “Dead Souls”, which the poet himself admitted (in this is hinted by the lines "Oh, my lost freshness" and "I have now become more stingy in desires").

The names of some of the Gogol landowners became common nouns: Lenin accused the populists of "Manilov projection", Mayakovsky titled a poem about a greedy man in the street "Plyushkin". The schoolchildren have learned the passage about the three-bird by heart for decades.

Gogol's poem was screened for the first time back in 1909 in Khanzhonkov's studio; in 1960, Leonid Trauberg directed the film-performance Dead Souls based on Bulgakov's play; in 1984, Mikhail Schweitzer directed a five-part film with Alexander Kalyagin in the title role. Among the newest interpretations, one can recall the "Case of" Dead Souls "directed by Pavel Lungin and a loud theatrical production by Kirill Serebrennikov at the" Gogol Center "in 2013.

A fragment of Alexander Ivanov's painting "The Appearance of Christ to the People". 1837-1857 years. Tretyakov Gallery... Ivanov painted from Gogol the face of the person closest to Jesus

Was Chichikov's scam feasible in practice?

No matter how fantastic the venture with “dead souls” may seem, it was not only feasible, but formally did not violate the laws and even had precedents.

The deceased serfs, listed as the landlord by revision tale A document with the results of the census of the taxable population carried out in Russia in the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries. In fairy tales, the name, patronymic, surname, age of the owner of the yard and members of his family were indicated. A total of ten such audits were carried out. ⁠ , for the state were alive until the next census and were subject to a poll tax. Chichikov's calculation was that the landlords would only be happy to get rid of the excess rent and give him for a pittance the dead (but living on paper) peasants, whom he could then mortgage. The only hitch was that the peasants could neither be bought nor mortgaged without land (this is perhaps an anachronism: such a practice was prohibited only in 1841, and the action of the first volume of Dead Souls unfolds a decade earlier), but Chichikov allowed it easy: “Why, I’ll buy for withdrawal, for withdrawal; now the lands in the Tauride and Kherson provinces are given away for free, just populate them. "

The plot of the poem, presented to Gogol by Pushkin (as Gogol writes in The Author's Confession), was taken from real life. As writes Pyotr Bartenev Pyotr Ivanovich Bartenev (1829-1912) - historian, literary critic. From 1859 to 1873 he was the head of the Chertkovskaya library, the first public library in Moscow. He wrote monographs about Pushkin, along with Pavel Annenkov, he is considered the founder of Pushkin studies. Since 1863 he published the historical journal "Russian Archive". As a historian, he consulted Tolstoy in his work on War and Peace. ⁠ in a note to memories Vladimir Sollogub Vladimir Alexandrovich Sollogub (1813-1882) - writer. He served in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, published secular stories in magazines. The most famous work of Sollogub was the story "Tarantas", published in 1845. He had the title of court historiographer. Sollogub was a close friend of Pushkin: in 1836 a duel could have taken place between them, but the parties made up, Sollogub acted as Pushkin's second in the first duel with Dantes. ⁠ : “In Moscow, Pushkin was with one friend on the run. There was also a certain P. (old dandy). Pointing to him to Pushkin, a friend told about him how he bought up dead souls for himself, pledged them and got a big profit. Pushkin liked it very much. “This could be a novel,” he said among other things. It was before 1828 of the year" 12 Russian archive. 1865.S. 745. ⁠ .

This could be superimposed on another plot that interested Pushkin during his stay in Chisinau. At the beginning of the 19th century, peasants fled en masse to Bessarabia. To hide from the police, fugitive serfs often adopted the names of the dead. The city of Bender was especially famous for this practice, whose population was called "an immortal society": for many years there was not a single death recorded there. As the investigation showed, in Bendery it was accepted as a rule: the dead “should not be excluded from society”, and their names should be given to newly arrived fugitive peasants.

Alas! fat people know how to handle their affairs better in this world than thin

Nikolay Gogol

In general, fraud with audit lists was not uncommon. A distant relative of Gogol, Marya Grigorievna Anisimo-Yanovskaya, was sure that the idea of \u200b\u200bthe poem was given to the writer by her own uncle Kharlampy Pivinsky. Having five children and at the same time 200 dessiatines Tithing is a unit of land area equal to 1.09 hectares. 200 dessiatines make up 218 hectares. ⁠ land and 30 souls of peasants, the landowner made ends meet thanks to the distillery. Suddenly there was a rumor that only landowners with at least 50 souls would be allowed to smoke wine. The small local nobles burst into flames, and Kharlampy Petrovich “went to Poltava, and even made a rent for his dead peasants, as if for the living. And since his own, and even with the dead, were far from fifty, he collected vodka in the chaise, and he drove through the neighbors and bought them for this vodka of dead souls, wrote them down for himself and, becoming the owner of fifty souls by paper, until his death he smoked wine and gave this theme to Gogol, who was in Fedunki, Pivinsky's estate, 17 versts from Yanovshchyna Another name for the Gogolei estate is Vasilyevka. ⁠ ; in addition, the entire Mirgorod region knew about dead souls Pivinsky " 13 Russian antiquity. 1902. No. 1. S. 85-86. ⁠ .

Another local anecdote is recalled by a schoolmate of Gogol: “In Nizhyn ... there was a certain K-ach, a Serb; huge growth, very handsome, with the longest mustache, a terrible explorer - somewhere he bought the land on which he is - it is said in the deed of the fortress - 650 souls; the amount of land is not indicated, but the boundaries are indicated definitively. ... What turned out to be? This land was a neglected cemetery. This very case told 14 Literary heritage. T. 58.M .: Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1952. P. 774. ⁠ Gogol the prince abroad N. G. Repnin Nikolai Grigorievich Repnin-Volkonsky (1778-1845) - military man. He took part in the battle at Austerlitz, after which he was captured - Napoleon I sent Repnin to Alexander I with a proposal to enter into negotiations. During the war of 1812, he commanded a cavalry division. Was the governor-general of Saxony and Little Russia. Since 1828, member of the State Council. Due to accusations of improper spending of state money, he resigned. ⁠ »

Probably, Gogol listened to this story in response to a request to supply him with information about various "incidents" "that could happen when buying dead souls," with which he pestered all his relatives and acquaintances - perhaps this story was echoed in the second volume of the poem in to the remark of General Betrishchev: “To give you dead souls? Yes, for such an invention I give them to you with the land, with housing! Take the whole cemetery for yourself! "

Despite the careful research carried out by the writer, there were discrepancies in Chichikov's plan, which were pointed out to Gogol after the release of the poem by Sergei Aksakov 15 Correspondence of N.V. Gogol. In 2 volumes. T. 2.M .: Art. literature, 1988.S. 23-24. ⁠ : “I scold myself very much that I overlooked one thing, but insisted on the other a little: the peasants are being sold with their families for withdrawal, and Chichikov refused the female sex; without a power of attorney issued in a public place, it is impossible to sell foreign peasants, and the chairman cannot be at the same time a confidant and present in this matter. " The short-sighted Chichikov did not buy women and children, apparently, simply because their nominal price was lower than for men.

Pyotr Boklevsky. Chichikov. Illustration for "Dead Souls". 1895 year

Why is Dead Souls a poem?

Calling his main work a poem, Gogol, first of all, meant that this is not a story or a novel in the understanding of his time. Such an unusual genre definition is clarified by Gogol's sketches for the unrealized "Educational Book of Literature for Russian Youth", where Gogol, analyzing different types of literature, "the greatest, most complete, huge and most versatile of all creatures" calls an epic capable of covering an entire historical era, the life of a nation or even of all mankind - as an example of such an epic, Gogol cites the Iliad and the Odyssey, which he loved in the translations of Gnedich and Zhukovsky, respectively. At the same time, the novel, as we would intuitively call “Dead Souls” today, “is a composition too prearranged”, the main thing in it is intrigue: all the events in it should directly relate to the fate of the main character, the author cannot “move quickly and in a multitude, in the form of phenomena flying by ”; the novel "does not take a lifetime, but a wonderful incident in life" - and yet Gogol's goal was precisely to create a kind of Russian space.

Konstantin Aksakov immediately declared Gogol a Russian Homer in the press, provoking Belinsky's ridicule, which in reality is not entirely fair. Many of Gogol's techniques, which confused critics, become understandable precisely in the Homeric context: for example, a lyrical digression, for the sake of which the narrator throws Chichikov on the road in order to return to him just as suddenly, or detailed comparisons that parody, in Nabokov's words, branchy parallels of Homer. Gogol compares the gentlemen in black tailcoats at the governor's party, scurrying around the ladies, with a swarm of flies - and from this comparison a whole living picture grows: a portrait of an old housekeeper who chops sugar on a summer day. In the same way, comparing Sobakevich's face with a gourd pumpkin, Gogol recalls that balalaikas are made of such pumpkins - and out of nowhere we see the image of a balalaika player, "a blinker and a dandy, and winking and whistling at white-breasted and white-necked girls" and absolutely no role not playing in the plot of the poem.

In the same epic piggy bank - sudden and inappropriate transfers of names and details that are not related to the action: Chichikov, wanting to entertain the governor's daughter, tells her pleasant things that “he already happened to say on similar occasions in different places, namely: in the Simbirsk province at Sofron Ivanovich Bespechny, where his daughter Adelaida Sofronovna was then with three sister-in-law: Marya Gavrilovna, Alexandra Gavrilovna and Adelgeida Gavrilovna; from Fyodor Fedorovich Perekroev in the Ryazan province; Frol Vasilyevich Victorious in the Penza province and his brother Peter Vasilyevich, where his sister-in-law Katerina Mikhailovna and her grand-sisters Rosa Fedorovna and Emilia Fedorovna were; in the Vyatka province with Peter Varsonofievich, where his daughter-in-law's sister Pelageya Yegorovna was with her niece Sophia Rostislavna and two half-sisters - Sofia Alexandrovna and Maklatura Alexandrovna ”- this is not a Homeric list of ships.

In addition, the genre definition of "Dead Souls" refers to the work of Dante, which is called "Divine Comedy", but is a poem. The three-part structure of The Divine Comedy was supposedly to be repeated by Dead Souls, but only Hell was completed.

Revision tale of 1859 for the village of Novoye Kataevo, Orenburg province

Map of the Kherson province. 1843 year

Why is Chichikov mistaken for Napoleon?

Officials of the city of N. are anxiously discussing the resemblance between Chichikov and Napoleon, having discovered that the most charming Pavel Ivanovich turned out to be some sinister rogue: “... Now they, perhaps, released him from Elena Island, and now he is making his way to Russia as if Chichikov ". Such a suspicion - along with the maker of counterfeit banknotes, an official of the General-Governor's Office (that is, in fact, an auditor), a noble robber “like Rinalda Rinaldin The hero-robber from the novel by Christian August Vulpius "Rinaldo Rinaldini", published in 1797. ⁠ "- looks like the usual Gogolian absurdism, but it did not appear in the poem by accident.

Also in the "Old World Landowners" someone "said that the Frenchman secretly agreed with the Englishman to release Bonaparte to Russia again." Such conversations could be fueled by rumors about the "hundred days", that is, about Napoleon's escape from the island of Elba and his second brief reign in France in 1815. By the way, this is the only place in the poem where the time of action of Dead Souls is specified: “However, one must remember that all this happened soon after the glorious expulsion of the French. At that time, all our landowners, officials, merchants, inmates and every literate and even illiterate people became, at least for eight whole years, sworn politicians. " Thus, Chichikov travels through the Russian outback in the early 1820s (he is older than both Onegin and Pechorin in years), or rather, probably in 1820 or 1821, since Napoleon died on May 5, 1821, after which the possibility of suspecting him in Chichikovo naturally disappeared.

Signs of the time include some indirect signs, like the beloved postmaster "Lancaster School of Peer Learning" A peer education system whereby older students teach younger students. Invented in Great Britain in 1791 by Joseph Lancaster. The Russian "Society of Mutual Education Schools" was founded in 1819. The proponents of the Lancaster system were many members of secret societies; Thus, the Decembrist VF Raevsky was in 1820 under investigation for "harmful propaganda among the soldiers" precisely in connection with teaching. ⁠ , which Griboyedov mentions in "Woe from Wit" as a characteristic hobby of the Decembrist circle.

Bonaparte, who suddenly appeared incognito in a provincial Russian city, is a common folklore motif of the times of the Napoleonic Wars. Pyotr Vyazemsky cites in the Old Notebook an anecdote about Alexei Mikhailovich Pushkin (the poet's second cousin and a great wit), who served in the militia service under Prince Yuri Dolgorukov during the war of 1806-1807: “At a post station in one of the distant provinces, he noticed in a room the caretaker's portrait of Napoleon, glued to the wall. "Why are you keeping this bastard with you?" “And then, Your Excellency,” he replies, “if it’s unequal, Bonaparte arrives at my station under a false name or on a false road, I immediately recognize him from his portrait, my dear fellow, grab him, tie him up, and even present him to his superiors”. "Ah, that's another matter!" - said Pushkin. "

"Oh, you are such a little face!" Chichikov (Alexander Kalyagin)

Or maybe Chichikov is the devil?

“I call the devil a devil, I don’t give him a magnificent suit à la Byron and I know that he goes to tailcoat " 16 Aksakov S. T. Collected works in 5 volumes. T. 3.M .: Pravda, 1966.S. \u200b\u200b291-292. ⁠ , - wrote Gogol to Sergei Aksakov from Frankfurt in 1844. This idea was developed in the article “Gogol and the Devil” by Dmitry Merezhkovsky: “The main strength of the devil is the ability to seem not what he is.<...> Gogol was the first to see the devil without a mask, to see his real face, terrible not in its extraordinaryness, but in its ordinariness, vulgarity; the first one understood that the face of the devil is not distant, alien, strange, fantastic, but the closest, familiar, generally real “human… almost our own face in those minutes when we dare not be ourselves and agree to be“ like everyone else ”.

In this light, the sparks on Chichikov's lingonberry dress coat shine ominously (Chichikov, as we remember, generally kept his clothes in “brown and reddish colors with a spark”; in the second volume, the merchant sells him cloth in the shade of “Navarino smoke with flame”).

Pavel Ivanovich is devoid of distinctive features: he is “not handsome, but not bad-looking, neither too fat, nor too thin; one cannot say that he is old, but not so that he is too young "and at the same time, like a real tempter, charms everyone, with everyone speaking his language: with Manilov he is sentimental, with Sobakevich he is businesslike, with Korobochka he is simply rude, knows how to support any conversation: “Whether it was a question of a horse factory, he also spoke about a horse factory ... whether they interpreted the investigation carried out by the treasury chamber, - he showed that he was also not unaware of the judicial tricks; was there any reasoning about the biliart game - and in the biliart game he did not miss; whether they talked about virtue, and about virtue he reasoned very well, even with tears in his eyes. " Chichikov buys human souls not only in a business sense, but also in a figurative sense - for everyone he becomes a mirror, which wins over.

In a lyrical digression, the author directly asks the reader: "And who of you ... in moments of solitary conversations with yourself will deepen this difficult inquiry into your own soul:" Isn't there any part of Chichikov in me too? " Yes, no matter how it is! " - whereas in a neighbor everyone is ready to recognize Chichikov at once.

Do you need something else? Perhaps you are accustomed, my father, to someone scratching their heels at night. My deceased did not fall asleep without it

Nikolay Gogol

And looking in this mirror, the inspector of the medical board turns pale, thinking that under dead souls the patients who died in the hospitals are understood, because he did not take the necessary measures; the chairman turns pale, speaking in the deal with Plyushkin's attorney contrary to the law; the officials who covered up the recent murder of merchants turn pale: "Everyone suddenly found in themselves such sins that did not even exist."

Chichikov himself incessantly admires himself in the mirror, pats himself on the chin and comments approvingly: "Oh, you little face!" - but the reader will never come across a description of his face, with the exception of an apophatic one, although the other heroes of the poem are described in great detail. He does not seem to be reflected in mirrors - like evil spirits in popular beliefs. The figure of Chichikov concentrates that famous Gogol devilry on which Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka are built and which is present in Dead Souls, although not so clearly, but undoubtedly. Mikhail Bakhtin discovers at the heart of Dead Souls “forms of a cheerful (carnival) walk through the underworld, through the land of death.<…> No wonder, of course, the afterlife is present in the very idea and title of Gogol's novel ("Dead Souls"). The world of "Dead Souls" is a world of merry underworld.<...> We will find in it both the rabble, and the junk of the carnival "hell", and a number of images that are the realization of abusive metaphors " 17 Bakhtin M.M. Rabelais and Gogol (The art of words and folk culture of laughter) // Bakhtin M.M. Questions of literature and aesthetics: Studies of different years. M .: Art. Lit., 1975.S. 484-495. ⁠ .

In this context, Chichikov is a carnival, boisterous devil, insignificant, comical and opposed to the sublime romantic evil that is often found in contemporary Gogol literature (“the spirit of denial, the spirit of doubt” - Pushkin’s demon - appears in Gogol in the form of a pleasant lady in all respects, who “ was partly a materialist, inclined to denial and doubt, and rejected very much in life ").

This cheerful demonism is like notes 18 ⁠ researcher Elena Smirnova, condenses towards the end of the first volume in the picture of the “rebellious” city, where evil spirits, alarmed by Chichikov, crawled from all corners: “… And everything that is, rose. How a whirlwind whirled up until then, it seemed, a dormant city! All the jails and bobaks came out of their holes ...<…> Some Sysoy Pafnutievich and MacDonald Karlovich appeared, about whom it was never heard; in the drawing-rooms a long, long man with a bullet in his arm stuck up, of such tall stature that he had never even seen. Covered droshky appeared on the streets, unknown rulers, rattles, wheel whistles - and porridge was brewed.

Manilov (Yuri Bogatyrev)

Pyotr Boklevsky. Manilov. Illustration for "Dead Souls". 1895 year

Pyotr Boklevsky. Box. Illustration for "Dead Souls". 1895 year

Why is the narrator in Dead Souls so afraid of ladies?

As soon as the narrator touches the ladies in his reasoning, horror attacks him: “The ladies of the city N. were ... no, in no way can I; one feels exactly shyness. The most remarkable thing about the ladies of the city of N. was ... It’s even strange, the feather does not rise at all, as if some kind of lead was sitting in it ”.

These assurances should not be taken at face value - after all, we immediately find such, for example, a bold description: “Everything was invented and provided for with extraordinary circumspection; neck, shoulders were open just as much as necessary, and no further; each laid bare her possessions as long as she felt, by her own conviction, that they were capable of destroying a person; the rest, everything was hidden with an extraordinary taste: either some lightweight ribbon tie or scarf lighter than a cake known as kissing, ethereally hugged and wrapped around the neck, or were released from behind the shoulders, from under the dress, small scalloped walls made of thin cambric, known as modesty. These modesty hid in front and behind that which could no longer inflict death on a person, but meanwhile they made one suspect that it was there that the very death took place. "

Nevertheless, the narrator has fears, and they are not unfounded. Literary critic Elena Smirnova noted that the conversation between “a lady who is pleasant in all respects” and “a lady who is just pleasant” in “Dead Souls” is close to the text repeating the chirping of the princesses with Natalya Dmitrievna Gorich in the third act “Woe from Wit” (“ 1st princess: What a beautiful style! 2nd princess: What folds! 1st princess:Fringed trim. Natalya Dmitrievna: No, if they had seen my satin tulle ... "- etc.) and plays the same constructive role in action 19 Smirnova E. A. Gogol's poem "Dead Souls". L .: Nauka, 1987. ⁠ .

In both cases, from discussing fashions, "eyes and paws", the ladies go directly to gossip and, having rebelled in a "general rebellion" (with Griboyedov) or heading "each in its own direction to rebel the city" (with Gogol), they launch a rumor that destroyed the life to the hero: in one case about insanity, in the other - about the insidious plan of taking away the governor's daughter. In the ladies of the city N. Gogol partially depicted the matriarchal terror of Famus' Moscow.

We do not know what will happen in the other two parts of the poem; but still in the foreground are people who abuse their position and profit from illegal means

Konstantin Masalsky

A striking exception is the governor's daughter. This is generally the only character in the first volume of the poem, which the narrator frankly admires - her face, which looks like a fresh testicle, and her thin ears, glowing with warm sunlight. She makes an unusual effect on Chichikov: for the first time he is confused, captivated, forgets about profit and the need to please everyone and, “turning into a poet,” argues that your Russo: “She is now like a child, everything is simple in her: she will say that she he will, he will laugh, where he wants to laugh. "

This light and completely silent female image was to be reincarnated in the second volume of Dead Souls in a positive ideal - Ulinka. We know Gogol's attitude to women from his Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends, where he published, under the title Woman in the Light, variations on his real letters to Alexandra Smirnova-Rosset Alexandra Osipovna Smirnova (maiden name - Rosset; 1809-1882) - maid of honor of the imperial court. She became the maid of honor of Empress Maria Feodorovna in 1826. In 1832 she married Nikolai Smirnov, an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She became friends with Pushkin, Zhukovsky, Vyazemsky, Odoevsky, Lermontov and Gogol. ⁠ , which is often called "hidden love" of Gogol, who has not been noticed in love affairs in his whole life. The ideal woman, developed by Gogol from his youth under the influence of German romantics, is incorporeal, almost silent and clearly inactive - she “revives” a society infected with “moral fatigue” by her very presence and her beauty, which is not without reason that strikes even the most hardened souls: “If one senseless whim of a beauty was the cause of world upheavals and forced the wisest people to do stupid things, what would have happened if this whim had been meaningful and directed towards good? " (As we can see, women's power is also ambivalent here: so from the governor's daughter "there may be a miracle, or rubbish may come out.")

Answering the question, “what should a young, educated, beautiful, wealthy, moral and still not satisfied with her secular uselessness woman do”, notices 20 A. Terts (A. D. Sinyavsky) In the shadow of Gogol // Sobr. op. in 2 volumes.Vol. 2.M .: Start, 1992.S. 20. ⁠ Abram Tertz, Gogol "does not call her either to cut frogs, or to abolish a corset, or even to bear children, or to refrain from childbearing." “Gogol does not demand anything from her, except for what she already has as a woman - neither moral teachings, nor social activities. Her good task is to be herself, showing everyone for their edification beauty " 21 A. Terts (A. D. Sinyavsky) In the shadow of Gogol // Sobr. op. in 2 volumes.Vol. 2.M .: Start, 1992.S. 3-336 ⁠ ... It is understandable why "Woman in the Light" is ridiculed by the vivisector of frogs - Turgenev's Bazarov, who wavered in his nihilism under the influence of love: "... I feel disgusting, as if I had read Gogol's letters to the Kaluga governor" (Aleksandra Smirnova was the wife of the Kaluga governor) ...

The governor's daughter, who “was only one white and came out transparent and light from the muddy and opaque crowd”, is not for nothing the only bright character of the poem: she is the reincarnation of Beatrice, who should lead the hero out of Dante's hell of the first volume, and this transformation inspires the author with awe.

Museum of London / Heritage Images / Getty Images

Who really means dead souls?

Despite the fact that this phrase has a direct meaning - the deceased serfs, who were called "souls" (just as a herd of horses is counted by "heads"), the figurative meaning is clearly read in the novel - people dead in spiritual sense... Announcing the future positive characters of his poem, “a husband endowed with divine prowess, or a wonderful Russian girl, which cannot be found anywhere in the world, with all the wondrous beauty of a woman’s soul,” the author adds: “All virtuous people of other tribes will seem dead before them, as dead a book before a living word! " Nevertheless, contemporaries were inclined to oppose these living, Russian and popular ideals not to foreigners, but to officials and landowners, considering this as a socio-political satire.

Gogol describes an anecdotal discussion of the poem in the censorship committee in a letter to Pletnev in 1842: “As soon as Golokhvastov, who took the place of president, heard the name“ Dead Souls ”, he shouted in the voice of an ancient Roman:“ No, I will never allow this: the soul is immortal; dead soul it cannot be, the author is arming himself against immortality. " By force, the clever president could finally understand that it was about the souls of the Reviz. As soon as he got it ... there was even more confusion. “No,” shouted the chairman and half of the censors behind him, “this is even more impossible to allow, even if there was nothing in the manuscript, but there was only one word: the soul of Revizh,“ this cannot be allowed, it means against serfdom. ” A somewhat limited interpretation of Golokhvastov, it should be noted, was shared by many of Gogol's admirers. Herzen turned out to be somewhat shrewd, seeing in the poem not so much social caricatures as a gloomy epiphany about the human soul: “This title itself bears something terrifying. And he could not name otherwise; not revision ones - dead souls, but all these Nozdryovs, Manilovs and tutti quanti - these are dead souls, and we meet them at every step.<…> Are not all of us after adolescence, one way or another, leading one of the lives of Gogol's heroes? " Herzen suggests that Lensky in "Eugene Onegin" would have turned into Manilov over the years, had not "shot" its author in time, and laments that Chichikov is "one active person ... and that limited rogue" did not meet a "moral landowner" on his way kindhearted, old-fashioned"- this is exactly what should have happened, according to Gogol's plan, in the second volume of Dead Souls.

The unfortunate fate of the second volume, which Gogol tortured for ten years and burned twice, is partly due to the fact that Gogol could not find satisfactory "living souls" in the very reality, the ugly sides of which he showed in the first volume (where he describes his landlords , in fact, not without sympathy). Sobakevich, Manilov and Nozdrev, he opposes not the Russian people, as was commonly believed in Soviet literary criticism, but some epic or fairy-tale heroes. The most poetic descriptions of Russian peasants in the poem refer to the peasants of Sobakevich, whom he paints as living in order to increase the price (and after him, Chichikov starts up in the fantasy of Russian prowess): “Yes, of course, they are dead,” Sobakevich said, as if rethinking And remembering that they were in fact already dead, and then he added: “However, even then say: which of these people who are now listed as living? What kind of people are they? flies, not people. "

Nozdrev (Vitaly Shapovalov)

Pyotr Boklevsky. Nozdryov. Illustration for "Dead Souls". 1895 year

Why are there so many different foods in Gogol's poem?

First of all, Gogol himself was very fond of eating and treating others.

Sergei Aksakov recalls, for example, with what artistic ecstasy Gogol personally cooked pasta for his friends: “Standing on his feet in front of a bowl, he rolled up the cuffs, and with haste, and at the same time with accuracy, he first put in a lot of butter and with two sauce spoons began to stir the pasta, then he put salt, then pepper and finally cheese and continued to stir for a long time. It was impossible to look at Gogol without laughter and surprise. " Another memoirist, Mikhail Maksimovich Mikhail Alexandrovich Maksimovich (1804-1873) - historian, botanist, philologist. From 1824 he was director of the botanical garden of Moscow University, headed the department of botany. In 1834 he was appointed the first rector of the Imperial University of St. Vladimir in Kiev, but left the post a year later. In 1858 he was secretary of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature. Collected Ukrainian folk songs, studied the history of ancient Russian literature. Conducted a correspondence with Gogol. ⁠ , recalls: “At the stations he bought milk, skimmed the cream and very skillfully made butter out of it using a wooden spoon. He found as much pleasure in this activity as in picking flowers. "

Mikhail Bakhtin, analyzing the Rabelaisian nature of Gogol's work, remarks about Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka: “The food, drink and sex life in these stories are of a festive, carnival-Shrovetide nature”. A hint of this folklore layer can also be seen in the banquet scenes of Dead Souls. Korobochka, wishing to placate Chichikov, puts on the table various pies and pies, of which Chichikov pays the main attention to pancakes, dipping them three at a time in melted butter and praising them. Pancakes on Maslenitsa placate caroling, personifying evil spirits, and Chichikov, who came "God knows where, and even at night" and buying up the dead, in the eyes of the simple-minded "mother landowner" looks like evil spirits.

Food serves to characterize landowners, as well as their wives, villages and surroundings, and it is often during the meal that cute human traits appear in Gogol's cartoons. Feeding Chichikov with “mushrooms, pies, quick-witted Fried eggs baked with bread and ham. ⁠ , shanishki A diminutive form of the word "shangi" - round pies, a traditional Russian dish. In Gogol's notebook - "a kind of cheesecake, a little less." However, shangi, unlike cheesecakes, are not made sweet. ⁠ , spongers "Donuts, Pancakes" (from Gogol's notebook). ⁠ , pancakes, flat cakes with all sorts of baked goods: baking with onions, baking with poppy seeds, baking with cottage cheese, baking with snapshots Smelt is a small lake fish. ⁠ ", Korobochka reminds of the absolutely dear author Pulcheria Ivanovna from" Old World Landowners "with her shortbreads with bacon, salted mushrooms, various dried fish, dumplings with berries and pies - with poppy seeds, cheese or with cabbage and buckwheat porridge (" these are the ones that Afanasy Ivanovich is very fond of ”). And in general, she is a good housewife, takes care of the peasants, hospitably lays feather beds for the suspicious night guest and invites them to scratch their heels.

Sobakevich, who in one sitting kills a side of mutton or a whole sturgeon, but will not take a frog or an oyster (food of "the Germans and the French") in his mouth, "at least stick it with sugar", reminds at this moment an epic Russian hero like Dobrynya Nikitich, who drank at once " a charu of green wine in a bucket and a half ”, it was not for nothing that his deceased father went to the bear alone; Russian bear is not at all a pejorative definition in the Gogolian world.

Nozdryov was in some respects a historical person. Not a single meeting he attended was complete without history. Some story certainly happened: either the gendarmes would take him out of the hall under the arms, or they were forced to push out their own friends

Nikolay Gogol

Manilov, who has built himself a “temple of solitary reflection” and says “You” to the coachman, offers Chichikov “simply, according to Russian custom, cabbage soup, but from a pure heart” - an attribute of a rural idyll among happy villagers. Manilovka and its inhabitants are a parody of the literature of sentimentalism. In "Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends" Gogol writes: "Karamzin's imitators served as a pitiful caricature of himself and brought both the syllable and the thoughts to sugar cloying", - Manilov, as we remember, was not without pleasantness, however, "in this the pleasantness seemed to have been transferred too much to the sugar. " Lunch in Manilovka, contrary to custom, is not described in detail - but we know that Manilov and his wife now and then brought each other “either a piece of an apple, or a candy, or a nut and spoke in a touchingly tender voice that expressed perfect love:“ Razin, darling , my mouth, I'll put this piece for you ”, thus showing, though grotesque, but the only example of conjugal love in the entire poem.

Only from Nozdryov Chichikov leaves hungry - his dishes are burnt or undercooked, made by the chef from whatever: “was there a pepper near him - he sprinkled pepper, did he get a cabbage - poked cabbage, stuffed milk, ham, peas, in a word, roll it "; but Nozdryov drinks a lot - and also some utter rubbish: Madeira, which the merchants "ran mercilessly with rum, and sometimes poured in royal vodka," some kind of "burgon and champagne together", brandy, in which "was heard in all its might. "

Finally, Plyushkin, the only one in Dead Souls, not a comic, but a tragic figure, whose story of transformation the author tells us, thereby inevitably evoking sympathy, does not eat or drink at all. His treat - a carefully preserved biscuit from an Easter cake brought by his daughter - is a rather transparent metaphor for the future resurrection. In Selected Places, Gogol wrote: “Call ... to a beautiful but dormant person. ... To save his poor soul ... he insensibly clothed himself with flesh and became already all flesh, and there is almost no soul in him.<…> Oh, if you could tell him what my Plyushkin has to say if I get to the third volume of Dead Souls! "

Gogol no longer had to describe this revival: there is a tragic paradox in the fact that in the last days Gogol was cruelly fasting, as it is believed, starving himself, renouncing food and laughter - that is, turning himself into Plyushkin in some spiritual sense.

Roast suckling pig. 19th century engraving

Chichikov (Alexander Kalyagin)

Why did Gogol decide to make his hero a scoundrel?

The author himself motivated his choice in the following way: “They turned a virtuous person into a workhorse, and there is no writer who would not ride him, urging him with a whip and everything else ... they starved a virtuous person to the point that now there is no shadow of virtue on him, and there were only ribs and skin instead of a body ... they hypocritically call on a virtuous person ... they do not respect a virtuous person. No, it's time to finally hide the scoundrel. "

One of Chichikov's no special meanness does not appear, hardly anyone has suffered from his scams (except indirectly - the prosecutor died of fright). Nabokov calls him "a vulgar gigantic caliber", noting at the same time: "Trying to buy the dead in a country where they legally bought and mortgaged living people, Chichikov hardly sinned seriously from the point of view of morality."

For all Chichikov's caricatured vulgarity, he is the Russian who loves fast driving, in the apologetic passage about the troika. It was he who had to pass the crucible of trials and be spiritually reborn in the third volume.

The prerequisite for such a revival is the only property that distinguishes Chichikov from all the other characters in Dead Souls: he is active. Life failures do not extinguish energy in him, “activity did not die in his head; there everything wanted to build something and was only waiting for a plan. " In this respect, he is the very Russian man whom "they went ... even to Kamchatka, give only warm mittens, he will pat his hands, an ax in his hands, and went to chop his own hut."

Of course, so far his activity is only acquisitive, and not creative, in which the author sees his main vice. Nevertheless, it is and only the energy of Chichikov that moves the action from the spot - from the movement of his bird-troika "everything flies: miles fly, merchants fly towards them on their wagons, a forest with dark lines of fir and pines flies from both sides" somewhere.

The whole city there is like this: a swindler sits on a swindler and drives him to a swindler. All Christ sellers. There is only one decent person there - the prosecutor, and even that, if you tell the truth, is a pig

Nikolay Gogol

All Russian classics dreamed of an energetic, active Russian hero, but it seems they did not believe in his existence too much. The Russian mother laziness, who was born before us, was perceived by them as the source of all evil and sorrow - but at the same time as the basis of national character. An example of a good master, immersed in vigorous activity, Gogol displays in the second volume of Dead Souls, it is no coincidence that he endows him with the difficult-to-pronounce and obviously foreign (Greek) surname Kostanzhoglo: "A Russian man ... cannot live without a urge ... So it will doze off, it will turn sour." The next famous businessman in Russian literature, described by Goncharov in Oblomov, is the half-German Andrei Stolts, while undoubtedly the prettier Oblomov is the direct heir of Tentetnikov, Gogol's “bumpkin, lazy fellow, bobak” on the sofa. Complaining about Russian laziness, both Gogol and his followers did not seem to believe in the possibility of eradicating it without the participation of business-minded foreigners - but contrary to reason, they could not defeat the feeling that bargaining was a spiritless, vulgar and vile property. The word "vile" in the archaic sense meant a low kind (after all, Chichikov's origins are "dark and modest"). Ilya Ilyich Oblomov formulated this antithesis most expressively in his apology of laziness, where he, the Russian master, opposes himself to the “other” - a low, uneducated person, whom “need rushes from corner to corner, he runs day and day” (“There are many such, - said Zakhar sullenly ").

This situation changed only with the arrival of common heroes in literature, who could not afford to unwind. It is characteristic that in the famous production of Dead Souls at the Gogol Center in 2013, Chichikov was played by the American Odin Byron, and the final poetic monologue about the bird-three was replaced by the perplexing question: “Rus, what do you want from me?” Explaining this choice, director Kirill Serebrennikov interprets the conflict of Dead Souls as a clash of a “man from the new world”, industrial and rational, with a “Russian hardened local way of life”. Long before Serebrennikov, Abram Tertz expressed a similar idea: “Gogol, as a magic wand, brought Russia - not Chatsky, not Lavretsky, not Ivan Susanin, and not even Elder Zosim, but Chichikov. This will not give out! Chichikov, Chichikov is the only one capable of moving and taking out a cart of history, ”Gogol foresaw at a time when he had not dreamed of any development of capitalism in Russia ... let you down! .. " 22 A. Terts (A. D. Sinyavsky) In the shadow of Gogol // Sobr. op. in 2 volumes.Vol. 2.M .: Start, 1992.S. 23. ⁠

The play "Dead Souls". Directed by Kirill Serebrennikov. Gogol Center, 2014

The play "Dead Souls". Directed by Kirill Serebrennikov. Gogol Center, 2014

Did Gogol portray himself in Dead Souls?

In Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends, Gogol describes his work as a way of spiritual improvement, a kind of psychotherapy: “I have already got rid of many of my nasty things by passing them on to my heroes, laughing at them in them and making others also laugh at them.”

When reading Dead Souls, it may seem that the author was too strict with himself. The traits with which he endowed his characters look rather touching, in any case, it is they that give the heroes humanity - but it must be borne in mind that Gogol considered any habit, excessive attachment to the material world, to be weak. And he had many weaknesses of this kind. At the end of Chapter VII of "Dead Souls" one of the many seemingly completely random, but incredibly alive is shown for a minute minor characters - Ryazan lieutenant, “a big, apparently, a hunter for boots”, who had already ordered four pairs and could not go to bed, constantly trying on the fifth: “the boots, as if, were well-sewn, and for a long time he lifted his leg and examined it smartly and a wonderfully stitched heel. " Lev Arnoldi (the half-brother of Alexandra Smirnova-Rosset, who knew Gogol briefly) assures in his memoirs that this passionate hunter of boots was Gogol himself: “In his little suitcase there was very little, and there were just as many dresses and linen as needed, and there were always three boots, often even four pairs, and they were never worn out. "

Another example is cited (also from Arnoldi's memoirs) Abram Tertz: "In his youth, Gogol had a passion for acquiring unnecessary things - all kinds of inkpots, vases, paperweights: later it separated and developed into Chichikov's hoard, removed forever from the author's household property" ( this observation is confirmed by many memoirists: partly in the types of self-improvement, partly for the practical reason that Gogol spent most of his life on the road and all his belongings fit into one chest, the writer at some point renounced fraud Addiction to collecting things, receiving gifts, bribes. From the point of view of Christianity, it is a sin. ⁠ and gave all the graceful little things dear to his heart to friends).

Gogol was generally a big dandy with extravagant taste. In particular, Chichikov's "woolen, rainbow-colored headscarf", which the narrator, according to his statement, never wore, was his own - Sergei Aksakov recalls how in Zhukovsky's house he saw the writer at work in a striking outfit: "Instead of boots, long woolen Russian stockings above the knees; instead of a frock coat, over a flannel camisole, a velvet spenzer; the neck is wrapped in a large multi-colored scarf, and on the head is a velvet, crimson, gold-embroidered kokoshnik, very similar to the headdress of Mordovians. "

"AND! patched, patched! " the man cried out. He also added a noun to the word patched, very successful, but not used in small talk, and therefore we will skip it.<...> The Russian people are strongly expressed!

Nikolay Gogol

The habit of the governor of the city N., who, as you know, was "a great kind-hearted man and sometimes even embroidered on tulle himself," is also an autobiographical trait: as Pavel Annenkov recalled, Gogol had a passion for needlework and "with the approach of summer ... he began to carve out neck scarves made of muslin and cambric, let the vests go a few lines lower, etc., and he was very serious about this business ”; he loved to knit, cut dresses for the sisters.

Not only himself, but those around him, Gogol, however, put into action even before, when working on Dead Souls, he set out to portray his own vices in the form of “monsters”. Finding a comic detail or situation in the surrounding life, he brought it to the grotesque, which made Gogol the inventor of Russian humor. Vladimir Nabokov mentions, say, Gogol's mother - “a ridiculous provincial lady who annoyed her friends with the statement that steam locomotives, steamers and other innovations were invented by her son Nikolai (and she drove her son into a frenzy, delicately hinting that he was the author of every her vulgar romance) "- here one cannot but recall Khlestakov:" There are, however, many of my works: "The Marriage of Figaro", "Robert the Devil", "Norma".<…> All this that was under the name of Baron Brambeus ... I wrote all this ”(and, as you know, Gogol himself was“ with Pushkin on a friendly footing ”).

Expressions like “to visit Sopikov and Khrapovitsky, meaning all sorts of dead dreams on the side, on the back and in all other positions,” which cut the ear of critics in “Dead Souls,” were reported to have been used by Gogol in his life.

The main thing, probably, is what he conveyed to Chichikov - a nomadic way of life and a love of fast driving. As the writer admitted in a letter to Zhukovsky: “I only felt good then when I was on the road. The road always saved me when I sat for a long time on the spot or fell into the hands of doctors, because of their cowardice, who always hurt me, not knowing a hair of my nature. "

Arriving from Little Russia to St. Petersburg in December 1828 with the intention of serving, he went abroad six months later and from then until the end of his life traveled almost continuously. At the same time, in Rome, and in Paris, and in Vienna, and in Frankfurt, Gogol wrote exclusively about Russia, which, as he believed, was visible in its entirety only from afar (one exception is the story “Rome”). Diseases forced him to go to the waters for treatment in Baden-Baden, Carlsbad, Marienbad, Ostend; at the end of his life he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. In Russia, Gogol did not have his own home - he lived with friends for a long time (most of all - with Stepan Shevyrev and Mikhail Pogodin), but he rather unceremoniously resettled his sisters as friends, taking them from the institute. The Gogol House Museum on Nikitsky Boulevard in Moscow is the former mansion of Count Alexander Tolstoy, where Gogol lived for the last four years, burned the second volume of Dead Souls and died.

The story, satirically directed against the highest Petersburg administration, became the main and only obstacle to the publication of Dead Souls. Probably foreseeing this, even before the manuscript was censored, Gogol himself significantly edited the first edition of the story, throwing out the finale, which tells about the adventures of Kopeikin, who robbed a whole army of "fugitive soldiers" in the Ryazan forests (but "all this, in fact, so to speak, aimed at only one state-owned "; Kopeikin robbed only the state, without touching private people, thereby resembling a people's avenger), and then fled to America, from where he wrote a letter to the sovereign and sought royal favor for his comrades, so that his story would not repeated. The second edition of the story, which is now considered normative, ends only with a hint that Captain Kopeikin has become the chieftain of a gang of robbers.

But even in a relaxed version, the censor Alexander Nikitenko called "Kopeikin" "absolutely impossible to pass," which plunged the writer into despair. “This is one of best places in the poem, and without it - a hole, which I am unable to pay and sew up, - wrote Gogol to Pletnev on April 10, 1842. - I'd rather decided to remake it than to lose it altogether. I threw out all the generals, Kopeikin's character meant more, so now it is clear that he was the cause of everything and that he was treated well. " Instead of a hero who suffered for his homeland and was brought to despair by the neglect of the authorities, Kopeikin now turned out to be a red tape and a crook with excessive claims: “I cannot, he says, interrupt somehow. I need, he says, to eat a cutlet, a bottle of French wine, to amuse myself, too, in the theater, you know. "

Neither in the corridors, nor in the rooms, their gaze was not struck by the cleanliness. They did not take care of her then; and what was dirty remained dirty, not taking on an attractive appearance

Nikolay Gogol

The story does not seem to relate to the development of the plot and looks like a plug-in novel in it. However, the author treasured this episode so much that he was not ready to publish the poem without it and chose to mutilate the story, throwing out all the politically sensitive points from it - obviously, satire was not the main thing in Kopeikin.

According to Yuri Mann, one of the artistic functions of the story is "interrupting the" provincial "plan of the St. Petersburg, capital, the inclusion in the plot of the poem of the higher metropolitan spheres of the Russian life " 23 Mann Yu. V. Poetics of Gogol, 2nd ed., Add. M .: Fiction, 1988.S. 285. ⁠ ... The researcher interprets Kopeikin as a “little man” rebelling against the repressive and soulless state machine - this interpretation was legalized in Soviet literary criticism, but it was brilliantly refuted by Yuri Lotman, who showed that the meaning of the story is in another way.

Noting the choice of Gogol, who made his Kopeikin not a soldier, but a captain and an officer, Lotman explains: “An army captain is a 9th grade rank that gave the right to hereditary nobility and, consequently, to the possession of the soul. The choice of such a hero to play the role of a positive character in the natural school is strange for a writer with such a heightened "sense of rank" as Gogol was. " In Kopeikin, the philologist sees a reduced version of literary “ noble robbers"; According to Lotman, this very plot was presented to Gogol by Pushkin, who was fascinated by the image of a robber nobleman, dedicated his Dubrovsky to him and intended to use it in the unwritten novel Russian Pelam.

The main character himself is endowed with parodic features of a romantic robber in Dead Souls: he bursts into Korobochka at night, “like Rinald Rinaldin”, he is suspected of kidnapping a girl, like Kopeikin, he deceives not private individuals, but only the treasury - straight Robin Hood ... But Chichikov, as we know, has many faces, he is a round emptiness, an averaged figure; therefore, he is surrounded by “literary projections, each of which is“ both parodic and serious ”and highlights one or another ideology important for the author, to which Dead Souls are referred or polemicized: Sobakevich seemed to emerge from an epic, Manilov - from sentimentalism , Plyushkin is the reincarnation of the stingy knight. Kopeikin is a tribute to the romantic, Byronic tradition, which is of paramount importance in the poem; without this "literary projection" it really was impossible to do. In the romantic tradition, it was on the side of the hero — the villain and the outcast — that the sympathies of the author and the reader were; his demonism is from disappointment with society, he is charming against the background of vulgar people, he is always left with the possibility of redemption and salvation (usually under the influence of female love). Gogol, on the other hand, approaches the issue of moral revival from a different - not romantic, but Christian side. Gogol's parody comparisons - Kopeikin, Napoleon or Antichrist - remove the halo of nobility from evil, make it funny, vulgar and insignificant, that is, absolutely hopeless, "and it is in its hopelessness that the possibility of an equally complete and absolute rebirth lies."

The poem was conceived as a trilogy, the first part of which was to make the reader horrified by showing all the Russian abominations, the second - to give hope, and the third - to show the picture of the rebirth. Already on November 28, 1836, in the same letter Mikhail Pogodin Mikhail Petrovich Pogodin (1800-1875) - historian, prose writer, publisher of the Moskvityanin magazine. Pogodin was born into a peasant family, and by the middle of the 19th century he became such an influential figure that he gave advice to Emperor Nicholas I. "Moskvityanine" published Gogol, Zhukovsky, Ostrovsky. The publisher shared the views of the Slavophiles, developed the ideas of Pan-Slavism, and was close to the philosophical circle of all-wise. Pogodin professionally studied the history of Ancient Rus, defended the concept according to which the foundations of Russian statehood were laid by the Scandinavians. He collected a valuable collection of Old Russian documents, which was later bought by the state. ⁠ , in which Gogol reports on the work on the first volume of Dead Souls - a thing in which "all of Russia will respond" - he explains that the poem will be "in several volumes." One can imagine what a high bar Gogol set for himself if the first and only published volume of the poem over time began to seem insignificant to him, as "a porch attached to a palace hastily attached by a provincial architect, which is intended to be built on a colossal scale." Having promised himself and his readers to describe no less than the whole of Russia and give a recipe for the salvation of the soul, announcing a “husband endowed with valor” and “a wonderful Russian girl”, Gogol drove himself into a trap. They waited impatiently for the second volume, moreover, Gogol himself mentioned it so often that rumors spread among his friends that the book was already ready. Pogodin even announced its release in "Moskvityanin" in 1841, for which he had from Gogol reprimand From French - a reproach, a reprimand. ⁠ .

Meanwhile, the work did not go on. Throughout 1843-1845, the writer constantly complains in letters to Aksakov, Zhukovsky, Yazykov about the creative crisis, which is then further aggravated by a mysterious illness - Gogol is afraid of “a blues that can intensify an even painful state” and sadly admits: “I tortured myself, raped to write, suffered severe suffering, seeing his impotence, and several times already caused himself illness by such compulsion and could not do anything, and everything came out compulsorily and bad" 24 Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends // Complete Works of N. V. Gogol. 2nd ed. T. 3.M., 1867. ⁠ ... Gogol is ashamed to return to his homeland, as "a man sent for business and returned empty-handed," and in 1845 for the first time burns the second volume of "Dead Souls", the fruit of five years of labors. In "Selected Passages ..." in 1846, he explains: "One must take into account not the delight of any art and literature lovers, but all readers," and the latter, according to the reader, would be more likely to harm than benefit , several vivid examples of virtue (as opposed to cartoons from the first volume), if you do not immediately show them, "as clear as day," the universal path of moral improvement. By this time, Gogol considered art only a stepping stone to preaching.

The neck and shoulders were open just as much as necessary, and no further; each laid bare her possessions as long as she felt, by her own conviction, that they were capable of destroying a person; the rest everything was hidden with extraordinary taste

Nikolay Gogol

Selected Places became such a sermon, which greatly ruined Gogol's reputation in the liberal camp as an apology for serfdom and an example of church hypocrisy. By the time Selected Places came out, friends-correspondents were already (despite the real cult of Gogol) annoyed by his real letters, in which Gogol lectured them and literally dictated the daily routine. Sergei Aksakov wrote to him: “I am fifty-three years old. I then read Thomas of Kempis Thomas of Kempis (c. 1379 - 1471) - writer, Catholic monk. The probable author of the anonymous theological treatise "On Imitation of Christ", which became the programmatic text of the spiritual movement "New Piety". The treatise criticizes the outward piety of Christians and praises self-denial as a way of becoming like Christ. ⁠ when you weren't born yet.<…> I do not condemn any, anyone's convictions, if only they were sincere; but, of course, I won't accept anyone else ... And suddenly you put me in prison, like a boy, for reading Thomas of Kempis, by force, not knowing my convictions, but how else? at the legal time, after coffee, and dividing the reading of the chapter, as if for lessons ... And funny and annoying ... "

All this mental evolution took place in parallel and in connection with a mental illness, which is described very similar to what until recently was called manic-depressive psychosis, and today it is more accurately called bipolar disorder. Throughout his life, Gogol suffered from mood swings - periods of ebullient creative energy, when the writer created both bright and unusually funny things and, according to the recollections of friends, started dancing in the street, replaced by black stripes. Gogol experienced his first such attack in Rome in 1840: “The sun, the sky - everything is unpleasant to me. My poor soul: she has no shelter here. I am now more fit for a monastery than for a secular life. " The very next year, the blues are replaced by ecstatic energy (“I am deeply happy, I know and hear wonderful moments, a wonderful creation is happening and is happening in my soul”) and immoderate conceit, characteristic of the state of hypomania (“Oh, believe my words. henceforth my word "). A year later, in the description of Gogol one recognizes chronic depression with its characteristic apathy, intellectual decline and a sense of isolation: “I was seized by my ordinary (already ordinary) periodic illness, during which I remain almost motionless in the room, sometimes for 2-3 weeks ... My head was numb. The last ties that bind me to the light have been broken. "

In 1848, Gogol, who was becoming increasingly religious, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but this did not bring him relief; after that he became a spiritual child of Father Matthew Konstantinovsky, who called for fierce asceticism and inspired the writer with the idea of \u200b\u200bthe sinfulness of all his creative labor 25 Svyatopolk-Mirsky D.P. The history of Russian literature from ancient times to 1925. Novosibirsk: Svinin and Sons, 2006.S. 239. ⁠ ... Apparently, under his influence, aggravated by a creative crisis and depression, on February 24, 1852, Gogol burned the almost finished second volume of Dead Souls in the stove. Ten days later, falling into black melancholy, Gogol died, apparently starving himself to death under the guise of fasting.

The text of the second volume of the poem, available to us now, is not a Gogol work, but a reconstruction based on the autographs of five chapters found after the death of Gogol by Stepan Shevyrev (and existing in two editions), separate excerpts and sketches. The second volume of "Dead Souls" first appeared in print in 1855 as an addition to the second collected works ("Works of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, found after his death. The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls. Poem by N. V. Gogol. Volume Two (5 chapters). Moscow. In the University Printing House, 1855 ").

list of references

• Adamovich G. Report on Gogol // Questions of literature. 1990. No. 5. S. 145.
• Aksakov KS A few words about Gogol's poem: "The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls" // Aksakov KS, Aksakov IS Literary criticism / Comp., Will enter. article and comment. A.S. Kurilova. Moscow: Sovremennik, 1981.
• Aksakov S. T. Collected works in 4 volumes. T. 3.M .: State. published. artist lit., 1956.
• Aksakov S. T. Collected works in 5 volumes. T. 3.M .: Pravda, 1966. S. 291–292.

• Annenkov P.V. Literary memoirs. M .: Pravda, 1989.
• Annensky I. F. Aesthetics of "Dead Souls" and its legacy. M .: Nauka, 1979 (series "Literary Monuments").
• Bakhtin M.M. Rabelais and Gogol (The art of words and folk culture of laughter) // Bakhtin M.M. Questions of literature and aesthetics: Studies of different years. M .: Art. lit., 1975. S. 484–495.
• Belinsky V.G. Chichikov's Adventures, or Dead Souls // Otechestvennye zapiski. 1842.T. XXIII. No. 7. Dept. VI "Bibliographic Chronicle". S. 1-12.
• Bely A. Gogol's Mastery: Research / Preface. L. Kameneva. M., L .: State. publishing house art. lit., 1934.
• Bryusov V. Ya. Incinerated. On the characteristic of Gogol // Bryusov V. Ya. Sobr. op. in 7 volumes. T. 6.M .: Art. liter, 1975.
• Veresaev V.V. Gogol in life: A systematic collection of authentic testimonies of contemporaries: With illustrations on separate sheets. M., L .: Academia, 1933.
• Veselovsky A. Etudes and characteristics. T. 2.M .: Tipo-lithography of the T-va I.N.Kushnerev and Co., 1912.
• Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends // Complete Works of N. V. Gogol. 2nd ed. T. 3.M., 1867.
• Herzen A. I. Literature and public opinion after December 14, 1825 // Russian aesthetics and criticism of the 40-50s of the XIX century / Podgot. text, comp., entry. article and note. V.K.Kantor and A.L. Ospovata. Moscow: Art, 1982.
• Gogol in the memoirs of his contemporaries / Text revision, foreword and commentary by S. I. Mashinsky. M .: State. publishing house art. lit., 1952 (Ser. literary memoirs / Under the general editorship of N.L.Brodsky, F.V. Gladkov, F.M.Golovenchenko, N.K. Gudzia).
• Gogol N.V. What is finally the essence of Russian poetry and what is its peculiarity // Gogol N.V. Complete Works. In 14 volumes. T. 8. Articles. M., L .: Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1937–1952. S. 369-409.
• Grigoriev A. A. Gogol and his last book // Russian aesthetics and criticism of the 40-50s of the XIX century / Podgot. text, comp., entry. article and note. V.K.Kantor and A.L. Ospovata. Moscow: Art, 1982.
• Gukovsky G.A.Gogol's Realism. M., L .: State. publishing house art. lit., 1959.
• Guminsky V.M. Gogol, Alexander I and Napoleon. On the 150th anniversary of the death of the writer and the 190th anniversary of the Patriotic War of 1812 // Our contemporary. 2002. No. 3.
• Zaitseva I. A. "The Tale of Captain Kopeikin" (From the History of the Censored Edition) // N. V. Gogol: Materials and Research. Issue 2.M .: IMLI RAN, 2009.
• Kirsanova R. M. Clothes, fabrics, color designations in "Dead Souls" // N. V. Gogol. Materials and research. Issue 2.M .: IMLI RAN, 2009.
• Literary heritage. T. 58.M .: Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1952. P. 774.
• Lotman Yu. M. Pushkin and "The Tale of Captain Kopeikin". To the history of the concept and composition of "Dead Souls" // Lotman Yu. M. At the School of Poetic Word: Pushkin. Lermontov. Gogol: Book. for the teacher. M .: Education, 1988.
• Mann Yu. V. In Search of a Living Soul: "Dead Souls". Writer - critic - reader. M .: Kniga, 1984.
• Mann Yu.V. Gogol. Book two. On the top. 1835-1845. Moscow: Publishing Center RGGU, 2012.
• Mann Yu.V. Gogol. Works and days: 1809-1845. M .: Aspect-press, 2004.
• Mann Yu. V. Poetics of Gogol. Variations to the theme. M .: Coda, 1996.
• Mashinsky S. Gogol in the assessment of Russian criticism // N. V. Gogol in Russian criticism and memoirs of contemporaries. M .: Detgiz, 1959.
• Mashinsky S.I. Art world Gogol: A Guide for Teachers. 2nd ed. Moscow: Education, 1979.
• Merezhkovsky D.S.Gogol and the devil (Research) // Merezhkovsky D.S. In a quiet pool. M .: Soviet writer, 1991.
• Nabokov V.V. Nikolai Gogol // Lectures on Russian Literature. M .: Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 1996.
• N. V. Gogol in Russian criticism: Sat. Art. / Prepared text by A. K. Kotov and M. Ya. Polyakov; Entry. Art. and note. M. Ya.Polyakova. M .: State. published. artist lit., 1953.
• N. V. Gogol: Materials and research / Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Institute of Rus. lit .; Ed. V. V. Gippius; Resp. ed. Yu. G. Oxman. M., L .: Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1936 (Literary archive).
• Correspondence of N.V. Gogol. In 2 volumes. T. 2.M .: Art. literature, 1988. S. 23-24.
• Polevoy N.A. Chichikov's Adventures, or Dead Souls. Poem by N. Gogol // Criticism of the 40s. XIX century / Comp., Preambles and notes. L. I. Sobolev. Moscow: Olympus, AST, 2002.
• Propp V. Ya. Problems of the comic and laughter. Ritual laughter in folklore (about the tale of Nesmeyan) // Propp V. Ya. Collection of works. M .: Labyrinth, 1999.
• Russian antiquity. 1889. No. 8. P. 384–385.
• Russian antiquity. 1902. No. 1. P. 85–86.
• Russian Bulletin. 1842. No. 5-6. P. 41.
• Svyatopolk-Mirsky D.P. The history of Russian literature from ancient times to 1925. Novosibirsk: Svinin and Sons, 2006.
• Northern bee. 1842. No. 119.
• Smirnova E. A. Gogol's poem "Dead Souls". L .: Nauka, 1987.
• Stasov V.V.<Гоголь в восприятии русской молодёжи 30–40-х гг.> // N.V. Gogol in the memoirs of his contemporaries / Ed., Foreword. and comments. S. I. Mashinsky. M .: State. published. artist lit., 1952, pp. 401–402.
• The creative path of Gogol // Gippius V.V. From Pushkin to Blok / Otv. ed. G.M. Friedlander. Moscow, Leningrad: Nauka, 1966, pp. 1–6, 46–200, 341–349.
• A. Terts (A. D. Sinyavsky) In the shadow of Gogol // Sobr. op. in 2 volumes. T. 2. M .: Start, 1992. S. 3–336.
• Tynyanov Yu. N. Dostoevsky and Gogol (to the theory of parody) // Tynyanov Yu. N. Poetics. Literary history. Movie. Moscow: Nauka, 1977.
• Fokin P.E. Gogol without gloss. Saint Petersburg: Amphora, 2008.
• Shenrok V.I.Materials for the biography of Gogol. In 4 volumes. M., 1892-1898.

The entire list of references

February 24, 1852 Nikolay Gogol burned the second, final edition of the second volume of "Dead Souls" - the main work in his life (he also destroyed the first edition seven years earlier). It was Great Lent, the writer practically did not eat anything, and the only person to whom he gave his manuscript to read, called the novel "harmful" and advised to destroy a number of chapters from there. The author threw the entire manuscript into the fire at once. And the next morning, realizing what he had done, he regretted his impulse, but it was too late.

But the first few chapters from the second volume are still familiar to readers. A couple of months after Gogol's death, his draft manuscripts were discovered, including four chapters to the second book of Dead Souls. AiF.ru tells the story of both volumes of one of the most famous Russian books.

The title page of the first edition of 1842 and the title page of the second edition of Dead Souls in 1846, based on a sketch by Nikolai Gogol. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

Thanks to Alexander Sergeevich!

In fact, the plot of "Dead Souls" does not belong at all to Gogol: he suggested an interesting idea to his "pen colleague" Alexander Pushkin... During his exile in Chisinau, the poet heard a “strange” story: it turned out that in one place on the Dniester, judging by the official documents, no one had died for several years. There was no mysticism in this: the names of the dead were simply assigned to fugitive peasants who, in search of a better life, ended up on the Dniester. So it turned out that the city received an influx of new labor, the peasants had a chance to new life (and the police could not even figure out the fugitives), and the statistics showed no deaths.

Having slightly modified this plot, Pushkin told it to Gogol - it happened, most likely, in the fall of 1831. And four years later, on October 7, 1835, Nikolai Vasilyevich sent a letter to Alexander Sergeevich with the following words: “I began writing Dead Souls. The plot stretched out into a pre-long novel and it seems to be very funny. " The main character of Gogol was an adventurer who pretends to be a landowner and buys up dead peasants who are still listed as living in the census. And he puts the received “souls” in a pawnshop, trying to get rich.

Three circles of Chichikov

Gogol decided to make his poem (and this is how the author defined the genre of "Dead Souls") in three parts - in this the work resembles the "Divine Comedy" Dante Alighieri... In Dante's medieval poem, the hero travels through the afterlife: he goes through all the circles of hell, passes purgatory and in the end, enlightened, goes to heaven. Gogol's plot and structure are conceived in a similar way: main character, Chichikov, travels around Russia, observing the vices of the landowners, and gradually changes himself. If in the first volume Chichikov appears as a clever schemer who is able to get into the trust of any person, then in the second he gets caught in a scam with someone else's inheritance and almost goes to jail. Most likely, the author assumed that in the final part of his character he would end up in Siberia along with several more characters, and, having gone through a series of trials, all together they would become honest people, role models.

But Gogol never got down to writing the third volume, and the content of the second one can only be guessed at from the four surviving chapters. Moreover, these records are working and incomplete, and the characters' names and ages "differ".

Pushkin's "Sacred Testament"

In total, Gogol wrote the first volume of Dead Souls (the one that we know so well now) for six years. The work began at home, then continued abroad (the writer "drove off" there in the summer of 1836) - by the way, the writer read the first chapters to his "inspirer" Pushkin just before leaving. The author worked on the poem in Switzerland, France and Italy. Then, in short "raids" he returned to Russia, read excerpts from the manuscript at secular evenings in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and again went abroad. In 1837, the news that shocked Gogol reached Gogol: Pushkin was killed in a duel. The writer considered that now it was his duty to finish Dead Souls: by doing so, he would fulfill the poet's “sacred testament”, and took up work even harder.

By the summer of 1841, the book was finished. The author came to Moscow planning to publish the work, but faced serious difficulties. The Moscow censorship did not want to let Dead Souls through and was going to ban the poem for publication. Apparently, the censor, who "got" the manuscript, helped Gogol and warned him about the problem, so that the writer managed to transport Dead Souls through Vissarion Belinsky (literary critic and publicist) from Moscow to the capital - St. Petersburg. At the same time, the author asked Belinsky and several of his influential friends from the capital to help pass the censorship. And the plan succeeded: the book was allowed. In 1842, the work finally came out - then it was called "The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls, a poem by N. Gogol."

Illustration by Pyotr Sokolov for Nikolai Gogol's poem "Dead Souls". "Arrival of Chichikov to Plyushkin." 1952 year. Reproduction. Photo: RIA Novosti / Ozersky

First edition of the second volume

It is impossible to say for sure exactly when the author started writing the second volume - presumably, it happened in 1840, even before the first part was published. It is known that Gogol worked on the manuscript again in Europe, and in 1845, during a mental crisis, he threw all the sheets into the oven - this was the first time he destroyed the manuscript of the second volume. Then the author decided that his calling was to serve God in the literary field, and came to the conclusion that he was chosen in order to create a great masterpiece. As Gogol wrote to his friends while working on Dead Souls: “... a sin, a grave sin, a grave sin to distract me! Only one unbelieving words of mine and inaccessible thoughts of lofty are allowed to do this. My labor is great, my feat is salutary. I have died now for everything petty. "

According to the author himself, after the burning of the manuscript of the second volume, an inspiration came to him. He understood what the content of the book really should be: more sublime and "enlightened". And the inspired Gogol proceeded to the second edition.

Character illustrations that have become classic
Works by Alexander Agin for the first volume
Nozdryov	Sobakevich	Plyushkin	Ladies
Works by Pyotr Boklevsky for the first volume
Nozdryov	Sobakevich	Plyushkin	Manilov
Works by Pyotr Boklevsky and I. Mankovsky for the second volume
Peter the Rooster	Tentetnikov	General Betrishchev	Alexander Petrovich

"Now everything is gone." Second edition of the second volume

When the next, already the second manuscript of the second volume was ready, the writer persuaded his spiritual teacher, archpriest Matthew Konstantinovsky read it - the priest was just visiting at that time in Moscow, in the house of his friend Gogol. At first, Matthew refused, but after getting acquainted with the edition, he advised to delete several chapters from the book and never publish them. A few days later, the archpriest left, and the writer practically stopped eating - and this happened 5 days before the beginning of Lent.

Portrait of Nikolai Gogol for his mother, painted by Fyodor Moller in 1841, in Rome.

According to legend, on the night of February 23-24, Gogol woke up his servant of Semyon, told him to open the stove valves and bring the briefcase in which the manuscripts were kept. The writer answered the pleas of the frightened servant: “It's none of your business! Pray! " - and set fire to his notebooks in the fireplace. None of those living today can know what then moved the author: dissatisfaction with the second volume, disappointment or psychological stress. As the writer himself later explained, he destroyed the book by mistake: “I wanted to burn some things that had been prepared long ago, but I burned everything. How the evil one is strong - that's what he pushed me to! And I was there, I figured out a lot and expounded ... I thought of sending it to friends from a notebook: let them do what they wanted. Now everything is gone. "

After that fateful night, the classic lived for nine days. He died in a state of severe exhaustion and exhaustion, but to the last he refused to take food. Sorting through his archives, a couple of Gogol's friends in the presence of the Moscow civil governor found the draft chapters of the second volume a couple of months later. He did not even have time to start the third ... Now, 162 years later, Dead Souls are still read, and the work is considered a classic not only of Russian, but of all world literature.

"Dead Souls" in ten quotes

“Rus, where are you rushing? Give an answer. Doesn't give an answer. "

"And what Russian doesn't like driving fast?"

“There is only one decent person there: the prosecutor; and that, to tell the truth, is a pig. "

"Love us black, and everyone will love us white."

“Eh, Russian people! Doesn't like to die a natural death! "

"There are people who have a passion to spoil their neighbor, sometimes for no reason at all."

"Often tears invisible to the world flow through the laughter visible to the world."

“Nozdryov was in some respects a historical person. Not a single meeting he attended was complete without history. "

"It is very dangerous to look deeper into the hearts of women."

"Fear is more sticky than the plague."

Illustration by Pyotr Sokolov for Nikolai Gogol's poem "Dead Souls". "Chichikov at Plyushkin's." 1952 year. Reproduction. Photo: RIA Novosti / Ozersky

The plot of the poem was suggested to Gogol by Alexander Pushkin, presumably in September 1831. Information about this goes back to the "Author's Confession", written in 1847 and posted posthumously in 1855, and is confirmed by reliable, albeit indirect evidence.

The documented history of the creation of the work begins on October 7, 1835: in a letter to Pushkin dated that day, Gogol for the first time mentions "Dead Souls": "He began to write Dead Souls. The plot stretched out into a pre-long novel and it seems to be very funny. "

The first chapters Gogol read to Pushkin before his departure abroad. Work continued in the fall of 1836 in Switzerland, then in Paris and later in Italy. By this time, the creator had developed an attitude to his own work as to the "sacred testament of the poet" and to a literary feat, which at the same time has a patriotic meaning, which should reveal the fate of Russia and the world. In Baden-Baden in August 1837, Gogol read an unfinished poem in the presence of the lady-in-waiting of the government court, Alexandra Smirnova (née Rosset) and the son of Nikolai Karamzin, Andrei Karamzin, in October 1838 he read part of the manuscript to Alexander Turgenev. Work on the first volume took place in Rome in late 1837 - early 1839.

Upon his return to Russia, Gogol read chapters from Dead Souls at the Aksakovs' house in Moscow in September 1839, then in St. Petersburg with Vasily Zhukovsky, Nikolai Prokopovich and other close friends. The writer was engaged in the final finishing of the first volume in Rome from the end of September 1840 to August 1841.

Returning to Russia, Gogol read the chapters of the novel in the Aksakovs' house and prepared the manuscript for publication. At a meeting of the Metropolitan Censorship Committee on December 12, 1841, obstacles to the publication of the manuscript, submitted to the censor Ivan Snegirev, were clarified, who, in all likelihood, acquainted the creator with the burdens that could appear. Fearing a censorship ban, in January 1842 Gogol forwarded the manuscript through Belinsky to St. Petersburg and asked his friends A.O. Smirnova, Vladimir Odoevsky, Pyotr Pletnev, Misha Vielgorsky to help with the passage of censorship.

On March 9, 1842, the book was authorized by the censor Alexander Nikitenko, but with a changed title and in the absence of "The Tale of Captain Kopeikin". Even before receiving the censored copy, the manuscript began to be typed in the printing house of the Metropolitan Institute. Gogol himself undertook to design the cover of the novel, wrote in small letters "The Adventures of Chichikov or" and in large letters "Dead Souls". In May 1842, the book was published under the title "The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls, a poem by N. Gogol." In the USSR and modern Russia, the name "Chichikov's Adventures" is not used.

Gogol, like Dante Alighieri, intended to make the poem in three volumes, and wrote the second volume, where positive images were displayed and an attempt was made to depict Chichikov's moral degeneration. Gogol probably began work on the second volume in 1840. Work on it lasted in Germany, France and mainly in Italy in 1842-1843. In late June or early July 1845, the writer burned the manuscript of the second volume. When working on the second volume, the significance of the work in the mind of the writer grew beyond the boundaries of actually literary texts, which made the plan practically unrealizable. On the night of February 11-12, 1852, Gogol burned the white manuscript of the second volume (the only eyewitness was the servant Semyon) and died 10 days later. The preliminary manuscripts of four chapters of the second volume (in incomplete form) were found during the opening of the writer's papers, sealed after his death. An autopsy was performed on April 28, 1852 by S.P.Shevyrev, Count A.P. Tolstoy and the capital's civil governor Ivan Kapnist (the son of the poet and playwright V.V. Kapnist). Shevyryov was involved in the bleaching of the manuscripts, who also took care of its publication. The lists of the second volume were circulated even before its publication. For the first time, the surviving chapters of the second volume of Dead Souls were published as part of Gogol's Complete Works in the summer of 1855. One of the last chapters, which is now being printed together with the first 4 chapters of the second volume, belongs to an earlier edition than the other chapters.

Material source: ru.wikipedia.org

You can read the poem "Dead Souls" on the Internet at the following websites:

ilibrary.ru - the poem is divided into chapters page by page, comfortable to read

public-library.narod.ru - the entire poem on one page of the website

nikolaygogol.org.ru - the poem is broken down by page. A total of 181 pages. It is possible to print the text

What year was it written poem The Dead souls?

The plot of the poem was suggested to Gogol by Alexander Pushkin, presumably in September 1831. Information about this goes back to the "Author's Confession", written in 1847 and posted posthumously in 1855, and is confirmed by reliable, albeit indirect evidence. The documented history of the creation of the work begins on October 7, 1835: in a letter to Pushkin, dated that day, Gogol mentions for the first time ...

To the reader from the writer

Whoever you are, my reader, no matter where you stand, no matter what rank you are in, whether you are honored by the highest rank or a person of a simple class, but if God taught you to read and write and my book has already fallen into your hands, I ask help me. The book in front of you, which you have probably already read in its first edition, depicts a person taken from our own state. He travels across our Russian land, meets people of all classes, from noble to simple. It is taken more in order to show the shortcomings and vices of the Russian person, and not his merits and virtues, and all the people who surround him are also taken in order to show our weaknesses and shortcomings; the best people and characters will be in other parts. In this book, much is described incorrectly, not the way it is and how it really happens in the Russian land, because I could not learn everything: a person's life is not enough to learn one and a hundredth part of what is happening in our land. Moreover, from my own oversight, immaturity and haste there have been many all sorts of mistakes and blunders, so there is something to correct on every page: I ask you, reader, to correct me. Do not neglect such a matter. No matter how high your education and high life you are, and no matter how insignificant my book may seem in your eyes, and no matter how small it may seem to you to correct it and write comments on it, I ask you to do it. And you, a reader of low education and a simple rank, do not consider yourself so ignorant that you cannot teach me anything. Anyone who has lived and seen the light and met people has noticed something that another has not noticed, and has learned something that others do not know. Therefore, do not deprive me of your remarks: it cannot be that you will not find something to say in some place in the whole book, if you only read it carefully. How nice, for example, it would be if at least one of those who are rich in experience and knowledge of life and know the circle of those people whom I have described, took notes all over the book, without missing a single sheet of it, and began to read it is nothing other than taking a pen in my hands and putting a sheet of letter paper in front of me, and after reading several pages, I would remember my whole life and all the people I met, and all the incidents that happened before his eyes, and everything that I saw he himself or what he heard from others similar to what is depicted in my book, or the opposite, he would describe all this in the exact form in which it appeared to his memory, and would send every sheet to me as he is finished until the whole book is read to them in this way. What a big deal he would do me! There is nothing to worry about the syllable or the beauty of the expressions; the thing is business and in the truth deeds, not syllables. He also has nothing to do in front of me if he wanted to reproach me, or scold me, or point out to me the harm that I have done in place of benefit by a thoughtless and incorrect depiction of anything. For everything I will be grateful to him. It would also be nice if someone was found from the upper class, distant by everything and life itself and education from the circle of people that is depicted in my book, but who knows the life of the class in which he lives, and would decide to read again in the same way my book and mentally recall to myself all the people of the upper class, whom I have met in my entire life, and consider carefully whether there is any kind of rapprochement between these classes and is not the same thing sometimes repeated in the higher circle, which is done in the lower? and everything that comes to his mind about this, that is, any event of the upper circle serving to confirm or refute this, would describe how it happened before his eyes, not letting in any people with their morals, inclinations and habits, nor the soulless things that surround them, from clothes to furniture and the walls of the houses in which they live. I need to know this class, which is the color of the people. I cannot give out the last volumes of my work until I somehow know Russian life from all its sides, although to the extent that I need to know it for my work. It is also not bad if someone who is endowed with the ability to imagine or vividly imagine different situations of people and pursue them mentally in different fields - in a word, who is able to delve into the thought of every author he reads or develop it, would closely follow every face deduced in my book, and would tell me how it should act in such and such cases, what, judging by the beginning, should happen to him further, what new circumstances may appear to him, and what would be good to add to what is already I described; All this I would like to take into consideration by the time when a new publication of this book follows, in a different and better form. One thing I ask strongly of the one who would like to endow me with his comments: not to think at this time how he will write, that he writes them for a person equal to him in education, who has the same tastes and thoughts and can already realize a lot himself no explanation; but instead of imagining that in front of him stands a man incomparably inferior in his education, who has hardly learned anything. Better even if, instead of me, he imagines some village savage, whom his whole life has passed in the wilderness, with whom he must enter into a detailed explanation of every circumstance and be simple in speech, as with a child, fearing every minute so as not to use expressions from above him concepts. If this is constantly borne in mind by someone who begins to make comments on my book, then his comments will come out more significant and curious than he himself thinks, and they will bring true benefit to me. So, if it happened that my heartfelt request would be respected by my readers and there would be really such kind souls among them who would want to do everything the way I want, then this is how they can send their comments: having made the package first to my name, then wrap it up in another bag, or in the name of the rector of St. Petersburg University, His Excellency Pyotr Alexandrovich Pletnev, addressing directly to St. Petersburg University, or in the name of the professor of Moscow University, his honor Stepan Petrovich Shevyrev, addressing to Moscow University, depending on which city is closer to whom. And all, both journalists and writers in general, thanks sincerely for all their previous reviews of my book, which, despite some immoderation and hobbies inherent in man, have brought, however, great benefits to both my head and my soul, please do not leave me with your remarks this time. I assure you sincerely that everything that they say for their admonition or my teaching, will be accepted by me with gratitude.