The compositional meaning of Chapter 1 of Dead Souls. Composition of the poem “Dead Souls” N

According to Gogol’s plan, the composition of the poem “Dead Souls” was supposed to consist of three volumes, like Dante’s “Divine Poem,” but only the first volume was realized, according to the author - “the porch to the house.” This is a kind of “Hell” of Russian reality. In volume 2, similar to “Purgatory,” new positive heroes were supposed to appear and, using the example of Chichikov, it was supposed to show the path of purification and resurrection of the human soul. Finally, in volume 3 - “Paradise” - a beautiful, ideal world and truly spiritualized heroes were to appear.

The author also determined the genre of his work by analogy with the “Divine Comedy”: he called “Dead Souls” a poem. It is obvious that Gogol’s poem is not traditional, it is a new artistic construction that has no analogues in world literature. No wonder the debate about the genre of this work, which began immediately after the release of Dead Souls, has not subsided to this day. The originality of the genre of this work lies in the combination of the epic and lyrical principles (in lyrical digressions), the features of a travel novel and a review novel (through-out hero). In addition, features of the genre are revealed here, which Gogol himself identified in his work “Training Book of Literature” and called it “a lesser kind of epic.” Unlike a novel, such works tell a story not about individual characters, but about the people or part of them, which is quite applicable to the poem “Dead Souls.” It is characterized by a truly epic breadth of scope and grandeur of design, going far beyond the history of the purchase of audit dead souls by a certain swindler.

But another story is more important, showing the transformation of Russia and the revival of the people living in it. It would become, according to Gogol’s plan, the unifying beginning of all three volumes of “Dead Souls”, making the poem a genuine Russian “Odyssey”, similar to the great epic of the ancient Greek poet Homer. But in the center of it was not the cunning Homeric traveler, but the “scoundrel-acquirer,” as Gogol called the central character of his poem, Chichikov. He also has the important compositional function of a connecting character, connecting all parts of the plot and making it possible to easily introduce new faces, events, pictures, which, as a whole, make up the broadest panorama of Russian life. Material from the site

The composition of the first volume of “Dead Souls,” similar to “Hell,” is organized in such a way as to show as fully as possible the negative aspects of life in all components of the author’s contemporary Russia. The first chapter is a general exposition, followed by five portrait chapters (chapters 2-6), in which landowner Russia is presented; in chapters 7-10 a collective image of bureaucracy is given, and the last - eleventh - chapter is dedicated to Chichikov. These are externally closed, but internally interconnected links. Outwardly, they are united by the plot of the purchase of “dead souls” (Chapter 1 tells about Chichikov’s arrival in the provincial town, then a series of his meetings with landowners are successively shown, in Chapter 7 we talk about completing the purchase, and in 8-9 - about rumors, associated with her, in Chapter 11, along with Chichikov’s biography, his departure from the city is reported). Internal unity is created by the author’s reflections on contemporary Russia. Therefore, a large number of extra-plot elements (lyrical digressions, inserted episodes), as well as the inserted “The Tale of Captain Kopeikin,” organically fit into the composition of the poem.

According to N.V. Gogol’s plan, the theme of the poem should have been the whole of contemporary Russia. In the conflict of the first volume of Dead Souls, the writer took two types of contradictions inherent in Russian society in the first half of the 19th century: between the imaginary meaningfulness and the real insignificance of the ruling strata of society and between the spiritual forces of the people and their enslavers.

Indeed, “Dead Souls” can be called an encyclopedic study of all the pressing problems of that time: the state of landowners’ farms, the moral character of the landowners and bureaucrats, their relationships with the people, the fate of the people and the homeland. “...What a huge, what an original plot! What a varied bunch! All Rus' will appear in it,” Gogol wrote to Zhukovsky about his poem. Naturally, such a multifaceted plot determined a unique composition.

First of all, the construction of the poem is distinguished by its clarity and precision: all parts are interconnected by the plot-forming hero Chichikov, who travels with the goal of getting “a million.” This is an energetic businessman, looking for profitable connections, entering into numerous acquaintances, which allows the writer to depict reality in all its facets, to capture socio-economic, family, household, moral, legal and cultural relations in feudal Russia.

In the first chapter, expositional, introductory, the author gives a general description of the provincial provincial town and introduces readers to the main characters of the poem.

The next five chapters are devoted to the depiction of landowners in their own family and everyday life, on their estates. Gogol masterfully reflected in the composition the isolation of the landowners, their isolation from public life (Korobochka had never even heard of Sobakevich and Manilov). The content of all these five chapters is based on one general principle: the appearance of the estate, the state of the economy, the manor's house and its interior, characteristics of the landowner and his relationship with Chichikov. In this way, Gogol paints a whole gallery of landowners, who together recreate the general picture of serfdom.

The satirical orientation of the poem is manifested in the very sequence of presentation of the landowners, starting with Manilov and ending with Plyushkin, who has already “turned into a hole in humanity.” Gogol showed the terrible degradation of the human soul, the spiritual and moral fall of the self-seeking serf-owner.

But the writer’s realistic style and satirical pathos were most clearly manifested in the creation of images of Russian landowners. Gogol brings to the fore the moral and psychological essence of the hero, his negative traits and typical signs, such as, for example, Manilov’s beautiful-hearted daydreaming and complete lack of understanding of life; Nozdryov’s blatant lies and recklessness; kulaks and misanthropy in Sobakevich, etc.

The breadth of generalization of images is organically combined with their clearly defined individuality, vital tangibility, which is achieved through exaggerated specification of their typical features; a sharp delineation of moral traits and their individualization by sharpening techniques is reinforced by the delineation of the appearance of the characters.

Following the close-up portraits of landowners, the poem is followed by a satirical depiction of the life of the provincial bureaucracy, which represents the socio-political power of the nobility. It is remarkable that Gogol chooses the entire provincial city as the subject of his image, creating a collective image of a provincial bureaucrat.

In the process of depicting landowners and officials, the image of the main character of the story, Chichikov, gradually unfolds before readers. Only in the final, eleventh chapter does Gogol reveal his life in all details and finally expose his hero as a cunning bourgeois predator, a swindler, a civilized scoundrel. This approach is due to the author’s desire to more fully expose Chichikov as a socio-political type that expresses a new, still maturing, but already quite viable and quite strong phenomenon - capital. That is why his character is shown in development, in collisions with many different obstacles that arise on his way. It is remarkable that all the other characters in Dead Souls appear before the reader psychologically already formed, that is, without development and internal contradictions (the exception to some extent is Plyushkin, who is given a descriptive backstory). Such static nature of the characters emphasizes the stagnation of life and the entire way of life of the landowners and helps to concentrate attention on the characteristics of their characters.

Throughout the entire poem, Gogol, parallel to the plot lines of landowners, officials and Chichikov, continuously draws another one - connected with the image of the people. With the composition of the poem, the writer constantly reminds us of the existence of a gulf of alienation between the common people and the ruling classes.

Throughout the entire poem, the affirmation of the people as a positive hero merges with the glorification of the homeland, with the author’s expression of his patriotic and civic judgments. These judgments are scattered throughout the work in the form of heartfelt lyrical digressions. Thus, in the 5th chapter, Gogol praises the “living and lively Russian mind”, its extraordinary ability for verbal expressiveness. In Chapter 6, he makes a passionate appeal to the reader to preserve truly human feelings until the end of his life. Chapter 7 talks about the role of writers, about their different “destinations.” The 8th shows the disunity between the provincial nobility and the people. The last, chapter 11, ends with an enthusiastic hymn to the Motherland and its wonderful future.

As can be seen from chapter to chapter, the themes of lyrical digressions are acquiring greater social significance, and the working people appear before the reader in a steadily increasing progression of their merits (mentions of the dead and runaway men Sobakevich and Plyushkin).

Thus, Gogol achieves in the composition of the poem that continuously increasing tension, which, together with the increasing drama of the action, gives “Dead Souls” exceptional entertainment.

In the composition of the poem, one should especially emphasize the image of the road running through the entire work, with the help of which the writer expresses hatred of stagnation and striving forward, ardent love for his native nature. This image helps to enhance the emotionality and dynamism of the entire poem.

Gogol's amazing art in plot composition is reflected in the fact that many different introductory episodes and author's digressions, caused by the desire to recreate the reality of that time more broadly and deeply, are strictly subordinated to the embodiment of certain ideas of the writer. Such author's digressions as about thick and thin, about “the passion of a Russian person to know someone who was at least one rank higher than him,” about “gentlemen of great hands and gentlemen of medium hands,” about the broad typicality of the images of Nozdryov, Korobochka, Sobakevich, Plyushkin, constitute the necessary social background for revealing the main ideas of the poem. In many of the author’s digressions, Gogol in one way or another touched on the metropolitan theme, but in extreme satirical nakedness this “dangerous* theme was heard in the poem “The Tale of Captain Kopeikin” included in the composition, told by the provincial postmaster. In its internal meaning, in its idea, this inserted short story is an important element in the ideological and artistic sense of Gogol’s poem. It gave the author the opportunity to include in the poem the theme of the heroic year of 1812 and thereby highlight even more sharply the heartlessness and arbitrariness of the supreme power, the cowardice and insignificance of the provincial nobility. “The Tale of Captain Kopeikin” briefly distracts the reader from the musty world of the Plyushkins and the officials of the provincial city, but this change of impressions creates a certain artistic effect and helps to more clearly understand the intent of the work, its satirical orientation.

The composition of the poem not only perfectly develops the plot, which is based on Chichikov’s fantastic adventure, but also allows Gogol, with the help of extra-plot episodes, to recreate the entire reality of Nicholas Rus'. All of the above convincingly proves that the composition of the poem is distinguished by a high degree of artistic skill.

The relationship of parts in “Dead Souls” is strictly thought out and subject to creative intent.

The first chapter of the poem is a kind of introduction. The author introduces the reader to the main characters: Chichikov and his constant companions - Petrushka and Selifan, the landowners Manilov, Nozdrev, Sobakevich. Here is a sketch of the society of provincial officials. Chapters two to six are devoted to landowners, who personify the “noble” class of Russia, the “masters of life.” In chapters seven to ten, provincial society is masterfully depicted. City leaders, minor officials, ladies “simply pleasant” and “pleasant in all respects” pass before the reader’s eye in a motley crowd. The eleventh chapter gives a biography of Chichikov, an unscrupulous businessman of the bourgeois type, the acquirer of dead souls. The final lines of “Dead Souls” are dedicated to his beloved homeland: Gogol the patriot sings of the greatness and strength of Russia. A significant place in the ideological and compositional structure of the work is occupied by lyrical digressions and inserted episodes, which is characteristic of the poem as a literary genre.

In his lyrical digressions, Gogol touches on the most pressing, most important social issues. The author's thoughts about the high purpose of man, about the fate of the people are contrasted with gloomy pictures of Russian life. Herzen said that when you read “Dead Souls,” “horror washes over you, with every step you get stuck, drowning deeper. The lyrical place suddenly revives, illuminates, and is now replaced again by a picture that reminds even more clearly what a ditch of hell we are in...” The poem includes extra-plot, inserted episodes, scenes, paintings, and the author’s reasoning. For example, in the first chapter, Gogol casually sketches portraits of thin and fat officials. “Alas, fat people know how to manage their affairs better in this world than thin ones,” writes the author. The third chapter gives a satirical portrait of a certain ruler of the chancellery. Among his subordinates, the ruler is “Prometheus, decisive Prometheus!.. and a little higher than him, with Prometheus, such a transformation will take place, which even Ovid would not invent: a fly, even smaller than a fly, is destroyed into a grain of sand!” In the ninth chapter, Gogol talks about an incident that happened in the village of Lousy Arrogance. The peasants “razed off the face of the earth... the zemstvo police in the person of an assessor, some Drobyazhkin.” The tenth chapter contains “The Tale of Captain Kopeikin,” who arrived in St. Petersburg to ask for “royal mercy.”

Extra-plot, inserted episodes, portrait sketches and scenes help provide comprehensive coverage of the life of various social strata of feudal Russia, from downtrodden peasants to dignitaries. “Dead Souls” reflects all of Rus' with its good and evil.

The poem "Dead Souls" is a brilliant satire on feudal Rus'. But fate has no mercy for the One whose noble genius Became an exposer of the crowd, Its passions and delusions. The creativity of N.V. Gogol is multifaceted and diverse. The writer has talent...

Unlike Nozdryov, Sobakevich cannot be considered a person with his head in the clouds. This hero stands firmly on the ground, does not indulge himself with illusions, soberly evaluates people and life, knows how to act and achieve what he wants. Given the character of his life, Gogol is in everything...

Poem by N.V. Gogol's "Dead Souls" is the greatest work of world literature. In the death of the souls of the characters - landowners, officials, Chichikov - the writer sees the tragic death of humanity, the sad movement of history along a closed...

When Chichikov went to the city of N, readers knew practically nothing about him, but as events developed in the poem, we began to understand a little, although it is still unclear, what kind of person he was, why and for what purposes he came. There are a few Chichikov...

The poem “Dead Souls” (1842) is a deeply original, nationally original work. This is a work about the contrast and uncertainty of Russian reality, and the title of the poem is no coincidence. To Gogol's contemporaries such a name seemed surprising...

"Dead Souls"– work by N.V. Gogol, the genre of which the author himself designated as a poem. It was originally conceived as a three-volume work. The first volume was published in 1842. The almost finished second volume was destroyed by the writer, but several chapters were preserved in drafts. The third volume was conceived and not started, only some information about it remained.

General view of the composition of the poem

It is believed that the first volume of Dead Souls is built on the same principle. A. Bely formulated this principle as follows: each subsequent landowner with whom fate confronts Chichikov is “more dead than the previous one.” A. Vronsky wrote: “Heroes are increasingly becoming dead souls, so that later they become almost completely petrified in Plyushkin.” That is, all types are arranged according to the degree of intensification of the features of spiritual impoverishment in each subsequent image. This point of view has become widespread and is found in almost all works on “Dead Souls”.

However, this principle, upon a more detailed and in-depth examination of the issues and images of the poem, raises doubts. Gogol's landowners line up in the following order: Manilov - Korobochka - Nozdrev - Sobakevich - Plyushkin. This means that Nozdryov is worse than Manilov, and Sobakevich is worse than Nozdryov, and so on. But is this really so? Is the economical Sobakevich, whose “men’s huts were cut down marvelously,” worse than Manilov, for whom “the economy somehow went on by itself” and the peasants were given over to the power of a cunning clerk? Or is the almost apathetic Manilov better than Nozdryov and Plyushkin, who have at least some “enthusiasm” in their character? As we see, this point of view does not stand up to criticism.

Character types in Dead Souls

To understand the truth of the composition of the poem “Dead Souls”, you need to talk about the types of characters presented in it. When the reader approaches Plyushkin in the gallery of images, the tone of the narrative changes sharply, previously unheard of motifs of sadness and sadness appear. This sixth chapter is a turning point in the entire course of the narrative.

There is an opinion that Gogol's characters are simple and primitive, literally, that each of the landowners has one dominant feature, like the heroes of classicism. But such a point of view is erroneous, since not one of the heroes can be characterized by one vice known to us. What we call Manilovism, Nozdrevism is a whole psychological and moral complex, consisting of many shades and first discovered by Gogol.

The only thing we can agree with is that Gogol’s landowners are static. This does not mean that they are clear from the very beginning, their character traits are revealed gradually as the plot develops. But this is precisely the revelation of character, and not its evolution.

But it’s worth asking the question: are all heroes like this? No, not all. We have already said that in the image of Plyushkin something new is felt, and this new thing is “development”. Plyushkin is the only landowner given by Gogol in time and in change. He is the only one with a backstory; we see the gradual impoverishment of the hero’s soul, from a wise business executive to a terrible miser. Other heroes do not have a past; they are given by already established people in a given place and in a given period of time. With Plyushkin, for the first time, the poem includes a biography and character history.

The second image, built on the same principle, is the image of Chichikov himself. In the eleventh chapter, we discover the gradual formation, development and strengthening of the spirit of acquisition and Chichikovism.

Thus, in the poetics of the poem “Dead Souls” two types of character are distinguished. The first includes static heroes: Manilov, Korobochka, Nozdryov and Sobakevich. The second includes heroes shown in development: Plyushkin and Chichikov. The difference between these two types of characters is also confirmed by the fact that Gogol intended to take and lead through life's trials to the revival of only two heroes from the first volume: Chichikov and Plyushkin. Characters like Manilov and Korobochka were impossible to continue.

A New Look at Composition

Having examined the typology of characters in the poem, we can draw the following conclusion. Officials are positioned not according to the increasing fading and impoverishment of images, but vice versa. From those whose character and way of life have formed and ossified, to Plyushkin, in whom a spark of living life and hope still glimmers.

Literature:

1. Mann, Yu. On the poetics of “Dead Souls” // Russian classical literature: Analysis and analysis / Comp. D. Ustyuzhanin. – Moscow: Education, 1969.

According to N.V. Gogol’s plan, the theme of the poem was to be the whole of contemporary Russia. In the conflict of the first volume of “Dead Souls,” the writer took two types of contradictions inherent in Russian society in the first half of the 19th century: between the imaginary meaningfulness and real insignificance of the ruling strata of society and between the spiritual forces of the people and their enslavers.

Indeed, “Dead Souls” can be called an encyclopedic study of all the pressing problems of that time: the state of landowners’ households, the moral character of the landowners and bureaucrats, their relationships with the people, the fate of the people and the homeland. “...What a huge, what an original plot! What a varied bunch! All Rus' will appear in it,” Gogol wrote to Zhukovsky about his poem. Naturally, such a multifaceted plot determined a unique composition.

In the first chapter, expositional, introductory, the author gives a general description of the provincial provincial town and introduces readers to the main characters of the poem.

The next five chapters are devoted to the depiction of landowners in their own family and everyday life on their estates. Gogol masterfully reflected in the composition the isolation of the landowners, their isolation from public life (Korobochka had never even heard of Sobakevich and Manilov). The content of all these five chapters is based on one general principle: the appearance of the estate, the state of the economy, the manor's house and interior decoration, the characteristics of the landowner and his relationship with Chichikov. In this way, Gogol paints a whole gallery of landowners, who together recreate the general picture of serfdom.

But the writer’s realistic style and satirical pathos were most clearly manifested in the creation of images of Russian landowners. Gogol brings to the fore the moral and psychological essence of the hero, his negative traits and typical signs: such as, for example, Manilov’s beautiful-hearted daydreaming and complete lack of understanding of life; Nozdryov’s blatant lies and recklessness; kulaks and misanthropy in Sobakevich, etc.

The breadth of generalization of images is organically combined with their clearly designated individuality, vital tangibility, which is achieved through exaggerated specification of their typical features, a sharp delineation of moral traits and their individualization by sharpening techniques is reinforced by the delineation of the appearance of the characters.

In the process of depicting landowners and officials, the image of the main character of the story, Chichikov, gradually unfolds before readers. Only in the final, eleventh chapter does Gogol reveal his life in all details and finally expose his hero as a cunning bourgeois predator, a swindler, a civilized scoundrel. This approach is due to the author’s desire to more fully expose Chichikov as a socio-political type that expresses a new, still maturing, but already quite viable and quite strong phenomenon - capital. That is why his character is shown in development, in collisions with many different obstacles that arise on his way. It is remarkable that all the other characters in “Dead Souls” appear before the reader as psychologically already formed, that is, without development and internal contradictions (the exception to some extent is Plyushkin, who is given a descriptive backstory). Such static nature of the characters emphasizes the stagnation of life and the entire way of life of the landowners and helps to concentrate attention on the characteristics of their characters.

Throughout the poem, the affirmation of the people as a positive hero merges with the glorification of the homeland, with the expression/author of his patriotic and civic judgments. These judgments are scattered throughout the work in the form of heartfelt lyrical digressions. Thus, in the 5th chapter, Gogol praises the “living and lively Russian mind”, its extraordinary ability for verbal expressiveness. In Chapter 6, he makes a passionate appeal to the reader to preserve truly human feelings until the end of his life. Chapter 7 talks about the role of writers, about their different “destinations.” The 8th shows the disunity between the provincial nobility and the people. The last, 11th, chapter ends with an enthusiastic hymn to the Motherland and its wonderful future.

As you can see, from chapter to chapter the themes of lyrical digressions acquire increasing social significance, and the working people appear before the reader in a steadily increasing progression of their merits (mentions of the dead and runaway men Sobakevich and Plyushkin).

Thus, Gogol achieves in the composition of the poem that continuously increasing tension, which, together with the increasing drama of the action, gives “Dead Souls” exceptional entertainment.

Gogol's amazing art in plot composition is reflected in the fact that many different introductory episodes and author's digressions, caused by the desire to recreate the reality of that time more broadly and deeply, are strictly subordinated to the embodiment of certain ideas of the writer. Such author's digressions as about thick and thin, about “the passion of a Russian person to know someone who was at least one rank higher than him,” about “gentlemen of great hands and gentlemen of medium hands,” about the broad typicality of the images of Nozdryov, Korobochka, Sobakevich, Plyushkin, constitute the necessary social background for revealing the main ideas of the poem. In many of the author’s digressions, Gogol in one way or another touched on the metropolitan theme, but in extreme satirical nakedness this “dangerous” theme was heard in the poem “The Tale of Captain Kopeikin” included in the composition, told by the provincial postmaster. In its internal meaning, in its idea, this inserted short story is an important element in the ideological and artistic sense of Gogol’s poem. It gave the author the opportunity to include in the poem the theme of the heroic year of 1812 and thereby highlight even more sharply the heartlessness and arbitrariness of the supreme power, the cowardice and insignificance of the provincial nobility. “The Tale of Captain Kopeikin” briefly distracts the reader from the musty world of the Plyushkins and the officials of the provincial city, but this change of impressions creates a certain artistic effect and helps to more clearly understand the intent of the work, its satirical orientation.