Tragic in the fairy-tale world of Yu Mann evenings. Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol

Mann Yu V

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol

GOGOL Nikolai Vasilievich, Russian writer.

Gogol's literary fame was brought to him by the collection "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka" (1831-1832), rich in Ukrainian ethnographic material, romantic moods, lyricism and humor. The stories from the collections “Mirgorod” and “Arabesques” (both 1835) open the realistic period of Gogol’s work. The theme of the humiliation of the “little man” was most fully embodied in the story “The Overcoat” (1842), with which the formation of the natural school is associated. The grotesque beginning of the “St. Petersburg stories” (“The Nose”, “Portrait”) was developed in the comedy “The Inspector General” (production 1836) as a phantasmagoria of the bureaucratic and bureaucratic world. In the poem-novel "Dead Souls" (volume 1 - 1842), satirical ridicule of landowner Russia was combined with the pathos of the spiritual transformation of man. The religious and journalistic book “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends” (1847) provoked a critical letter from V. G. Belinsky. In 1852, Gogol burned the manuscript of the second volume of Dead Souls. Gogol had a decisive influence on the establishment of humanistic and democratic principles in Russian literature.

Family. Childhood

The future classic of Russian literature came from a middle-income landowner family: the Gogols had about 400 serfs and over 1000 acres of land. The writer's ancestors on his father's side were hereditary priests, but the writer's grandfather Afanasy Demyanovich left the spiritual career and entered service in the hetman's office; It was he who added another name to his Yanovsky surname - Gogol, which was supposed to demonstrate the origin of the family from Colonel Evstafy (Ostap) Gogol, famous in Ukrainian history of the 17th century (this fact does not find sufficient confirmation). Father, Vasily Afanasyevich, served at the Little Russian Post Office. Mother, Marya Ivanovna, who came from the landowner Kosyarovsky family, was known as the first beauty in the Poltava region; She married Vasily Afanasyevich at the age of fourteen. In addition to Nikolai, the family had five more children. The future writer spent his childhood years in his native estate Vasilyevka (another name is Yanovshchina), visiting with his parents the surrounding places - Dikanka, which belonged to the Minister of Internal Affairs V.P. Kochubey, Obukhovka, where the writer V.V. Kapnist lived, but especially often in Kibintsy, the estate of a former minister, a distant relative of Gogol on his mother’s side - D. P. Troshchinsky. The early artistic experiences of the future writer are connected with Kibintsy, where there was an extensive library and a home theater. Another source of the boy’s strong impressions were historical legends and biblical stories, in particular, the prophecy told by his mother about the Last Judgment with a reminder of the inevitable punishment of sinners. Since then, Gogol, in the words of researcher K.V. Mochulsky, has constantly lived “under the terror of retribution from beyond the grave.”

“I started thinking about the future early...” Years of study. Moving to St. Petersburg

At first, Nikolai studied at the Poltava district school (1818-1819), then took private lessons from the Poltava teacher Gabriel Sorochinsky, living in his apartment, and in May 1821 he entered the newly founded Nizhyn Gymnasium of Higher Sciences. Gogol was a fairly average student, but excelled in the gymnasium theater as an actor and decorator. The first literary experiments in poetry and prose belong to the gymnasium period, mainly “in the lyrical and serious kind,” but also in a comic spirit, for example, the satire “Something about Nezhin, or the law is not written for fools” (not preserved). Most of all, however, Gogol was occupied at this time by the thought of public service in the field of justice; This decision arose not without the influence of Professor N. G. Belousov, who taught natural law and was subsequently dismissed from the gymnasium on charges of “freethinking” (during the investigation, Gogol testified in his favor).

After graduating from the gymnasium, Gogol in December 1828, together with one of his closest friends A. S. Danilevsky, came to St. Petersburg, where he was met with a series of blows and disappointments: he failed to get the desired place; the poem "Hanz Küchelgarten", written, obviously, while still in high school and published in 1829 (under the pseudonym V. Alov), meets with murderous responses from reviewers (Gogol immediately buys up almost the entire circulation of the book and sets it on fire); to this, perhaps, were added the love experiences that he spoke about in a letter to his mother (dated July 24, 1829). All this makes Gogol suddenly leave St. Petersburg for Germany.

Upon returning to Russia (in September of the same year), Gogol finally managed to decide on a service - first in the Department of State Economy and Public Buildings, and then in the Department of Appanages. Official activity does not bring Gogol satisfaction; but his new publications (the story “Bisavryuk, or the Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala”, articles and essays) are paying more and more attention to him. The writer makes extensive literary acquaintances, in particular, with V. A. Zhukovsky, P. A. Pletnev, who introduced Gogol to A. S. Pushkin at his home in May 1831 (apparently the 20th).

"Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka"

In the autumn of the same year, the 1st part of the collection of stories from Ukrainian life “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka” was published (the 2nd part appeared the following year), enthusiastically received by Pushkin: “This is real gaiety, sincere, relaxed, without affectation, without primness And in some places what poetry!..." At the same time, the “gaiety” of Gogol’s book revealed various shades - from carefree banter to dark comedy, close to black humor. Despite the completeness and sincerity of the feelings of Gogol’s characters, the world in which they live is tragically conflicted: natural and family ties are dissolved, mysterious unreal forces invade the natural order of things (the fantastic is based mainly on folk demonology). Already in “Evenings...” Gogol’s extraordinary art of creating an integral, complete artistic cosmos that lives according to its own laws was revealed.

After the publication of his first prose book, Gogol became a famous writer. In the summer of 1832 he was enthusiastically greeted in Moscow, where he met M. P. Pogodin, S. T. Aksakov and his family, M. S. Shchepkin and others. Gogol's next trip to Moscow, equally successful, took place in the summer of 1835. By the end of this year, he left the field of pedagogy (since the summer of 1834 he held the position of associate professor of general history at St. Petersburg University) and devoted himself entirely to literary work.

"Mirgorodsky" and "Petersburg" cycles. "Inspector"

The year 1835 is unusual in the creative intensity and breadth of Gogol's plans. This year the next two collections of prose works are published - "Arabesques" and "Mirgorod" (both in two parts); work began on the poem "Dead Souls", the comedy "The Inspector General" was mostly completed, the first edition of the comedy "Grooms" (the future "Marriage") was written. Reporting on the writer’s new creations, including the upcoming premiere of “The Inspector General” at the St. Petersburg Alexandrinsky Theater (April 19, 1836), Pushkin noted in his “Contemporary”: “Mr. Gogol is moving forward. We wish and hope to have frequent opportunities to speak about him in our magazine." By the way, Gogol actively published in Pushkin’s magazine, in particular as a critic (article “On the movement of magazine literature in 1834 and 1835”).

"Mirgorod" and "Arabesque" marked new artistic worlds on the map of Gogol's universe. Thematically close to "Evenings..." ("Little Russian" life), the Mirgorod cycle, which united the stories "Old World Landowners", "Taras Bulba", "Viy", "The Story of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich", reveals a sharp change in perspective and pictorial scale: instead of strong and sharp characteristics - the vulgarity and facelessness of ordinary people; instead of poetic and deep feelings - sluggish, almost reflexive movements. The ordinariness of modern life was set off by the colorfulness and extravagance of the past, but the more strikingly manifested in it, in this past, was deep internal conflict (for example, in “Taras Bulba” - the clash of an individualizing love feeling with communal interests). The world of the “St. Petersburg stories” from “Arabesques” (“Nevsky Prospekt”, “Notes of a Madman”, “Portrait”; they are joined by “The Nose” and “Overcoat” published later, in 1836 and 1842 respectively) - this is the world of modern a city with its acute social and ethical conflicts, fractured characters, and an alarming and ghostly atmosphere. Gogol's generalization reaches its highest degree in "The Inspector General", in which the "prefabricated city" seemed to imitate the life activity of any larger social association, up to the state, the Russian Empire, or even humanity as a whole. Instead of the traditional active engine of intrigue - a rogue or an adventurer - an involuntary deceiver (the imaginary auditor Khlestakov) was placed at the epicenter of the collision, which gave everything that happened an additional, grotesque illumination, enhanced to the limit by the final “silent scene”. Freed from the specific details of the “punishment of vice”, conveying first of all the very effect of general shock (which was emphasized by the symbolic duration of the moment of petrification), this scene opened up the possibility of a variety of interpretations, including the eschatological one - as a reminder of the inevitable Last Judgment.

main book

In June 1836, Gogol (again together with Danilevsky) went abroad, where he spent a total of more than 12 years, not counting two visits to Russia - in 1839-40 and 1841-42. The writer lived in Germany, Switzerland, France, Austria, the Czech Republic, but most of all in Italy, continuing to work...

Yu.V.Mann
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol
GOGOL Nikolai Vasilievich, Russian writer.
Gogol's literary fame was brought to him by the collection "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka" (1831-1832), rich in Ukrainian ethnographic material, romantic moods, lyricism and humor. The stories from the collections “Mirgorod” and “Arabesques” (both 1835) open the realistic period of Gogol’s work. The theme of the humiliation of the “little man” was most fully embodied in the story “The Overcoat” (1842), with which the formation of the natural school is associated. The grotesque beginning of the “St. Petersburg stories” (“The Nose”, “Portrait”) was developed in the comedy “The Inspector General” (production 1836) as a phantasmagoria of the bureaucratic and bureaucratic world. In the poem-novel "Dead Souls" (volume 1 - 1842), satirical ridicule of landowner Russia was combined with the pathos of the spiritual transformation of man. The religious and journalistic book “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends” (1847) provoked a critical letter from V. G. Belinsky. In 1852, Gogol burned the manuscript of the second volume of Dead Souls. Gogol had a decisive influence on the establishment of humanistic and democratic principles in Russian literature.
Family. Childhood
The future classic of Russian literature came from a middle-income landowner family: the Gogols had about 400 serfs and over 1000 acres of land. The writer's ancestors on his father's side were hereditary priests, but the writer's grandfather Afanasy Demyanovich left the spiritual career and entered service in the hetman's office; It was he who added another name to his Yanovsky surname - Gogol, which was supposed to demonstrate the origin of the family from Colonel Evstafy (Ostap) Gogol, famous in Ukrainian history of the 17th century (this fact does not find sufficient confirmation). Father, Vasily Afanasyevich, served at the Little Russian Post Office. Mother, Marya Ivanovna, who came from the landowner Kosyarovsky family, was known as the first beauty in the Poltava region; She married Vasily Afanasyevich at the age of fourteen. In addition to Nikolai, the family had five more children. The future writer spent his childhood years in his native estate Vasilyevka (another name is Yanovshchina), visiting with his parents the surrounding places - Dikanka, which belonged to the Minister of Internal Affairs V.P. Kochubey, Obukhovka, where the writer V.V. Kapnist lived, but especially often in Kibintsy, the estate of a former minister, a distant relative of Gogol on his mother’s side - D. P. Troshchinsky. The early artistic experiences of the future writer are connected with Kibintsy, where there was an extensive library and a home theater. Another source of the boy’s strong impressions were historical legends and biblical stories, in particular, the prophecy told by his mother about the Last Judgment with a reminder of the inevitable punishment of sinners. Since then, Gogol, in the words of researcher K.V. Mochulsky, has constantly lived “under the terror of retribution from beyond the grave.”
“I started thinking about the future early...” Years of study. Moving to St. Petersburg
At first, Nikolai studied at the Poltava district school (1818-1819), then took private lessons from the Poltava teacher Gabriel Sorochinsky, living in his apartment, and in May 1821 he entered the newly founded Nizhyn Gymnasium of Higher Sciences. Gogol was a fairly average student, but excelled in the gymnasium theater as an actor and decorator. The first literary experiments in poetry and prose belong to the gymnasium period, mainly “in the lyrical and serious kind,” but also in a comic spirit, for example, the satire “Something about Nezhin, or the law is not written for fools” (not preserved). Most of all, however, Gogol was occupied at this time by the thought of public service in the field of justice; This decision arose not without the influence of Professor N. G. Belousov, who taught natural law and was subsequently dismissed from the gymnasium on charges of “freethinking” (during the investigation, Gogol testified in his favor).
After graduating from the gymnasium, Gogol in December 1828, together with one of his closest friends A. S. Danilevsky, came to St. Petersburg, where he was met with a series of blows and disappointments: he failed to get the desired place; the poem "Hanz Küchelgarten", written, obviously, while still in high school and published in 1829 (under the pseudonym V. Alov), meets with murderous responses from reviewers (Gogol immediately buys up almost the entire circulation of the book and sets it on fire); to this, perhaps, were added the love experiences that he spoke about in a letter to his mother (dated July 24, 1829). All this makes Gogol suddenly leave St. Petersburg for Germany.
Upon returning to Russia (in September of the same year), Gogol finally managed to decide on a service - first in the Department of State Economy and Public Buildings, and then in the Department of Appanages. Official activity does not bring Gogol satisfaction; but his new publications (the story “Bisavryuk, or the Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala”, articles and essays) are paying more and more attention to him. The writer makes extensive literary acquaintances, in particular, with V. A. Zhukovsky, P. A. Pletnev, who introduced Gogol to A. S. Pushkin at his home in May 1831 (apparently the 20th).
"Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka"
In the autumn of the same year, the 1st part of the collection of stories from Ukrainian life “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka” was published (the 2nd part appeared the following year), enthusiastically received by Pushkin: “This is real gaiety, sincere, relaxed, without affectation, without primness And in some places what poetry!..." At the same time, the “gaiety” of Gogol’s book revealed various shades - from carefree banter to dark comedy, close to black humor. Despite the completeness and sincerity of the feelings of Gogol’s characters, the world in which they live is tragically conflicted: natural and family ties are dissolved, mysterious unreal forces invade the natural order of things (the fantastic is based mainly on folk demonology). Already in “Evenings...” Gogol’s extraordinary art of creating an integral, complete artistic cosmos that lives according to its own laws was revealed.
After the publication of his first prose book, Gogol became a famous writer. In the summer of 1832 he was enthusiastically greeted in Moscow, where he met M. P. Pogodin, S. T. Aksakov and his family, M. S. Shchepkin and others. Gogol's next trip to Moscow, equally successful, took place in the summer of 1835. By the end of this year, he left the field of pedagogy (since the summer of 1834 he held the position of associate professor of general history at St. Petersburg University) and devoted himself entirely to literary work.
"Mirgorodsky" and "Petersburg" cycles. "Inspector"
The year 1835 is unusual in the creative intensity and breadth of Gogol's plans. This year the next two collections of prose works are published - "Arabesques" and "Mirgorod" (both in two parts); work began on the poem "Dead Souls", the comedy "The Inspector General" was mostly completed, the first edition of the comedy "Grooms" (the future "Marriage") was written. Reporting on the writer’s new creations, including the upcoming premiere of “The Inspector General” at the St. Petersburg Alexandrinsky Theater (April 19, 1836), Pushkin noted in his “Contemporary”: “Mr. Gogol is moving forward. We wish and hope to have frequent opportunities to speak about him in our magazine." By the way, Gogol actively published in Pushkin’s magazine, in particular as a critic (article “On the movement of magazine literature in 1834 and 1835”).
"Mirgorod" and "Arabesque" marked new artistic worlds on the map of Gogol's universe. Thematically close to "Evenings..." ("Little Russian" life), the Mirgorod cycle, which united the stories "Old World Landowners", "Taras Bulba", "Viy", "The Story of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich", reveals a sharp change in perspective and pictorial scale: instead of strong and sharp characteristics - the vulgarity and facelessness of ordinary people; instead of poetic and deep feelings - sluggish, almost reflexive movements. The ordinariness of modern life was set off by the colorfulness and extravagance of the past, but the more strikingly manifested in it, in this past, was deep internal conflict (for example, in “Taras Bulba” - the clash of an individualizing love feeling with communal interests). The world of the “St. Petersburg stories” from “Arabesques” (“Nevsky Prospekt”, “Notes of a Madman”, “Portrait”; they are joined by “The Nose” and “Overcoat” published later, in 1836 and 1842 respectively) - this is the world of modern a city with its acute social and ethical conflicts, fractured characters, and an alarming and ghostly atmosphere. Gogol's generalization reaches its highest degree in "The Inspector General", in which the "prefabricated city" seemed to imitate the life activity of any larger social association, up to the state, the Russian Empire, or even humanity as a whole. Instead of the traditional active engine of intrigue - a rogue or an adventurer - an involuntary deceiver (the imaginary auditor Khlestakov) was placed at the epicenter of the collision, which gave everything that happened an additional, grotesque illumination, enhanced to the limit by the final “silent scene”. Freed from the specific details of the “punishment of vice”, conveying first of all the very effect of general shock (which was emphasized by the symbolic duration of the moment of petrification), this scene opened up the possibility of a variety of interpretations, including the eschatological one - as a reminder of the inevitable Last Judgment.
main book
In June 1836, Gogol (again together with Danilevsky) went abroad, where he spent a total of more than 12 years, not counting two visits to Russia - in 1839-40 and 1841-42. The writer lived in Germany, Switzerland, France, Austria, the Czech Republic, but most of all in Italy, continuing work on “Dead Souls,” the plot of which (like “The Inspector General”) was suggested to him by Pushkin. The generality of scale characteristic of Gogol now received spatial expression: as the Chichikov scam (purchase of the “revision souls” of dead people) developed, Russian life was to reveal itself in a variety of ways - not only from the “lowest ranks”, but also in higher, more significant manifestations. At the same time, the full depth of the key motif of the poem was revealed: the concept of “dead soul” and the resulting antithesis “alive” - “dead” from the sphere of concrete word usage (dead peasant, “revision soul”) moved into the sphere of figurative and symbolic semantics. The problem arose of the mortification and revival of the human soul, and in connection with this - of society as a whole, of the Russian world first of all, but through it of all modern humanity. The genre specificity of “Dead Souls” is associated with the complexity of the concept (the designation “poem” indicated the symbolic meaning of the work, the special role of the narrator and the positive ideal of the author).
The second volume of "Dead Souls". "Selected passages from correspondence with friends"
After the release of the first volume (1842), work on the second volume (started back in 1840) was especially intense and painful. In the summer of 1845, in a difficult mental state, Gogol burned the manuscript of this volume, later explaining his decision precisely by the fact that the “paths and roads” to the ideal, the revival of the human spirit, did not receive sufficiently truthful and convincing expression. As if compensating for the long-promised second volume and anticipating the general movement of the meaning of the poem, Gogol in “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends” (1847) turned to a more direct, journalistic explanation of his ideas. The need for internal Christian education and re-education of each and every person was emphasized with particular force in this book, without which no social improvements are possible. At the same time, Gogol was also working on works of a theological nature, the most significant of which was “Reflections on the Divine Liturgy” (published posthumously in 1857).
In April 1848, after a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to the Holy Sepulcher, Gogol finally returned to his homeland. He spends many months of 1848 and 1850-51 in Odessa and Little Russia, in the fall of 1848 he visits St. Petersburg, in 1850 and 1851 he visits Optina Pustyn, but most of the time he lives in Moscow.
By the beginning of 1852, the edition of the second volume was re-created, chapters from which Gogol read to his closest friends - A. O. Smirnova-Rosset, S. P. Shevyrev, M. P. Pogodin, S. T. Aksakov and members of his family and others . The Rzhev archpriest Father Matvey (Konstantinovsky), whose preaching of rigorism and tireless moral self-improvement largely determined Gogol’s mentality in the last period of his life, disapproved of the work.
On the night of February 11-12, in the house on Nikitsky Boulevard, where Gogol lived with Count A.P. Tolstoy, in a state of deep mental crisis, the writer burns the new edition of the second volume. A few days later, on the morning of February 21, he dies.
The writer's funeral took place with a huge crowd of people at the cemetery of the St. Daniel's Monastery (in 1931, Gogol's remains were reburied at the Novodevichy cemetery).
"Four-Dimensional Prose"
From a historical perspective, Gogol's creativity was revealed gradually, revealing its deeper and deeper levels with the passage of time. For his immediate successors, representatives of the so-called natural school, social motives, the removal of all prohibitions on the topic and material, everyday concreteness, as well as humanistic pathos in the depiction of the “little man” were of paramount importance. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Christian philosophical and moral problematics of Gogol’s works were revealed with particular force; subsequently, the perception of Gogol’s work was complemented by a sense of the special complexity and irrationality of his artistic world and the visionary courage and unconventionality of his pictorial manner. “Gogol’s prose is at least four-dimensional. He can be compared with his contemporary, the mathematician Lobachevsky, who blew up the Euclidean world...” (V. Nabokov). All this determined the enormous and ever-increasing role of Gogol in modern world culture.
Yu. V. Mann
N. Piksanov. Gogol
Gogol, Nikolai Vasilyevich - one of the greatest writers of Russian literature (1809 - 1852). He was born on March 20, 1809 in the town of Sorochintsy (on the border of Poltava and Mirgorod districts) and came from an old Little Russian family; in the troubled times of Little Russia, some of his ancestors pestered the Polish nobility, and Gogol’s grandfather, Afanasy Demyanovich, wrote in an official paper that “his ancestors, with the surname Gogol, were of the Polish nation,” although he himself was a real Little Russian, and others considered him prototype of the hero of "Old World Landowners". Great-grandfather, Yan Gogol, a graduate of the Kyiv Academy, “went to the Russian side”, settled in the Poltava region, and from him came the nickname “Gogol-Yanovsky”. Gogol himself apparently did not know about the origin of this addition and subsequently discarded it, saying that the Poles had invented it. Gogol's father, Vasily Afanasyevich, died when his son was 15 years old; but it is believed that the stage activities of his father, who was a man of a cheerful character and a wonderful storyteller, did not remain without influence on the tastes of the future writer, who early showed a penchant for the theater. Life in the village before school and after, during the holidays, went on in the complete atmosphere of Little Russian life, lordly and peasant. These impressions were the root of Gogol’s later Little Russian stories, his historical and ethnographic interests; Subsequently, from St. Petersburg, Gogol constantly turned to his mother when he needed new everyday details for his Little Russian stories. The inclinations of religiosity, which later took possession of Gogol’s entire being, are attributed to the influence of his mother, as well as the shortcomings of his upbringing: his mother surrounded him with real adoration, and this could be one of the sources of his conceit, which, on the other hand, was early generated by the instinctive consciousness of the genius power hidden within him. At the age of ten, Gogol was taken to Poltava to prepare for the Gymnasium, with one of the teachers there; then he entered the gymnasium of higher sciences in Nizhyn (from May 1821 to June 1828), where he was first a self-employed student, then a boarder of the gymnasium. Gogol was not a diligent student, but had an excellent memory, prepared for exams in several days and moved from class to class; he was very weak in languages ​​and made progress only in drawing and Russian literature. Apparently, the gymnasium itself, which was poorly organized at first, was also to blame for the poor teaching; for example, the literature teacher was a fan of Kheraskov and Derzhavin and an enemy of modern poetry, especially Pushkin. The shortcomings of the school were made up for by self-education in a friendly circle, where there were people who shared literary interests with Gogol (Vysotsky, who apparently had considerable influence on him at that time; A. S. Danilevsky, who remained his friend for life, like N. Prokopovich; Nestor Kukolnik, with whom, however, Gogol never got along). Comrades contributed magazines; They started their own handwritten journal, where Gogol wrote a lot in poetry. Along with literary interests, a love for the theater also developed, where Gogol, already distinguished by his unusual comedy, was the most zealous participant (from the second year of his stay in Nizhyn). Gogol's youthful experiences were formed in the style of romantic rhetoric - not in the taste of Pushkin, whom Gogol already admired then, but rather in the taste of Bestuzhev-Marlinsky. The death of his father was a heavy blow for the whole family. Gogol also takes care of business; he gives advice, reassures his mother, and must think about the future arrangement of his own affairs. Towards the end of his stay at the gymnasium, he dreams of broad social activity, which, however, he sees not at all in the literary field; no doubt, under the influence of everything around him, he thinks to advance and benefit society in a service for which in fact he was completely incapable. Thus, plans for the future were unclear; but it is curious that Gogol was possessed by a deep confidence that he had a wide career ahead of him; he is already talking about the instructions of providence and cannot be satisfied with what simple “existents” are content with, as he put it, which were the majority of his Nezhin comrades. In December 1828, Gogol went to St. Petersburg. Here for the first time he was met with severe disappointment: his modest means turned out to be very meager in the big city; brilliant hopes were not realized as quickly as he expected. His letters home during this time are a mixture of this disappointment and of broad expectations for the future, albeit vague. He had a lot of character and practical enterprise in reserve: he tried to enter the stage, become an official, and devote himself to literature. He was not accepted as an actor; the service was so meaningless that he immediately began to feel burdened by it; the more attracted he was to the literary field. In St. Petersburg, for the first time, he found himself in a Little Russian circle, partly from his former comrades. He found that Little Russia aroused interest in society; experienced failures turned his poetic dreams to his native Little Russia, and from here arose the first plans for work, which was supposed to give rise to the need for artistic creativity, and at the same time bring practical benefits: these were plans for “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka.” But first he published, under the pseudonym V. Alova, that romantic idyll: “Hanz Küchelgarten” (1829), which was written back in Nizhyn (he himself marked it in 1827) and the hero of which was given the ideal dreams and aspirations with which he himself was fulfilled in the last years of Nizhyn’s life. Soon after the book was published, he himself destroyed it when critics reacted unfavorably to his work. In a restless search for life's work, Gogol at that time went abroad, by sea to Lubeck, but a month later he returned again to St. Petersburg (in September 1829) and then mysteriously justified this strange trick by the fact that God showed him the way to a foreign land, or referred to some kind of hopeless love: in reality, he was running from himself, from the discord between his lofty and also arrogant dreams and practical life. “He was drawn to some fantastic land of happiness and reasonable productive work,” says his biographer; America seemed like such a country to him. In fact, instead of America, he ended up serving in the department of appanages (April, 1830) and remained there until 1832. Even earlier, one circumstance had a decisive influence on his future fate and on his literary activity: it was a rapprochement with the circle of Zhukovsky and Pushkin . The failure with Hanz Küchelgarten was already some indication of the need for a different literary path; but even earlier, from the first months of 1828, Gogol besieged his mother with requests to send him information about Little Russian customs, legends, costumes, as well as to send “notes kept by the ancestors of some old family, ancient manuscripts,” etc. All this there was material for future stories from Little Russian life and legends, which became the first beginning of his literary fame. He already took some part in the publications of that time: at the beginning of 1830, in the old “Notes of the Fatherland” Svinin was published, with corrections from the editors, “The Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala”; at the same time (1829) “Sorochinskaya Fair” and “May Night” were started or written. Gogol then published other works in the publications of Baron Delvig, Literaturnaya Gazeta and Northern Flowers, where, for example, a chapter from the historical novel Hetman was published. Perhaps Delvig recommended him to Zhukovsky, who received Gogol with great cordiality: apparently, from the first time the mutual sympathy of people related by love of art, by religiosity inclined towards mysticism was felt between them - after that they became very close friends. Zhukovsky handed over the young man to Pletnev with a request to accommodate him, and, indeed, already in February 1831. Pletnev recommended Gogol for the position of teacher at the Patriotic Institute, where he himself was an inspector. Having gotten to know Gogol better, Pletnev waited for an opportunity to “bring him under Pushkin’s blessing”; this happened in May of the same year. Gogol's entry into this circle, which soon recognized him as a great budding talent, had a great influence on his entire fate. Finally, the prospect of the broad activity that he had dreamed of was revealed to him, but in the field not of service, but of literature. In material terms, Gogol could have been helped by the fact that, in addition to a place at the institute, Pletnev provided him with private lessons from the Longvinovs, Balabins, and Vasilchikovs; but the main thing was the moral influence that greeted Gogol in his new environment. He entered the circle of people who stood at the head of Russian fiction: his long-standing poetic aspirations could now develop in all their breadth, his instinctive understanding of art could become a deep consciousness; Pushkin's personality made an extraordinary impression on him and forever remained an object of worship for him. Serving art became for him a high and strict moral duty, the requirements of which he tried to fulfill religiously. Hence, by the way, his slow manner of work, the long definition and development of the plan and all the details. The society of people with a broad literary education and in general was useful for a young man with meager knowledge learned from school: his powers of observation became deeper, and with each new work his artistic creativity increased. At Zhukovsky, Gogol met a select circle, partly literary, partly aristocratic; in the latter, he began a relationship that later played a significant role in his life, for example, with the Vielgorskys; at the Balabins, he met the brilliant maid of honor A. O. Rosset, later Smirnova. The horizon of his life observations expanded, long-standing aspirations gained ground, and Gogol’s lofty concept of his destiny was already falling into extreme conceit: on the one hand, his mood became sublime idealism, on the other, the possibility of those deep mistakes that have marked recent years already arose his life. This time was the most active era of his work. After small works, partly mentioned above, his first major literary work, which marked the beginning of his fame, was: “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka. Stories published by the beekeeper Rudy Panko,” published in St. Petersburg in 1831 and 1832, in two parts (in the first "Sorochinskaya Fair", "The Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala", "May Night, or the Drowned Woman", "The Missing Letter" were placed; in the second - "The Night Before Christmas", "Terrible Revenge, Ancient Reality", "Ivan Fedorovich Shponka and his aunt", "Enchanted Place"). It is known what impression these stories made on Pushkin, depicting in an unprecedented way pictures of Little Russian life, shining with gaiety and subtle humor; At first, the full depth of this talent, capable of great creations, was not understood. The next collections were first "Arabesques", then "Mirgorod", both published in 1835 and composed partly from articles published in 1830 - 1834, partly from new works that appeared here for the first time. Gogol's literary fame was now completely established. He grew in the eyes of his inner circle, and especially in the sympathies of the young literary generation; it already guessed in him the great force that would carry out a revolution in the course of our literature. Meanwhile, events took place in Gogol's personal life that in various ways influenced the internal structure of his thoughts and fantasies and his external affairs. In 1832, he was in his homeland for the first time after completing a course in Nizhyn. The path lay through Moscow, where he met people who later became his more or less close friends: Pogodin, Maksimovich, Shchepkin, S.T. Aksakov. Staying at home first surrounded him with impressions of his native, beloved environment, memories of the past, but then also with severe disappointments. Household affairs were upset; Gogol himself was no longer the enthusiastic youth he had been when he left his homeland; life experience taught him to look deeper into reality and see its often sad, even tragic basis behind its outer shell. Soon his “Evenings” began to seem to him like a superficial youthful experience, the fruit of that “youth during which no questions come to mind.” Little Russian life still provided material for his imagination, but the mood was already different: in the stories of “Mirgorod” this sad note constantly sounds, reaching the point of high pathos. Returning to St. Petersburg, Gogol worked hard on his works: this was generally the most active time of his creative activity; At the same time, he continued to make plans for his life. From the end of 1833, he was carried away by a thought as unrealizable as his previous plans for service: it seemed to him that he could enter the scientific field. At that time, preparations were being made for the opening of Kyiv University, and he dreamed of occupying the department of history there, which he taught to girls at the Patriotic Institute. Maksimovich was invited to Kyiv; Gogol thought of settling with him in Kyiv, and wanted to invite Pogodin there; in Kyiv, he finally imagined Russian Athens, where he himself thought of writing something unprecedented in universal history, and at the same time studying Little Russian antiquity. To his chagrin, it turned out that the department of history had been given to another person; but soon he was offered the same chair at St. Petersburg University, thanks to the influence of his high literary friends. He actually took this chair: once or twice he managed to give a spectacular lecture, but then the task turned out to be beyond his strength, and he himself refused the professorship in 1835. This was, of course, great arrogance; but his guilt was not so great if we remember that Gogol’s plans did not seem strange either to his friends, among whom were Pogodin and Maksimovich, professors themselves, or to the Ministry of Education, which considered it possible to give a professorship to a young man who had completed a gymnasium course with sin in half ; The entire level of university science at that time was still so low. In 1832, his work was somewhat suspended due to all sorts of domestic and personal troubles; but already in 1833 he was working hard again, and the result of these years were the two mentioned collections. First came “Arabesques” (two parts, St. Petersburg, 1835), which contained several articles of popular scientific content on history and art (“Sculpture, painting and music”; a few words about Pushkin; about architecture; about Bryullov’s painting; about teaching general history; a look at the state of Little Russia; about Little Russian songs, etc.), but at the same time new stories: “Portrait”, “Nevsky Prospect” and “Notes of a Madman”. Then in the same year he published: “Mirgorod. Stories serving as a continuation of Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” (two parts, St. Petersburg, 1835). A number of works were placed here in which new striking features of Gogol’s talent were revealed. In the first part of "Mirgorod" "Old World Landowners" and "Taras Bulba" appeared, in the second - "Viy" and "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich." "Taras Bulba" appeared here in the first essay, which was developed much more widely by Gogol later (1842). The plans for some of Gogol’s other works date back to these first thirties, such as the famous “The Overcoat”, “The Stroller”, perhaps “Portrait” in its revised edition; these works appeared in Pushkin's Sovremennik (1836) and Pletnev's (1842); a later stay in Italy includes “Rome” in Pogodin’s “Moskvityanin” (1842). The first idea of ​​“The Inspector General” dates back to 1834. The surviving manuscripts of Gogol generally indicate that he worked on his works extremely carefully: from what has survived from these manuscripts, it is clear how the work, in its completed form known to us, grew gradually from the initial outline, becoming more and more complicated in details and reaching, finally, that amazing artistic completeness and vitality with which we know them after the completion of a process that sometimes lasted for whole years. It is known that the main plot of The Inspector General, like the plot of Dead Souls, was communicated to Gogol by Pushkin; but it is clear that in both cases the entire creation, from the plan to the last details, was the fruit of Gogol’s own creativity: an anecdote that could be told in a few lines turned into a rich work of art. "The Inspector General" seems to have especially evoked in Gogol this endless work of determining the plan and details of execution; there is a whole series of sketches, in whole and in parts, and the first printed form of the comedy appeared in 1836. The old passion for theater took possession of Gogol to an extreme degree: comedy did not leave his head; he was languidly fascinated by the idea of ​​coming face to face with society; he tried with the greatest care to ensure that the play was performed completely in accordance with his own ideas about characters and action; The production encountered various obstacles, including censorship, and, finally, could only be carried out by the will of Emperor Nicholas. “The Inspector General” had an extraordinary effect: the Russian stage had never seen anything like it; the reality of Russian life was conveyed with such force and truth that although, as Gogol himself said, it was only about six provincial officials who turned out to be rogues, the whole society rebelled against him, which felt that it was a matter of a whole principle, a whole order life, in which it itself resides. But, on the other hand, the comedy was greeted with the greatest enthusiasm by those best elements of society who were aware of the existence of these shortcomings and the need to expose them, and especially by the young literary generation, who saw here once again, as in the previous works of their beloved writer, a whole revelation, a new, the emerging period of Russian art and Russian public. This last impression was probably not entirely clear to Gogol: he did not yet have such broad social aspirations or hopes as his young admirers; he stood completely in line with the point of view of his friends in the Pushkin circle, he only wanted more honesty and truth in the given order of things, and that is why he was especially struck by the cries of condemnation that rose against him. Subsequently, in “Theatrical Tour after the Presentation of a New Comedy,” he, on the one hand, conveyed the impression that “The Inspector General” made in various strata of society, and on the other, he expressed his own thoughts about the great importance of theater and artistic truth. Gogol's first dramatic plans appeared even before The Inspector General. In 1833, he was absorbed in the comedy "Vladimir of the 3rd degree"; it was not completed by him, but its material served for several dramatic episodes, such as “The Morning of a Business Man,” “Litigation,” “The Lackey” and “Excerpt.” The first of these plays appeared in Pushkin's Sovremennik (1836), the rest - in the first collection of his works (1842). In the same meeting appeared for the first time: "Marriage", the first sketches of which date back to the same 1833, and "Players", conceived in the mid-thirties. Tired of the intense work of recent years and the moral anxieties that The Inspector General cost him, Gogol decided to rest away from this crowd of society, under a different sky. In June 1836, he went abroad, where he then stayed, with interruptions of visits to Russia, for many years. His stay in the “beautiful distance” for the first time strengthened and calmed him, gave him the opportunity to complete his greatest work, “Dead Souls,” but it also became the embryo of deeply fatal phenomena. Disconnection with life, an increased withdrawal into oneself, the exaltation of religious feeling led to pietistic exaggeration, which ended with his last book, which amounted to a kind of negation of his own artistic work... Having gone abroad, he lived in Germany, Switzerland, and spent the winter with A Danilevsky in Paris, where he met and became especially close to Smirnova, and where he was caught by the news of Pushkin’s death, which shocked him terribly. In March 1837, he was in Rome, which he fell in love with greatly and became like a second homeland for him. European political and social life always remained alien and completely unfamiliar to Gogol; he was attracted by nature and works of art, and the Rome of that time represented only these interests. Gogol studied ancient monuments, art galleries, visited artists’ workshops, admired folk life and loved to show Rome and “treat” visiting Russian acquaintances and friends to it. But in Rome he worked hard: the main subject of this work was “Dead Souls,” conceived in St. Petersburg in 1835; Here in Rome he finished “The Overcoat”, wrote the story “Anunziata”, later remade into “Rome”, wrote a tragedy from the life of the Cossacks, which, however, after several alterations he destroyed. In the fall of 1839, he, together with Pogodin, went to Russia, to Moscow, where the Aksakovs greeted him with delight. Then he went to St. Petersburg, where he had to take his sisters from the institute; then he returned to Moscow again; in St. Petersburg and Moscow he read completed chapters of Dead Souls to his closest friends. Having somewhat arranged his affairs, Gogol again went abroad, to his beloved Rome; He promised his friends to return in a year and bring the finished first volume of Dead Souls. By the summer of 1841 this first volume was ready. In September of this year, Gogol went to Russia to print his book. He again had to endure the severe anxieties that he had once experienced during the production of The Inspector General. The book was first submitted to the Moscow censorship, which intended to ban it completely; then the book was submitted to the St. Petersburg censorship and, thanks to the participation of Gogol’s influential friends, was, with some exceptions, allowed. It was published in Moscow (“The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls, a poem by N. Gogol,” M., 1842). In June, Gogol went abroad again. This last stay abroad was the final turning point in Gogol’s state of mind. He lived now in Rome, now in Germany, in Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, now in Nice, now in Paris, now in Ostend, often in the circle of his closest friends, Zhukovsky, Smirnova, Vielgorsky, Tolstoy, and that pietistic the direction mentioned above. A high idea of ​​his talent and the responsibility that lies within it led him to the conviction that he was doing something providential: in order to expose human vices and take a broad look at life, one must strive for internal improvement, which is given only by thinking about God. Several times he had to endure serious illnesses, which further increased his religious mood; in his circle, he found convenient soil for the development of religious exaltation - he adopted a prophetic tone, self-confidently gave instructions to his friends and, in the end, came to the conviction that what he had done so far was unworthy of the high goal for which he was now considered himself called. If before he said that the first volume of his poem was nothing more than a porch to the palace that was being built in it, now he was ready to reject everything he wrote as sinful and unworthy of his high mission. One day, in a moment of heavy thought about fulfilling his duty, he burned the second volume of “Dead Souls”, sacrificed it to God, and the new content of the book, enlightened and purified, was presented to his mind; It seemed to him that he now understood how to write in order to “direct the whole society towards the beautiful.” New work began, and in the meantime another thought occupied him: he rather wanted to tell society what he considered useful for him, and he decided to collect in one book everything he had written in recent years to friends in the spirit of his new mood, and instructed publish this book to Pletnev. These were “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends” (St. Petersburg, 1847). Most of the letters that make up this book date back to 1845 and 1846, the time when this mood of Gogol reached its highest development. The book made a grave impression even on Gogol’s personal friends with its tone of prophecy and teaching, its preaching of humility, due to which, however, one could see extreme conceit; condemnations of previous works, in which Russian literature saw one of its best decorations; complete approval of those social orders, the inconsistency of which was clear to enlightened people without distinction of parties. But the book’s impression on Gogol’s literary fans was depressing. The highest degree of indignation aroused by Selected Places was expressed in Belinsky’s famous letter, to which Gogol did not know how to respond. Apparently, he was not fully aware of this significance of his book. He explained the attacks on her partly by his mistake, the exaggeration of the teacher’s tone, and by the fact that the censor did not miss several important letters in the book; but he could explain the attacks of former literary adherents only by calculations of parties and pride. The social meaning of this controversy eluded him; he himself, having left Russia long ago, retained those vague social concepts that he acquired in the old Pushkin circle, was alien to the literary and social ferment that had arisen since then and saw in it only ephemeral disputes between writers. In a similar sense, he then wrote the “Preface to the second edition of Dead Souls”; “The Inspector General’s Denouement,” where he wanted to give a free artistic creation a strained character of some kind of moralizing allegory, and “Pre-Notice,” where it was announced that the fourth and fifth editions of “The Inspector General” would be sold for the benefit of the poor... The failure of the book had an overwhelming effect on Gogol action. He had to admit that a mistake had been made; even friends like S.T. Aksakov, they told him that the mistake was gross and pathetic; he himself confessed to Zhukovsky: “I have made such a big deal of Khlestakov in my book that I don’t have the courage to look into it.” In his letters from 1847 there is no longer the former arrogant tone of preaching and teaching; he saw that it is possible to describe Russian life only in the midst of it and by studying it. His refuge remained a religious feeling: he decided that he could not continue work without fulfilling his long-standing intention to venerate the Holy Sepulcher. At the end of 1847 he moved to Naples and at the beginning of 1848 he sailed to Palestine, from where he finally returned to Russia through Constantinople and Odessa. His stay in Jerusalem did not have the effect he expected. “Never before have I been so little satisfied with the state of my heart as in Jerusalem and after Jerusalem,” he says. “I was at the Holy Sepulcher as if to feel there on the spot how much coldness of heart there was in me, how a lot of selfishness and selfishness.” Gogol calls his impressions of Palestine sleepy; one day caught in the rain in Nazareth, he thought he was just sitting at a station in Russia. He spent the end of spring and summer in the village with his mother, and on September 1 he moved to Moscow; spent the summer of 1849 with Smirnova in the village and in Kaluga, where Smirnova’s husband was governor; the summer of 1850 lived again with his family; then he lived for some time in Odessa, was at home again, and in the fall of 1851 he settled again in Moscow, where he lived in the house of Count A.P. Tolstoy. He continued to work on the second volume of Dead Souls and read excerpts from it from the Aksakovs, but the same painful struggle between artist and pietist that had been going on in him since the early forties continued. As was his custom, he revised what he had written many times, probably succumbing to one mood or another. Meanwhile, his health became increasingly weaker; in January 1852 he was struck by the death of Khomyakov’s wife, who was the sister of his friend Yazykov; he was overcome by the fear of death; he gave up his literary studies and began fasting at Maslenitsa; One day, when he was spending the night in prayer, he heard voices saying that he would soon die. One night, in the midst of religious reflections, he was seized by religious horror and doubt that he had not fulfilled the duty imposed on him by God; he woke up the servant, ordered the fireplace chimney to be opened, and, taking papers from the briefcase, burned them. The next morning, when his consciousness cleared, he repentantly told Count Tolstoy about this and believed that this was done under the influence of an evil spirit; from then on, he fell into gloomy despondency and died a few days later, on February 21, 1852. He was buried in Moscow, in the Danilov Monastery, and on his monument are the words of the prophet Jeremiah: “I will laugh at my bitter word.” The study of Gogol's historical significance has not yet been completed. The present period of Russian literature has not yet escaped from his influence, and his activities represent various aspects that become clear with the course of history itself. At first, when the last facts of Gogol’s activity took place, it was believed that it represented two periods: one, where he served the progressive aspirations of society, and the other, when he became openly on the side of immovable conservatism. A more careful study of Gogol’s biography, especially his correspondence, which revealed his inner life, showed that no matter how contradictory, apparently, the motives of his stories, “The Inspector General” and “Dead Souls”, on the one hand, and “Selected Places”, on the other hand, in the writer’s personality itself there was not the turning point that was expected in it, one direction was not abandoned and another, opposite one was adopted; on the contrary, it was one integral inner life, where already at an early time there were the makings of later phenomena, where the main feature of this life did not cease: service to art; but this personal life was broken by the contradictions that she had to reckon with in the spiritual principles of life and in reality. Gogol was not a thinker, but he was a great artist. About the properties of his talent, he himself said: “I only did well what I took from reality, from the data known to me”... “My imagination has not yet given me a single remarkable character and has not created any one such thing that somewhere my eyes did not notice in nature." It was impossible to more simply and powerfully indicate the deep basis of realism that lay in his talent, but the great property of his talent lay in the fact that he elevated these features of reality “to the pearl of creation.” And the faces he depicted were not repetitions of reality: they were entire artistic types in which human nature was deeply understood. His heroes, as rarely in any other Russian writer, became household names, and before him there was no example in our literature of such an amazingly inner life being revealed in the most humble human existence. Another personal feature of Gogol was that from his earliest years, from the first glimpses of his young consciousness, he was worried about sublime aspirations, the desire to serve society with something high and beneficial; from an early age he hated limited self-satisfaction, devoid of internal content, and this trait was later expressed, in the thirties, by a conscious desire to expose social ills and depravity, and it also developed into a high idea of ​​​​the importance of art, standing above the crowd as the highest enlightenment of the ideal. .. But Gogol was a man of his time and society. He didn't get much out of school; no wonder that the young man did not have a definite way of thinking; but there was no inclination for this in his further education. His opinions on fundamental issues of morality and social life remained patriarchal and simple-minded even now. A powerful talent was ripening in him - his feeling and observation deeply penetrated into life phenomena - but his thought did not stop at the causes of these phenomena. He was early filled with a magnanimous and noble desire for human good, sympathy for human suffering; he found sublime, poetic language, deep humor and stunning pictures to express them; but these aspirations remained at the level of feeling, artistic insight, ideal abstraction - in the sense that, with all their strength, Gogol did not translate them into the practical thought of improving society, and when they began to show him a different point of view, he could no longer understand it. .. All of Gogol’s fundamental ideas about life and literature were ideas of the Pushkin circle. Gogol entered it as a youth, and the persons in this circle were already people of mature development, more extensive education, and a significant position in society; Pushkin and Zhukovsky are at the height of their poetic glory.
The old legends of Arzamas developed into a cult of abstract art, which ultimately led to a withdrawal from the issues of real life, with which the conservative view on social subjects naturally merged. The circle worshiped the name of Karamzin, was carried away by the glory of Russia, believed in its future greatness, had no doubts about the present and, indignant at the shortcomings that could not be ignored, attributed them only to the lack of virtue in people, the failure to comply with the laws. By the end of the thirties, while Pushkin was still alive, a turn began, showing that his school had ceased to satisfy the emerging new aspirations of society. Later, the circle became more and more secluded from new directions and was at enmity with them; according to his ideas, literature was supposed to soar in sublime regions, shun the prose of life, stand “above” social noise and struggle: this condition could only make its field one-sided and not very broad... The artistic feeling of the circle was, however, strong and appreciated the unique Gogol's talent; the circle also took care of his personal affairs... Pushkin expected great artistic merit from Gogol’s works, but hardly expected their social significance, as Pushkin’s friends later did not fully appreciate it, and as Gogol himself was ready to renounce him... Later Gogol became close to the Slavophil circle, or actually with Pogodin and Shevyrev, S.T. Aksakov and Yazykov; but he remained completely alien to the theoretical content of Slavophilism, and it had no influence on the structure of his work. In addition to personal affection, he found here warm sympathy for his works, as well as for his religious and dreamily conservative ideas. But then, in the elder Aksakov, he also met a rebuff to the mistakes and extremes of “Selected Places”... The sharpest moment of the collision of Gogol’s theoretical ideas with the reality and aspirations of the most enlightened part of society was Belinsky’s letter; but it was already too late, and the last years of Gogol’s life passed, as they say, in a difficult and fruitless struggle between the artist and the pietist. This internal struggle of the writer represents not only the interest of the personal fate of one of the greatest writers of Russian literature, but also the broad interest of a socio-historical phenomenon: the personality and work of Gogol were reflected in the struggle of moral and social elements - the dominant conservatism, and the demands of personal and social freedom and justice , the struggle between old tradition and critical thought, pietism and free art. For Gogol himself, this struggle remained unresolved; he was broken by this internal discord, but nevertheless, the significance of Gogol’s main works for literature was extremely deep. The results of its influence are reflected in many different ways throughout subsequent literature. Not to mention the purely artistic merits of execution, which, after Pushkin, further increased the level of possible artistic perfection among later writers, his deep psychological analysis had no equal in previous literature and opened up a wide path of observations, of which so many were made subsequently. Even his first works, “Evenings”, which he later so strictly condemned, undoubtedly contributed a lot to strengthening the loving attitude towards the people that subsequently developed. “The Inspector General” and “Dead Souls” were again, unprecedented to this extent, a fiery protest against the insignificance and depravity of public life; This protest broke out from personal moral idealism and did not have any specific theoretical basis, but this did not prevent it from making a striking moral and social impression. The historical question about this significance of Gogol, as has been noted, has not yet been exhausted. They call it a prejudice the opinion that Gogol was the pioneer of realism or naturalism among us, that he made a revolution in our literature, the direct consequence of which is modern literature; they say that this merit is the work of Pushkin, and Gogol only followed the general trend of development at that time and represents only one of the stages in the approach of literature from transcendental heights to reality, that the brilliant accuracy of his satire was purely instinctive, and his works are striking in the absence of any conscious ideals , - as a result of which he later became entangled in the labyrinth of mystical-ascetic speculations; that the ideals of later writers have nothing in common with this, and therefore Gogol, with his brilliant laughter and his immortal creations, should in no way be placed ahead of our century. But there is an error in these judgments. First of all, there is a difference between the technique, the manner of naturalism and the content of literature. A certain degree of naturalism goes back to the 18th century; Gogol was not an innovator here, although even here he went further than Pushkin in approaching reality. But the main thing was in that bright new feature of the content, which before him, to this extent, did not exist in literature. Pushkin was pure epic in his stories; Gogol - at least semi-instinctively - is a social writer. There is no need that his theoretical worldview remained unclear; A historically noted feature of such genius talents is that they often, without being aware of their creativity, are profound exponents of the aspirations of their time and society. Artistic merits alone cannot explain either the enthusiasm with which his works were received by younger generations, or the hatred with which they were met in the conservative crowd of society. What explains the internal tragedy in which Gogol spent the last years of his life, if not the contradiction of his theoretical worldview, his repentant conservatism, with the unusual social influence of his works, which he did not expect or anticipate? Gogol's works precisely coincided with the emergence of this social interest, which they greatly served and from which literature no longer emerged. The great significance of Gogol is also confirmed by negative facts. In 1852, for a short article in memory of Gogol, Turgenev was arrested in his unit; censors were ordered to strictly censor everything that was written about Gogol; there was even a complete ban on talking about Gogol. The second edition of the Works, begun in 1851 by Gogol himself and unfinished due to these censorship obstacles, could only be published in 1855-56... Gogol’s connection with subsequent literature is beyond doubt. The defenders of the aforementioned opinion, which limits the historical significance of Gogol, themselves admit that Turgenev’s “Notes of a Hunter” seems to be a continuation of “Dead Souls.” The “spirit of humanity” that distinguishes the works of Turgenev and other writers of the new era was brought up among our literature by no one more than Gogol, for example, in “The Overcoat”, “Notes of a Madman”, “Dead Souls”. In the same way, the depiction of the negative aspects of landowner life comes down to Gogol. Dostoevsky's first work is adjacent to Gogol to the point of obviousness, etc. In their subsequent activities, new writers made independent contributions to the content of literature, just as life posed and developed new questions, but the first stimulation was given by Gogol. By the way, definitions were made to Gogol from the point of view of his Little Russian origin: the latter explained, to a certain extent, his attitude towards Russian (Great Russian) life. Gogol's attachment to his homeland was very strong, especially in the first years of his literary activity and right up to the completion of the second edition of Taras Bulba, but his satirical attitude towards Russian life, no doubt, is explained not by his tribal properties, but by the entire nature of his internal development. There is no doubt, however, that tribal traits also affected the nature of Gogol’s talent. These are the features of his humor, which still remains unique in our literature. The two main branches of the Russian tribe happily merged in this talent into one, highly remarkable phenomenon. A. N. Pypin. The article reproduced above by the late academician A. N. Pypin, written in 1893, summarizes the results of Gogol’s scientific studies over the forty years that have passed since the poet’s death, being at the same time the result of Pypin’s own many years of studies. And although a lot of detailed studies and materials have accumulated over this forty years, there have not yet been general collections of them. Thus, from the editions of Gogol’s works, Pypin could only use the old ones: P. Kulish, 1857, where the last two volumes were occupied by letters from Gogol, and Chizhov, 1867; Tikhonravov's publication had just begun. Of the biographical and critical materials, the main ones were: Belinsky’s works “Notes on the life of Gogol, compiled from the memories of his friends and from his own letters” by P.A. Kulish, "Essays on the Gogol period of Russian literature" by N. G. Chernyshevsky ("Contemporary", 1855 - 56, and St. Petersburg, 1892), a long series of memoirs published later than Kulish's book (Annenkov, Grot, Sollogub, Berg, etc. ), bibliographic reviews by Ponomarev (News of the Nezhin Institute, 1882) and Gorozhansky (Russian Thought, 1882). Based on these materials and with the general extensive knowledge and understanding that Pypin possessed, he was given the above excellent, not outdated to this day, general description of Gogol’s personality, the main points of his biography and creativity, and an assessment of his historical significance. But twenty more years have passed since his article was written, and during this time a huge amount of new materials has accumulated, extensive new scientific research has been carried out, and the historical understanding of Gogol and his era has changed. The classic tenth edition of Gogol's works, begun by N. S. Tikhonravov and completed by V. I. Shenrok (1889 - 97, seven volumes; separate edition of "The Inspector General", 1886), has been completed, where the text is corrected according to manuscripts and Gogol's own publications and where given extensive comments, outlining the history of each work in its successive editions, based on surviving autographs, correspondence and other data. Subsequently, textual materials continued to arrive from public and private archives, as well as editorial techniques became even more complex, and in modern times new collections of Gogol’s works were undertaken: under the editorship of V. V. Kallash (St. Petersburg, 1908 - 1909, 9 volumes; a re-edition with new additions is being printed) and edited by another Gogol expert, N. I. Korobka (since 1912, in nine volumes). A huge mass of Gogol’s letters, which appeared in print in a continuous stream, was finally collected by the tireless Gogol researcher, V. I. Shenrok, in four volumes, equipped with all the necessary notes: “Letters of N. V. Gogol,” edited by V. I. Shenrok , published by A.F. Marx (St. Petersburg, 1901). A huge amount of work and the editor’s extensive knowledge were invested in the publication, but the matter was not without major mistakes; see the analysis of N.P. Dashkevich in the “Report on the awarding of Count Tolstoy’s prizes” (St. Petersburg, 1905, pp. 37 - 94); Wed review by V.V. Kallash in "Russian Thought", 1902, No. 7. Another extensive collection undertaken by the same V.I. Shenrok was "Materials for the biography of Gogol", in four volumes (M., 1892 - 98) ; Here, rich data for assessing Gogol’s personality and creativity, and his entire environment and era, are carefully collected and systematized, often from unpublished sources. Thus, by the beginning of the nine hundred years, literary historiography received three huge Gogol collections: 1) works, 2) letters and 3) biographical materials. Later, these collections were replenished and are continuously replenished to this day (see the bibliographic reviews listed below); but the main thing was already ready, and from here come new generalizing works on Gogol. In the anniversary year of 1902, four such studies immediately appeared: N. A. Kotlyarevsky "N. V. Gogol. 1829 - 42. Essay on the history of Russian stories and drama" ("The World of God", 1902 - 03, then, with additions, separately; 3rd revised ed. 1911); D. N. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky - "Gogol" ("Bulletin of Education", 1902 - 04, then several separate supplemented editions, the last - as part of the collected works of Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky, vol. I, St. Petersburg, 1913); S. A. Vengerova - "Writer-Citizen" ("Russian Wealth", 1902, No. 1 - 4, then in "Essays on the History of Russian Literature", St. Petersburg, 1907, and finally, as a separate book, in a revised form , as part of the collected works of Vengerov, vol. 4, St. Petersburg, 1913); Professor I. Mandelstam - “On the character of Gogol’s style. A chapter from the history of the Russian literary language” (Helsingfors, 1902). Considering that through the efforts of previous researchers, “both the biography of the poet, and the artistic value of his works, and, finally, the very methods of his work have been sufficiently clarified and described,” N. A. Kotlyarevsky defines the task of his research as follows: “it is necessary, firstly, to restore with possible completeness, the history of the mental movements of this mysterious soul of the artist and, secondly, to explore in more detail the mutual connection that unites Gogol’s work with the work of the writers who preceded and contemporary him.” However, the researcher does not go further in his analysis than 1842, i.e., the time when the first volume of “Dead Souls” was completed, and after which the poet’s mental life begins to tend towards morbidity, and his literary activity moves from art to preaching. The author tells the history of Gogol's artistic creativity in connection with the main moments of his mental development and, in parallel with this, sets out the history of Russian stories and drama from the end of the 18th century. and through the forties, connecting Gogol with the artistic production of Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Lazhechnikov, Bestuzhev, Polevoy, Prince V.F. Odoevsky, Kukolnik, Narezhny, Griboyedov, Kvitka and other first-class and secondary fiction writers and playwrights. At the same time, Kotlyarevsky also revises the judgments of Russian criticism, which grew along with fiction. Thus, Gogol is assessed in connection with the general course of Russian literature, which constitutes the main value of Kotlyarevsky’s book. In contrast to Kotlyarevsky, Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky examines mainly the “artistic value” of Gogol’s works and especially “working methods” - based on a general assessment of his mind and genius. The author offers a special understanding of Gogol as an artist - an experimenter and egocentric, studying and depicting the world from himself, in contrast to Pushkin, a poet-observer. Analyzing the characteristics of Gogol’s mind-talent, the level of his spiritual interests and the degree of intensity of his mental life, Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky comes to the conclusion that Gogol’s mind was deep, powerful, but “dark” and “lazy” mind. In addition to the “torment of the word”, familiar to Gogol as an artist, he was also joined by the “torment of conscience” of a moralist-mystic, who took upon himself the enormous burden of a special “spiritual work” - preaching, which brings Gogol closer to Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Ch. Uspensky. Analyzing the national elements in Gogol’s work, the author comes to the conclusion that while there were undoubted Little Russianisms in his personal character, language and creativity, Gogol was an “all-Russian”, i.e. he belonged to that group of Russian people who create a national culture that unites all tribal varieties. A unique assessment of Gogol’s artistic method and the peculiarity of his mind and talent constitute the main advantage of Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky’s book. A no less original assessment is given to Gogol in the book by S. A. Vengerov - but from a different point of view. Vengerov studies Gogol not from the literary or psychological side, but from the side of his social views - as a “citizen writer” and puts forward the thesis that “Gogol’s spiritual being was directly overflowing with civic aspirations and, moreover, not at all as unconsciously as is usually thought.” . The author rejects the usual mistake that connects “the concept of a civil system of thought with one or another specific socio-political worldview,” that is, most often with a liberal one. “A citizen is one who, in one form or another, but passionately and intensely thinks about the good of his homeland, seeks ways to achieve this good and subordinates all his other aspirations to this supreme guiding principle.” “Gogol was such a citizen all his life.” This rejects the previous view, which claimed that Gogol’s creativity was unconscious. Vengerov sees certain social interests and consciousness in Gogol’s youthful letters and then in special chapters devoted to Gogol’s professorial activities, his critical articles and views, the plans of “The Inspector General” and other works of art, studies of history and Russian ethnography, “Correspondence with Friends,” proves that everywhere Gogol showed great consciousness and public interests. In a special excursion, Vengerov examines the question: did Gogol know the true Great Russian province, which he described in his works, especially in “Dead Souls”, and by reviewing the exact biographical data he comes to the conclusion that he did not know, or knew very little, which was reflected in ambiguity and confusion of everyday details. Professor Mandelstam's book studies a special issue, only hinted at in Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky's work - about the language and style of Gogol, and is the only one of its kind not only in Gogol's literature, but in general in scientific literature about Russian writers, since none of Russian word artists have not been studied monographically from this side. In separate chapters, the author monitors the influence on Gogol of the language of previous writers, for example, Pushkin, and the language of Little Russian, common Great Russian, and traditional poetic images in Gogol’s style; tells the history of Gogol's work on his poetic style, analyzes the formal irregularities of his language, characterizes the role of epithets and comparisons in Gogol, the epic nature of his style, and finally gives a special excursion about Gogol's humor. The study is valuable both for its rich factual material and original observations, and for the methodological techniques of the author. It was met with approval in journalism, but also caused objections, interesting in essence (A. Gornfeld in “Russian Wealth”, 1902, No. 1, reprinted in the book “On Russian Writers”, vol. 1, St. Petersburg, 1912; P. Morozov in the magazine "World of God", 1902, No. 2; N. Box in the "Journal of the Ministry of Public Education", 1904, No. 5). The four books presented above provide a new general revision of Gogol's work, personality and historical significance - based on the enormous material that had accumulated by the beginning of the nineties. The rest of Gogol's literature of the last twenty years provides a lot of very important, but fragmentary materials and research. In the field of textual discoveries, the first place should be given here to the collection “In Memory of V. A. Zhukovsky and N. V. Gogol,” published by the Academy of Sciences, issues 2 and 3 (St. Petersburg, 1908 and 1909), in which G. P. Georgievsky published songs collected by N.V. Gogol, and a large number of Gogol’s texts, which were never published, although they were in the hands of Tikhonravov and Shenrok; Among these texts, some are of great value, for example, the first edition of “Sorochinskaya Fair”, the manuscript of “May Night”, versions of “The Inspector General”, Gogol’s prayers - so that sometimes they require a revision of old views and assessments. It is also worth mentioning the “Newly Found Manuscripts of Gogol”, reported by K. N. Mikhailov in the “Historical Bulletin”, 1902, No. 2 (with photographs from them). Many of Gogol's letters that appeared after the publication of Shenrok are registered in the indexes listed below. As for new biographical research, the names of V. I. Shenrok, who continued to work on Gogol even after his consolidated major works, V. V. Kallash, A. I. Kirpichnikov, N. I. Korobka, M. N. should be mentioned here. Speransky, E.V. Petukhov, P.A. Zabolotsky, P.E. Shchegolev, who developed special biographical questions based on unpublished or unexamined materials. Generally useful here is the “Experience of a chronological outline for the biography of Gogol” in the “Complete Works of N. V. Gogol”, published by the partnership of I. D. Sytin, edited by Professor A. I. Kirpichnikov (M., 1902). A special group included investigations and disputes about Gogol’s illness (V. Chizh, G. Troshin, N. Bazhenov, Dr. Kachenovsky), articles about Gogol’s ancestors, parents and school years (N. Korobka, P. Shchegolev, V. Chagovets, P. Zabolotsky, M. Speransky, etc.), and here we should especially note the autobiography of the poet’s mother, M. I. Gogol (Russian Archive, 1902, No. 4) and the memoirs of O. Gogol-Golovnya (Kyiv, 1909). Among the special historical and literary studies, the work of G. I. Chudakov stands out: “The relationship of N. V. Gogol’s work to Western European literatures” (Kiev, 1908), in which all the factual data on the issue are carefully compared, and the appendices provide indexes: 1) foreign authors known to Gogol, 2) works of Western European literature in Russian translations of the 20s and 30s of the 19th century. , 3) historical books in foreign languages, donated to G. Danilevsky, 4) translated works in the library of D. P. Troshchinsky, which Gogol used as a high school student. Among the general psychological and literary assessments, the following stand out: Alexey N. Veselovsky’s articles on “Dead Souls” and the relationship between Gogol and Chaadaev in “Etudes and Characteristics” (4th ed., M., 1912), the paradoxical book by D.S. Merezhkovsky "Gogol and the Devil" (Moscow, 1906; another edition: "Gogol. Creativity, Life and Religion", "Pantheon", 1909; also included in the collected works of Merezhkovsky); a brilliant sketch by Valery Bryusov: “Incinerated. On the characterization of Gogol” (M., 1909); book by S.N. Chambinago: "Trilogy of Romanticism. N.V. Gogol." (M., 1911); sketches by V.V. Rozanov in the book “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor” and in the magazine “Scales” (1909, No. 8 and 9). For the needs of school and self-education, the best publications are: 1) the first issue of the “Historical and Literary Library” edited by A. E. Gruzinsky: “N. V. Gogol in the memoirs of contemporaries and correspondence. Compiled by V. V. Kallash”; there is an introductory article and bibliographical notes by the compiler, one of the prominent Gogol experts, and an excellent selection of memoirs about Gogol and his letters; 2) “Russian critical literature about the works of N.V. Gogol. Collection of critical and bibliographic articles. Collected by V. Zelinsky. Three parts” (4th ed., M., 1910); 3) “N.V. Gogol. Collection of historical and literary articles. Compiled by V.I. Pokrovsky” (3rd ed., M., 1910); 4) “Dictionary of Literary Types”, issue 4, edited by N. D. Noskov (St. Petersburg, 1910). The bibliography of Gogol’s extensive literature is exhausted in the following works, which complement each other: P. A. Zabolotsky “N. V. Gogol in Russian literature (bibliographic review)”; "Gogol Collection" of the Nezhin Institute, Kyiv, 1902; Wed his “Experience in reviewing materials for the bibliography of N.V. Gogol in his youth” (Izvestia of the II Branch of the Academy of Sciences, 1902, vol. VII, book 2); N. Korobka “Results of Gogol’s anniversary literature” (Journal of the Ministry of Public Education, 1904, No. 4 and 5); S. A. Vengerov “Sources of the Dictionary of Russian Writers”, vol. I (St. Petersburg, 1900); S. L. Bertenson "Bibliographic index of literature about Gogol for 1900 - 1909" ("News of the II Branch of the Academy of Sciences", 1909, vol. XIV, book 4); additions for 1910 - ibid., 1912, vol. XVII, book. 2); A. Lebedev "Christian Poet. Bibliographic Monograph" (Saratov, 1911).
N. Piksanov.

Chapter 6.

I. ABOUT LITERARY GENERALIZATION

At the beginning of the first chapter, describing Chichikov’s arrival in the city of NN, the narrator notes: “His entry did not make any noise at all in the city and was not accompanied by anything special; only two Russian men standing at the door of the tavern opposite the hotel made some comments, which, however, related more to the carriage than to those sitting in it.”

The definition of “Russian men” seems somewhat unexpected here. After all, from the first words of the poem it is clear that its action takes place in Russia, therefore, the explanation “Russian” is at least tautological. S. A. Vengerov was the first to draw attention to this in the scientific literature. “What other men could there be in a Russian provincial town? French, German?.. How could such a non-defining definition arise in the creative brain of a writer of everyday life?

The designation of nationality draws a line between the foreign narrator and the local population, life, environment, etc. that is alien to him. In a similar situation, Vengerov believes, the author of “Dead Souls” was in relation to Russian life, “... Russian men” cast a bright light on the basis of Gogol’s attitude to the life he depicts as something alien, lately recognized and therefore unconsciously ethnographically colored.”

Later A. Bely wrote about the same definition: “two Russian men... what are Russian men for?” What if not Russians? The action doesn't take place in Australia!

First of all, it should be noted that the definition of “Russian” usually performs a characterological function in Gogol. And in his previous works it appeared where, from a formal point of view, there was no need for it. “...Only women, covered with blankets, and Russian merchants under umbrellas, and coachmen caught my eye” (“Notes of a Madman”). Here, however, the definition “Russians” may have been needed to distinguish them from foreign merchants who visited St. Petersburg." But in the following examples pure characterology appears. “Ivan Yakovlevich, like any decent Russian artisan, was a terrible drunkard" (“ Nose"), The fact that Ivan Yakovlevich is Russian is extremely clear; the definition only reinforces, “motivates” the characterological property. The same function of the definition in the following example: “...Traders, young Russian women, rush by instinct to listen to what he is scribbling about people" ("Portrait").

And here are the “Russian peasants”: “The right people trudge along the streets: sometimes Russian peasants cross it, hurrying to work...”, “A Russian peasant talks about a hryvnia or seven pennies of copper...” (“Nevsky Prospekt”).

Gogol’s definition of “Russian” is like a constant epithet, and if the latter seems erased, unnecessary, then this stems from its repetition.

In “Dead Souls” the definition of “Russian” is included in the system of other signals that realize the point of view of the poem.

Touching in one of his letters to Pletnev (dated March 17, 1842) the reasons why he could work on “Dead Souls” only abroad, Gogol dropped the following phrase: “Only there it (Russia - Yu. M.) will have to all to me, in all its bulk.”

For each work, as is known, the angle from which life is seen is important and which sometimes determines the smallest details of the letter. The point of view in “Dead Souls” is characterized by the fact that Russia opens up to Gogol as a whole and from the outside. From the outside - not in the sense that what is happening in it does not concern the writer, but in the fact that he sees Russia as a whole, in all its “hulk”.

In this case, the artistic angle of view coincided, so to speak, with the real one (that is, with the fact that Gogol really wrote “Dead Souls” outside Russia, looking at it from his beautiful “far”). But the essence of the matter, of course, is not a coincidence. The reader might not have known about the real circumstances of the writing of the poem, but he still felt the “all-Russian scale” underlying it.

This is easy to show using the example of purely Gogolian phrases, which can be called generalization formulas. The first part of the formula fixes a specific object or phenomenon; the second (attached using the pronouns “which”, “which”, etc.) establishes their place in the system of the whole.

In works written in the early 1830s, the second part of the formula implies as a whole either a specific region (for example, the Cossacks, Ukraine, St. Petersburg), or the whole world, all of humanity. In other words, either locally limited or extremely wide. But, as a rule, the middle, intermediate authority is not taken into account - the world of all-Russian life, Russia. Let us give examples of each of the two groups.

1. Formulas for generalization carried out within the region.

“The darkness of the night reminded him of that laziness that is dear to all Cossacks” (“The Night Before Christmas”), “...filled with straw, which is usually used in Little Russia instead of firewood.” “Rooms of the house... which are usually found among old-world people” (“Old-World Landowners”). “...A building such as was usually built in Little Russia.” “...They began to put their hands to the stove, which is what Little Russians usually do” (“Viy”), etc. In the examples given, the generalization is achieved on the scale of Ukraine, Ukrainian, Cossack. From the context it is clear that a specific region is meant.

2. Formulas for generalization carried out within the framework of the universal.

“The godfather’s wife was such a treasure, of which there are quite a few in this world” (“The Night Before Christmas”). “The judge was a man, as all good people of the cowardly ten usually are” (“The Tale of How He Quarreled…”). “...One of those people who with the greatest pleasure love to engage in soul-delighting conversation” (“Ivan Fedorovich Shponka...”). “The philosopher was one of those people who, if fed, awakens extraordinary philanthropy” (“Viy”). “...Strange feelings that overcome us when we enter the widower’s home for the first time...” (“Old World Landowners”). “...His life has already touched those years when everything that breathes with impulse is compressed in a person...” (“Portrait”, 1st and 2nd editions). Etc.

But in the second half of the 1830s (which coincided with the work on “Dead Souls”) in Gogol’s work, the number of formulas that implement a generalization of the third, “intermediate” type—generalization within the Russian world—increases sharply. Convincing data is provided here by the second edition of the “Portrait”, created in the second half of the 30s - at the very beginning of the 40s.

"Damn it! disgusting in the world! - he said with the feeling of a Russian whose business is bad." “He was an artist, of which there are few, one of those miracles that only Rus' alone spews from its unseeded womb..." "...Even the thought that often runs through the Russian head ran through: give up everything and go on a spree out of grief in spite of everything.”

Generalization formulas within the all-Russian world characterize the tendency of Gogol’s artistic (and not only artistic) thought, which intensified precisely at the turn of 1830-1840.

In Dead Souls, generalization formulas, realizing an all-Russian, all-Russian scale, literally layer the entire text.

“...the cries with which horses are treated all over Russia...”, “... taverns, of which there are many built along the roads...”, “... the strangest thing is what can happen only in Russia...”, “... a house like those that are being built here for military settlements and German colonists”, - “... Moldavian pumpkins... from which balalaikas are made in Rus'...”, “... they ate, as the whole of vast Russia eats in cities and villages...”, etc.

Generalization formulas within a limited region or within the universal “Dead Souls” provide significantly fewer formulas than formulas of the type just described.

Other descriptive and stylistic devices are also in harmony with these formulas. This is the switch from any specific property of a character to the national substance as a whole. “Here Nozdryov (Chichikov) was promised many difficult and strong desires... What to do? A Russian man, and even in his hearts,” “Chichikov... loved driving fast. And what Russian doesn’t like driving fast?” Chichikov often unites in feeling, in experience, in spiritual quality with every Russian.

The poem is also replete with moral descriptive or characterological considerations, whose subject matter is of an all-Russian scale. Usually they include the phrase “in Rus'”: “In Rus', lower societies really like to talk about gossip that happens in higher societies...”, “I must say that such a phenomenon rarely comes across in Rus', where everything likes to unfold rather than shrink ..." Gogol thinks in national categories; hence the predominance of “general” signs (names of nationalities, possessive pronouns), which in another context would really not have any meaning, but in this case perform a generalizing semantic function.

V. Belinsky writes: “With every word of his poem, the reader can say: “Here is the Russian spirit, here it smells of Russia.”

“With every word” is not an exaggeration; the Russian spatial scale is created in the poem “with every word” of its narrative manner.

In “Dead Souls” there are, of course, characteristics of a conclusion on a universal, global scale about the course of world history (in Chapter X), about the ability of people to convey nonsense, “as long as it is news” (Chapter VIII), etc.

Let us cite one more place - a description of Chichikov’s trip to Manilov: “As soon as the city had gone back, they began to write, according to our custom, nonsense and game on both sides of the road: hummocks, a spruce forest, low thin bushes of young pines, charred trunks of old ones, wild heather and such nonsense... Several men, as usual, yawned, sitting on benches in front of the gate in their sheepskin coats. Women with fat faces and bandaged breasts looked out from the upper windows... In a word, the views are well-known.”

From the point of view of orthodox poetics, the phrases we underlined are superfluous, because, as S. Vengerov said, they do not define anything. But it is not difficult to see, firstly, that they function together with a large number of very specific details and details. And that, secondly, they create a special perspective, a special atmosphere in relation to what is being described. In other words, they do not so much bring with them some additional, specific feature, but rather elevate the described object to a national rank. The descriptive function is complemented here by another - generalizing one.

From a purely psychological point of view, the nature of the latter is, of course, quite complex. “Ours”, “according to our custom”, “as usual”, “known species”... When reading, all this serves as a signal of “familiarity”, the coincidence of what is depicted with our subjective experience. These signals hardly require mandatory implementation. Such realization, as we know, is generally not in the nature of fiction and its reader’s perception. In this case, the opposite tendency is rather created: we probably more “easily”, unhinderedly embrace such a text with our consciousness, since these signals envelop what is depicted in a special atmosphere of the subjectively close, familiar. At the same time, creating such an atmosphere, these signs perform an associative and incentive function, since they force the reader not only to constantly remember that all of Rus' is in his field of vision, “in its entirety,” but also to complement the “depicted” and “ shown” by personal subjective mood.

The at first glance insignificant definition of “Russian men” is, of course, connected to this national scale and performs the same generalizing and incentive-associative function, which does not at all make this definition unambiguous, strictly unidirectional.

Gogol's deviation from tradition is deeply justified, regardless of whether this deviation is deliberate or whether it is unconsciously caused by the implementation of the general artistic task of the poem.

By the way, so as not to return to this issue, let’s dwell a little on Gogol’s other “mistakes.” They are extremely symptomatic of the general structure of the poem, of the peculiarities of Gogol’s artistic thinking, although they sometimes violate not only the traditions of poetics, but also the requirements of verisimilitude.

At one time, professor of ancient history V.P. Buzeskul drew attention to the contradictions in the designation of the time of action of the poem. When going to make visits to landowners, Chichikov put on “a lingonberry-colored tailcoat with a sparkle and then an overcoat on big bears.” On the way, Chichikov saw men sitting in front of the gate “in their sheepskin coats.”

All this makes us think that Chichikov went on the road during the cold season. But on the same day Chichikov arrives in the village of Manilov - and a house on the mountain, dressed in “trimmed turf,” opens to his gaze. On the same mountain, “two or three flower beds with lilac and yellow acacia bushes were scattered in English style... A gazebo with a flat green dome, blue wooden columns was visible... lower down was a pond covered with greenery.” The time of year, as we see, is completely different...

But psychologically and creatively this inconsistency in time is very understandable. Gogol thinks of details - everyday, historical, temporary, etc. - not as a background, but as part of the image. Chichikov's departure is depicted by Gogol as an important event, thought out in advance (“... having given the necessary orders in the evening, waking up very early in the morning,” etc.). The “overcoat on big bears” appears very naturally in this context - as did the tavern servant supporting Chichikov when he was descending from the stairs in this vestment, as well as the chaise that rolled out into the street with “thunder”, so that the priest passing by involuntarily “took off hat”... One detail leads to another - and all together they leave the impression of a solidly begun business (after all, with Chichikov’s departure, his plan begins to come to fruition), illuminated in an ironic and alarming light.

On the contrary, Manilov is imagined by Gogol in a different environment - everyday and temporary. Here the writer absolutely needs trimmed turf, lilac bushes, an “Aglitsky garden”, and a pond covered with greenery. All these are elements of the image, components of the concept called “Manilovism”. This concept also cannot exist without a light spectrum formed by a combination of green (the color of turf), blue (the color of wooden columns), yellow (blooming acacia) and, finally, some vague paint that cannot be precisely defined: “even the weather itself is very By the way, it came in handy, the day was either clear or gloomy, but some kind of light gray color...” (here, of course, a path to the future is already outlined, a direct name for one of Manilov’s qualities - uncertainty: “neither this nor that, neither in the city of Bogdan, nor in the village of Selifan"). Again, one detail leads to another, and all together they make up the tone, color, and meaning of the image.

And finally, one more example. As you know, Nozdryov calls Mizhuev his son-in-law and the latter, given his tendency to dispute every word of Nozdryov, leaves this statement without objection. Obviously, he really is Nozdryov's son-in-law. But how is he his son-in-law? Mizhuev may be Nozdryov's son-in-law, either as the husband of his daughter, or as the husband of his sister. Nothing is known about the existence of Nozdryov’s adult daughter; All we know is that after the death of his wife, he was left with two children, who were “looked after by a pretty nanny.” From Nozdryov’s statements about Mizhuev’s wife, it is also impossible to conclude with complete certainty that she is his sister. Gogol, from the point of view of traditional poetics (in particular the poetics of moral and family novels), made an obvious mistake by not motivating or clarifying the genealogical connections of the characters.

But, in essence, how understandable and natural this “error” is! Nozdryov is portrayed by Gogol in significant contrast to Mizhuev, starting from his appearance (“one is blond, tall; the other is a little shorter, dark-haired...”, etc.) and ending with character, manner of behavior and speech. The desperate insolence and impudence of one constantly collides with the intractability and simple-minded stubbornness of the other, which, however, always turns into “softness” and “submissiveness.” The contrast is even more expressive because both characters are related as son-in-law and father-in-law. They communicate even despite the requirements of external plausibility.

Goethe’s interesting statement about Shakespeare is to some extent applicable to Gogol here. Noting that in Shakespeare Lady Macbeth says in one place: “I have suckled children,” and in another place it is said about the same Lady Macbeth that “she has no children,” Goethe draws attention to the artistic justification of this contradiction: “Shakespeare” cared about the power of each given speech... The poet makes his persons say in a given place exactly what is required here, what is good right here and makes an impression, without particularly caring about it, without counting on the fact that it may be in an obvious contradictions with words spoken elsewhere."

These “mistakes” of Gogol (as well as of Shakespeare) are so artistically motivated that we, as a rule, do not notice them. And even if we notice, they don’t bother us. They do not interfere with seeing the poetic and life truth of each scene or image separately, and the entire work as a whole.

II. ABOUT TWO OPPOSITE STRUCTURAL PRINCIPLES OF “DEAD SOULS”

But let's return to the main thread of our reasoning. We have seen that the seemingly random definition of “two Russian men” is closely connected with the poetic structure of the poem, and the latter with its main task.

This task was determined with the beginning of work on “Dead Souls,” that is, in the mid-30s, despite the fact that the detailed “plan” of the poem, and especially its subsequent parts, were still not clear to Gogol.

By the mid-30s, a change was outlined in Gogol's work. Later, in “The Author's Confession,” the writer was inclined to define this change by such criteria as the attitude to laughter, the purposefulness of the comic. “I saw that in my writings I laugh for nothing, in vain, without knowing why. If you laugh, it’s better to laugh hard at something that is truly worthy of everyone’s ridicule.” However, in these words there is an excessive categorical opposition, explained by the increasingly strict approach of the late Gogol to his early works. Of course, even before 1835, Gogol laughed not only “for nothing” and not only “in vain”! A more legitimate opposition is on the basis of which Gogol approaches at the very end of the above quotation - on the basis of “ridicule of the universal.”

Gogol's artistic thought had previously strived for broad generalizations - this was already discussed in the previous chapter. Hence his attraction to collective images (Dikanka, Mirgorod, Nevsky Prospekt), going beyond geographical or territorial names and denoting, as it were, entire continents on the map of the universe. But Gogol first tried to find an approach to these “continents”, first from one side, then from the other, breaking up the overall picture into many fragments. “Arabesques” - the title of one of Gogol’s collections - did not arise by accident, of course.

However, Gogol persistently seeks such an aspect of the image in which the whole would appear not in parts, not

In “arabesques”, but in general. In one year, 1835, the writer begins work on three works, showing, in his later expression, “the deviation of the entire society from the straight path.” One work is the unfinished historical drama Alfred. Another is “The Inspector”. Third - "Dead Souls". In a series of these works, the concept of “Dead Souls” gradually acquired greater and greater importance. A year after starting work on Dead Souls, Gogol wrote: “If I complete this creation the way it needs to be done, then... what a huge, what an original plot! What a varied bunch! All Rus' will appear in it!” (letter to V. Zhukovsky dated November 12, 1836)

In The Inspector General, the broad, “all-Russian” scale arose mainly due to the similarity of Gogol’s city to many other Russian “cities.” It was an image of a living organism through one of its cells, involuntarily imitating the vital activity of the whole.

In Dead Souls Gogol expanded this scale spatially. Not only that, soon after starting work, he set himself the task of depicting in the poem the positive phenomena of Russian life, which was not in “The Inspector General” (although the real meaning and scope of these phenomena was not yet clear to Gogol). But the plot was also important, the way of storytelling, in which Gogol planned to travel “all over Rus'” with his hero. In other words, the synthetic task of “Dead Souls” could not receive a one-time, “final” solution as in “The Inspector General,” but assumed a long ripening of the plan, viewed through the “magic crystal” of time and acquired experience.

As for the reasons that influenced Gogol’s new creative attitudes, the wide-scale design of both “The Inspector General” and “Dead Souls,” they are already known to us. This is primarily a general philosophical mindset, reflected, in particular, in his historical scientific studies. They just preceded the aforementioned artistic plans and informed them of that search for “general thought”, which Gogol, from about the mid-30s, considered obligatory for both the artist and the historian.

“All the events of the world must be... closely connected with each other,” Gogol wrote in the article “On the Teaching of World History.” And then he made a conclusion regarding the nature of the depiction of these events: “... It must be developed throughout the entire space, bring out all the secret reasons for its appearance and show how the consequences from it, like wide branches, spread over the coming centuries, branching out more and more into barely noticeable offspring weaken and finally disappear completely...” Gogol outlines in these words the task of a historian, a scientist, but they - in a certain sense - also characterize the principles of his artistic thinking.

The author of Dead Souls calls himself a “historian of the proposed events” (Chapter II). In addition to the breadth of the task (as already mentioned above), Gogol’s artistic style was in its own way broken by the strictly “historical” sequence of presentation, the desire to expose all the secret “springs” of the characters’ actions and intentions, to motivate with circumstances and psychology any change in action, any turn in the plot . We repeat that there is, of course, no direct analogy here. But the similarity of Gogol’s scientific and artistic principles is undeniable.

From this same relationship comes the well-known rationalism of the general “plan” of “Dead Souls,” in which each chapter is, as it were, completed thematically, has its own task and its own “subject.” The first chapter is Chichikov’s arrival and introduction to the city. Chapters two to six are visits to landowners, and each landowner is given a separate chapter: he sits in it, and the reader travels from chapter to chapter as if through a menagerie. Chapter seven - registration of deeds of sale, etc. The last, eleventh, chapter (Chichikov’s departure from the city) together with the first chapter creates the frame for the action. Everything is logical, everything is strictly consistent. Each chapter is like a ring in a chain. “If one ring is torn out, then the chain is broken...” Here, the traditions of the poetics of the Enlightenment novel - Western European and Russian - were intertwined in Gogol’s mind with the tradition of scientific systematism coming from German idealistic philosophy.

But it turns out that along with this trend in “Dead Souls” another, the opposite, is developing. In contrast to the author's attraction to logic, here and there alogism strikes the eye. The desire to explain facts and phenomena encounters the inexplicable and uncontrollable mind at every step. Consistency and rationality are “violated” by the inconsistency of the subject of the image itself - the described actions, intentions - even “things”.

Slight deviations from harmony can be seen already in the external drawing of the chapters. Although each of the landowners is the “master” of his own head, the owner is not always autocratic. If the chapter about Manilov is structured according to a symmetrical pattern (the beginning of the chapter is leaving the city and arriving at Manilov, the end is leaving Manilov), then the subsequent chapters show noticeable fluctuations (the beginning of the third chapter is a trip to Sobakevich, the end is leaving Korobochka; the beginning of the fourth is arrival at the tavern, end - departure from Nozdryov). Only in the sixth chapter, which in this respect repeats the pattern of the chapter about Manilov, is the beginning in harmony with the end: the arrival at Plyushkin and the departure from him.

Let us now turn to some descriptions. In them one can see an even greater departure from the “norm.”

The tavern where Chichikov was located was nothing special. And the common room - how

Everywhere. “Everyone passing through knows very well what these common rooms are like.” (By the way, again,

Along with specific “details”, a deliberately generalized, incentive-associative form of description!) “In a word,

Everything is the same as everywhere else, the only difference is that one picture depicted a nymph with such huge

Breasts the likes of which the reader has probably never seen.” It would seem like a random, comic detail... But

It was not for nothing that she was abandoned. The motif of, as Gogol says, a strange “game” is woven into the artistic fabric of the poem.

Nature."

Gogol's favorite motif - an unexpected deviation from the rule - sounds with all its force in Dead Souls.

In Korobochka’s house there were only “paintings with some birds” hanging, but between them somehow appeared a portrait of Kutuzov and some old man.

In Sobakevich’s paintings, “everyone was a fine fellow, all the Greek commanders, engraved to their full height... All these heroes had such thick thighs and an incredible mustache that a shiver ran through the body.” But - “between the strong Greeks, no one knows how or why, Bagration, skinny, thin, with small banners and cannons below and in the narrowest frames, fit.” The taste of the owner, who loved his house to be “decorated by strong and healthy people,” misfired inexplicably.

The same unexpected deviation from the rules in the outfits of provincial ladies: everything is decent, everything is thought out, but “suddenly some kind of cap, unprecedented on earth, or even some kind of almost peacock feather, would stick out, contrary to all fashions, according to one’s own taste. But it’s impossible without this, this is the property of a provincial city: somewhere it will certainly end.”

“The play of nature” is present not only in household utensils, paintings, outfits, but also in the actions and thoughts of the characters.

Chichikov, as you know, used to blow his nose “extremely loudly,” “his nose sounded like a trumpet.” “This apparently completely innocent dignity acquired, however, a lot of respect for him from the tavern servant, so that every time he heard this sound, he shook his hair, straightened up more respectfully and, bending his head from on high, asked: do you need anything?

But like other cases of strange manifestations in the actions and thoughts of characters, this fact does not exclude the possibility of internal motivation: who knows what kind of concepts of respectability a servant in a provincial tavern should have acquired.

In the speech of characters or the narrator, alogism is sometimes sharpened by the contradiction of a grammatical structure with meaning. To Chichikov, who noted that he has “neither a big name” nor a “noticeable rank,” Manilov says: “You have everything... even more.” If “everything”, then why the intensifying particle “even”? However, internal motivation is again not excluded: Manilov, who knows no limits, wants to add something to the infinity itself.

Alogism blooms magnificently in the last chapters of the poem, which talks about the reaction of city residents to Chichikov’s scam. Every step here is absurd; Each new “thought” is more ridiculous than the previous one. The lady, pleasant in all respects, concluded from the story about Chichikov that “he wants to take away the governor’s daughter,” a version that was then picked up by the entire female part of the city. The postmaster concluded that Chichikov was Captain Kopeikin, forgetting that the latter was “without an arm or a leg.” The officials, contrary to all common sense, resorted to the help of Nozdryov, which gave Gogol a reason for a broad generalization: “These gentlemen are strange people officials, and after them all other ranks: after all, they knew very well that Nozdryov was a liar, that he could not be trusted in a single word, or in the most trifle, and yet they resorted to him.”

Thus, in “Dead Souls” one can find almost all the forms of “non-fantastic fiction” that we noted (in Chapter III) - the manifestation of the strange and unusual in the narrator’s speech, in the actions and thoughts of the characters, the behavior of things, the appearance of objects, road confusion and confusion etc. (The only form that is not presented in a developed form is the strange intervention of an animal in the plot, although some motifs close to it also appear in “Dead Souls.”) This confirms the pattern that we also noted in Chapter III: on The development of the plot is influenced by the strangely unusual in the judgments and actions of the characters (the version of officials and ladies about who Chichikov is), road confusion (more on this below). But the strange does not directly influence the appearance of objects, the behavior of things, etc.

The development of forms of alogism is not limited to individual episodes and descriptions and is reflected in the situation of the work (if we take it as a one-time, single situation, which, as we will see later, is not entirely accurate). In this regard, the situation in “Dead Souls” continues Gogol’s directive to create incorrect (complicated) situations. Neither the idea of ​​an audit in The Inspector General, nor the idea of ​​a game in The Players, nor, especially, the idea of ​​marriage in Marriage are in themselves illogical; to achieve such an effect, it was necessary to deviate from the “normal” level within the chosen situation. The very idea of ​​buying and selling is also not illogical, but within the situation created in this way, a deviation from the “normal” level occurs again. Chichikov trades in nothing, buys nothing (“after all, the object is simply: “fu-fu”), and yet this operation promises him real, tangible wealth. Other contrasting moments of action are drawn towards the contradiction hidden in the situation of the poem.

Revision, dead souls seem to rise from oblivion. Chichikov is not the only one who treats them almost like living people. Although Korobochka agrees with the argument that it is all “dust,” she still admits the thought; “Or maybe the farm will somehow need it just in case...” Sobakevich begins to enthusiastically praise the dead (“Another swindler will deceive you, sell you rubbish, not souls; but I, like a strong nut, have everything for selection…").

A. Slonimsky believed that “the substitution of concepts is motivated by Sobakevich’s desire to increase the price of dead souls.” But Gogol does not provide any motivation in this case; The reasons for Sobakevich’s “substitution of concepts” are unclear, not disclosed, especially if we take into account a similar episode in Chapter VII: Sobakevich praises the product after the sale, when any need to “raise the price” has disappeared - he praises it in front of the chairman of the chamber, which was not entirely safe. The situation here is similar to the duality of Gogol’s characterology that we have already noted: psychological motivation in general is not excluded, but its unrecorded nature, “closedness,” leaves the possibility of a different, so to speak, grotesque reading. And in this case, no matter what motives govern Sobakevich, it remains possible to assume the presence of a certain amount of “pure art” in his actions. It seems that Sobakevich is genuinely passionate about what he says (“...where did the lynx and the gift of speech come from”), he believes (or begins to believe) in the reality of what he said. Dead souls, having become the subject of bargaining and sale, acquire in his eyes the dignity of living people.
Author of the article: Mann Yu.

The image constantly doubles: the reflection of some strange “game of nature” falls on real objects and phenomena...

The consequences of Chichikov’s “negotiation” were not limited to rumors and speculation. Not without death - the death of the prosecutor, the appearance of which, the narrator says, is just as “terrible in a small person as it is terrible in a great man.” If, say, in “The Overcoat,” real events led to a denouement close to fantasy, then in “Dead Souls,” from an event that was not quite ordinary, painted in fantastic tones (the acquisition of “dead souls”), results that were quite tangible in their real tragedy followed.

“Where is the exit, where is the road?” Everything is significant in this lyrical digression; both the fact that Gogol adheres to educational categories (“road”, “eternal truth”), and the fact that, adhering to them, he sees the monstrous deviation of humanity from the straight path. The image of the road - the most important image of “Dead Souls” - constantly collides with images of a different, opposite meaning: “impassable outback”, swamp (“swamp lights”), “abyss”, “grave”, “pool”... In turn, the image The road is stratified into contrasting images: these are (as in the passage just cited) both the “straight path” and “the roads that lead far to the side.” The plot of the poem includes Chichikov’s life path (“but despite all that, his road was difficult...) and the road that runs through the vast Russian expanses; the latter turns out to be either the road along which Chichikov’s troika is rushing, or the road of history along which the Rus-troika is rushing.

The duality of the structural principles of “Dead Souls” ultimately goes back to the antithesis of the rational and the illogical (grotesque).

Early Gogol felt the contradictions of the “mercantile age” more acutely and nakedly. The anomaly of reality sometimes directly, dictatorially invaded Gogol’s artistic world. Later, he subordinated fantasy to strict calculation, brought to the fore the beginning of synthesis, a sober and complete embrace of the whole, an image of human destinies in relation to the main “road” of history. But the grotesque principle did not disappear from Gogol’s poetics - it only went deeper, more evenly dissolving into the artistic fabric.

The grotesque principle also appeared in “Dead Souls”, manifested itself on different levels: both in the style - with its alogism of descriptions, alternation of plans, and in the very grain of the situation - in Chichikov’s “negotiation”, and in the development of the action.

The rational and the grotesque form the two poles of the poem, between which its entire artistic system unfolds. In Dead Souls, generally constructed in contrast, there are other poles: epic and lyricism (in particular, condensed in the so-called lyrical digressions); satire, comedy - and tragedy. But this contrast is especially important for the overall structure of the poem; this is also evident from the fact that it permeates its “positive” sphere.

Thanks to this, we are not always clearly aware of whom exactly the inspired Gogolian troika is rushing. And these characters, as D. Merezhkovsky noted, are three, and all of them are quite characteristic. “Crazy Poprishchin, witty Khlestakov and prudent Chichikov - that’s who this symbolic Russian troika is rushing along in its terrible flight into the vast expanse or immense emptiness.”

The usual contrasts - say, the contrast between low and high - are not hidden in Dead Souls. On the contrary, Gogol exposes them, guided by his rule: “The true effect lies in the sharp opposite; beauty is never so bright and visible as in contrast.” According to this “rule,” a passage in Chapter VI is constructed about a dreamer who came “to Schiller... to visit” and suddenly found himself “on earth” again: in Chapter XI - the “author’s” reflections on space and Chichikov’s road adventures: “... Illuminated by unnatural power my eyes: oh! what a sparkling, wonderful, unknown distance to the earth! Rus!.."

“Hold it, hold it, you fool!” - Chichikov shouted to Selifan.” The contrast between an inspired dream and a sobering reality is shown.

But the contrast in the positive sphere that we just talked about is deliberately implicit, veiled either by the formal logic of the narrative turn or by an almost imperceptible, smooth change of perspective and points of view. An example of the latter is the passage about the troika that concludes the poem: at first, the entire description is strictly tied to Chichikov’s troika and to his experiences; then a step is taken to the experiences of the Russian in general (“And what Russian doesn’t like driving fast?”), then the troika itself becomes the addressee of the author’s speech and description (“Eh, troika! bird troika, who invented you?..”), for this to lead to a new author’s appeal, this time to Rus' (“Aren’t you, Rus', like a brisk, unstoppable troika, rushing?..”). As a result, the border where Chichikov’s troika turns into Rus'-troika is masked, although the poem does not provide a direct identification.

III. CONTRAST OF LIVING AND DEAD

The contrast between the living and the dead in the poem was noted by Herzen in his diary entries of 1842. On the one hand, Herzen wrote, “dead souls... all these Nozdryovs, Manilovs and tutti quanti (all the others).” On the other hand: “where the gaze can penetrate the fog of unclean dung fumes, there it sees a daring, full of strength nationality”

The contrast between the living and the dead and the death of the living is a favorite theme of the grotesque, embodied with the help of certain and more or less stable motifs.

Here is a description of officials from Chapter VII of Dead Souls. Entering the civil chamber to complete the deed of sale, Chichikov and Manilov saw “a lot of paper, both rough and white, bowed heads, wide napes, tailcoats, provincial cut frock coats, and even just some kind of light gray jacket, separated very sharply, which, turning its head on its side and laying it almost on the paper itself, she quickly and neatly wrote out some kind of protocol...” The increasing number of synecdoches completely obscures living people; in the last example, the bureaucratic head itself and the bureaucratic function of writing turn out to belong to the “light gray jacket.”

Interesting, from this point of view, is Gogol’s favorite form of describing similar, almost mechanically repeating actions or remarks. In Dead Souls this form occurs especially often.

“All officials were pleased with the arrival of a new person. The governor explained about him that he was a well-intentioned person; the prosecutor that he is a sensible person; the gendarme colonel said that he was a learned man; the chairman of the chamber, that he is a knowledgeable and respectable police chief, that he is a respectable and amiable person; the wife of the police chief, that he is the most kind and courteous person.” The pedantic strictness of the narrator's recording of each of the remarks contrasts with their almost complete homogeneity. In the last two cases, primitivism is further strengthened by the fact that each one picks up one word of the previous one, as if trying to add to it something of his own and original, but adds something equally flat and insignificant.

The author of “Dead Souls” developed in an equally unique way such grotesque motifs that are associated with the movement of characters in a series of animals and inanimate objects. Chichikov more than once finds himself in a situation very close to animals, insects, etc. “...Yes, like a hog, your whole back and side are covered in mud! where did you deign to get so dirty?” - Korobochka tells him. At the ball, feeling “all sorts of fragrances,” “Chichikov just raised his howls and sniffed” - an action that clearly hints at the behavior of dogs. Near the same Box, the sleeping Chichikov was literally surrounded by flies - “one sat on his lip, another on his ear, the third tried to sit right on his eye,” etc. Throughout the entire poem, animals, birds, insects seem to crowd Chichikov, crowding into him in "buddies". On the other hand, the incident at Nozdryov’s kennel was not the only one in which Chichikov was offended by this kind of “friendship.” Waking up at Korobochka, Chichikov “sneezed again so loudly that an Indian rooster, who came up to the window at that time... suddenly and very quickly chatted something to him in his strange language, probably, “I wish you hello,” to which Chichikov told him he was a fool.”

What is the basis for the comedy of Chichikov's reaction? Usually a person will not take offense at an animal, much less a bird, without risking getting into a funny situation. The feeling of resentment presupposes either biological equality or superiority of the offender. Elsewhere it is said that Chichikov “did not like to allow himself to be treated with familiarity under any circumstances, unless the person was of too high a rank.”

Eyes are a favorite detail of a romantic portrait. In Gogol, the contrast between the living and the dead, the death of the living is often indicated precisely by the description of the eyes.

In Dead Souls, in the portrait of the characters, the eyes are either not indicated in any way (since they are simply unnecessary), or their lack of spirituality is emphasized. That which essentially cannot be objectified is objectified. Thus, Manilov “had eyes as sweet as sugar,” and in relation to Sobakevich’s eyes, the weapon that nature used for this case was noted: “she picked her eyes with a large drill.” About Plyushkin’s eyes it is said: “The little eyes had not yet faded and ran from under high eyebrows, like mice, when, sticking out their sharp muzzles from dark holes, ears pricked and whiskers blinking, they look out to see if a cat or a naughty boy is hiding somewhere, and sniff the very air suspiciously.” This is already something animated and, therefore, higher, but it is not human liveliness, but rather animal; in the very development of the conventional, metaphorical plane, the lively agility and suspicion of the small animal is conveyed.

The conventional plan either objectifies the phenomenon being compared, or translates it into a series of animals, insects, etc. - that is, in both cases it performs the function of a grotesque style.

The first case is a description of the faces of officials: “Some had faces like badly baked bread: the cheek was swollen in one direction, the chin was askew in the other, the upper oak was blown up in a bubble, which, in addition, was also cracked...” The second case is a description of the blacks tailcoats: “Black tailcoats flashed and rushed separately and in heaps here and there, like flies scamper on white shining refined sugar during the hot July summer, when the old klyupshitsa chops and divides it into sparkling fragments...”, etc. On the other hand, if the human moves to a lower, “animal” row, then the latter “raises” to the human: let us recall the comparison of singing dogs with a choir of singers.

In all cases, the rapprochement between the human and the inanimate or animal occurs in Gogol's subtle and polysemantic way.

But, of course, it is not Chichikov who embodies “that daring, full of strength nationality” about which Herzen wrote and which must resist “dead souls.” The image of this force, passing in the “background”, is nevertheless very important precisely because of its stylistic contrast of grotesque immobility and death.

IV. ABOUT 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 confronted Chichikov is “more dead than the previous one.” Is Korobochka really “more dead” than Manilov, Nozdryov “more dead” than Ma-Eilov and Korobochka, Sobakevich more dead than Manilov, Korobochka and Nozdryov?..

Let us recall what Gogol says about Manilov: “You won’t get any lively or even arrogant words from him, which you can hear from almost anyone if you touch an object that bothers him. Everyone has their own enthusiasm: one of them turned his enthusiasm to greyhounds; others think that he is a strong lover of music... in a word, everyone has their own, but Manilov had nothing.” If by “mortality” we mean the social harm caused by one or another landowner, then here too one can still argue who is more harmful: the economic Sobakevich, whose “men’s huts... were cut down amazingly,” or Manilov, whose “farm was going well.” somehow by itself,” and the men were given over to the power of a cunning clerk. But Sobakevich follows after Manilov.

In a word, the existing point of view on the composition of “Dead Souls” is quite vulnerable.

Speaking about the splendor of Plyushkin’s garden, Gogol, by the way, notes: “...Everything was somehow deserted and good, as neither nature nor art could invent, but as happens only when they are united together, when in a piled-up, often without nature will pass through the work of man with its final cutter, lighten the heavy masses, destroy rough regularity and beggarly gaps through which the unhidden, naked plan is visible, and give wonderful warmth to everything that was created in the cold of measured cleanliness and neatness.”

It is useless to look for one, “single principle” in works of genius.

Why, for example, does Gogol open a gallery of landowners with Manilov?

Firstly, it is clear that Chichikov decided to begin his tour of the landowners with Manilov, who, even in the city, charmed him with his courtesy and courtesy and from whom (as Chichikov might have thought) dead souls would be acquired without difficulty. Features of characters, circumstances of the case - all this motivates the development of the composition, giving it such qualities as naturalness and lightness.

However, this quality is immediately layered with many others. What is important, for example, is the method of solving the case itself, Chichikov’s “negotiation”. In the first chapter we don't know anything about her yet. “The Strange Property of the Guest and the Enterprise” opens for the first time in Chichikov’s communication with Manilov. Chichikov’s extraordinary enterprise stands out against the backdrop of Manilov’s dreamy, “blue” ideality, gaping in its dazzling contrast.

But this does not exhaust the compositional significance of the chapter about Manilov. Gogol first of all presents us with a person who does not yet evoke too strong negative or dramatic emotions. It doesn’t appeal precisely because of its lifelessness and lack of “enthusiasm.” Gogol deliberately begins with a person who does not have sharp properties, that is, with “nothing.” The general emotional tone around the image of Manilov is still serene, and that light spectrum, which has already been mentioned, comes in handy for him. Subsequently, the light spectrum changes; dark, gloomy tones begin to predominate in it - as in the development of the entire poem. This happens not because each subsequent hero is deader than the previous one, but because each brings his share of “vulgarity” into the overall picture, and the general measure of vulgarity, “the vulgarity of all together” becomes unbearable. But the first chapter is deliberately instructed in such a way as not to anticipate a gloomy and depressing impression, to make it possible for it to gradually increase.

At first, the arrangement of the chapters seems to coincide with the plan of Chichikov’s visits. Chichikov decides to start with Manilov - and here comes the chapter about Manilov. But after visiting Manilov, unexpected complications arise. Chichikov intended to visit Sobakevich, but lost his way, the chaise overturned, etc.

So, instead of the expected meeting with Sobakevich, a meeting with Korobochka followed. Neither Chichikov nor the readers knew anything about Korobochka until now. The motive of such surprise and novelty is enhanced by the question. Chichikova: has the old woman even heard of Sobakevich and Manilov? No, I haven't heard. What kind of landowners live around? - “Bobrov, Svinin, Kanapatiev, Kharpakin, Trepakin, Pleshakov” - that is, a selection of deliberately unfamiliar names follows. Chichikov's plan begins to go wrong. He is even more upset because in the stupid old woman, with whom Chichikov was not very shy and on ceremony, he suddenly met unexpected resistance...

In the next chapter, in Chichikov’s conversation with the old woman in the tavern, Sobakevich’s name comes up again (“the old woman knows not only Sobakevich, but also Manilov ...”), and the action seemed to be entering the intended rut. And again a complication: Chichikov meets with Nozdryov, whom he met back in the city, but whom he had no intention of visiting.

Chichikov still ends up with Sobakevich. In addition, not every unexpected meeting promises trouble for Chichikov: a visit to Plyushkin (which Chichikov learned about only from Sobakevich) brings him the “acquisition” of more than two hundred souls and seems to crown the whole voyage happily. Chichikov had no idea what complications awaited him in the city...

Although everything unusual in “Dead Souls” (for example, the appearance of Korobochka in the city, which had the most tragic consequences for Chichikov) is just as strictly motivated by the circumstances and characters of the characters as the usual, but the game itself and the interaction of “right” and “wrong” logical and illogical, casts an alarming, flickering light on the action of the poem. It enhances the impression of that, in the words of the writer, “confusion, turmoil, confusion” of life, which is reflected in the main structural principles of the poem.

V. TWO TYPES OF CHARACTERS IN “DEAD SOULS”

When we approach Plyushkin in the gallery of images of the poem, we clearly hear new, “hitherto unswearing strings” in his depiction. In the sixth chapter, the tone of the narrative changes sharply - the motives of sadness and sadness increase. Is this because Plyushkin is “deader” than all previous characters? Let's see. For now, let us note a common property of all Gogol’s images.

Look how complex the game of opposites is; movements, properties occur in any, the most “primitive” Gogolian character.

“The box is suspicious and distrustful; None of Chichikov’s persuasion had any effect on her. But “unexpectedly successfully” Chichikov mentioned that he takes on government contracts, and the “club-headed” old woman suddenly believed him...

Sobakevich is cunning and cautious, but not only to Chichikov, but also to the chairman of the chamber (which was no longer necessary at all) he praises the coachman Mikheev, and when he remembers: “After all, you told me that he died,” he says without a shadow of hesitation : “It was his brother who died, but he was still alive and became healthier than before”... Sobakevich did not speak well of anyone, but called Chichikov “a pleasant person”...

Nozdryov is reputed to be “a good comrade,” but he is ready to do mischief to a friend. And he does mischief not out of malice, not out of self-interest, but out of no one knows why. Nozdryov is a reckless reveler, a “broken fellow,” a reckless driver, but in a game of cards or checkers he is a calculating rogue. From Nozdryov, it seemed, it was easiest to get dead souls - what are they to him? Meanwhile, he is the only landowner who left Chichikov with nothing...

Gogol's characters do not fit this definition not only because they (as we have seen) combine opposite elements. The main thing is that the “core” of Gogol’s types cannot be reduced to hypocrisy, rudeness, gullibility, or any other well-known and clearly defined vice. What we call Manilovism, Nozdrevism, etc., is essentially a new psychological and moral concept, first “formulated” by Gogol. Each of these concept-complexes includes many shades, many (sometimes mutually exclusive) properties, which together form a new quality that is not covered by one definition.

There is nothing more erroneous than thinking that a character “opens up right away.” This is more of an outline of the character, a sketch of it, which will be deepened and supplemented in the future. And this “characterization” is based not so much on the direct naming of already known qualities, but on figurative associations that evoke a completely new type in our minds. “Nozdryov was in some respects a historical person” is not at all the same as: “Nozdryov was impudent,” or: “Nozdryov was an upstart.”

Now - about the typological differences between the characters in Dead Souls.

The new thing that we feel in Plyushkin can be briefly conveyed by the word “development”. Plyushkin was given by Gogol in time and in change. Change - change for the worse - gives rise to the minor dramatic tone of the sixth, turning point chapter of the poem.

Gogol introduces this motif gradually and imperceptibly. In the fifth chapter, in the scene of Chichikov’s meeting with the beautiful “blonde,” he already clearly makes his way into the narrative twice. For the first time in the contrasting description of the reaction of the “twenty-year-old youth” (“he would have stood insensitively in one place for a long time…”) and Chichikov: “but our hero was already middle-aged and of a cautiously cool character...”. The second time - in the description of a possible change in the beauty herself: “Anything can be made of her, she can be a miracle, or she can turn out to be rubbish, and she will turn out to be rubbish”!

The beginning of the sixth chapter is an elegy about passing youth and life. Everything that is best in a person - his “youth”, his “freshness” - is irrevocably wasted on the roads of life.

Most of the images of “Dead Souls” (we are talking only about the first volume), including all the images of landowners, are static. This does not mean that they are clear from the start; on the contrary, the gradual revelation of character, the discovery of unforeseen “readiness” in him is the law of the entire Gogol typology. But this is precisely the revelation of character, and not its evolution. The character, from the very beginning, is given as an established one, with his own stable, albeit inexhaustible “core.” Let us note: all landowners before Plyushkin have no past. All that is known about Korobochka’s past is that she had a husband who loved having his heels scratched. Nothing is reported about Sobakevich’s past: it is only known that for more than forty years he had not yet been ill with anything and that his father was distinguished by the same excellent health. “Nozdryov at thirty-five years old was exactly the same as he was at eighteen and twenty...” Manilov, it is said in passing, served in the army, where “he was considered the most modest and educated officer,” that is, the same Manilov. It seems that Manilov, Sobakevich, Nozdryov, and Korobochka were already born as the action of the poem finds them. Not only Sobakevich, they all came out ready from the hands of nature, which “let them into the world, saying: lives!” — only I used different tools.

At first, Plyushkin is a man of a completely different mental organization. In early Plyushkin there are only the possibilities of his future vice (“wise stinginess”, lack of “too strong feelings”), nothing more. With Plyushkin, for the first time the poem includes a biography and character history.

The second character in the poem who has a biography is Chichikov. True, Chichikov’s “passion” (unlike Plyushkin’s) developed a very long time ago, from childhood, but the biography - in Chapter XI - demonstrates, so to speak, the vicissitudes of this passion, its vicissitudes and its drama.

The difference between the two types of characters plays an important role in the artistic concept of Dead Souls. The central motif of the poem is connected with it - the emptiness, immobility, deadness of man. The motif of the “dead” and “living” soul.

In the characters of the first type - in Manilov, Korobochka, etc. - the motives of puppetry and automaticity, which we have already discussed, are more strongly expressed. With a variety of external movements, actions, etc., what is happening in the soul of Manilov, or Korobochka, or Sobakevich is not known exactly. Do they even have a “soul”?

The remark about Sobakevich is characteristic: “Sobakevich listened, still bowing his head, and at least something similar to an expression appeared on his face. It seemed that this body had no soul at all, or it had one, but not at all where it should be, but like the immortal Koshchei, somewhere behind the mountains and covered with such a thick shell that everything that moved at the bottom of it, did not produce absolutely any shock on the surface.”

It is also impossible to say definitely whether Sobakevich, Manilov, etc. have a soul or not. Maybe they just have it hidden even further than Sobakevich?

They learned about the “soul” of the prosecutor (who, of course, belongs to the same type of characters as Manilov, Sobakevich, etc.) only when he suddenly began to “think and think and suddenly... died.” “Then it was only with condolences that they learned that the deceased definitely had a soul, although due to his modesty he never showed it.”

But about Plyushkin, who heard the name of his school friend, it is said: “And some kind of warm ray suddenly slid across this wooden face, it was not a feeling that was expressed, but some kind of pale reflection of a feeling, a phenomenon similar to the unexpected appearance of a drowning person on the surface of the waters.” Even if this is only a “pale reflection of a feeling,” it is still a “feeling,” that is, a true, living movement with which man was previously inspired. For Manilov or Sobakevich this is impossible. They are simply made from a different material. Yes, they don’t have a past.

Chichikov also experiences “reflection of feelings” more than once, for example, when meeting a beauty, or while “driving fast,” or in thoughts about “the revelry of a broad life.”

Figuratively speaking, characters of the first and second types belong to two different geological periods. Manilov may be more “prettier” than Plyushkin, but the process in him has already been completed, the image has petrified, while in Plyushkin the last echoes of underground blows are still noticeable.

It turns out that he is not deader, but more alive than the previous characters. Therefore, he crowns the gallery of images of landowners. In the sixth chapter, placed strictly in the middle, at the focus of the poem, Gogol gives a “turning point” - both in tone and in the nature of the narrative. For the first time, the theme of a person’s mortification is translated into a time perspective, presented as the result, the result of his entire life; “And a person could stoop to such insignificance, pettiness, and disgustingness! could have changed so much! Hence the “breakthrough” into the narrative precisely in the sixth chapter of mournful, tragic motives. Where a person has not changed (or is no longer visible that he has changed), there is nothing to mourn about. But where life is gradually fading away before our eyes (so that its last reflections are still visible), there the comic gives way to pathos.

The difference between the two types of characters is confirmed, among other things, by the following circumstance. Of all the heroes of the first volume, Gogol (as far as can be judged from the surviving data) intended to take and lead through life's trials to revival - not only Chichikov, but also Plyushkin.

Interesting data for Gogol's typology of characters can be provided by its analysis from the point of view of the author's introspection. By this concept we mean objective, that is, evidence belonging to the narrator about the character’s internal experiences, his mood, thoughts, etc. In terms of the “quantity” of introspection, Plyushkin is also noticeably superior to all the characters mentioned. But Chichikov occupies a special place. Not to mention “quantity” - introspection accompanies Chichikov constantly - the complexity of its forms increases. In addition to one-time internal cues and recording of unambiguous internal movement, forms of introspection of the current internal state are widely used. Cases of “disinterested” reflections, that is, not directly related to the idea of ​​​​buying dead souls, are sharply increasing, and the subject of reflection becomes more complex and varied: about the fate of a woman (in connection with a blonde), about the inappropriateness of balls.

VI. ON THE QUESTION OF GENRE

The sense of genre novelty of “Dead Souls” is conveyed in the famous words of Leo Tolstoy: “I think that every great artist should create his own forms. If the content of works of art can be infinitely varied, then so can their form... Let’s take Gogol’s “Dead Souls.” What is this? Neither a novel nor a story. Something completely original." The statement of L. Tolstoy, which has become a textbook, goes back to the no less famous words of Gogol: “The thing that I am sitting and working on now... does not look like a story or a novel... If God helps me to complete my poem as it should, then it will will be my first decent creation” (letter to M. Pogodin dated November 28, 1836).

Let’s take the “lesser kind of epic” indicated by Gogol - the genre to which “Dead Souls” usually calls (from the “Training Book of Literature for Russian Youth”).

“In new centuries,” we read in the “Training Book of Literature...” after the description of the “epic,” “a kind of narrative works arose that constitute, as it were, a middle ground between the novel and the epic, the hero of which is, although a private and invisible person, but, nevertheless, significant in many respects for the observer of the human soul. The author leads his life through a chain of adventures and changes, in order to present at the same time a true picture of everything significant in the traits and morals of the time he took, that earthly, almost statistically captured picture of the shortcomings, abuses, vices and everything that he noticed in the era he took and a time worthy of attracting the attention of every observant contemporary, looking for living lessons for the present in the past. Such phenomena appeared from time to time among many nations.”

The similarities between the described genre and “Dead Souls” are greater than one might expect! The focus is not on the biographies of the characters, but on one main event, namely the “strange enterprise” just mentioned. In the novel, a “remarkable incident” affects the interests and requires the participation of all characters. In “Dead Souls,” Chichikov’s scam unexpectedly determined the lives of hundreds of people, becoming for some time the center of attention of the entire “city of NN,” although, of course, the degree of participation of the characters in this “incident” varies.

One of the first reviewers of Dead Souls wrote that Selifan and Petrushka are not connected with the main character by unity of interest, they act “without any relation to his business.” This is not accurate. Chichikov's companions are indifferent to his “business”. But the “business” is not indifferent to them. When the frightened officials decided to carry out an inquiry, the turn came to Chichikov’s people, but “from Petrushka they only heard the smell of residential peace, and from Selifan, who performed the state’s service...”. Among the parallels that can be drawn between Gogol’s definition of the novel and Dead Souls, the most interesting is the following. Gogol says that in the novel “every arrival of a person at the beginning... announces his participation later.” In other words, the characters, revealing themselves in the “main incident,” involuntarily prepare changes in the plot and in the fate of the main character. If not to everyone, then to many faces of “Dead Souls” this particular rule applies.

Take a closer look at the course of the poem: after five “monographic” chapters, seemingly independent of each other, each of which is “dedicated” to one landowner, the action returns to the city, almost to the state of the expositional chapter. New meetings between Chichikov and his acquaintances follow - and we suddenly see that the information received about their “character traits” simultaneously hid the impulses for the further course of action. Korobochka, having arrived in the city to find out “how much dead souls walk,” involuntarily gives the first impetus to Chichikov’s misadventures - and we remember her terrible suspicion and fear of selling herself short. Nozdryov, aggravating Chichikov’s situation, calls him at the ball a buyer of “dead souls” - and we remember Nozdryov’s extraordinary passion for annoying his neighbor, and the characterization of Nozdryov as a “historical person” is finally confirmed.

Even the detail that the officials in Chapter IX, in response to their questions, heard from Petrushka “only a smell” is a consequence of a well-known feature of the hero, mentioned as if without any purpose at the beginning of Chapter II.
Author of the article: Mann Yu.

“Dead Souls” also uses many other means to emphasize the “close connection of persons with each other.” This is the reflection of one event in different versions of the characters. In general, almost all of Chichikov’s visits from the first half of the volume in the second half are, as it were, “played out” again - with the help of versions reported by Korobochka, Manilov, Sobakevich, Nozdrev.

On the other hand, Gogol’s decisive rapprochement between the novel and drama is very indicative. It was in Gogol’s drama, but only to an even greater extent (remember “The Government Inspector”), that certain properties of the characters led to sometimes unexpected, but always internally determined changes in the plot: from the naive curiosity of the postmaster - the fact of his perusal of Khlestakov’s letter; from Osip’s prudence and cunning - the fact that Khlestakov leaves the city on time, etc.

Even the very swiftness of the action - a quality that seems to be contraindicated in the novel as a type of epic, but which Gogol persistently highlights in both genres (in the novel and in the drama) - even this swiftness is not so alien to Dead Souls. “In a word, there was talk and talk, and the whole city started talking about dead souls and the governor’s daughter, about Chichikov and dead souls... And everything that was raised. Like a whirlwind, the hitherto dormant city was thrown up like a whirlwind!”

In a word, if we ignore for a moment the novelty of the Dead Souls genre, we could see in them a “novel of characters”, as a kind of epic version of the “comedy of characters”, embodied most clearly in “The Government Inspector”. And if we remember what role the above-mentioned alogisms and dissonances play in the poem, from style to plot and composition, then we can call it “a novel of characters with a grotesque touch.”

Let's continue the comparison of "Dead Souls" with "The Inspector General". Let's take such characters as, on the one hand, Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, on the other - the lady is simply pleasant and the lady is pleasant in all respects.

And there and here - two characters, a couple. A small cell in which its own life pulsates. The relationship between the components that make up this cell is unequal: the lady was simply pleasant and “only knew how to worry” and supply the necessary information. The privilege of higher considerations remained with the lady who was pleasant in all respects.

But pairing itself is a necessary prerequisite for “creativity.” The version is born out of competition and rivalry between two individuals. This is how the version was born that Khlestakov was an auditor and that Chichikov wanted to take away the governor’s daughter.

It can be said that both couples stand in both “The Inspector General” and “Dead Souls” at the origins of myth-making. Since these versions come from the psychological properties of the characters and their relationships, they largely design the entire work as a drama or a novel of characters.

But an important difference should be noted here. In The Inspector General, Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky stand not only at the origins of myth-making, but also at the beginning of the action. Other characters accept their version about Khlestakov before meeting him, before he appears on stage. The version precedes Khlestakov, decisively shaping (together with other factors) the idea of ​​him. In “Dead Souls,” the version appears at the height of the action (in Chapter IX), after the characters saw Chichikov with their own eyes, came into contact with him, and formed their own idea of ​​him.

In “The Inspector General,” the version completely falls into the groove of general expectations and concerns, completely merges with it, and forms a single general opinion about Khlestakov the Inspector General. In “Dead Souls,” the version becomes only a private version, namely the one that was picked up by the ladies (“The men’s party... drew attention to the dead souls. The women’s party was exclusively concerned with the kidnapping of the governor’s daughter”). Along with it, dozens of other assumptions and rumors are included in the game.

All of the above leads to differences in the overall situation. In The Inspector General, the general situation is a single situation in the sense that it is closed by the idea of ​​revision and the single experience of all characters associated with it. For Gogol, this was the general principle of a dramatic work: both “Marriage” and “The Players” were built on the unity of the situation. In “Dead Souls” the general situation is moving, fluid. At first, Chichikov is united with other characters by the situation of buying and selling “dead souls”. Then, as the “significance” of his operations is discovered, this situation develops into another. But the situation in “Dead Souls” does not end there: the further circulation of rumors and rumors, the appointment of a new governor-general gradually force aspects of it to come forward that are reminiscent of the situation in Gogol’s comedy (they began to think, “Isn’t Chichikov an official sent from the general’s office?” governor to carry out a secret investigation") and the general excitement, fear and expectation of something significant arising from this situation.

The purposeful actions of the character (Chichikov) do not lead to success, in the sense that they are broken by the actions of other people who were unexpected by him. By the way, Chichikov’s failure is already anticipated by his father’s career: having provided his son with useful advice - “you can do everything and ruin everything in the world with a penny,” he himself died a poor man. “Father, apparently, was only versed in the advice of saving a penny, but he saved a little of it himself.” Let us also note that in the text of the poem, mainly in Chichikov’s speech, variations of the “old rule” appear more than once: “What kind of misfortune is this, tell me,” Chichikov complains, “every time that you just begin to achieve fruits and, so to speak, already touching with your hand... suddenly a storm, an underwater stone, crushing the whole ship into pieces.”

But in “The Inspector General,” the mayor’s cunning plan breaks down due to the unintentional nature of Khlestakov’s actions, which he does not understand. In “Dead Souls,” Chichikov’s no less well-thought-out plan runs into a whole series of moments. Firstly, on the unforeseen action of the character (Korobochka’s arrival in the city), which, although it stemmed from the character (from the “club-headedness”, fear of selling out), but which was difficult to foresee (who could have imagined that Korobochka would go to make inquiries about how much they were going dead Souls?). Secondly, to the inconsistency of Chichikov himself (he knew that it was impossible to approach Nozdryov with such a request, but still could not resist). Thirdly, on his own mistake (insulting the provincial ladies) and the resulting indignation of those around him.

Further. The defeat of the Governor in The Inspector General was complete. Chichikov's defeat in the first volume of the poem, in the events that took place in the city of NN, is not complete: he is overthrown in public opinion, but not exposed. Nobody guessed who Chichikov was and what his business was. On the one hand, this further strengthens the motives of illogicality and confusion. But on the other hand, it leaves the possibility of further similar actions of the character in other cities and towns of the Russian Empire. What is important to Gogol is not the one-time occurrence, but the duration of these actions.

Finally, let's dwell on the nature of the moments of suspense in the plot. In the first volume of Dead Souls, the outcome of the intrigue is unclear until the end of the action (will Chichikov leave safely?). This kind of ambiguity was also characteristic of The Inspector General. The level of “game” that Chichikov represents is also partly unclear. Although we understand from the very beginning that we are witnessing a scam, what its specific purpose and mechanism is becomes completely clear only in the last chapter. From this same chapter, another “secret” that was not announced at the beginning, but no less important, becomes clear: what biographical, personal reasons led Chichikov to this scam. The history of a case turns into a history of character - a transformation that in Gogol’s work puts “Dead Souls” in a special place as an epic work.

As an epic work, Dead Souls is significantly related to the genre of picaresque novel. Let's look at this problem in more detail.

M. Bakhtin showed that the emergence of the European novel occurred with a shift of interest from general life to private and everyday life and from the “public person” to the private and domestic. A public person “lives and acts in the world”; everything that happens to him is open and accessible to the observer. But everything changed with the shift of the center of gravity to privacy. This life is “by nature closed.” “Essentially, you can only spy on it and overhear it. The literature of private life is, in essence, the literature of spying and eavesdropping - “how others live.”

The type of rogue turned out to be among the most suitable for such a role, for a special production of the character. “This is the position of the rogue and the adventurer, who are not internally involved in everyday life, do not have a specific fixed place in it, and who at the same time pass through this life and are forced to study its mechanics, all its secret springs. But this is especially the case with a servant who replaces various masters. The servant is a witness of private life par excellence. They are as little ashamed of him as they are of a donkey. In this extremely insightful characterization, we note three points: 1. The trickster by his nature is suitable for changing various positions, for passing through various states that provide him with the role of a cross-cutting hero. 2. The rogue, in his psychology, as well as his everyday and, one might say, professional attitude, is closest to the intimate, hidden, shadow sides of private life; he is forced to be not only their witness and observer, but also an inquisitive researcher. 3. The rogue enters into the private and hidden life of others in the position of a “third” and (especially if he is in the role of a servant) - a lower being who does not need to be embarrassed, and, therefore, the veils of home life are revealed to him without much effort on his part and effort. All these moments were subsequently refracted, albeit in different ways, in the situation of the emergence of the Russian novel.

Thus, the “great work” that Gogol began to write at Pushkin’s prompting was formed, on the one hand, precisely as a novel. We say “on the one hand,” since Gogol gradually associated additional genre and ideological aspirations with “Dead Souls” that exceeded the requirements of the novel.

As the central character, Chichikov had all the advantages of a through-and-through hero of a picaresque novel.

Yu. Stridter summarizes the difference between a picaresque novel and a knightly one in the following points: 1. The central figure is not the hero, but the antihero. 2. “A series of knightly adventures has been replaced by a series of pranks.” 3. “If the cynical chivalric romance begins in médias res, in order to then, using a complex technique of insertions (Schachteltechnik)], make up for the background stories of individual characters, then the picaresque romance begins with the birth of the hero and then linearly strings one episode onto another.” 4. “These episodes no longer aim to provide proof of knightly virtues and heroic readiness for self-sacrifice, but document the cunning of a rogue in a deceiving and deceived world. And this world is no longer a fairy-tale world, full of good and evil fairy-tale creatures, but the modern surrounding world, in front of which the rogue holds a satirical mirror." Most of these conclusions, with certain adjustments, are also applicable to "Dead Souls." Only point three is inapplicable "Dead Souls" (their first volume) just began médias in res (with Chichikov's scam in the city of NN), in order to then, using a complex technique of digressions, to catch up with the biographies of the main characters (primarily Chichikov).This is due to the fact that Gogol departed from the technique of the old novel (not only picaresque, but also morally descriptive, travel novel, etc.), rounding out the action and introducing into it the principles of dramatic organization of the whole. The compositional basis of the picaresque novel is an almost unlimited possibility for the multiplication and accumulation of episodes. “The Dead” souls", on the contrary, are conceived on the consistent and complete disclosure of the central character. In Nadezhdin's language, Chichikov is not an "arbitrarily invented axis", but an "essential center" of everything that happens in the work.

Associated with this is a change in the very nature of the character’s activities and activities. Let us note: the entry of Gogol’s hero into various spheres of life is not traditionally determined by his position as a servant. The change is not unimportant: it characterizes the modernity of the situation.

This is in Chichikov’s prehistory. In the main action of the first volume (as well as the subsequent one) - Chichikov’s entry into various spheres of life is carried out on the basis of a scam with dead souls.

The enterprise with the acquisition of revision souls made it possible to approach the characters from the public social side, which was characteristic specifically for feudal Russia. But at the same time, it was also the domestic, economic side: the sphere of conducting business, the owner’s (or non-owner’s) attitude towards them, the sphere of the home budget, family prosperity, etc. Consequently, Chichikov’s enterprise made it possible to approach the characters from the everyday, family-personal, private, even ambitious and prestigious (the number of souls is adequate to the measure of public respect and self-esteem). With his wandering hero, Gogol opened up the everyday sphere no worse than the author of picaresque novels. True, Chichikov enters the lives of other characters not so much as a “third”, but as a “second”, that is, as a direct partner in a transaction. From the second half of the volume - in relation to the city, to the officials - Chichikov’s position changes: he is no longer a partner, but a person of the highest order (albeit imaginary, not real), a “millionaire” who forces you to look up to yourself. But in both cases - as a partner and as a “millionaire” - he actualizes the traditional role of an intermediary: this is no longer so much the role of an observer, but rather a catalyst of events, accelerating the self-disclosure of various spheres of life.

But the situation in “Dead Souls” is not only modern, but, as we have already said, it is also complicated and incorrect. Chichikov buys up dead audit souls, and this moment has multiple consequences. We have just mentioned one of them: the invalid, “illusory” nature of the rise of Chichikov, the “millionaire” (similar to the invalid, “illusory” position of Khlestakov as an auditor). The incorrectness of the situation is also reflected in the nature of the disclosure of various spheres of life. It can be noted that in the sense of intimate secrets, the hidden side of life, the poem (at least its first volume) communicates much less than a traditional picaresque novel. This depends, of course, not only on the psychological texture of such characters as Manilov, Korobochka, etc., but also on the attitude of the through-and-through hero Chichikov (and, accordingly, the attitude of the entire work). Chichikov is not interested in the hidden side of life, but in something more: its opposite - “death”. A catcher of dead souls, a tracker of death, Chichikov sharpens his attention to the forbidden to a grotesque climax. Already in the very first days of Chichikov in the city of NN, the visitor “asked carefully about the state of the region: were there any diseases in their province, epidemic fevers, some kind of killer fevers, smallpox and the like, and everything was so detailed and with such accuracy that showed more than mere curiosity."

The complicated situation of the poem gave rise to the semantics of the transition of the direct antithesis “alive - dead” into a figurative and symbolic one, the problem of the death and resurrection of the human soul - in a word, the entire complex philosophical meaning of the work. The multi-tiered meaning, in turn, opened up the possibility of moving from one layer to another, deeper one - from the social and everyday conflict of a certain time and place to layers that are less deterministic, more philosophical, which, as is known, is the source of the enduring artistic impact of the work. For the modern generation of readers, for example, the general philosophical levels of the work are much more significant and noticeable than the levels of the first decades of the 19th century.

Finally, another departure of Dead Souls from the tradition of the picaresque novel. Gogol's work is told from the perspective not of the central character, the rogue, but of the narrator. From the very beginning, this gives the work not only a different, broader outlook, but also a different manner of narration. Let us dwell on the latter, turning to another novel tradition.

In the drafts of the poem, writers chosen by the author as exemplary are mentioned. The author loves to look “at the portraits of Shakespeare, Ariost, Fielding, Cervantes, Pushkin hanging in front of him on the wall, reflecting nature as it was, and not as some would like it to be.” In the European development of the novel, Fielding occupies a key position as the founder of the autorial novel. This is a novel with a personal narrator, but not embodied in a specific character and having no direct contact with the characters of the work; in a word - a narrator, definitely distanced from the depicted world. All these characteristics are embodied in The Story of Tom Jones, Foundling. “Events are told retrospectively, from a point after they have ended. Flashback provides the opportunity to attach commentary to events from the narrator's present-day perspective.

What is the attitude towards these traditions of the narrative style of Dead Souls?

In one of the initial chapters (in II), the narrator, in the spirit of Fielding, calls himself a “historian”: “It would be a great reproach to the historian of the proposed events if he failed to say that pleasure overcame the guest...”, etc. At the same time the author also appears in the guise of a writer-creator. the novel appears simultaneously as something that carries within itself its own order, its own law of organization, and as something formed before our eyes by the active will of the artist. Let's take a closer look at how one and the other trend is realized.

It is possible to identify a large group of signals in the novel that indicate the author’s witness position. The author is a mysterious spy, invisibly accompanying his characters. Moreover, in its function of storytelling it supposedly depends on the objective course of events and must strictly take into account the latter. This is the technique of a pause in events, into which the author must fit his deviation from the topic. “Although the time during which they (Chichikov and Manilov) will pass through the entryway, the front hall and the dining room is somewhat short, we will try to see if we have time to somehow use it and say something about the owner of the house.” At the same time, the very moment of retreat from the main course of events is accurately recorded, as well as the moment of returning to it: “... it’s time for me to return to our heroes, who have been standing for several minutes in front of the living room doors...”

In addition to the pause device, there are many other signs scattered throughout the narrative that highlight the author’s witness position. For example, the moment from which the author begins to follow the hero is recorded: “At once and suddenly we will plunge into life ... and see what Chichikov is doing.” “But our friend Chichikov also felt at that time dreams that were not entirely prosaic. Let's see how he felt."

The sovereignty of the subject of the image is emphasized in every possible way. The author, it turns out, cannot change anything in what is being told (“unfortunately, everything happened exactly as it is told...”); he is not even free to replace one word of the character with another, more consistent with the taste of the readers (“I’m sorry! It seems that a word that was noticed on the street has escaped from the lips of our hero. What can we do?..”). Some events are as much a surprise for him as they are for the characters (“So the blonde, too, suddenly appeared in our story in a completely unexpected way and disappeared in the same way.” If “in the story” does that mean unexpected for the author as well?).

Heroes exist independently of the work. Chichikov “looked for (smuggling) in wheels, drawbars, horse ears, and God knows in what places, where no author would ever think of going…”. In other words, the character’s experience is in some sense greater than the author’s experience, and also greater than what comes into the poem’s field of view. Chichikov leads an independent life, and only part of it is presented to the reader’s attention. Hence the conclusion follows: it is not the author who leads the character, but the character who leads the author. For “if this thought had not occurred to Chichikov, this poem would not have been born.” Therefore, the choice of other characters is Chichikov’s business.

Let us pay attention to one more place in Chichikov’s biography. “The reader, without any doubt, has heard the so often repeated story about the witty journey of Spanish sheep... This incident happened precisely when Chichikov was serving at customs.” Here the reference to an allegedly real high-profile crime (in the terms of our time, almost a “crime of the century”) comes into its own (generally uncharacteristic of “Dead Souls”), with an appeal to the reader’s memory, which should confirm (and without a shadow irony) the existence of Chichikov as a real person.

In relation to the two trends (the work as a finished, independent work and as a work of art, created by the author), all the cases described above occupy an ambiguous position. The ability to withstand the “pause technique”, to adapt to its chronological segment, to record the moment of addressing a character, etc. - all this simultaneously highlights the sovereignty of the subject of the image and characterizes the creative process from the subjective side. But still, the leading principle in the described techniques is the first, that is, the sovereignty of the subject of the image. Reality appears on this plane as if it carries within itself its own law of organization, not so much embodied by the author as presented to him. The author is more of a “historian” than a creator. But, on the other hand, “Dead Souls” offers many such signs and moments that highlight the role of the author as a creator. First of all, these are lyrical digressions, which in the historical and literary sense pick up the tradition of Fielding’s digressions. Although Gogol’s digressions are never organized into independent chapters, they are quite extensive, and most importantly, they reveal the same two directions as in Fielding: on what is told and on the very function of storytelling. Examples of the first are discussions about the typicality of Korobochka or Nozdryov; about the deadening breath of “the old age that lies ahead”; about the changes experienced by the “author” since his “youth”; etc. Examples of the second - about the difficulty of depicting people like Manilov; about the effectiveness of Nozdryov as an object of the artist’s depiction, etc. A number of digressions relate simultaneously to both the first and to the second type (for example, about the “happy” and unrecognized writer - at the beginning of Chapter VII).

Let us note one more technique - the supposedly emphasized arbitrary (that is, established by the author in the course of the story) distribution of material into chapters. In Fielding you come across this all the time: “...since this subject is very important, we will present it in the next chapter,” etc. In “Dead Souls,” the noted technique occurs only once, but with a similar function: “This conversation ... But it’s better to have this conversation in the next chapter.”

All the noted techniques are opposed to the first group of techniques, since they shift the emphasis from the sovereignty of the object, the image, to the artistic will, to the creative process, sometimes with its technical aspects; The work is created, created, and remains in a state of emergence before the reader’s eyes.

The contradiction between both groups of techniques gives rise to a wide range of meanings, stylistic and emotional interruptions. Thanks to this, almost every technique seems to be shrouded in a haze of irony, oscillating between opposite semantic planes. Let's show this in naming characters.

At the beginning of Chapter IX, the author asks the question “how to name both ladies to him in such a way that they will not be angry with him again, as they were angry of old.” And having weighed various possibilities, expressing various concerns, the “author” decides: “... to avoid all this, we will call the lady... as she was called almost unanimously in the city of N, namely, a lady pleasant in all respects.” By naming the characters at his own discretion, the author demonstrates their artistic, conventional nature, their “fictionality.” But Gogol uses the intended opportunity, gives the character a name, but one that he supposedly already has in reality. The naming technique oscillates between the semantic planes of “composed” and “genuine”.

The same is the situation in numerous cases that can be subsumed under the technique of evasion - the author’s evasion from explanation, from continuation of the topic, etc. Autoro refuses to say what Selifan was thinking, scratching his head: “God knows, you won’t guess. Scratching your head means a lot of different things to the Russian people.” The technique of silence, without giving a final answer about its own motives, ironically oscillates between different semantic planes.

Since Dead Souls was constructed consistently and autorially, it continued the narrative traditions of Fielding's novel epic. The significance of Dead Souls is that they decisively contributed to the creation of the Russian autorial novel. In “Eugene Onegin” 2 (as later in “A Hero of Our Time”) the author’s presence is still combined with the author’s participation in the action; the author enters into various relationships with the characters, he “knows” them personally, he “met” them, etc. In “Dead Souls” the narrative “situation” is dramatically changed: the “author” is not a participant in the events, does not enter into relationships with the characters (the fact that he is their invisible spy, “companion” is a phenomenon of a different order, which does not lead to the emergence of plot connections and contacts between both sides).

Dead Souls, compared to the picaresque novel, not only reveals a broader perspective (including the epic scope of national, national life, unimaginable from the perspective of the rogue's observation), but changes the way private life is revealed. Although the character “leads” the “author,” it is primarily the “author” who observes, “overhears,” and “spies on” this life, which creates an additional constructive contradiction both in the narrative and in the general setting of the work.

It should be noted, however, that already in the first volume some of its narrative principles were, as it were, aimed and tried on for the subsequent volumes. This applies to distancing techniques.

The action of the first volume is generally considered by the author as already accomplished. Already at the end of Chapter I, a hint is given of a “passage”, “which the reader will soon learn about” and which “has led almost the entire city into modern bewilderment.” In other words, the author already knows everything that happened; the observation point is located after the end of the events, which corresponds to the accepted distance of the autorial “situation”

But the author's knowledge is limited only to the events of the first volume. In relation to subsequent volumes, the author's position is different. The author anticipates and guesses a lot. But it is discerned as a mystery that has not yet been spoken out (“And another mystery, why this image appeared in the poem that is now being born”), a definition that has not come true. The author's capabilities are still great, but there is something that exceeds his powers as the demiurge of the artistic world. This higher power predetermines the path of the characters and, accordingly, the creation of the work, and the author must be its sensitive echo and organ.

Gogol called “Dead Souls” a poem, placing emphasis on this word. On the famous cover of the first edition, based on a drawing by Gogol, the word “poem” dominates both the title and the author’s surname. Huge light letters on a black background, placed in the center of the sheet, are ready, as Gogol would say, to “jump into your eyes.”

The word “poem” in Gogol’s time meant various types of works. The poem was called the “Iliad” and “Odyssey” - a genre that Gogol considered irrecoverable in the post-Homeric era. A poem was a romantic work of the Byronian or Pushkin type. Finally, the word “poem” evoked associations with Dante’s great work. This tradition had special meaning for the author of Dead Souls.

In the consciousness of Russian society, the “Divine Comedy” existed at that time precisely as a poem (the name “sacred poem” is also used by Dante towards the end of the work). Belinsky called the “Divine Comedy” a poem, and A. Merzlyakov before him.

The similarity of the two “poems”, noticed by contemporaries (Herzen, Vyazemsky), makes it possible to more clearly imagine the genre organization of “Dead Souls”. It is only necessary not to lose sight of the fact that Gogol transformed the Dantean tradition and included it in a new whole.

Dante's companion through hell and purgatory was Virgil. The person who “served” Chichikov was an official who “made sacrifices to Themis with such zeal that both sleeves burst at the elbows and the lining had long been peeling off, for which he at one time received a collegiate registrar...”. Virgil leaves Dante in earthly Paradise when Beatrice appears before ascending to Heavenly Paradise (where his path is prohibited as a pagan).

Chichikov’s guide leaves him on the threshold of another “Paradise” - the room where the chairman sits: “In this place, the new Virgil felt such reverence that he did not dare to put his foot there and turned back, showing his back, wiped like matting, with something stuck somewhere. then a chicken feather." In the depiction of the highest sphere of Paradise, the Empyrean, in the contemplation of the deity, Dante’s symbolism of light, the radiance of circles reflecting each other, plays a huge role. In the room where Chichikov entered, “in front of the table, behind a mirror and two thick books, the chairman sat alone, like the sun.” The effect is created by the interaction of the direct and figurative meaning of the word: a mirror is an object, a special prism with decrees written on its edges; at the same time, the latter seem to reflect the light of truth (cf. the mention of the sun), and are its mirror.

The mentioned scene is nothing more than one cell of the narrative fabric of Gogol’s work. But in this cell the general laws of its structure are visible. The reminiscence from Dante is, of course, presented ironically. This is the kind of “deity” and these are the passions that govern the life of modern man! - says Gogol.

It should be noted that other mythological and literary reminiscences are also ironically presented in Dead Souls. It is said of the same chairman that he could lengthen and shorten the hours of presence, “like the ancient Zeus of Homer, who lengthened the days and sent swift nights”; This comparison leads, by the way, to the well-known image of “lightweight astronomy” by Saltykov-Shchedrin, “by virtue of which the sun rises and sets at the discretion of the police officers.” According to the simply pleasant lady’s version, Chichikov came to Korobochka as the hero of a popular novel by Christian Vulpius. All these examples again serve as an ironic contrast. But at the same time, they are also signs of the genre nature of the poem, recalling that it is more complex than any tradition that feeds it: the picaresque novel, the travel novel, etc.
Author of the article: Mann Yu.

Shevyrev drew attention to the similarity of comparisons in Gogol and Dante, writing that the author of The Divine Comedy, as “one of the poets of the new world, comprehended all the simplicity of Homeric comparison and returned to it round fullness and finality...”. But at the same time, Shevyrev missed such a “trifle” as the irony of Gogol’s comparisons. Shevyrev quite seriously, without any reservations, compared the comparison of black tailcoats and flies “on white shining refined sugar” (from Chapter I of “Dead Souls”) with Dante’s description of souls. Objecting to Shevyrev, Belinsky wrote: “If Homer compares Ajax, pressed in battle by the Trojans, with a donkey, he compares him innocently, without any humor, as he would compare him with a lion... Gogol, on the contrary, compares, for example, dandies hanging around beauties, with flies flying on sugar, everything is thoroughly imbued with humor.”

But in this case, as it might seem to Gogol’s readers, the very definition of the genre—the poem—was at risk.

On the one hand, the critic, clearly having the scale of Dante’s poem in the subject, writes that the author of “Dead Souls” “will let down the whole world, from the stars to the underworld of the Earth.” On the other hand, concluding the analysis, he writes: “But if you look at the comic humor that predominates in the content of the first part, then involuntarily, because of the word: poem, a deep, significant irony will appear, and you will say internally: shouldn’t we add to the title: poem of our time?

“A Poem of Our Time” - this, of course, is suggested by the title of Lermontov’s novel, which shortly before became known to the reader. “Perhaps some readers will want to know my opinion about the character of Pechorin? — My answer is the title of this book. “Yes, this is evil irony!” they will say. “I don’t know.”

The refusal to give an exact decoding of the name is an admission of complexity that does not allow for a flat dilemma: either - or. The title formula combines different, at a superficial glance, mutually exclusive meanings.

Indeed, along with an ironic rethinking of the Dantean tradition, we see that in Dead Souls this tradition is taken quite seriously. Quite seriously, but in a Gogolian way. In other words, it is also subordinated to a new structural and semantic whole.

Usually, in connection with the Dantean tradition, they only point out that the poem was supposed to consist of three parts (by analogy with “Hell”, “Purgatory” and “Paradise”). But within this similarity there are other interesting analogies.

Above, we had the opportunity to challenge the widespread opinion that the characters in the first volume follow in order of increasing “mortality” (they say, each subsequent one is “more dead than the previous one”). But if not “increasing deadness,” then is there any other principle for the arrangement of characters in the first volume?

Let us first pay attention to the fact that in Dante’s first part of the poem the characters follow in order of increasing guilt (which is also the principle of the plot development, that is, the meeting of Dante and his companion with the inhabitants of Hell). At the same time, sin is measured “not so much by action as by intentions. Therefore, treachery and deceit are worse than intemperance and violence, and cold-blooded, premeditated betrayal is worse than treachery.” In Gogol, in accordance with the general tone of the first volume of the poem, such vices and crimes as murder, betrayal, apostasy are generally excluded (“My heroes are not villains at all...”). But the ethical principle of arranging characters within certain limits is preserved.

The fact that Manilov opens a gallery for landowners receives, from this point of view, an additional ethical justification. In Dante, on the eve of Hell there are those who have done neither good nor evil. The starting point of the journey through Hell is impersonality and, in this sense, deadness. “Character here lies in the complete absence of it. In this womb of the human race there is neither sin nor virtue, for there is no active force.” But let us remember again the description of the kind of people to which “Manilov should also join”: “...People are so-so, neither this nor that, neither in the city of Bogdan, nor in the village of Selifan...”. The characters following Manilov have their own “passion”, their own “enthusiasm”, although it is difficult to talk about a definite and progressive increase in the conscious element in them. But now, getting to know Plyushkin, we for the first time clearly see that he could have been a different person.

In the preface to the second edition of the poem, Gogol specifically asks the reader to monitor whether “the same thing is sometimes repeated in the highest circle...”. Drawing provincial, provincial life, Gogol opens windows into metropolitan, “higher” life. “The Tale of Captain Kopeikin” is such a window into the world of capital offices, nobles, and the highest government hierarchy, although its role in the poem is not limited to this.

Gogol wrote that in the second volume “the characters are more significant than before” (letter to K. Markov, December 1849). The increase in “significance” occurred (as far as can be judged from the surviving chapters) due to the strengthening of conscious elements in the characters and, in connection with this, an increase in “guilt”.

The second volume, as we know, was supposed to become a transition to the third, primarily in relation to the evolution of the main character. This should hardly be understood in the sense that Chichikov’s misdeeds in the second volume are easier than in the first (rather the opposite). But now the voice of conscience sounds stronger in Chichikov, the author more clearly points out the possibility of a different path. The revival itself should have taken place already in the third volume, as we know from the memoirs of A. M. Bukharev. From another document - Gogol’s letter to I.M. Yazykov, already mentioned above - it is known that repentance should have come to Plyushkin as well. If this were to come true, we would have before us the final stage of the “history of the soul” of modern Russian man—its initiation into the truth. Another question is how successful and artistically feasible this plan was. However, no matter how problematic the outcome of Gogol’s plan, there is no doubt that its wide scale already from the very beginning set the tone of the work and, in particular, dictated its very genre definition - a poem.

Gogol's new understanding of universality could be influenced not only by the Dantean tradition, but also by modern philosophical thinking, to which Gogol was quite close. Even in “Arabesques,” Gogol wrote about the universality of historical description, calling it, by the way, a “poem.” And the very division of the poem into three parts could be supported by the modern philosophical tradition.

The former Gogolian universality, based on the similarity of the small to the large, of one cell to the whole, was supplemented by new principles: the similarity of the external to the internal and - in connection with this - the spatial distribution of the scale of the poem, its tripartite division, which, in turn, receives a deep philosophical meaning.

But to the extent that the writer obeyed the new principles of universality, he departed from the genre of the work, initially conceived as a novel (in Gogol’s understanding). The question remains open to what extent Gogol's characterization of the novel would be applicable to each subsequent volume. If in relation to the first volume this degree was quite high, then from the surviving chapters of the second volume one can see how the characters deviate more and more from the main action, how side plot lines arise.

Actually, we are faced with a violation of the “model” of the novel only in its Gogolian understanding, recorded in the “Training Book...” understanding. But this same process at the same time meant the development of those features of plotting and characterization that today are habitually associated with the novel. Therefore, we can say that the development of “Dead Souls” consisted both in moving away from the genre of the novel (in Gogol’s understanding of it), and in approaching the type of novel of the new time, although Gogol’s work did not and, apparently, should never have coincided with the latter . The interaction of the novelistic tradition with other traditions, including Dante's poem, largely determined the originality of Gogol's plan, removing it - in terms of genre - from any known model.

“Dead Souls” is, in a certain sense, an attempt at an epic resolution of the deep dynamic tendencies of Gogol’s poetics. On the one hand, the poem expands the spatial scale to an all-Russian one, differentiating the general situation into a number of particular, interconnected ones, introducing the beginning of development into the characterology of the characters (which at the same time led to their polarization - as characters of two types), neutralizing moments of “fear” and general shock and at the same time, strengthening the moments of “guilt” and personal freedom of the characters, which formed the prospect of correction and revival of the main character, etc. But, on the other hand, the poem not only did not cancel, but in a certain sense strengthened the moments of alogism as in its general “mirage intrigue” both in composition and in its stylistic sphere, where the features of non-fantastic fiction, grotesque objectification, death, etc. reached, perhaps, the highest degree of development in Gogol’s work.

Today, reading Soviet literary texts, even the seemingly best ones, makes a rather strange impression on me, namely: these texts are perceived by me as written by Martians, for whom the most important and significant is that which today interests no one as worthy of attention. reason for its uselessness.

This happened because ideology, for us - Soviet ideology, has ceased to be not only a determining, but even a secondary factor in modern social life, although it still continues its life in academies, universities and other noticeable forms in a hidden and not so hidden form. institutions lagging behind the social movement.

As a modern person, I am not interested in the ideas of the progressive historical role of the proletariat, and it is these ideas that lie at the basis of the Soviet literary tradition; today this idea is not only thought of, it even sounds absurd, and our perception of Russian literature, including the perception of N.V. Gogol, is essentially based on this absurd idea.

That is why “The Poetics of Gogol” by Yuri Mann is perceived by me as a book written by a person who has incredibly strange, pretentious, absurd, Martian ideas about life, radically different from both my ideas about life and, I think, from the ideas of N .V.Gogol.

Reading “The Poetics of Gogol” by Yuri Mann, who was universally considered before and continues - in academic circles - to this day to be considered the leading Russian Gogol scholar, gives me a feeling of awkwardness caused by both the general, too cloying style of his perception of Gogol, and the strangeness of the very idea of ​​this books.

Yuri Mann tries to apply the provisions and results developed by Bakhtin for the analysis of carnival culture, and only in some of its forms that appeared in Western culture, to study the literary work of N.V. Gogol; that is, Yuri Mann set himself the task of considering Gogol’s literary works through the prism of “carnivalism.”

At first glance, it seems that this is permissible, especially if such research was blessed by Bakhtin, but only if one condition, decisive in the given circumstances, is met: the principles of carnivalism can only be applied to the study of the content of N.V. Gogol’s works that correspond or at least partially correspond the phenomenon of carnivalism, for example, to the analysis of descriptions of fairs, weddings, carols, etc., which was self-evident for Bakhtin. But not for Yu. Mann.

That is, in order to adequately, in accordance with the subject - the work of N.V. Gogol, conduct this research, it is necessary to take into account the obvious fact that the principles of carnivalism can only be applied to a rather limited content of his works, but in no case to all their contents.

Otherwise, with equal success, one can study the content of N.V. Gogol’s literary works by correlating their content with the Kursk train schedule or with Buryat Lamaism.

As soon as the researcher applies the method of identifying the features of carnivalism in the content of Gogol’s stories, comedies or poems that have nothing to do with carnivalism, for example, the episode with Captain Kopeikin, “Notes of a Madman” and much more, the researcher abandons the basis of his research and moves, perhaps imperceptibly to myself, but definitely noticeably to me, into the realm of imagination, guesses, hypotheses.

Moreover, if we strictly consider the possibility of correlating carnivalism and the content of N.V. Gogol’s works, which corresponds to carnivalism, then it is necessary to conclude that even such a limited correlation is impossible, because carnivalism as an element of social life already in the Middle Ages, and even more so in modern times, was an archaic cultural phenomenon, so for its adequate study it is necessary to consider it in relation to the ancient forms that gave rise to it.

After such a correlation of carnivalism with the antiquity that gave birth to it, the correlation of carnivalism with the work of N.V. Gogol loses all meaning, because it is much more effective and objective to study the correlation of his work with ancient culture as a whole, in which carnivalism was one of the essential elements, and not with its modified rudiment in modern times.

Justifying the legitimacy of his research, Yu. Mann writes: “the carnival principle embodies a special type of folk laughter culture, which has had a strong influence on art and fiction for many centuries. The logical question is how the work of Gogol, separated from the “luminary of the folk choir” [Rabelais] by three centuries and representing the most characteristic comic writer of modern times, relates to the carnival beginning.”

If carnivalism is a special type of folk laughter culture, then it would be more logical to correlate the work of N.V. Gogol precisely with this folk laughter culture, that is, with Russian culture, and not with just its type - carnivalism, moreover, considered in the indistinguishability of its Western and Russian modifications, which does not allow us to characterize Gogol’s work as a Russian writer at all.

In the same way, it is incorrect to study his work in isolation from his contemporary culture, directly comparing it with a rudiment of ancient culture, and even in its Western modification, which further confuses an already hopeless matter.

That is, it is possible to consider the works of N.V. Gogol only in the integrity of contemporary Russian culture, or in the integrity of the past, that is, medieval, but also Russian culture, subject to the introduction of an appropriate correction of the methodology.

If a researcher takes a preserved, especially in a transformed form, element of ancient culture - carnivalism, and directly compares it with the entire integrity of modernity, in which this element has been preserved and functions, then he will inevitably be forced to establish exclusively external , visible, surface connections.

This is exactly what happened to Yuri Mann, who looked directly at the entire content of N.V. Gogol’s work through the prism of carnivalism; It is not difficult, but very tedious, to search for that negligible content of Mann’s book that will make sense, namely: to correlate with Gogol’s work in that extremely limited scope, which has already been mentioned above, only those principles of carnivalism are possible, in which they are embodied without distortion its actual, ancient cultural foundations; there are, of course, very few of them, and besides, they still need to be specifically identified, which overloads an already overloaded study.

Yu. Mann points out: “we can already be a priori sure that we will find in it [Gogol’s work] many elements of carnivalism.”

With this a priori approach, carnivalism can be found in any television program that contains something funny or sad, high or low, etc.

If you essentially look at the results of the literary work carried out by Yu. Mann in “The Poetics of Gogol”, then in terms of content in the vast majority of cases these results will boil down to the following: something in the works of N.V. Gogol corresponds to carnivalism, and something does not match.

You read Y. Mann and think: why? Why should a Russian writer be combed under the comb of carnivalism of Western culture? especially if we take into account the fact that N.V. Gogol himself definitely, persistently and unequivocally separated his work from the matrices of other cultures and insisted that his work belonged specifically to Russian culture.

One more thing surprises me: why do Russian Gogol scholars and literary critics generally treat N.V. Gogol’s explanations of his literary work so disdainfully? Where does this contempt come from? They themselves wrote nothing except these now useless books, unnecessary because, as it turned out, these books are not about Gogol at all, but about something and for something else: autocracy, communist parties and the like, of which only dust remains or will soon remain on the road.

What can Yuri Mann’s analysis of the description of Pulcheria Ivanovna’s funeral give us, friends, from the point of view of the top and bottom of carnivalism? sadness? full understanding and experience of oneself as a Russian? - in no case; department? academic degree? fee? - yes to some, but not to us. For us, nothing but regret for the lost time and surprise at the ingenuity of the idle human mind, which eagerly rushed to measure the corpse of a man with a protractor in search of the party parameters of his soul.

However, perhaps our reader doesn’t care at all, he will take all our books about N.V. Gogol and begin to reason: “yeah, Zolotussky’s Gogol is intoxicated with religion and teaching, and is also clearly not indifferent to old women, Mann’s Gogol is fantastic without a bearer of fantasticness, But at Yafarov’s he boldly drowns cats, well, that’s it!”

And N.V. Gogol will remain somewhere far away, like an excuse, like chewing gum stuck to a shoe, in relation to which everyone invents their own way of liberation, or like a step unnoticed by you, having already tripped over it, only then do you notice the warning you inscription.

We, like Kharms’ heroes, still stumble “over Pushkin and Gogol.”

How can I make sure that the reader sees, recognizes, guesses N.V. Gogol himself, and not me with Zolotussky and Mann? how to make him be surprised, admire Gogol’s life, or simply sympathize with it? How to distract him from delving into details, from dismantling the various opinions of a multitude of specialists, how to convey to him the living word of the great Russian writer?

N.V. Gogol’s word is amazingly simple, artless, naive, filled with only one thing - his own living experience, there is nothing else in it, but this is already enough, this is already a lot, because his living word is complete, filled with the greatness and triumph of life itself , and this is quite enough and this will be enough for everyone who takes no matter how much!

To hear N.V. Gogol in his fullness, in his perfection, you need to do a very simple thing, which for some is the most difficult thing in the world, but not for a Russian - you need to forget yourself about him, you need to fall into N.’s living sleep. V. Gogol, they need to doze off, just as each of us Russians does when we forget about something.

By the way, then it will turn out that the Belinsky, Zolotussky, Manna and Yafarovskys are completely unnecessary in order to live Russian literature.

Our literary criticism is still completely dependent on the idea that inspiration, creative inspiration is a force independent of man, the idea that V.G. Belinsky loved so much, or more precisely, to which the critic clung so much, since it is precisely this idea about the dual nature of the writer and creativity allowed him, firstly, not to pay due attention to his own, personal perceptions and experiences generated by the reading process, and, secondly, to highlight in the writer’s work that content that is the result of inspiration, and distinguish it from the content that he wrote without inspiration.

For example, the delight or sadness that reading “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” or “Old World Landowners” produced in him, V.G. Belinsky attributed precisely to the action of inspiration that visited the writer, which, of course, has some basis in Gogol, but yet it is almost completely autonomous, independent, just as divine grace descending on sinful man is autonomous and independent.

That is, Belinsky, following dogmatic Orthodoxy, believed that the creative inspiration that takes possession of the artist transforms him in such a way that during the period of inspiration he ceases to be himself and, accordingly, when analyzing his work, the artist’s personality can only be involved as a secondary element.

How absurd!
What contempt for man!
What incredible blindness!
What insane vanity!

V.G. Belinsky and the literary criticism that follows him believe that without grace, without inspiration, a person is a worm, nothing, zero.

Is Gogol the man interesting apart from his inspiration (which, moreover, is not even his at all)? - secretly, and sometimes openly, like Veresaev, who perceived Gogol as a rather limited person, domestic critics and Gogol scholars ask themselves and answer themselves: no, he’s not interesting.

Because Gogol’s origin is neither this nor that, his education is no better, his external merits and personal qualities are unprepossessing, his aspirations are strange, his actions are pretentious and incomprehensible, his claims are either incredible or none, the same thing with conceit and suspiciousness ; He even died strangely, either from illness, or from excessive suspiciousness, or from having written himself off, but, most likely, from all of this combined.

As a result of such an attitude towards the man-Gogol, his personal history, his biography turns into the story of some maniac obsessed with his creativity or his faith; Most likely, this image of the artist is most in demand in Rus' by the authorities and the wives of academicians and professors.

If something is wrong, if something in the artist’s work or in his life does not fit into the desired flow, it can easily and, most importantly, quite rightly be attributed to his complex character, hopelessly spoiled by his flighty disposition inspiration, which, “as usual from time immemorial” (Belin’s favorite), comes and goes from the artist (writer) whenever he wants, just like a Russian official organizing an audit of the departments subordinate to him.

It is for these reasons, which in principle are not directly related to literary criticism, that Russian criticism was left without Gogol the man, but instead, as it reassured and justified itself, not at all without Gogol the inspiration.

Rolling up their sleeves, our specialists began to dissect the works of N.V. Gogol as the result of inspiration, or more precisely, as the result of an “alloy” (favorite Zolotus) of inspiration and man. Domestic literary criticism not only turned away from Gogol the man and turned to Gogol the inspiration, it, with the same “dialectical” consistency, continued its surgical operation on the works of N.V. Gogol!

First, man and creativity were separated, then creativity itself was divided by dialectical Marxists into creativity itself, that is, something inspired, and human, that is, weak, low, even incomprehensible, suspicious, dark, in general, the devil knows what!

For example, for Gogol scholars, N.V. Gogol’s first story, “Sorochinskaya Fair,” in its main content was the result of inspiration, but its ending was “unexpected,” “retreating,” “contrary,” “suspicious” (party people They are particularly suspicious; they see someone’s machinations everywhere).

For example, Yuri Mann writes: “The strange, still clearly incomprehensible ending of the Sorochinskaya Fair... However, picking up the main motive of the fair scene, the ending then sharply dissonates with it. The image of dancing old ladies is the first strange thing of the final scene. What we see is not so much old age dancing as it is imitating dancing. A moment of puppetry, lifeless execution of the prescribed will is introduced into her behavior. One strangeness of the ending is followed by another. In Gogol's story, an outside point of view is introduced - the narrator (who has not yet participated in the story or participated in a very limited way). This is his interested, admiring and at the same time detached look at folk fun, unity, and agreement. This is his non-participation in the general action, resulting in the sad sigh of the “left behind.”

Y. Mann believes that N.V. Gogol is watching the wedding from the side and is sad that he is separated from what the “people’s collective” is doing (Mann’s favorite).

“Thus, we can state two directions in which there is a departure from the universality and integrity of folk action. One is in the direction of a mechanical imitation of life, foreshadowing moments of deadness, automatism, and mortification that were so significant for the mature Gogol - the whole complex of motifs in “Dead Souls.”

Here one could ask Mann: are the heroes of Dead Souls imitating a folk act? Chichikov lifelessly, automatically buys up dead souls, when it should be bought up with inspiration, the way modern “people's collectives” of domestic officials wield dead souls?

“The other direction is towards some kind of deep, languishing and suffering spirituality.”

This is where the “poetics” lies: in the suffering of “superfluous people”, the restlessness of the Russian people, cut off from the people’s collective!

“In the ecstasy of mass action, there is a free merging of still undifferentiated individual wills and worldviews, in relation to which, say, the consciousness of the narrator in the finale of the Sorochinskaya Fair (“the bored one left behind”!) represents a different stage.”

I can’t say anything here about the stages of consciousness, this is for A. Sekatsky, who will send every believer into space in “three stages,” but again you can ask the question to Yu. Mann: how can undifferentiated individual wills and worldviews freely merge? If they are individual, then they are already differentiated, and only what is already separate (diluted) can merge. Or, if they are individually undifferentiated, how can they be free? etc. Beneath the external scientificity and meaningfulness lies nonsense, which is inevitable if the method itself - to see in everything the fulfillment or deviation from carnivalism - is initially false.

All the domestic literary critics with whom I have already met are confused by the ending of the Sorochinskaya Fair, confused, but still not forced to think about why N.V. Gogol ends the story this way; specialists do not ask themselves: not Does this ending follow from the content of the story itself? Is there a direct and immediate connection here? Isn't it just what the author of the story writes about?

If the question is posed so simply, then the answer will be very simple and therefore reliable:

Question:
How does a person feel when left alone after being carried away and completely forgotten in the general frantic movement, so rapid and full of life that even almost lifeless old women are captured by it?

Answer:
Of course - sadness, sadness, or at least regret! What's strange, unexpected or suspicious here? It is so simple, natural and even inevitable.

Left alone, a person cannot help but experience the bright sadness of memory and the dark abandonment of loneliness. A hangover of loneliness after being intoxicated by everything - how Russian!

But not for our specialists, they reinterpret the simple and understandable to every Russian person into “carnival”, “party”, “progressive”, etc., as a result of which the ending of the story becomes a manifestation of Gogol’s human weakness, the result of his personal pessimism caused by suspiciousness and fear of his death (in Zolotussky) and God knows what other reasons. This opens up scope for the specialist’s personal preferences; it is here that he can practice the originality of his interpretations of the artist’s oddities.

What N.V. Gogol says in the finale of “Sorochinskaya Fair” is not at all difficult to hear, because he talked about this all his life, namely: it is sad that ancient Russian culture is irrevocably dying before our eyes, just as our parents are dying, loved ones, friends, leaving us in the emptiness of loneliness; Gogol is sad and asks himself: what needs to be done to preserve this old light of goodness, simplicity, sincerity, fun, cordiality and sincerity?

Understanding and experiencing this sadness of N.V. Gogol is quite enough not to fall into the inspiration of party insanity, covered up by this kind of reasoning:

“We are observing a very important process of changing the carnival worldview; in fact, if by the ambivalence of carnival we understand the dynamics of opposite principles, ... then we have a clear complication of this dynamics. Ambiguity, ambiguity, and reciprocity remain, but its logic becomes more whimsical and, so to speak, unpredictable. “Happy” is replaced not just by “sad”, but by something incomprehensible and foreign. The ascending line of movement of objectivity is interrupted, giving rise to a complex set of sensations and feelings.”

N.V. Gogol’s sadness for Yu. Mann is “unpredictable, incomprehensible and foreign”! Our main Gogol scholar doesn’t even try to ask himself: why is Gogol sad? is it so unpredictable, even if you know nothing about his life, but just read his stories? What is this “important process of changing the carnival worldview”? What kind of “whimsical logic of ambiguity” is this? Does Mann even have some idea of ​​what he's actually doing?

Yuri Mann can be compared to the old women of Sorochinsky: he and their grave indifference and lifelessness are captured by some force. in Mann's case, by the puppet movement of his academic environment, which forces him to imitate the study of someone he does not even look at - the cheerful living person, the author of the story.

Thus, having divided and dissected the work of N.V. Gogol into inspired and only human, low, Russian Gogol studies at once solved its main problem: how to make sure that the works and life of N.V. Gogol do not represent a single whole. Indeed, in the case of unfragmented, unsplit unity, integrity and his entire personality - living, speaking, acting, writing, dying - one will have to consider all these elements of life and death. .V. Gogol in their integrity, in their interconnectedness with each other, which requires forgetting about any a priori, predetermined ideas about man, which for our Gogol studies is tantamount to death.

That is why it will do whatever it wants, for example, like Yuri Mann - to compare the ancient carnivalism, preserved in Western society of the New Age as a rudiment, with the literary work of a Russian writer, but just not try, leaving all assumptions to any comparisons, perceive the unity and integrity of N.V. Gogol.

Then, after carrying out such work, you can do whatever you want, including relating it to carnivalism, romanticism, even anarchism, but only after, and not before. Without understanding the phenomenon of Gogol as a whole, any study of his literature, theater, letters, actions, journalism, etc. will inevitably suffer from fragmentation, bias, and ideology, but it is fragmentation, bias, and ideology that are taken by domestic literary studies as the foundation of their own methodology.

Ideology is a necessary condition for objectivity; due to the fact that the proletariat represents a progressive socio-historical force, the perception and understanding of reality by the proletariat as a class is the only correct and historically justified.

In Soviet times, no one hid this principle, now they try not to mention it, but all the results obtained by Soviet Gogol studies precisely on the basis of this methodological principle are still relevant in Russian literary criticism, no matter what it tells us.

Yuri Mann's book is a clear example of this state of affairs, although, what an irony! in Soviet times, it was perceived, as far as possible then, as “anti-Soviet”, or rather, not entirely Soviet, simply because of the use of the name and partially methods of Bakhtin, as well as because of the external absence of class terminology, then this was enough, even if A little.

But today there is no value in this, and the main thing is what should be the main thing in the book - the content of the book itself, and it is absurd precisely because, despite the external absence of class, ideological terminology, in its spirit it is certainly partisan.

I will not trace the entire content of Mann’s book; I will consider only its most characteristic content.

This is how Yu. Mann perceives the episode of Khoma Brut’s dance:
“Before us is again the captivating, evoking oblivion (the oblivion that Khoma Brut is looking for) element of dance, akin to wine or “fast driving.” But this captivating element... did not captivate anyone. Khoma Brut dances alone - there is something unnatural in this... And this persistent non-participation in the dance is already an expression of that terrible boundary that lies between Khoma Brut, who has fallen under the influence of disastrous forces, and the rest of the world.”

Gogolevod does not even imagine that the element of universality can captivate only one, but not captivate many, seemingly present here; for him this is “something unnatural.”

The author of “Gogol’s Poetics” does not use party terminology here, but it is obvious: Khoma Brut, who has fallen under the influence of disastrous forces, that is, not progressive social or cultural forces, dances unnaturally, because it is natural to dance along with the “folk collective” and, as a result, be under the influence of the unruly forces of the rest of the world.

Neither the author of “Viy” nor the characters in his story who watched Khoma’s dance perceived Khoma Brut’s dance as something strange, much less unnatural; for them it was completely natural, understandable and familiar, so there was no “terrible boundary” between them did not have.

“But here at the end of the story an unexpected note arises: fear of evil spirits. What is the basis for this? From “Sorochinskaya Fair” we already know about Gogol’s technique of a deliberately unmotivated sad chord in the finale; but here the image of the child also matters.

Why is the theme of fear embodied in the child? In Gogol, children's perception is also sharpened and sensitively tuned - but, alas, not to the foreboding of good things.

Ambivalence is again modified by strengthening (with the help of the child’s reaction) the motives of the terrible and unclean in the future.”

From N.V. Gogol we read:
“...on the wall to the side, as you enter the church, Vakula painted a devil in hell, so disgusting that everyone spat when they passed by; and the women, as soon as the child burst into tears in their arms, brought him to the picture and said: “It’s a big deal!” - and the child, holding back his tears, glanced sideways at the picture and huddled close to his mother’s chest.”

And this “deliberately unmotivated sad chord in the finale”? What is sad and deliberately unmotivated here? What does “exacerbation of a child’s perception”, “child’s reaction” have to do with it? What kind of “premonition” is this? etc.

And based on this material, Yu. Mann makes a grandiose, but completely meaningless conclusion:
“Ambivalence is again modified by strengthening (with the help of the child’s reaction) the motives of the terrible and unclean in the future.”

This is how Yu. Mann sees the endings of “Viy” and “Overcoat”:
“The finale of “Viy” in relation to the completion of the plot is similar to the ending of “The Overcoat” in that both of them relate to the real outcome of the action as some kind of problematic and ironic hypotheses. And they therefore do not soften the tragic outcome, do not dissolve it in another opposite mood, but rather enhance the main tone with accompanying contrasting notes.”

Let me explain: Mann means that if the endings of these Gogol stories corresponded to the carnival beginning, then they should have dissolved tragedy in its opposite - in fun, but this does not happen, you can only notice hints of this in irony or fantasy. That is, Yu. Mann tells us, if we apply the principles of carnivalism to these stories of Gogol, then they are not fulfilled in them, however, in order to regardless of this, to see these principles where they do not exist, it is necessary to do so retread the content of the stories in order to still put a carnival costume on Gogol’s mannequin.

Let's take another typical example - Mann's attitude to the description of the Rooster's snoring:
“...This seems to be the pinnacle of sound effects, designed, in addition to everyday and physiological detail, to evoke the impression of chaos, the impression of “clutter, turmoil, confusion.” In other words, we have before us realization in an unexpected sphere - in the form of a dream! - those motives of a special style - the style of non-fantasy fiction...", etc.

It’s funny to me: fantasy is not fantastic, snoring is designed to evoke the impression of turmoil, and fantasy, although it is not fantastic, is unexpectedly realized in a dream.

Let's see what the carnival opening showed Mann in "Old World Landowners":
“Gogol also has particularly difficult cases, and among them perhaps the most difficult is “Old World Landowners.” Of the types of hierarchies we have described, the story is closer to the second (relatively speaking, realistic) type, but presents it with unique - even for Gogol - originality.”

Let me explain: Mann means that this story by Gogol is only “relatively speaking” realistic, it is so originally realistic that it is too much even for Gogol; in general, the devil knows what kind of hierarchy there is!

Here it can be noted that N.V. Gogol’s story “Old World Landowners” is a real stumbling block for every domestic Gogol scholar; all of them, starting with Belinsky and ending with Mann, “stumbled” over this story primarily because it is completely non-ideological, not at all partisan, simple.

Yu. Mann writes:
“...the actions of the Tovstogubs are constantly accompanied by an inner feeling, invariably warm and even, but in the very constancy and certainty of this motivation there is hidden a subtle irony...” They vied with each other to try to treat you to everything.” The tricky part of these assurances from the narrator is that a substitution occurs imperceptibly in them: kindness appears as “readiness to treat.” The old men were really kind, and they were always ready to do anything for the guests, but could they offer you anything other than food?

This, it turns out, is why Gogol loved his “Old World Landowners” so much! For the fact that in this story he managed to “cunningly and imperceptibly” deceive the reader: under the guise of kind, welcoming and hospitable people, he slipped us narrow-minded, vulgar, low people; special thanks to Belinsky, who unraveled Gogol’s trick.

For Yu. Mann, like V.G. Belinsky, kindness, simplicity, sincerity, cordiality are not enough - give them more and richer “spirituality”! What kind of kindness is this if a person hasn’t worked on it: didn’t sit at a party meeting, didn’t read books, didn’t go to the theater, didn’t argue in a literary circle, didn’t develop “images of spiritual, intellectual movements”?

Now we can draw a completely logical conclusion from Y. Mann’s “carnival” analysis of the story:
“...images of food begin to testify not to the emotions of the initial, “heroic” stage of collective life, but to affection, love, immeasurable sorrow - that is, a strong, individualized feeling.”

That is, Taras Bulba, who was at the “heroic stage of collective life,” did not know anything about love and immeasurable sorrow, because he was not yet “individualized,” but the Tovstogubs are already at such a stage of collective life when there is no originality, and no heroism anymore no, but there is only one left - “individualization”!

Carnival, friends, by God, a complete carnival, name day of the heart!

Yu. Mann, unlike N.V. Gogol, who always spoiled everything in the finale, completes the analysis of the story very predictably:
“The poetics of the story is based on the multiple effect of surprise, violation of rules...”

Gogol is an amazing writer: no matter what he does, everything is “unexpected” for Gogol scholars, and for especially knowledgeable ones, such as Yuri Mann, “many times unexpected.”

Finally, let’s see how Yuri Mann perceives the image of Khlestakov:
“Gogol warned more than once: Khlestakov is the most difficult character in the play. Why? Because, having become the culprit of universal deception, Khlestakov did not deceive anyone. He successfully played the role of the auditor, not only without intending to play it, but without even realizing that he was playing it.

But Khlestakov did not pose any challenge, he simply said and did reflexively what the given moment required of him.

Since then, through the efforts of generations of Russian actors, critics, and researchers, much has been done to correctly understand Khlestakov. The observations in the works of recent decades are fruitful. Thus, G. Gukovsky showed in detail that in the “scene of lies” Khlestakov only says what the inquirers expect from him, while V. Ermilov noted that it was Khlestakov’s fear that forced him to play the role of a strict “auditor” at the first meeting with Gorodnichy.

Is this Khlestakov’s deceit? But we know that he is lying from the heart. Boastfulness? But he himself believes in what he says... No matter what established concepts measure Khlestakov’s character, you are always faced with their insufficiency and inaccuracy. One inevitably comes to the conclusion that the most accurate and comprehensive definition will be one derived from the name of the character himself - Khlestakovism.”

In this spirit, one can study N.V. Gogol for another couple of centuries and “involuntarily come to the conclusion” that the most accurate definitions of his work will be derivatives from the names of the characters - Chichikovism, Selifanism, Petushinism, Plyushkinism, etc.

However, anyone who has nothing special to do or who is interested in the transformed forms of human psychology, for example, for psychoanalysts, Yuri Mann’s book about the poetics of N.V. Gogol may be interesting; for those who are interested in the Russian writer himself, it is useless and even harmful, since instead of the writer’s integral personality it will present him with an unimaginable pile of heterogeneous and only externally related material.

At the end of his book, Yu. Mann, as highly as I did, appreciated the successes of Gogol studies over the past almost 150 years, justifying this by the fact that N.V. Gogol’s work is too deep and multifaceted (so “specialists” can feed on this creativity still a long time):
“(First Mann quotes N. Nekrasov) “...maybe a writer will appear who will interpret Gogol for us, but until then we will make private notes on individual faces of his works and wait - this is more useful and modest.” More than a century has passed since these lines were written; During this time, both in our country and abroad, a huge literature about Gogol arose, but Nekrasov’s conclusion has not lost its force, and we still have “private notes” rather than an exhaustive interpretation of the writer’s work.”

It is obvious and even symbolic to me that it was the poetics of partisanship that forced our now no longer main Gogol scholar, Yuri Mann, to ignore what N.V. Gogol considered the most important in his life: “mental phenomena” and “The Farewell Tale.”

Today the situation in Russian criticism and Gogol studies has changed: from “private notes” we are moving to a holistic perception.

SHSHSH "" ETHICS OF GOGOL VARIATIONS ON THE THEME Jr JO. cyila/nzh "j// CUT. oetshsh sUszhl ua/ishlshchp ft crown /996 UDC 882.0 BBK 83 (2Ros-Rus)2 M23 M 23 Mann Yu. V. Gogol’s Poetics. Variations on a Theme. - M.: “Coda” , 1996-474 pp. ISBN 5-89344-002-1 The book is dedicated to the poetological study of the work of N. V. Gogol. The first section of the book is a monograph, previously published in two editions (1978, 1988). The second section includes articles written and published from 1981 to 1995. In all works, technical errors and typos were corrected, some wording was clarified. In some cases, links to the latest publications were provided. ISBN 5-89344-002-1 © Yu. V. Mann, 1996 © N. N . Mamontova, 1996 FROM THE AUTHOR This publication includes studies about Gogol written over approximately thirty years. The first part is the monograph “Gogol’s Poetics”, published in two editions (in 1978 and 1988). The second part is selected Works published later In essence, they all develop certain aspects of one topic - Gogol's poetics, but it seemed to me preferable not to include them in the body of the monograph, but to place them separately - as variations on the topic. Minor changes were made to all works (technical errors and typos were corrected, some wording was clarified). In a number of cases, links are given to publications that were published after the corresponding texts of mine. Gogol's poetics Gogol and the carnival beginning “Terrible revenge”. A perspective into the depths of Gogol’s artistic world Real and fantastic Hierarchy of spiritual and physical abilities “The Inspector General”. General situation. “Mirage Intrigue” “Dead Souls” Evolution of one Gogol formula Some general points of Gogol’s poetics In memory of my parents - Sofia Yakovlevna and Vladimir Yakovlevich Main INSTEAD OF PREFACE Literature about Gogol, as we know, is huge and grows every year. The biography of the writer, his creative path, influence on other writers and other forms of art, etc. are explored. The author of the proposed book did not want to repeat what was known, and he focused his attention on some important, from his point of view, facets of Gogol’s poetics. At the same time, he hopes that the reader will also discover how these facets are connected, making up a more or less integral image of Gogol’s poetics. As for the category of “poetics”, as is known, there are two – narrower and broader – understandings of it. The first is limited to problems of poetic speech and style. The second involves studying not only speech, but also other structural aspects of a literary text. V.V. Vinogradov, in particular, speaks about a broad understanding of poetics: “Poetics as a science about forms, types, means and methods of organizing works of literary and artistic creativity, about structural types and genres of literary works strives to embrace... not only the phenomena of poetic speech, but also the most diverse aspects of the structure of works of literature and oral folk literature" 1. And further V.V. Vinogradov names some problems of such poetics: motives and plot, techniques and principles of plot formation, artistic time, composition as a system combinations and movements of speech, functional-stylistic and ideological-thematic plans, plot-dynamic and speech characteristics of characters, genre specificity, etc. In this book, poetics is understood in such a broad sense. However, the book does not and cannot provide a comprehensive description of all the diverse aspects of Gogol’s poetics, in particular, V. V. Vinogradov. Stylistics. Theory of poetic speech. Poetics. M, 1963. P. 184. 7 problems of style (this would require many books) and only seeks to outline some lines connecting them. This means that, along with the usual aspects of poetics (composition, plot structure, principles of characterization, etc.), those that seem to carry out the unification and coordination of the whole logo are also considered here. These are the problems of the real and the fantastic, the relationship between spiritual and physical abilities, the problem of the “general situation,” etc. The very presentation of these problems is prompted by Gogol’s evolution; in other words, their sequence is to a certain extent predetermined by the natural movement of Gogol’s artistic system, although this movement, of course, is by no means reduced only to the named problems. All that we have just said is the most necessary, preliminary clarification of the topic. Its detailing and specific development is a matter of further presentation. Is it necessary in conclusion to stipulate that the book does not pretend to be a final solution to the questions raised? To solve them means, in a certain sense, to exhaust the creativity of the great writer - a task that no other author, it seems, has ever succeeded in. Especially in relation to such an artist as Gogol. 8 Chapter One GOGOL AND THE CARNIVAL BEGINNING The formulation of this problem can serve as the key to entering the poetic world of Gogol. After all, as a number of works have shown - the works of M. Bakhtin in the first place - the carnival principle embodies a special type of folk laughter culture, which has had a strong influence on art and fiction for many centuries. M. Bakhtin identified the stamp of carnivalization in the work of Rabelais, emphasizing that “although he was the luminary of the folk choir only in the Renaissance, he revealed with such clarity and completeness the unique and difficult language of the laughing people that his work sheds light on the folk laughter culture of other eras." "The logical question is how the work of Gogol, separated from the “luminary of his native choir” by three centuries and representing the character of the most comic writer of modern times, relates to the carnival beginning. I. A few preliminary remarks First of all, let us recall the main features of the carnival beginning. Gogol has evidence in this sense that is almost as clear as the famous description of the Roman carnival in Goethe’s “Journey to Italy.” On February 2, 1838, Gogol reported to A. Danilevsky from Rome: “Now it’s carnival time: Rome is walking in vain." And then followed a detailed report, which we present almost in full. "An amazing phenomenon in Italy, carnival, and especially in Rome - everything that is, everything is on the street, everyone is wearing masks. Whoever has no opportunity to dress up will turn out his sheepskin coat or smear soot on his face. Entire trees and flower beds are driven along the streets, often a cart is dragged along covered in leaves and garlands, the wheels are decorated with leaves and branches and, turning, produce an amazing effect, and in the cart sits a train completely in the taste of the ancient Ceremony festivals or that painting that Robert painted . On Bakhtin M. The work of Francois Rabelais and the folk culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. M, 1965. P. 518. 9 Yu. Mann Gogol's Poetics Corso perfect snow from thrown flour. I heard about confetti, I never thought it would be so good. Imagine that you can pour a whole sack of flour into the face of the prettiest one, even if it’s Borghesi, and she won’t get angry, but will repay you in kind... Servants, coachmen - all in fancy dress. In other places, only people are carousing and camouflaging. Everything gets mixed up here. The freedom is amazing... You can say and give flowers absolutely anything you want. You can even climb into the stroller and sit between them... It’s a surprisingly happy time for intrigue. Many of the most romantic stories have been tied up with me...” During the carnival action, a new system of human relations is established, a special type of connections arises. Their starting point is a deviation from rules and norms, both social (Gogol noted several times that cheerful carnival communication and lively life does not know reverence for nobility - “even if it were Borgesi”), and moral, ethical (“amazing freedom . .."). Naturally, the change is felt most by the lower ones. Gogol’s description all the time spontaneously slides to the point of view of the “commoner”, who suddenly joyfully saw the possibilities that had opened up before him. 2. Gogol recorded the central moment of the carnival transformation - a change in appearance with the help of a mask, an inverted sheepskin coat, or simply smearing with soot. Changing clothes “is a renewal of clothes and one’s social image” 3; it conveys that topographical dynamics that Bakhtin calls the movement “from top to bottom” (possible in at least three levels: in the cosmic - the earth instead of the sky; social - lower classes and classes instead of higher ones; finally, individually biological - organs of lower human functions instead of the head as an organ of consciousness and thinking). The shooting of confetti (that is, plaster, chalk or flour balls) that Gogol liked is also interesting - it carries out the softening and travestying of everything terrible, characteristic of carnival, from bloody battles to eschatological teachings. Travested death enters as a moment in the general non-stop self-motion of life, in that interpenetration opposites, Vsevolod Miller, who studied the connections between Western European carnival and Russian Maslenitsa, wrote: “Carnival is a holiday - mainly for servants: even today, in some places in Germany and Russia at this time, crowds of workers go around the owners’ houses with music and receive handouts, and in Georgia, on the farewell evening at Maslenitsa in the past, masters pledged complete obedience to their servants, as in Rome...” (Miller Vs. Russian Maslenitsa and Western European Carnival. M, 1884. P. 18). Bakhtin M. The work of Francois Rabelais... P. 91. 10 Chapter one Gogol and the carnival beginning of the beginnings, which M. Bakhtin calls ambivalence: “Destruction and dethronement are associated with revival and renewal, the death of the old is associated with the birth of the new: all images are related to the contradictory unity of the dying and the emerging world” \ Finally, from Gogol’s description it is clearly seen that the soul of the carnival worldview is the integrity and indivisibility of people’s life restored for some time. Everyone without exception comes into action (“...everything that is”). The Roman carnival, which preserved the tradition to the greatest extent, struck Gogol with the universality of the celebration: “In other places, only the people revel and disguise themselves. Here everything gets mixed together” (cf. Goethe: “The Roman carnival is a festival that is given * in essence not to the people, but by the people to themselves” 5). The bearer of the carnival principle is “not an isolated biological individual and not a bourgeois egoistic individual, but a people, moreover, a people, eternally growing and renewing in its development.” In conclusion of our brief - in connection with Gogol's note - description of the carnival principle, it should be emphasized that the tradition of the philosophical interpretation of carnival did not arise today, and this in itself already serves as confirmation of the importance and stability of its meaning. Under a different name (as the beginning of Dionysus) and in connection with a different task (the origin of tragedy), F. Nietzsche described the complex of ideas of carnivalization. In the cult of Dionysus, a new, lost system of relations arises: “Under the magical influence of the Dionysian principle, man not only restores ties with his own kind, but also alienated, hostile or enslaved nature again celebrates the holiday of reconciliation with its lost son - man. The earth voluntarily gives him its gifts, and predatory animals peacefully come out to him from deserts and rock crevices. The chariot of Dionysus is showered with wreaths and flowers 7, a panther and a tiger are walking in its harness.” L Emphasized by the author of “The Origin of Tragedy” and social movement “from below to above”, as well as the associated general tendency towards ambivalence (interpenetration of opposite principles) and overcoming everything ossified, stable, traditional. “The slave becomes a free man; all motionless, hostile partitions, ko4 Ibid. P. 236. Goethe. Collection Op. in 13 volumes. T. 11. M., 1935. P. 510. 6 Bakhtin M. The work of Francois Rabelais... P. 24. Cf. the lush green decoration of the carts noted by Gogol, reminiscent of the “ancient Cererine festivals.” Nietzsche Fr. Die Geburt der TragOdie. Oder Griechenthum und Pessimismus. Neue Ausgabe. Leipzig, S. 5. 5 11 CH/Lann Gogol's Poetics that need, arbitrariness or “crude fashion” have erected between people are collapsing. In the gospel of world harmony, everyone feels with his neighbor not only united, reconciled, fused, but simply one being... By singing and dancing, a person expresses himself as a member of a higher community: he has forgotten how to walk and talk and is ready to fly up dancing. . His gestures and behavior speak of enchantment itself." 9. Enchantment in the cult of Dionysus - and this is ultimately the most important thing - is the all-subordinating power of the general: the element of Dionysus "not only does not respect the individual, but seeks to destroy the individual and liberate with the help of a mystical sensation unity" 1. “Dionysian art seeks to convince us of the eternal joy of existence: however, this joy should be sought not in phenomena, but behind them. We must understand how everything that arises must be prepared for a painful death. We must see the horror of individual existence and at the same time not become numb: metaphysical consolation immediately pulls us out of the turmoil of changing images... Despite fear and suffering, we are happy, but not as an individual mind, but as a kind of living principle, with generative power which we have merged into one.” In the eternal, indestructible, common life that knows no obstacles, individual pain and suffering fade away, then the grains of sand of individual existence fade away. II. Elements of carnivalization in Gogol Moving on to Gogol’s work, we can already be a priori sure that we will find in it many elements of carnivalization. After all, if the latter defined a whole type of folk laughter culture, then, as emphasized by M. Bakhtin, its influence extends over many eras, almost right up to our time. The whole question is in the meaning, as well as in the real specific gravity of these elements... In a number of stories from the “Evenings” cycle (where, for obvious reasons, the manifestation of the folk carnival principle should be felt more strongly than in other Gogol’s works), we are first of all faced with a characteristic establishing deviations from the rules. From social rules, as well as moral and ethical ones. This is the setting of the characters, but it coincides with the setting of the selected mo9 Ibid S.6. "ibid S.7. and Ibid. S.92-93. 12 Chapter One Gogol and the carnival beginning of the period of time (fairs, festivities on May or pre-Christmas night), in which the accepted type of human connections is canceled, a new world of relationships arises - the world , deviating from social and moral (we are only talking about them for now) rules. In “May Night...” the boys got wild wildly, got into “pranks”, showed themselves “God knows what kind of brawlers.” Levko thought of calming down They (had a good time), but when he found out that his father was dragging after Hanna, he again enticed his comrades into tricks: “Wait, old horseradish, you will know from me... how to beat other people’s brides!” Here, filial disrespect is multiplied by disrespect for authority (Levka’s father is Golova), moreover, all this is accompanied by carnival dressing (“change your clothes, whoever you are!”), turning your sheepskin coat inside out, as well as public abuse and ridicule. Digression It is also clear from the rules that the drunken Kalenik got out of obedience: “Well, the head, the head. I am my own head.” And then - a colorful abuse in the face of the head itself: “What is my head? So that he dies, the dog son! I spit on him! So that he, the one-eyed devil, will be run over by a cart! That he pours on people in the cold..." 12 A love affair is woven into the fair or pre-holiday and festive night action, sometimes approaching - at least in the "Sorochinskaya Fair" - to the story of the cheerful antics of lovers (we are leaving everything aside for now moments complicating this story - primarily moments of fantasy). The tradition of cheerful pranks of lovers, with overcoming various intrigues arranged on the way of loving parents, rivals, etc., with the inevitable triumph of lovers in the finale - this tradition went back to the ancient, carnivalized layers of art, in particular to the comedy arte. From the point of view of the carnival moment, it is also very important that the three stories from “Evenings” end with the union of lovers, an agreement on a wedding, or (as in “The Night Before Christmas”) the beginning of the life of a new family. After all, a wedding is an indication of an ongoing life, its new stage. A commentary on the last phrase can be the comedy “The Simpleton, or the Cunning of a Woman Outwitted by a Soldier.” The comedy was composed by the writer’s father, Vasily Afanasievich Gogol, the author of a number of dramatic works (of which only the mentioned “Simp” has reached us). In this comedy, responding to the soldier’s remark: “How can you sell the last bread?”, Roman says: “... Why sell the last grain, damn it! the sshaks did not pour cold water on Mopo3i” (Osnova, 1862. No. 2. Section 6. P. 39). This is how the authorities (stak - a picky boss) punished the peasants who were not borrowers. A living detail of Ukrainian life (perhaps through comedy from the tsa) entered Gogol’s story. 13 Yu. Mann The Poet of Togol is a new node in the ever-flowing and unstoppable general flow |3 (we again leave aside the moments that complicate this ending for Gogol). Does this mean that Gogol’s work entirely inherits the carnival tradition? M. Bakhtin, judging by his short article “The Art of Words and Folk Culture of Laughter (Rabelais and Gogol),” which is an addition to the book about Rabelais, seemed inclined to answer this question in the affirmative 14. We say this with understandable caution: write researcher of a special large work on Gogol, his point of view, without a doubt, would have been developed more fully and differentiated. However, today there is already a tendency to draw the most radical conclusions about Gogol’s carnival Laughter and his similarities with the artists of the Renaissance. The question is sufficiently fundamental that it can be avoided or limited to a general answer. III. Two directions of departure from the universality of the action Let us pay attention to the strange, still clearly incomprehensible ending of “Sorochinskaya Fair”, the first story of “Evenings”. The events are crowned with a happy ending, the young people have united, Khivri’s opposition is neutralized, everyone is cheerful - and a general dance begins. “A strange, inexplicable feeling would take possession of the viewer, seeing how from one blow with the musician’s bow... everything turned, willingly or unwillingly, to unity and turned into agreement. People, on whose gloomy faces it seemed that a smile had not slipped for centuries, stamped their feet and trembled their shoulders. Everything was rushing. Everything is danced." We will continue the quote later. For now, let us note that this place is clearly correlated with another - when the Cherevik family, and with them the readers of the story, first saw the view of the fair. “You have probably heard a distant waterfall falling somewhere, when the alarmed surroundings are full of roar, and a chaos of wonderful, unclear sounds rushes like a whirlwind in front of you. Isn’t it true that the ambivalent meaning of the wedding in the carnival (Maslenitsa) event is emphasized by the Sun. Miller: “Indicating with its pancakes the funeral character, Maslenitsa, on the other hand, is a special holiday of the beginning of a new life, a holiday of the newly married, the newlyweds, a celebration of a newly formed family, just as the Romans, after parental days, celebrated the holiday of marriage, Matronalia "(Miller Vs. Russian Maslenitsa and Western European Carnival. P. 22). 14 “Gogol’s positive, “light”, high laughter, which grew on the soil of folk laughter culture, was not understood (in many ways it is still not understood).” (Context-1972: Literary-theoretical studies. M, 1973. P. 254; reprinted in the book: Bakhtin M. Questions of literature and aesthetics. M., 1975.) 14 Chapter One Gogol and the carnival beginning those same feelings instantly will they engulf you in a whirlwind of rural fairs, when all the people merge into one huge monster and move their whole body in the square and along the narrow streets, screaming, cackling, thundering? Noise, swearing, mooing, bleating, roaring - everything merges into one discordant conversation. Oxen, sacks, hay, gypsies, pots, women, gingerbread, hats - everything is bright, colorful, discordant, tossing around in heaps and scurrying around before your eyes. Discordant speeches drown each other, and not a single word can be snatched out or saved from this flood; not a single cry will be spoken clearly,” The predominant note of this description is unity in diversity and chaos. An imperious, all-subordinating force dominates over the flickering and discordance of details. Private; cannot isolate itself* separate itself (“,..not a single word will be snatched out...”), it drowns in the general. The view of the all-fascinating water element appears twice: a “falling waterfall” - at the beginning and a “flood” - at the end. Between them is the climax of the scene - the image of a people fused into a huge monster, moving “with its whole body.” In the carnival beginning, the fusion of people into a single being, “physical contact of bodies” is a sign of the indivisible community of the people. “The people feel their concrete sensual material-corporeal unity and community.” In the final scene there is the same power of an all-subduing element, the same universality of participation (“everything was rushing,” “everything was dancing”), the same transition of the folk group to a single action, supported by a single dance pattern. However, while picking up the main motif of the fair scene, the ending then sharply dissonates with it. The ending argues with the fair scene, limits and clarifies it. “...But an even stranger, an even more inexplicable feeling would awaken in the depths of the soul when looking at the old women, on whose shabby faces the indifference of the grave wafted, jostling between a new, laughing, living person. Carefree! even without childish joy, without a spark of sympathy, which only drunkenness, like the mechanic of his lifeless machine, forces to do something similar to a human one, they quietly shook their drunken heads, dancing along with the merry people, not even paying attention to the young couple.” The image of dancing old ladies is the first “strange thing” of the final scene. M. Bakhtin believes that we have before us a typical carnival moment: “the image of dancing old age (almost dancing death)” 16. But this is not so. Before us is not so much dancing, 1b Bakhtin M. The Work of Francois Rabelais... P. 277. Context-1972.P250. 15 Yu. Mann Gogol's poetics imitates old age as a dance. A moment of puppetry, lifeless execution of the prescribed will is introduced into her behavior. And in the carnival fun itself, we can feel the dictate of the universal force, but it merged with the counter impulse of the individual will. The dancing old women do not have such a will: the action of universal force here is like mechanical compulsion (“like a mechanic of his own lifeless automaton”). On another occasion, in connection with the figures of laughing pregnant old women from the collection of Kerch terracottas stored in the Hermitage, M. Bakhtin wrote: “This is a very characteristic expressive grotesque. He is ambivalent; this is a pregnant death, giving birth to death” 17. This characteristic does not apply to the old women from the “Sorbchinskaya Fair”. They do not participate in the cycle of life - they imitate it. They are not joyful (cf. laughing old age); on the contrary, their persistent joylessness, gloominess (“without childish joy, without a spark of sympathy”) are in ominous contrast with the dance movements they produce. They do not bear the fruit of new life - they only contain the “indifference of the grave.” One “strangeness” of the ending is followed by another. The fun and noise of the dancing subside: “Isn’t it true that joy, the beautiful and fickle guest, flies away from us, and in vain does a lonely sound think to express joy? In his own echo he already hears sadness and desert and wildly listens to it. Isn’t it so that the playful friends of a stormy and free youth, one by one, one after another, get lost around the world and finally leave behind one of their old brothers? Bored left! And the heart becomes heavy and sad, and there is nothing to help it.” The thread to this conclusion is outlined in the phrase: “A strange, inexplicable feeling would take possession of the viewer...” 18 After all, in the actual collective action of the dance there are no spectators: “At the carnival there are neither guests nor spectators, all participants, all owners” 19. In other words , in Gogol's story an outside point of view is introduced - the narrator (who has not yet participated in the story or participated in a very limited way). This is his interested, admiring and at the same time defamiliarized view of folk fun, unity, and agreement. This is his non-participation in the general action, resulting in the sad sigh of the “left behind”. Are the dancing masses plunging into the haze of the past? Or literally leaves an alien observer? In any case, what was left represents a sharp dissonance to the undifferentiated integrity of the carnival principle. Moreover, this was carried - Bakhtin M. The Works of Francois Rabelais... P. 31. Italics here and below in all cases, except where specifically stated, are mine. 19 Bakhtin M. The Work of François Rabelais... P. 271. 16 Chapter One Gogol and the carnival principle, brightness no longer arises on the basis of mechanical lifelessness (like dancing old women), but under the influence of some deeper, although not yet revealed spirituality (“boringly left to him” is a direct foreshadowing of the final phrase of “The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich”: “... it’s boring in this world, gentlemen”). Thus, we can state two directions in which there is a departure from the universality and integrity of folk action. One is in the direction of a mechanical imitation of life, foreshadowing the moments of deadness, automatism, mortification that are so significant for the mature Gogol - the whole complex of “dead souls” motifs. Another direction is towards some kind of deep, languishing and suffering spirituality. IV. Dance Scene Let's dwell a little longer on Gogol's descriptions of dance. The fact that this is a sign of the indivisibility and unity of the folk collective explains the writer’s predilection for the corresponding scenes. But at the same time, unexpected notes again slip through Gogol’s description of the dance... Scenes of collective dance, in addition to the Sorochinskaya Fair, are found in “The Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala”, and in “The Enchanted Place”, and in “Terrible Revenge”, and in “Taras Bulba”... Let’s cite a scene from “Taras Bulba” (edition of “Mirgorod”) 2p: “The earth hummed dully throughout the entire area, and the air only echoed: waste-ta-ta, waste-ta. The crowd grew larger and larger; Others pestered the dancers, and almost the entire square was covered with crouching Cossacks. There was something strikingly fascinating about it. It was impossible without moving your whole soul to see how the whole crowd was tearing off the most free, most frenzied dance that the world has ever seen, and which, according to its powerful inventors, is called the Cossack. Only in music alone is there the will of man. He is in chains everywhere. He forges even more painful shackles for himself than society and power impose on him wherever he touches life. He is a slave, but he is free only when he is lost in a frenzied dance, where his soul is not afraid of his body and rises in free leaps, ready to have fun for eternity.” 0 As you know, the story was originally published in the collection “Mirgorod” (Part I, 1835) and was subsequently significantly revised (the new edition was published in “The Works of Nikolai Gogol.” Vol. 2, 1842). Yu. Mann Gogol's Poetics Signs of dance: complete coordination - everyone does the same thing at the same time; the universality of the action (for Taras Bulba, as specially stated, only the horse “prevented... from starting to dance”), oblivion itself in a frenzied, unstoppable whirlwind (let us pay attention to the almost literal coincidence of the final phrase about the soul ascending in “free leaps” , and Nietzsche’s remarks about a person at the festival of Dionysus: “he has forgotten how to walk and talk and is ready to fly up dancing”) 21. v How to reconcile in dance the dictates of community with complete individual freedom and freedom, which are so repeatedly emphasized in the scene of the Cossacks dancing (“he is free only if he gets lost in a mad dance”; and below: “screams and songs that could only come to a person’s head in riotous fun were heard freely”)? Obviously, the individual principle has not yet become so developed and complicated as to strive for isolation and autonomy. In the ecstasy of mass action, there is a free merging of still undifferentiated individual wills and worldviews, in relation to which, say, the consciousness of the narrator in the finale of “Sorochinskaya Fair” (“the bored one left”) represents a different stage. But we said that in Gogol’s dance unexpected notes slip through every now and then. Sometimes it’s as if something is crowding the dancers, disturbing them. In “The Enchanted Place,” the grandfather wants to entice the guests to dance: “See, damn children! Is this how they dance? This is how they dance!” But that was not the case: “I just got to halfway and wanted to go for a walk and throw some of my things into the whirlwind with my feet - my legs won’t rise, and that’s all!” The influence of the “enchanted place” is that a person becomes paralyzed in his very important individual and social action. “He can’t dance, that’s all!” In “Vie” Khoma, Brut, after a new unsuccessful attempt to escape from the centurion’s farm, drank fusel, ordered to call the musicians, “and, without waiting for the musicians, set off in the middle of the courtyard in a cleared place to dance the trepak. He danced until it was time for afternoon tea, and the servants, who surrounded him, as is usual in such cases, in a circle, finally spat and walked away, saying: “That’s how long a man has been dancing!” Before us is again a captivating element, blowing into oblivion (the oblivion that Khoma Brut is looking for) An image akin to the oblivion of dance in “Dead Souls” is the image of “fast driving”: “Is it his soul, striving to spin, to take a walk, to sometimes say “damn it all” ! “Doesn’t his soul not love her?” 18 Chapter One Gogol and the carnival beginning of the dance, akin to wine or “fast driving.” But this captivating element... did not captivate anyone. Khoma Brut dances alone - there is something unnatural about it. Folk dance is characterized by a consistent transformation of spectators into performers (cf. in “Taras Bulba”: “...others pestered the dancers”). In Viya, it was not possible to melt the cold curiosity of the audience, as if they had gathered only to see how long a person would last. And this persistent non-participation in the dance is already an expression of that terrible boundary that lies between Khoma Brut, who fell under the influence of disastrous forces, and the rest of the world. On the other hand, in Gogol’s works we also encounter episodes when characters who embody an otherworldly evil force dance: devils, witches, etc. (let’s agree to call them carriers of an unreal evil force). The functions of these episodes vary. In “Terrible Vengeance,” the not yet recognized sorcerer “danced to the glory of a Cossack and already managed to make the crowd surrounding him laugh.” Here the dance is almost a sign of mimicry: the sorcerer demonstrates his commonality with the folk group, which in reality does not exist. But here’s a dance in the devil’s lair, where the “grandfather” ended up in search of a letter (“The Missing Letter”): “The witches are such a death, as sometimes happens at Christmas when the snow falls: they are discharged, smeared, like little ladies at a fair. And everyone, no matter how many of them there were, danced some kind of devilish trope like they were drunk. It raised some dust, God forbid! A baptized person would have trembled at the mere sight of how high the demonic tribe was jumping. Grandfather, despite all his fear, began to laugh when he saw how devils with dog faces, on German legs, twirling their tails, hovered around the witches, like guys around red girls...” The dance is travestied by transferring human, Ukrainian, rural flavor and surroundings to the “demonic tribe”. The scene is presented through the eyes of the grandfather, who observes with amazement and “laughter” that the same thing happens behind the devils. And that they even outdid people in some things (“... how high the demonic tribe jumped”). Here the travesty borders on a completely serious tone, because the “damn trope” has its own meaning. This will become clearer to us a little later, after a special analysis of Gogol’s fiction (see Chapter III). In connection with the present topic, it should be noted: the “demonic tribe” has something in common with an undivided single collective, that it has its own all-subordinating, transpersonal, bewitching power and that this power reveals itself in dance. In a word, Gogol’s dance in its own way reveals a departure from the philosophy and poetics of the carnival community - on the one hand, in the direction of individualization, a departure from the “common dance”, in the direction of individual action, which for some reason cannot be supported and shared by the “spectators”; on the other hand, the properties of whirlwind enthusiasm and integrity of the dance turn out to be adopted by the carriers of evil unreal power. V. Complication of ambivalence All the processes described above are sometimes associated with a change in the scene of action. M. Bakhtin notes that the condition for the implementation of the carnival principle is usually a “fun place” (such as a city or fairground) and “fun time” (the time of the change of seasons, harvest or other holiday). In Gogol, as if to confirm this pattern, the action of one of the stories is localized to a fairground and its surroundings. However, significant complications then occur. It turns out that the assessor “set aside a damned place for the fair,” where, according to legend, the damned scroll was cut into pieces. The “fun place” turns out to be a “cursed place.” And in another case, next to the place of fun, where the grandfather treated the visiting Chumaks and wanted to amaze them with the art of dance, there turns out to be an “enchanted place” (that’s what the story is called). Gogolevskoe enchanted place - the implementation of the folklore motif of the “fainting place”. “Fainting places, according to popular belief, have a special power to darken the consciousness of a person who accidentally enters them until it is impossible to find a way out... Such places are often visited by special midnight spirits - Polunichka, Mara or devils in various images” 22. Let us note the only case of partial changes in the opposite direction: in “May Night...” a scary house, the abode of mermaids, turns (in Levko’s dream) into a non-scary house, mysterious forces - into friendly forces. (“That’s how little you need to rely on people’s talk,” our hero thought to himself). But we are talking about a partial transformation: the shadow of the mysterious, unreal also hides the “witch,” the embodiment of the evil principle. In a word, the “fun place” in Gogol’s works is constantly limited, it is threatened by pushes and threats from the outside. It seems that something is hiding nearby, preparing unexpected tricks and complications. We are observing a very important process of changing the carnival worldview. In fact: if under the ambivalence of carn22 Petrov N.I. Southern Russian folk element in Gogol’s early works // In Memory of Gogol. Kyiv, 1902. Dept. 2. pp. 68-69. 20 Chapter One Gogol and the carnival beginning of the shaft to understand the dynamics of opposite principles (sadness and joy, death and birth, etc.), going back to the “contradictory unity of the dying and being born world” (M. Bakhtin), then we have a clear complication of this speakers. Ambiguity, ambiguity, and reciprocity remain, but its logic becomes more capricious and, so to speak, more unpredictable. “Merry” is replaced not just by “sad” (in order to then give way to “fun”), but by something incomprehensible, foreign. The ascending line of movement is interrupted, giving rise to a complex set of sensations and feelings. About the general emotional tone of the carnival, M. Bakhtin writes: “...Participants in the carnival are least sad: at the signal for the start of the holiday, all of them, even the most serious of them, abandoned all seriousness” 23. Even if in Gogol’s fiction world to limit ourselves only to scenes of celebrations, it is clear that a different, more complex mood is diffused in them. In “May Night...” “the boys and girls noisily gathered in a circle. .. pour out your joy into sounds that are always inseparable from despondency*. Then Ganna picks up the note of “despondency”: “It’s as if something is whispering in my ear that we won’t see each other so often in the future. Your people are not kind: the girls all look so enviously, and the boys...” It is remarkable that the last phrase is in no way supported by the material of the story, which depicts not the evil and “envious”, but the benevolent and cheerful, and seems abstracted from the work of another on structure and genre. Isn’t a similar invasion of a “foreign” genre recorded in the conveyance of Khoma Brut’s feelings when he looks at the dead beauty? “He felt that his soul was beginning to ache somehow painfully, as if suddenly, in the midst of a whirlwind of fun and a swirling crowd, someone was singing a song about an oppressed people*. The ending of the phrase “... a funeral song”, printed during Gogol’s lifetime, further sharpened the genre interruption 24. Moreover, it is characteristic that the uncontrollable element of mass action - dance - again appears as the main element, disrupted by the invasion of a foreign element. No matter how joyful and uninhibited Gogol’s heroes may be, we feel that this is not all. Like some kind of sad and Bakhtin M. The Works of Francois Rabelais... P. 271. Commentators on the academic Complete Works restored the phrase from the autograph, “considering the word “funeral” a censorship distortion” (II, 735). But in any case this required justification. 21 Y. Mani Gogol’s Poetics a strange note is ready at any moment to interrupt the joy of the “singing and dancing tribe” (A. Pushkin). The complication of ambivalence is generally a fairly constant point in Gogol’s poetic philosophy. In popular ideas, for example (and this expresses the ascending logic of their ambivalence), a bad meeting (funeral) means good luck, a bad dream means a happy event. The logic of omens “from the opposite direction” is often reflected in art. Let us limit ourselves to one example - from “The Vicar of Wakefield” (1766) by O. Goldsmith: “...Then she will dream of a coffin and two crossed bones above it - a herald of an imminent wedding: then it will seem as if her daughters’ pockets are filled to the brim with coppers - sure proof that soon they will be filled with gold...” In Gogol, this logic changes dramatically: a bad dream (or more precisely, a strange, unusual dream) usually portends bad things in life. Gogol also violates the tradition of recreational ambivalence, as can be seen in Viya. The worldview associated with student recreation (vacation) was dominated by the spirit of irresistible fun, freedom, and rejection of constraining moral and class regulations. The beginning of Gogol's story reminds us of this time. “The most solemn event for the seminary was the vacancy, when the bursa usually went home.” Khoma Brut and two comrades set off on a merry time that foreshadowed only relaxation and carnal joys. But how this path ended is well known on 26.VI. Methods of overcoming the devil The change in ambivalence is also noticeable in how Gogol overcomes the devil - one of the main themes of “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka”. Over the course of several centuries, folk laughter culture has developed stable traditions of simplification, de-demonization and ode. Lotman pointed out that Pushkin repeats the expression of Catherine II (see: Scientific notes of the University of Tartu. Issue 251, 1970. P. 34). 26 The contrast between the beginning and the subsequent course of events in Viya is especially expressive against the background of V. Narezhny’s story “Two Ivans, or the Passion for Litigation.” It has long been noted that the beginning of “Two Ivans” “vividly resembles the night journey of the students in Vie” (Engelhardt N. Gogol and the novels of the twenties // Historical Bulletin. 1902. No. 2. P. 573.). Two “Poltava philosophers” Koronat and Nikanor set off from the seminary on the road, “having exhausted the entire reservoir of wisdom in that temple and being released into the wild.” Next (in Chapter IV) a description of a fun time is introduced - the fair. But, unlike “Viy,” the events of Narezhny’s story, through a series of complications, are steadily moving toward a happy ending, toward universal reconciliation and joy. 22 Chapter One Gogol and the carnival beginning of the machination of Christian-mythological images of evil. “In almost all countries and in all centuries, people treat the devil much better and kinder than the intimidating church teaches and demands... The people love to familiarize themselves with supernatural forces... The devil among the people is sharply different from the devil of theologians and ascetics. The devil of the people is something like a nasty neighbor... The devil has a house, a profession, his own occupations, needs, chores... he eats, drinks, smokes, wears a dress and shoes.” 27. Gogol’s descriptions of devilry are built on an open or half-hidden analogy of the demonic and human. “...Then the devil, coming up like a little demon, grabbed her by the arm” (“The Night Before Christmas”). In one of the following scenes, Oksana says to Vakula: “You are all experts at approaching us.” After traveling by air, the witch Solokha appeared in her hut as an ordinary “forty-year-old gossip,” “a talkative and obsequious housewife,” with whom you can warm up and “eat fatty dumplings with sour cream.” Vakula’s pathetic love speech is interrupted by a question. “Is it true that your mother is a witch?” Oksana said and laughed.” So you can really ask not about a supernatural being, but at most about the “bad neighbor”. Many episodes of Gogol's stories are a clear reduction, simplification, de-demonization of infernal ideas. It is enough to recall exactly the devil in hell from “The Night Before Christmas”, who, “putting on a cap and standing in front of the fire, as if he were really a cook, fried... sinners with such pleasure as a woman usually fries sausage for Christmas.” From the family of Gogol’s devils or their close and distant relatives, the most carnivalized image is Patsyuk (“The Night Before Christmas”). According to the men, he is “a little akin to the devil,” but he uses his charms to treat the laity. He almost led Vakula into sin, almost forced him into a hungry feast, but he readily helps him in his love misadventures. Gluttony, a penchant for copious libations, laziness, and those forest excesses are represented in the pot-bellied Patsyuk, not without sly sympathy: “...He lived like a real Cossack: he worked nothing, slept three-quarters of the day, ate for six mowers and drank for one almost a whole bucket at once; however, there was room to fit in: because Patsyuk, despite his small stature, was quite heavy in width.” In carnival and related forms and Amphitheaters A. Devil. The Devil in everyday life, legend and literature of the Middle Ages // Amphiteatrov A. Collection. Op. T. 18. St. Petersburg, 1913. P. 358. 23 Yu. Mann Gogol's Poetics of Art, the motif of an agape mouth is noted - a kind of constant readiness to uncontrollably absorb food. Let’s compare Patsyuk’s method of punishment with dumplings: “...Patsyuk opened his mouth; looked at the dumplings and opened his mouth even more. At this time, the dumpling splashed out of the bowl... and just landed in his mouth.” Pasyuk doesn’t even consider it necessary to move his hand; “He only took upon himself the labor of chewing and swallowing.” “The de-demonization and simplification of the evil force, together with the tendency to defeat it, led to the creation of a special type of mythological creature - the stupid devil. Even K. Flegel, a German scientist, author of the first monograph on the grotesque (1788), noted: “To the authors of mysteries and the people, if he could not fear the fire for a friendly word about Satan, the devil always seemed like a stupid, childishly boastful guy (Geselle) , that is, a comic figure, in the depiction of which amusing, artless folk humor could give full rein.” 28. The stupid devil (der dumme Teufel) is an indispensable character in German religious dramas; he strives with all his might to take possession of the soul of his victim, but he gets into trouble and is disgraced. In such a drama, “the villain necessarily had to play a comic role; he was given over to the power of the comic." He played a similar role” 29 in folk plays and in secular painting. By the way, the problem of the comic depiction of the devil was treated by R. R.’s translated article “On the Depiction of the Devil in Painting,” published in “Telescope” in the year the second part of Gogol’s “Evenings” was published. In the old religious dramas, the devil aroused “more laughter than horror.” “From here came the comic concepts of artists about him and the sayings preserved in the language: poor devil, stupid devil...” One of the interlocutors of Hoffmann’s Serapion Brothers, Othmar, mourns the gradual loss of the comic tradition of the “stupid devil”: now the devil appears or “a stupid buffoon,” or surrounded by “an arsenal of the most flat, farcical horrors.” Probably, “The Corner Window” can serve as a vivid illustration of comic demonology in Hoffmann’s work: The cousin imagines “a very small, malevolent imp, who, like his brother in Hogarth’s drawing... crawled under our merchant’s chair... and insidiously files his legs. Bam! - she falls on her porcelain and crystal...” Flogel Karl Friedrich. Geschichte des Grotesk-Komischen, 1914, MUnchen, S. 50. 29 See: WesselJ. E. Die GestaJten des Todes und des Teufels in der darstellenden Kunst. Leipzig, 1878, S. 88. 30 Telescope, 1832. 4. 8. No. 8. P. 429 (italics R.R.). 24 Chapter One Gogol and the carnival beginning The tendency to depict the “stupid devil” is clearly visible in Gogol’s early works. First of all, in "The Night Before Christmas", where the devil is busy with his traditional business - hunting for a soul - and where he also traditionally fails and is disgraced. His tricks are so naive, his expression of feelings is so direct that the “enemy of the human race” looks more like a petty prankster, moreover, much more unlucky than the “gloating imp” of Hogarth - Hoffmann. In “The Night Before Christmas,” in addition, the decline of the demonological tradition, the shaming of the devil becomes its own theme. Vakula is an artist who performs religious subjects, and to depict the devil - from a funny or ugly side - means to master evil, to overcome it. Therefore, the devil interferes with the work of the blacksmith, who draws how St. Peter on the Day of the Last Judgment expels an evil spirit from hell. And at the end of the story, Vakula in the church “painted... a devil in hell, so disgusting that everyone spat when they passed by...”. But here, at the end of the story, an unexpected note arises: fear of evil spirits. What is the basis for this? - the devil is disgraced and fooled, neutralized by the pious brush of Vakula, but when the mother brought the child to the picture, saying “he’s a big boy, he’s painted!”, then “the child, holding back his tears, glanced sideways at the picture and huddled against his mother’s chest.” From “Sorochinskaya Fair” we already know about Gogol’s technique of a deliberately unmotivated sad chord in the finale; but here the image of the child also matters. Why is the theme of fear embodied in the child? In an ambivalent worldview, the child is becoming himself and overcoming all time; this, as M. Bakhtin says, is the playing boy of Heraclitus, who has the highest power (“the child has dominion”). In Gogol, children's perception is also sharpened and sensitively tuned - but, alas, not to the foreboding of good things. In “Terrible Vengeance,” the captain was just about to say a prayer, when suddenly the children playing on the ground screamed, frightened, and after them the people retreated and everyone pointed their fingers in fear at the Cossack standing in the middle of them” (the sorcerer). Children are messengers of evil; they are the first to sense the presence of an evil force. Therefore, in narrative terms, the terrible in “Evenings” is often mediated by the child’s perception. The story of Basavryuk was heard by Foma Grigoryevich when he was still a child: the hero Spit in the direction of the devil is a kind of topos (commonplace) of a comic image of an evil force, a sign of contempt for it. Curtius speaks about this when analyzing comic motifs in the Old Christian biblical epic, in particular in the lives of saints. Curtius E. R. Europaische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter. Achte Auflage. Bern, 1973, pp. 425-428. 25 Yu./Lann Portico Gogol’s legends “did not interest us as much as stories about some ancient marvelous deed, which always sent a shiver through the body and ruffled the hair on the head.” Ambivalence is again modified through the effort (with the help of the child’s reaction) of moments of fear and incomprehensibility in the future. Now let us pay attention to the role that piety plays in Gogol’s work in overcoming evil. Vakula pacifies the devil and forces him to serve himself by repeatedly applying the cross. It turns out that Vakula rushes to Patsyuk (who is somewhat “akin to the devil”) for salvation from love, and to God for salvation from the devil. M. Bakhtin notes “a completely carnival image of playing fools in the underworld in the story “The Missing Letter” 32. But at the same time, it should be noted the complexity of the “image of the game” in this story: “Here, the grandfather slowly under the table crossed the cards; Lo and behold, he has an ace, a king, and a jack of trump cards in his hands. ..” On the one hand, the image of the game preserves the lightness - truly carnival lightness - of victory over evil. But, on the other hand, it is characteristic that this victory is achieved only in the third “round” of the game, only after the grandfather, who had lost twice, guessed to resort to the power of the cross. Here for Gogol (especially in “The Night Before Christmas”) one tradition of hagiographic and ascetic literature turned out to be important. “Already in the life of one of our most ancient saints, St. Anthony of Novgorod, it is told how the devil, wanting to distract the saint’s attention from prayer, climbed into his washstand and began splashing around there. Then captured St. Anthony in this vessel, out of fear of the sign of the cross, he had to fulfill the saint’s wish and carry him on his back for one night to Jerusalem and back to Novgorod” 33. This was a fairly common plot. The story about the journey of John of Novgorod on a demon to Jerusalem is also well known. If Vakula does not share the goals of the pious journey of Anthony or John (the blacksmith flies to St. Petersburg and for a rather secular matter), then he acts with the same threat of the “sign of the cross.” The demon wanted to “terrify the saint,” but “he could not shake the solid adamant.” This is reminiscent of Vakula’s unshakable faith 34. 32 Context-1972. P. 249. Rozov V. Traditional types of Little Russian theater of the 17th - 18th centuries. and youth stories by N.V. Gogol // In memory of N.V. Gogol. Collection of speeches and articles. Kyiv, 1911. P. 118. 34 Some details also coincide. John told the demon to turn into a horse. Wed. from Gogol: “The devil, having flown over the barrier, turned into a horse, and the blacksmith saw himself on a dashing runner in the middle of the street.” 33 26 Chapter One Gogol and the carnival beginning Could have directly influenced Gogol and “The verse spoken to Hetman Potemkin by the Cossacks on the bright holiday of the “resurrection”, where the overcoming of evil spirits also occurs with the help of the cross (“Bo bag with the cross drove away the devil with his tail, like dog ku"), and the very effect of the combination of “cross” and “tail” was reflected in “The Night Before Christmas” (Vakula “created a cross”, pulling the devil “by the tail to the ground”) 35. Sometimes a parallel is drawn between “The Night Before Christmas" and the Ukrainian "Nativity Scene". But this parallel rather shows the difference between Gogol’s text. Here is the corresponding (21st) phenomenon from the “Nativity Scene”: “Two devils. They come in and want to take the Cossack; He catches one of them by the tail, the other runs away. The Cossack is pulling the devil by the tail towards the light.” He examines him from behind, hits him with a mace and makes him dance with him; then the devil runs away in fright. Here the travesting is carried out to completion; the cross is not mentioned; the devil is overcome for the threshold with the help of thoroughly earthly means (Gogol also gives a scene of beating the devil - but this time pacified in a different way). The orthodoxy of overcoming the evil elements in “Evenings” is full of deep meaning: this is the other side of the inexorable power of devilry. For the latter can be ridiculed, humiliated, travestied to the level of a “stupid devil” - but all this will remain only a half-measure, a palliative. A radical remedy, if it exists, can be found at a fundamentally different level. In other words, no matter how comical or unattractive the “enemy of the human race” may appear, only the intervention of an opposing higher power can provide sufficient counteraction to it. Gogol's orthodoxy comes from the power of the dark element (and, consequently, its participation in ambivalence). Moreover, it must be emphasized that in this case we are talking about Gogol from the period of “Evenings”: subsequently the situation became even more complicated, and, say, Home Brutus from “Viy” was not helped in the fight against the dark force by either the cross or prayer. VII. Attitude to death But, probably, nowhere was Gogol’s departure from the carnival principle more expressed than in the depiction of death. Attitude to death is the most important criterion that allows us to see in Gogol a writer of modern times. 35 36 Noted by V. Gippius (Proceedings of the department of new Russian literature. M.; Leningrad, 1948. P. 31). Markevich I. Customs, beliefs, cuisine and drinks of Little Russians. Kyiv, 1860. P. 59-60. 27 Y. Mann Gogol's Poetics In the type of art described by M. Bakhtin, death is correlated with birth. “Death here enters into the whole of life as its necessary element, as a condition for its constant renewal and rejuvenation... Death and renewal are inseparable from each other in the whole of life, and this whole is least capable of causing fear” 37. In other words, death loses the prerogative of the highest, irreversible and irrevocable tragedy. In a worldview that comes from the whole - from the whole of people's life, the whole people's organism - the death of individual individuals is nothing more than the death of some cells and their replacement by others. By renewing individual cells, general life develops in an ascending line. Gogol repeats the situation more than once: with the death of a character, life does not end, events take their own course. But this situation seems to have arisen on purpose in order to highlight the unconventionality of its solution. In “Nevsky Prospekt” the narrator from the deceased Piskarev immediately turns to the living Pirogov (this transition is recorded precisely from the point of view of the antithesis: “living - dead”: “but let’s turn to him. “I don’t like corpses and dead people...”, etc.). But, alas, this is not a carnival ambivalence of life and death. The transition occurs with a clear decrease in level and is illuminated by sad irony, which the young Belinsky felt well: “Piskarev and Pirogov - what a contrast! One is in the grave, the other is content and happy, even after unsuccessful red tape and terrible beatings!.. Yes, gentlemen, it’s boring in this world!..” 38 Traditional logic would correspond to the transition from the less worthy (in the moral or physical sense) to the more worthy. From something that has outlived its usefulness to something that is emerging and growing stronger. But in this case we have a transition from more worthy to less worthy. If the latter retains a moment of superiority, then only in one sense: vitality (as a synonym for a more primitive organization): so a weed is more resilient than a cultivated plant, an amoeba - than a highly developed organism. The transition from the deceased Piskarev to the surviving Pirogov does not convey renewal and development, but is rather sustained in the spirit of contrast, as recorded by Schiller - Zhukovsky (“The Triumph of the Winners”): How many vigorous lives have faded! How many lowly ones does rock spare! No great Patroclus! The contemptuous Thersites lives! 38 28 Bakhtin M. The work of Francois Rabelais... P. 58. Belinsky V. G. Loln. collection Op. in 13 volumes. T. 1. M, 1953. P. 303. Chapter One Gogol and the carnival beginning Another version of Gogol’s situation - life after death - is represented by “The Overcoat”. Some moments of the ending of the story could suggest carnivalization: the dead comes to life, the humiliated becomes an avenger, and the offender becomes humiliated and punished, that is, there is a movement of top and bottom. However, all this happens on the basis of one essential premise, which again moves the whole situation to another level. If in “Nevsky Prospekt” the decrease in level consisted of a transition from more worthy to less worthy, then in “The Overcoat” it was from the real to the problematic. This antithesis (just as in the first case the antithesis: living - dead) is recorded by the narrator: “... our poor history unexpectedly takes a fantastic direction.” That is, a ghostly triumph becomes a continuation of the character’s real suffering, and a problematic reward becomes the crown of real injustice. The alternation of plans itself is not enough to create this effect. They also need a certain hierarchy, the superiority of the main plan over the second (deployed in the finale) at least in one sense - in the sense of reality39. Let us compare the outwardly similar interruption of plans in the folk play “Tsar Maximilian”. The faithful Christian Adolf, son of Maximilian, is imprisoned and executed. But what follows are buffoonery scenes: the executed Adolf bites the finger of one of the undertakers, jumps up and runs away. The tragedy of death is overcome by buffoonery resurrection; the finale bears features of mischievous ambivalence, although the contrast of plans - basic and fantastic - is obvious. In the finale of “The Overcoat,” everything is more problematic, ghostly, and emotionally heavier. Departing from the chronology of Gogol’s work, let us linger at the finale of “Viy.” And here the HCL story does not end with the death of a character. Another episode follows of the meeting of the two remaining friends - Khalyava and Tiberiy Gorobets, who remember Khoma Brut, and one of them, Gorobets, expresses the opinion “why did he disappear: because he was afraid... You just need to cross yourself and spit on her very tail, then nothing will happen. I already know all this. After all, in Kyiv, all the women who sit at the market are all witches.” Spitting in the direction of a devil or a witch is, as we know, a traditional sign of a comic victory over an evil force (besides, the detail “spit on its very tail” should, it seems, maximize the comedy). But the function of this sign is after all the events described, after the death of Khoma Brut, depicted as immutable. Technically, this is all conveyed through the veiled or implicit fantasy of the finale (see about this below, in Chapter III). 29 Yu. Mann Gogol's poetics is a fact - it becomes somewhat different, more complex. There is something of a hanged man’s humor in Gorobets’s remark. In any case, after the tragedy, the method proposed by Gorobets for mastering the witch seems no less problematic than Akaki Akakievich receiving a new overcoat (let’s pay attention to the effect of the combination of a cross and a tail, which in the Viya worldview system no longer sounds so bright and serene, as in “The Night Before Christmas”) 40. The finale of “Viy” in relation to the completion of the plot is similar to the ending of “The Overcoat” in that both of them relate to the real outcome of the action as some kind of problematic-ironic hypotheses. And therefore they do not soften the tragic outcome, do not dissolve it in another opposite mood, but rather enhance the main tone with accompanying contrasting notes. Along with the situation: life after death - Gogol often stops at describing how other characters relate to death. The reaction to death is a recurring moment in the development of Gogol's works. This is the short lyrical intermezzo between the two short stories of Nevsky Prospect - the completion of Piskarev’s story: “No one cried over him; no one was visible near him without the stuffy corpse, except for the ordinary figure of the neighborhood warden and the indifferent face of the city doctor. His coffin was taken quietly, even without religious rites, to Okhta; As he followed him, only the guard soldier cried, and that was because he drank an extra bottle of vodka. Even Lieutenant Pirogov did not come to look at the corpse of the unfortunate poor man, to whom during his lifetime he had provided his high patronage. However, he had no time for that at all: he was busy with the emergency. But let’s turn to him... It’s always unpleasant for me when a long funeral procession crosses my road and an invalid soldier, dressed as some kind of Capuchin, sniffs tobacco with his left hand, because his right hand is occupied by a torch. I always feel vexed in my soul at the sight of a rich hearse and a velvet coffin; but my annoyance is mixed with sadness when I see a drayman dragging a red, uncovered coffin of a poor man from a driver, and only one beggar, having met at a crossroads, trails behind him, having nothing else to do.” Of course, one could consider (along with Tiberius Gorobets) that the whole point is in Khoma Brut’s lack of internal fortitude: they say, he died “because he was afraid” of Viy. But this is a simplification of Gogol’s thought. "Don't look!" - some inner voice whispered to the philosopher. He couldn’t bear it and looked.” The situation is sharpened in this way: instead of not being afraid or being afraid - look or not look. To look means to play, because it is impossible to withstand Viy’s gaze. 30 Chapter One Gogol and the carnival beginning This description, despite the external diversity and heterogeneity, is surprisingly one-directional. Gogol accumulates a variety of drawings, images, and details based on one characteristic: the absence of the slightest compassion for the fate of the character. It is expressed either in direct non-participation (“no one cried ...”, “no one was visible ...”, “even Lieutenant Pirogov did not come ...”), or participation only due to official duties (quarter overseer and doctor with “with an indifferent expression”) or simply for lack of anything else to do (a beggar met at a crossroads). A certain extraordinary silence (“his coffin was quietly... taken away...”) of everything that is happening is emphasized, the absence of lamentations, tears or speeches, shaded by the only soldier-guard crying under the influence of an extra damask of vodka (the one that arose in the finale is again realized “Sorochinskaya Fair” is a motive of unspiritualized movement, the source of which is only hops, like a mechanic of his lifeless machine. .."). In general, the absence of something, subtraction, is the poetic law of this little scene, where everything is given with a minus value or with a sign of non-presence. Not only is compassion absent, ordinary things, rituals and actions are absent (“even without the rites of religion,” “an uncovered coffin”). Only one sharp stroke of paint - a redder spot than the coffin - sets off this general bareness and colorlessness, just as the cry of an over-drunk soldier set off the general coldness and indifference. Finally, everything culminates in the contrast between the funeral of the poor man and the magnificent funeral procession. This is reminiscent of Pushkin’s poem “When outside the city, thoughtfully, I wander...” (1836), but in the latter case everything is in the spirit of contrast between naturalness and soulless ritual, natural and “civilized,” rural and urban (“prayer” and “sigh” instead of these ridiculous inscriptions and a wide oak tree instead of “noseless geniuses, disheveled charites”). For Gogol, death is hard and unsightly, both here and here, among rich and noble people, and among the poor; but in one case, everything seems to be cluttered with bulkiness and opera props (“a disabled soldier dressed as some kind of Capuchin...”, etc.), just as a room is cluttered with old antique furniture; in the second case, there is nothing cluttering or distracting, as if in front of us there are only bare walls and a coffin, only death. Let's move on to another similar description - from “The Overcoat”. Akaki Akakievich was taken and buried. And Petersburg was left without Akaki Akakievich, as if he had never been there. A creature disappeared and hid, unprotected by anyone, dear to no one, not interesting to anyone, not even attracting the attention of a natural observer, who would not allow an ordinary fly to be placed on a pin and examined under a microscope; - a creature who meekly endured clerical ridicule and went to the grave without any extraordinary matter, but for whom nevertheless, although just before the end of his life, a bright guest flashed in the form of an overcoat, reviving his poor life for a moment, and for whom the same after that Misfortune struck unbearably, as it did on the kings and rulers of the world...” * Thus, in “The Overcoat” a special theme is developed: the reaction to the death of a character. And here various sketches, images, details accumulate according to one sign: the complete absence of any participation or compassion. But in “The Overcoat” the effect of these unidirectional details is strengthened by the author’s direct generalization (“the creature disappeared. .. not dear to anyone”, etc.) and the fact that the latter is contrasted with the generally accepted scale of values, on which Akaki Akakievich is placed below an insect, an “ordinary fly”. It seems that Akaki Akakievich himself accepts this hierarchy and resigns himself to it. The character’s remarkably easy and submissive attitude (from an outside point of view) to the very fact of death, as if continuing his humility and tolerance of humiliation and ridicule in life (“a creature that humbly endured clerical ridicule and went to the grave without any extraordinary matter... ."); death is equalized among other troubles and troubles, as if adding to them one more, superfluous one; death is surrounded by words and expressions that threaten to take away its extraordinaryness. “Go to the grave” is an accepted periphrasis of death (cf. Pushkin: “And going into the grave, he blessed”, “...I will go down to the grave into the mysterious canopy”), but the “creature” that went to the grave “without any emergency case”, brings this act almost to the administration of an official function, and in that simplified, primitive form that was the lot of the living Akaki Akakievich (this is how the previous contrast is unexpectedly refracted - mechanical rewriting and a slightly complicated “case”, to which he turned out to be incapable: “the only thing was to change the title”). But, perhaps, the highest point of indifference and relief of what should not be alleviated is the remark of the department watchman. “A few days after his death, a watchman from the department was sent to his apartment with orders to appear immediately: the boss said he demanded it; but the watchman had to return with nothing, having given a report that he could no longer come, and to the question: “Why?” expressed himself in the words: “yes, he died, they buried him on the fourth day.” Here, not only every word speaks, but also every pause between words. Sent to Akaki Akakievi32 Chapter One Gogol and the carnival beginning chu at first tells only one thing - “that can no longer come,” since what is important is not that he died, but that he cannot carry out the orders of the boss, and if they did not ask “why ?”, then the watchman would consider himself entitled not to mention death as a secondary thing. The explanation “yes, he’s already dead” is like indicating a reason - a good reason - why he cannot come, and the addition of “they buried him on the fourth day” is like an additional, strongest argument, as if if he hadn’t been buried, then he could still there was something to be asked of the official who did not appear, but now it is clearly impossible. “Thus, the department learned about the death of Akaki Aka Kievich, and the next day a new official was sitting in his place, much taller and writing letters no longer in such a straight handwriting, but much more slanted and askew.” These lines - the final lines of the entire passage - concentrate the view on everything that is happening from the point of view of the bureaucratic machine. The bureaucratic machine reacts to the loss of a person only as if a screw had fallen out, demanding an appropriate replacement, which was immediately satisfied. The final effect of the entire passage is that the complete replaceability of the lost link (cog), replaceability according to its function in the system of the whole is stated. Everything that made up the content of Akaki Akakievich’s “poor life” and that a few lines above was specifically recalled by one phrase of the narrator (“... a bright guest flashed in the form of an overcoat...”) - all this is completely indifferent to the bureaucratic machine, recording only how the new official sits and writes in comparison with the previous one (“...much more inclined and askew”). Departing again from the chronology of Gogol’s work, let us dwell on the corresponding description from “Old World Landowners” - the reaction to the death of Pulcheria Ivanovna. “The deceased was laid on the table, dressed in the very dress that she herself had appointed... he looked at all this insensitively. A multitude of people of all ranks filled the courtyard, many guests came to the funeral, long tables were placed around the courtyard, kutya, liqueurs, pies lay in heaps, the guests talked, cried, looked at the deceased, talked about her qualities, looked at him; but he himself looked at it all strangely. They finally carried the deceased, the people followed, and he followed her; the priests were in full vestments, the sun was shining, infants were crying in the arms of their mothers, the larks were singing, children in shirtsleeves were running and frolicking along the road. Finally, the coffin was placed over the pit, he was ordered to come up and kiss the peace for the last time2 Mann Yu. is especially interesting to us, since it carries within itself the features of ambivalence (but in a complicated form, as we will see). If not feast images, then an abundance of food and drink; the wake itself as a clearly ambivalent moment of folk life (posthumous meal, continuation of life after death); jubilant nature; the running and playfulness of children in view of death (but then everything is complicated in Golev’s way: “babies cried in the arms of their mothers” - this is a clear implementation of the familiar motif of a frightened child sensing trouble); finally, a repeated upward movement - towards the singing “larks”, towards the “sun”, towards the “clean, cloudless sky”, contrasting with the downward movement (“the coffin was placed over the pit”, “the coffin was lowered”, etc.) d.). From the dead - to the jubilant, ever-living nature; from old age, the end of life - to its beginning, the child; from the earth with its underground holes and graves - up to the sky - shouldn't these multiple and unidirectional movements completely dissolve the tragedy of individual death, disintegration and transubstantiation of a tiny particle of world life? One of the directions just indicated - from the earth and the grave to the sky, upward - is realized by Tyutchev's poem “And the coffin was lowered into the grave...”, by the way, dating back to the same 1835 - the year of the appearance of “Old World Landowners”. And the coffin was already lowered into the grave, And everyone crowded around... They jostle, breathe through force, A corruptive spirit constricts their chest... And over the open grave, At the head, where the coffin stands, A learned pastor, dignified, Says the funeral speech... It broadcasts the frailty of man, the Fall, the blood of Christ... And the crowd is variously occupied with intelligent, decent speech... And the sky is so imperishable and pure, So boundless above the earth... And the birds soar loudly In the blue abyss of air;.. - “But Tyutchev’s gaze turns from the earth to the sky and does not return (in the words of another of his poems, “The gaze gradually from the valley, / / ​​Rising, ascends to the heights”). Something huge and lofty is the opposite of earthly, limited (but 34 Chapter One Gogol and the carnival beginning is not morally low: in the description there is no active decline - the speech at the grave is “smart and decent,” as it should be). The heavenly is contrasted even with earthly speeches about the heavenly as something else - perhaps simpler, in any case, mysteriously inaccessible, boundless. The contrast is one-directional and enduring. Everything is different in “Old World Landowners.” The true center of the jerk is, of course, not Pulcheria Ivanovna, but Afanasy Ivanovich. The gaze constantly returns to him, everything is tuned to the expectation of some of his words and actions. The leading point is that we, the readers (along with the characters in the story), do not understand his reaction; she is almost mechanical, insensitive (“... he looked at it all insensitively”), and this mechanicalness, it would seem, continues the mechanical jokes of Afanasy Ivanovich, the mechanical structure of his way of thinking and behavior; but at the same time, his reaction is strangely restrained (“... he himself looked at all this strangely”), as if threatening something unexpected and unforeseen. In a collective ritual action, where everyone, including the relatives of the deceased, is assigned a certain role (which does not at all exclude sincerity and depth of experience), Afanasy Ivanovich seems like some kind of unmerged, foreign body, and this unforeseenness persists until the end, although in a decisive turning point occurs in her character. The effect here is that the suspected mechanicalness and coldness of the reaction instantly dissolves into such a genuinely deep, terrible grief that only an unexpectedly inappropriate word, broken speech and silence can express. “He raised his eyes, looked vaguely and said: “So you’ve already buried her!” For what?!." He stopped and didn’t finish his speech.” “This “why?” writes Gukovsky, “one of those shortest formulas of poetry by which the true genius of an artist is recognized... “Why?” - this means that for him, for his love, she is alive, and there is no death for her in his love, and it is impossible, impossible to bury in the ground what does not die, and he does not accept the death of his beloved” 41. To the words of the researcher However, it is necessary to add that the one who did not accept the death of his beloved had to realize the fact of this death - and then finally all the irreparability and horror of what had happened was revealed to him. “...When he returned home, when he saw that his room was empty, that there wasn’t even a chair, n? where Pulcheria Ivanovna was sitting, was carried out - he sobbed, sobbed heavily, sobbed inconsolably, and tears flowed like a river from his dull eyes.” 41.2* Gukovsky G. A. Gogol’s realism. M; L., 1959. P. 85. 35 Yu. Mann Gogol's Poetics The narrative always returns to Afanasy Ivanovich in order to leave him the last word in the motley and chaotic picture of the burial. The terrible power of this description is in the contrast of the general and individual principles. Multiple movements - upward, towards nature, towards the child - seem to strive to lead away from individual death, but they are overpowered by one tongue-tied phrase from Afanasy Ivanovich: “So you’ve already buried her! For what?!." Cosmic infinity is opposed by individualized consciousness, which does not, cannot, tolerate the death of a loved one, no matter how balanced and neutralized this death is in the natural course of life. What in “Nevsky Prospekt” and “The Overcoat” is expressed mainly negatively (as improper) or, if positively, then indirectly, by the narrator (his reaction to the death of Piskarev or Akakiy Akakievich), in “Old World Landowners” is embodied in character's experiences. It was embodied with daring and, perhaps, programmatic surprise, since we encountered a reaction of pain and rejection in a person in whom, it seemed, we should have encountered submissive and mechanical submission to the flow of existence. The eternal renewal of life, the change of its links and “individuals” does not cancel the tragedy of personal death, cannot console someone who has lost a loved one. This idea arises and strengthens in direct polemics with the concept of the extrapersonal development of the whole, assimilating and at the same time changing many aspects of the carnival perception of death. Ambivalence again becomes more complex - perhaps in its most essential direction - in the question of personal being and its dependence on the system of the whole. Finally, let’s look at one more description - from “Dead Souls”. Chapter ten. Death of a prosecutor. “Whether it was paralysis or something else, he just sat there and fell backwards out of his chair. They cried out, as usual, clasping their hands: “Oh, my God!” They sent for the doctor to draw blood, but saw that the prosecutor was already one soulless body. Only then did they learn with condolences that the deceased certainly had a soul, although due to his modesty he never showed it. Meanwhile, the appearance of death was just as scary in a small person, just as it is scary in a great man: the one who not so long ago walked, moved, played whist, signed various papers and was so often seen among officials with his thick eyebrows and a blinking eye, now lying on the table, the left eye no longer blinked at all, but one eyebrow was still raised with some kind of questioning expression. What the dead man asked, why he died, or why he lived, only God knows about this.” 36 Chapter One Gogol and the carnival beginning This description is somewhat different from all those discussed above. Moments of direct compassion and participation in the deceased are eliminated here or reduced to a minimum - not only in the reactions of the characters, but also of the narrator. Or, more precisely, these moments receive metaphysical, philosophical expression. What comes to the fore is the very meaning of the transition from life to non-existence, the moment of this transition (the latter is indeed reduced to one moment: “as soon as he was sitting, he fell backwards out of his chair...”), the very terrifying suddenness of death. Death is incompatible with life, even if the latter did not know any high movements and was reduced to the performance of the simplest functions (“... walked, moved, played whist, signed various papers...”). Death is terrible “in small things... as in great men.” If in “The Overcoat” or “Old Secular Landowners” the death of a “small” called for the same compassion, the same participation as the death of any person (while official thinking threatens to consolidate and intensify this diminishing smallness, placing it at the lowest place - below the “fly”), then in “Dead Souls” the death of the small and the death of the great are equated as a philosophical phenomenon. Equalized in the sense of absolute illogicality; the strangeness, the horror of the disappearance of the individual living. And also in connection with this, in the sense of posing the fundamental questions of existence (“...why did he die, or why did he live”). They are equalized, regardless of even the specific answers to these questions, even with the characteristic Gogolian silence, refusal of a certain conclusion (“...only God knows about this”) 42. Let us explain this feature of Gogol’s image with the following analogy. “Two Physiological Sketches” (1846) by A. Kulchitsky, one of the representatives of the so-called “natural school,” talks about the vulgar, meaningless life of a “vaudeville artist” and an “unrecognized poet”: “...Both of these faces are pitiful, empty, never they cannot look directly into their essence and never think about it... Only death, touching them with its majestic hand, makes us believe that they are people too...” These lines that conclude the work are clearly suggested by the scene of death prosecutor in Dead Souls. Death contrasts with the life of the character, reveals something unexpected in him, transfers him from one level (mechanical, animal) to another (human). But Kulchytsky’s “answer” is more definite, especially if we take into account the general context of the “natural school”. The “Natural School” sharpened the antithesis of human potential and their concrete implementation, the high purpose of man and his vulgar real existence (cf. Nekrasov in his unfinished novel “The Life and Adventures of Tikhon Trostnikov,” 1843-1848: “And in one every day an unbearable melancholy, mortal melancholy attacks me, God’s spark, which died out under the ashes of need and everyday worries, flares up stronger and stronger...”). Death takes this antithesis to the limit, revealing, so to speak, the mystery of life. With Gogol, everything is more complicated: the philosophical problematic of existence is not exposed in all its depth, like some kind of bottomless abyss, but what is hidden in it is not said. Gogol’s: “Why he lived, God alone knows about this” - recalls the lines of “The Bronze Horseman”: “And life is nothing like an empty dream, // The sky’s mockery of 37 Yu. Mann Gogol’s Poetics The shift to the philosophical plane corresponds to the general spirit and structure “Dead Souls,” but its starting point is the same absolute irreconcilability of individual death and the life of the whole, which we have traced in all similar descriptions. * * * V Reinterpretation of motives, images and scenes traditionally associated with folk carnival laughter culture, the complication of ambivalence, the yawning contrast of individual death and the life of the whole, the acutely tragic feeling of this contrast, leading to the formulation of philosophical problems - all this makes you see in Gogol, the most characteristic comic writer of modern times, irreducible to the tradition of the carnival laughter principle (although it has points of contact with it). An analysis of other aspects of Gogol’s poetics, we hope, will confirm and concretize this conclusion. earth"; but at the same time, Gogol’s cold skepticism is given in the form of uncertainty. Neither the solution to the “secret” nor even its very presence (or absence) is indicated. Let us add that the emphasis in the “natural school” of the antithesis - human essence (purpose) and real existence - is a typical example of the development and at the same time straightening of Gogol’s complex artistic philosophy. 43 The points of contact between Gogol’s creativity and ancient non-carnival forms of the comic are also obvious. In these forms, which were studied by O. Freidenberg, and more recently by A. Gurevich, there was no ambivalent reduction in the sacred, high, terrible, etc. On the contrary, the “grassroots” was perceived “in the context of the serious, giving the latter a new dimension” ; “in this system, the sacred is not called into question by laughter, on the contrary, it is strengthened by the laughter principle, which is its double and companion, its constantly sounding echo” (Gurevich A. Ya. On the history of the grotesque. “Top” and “bottom” in the medieval Latin literature / Izvestia of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Series of literature and language, 1975. No. 4. P. 327). The constancy and irrevocability of the terrible sometimes bring Gogol’s comicism closer to this non-carnivalesque form of the comic. However, the general emotional spectrum of Gogol’s ambivalence is more complex, not to mention the philosophical formulation of such new problems as the contrast between individual death and the continuing life of the whole. Before us is another, new form of the comic, into which, however, threads coming from ancient forms are woven. 38 Chapter two “TERRIBLE REVENGE. A PERSPECTIVE INTO THE DEEPTH OF GOGOL'S ART WORLD I. Preliminary remarks Among the works that most clearly demonstrate the special Gogolian complexity of artistic writing should be named "Terrible Revenge." Andrei Bely even considered this story to be the most characteristic work of Gogol’s “first creative phase.” “Everything here is presented in the brightest way, there are no copybooks anywhere; everything that needs to be read is shown as if under a veil of a device that is unique in its kind. Without realizing it, you won’t read anything; and you will only go blind from the brightness of the images. The power of achievement is incredible in Vengeance; only “Dead Souls” challenge this work” (. The “brightness” of the letter in “Terrible Vengeance” can be misleading: it seems simple to the point of lubok, to the point of posterity. Hence, the division of the story into two contrasting ones, which has entered into both school and university usage plan: on the one hand - heroism, on the other - renegade. The first is raised, epically wide, with a plus sign; the second is reduced, terrible, with a minus sign. Here is a typical judgment: “If the main patriotic theme of the story is revealed in the images of Danila, Katerina, the Cossacks and is realized by the stylistic means of the folk heroic epic, then the image of the traitor-sorcerer is resolved by Gogol in terms of romantically terrible grotesque... The thought of the guilt of a person who has fallen away Gogol in “Terrible Revenge” expressed the message of the collective that betrayed its people in romantically conventional images, moving away from the realistic basis that determined the vitality of the stories of “Evenings” 2. Let us pay attention to the researcher’s categorical definition of the guilt of one of the characters: she inevitably follows from the contrast of the two plans, from the apparent extreme simplicity of the manner of “Terrible Vengeance.” Therefore, so to speak, re-probing this ma1 2 Andrey Bely. Gogol's mastery. Study. M.; L., 1934. P. 54. Stepanov K. L. N. V. Gogol. Creative path. 2nd ed. M, 1959. P. 100. 39 Y. Mann Poetics of Gogol Nehru, we must ask ourselves what exactly is the fault of the “sorcerer”, Katerina’s father. This will be a control question for a deeper definition of the poetics of the work. An unconventional approach to it was outlined by A. Bely, who described what he calls the “technique” of “Terrible Revenge.” “The appearance of the sorcerer at the feast is preceded by a story about how the father of Danila Burulbash’s wife, who lives on the other side of the Dnieper, did not come to the feast: the guests are amazed at the white face of Mrs. Katerina; “But they were even more surprised that... her old father did not come with her...”. The father is presented with "not". Esaul Gorobets raises the icons to bless the young: “...their utensils are not rich, neither silver nor gold burns, but no evil spirit will dare to touch the one who has them in the house...” The sorcerer is served with help “not” 3, concludes A. Bely. What is the sorcerer presented in this way like? “Gogol’s naive contemporaries did not comprehend the stylistic portrayal of the sorcerer with particles of “not” that pierced his outline not with lines, but with cracks into the depths of a hole, the bottom of which “no one could see,” the researcher concludes. This panache, in other words, all sorts of negative words surrounding the sorcerer, casts a network of irony over everything that happens - only hidden irony, difficult to discern. In “The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich,” Gogol’s grin is obvious; in “Terrible Revenge” “they did not see this grin in the presentation of “nonsense” under the form of the Dikan universe; they didn’t see that “fantasy” that says little is a very telling characteristic of the team shown; He is frightening, this collective, which sees in the unread actions of a stranger all the positive of terrible, witchcraft deeds. ..” 4 A. Bely, however, does not limit himself to stating the uncertainty of Gogol’s drawing and the special irony associated with it; he wants to unravel what was hidden behind all this. What was hidden was “the inexplicability of the actions of a person, perhaps touched by the Renaissance, to savages: it is clear that a sorcerer is drawn to the Poles and fraternizes with foreigners.” “...It is doubtful that the “legend” about the crimes of the sorcerer is not the delirium of the frustrated imagination of degenerates of a rotten race reacting to the Renaissance; we have the right to think: signs written “not in Russian or Polish letters” were written ... in French or German; black water - coffee; sorcerer - vegeBely Andrey. Gogol's mastery. P. 57. (italics by Andrei Bely). Right there. P. 56. 40 Chapter two “Terrible revenge.” Perspective into the depths of the Tarian; he studies astronomy and makes all sorts of experiments, like Albertus Magnus, like Henry of Aurillac...” 5 A. Bely, thus, reinterprets the events and facts of the story - a special type of interpretation, which already sharply deviates from the artistic basis. Indeed, in the work, the events and facts indicated by A. Bely are given not by the subjective plan of one of the characters, but by the narrator himself; supported by the entire event and narrative system. Consequently, they should not be deciphered, but understood in their most “fantastic” quality. A. Bely seems to be pulling the material of the story onto another block. But this is how you can transform any work with elements of fantasy, especially folklore. A. Bely’s realistic reduction of the fantasy of “Terrible Vengeance” to a Renaissance theme, mysterious signs to a French text, an unknown black drink to coffee, etc. is to some extent similar to the methodology of older mythologists (for example, the Russian folklorist of the past century A. Afanasyev), who recognized in Ilya Muromets a modification of the thunder god, in the beer he drinks an “old metaphor of rain,” and in his arrows lightning, etc. 6 II. The method of exception and the function of myth Probably, the main “technique” of depicting a sorcerer (we will limit ourselves to this for now) is more correct to see not in a system of negations, but in a system of exceptions. This is precisely the technique of exclusion: what characterizes the sorcerer belongs only to him, one of a kind. In this case, negation or uncertainty of the attribute is not necessary. Sometimes the sign can be very specific and specific. “Suddenly his whole face changed: his nose grew and tilted to the side, instead of brown eyes, green eyes began to jump...”, etc. Before our eyes, the sorcerer is alienated from the Cossack element. Brown (sometimes black) eyes are a sign of tribal community (in “May Night...” Galya says to Levko: “I love you, black-browed Cossack! Because I love you because you have brown eyes...”). The man with brown eyes is his own; with green ones, and even jumping ones, falls out of commonality. “Suddenly Katerina’s father came in... with an overseas cradle in his mouth...” The old man “had a saber with wonderful stones hanging.” “Overseas Bely Andrey. Gogol's mastery. P. 67. See: Afanasyev A. N. Poetic views of the Slavs on nature. T. I. M., 1885. P. 304-305. 41 Yu. Mann Gogol's Poetics "cradle" and "wonderful stones" perform the same function as green eyes instead of brown. The method of exception is also used in the description of the sorcerer’s family cemetery, where “his unclean grandfathers are rotting.” It does not look like an ordinary cemetery: “Neither viburnum grows between them (the crosses), nor the grass turns green, only the month warms them...” One should not think that the watershed runs along the line: Russian (Ukrainian) - “Busurman” , Orthodox - infidel, one's own - someone else's. A. Bely clearly absolutizes this facet, seeing in the old man an alien from another, foreign, European, “Renaissance” world. But the sorcerer is initially alien to that world, just as he is to the Orthodox one. The method of exclusion goes wide, separating the old man from everyone and everything. This can be seen, for example, in the listing of what the sorcerer did not want to eat and what he ate - a peculiar assortment of dishes that baffles Danila, exceeding all his expectations and assumptions. “I didn’t want to drink honey!”, “He doesn’t even drink burners!” - that is, he does not love what a “good Cossack” cannot do without. But then Danilo remembers that “Catholics are even greedy for vodka, only the Turks don’t drink.” The old man scolds the dumplings: “I know, you’re better off with Jewish noodles,” Danilo thought to himself." However, the sorcerer doesn’t even eat noodles. “The old father ate only one slice with milk,” and sipped “some kind of black water” from a flask. The complete unusualness of the food is noteworthy 7. The same attitude is used in the description of the weapons in the sorcerer’s castle: “There are weapons hanging, but everything is strange: neither the Turks, nor the Crimeans, nor the Poles, nor the Christians, nor the glorious Swedish people carry anything like this” - that is, practically not a single “people". These are signs of some kind of inhuman, transcendental power. Note that in the list of peoples - those with whom the Cossacks are fighting and on whose side they acted (“Poles”) or were going to act (“Crimeans” ") sorcerer. However, the clarification concerning the last case is eloquent: “... directed the path to the tars directly to the Crimea, without knowing why.” The sorcerer has no commonality with those whose hands he holds. A special type of exclusion technique in the story is ridicule of the witch by others (real or apparent ridicule). One of the functions of laughter is that the person being ridiculed is excluded from the community of people; an impenetrable barrier arises between him and her. Ridicule borders on persecution. The effect here is precisely inconsistency, strangeness. On the one hand, lemishka (made from sieve or buckwheat flour) is an unrefined dish. N. Markevich mentions it, describing “common people’s cuisine” (Markevich N. Customs, beliefs, cuisine and drinks of Little Russians. P. 156). On the other hand, some unknown “black water”. 42 Chapter two “Terrible revenge.” Perspective in depth Katerina retells the rumor about the sorcerer: “They say that he was born so scary... and none of the children wanted to play with him from childhood... How scary they say: that it was as if he always imagined that everyone was laughing at him. If he met some person in the dark evening, he immediately imagined that he was opening his mouth and showing his teeth. And the next day they found that man dead.” Then this scene will echo three times: with the laughter of the horse, the schema-monk (imaginary laughter) and, finally, the rider. In two cases, the laughing yid is repeated (open mouth, whitening teeth), but with an increasing function of persecution: the human action turns out to belong to a horse or a schema-monk who has long since retired from the world, that is, all living nature, as well as divine power, retreats from the old man. In the first case, the moment of horror is further enhanced by the natural similarity and visibility of the image: neighing = laughing horse. “Suddenly their galloping horse stopped, turned its muzzle towards him and, miraculously, laughed! White teeth flashed terribly in two rows in the darkness!.. He screamed wildly and cried like a frenzy. It seemed to him that everything was running from all sides to catch him.” Let’s compare in the scene with the schema-monk, where the moment of horror is further intensified by the associations of a grinning dead skull: “...You’re laughing, don’t speak... I see how your mouth has parted: your old teeth are whitening in rows!..”, etc. d. In this scene, the sorcerer’s murder of his offender, his (imaginary) pursuer, is also repeated. The difficulty of answering the question of what the sorcerer’s fault is is predetermined by the discrepancy between the subjective plans of the narrator and the characters. For the latter, first of all for Danila, the sorcerer, like Katerina’s father (at first Danilo does not yet know that this is the same person), is a bearer of evil will. Cruel and wicked deeds supposedly stem entirely from his intentions and interests. “...Your father does not want to live in harmony with us.” “No, he doesn’t have a Cossack heart.” The old sorcerer is even the highest embodiment of evil will; so, at least, Danilo thinks: “Do you know that your father is the antichrist?” The narrator's attitude towards the sorcerer is more complex. True, in general, the story is dominated by an almost indissoluble closeness of the author to his characters - the Cossacks, which is visible, for example, in the battle scene: “Koli, Cossack! walk, Cossack! But look back: it is not the honorable Poles who are already setting fire to huts and driving away frightened cattle. And like a whirlwind, Pan Danilo turned back...” Pan Danilo seemed to hear the narrator’s warning (or, which is the same thing, the narrator expressed Danilo’s involuntary guess with his warning). 43 Y. Mann Gogol's Poetics Sometimes it seems that the narrator shares Danila's opinion about the old man's evil will. In the witchcraft scene: “Unholy sinner! his beard has long since turned grey, and his face is riddled with wrinkles... and yet he still creates ungodly intentions.” “Godless intent” is an unequivocal assessment given by the narrator. But here's a more complicated case. The sorcerer sits in the basement, “shackled in iron chains,” awaiting execution. Describes what he sees and feels. Then the author’s plan comes into play - a typical Gogolian note appears: “It’s empty all over the world. The Dnieper rustles sadly. Sadness lies in the heart. But does the sorcerer know this sadness? There is no answer to the problem. But it’s already interesting that there can be an assumption about some commonality of experiences between the author and the character8. Let us return, however, to the scene of witchcraft. An unfamiliar face appeared to the old man. “And there seems to be little scary in it; and an insurmountable horror attacked him... The sorcerer turned completely white as a sheet.” The mysterious person is probably Ivan, taking revenge, unknown to the sorcerer, offended by his distant ancestor. All this will become clear from the epilogue. In the meantime, the strangeness of the sorcerer’s behavior attracts attention. Until now, we (together with Danila) could consider him the sovereign source of evil, so to speak, its highest authority. But it turned out that his power was limited by some other, more powerful force. Until now, we could consider him capable of instilling fear in everyone. It turned out that he himself was subject to attacks of insurmountable fear. The explanation for everything is in the ending of the story, in the song of the blind ban durist, in the myth. The ending explains that the sorcerer is guilty of his distant ancestor, Petro, who was jealous of his sworn brother Ivan and killed him. The punishment was requested by Ivan, determined by God's decision, and this puts the great sinner, the sorcerer, in a new situation. The myth in “Terrible Revenge” is in a special, but not conflicting, relationship with the main action. He completes the action, reveals what is unclear in it, offers his own explanation, but the latter in no way contradicts what was said before. We have already seen the shaking of the earth, the rise of the dead (the sorcerer’s ancestors) from the grave, we have seen the “man with closed eyes” (Ivan), we have seen the death of the sorcerer, the revenge of the sorcerer of his ancestors - everything that will appear in the myth. The irrefutability of the myth, its coincidence with the events of the story, changes the perspective: the ending of the story becomes the plot 8 Many years later, in “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends,” in the article “Bright Sunday,” Gogol, on his own behalf, will repeat the first phrase almost word for word: “ God! It’s becoming empty and scary in your world\" 44 Chapter Two * “Terrible revenge.” The perspective is in depth and the main tragic action, and the fate of the sorcerer, Danila, Katerina is its real ending. A glance from the depths reveals in a different way the guilt of the sorcerer and the nature of the “terrible revenge”. III. Two conclusions At least two conclusions follow from the reverse perspective established by the ending of the story. Pred^zseg^^e^^ niya - generic, in which the concept of individuality is dissolved in the concept of the genus - as a whole of the general. About STOISI already ShsatGKkdrei^elyi""""""""""""""""TOT Lotman 9" lately, but we, from our positions, need to make additions and adjustments. The generic type of consciousness is most clearly expressed in the myth addressed to prehistoric time. The crime of Petro, who was jealous sworn brother, directed both against Ivan and against his only son, that is, it affects the entire clan (“... deprived me of my honest clan and descendants on earth. And a man without an honest clan and descendants is like a grain seed thrown into the ground and lost in vain..." - says Ivan). For his part, Ivan asks for revenge for the entire Petro family (“Make it, God, so that all his descendants will not have happiness on earth!”). Petro's family ends with the sorcerer, with his daughter and son-in-law, as well as with his youngest branch, his grandson Ivan, whose name coincides with the head of the long-destroyed family. On the other hand, it was predetermined that in the Petro family, punishment would apply not only to all offspring, but also at the same time - from the crimes of the greatest sinner, the sorcerer, to his ancestors, to the entire extinct clan (“from each of his crimes, so that his grandfathers and great-grandfathers would not have found peace in their graves..."), and from them - on the great sinner again. Ancestral guilt cross-links everyone - both living and dead. The law of revenge “life for life” expands to the law - offspring for offspring, generation for generation. However, contrary to A. Bely, the point of view of the family is not the point of view of the entire story. A. Bely believed that the story in its primary basis expresses precisely the generic (collective) principle; if she does this unconvincingly or contradictorily, then it is against the author’s intentions. “A lawyer of tribal patriotism, Gogol feeds a “client” [kind] purer than a prosecutor”: patriarchal life See: Loshman Yu. M. From observations on the structural principles of Gogol’s early work // Scientific notes of Tartu State University, 1970. Vol. 251. pp. 17-45. 45 Y. Mann Gogol’s poetics “leads to the nonsense of being born without the guilt of the guilty.” The conclusion corresponds to the general view of the researcher on Gogol as an ideologist of collectivism, gradually changing what was accepted at the beginning. “Gogol’s personal is petty, not aesthetic, not heroic; a person, having been discharged from the nobility, peasantry, Cossacks, dies physically with Poprishchin or... dies during his lifetime in the bourgeois class, into which the nobleman crawls." However, the emphasis should be sharply shifted: from the analysis of the transformation of the carnival principle (in the previous chapter) it is clear that bringing forward individual moments was not accidental or arbitrary for Gogol. His entire poetic system developed in this direction, and this shift, in turn, was sanctified by a special aesthetics, leading to poeticization and warming of the entire atmosphere, enveloping the death of the individual principle. The formula “advocate of tribal patriotism” is too inaccurate for Gogol’s poetic and philosophical system, which reflects the fate of ancient psychological experiences and complexes in historically changed times. This can also be seen in the attitude towards ancestral guilt. Y. Lotman believes that “Terrible Vengeance” reflected the very “essence of the archaic worldview” with its inherent “system of categories” and, in particular, with the understanding of guilt (sin). “The villain Petro, having killed his brother... becomes the initiator of a new and unprecedented logo of evil. His crime does not become a thing of the past: giving rise to a chain of new atrocities, it continues to exist in the present and is constantly increasing. The expression of this idea is the image of a dead man growing underground with each new atrocity.”12 This is true only with the amendment that the “archaic worldview” does not exhaust the point of view of the story as a whole, that the narrative constantly overcomes the ancient “system of categories” , confronting them with new, modern ones. It would seem that who else but Danilo should be a consistent “advocate of tribal patriotism”, fully representing the tribal principle (in this capacity he was perceived by A. White). For Danila, there is only a community, a whole - comrades, the army, Ukraine. However, the deliberate ambiguity of the situation is that, being consistent, he must recognize himself, his wife, and his son as completely guilty - as belonging to a cursed family. But that’s what he doesn’t do, doesn’t want to do. “If only White Andrey. Gogol's mastery. P. 67. Same. P. 163. 12 Lotman Yu. M. Ringing in ancient glory // Scientific notes of Tartu State University, 1977. Vol. 414. P. 99. 11 46 Chapter two * “Terrible revenge.” Prospect in depth, I knew that you had such a father, I would not have married you... I would not have accepted sin on my soul by intermarrying with the Antichrist tribe.” But immediately Danilo reassures his wife: “...I know you now and I won’t leave you for anything. All sins lie on your father.” Personal experience and attachment to a loved one decide more than the idea of ​​a “tribe.” The finale of the family drama is being played out already in historically new times. The ancient type of consciousness tragically contradicts the developing individualization and personal destiny. But this same contradiction has a second side that seems to have not yet been noted at all: a certain irregularity in God’s decision, whose will established the form of punishment. “A terrible execution you have invented, man!” said God. “Let everything be as you said, but you sit there forever on your horse, and there will be no kingdom of heaven for you as long as you sit on your horse!” The supreme decision is not consistent with the passage of time; it lasts forever (“...you judge forever there on your horse”; the torments of the great dead man underground and all his offspring are also determined forever). The highest decision does not know mercy, does not take into account the transition from the generic to the individual principle. It is transtemporal and transhistorical. While fluidity and changes in being powerfully declare themselves. From God's judgment comes the terrible function of ridicule as persecution, rejection, exclusion from the community (the laughter of those around the sorcerer, the laughter of his horse, the apparent laughter of the schema-monk). After all, it was Ivan who asked God to make sure that “I would have fun looking at his torment!” (compare before this the laughter of the fratricide: “Petro laughed and pushed him with a pike...”; and then the laughter of the sleeping horseman: “... he saw the sorcerer rushing towards him and laughed”). God, however, “laughed” at Ivan himself - “laughed” at everyone. For in his court he does not completely join either side - neither the victim nor the offender. The highest decision is unpredictable and transpersonal. It gives its due to everyone - both the plaintiff and the defendant, and the descendants of the latter, and people who were not at all involved in the “terrible thing that happened in the old days”: “And from this there came a shaking throughout the whole earth. And many more