Brief creative history of the poem Dead Souls. The history of the creation of the poem Dead Souls of Gogol

“Pushkin found,” Gogol wrote, “that such a plot of “Dead Souls” is good for me because it gives me complete freedom to travel all over Russia with the hero and bring out many different characters.” Gogol himself believed that in order “to find out what Russia is today, you must certainly travel around it yourself.” In October 1835, Gogol reported to Pushkin: “I began to write Dead Souls.” The plot stretches out into a long novel and, it seems, will be very funny. But now I stopped it on the third chapter. I'm looking for a good sneaker with whom I can get along briefly. In this novel I want to show at least one side of all of Rus'.”

Gogol anxiously read the first chapters of his new work to Pushkin, expecting that they would make him laugh. But, having finished reading, Gogol discovered that the poet became gloomy and said: “God, how sad our Russia is!” This exclamation forced Gogol to take a different look at his plan and rework the material. In further work, he tried to soften the painful impression that “Dead Souls” could have made - he alternated funny phenomena with sad ones.

At the beginning of his work, Gogol defined his novel as comic and humorous, but gradually his plan became more complex. In the fall of 1836, he wrote to Zhukovsky: “I redid everything I started again, thought over the whole plan and now I am writing it calmly, like a chronicle... If I complete this creation the way it needs to be done, then... what a huge, what an original plot!.. All Rus' will appear in it!” Thus, in the course of the work, the genre of the work was determined - the poem, and its hero - all of Rus'. At the center of the work was the “personality” of Russia in all the diversity of its life.

After the death of Pushkin, which was a heavy blow for Gogol, the writer considered the work on “Dead Souls” a spiritual covenant, the fulfillment of the will of the great poet: “I must continue the great work that I began, which Pushkin took from me to write, whose thought is his creation and which from now on turned into a sacred testament for me.”

In the fall of 1839, Gogol returned to Russia and read several chapters in Moscow from S.T. Aksakov, whose family he became friends with at that time. Friends liked what they heard, they gave the writer some advice, and he made the necessary amendments and changes to the manuscript. In 1840 in Italy, Gogol repeatedly rewrote the text of the poem, continuing to work hard on the composition and images of the characters, and lyrical digressions. In the fall of 1841, the writer returned to Moscow again and read the remaining five chapters of the first book to his friends. This time they noticed that the poem showed only the negative sides of Russian life. Having listened to their opinion, Gogol made important insertions into the already rewritten volume.

In the 30s, when an ideological turning point was outlined in Gogol’s consciousness, he came to the conclusion that a real writer must not only expose to public attention everything that darkens and obscures the ideal, but also show this ideal. He decided to embody his idea in three volumes of Dead Souls. In the first volume, according to his plans, the shortcomings of Russian life were to be captured, and in the second and third the ways of resurrecting “dead souls” were shown. According to the writer himself, the first volume of “Dead Souls” is only “a porch to a vast building,” the second and third volumes are purgatory and rebirth. But, unfortunately, the writer managed to realize only the first part of his idea.

In December 1841, the manuscript was ready for publication, but censorship prohibited its release. Gogol was depressed and looked for a way out of this situation. Secretly from his Moscow friends, he turned for help to Belinsky, who arrived in Moscow at that time. The critic promised to help Gogol, and a few days later he left for St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg censors gave permission to publish “Dead Souls,” but demanded that the title of the work be changed to “The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls.” In this way, they sought to divert the reader’s attention from social problems and switch it to the adventures of Chichikov.

“The Tale of Captain Kopeikin,” which is plot-related to the poem and is of great importance for revealing the ideological and artistic meaning of the work, was categorically banned by censorship. And Gogol, who treasured it and did not regret giving it up, was forced to rework the plot. In the original version, he laid the blame for the disasters of Captain Kopeikin on the tsar’s minister, who was indifferent to the fate of ordinary people. After the alteration, all the blame was attributed to Kopeikin himself.

In May 1842, the book went on sale and, according to the recollections of contemporaries, was sold out in great demand. Readers immediately divided into two camps - supporters of the writer’s views and those who recognized themselves in the characters of the poem. The latter, mainly landowners and officials, immediately attacked the writer, and the poem itself found itself at the center of the journal-critical struggle of the 40s.

After the release of the first volume, Gogol devoted himself entirely to work on the second (begun back in 1840). Each page was created tensely and painfully; everything written seemed to the writer to be far from perfect. In the summer of 1845, during a worsening illness, Gogol burned the manuscript of this volume. Later, he explained his action 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. Gogol dreamed of regenerating people through direct instruction, but he could not - he never saw the ideal “resurrected” people. However, his literary endeavor was later continued by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, who were able to show the rebirth of man, his resurrection from the reality that Gogol so vividly depicted.

All topics in the book “Dead Souls” by N.V. Gogol. Summary. Features of the poem. Essays":

Summary of the poem “Dead Souls”: Volume one. Chapter first

Features of the poem “Dead Souls”

History of the creation of the work

Work on the poem began in 1835. From Gogol’s “Author’s Confession,” his letters, and from the memoirs of his contemporaries, it is known that the plot of this work, as well as the plot of “The Inspector General,” was suggested to him by Pushkin. Pushkin, who was the first to unravel the originality and uniqueness of Gogol’s talent, which consisted in the ability to “guess a person and make him look like a living person with a few features,” advised Gogol to take on a large and serious essay. He told him about one rather clever swindler (whom he himself heard from someone) who was trying to get rich by pawning the dead souls he had bought as living souls in the guardianship council.

There are many stories about real buyers of dead souls, in particular about Ukrainian landowners of the first third of the 19th century, who quite often resorted to such an “operation” in order to acquire the qualification for the right to distill alcohol. Even one distant relative of Gogol was named among this kind of buyer. The purchase and sale of living revision souls was an everyday, everyday, ordinary fact. The plot of the poem turned out to be quite realistic.

In October 1835, Gogol informed Pushkin: “I began to write Dead Souls.” The plot stretches out into a long novel and, it seems, will be very funny.<...>In this novel I want to show at least from one side the whole of “Rus”.

From this letter one can see the task set by the writer. The plot of the conceived “pre-long novel” was mainly built, apparently, more on positions than on characters, with a predominance of a comic, humorous tone, rather than a satirical one.

Gogol read the first chapters of his work to Pushkin. He expected that the monsters coming from his pen would make the poet laugh. In fact, they made a completely different impression on him. “Dead Souls” revealed to Pushkin a new world, previously unknown to him, and horrified him with the impenetrable quagmire that provincial Russian life was at that time. It is not surprising that as he read, Gogol says, Pushkin became more and more gloomy, “finally becoming completely gloomy.” When the reading was over, he said in a voice of melancholy: “God, how sad our Russia is!” Pushkin's exclamation amazed Gogol, forced him to look more carefully and seriously at his plan, to reconsider the artistic method of processing life material. He began to think “how to soften the painful impression” that “Dead Souls” could make, how to avoid the “frightening absence of light” in his “very long and funny novel.” Contemplating further work, Gogol, reproducing the dark sides of Russian life, interspersing funny phenomena with touching ones, wants to create “a complete work, where there would be more than one thing to laugh at.”

In these statements, although in embryo, one can already discern the author’s intention, along with the dark sides of life, to give bright, positive ones. But this did not mean at all that the writer necessarily wanted to find the bright, positive aspects of life in the world of landowner and bureaucratic Russia. Apparently, in the chapters read to Pushkin for Gogol, the author’s personal attitude to the depicted had not yet been clearly defined; the work was not yet permeated with the spirit of subjectivity due to the lack of a clear ideological and aesthetic concept.

“Dead Souls” was written abroad (mostly in Rome), where Gogol went after the production of “The Inspector General” in the spring of 1836 in the most dejected and painful state. The waves of muddy and malicious hatred that fell upon the author of “The Inspector General” from many critics and journalists made a stunning impression on him. It seemed to Gogol that the comedy aroused an unfriendly attitude among all layers of Russian society. Feeling lonely, not appreciated by his compatriots for his good intentions to serve them in exposing untruths, he went abroad.

Gogol's letters allow us to say that he left his native country not in order to relive his insult, but in order to “think about his duties as an author, his future creations” and create “with great reflection.” Being far from his homeland, Gogol was connected with Russia in his heart, thought about it, sought to learn about everything that was happening there, turned to friends and acquaintances with a request to inform him about everything that was happening in the country. “My eyes,” he writes, “most often look only at Russia and there is no measure of my love for her.” Immense love for the fatherland inspired Gogol and guided him in his work on Dead Souls. In the name of the prosperity of his native land, the writer intended, with the full force of his civil indignation, to brand the evil, self-interest and untruth that were so deeply rooted in Russia. Gogol was aware that “new classes and many different masters” would rise up against him, but convinced that Russia needed his flagellating satire, he worked a lot, intensely, persistently on his creation.

Soon after leaving abroad, Gogol wrote to Zhukovsky: “The dead flow alive... and it completely seems to me as if I were in Russia.”<...>.. I’m completely immersed in Dead Souls.”

If in a letter to Pushkin dated October 7, 1835, Gogol defined “Dead Souls” as a basically comic and humorous novel, then the further the writer’s work on the work went, the broader and deeper his plan became. 12 November 1836, he informs Zhukovsky: “I redid everything I started again, thought more over the whole plan and now I am writing it calmly, like a chronicle... 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!<...>My creation is enormously great and its end will not come soon.”

So, the genre definition of the work is a poem, its hero is all of Rus'. After 16 days, Gogol informs Pogodin: “The thing that I am sitting and working on now and which I have been thinking about for a long time, and which I will think about for a long time, is not like either a story or a novel.”<...>If God helps me complete my poem as it should, then this will be my first decent creation: all of Rus' will respond to it.” Here the title of the new work, already given in the letter to Pushkin, is confirmed, and again it is said that this is a poem that will cover all of Rus'. He also says in 1842 in a letter to Pletnev that Gogol wants to give a single complex image of Rus', wants his homeland to appear “in all its enormity.” The definition of the genre of the future work - a poem - indisputably testified that it was based on a “all-Russian scale”, that Gogol thought in national categories. Hence the many common signs that carry a generalizing semantic function, the appearance of such statements as “U us in Rus'" .... "y us not that" ..., "in our opinion custom" ..., "what we have there are common rooms,” etc.

So gradually, in the course of work, “Dead Souls” turned from a novel into a poem about Russian life, where the focus was on the “personality” of Russia, embraced from all sides at once, “in full scope” and holistically.

The heaviest blow for Gogol was the death of Pushkin. “My life, my highest pleasure died with him,” we read in his letter to Pogodin. “I didn’t do anything, didn’t write anything without his advice.” He took an oath from me to write.” From now on, Gogol considers the work on “Dead Souls” to be the fulfillment of Pushkin’s will: “I must continue the great work I began, which Pushkin took the word from me to write, whose thought is his creation and which has since become a sacred testament for me.”

From the diary of A.I. Turgenev it is known that when Gogol was with him in Paris in 1838, he read “excerpts from his novel “Dead Souls.” A true, living picture in Russia of our bureaucratic, noble life, our statehood... It’s funny and painful.” In Rome in the same year 1838, Gogol reads to Zhukovsky, Shevyrev, and Pogodin who arrived there, chapters about Chichikov’s arrival in the city of N, about Manilov, and Korobochka.

On September 13, 1839, Gogol came to Russia and read four chapters of the manuscript in St. Petersburg from N. Ya. Prokopovich; in February-April 1840, he read a number of chapters in Moscow from S. T. Aksakov, with whose family by this time he had developed friendly relations relationship. Moscow friends enthusiastically greeted the new work and gave a lot of advice. The writer, taking them into account, again began to redo, “re-clean” the already completed edition of the book.

In the spring and summer of 1840 in Rome, Gogol, rewriting the revised text of Dead Souls, again made changes and corrections to the manuscript. Repetitions and lengths are removed, whole new pages, scenes, additional characteristics appear, lyrical digressions are created, individual words and phrases are replaced. Work on the work testifies to the enormous tension and rise of the writer’s creative powers: “everything further appeared clearer and more majestic for him.”

In the fall of 1841, Gogol came to Moscow and, while the first six chapters were being whitewashed, read the remaining five chapters of the first book to the Aksakov family and M. Pogodin. Friends now with particular insistence pointed out the one-sided, negative nature of the depiction of Russian life, noting that the poem gives only “half the girth, and not the whole girth” of the Russian world. They demanded to show the other, positive side of life in Russia. Gogol, apparently, heeded this advice and made important insertions into the completely rewritten volume. In one of them, Chichikov takes up arms against the tailcoats and balls that came from the West, from France, and are contrary to the Russian spirit and Russian nature. In another, a solemn promise is made that in the future “a formidable blizzard of inspiration will rise and the majestic thunder of other speeches will be heard.

The ideological turning point in Gogol’s consciousness, which began to emerge in the second half of the 30s, led to the fact that the writer decided to serve his fatherland not only by exposing “to general ridicule” everything that desecrated and obscured the ideal to which a Russian could and should strive man, but also showing this ideal itself. Gogol now saw the book in three volumes. The first volume was supposed to capture the shortcomings of Russian life, the people hindering its development; the second and third are to indicate the path to the resurrection of “dead souls,” even such as Chichikov or Plyushkin. “Dead Souls” turned out to be a work in which pictures of a broad and objective display of Russian life would serve as a direct means of promoting high moral principles. The realist writer became a preacher-moralist.

Of his enormous plan, Gogol managed to fully implement only the first part.

At the beginning of December 1841, the manuscript of the first volume of Dead Souls was submitted to the Moscow censorship committee for consideration. But rumors that reached Gogol about unfavorable rumors among the committee members prompted him to take the manuscript back. In an effort to get “Dead Souls” through the St. Petersburg censorship, he sent the manuscript with Belinsky, who arrived in Moscow at that time, but the St. Petersburg censorship was in no hurry to review the poem. Gogol waited, full of anxiety and confusion. Finally, in mid-February 1842, permission was received to print Dead Souls. However, the censorship changed the title of the work, demanding that it be called “The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls” and thereby trying to divert the reader’s attention from the social issues of the poem, focusing his attention mainly on the adventures of the rogue Chichikov.

Censorship categorically banned The Tale of Captain Kopeikin. Gogol, who valued it very much and wanted to preserve “The Tale ...” at all costs, was forced to redo it and shift all the blame for the disasters of Captain Kopeikin onto Kopeikin himself, and not onto the tsar’s minister, indifferent to the fate of ordinary people, as is the case was originally.

On May 21, 1842, the first copies of the poem were received, and two days later an announcement appeared in the Moskovskie Vedomosti newspaper that the book had gone on sale.

February 24, 1852 Nikolay Gogol burned the second, final edition of the second volume of “Dead Souls” - the main work in his life (he also destroyed the first edition seven years earlier). It was Lent, the writer ate practically nothing, and the only person he gave to read his manuscript called the novel “harmful” and advised him to destroy a number of chapters from it. The author threw the entire manuscript into the fire at once. And the next morning, realizing what he had done, he regretted his impulse, but it was too late.

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

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

Thanks to Alexander Sergeevich!

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

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

Three circles of Chichikov

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

But Gogol never started writing the third volume, and the contents of the second can only be guessed from the four surviving chapters. Moreover, these records are working and incomplete, and the characters have “different” names and ages.

"Sacred Testament" of Pushkin

In total, Gogol wrote the first volume of Dead Souls (the same one that we now know so well) for six years. The work began in his homeland, then continued abroad (the writer “went there” in the summer of 1836) - by the way, the writer read the first chapters to his “inspiration” Pushkin just before leaving. The author worked on the poem in Switzerland, France and Italy. Then he returned to Russia in short “forays,” read excerpts from the manuscript at social evenings in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and then went abroad again. In 1837, Gogol received news that shocked him: Pushkin was killed in a duel. The writer considered that it was now his duty to finish “Dead Souls”: thereby he would fulfill the “sacred will” of the poet, and he set to work even more diligently.

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

Illustration by Pyotr Sokolov for Nikolai Gogol’s poem “Dead Souls”. "Chichikov's arrival to Plyushkin." 1952 Reproduction. Photo: RIA Novosti / Ozersky

First edition of the second volume

It is impossible to say for sure when exactly the author began writing the second volume - presumably, this happened in 1840, even before the first part was published. It is known that Gogol worked on the manuscript again in Europe, and in 1845, during a mental crisis, he threw all the sheets into the oven - this was the first time he destroyed the manuscript of the second volume. Then the author decided that his calling was to serve God in the literary field, and came to the conclusion that he had been chosen to create a great masterpiece. As Gogol wrote to his friends while working on Dead Souls: “... it is a sin, a strong sin, a grave sin to distract me! Only one person who does not believe my words and is inaccessible to lofty thoughts is allowed to do this. My work is great, my feat is saving. I am now dead to everything petty.”

According to the author himself, after burning the manuscript of the second volume, insight came to him. He realized what the content of the book should really be: more sublime and “enlightened.” And inspired Gogol began the second edition.

Character illustrations that have become classics
Works by Alexander Agin for the first volume

Nozdryov	Sobakevich	Plyushkin	Ladies
Works by Peter Boklevsky for the first volume

Nozdryov	Sobakevich	Plyushkin	Manilov
Works by Peter Boklevsky and I. Mankovsky for the second volume

Peter Rooster	Tentetnikov	General Betrishchev	Alexander Petrovich

"Now it's all gone." Second edition of the second volume

When the next, already second, manuscript of the second volume was ready, the writer persuaded his spiritual teacher, Rzhevsky Archpriest Matthew Konstantinovsky read it - the priest was just visiting Moscow at that time, in the house of a friend of Gogol. Matthew initially refused, but after reading the edition, he advised that several chapters be destroyed from the book and never published. A few days later, the archpriest left, and the writer practically stopped eating - and this happened 5 days before the start of Lent.

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

According to legend, on the night of February 23-24, Gogol woke up his Semyon's servant, ordered him to open the stove valves and bring the briefcase in which the manuscripts were kept. To the pleas of the frightened servant, the writer replied: “It’s none of your business! Pray! - and set fire to his notebooks in the fireplace. No one living today can know what motivated the author then: dissatisfaction with the second volume, disappointment or psychological stress. As the writer himself later explained, he destroyed the book by mistake: “I wanted to burn some things that had been prepared for a long time, but I burned everything. How strong the evil one is - that’s what he brought me to! And I understood and presented a lot of useful things there... I thought I would send out a notebook to my friends as a souvenir: let them do what they wanted. Now everything is gone."

After that fateful night, the classic lived for nine days. He died in a state of severe exhaustion and without strength, but until the last he refused to take food. While sorting through his archives, a couple of Gogol's friends, in the presence of the Moscow civil governor, found the draft chapters of the second volume a couple of months later. He didn’t even have time to start the third... Now, 162 years later, “Dead Souls” is still read, and the work is considered a classic not only of Russian, but of all world literature.

"Dead Souls" in ten quotes

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

“And what Russian doesn’t like driving fast?”

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

“Love us black, and everyone will love us white.”

“Oh, Russian people! He doesn’t like to die his own death!”

“There are people who have a passion to spoil their neighbors, sometimes for no reason at all.”

“Often, through the laughter visible to the world, tears flow invisible to the world.”

“Nozdryov was in some respects a historical person. Not a single meeting where he attended was complete without a story.”

“It is very dangerous to look deeper into women’s hearts.”

“Fear is stickier than the plague.”

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

"Dead Souls" is Gogol's greatest work. He began writing it as a young man, almost a youth; entered with him into the time of maturity; approached the last line of life. Gogol gave everything to “dead souls” - his artistic genius, frenzy of thought, and passion of hope. “Dead Souls” is Gogol’s life, his immortality and his death.”

Gogol began work on Dead Souls in 1835. At this time, the writer dreamed of creating a large epic work dedicated to Russia. A.S. Pushkin, who was one of the first to appreciate the uniqueness of Nikolai Vasilyevich’s talent, advised him to take up a serious essay and suggested an interesting plot. He told Gogol about one clever swindler who tried to get rich by pawning the dead souls he bought as living souls on the board of guardians. At that time, many stories were known about real buyers of dead souls. One of Gogol’s relatives was also named among such buyers. Gogol anxiously read the first chapters of his new work to Pushkin, expecting that they would make him laugh. But, having finished reading, Gogol discovered that the poet became gloomy and said: “God, how sad our Russia is!” This exclamation forced Gogol to take a different look at his plan and rework the material. In further work, he tried to soften the painful impression that “Dead Souls” could have made - he mixed funny phenomena with sad ones.

Most of the work was created abroad, mainly in Rome, where Gogol tried to get rid of the impression made by the attacks of critics after the production of The Inspector General. Being far from his homeland, the writer felt an inextricable connection with it, and only love for Russia was the source of his creativity. At the beginning of his work, Gogol defined his novel as comic and humorous, but gradually his plan became more complicated. After the death of Pushkin, which was a heavy blow for Gogol, the writer considered the work on “Dead Souls” a spiritual covenant, the fulfillment of the will of the great poet

In December 1841, the manuscript was ready for publication, but censorship prohibited its release. Gogol was depressed and looked for a way out of this situation. Unknown to his Moscow friends, he turned to Belinsky for help, who arrived in Moscow at that time. The critic promised to help Gogol, and a few days later he left for St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg censors gave permission to publish “Dead Souls,” but demanded that the title of the work be changed to “The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls.” In this way, they sought to divert the reader’s attention from social problems and switch it to the adventures of Chichikov. In May 1842, the book went on sale and, according to the recollections of contemporaries, was sold out in great demand. Readers were immediately divided into two camps - supporters of the writer’s views and those who recognized themselves in the characters of the poem. The latter, mainly landowners and officials, immediately attacked the writer, and the poem itself found itself at the center of the journal-critical struggle of the 40s.

MANILOV. Manilov is a sentimental landowner, the first “seller” of dead souls. He is kind by nature, polite, courteous, but all this took on ugly forms in him. Manilov is beautiful-hearted and sentimental to the point of cloying. Relations between people seem to him idyllic and festive. Manilov did not know life at all; reality was replaced by empty fantasy. He loved to think and dream, sometimes even about things useful to the peasants. But his projecting was far from the demands of life. He did not know and never thought about the real needs of the peasants.

Manilov considers himself a bearer of spiritual culture. Once in the army he was considered the most educated man. The author speaks ironically about the atmosphere of Manilov’s house, in which “something was always missing,” and about his sugary relationship with his wife. Meanwhile, in his office there is a book that has been pawned on page fourteen for two years. Manilov is a parody of the hero of sentimental novels, and his groundless dreams give Gogol a reason to compare the landowner with a “too smart minister.” Such a comparison means that another minister may not be too different from the dreamy and inactive Manilov, but is a typical phenomenon of this vulgar life. Gogol's irony invades forbidden areas. When talking about dead souls, Manilov is compared to an overly smart minister. Here Gogol’s irony, as if accidentally, intrudes into the forbidden area. Comparing Manilov with the minister means that the latter is not so different from this landowner, and “Manilovism” is a typical phenomenon of this vulgar world.

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

comments: Varvara Babitskaya

What is this book about?

A retired official, Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, a man devoid of distinctive features and liked by everyone, arrives in the provincial town of N. Having charmed the governor, city officials and surrounding landowners, Chichikov begins to travel around the latter with a mysterious purpose: he buys up dead souls, that is, recently deceased serfs who have not yet been included in the list. revision tale ⁠ and therefore are formally considered alive. Having visited successively caricatured, each in his own way, Sobakevich, Manilov, Plyushkin, Korobochka and Nozdryov, Chichikov draws up bills of sale and prepares to complete his mysterious plan, but by the end of the first (and only completed) volume of the poem, some kind of thicket is gathering in the city of N. chthonic forces, a scandal breaks out, and Chichikov, as Nabokov puts it, “leaves the city on the wings of one of those delightful lyrical digressions... which the writer always places between the character’s business meetings.” This is how the first volume of the poem, conceived by Gogol in three parts, ends; the third volume was never written, and Gogol burned the second - today we only have access to its reconstructions based on the surviving excerpts, and in different editions, therefore, when speaking about “Dead Souls”, we generally mean only their first volume, completed and published by the author.

Nikolay Gogol. Engraving based on a portrait by Fyodor Moller from 1841

When was it written?

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

“Dead Souls” was conceived as a satirical picaresque novel, a parade of evil caricatures - as Gogol wrote in “The Author's Confession”, “if anyone had seen the monsters that came from my pen at first for myself, he would definitely have shuddered.” In any case, Pushkin, who listened to the author’s reading of the first chapters in an early edition that has not reached us, shuddered and exclaimed: “God, how sad our Russia!" 1 ⁠ . Thus, although Gogol’s poem subsequently acquired the reputation of an angry verdict on Russian reality, in fact we are already dealing with kind, sweet “Dead Souls”.

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

How is it written?

Gogol's most striking feature is his wild imagination: all things and phenomena are presented on a grotesque scale, a random situation turns into a farce, a casually dropped word escapes in the form of an expanded image, from which a more economical writer could make a whole story. “Dead Souls” owes much of its comic effect to its naive and important narrator, who describes sheer nonsense in great detail with calm thoroughness. An example of such a technique is “a conversation, amazing in its deliberate, monumentally majestic idiocy, about wheel" 2 Adamovich G. Report on Gogol // Questions of Literature. 1990. No. 5. P. 145. ⁠ in the first chapter of the poem (Gogol also used this technique, which made his friends laugh terribly, in oral improvisations). This manner is sharply contrasted with lyrical digressions, where Gogol moves on to poetic rhetoric, which took a lot from the holy fathers and was colored by folklore. It is believed that, due to its richness, Gogol’s language is “more untranslatable than any other Russian language.” prose" 3 Svyatopolk-Mirsky D. P. History of Russian literature from ancient times to 1925. Novosibirsk: Svinin and sons, 2006. P. 241. ⁠ .

Analyzing Gogol's absurdities and alogisms, Mikhail Bakhtin uses the term “kokalans” (coq-à-l'âne), literally meaning “from a rooster to a donkey”, and in a figurative meaning - verbal nonsense, which is based on a violation of stable semantic, logical, spatio-temporal connections (an example of a kokalan - “there is an elderberry in the garden, and a guy in Kyiv”). Elements of the “Kokalan style” - deification and curses, feast images, laudatory nicknames, “unpublished speech spheres” - and indeed, such common expressions as “fetyuk, haberdashery, mouse foal, jug snout, grandma”, many contemporary critics of Gogol found it unprintable; They were also insulted by the information that “the beast Kuvshinnikov will not let any simple woman down”, that “he calls it taking advantage of strawberries”; Nikolay Polevoy Nikolai Alekseevich Polevoy (1796-1846) - literary critic, publisher, writer. From 1825 to 1834 he published the Moscow Telegraph magazine; after the magazine was closed by the authorities, Polevoy’s political views became noticeably more conservative. Since 1841 he published the magazine “Russian Messenger”. ⁠ complains about “Chichikov’s servant, who stinks and carries a stinking atmosphere with him everywhere; to the drop that drips from the boy’s nose into the soup; at the fleas that were not combed out of the puppy... at Chichikov, who sleeps naked; to Nozdryov, who comes in a dressing gown without a shirt; on Chichikov plucking nose hairs.” All this appears in abundance on the pages of “Dead Souls” - even in the most poetic passage about the bird-three, the narrator exclaims: “Damn it all!” There are countless examples of feast scenes - dinner at Sobakevich’s, Korobochka’s treat, breakfast at the governor’s. It is curious that in his judgments about the artistic nature of “Dead Souls,” Polevoy actually anticipated Bakhtin’s theories (albeit in an evaluatively negative way): “Even if crude farces, Italian buffoonery, epic poems inside out (travesti), poems like “ Elisha" Maykov, can one not regret that Mr. Gogol’s wonderful talent is wasted on such creatures!”

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

Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images

What influenced her?

Gogol’s work struck his contemporaries with its originality - no direct pretexts were found for him either in Russian literature or in Western literature, which was noted, for example, by Herzen: “Gogol is completely free from foreign influence; he didn't know any literature when he made it for himself Name" 4 Herzen A.I. Literature and public opinion after December 14, 1825 // Russian aesthetics and criticism of the 40-50s of the 19th century / Prepared by. text, comp., intro. article and notes V. K. Kantor and A. L. Ospovat. M.: Art, 1982. ⁠ . Both contemporaries and later researchers considered “Dead Souls” as an equal element of the world literary process, drawing parallels with Shakespeare, Dante, Homer; Vladimir Nabokov compared Gogol's poem with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Joyce's Ulysses and Henry James's Portrait. Mikhail Bakhtin mentions 5 Bakhtin M. M. Rabelais and Gogol (The art of words and folk laughter culture) // Bakhtin M. M. Questions of literature and aesthetics. M.: Fiction, 1975. pp. 484-495. ⁠ about “the direct and indirect (through Stern and the French natural school) influence of Rabelais on Gogol,” in particular, seeing in the structure of the first volume “an interesting parallel to the fourth book of Rabelais, that is, the journey of Pantagruel.”

Svyatopolk-Mirsky Dmitry Petrovich Svyatopolk-Mirsky (1890-1939) - publicist and literary critic. Before emigrating, Svyatopolk-Mirsky published a collection of poems, participated in the First World War and the Civil War on the side of the White movement. In exile since 1920; There he publishes “The History of Russian Literature” in English, is interested in Eurasianism and establishes the magazine “Versty”. At the end of the 20s, Svyatopolk-Mirsky became interested in Marxism and in 1932 moved to the USSR. After returning, he signs his literary works as “D. Mirsky." In 1937 he was sent into exile, where he died. ⁠ notes in Gogol’s work the influence of the tradition of Ukrainian folk and puppet theater, Cossack ballads (“dumas”), comic authors from Moliere to the vaudeville artists of the twenties, the novel of manners, Stern, German romantics, especially Tieck and Hoffmann (under the influence of the latter, Gogol wrote while still in high school the poem "Hanz Küchelgarten", which was destroyed by criticism, after which Gogol bought and burned all available copies), French romanticism led by Hugo, Jules Janin Jules-Gabriel Janin (1804-1874) - French writer and critic. For more than forty years he worked as a theater critic for the Journal des Debats newspaper. In 1858, a collection of his theatrical feuilletons was published. Janin became famous for his novel “The Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman,” which became the programmatic text of the French frantic school. In a letter to Vera Vyazemskaya, Pushkin calls the novel “charming” and puts Janin above Victor Hugo. ⁠ and their common teacher Maturin Charles Robert Maturin (1780-1824) - English writer. From the age of 23 he served as a vicar in the Irish Church, and wrote his first novels under a pseudonym. He became famous thanks to the play "Bertrand", which was highly appreciated by Byron and Walter Scott. Maturin's novel Melmoth the Wanderer is considered a classic example of English Gothic literature. ⁠ , “The Iliad” translated by Gnedich. But all this, the researcher concludes, “is just details of the whole, so original that it could not be expected.” Gogol’s Russian predecessors were Pushkin and especially Griboyedov (in “Dead Souls” there are many indirect quotes from, for example, the abundance of off-screen characters who are useless for the plot, directly borrowed situations, vernacular language, which critics reproached both Griboyedov and Gogol).

The parallel between “Dead Souls” and Dante’s “Divine Comedy” is obvious, the three-part structure of which, according to the author’s plan, was to be repeated by his poem. Comparing Gogol with Homer after a fierce polemic became a common place already in Gogol’s times, but here it is more appropriate to recall not the Iliad, but the Odyssey - a journey from chimera to chimera, at the end of which the hero is rewarded with a home; Chichikov does not have his own Penelope, but he often dreams of “a little woman, about a nursery.” Gogol, according to the recollections of his acquaintances, read the “Odyssey” in Zhukovsky’s translation aloud to him, admiring every line.

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

Vladimir Nabokov

Not without censorship delays. In general, Gogol’s relationship with censorship was quite ambiguous - for example, Nicholas I personally allowed him to participate in the production, on whom Gogol subsequently counted in various ways - he even asked for (and received) financial assistance as the first Russian writer. Nevertheless, some work had to be done about “Dead Souls”: “Perhaps Gogol never brought to bear such an amount of worldly experience, knowledge of the heart, ingratiating affection and feigned anger as in 1842, when he began publishing “Dead Souls” - the critic later recalled Pavel Annenkov Pavel Vasilievich Annenkov (1813-1887) - literary critic and publicist, the first biographer and researcher of Pushkin, the founder of Pushkin studies. He became friends with Belinsky, in the presence of Annenkov, Belinsky wrote his actual will - “Letter to Gogol”, and under Gogol’s dictation Annenkov rewrote “Dead Souls”. Author of memoirs about the literary and political life of the 1840s and its heroes: Herzen, Stankevich, Bakunin. One of Turgenev’s close friends, the writer sent all his latest works to Annenkov before publication. ⁠ .

At a meeting of the Moscow Censorship Committee on December 12, 1841, “Dead Souls” was entrusted to the care of the censor Ivan Snegireva Ivan Mikhailovich Snegirev (1793-1868) - historian, art critic. From 1816 he taught Latin at Moscow University. He was a member of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature and served as a censor for more than 30 years. Snegirev is one of the first researchers of Russian folklore and popular prints; he studied monuments of ancient Russian architecture. He introduced the term “parsuna” into art history, denoting portraiture of the 16th-18th centuries using the technique of icon painting. ⁠ , who at first found the work “completely well-intentioned,” but then for some reason was afraid to let the book go into print on his own and handed it over to his colleagues for review. Here, difficulties were caused, first of all, by the name itself, which, according to the censors, meant atheism (after all, the human soul is immortal) and condemnation of serfdom (in reality, Gogol never meant either one or the other). They were also afraid that Chichikov’s scam would set a bad example. Faced with a ban, Gogol took the manuscript from the Moscow censorship committee and sent it to St. Petersburg through Belinsky, asking him to intercede with Prince Vladimir Odoevsky, Vyazemsky and his good friend Alexander Smirnov-Rosset ⁠ . Petersburg censor Nikitenko Alexander Vasilyevich Nikitenko (1804-1877) - critic, editor, censor. In 1824, Nikitenko, who came from peasant background, received his freedom; he was able to go to university and pursue an academic career. In 1833, Nikitenko began working as a censor and by the end of his life he had risen to the rank of Privy Councilor. From 1839 to 1841 he was editor of the magazine “Son of the Fatherland”, from 1847 to 1848 - of the magazine “Sovremennik”. Nikitenko's memoirs, which were published posthumously, became famous in the late 1880s. ⁠ reacted enthusiastically to the poem, but considered it completely unpassable “The Tale of Captain Kopeikine" 6 Russian antiquity. 1889. No. 8. P. 384-385. ⁠ . Gogol, who exclusively valued “The Tale” and saw no point in publishing the poem without this episode, significantly altered it, removing all the dangerous parts, and finally received permission. “The Tale of Captain Kopeikin” was published until the revolution in a censored version; Among the significant censorship edits, one should also mention the title, which Nikitenko changed to “The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls,” thus shifting the emphasis from political satire to a picaresque novel.

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

Title page of the first edition of the novel, 1842

Cover of Dead Souls, drawn by Gogol for the 1846 edition

How was she received?

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the 1920s and 30s, Dead Souls was adapted by Mikhail Bulgakov. In his feuilleton “The Adventures of Chichikov,” the heroes of Gogol’s poem found themselves in Russia in the 20s and Chichikov made a dizzying career, becoming a billionaire. In the early 1930s, Bulgakov’s play “Dead Souls” was successfully performed at the Moscow Art Theater; He also created a film script, which, however, was not used by anyone. Gogol’s poem also resonated in literature more indirectly: for example, Yesenin’s poem “I don’t regret, I don’t call, I don’t cry” (1921) was written under the impression of the lyrical introduction to the sixth - Plyushkin’s - chapter of “Dead Souls”, which the poet himself admitted (on this is hinted at by the lines “Oh, my lost freshness” and “I have now become more stingy in my desires”).

The names of some of Gogol’s landowners became household names: Lenin accused the populists of “Manilov’s project-making,” and Mayakovsky entitled his poem about the greedy man in the street “Plyushkin.” Schoolchildren have been learning the passage about the bird-three by heart for decades.

Gogol's poem was filmed for the first time back in 1909 in Khanzhonkov's studio; in 1960, the film-play “Dead Souls” based on Bulgakov’s play was directed by Leonid Trauberg; in 1984, a five-episode film starring Alexander Kalyagin was directed by Mikhail Schweitzer. Among the newest interpretations, we can recall “The Case of Dead Souls” directed by Pavel Lungin and the high-profile theatrical production by Kirill Serebrennikov at the Gogol Center in 2013.

Fragment of the painting “The Appearance of Christ to the People” by Alexander Ivanov. 1837–1857. Tretyakov Gallery. Ivanov drew from Gogol the face of the person closest to Jesus

Was Chichikov's scam feasible in practice?

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

Deceased serfs who were registered with the landowner according to revision fairy tale A document with the results of the census of the tax-paying population conducted in Russia in the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries. The fairy tales indicated the first name, patronymic, last name, and age of the owner of the yard and his family members. A total of ten such audits were carried out. ⁠ , for the state were alive until the next census and were subject to a poll tax. Chichikov’s calculation was that the landowners would be only too happy to get rid of the extra rent and would give him dead (but on paper living) peasants for pennies, whom he could then mortgage. The only hitch was that peasants could neither be bought nor mortgaged without land (this is perhaps an anachronism: such a practice was prohibited only in 1841, and the action of the first volume of Dead Souls takes place a decade earlier), but Chichikov allowed it easy: “But I’ll buy for withdrawal, for withdrawal; Now the lands in the Taurida and Kherson provinces are given away for free, just populate them.”

The plot of the poem, given to Gogol by Pushkin (as Gogol writes in the “Author's Confession”), was taken from real life. As he writes Peter Bartenev Pyotr Ivanovich Bartenev (1829-1912) - historian, literary critic. From 1859 to 1873 he was the head of the Chertkovsky Library, the first public library in Moscow. He wrote monographs about Pushkin and, along with Pavel Annenkov, is considered the founder of Pushkin studies. Since 1863, he published the historical magazine “Russian Archive”. As a historian, he advised Tolstoy in his work on War and Peace. ⁠ in a note to the memoirs Vladimir Sollogub Vladimir Aleksandrovich Sollogub (1813-1882) - writer. He served in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and published secular stories in magazines. Sollogub's most famous work was the story "Tarantas", published in 1845. He had the title of court historiographer. Sollogub was a close friend of Pushkin: in 1836 a duel could have taken place between them, but the parties made peace; Sollogub acted as Pushkin’s second in the first duel with Dantes. ⁠ : “In Moscow, Pushkin was running with one friend. There was also a certain P. (an old dandy). Pointing him out to Pushkin, the friend told about him how he bought dead souls for himself, pawned them and received a big profit. Pushkin really liked it. “This could be a novel,” he said matter-of-factly. This was before 1828 of the year" 12 Russian archive. 1865. P. 745. ⁠ .

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

Alas! fat people know how to manage their affairs in this world better than thin people
Nikolay Gogol

In general, fraud with audit lists was not uncommon. A distant relative of Gogol, Marya Grigorievna Anisimo-Yanovskaya, was sure that the idea for the poem was given to the writer by her own uncle Kharlampy Pivinsky. Having five children and still only 200 tithes A tithe is a unit of land area equal to 1.09 hectares. 200 acres equal 218 hectares. ⁠ land and 30 peasant souls, the landowner made ends meet thanks to the distillery. Suddenly a rumor spread that only landowners with at least 50 souls would be allowed to smoke wine. The small-scale nobles began to mourn, and Kharlampy Petrovich “went to Poltava, and paid a quitrent for his dead peasants, as if for the living. And since there weren’t enough of his own, and even with the dead, there were far from fifty, he filled the chaise with vodka, and went to the neighbors and bought dead souls from them for this vodka, wrote them down for himself and, according to the papers, became the owner of fifty souls, until his death he smoked wine and gave this theme to Gogol, who visited Fedunki, Pivinsky’s estate, 17 miles from Yanovschina Another name for the Gogol estate is Vasilyevka. ⁠ ; in addition, the entire Mirgorod region knew about dead souls Pivinsky" 13 Russian antiquity. 1902. No. 1. P. 85-86. ⁠ .

Another local anecdote is recalled by Gogol’s high school classmate: “In Nizhyn... there was someone K-ach, a Serb; enormous in stature, very handsome, with a long mustache, a terrible explorer - somewhere he bought the land on which he is located - it is said in the deed of sale - 650 souls; the amount of land is not specified, but the boundaries are clearly indicated. ...What happened? This land was a neglected cemetery. This very case told 14 Literary heritage. T. 58. M.: Publishing House of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1952. P. 774. ⁠ Prince Gogol abroad N. G. Repnin Nikolai Grigorievich Repnin-Volkonsky (1778-1845) - military man. He took part in the battle of Austerlitz, after which he was captured - Napoleon I sent Repnin to Alexander I with a proposal to enter into negotiations. During the War of 1812 he commanded a cavalry division. He was governor-general of Saxony and Little Russia. Since 1828, member of the State Council. Due to accusations of improper spending of government money, he resigned. ⁠ »

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

Despite the thorough research carried out by the writer, inconsistencies remained in Chichikov’s plan, which were pointed out to Gogol after the publication of the poem by Sergei Aksakov 15 Correspondence of N.V. Gogol. In 2 volumes. T. 2. M.: Khudozh. Lit-ra, 1988. pp. 23-24. ⁠ : “I really scold myself for overlooking one thing and not insisting much on the other: peasants are sold with their families for withdrawal, and Chichikov refused to be female; Without a power of attorney issued in a public place, it is impossible to sell other people’s peasants, and the chairman cannot be at the same time both a proxy and a person present in this matter.” The short-sighted Chichikov did not buy women and children, apparently simply because their nominal price was lower than for men.

Pyotr Boklevsky. Chichikov. Illustration for “Dead Souls”. 1895

Why is “Dead Souls” a poem?

By calling his main work a poem, Gogol, first of all, meant that it was not a story or a novel in the understanding of his time. This unusual genre definition is clarified by Gogol’s sketches for the unrealized “Training Book of Literature for Russian Youth”, where Gogol, analyzing different types of literature, calls “the greatest, most complete, most enormous and many-sided of all creations” an epic, capable of covering an entire historical era, the life of a nation or even all of humanity - as an example of such an epic, Gogol cites the Iliad and the Odyssey, his favorite translations by Gnedich and Zhukovsky, respectively. At the same time, the novel, as we would intuitively call “Dead Souls” today, “is a work that is too conventional,” the main thing in it is intrigue: all events in it must directly relate to the fate of the main character, the author cannot “move the characters of the novel quickly and in abundance, in the form of passing phenomena”; the novel “does not take the whole life, but a remarkable incident in life” - but Gogol’s goal was precisely to create a kind of Russian cosmos.

Konstantin Aksakov immediately declared Gogol the Russian Homer in print, causing ridicule from Belinsky, which in reality was not entirely fair. Many of Gogol’s techniques, which confused critics, become understandable precisely in the Homeric context: for example, a lyrical digression, for which the narrator abandons Chichikov on the road in order to just as suddenly return to him, or extended comparisons that parody, as Nabokov puts it, Homer’s branching parallels. Gogol compares the gentlemen in black tailcoats at the governor's party, scurrying around the ladies, to a swarm of flies - and from this comparison a whole living picture grows: a portrait of an old housekeeper who chops sugar on a summer day. In the same way, having compared Sobakevich’s face with a gourd pumpkin, Gogol remembers that balalaikas are made from such pumpkins - and out of nowhere appears before us the image of a balalaika player, “a blinker and a dandy, and winking and whistling at white-breasted and white-necked girls” and absolutely no role not playing a role in the plot of the poem.

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

In addition, the genre definition of “Dead Souls” refers to Dante’s work, which is called “The Divine Comedy”, but is a poem. The three-part structure of The Divine Comedy was supposed to be repeated by Dead Souls, but only Inferno was completed.

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

Map of Kherson province. 1843

Why is Chichikov mistaken for Napoleon?

Chichikov’s resemblance to Napoleon is discussed with alarm by officials of the city of N., having discovered that the most charming Pavel Ivanovich turned out to be some kind of sinister rogue: “...Now they, perhaps, have released him from the island of Helena, and now he is now making his way to Russia, supposedly Chichikov." Such suspicion - along with the maker of counterfeit notes, an official of the Governor General's office (that is, in fact, an auditor), a noble robber "like Rinalda Rinaldina The hero-robber from the novel Rinaldo Rinaldini by Christian Augustus Vulpius, published in 1797. ⁠ “- looks like ordinary Gogolian absurdism, but it did not appear in the poem by chance.

Also in “Old World Landowners,” someone “said that the Frenchman secretly agreed with the Englishman to release Bonaparte into Russia again.” Such talk may have been fueled by rumors of the “hundred days,” i.e., Napoleon’s escape from the island of Elba and his second brief reign in France in 1815. This, by the way, is the only place in the poem where the time of action of “Dead Souls” is specified: “However, we must remember that all this happened shortly after the glorious expulsion of the French. At this time, all our landowners, officials, merchants, farmers and every literate and even illiterate people became, at least for a whole eight years, sworn politicians.” Thus, Chichikov travels through the Russian outback in the early 1820s (he is older than both Onegin and Pechorin in years), or more precisely, probably in 1820 or 1821, since Napoleon died on May 5, 1821, after which it was possible to suspect him in Chichikovo she naturally disappeared.

Signs of the times also include some indirect signs, such as the postmaster’s favorite "Lancaster School of Peer Education" A system of peer teaching in which older students teach younger ones. Invented in Great Britain in 1791 by Joseph Lancaster. The Russian “Society of Mutual Training Schools” was founded in 1819. The Lancastrian system was supported by many members of secret societies; Thus, the Decembrist V.F. Raevsky came under investigation in 1820 for “harmful propaganda among soldiers” precisely in connection with his teaching activities. ⁠ , which Griboyedov mentions in “Woe from Wit” as a characteristic hobby of the Decembrist circle.

Bonaparte suddenly showing up incognito in a provincial Russian city is a common folklore motif from the Napoleonic Wars. Pyotr Vyazemsky cites in his “Old Notebook” an anecdote about Alexei Mikhailovich Pushkin (the poet’s second cousin and a great wit), who was in the police service under Prince Yuri Dolgoruky during the war of 1806-1807: “At the post station of one of the remote provinces, he noticed in the room caretaker's portrait of Napoleon glued to the wall. “Why do you keep this scoundrel with you?” “But then, Your Excellency,” he replies, “what if Bonaparte arrives at my station under a false name or with a false travel document, I will immediately recognize him by his portrait, my dear, I will seize him, tie him up, and present him to the authorities.” “Oh, this is different!” - said Pushkin."

“Oh, what a cute little face you are!” Chichikov (Alexander Kalyagin)

Or maybe Chichikov is the devil?

“I just call the devil devil, I don’t give him a magnificent suit à la Byron, and I know that he goes to tailcoat" 16 Aksakov S. T. Collected works in 5 volumes. T. 3. M.: Pravda, 1966. P. 291-292. ⁠ , - Gogol wrote to Sergei Aksakov from Frankfurt in 1844. This idea was developed in the article “Gogol and the Devil” by Dmitry Merezhkovsky: “The main strength of the devil is the ability to appear to be something other than what he is.<...>Gogol was the first to see the devil without a mask, saw his true face, scary not because of its extraordinaryness, but its ordinariness, its vulgarity; the first to understand that the face of the devil is not distant, alien, strange, fantastic, but the closest, familiar, generally real “human... almost our own face in those moments when we do not dare to be ourselves and agree to be “like everyone else.”

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

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

In a lyrical digression, the author directly asks the reader: “And which of you... in moments of solitary conversations with yourself will deepen this difficult question into the interior of your own soul: “Isn’t there some part of Chichikov in me too?” Yes, no matter how it is!” - whereas everyone is ready to immediately recognize Chichikov in their neighbor.

Isn't there anything else needed? Maybe you’re used to having someone scratch your heels at night, my father. My deceased could not fall asleep without this
Nikolay Gogol

And looking in this mirror, the inspector of the medical board turns pale, having thought that under dead souls of course, patients who died in hospitals because he did not take the necessary measures; the chairman, who acted as an attorney in the deal with Plyushkin contrary to the law, turns pale; The officials who covered up the recent murder of merchants turn pale: “Everyone suddenly found sins in themselves that never even existed.”

Chichikov himself constantly admires himself in the mirror, pats himself on the chin and comments approvingly: “Oh, you little face!” - but the reader will never encounter a description of his face, except for the apophatic one, although the other heroes of the poem are described in great detail. It is as if he is not reflected in mirrors - like evil spirits in popular beliefs. The figure of Chichikov concentrates that famous Gogolian devilry on which “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” is based and which is present in “Dead Souls,” although not so clearly, but undoubtedly. Mikhail Bakhtin discovers at the heart of Dead Souls “forms of a cheerful (carnival) walk through the underworld, through the land of death.<…>It is not without reason, of course, that the afterlife moment is present in the very concept and title of Gogol’s novel (“Dead Souls”). The world of “Dead Souls” is a world of cheerful underworld.<...>We will find in it both rabble and junk of the carnival “hell”, and a whole series of images that are the realization of abusive metaphors" 17 Bakhtin M. M. Rabelais and Gogol (The art of speech and folk culture of laughter) // Bakhtin M. M. Questions of literature and aesthetics: Studies of different years. M.: Artist. lit., 1975. pp. 484-495. ⁠ .

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

This cheerful demonism, like notes 18 ⁠ researcher Elena Smirnova, condenses towards the end of the first volume in a picture of a “rebellious” city, where the evil spirits alarmed by Chichikov climbed out of all corners: “...And everything that is, rose. Like a whirlwind, the hitherto dormant city was thrown up! All the little tyuryuks and boars came out of their holes...<…>Some Sysoy Pafnutievich and McDonald Karlovich appeared, whom we had never heard of before; Sticking around in the living rooms was a tall man with a bullet through his arm, so tall the likes of which had never even been seen. Covered droshky, unknown rulers, rattlers, wheel whistles appeared on the streets - and a mess started brewing.”

Manilov (Yuri Bogatyrev)

Pyotr Boklevsky. Manilov. Illustration for “Dead Souls”. 1895

Pyotr Boklevsky. Box. Illustration for “Dead Souls”. 1895

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

As soon as the narrator touches on the ladies in his reasoning, he is attacked with horror: “The ladies of the city of N. were... no, I can’t in any way; one feels definitely timid. What was most remarkable about the ladies of the city of N. was that... It’s even strange, the feather does not rise at all, as if some kind of lead were sitting in it.”

These assurances should not be taken at face value - after all, here we find, for example, a bold description: “Everything was invented and provided for by them with extraordinary prudence; the neck and shoulders were open exactly as much as needed, and no further; each exposed her possessions as long as she felt, in her own conviction, that they were capable of destroying a person; the rest was all hidden with extraordinary taste: either some light tie made of ribbon or a scarf lighter than a cake, known as a kiss, ethereally hugged and wrapped around the neck, or were released from behind the shoulders, from under the dress, small jagged walls of thin batista, known as modesty. These modesties hid in front and behind that which could no longer cause death to a person, and meanwhile they made one suspect that it was precisely there that the death itself lay.”

Nevertheless, the narrator has concerns, and not unfounded ones. Literary critic Elena Smirnova noted that the conversation between “a lady pleasant in all respects” and “a lady simply pleasant” in “Dead Souls” closely repeats the chatter between the princesses and Natalya Dmitrievna Gorich in the third act of “Woe from Wit” (“Woe from Wit”). 1st Princess: What a beautiful style! 2nd princess: What folds! 1st Princess: Trimmed with fringe. Natalya Dmitrievna: No, if only you could see my satin necklace..." - etc.) and plays the same constructive role in action 19 Smirnova E. A. Gogol’s poem “Dead Souls”. L.: Nauka, 1987. ⁠ .

In both cases, from discussing fashion, “eyes and paws,” the ladies move directly to gossip and, having rebelled in a “general rebellion” (in Griboyedov) or going “each in their own direction to revolt the city” (in Gogol), they start a rumor that ruins the life of the main to the hero: in one case about madness, in the other about a malicious plan to take away the governor’s daughter. In the ladies of the city of N. Gogol partly depicted the matriarchal terror of Famusov’s Moscow.

We don’t know what will happen in the remaining two parts of the poem; but still in the foreground are people who abuse their positions and make money through illegal means
Konstantin Masalsky

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

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

Answering the question, “what should a young, educated, beautiful, wealthy, moral woman who is still not satisfied with her secular uselessness do?” notices 20 Tertz A. (Sinyavsky A.D.) In the shadow of Gogol // Collection. Op. in 2 volumes. T. 2. M.: Start, 1992. P. 20. ⁠ Abram Tertz, Gogol “does not call her to cut frogs, or to abolish the corset, or even to bear children, or to abstain from childbearing.” “Gogol does not demand anything from her other than what she already has as a woman - neither moral teachings, nor social activities. Her good task is to be herself, showing everyone her beauty" 21 Tertz A. (Sinyavsky A.D.) In the shadow of Gogol // Collection. Op. in 2 volumes. T. 2. M.: Start, 1992. P. 3-336. ⁠ . It is clear why “Woman in the Light” is ridiculed by the vivisector of frogs - Turgenev’s Bazarov, who swayed in his nihilism under the influence of love: “...I feel like I’m really disgusting, as if I’ve read Gogol’s letters to the Kaluga governor” (the wife of the Kaluga governor was Alexandra Smirnova) .

The governor’s daughter, who “was the only one who turned white and emerged transparent and bright from the muddy and opaque crowd,” is not in vain the only bright character in the poem: she is the reincarnation of Beatrice, who must lead the hero out of Dante’s hell of the first volume, and this transformation inspires awe in the author.

Museum of London/Heritage Images/Getty Images

Who do we really mean by dead souls?

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

Gogol describes an anecdotal discussion of the poem in the censorship committee in a letter to Pletnev in 1842: “As soon as Golokhvastov, who held the position of president, heard the name “Dead Souls,” he shouted in the voice of an ancient Roman: “No, I will never allow this: the soul can be immortal; there cannot be a dead soul, the author is arming himself against immortality.” The smart president could finally understand that this was about Revizhsky souls. As soon as he realized it... an even bigger mess happened. “No,” shouted the chairman and half of the censors behind him, “this certainly cannot be allowed, even if there was nothing in the manuscript, but only one word: Revizhskaya soul, this cannot be allowed, it means against serfdom.” It should be noted that Golokhvastov’s somewhat limited interpretation was shared by many of Gogol’s admirers. Herzen turned out to be somewhat more perceptive, seeing in the poem not so much social caricatures as a gloomy insight about the human soul: “This title itself carries something terrifying. And he couldn’t call it any other way; not the revisionists are dead souls, but all these Nozdryovs, Manilovs and tutti quanti - these are dead souls, and we meet them at every step.<…>After our youth, don’t we all, one way or another, lead one of the lives of Gogol’s heroes?” Herzen suggests that Lensky in “Eugene Onegin” would have turned into Manilov over the years if the author had not “shot” him on time, and laments that Chichikov is “one active person... and that narrow-minded rogue” did not meet a “moral landowner” on his way kind-hearted, old-timer“- this is exactly what was supposed to happen, according to Gogol’s plan, in the second volume of Dead Souls.

The unfortunate fate of the second volume, which Gogol tortured for ten years and burned twice, may be partly explained by the fact that Gogol could not find satisfactory “living souls” in the very reality, the ugly sides of which he showed in the first volume (where he describes his landowners , in fact, not without sympathy). He contrasts Sobakevich, Manilov and Nozdryov not with the Russian people, as was commonly believed in Soviet literary criticism, but with certain epic or fairy-tale heroes. The most poetic descriptions of Russian peasants in the poem relate to Sobakevich’s peasants, whom he paints as alive in order to inflate the price (and after him Chichikov indulges in fantasies about Russian prowess): “Yes, of course, they are dead,” said Sobakevich, as if having come to his senses and remembering that they were, in fact, already dead, and then added: “However, and then to say: what of these people who are now listed as living? What kind of people are these? flies, not people."

Nozdryov (Vitaly Shapovalov)

Pyotr Boklevsky. Nozdryov. Illustration for “Dead Souls”. 1895

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

First of all, Gogol loved to eat and treat others.

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

Mikhail Bakhtin, analyzing the Rabelaisian nature of Gogol’s work, notes about “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka”: “Food, drink and sex life in these stories are of a festive, carnival-maslenitsa character.” A hint of this folklore layer can also be seen in the feast scenes of Dead Souls. Korobochka, wanting to appease Chichikov, puts various pies and baked goods on the table, of which Chichikov pays the main attention to pancakes, dipping them three at a time into melted butter and praising them. During Maslenitsa, pancakes are used to appease carolers who personify evil spirits, and Chichikov, who came “God knows from where, and at night too” and buys up the dead, looks like evil spirits in the eyes of the simple-minded “mother landowner”.

Food serves to characterize the landowners, as well as their wives, villages and surroundings, and often it is food that reveals sympathetic human features in Gogol’s caricatures. Treating Chichikov with “mushrooms, pies, quick-witted Fried egg baked with bread and ham. ⁠ , shanishki The diminutive form of the word “shangi” is round pies, a traditional dish of Russian cuisine. In Gogol's notebook - “a kind of cheesecake, a little smaller.” However, shangi, unlike cheesecakes, are not made sweet. ⁠ , by the spinners “Donuts, pancakes” (from Gogol’s notebook). ⁠ , pancakes, flatbreads with all sorts of toppings: topping with onions, topping with poppy seeds, topping with cottage cheese, topping with with pictures Smelt is a small lake fish. ⁠ ”, The box reminds the author of Pulcheria Ivanovna from “Old World Landowners”, who is absolutely dear to the author, with her shortbreads with lard, salted saffron milk caps, various dried fish, dumplings with berries and pies - with poppy seeds, with cheese or with cabbage and buckwheat porridge (“these are the ones Afanasy Ivanovich loves very much." And in general, she is a good housewife, takes care of the peasants, and cordially lays down feather beds for a suspicious night guest and offers to scratch their heels.

Sobakevich, who in one sitting crushes a side of lamb or a whole sturgeon, but won’t take a frog or an oyster (food “of the Germans and the French”) into his mouth, “even with sugar,” reminds at this moment of an epic Russian hero like Dobrynya Nikitich, who drank at once “ Charu green wine in one and a half buckets,” - it was not for nothing that his late father went bear hunting alone; Russian bear is not at all a pejorative definition in Gogol’s world.

Nozdryov was in some respects a historical person. Not a single meeting he attended was complete without a story. Some story would certainly happen: either the gendarmes would lead him out of the hall by the arm, or his own friends would be forced to push him out
Nikolay Gogol

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

Only Chichikov leaves Nozdryov hungry - his dishes are burnt or undercooked, the cook made them from whatever he can find: “if there was pepper near him, he sprinkled pepper, if he caught cabbage, he stuck cabbage, stuffed milk, ham, peas, in a word, roll and go.” "; but Nozdryov drinks a lot - and also some kind of utter rubbish: Madeira, which the merchants “mercilessly seasoned with rum, and sometimes poured in aqua regia,” some kind of “Bourgognon and champagne together,” rowan wine, in which “you could hear fusels in all its strength."

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

Gogol no longer had to describe this revival: there is a tragic paradox in the fact that in his last days Gogol fasted cruelly, it is believed that he starved himself to death, renouncing food and laughter - that is, he himself turned into Plyushkin in some spiritual sense.

Roasted pig. 19th century engraving

Chichikov (Alexander Kalyagin)

Why did Gogol decide to make his hero a scoundrel?

The author himself motivated his choice as follows: “They turned a virtuous man into a workhorse, and there is no writer who would not ride him, urging him with a whip and with everything else... they starved the virtuous man to the point that now there is not even a shadow of virtue on him, and only ribs and skin remained instead of a body... they hypocritically call for a virtuous person... they do not respect a virtuous person. No, it’s time to finally hide the scoundrel too.”

Chichikov alone does not have any special villainy, hardly anyone suffered from his scams (except perhaps indirectly - the prosecutor died of fright). Nabokov calls him “a vulgar man of gigantic caliber,” noting: “By trying to buy dead people in a country where living people were legally bought and pawned, Chichikov hardly sinned seriously from a moral point of view.”

With all the caricatured vulgarity of Chichikov, he is, after all, that Russian who loves driving fast, in an apologetic passage about the troika. It was he who had to go through the crucible of trials and be spiritually reborn in the third volume.

The prerequisite for such a revival is the only property that distinguishes Chichikov from all other heroes of Dead Souls: he is active. Everyday failures do not extinguish his energy, “activity did not die in his head; “everyone there wanted to build something and was just waiting for a plan.” In this respect, he is the same Russian man whom “they sent... even to Kamchatka, just give him warm mittens, he claps his hands, an ax in his hands, and goes to cut himself a new hut.”

Of course, his activity is still only acquisitive, and not creative, which the author sees as his main vice. Nevertheless, it is and only Chichikov’s energy that moves the action from the spot - from the movement of his bird-troika “everything flies: miles fly, merchants fly towards them on the beams of their wagons, a forest flies on both sides with dark formations of spruces and pines,” all of Rus' rushes somewhere.

The whole city there is like this: a swindler sits on a swindler and drives the swindler around. All sellers of Christ. There is only one decent person there - the prosecutor, and even he, to tell the truth, is a pig
Nikolay Gogol

All Russian classics dreamed of an energetic, active Russian hero, but, it seems, they did not really believe in his existence. Russian mother laziness, who was born before us, was perceived by them as the source of all evil and sorrow - but at the same time as the basis of the national character. Gogol displays an example of a good owner, immersed in vigorous activity, in the second volume of “Dead Souls”, it is no coincidence that he gives him the unpronounceable and obviously foreign (Greek) surname Kostanzhoglo: “A Russian man... cannot live without encouragement... He will doze off and sour.” The next famous businessman in Russian literature described by Goncharov in “Oblomov” is the half-German Andrei Stolz, while the undoubtedly more handsome Oblomov is the direct heir to Gogol’s “hulk, lazybones, bobcat” Tentetnikov, who in his youth nurtured plans for vigorous management, and then settled down in a dressing gown on the couch. Complaining about Russian laziness, both Gogol and his followers did not seem to believe in the possibility of its eradication without the participation of businesslike foreigners - but, contrary to reason, they could not overcome the feeling that businessmanship was a spiritless, vulgar and vile quality. The word “mean” in the archaic sense meant low birth (after all, Chichikov’s origins were “dark and modest”). Ilya Ilyich Oblomov most expressively formulated this antithesis in his apology for laziness, where he contrasts himself, a Russian gentleman, with “another” - a low, uneducated person, whom “need rushes from corner to corner, he runs around all day long” (“There are many Germans “like that,” Zakhar said gloomily.”

This situation changed only with the advent of commoner heroes in literature, who could not afford to relax. It is characteristic that in the famous production of “Dead Souls” at the Gogol Center in 2013, Chichikov was played by the American Odin Byron, and the final poetic monologue about the bird-three was replaced by a perplexed question: “Rus, what do you want from me?” Explaining this choice, director Kirill Serebrennikov interprets the conflict of “Dead Souls” as a clash between “a man from the new world,” industrial and rational, with “the Russian callous local way of life.” Long before Serebrennikov, Abram Tertz expressed a similar thought: “Gogol brought Russia as a magic wand - not Chatsky, not Lavretsky, not Ivan Susanin, and not even the elder Zosima, but Chichikov. This one won't give away! Chichikov, only Chichikov is capable of moving and transporting the cart of history, - Gogol foresaw at a time when no development of capitalism in Russia had yet been dreamed of... and he brought out the bastard: this one is not will let you down!.." 22 Tertz A. (Sinyavsky A.D.) In the shadow of Gogol // Collection. Op. in 2 volumes. T. 2. M.: Start, 1992. P. 23. ⁠

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

Did Gogol portray himself in Dead Souls?

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

When reading “Dead Souls,” it may seem that the author was too strict with himself. The traits that he endowed with his characters look rather touching, in any case, it is they who give the heroes humanity - but we must take into account that Gogol considered any habit, excessive attachment to the material world, to be a weakness. And he had many weaknesses of this kind. At the end of Chapter VII of Dead Souls, one of the many seemingly completely random, but incredibly alive secondary characters is shown for a minute - the Ryazan lieutenant, “a big, apparently, hunter of boots,” who had already ordered four pairs and could not lie down sleep, constantly trying on the fifth: “the boots were definitely well made, and for a long time he raised his foot and examined the smartly and wonderfully worn heel.” Lev Arnoldi (the half-brother of Alexandra Smirnova-Rosset, who knew Gogol briefly) assures in his memoirs that this passionate hunter of boots was Gogol himself: “In his small suitcase there was very little of everything, and just as much dress and underwear as was necessary, and there were always three, often even four pairs of boots, and they were never worn out.”

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

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

"A! patched, patched!” the man screamed. He also added a noun to the word patched, which is very successful, but not used in social conversation, and therefore we will skip it.<...>The Russian people express themselves strongly!
Nikolay Gogol

The habit of the governor of the city N., who, as you know, was “a great good-natured man and sometimes even embroidered tulle himself,” is also an autobiographical trait: as Pavel Annenkov recalled, Gogol had a passion for handicrafts and “with the approach of summer... he began to cut out necklaces for himself.” scarves made of muslin and cambric, placing vests several lines lower, etc., and dealt with this matter very seriously”; He loved to knit and cut dresses for his sisters.

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

Expressions like “to visit Sopikov and Khrapovitsky, meaning all sorts of dead dreams on the side, on the back and in all other positions,” which grated the ears of critics in “Dead Souls,” Gogol, according to evidence, used in life.

The main thing, probably, that he passed on to Chichikov was a nomadic lifestyle and a love of driving fast. As the writer admitted in a letter to Zhukovsky: “Then I only felt good when I was on the road. The road always saved me when I stayed in one place for a long time or fell into the hands of doctors, due to their cowardice, who always harmed me, not knowing a single bit about my nature.”

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

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

But even in a softened version, censor Alexander Nikitenko called “Kopeikin” “completely impossible to pass,” which plunged the writer into despair. “This is one of the best places in the poem, and without it there is a hole that I cannot patch or sew up with anything,” Gogol wrote to Pletnev on April 10, 1842. “I’d rather decide to remake it than to lose it altogether.” I threw out all the generals, I made Kopeikin’s character stronger, so now it is clear that he himself was the cause of everything and that they treated him well.” Instead of a hero who suffered for his homeland and was driven to complete despair by the neglect of the authorities, Kopeikin now turned out to be a red tape and a rogue with immoderate claims: “I can’t,” he says, “get by somehow.” “I need, he says, to eat a cutlet, a bottle of French wine, and also entertain myself, in the theater, you know.”

Neither in the corridors nor in the rooms was their gaze struck by the cleanliness. They didn't care about her then; and what was dirty remained dirty, not taking on an attractive appearance
Nikolay Gogol

The story does not seem to relate to the development of the plot in any way and looks like an inserted short story in it. However, the author valued this episode so much that he was not ready to publish the poem without it and chose to mutilate the story, eliminating all the politically sensitive parts from it - obviously, satire was not the main thing in Kopeikin.

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

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

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

The poem was conceived as a trilogy, the first part of which was supposed to make the reader horrified, showing all Russian abominations, the second - to give hope, and the third - to show a picture of revival. Already on November 28, 1836, in the same letter Mikhail Pogodin Mikhail Petrovich Pogodin (1800-1875) - historian, prose writer, publisher of the magazine "Moskvityanin". Pogodin was born into a peasant family, and by the middle of the 19th century he became such an influential figure that he gave advice to Emperor Nicholas I. Pogodin was considered the center of literary Moscow, he published the almanac "Urania", in which he published poems by Pushkin, Baratynsky, Vyazemsky, Tyutchev, in his “Moskvityanine” published Gogol, Zhukovsky, Ostrovsky. The publisher shared the views of the Slavophiles, developed the ideas of Pan-Slavism, and was close to the philosophical circle of wise men. Pogodin professionally studied the history of Ancient Rus' and defended the concept that the Scandinavians laid the foundations of Russian statehood. He collected a valuable collection of ancient Russian documents, which was later bought by the state. ⁠ , in which Gogol reports work on the first volume of “Dead Souls” - a thing in which “all of Rus' will respond” - he explains that the poem will be “in several volumes.” One can imagine what a high standard Gogol set for himself if the first and only published volume of the poem began to seem insignificant to him over time, like “a porch hastily attached by a provincial architect to a palace that was planned to be built on a colossal scale.” Having promised himself and his readers to describe nothing less than the whole of Rus' and give a recipe for the salvation of the soul, announcing a “husband gifted with valor” and a “wonderful Russian maiden,” Gogol drove himself into a trap. The second volume was eagerly awaited; moreover, Gogol himself mentioned it so often that a rumor spread among his friends that the book was already ready. Pogodin even announced its release in Moskvityanin in 1841, for which he received from Gogol reprimand From French - reproach, reprimand. ⁠ .

Meanwhile, work did not proceed. Throughout 1843-1845, the writer continuously complained in letters to Aksakov, Zhukovsky, Yazykov about a creative crisis, which was then further aggravated by mysterious ill health - Gogol is afraid of “the blues, which could intensify an even painful state” and sadly admits: “I tortured myself, raped write, suffered severe suffering, seeing his powerlessness, and several times he had already caused himself illness through such coercion and could not do anything, and everything came out forcedly and bad" 24 Selected passages from correspondence with friends // Complete works of N. V. Gogol. 2nd ed. T. 3. M., 1867. ⁠ . Gogol is ashamed to return to his homeland, like “a man sent on a mission and returning empty-handed,” and in 1845, for the first time, he burned the second volume of “Dead Souls,” the fruit of five years of labor. In “Selected Places...” in 1846, he explains: “We must take into account not the pleasure of some lovers of arts and literature, but of all readers,” and the latter, in the reader’s opinion, would do more harm than good , several striking examples of virtue (as opposed to the caricatures from the first volume), if you do not immediately show them, “clear as day,” the universal path of moral improvement. By this time, Gogol considers art only a stepping stone to preaching.

The neck and shoulders were open exactly as much as needed, and no further; each exposed her possessions as long as she felt, in her own conviction, that they were capable of destroying a person; the rest was all hidden with extraordinary taste
Nikolay Gogol

“Selected Places” became such a sermon, which greatly damaged Gogol’s reputation in the liberal camp as an apology for serfdom and an example of church hypocrisy. By the time “Selected Places” was published, fellow correspondents were already (despite the real cult of Gogol) irritated by his real letters, in which Gogol lectured them and literally dictated their daily routine. Sergei Aksakov wrote to him: “I am fifty-three years old. I was reading then Thomas a Kempis Thomas a à Kempis (c. 1379 - 1471) - writer, Catholic monk. Probable author of the anonymous theological treatise “On the Imitation of Christ,” which became the program text of the spiritual movement “New Piety.” The treatise criticizes the outward piety of Christians and praises self-denial as a way of becoming like Christ. ⁠ when you were not yet born.<…>I don’t blame anyone’s beliefs, as long as they are sincere; but, of course, I won’t accept anyone’s... And suddenly you imprison me, like a boy, for reading Thomas a à Kempis, by force, without knowing my convictions, and how else? at the appointed time, after coffee, and dividing the reading of the chapter, as if for lessons... It’s both funny and annoying...”

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

In 1848, Gogol, increasingly immersed in religion, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but this did not bring him relief; After that, he became the spiritual child of Father Matthew of Konstantinovsky, who called for fierce asceticism and instilled in the writer thoughts about the sinfulness of all his creative work. labor 25 Svyatopolk-Mirsky D. P. History of Russian literature from ancient times to 1925. Novosibirsk: Svinin and Sons, 2006. P. 239. ⁠ . Apparently, under his influence, aggravated by a creative crisis and depression, on February 24, 1852, Gogol burned the almost completed second volume of Dead Souls in the stove. Ten days later, having fallen into black melancholy, Gogol died, apparently starving himself to death under the guise of fasting.

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

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