On June 11, 1842, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol's poem "Dead Souls" was published. To be precise, the first edition was called "The Adventures of Chichikov or Dead Souls." Today, a little more than 170 years later, we decided to remember the great writer with a kind word and reflect on several up-to-date questions about this amazing work, on the pages of which the picture of Gogol's contemporary life is so clearly imprinted.
By the way, there are still copies of this very first edition. One of them was recently put up for auction of antique and used books. This volume was presented by the writer Vsevolod Ivanov to the director Alexander Dovzhenko, which, in fact, is the inscription. The lot went under the hammer for 350 thousand rubles.
Tell me, brother Pushkin, an anecdote...
Of course, every self-respecting "reader" today knows that the idea of the poem was suggested to Gogol by none other than Pushkin. This is documented in their correspondence dated October 7, 1835, and later, in 1847, Gogol will directly write about the fact of the transmission of the plot in the "Author's Confession". Researchers have interpreted this in different ways. For example, Yuri Mann wrote about the nature of the “hint” as follows: “It does not mean that a joke with dead souls can be realized at all, but that a great work can be created on its basis ...”. But what does it do? Was Gogol's iconic thing invented by Pushkin? Of course not. The fact is that Pushkin told Gogol an anecdote, a funny, modern story about the adventures of a cunning businessman. An anecdote, nothing more.
Pushkin was simply given a hook that not everyone can grasp, and only Gogol could use it in this way.
Knowing how much Gogol rewrote, supplemented, reworked and again rewrote the chapters of the poem cleanly, one can imagine what would have remained of Pushkin's sketches. It should be noted that Gogol, apparently, throughout the entire time of the creation of the first volume, kept in himself the feeling that he should pay some tribute to Pushkin. A tribute not for the plot or idea, but for the incentive to create a great work. In The Author's Confession, Gogol writes: “But Pushkin made me look at the matter seriously. He has long been inciting me to take on a great work ... ". Writer's gratitude can already be seen in the genre definition of "Dead Souls". Gogol called his work a poem. Someone believed that this was only a mockery of everything and everything peculiar to him. But why not assume that the poem "Dead Souls" is also called because if Pushkin wrote it, then it would certainly be a poem?
Were there any illustrations?
Contrary to popular belief, the first edition of Gogol's poem contained no illustrations at all. A.A. Agin created a series of drawings for the poem, which were supposed to be included in the book, but they were first published only 4 years later, in 1846, in the collection One Hundred Drawings for N.V. Gogol's Dead Souls. Agin's drawings are considered to be "classic". Perhaps this influenced the widespread opinion about the presence of illustrations in the first book.
Subsequently, many artists found inspiration in Gogol's poem, and created wonderful collections of illustrations for it. Artists P.M. Boklevsky, V.E. Makovsky, P.P. Sokolov, Marc Chagall. The drawings are talented and cheerful, and they still adorn various editions of the poem published around the world.
Gogol burned?
The magic of numbers. On June 11, 1842, the first volume of the poem was published, and on February 11, 1852, Gogol burned the second volume. This act was so unjustified and incomprehensible to the writer's contemporaries, as it remains inexplicable today. The human mind does not sleep and comes up with new and new versions that can, if not explain, then shed some light on this incident.
The first version, the official one, is that Gogol really burned the second volume of Dead Souls. He planned to write a trilogy, which is directly evidenced by the notes in the writer's notebooks.
On the night of February 11-12, Gogol had another bout of his mental illness. Disappointment in the results of his own work, the feeling that he wrote something wrong and not that he did not reach the required level, did not create the desired images, made him throw the manuscript into the fire of the fireplace. It is likely that Gogol, who dreamed in the second volume, in his own words, to bring out heroes that are purer, striving for the right values and ideals, virtuous, having failed to do this, realized that his theory was not correct. That there are no prerequisites for such types in Rus'. And tried to stop himself. It was the only way he could stop.
According to another theory, which is less likely, but still has the right to exist, Gogol did not write the second volume at all. Apparently, the followers of this version believe that for several years the writer only portrayed painstaking work on the text, in fact, creating nothing.
According to another version, Nikolai Vasilyevich, whose handwriting is known, thanks to the surviving samples, for its ornateness, simply could not make out what he himself wrote. Unlikely? Well ... it must be that time will no longer judge this dispute, so all versions will remain unconfirmed. Gogol's riddles are such riddles.
(where Pushkin was twice) no one dies. The fact is that at the beginning of the 19th century, quite a lot of peasants from the central provinces of the Russian Empire fled to Bessarabia. The police were obliged to identify the fugitives, but often unsuccessfully - they took the names of the dead. As a result, not a single death was registered in Bendery for several years. An official investigation began, which revealed that the names of the dead were given to fugitive peasants who did not have documents. Many years later, Pushkin, creatively transforming a similar story, told Gogol.
The documented history of the creation of the work begins on October 7, 1835. In a letter to Pushkin dated this day, Gogol first mentions "Dead Souls":
Started writing Dead Souls. The plot stretched out into a long novel and, it seems, will be very funny.
Gogol read the first chapters to Pushkin before his departure abroad. Work continued in the autumn of 1836 in Switzerland, then in Paris and later in Italy. By this time, the author had developed an attitude towards his work as a “sacred testament of the poet” and a literary feat, which at the same time has the meaning of a patriotic one, which should reveal the fate of Russia and the world. In Baden-Baden in August 1837, Gogol read an unfinished poem in the presence of the maid of honor of the imperial court Alexandra Smirnova (née Rosset) and Nikolai Karamzin's son Andrei Karamzin, in October 1838 he read part of the manuscript to Alexander Turgenev. Work on the first volume took place in Rome in late 1837 and early 1839.
Upon his return to Russia, Gogol read chapters from Dead Souls at the Aksakovs' house in Moscow in September 1839, then in St. Petersburg with Vasily Zhukovsky, Nikolai Prokopovich and other close acquaintances. The writer worked on finishing the first volume in Rome from the end of September 1840 to August 1841.
Returning to Russia, Gogol read the chapters of the poem in the Aksakovs' house and prepared the manuscript for publication. At a meeting of the Moscow Censorship Committee on December 12, 1841, obstacles to the publication of the manuscript, submitted for consideration to the censor Ivan Snegirev, were revealed, who, in all likelihood, acquainted the author with possible complications. Fearing a censorship ban, in January 1842, Gogol sent the manuscript to St. Petersburg through Belinsky and asked his friends A. O. Smirnova, Vladimir Odoevsky, Pyotr Pletnev, Mikhail Vielgorsky to help with the passage of censorship.
On March 9, 1842, the book was allowed by the censor Alexander Nikitenko, but with a changed title and without The Tale of Captain Kopeikin. Even before receiving the censored copy, the manuscript began to be typed in the printing house of Moscow University. Gogol himself undertook to design the cover of the novel, wrote in small letters "The Adventures of Chichikov or" and in large letters "Dead Souls". In May 1842, the book was published under the title "The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls, a poem by N. Gogol." In the USSR and modern Russia, the title "The Adventures of Chichikov" is not used.
Draft manuscripts of four chapters of the second volume (in an incomplete form) were discovered during the opening of the writer's papers, sealed after his death. The autopsy was performed on April 28, 1852 by S.P. Shevyryov, Count A.P. Tolstoy and the Moscow civil governor Ivan Kapnist (son of the poet and playwright V.V. Kapnist). The whitewashing of the manuscripts was carried out by Shevyryov, who also took care of its publication. The listings for the second volume circulated even before its publication. For the first time, the surviving chapters of the second volume of Dead Souls were published as part of the Complete Works of Gogol in the summer of 1855. Now printed together with the first four chapters of the second volume, one of the last chapters belongs to an earlier edition than the rest of the chapters.
The book tells about the adventures of Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, the protagonist of the story, a former collegiate adviser posing as a landowner. Chichikov arrives in a town not specifically named, a certain provincial "city N" and immediately tries to gain confidence in all the inhabitants of the city of any importance, which he successfully succeeds. The hero becomes an extremely welcome guest at balls and dinners. The townspeople of the unnamed city are unaware of Chichikov's true goals. And its purpose is to buy up or gratuitously acquire dead peasants, who, according to the census, were still registered as living with local landlords, and then register them in their own name as living. The character, past life of Chichikov and his future intentions about the "dead souls" are described in the last, eleventh chapter.
Chichikov is trying by any means to get rich, to achieve a high social status. In the past, Chichikov served in customs, for bribes he allowed smugglers to freely transport goods across the border. However, he quarreled with an accomplice, who wrote a denunciation against him, after which the scam was revealed, and both were under investigation. The accomplice went to prison, Chichikov immediately left the province, so as not to be caught without taking money from the bank, having managed to take with him only a few shirts, some official paper, and a couple of bars of soap.
Chichikov only smiled, slightly flying up on his leather cushion, for he liked fast driving. And what Russian does not like to drive fast? Is it his soul, seeking to spin, take a walk, sometimes say: “Damn everything!” - Does his soul not love her?
Dead Souls Volume One
Chichikov and his servants:
Residents of the city N and its environs:
The chapters of this volume are working or draft versions, and some of the characters go through it with different names and surnames and ages.
Unlike Goncharov's hero, Tentetnikov did not completely plunge into Oblomovism. He will join an anti-government organization and be put on trial in a political case. The author had a role planned for him in the unwritten third volume.... Tentetnikov belonged to the family of those people who are not translated in Rus', who used to have names: goofs, couch potatoes, bobaki, and now, really, I don’t know what to call. Are such characters already born, or are they formed later, as a product of sad circumstances that severely surround a person? ... Where is the one who, in the native language of our Russian soul, would be able to tell us this almighty word: forward! who, knowing all the forces, and properties, and the whole depth of our nature, with one magical wave could direct us to a high life? With what tears, what love, a grateful Russian would pay him. But centuries pass after centuries, half a million sydneys, bumpkins and bobakov doze soundly, and a husband is rarely born in Rus' who knows how to pronounce this almighty word.
... Alexander Petrovich was gifted with a flair to hear human nature ... He usually said: “I demand the mind, and not anything else. Whoever thinks of being smart has no time to play pranks: prank must disappear by itself. He did not restrain many playfulness, seeing in them the beginning of the development of spiritual properties and saying that he needed them, like rashes to a doctor - then, in order to find out for sure what exactly is contained inside a person. He did not have many teachers: he read most of the sciences himself. Without pedantic terms, pompous views and views, he was able to convey the very soul of science, so that even a minor could see what he needed it for ... But it is necessary that at the very time when he (Tentetnikov) was transferred to this course of the elect, ... an extraordinary mentor suddenly died ... Everything has changed in the school. In place of Alexander Petrovich, some Fedor Ivanovich entered ...
N.V. Gogol, Dead Souls, Volume Two (later edition), Chapter One
... In the free swagger of the first-year children, something unbridled seemed to him. He began to establish some kind of external order between them, demanded that the young people remain in some kind of silent silence, so that in no case would everyone go around like in pairs. He even began to measure the distance from a couple to a couple with a yardstick. At the table, for a better view, he seated everyone according to their height ...
... And just as if to spite his predecessor, he announced from the first day that intelligence and success meant nothing to him, that he would look only at good behavior ... Strange: Fyodor Ivanovich did not achieve good behavior. Hidden pranks started. Everything was in order during the day and went in pairs, but at night there were revelry ... Respect for superiors and authorities was lost: they began to mock both mentors and teachers.
N.V. Gogol, Dead Souls, Volume Two (later edition), Chapter One
... to blasphemy and ridicule of religion itself, only because the director demanded frequent going to church and a bad priest got caught [not a very smart priest (in a later edition)].
N.V. Gogol, Dead Souls, Volume Two (Early Edition), Chapter One
... The directors began to be called Fedka, Bulka and other different names. The debauchery that started up was no longer childish ... nightly orgies of comrades who acquired some kind of lady [mistress - one for eight people (in an early version)] in front of the very windows of the director's apartment ...
Something strange happened to the sciences too. New teachers were discharged, with new views and points of view ...N.V. Gogol, Dead Souls, Volume Two (later edition), Chapter One
... They read learnedly, bombarded the listeners with many new terms and words. There was a logical connection, and following new discoveries, but alas! there was only no life in science itself. All this began to seem dead in the eyes of the listeners who had already begun to understand ... He (Tentetnikov) listened to the professors getting excited in the department, and recalled the former mentor, who, without getting excited, knew how to speak clearly. He listened to chemistry, and the philosophy of rights, and professorial deepenings into all the subtleties of political science, and the general history of mankind in such a huge form that the professor only managed to read the introduction and development of the communities of some German cities in three years; but all this remained in his head in some ugly shreds. Thanks to his natural mind, he only felt that this was not how it should be taught ... Ambition was strongly aroused in him, but he had no activity and field. It would be better not to excite him! ..
N.V. Gogol, Dead Souls, Volume Two (Early Edition), Chapter One
… If a transparent picture suddenly flared up in a dark room, lit from behind by a lamp, it would not have struck as much as this figurine shining with life, which appeared exactly to illuminate the room. It seemed as if a sunbeam flew into the room with her, suddenly illuminating the ceiling, the cornice and its dark corners ... It was hard to say what land she was born in. Such a pure, noble outline of the face could not be found anywhere, except perhaps only on some ancient cameos. Straight and light, like an arrow, she seemed to tower over everyone with her height. But it was a deception. She was not tall at all. This happened from the extraordinary harmony and harmonious relationship between all parts of the body, from the head to the fingers ...
N.V. Gogol, Dead Souls, Volume Two, Chapter Two
"Fool, fool! Chichikov thought. The name is decent. You look - and the peasants are good, and they are not bad. And how they get enlightened there at restaurants and in theaters - everything will go to hell. I would live for myself, a kulebyak, in the village ... Well, how can such a person go to St. Petersburg or Moscow? With such hospitality, he will live in fluff there in three years! That is, he did not know that now it has been improved: and without hospitality, to lower everything not in three years, but in three months.
But I know what you think, - said the Rooster.
- What? Chichikov asked, embarrassed.
- You think: "Fool, this fool this Rooster, called for dinner, but there is still no dinner." He will be ready, most respected, the short-haired girl will not have time to braid her braids, as he will be in time ...
Who slammed glass after glass; one could see in advance what part of human knowledge they would pay attention to upon their arrival in the capital.
N.V. Gogol, Dead Souls, Volume Two (later edition), Chapter Three
There is an assumption that the famous industrialist Dmitry Benardaki was the prototype of this hero.... about Konstantin Fedorovich - what can we say! It's like Napoleon...
N.V. Gogol, Dead Souls, Volume Two (later edition), Chapter Four
Why didn't you tell me this before? Why were they kept from nothing? - Chichikov said with a heart.
Why, how could I know about it in the first place? This is the benefit of paper production, that now everything, as in the palm of your hand, turned out to be clear. . .
"You fool, you stupid bastard! Chichikov thought to himself. - I dug into books, but what did I learn? Past all courtesy and decency, he grabbed his hat - from home. The coachman stood, the cabs at the ready and did not put off the horses: a written request would go about the stern, and the resolution - to issue oats to the horses - would come out only the next day.N.V. Gogol, Dead Souls, Volume Two (Early Edition), Chapter Three
In his speeches there was so much knowledge of people and light! He saw many things so well and truly, so aptly and deftly outlined the neighbors of the landowners in a few words, so clearly saw the shortcomings and mistakes of all ... he was able to convey their slightest habits with such original aptness that both of them were completely fascinated by his speeches and were ready to recognize him for the smartest person.
Listen, - said Platonov, .. - with such a mind, experience and worldly knowledge, how can you not find means to get out of your predicament?
“There are funds,” said Khlobuev, and after that laid out a whole bunch of projects for them. All of them were so absurd, so strange, they flowed so little from the knowledge of people and the world, that one could only shrug their shoulders: “Lord, God, what an immense distance between the knowledge of the world and the ability to use this knowledge!” Almost all the projects were based on the need to suddenly get a hundred or two hundred thousand from somewhere ...
"What to do with him" - thought Platonov. He did not yet know that in Rus', in Moscow and other cities, there are such wise men whose life is an inexplicable mystery. Everything seems to have lived, all around in debt, no funds from anywhere, and the dinner that is being asked seems to be the last; and the diners think that tomorrow the host will be dragged to prison. Ten years pass after that - the sage is still holding on in the world, he is even more in debt than before and sets dinner in the same way, and everyone is sure that tomorrow they will drag the owner to prison. The same wise man was Khlobuev. Only in Rus' alone could it exist in this way. Having nothing, he treated and hospitable, and even provided patronage, encouraged all kinds of artists who came to the city, gave them shelter and an apartment ... Sometimes for whole days there was not a crumb in the house, sometimes they asked him such a dinner that would satisfy the taste of the finest deli. The owner appeared festive, cheerful, with the posture of a rich gentleman, with the gait of a man whose life flows in abundance and contentment. But at times there were such difficult minutes (times) that another would hang himself or shoot himself in his place. But he was saved by a religious mood, which in a strange way combined in him with his dissolute life ... And - a strange thing! - almost always came to him ... unexpected help ...
Has a great gift of persuasion. He also tried to persuade Chichikov, like a lost sheep, to implement his great idea, and under the influence of circumstances, he almost agreed. He persuaded the prince to release Chichikov from prison.Do you know, Pyotr Petrovich (Khlobuev)? give me this in my arms - children, affairs; leave your family (wife) too ... After all, your circumstances are such that you are in my hands ... Put on a simple Siberian coat ... yes, with a book in your hands, on a simple cart and go to towns and villages ... (ask for money for the church and collect information about everyone) .
She died, leaving confusion with wills, which Chichikov took advantage of.I have, perhaps, a three-million-dollar aunt, ”said Khlobuev,“ a devout old woman: she gives to churches and monasteries, but to help her neighbor is a tugen. An old aunt worth looking at. She has about four hundred canaries alone, pugs, accustomers and servants, which are no longer there. The youngest of the servants will be about sixty years old, even though she calls him: “Hey, kid!” If the guest somehow behaves in a wrong way, she will order to enclose him with a dish at dinner. And they will carry it. Here's what!
N.V. Gogol, Dead Souls, Volume Two (Early Edition), Chapter Four
In wartime, this man would have done miracles: he would have been sent somewhere to get through impassable, dangerous places, to steal a cannon from the enemy right in front of him ... And in the absence of a military field ... he dirty and spoiled. Incredible business! he was good with his comrades, he did not sell anyone, and, having taken his word, he kept; but he considered the superiors above him to be something like an enemy battery, through which you need to break through, taking advantage of every weak spot, gap or omission.
N.V. Gogol, Dead Souls, Volume Two (early edition), one of the last chapters
At this angry-righteous speech before a sedate assembly, the manuscript breaks off.… It goes without saying that many innocents will suffer among them. What to do? The case is too dishonorable and cries out for justice... I must now turn to only one insensitive instrument of justice, an ax that must fall on our heads... The fact is that it has come to us to save our land; that our land is already perishing not from the invasion of twenty foreign languages, but from ourselves; that already past the lawful government, another government was formed, much stronger than any lawful one. Their conditions have been established, everything has been evaluated, and the prices have even been made known to everyone ...
N.V. Gogol, Dead Souls, Volume Two (late edition), one of the last chapters
The third volume of "Dead Souls" was not written at all, but there was information that in it two characters from the second volume (Tentetnikov and Ulinka) are referred to Siberia (Gogol collected materials about Siberia and the Simbirsk Territory), where the action should take place; Chichikov also gets there. Probably, in this volume, the previous characters or their analogues, having passed the “purgatory” of the second volume, should have appeared before the reader as some ideals to follow. For example, Plyushkin from the stingy and suspicious senile of the first volume was supposed to turn into a benevolent wanderer, helping the poor and on his own getting to the scene of events. The author had conceived a wonderful monologue on behalf of this hero. Other characters and details of the action of the third volume are unknown today.
The poem "Dead Souls" began to gain international fame during the life of the writer. In a number of cases, translations of fragments or individual chapters of the novel were first published. In 1846, the German translation of F. Lobenstein Die toten Seelen (reprinted in , , ) was published in Leipzig, another translation was published under the title Paul Tschitchikow's Irrfahrten oder Die toten Seelen. Three years after the first German translation, a Czech translation by K. Havlichka-Borovsky appeared (). Anonymous translation Home life in Russia. By a Russian noble was published in English in London in 1854. In the United States of America, the poem was first published in the translation of I. Hapgood in 1886 under the title Tchitchikoff's journeys, or Dead souls(reissue in London at ). Subsequently, with the title Dead souls, various translations were published in London (, , , , , ,) and New York ( , ,); sometimes the novel was printed with the title Chichikov's journeys; or, Home life in Russia(New York, ) or dead souls. Chichikov's journey or Home life in Russia(New York, ). An excerpt in Bulgarian was published in 1858. The first French translation was published in 1859. .
An excerpt from "Nozdryov" translated into Lithuanian by Vincas Petaris was published in 1904. Motejus Miskinis prepared in 1923 a translation of the first volume, but then it was not published; his translation was published in Kaunas in 1938, went through several editions.
The poem has been filmed several times.
The poem has been staged many times in Russia. Often directors turn to M. Bulgakov's staged play based on the work of the same name by Gogol ().
Illustrations for the novel "Dead Souls" were created by outstanding Russian and foreign artists.
"One Hundred Drawings for N.V. Gogol's Dead Souls" was published in 1847 in notebooks with four woodcuts each. In addition to Bernardsky, his students F. Bronnikov and P. Kurenkov took part in the engraving of illustrations. The entire series (104 drawings) was published in 1892 and phototypically repeated in 1893. In 1902, when the exclusive copyright on Gogol's works owned by the St. Petersburg publisher A.F. Marx expired, two editions of "Dead Souls" were published with drawings by A.A. Agin (St. Petersburg Electric Printing and Publishing House F.F. Pavlenkov ). In and 1935, a book with illustrations by Agin was published by the State Publishing House of Fiction. In 1937, "Dead Souls" with drawings by Agin, re-engraved by M. G. Pridantsev and I. S. Neutolimov, was published by the Academia publishing house. Later, E. E. Bernardsky's engravings were photomechanically reproduced (Dagestan State Publishing House, Makhachkala,; Children's State Publishing House,,; Goslitizdat,; Trud advertising and computer agency). Agin's illustrations were also reproduced in foreign editions of "Dead Souls": 25 of them in a German translation, published in 1913 in Leipzig; 100 - in the edition issued by the Zander publishing house in Berlin without indicating the year. Agin's drawings were reproduced in the publication of the Berlin publishing house "Aufbau Verlag" ().
The artist began working on illustrations for Dead Souls in the 1860s. However, the first publication dates back to 1875, when 23 watercolor portraits of Gogol's heroes, reproduced in woodcut technique, were printed by the Moscow magazine "Pchela". Then, in the magazine "Picturesque Review" in,, 1887, seven more drawings appeared. The first independent publication of Boklevsky's illustrations was the Album of Gogol's Types (St. Petersburg,), published by N. D. Tyapkin with a preface by V. Ya. Stoyunin. The album consists of 26 drawings previously published in magazines. It was repeatedly reprinted in the xylography technique by St. Petersburg printers S. Dobrodeev (,), E. Goppe (,,). In 1895, the Moscow publisher V. G. Gauthier published an album in a new phototype technique with a preface by L. A. Belsky. The 1881 album with drawings by Boklevsky was reproduced in facsimile in Germany by the Berlin publishing house Rutten und Loning (). Boklevsky's drawings were rarely used as actual illustrations. They were most fully presented in the 5th volume of N.V. Gogol's Complete Works, undertaken by the Pechatnik publishing house (Moscow,). Later, Boklevsky's drawings illustrated the publication of Dead Souls (Goslitizdat,) and the 5th volume of Gogol's Collected Works (Goslitizdat,). Seven oval bust images of Chichikov, Manilov, Nozdrev, Sobakevich, Plyushkin, Captain Kopeikin, Tentetnikov in the Collected Works are printed on coated paper on separate sheets using the autotype technique.
Chagall began work on illustrations for Dead Souls in 1923, fulfilling the order of the French marchand and publisher Ambroise Vollard. The entire edition was printed in 1927. The book translated into French by A. Mongo with illustrations by Chagall was published in Paris only in 1948, almost ten years after the death of Vollard, thanks to the efforts of another outstanding French publisher, Eugene Teriade.
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol follows that the original work was created as a light humorous novel. However, as it was written, the plot seemed to the author more and more original. About a year after the start of work, Gogol finally defined another, deeper and more extensive literary genre for his offspring - Dead Souls became a poem. The writer divides the work into three parts. In the first, he decided to show all the shortcomings of modern society, in the second - the process of correction, and in the third - the life of heroes who have already changed for the better.
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol's poem "Dead Souls" has to be read in the 9th grade. It was written in the 30-40s of the XIX century. The author worked on his work for a long time, since his original idea, which was to show "at least from one side all of Rus'", gradually transformed into a more global idea: to show "the whole depth of the abomination" that exists in Rus' in order to push society "to the beautiful". It cannot be said that the author achieved his ultimate goal, but, as Herzen believed, the poem "Dead Souls" shocked Russia. The author defined his work as a poem in prose, there are many lyrical digressions in the text. If it were not for them, then we would get a classic novel - a journey, or a European “picaresque” novel, since the protagonist of the work is a real swindler. The plot of the poem was suggested to Gogol by A. S. Pushkin shortly before his death.
Gogol's poem "Dead Souls" most truthfully shows the social structure of the Russian Empire in the 20-30s of the XIX century - a time when the state was going through certain upheavals: the death of Emperor Alexander I, the Decembrist uprising, the beginning of the reign of the new emperor, Nicholas I. The author draws the capital, in which is ruled by ministers and generals, a classic provincial city ruled by officials, nobles and merchants, draws a classic landowner's estate and a serf village, where the protagonist of the poem, Chichikov, visits in search of the so-called "dead souls". The author, not embarrassed and not afraid of censorship, shows all the negative character traits of "managers" and "those in power", speaks of bureaucratic and landowner arbitrariness, draws "an evil and vile world of real slave owners."
All this is opposed in the poem by the lyrical image of the real folk Russia, which the author admires. The images of "people from the people" are deeper, cleaner, softer, one feels that their souls are alive, that their aspirations come down to only one thing - to a free life. The author speaks of people's dreams with sadness, with pain, but at the same time one can feel his genuine belief that someday there will be no Chichikovs and Sobakevichs, that Russia will get rid of the "landlord oppression" and "rise from its knees to greatness and glory" . The poem "Dead Souls" is a kind of social manifesto, an encyclopedia, according to which you can study all the disadvantages of the dominant social system. N. Gogol, like many other enlightened people, understood that it was the feudal system that hindered the development of the empire. If Russia can throw off its shackles, then it will pull ahead and take a leading position on the world stage. No wonder Belinsky said that Gogol boldly and in a new way looked at Russian reality, not being afraid of consequences, drawing a future in which it was no longer the feudal nobles "masters of life", but the Russian peasant, the one who moves the country forward and, being free, does not spare himself and his strength. You can download or read the work of N. Gogol completely online on our website.
