Dead Souls

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, born at Sorochintsky, Russia, on 31st March 1809. Obtained government post at St. Petersburg and later an appointment at the university. Lived in Rome from 1836 to 1848. Died on 21st February 1852.

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• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 27 septembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819923244
• Langue: English

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DEAD SOULS
By Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
Translated by D. J. Hogarth
Introduction By John Cournos
Introduction By John Cournos
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, born at Sorochintsky,Russia, on 31st March 1809. Obtained government post at St.Petersburg and later an appointment at the university. Lived inRome from 1836 to 1848. Died on 21st February 1852.
INTRODUCTION
Dead Souls, first published in 1842, is the greatprose classic of Russia. That amazing institution, “the Russiannovel, ” not only began its career with this unfinished masterpieceby Nikolai Vasil'evich Gogol, but practically all the Russianmasterpieces that have come since have grown out of it, like thelimbs of a single tree. Dostoieffsky goes so far as to bestow thistribute upon an earlier work by the same author, a short storyentitled The Cloak; this idea has been wittily expressed by anothercompatriot, who says: “We have all issued out of Gogol's Cloak.”
Dead Souls, which bears the word “Poem” upon thetitle page of the original, has been generally compared to DonQuixote and to the Pickwick Papers, while E. M. Vogue places itsauthor somewhere between Cervantes and Le Sage. Howeverconsiderable the influences of Cervantes and Dickens may have been—the first in the matter of structure, the other in background,humour, and detail of characterisation— the predominating anddistinguishing quality of the work is undeniably something foreignto both and quite peculiar to itself; something which, for want ofa better term, might be called the quality of the Russian soul. TheEnglish reader familiar with the works of Dostoieffsky, Turgenev,and Tolstoi, need hardly be told what this implies; it might bedefined in the words of the French critic just named as “a tendencyto pity. ” One might indeed go further and say that it implies acertain tolerance of one's characters even though they be, in theconventional sense, knaves, products, as the case might be, ofconditions or circumstance, which after all is the thing to becriticised and not the man. But pity and tolerance are rare insatire, even in clash with it, producing in the result a deep senseof tragic humour. It is this that makes of Dead Souls a uniquework, peculiarly Gogolian, peculiarly Russian, and distinct fromits author's Spanish and English masters.
Still more profound are the contradictions to beseen in the author's personal character; and unfortunately theyprevented him from completing his work. The trouble is that he madehis art out of life, and when in his final years he carried hisstruggle, as Tolstoi did later, back into life, he repented of allhe had written, and in the frenzy of a wakeful night burned all hismanuscripts, including the second part of Dead Souls, onlyfragments of which were saved. There was yet a third part to bewritten. Indeed, the second part had been written and burned twice.Accounts differ as to why he had burned it finally. Religiousremorse, fury at adverse criticism, and despair at not reachingideal perfection are among the reasons given. Again it is said thathe had destroyed the manuscript with the others inadvertently.
The poet Pushkin, who said of Gogol that “behind hislaughter you feel the unseen tears, ” was his chief friend andinspirer. It was he who suggested the plot of Dead Souls as well asthe plot of the earlier work The Revisor, which is almost the onlycomedy in Russian. The importance of both is their introduction ofthe social element in Russian literature, as Prince Kropotkinpoints out. Both hold up the mirror to Russian officialdom and theeffects it has produced on the national character. The plot of DeadSouls is simple enough, and is said to have been suggested by anactual episode.
It was the day of serfdom in Russia, and a man'sstanding was often judged by the numbers of “souls” he possessed.There was a periodical census of serfs, say once every ten ortwenty years. This being the case, an owner had to pay a tax onevery “soul” registered at the last census, though some of theserfs might have died in the meantime. Nevertheless, the system hadits material advantages, inasmuch as an owner might borrow moneyfrom a bank on the “dead souls” no less than on the living ones.The plan of Chichikov, Gogol's hero-villain, was therefore to makea journey through Russia and buy up the “dead souls, ” at reducedrates of course, saving their owners the government tax, andacquiring for himself a list of fictitious serfs, which he meant tomortgage to a bank for a considerable sum. With this money he wouldbuy an estate and some real life serfs, and make the beginning of afortune.
Obviously, this plot, which is really no plot at allbut merely a ruse to enable Chichikov to go across Russia in atroika, with Selifan the coachman as a sort of Russian SanchoPanza, gives Gogol a magnificent opportunity to reveal his geniusas a painter of Russian panorama, peopled with characteristicnative types commonplace enough but drawn in comic relief. “Thecomic, ” explained the author yet at the beginning of his career,“is hidden everywhere, only living in the midst of it we are notconscious of it; but if the artist brings it into his art, on thestage say, we shall roll about with laughter and only wonder we didnot notice it before. ” But the comic in Dead Souls is merelyexternal. Let us see how Pushkin, who loved to laugh, regarded thework. As Gogol read it aloud to him from the manuscript the poetgrew more and more gloomy and at last cried out: “God! What a sadcountry Russia is! ” And later he said of it: “Gogol inventsnothing; it is the simple truth, the terrible truth. ”
The work on one hand was received as nothing lessthan an exposure of all Russia— what would foreigners think of it?The liberal elements, however, the critical Belinsky among them,welcomed it as a revelation, as an omen of a freer future. Gogol,who had meant to do a service to Russia and not to heap ridiculeupon her, took the criticisms of the Slavophiles to heart; and hepalliated his critics by promising to bring about in the succeedingparts of his novel the redemption of Chichikov and the other“knaves and blockheads. ” But the “Westerner” Belinsky and othersof the liberal camp were mistrustful. It was about this time (1847)that Gogol published his Correspondence with Friends, and aroused aliterary controversy that is alive to this day. Tolstoi is to befound among his apologists.
Opinions as to the actual significance of Gogol'smasterpiece differ. Some consider the author a realist who hasdrawn with meticulous detail a picture of Russia; others,Merejkovsky among them, see in him a great symbolist; the verytitle Dead Souls is taken to describe the living of Russia as wellas its dead. Chichikov himself is now generally regarded as auniversal character. We find an American professor, William LyonPhelps 1, of Yale, holding the opinion that “no one can travel farin America without meeting scores of Chichikovs; indeed, he is anaccurate portrait of the American promoter, of the successfulcommercial traveller whose success depends entirely not on the realvalue and usefulness of his stock-in-trade, but on his knowledge ofhuman nature and of the persuasive power of his tongue. ” This isalso the opinion held by Prince Kropotkin 2, who says: “Chichikovmay buy dead souls, or railway shares, or he may collect funds forsome charitable institution, or look for a position in a bank, buthe is an immortal international type; we meet him everywhere; he isof all lands and of all times; he but takes different forms to suitthe requirements of nationality and time. ”
Again, the work bears an interesting relation toGogol himself. A romantic, writing of realities, he was appalled atthe commonplaces of life, at finding no outlet for his love ofcolour derived from his Cossack ancestry. He realised that he haddrawn a host of “heroes, ” “one more commonplace than another, thatthere was not a single palliating circumstance, that there was nota single place where the reader might find pause to rest and toconsole himself, and that when he had finished the book it was asthough he had walked out of an oppressive cellar into the open air.” He felt perhaps inward need to redeem Chichikov; in Merejkovsky'sopinion he really wanted to save his own soul, but had succeededonly in losing it. His last years were spent morbidly; he sufferedtorments and ran from place to place like one hunted; but reallyalways running from himself. Rome was his favourite refuge, and hereturned to it again and again. In 1848, he made a pilgrimage tothe Holy Land, but he could find no peace for his soul. Somethingof this mood had reflected itself even much earlier in the Memoirsof a Madman: “Oh, little mother, save your poor son! Look how theyare tormenting him. . . . There's no place for him on earth! He'sbeing driven! . . . Oh, little mother, take pity on thy poor child.”
All the contradictions of Gogol's character are notto be disposed of in a brief essay. Such a strange combination ofthe tragic and the comic was truly seldom seen in one man. He, forone, realised that “it is dangerous to jest with laughter. ”“Everything that I laughed at became sad. ” “And terrible, ” addsMerejkovsky. But earlier his humour was lighter, less tinged withthe tragic; in those days Pushkin never failed to be amused by whatGogol had brought to read to him. Even Revizor (1835), with itstragic undercurrent, was a trifle compared to Dead Souls, so thatone is not astonished to hear that not only did the Tsar, NicholasI, give permission to have it acted, in spite of its being acriticism of official rottenness, but laughed uproariously, and ledthe applause. Moreover, he gave Gogol a grant of money, and askedthat its source should not be revealed to the author lest “he mightfeel obliged to write from the official point of view. ”
Gogol was born at Sorotchinetz, Little Russia, inMarch 1809. He left college at nineteen and went to St. Petersburg,where he secured a position as copying clerk in a govern