1. "Dead soul" as a realistic work
b) The principles of realism in the poem:
1. Historicism
Gogol wrote about his own time - approximately the end of the 20s - the beginning of the 30s, during the crisis of serfdom in Russia.
2. Typical characters in typical circumstances
The main trends in the depiction of landlords and officials are satirical description, social typification and a general critical orientation. "Dead Souls" is a work of everyday life. Particular attention is paid to the description of nature, the estate and the interior, the details of the portrait. Most of the characters are shown statically. Much attention is paid to the details, the so-called "silt of trifles" (for example, the character of Plyushkin). Gogol correlates various plans: universal scales (a lyrical digression about a troika bird) and the smallest details (a description of a trip along extremely bad Russian roads).
3. Means of satirical typification
a) The author's characteristics of the characters, b) Comic situations (for example, Manilov and Chichikov cannot part at the door), c) Appeal to the past of the heroes (Chichikov, Plyushkin), d) Hyperbole (the unexpected death of the prosecutor, Sobakevich's extraordinary voracity), e ) Proverbs (“Neither in the city of Bogdan, nor in the village of Selifan”), e) Comparisons (Sobakevich is compared with a medium-sized bear, Korobochka is compared with a mongrel in the hay).
2. Genre originality
Calling his work a “poem”, Gogol meant: “a lesser kind of epic ... A prospectus for an educational book of literature for Russian youth. The hero of epics is a private and invisible person, but significant in many respects for observing the human soul.
The poem is a genre that goes back to the traditions of the ancient epic, which recreated a holistic being in all its contradictions. The Slavophiles insisted on this characterization of "Dead Souls", appealing to the fact that elements of the poem, as a glorifying genre, are also in "Dead Souls" (lyrical digressions). Gogol himself, later in his "Selected passages from correspondence with friends", analyzing the translation of Zhukovsky's "Odyssey", will admire the ancient epic and the genius of Homer, who presented not only the events that make up the core of the poem, but also "the whole ancient world" in all its completeness, with its way of life, beliefs, popular beliefs, etc., i.e. the very spirit of the people of that era. In letters to friends, Gogol called "Dead Souls" not only a poem, but also a novel. In "Dead Souls" there are features of an adventure-adventure, picaresque, and also a social novel. However, "Dead Souls" is usually not called a novel, since there is practically no love intrigue in the work.
3. Features of the plot and composition
The features of the plot of "Dead Souls" are associated primarily with the image of Chichikov and his ideological and compositional role. Gogol: "The author leads his life through a chain of adventures and changes, in order to present at the same time a true picture of everything significant in the features and customs of the time he took ... a picture of shortcomings, abuses, vices." In a letter to V. Zhukovsky, Gogol mentions that he wanted to show "all Rus'" in the poem. The poem is written in the form of a journey, disparate fragments of the life of Russia are united into a single whole. Such is the main compositional role of Chichikov. The independent role of the image is reduced to the description of a new type of Russian life, an entrepreneur-adventurer. In chapter 11, the author gives a biography of Chichikov, from which it follows that the hero uses either the position of an official or the mythical position of a landowner to achieve his goals.
The composition is built on the principle of "concentric circles" or "enclosed spaces" (city, estates of landowners, all of Russia).
4. The theme of the motherland and the people
Gogol wrote about his work: "All Rus' will appear in it." The life of the ruling class and the common people is given without idealization. Peasants are characterized by ignorance, narrow-mindedness, downtroddenness (the images of Petrushka and Selifan, the courtyard girl Korobochka, who does not know where the right is, where the left is, Uncle Mityai and Uncle Minyay, who are discussing whether Chichikov’s britzka will reach Moscow and Kazan). Nevertheless, the author warmly describes the talent and other creative abilities of the people (a lyrical digression about the Russian language, a characterization of a Yaroslavl peasant in a digression about the Bird Troika, Sobakevich's register of peasants).
Much attention is paid to the popular revolt (the story of Captain Kopeikin). The theme of the future of Russia is reflected in Gogol's poetic attitude to his homeland (lyrical digressions about Rus' and the troika bird).
5. Features of the image of landlords in the poem
The images drawn by Gogol in the poem were ambiguously perceived by his contemporaries: many reproached him for drawing a caricature of his contemporary life, depicting reality in a ridiculous, absurd way.
Gogol unfolds before the reader a whole gallery of images of landowners (leading his main character from the first to the last) primarily in order to answer the main question that occupied him - what is the future of Russia, what is its historical purpose, what is in modern life contains at least a small hint of a bright, prosperous future for the people, which will be the key to the future greatness of the nation. In other words, the question that Gogol asks at the end, in a lyrical digression about "Rus-Troika", permeates the entire narrative as a leitmotif, and it is to him that the logic and poetics of the entire work are subordinated, including the images of landowners (see Logic of creativity).
The first of the landowners whom Chichikov visits in the hope of buying dead souls is Manilov. Main features: Manilov is completely divorced from reality, his main occupation is fruitless wandering in the clouds, useless projecting. This is evidenced both by the appearance of his estate (a house on a hill, open to all winds, a gazebo - a “temple of solitary reflection”, traces of begun and unfinished buildings), and the interior of residential premises (variegated furniture, heaps of pipe ash, laid out in neat rows on the windowsill , some book, the second year laid on the fourteenth page, etc.). Drawing the image, Gogol pays special attention to the details, interior, things, through them showing the features of the owner's character. Manilov, despite his "great" thoughts, is stupid, vulgar and sentimental (lisping with his wife, "ancient Greek" names of not quite neat and well-mannered children). The internal and external squalor of the type depicted prompts Gogol, starting from him, to look for a positive ideal, and to do this "from the opposite." If complete isolation from reality and fruitless wandering in the clouds lead to this, then perhaps the opposite type will inspire some hope in us?
The box in this respect is the exact opposite of Manilov. Unlike him, she does not hover in the clouds, but, on the contrary, is completely immersed in everyday life. However, the image of the Box does not give the desired ideal. Pettiness and stinginess (old coats kept in chests, money put into a stocking for a “rainy day”), inertia, stupid adherence to tradition, rejection and fear of everything new, “clubhead” make her appearance almost more repulsive than that of Manilov .
For all the dissimilarity of the characters of Manilov and Korobochka, they have one thing in common - inactivity. Both Manilov and Korobochka (albeit for opposite reasons) do not affect the reality around them. Maybe an active person will be a model from which the younger generation should take an example? And, as if in answer to this question, Nozdryov appears. Nozdryov is extremely active. However, all his violent activities are mostly scandalous. He is a frequenter of all boozes and sprees in the district, he changes everything for anything (he tries to hand Chichikov puppies, a barrel organ, a horse, etc.), cheats when playing cards and even checkers, stupidly squanders the money that he gets from selling harvest. He lies unnecessarily (it is Nozdryov who subsequently confirms the rumor that Chichikov wanted to steal the governor's daughter and took him as an accomplice, without blinking an eye agrees that Chichikov is Napoleon, who fled from exile, etc.). Repeatedly he was beaten, and by his own friends, and the next day, as if nothing had happened, he appeared to them and continued everything in the same spirit - “he is nothing, and they, as they say, nothing.” As a result, almost more troubles come from Nozdryov's "activities" than from the inaction of Manilov and Korobochka. Nevertheless, there is a feature that unites all the three types described - this is impracticality.
The next landowner, Sobakenich, is extremely practical. This is the type of "master", "fist". Everything in his house is solid, reliable, made "for centuries" (even the furniture seems to be full of complacency and wants to shout: "Iya Sobakevich!"). However, all the practicality of Sobakevich is directed only towards one goal - obtaining personal gain, for the achievement of which he stops at nothing (“scoldling” by Sobakevich of everyone and everything - in the city, according to him, there is one decent person - the prosecutor, “and even the one who if you look at it - a pig", Sobakevich's "meal", when he eats mountains of food and so on, seems to be able to swallow the whole world in one sitting, the scene with the purchase of dead souls, when Sobakevich is not at all surprised by the very subject of the sale, but immediately feels that the case smells of money that can be “ripped off” from Chichikov). It is quite clear that Sobakevich is even further away from the sought-for ideal than all previous types.
Plushkin is a kind of generalizing image. He is the only one whose path to his current state (“how he got to such a life”) is shown to us by Gogol. Giving the image of Plyushkin in development, Gogol raises this final image to a kind of symbol, accommodating Manilov, and Korobochka, and Nozdryov, and Sobakevich. What is common to all the types bred in the poem is that their life is not sanctified by thought, a socially useful goal, is not filled with concern for the common good, progress, and the desire for national prosperity. Any activity (or inaction) is useless and meaningless if they do not carry concern for the good of the nation, the country. That is why Plyushkin turns into a "hole in humanity", that is why his repulsive, disgusting image of a miser who has lost all kinds of human appearance, stealing old buckets and other rubbish from his own peasants, turning his own house into a dump, and his serfs into beggars - precisely therefore, his image is the final stop for all these manila, boxes, nostrils and dogs. And it is precisely a “hole in humanity”, like Plyushkin, that Russia can turn out to be if it does not find the strength in itself to tear away all these “dead souls” and bring to the surface of national life a positive image - active, diligent in deeds with a mobile mind and imagination, and most importantly - dedicated to the common good. It is characteristic that it was precisely this type that Gogol tried to portray in the second volume of Dead Souls in the guise of the landowner Kostanjoglo (see below). However, the surrounding reality did not provide material for such images - Costanjoglo turned out to be a speculative scheme that had nothing to do with real life. Russian reality supplied only manila, boxes, nostrils and Plushkins - “Where am I? I don’t see anything ... Not a single human face, .. Only snouts, snouts around ... ”- exclaims Gogol through the mouth of the Governor in The Government Inspector (compare with the“ evil spirits ”from“ Evenings ... ”and“ Mirgorod ”: a pig's snout protruding through the window in the Sorochinskaya Fair, mocking inhuman muzzles in the Enchanted Place). That is why the words about Rus'-troika sound like a woeful cry-warning - "Where are you rushing? .. He does not give an answer ...". The meaning of this passage, which has been interpreted in different ways at different times, can be understood by recalling a similar passage, very reminiscent of this one, from the Notes of a Madman:
"No, I can't take it anymore. God! what are they doing to me!.. They don't heed, they don't see, they don't listen to me. What did I do to them? Why are they torturing me? What do they want from me poor? What can I give them? I dont have anything. I am unable, I cannot endure all their torments, my head is on fire, and everything is spinning before me. Help me! take me! give me a trio of horses as fast as a whirlwind! Sit down, my driver, ring, my bell, soar, horses, and carry me from this world! Further, further, so that nothing, nothing can be seen. There the sky swirls before me; an asterisk sparkles in the distance; the forest is rushing with dark trees and a moon; gray fog creeps underfoot; the string rings in the mist; on one side the sea, on the other Italy; you can see the Russian huts too. Does my house turn blue in the distance? Is my mother sitting in front of the window? Mother, save your poor son! drop a tear on his sick little head] look how they torment him! hug your poor orphan to your breast! he has no place in the world! they chase him! Mother! have pity on your poor child!”
Thus, the troika is, according to Gogol, what should rush him away from all these Plyushkins, Dzhimords, boxes and Akaki Akakievichs, and Russia-troika is the image of that Russia, which, having overcome all its age-old ailments: slavery, darkness , depravity and impunity of power, longsuffering and silence of the people - will enter a new life worthy of free, enlightened people.
But so far there are no prerequisites for this. And Chichikov rides in a britzka - a swindler, the embodiment of mediocrity, neither this nor that - who feels at ease in the Russian open spaces, who is free to take where something is bad and who is free to fool fools and scold bad Russian roads.
So, the main and main meaning of the poem is that Gogol wanted to understand the historical path of Russia through artistic images, to see its future, to feel the sprouts of a new, better life in the reality surrounding him, to distinguish those forces that would turn Russia off the sidelines of world history and turn on into the overall cultural process. The image of the landowners is a reflection of this very search. Through extreme typification, Gogol creates figures of a national scale, representing the Russian character in many forms, in all its contradictory and ambiguous nature.
The types bred by Gogol are an integral part of Russian life, these are precisely Russian types that are as bright as they are stable in Russian life - until life itself changes radically.
6. Features of the image of officials
Like the images of landowners, the images of officials, whose whole gallery Gogol unfolds in front of the reader, perform a certain function. Showing the life and customs of the provincial town of NN, the author tries to answer the main question that concerns him - what is the future of Russia, what is its historical purpose, what in modern life contains at least a small hint of a bright, prosperous future for the people.
The theme of bureaucracy is an integral part and continuation of the ideas that Gogol developed by depicting landowners in the poem. It is no coincidence that the images of officials follow the images of the landowners. If the evil embodied in the owners of the estates - in all these boxes, manilovs, sobeviches, nostrils and Plyushkins - is scattered throughout the Russian expanses, then here it appears in a concentrated form, compressed by the living conditions of a provincial city. A huge number of "dead souls" gathered together creates a special monstrously absurd atmosphere. If the character of each of the landowners left a unique imprint on his house and estate as a whole, then the city is influenced by the entire huge mass of people (including officials, since officials are the first people in the city) living in it. The city turns into a completely independent mechanism, living according to its own laws, sending its needs through the offices, departments, councils and other public institutions. And it is the officials who ensure the functioning of this whole mechanism. The life of a civil servant, which does not bear the imprint of a lofty idea, the desire to promote the common good, becomes an embodied function of the bureaucratic mechanism. In essence, a person ceases to be a person, he loses all personal characteristics (unlike the landowners, who had an ugly, but still their own physiognomy), loses even his own name, since the name is still a certain personal characteristic, and becomes simply Postmaster, Prosecutor, Governor, Chief of Police, Chairman, or the owner of an unimaginable nickname like Ivan Antonovich Jug Snout. A person turns into a detail, a "cog" of the state machine, the micromodel of which is the provincial town of NN.
Officials themselves are unremarkable, except for the position they hold. To enhance the contrast, Gogol cites grotesque "portraits" of some officials - so the chief of police is famous for the fact that, according to rumors, he only needs to blink, passing by the fish row, to ensure himself a sumptuous dinner and an abundance of fish delicacies. The postmaster, whose name was Ivan Andreevich, is known for the fact that they always added to his name: “Sprechen zi deutsch, Ivan Andreich?” The chairman of the chamber knew Zhukovsky's "Lyudmila" by heart and "masterfully read many places, especially: "Bor fell asleep, the valley is sleeping," and the word "Chu!" Others, as Gogol sarcastically notes, were “also more or less enlightened people: some read Karamzin, some Moskovskie Vedomosti, some even read nothing at all.”
The reaction of the inhabitants of the city, including officials, to the news that Chichikov is buying dead souls is noteworthy - what is happening does not fit into the usual framework and immediately gives rise to the most fantastic assumptions - from the fact that Chichikov wanted to kidnap the governor's daughter, to the fact that Chichikov - either a wanted counterfeiter or a runaway robber, about whom the Chief of Police receives an order for immediate detention. The grotesqueness of the situation is only intensified by the fact that the Postmaster decides that Chichikov is Captain Kopeikin in disguise, a hero of the war of 1812, an invalid without an arm and leg. The rest of the officials assume that Chichikov is Napoleon in disguise who escaped from Saint Helena. The absurdity of the situation reaches its climax when, as a result of a collision with insoluble problems (from mental stress), the prosecutor dies. In general, the situation in the city resembles the behavior of a mechanism into which a grain of sand has suddenly fallen. Wheels and cogs, designed for quite specific functions, scroll idly, some break with a bang, and the whole mechanism rings, strums and "peddles". It is the soulless car that is a kind of symbol of the city, and it is in this context that the very title of the poem - “ Dead Souls" - takes on a new meaning.
Gogol, as it were, asks the question - if the first people in the city are like this, then what are all the rest? Where is the positive ideal that will serve as an example for the new generation? If the city is a soulless machine that kills everything living, pure in people, destroying the very human essence, depriving them of all human feelings and even a normal name, turning the city itself into a “graveyard” of dead souls, then in the end the whole of Russia can take on a similar appearance , if he does not find the strength in himself to tear away all this "dead matter" and bring to the surface of national life a positive image - active, with a mobile mind and imagination, diligent in business and, most importantly, sanctified by concern for the common good.
About the second volume of "Dead Souls"
Gogol, in the guise of the landowner Kostanzhoglo, tried to show a positive ideal (Chichikov comes to him and sees his activities). It embodied Gogol's ideas about the harmonious structure of life: rational management, a responsible attitude to the work of all those involved in the construction of the estate, the use of the fruits of science. Under the influence of Costanjoglo, Chichikov had to reconsider his attitude to reality and "correct himself." However, sensing in his work "life untruth", Gogol burned the second volume of "Dead Souls".
Features of the genre and composition of Gogol's poem "Dead Souls". Artistic features of the poem
Gogol had long dreamed of writing a work "in which all of Rus' would appear." It was supposed to be a grandiose description of life and customs
Russia in the first third of the 19th century. The poem became such a work.
"Dead Souls", written in 1842. The first edition of the work
was called "The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls." Such
the name reduced the true meaning of this work, translated into the field of an adventure novel. Gogol did this for censorship reasons, in order for the poem to be published.
Why did Gogol call his work a poem? The definition of the genre became clear to the writer only at the last moment, since, while still working on the poem, Gogol calls it either a poem or a novel. To understand the features of the genre of the poem "Dead Souls", you can compare this work with the "Divine Comedy" by Dante, a poet of the Renaissance. Her influence is felt in Gogol's poem. The Divine Comedy consists of three parts. In the first part, the shadow of the ancient Roman poet Virgil appears to the poet, which accompanies the lyrical hero to hell, they go through all the circles, a whole gallery of sinners passes before their eyes. The fantasy of the plot does not prevent Dante from revealing the theme of his homeland - Italy, her fate. In fact, Gogol conceived to show the same circles of hell, but the hell of Russia. No wonder the title of the poem "Dead Souls" ideologically echoes the title of the first part of Dante's poem "The Divine Comedy", which is called "Hell".
Gogol, along with satirical denial, introduces an element glorifying, creative - the image of Russia. With this image is connected the "high lyrical movement", which in the poem sometimes replaces the comic narrative.
A significant place in the poem "Dead Souls" is occupied by lyrical digressions and inserted episodes, which is typical for the poem as a literary genre. In them, Gogol deals with the most pressing Russian social issues. The author's thoughts about the high purpose of man, about the fate of the Motherland and the people are contrasted here with the gloomy pictures of Russian life.
So, let's go for the hero of the poem "Dead Souls" Chichikov in N.
From the very first pages of the work, we feel the fascination of the plot, since the reader cannot assume that after the meeting of Chichikov with Manilov there will be meetings with Sobakevich and Nozdrev. The reader cannot guess about the end of the poem either, because all its characters are drawn according to the principle of gradation: one is worse than the other. For example, Manilov, if considered as a separate image, cannot be perceived as a positive hero (on the table he has a book open on the same page, and his courtesy is feigned: "Let me not allow you to do this>>), but in comparison with Plyushkin, Manilov even wins in many respects.However, Gogol put the image of the Box in the center of attention, since it is a kind of single beginning of all characters.According to Gogol, this is the symbol of the "box man", which contains the idea of an irrepressible thirst for hoarding.
The theme of exposing bureaucracy runs through all of Gogol's work: it stands out both in the Mirgorod collection and in the comedy The Inspector General. In the poem "Dead Souls" it is intertwined with the theme of serfdom.
A special place in the poem is occupied by "The Tale of Captain Kopeikin". It is plot-related to the poem, but is of great importance for revealing the ideological content of the work. The form of the tale gives the story a vital character: it denounces the government.
The world of "dead souls" in the poem is opposed by the lyrical image of people's Russia, about which Gogol writes with love and admiration.
Behind the terrible world of landlord and bureaucratic Russia, Gogol felt the soul of the Russian people, which he expressed in the image of a rapidly rushing forward troika, embodying the forces of Russia: So, we settled on what Gogol depicts in his work. He portrays the social disease of society, but we should also dwell on how Gogol manages to do this.
First, Gogol uses the techniques of social typification. In the image of the gallery of landowners, he skillfully combines the general and the individual. Almost all of his characters are static, they do not develop (except for Plyushkin and Chichikov), they are captured by the author as a result. This technique emphasizes once again that all these Manilovs, Korobochki, Sobakevichs, Plyushkins are dead souls. To characterize his characters, Gogol also uses his favorite technique - the characterization of a character through a detail. Gogol can be called a "genius of detail", so precisely sometimes the details reflect the character and inner world of the character. What is worth, for example, the description of the estate and the house of Manilov! When Chichikov drove into the Manilov estate, he drew attention to the overgrown English pond, to the rickety gazebo, to the dirt and desolation, to the wallpaper in Manilov's room - either gray or blue, to two chairs covered with matting, which they never reach owner's hands. All these and many other details bring us to the main characterization made by the author himself: "Neither this nor that, but the devil knows what it is!" Let's remember Plyushkin, this "hole in humanity", who even lost his gender.
He goes out to Chichikov in a greasy dressing gown, some unthinkable scarf on his head, everywhere desolation, dirt, dilapidation. Plushkin - an extreme degree of degradation. And all this is conveyed through the detail, through those little things in life that A.S. so admired. Pushkin: "Not a single writer has ever had this gift to expose the vulgarity of life so vividly, to be able to outline the vulgarity of a vulgar person in such force that all that trifle that escapes the eyes would flash large into the eyes of everyone."
The main theme of the poem is the fate of Russia: its past, present and future. In the first volume, Gogol revealed the theme of the past of the motherland. The second and third volumes he conceived were to tell about the present and future of Russia. This idea can be compared with the second and third parts of Dante's Divine Comedy: Purgatory and Paradise. However, these plans were not destined to come true: the second volume was unsuccessful in concept, and the third was never written. Therefore, Chichikov's trip remained a trip into the unknown. Gogol was at a loss, thinking about the future of Russia: "Rus, where are you rushing to? Give me an answer! Doesn't give an answer."
1. "Dead Souls" as a realistic work
b) The principles of realism in the poem:
historicism
Gogol wrote about his own time - approximately the end of the 20s - the beginning of the 30s, during the crisis of serfdom in Russia.
Typical characters in typical circumstances
The main trends in the depiction of landlords and officials are satirical description, social typification and a general critical orientation. "Dead Souls" is a work of everyday life. Particular attention is paid to the description of nature, the estate and the interior, the details of the portrait. Most of the characters are shown statically. Much attention is paid to the details, the so-called "stain of small things" (Plyushkin's character). Gogol correlates various plans: universal scales (a lyrical digression about a troika bird) and the smallest details (a description of a trip along extremely bad Russian roads).
Means of satirical typing
a) The author's characteristics of the characters, b) Comic situations (for example, Manilov and Chichikov cannot part at the door), c) Appeal to the past of the heroes (Chichikov, Plyushkin), d) Hyperbole (the unexpected death of the prosecutor, Sobakevich's extraordinary voracity), e) Proverbs (“Neither in the city of Bogdan, nor in the village of Selifan”), f) Comparisons (Sobakevich is compared with a medium-sized bear, Korobochka is compared with a mongrel in the hay).
2. Genre originality of "Dead Souls"
Calling his work a “poem”, Gogol meant: “a lesser kind of epic ... A prospectus for an educational book of literature for Russian youth. The hero of epics is a private and invisible person, but significant in many respects for observing the human soul.
The poem is a genre that goes back to the traditions of the ancient epic, which recreated a holistic being in all its contradictions. The Slavophiles insisted on this characterization of "Dead Souls", appealing to the fact that elements of the poem, as a glorifying genre, are also in "Dead Souls" (lyrical digressions). Gogol, in letters to friends, called "Dead Souls" not only a poem, but also a novel. In "Dead Souls" there are features of an adventure-adventure, picaresque, and also a social novel. However, "Dead Souls" is usually not called a novel, since there is practically no love intrigue in the work.
3. Features of the plot and composition of "Dead Souls"
The features of the plot of "Dead Souls" are associated primarily with the image of Chichikov and his ideological and compositional role. Gogol: "The author leads his life through a chain of adventures and changes, in order to present at the same time a true picture of everything significant in the features and customs of the time he took ... a picture of shortcomings, abuses, vices." In a letter to V. Zhukovsky, Gogol mentions that he wanted to show "all Rus'" in the poem. The poem is written in the form of a journey, disparate fragments of the life of Russia are united into a single whole. Such is the main compositional role of Chichikov. The independent role of the image is reduced to the description of a new type of Russian life, an entrepreneur-adventurer. In chapter 11, the author gives a biography of Chichikov, from which it follows that the hero uses either the position of an official or the mythical position of a landowner to achieve his goals.
The composition is built on the principle of "concentric circles" or "enclosed spaces" (city, estates of landowners, all of Russia).
The theme of the motherland and the people in the poem "Dead Souls"
Gogol wrote about his work: "All Rus' will appear in it." The life of the ruling class and the common people is given without idealization. Peasants are characterized by ignorance, narrow-mindedness, downtroddenness (the images of Petrushka and Selifan, the yard girl Korobochka, who does not know where the right is, where the left is, Uncle Mityai and Uncle Minyay, who are discussing whether Chichikov’s britzka will reach Moscow and Kazan). Nevertheless, the author warmly describes the talent and other creative abilities of the people (a lyrical digression about the Russian language, a characterization of a Yaroslavl peasant in a digression about a troika bird, Sobakevich's register of peasants).
Much attention is paid to the popular revolt (the story of Captain Kopeikin). The theme of the future of Russia is reflected in Gogol's poetic attitude to his homeland (lyrical digressions about Rus' and the troika bird).
About the second volume of "Dead Souls"
Gogol, in the image of the landowner Kostanzhoglo, tried to show a positive ideal. It embodied Gogol's ideas about the harmonious structure of life: rational management, a responsible attitude to the work of all those involved in the construction of the estate, the use of the fruits of science. Under the influence of Costanjoglo, Chichikov had to reconsider his attitude to reality and "correct himself." Sensing in his work "life untruth", Gogol burned the second volume of "Dead Souls".
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1. ARTISTIC INDIVIDUALITY OF THE POEM
"DEAD SOULS"
1 The idea and sources of the poem "Dead Souls"
2 Genre originality of the poem
3 Features of the plot and composition of the poem
CHAPTER 2
1 The image of Chichikov in the poem "Dead Souls"
2 Features of the image of landowners in the poem
3 Lyrical digressions of "Dead Souls" and their ideological content
CONCLUSION
LIST OF USED LITERATURE
dead soul chichikov retreat
INTRODUCTION
The creative pinnacle of Gogol, one of the masterpieces of Russian and world literature, is Dead Souls. Justifying the need for the most careful re-reading of this seemingly well-known work from school years, one can refer to V. G. Belinsky, who wrote: “Like any deep creation, Dead Souls is not revealed from the first reading: reading them a second time, reading a new, never seen work. "Dead Souls" Demands Study".
The poem was published in May 1842 under the title “The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls” (the title was changed under pressure from censorship, for the same reason “The Tale of Captain Kopeikin” was also thrown out of the poem). “For a long time we have not had such a movement as now on the occasion of Dead Souls,” wrote one of his contemporaries, recalling the controversy caused by the appearance of the book. Some critics accused Gogol of caricature and slandering reality. Others noted their high artistry and patriotism (the last definition belonged to Belinsky). The controversy reached a particular tension after the appearance of K. Aksakov's brochure “A few words about Gogol's poem: “The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls””, in which the idea of the resurrection of the ancient epic in the poem was developed. Behind the idea of epicness and focus on Homer was the assertion of the passionlessness of Gogol's writing, which is generally characteristic of the epic. First of all, Belinsky entered into a polemic with Aksakov. Gogol himself at that time went abroad, to Germany, and then to Rome, entrusting before that the publication of the first collection of his works to N. Ya. Prokopovich (published in 1842).
In Rome, he worked on the second volume of Dead Souls, begun as early as 1840. This work would continue intermittently for almost 12 years, that is, almost until Gogol's death. Contemporaries were looking forward to the continuation of the poem, but instead of it, in 1847, “Selected passages from correspondence with friends” were published in St. Petersburg, the dual purpose of which (as Gogol formulated it for himself) was to explain why the second volume had not yet been written, and prepare readers for its subsequent perception. "Selected places" affirmed the idea of spiritual life-building, the purpose of which would be the creation of an "ideal heavenly state". The very title of the poem (“dead souls”) suggested the possibility of the opposite: the existence of “living” souls. The key to this should have been the resurrection of the protagonist for a new "wonderful" life, as well as the emergence of new, compared to the first volume, "positive" characters: exemplary landowners (Costanjoglo and Vasily Platonov), officials, heroes who could be perceived as alter ego of the author himself (e.g., Murazov) and which we know about from five surviving chapters of draft editions.
January 1852 Gogol finally reports that the second volume is "completely finished." At the end of January, Father Matvey, Gogol's spiritual father, arrives in Moscow. The content of their conversations that took place these days remains unknown, but there is indirect evidence that it was Father Matvey who advised Gogol to burn some of the chapters of the poem, citing the harmful influence that they may have on readers. So, on the night of February 11-12, 1852, the white manuscript of the second volume was burned. Subsequently, Andrei Bely called the fate of Gogol "a terrible revenge", comparing father Matvey with a terrible horseman in the Carpathians: "... the earth committed its Terrible revenge on him. The face seen by Gogol did not save Gogol: this face became for him a "rider in the Carpathians." Gogol ran away from him.
Gogol died on February 21, 1852 - ten days after the burning of the manuscript of the poem. On his tombstone, the words of the prophet Jeremiah were carved: "I will laugh at my bitter word."
"Dead Souls" is one of the most read and revered works of Russian classics. No matter how much time separates us from this work, we will never cease to be amazed at its depth, perfection, and, probably, we will not consider our understanding of it exhausted. Reading "Dead Souls", you bring up in yourself the noble moral ideas that every brilliant work of art carries with it. Gogol showed the whole of modern Russia, satirically depicting the local nobility and provincial bureaucracy. But if you think about it, the disgusting and pitiful features of Gogol's characters have not been outlived to this day and are clearly manifested today. This is the relevance of the study of this work.
The purpose of this work is to reveal the ideological and artistic originality of "Dead Souls".
The object of the study is N. V. Gogol's poem "Dead Souls".
Subject of study: unique ideological and artistic originality of the work.
This goal involves the solution of the following tasks:
Consider the artistic originality of the poem "Dead Souls"
To reveal the idea and sources of the poem "Dead Souls".
Determine the genre of the poem
Analyze the features of the plot and composition of the poem
Explore the features of the image of Chichikov, as well as landowners in the poem.
Understand the role of lyrical digressions in the poem "Dead Souls" and their ideological content.
Research methods: descriptive, biographical, cultural-historical, structural.
CHAPTER 1
1 The idea and sources of the plot of the poem
It is believed that, just like the plot of The Inspector General, the plot of Dead Souls was suggested to Gogol by Pushkin. There are two stories associated with the name of Pushkin and comparable to the plot of "Dead Souls". During his stay in Bessarabia (1820-1823), administrative abuses took place in Bendery: deaths were not registered here, and the names of the dead were transferred to other persons, fugitive peasants who flocked here from all over Russia; for this reason, the inhabitants of the town were called the "immortal society". Subsequently, while already in Odessa, Pushkin asked his Bessarabian acquaintance I.P. Liprandi: “Is there anything new in Bendery?” P. I. Bartenev wrote about another case related to Pushkin’s stay in Moscow in the notes to the memoirs of V. A. Sollogub: “In Moscow, Pushkin was on the run with a friend. There was also a certain P. (an old dandy). Pointing to him to Pushkin, a friend told about him how he bought up dead souls, pawned them and got a big profit<…>This was before 1826." Interestingly, this episode evoked a direct artistic reaction from Pushkin himself: “You could make a novel out of this,” he said, among other things.
However, there is evidence that Gogol, regardless of Pushkin, had heard a lot about stories with dead souls. According to the story of a distant relative of the writer M. G. Anisimo-Yanovskaya, her uncle, a certain Kharlampy Petrovich Pivinsky, who lived 17 versts from Yanovshchina (another name for the Gogol Vasilievka estate) and was engaged in distillation, was frightened by rumors that such a trade would be allowed only to landowners, possessing no less than fifty souls. Pivinsky (who had only thirty souls) went to Poltava “and he paid a quitrent for his dead peasants, as if for the living ... And since his own, and with the dead, were far from fifty, he scored vodka in a cart and went in the neighbors and bought dead souls from them for this vodka ... ”Anisimo-Yanovskaya claims that“ the whole Mirgorod region knew this story.
Another episode, allegedly also known to Gogol, was reported by his classmate at the Nizhyn Gymnasium of Higher Sciences P. I. Martos in a letter to P. I. Bartenev: “As for Dead Souls, I can tell the following ... In Nizhyn<…>, at the gymnasium of higher sciences of Prince Bezborodko, there was a certain K-ach, a Serb; of enormous growth, very handsome, with the longest mustaches, 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 indicated, but the boundaries are definitive. … What happened? This land was a neglected cemetery. This very incident was told to Gogol abroad by Prince N. G. Repnin.
Here it is necessary, however, to make a reservation that Repnin, if he told Gogol this episode, then already abroad, when work on Dead Souls had already begun. But at the same time, it is known that abroad, in the process of writing the poem, Gogol continued to collect material and ask acquaintances about various “incidents” that “could happen when buying dead souls” (letter to V. A. Zhukovsky from Paris on November 12, 1836) .
With a completely everyday origin, the very formula “dead souls”, placed in the title of the work, was saturated with both literary and philosophical-religious themes. The actual everyday aspect of this formula was recorded by V. I. Dal in the first edition of the Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language (1863): Soul") . However, in the religious and philosophical aspect, Gogol's formula was antithetical to the biblical concept of a "living soul" (cf.: "And the Lord God created man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul" - Bible, Genesis , 2, 7). In addition, the oxymoron expression "dead soul" and its derivatives - "dead life", "living death" - have become widespread in Western European poetry since the Middle Ages; cf. also in the mystery of V. K. Kuchelbeker "Izhora": "To what I could be reasonable, // My dead soul does not believe"). In the poem, the formula "dead soul" - "dead souls" was refracted in many ways by Gogol, acquiring more and more new semantic nuances: dead souls - dead serfs, but also spiritually dead landowners and officials, buying up dead souls as an emblem of the deadness of the living.
2 Genre originality of the poem
In terms of genre, Dead Souls was conceived as a novel of the "high road". Thus, in a certain sense, they correlated with the famous novel by Cervantes "Don Quixote", which Pushkin also pointed out to Gogol in his time (a parallel on which Gogol later insisted in the "Author's Confession"). As M. Bakhtin wrote, “at the turn of the XVI-XVII centuries. Don Quixote set out on the road to meet all of Spain on it, from the convict going to the galleys to the duke. Also, Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov "leaves on the road" to meet here, in Gogol's own words, "all Rus'" (from a letter to Pushkin on October 7, 1835). Thus, the genre characterology of Dead Souls as a travel novel is immediately outlined. At the same time, it is also predetermined from the very beginning that this journey will be of a special kind, namely the wandering of a rogue, which additionally enters "Dead Souls" into another genre tradition - a picaresque novel, picaresque, widely spread in European literature (the anonymous "Life of Lazarillo with Tormes”, “Gille Blas” by Lesage and others). In Russian literature, the most prominent representative of this genre before "Dead Souls" was the novel by V. T. Narezhny "Russian Zhilblaz, or the Adventures of Prince Gavrila Simonovich Chistyakov."
The linear construction of the novel, which the picaresque assumed (a work whose content is the amusing adventures of a rogue), immediately gave the work an epic character: the author led his hero through “a chain of adventures and changes in order to present at the same time a true picture of everything significant in features and morals of the time he took” (this characterization of the “lesser kind of epic”, given by Gogol already in the mid-40s in the “Study Book of Literature for Russian Youth”, was largely applicable to “Dead Souls”). And yet, the experience of the playwright was not in vain: it was he who made it possible for Gogol to do the almost impossible, to integrate a linear plot, seemingly the most remote from the dramatic principle, into a special “dramatic” whole. According to Gogol's own definition, the novel "flies like a drama, united by the lively interest of the main characters themselves, in which the characters are entangled and which, with a seething course, makes the characters themselves develop and reveal their characters more strongly and quickly, increasing enthusiasm." So it is in Dead Souls - their purchase by Chichikov (the main incident), expressed in a plot in a chain of episodes (chapters), for the most part coinciding with the hero’s visit to one or another landowner, unites all the characters with a common interest. It is no coincidence that Gogol builds many episodes of the book on parallels and on the repetition of actions, events, and even individual details: the reappearance of Korobochka, Nozdryov, Chichikov's symmetrical visit to various "city dignitaries" at the beginning and end of the book - all this creates the impression of a circular composition. The role of a catalyst for action that fear played in The Government Inspector is now played by gossip - "condensed lies", "the real substratum of the fantastic", where "everyone adds and applies a little, and the lie grows like a snowball, threatening to turn into a snow fall" . The circulation and growth of rumors - a technique inherited by Gogol from another great playwright, Griboedov, additionally organizes the action, speeds up its pace, leading the action to a swift denouement in the final:
In fact, the plan of "Dead Souls" was originally conceived by Gogol as a three-part combination of relatively independent, completed works. At the height of Gogol's work on the first volume, Dante begins to occupy him. In the first years of Gogol's life abroad, many factors contributed to this: meetings with V. A. Zhukovsky in Rome in 1838-1839, who at that time was fond of the author of The Divine Comedy; conversations with S.P. Shevyrev and reading his translations from Dante. Directly in the first volume of "Dead Souls", "The Divine Comedy" responded with a parodic reminiscence in the 7th chapter, in the scene of "committing a bill of sale": Chichikov (Dante), a wanderer in the underworld kingdom, with his temporary companion Manilov, with the help of a petty official (Virgil), find themselves on on the threshold of the "sanctuary" - the office of the chairman of the civil chamber, where the new guide - "Virgil" leaves the Gogol hero (in the "Divine Comedy" Virgil leaves Dante before ascension to heavenly Paradise, where he, as a pagan, is forbidden to go).
But, apparently, the main impulse that Gogol received from reading The Divine Comedy was the idea to show the history of the human soul passing through certain stages - from the state of sinfulness to enlightenment - a story that receives concrete embodiment in the individual fate of the central character. This gave a clearer outline to the three-part plan of "Dead Souls", which now, by analogy with the "Divine Comedy", began to be presented as the ascent of the human soul, passing through three stages on its way: "Hell", "Purgatory" and "Paradise".
This also led to a new genre comprehension of the book, which Gogol originally called a novel and which he now gave the genre designation of a poem, which forced the reader to additionally correlate Gogol's book with Dante's, since the designation "sacred poem" ("poema sacra") also appears in Dante himself ( "Paradise", canto XXV, line 1) and also because at the beginning of the XIX century. in Russia, the Divine Comedy was steadily associated with the genre of the poem (the poem was called the Divine Comedy, for example, by A.F. Merzlyakov in his “Brief outline of the theory of belles-lettres”; 1822), well known to Gogol. But, in addition to the Dante's association, Gogol's naming of "Dead Souls" as a poem also affected other meanings associated with this concept. First, most often a "poem" defined a high degree of artistic perfection; this meaning was assigned to this concept in Western European, in particular, German criticism (for example, in F. Schlegel's "Critical Fragments"). In these cases, the concept served not so much as a genre definition as an evaluative definition and could appear regardless of the genre (it was in this vein that Griboyedov wrote about Woe from Wit as a “stage poem”, V. G. Belinsky called Taras Bulba a “poem” ”, and N. I. Nadezhdin called all literature “an episode of a lofty, boundless poem, represented by the original life of the human race”).
However, in Gogol, in this designation, and this should also be borne in mind, there was also an element of polemic. The fact is that in terms of genre, a poem was considered a concept applicable only to poetic works - both small and large forms (“A poem can be called any work written in verse, with imitation of graceful nature,” wrote N. F. Ostolopov in "Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Poetry", and in this sense, "The Divine Comedy" more naturally fell under such a classification). In other cases, this concept acquired, as already mentioned, an evaluative meaning. Gogol, on the other hand, used the word “poem” in relation to a large prose form (which would initially be more natural to define as a novel) precisely as a direct designation of the genre, placing it on the title page of the book (graphically, he further strengthened the meaning: on the title page created according to his drawing, the word “ poem" dominated both the title and the author's surname). The definition of "Dead Souls" as a poem, writes Yu. V. Mann, came to Gogol along with the realization of their genre uniqueness. This uniqueness consisted, firstly, in that universal task, which overcame the one-sidedness of the comic and even more satirical perspective of the book (“all Rus' will respond in it”), and, secondly, in its symbolic significance, since the book turned to fundamental problems purpose of Russia and human existence.
Thus, the genre origins of "Dead Souls" are diverse. They synthesized into a single artistic whole elements of both the picaresque novel, and the genre of travel and essay, the socio-psychological and satirical novel, the lofty and parody poem.
3 Features of the plot and composition of the poem
The composition of "Dead Souls" is slender and proportionate in Pushkin's way.
There are 11 chapters in the 1st volume. Of these, Chapter I is an extensive exposition. The next 5 chapters (II-VI), tying and developing the action, at the same time represent, as it were, 5 completed short stories-essays, in the center of each of them is a detailed portrait of one of the landowners of the province, where Chichikov arrived in the hope of carrying out the scam he had conceived. Each portrait is a certain type.
In the next five chapters (VII-XI), mainly officials of the provincial city are drawn. However, these chapters are no longer built as separate essays with one main character in the center, but as a successively developing chain of events that take on an increasingly intense plot character.
Chapter XI completes the 1st volume and at the same time, as it were, returns the reader to the beginning of the story.
In chapter I, Chichikov's entry into the city of NN is depicted, and a hint is already made of the plot of the action. In chapter XI, the denouement takes place, the hero hastily leaves the city, and here Chichikov's background is given. In general, the chapter is both the completion of the plot, its denouement, and the exposition, the "key" of the character of the protagonist and the explanation of the secret of his strange "negotiation" associated with the purchase of dead souls.
When studying the system of images in Dead Souls, one should especially think about the peculiarities of character typification, in particular, the images of landowners. Usually, for all their individual originality, they accentuate the social features of the landowners-serfs of the period of the decomposition of the feudal system that began in Russia, which, in particular, is mentioned in all school and university textbooks.
On the whole, this is correct, but far from sufficient, since this approach leaves unexplained the unusual breadth of artistic generalization in these images. Reflecting in each of them a variety of the social type of the landowner-serf, Gogol did not limit himself to this, because for him not only the social and species specificity is important, but also the universal human characteristic of the depicted artistic type. A truly artistic type (including Gogol's) is always wider than any social type, because it is depicted as an individual character in which the social-species, class-group difficultly correlates with the social-generic, holistic-personal, universal - with great or less predominance of one of these principles. That is why Gogol's artistic types contain features that are characteristic not only of landowners or officials, but also of other classes, estates and social strata of society.
It is noteworthy that Gogol himself repeatedly emphasized the openness of his heroes to social class, social species, narrow group and even time frames. Speaking of Korobochka, he remarks: "Another and respectable, and even a statesman, but in reality the perfect Korobochka comes out." Masterfully characterizing the "wide" nature of Nozdryov's "historical man", the writer in this case does not attribute all his diverse properties exclusively to the feudal landowner of his era, arguing: "Nozdryov will not leave the world for a long time. He is everywhere between us and, perhaps, he only walks in a different caftan; but people are frivolously impenetrable, and a person in a different caftan seems to them a different person.
For all their undoubted socio-psychological limitations, the characters of Gogol's characters are far from schematic one-dimensionality, they are living people with a mass of individual shades. The same, according to Gogol, “many-sided man” Nozdryov with his “bouquet” of negative qualities (a reveler, a gambler, a shameless liar, a fighter, etc.) is somewhat sympathetic in his own way: with his irrepressible energy, ability to quickly converge with people, peculiar democratism, disinterestedness and inconsistency, lack of hoarding. The only trouble is that all these human qualities acquire an ugly development in him, they are not illuminated by any meaning, truly human goals.
There are positive beginnings in the characters of Manilov, Korobochka, Sobakevich, and even Plyushkin. But these are, more precisely, the remnants of their humanity, which further shade the lack of spirituality that triumphed in them under the influence of the environment.
If, for example, Lermontov portrayed mainly the resistance of the “inner man” to the external circumstances of life surrounding him, then Gogol in “Dead Souls” focuses on his submission to these circumstances, up to “dissolution” in them, focusing, as a rule, on the final the result of this process. This is how Manilov, Korobochka, Nozdrev are represented. But already in the image of Sobakevich there is another tendency - to understand the origins of the process of spiritual mortification of a person: “Are you born like a bear,” says the poem about Sobakevich, “or did the provincial life, grain crops, fuss with peasants bear you? what is called a man-fist has become.
The more a person loses human qualities, the more Gogol seeks to get to the bottom of the causes of his spiritual deadness. This is exactly what Plyushkin does as a “hole in humanity”, unfolding his life background, talking about that time “when he was only a thrifty owner”, “he was married and a family man”, an exemplary one, when his “mind was visible in his eyes; his speech was permeated with experience and knowledge of the world, and it was pleasant for the guest to listen to him; the friendly and talkative hostess was famous for her hospitality; two pretty daughters came out to meet them, both blond and fresh as roses, a son ran out, a broken boy ... ".
And then the author, without skimping on details, shows how Plyushkin's frugality gradually turned into meaningless stinginess, how marital, paternal and other human feelings died out. His wife and youngest daughter died. The eldest Alexandra Stepanovna fled with an officer in search of a free and happy life. The son, becoming an officer, lost in cards. Instead of material or moral support, Plyushkin sent them a paternal curse and closed himself even more in himself and his all-consuming passion for hoarding, which becomes more and more meaningless with time.
Along with pathological stinginess, suspicion, hypocrisy develops in him, designed to create a semblance of lost spiritual properties. In some way here Gogol anticipated the image of Yudushka Golovlev, for example, in the scene of Plyushkin’s reception of the “runaway” daughter with her “two babies”: “Alexandra Stepanovna once came twice with her little son, trying to see if she could get something; evidently the camp life with the staff captain was not as attractive as it had seemed before the wedding. Plyushkin, however, forgave her and even gave his little granddaughter a button to play with... but he didn't give her any money. Another time, Alexandra Stepanovna came with two little ones and brought him an Easter cake for tea and a new dressing gown, because the father had such a dressing gown, which was not only ashamed to look at, but even ashamed. Plyushkin caressed both granddaughters and, seating them one on his right knee and the other on his left, shook them in exactly the same way as if they were riding horses, took the Easter cake and dressing gown, but gave absolutely nothing to his daughter; with that, Alexandra Stepanovna left.
But even in such a "monster" the writer is looking for the remnants of humanity. In this regard, the episode is indicative when Plyushkin, during the “bargaining” with Chichikov, remembered his only acquaintance in the city, who was his classmate as a child: “And on this wooden face some kind of warm beam suddenly glided, expressed not a feeling, but some that pale reflection of feeling ... ".
By the way, according to the plan, Plyushkin was supposed to appear in the subsequent volumes of Dead Souls, if not resurrected morally and spiritually, then realizing, as a result of a strong life shock, the measure of his human fall.
The prehistory of the protagonist, the "scoundrel" Chichikov, who, according to the writer's intention, had to go through a significant internal evolution over the course of three volumes, is given in even more detail.
The types of officials are described more succinctly, but no less meaningfully, for example, the prosecutor with thick eyebrows and an involuntary winking left eye. Rumors and rumors about the story of Chichikov's purchase of dead souls had such an effect on him that he "began to think, think, and suddenly ... he died for no reason." They sent, it was, for the doctor, but soon saw that the prosecutor "was already one soulless body." And it was only then that his fellow citizens “learned with condolence that the dead man had exactly a soul, although he, due to his modesty, never showed it.”
The comedy and satire of the image here imperceptibly pass into a different, moral and philosophical tone: the deceased lies on the table, “the left eye no longer blinked at all, but one eyebrow was still raised with some kind of questioning expression. What the deceased asked, why he died or why he lived, only God knows about this.
It was precisely that cardinal vital question that was posed - why did a person live, why does a person live? - a question that so little bothered all these seemingly prosperous inhabitants of the provincial city with their dead souls alive. Here one involuntarily recalls the words of Pechorin from “A Hero of Our Time”: “Why did I live? For what purpose was I born?
We talk a lot and rightly about social satire in Dead Souls, not always noticing their moral and philosophical overtones, which over time, and especially in our time, are gaining more and more not only historical, but also modern interest, highlighting in concrete the historical content of "Dead Souls" its universal perspective.
The deep unity of these two aspects was noticed by Herzen. Immediately after reading Gogol's poem, he wrote in his diary: "Dead Souls" - this title itself bears something terrifying ... not dead souls from the revision, but all these Nozdrevs, Manilovs and tutti quaiili - these are dead souls, and we we meet at every step. Where are the common, living interests?.. After youth, one way or another, don't we all lead one of the lives of Gogol's heroes? One remains with Manilov's dull daydreaming, the other rages like Nozdrev, the third - Plyushkin, etc. One active person is Chichikov, and that one is a limited rogue.
Gogol emphasizes the tragedy of the fates of most of them, who are increasingly “thinking” about their disenfranchised life - like that Grigory Get-you-don’t-get, who “thought, thought, but for no reason turned into a tavern, and then right into the hole and remember your name." And the writer makes a meaningful conclusion: “Eh! Russian people! does not like to die a natural death! .
Speaking about the central conflict in the artistic structure of the poem, one must keep in mind its peculiar duality. On the one hand, this is a conflict between the protagonist and landowners and officials, based on Chichikov's adventure in buying up dead souls. On the other hand, this is a deep-seated conflict between the landlord-bureaucratic, autocratic-feudal elite of Russia with the people, primarily with the serf peasantry. Echoes of this deep conflict are heard every now and then on the pages of Dead Souls.
Even the “well-intentioned” Chichikov, annoyed by the failure of his cunning undertaking, hastily leaving the governor’s ball, suddenly falls upon the balls, and all the idle life of the ruling classes associated with them: “Damn you all who invented these balls! .. Well, what were you so happy about? There are crop failures in the province, high prices, and so they are for balls! .. But at the expense of peasant dues ... "
Chichikov occupies a special place in the figurative and semantic structure of "Dead Souls" - not only as the main character, but also as the ideological, compositional and plot-forming center of the poem. Chichikov's journey, which was the basis of his adventurous and mercantile intentions, made it possible for the writer, in his words, "to travel ... all over Russia and bring out a multitude of the most diverse characters", to show "all of Rus'" in its contradictions and dormant potencies.
So, analyzing the reasons for the collapse of Chichikov's idea of enrichment by acquiring dead souls, it is worth paying special attention to two seemingly incidental episodes - at a meeting between Chichikov and a young blonde who turned out to be the governor's daughter, and the consequences of these meetings. Chichikov only for a moment allowed himself sincere human feelings, but this was enough to confuse all his cards, to destroy his plan, which was so prudently carried out. Of course, the narrator says, “it is doubtful that gentlemen of this kind ... were capable of love ...” But, “it is clear that the Chichikovs turn into poets for a few minutes in their lives ...” . As soon as Chichikov, in his fleeting passion, forgot about the role he had assumed and ceased to pay due attention to "society" in the person of, first of all, the ladies, they were not slow in taking revenge on him for such neglect, picking up the version of dead souls, flavoring it in their own way with the legend of the abduction governor's daughter: "All the ladies did not like this treatment of Chichikov at all." And they at once "went each in their own direction to riot the city," i.e. set him up against the recent universal favorite Chichikov. This "private" storyline in its own way highlights the complete incompatibility in the mercantile-prudent world of businesslike prosperity with sincere human feelings and heart movements.
The basis of the plot in the 1st volume of "Dead Souls" is Chichikov's misadventures associated with his scam based on the purchase of dead souls. The news of this excited the entire provincial town. The most incredible assumptions were made as to why Chichikov needed dead souls.
General confusion and fear were intensified by the fact that a new governor-general was appointed to the province. “All of a sudden, they were looking for such sins in themselves that they didn’t even exist.” The officials wondered who Chichikov was, whom they so kindly received by his dress and manners: “is he such a person who needs to be detained and seized as unintentional, or is he such a person who himself can seize and detain them all as unintentional” .
This social “ambivalence” of Chichikov as a possible carrier of both law and lawlessness reflected their relativity, opposition and interconnectedness in the society depicted by the writer. Chichikov was a mystery not only for the characters of the poem, but also in many respects for its readers. That is why, while riveting attention to it, the author was in no hurry to solve it, referring the exposition explaining the origins of this nature to the final chapter.
Conclusion for the chapter: Gogol sought to show the terrible face of Russian reality, to recreate the "Hell" of Russian modern life.
The poem has a ring "composition": it is framed by the action of the first and eleventh chapters: Chichikov enters the city and leaves it. The exposition in "Dead Souls" was moved to the end of the work. Thus, the eleventh chapter is, as it were, the informal beginning of the poem and its formal end. The poem begins with the development of the action: Chichikov begins his journey to the "acquisition" of dead souls. The construction of "Dead Souls" is logical and consistent. Each chapter is completed thematically, it has its own task and its own subject matter. The chapters devoted to the depiction of landlords are arranged according to the scheme: a description of the landscape, the estate, the house and life, the appearance of the hero, then the dinner and the attitude of the landowner to the sale of dead souls are shown. The composition of the poem contains lyrical digressions, inserted short stories (“The Tale of Captain Kopeikin”), a parable about Kif Mokievich and Mokiya Kofovich.
The macro-composition of the poem "Dead Souls", that is, the composition of the entire conceived work, was suggested to Gogol by Dante's immortal "Divine Comedy": Volume 1 - the hell of feudal reality, the kingdom of dead souls; 2 volume - purgatory; Volume 3 - Paradise. This idea remained unfulfilled. You can also note the gradual spiritual degradation of the landowners as the reader gets to know them. Such a picture creates in the reader a rather heavy emotional sensation from the symbolic steps along which the human soul moves to hell.
CHAPTER 2
1 The image of Chichikov in the poem "Dead Souls"
In the image of Chichikov, Gogol introduced into Russian literature the type of bourgeois-acquirer that was taking shape in Russian reality, who relies not on the titles and wealth bestowed by fate, but on personal initiative and enterprise, on a “penny”, multiplied into capital, bringing him everything: good lives laid down in society, nobility, etc.
This type had undoubted advantages over the type of patriarchal landowner-nobleman, who lived according to customs inherited, like material wealth, from fathers and grandfathers.
It is no coincidence that Chichikov is always on the road, in motion, in trouble, while other characters are inactive and inert in every respect. Chichikov achieves everything in life on his own. More than once he made a solid fortune and failed, but again and again with the same energy he rushed to his cherished goal - to get rich at all costs, by any means.
But this limited life goal, promiscuity and uncleanliness in the means of achieving it eventually nullified his positive qualities, devastating him spiritually, ultimately also turning him into a dead soul.
At the same time, Chichikov is a very capacious image-type. It is not for nothing that officials alternately take him for an official of the governor-general's office, then for a counterfeiter, then for a disguised robber, then even for Napoleon released from the island of Helena. For all the absurdity of the assumptions of the frightened officials, they are not absolutely groundless: in Chichikov there really is something that makes him related to all these human "copies", he ascends to each of them with some of his side. Even with Napoleon, he has something in common: the same active individualism, turning into egocentrism and causing the limitation of all goals; the same indiscriminateness in the means of achieving them; climbing to these goals literally "over the corpses", through the suffering and death of one's own kind. As soon as he arrived in the city, Chichikov wondered if "there were any diseases in the province, epidemic fevers, some deadly fevers, smallpox, and the like."
Only one of the guesses, “who really is Chichikov,” turned out to be completely untenable when the postmaster suddenly declared: “This, gentlemen ... is none other than Captain Kopeikin!” .
It should be emphasized that "The Tale of Captain Kopeikin", despite the fact that it does not seem to be connected with the main action of the poem, nor with the image of Chichikov, carries a great ideological and artistic content that complements and deepens the main meaning of "Dead Souls" . No wonder Gogol himself cherished it so much and was deeply worried about the threat of its withdrawal by censorship, about which he wrote to P. A. Pletnev on April 10, 1842: “The destruction of Kopeikin greatly embarrassed me! This is one of the best places in the poem, and without it - a hole that I can’t patch up and sew up with anything.
In this “poem within a poem” (cf. the words of the postmaster: “it is ... in some way a whole poem”), the narrative goes beyond the boundaries of the province, involving St. covering all of Russia.
In addition, with the image of Captain Kopeikin, a hero and invalid of the Patriotic War of 1812, a representative of the democratic lower classes of the country, the theme of rebellion sounds again and with renewed vigor. Of course, Gogol, not being in any way a revolutionary, did not call for revolt. However, as a great and honest realist artist, he could not fail to show the patterns of rebellious tendencies in the existing socially unjust social and state structure.
The postmaster's story about Captain Kopeikin is suddenly interrupted when the listeners learn that Kopeikin, having lost faith in the "monarch's help", becomes the leader of a gang of robbers in his homeland, in the Ryazan forests: "Just let me, Ivan Andreevich," the police chief suddenly said interrupting him: " after all, Captain Kopeikin, you yourself said, without an arm and a leg, but Chichikov’s ... ”The postmaster himself could not understand how it didn’t really occur to him right away, and he only“ clapped his hand with all his might on to your forehead, calling yourself publicly in front of everyone as a veal. Familiar to us from Gogol's previous works is the alogism of thinking - characters and narrators.
This technique is widely used in "Dead Souls", primarily to comprehend the main storyline, and through it - and the entire displayed reality. The author makes readers, if not officials, ask themselves the question: is there more logic in the daily purchases and sales of “living souls”, living people?
It is difficult to say with certainty how Chichikov would have appeared at the end of the three-volume poem. But, regardless of the final idea, in the 1st volume Gogol managed to create a realistic type of great generalizing power. Belinsky immediately noted his significance: "Chichikov, as an acquirer, is no less, if not more than Pechorin, a hero of our time." An observation that has not lost its relevance even now. The virus of acquisition, acquisition at any cost, when all means are good, when the biblical truth bequeathed for centuries is forgotten: “Man does not live by bread alone”, this virus is so strong and tenacious that it freely penetrates everywhere, bypassing not only spatial, but also temporal boundaries . The Chichikov type has not lost its vital and generalizing meaning both today and in our society, on the contrary, it is experiencing its powerful revival and development. Turning to readers, Gogol suggested that everyone ask themselves the question: “Isn’t there some part of Chichikov in me too?” At the same time, the writer advised not to rush to answer, not to nod at others: “Look, look, there Chichikov ... go!” . This advice is also addressed to everyone living today.
2 Features of the image of landowners in the poem
The images drawn by Gogol in the poem were ambiguously perceived by his contemporaries: many reproached him for drawing a caricature of his contemporary life, depicting reality in a ridiculous, absurd way. Gogol unfolds before the reader a whole gallery of images of landowners (leading his main character from the first to the last) primarily in order to answer the main question that occupied him - what is the future of Russia, what is its historical purpose, what is in modern life contains at least a small hint of a bright, prosperous future for the people, which will be the key to the future greatness of the nation. In other words, the question that Gogol asks at the end, in a lyrical digression about "Rus-Troika", permeates the entire narrative as a leitmotif, and it is to him that the logic and poetics of the entire work, including the images of the landowners, are subordinated.
The first of the landowners whom Chichikov visits in the hope of buying dead souls is Manilov. Main features: Manilov is completely divorced from reality, his main occupation is fruitless wandering in the clouds, useless projecting. This is evidenced both by the appearance of his estate (a house on a hill, open to all winds, a gazebo - a “temple of solitary reflection”, traces of begun and unfinished buildings), and the interior of residential premises (variegated furniture, heaps of pipe ash, laid out in neat rows on the windowsill , some book, the second year laid on the fourteenth page, etc.). Drawing the image, Gogol pays special attention to the details, interior, things, through them showing the features of the owner's character. Manilov, despite his "great" thoughts, is stupid, vulgar and sentimental (lisping with his wife, "ancient Greek" names of not quite neat and well-mannered children). The internal and external squalor of the type depicted prompts Gogol, starting from him, to look for a positive ideal, and to do this "from the opposite." If complete isolation from reality and fruitless wandering in the clouds lead to this, then perhaps the opposite type will inspire some hope in us? The box in this respect is the exact opposite of Manilov. Unlike him, she does not hover in the clouds, but, on the contrary, is completely immersed in everyday life. However, the image of the Box does not give the desired ideal. Pettiness and stinginess (old coats kept in chests, money put into a stocking for a “rainy day”), inertia, stupid adherence to tradition, rejection and fear of everything new, “clubhead” make her appearance almost more repulsive than that of Manilov . For all the dissimilarity of the characters of Manilov and Korobochka, they have one thing in common - inactivity. Both Manilov and Korobochka (albeit for opposite reasons) do not affect the reality around them. Maybe an active person will be a model from which the younger generation should take an example? And, as if in answer to this question, Nozdryov appears. Nozdryov is extremely active. However, all his violent activities are mostly scandalous. He is a frequenter of all boozes and sprees in the district, he changes everything for anything (he tries to hand Chichikov puppies, a barrel organ, a horse, etc.), cheats when playing cards and even checkers, stupidly squanders the money that he gets from selling harvest. He lies unnecessarily (it is Nozdryov who subsequently confirms the rumor that Chichikov wanted to steal the governor's daughter and took him as an accomplice, without batting an eye agrees that Chichikov is Napoleon, who fled from exile, etc.). d.). Repeatedly he was beaten, and by his own friends, and the next day, as if nothing had happened, he appeared to them and continued everything in the same spirit - “he is nothing, and they, as they say, nothing.” As a result, almost more troubles come from Nozdryov's "activities" than from the inaction of Manilov and Korobochka. Nevertheless, there is a feature that unites all the three types described - this is impracticality.
The next landowner, Sobakevich, is extremely practical. This is the type of "master", "fist". Everything in his house is solid, reliable, made "for centuries" (even the furniture seems to be full of complacency and wants to shout: "Iya Sobakevich!"). However, all the practicality of Sobakevich is directed only towards one goal - obtaining personal gain, for the achievement of which he stops at nothing (“scoldling” by Sobakevich of everyone and everything - in the city, according to him, there is one decent person - the prosecutor, “and even the one who if you look at it - a pig", Sobakevich's "meal", when he eats mountains of food and so on, seems to be able to swallow the whole world in one sitting, the scene with the purchase of dead souls, when Sobakevich is not at all surprised by the very subject of the sale, but immediately feels that the case smells of money that can be “ripped off” from Chichikov). It is quite clear that Sobakevich is even further away from the sought-for ideal than all previous types.
Plushkin is a kind of generalizing image. He is the only one whose path to his current state (“how he got to such a life”) is shown to us by Gogol. Giving the image of Plyushkin in development, Gogol raises this final image to a kind of symbol, accommodating Manilov, and Korobochka, and Nozdryov, and Sobakevich. What is common to all the types bred in the poem is that their life is not sanctified by thought, a socially useful goal, is not filled with concern for the common good, progress, and the desire for national prosperity. Any activity (or inaction) is useless and meaningless if they do not carry concern for the good of the nation, the country. That is why Plyushkin turns into a "hole in humanity", that is why his repulsive, disgusting image of a miser who has lost all kinds of human appearance, stealing old buckets and other rubbish from his own peasants, turning his own house into a dump, and his serfs into beggars - precisely therefore, his image is the final stop for all these manila, boxes, nostrils and dogs. And it is precisely a “hole in humanity”, like Plyushkin, that Russia can turn out to be if it does not find the strength in itself to tear away all these “dead souls” and bring to the surface of national life a positive image - active, diligent in deeds with a mobile mind and imagination, and most importantly - dedicated to the common good. It is characteristic that it was precisely this type that Gogol tried to portray in the second volume of Dead Souls in the guise of the landowner Costanjoglo. However, the surrounding reality did not provide material for such images - Costanjoglo turned out to be a speculative scheme that had nothing to do with real life. Russian reality supplied only manila, boxes, nostrils and Plushkins - “Where am I? I don’t see anything ... Not a single human face, .. Only snouts, snouts around ... ”- exclaims Gogol through the mouth of the Governor in The Government Inspector (compare with the“ evil spirits ”from“ Evenings ... ”and“ Mirgorod ”: a pig's snout protruding through the window in the Sorochinskaya Fair, mocking inhuman muzzles in the Enchanted Place). That is why the words about Rus'-troika sound like a woeful cry-warning - "Where are you rushing? .. He does not give an answer ...".
So, the main and main meaning of the poem is that Gogol wanted to understand the historical path of Russia through artistic images, to see its future, to feel the sprouts of a new, better life in the reality surrounding him, to distinguish those forces that would turn Russia off the sidelines of world history and turn on into the overall cultural process. The image of the landowners is a reflection of this very search. Through extreme typification, Gogol creates figures of a national scale, representing the Russian character in many forms, in all its contradictory and ambiguous nature. The types bred by Gogol are an integral part of Russian life, these are precisely Russian types that are as bright as they are stable in Russian life - until life itself changes radically.
Like the images of landowners, the images of officials, whose whole gallery Gogol unfolds in front of the reader, perform a certain function. Showing the life and customs of the provincial town of NN, the author tries to answer the main question that concerns him - what is the future of Russia, what is its historical purpose, what in modern life contains at least a small hint of a bright, prosperous future for the people.
The theme of bureaucracy is an integral part and continuation of the ideas that Gogol developed by depicting landowners in the poem. It is no coincidence that the images of officials follow the images of the landowners. If the evil embodied in the owners of the estates - in all these boxes, manilovs, sobeviches, nostrils and Plyushkins - is scattered throughout the Russian expanses, then here it appears in a concentrated form, compressed by the living conditions of a provincial city. A huge number of "dead souls" gathered together creates a special monstrously absurd atmosphere.
If the character of each of the landowners left a unique imprint on his house and estate as a whole, then the city is influenced by the entire huge mass of people (including officials, since officials are the first people in the city) living in it. The city turns into a completely independent mechanism, living according to its own laws, sending its needs through the offices, departments, councils and other public institutions. And it is the officials who ensure the functioning of this whole mechanism. The life of a civil servant, which does not bear the imprint of a lofty idea, the desire to promote the common good, becomes an embodied function of the bureaucratic mechanism. In essence, a person ceases to be a person, he loses all personal characteristics (unlike the landowners, who had an ugly, but still their own physiognomy), loses even his own name, since the name is still a certain personal characteristic, and becomes simply Postmaster, Prosecutor, Governor, Chief of Police, Chairman, or the owner of an unimaginable nickname like Ivan Antonovich Jug Snout. A person turns into a detail, a "cog" of the state machine, the micromodel of which is the provincial town of NN. Officials themselves are unremarkable, except for the position they hold.
To enhance the contrast, Gogol cites grotesque "portraits" of some officials - so the chief of police is famous for the fact that, according to rumors, he only needs to blink, passing by the fish row, to ensure himself a sumptuous dinner and an abundance of fish delicacies. The postmaster, whose name was Ivan Andreevich, is known for the fact that they always added to his name: “Sprechen zi deutsch, Ivan Andreich?” The chairman of the chamber knew Zhukovsky's "Lyudmila" by heart and "masterfully read many places, especially: "Bor fell asleep, the valley is sleeping," and the word "Chu!" Others, as Gogol sarcastically notes, were “also more or less enlightened people: some read Karamzin, some Moskovskie Vedomosti, some even read nothing at all.” The reaction of the inhabitants of the city, including officials, to the news that Chichikov is buying dead souls is noteworthy - what is happening does not fit into the usual framework and immediately gives rise to the most fantastic assumptions - from the fact that Chichikov wanted to kidnap the governor's daughter, to the fact that Chichikov - or a wanted counterfeiter, or an escaped robber, about whom the Chief of Police receives an order for immediate detention. The grotesqueness of the situation is only intensified by the fact that the Postmaster decides that Chichikov is Captain Kopeikin in disguise, a hero of the war of 1812, an invalid without an arm and a leg. The rest of the officials assume that Chichikov is Napoleon in disguise who escaped from Saint Helena.
The absurdity of the situation reaches its climax when, as a result of a collision with insoluble problems (from mental stress), the prosecutor dies. In general, the situation in the city resembles the behavior of a mechanism into which a grain of sand has suddenly fallen. Wheels and cogs, designed for quite specific functions, scroll idly, some break with a bang, and the whole mechanism rings, strums and "peddles".
If the city is a soulless machine that kills everything living, pure in people, destroying the very human essence, depriving them of all human feelings and even a normal name, turning the city itself into a “graveyard” of dead souls, then in the end the whole of Russia can take on a similar appearance , if he does not find the strength in himself to tear away all this "dead matter" and bring to the surface of national life a positive image - active, with a mobile mind and imagination, diligent in business and, most importantly, sanctified by concern for the common good.
3 Lyrical digressions of "Dead Souls" and their ideological content
Lyrical digressions are a very important part of any work. By the abundance of lyrical digressions, the poem "Dead Souls" can be compared with a work in verse by A.S. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin". This feature of these works is associated with their genres - a poem in prose and a novel in verse.
The lyrical digressions in "Dead Souls" are saturated with the pathos of affirming the high vocation of man, the pathos of great social ideas and interests. Whether the author expresses his bitterness and anger at the insignificance of the heroes shown by him, whether he speaks about the place of the writer in modern society, whether he writes about the lively, lively Russian mind - a deep source of his lyricism are thoughts about serving his native country, about its fate, its sorrows, her hidden, crushed gigantic forces.
Gogol created a new type of prose, in which the opposite elements of creativity - laughter and tears, satire and lyrics - inseparably merged. Never before have they, as already established, met in one work of art.
The epic narrative in Dead Souls is now and then lo is interrupted by an excited lyrical monologue mi of the author, evaluating the behavior of the character or reflecting on life, on art. The true lyrical hero of this book is Gogol himself. We hear his voice all the time. The image of the author is, as it were, an indispensable participant in all the events taking place in the poem. He closely monitors the behavior of his characters and actively influences the reader. Moreover, the author's voice is completely devoid of didactics, because this image is perceived from within, as a representative of the same reflected reality as other characters in Dead Souls. The lyrical voice of the author reaches the greatest tension on those pages that are directly dedicated to the Motherland, Russia. Another theme is woven into Gogol's lyrical thoughts - the future of Russia, its own historical fate and place in the fate of mankind. Passionate lyrical monologues of Gogol were the expression of his poetic dream of undistorted, correct reality. They revealed a poetic world, in contrast to which the world of gain and self-interest was even more clearly exposed. Gogol's lyrical monologues are an assessment of the present from the standpoint of the author's ideal, which can only be realized in the future. Gogol in his poem appears, first of all, as a thinker and contemplator, trying to unravel the mysterious bird-troika - the symbol of Rus'. The two most important themes of the author's reflections - the theme of Russia and the theme of the road - merge in a lyrical digression: “Aren't you, Rus, that a lively, unhindered troika rushing about? ...Rus! where are you going? Give an answer. Gives no answer." The theme of the road is the second most important theme of "Dead Souls" associated with the theme of Russia. The road is an image that organizes the whole plot, and Gogol introduces himself into lyrical digressions as a man of the path. “Before, a long time ago, in the summers of my youth ... it was fun for me to drive up to an unfamiliar place for the first time ... Now I indifferently drive up to any unfamiliar village and indifferently look at its vulgar appearance; my chilled gaze is uncomfortable, it’s not funny to me, .. and an indifferent silence is kept by my motionless lips. O my youth! O my conscience! Of greatest importance are lyrical digressions about Russia and the Russian people. Throughout the poem, the author's idea of a positive image of the Russian people is affirmed, which merges with the glorification and chanting of the motherland, which expresses the civil and patriotic position of the author: real Russia is not sobakevichi, nostrils and boxes, but the people, the element of the people. So, in the fifth chapter, the writer glorifies the “live and lively Russian mind”, his extraordinary ability for verbal expressiveness, that “if he rewards an oblique word, then it will go to his family and offspring, he will drag him with him both to the service and to retirement , and to St. Petersburg, and to the ends of the world. Chichikov's reasoning was prompted by his conversation with the peasants, who called Plyushkin "patched" and knew him only because he fed his peasants poorly. In close contact with the lyrical statements about the Russian word and folk character is the author's digression, which opens the sixth chapter. The story about Plyushkin is interrupted by the angry words of the author, which have a deep generalizing meaning: “And a person could descend to such insignificance, pettiness, filth!” Gogol felt the living soul of the Russian people, their boldness, courage, diligence and love for a free life. In this respect, the author's discourses, put into the mouth of Chichikov, about the serfs in the seventh chapter, are of profound significance. What appears here is not a generalized image of Russian peasants, but specific people with real features, written out in detail. This is the carpenter Stepan Cork - "a hero who would be fit for the guard", who, according to Chichikov's assumption, went all over Rus' with an ax in his belt and boots on his shoulders. This is the shoemaker Maxim Telyatnikov, who studied with a German and decided to get rich at once, making boots from rotten leather, which fell apart after two weeks. On this, he abandoned his work, took to drink, blaming everything on the Germans, who do not give life to the Russian people. In lyrical digressions, the tragic fate of a enslaved people, downtrodden and socially humiliated, appears, which is reflected in the images of Uncle Mitya and Uncle Minya, the girl Pelageya, who could not distinguish where the right is, where the left is, Plyushkin's Proshka and Mavra. Behind these images and pictures of people's life lies the deep and broad soul of the Russian people. The image of the road in lyrical digressions is symbolic. This is the road from the past to the future, the road along which every person and Russia as a whole develops. The work ends with a hymn to the Russian people: “Eh! troika! Threesome bird, who invented you? You could have been born among a lively people...” Here, lyrical digressions perform a generalizing function: they serve to expand the artistic space and to create a holistic image of Rus'. They reveal the positive ideal of the author - Russia of the people, which is opposed to landowner-bureaucratic Rus'. To recreate the completeness of the image of the author, it is necessary to say about lyrical digressions in which Gogol talks about two types of writers. One of them “never changed the sublime structure of his lyre, did not descend from his top to his poor, insignificant fellows, and the other dared to call out everything that is every minute in front of his eyes and that indifferent eyes do not see” . The destiny of a real writer who dared to truthfully recreate reality hidden from the eyes of the people is such that, unlike the romantic writer, absorbed in his unearthly and sublime images, he is not destined to achieve fame and experience joyful feelings when you are recognized and sung. Gogol comes to the conclusion that the unrecognized realist writer, the satirist writer will remain without participation, that "his field is harsh, and he bitterly feels his loneliness." Throughout the poem, lyrical passages are interspersed with great artistic tact. At first, they are in the nature of the author's statements about his characters, but as the action unfolds, their inner theme becomes broader and more multifaceted. It can be concluded that the lyrical digressions in "Dead Souls" are saturated with the pathos of affirming the high vocation of man, the pathos of great social ideas and interests. Whether the author expresses his bitterness and anger at the insignificance of the heroes shown by him, whether he speaks about the place of the writer in modern society, whether he writes about the lively, lively Russian mind - a deep source of his lyricism are thoughts about serving his native country, about its fate, its sorrows, her hidden, crushed gigantic forces. So, the artistic space of the poem "Dead Souls" consists of two worlds, which can be designated as the real world and the ideal world. Gogol builds the real world by recreating the reality of his day, revealing the mechanism of distortion of a person as a person and the world in which he lives. The ideal world for Gogol is the height to which the human soul aspires, but due to its damage by sin, it does not find the way. In fact, all the heroes of the poem are representatives of the anti-world, among which the images of landowners, led by the main character Chichikov, are especially vivid. With the deep meaning of the title of the work, Gogol gives the reader an angle of reading his work, the logic of seeing the characters he created, including the landowners. CONCLUSION The poem "Dead Souls" is one of the most remarkable works of Russian literature. The great realist writer Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol showed the whole of modern Russia, satirically depicting the local nobility and provincial bureaucracy. But if you look closely, the disgusting and pitiful features of Gogol's characters have not been outlived to this day and are clearly manifested even today, at the turn of the new century. Gogol's laughter also included a feeling of acute grief, born of pictures of spiritual extinction, the "death" of a person, his humiliation and suppression, the phenomena of social stagnation. No wonder the writer said that he had to look at life "through laughter visible to the world and invisible, unknown to him tears." And at the same time, Gogol's laughter does not cause disappointment, it awakens the energy of resistance and protest, the energy of action. N.V. Gogol thought a lot about the fate of Russia, each line is saturated with love for the country, deep feelings. “Isn’t that right, Rus, that brisk, unbeaten troika, are you rushing? .. Rus', where are you rushing, give me an answer. Doesn't answer!" The whole of Russia was embodied in the image of a troika, and to the question “Where are you rushing to?” - does not give an answer, unfortunately, the writer himself does not know where she will come if people like Chichikov, Manilov, Plyushkin will rule her. Belinsky very expressively formulated the main feature of Gogol's "syllable", that is, his language and style: "Gogol does not write, but draws; his images breathe the living colors of reality. You see and hear them. Every word, every phrase sharply, definitely, vividly expresses his thought, and in vain would you like to come up with another word or another phrase to express this thought. In Gogol, the exact correlation of word and thought is combined with the picturesqueness of the word, with the visualization, the pictoriality of the image. The word, speech characteristics in Gogol are firmly correlated with the image of the character, reveal his essence, his character. In the language of Gogol, all of Russia of that time found its expression - all its social strata, professions, and the most diverse styles. But at the heart of his work on languages who lay the desire for maximum democracy speech, to the inclusion in the literary language of everything wealth of the language of the people, to the destruction of the boundaries between them. This democratization of speech was especially clearly felt by contemporaries. Gogol, as we see, was one of the first to make an attempt not only to pose the most important problems that writers of subsequent eras, including ours, would then struggle with, but also to solve them individually in his grandiose concept of an epic poem. But this turned out to be beyond the power of even a brilliant artist, like Gogol. And yet, with his selfless creative labor, at the cost of endless trial and error, searches and discoveries, he paved the way with his poem for the genre of the Russian socio-psychological and moral philosophical novel, which became the leading one in Russian literature of the 2nd half of the 19th century, which deservedly brought it world fame. Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol developed and deepened the traditions of Pushkin in prose and drama, at the same time signifying a new direction in Russian literature, which, thanks to revolutionary democratic aesthetics, received the name "critical realism". However, Gogol was least of all concerned with the criticism of reality, although many aspects of Russian life were ridiculed in his works. All of Gogol's work was animated by the ideal of the sublime. He dreamed of seeing Russia and the Russian people free from all moral distortions and showing the way for all mankind to a divinely beautiful and majestic life. The eradication of vices through laughter and a solemn striving for spiritual perfection - these are the terms of Gogol, in which the writer and the prophet were united. LIST OF USED LITERATURE 1. Andre N. Okara Gogol's creativity as a phenomenon of "all-Russian culture" /N. André Okara // #"justify">. Annensky I. Aesthetics of "Dead Souls" and its legacy /I. Annensky // #"justify">. Belinsky V.G. Complete works /V. G. Belinsky. - M.: Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 10 volumes, 1981. Bocharov S.G. About Gogol's style /S. G. Bocharov // Theory of literary styles. Typology of stylistic development of modern times. - M.: Fiction, 1976. - 412 p. Burkov I.A. Nikolai Gogol / I. A. Burkov. - M.: Enlightenment, 1989. - 549s. Voropaev V. Articles about Gogol /V. Voropaev // http: // www. library.ru. Gippius V. Gogol: Memoirs. Letters. Diaries / V. Gippius. - M .: Agraf, 1999. - 461 p. Gogol N.V. Collected works in 6 volumes /N. V. Gogol. - M.: Fiction, 1950 Zaslonov V.A. Nikolay Gogol. Experience of spiritual biography / V. A. Zaslonov. - M.: Enlightenment, 1980. - 120 p. Krivkevich A.M. Comments on the poem "Dead Souls" / A. M. Krinkevich. - Minsk: Higher School, 2005. - 659s. Lotman Y. In the school of the poetic word: Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol / Y. Lotman. - M.: Enlightenment, 1982. - 352 p. Mazhinsky S. Artistic world of Gogol /S. Maginsky. - M.: Enlightenment, 1971. - 437 p. Mann Yu. V. In search of a living soul / Yu. V. Mann. - M., Fiction, 1987. - 325 p. Mann Yu. V. Courage of invention. Features of the artistic world of Gogol / Yu. W. Mann. - M.: Fiction, 1985. - 225 p. Mann Yu. M. Poetics of Gogol / Yu. M. Mann. - M.: Fiction, 1995. - 413 p. Mashinsky S. N. V. Gogol in Russian criticism and memoirs of his contemporaries. M.: Education, 1959. -367 p. Nabokov V.V. Lectures on Russian literature. Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Gorky, Tolstoy, Turgenev [transl. from eng. and preface. Iv. Tolstoy] - M.: Publishing House "Nezavisimaya Gazeta", 1998. - 440 p. (literary criticism) Nechiporenko Yu. Cosmogony of Gogol / Yu. Nechiporenko // www. library.ru. Nikolaev P. A. Artistic discoveries of Gogol /P. A. Nikolaev // #"justify">. Nikolaev D.P. Gogol's satire / D. P. Nikolaev. - M.: Fiction, 1984. - 367 p.
Send your good work in the knowledge base is simple. Use the form below
Students, graduate students, young scientists who use the knowledge base in their studies and work will be very grateful to you.
Hosted at http://www.allbest.ru
Hosted at http://www.allbest.ru
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1. ARTISTIC INDIVIDUALITY OF THE POEM
"DEAD SOULS"
1.1 The idea and sources of the poem "Dead Souls"
2.3 Lyrical digressions of "Dead Souls" and their ideological content
CONCLUSION
LIST OF USED LITERATURE
dead soul chichikov retreat
INTRODUCTION
The creative pinnacle of Gogol, one of the masterpieces of Russian and world literature, is Dead Souls. Justifying the need for the most careful re-reading of this seemingly well-known work from school years, one can refer to V. G. Belinsky, who wrote: “Like any deep creation, Dead Souls is not revealed from the first reading: reading them a second time, reading a new, never seen work. "Dead Souls" Demands Study".
The poem was published in May 1842 under the title “The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls” (the title was changed under pressure from censorship, for the same reason “The Tale of Captain Kopeikin” was also thrown out of the poem). “For a long time we have not had such a movement as now on the occasion of Dead Souls,” wrote one of his contemporaries, recalling the controversy caused by the appearance of the book. Some critics accused Gogol of caricature and slandering reality. Others noted their high artistry and patriotism (the last definition belonged to Belinsky). The controversy reached a particular tension after the appearance of K. Aksakov's brochure “A few words about Gogol's poem: “The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls””, in which the idea of the resurrection of the ancient epic in the poem was developed. Behind the idea of epicness and focus on Homer was the assertion of the passionlessness of Gogol's writing, which is generally characteristic of the epic. First of all, Belinsky entered into a polemic with Aksakov. Gogol himself at that time went abroad, to Germany, and then to Rome, entrusting before that the publication of the first collection of his works to N. Ya. Prokopovich (published in 1842).
In Rome, he worked on the second volume of Dead Souls, begun as early as 1840. This work would continue intermittently for almost 12 years, that is, almost until Gogol's death. Contemporaries were looking forward to the continuation of the poem, but instead of it, in 1847, “Selected passages from correspondence with friends” were published in St. Petersburg, the dual purpose of which (as Gogol formulated it for himself) was to explain why the second volume had not yet been written, and prepare readers for its subsequent perception. "Selected places" affirmed the idea of spiritual life-building, the purpose of which would be the creation of an "ideal heavenly state". The very title of the poem (“dead souls”) suggested the possibility of the opposite: the existence of “living” souls. The key to this should have been the resurrection of the protagonist for a new "wonderful" life, as well as the emergence of new, compared to the first volume, "positive" characters: exemplary landowners (Costanjoglo and Vasily Platonov), officials, heroes who could be perceived as alter ego of the author himself (e.g., Murazov) and which we know about from five surviving chapters of draft editions.
On January 1, 1852, Gogol finally announces that the second volume is "completely finished." At the end of January, Father Matvey, Gogol's spiritual father, arrives in Moscow. The content of their conversations that took place these days remains unknown, but there is indirect evidence that it was Father Matvey who advised Gogol to burn some of the chapters of the poem, citing the harmful influence that they may have on readers. So, on the night of February 11-12, 1852, the white manuscript of the second volume was burned. Subsequently, Andrei Bely called the fate of Gogol "a terrible revenge", comparing father Matvey with a terrible horseman in the Carpathians: "... the earth committed its Terrible revenge on him. The face seen by Gogol did not save Gogol: this face became for him a "rider in the Carpathians." Gogol ran away from him.
Gogol died on February 21, 1852 - ten days after the burning of the manuscript of the poem. On his tombstone, the words of the prophet Jeremiah were carved: "I will laugh at my bitter word."
"Dead Souls" is one of the most read and revered works of Russian classics. No matter how much time separates us from this work, we will never cease to be amazed at its depth, perfection, and, probably, we will not consider our understanding of it exhausted. Reading "Dead Souls", you bring up in yourself the noble moral ideas that every brilliant work of art carries with it. Gogol showed the whole of modern Russia, satirically depicting the local nobility and provincial bureaucracy. But if you think about it, the disgusting and pitiful features of Gogol's characters have not been outlived to this day and are clearly manifested today. This is the relevance of the study of this work.
The purpose of this work is to reveal the ideological and artistic originality of "Dead Souls".
The object of the study is N. V. Gogol's poem "Dead Souls".
Subject of study: unique ideological and artistic originality of the work.
This goal involves the solution of the following tasks:
1. Consider the artistic originality of the poem "Dead Souls"
2. To reveal the idea and sources of the poem "Dead Souls".
3. Determine the genre originality of the poem
4. Analyze the features of the plot and composition of the poem
5. Explore the features of the image of Chichikov, as well as the landowners in the poem.
6. Understand the role of lyrical digressions in the poem "Dead Souls" and their ideological content.
Research methods: descriptive, biographical, cultural-historical, structural.
CHAPTER 1
1.1 The idea and sources of the plot of the poem
It is believed that, just like the plot of The Inspector General, the plot of Dead Souls was suggested to Gogol by Pushkin. There are two stories associated with the name of Pushkin and comparable to the plot of "Dead Souls". During his stay in Bessarabia (1820-1823), administrative abuses took place in Bendery: deaths were not registered here, and the names of the dead were transferred to other persons, fugitive peasants who flocked here from all over Russia; for this reason, the inhabitants of the town were called the "immortal society". Subsequently, while already in Odessa, Pushkin asked his Bessarabian acquaintance I.P. Liprandi: “Is there anything new in Bendery?” P. I. Bartenev wrote about another case related to Pushkin’s stay in Moscow in the notes to the memoirs of V. A. Sollogub: “In Moscow, Pushkin was on the run with a friend. There was also a certain P. (an old dandy). Pointing to him to Pushkin, a friend told about him how he bought up dead souls, pawned them and got a big profit<…>This was before 1826." Interestingly, this episode evoked a direct artistic reaction from Pushkin himself: “You could make a novel out of this,” he said, among other things.
However, there is evidence that Gogol, regardless of Pushkin, had heard a lot about stories with dead souls. According to the story of a distant relative of the writer M. G. Anisimo-Yanovskaya, her uncle, a certain Kharlampy Petrovich Pivinsky, who lived 17 versts from Yanovshchina (another name for the Gogol Vasilievka estate) and was engaged in distillation, was frightened by rumors that such a trade would be allowed only to landowners, possessing no less than fifty souls. Pivinsky (who had only thirty souls) went to Poltava “and he paid a quitrent for his dead peasants, as if for the living ... And since his own, and with the dead, were far from fifty, he scored vodka in a cart and went in the neighbors and bought dead souls from them for this vodka ... ”Anisimo-Yanovskaya claims that“ the whole Mirgorod region knew this story.
Another episode, allegedly also known to Gogol, was reported by his classmate at the Nizhyn Gymnasium of Higher Sciences P. I. Martos in a letter to P. I. Bartenev: “As for Dead Souls, I can tell the following ... In Nizhyn<…>, at the gymnasium of higher sciences of Prince Bezborodko, there was a certain K-ach, a Serb; of enormous growth, very handsome, with the longest mustaches, 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 indicated, but the boundaries are definitive. … What happened? This land was a neglected cemetery. This very incident was told to Gogol abroad by Prince N. G. Repnin.
Here it is necessary, however, to make a reservation that Repnin, if he told Gogol this episode, then already abroad, when work on Dead Souls had already begun. But at the same time, it is known that abroad, in the process of writing the poem, Gogol continued to collect material and ask acquaintances about various “incidents” that “could happen when buying dead souls” (letter to V. A. Zhukovsky from Paris on November 12, 1836) .
With a completely everyday origin, the very formula “dead souls”, placed in the title of the work, was saturated with both literary and philosophical-religious themes. The actual everyday aspect of this formula was recorded by V. I. Dal in the first edition of the Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language (1863): Soul") . However, in the religious and philosophical aspect, Gogol's formula was antithetical to the biblical concept of a "living soul" (cf.: "And the Lord God created man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul" - Bible, Genesis , 2, 7). In addition, the oxymoron expression "dead soul" and its derivatives - "dead life", "living death" - have become widespread in Western European poetry since the Middle Ages; cf. also in the mystery of V. K. Kuchelbeker "Izhora": "To what I could be reasonable, // My dead soul does not believe"). In the poem, the formula "dead soul" - "dead souls" was refracted in many ways by Gogol, acquiring more and more new semantic nuances: dead souls - dead serfs, but also spiritually dead landowners and officials, buying up dead souls as an emblem of the deadness of the living.
1.2 Genre originality of the poem
In terms of genre, Dead Souls was conceived as a novel of the "high road". Thus, in a certain sense, they correlated with the famous novel by Cervantes "Don Quixote", which Pushkin also pointed out to Gogol in his time (a parallel on which Gogol later insisted in the "Author's Confession"). As M. Bakhtin wrote, “at the turn of the XVI-XVII centuries. Don Quixote set out on the road to meet all of Spain on it, from the convict going to the galleys to the duke. Also, Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov "leaves on the road" to meet here, in Gogol's own words, "all Rus'" (from a letter to Pushkin on October 7, 1835). Thus, the genre characterology of Dead Souls as a travel novel is immediately outlined. At the same time, it is also predetermined from the very beginning that this journey will be of a special kind, namely the wandering of a rogue, which additionally enters "Dead Souls" into another genre tradition - a picaresque novel, picaresque, widely spread in European literature (the anonymous "Life of Lazarillo with Tormes”, “Gille Blas” by Lesage and others). In Russian literature, the most prominent representative of this genre before "Dead Souls" was the novel by V. T. Narezhny "Russian Zhilblaz, or the Adventures of Prince Gavrila Simonovich Chistyakov."
The linear construction of the novel, which the picaresque assumed (a work whose content is the amusing adventures of a rogue), immediately gave the work an epic character: the author led his hero through “a chain of adventures and changes in order to present at the same time a true picture of everything significant in features and morals of the time he took” (this characterization of the “lesser kind of epic”, given by Gogol already in the mid-40s in the “Study Book of Literature for Russian Youth”, was largely applicable to “Dead Souls”). And yet, the experience of the playwright was not in vain: it was he who made it possible for Gogol to do the almost impossible, to integrate a linear plot, seemingly the most remote from the dramatic principle, into a special “dramatic” whole. According to Gogol's own definition, the novel "flies like a drama, united by the lively interest of the main characters themselves, in which the characters are entangled and which, with a seething course, makes the characters themselves develop and reveal their characters more strongly and quickly, increasing enthusiasm." So it is in Dead Souls - their purchase by Chichikov (the main incident), expressed in a plot in a chain of episodes (chapters), for the most part coinciding with the hero’s visit to one or another landowner, unites all the characters with a common interest. It is no coincidence that Gogol builds many episodes of the book on parallels and on the repetition of actions, events, and even individual details: the reappearance of Korobochka, Nozdryov, Chichikov's symmetrical visit to various "city dignitaries" at the beginning and end of the book - all this creates the impression of a circular composition. The role of a catalyst for action that fear played in The Government Inspector is now played by gossip - "condensed lies", "the real substratum of the fantastic", where "everyone adds and applies a little, and the lie grows like a snowball, threatening to turn into a snow fall" . The circulation and growth of rumors - a technique inherited by Gogol from another great playwright, Griboedov, additionally organizes the action, speeds up its pace, leading the action to a swift denouement in the final:
In fact, the plan of "Dead Souls" was originally conceived by Gogol as a three-part combination of relatively independent, completed works. At the height of Gogol's work on the first volume, Dante begins to occupy him. In the first years of Gogol's life abroad, many factors contributed to this: meetings with V. A. Zhukovsky in Rome in 1838-1839, who at that time was fond of the author of The Divine Comedy; conversations with S.P. Shevyrev and reading his translations from Dante. Directly in the first volume of "Dead Souls", "The Divine Comedy" responded with a parodic reminiscence in the 7th chapter, in the scene of "committing a bill of sale": Chichikov (Dante), a wanderer in the underworld kingdom, with his temporary companion Manilov, with the help of a petty official (Virgil), find themselves on on the threshold of the "sanctuary" - the office of the chairman of the civil chamber, where the new guide - "Virgil" leaves the Gogol hero (in the "Divine Comedy" Virgil leaves Dante before ascension to heavenly Paradise, where he, as a pagan, is forbidden to go).
But, apparently, the main impulse that Gogol received from reading The Divine Comedy was the idea to show the history of the human soul passing through certain stages - from the state of sinfulness to enlightenment - a story that receives concrete embodiment in the individual fate of the central character. This gave a clearer outline to the three-part plan of "Dead Souls", which now, by analogy with the "Divine Comedy", began to be presented as the ascent of the human soul, passing through three stages on its way: "Hell", "Purgatory" and "Paradise".
This also led to a new genre comprehension of the book, which Gogol originally called a novel and which he now gave the genre designation of a poem, which forced the reader to additionally correlate Gogol's book with Dante's, since the designation "sacred poem" ("poema sacra") also appears in Dante himself ( "Paradise", canto XXV, line 1) and also because at the beginning of the XIX century. in Russia, the Divine Comedy was steadily associated with the genre of the poem (the poem was called the Divine Comedy, for example, by A.F. Merzlyakov in his “Brief outline of the theory of belles-lettres”; 1822), well known to Gogol. But, in addition to the Dante's association, Gogol's naming of "Dead Souls" as a poem also affected other meanings associated with this concept. First, most often a "poem" defined a high degree of artistic perfection; this meaning was assigned to this concept in Western European, in particular, German criticism (for example, in F. Schlegel's "Critical Fragments"). In these cases, the concept served not so much as a genre definition as an evaluative definition and could appear regardless of the genre (it was in this vein that Griboyedov wrote about Woe from Wit as a “stage poem”, V. G. Belinsky called Taras Bulba a “poem” ”, and N. I. Nadezhdin called all literature “an episode of a lofty, boundless poem, represented by the original life of the human race”).
However, in Gogol, in this designation, and this should also be borne in mind, there was also an element of polemic. The fact is that in terms of genre, a poem was considered a concept applicable only to poetic works - both small and large forms (“A poem can be called any work written in verse, with imitation of graceful nature,” wrote N. F. Ostolopov in "Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Poetry", and in this sense, "The Divine Comedy" more naturally fell under such a classification). In other cases, this concept acquired, as already mentioned, an evaluative meaning. Gogol, on the other hand, used the word “poem” in relation to a large prose form (which would initially be more natural to define as a novel) precisely as a direct designation of the genre, placing it on the title page of the book (graphically, he further strengthened the meaning: on the title page created according to his drawing, the word “ poem" dominated both the title and the author's surname). The definition of "Dead Souls" as a poem, writes Yu. V. Mann, came to Gogol along with the realization of their genre uniqueness. This uniqueness consisted, firstly, in that universal task, which overcame the one-sidedness of the comic and even more satirical perspective of the book (“all Rus' will respond in it”), and, secondly, in its symbolic significance, since the book turned to fundamental problems purpose of Russia and human existence.
Thus, the genre origins of "Dead Souls" are diverse. They synthesized into a single artistic whole elements of both the picaresque novel, and the genre of travel and essay, the socio-psychological and satirical novel, the lofty and parody poem.
1.3 Features of the plot and composition of the poem
The composition of "Dead Souls" is slender and proportionate in Pushkin's way.
There are 11 chapters in the 1st volume. Of these, Chapter I is an extensive exposition. The next 5 chapters (II-VI), tying and developing the action, at the same time represent, as it were, 5 completed short stories-essays, in the center of each of them is a detailed portrait of one of the landowners of the province, where Chichikov arrived in the hope of carrying out the scam he had conceived . Each portrait is a certain type.
In the next five chapters (VII-XI), mainly officials of the provincial city are drawn. However, these chapters are no longer built as separate essays with one main character in the center, but as a successively developing chain of events that take on an increasingly intense plot character.
Chapter XI completes the 1st volume and at the same time, as it were, returns the reader to the beginning of the story.
In chapter I, Chichikov's entry into the city of NN is depicted, and a hint is already made of the plot of the action. In chapter XI, the denouement takes place, the hero hastily leaves the city, and here Chichikov's background is given. In general, the chapter is both the completion of the plot, its denouement, and the exposition, the "key" of the character of the protagonist and the explanation of the secret of his strange "negotiation" associated with the purchase of dead souls.
When studying the system of images in Dead Souls, one should especially think about the peculiarities of character typification, in particular, the images of landowners. Usually, for all their individual originality, they accentuate the social features of the landowners-serfs of the period of the decomposition of the feudal system that began in Russia, which, in particular, is mentioned in all school and university textbooks.
On the whole, this is correct, but far from sufficient, since this approach leaves unexplained the unusual breadth of artistic generalization in these images. Reflecting in each of them a variety of the social type of the landowner-serf, Gogol did not limit himself to this, because for him not only the social and species specificity is important, but also the universal human characteristic of the depicted artistic type. A truly artistic type (including Gogol's) is always wider than any social type, because it is depicted as an individual character in which the social-specific, class-group difficultly correlates with the social-generic, holistic-personal, universal - with a large or a lesser predominance of one of these principles. That is why Gogol's artistic types contain features that are characteristic not only of landowners or officials, but also of other classes, estates and social strata of society.
It is noteworthy that Gogol himself repeatedly emphasized the openness of his heroes to social class, social species, narrow group and even time frames. Speaking of Korobochka, he remarks: "Another and respectable, and even a statesman, but in reality the perfect Korobochka comes out." Masterfully characterizing the "wide" nature of Nozdryov's "historical man", the writer in this case does not attribute all his diverse properties exclusively to the feudal landowner of his era, arguing: "Nozdryov will not leave the world for a long time. He is everywhere between us and, perhaps, he only walks in a different caftan; but people are frivolously impenetrable, and a person in a different caftan seems to them a different person.
For all their undoubted socio-psychological limitations, the characters of Gogol's characters are far from schematic one-dimensionality, they are living people with a mass of individual shades. The same, according to Gogol, “many-sided man” Nozdryov with his “bouquet” of negative qualities (a reveler, a gambler, a shameless liar, a fighter, etc.) is somewhat sympathetic in his own way: with his irrepressible energy, ability to quickly converge with people, peculiar democratism, disinterestedness and inconsistency, lack of hoarding. The only trouble is that all these human qualities acquire an ugly development in him, they are not illuminated by any meaning, truly human goals.
There are positive beginnings in the characters of Manilov, Korobochka, Sobakevich, and even Plyushkin. But these are, more precisely, the remnants of their humanity, which further shade the lack of spirituality that triumphed in them under the influence of the environment.
If, for example, Lermontov portrayed mainly the resistance of the “inner man” to the external circumstances of life surrounding him, then Gogol in “Dead Souls” focuses on his submission to these circumstances, up to “dissolution” in them, focusing, as a rule, on the final the result of this process. This is how Manilov, Korobochka, Nozdrev are represented. But already in the image of Sobakevich there is another tendency - to understand the origins of the process of spiritual mortification of a person: “Are you born like a bear,” says the poem about Sobakevich, “or did the provincial life, grain crops, fuss with peasants, and through them you have become what is called a man-fist.
The more a person loses human qualities, the more Gogol seeks to get to the bottom of the causes of his spiritual deadness. This is exactly what Plyushkin does as a “hole in humanity”, unfolding his life background, talking about that time “when he was only a thrifty owner”, “he was married and a family man”, an exemplary one, when his “mind was visible in his eyes; his speech was permeated with experience and knowledge of the world, and it was pleasant for the guest to listen to him; the friendly and talkative hostess was famous for her hospitality; two pretty daughters came out to meet them, both blond and fresh as roses, a son ran out, a broken boy ... ".
And then the author, without skimping on details, shows how Plyushkin's frugality gradually turned into meaningless stinginess, how marital, paternal and other human feelings died out. His wife and youngest daughter died. The eldest Alexandra Stepanovna fled with an officer in search of a free and happy life. The son, becoming an officer, lost in cards. Instead of material or moral support, Plyushkin sent them a paternal curse and closed himself even more in himself and his all-consuming passion for hoarding, which becomes more and more meaningless with time.
Along with pathological stinginess, suspicion, hypocrisy develops in him, designed to create a semblance of lost spiritual properties. In some way here Gogol anticipated the image of Yudushka Golovlev, for example, in the scene of Plyushkin’s reception of the “runaway” daughter with her “two babies”: “Alexandra Stepanovna once came twice with her little son, trying to see if she could get something; evidently the camp life with the staff captain was not as attractive as it had seemed before the wedding. Plyushkin, however, forgave her and even gave his little granddaughter a button to play with... but he didn't give her any money. Another time, Alexandra Stepanovna came with two little ones and brought him an Easter cake for tea and a new dressing gown, because the father had such a dressing gown, which was not only ashamed to look at, but even ashamed. Plyushkin caressed both granddaughters and, seating them one on his right knee and the other on his left, shook them in exactly the same way as if they were riding horses, took the Easter cake and dressing gown, but gave absolutely nothing to his daughter; with that, Alexandra Stepanovna left.
But even in such a "monster" the writer is looking for the remnants of humanity. In this regard, the episode is indicative when Plyushkin, during the “bargaining” with Chichikov, remembered his only acquaintance in the city, who was his classmate as a child: “And on this wooden face some kind of warm beam suddenly glided, expressed not a feeling, but some that pale reflection of feeling ... ".
By the way, according to the plan, Plyushkin was supposed to appear in the subsequent volumes of Dead Souls, if not resurrected morally and spiritually, then realizing, as a result of a strong life shock, the measure of his human fall.
The prehistory of the protagonist, the "scoundrel" Chichikov, who, according to the writer's intention, had to go through a significant internal evolution over the course of three volumes, is given in even more detail.
The types of officials are described more succinctly, but no less meaningfully, for example, the prosecutor with thick eyebrows and an involuntary winking left eye. Rumors and rumors about the story of Chichikov's purchase of dead souls had such an effect on him that he "began to think, think, and suddenly ... he died for no reason." They sent, it was, for the doctor, but soon saw that the prosecutor "was already one soulless body." And it was only then that his fellow citizens “learned with condolence that the dead man had exactly a soul, although he, due to his modesty, never showed it.”
The comedy and satire of the image here imperceptibly pass into a different, moral and philosophical tone: the deceased lies on the table, “the left eye no longer blinked at all, but one eyebrow was still raised with some kind of questioning expression. What the deceased asked, why he died or why he lived, only God knows about this.
It was precisely that cardinal vital question that was posed - why did a person live, why does a person live? - a question that so little bothered all these seemingly prosperous inhabitants of the provincial city with their dead souls alive. Here one involuntarily recalls the words of Pechorin from “A Hero of Our Time”: “Why did I live? For what purpose was I born?
We talk a lot and rightly about social satire in Dead Souls, not always noticing their moral and philosophical overtones, which over time, and especially in our time, are gaining more and more not only historical, but also modern interest, highlighting in concrete the historical content of "Dead Souls" its universal perspective.
The deep unity of these two aspects was noticed by Herzen. Immediately after reading Gogol's poem, he wrote in his diary: "Dead Souls" - this title itself bears something terrifying ... not dead souls from revisionists, but all these Nozdrevs, Manilovs and tutti quaiili - these are dead souls, and we meet them at every step. Where are the common, living interests?.. After youth, one way or another, don't we all lead one of the lives of Gogol's heroes? One remains with Manilov's stupid daydreaming, the other rages like Nozdrev, the third - Plyushkin, etc. One active person is Chichikov, and that one is a limited rogue.
The writer contrasts all these dead souls, first of all, with the “living souls” of the peasants, who, as a rule, died not of their own, but of forced death or who could not stand the serfdom and became fugitives, such as the carpenter Stepan Probka (“a hero who would fit into the guard” ), shoemaker Maxim Telyatnikov (“what pierces the awl, then the boots”), the amazing master brickmaker Milushkin, Abakum Fyrov, who “loved the free life” and turned into barge haulers, and others.
Gogol emphasizes the tragedy of the fates of most of them, who are increasingly “thinking” about their disenfranchised life - like that Grigory Get there, you won’t get there, who “thought, thought, but for no reason turned into a tavern, and then straight into ice hole, and remember your name. And the writer makes a meaningful conclusion: “Eh! Russian people! does not like to die a natural death! .
Speaking about the central conflict in the artistic structure of the poem, one must keep in mind its peculiar duality. On the one hand, this is a conflict between the protagonist and landowners and officials, based on Chichikov's adventure in buying up dead souls. On the other hand, this is a deep-seated conflict between the landlord-bureaucratic, autocratic-feudal elite of Russia with the people, primarily with the serf peasantry. Echoes of this deep conflict are heard every now and then on the pages of Dead Souls.
Even the “well-intentioned” Chichikov, annoyed by the failure of his cunning undertaking, hastily leaving the governor’s ball, suddenly falls upon the balls, and all the idle life of the ruling classes associated with them: “Damn you all who invented these balls! .. Well, what were you so happy about? There are crop failures in the province, high prices, and so they are for balls! .. But at the expense of peasant dues ... "
Chichikov occupies a special place in the figurative and semantic structure of "Dead Souls" - not only as the main character, but also as the ideological-compositional and plot-forming center of the poem. Chichikov's journey, which was the basis of his adventurous and mercantile intentions, made it possible for the writer, in his words, "to travel ... all over Russia and bring out a multitude of the most diverse characters", to show "all of Rus'" in its contradictions and dormant potencies.
So, analyzing the reasons for the collapse of Chichikov's idea of enrichment by acquiring dead souls, it is worth paying special attention to two seemingly incidental episodes - at a meeting between Chichikov and a young blonde who turned out to be the governor's daughter, and the consequences of these meetings. Chichikov only for a moment allowed himself sincere human feelings, but this was enough to confuse all his cards, to destroy his plan, which was so prudently carried out. Of course, the narrator says, “it is doubtful that gentlemen of this kind ... were capable of love ...” But, “it is clear that the Chichikovs turn into poets for a few minutes in their lives ...” . As soon as Chichikov, in his fleeting passion, forgot about the role he had assumed and ceased to pay due attention to "society" in the person of, first of all, the ladies, they were not slow in taking revenge on him for such neglect, picking up the version of dead souls, flavoring it in their own way with the legend of the abduction governor's daughter: "All the ladies did not like this treatment of Chichikov at all." And they at once "went each in their own direction to riot the city," i.e. set him up against the recent universal favorite Chichikov. This "private" storyline in its own way highlights the complete incompatibility in the mercantile-prudent world of businesslike prosperity with sincere human feelings and heart movements.
The basis of the plot in the 1st volume of "Dead Souls" is Chichikov's misadventures associated with his scam based on the purchase of dead souls. The news of this excited the entire provincial town. The most incredible assumptions were made as to why Chichikov needed dead souls.
General confusion and fear were intensified by the fact that a new governor-general was appointed to the province. “All of a sudden, they were looking for such sins in themselves that they didn’t even exist.” The officials wondered who Chichikov was, whom they so kindly received by his dress and manners: “is he such a person who needs to be detained and seized as unintentional, or is he such a person who himself can seize and detain them all as unintentional” .
This social “ambivalence” of Chichikov as a possible carrier of both law and lawlessness reflected their relativity, opposition and interconnectedness in the society depicted by the writer. Chichikov was a mystery not only for the characters of the poem, but also in many respects for its readers. That is why, while riveting attention to it, the author was in no hurry to solve it, referring the exposition explaining the origins of this nature to the final chapter.
Conclusion for the chapter: Gogol sought to show the terrible face of Russian reality, to recreate the "Hell" of Russian modern life.
The poem has a ring "composition": it is framed by the action of the first and eleventh chapters: Chichikov enters the city and leaves it. The exposition in "Dead Souls" was moved to the end of the work. Thus, the eleventh chapter is, as it were, the informal beginning of the poem and its formal end. The poem begins with the development of the action: Chichikov begins his journey to the "acquisition" of dead souls. The construction of "Dead Souls" is logical and consistent. Each chapter is completed thematically, it has its own task and its own subject matter. The chapters devoted to the depiction of landlords are arranged according to the scheme: a description of the landscape, the estate, the house and life, the appearance of the hero, then the dinner and the attitude of the landowner to the sale of dead souls are shown. The composition of the poem contains lyrical digressions, inserted short stories (“The Tale of Captain Kopeikin”), a parable about Kif Mokievich and Mokiya Kofovich.
The macro-composition of the poem "Dead Souls", that is, the composition of the entire conceived work, was suggested to Gogol by Dante's immortal "Divine Comedy": Volume 1 - the hell of feudal reality, the kingdom of dead souls; 2 volume - purgatory; Volume 3 - Paradise. This idea remained unfulfilled. You can also note the gradual spiritual degradation of the landowners as the reader gets to know them. Such a picture creates in the reader a rather heavy emotional sensation from the symbolic steps along which the human soul moves to hell.
CHAPTER 2
2.1 The image of Chichikov in the poem "Dead Souls"
In the image of Chichikov, Gogol introduced into Russian literature the type of bourgeois-acquirer that was taking shape in Russian reality, who relies not on the titles and wealth bestowed by fate, but on personal initiative and enterprise, on a “penny”, multiplied into capital, bringing him everything: good lives laid down in society, nobility, etc.
This type had undoubted advantages over the type of patriarchal landowner-nobleman, who lived according to customs inherited, like material wealth, from fathers and grandfathers.
It is no coincidence that Chichikov is always on the road, in motion, in trouble, while other characters are inactive and inert in every respect. Chichikov achieves everything in life on his own. More than once he made a solid fortune and failed, but again and again with the same energy he rushed to his cherished goal - to get rich at all costs, by any means.
But this limited life goal, promiscuity and uncleanliness in the means of achieving it eventually nullified his positive qualities, devastating him spiritually, ultimately also turning him into a dead soul.
At the same time, Chichikov is a very capacious image-type. It is not for nothing that officials alternately take him for an official of the governor-general's office, then for a counterfeiter, then for a disguised robber, then even for Napoleon released from the island of Helena. For all the absurdity of the assumptions of the frightened officials, they are not absolutely groundless: in Chichikov there really is something that makes him related to all these human "copies", he ascends to each of them with some of his side. Even with Napoleon, he has something in common: the same active individualism, turning into egocentrism and causing the limitation of all goals; the same indiscriminateness in the means of achieving them; climbing to these goals literally "over the corpses", through the suffering and death of one's own kind. As soon as he arrived in the city, Chichikov wondered if "there were any diseases in the province, epidemic fevers, some deadly fevers, smallpox, and the like."
Only one of the guesses, “who really is Chichikov,” turned out to be completely untenable when the postmaster suddenly declared: “This, gentlemen ... is none other than Captain Kopeikin!” .
It should be emphasized that "The Tale of Captain Kopeikin", despite the fact that it does not seem to be connected with the main action of the poem, nor with the image of Chichikov, carries a great ideological and artistic content that complements and deepens the main meaning of "Dead Souls" . No wonder Gogol himself cherished it so much and was deeply worried about the threat of its withdrawal by censorship, about which he wrote to P. A. Pletnev on April 10, 1842: “The destruction of Kopeikin greatly embarrassed me! This is one of the best places in the poem, and without it - a hole that I can’t patch up and sew up with anything.
In this “poem within a poem” (cf. the words of the postmaster: “it is ... in some way a whole poem”), the narrative goes beyond the boundaries of the province, involving St. covering all of Russia.
In addition, with the image of Captain Kopeikin, a hero and invalid of the Patriotic War of 1812, a representative of the democratic lower classes of the country, the theme of rebellion sounds again and with renewed vigor. Of course, Gogol, not being in any way a revolutionary, did not call for revolt. However, as a great and honest realist artist, he could not fail to show the patterns of rebellious tendencies in the existing socially unjust social and state structure.
The postmaster's story about Captain Kopeikin is suddenly interrupted when the listeners learn that Kopeikin, having lost faith in the "monarch's help", becomes the leader of a gang of robbers in his homeland, in the Ryazan forests: "Just let me, Ivan Andreevich," the police chief suddenly said interrupting him: " after all, Captain Kopeikin, you yourself said, without an arm and a leg, but Chichikov’s ... ”The postmaster himself could not understand how it didn’t really occur to him right away, and he only“ clapped his hand with all his might on to your forehead, calling yourself publicly in front of everyone as a veal. Familiar to us from Gogol's previous works is the alogism of thinking - characters and narrators.
This technique is widely used in "Dead Souls", primarily to comprehend the main storyline, and through it - and the entire displayed reality. The author makes readers, if not officials, ask themselves the question: is there more logic in the daily purchases and sales of “living souls”, living people?
It is difficult to say with certainty how Chichikov would have appeared at the end of the three-volume poem. But, regardless of the final idea, in the 1st volume Gogol managed to create a realistic type of great generalizing power. His significance was immediately noted by Belinsky: "Chichikov, as an acquirer, is no less, if not more than Pechorin, a hero of our time." An observation that has not lost its relevance even now. The virus of acquisitiveness, acquisitiveness at any cost, when all means are good, when the biblical truth bequeathed for centuries is forgotten: “Man does not live by bread alone,” this virus is so strong and tenacious that it freely penetrates everywhere, bypassing not only spatial, but also temporal borders. The Chichikov type has not lost its vital and generalizing meaning both today and in our society, on the contrary, it is experiencing its powerful revival and development. Turning to readers, Gogol suggested that everyone ask themselves the question: “Isn’t there some part of Chichikov in me too?” At the same time, the writer advised not to rush to answer, not to nod at others: “Look, look, there Chichikov ... go!” . This advice is also addressed to everyone living today.
2.2 Features of the image of landlords in the poem
The images drawn by Gogol in the poem were ambiguously perceived by his contemporaries: many reproached him for drawing a caricature of his contemporary life, depicting reality in a ridiculous, absurd way. Gogol unfolds before the reader a whole gallery of images of landlords (leading his main character from the first of them to the last), primarily in order to answer the main question that occupied him - what is the future of Russia, what is its historical purpose, what modern life contains at least a small hint of a bright, prosperous future for the people, which will be the key to the future greatness of the nation. In other words, the question that Gogol asks at the end, in a lyrical digression about "Rus-Troika", permeates the entire narrative as a leitmotif, and it is to him that the logic and poetics of the entire work, including the images of the landowners, are subordinated.
The first of the landowners whom Chichikov visits in the hope of buying dead souls is Manilov. Main features: Manilov is completely divorced from reality, his main occupation is fruitless wandering in the clouds, useless projecting. This is evidenced both by the appearance of his estate (a house on a hill, open to all winds, an arbor - a “temple of solitary reflection”, traces of begun and unfinished buildings), and the interior of residential premises (variegated furniture, heaps of pipe ash, laid out in neat rows on window sill, some book, the second year laid on the fourteenth page, etc.). Drawing the image, Gogol pays special attention to the details, interior, things, through them showing the features of the owner's character. Manilov, despite his "great" thoughts, is stupid, vulgar and sentimental (lisping with his wife, "ancient Greek" names of not quite neat and well-mannered children). The internal and external squalor of the type depicted prompts Gogol, starting from him, to look for a positive ideal, and to do this "from the opposite." If complete isolation from reality and fruitless wandering in the clouds lead to this, then perhaps the opposite type will inspire some hope in us? The box in this respect is the exact opposite of Manilov. Unlike him, she does not hover in the clouds, but, on the contrary, is completely immersed in everyday life. However, the image of the Box does not give the desired ideal. Pettiness and stinginess (old coats kept in chests, money put into a stocking for a “rainy day”), inertia, stupid adherence to tradition, rejection and fear of everything new, “clubhead” make her appearance almost more repulsive than that of Manilov . For all the dissimilarity of the characters of Manilov and Korobochka, they have one thing in common - inactivity. Both Manilov and Korobochka (albeit for opposite reasons) do not affect the reality around them. Maybe an active person will be a model from which the younger generation should take an example? And, as if in answer to this question, Nozdryov appears. Nozdryov is extremely active. However, all his violent activities are mostly scandalous. He is a frequenter of all boozes and sprees in the district, he changes everything for anything (he tries to hand Chichikov puppies, a barrel organ, a horse, etc.), cheats when playing cards and even checkers, stupidly squanders the money that he gets from selling harvest. He lies without any need (it is Nozdryov who subsequently confirms the rumor that Chichikov wanted to steal the governor's daughter and took her as an accomplice, without batting an eye agrees that Chichikov is Napoleon, who fled from exile, etc.). d.). Repeatedly he was beaten, and by his own friends, and the next day, as if nothing had happened, he appeared to them and continued in the same vein - "both he is nothing, and they, as they say, nothing." As a result, almost more troubles come from Nozdryov's "activities" than from the inaction of Manilov and Korobochka. Nevertheless, there is a feature that unites all the three types described - this is impracticality.
The next landowner, Sobakevich, is extremely practical. This is the type of "master", "fist". Everything in his house is solid, reliable, made "for centuries" (even the furniture seems to be full of complacency and wants to shout: "Iya Sobakevich!"). However, all Sobakevich’s practicality is directed only towards one goal - obtaining personal gain, for the achievement of which he stops at nothing (“scoldling” by Sobakevich of everyone and everything - in the city, according to him, there is one decent person - the prosecutor, “yes and that one, if you look at it, is a pig, Sobakevich’s “meal”, when he eats mountains of food and so on, it seems, is capable of swallowing the whole world in one sitting, the scene with the purchase of dead souls, when Sobakevich is not at all surprised by the very subject of the purchase - sale, but immediately feels that the case smells like money that can be “ripped off” from Chichikov). It is quite clear that Sobakevich is even further away from the sought-for ideal than all previous types.
Plushkin is a kind of generalizing image. He is the only one whose path to his current state (“how he got to such a life”) is shown to us by Gogol. Giving the image of Plyushkin in development, Gogol raises this final image to a kind of symbol, accommodating Manilov, and Korobochka, and Nozdryov, and Sobakevich. What is common to all the types bred in the poem is that their life is not sanctified by thought, a socially useful goal, is not filled with concern for the common good, progress, and the desire for national prosperity. Any activity (or inaction) is useless and meaningless if they do not carry concern for the good of the nation, the country. That is why Plyushkin turns into a "hole in humanity", that is why his repulsive, disgusting image of a miser who has lost all human appearance, stealing old buckets and other rubbish from his own peasants, turning his own house into a dump, and his serfs into beggars - - that is why his image is the final stop for all these manila, boxes, nostrils and dogs. And it is precisely a “hole in humanity,” like Plyushkin, that Russia can turn out to be if it does not find the strength in itself to tear away all these “dead souls” and bring to the surface of national life a positive image - active, with a mobile mind and imagination, diligent in deeds and, most importantly, -- sanctified by concern for the common good. It is characteristic that it was precisely this type that Gogol tried to portray in the second volume of Dead Souls in the guise of the landowner Costanjoglo. However, the surrounding reality did not provide material for such images - Costanjoglo turned out to be a speculative scheme that had nothing to do with real life. Russian reality supplied only manila, boxes, nostrils and Plushkins - “Where am I? I don’t see anything ... Not a single human face, .. Only snouts, snouts around ... ”- Gogol exclaims through the mouth of the Gorodnichiy in The Government Inspector (compare with the“ evil spirits ”from“ Evenings ... ”and“ Mirgorod ” : a pig's snout protruding through the window in the "Sorochinsky Fair", mocking inhuman muzzles in the "Enchanted Place"). That is why the words about Rus'-troika sound like a sad cry-warning - "Where are you rushing? .. He does not give an answer ...".
So, the main and main meaning of the poem is that Gogol wanted to understand the historical path of Russia through artistic images, to see its future, to feel the sprouts of a new, better life in the reality surrounding him, to distinguish those forces that would turn Russia off the sidelines of world history and turn on into the overall cultural process. The image of the landowners is a reflection of precisely this search. Through extreme typification, Gogol creates figures of a national scale, representing the Russian character in many forms, in all its contradictory and ambiguous nature. The types bred by Gogol are an integral part of Russian life, they are precisely Russian types that are as bright and stable in Russian life as long as life itself does not change radically.
Like the images of landowners, the images of officials, whose whole gallery Gogol unfolds in front of the reader, perform a certain function. Showing the life and customs of the provincial town of NN, the author tries to answer the main question that concerns him - what is the future of Russia, what is its historical destiny, what in modern life contains at least a small hint of a bright, prosperous future for the people.
The theme of bureaucracy is an integral part and continuation of the ideas that Gogol developed by depicting landowners in the poem. It is no coincidence that the images of officials follow the images of the landowners. If the evil embodied in the owners of the estates - in all these boxes, manilovs, sobakeviches, nostrils and Plyushkins - is scattered across the Russian expanses, then here it appears in a concentrated form, compressed by the living conditions of a provincial city. A huge number of "dead souls" gathered together creates a special monstrously absurd atmosphere.
If the character of each of the landowners left a unique imprint on his house and estate as a whole, then the city is influenced by the entire huge mass of people (including officials, since officials are the first people in the city) living in it. The city turns into a completely independent mechanism, living according to its own laws, sending its needs through the offices, departments, councils and other public institutions. And it is the officials who ensure the functioning of this whole mechanism. The life of a civil servant, which does not bear the imprint of a lofty idea, the desire to promote the common good, becomes an embodied function of the bureaucratic mechanism. In essence, a person ceases to be a person, he loses all personal characteristics (unlike the landowners, who had an ugly, but still their own physiognomy), even loses his own name, since the name is still a certain personal characteristic, and becomes simply Postmaster, Prosecutor, Governor, Chief of Police, Chairman, or the owner of an unimaginable nickname like Ivan Antonovich Kuvshinnoye Rylo. A person turns into a detail, a "cog" of the state machine, the micromodel of which is the provincial town of NN. Officials themselves are unremarkable, except for the position they hold.
Similar Documents
Artistic originality of Gogol's poem "Dead Souls". Description of the extraordinary history of the writing of the poem. The concept of "poetic" in "Dead Souls", which is not limited to direct lyricism and the author's intervention in the narrative. The image of the author in the poem.
control work, added 10/16/2010
The artistic world of Gogol is the comic and realism of his creations. Analysis of lyrical fragments in the poem "Dead Souls": ideological content, compositional structure of the work, stylistic features. Gogol's language and its significance in the history of the Russian language.
thesis, added 08/30/2008
The history of the creation of the poem "Dead Souls". The purpose of Chichikov's life, the testament of his father. The primary meaning of the expression "dead souls". The second volume of "Dead Souls" as a crisis in Gogol's work. "Dead Souls" as one of the most read, revered works of Russian classics.
abstract, added 02/09/2011
Pushkin-Gogol period of Russian literature. The influence of the situation in Russia on Gogol's political views. The history of the creation of the poem "Dead Souls". Formation of its plot. Symbolic space in Gogol's Dead Souls. Display of 1812 in the poem.
thesis, added 12/03/2012
Folklore origins of the poem by N.V. Gogol "Dead Souls". The use of the pastoral word and the Baroque style in the work. Disclosure of the theme of Russian heroism, song poetics, the elements of proverbs, the image of Russian Shrovetide. Analysis of the story about Captain Kopeikin.
abstract, added 06/05/2011
The work of the Russian writer N.V. Gogol. Gogol's acquaintance with Pushkin and his friends. The world of dreams, fairy tales, poetry in the stories from the cycle "Evenings on a farm near Dikanka". Features of the genre of the poem "Dead Souls". Originality of Gogol's artistic manner.
abstract, added 06/18/2010
The meaning of the title of the poem "Dead Souls" and the definition of N.V. Gogol of her genre. The history of the creation of the poem, the features of the storyline, the original combination of darkness and light, the special tone of the story. Critical materials about the poem, its influence and genius.
abstract, added 05/11/2009
The study of Gogol's method of characterization of heroes and social structure through portrait and everyday details. The artistic world of the poem "Dead Souls". Principles of disclosing the characters of landlords. Hidden character traits of the hero. The basis of the plot of the poem.
abstract, added 03/27/2011
Pavel Chichikov - the main character of N. Gogol's poem "Dead Souls". Type of adventurer-acquirer; the embodiment of a new evil for Russia - quiet, average, but enterprising. The origin and formation of the character of the hero; manners, speech, clothing, spiritual basis.
presentation, added 12/12/2013
epic specifics. Reading and introductory classes. The dependence of the method of analysis of the work on the genre and genre. Questions of the theory of literature. The study of the poem by N.V. Gogol "Dead Souls". Work with literary concepts "satire" and "humor".
