In the poem "Dead Souls" Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol managed to portray the numerous vices of his contemporary. He raised questions that kept up to date still. After reviewing the summary of the poem, the main character, the reader will be able to find out the plot and the main idea, as well as how many volumes the author managed to write.

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Author's intent

In 1835, Gogol began work on the poem Dead Souls. In the annotation to the poem, the author states that storyline of the future masterpiece was donated by A.S. Pushkin. The idea of ​​​​Nikolai Vasilyevich was huge, it was planned to create a three-part poem.

1. The first volume was supposed to be made predominantly accusatory in order to reveal the painful places in Russian life, to study them, to explain the reasons for their occurrence. In other words, Gogol depicts the souls of the heroes and names the cause of their spiritual death.
2. In the second volume, the author was going to continue creating a gallery of "dead souls" and, first of all, pay attention to the problems of consciousness of the characters, who begin to understand the full extent of their fall and grope for ways out of the state of necrosis.
3. It was decided to dedicate the third volume to depicting the difficult process of spiritual resurrection.

The idea of ​​the first volume of the poem has been fully implemented.

The third volume has not even been started, but researchers can judge its content from the book “Selected passages from correspondence with friends”, dedicated to intimate thoughts about the ways of transforming Russia and the resurrection of human souls.

Traditionally, the first volume of "Dead Souls" is studied at school as an independent work.

Genre of the work

Gogol, as you know, in the annotation to the book called "Dead Souls" a poem, although in the process of work he defined the genre of the work in different ways. For a brilliant writer, following genre canons is not an end in itself, the creative thought of the author should not be bound by no boundaries and, and soar freely.

Moreover, artistic genius always transcends the genre and creates something original. A letter has been preserved, where in one sentence Gogol three times defines the genre of the work he is working on, calling it alternately a novel, a short story and, finally, a poem.

The specificity of the genre is associated with the author's lyrical digressions and the desire to show the national element of Russian life. Contemporaries repeatedly compared Gogol's work with Homer's Iliad.

The plot of the poem

We offer summary by chapter. First, there is an annotation to the poem, where, with some irony, the author wrote an appeal to readers: to read the work as carefully as possible, and then send their comments and questions.

Chapter 1

The action of the poem develops in small county town, where the main character named Chichikov Pavel Ivanovich arrives.

He travels accompanied by his servants Petrushka and Selifan, who will play an important role in the story.

Upon arrival at the hotel, Chichikov went to a tavern to find out information about the most important people in the city, making acquaintance with Manilov and Sobakevich here.

After dinner, Pavel Ivanovich walks around the city and makes several important visits: he meets the governor, vice-governor, prosecutor, police chief. A new acquaintance has everyone to himself, therefore he receives many invitations to social events and home evenings.

Chapter 2

The second chapter details the Chichikov's servants. Parsley is distinguished by a silent disposition, a peculiar smell and a passion for superficial reading. He looked through the books, not really delving into their content. The coachman Chichikov Selifan, according to the author, did not deserve a separate story, since he had a very low origin.

Further events develop as follows. Chichikov goes out of town to visit the landowner Manilov. With difficulty finds his estate. The first impression that formed when looking at the owner of Manilovka, almost everyone was positive. At first it seemed that he was a nice and kind person, but then it became obvious that he did not have any character, his own tastes and interests. This, of course, acted repulsively on those around him. There was a feeling that time had stopped in Manilov's house, flowing sluggishly and slowly. The wife was a match for her husband: she was not interested in the household, considering this matter not obligatory.

The guest announces the true purpose of his visit, asks a new acquaintance to sell him the peasants who died, but according to the papers they are listed as alive. Manilov is discouraged by his request, but agrees to the deal.

Chapter 3

On the way to Sobakevich, the protagonist's carriage goes astray. To wait out the storm That is, Chichikov asks for the night to the landowner Korobochka, who opened the door only after she heard that the guest had a title of nobility. Nastasya Filippovna was very thrifty and thrifty, one of those who would not do anything just like that. Our hero had to have a long conversation with her about selling dead souls. The hostess did not agree for a long time, but eventually gave up. Pavel Ivanovich was greatly relieved that the conversation with Korobochka was over and continued on his way.

Chapter 4

Along the way, a tavern comes across, and Chichikov decides to dine there, the hero is famous for his excellent appetite. Here a meeting with an old acquaintance Nozdrev took place. He was a noisy and scandalous man, constantly getting into unpleasant stories because of features of his character: constantly lied and cheated. But since Nozdryov is of great interest to the case, Pavel Ivanovich accepts an invitation to visit the estate.

Visiting his noisy friend, Chichikov starts a conversation about dead souls. Nozdryov is stubborn, but agrees to sell papers for dead peasants along with a dog or a horse.

The next morning, Nozdryov offers to play checkers for dead souls, but both heroes try to deceive each other, so that the game ends in a scandal. At that moment, a police officer came to Nozdryov to inform him that a case had been opened against him for beating. Chichikov, taking advantage of the moment, hides from the estate.

Chapter 5

On the way to Sobakevich, Pavel Ivanovich's carriage hit a small a road accident, the image of a girl from a carriage moving towards him sinks into his heart.

Sobakevich's house is striking in its resemblance to the owner. All interior items are huge and ridiculous.

The image of the owner in the poem is very interesting. The landowner begins to bargain, trying to get more for the dead peasants. After this visit, Chichikov has an unpleasant aftertaste. This chapter characterizes the image of Sobakevich in the poem.

Chapter 6

From this chapter, the reader will learn the name of the landowner Plyushkin, since he was the next person visited by Pavel Ivanovich. The landowner's village could well live richly, if not for the huge stinginess of the owner. He made a strange impression: at first glance it was difficult to determine even the sex of this creature in tatters. Plyushkin sells a large number of souls to an enterprising guest, and he returns to the hotel satisfied.

Chapter 7

Having already about four hundred souls, Pavel Ivanovich is in high spirits and strives to finish things in this city as soon as possible. He goes with Manilov to the Court of Justice to finally certify his acquisitions. In court, the consideration of the case drags on very slowly, a bribe is extorted from Chichikov in order to speed up the process. Sobakevich appears, who helps to convince everyone of the legitimacy of the plaintiff.

Chapter 8

A large number of souls acquired from the landlords give the main character a huge weight in society. Everyone begins to please him, some ladies imagine themselves in love with him, one sends him a love message.

At the Governor's Reception Chichikov is introduced to his daughter, in whom he recognizes the very girl who captivated him during the accident. Nozdryov is also present at the ball, telling everyone about the sale of dead souls. Pavel Ivanovich begins to worry and quickly leaves, which causes suspicion among the guests. Adds problems and the landowner Korobochka, who comes to the city to find out about the value of the dead peasants.

Chapters 9-10

Rumors are crawling around the city that Chichikov not clean-handed and, allegedly, is preparing the kidnapping of the governor's daughter.

Rumors are overgrown with new conjectures. As a result, Pavel Ivanovich is no longer accepted in decent houses.

The high society of the city is discussing the question of who Chichikov is. Everyone gathers at the police chief. A story pops up about Captain Kopeikin, who lost his arm and leg on the field of hostilities in 1812, but never received a pension from the state.

Kopeikin became the leader of the robbers. Nozdryov confirms the fears of the townspeople, calling the recent universal favorite a counterfeiter and a spy. This news shocks the prosecutor so much that he dies.

The main character is hastily going to hide from the city.

Chapter 11

This chapter gives a brief answer to the question why Chichikov bought dead souls. Here the author tells about the life of Pavel Ivanovich. Noble origin was the hero's only privilege. Realizing that in this world wealth does not come by itself, from an early age he worked hard, learned to lie and cheat. After another fall, he starts all over again and decides to present information about the dead serfs as if they were alive in order to receive financial payments. That is why Pavel Ivanovich so diligently bought up paper from the landowners. How the adventures of Chichikov ended is not completely clear, because the hero is hiding from the city.

The poem ends with a wonderful lyrical digression about a trinity bird, which symbolizes the image of Russia in N.V. Gogol "Dead Souls". We will try to briefly outline its content. The author wonders where Rus' is flying, where is she going leaving everything and everyone behind.

Dead Souls - summary, retelling, analysis of the poem

Conclusion

Numerous reviews of Gogol's contemporaries define the genre of the work as a poem, thanks to lyrical digressions.

Gogol's work has become an immortal and wonderful contribution to the treasury of great works of Russian literature. And many questions related to it are still waiting for answers.

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol worked on the main work of his life - the poem "Dead Souls" for seventeen years, from October 1835 to February 1852.

An interesting and extraordinary plot was offered to a promising young writer Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. Pushkin himself learned the plot from real life during his stay in Chisinau exile.

He was struck by an amazing story that for a number of years in one of the places on the Dniester, according to official data, no one died. The answer turned out to be simple: fugitive peasants were hiding under the names of the dead.

The history of writing Dead Souls is interesting in that in 1831 Pushkin told this story to Gogol, slightly modifying it, and in 1835 he received news from Nikolai Vasilievich that the writer had begun writing a long and very funny novel based on the plot presented to him. In the new plot, the main character is an enterprising figure who buys dead peasants from the landlords, who are still alive in the revision tales, and pawns their "souls" in the Board of Trustees to obtain a loan.

The beginning of work on the future brilliant novel was laid in St. Petersburg, but basically the history of writing Dead Souls developed abroad, where Gogol left in the summer of 1836. Before leaving, he read several chapters to his inspiration, Alexander Pushkin, who was mortally wounded in a duel a few months later. After such a tragic event, Gogol was simply obliged to complete the work he had begun, thereby paying tribute to the memory of the deceased poet.

Sweden, France, Italy have become creative workshops of an unsurpassed artist of the word. Being in a particularly beloved city of Rome, Gogol made it a rule to write three pages into his manuscript every morning. Periodically, the writer came to Moscow and St. Petersburg and introduced the public to excerpts from his poem.

In 1841, the six-year labor of writing the first volume of Dead Souls was completed. But problems arose in Moscow with the passage of censorship, and then the manuscript, with the help of the well-known critic Belinsky, was forwarded to St. Petersburg.

In the capital, on March 9, 1842, the censor A. Nikitenko finally signed the censorship permit, and freshly printed copies of the book called "The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls" were published on May 21. The original name was changed at the request of the censorship committee.

The history of writing Dead Souls is interesting in that in 1831 Pushkin told this story to Gogol, slightly modifying it, and in 1835 he received news from Nikolai Vasilyevich that the writer had already started writing it.

The last decade of Nikolai Gogol's work

The last decade of the writer's life was devoted to writing the second volume of the poem "Dead Souls", and in the future there should have been a third part (like Dante Alighieri in his poem "The Divine Comedy", which includes three components). In 1845, Gogol considered that the content of the second volume was not sufficiently sublime and enlightened, and in an emotional outburst he burned the manuscript.

In 1852, a new version of the volume of the poem was completed, but it suffered the same fate: on the night of February 12, the great creation was thrown into the fire. Perhaps the reason was that the confessor of the writer Matvey Konstantinovsky, who had read the manuscript, spoke unflatteringly about some chapters of the poem. After the departure of the archpriest from Moscow, Nikolai Gogol practically stopped eating and destroyed the manuscript.

A few days later, on February 21, 1852, the great Russian writer died - he went into eternity after his creation. But part of the second volume nevertheless came down to posterity thanks to the drafts of the manuscript that survived after Gogol's death. A contemporary of Nikolai Gogol and a great admirer of him, Fyodor Dostoevsky believed that the ingenious book "Dead Souls" should become a desktop for every enlightened person.

The history of the creation of the poem "Dead Souls"

There are writers who easily and freely invent the plots of their writings. Gogol was not one of them. He was painfully uninventive on plots. With the greatest difficulty, the idea of ​​each work was given to him. He always needed an external push to inspire his imagination. Contemporaries tell how eagerly Gogol listened to various everyday stories, anecdotes picked up on the street, and there were also fables. I listened professionally, like a writer, memorizing every characteristic detail. Years passed, and another of these accidentally heard stories came to life in his works. For Gogol, P.V. Annenkov, "nothing was wasted."

The plot of "Dead Souls" Gogol, as you know, was obliged to A.S. Pushkin, who had long encouraged him to write a great epic work. Pushkin told Gogol the story of the adventures of a certain adventurer who bought dead peasants from the landlords in order to pawn them, as if they were alive, in the Board of Trustees and receive a hefty loan against them.

The history of fraudulent tricks with dead souls could become known to Pushkin during his exile in Kishinev. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, tens of thousands of peasants fled here, to the south of Russia, to Bessarabia, from different parts of the country, fleeing from paying arrears and various fees. Local authorities obstructed the resettlement of these peasants. They were pursued. But all measures were in vain. Fleeing from pursuers, fugitive peasants often took the names of dead serfs. They say that during Pushkin's stay in Kishinev exile, a rumor spread around Bessarabia that the city of Bendery was immortal, and the population of this city was called "an immortal society." No deaths have been recorded there for many years. An investigation has begun. It turned out that in Bendery it was accepted as a rule: the dead "do not be excluded from society", and their names should be given to the fugitive peasants who arrived here. Pushkin visited Bendery more than once, and he was very interested in this story.

Most likely, it was she who became the grain of the plot, which, almost a decade and a half after the Kishinev exile, was retold by the poet Gogol.

It should be noted that Chichikov's idea was by no means such a rarity in life itself. Frauds with "revision souls" were a fairly common thing in those days. It can be safely assumed that not only one specific case formed the basis of Gogol's design.

The core of the plot of "Dead Souls" was Chichikov's adventure. It only seemed incredible and anecdotal, but in fact it was reliable in all the smallest details. Serfdom reality created very favorable conditions for such adventures.

By decree of 1718, the so-called household census was replaced by a poll. From now on, all male serfs, "from the oldest to the very last baby", were subject to taxation. Dead souls (dead or fugitive peasants) became a burden for the landlords, who naturally dreamed of getting rid of it. And this created a psychological prerequisite for all kinds of fraud. Some dead souls were a burden, others felt the need for them, hoping to benefit from fraudulent transactions. This is exactly what Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov relied on. But the most interesting thing is that Chichikov's fantastic deal was carried out in perfect accordance with the paragraphs of the law.

The plots of many Gogol's works are based on an absurd anecdote, an exceptional case, an emergency. And the more anecdotal and extreme the outer shell of the plot seems, the brighter, more reliable, more typical the real picture of life appears before us. Here is one of the peculiar features of the art of a talented writer.

Gogol began working on Dead Souls in the middle of 1835, that is, even earlier than on The Inspector General. On October 7, 1835, he tells Pushkin that he wrote three chapters of Dead Souls. But the new thing has not yet captured Nikolai Vasilyevich. He wants to write comedy. And only after The Inspector General, already abroad, Gogol really takes on Dead Souls.

In the autumn of 1839, circumstances forced Gogol to make a trip to his homeland, and, accordingly, take a forced break from work. Eight months later, Gogol decided to return to Italy to speed up work on the book. In October 1841, he again comes to Russia with the intention of publishing his work - the result of six years of hard work.

In December, the last corrections were completed, and the final version of the manuscript was submitted for consideration by the Moscow Censorship Committee. Here "Dead Souls" met with a clearly hostile attitude. As soon as Golokhvastov, who was chairing the meeting of the censorship committee, heard the name "Dead Souls", he shouted: "No, I will never allow this: the soul is immortal - there cannot be a dead soul - the author is arming himself against immortality!"

Golokhvastov was explained that they were talking about revision souls, but he became even more furious: “This can’t be allowed even more… it means against serfdom!” Then the members of the committee picked up: "Chichikov's enterprise is already a criminal offense!"

When one of the censors tried to explain that the author did not justify Chichikov, they shouted from all sides: “Yes, he doesn’t justify him, but he put him out now, and others will go to take an example and buy dead souls ...”

Gogol was eventually forced to take the manuscript and decided to send it to Petersburg.

In December 1841, Belinsky was visiting Moscow. Gogol turned to him with a request to take the manuscript with him to St. Petersburg and assist in its speedy passage through the St. Petersburg censorship authorities. The critic willingly agreed to fulfill this order, and on May 21, 1842, with some censorship corrections, The Adventures of Chichikov or Dead Souls went out of print.

The plot of "Dead Souls" consists of three externally closed, but internally very interconnected links: landowners, city officials and Chichikov's biography. Each of these links helps to reveal Gogol's ideological and artistic conception in more detail and depth.

The beginning of work on the poem dates back to 1835. From Gogol's "Author's Confession", his letters, from the memoirs of his contemporaries, it is known that the plot of this work, as well as the plot of "The Government Inspector", was suggested to him by Pushkin. Pushkin, who was the first to discern the originality and originality of Gogol's talent, which consisted in the ability to "guess a person and make him look like a living person with a few features," advised Gogol to take up a large and serious work. He told him about a rather clever swindler (whom he himself had heard from someone) who tried to get rich by pledging the dead souls he had bought into the board of trustees as if they were living souls.

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

In October 1835, Gogol informed Pushkin: “I started writing Dead Souls. The plot stretched out into a long novel and, it seems, will be very funny.<...>In this novel I would like to show at least one side of the whole "Rus".

This letter shows the task set by the writer. The plot of the conceived "pre-long novel" was mainly built, apparently, more on positions than on characters, with a predominance of most likely a comic, humorous tone, rather than a satirical one.

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

In these statements, although in the embryo, the author's intention is already guessed, along with the dark sides of life, to give the bright, positive ones. But this did not mean at all that the writer wants to find the bright, positive aspects of life without fail in the world of landlord and bureaucratic Russia. Apparently, in the chapters read to Pushkin for Gogol, the author's personal attitude to the depicted was not yet clearly defined, the work was not yet imbued with the spirit of subjectivity due to the lack of a clear ideological and aesthetic concept.

Dead Souls were written abroad (mostly in Rome), where Gogol left after staging The Inspector General in the spring of 1836 in the most dejected and painful state. The waves of turbid and vicious hatred that fell upon the author of The Inspector General from many critics and journalists made an amazing impression on him. It seemed to Gogol that the comedy aroused an unfriendly attitude among all sections of Russian society. Feeling lonely, not appreciated by his compatriots for his good intentions to serve them as a denunciation of untruth, he went abroad.

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

Shortly after leaving abroad, Gogol wrote to Zhukovsky: “The dead are flowing alive ... and it completely seems to me as if I were in Russia<...>.. I am completely immersed in Dead Souls.”

If in a letter to Pushkin dated October 7, 1835 Gogol defined "Dead Souls" as a novel basically comic, humorous, then the further the writer's work on the work went, the wider and deeper his idea became. 12 November 1836, he informs Zhukovsky: “I redid everything I started again, thought over the whole plan more and now I’m keeping it calmly, like a chronicle ... If I make this creation the way it needs to be done, then ... what a huge, what an original plot ! What a varied bunch! All Rus' will appear in it!<...>Great is my creation, and it will not end soon.”

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

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

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

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

On September 13, 1839, Gogol arrived in Russia and read four chapters of the manuscript with N. Ya. Prokopovich in St. Petersburg; relationship. Moscow friends enthusiastically greeted the new work and gave a lot of advice. The writer, taking them into account, again began to remake, "re-clean" the already completed edition of the book.

In the spring and summer of 1840 in Rome, Gogol, rewriting the corrected text of Dead Souls, again makes changes and corrections to the manuscript. Repetitions, long lengths are removed, whole new pages, scenes, additional characteristics appear, lyrical digressions are created, individual words and phrases are replaced. Work on the work testifies to the enormous tension and rise of the writer's creative forces: "everything further loomed with him more and more purely, more and more majestic."

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

The ideological turning point in Gogol's mind, which began to emerge in the second half of the 1930s, led to the fact that the writer decided to serve his homeland not only by exposing "to general ridicule" everything that defiled and obscured the ideal that a Russian could and should strive for. man, but also showing this ideal itself. Gogol now saw the book in three volumes. The first volume was supposed to capture the shortcomings of Russian life, the people who hinder its development; the second and third are to indicate the ways of the resurrection of "dead souls", even such as Chichikov or Plyushkin. "Dead Souls" turned out to be a work in which pictures of a broad and objective display of Russian life would serve as a direct means of promoting high moral principles. The realist writer became a moralist preacher.

Of the huge plan, Gogol managed to complete only the first part.

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

Censorship categorically banned The Tale of Captain Kopeikin. Gogol, who cherished it very much and wished to preserve The Tale at all costs, was forced to remake it and shift all the blame for the disasters of Captain Kopeikin on Kopeikin himself, and not on the tsarist minister, indifferent to the fate of ordinary people, as it is was originally.

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

The very title of Nikolai Gogol's famous poem "Dead Souls" already contains the main idea and idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthis work. Judging superficially, the title reveals the content of the scam and the very personality of Chichikov - he bought the souls of already dead peasants. But in order to grasp the whole philosophical meaning of Gogol's idea, one must look deeper than the literal interpretation of the title and even what is happening in the poem.

The meaning of the name "Dead Souls"

The title "Dead Souls" contains a much more important and deeper meaning than is displayed by the author in the first volume of the work. It has been said for a long time that Gogol originally planned to write this poem by analogy with the famous and immortal "Divine Comedy" by Dante, and as you know, it consisted of three parts - "Hell", "Purgatory" and "Paradise". It was they who had to correspond to the three volumes of Gogol's poem.

In the first volume of his most famous poem, the author intended to show the hell of Russian reality, the frightening and truly terrifying truth about the life of that time, and in the second and third volumes, the rise of the spiritual culture and life of Russia. To some extent, the title of the work is a symbol of the life of the county town N., and the city itself is a symbol of the whole of Russia, and thus the author indicates that his native country is in a terrible state, and the saddest and most terrible thing is that that this is due to the fact that the souls of people gradually cool, harden and die.

The history of the creation of Dead Souls

The poem "Dead Souls" Nikolai Gogol began in 1835 and continued to work on it until the end of his life. At the very beginning, the writer singled out for himself, most likely, the funny side of the novel and created the plot of Dead Souls, as for a long work. There is an opinion that Gogol borrowed the main idea of ​​the poem from A.S. Pushkin, since it was this poet who first heard the real story about the "dead souls" in the city of Bendery. Gogol worked on the novel not only in his homeland, but also in Switzerland, Italy and France. The first volume of "Dead Souls" was completed in 1842, and in May it was already published under the title "The Adventures of Chichikov or Dead Souls."

Subsequently, work on the novel, Gogol's original plan expanded significantly, it was then that the analogy with the three parts of the Divine Comedy appeared. Gogol conceived that his characters went through a kind of circles of hell and purgatory, so that at the end of the poem they would rise spiritually and be reborn. The author never managed to realize his idea, only the first part of the poem was completely written. It is known that Gogol began work on the second volume of the poem in 1840, and by 1845 he had already prepared several options for continuing the poem. Unfortunately, it was in this year that the author independently destroyed the second volume of the work, he irrevocably burned the second part of Dead Souls, being dissatisfied with what was written. The exact reason for this act of the writer is still unknown. There are draft manuscripts of four chapters of the second volume, which were discovered after the opening of Gogol's papers.

Thus, it becomes clear that the central category and at the same time the main idea of ​​Gogol's poem is the soul, the presence of which makes a person complete and real. This is precisely the main theme of the work, and Gogol tries to point out the value of the soul using the example of soulless and callous heroes who represent a special social stratum of Russia. In his immortal and brilliant work, Gogol simultaneously raises the topic of the crisis in Russia and shows what it is directly related to. The author talks about the fact that it is the soul that is the nature of man, without which there is no meaning in life, without which life becomes dead, and that it is thanks to it that salvation can be found.