Gogol began work on Dead Souls in 1835. At this time, the writer dreamed of creating a large epic work dedicated to Russia. A.S. Pushkin, one of the first to appreciate the originality of Nikolai Vasilievich's talent, advised him to take up a serious essay and suggested an interesting plot. He told Gogol about a clever swindler who tried to get rich by pawning the dead souls he had bought into the board of trustees as if they were living souls. At that time, there were many stories about real buyers of dead souls. One of Gogol's relatives was also named among these buyers. The plot of the poem was prompted by reality.
“Pushkin found,” Gogol wrote, “that such a plot of Dead Souls is good for me because it gives me complete freedom to travel all over Russia with the hero and bring out a variety of characters.” Gogol himself believed that in order "to find out what Russia is today, you must certainly travel around it yourself." In October 1835, Gogol informed Pushkin: “I started writing Dead Souls. The plot stretched out into a long novel and, it seems, will be very funny. But now he stopped him at the third chapter. I'm looking for a good call-to-letter with whom I can get along briefly. I want to show in this novel, at least from one side, all of Rus'.
Gogol anxiously read the first chapters of his new work to Pushkin, expecting them to make him laugh. But, having finished reading, Gogol found that the poet grew gloomy and said: “God, how sad our Russia is!” This exclamation made Gogol take a different look at his plan and rework the material. In further work, he tried to soften the painful impression that "Dead Souls" could make - he alternated funny phenomena with sad ones.
Most of the work was created abroad, mainly in Rome, where Gogol tried to get rid of the impression made by the attacks of criticism after the production of The Inspector General. Being far from the Motherland, the writer felt an inextricable connection with her, and only love for Russia was the source of his work.
At the beginning of his work, Gogol defined his novel as comic and humorous, but gradually his plan became more complicated. In the autumn of 1836, he wrote to 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 complete this creation the way it needs to be done, then ... what a huge, what an original plot! .. All Rus' will appear in it!” So in the course of the work, the genre of the work was determined - a poem, and its hero - all of Rus'. In the center of the work was the "personality" of Russia in all the diversity of her life.
After the death of Pushkin, which was a heavy blow for Gogol, the writer considered the work on Dead Souls a spiritual covenant, the fulfillment of the will of the great poet: turned for me from now on into a sacred testament.
In the autumn of 1839, Gogol returned to Russia and read several chapters in Moscow from S.T. Aksakov, with whose family he became friends at that time. Friends liked what they heard, they gave the writer some advice, and he made the necessary corrections and changes to the manuscript. In 1840, in Italy, Gogol repeatedly rewrote the text of the poem, continuing to work hard on the composition and images of the characters, lyrical digressions. In the autumn of 1841, the writer returned to Moscow again and read to his friends the remaining five chapters of the first book. This time they noticed that the poem shows only the negative aspects of Russian life. Listening to their opinion, Gogol made important inserts into the already rewritten volume.
In the 1930s, when an ideological turning point was outlined in Gogol's mind, he came to the conclusion that a real writer should not only put on public display everything that darkens and obscures the ideal, but also show this ideal. He decided to translate his idea into three volumes of Dead Souls. In the first volume, according to his plans, the shortcomings of Russian life were to be captured, and in the second and third, the ways of the resurrection of "dead souls" were shown. According to the writer himself, the first volume of "Dead Souls" is only "a porch to a vast building", the second and third volumes are purgatory and rebirth. But, unfortunately, the writer managed to realize only the first part of his idea.
In December 1841, the manuscript was ready for printing, but censorship banned its release. Gogol was depressed and was looking for a way out of the situation. Secretly from his Moscow friends, he turned to Belinsky for help, who at that time had arrived in Moscow. The critic promised to help Gogol, and a few days later left for St. Petersburg. Petersburg censors gave permission to print "Dead Souls", but demanded that the title of the work be changed to "The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls." Thus, they sought to divert the reader's attention from social problems and switch it to the adventures of Chichikov.
"The Tale of Captain Kopeikin", which is plot-related to the poem and is of great importance for revealing the ideological and artistic meaning of the work, was categorically banned by censorship. And Gogol, who cherished it and did not regret giving it up, was forced to rework the plot. In the original version, he laid the blame for the disasters of Captain Kopeikin on the tsarist minister, who was indifferent to the fate of ordinary people. After the alteration, all the blame was attributed to Kopeikin himself.
In May 1842, the book went on sale and, according to the memoirs of contemporaries, was snapped up. Readers immediately divided into two camps - supporters of the writer's views and those who recognized themselves in the characters of the poem. The latter, mainly landowners and officials, immediately attacked the writer, and the poem itself found itself at the center of the journal-critical struggle of the 40s.
After the release of the first volume, Gogol devoted himself entirely to the work on the second (begun in 1840). Each page was created tensely and painfully, everything written seemed to the writer far from perfect. In the summer of 1845, during an aggravated illness, Gogol burned the manuscript of this volume. Later, he explained his action by the fact that the "ways and roads" to the ideal, the revival of the human spirit, did not receive a sufficiently truthful and convincing expression. Gogol dreamed of regenerating people through direct instruction, but he could not - he never saw the ideal "resurrected" people. However, his literary undertaking was later continued by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, who were able to show the rebirth of man, his resurrection from the reality that Gogol so vividly portrayed.
All topics of the book “Dead Souls” by N.V. Gogol. Summary. features of the poem. Compositions":
Summary of the poem "Dead Souls": Volume one. Chapter first
Features of the poem "Dead Souls"
- The history of the creation of the work
We can say that the poem "Dead Souls" was the life work of N.V. Gogol. After all, out of twenty-three years of his biography as a writer, he devoted seventeen years to working on this work.
The history of the creation of "Dead Souls" is inextricably linked with the name of Pushkin. In the "Author's Confession" Gogol recalled that Alexander Sergeevich repeatedly pushed him to write a large, large-scale work. Decisive was the poet's story about the incident he heard in Chisinau during his exile. He always remembered him, but told Nikolai Vasilievich only a decade and a half after the incident. So, the story of the creation of "Dead Souls" is based on the real adventures of an adventurer who bought long-dead serfs from landowners in order to pawn them, as if alive, in the Board of Trustees to obtain a considerable loan.
In fact, in real life, the invention of the main character of Chichikov's poem was not so rare. In those years, fraud of this kind was even common. It is quite possible that in the Mirgorod district itself there was a case with the purchase of the dead. One thing is obvious: the history of the creation of "Dead Souls" is connected not with one such event, but with several, which the writer skillfully summarized.
Chichikov's adventure is the plot core of the work. Its slightest details look reliable, as they are taken from real life. The possibility of carrying out such adventures was due to the fact that until the beginning of the 18th century, peasants were counted in the country not without exception, but by household. And only in 1718 a decree was issued to conduct a poll census, as a result of which all male serfs began to be taxed, starting with babies. Their number was recalculated every fifteen years. If some peasants died, fled or were recruited, the landowner had to pay taxes for them until the next census or divide them among the remaining workers. Naturally, any owner dreamed of getting rid of the so-called dead souls and easily fell into the net of an adventurer.
These were the real prerequisites for writing the work.
The history of the creation of the poem "Dead Souls" on paper begins in 1835. Gogol began work on it a little earlier than on The Inspector General. However, at first she did not fascinate him too much, because, after writing three chapters, he returned to comedy. And only after finishing it and returning from abroad, Nikolai Vasilyevich took up "Dead Souls" seriously.
With every step, with every written word, the new work seemed to him grander and grander. Gogol reworks the first chapters and generally rewrites the finished pages many times. For three years in Rome, he leads the life of a recluse, allowing himself only to undergo treatment in Germany and relax a bit in Paris or Geneva. In 1839, Gogol was forced to leave Italy for a long eight months, and with it the work on the poem. Upon his return to Rome, he continued to work on it and completed it within a year. The writer has only to polish the essay. Gogol took Dead Souls to Russia in 1841 with the intention of printing them there.
In Moscow, the result of his six years of work was taken into consideration by the censorship committee, whose members showed hostility towards him. Then Gogol took his manuscript and turned to Belinsky, who was just visiting Moscow, asking him to take the work with him to St. Petersburg and help him get through the censorship. The critic agreed to help.
The censorship in St. Petersburg was less strict and, after lengthy delays, they nevertheless allowed the book to be printed. True, with some conditions: to amend the title of the poem, the Tale of Captain Kopeikin, and thirty-six more dubious places.
The long-suffering work was finally out of print in the spring of 1842. This is a brief history of the creation of Dead Souls.
One of the most famous works of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol is considered to be the poem "Dead Souls". The author painstakingly worked on this work about the adventures of a middle-aged adventurer for 17 long years. The history of the creation of Gogol's "Dead Souls" is really interesting. Work on the poem began in 1835. Initially, "Dead Souls" was conceived as a comic work, but the plot was constantly becoming more complicated. Gogol wanted to display the entire Russian soul with its inherent vices and virtues, and the conceived three-part structure was to refer readers to Dante's Divine Comedy.
It is known that the plot of the poem was suggested to Gogol by Pushkin. Alexander Sergeevich briefly outlined the story of an enterprising man who sold dead souls to the board of trustees, for which he received a lot of money. Gogol wrote in his diary: “Pushkin found that such a plot of Dead Souls is good for me because it gives me complete freedom to travel all over Russia with the hero and bring out many different characters.”
By the way, in those days this story was not the only one. Heroes like Chichikov were constantly talked about, so we can say that Gogol reflected reality in his work. Gogol considered Pushkin his mentors in matters of writing, so he read the first chapters of the work to him, expecting that the plot would make Pushkin laugh. However, the great poet was darker than a cloud - Russia was too hopeless.The creative history of Gogol's "Dead Souls" could have ended at this moment, but the writer enthusiastically made changes, trying to remove the painful impression and adding comical moments. In the future, Gogol read the work in the Askakov family, the head of which was a well-known theater critic and public figure. The poem was highly acclaimed. Zhukovsky was also familiar with the work, and Gogol made corrections several times in accordance with Vasily Andreevich's suggestions. At the end of 1836, Gogol wrote to Zhukovsky: “I redid everything I started again, thought over the whole plan more and now I lead 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! .. All Rus' will appear in it!” Nikolai Vasilyevich did his best to show all aspects of Russian life, and not just the negative, as was the case in the first editions.
Nikolai Vasilyevich wrote the first chapters in Russia. But in 1837 Gogol left for Italy, where he continued to work on the text. The manuscript went through several edits, many scenes were deleted and redone, and the author had to make concessions in order for the work to be published. The censorship could not let The Tale of Captain Kopeikin go into print, because it satirically depicted the life of the capital: high prices, the arbitrariness of the tsar and the ruling elite, and the abuse of power. Gogol did not want to remove the story of Captain Kopeikin, so he had to "extinguish" satirical motives. The author considered this part to be one of the best in the poem, which was easier to remake than to remove altogether.
Who would have thought that the history of the creation of the poem "Dead Souls" is full of intrigue! In 1841, the manuscript was ready for printing, but the censorship changed its mind at the last moment. Gogol was depressed. In frustrated feelings, he writes to Belinsky, who agrees to help with the publication of the book. After a while, the decision was made in favor of Gogol, but a new condition was set for him: to change the name from "Dead Souls" to "The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls." This was done in order to distract potential readers from current social issues, focusing on the adventures of the protagonist.
In the spring of 1842, the poem was published, this event caused fierce controversy in the literary environment. Gogol was accused of slander and hatred of Russia, but Belinsky defended the writer, praising the work.
Gogol again goes abroad, where he continues to work on the second volume of Dead Souls. The work got even harder. The history of writing the second part is full of mental suffering and personal drama of the writer. By that time, Gogol felt an internal discord, which he could not cope with in any way. The reality did not coincide with the Christian ideals on which Nikolai Vasilievich was brought up, and this abyss grew larger every day. In the second volume, the author wanted to portray characters that are different from the characters in the first part - positive ones. And Chichikov had to go through a certain rite of purification, having embarked on the true path. Many drafts of the poem were destroyed by order of the author, but some parts still managed to be saved. Gogol believed that life and truth were completely absent in the second volume, he doubted himself as an artist, hating the continuation of the poem.
Unfortunately, Gogol did not realize his original intention, however, Dead Souls rightfully play their very important role in the history of Russian literature.
Artwork test
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.
"Dead Souls" is the most famous and significant work for Russian literature. N.V. Gogol was engaged in writing for 23 years, 17 of which he devoted to working on a poem. The first volume was published in 1842 after seven years of work on the manuscript. It was planned to release three volumes, where, like the plot of the "Divine Comedy" by D. Alighieri, the characters must go through the stages - sin, purification and resurrection. So far, the plot of only the first volume has come down, in which, through the types and characters of the characters, the author reveals the problems of Russian society in the 19th century.
A.S. made a great contribution to the creation of the poem. Pushkin. Based on his idea, the plot of the work is built. The famous poet himself initially planned to write a poetic poem characteristic of him, but decided that Gogol would bring this idea to life like no one else, because his heroes were always distinguished by their brightness and realism. A.S. Pushkin shared with him a story about a man who received money for dead people. This is how "Dead Souls" appeared.
The history of the poem began in St. Petersburg in 1835. In October of that year, Gogol informed Pushkin that he had begun work. The author set out to show another Russia - gloomy and uncomfortable, where deceit, greed, stinginess flourishes. The main character, Chichikov, travels around Russia in search of "dead souls". With the help of such a storyline, it was planned to most clearly show the flaws of society and display the characters of the characters. Initially, the work was conceived as a satire, but humor did not work out. Too serious and acute problem was deployed in the poem.
Having written the first chapters, Gogol shared what he had written with Pushkin. After reading the famous poet noted how sad and hopeless Russia is. In this regard, Gogol makes corrections and, along with gloomy landscapes, cheerful motives appear in the work. A new idea is born - to write three volumes. In the first volume, show readers the problems that exist in society with the help of different types of heroes. The second volume is the awareness of the heroes of their "sins". The third volume is their revival. Thus, in the last part, Gogol planned to show his vision and ideal of Russia. After reading the work to Zhukovsky, Gogol radically reconsiders his approach to the poem. Now his task is to show not only gloomy Russia. He strives to portray Russia from all sides, achieving maximum openness and objectivity. In the same period, the author also determined the genre of the work - a poem in prose. Some kind of chronicle of Russia should have turned out.
The writer continues to work on the poem already abroad. In the course of writing, Gogol is constantly tormented by doubts about the plot. There was a possibility that Dead Souls would never be finished. But the death of A.S. Pushkin served as an impetus for further creativity. Gogol gave his word to bring what he had begun to the end and to embody the idea of the poet.
By the end of 1841, the first volume was finished and ready for publication. But on the way to publication, the poem encounters many criticisms and obstacles. Gogol reflected the problems of society too openly and realistically. The censor could not agree with this. As a result of the "struggle for printing" the poem was edited. The title has been changed and some chapters have been edited. In order to distract the reader from social problems, the poem had to bear the double title "The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls."
In 1842 the work was published. The success was obvious. The circulation is sold out. Readers' opinions were mixed. Gogol was accused of hatred for the country. Despite the difficulties, the author continues to work on the poem and takes up writing the second volume. In the course of the work, Gogol rewrites the plot several times. But readers did not see the second and third volumes. The author could not cope emotionally and burned the manuscript.
The history of the creation of "Dead Souls" is no less interesting than the poem itself, as it reflects the fate of not only one work, but also the history of an entire era.
Option 2
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol created extraordinary works that caused a lot of controversy, disputes, and reasons for reflection. A particularly clear reflection of the Russian reality of the 19th century is shown in the novel Dead Souls, work on which began in 1835. The plot of the beautiful creation was prompted by the famous writer Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, who was not indifferent to Gogol's work. Work on the work lasted 17 years, because every little thing and every detail was thought out by the writer to the last, carefully.
Initially, it was assumed that the novel would be humorous, but through reflection and deep reflection, Nikolai Vasilyevich decided to touch on the global problems of people's lives in an indifferent world. Denoting the genre of the poem, Gogol considered it the best option to divide it into three parts, where in the first he wanted to depict the negative qualities of modern society, in the second it was the self-realization of the individual, ways to correct it, and in the third - the life of the characters, which changed fate in the right direction .
The first part took exactly 7 years from the writer, the beginning was laid in Russia, but subsequently continued abroad. He devoted quite a lot of time to creation, because he wanted everything to be perfect. The part was already ready for printing in 1841, but, unfortunately, it failed to pass the censorship. The publication process took place only the second time, taking into account that Gogol's friends who had an influential position helped him in this. But the creation was printed with some reservations: Nikolai Vasilyevich was obliged to change the name to “The Adventures of Chichikov or Dead Souls”, make some adjustments, exclude the story “about Captain Kopeikin”. But the writer agreed only to change the text, and not to remove it from the poem. So the first part was published in 1842.
After the publication of the work, there was a flurry of criticism. Judges, officials, and other people of supreme status were categorically against accepting the work, because they believed that Gogol showed Russia not as it really is. They argued that Nikolai Vasilyevich portrayed the homeland as harsh, gray, negative. There were disagreements about the dead soul that Gogol wrote in the novel. Thoughtless people said that the soul is immortal and what the writer is talking about is complete nonsense, nonsense. It becomes clear that they are too far from the great Gogol in mind.
It is noteworthy that friends and colleagues considered how deeply and accurately Nikolai Vasilyevich raised the eternal problems, because what is depicted in the poem is simply amazing in its reality, severity, truth.
Criticism from the people of Gogol hurt seriously, but this did not stop him from continuing to work on the novel. He wrote the second chapter until his death, never finishing it. To Nikolai Vasilyevich, the work seemed imperfect, imperfect. Exactly nine days before his death, Gogol sent his own manuscripts to the fire, it was a final version. To date, some chapters have survived, their number is five, now today they are perceived as a separate independent work. As you can see, the implementation of the third part of the novel did not happen, it remained only an idea that Gogol did not have time to bring to life.
Thus, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol is considered an unsurpassed writer, for he was able to present all the pressing problems in his work.
His perennial works are invaluable, after reading many questions remain. I managed to express my own point of view in the novel "Dead Souls", which is now a masterpiece of world literature. Even though Gogol did not have time to finish the third part, he left the readers something worth grasping with their hands and feet, something that is desirable to think about and reflect on. Nikolai Vasilievich would not have put anything in the poem in vain, for he cared too much about the process of writing it. All details are thought out to the smallest detail. Therefore, the work is of extraordinary value!
Story 3
Nikolai Gogol began to work on the creation of the poem "Dead Souls" in 1835. The author completed his creation only towards the end of his own life. Initially, the author planned to create a work in 3 volumes. Gogol took the main idea of the book from Pushkin. The author wrote the poem in his homeland, in Italy and Switzerland, also in France. The writer completed the first part of the book in 1842. Gogol called this volume "The Adventures of Chichikov or Dead Souls." In the next volume, the writer intended to portray the changing Rus' and people. In this volume, Chichikov tried to correct the landowners. In the third volume, the author wanted to describe the changed Russia.
The title of the book reflects the main idea of the poem. With a literal meaning, readers understand the essence of Chichikov's deception. The hero was engaged in the acquisition of the souls of the deceased peasants. The poem has a deeper meaning. At first, the author decided to compose a poem based on the work "The Divine Comedy" from Dante. Gogol conceived that the characters go through the circles of purgatory and hell. At the end of the work, the heroes must ascend and rise again.
Gogol was unable to realize his own plan. Gogol was able to complete only the first part. In 1840, the author wrote several versions of the second volume. For unknown reasons, the author himself destroyed the second part of the book. The poem has only draft manuscripts of the second part.
The writer in his creations highlights the soullessness and ruthlessness of the characters. Sobakevich was very soulless, like Koschei the immortal. Apart from him, all the city officials depicted in the book had no souls. At the beginning of the book, the active and interesting existence of the inhabitants of the city is described. In the book, a dead soul is a simple phenomenon. For the characters, the human soul is considered the hallmark of a living person.
The title of the work is closely connected with the symbolism of the county town N. And the city K depicted the whole country. The author wanted to show that in Russia there was a decline and that the souls of the inhabitants were extinguished. Gogol showed all the meanness of the existence of a fallen town. In one of his speeches, reading the names of the dead, Chichikov revives them in his own fantasy. In the poem, Plyushkin and Chichikov are living souls. The image of Plyushkin differs from other heroes. In chapter 6, the author gave a complete description of Plyushkin's garden. The garden is a comparison of Plyushkin's soul.
The world described in Dead Souls is considered the exact opposite of the real world. The social direction of creation is connected with the "dead souls". Chichikov's idea is impossible and at the same time simple.
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Regardless of who a person is and what age he is, everyone had a period in their lives when every action was under the control of their parents, Santa Claus was real, and miracles often came true.
