The history of the creation of Gogol's poem Dead Souls for the reader's diary. The history of writing dead souls Where most of the dead souls are written

February 24, 1852 Nikolay Gogol burned the second, final edition of the second volume of "Dead Souls" - the main work in his life (he also destroyed the first edition seven years earlier). There was Lent, the writer practically did not eat anything, and the only person to whom he gave his manuscript to read called the novel “harmful” and advised to destroy a number of chapters from there. The author threw the entire manuscript into the fire at once. And the next morning, realizing what he had done, he regretted his impulse, but it was already too late.

But the first few chapters from the second volume are still familiar to readers. A couple of months after Gogol's death, his draft manuscripts were discovered, including four chapters for the second book of Dead Souls. AiF.ru tells the story of both volumes of one of the most famous Russian books.

The title page of the first edition of 1842 and the title page of the second edition of Dead Souls of 1846, based on a sketch by Nikolai Gogol. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

Thanks to Alexander Sergeevich!

In fact, the plot of "Dead Souls" does not belong to Gogol at all: he suggested an interesting idea to his "colleague in pen" Alexander Pushkin. During his exile in Chisinau, the poet heard a “outlandish” story: it turned out that in one place on the Dniester, judging by official documents, no one had died for several years. There was no mysticism in this: the names of the dead were simply assigned to fugitive peasants who, in search of a better life, found themselves on the Dniester. So it turned out that the city received an influx of new labor, the peasants had a chance for a new life (and the police could not even figure out the fugitives), and the statistics showed the absence of deaths.

Having slightly modified this plot, Pushkin told it to Gogol - this happened, most likely, in the autumn of 1831. And four years later, on October 7, 1835, Nikolai Vasilievich sent a letter to Alexander Sergeevich with the following words: “I started writing“ Dead Souls ”. The plot stretched out for a long novel and, it seems, will be very funny. Gogol's main character was an adventurer who pretends to be a landowner and buys up dead peasants who are still listed as living in the census. And he pawns the received "souls" in a pawnshop, trying to get rich.

Three circles of Chichikov

Gogol decided to make his poem (namely, this is how the author designated the genre of "Dead Souls") in three parts - in this the work resembles the "Divine Comedy" Dante Alighieri. In a medieval poem by Dante, the hero travels through the afterlife: he goes through all the circles of hell, bypasses purgatory and, finally, having become enlightened, ends up in heaven. In Gogol, the plot and structure are conceived in a similar way: the main character, Chichikov, travels around Russia, observing the vices of the landowners, and gradually changes himself. If in the first volume Chichikov appears as a clever schemer who is able to ingratiate himself with any person, then in the second he gets caught in a scam with someone else's inheritance and almost goes to prison. Most likely, the author assumed that in the final part of his hero will end up in Siberia along with several other characters, and after going through a series of trials, all together they will become honest people, role models.

But Gogol did not start writing the third volume, and the content of the second can only be guessed from the four surviving chapters. Moreover, these records are working and incomplete, and the names and ages of the heroes “differ”.

Pushkin's "Sacred Testament"

In total, Gogol wrote the first volume of Dead Souls (the one that we now know so well) for six years. The work began at home, then continued abroad (the writer “drove off” there in the summer of 1836) - by the way, the writer read the first chapters to his “inspirer” Pushkin just before leaving. The author worked on the poem in Switzerland, France and Italy. Then he returned to Russia in short "forays", read excerpts from the manuscript at secular evenings in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and again went abroad. In 1837 Gogol received shocking news: Pushkin was killed in a duel. The writer considered that now it was his duty to finish "Dead Souls": in this way he would fulfill the poet's "sacred testament", and set to work even more diligently.

By the summer of 1841, the book was completed. The author arrived in Moscow, planning to publish a work, but faced serious difficulties. Moscow censorship did not want to let Dead Souls pass and was going to ban the poem from publication. Apparently, the censor who "got" the manuscript helped Gogol and warned him about the problem, so that the writer managed to smuggle "Dead Souls" through Vissarion Belinsky(literary critic and publicist) from Moscow to the capital - St. Petersburg. At the same time, the author asked Belinsky and several of his influential metropolitan friends to help get through the censorship. And the plan succeeded: the book was allowed. In 1842, the work finally came out - then it was called "The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls, a poem by N. Gogol."

Illustration by Pyotr Sokolov for Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls. Chichikov's visit to Plyushkin. 1952 Reproduction. Photo: RIA Novosti / Ozersky

First edition of the second volume

It is impossible to say exactly when the author began writing the second volume - presumably, this happened in 1840, even before the first part was published. It is known that Gogol worked on the manuscript again in Europe, and in 1845, during a mental crisis, he threw all the sheets into the oven - this was the first time he destroyed the manuscript of the second volume. Then the author decided that his calling was to serve God in the literary field, and came to the conclusion that he was chosen in order to create a great masterpiece. As Gogol wrote to his friends while working on Dead Souls: “... it is a sin, a strong sin, a grave sin to distract me! Only one who does not believe in my words and inaccessible to high thoughts is allowed to do this. My work is great, my feat is saving. I am dead now for everything petty.”

According to the author himself, after the burning of the manuscript of the second volume, an insight came to him. He understood what the content of the book should really be: more sublime and "enlightened". And inspired Gogol proceeded to the second edition.

Classic character illustrations
Works by Alexander Agin for the first volume
Nozdryov	Sobakevich	Plushkin	ladies
Works by Pyotr Boklevsky for the first volume
Nozdryov	Sobakevich	Plushkin	Manilov
Works by Pyotr Boklevsky and I. Mankovsky for the second volume
Pyotr Rooster	Tentetnikov	General Betrishchev	Alexander Petrovich

"Now it's all gone." Second edition of the second volume

When the next, already the second manuscript of the second volume was ready, the writer persuaded his spiritual teacher, Rzhevsky Archpriest Matthew Konstantinovsky read it - the priest was just visiting at that time in Moscow, in the house of a friend Gogol. Matthew initially refused, but after reading the editorial board, he advised to destroy several chapters from the book and never publish them. A few days later, the archpriest left, and the writer practically stopped eating - and this happened 5 days before the start of Lent.

Portrait of Nikolai Gogol for his mother, painted by Fyodor Moller in 1841, in Rome.

According to legend, on the night of February 23-24, Gogol woke up his Semyon's servant, told him to open the oven valves and bring the briefcase in which the manuscripts were stored. To the pleas of a frightened servant, the writer replied: “None of your business! Pray! and set fire to his notebooks in the fireplace. No one living today can know what motivated the author then: dissatisfaction with the second volume, disappointment or psychological stress. As the writer himself later explained, he destroyed the book by mistake: “I wanted to burn some things that had been prepared for a long time, but I burned everything. How strong the evil one is - that's what he moved me to! And I was there a lot of practical clarified and outlined ... I thought to send to friends as a keepsake from a notebook: let them do what they wanted. Now everything is gone."

After that fateful night, the classic lived for nine days. He died in a state of severe exhaustion and without strength, but until the last he refused to take food. While sorting through his archives, a couple of Gogol's friends, in the presence of the Moscow civil governor, found draft chapters of the second volume a couple of months later. He did not even have time to start the third one ... Now, after 162 years, Dead Souls is still being read, and the work is considered a classic not only of Russian, but of all world literature.

"Dead Souls" in ten quotes

“Rus, where are you going? Give an answer. Gives no answer."

“And what Russian does not like to drive fast?”

“There is only one decent person there: the prosecutor; and even that one, to tell the truth, is a pig.”

"Love us black, and everyone will love us white."

“Oh, the Russian people! He does not like to die a natural death!

“There are people who have a passion to spoil their neighbor, sometimes for no reason at all.”

“Often through laughter visible to the world, tears invisible to the world flow.”

“Nozdryov was in some respects a historical person. Not a single meeting where he was, did not do without history.

"It is very dangerous to look deeper into ladies' hearts."

"Fear stickier than the plague."

Illustration by Pyotr Sokolov for Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls. "Chichikov at Plyushkin's". 1952 Reproduction. Photo: RIA Novosti / Ozersky

(where Pushkin was twice) no one dies. The fact is that at the beginning of the 19th century, quite a lot of peasants from the central provinces of the Russian Empire fled to Bessarabia. The police were obliged to identify the fugitives, but often unsuccessfully - they took the names of the dead. As a result, not a single death was registered in Bendery for several years. An official investigation began, which revealed that the names of the dead were given to fugitive peasants who did not have documents. Many years later, Pushkin, creatively transforming a similar story, told Gogol.

The documented history of the creation of the work begins on October 7, 1835. In a letter to Pushkin dated this day, Gogol first mentions "Dead Souls":

Started writing Dead Souls. The plot stretched out into a long novel and, it seems, will be very funny.

Gogol read the first chapters to Pushkin before his departure abroad. Work continued in the autumn of 1836 in Switzerland, then in Paris and later in Italy. By this time, the author had developed an attitude towards his work as a “sacred testament of the poet” and a literary feat, which at the same time has the meaning of a patriotic one, which should reveal the fate of Russia and the world. In Baden-Baden in August 1837, Gogol read an unfinished poem in the presence of the maid of honor of the imperial court Alexandra Smirnova (née Rosset) and Nikolai Karamzin's son Andrei Karamzin, in October 1838 he read part of the manuscript to Alexander Turgenev. Work on the first volume took place in Rome in late 1837 and early 1839.

Upon his return to Russia, Gogol read chapters from Dead Souls at the Aksakovs' house in Moscow in September 1839, then in St. Petersburg with Vasily Zhukovsky, Nikolai Prokopovich and other close acquaintances. The writer worked on finishing the first volume in Rome from the end of September 1840 to August 1841.

Returning to Russia, Gogol read the chapters of the poem in the Aksakovs' house and prepared the manuscript for publication. At a meeting of the Moscow Censorship Committee on December 12, 1841, obstacles to the publication of the manuscript, submitted for consideration to the censor Ivan Snegirev, were revealed, who, in all likelihood, acquainted the author with possible complications. Fearing a censorship ban, in January 1842, Gogol sent the manuscript to St. Petersburg through Belinsky and asked his friends A. O. Smirnova, Vladimir Odoevsky, Pyotr Pletnev, Mikhail Vielgorsky to help with the passage of censorship.

On March 9, 1842, the book was allowed by the censor Alexander Nikitenko, but with a changed title and without The Tale of Captain Kopeikin. Even before receiving the censored copy, the manuscript began to be typed in the printing house of Moscow University. Gogol himself undertook to design the cover of the novel, wrote in small letters "The Adventures of Chichikov or" and in large letters "Dead Souls". In May 1842, the book was published under the title "The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls, a poem by N. Gogol." In the USSR and modern Russia, the title "The Adventures of Chichikov" is not used.

• Literary legend: In the early morning of February 12, 1852, Gogol deliberately burned a work with which he was dissatisfied.
• Reconstruction: Gogol, returning from the all-night service in a state of complete decline, mistakenly burned the draft instead of the drafts intended for burning.
• hypothetical version. Gogol by the end of 1851 finished the second volume of Dead Souls, according to the author and his listeners, a masterpiece. In February 1852, feeling the approach of his death, Gogol burned unnecessary drafts and papers. After his death, the manuscript of the second volume of "Dead Souls" came to Count A. Tolstoy and to this day remains somewhere safe and sound.

Draft manuscripts of four chapters of the second volume (in an incomplete form) were discovered during the opening of the writer's papers, sealed after his death. The autopsy was performed on April 28, 1852 by S.P. Shevyryov, Count A.P. Tolstoy and the Moscow civil governor Ivan Kapnist (son of the poet and playwright V.V. Kapnist). The whitewashing of the manuscripts was carried out by Shevyryov, who also took care of its publication. The listings for the second volume circulated even before its publication. For the first time, the surviving chapters of the second volume of Dead Souls were published as part of the Complete Works of Gogol in the summer of 1855. Now printed together with the first four chapters of the second volume, one of the last chapters belongs to an earlier edition than the rest of the chapters.

Plot and characters

First volume

The book tells about the adventures of Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, the protagonist of the story, a former collegiate adviser posing as a landowner. Chichikov arrives in a town not specifically named, a certain provincial "city N" and immediately tries to gain confidence in all the inhabitants of the city of any importance, which he successfully succeeds. The hero becomes an extremely welcome guest at balls and dinners. The townspeople of the unnamed city are unaware of Chichikov's true goals. And its purpose is to buy up or gratuitously acquire dead peasants, who, according to the census, were still registered as living with local landlords, and then register them in their own name as living. The character, past life of Chichikov and his future intentions about the "dead souls" are described in the last, eleventh chapter.

Chichikov is trying by any means to get rich, to achieve a high social status. In the past, Chichikov served in customs, for bribes he allowed smugglers to freely transport goods across the border. However, he quarreled with an accomplice, who wrote a denunciation against him, after which the scam was revealed, and both were under investigation. The accomplice went to prison, Chichikov immediately left the province, so as not to be caught without taking money from the bank, having managed to take with him only a few shirts, some official paper, and a couple of bars of soap.

Chichikov only smiled, slightly flying up on his leather cushion, for he liked fast driving. And what Russian does not like to drive fast? Is it his soul, seeking to spin, take a walk, sometimes say: “Damn everything!” - Does his soul not love her?

Dead Souls Volume One

Chichikov and his servants:

• Chichikov Pavel Ivanovich - a former official (retired collegiate adviser), and now a schemer: he is engaged in buying up the so-called "dead souls" (written information about dead peasants) to mortgage them as living in a pawnshop and gain weight in society. He dresses smartly, looks after himself and, after a long and dusty Russian road, manages to look as if only from a tailor and a barber.
• Selifan - Chichikov's coachman, short in stature, loves round dances with thoroughbred and slender girls. Connoisseur of the characters of horses. He dresses like a man.
• Petrushka - Chichikov's lackey, 30 years old (in the first volume), big-nosed and big-mouthed, lover of taverns and bread wines. She loves to brag about her travels. From dislike for the bath, wherever it is, there is a unique amber of Parsley. He dresses in worn clothes that are somewhat too big for him from the master's shoulder.
• Chubary, Gnedoy and brown Assessor - a trio of Chichikov's horses, respectively, right-handed, root and left-handed. The bay and the Assessor are honest hard workers, while the shaggy one, according to Selifan, is a sly one and only pretends to pull the shafts.

Residents of the city N and its environs:

• Governor
• Governor
• Governor's daughter
• Lieutenant Governor
• Chairman of the Chamber
• police chief
• Postmaster
• Prosecutor
• Manilov, landowner (the name Manilov became a household name for an inactive dreamer, and a dreamy and inactive attitude to everything around him began to be called Manilovism)
• Lizonka Manilova, landowner
• Manilov Themistoclus - Manilov's seven-year-old son
• Manilov Alkid - Manilov's six-year-old son
• Korobochka Nastasya Petrovna, landowner
• Nozdrev, landowner
• Mizhuev, Nozdrev's "son-in-law"
• Sobakevich Mikhail Semyonovich
• Sobakevich Feoduliya Ivanovna, wife of Sobakevich
• Plyushkin Stepan, landowner
• "Pleasant lady in every way"
• "Just a nice lady"

Second volume

The chapters of this volume are working or draft versions, and some of the characters go through it with different names and surnames and ages.

• Chichikov Pavel Ivanovich - according to Tentetnikov, the first person in his life with whom you can live a century and not quarrel. Since the time of the first volume, he has aged a little, but nevertheless he has become even more dexterous, lighter, more courteous and pleasant. He again leads a gypsy life, tries to buy up dead peasants, but he manages to acquire little: the landowners have a fashion to pawn souls in a pawnshop. He buys a small estate from one of the landowners, and towards the end of the novel comes across in a scam with someone else's inheritance. Not having left the city in time, he almost perished in prisons and penal servitude. He will do a favorable thing: he will reconcile Betrishchev and Tentetnikov, thereby ensuring the wedding of the latter with the daughter of General Ulinka.

... Tentetnikov belonged to the family of those people who are not translated in Russia, who used to have names: goofs, couch potatoes, bobaki, and now, really, I don’t know what to call. Are such characters already born, or are they formed later, as a product of sad circumstances that severely surround a person? ... Where is the one who, in the native language of our Russian soul, would be able to tell us this almighty word: forward! who, knowing all the forces, and properties, and the whole depth of our nature, with one magical wave could direct us to a high life? With what tears, what love, a grateful Russian would pay him. But centuries pass after centuries, half a million sydneys, bumpkins and bobakov doze soundly, and a husband is rarely born in Russia who knows how to pronounce this almighty word.

Unlike Goncharov's hero, Tentetnikov did not completely plunge into Oblomovism. He will join an anti-government organization and be put on trial in a political case. The author had a role planned for him in the unwritten third volume.

... Alexander Petrovich was gifted with a flair to hear human nature ... He usually said: “I demand the mind, and not anything else. Whoever thinks of being smart has no time to play pranks: prank must disappear by itself. He did not restrain many playfulness, seeing in them the beginning of the development of spiritual properties and saying that he needed them, like rashes to a doctor - then, in order to find out for sure what exactly is contained inside a person. He did not have many teachers: he read most of the sciences himself. Without pedantic terms, pompous views and views, he was able to convey the very soul of science, so that even a minor could see what he needed it for ... But it is necessary that at the very time when he (Tentetnikov) was transferred to this course of the elect, ... an extraordinary mentor suddenly died ... Everything has changed in the school. In place of Alexander Petrovich, some Fedor Ivanovich entered ...

N.V. Gogol, Dead Souls, Volume Two (later edition), Chapter One

... In the free swagger of the first-year children, something unbridled seemed to him. He began to establish some kind of external order between them, demanded that the young people remain in some kind of silent silence, so that in no case would everyone go around like in pairs. He even began to measure the distance from a couple to a couple with a yardstick. At the table, for a better view, he seated everyone according to their height ...

... And just as if to spite his predecessor, he announced from the first day that intelligence and success meant nothing to him, that he would look only at good behavior ... Strange: Fyodor Ivanovich did not achieve good behavior. Hidden pranks started. Everything was in order during the day and went in pairs, but at night there were revelry ... Respect for superiors and authorities was lost: they began to mock both mentors and teachers.

N.V. Gogol, Dead Souls, Volume Two (later edition), Chapter One

... to blasphemy and ridicule of religion itself, only because the director demanded frequent going to church and a bad priest got caught [not a very smart priest (in a later edition)].

N.V. Gogol, Dead Souls, Volume Two (Early Edition), Chapter One

... The directors began to be called Fedka, Bulka and other different names. The debauchery that started up was no longer childish ... nightly orgies of comrades who acquired some kind of lady [mistress - one for eight people (in an early version)] in front of the very windows of the director's apartment ...
Something strange happened to the sciences too. New teachers were discharged, with new views and points of view ...

N.V. Gogol, Dead Souls, Volume Two (later edition), Chapter One

... They read learnedly, bombarded the listeners with many new terms and words. There was a logical connection, and following new discoveries, but alas! there was only no life in science itself. All this began to seem dead in the eyes of the listeners who had already begun to understand ... He (Tentetnikov) listened to the professors getting excited in the department, and recalled the former mentor, who, without getting excited, knew how to speak clearly. He listened to chemistry, and the philosophy of rights, and professorial deepenings into all the subtleties of political science, and the general history of mankind in such a huge form that the professor only managed to read the introduction and development of the communities of some German cities in three years; but all this remained in his head in some ugly shreds. Thanks to his natural mind, he only felt that this was not how it should be taught ... Ambition was strongly aroused in him, but he had no activity and field. It would be better not to excite him! ..

N.V. Gogol, Dead Souls, Volume Two (Early Edition), Chapter One

… If a transparent picture suddenly flared up in a dark room, lit from behind by a lamp, it would not have struck as much as this figurine shining with life, which appeared exactly to illuminate the room. It seemed as if a sunbeam flew into the room with her, suddenly illuminating the ceiling, the cornice and its dark corners ... It was hard to say what land she was born in. Such a pure, noble outline of the face could not be found anywhere, except perhaps only on some ancient cameos. Straight and light, like an arrow, she seemed to tower over everyone with her height. But it was a deception. She was not tall at all. This happened from the extraordinary harmony and harmonious relationship between all parts of the body, from the head to the fingers ...

N.V. Gogol, Dead Souls, Volume Two, Chapter Two

"Fool, fool! Chichikov thought. The name is decent. You look - and the peasants are good, and they are not bad. And how they get enlightened there at restaurants and in theaters - everything will go to hell. I would live for myself, a kulebyak, in the village ... Well, how can such a person go to St. Petersburg or Moscow? With such hospitality, he will live in fluff there in three years! That is, he did not know that now it has been improved: and without hospitality, to lower everything not in three years, but in three months.

But I know what you think, - said the Rooster.
- What? Chichikov asked, embarrassed.
- You think: "Fool, this fool this Rooster, called for dinner, but there is still no dinner." He will be ready, most respected, the short-haired girl will not have time to braid her braids, as he will be in time ...

• Aleksasha and Nikolasha - the sons of Pyotr Petrovich Petukh, high school students.

Who slammed glass after glass; one could see in advance what part of human knowledge they would pay attention to upon their arrival in the capital.

N.V. Gogol, Dead Souls, Volume Two (later edition), Chapter Three

• Platonov Platon Mikhailovich - a rich gentleman, a very handsome young man of high stature, but in life overcome by the blues, who did not find interest in himself. According to brother Vasily, he is illegible for acquaintances. He agrees to accompany Chichikov on his wanderings, in order to finally dispel this boredom by traveling. Chichikov was very pleased to have such a companion: he could be dumped on all travel expenses and, on occasion, borrow a large sum of money.
• Voronoi-Cheapy - a landowner, a leader of a certain underground.
• Skudrozhoglo (Kostanzhoglo, Poponzhoglo, Gobrozhoglo, Berdanzhoglo) Konstantin Fedorovich, landowner for about forty years. Southern appearance, swarthy and energetic person with very lively eyes, although somewhat bilious and feverish; strongly criticizes the foreign orders and fashions that have become fashionable in Russia. An ideal business executive, a landowner not from birth, but from nature. He bought a ruined farm inexpensively and increased his income several times in a few years. He buys up the land of the surrounding landlords and, as the economy develops, becomes a manufacturing capitalist. He lives ascetically and simply, has no interests that do not bring an honest income.

... about Konstantin Fedorovich - what can we say! It's like Napoleon...

N.V. Gogol, Dead Souls, Volume Two (later edition), Chapter Four

There is an assumption that the famous industrialist Dmitry Benardaki was the prototype of this hero.

• Skudrozhoglo's wife, the sister of the Platonovs, outwardly resembles Plato. To match her husband, a very economic woman.
• Colonel Koshkarev - landowner. He looks very stern, dry face extremely serious. He failed the economy and went bankrupt, but he created an “ideal” system of managing the estate in the form of all kinds of government offices in disorder lined up in the village, commissions, subcommissions and paperwork between them, officials are former peasants: a parody of a developed bureaucratic system in an undeveloped country. To Chichikov's question about buying dead souls, in order to show how smoothly his administrative apparatus works, he entrusts this matter in writing to his departments. A long written answer that came in the evening, firstly, reprimands Chichikov for not having the appropriate education, since he calls the revision souls dead, the dead are not acquired and, in general, by educated people known for certain that the soul is immortal; secondly, all revision souls have long been mortgaged and re-mortgaged in a pawnshop.

Why didn't you tell me this before? Why were they kept from nothing? - Chichikov said with a heart.

Why, how could I know about it in the first place? This is the benefit of paper production, that now everything, as in the palm of your hand, turned out to be clear. . .
"You fool, you stupid bastard! Chichikov thought to himself. - I dug into books, but what did I learn? Past all courtesy and decency, he grabbed his hat - from home. The coachman stood, the cabs at the ready and did not put off the horses: a written request would go about the stern, and the resolution - to issue oats to the horses - would come out only the next day.

N.V. Gogol, Dead Souls, Volume Two (Early Edition), Chapter Three

In his speeches there was so much knowledge of people and light! He saw many things so well and truly, so aptly and deftly outlined the neighbors of the landowners in a few words, so clearly saw the shortcomings and mistakes of all ... he was able to convey their slightest habits with such original aptness that both of them were completely fascinated by his speeches and were ready to recognize him for the smartest person.

Listen, - said Platonov, .. - with such a mind, experience and worldly knowledge, how can you not find means to get out of your predicament?
“There are funds,” said Khlobuev, and after that laid out a whole bunch of projects for them. All of them were so absurd, so strange, they flowed so little from the knowledge of people and the world, that one could only shrug their shoulders: “Lord, God, what an immense distance between the knowledge of the world and the ability to use this knowledge!” Almost all the projects were based on the need to suddenly get a hundred or two hundred thousand from somewhere ...
"What to do with him" - thought Platonov. He did not yet know that in Russia, in Moscow and other cities, there are such wise men whose life is an inexplicable mystery. Everything seems to have lived, all around in debt, no funds from anywhere, and the dinner that is being asked seems to be the last; and the diners think that tomorrow the host will be dragged to prison. Ten years pass after that - the sage is still holding on in the world, he is even more in debt than before and sets dinner in the same way, and everyone is sure that tomorrow they will drag the owner to prison. The same wise man was Khlobuev. Only in Russia alone could it exist in this way. Having nothing, he treated and hospitable, and even provided patronage, encouraged all kinds of artists who came to the city, gave them shelter and an apartment ... Sometimes for whole days there was not a crumb in the house, sometimes they asked him such a dinner that would satisfy the taste of the finest deli. The owner appeared festive, cheerful, with the posture of a rich gentleman, with the gait of a man whose life flows in abundance and contentment. But at times there were such difficult minutes (times) that another would hang himself or shoot himself in his place. But he was saved by a religious mood, which in a strange way combined in him with his dissolute life ... And - a strange thing! - almost always came to him ... unexpected help ...

• Platonov Vasily Mikhailovich - landowner. He does not look like a brother either in appearance or in character, a cheerful and kind-hearted person. The owner is no worse than Skudrozhoglo and, like a neighbor, is not enthusiastic about German influences.
• Lenitsyn Alexei Ivanovich - landowner, His Excellency. By the will of not very serious circumstances, he sold dead souls to Chichikov, which he later, when a case was brought against Pavel Ivanovich, was very sorry.
• Chegranov is a landowner.
• Murazov Afanasy Vasilyevich, a farmer, a successful and intelligent financier and a kind of oligarch of the nineteenth century. Having saved 40 million rubles, he decided to save Russia with his own money, although his methods look a lot like creating a sect. He likes to get into someone else's life "with arms and legs" and guide him on the right path (in his opinion).

Do you know, Pyotr Petrovich (Khlobuev)? give me this in my arms - children, affairs; leave your family (wife) too ... After all, your circumstances are such that you are in my hands ... Put on a simple Siberian coat ... yes, with a book in your hands, on a simple cart and go to towns and villages ... (ask for money for the church and collect information about everyone) .

Has a great gift of persuasion. He also tried to persuade Chichikov, like a lost sheep, to implement his great idea, and under the influence of circumstances, he almost agreed. He persuaded the prince to release Chichikov from prison.

• Vishnepokromov Varvar Nikolaevich
• Khanasarova Alexandra Ivanovna is a very rich old townswoman.

I have, perhaps, a three-million-dollar aunt, ”said Khlobuev,“ a devout old woman: she gives to churches and monasteries, but to help her neighbor is a tugen. An old aunt worth looking at. She has about four hundred canaries alone, pugs, accustomers and servants, which are no longer there. The youngest of the servants will be about sixty years old, even though she calls him: “Hey, kid!” If the guest somehow behaves in a wrong way, she will order to enclose him with a dish at dinner. And they will carry it. Here's what!

N.V. Gogol, Dead Souls, Volume Two (Early Edition), Chapter Four

She died, leaving confusion with wills, which Chichikov took advantage of.

• The legal adviser-philosopher is a very experienced and quirky businessman and chicane with a highly volatile behavior depending on the reward. The shabby appearance creates a contrast to the chic furnishings of his home.
• Samosvistov, official. "A blowing beast", a reveler, a fighter and a great actor: not so much for a bribe, but for the sake of daring recklessness and mockery of superiors, crank out or, conversely, "wind up" any business. Do not disdain at the same time and dressing up. For thirty thousand in all, he agreed to help out Chichikov, who ended up in prison.

In wartime, this man would have done miracles: he would have been sent somewhere to get through impassable, dangerous places, to steal a cannon from the enemy right in front of him ... And in the absence of a military field ... he dirty and spoiled. Incredible business! he was good with his comrades, he did not sell anyone, and, having taken his word, he kept; but he considered the superiors above him to be something like an enemy battery, through which you need to break through, taking advantage of every weak spot, gap or omission.

N.V. Gogol, Dead Souls, Volume Two (early edition), one of the last chapters

… It goes without saying that many innocents will suffer among them. What to do? The case is too dishonorable and cries out for justice... I must now turn to only one insensitive instrument of justice, an ax that must fall on our heads... The fact is that it has come to us to save our land; that our land is already perishing not from the invasion of twenty foreign languages, but from ourselves; that already past the lawful government, another government was formed, much stronger than any lawful one. Their conditions have been established, everything has been evaluated, and the prices have even been made known to everyone ...

N.V. Gogol, Dead Souls, Volume Two (late edition), one of the last chapters

At this angry-righteous speech before a sedate assembly, the manuscript breaks off.

Third volume

The third volume of "Dead Souls" was not written at all, but there was information that in it two characters from the second volume (Tentetnikov and Ulinka) are referred to Siberia (Gogol collected materials about Siberia and the Simbirsk Territory), where the action should take place; Chichikov also gets there. Probably, in this volume, the previous characters or their analogues, having passed the “purgatory” of the second volume, should have appeared before the reader as some ideals to follow. For example, Plyushkin from the stingy and suspicious senile of the first volume was supposed to turn into a benevolent wanderer, helping the poor and on his own getting to the scene of events. The author had conceived a wonderful monologue on behalf of this hero. Other characters and details of the action of the third volume are unknown today.

Translations

The poem "Dead Souls" began to gain international fame during the life of the writer. In a number of cases, translations of fragments or individual chapters of the novel were first published. In 1846, the German translation of F. Lobenstein Die toten Seelen (reprinted in , , ) was published in Leipzig, another translation was published under the title Paul Tschitchikow's Irrfahrten oder Die toten Seelen. Three years after the first German translation, a Czech translation by K. Havlichka-Borovsky appeared (). Anonymous translation Home life in Russia. By a Russian noble was published in English in London in 1854. In the United States of America, the poem was first published in the translation of I. Hapgood in 1886 under the title Tchitchikoff's journeys, or Dead souls(reissue in London at ). Subsequently, with the title Dead souls, various translations were published in London (, , , , , ,) and New York ( , ,); sometimes the novel was printed with the title Chichikov's journeys; or, Home life in Russia(New York, ) or dead souls. Chichikov's journey or Home life in Russia(New York, ). An excerpt in Bulgarian was published in 1858. The first French translation was published in 1859. .

An excerpt from "Nozdryov" translated into Lithuanian by Vincas Petaris was published in 1904. Motejus Miskinis prepared in 1923 a translation of the first volume, but then it was not published; his translation was published in Kaunas in 1938, went through several editions.

Screen adaptations

The poem has been filmed several times.

• In 1909, Khanzhonkov's studio filmed the film Dead Souls (directed by Pyotr Chardynin)
• In 1960, the film-play “Dead Souls” was filmed (directed by Leonid Trauberg)
• In 1969, the film-play "Dead Souls" was filmed (director Alexander Belinsky, Igor Gorbachev as Chichikov).
• In 1974, two animated films were shot at the Soyuzmultfilm studio based on the plot of Dead Souls: Chichikov's Adventures. Manilov" and "The Adventures of Chichikov. Nozdryov. Directed by Boris Stepantsev.
• In 1984, the film Dead Souls was filmed (directed by Mikhail Schweitzer, in the role of Chichikov - Alexander Kalyagin).
• Based on the work, in 2005 the series “The Case of the“ Dead Souls ”was filmed" (Konstantin Khabensky played the role of Chichikov).

Theatrical performances

The poem has been staged many times in Russia. Often directors turn to M. Bulgakov's staged play based on the work of the same name by Gogol ().

• - Moscow Art Theater, "Dead Souls" (based on the play by M. Bulgakov). Director: V. Nemirovich-Danchenko
• - Moscow Theater of Drama and Comedy on Taganka, "Revizskaya Tale". Production: Y. Lyubimova
• - Moscow Drama Theater on Malaya Bronnaya, "Road". Staged by A. Efros
• - Moscow Drama Theatre. Stanislavsky, Solo performance "Dead Souls". Director: M. Rozovsky Cast: Alexander Filippenko
• - Theater "Russian entreprise" them. A. Mironov, "Dead Souls" (based on the works of M. Bulgakov and N. Gogol). Director: Vlad Furman Cast: Sergei Russkin, Nikolai Dik, Alexei Fedkin
• - Moscow State Theater "Lenkom", "Hoax" (based on the play by N. Sadur "Brother Chichikov" fantasy based on the poem by N. Gogol "Dead Souls"). Staged by M. Zakharov. Cast: Dmitry Pevtsov, Tatyana Kravchenko, Viktor Rakov
• - "Contemporary", "Dead Souls". Director: Dmitry Zhamoida. Cast: Ilya Drenov, Kirill Mazharov, Yana Romanchenko, Tatyana Koretskaya, Rashid Nezametdinov
• - Theatre. Mayakovsky, Dead Souls. Director: Sergei Artsibashev Cast: Daniil Spivakovsky, Svetlana Nemolyaeva, Alexander Lazarev, Igor Kostolevsky
• - Moscow theater-studio n / r Oleg Tabakov, "Adventure, compiled according to the poem by N. V. Gogol" Dead Souls "". Director: Mindaugas Karbauskis. Cast: Sergey Bezrukov, Oleg Tabakov, Boris Plotnikov, Dmitry Kulichkov.
• - State Academic Central Puppet Theater named after S. V. Obraztsov, "Concert for Chichikov with an orchestra." Director: Andrey Dennikov Cast: Andrey Dennikov, Maxim Mishaev, Elena Povarova, Irina Yakovleva, Irina Osintsova, Olga Alisova, Yana Mikhailova, Alexey Pevzner, Alexander Anosov.
• - Sverdlovsk State Academic Theater of Musical Comedy, "Dead Souls". Libretto by Konstantin Rubinsky, composer Alexander Pantykin.
• Since 2005 - National Academic Theater named after Yanka Kupala (Minsk, Republic of Belarus), "Chichikov". Director: Valery Raevsky, costumes and scenography: Boris Gerlovan, composer: Viktor Kopytko. The performance features both People's and Honored Artists of Belarus, as well as young actors. The role of the police chief's wife is played by Svetlana Zelenkovskaya.

Opera

Illustrations

Illustrations for the novel "Dead Souls" were created by outstanding Russian and foreign artists.

• Drawings by A. A. Agin, engraved by his permanent collaborator E. E. Bernardsky, became classic works.

"One Hundred Drawings for N.V. Gogol's Dead Souls" was published in 1847 in notebooks with four woodcuts each. In addition to Bernardsky, his students F. Bronnikov and P. Kurenkov took part in the engraving of illustrations. The entire series (104 drawings) was published in 1892 and phototypically repeated in 1893. In 1902, when the exclusive copyright on Gogol's works owned by the St. Petersburg publisher A.F. Marx expired, two editions of "Dead Souls" were published with drawings by A.A. Agin (St. Petersburg Electric Printing and Publishing House F.F. Pavlenkov ). In and 1935, a book with illustrations by Agin was published by the State Publishing House of Fiction. In 1937, "Dead Souls" with drawings by Agin, re-engraved by M. G. Pridantsev and I. S. Neutolimov, was published by the Academia publishing house. Later, E. E. Bernardsky's engravings were photomechanically reproduced (Dagestan State Publishing House, Makhachkala,; Children's State Publishing House,,; Goslitizdat,; Trud advertising and computer agency). Agin's illustrations were also reproduced in foreign editions of "Dead Souls": 25 of them in a German translation, published in 1913 in Leipzig; 100 - in the edition issued by the Zander publishing house in Berlin without indicating the year. Agin's drawings were reproduced in the publication of the Berlin publishing house "Aufbau Verlag" ().

• Another recognized series of illustrations for the novel belongs to P. M. Boklevsky.

The artist began working on illustrations for Dead Souls in the 1860s. However, the first publication dates back to 1875, when 23 watercolor portraits of Gogol's heroes, reproduced in woodcut technique, were printed by the Moscow magazine "Pchela". Then, in the magazine "Picturesque Review" in,, 1887, seven more drawings appeared. The first independent publication of Boklevsky's illustrations was the Album of Gogol's Types (St. Petersburg,), published by N. D. Tyapkin with a preface by V. Ya. Stoyunin. The album consists of 26 drawings previously published in magazines. It was repeatedly reprinted in the xylography technique by St. Petersburg printers S. Dobrodeev (,), E. Goppe (,,). In 1895, the Moscow publisher V. G. Gauthier published an album in a new phototype technique with a preface by L. A. Belsky. The 1881 album with drawings by Boklevsky was reproduced in facsimile in Germany by the Berlin publishing house Rutten und Loning (). Boklevsky's drawings were rarely used as actual illustrations. They were most fully presented in the 5th volume of N.V. Gogol's Complete Works, undertaken by the Pechatnik publishing house (Moscow,). Later, Boklevsky's drawings illustrated the publication of Dead Souls (Goslitizdat,) and the 5th volume of Gogol's Collected Works (Goslitizdat,). Seven oval bust images of Chichikov, Manilov, Nozdrev, Sobakevich, Plyushkin, Captain Kopeikin, Tentetnikov in the Collected Works are printed on coated paper on separate sheets using the autotype technique.

Chagall began work on illustrations for Dead Souls in 1923, fulfilling the order of the French marchand and publisher Ambroise Vollard. The entire edition was printed in 1927. The book translated into French by A. Mongo with illustrations by Chagall was published in Paris only in 1948, almost ten years after the death of Vollard, thanks to the efforts of another outstanding French publisher, Eugene Teriade.

Notes

1. Mann Yu.V. Gogol. Brief literary encyclopedia. T. 2: Gavrilyuk - Zulfigar Shirvani. Stb. 210-218. Fundamental Electronic Library "Russian Literature and Folklore" (1964). archived
2. Vadim Polonsky. Gogol. around the world. Yandex. Archived from the original on February 19, 2012. Retrieved June 2, 2009.
3. N. V. Gogol in Rome in the summer of 1841. - P. V. Annenkov. Literary Memories. Introductory article by V. I. Kuleshov; comments by A. M. Dolotova, G. G. Elizavetina, Yu. V. Mann, I. B. Pavlova. Moscow: Fiction, 1983 (A series of literary memoirs).
4. Khudyakov V.V. Chichikov's and Ostap Bender's scam // City in blossoming acacias... Benders: people, events, facts / ed. V.Valavin. - Bendery: Polygraphist, 1999. - S. 83-85. - 464 p. - 2000 copies. - ISBN 5-88568-090-6
5. Mann Yu.V. In Search of a Living Soul: Dead Souls. Writer - critic - reader. Moscow: Book, 1984 (Fate of books). S. 7.
6. Khyetso G. What happened to the second volume of "Dead Souls"? // Questions of Literature. - 1990. - No. 7. - P. 128-139.
7. Gogol N.V. Dead Souls .
8. The mystery of the crypt under the "October"
9. N. V. Gogol. Collected Works in eight volumes. Volume 6. S. 316
10. Yu. V. Mann. In Search of a Living Soul: Dead Souls. Writer - critic - reader. Moscow: Book, 1984 (Fate of books). S. 387; Bibliography of translations into foreign languages ​​of NV Gogol's works. Moscow: All-Union State Library of Foreign Literature, 1953, pp. 51-57.

The plot of the poem was suggested to Gogol by Alexander Pushkin, presumably in September 1831. Information about this goes back to the "Author's Confession", written in 1847 and posted posthumously in 1855, and is confirmed by reliable, albeit indirect, evidence.

The documented history of the creation of the work begins on October 7, 1835: in a letter to Pushkin dated this day, Gogol mentions “Dead Souls” for the first time: “He began to write Dead Souls. The plot stretched out into a long novel and seems to be very funny.

Gogol read the first chapters to Pushkin before his departure abroad. Work continued in the autumn of 1836 in Switzerland, then in Paris and later in Italy. By this time, the creator had developed an attitude towards his own work as a “sacred testament of a poet” and a literary feat, which at the same time has the meaning of a patriotic one, which should reveal the fate of Russia and the world. In Baden-Baden in August 1837, Gogol read an unfinished poem in the presence of the lady-in-waiting of the imperial court Alexandra Smirnova (nee Rosset) and Nikolai Karamzin's offspring Andrei Karamzin, in October 1838 he read part of the manuscript to Alexander Turgenev. Work on the first volume took place in Rome in late 1837 - early 1839.

Upon his return to Russia, Gogol read chapters from Dead Souls at the Aksakovs' house in Moscow in September 1839, then in St. Petersburg with Vasily Zhukovsky, Nikolai Prokopovich and other close acquaintances. The writer worked on the final finishing of the first volume in Rome from the end of September 1840 to August 1841.

Returning to Russia, Gogol read the chapters of the novel at the Aksakovs' house and prepared the manuscript for publication. At a meeting of the Moscow Censorship Committee on December 12, 1841, obstacles to the publication of the manuscript submitted for consideration to the censor Ivan Snegirev, who, in all likelihood, familiarized the creator with burdens that could appear, were revealed. Fearing a censorship ban, in January 1842, Gogol sent the manuscript to St. Petersburg through Belinsky and asked his friends A. O. Smirnova, Vladimir Odoevsky, Pyotr Pletnev, Misha Vielgorsky to help with the passage of censorship.

On March 9, 1842, the book was allowed by the censor Alexander Nikitenko, but with a changed title and in the absence of The Tale of Captain Kopeikin. Even before receiving the censored copy, the manuscript began to be typed in the printing house of the Moscow Institute. Gogol himself undertook to design the cover of the novel, wrote in small letters "The Adventures of Chichikov or" and in large letters "Dead Souls". In May 1842, the book was published under the title "The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls, a poem by N. Gogol." In the USSR and modern Russia, the name "The Adventures of Chichikov" is not used.

Gogol, like Dante Alighieri, meant to make the poem three-volume, and wrote the 2nd volume, where positive images were displayed and an attempt was made to depict the moral rebirth of Chichikov. Gogol began work on the second volume presumably in 1840. Work on it lasted in Germany, France and mainly in Italy in 1842-1843. In late June or early July 1845, the writer burned the manuscript of the second volume. When working on the second volume, the significance of the work in the writer's mind grew beyond the boundaries of actual literary texts, which made the plan virtually unrealizable. On the night of February 11-12, 1852, Gogol burned the white manuscript of the second volume (the only eyewitness was the servant Semyon) and died 10 days later. Preliminary manuscripts of four chapters of the second volume (in incomplete form) were discovered during the opening of the writer's papers, sealed after his death. The autopsy was performed on April 28, 1852 by S.P. Shevyryov, Count A.P. Tolstoy and the capital’s civilian governor Ivan Kapnist (son of the poet and playwright V.V. Kapnist). The whitewashing of the manuscripts was carried out by Shevyryov, who also took care of its publication. The listings for the second volume circulated even before its publication. For the first time, the surviving chapters of the second volume of Dead Souls were published as part of the Complete Works of Gogol in the summer of 1855. Printed now together with the first 4 chapters of the second volume, one of the last chapters belongs to an earlier edition than the other chapters.

Material source: en.wikipedia.org

On the Internet, you can read the poem "Dead Souls" on the following websites:

ilibrary.ru - the poem is divided into chapters page by page, comfortable for reading

public-library.narod.ru - the whole poem on one page of the website

nikolaygogol.org.ru - the poem is divided into pages. There are 181 pages in total. Possibility to print text

In what year was Dead Souls written?

The plot of the poem was suggested to Gogol by Alexander Pushkin, presumably in September 1831. Information about this goes back to the "Author's Confession", written in 1847 and posted posthumously in 1855, and is confirmed by reliable, albeit indirect, evidence. The documented history of the creation of the work begins on October 7, 1835: in a letter to Pushkin dated this day, Gogol for the first time mentions ...

Dead Souls is Gogol's main work, not only in terms of the depth and scale of artistic generalizations. The work on the poem turned into a long process of human and literary self-knowledge of the author, aspiring to the world of high spiritual truths. “It is not at all the province and not a few ugly landowners, and not what is attributed to them, that is the subject of Dead Souls,” Gogol noted after the publication of the first volume. “This is still a mystery that should suddenly, to the amazement of everyone ... be revealed in the following volumes.”

Changes in the idea of ​​Gogol's main work, the search for a genre, work on the text of the chapters of the first and second volumes, reflection on the third - everything that is called the creative history of the work - fragments of a grandiose "construction" conceived but not implemented by Gogol. The first volume of "Dead Souls" is only a part in which the outlines of the whole are guessed. According to the writer's definition, "this is the pale beginning of that work, which by the bright grace of Heaven will not be much useless." No wonder the author compared the first volume of the poem with a porch, hastily attached by the provincial architect to "the palace, which is planned to be built on a colossal scale." The study of the first volume is the first step towards comprehending the general plan of the poem. In turn, the meaning of the only completed volume is revealed only in comparison with that hypothetical work that was never created.

The originality of the genre, the features of the plot and the composition of "Dead Souls" are associated with the development and deepening of the original idea of ​​the work. Pushkin stood at the origins of Dead Souls. According to Gogol, the poet advised him to take on a large essay and even gave the plot, from which he himself wanted to make "something like a poem." “Pushkin found that the 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 multitude of the most diverse characters” (“Author's Confession”). Let us emphasize that it was not so much the plot itself, but rather the "thought" - the core of the artistic concept of the work - that was Pushkin's "hint" to Gogol. After all, the future author of the poem was well aware of everyday stories based on scams with "dead souls". One of these cases occurred in Mirgorod in Gogol's youth.

“Dead souls” are dead serfs who continued to be the “living” property of the landlords until the next “revision tale”, after which they were officially considered dead. Only then did the landlords stop paying tax for them - the poll tax. Peasants that existed on paper could be sold, donated or mortgaged, which was sometimes used by swindlers who tempted landowners with the opportunity not only to get rid of serfs who did not bring income, but also to get money for them. The very same buyer of "dead souls" became the owner of a very real state. Chichikov’s adventure is the result of the “most inspired thought” that dawned on him: “Yes, if I buy all these who have died out before they have yet filed new revision tales, get them, let’s say, a thousand, yes, let’s say, the board of trustees will give two hundred rubles per capita: here already two hundred thousand capital! And now the time is convenient, there was an epidemic recently, a lot of people died, thank God, a lot.

"Anecdote" with dead souls provided the basis for an adventurous picaresque novel. This variation of the novel genre is entertaining and has always been very popular. The picaresque novels were created by Gogol's older contemporaries: V.T. Despite the low artistic level, their novels were a resounding success.

An adventurous picaresque novel is the original genre model of Dead Souls, but in the process of working on the work it has changed dramatically. This is evidenced, in particular, by the author's designation of the genre - a poem, which appeared after adjusting the main idea and the general plan of the work. Gogol's thesis "all Russia will appear in it" not only emphasized the scale of the new idea in comparison with the previous intention to show Russia "at least from one side", that is, satirically, but also meant a decisive revision of the previously chosen genre model. The scope of the adventurous picaresque novel became narrow: the traditional genre could not contain all the richness of the new idea. Chichikov's "Odyssey" has become just one of the ways of artistic embodiment of the author's vision of Russia.

Having lost its leading role in Dead Souls, the adventurous picaresque novel remained a genre shell for the other two main genre tendencies of the poem - moralistic and epic. Revealing the genre originality of the work, it is necessary to find out which features of the genre of the novel have been preserved and which have been decisively discarded, how the romantic, moralistic and epic genre trends interact in the poem.

One of the tricks used in adventurous picaresque novels is the secret of the origin of the hero, who in the first chapters of the novel was either a foundling or a man from the common people, and “at the end of the last part,” in the words of Pushkin, having overcome many life obstacles, suddenly turned out to be a son "noble" parents and received a rich inheritance. Gogol resolutely abandoned this novelist template.

Chichikov is a man of the “middle”: “not a handsome man, but not bad-looking, neither too fat nor too thin; one cannot say that he is old, but it is not so that he is too young. The adventurer's life story is hidden from the reader until the eleventh and final chapter. Deciding to "hide the scoundrel", that is, to tell Chichikov's background, the writer begins by emphasizing the mediocrity, "vulgarity" of the hero:

"Dark and modest is the origin of our hero." And completing his detailed biography, he summarizes: “So, our hero is all there, what he is! But they will demand, perhaps, a final definition in one line: who is he in relation to moral qualities? That he is not a hero, full of perfection and virtue, is evident. Who is he? so a scoundrel? Why a scoundrel, why be so strict with others? Rejecting the extremes in the definition of Chichikov (not a hero, but not a scoundrel), Gogol stops at his main, conspicuous quality: "It is most fair to call him: the owner, the acquirer."

Thus, there is nothing unusual in Chichikov: this is an “average” person in whom the author has strengthened a trait common to many people. In his passion for profit, which replaced everything else, in pursuit of the ghost of a beautiful and easy life, Gogol sees a manifestation of the usual "human poverty", the paucity of spiritual interests and life goals - everything that many people carefully hide. The author needed the biography of the hero not so much to reveal the “secret” of his life, but to remind readers that Chichikov is not an exceptional, but quite an ordinary phenomenon: everyone can discover “some part of Chichikov” in himself.

The traditional plot “spring” in moralistic adventurous and picaresque novels is the persecution of the protagonist by vicious, greedy and malicious people. Against their background, the rogue hero, who fought for his rights, could seem almost like a “perfect model”. As a rule, he was helped by virtuous and compassionate people who naively expressed the author's ideals. In the first volume of Dead Souls, Chichikov is not pursued by anyone, and there are no characters who could at least to some extent become spokesmen for the author's point of view. Only in the second volume did “positive” characters appear: the tax farmer Murazov, the landowner Kostanzhoglo, the governor, who is uncompromising to the abuses of officials, however, these personalities, unusual for Gogol, are far from novel stencils.

The plots of many adventurous and picaresque novels were artificial, far-fetched. The emphasis was on "adventures", the adventures of rogue heroes. Gogol is not interested in Chichikov's "adventures" in and of themselves, and not even in their "material" result (in the end, the hero obtained a fortune by fraudulent means), but in their social and moral content, which allowed the writer to make Chichikov's roguery a "mirror", which reflected modern Russia. This is the Russia of landowners who sell "air" - "dead souls", and officials who assist the swindler, instead of grabbing his hand. In addition, the plot based on Chichikov's wanderings has a huge semantic potential: layers of other meanings, philosophical and symbolic, are superimposed on the real basis.

The author deliberately slows down the movement of the plot, accompanying each event with detailed descriptions of the appearance of the characters, the material world in which they live, reflections on their human qualities. The adventurous and picaresque plot loses not only its dynamics, but also its significance: each event causes an "avalanche" of facts, details, author's judgments and assessments to come down. Contrary to the requirements of the adventure-picaresque novel genre, the plot of Dead Souls almost completely stops in the last chapters. Of the events taking place in the seventh-eleventh chapters, only two - the registration of the deed of sale and the departure of Chichikov from the city - are significant for the development of the action. The turmoil in the provincial town, caused by the desire to uncover Chichikov's "secret", not only does not bring society closer to exposing the swindler, but also reinforces the feeling that there is "anarchy" in the city: confusion, stupid marking time, "a binge of idle talk."

The eleventh chapter of the first volume from the point of view of the plot is the most static, overloaded with extra-plot components: it contains three lyrical digressions, Chichikov's background and a parable about Kif Mokievich and Mokiya Kifovich. However, it is in the final chapter that the character of the adventurer is clarified (the author sets out in detail his view of him, after the points of view of other characters have already been presented). Here the “portrait” of the provincial city is completed, and most importantly, the scale of everything depicted in the first volume is determined: the majestic image of the “unbeatable” “Rus-troika”, rushing through the historical space, is opposed to the sleepy life of the provincial city and the run of the Chichikov troika. The author seems to convince the readers that the plot based on Chichikov's "adventures" is only one of the whole variety of life plots that life gives to Russia. The provincial city turns out to be just an inconspicuous point on its map, and the participants in the events described are only a small, insignificant part of Russia - a “mighty space”, “a sparkling, wonderful, unfamiliar land given”.

The figure of the swindler, rogue and adventurer Chichikov helped to build a variety of life material into a plot narrative. No matter how diverse the situations and episodes are, the swindler, thanks to his life goals and moral qualities, gives them harmony and integrity, provides a through action. The motivation for events, as in any adventure-picaresque novel, is relatively simple, but it “works” flawlessly.

The thirst for winning, good luck makes the hero-adventurer quickly change position, move easily, look for acquaintances with the “right” people, seek their location. Arriving in the provincial town of NN, Chichikov did not know anyone. Chichikov's acquaintances - with the officials of the provincial city and with the surrounding landowners - allowed the author to tell in detail about each new person, to characterize his appearance, way of life, habits and prejudices, and the manner of communicating with people. The arrival of the hero, his interest in the place where he arrived, in the people he met there, is quite sufficient plot motivation for the inclusion of more and more episodes in the work. Each episode simply joins the previous one, forming a chronicle plot - a chronicle of Chichikov's journey for "dead souls".

The monotony and “programming” of Chichikov’s journey is broken only in two cases: an unplanned meeting with Korobochka occurred at the mercy of a drunken Selifan who had lost his way, after which Chichikov met Nozdrev in a tavern on the “high road”, to whom he was not going to go at all. But, as always with Gogol, small deviations from the general rule only confirm it. Random meetings with Korobochka and Nozdryov, knocking Chichikov out of the usual "rut" for some time, do not violate the general plan. The following events in the provincial town became an echo of these meetings: Korobochka comes to find out “how much dead souls go for”, and Nozdryov tells everyone about the fraud of the “Kherson landowner”. Chichikov's greatest success - a visit to Plyushkin, whose peasants are dying like flies - is also accidental: Sobakevich told him about the existence of this landowner.

"Penetrating" together with the hero into the most diverse classes, Gogol creates a broad picture of morals. Moral descriptiveness is one of the secondary genre features of an adventurously picaresque novel. Gogol, using the moralistic potential of the genre, made everyday life and morality the most important genre trend in Dead Souls. Each movement of Chichikov is followed by an essay on life and customs. The most extensive of these essays is the story of the life of the provincial town, begun in the first chapter and continued in the seventh to eleventh chapters. In the second-sixth chapters, Chichikov's visit to the next landowner is accompanied by a detailed moralistic essay.

Gogol was well aware that the psychology of an adventurer gives him additional opportunities to penetrate into the depths of the characters portrayed. To achieve his goal, an adventurer cannot be limited to a superficial look at people: he needs to know their carefully hidden, reprehensible sides. Chichikov, already at the first stage of work on Dead Souls, became, as it were, an "assistant" to the writer, who was fascinated by the idea of ​​​​creating a satirical work. This function of the hero was fully preserved even when the idea of ​​the work expanded.

Buying up "dead souls", that is, committing a crime, the swindler must be an excellent physiognomist and subtle psychologist, of course, in his own special way. Indeed, by offering to sell dead souls, Chichikov persuades the landowners to enter into a criminal conspiracy with him, to become accomplices in his crime. He is convinced that profit and calculation are the strongest motives for any act, even illegal and immoral. However, like any rogue, Chichikov cannot be careless, but must “take precautions”, since every time he risks: what if the landowner turns out to be honest and law-abiding and not only refuses to sell “dead souls”, but also surrenders him to justice ? Chichikov is not just a swindler, his role is more important: he is necessary for a satirist writer as a powerful tool in order to test other characters, to show their private life hidden from prying eyes.

The image of all landlords is based on the same microplot. His “spring” is the actions of the buyer of “dead souls”. Two characters are indispensable participants in five microplots: Chichikov and the landowner whom he visits. The author builds the story about the landowners as a successive change of episodes: entry into the estate, meeting, refreshments, Chichikov's offer to sell "dead souls", departure. These are not ordinary plot episodes: it is not the events themselves that are of interest to the author, but the opportunity to show in detail the objective world surrounding the landowners, to create their portraits. The everyday details reflect the personality of this or that landowner: after all, each estate is like a closed world, created in the image and likeness of its owner. The whole mass of details enhances the impression of the landowner, emphasizes the most important aspects of his personality.

Arriving at the estate, Chichikov each time, as it were, finds himself in a new "state" that lives according to its own unwritten rules. The keen eye of an adventurer captures the smallest details. The author uses Chichikov's impressions, but is not limited to them. The picture of what Chichikov saw is supplemented by the author's descriptions of the estate, the landowner's house, the landowner himself. Both in the “landlord” and “provincial” chapters of the poem, a similar principle of representation is used: the author, focusing on the point of view of the hero-adventurer, easily replaces it with his own, “picking up” and generalizing what Chichikov saw.

Chichikov sees and understands the particulars - the author discovers in the characters and in various life situations their more general social and universal content. Chichikov is able to see only the surface of phenomena - the author penetrates into the depths. If it is important for the fraudulent hero to understand what kind of person he met and what can be expected from him, then for the author, each new plot partner of Chichikov is a person representing a very specific social and human type. Gogol seeks to elevate the individual, particular to the generic, common to many people. For example, characterizing Manilov, he notes: “There is a kind of people known by the name: people are so-so, neither this nor that, neither in the city of God given nor in the village of Selifan, according to the proverb. Maybe Manilov should join them. The same principle is used in the author's description of Korobochka: “A minute later the hostess came in, an elderly woman, in some kind of sleeping cap, put on hastily, with a flannel around her neck, one of those mothers, small landowners who cry for crop failures, losses and keep head a little to one side, and meanwhile they are gaining money little by little in motley bags placed in the drawers of chests of drawers. “Nozdryov's face is probably somewhat familiar to the reader. Everyone had to meet a lot of such people. ... They are always talkers, revelers, scorchers, prominent people, ”Nozdryov is presented to the reader in this way.

Gogol not only shows how the individuality of each landowner manifests itself in similar situations, but also emphasizes that it is the landowner who is responsible for everything that happens in this "state". The world of things surrounding the landlords, their estates and the village in which the serfs live is always an exact likeness of the landowner's personality, his "mirror". The key episode in the meetings with the landowners was Chichikov's proposal to sell the "dead souls" and the reaction of the landowners to this proposal. The behavior of each of them is individual, but the result is always the same: not a single landowner, including the scandalous Nozdryov, refused. This episode clearly shows that in each landowner Gogol discovers only a variation of one social type - a landowner who is ready to satisfy Chichikov's "fantastic desire".

In meetings with landowners, the personality of the adventurer himself is also revealed: after all, he is forced to adapt to each of them. Like a chameleon, Chichikov changes his appearance and demeanor: with Manilov he behaves like “Manilov”, with Korobochka he is rude and straightforward, like herself, etc. Perhaps, only with Sobakevich he fails to immediately “get into tune ”- the thought of this man, who looks like a “medium-sized bear”, for whom all the officials in the provincial city are swindlers and Christ-sellers, is too bizarre, “there is only one decent person there: the prosecutor; and even that one, to tell the truth, is a pig.”

The purely material reason for the hero's movements is only the plot "framework" that supports the entire "building" of the poem. To paraphrase Gogol's comparison of "Dead Souls" with a "palace", conceived "to be built on a huge scale", we can say that this building has many "rooms": spacious, bright and cramped, gloomy, it has many wide corridors and dark nooks and crannies, it is not clear where leading. The author of the poem is Chichikov's indispensable companion, never leaving him alone for a minute. He becomes something like a guide: he tells the reader the next turn of the plot action, he describes in detail the next “room” into which he leads his hero. Literally on every page of the poem, we hear the voice of the author - a commentator on ongoing events, who likes to talk in detail and in detail about their participants, to show the situation of the action without missing a single detail. They are necessary for the most complete image of a particular person or object that falls into his field of vision, and most importantly, in order to recreate in full and in detail the “portrait” of Russia and the Russian people.

The image of the author is the most important image of the poem. It is created both in the plot narrative and in the author's digressions. The author is extremely active: his presence is felt in every episode, in every description. This is due to the subjectivity of the narrative in Dead Souls. The main function of the author-narrator is generalization: in the particular and seemingly insignificant, he always strives to reveal the characteristic, typical, common to all people. The author appears not as a writer of everyday life, but as a connoisseur of the human soul, who has carefully studied its light and dark sides, oddities and "fantastic desires". In essence, for the author, there is nothing mysterious or accidental in the life of the characters. In any person whom Chichikov meets, and in himself, the author seeks to show secret "springs" hidden from outsiders motives of behavior. According to the author, “wise is he who does not shun any character, but, fixing him with a searching look, explores him to the original causes.”

In the author's digressions, the author reveals himself as a deeply feeling, emotional person, able to escape from particulars, discarding "all the terrible, amazing mire of the little things that have entangled our lives," which he talks about in the story. He looks at Russia with the eyes of an epic writer who understands the illusiveness, the ephemeral nature of the vulgar life of the people he depicts. Behind the emptiness and immobility of the “non-smokers”, the author is able to consider “the whole enormously rushing life”, the future vortex movement of Russia.

The widest range of the author's moods is expressed in lyrical digressions. Admiration for the accuracy of the Russian word and the briskness of the Russian mind (the end of the fifth chapter) is replaced by a sad and elegiac reflection on youth and maturity, about the loss of "living movement" (the beginning of the sixth chapter). A complex range of feelings is expressed in a lyrical digression at the beginning of the seventh chapter. Comparing the fates of two writers, the author writes with bitterness about the moral and aesthetic deafness of the “modern court”, which does not recognize that “glasses looking around the suns and conveying the movements of unnoticed insects are equally wonderful”, that “high enthusiastic laughter is worthy to stand next to the high lyrical movement ". The author refers himself to the type of writer who is not recognized by the "modern court": "His career is harsh, and he will bitterly feel his loneliness." But at the end of the lyrical digression, the author’s mood changes dramatically: he becomes an exalted prophet, his gaze opens up to the future “terrible blizzard of inspiration”, which “will rise from the head clothed in holy horror and in the brilliance” and then his readers “smell in embarrassed awe the majestic thunder of others speeches..."

In the eleventh chapter, the lyrical-philosophical meditation on Russia and the vocation of the writer, whose "head was overshadowed by a formidable cloud, heavy with the coming rains" ("Rus! Rus! I see you, from my wonderful, beautiful far away I see you ..."), replaces the panegyric of the road , a hymn to the movement - the source of "wonderful ideas, poetic dreams", "wonderful impressions" ("What a strange, and alluring, and bearing, and wonderful in the word: the road! .."). 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 that completes the first volume. “Rus-troika”, “all inspired by God”, appears in it as a vision of the author, who seeks to understand the meaning of its movement: “Rus, where are you rushing to? Give an answer. Doesn't give an answer."

The image of Russia created in this digression, and the author's rhetorical question addressed to her, echo Pushkin's image of Russia - the "proud horse", created in The Bronze Horseman, and with the rhetorical question: "What fire is in this horse! Where are you galloping, proud horse, / And where will you lower your hooves? Both Pushkin and Gogol passionately desired to understand the meaning and purpose of the historical movement in Russia. Both in The Bronze Horseman and Dead Souls, the artistic result of the writers' reflections was the image of an uncontrollably rushing country, striving for the future, disobeying its "riders": the formidable Peter, who "raised Russia on its hind legs", stopping its spontaneous movement, and "non-smokers", whose immobility contrasts sharply with the "terrifying movement" of the country.

In the high lyrical pathos of the author, directed to the future, one of the main genre tendencies of the poem was expressed - the epic, which is not dominant in the first volume of Dead Souls. This trend was to be fully revealed in the following volumes. Reflecting on Russia, the author recalls what is hidden behind the “mud of trifles that have entangled our lives” depicted by him, behind the “cold, fragmented, everyday characters that our earthly, sometimes bitter and boring road is teeming with.” It is not without reason that he speaks of the "wonderful, beautiful far away" from which he looks at Russia. This is an epic distance that attracts him with its “secret power”: the distance of the “mighty space” of Russia (“what a sparkling, wonderful, unfamiliar distance to the earth! Russia! ..”) and the distance of historical time: “What prophesies this immense expanse? Is it not here, in you, that an infinite thought is born, when you yourself are without end? Is there not a hero to be here when there is a place where to turn around and walk for him? The heroes depicted in the story of Chichikov's "adventures" are devoid of epic qualities, they are not heroes, but ordinary people with their weaknesses and vices. In the epic image of Russia, created by the author, there is no place for them: they seem to diminish, disappear, just as “like dots, icons, inconspicuously stick out among the plains of low ... cities.” Only the author himself, endowed with knowledge of Russia, "terrible power" and "unnatural power" received by him from the Russian land, becomes the only epic hero of Dead Souls, a prophecy about that hypothetical hero who, according to Gogol, should appear in Russia.

One of the important features of the poem, which does not allow the work to be perceived only as a story about the "adventures of Chichikov" behind the gold placers of "dead souls", is the symbolization of the depicted. “Dead souls” is the most capacious symbol of the poem: after all, Chichikov buys dead serfs from living “dead souls”. These are landlords who have lost their spirituality, turned into "material cattle." Gogol is interested in any person who is able to "give a true idea about the estate to which he belongs," as well as about universal human weaknesses. The private, the individual, the random becomes the expression of the typical, common to all people. The characters of the poem, the circumstances in which they find themselves, the objective world surrounding them are ambiguous. The author not only constantly reminds readers of the “ordinary” nature of everything he writes about, but also invites them to reflect on their observations, to remember what they themselves can see at every step, to take a closer look at themselves, their actions and habitual things. Gogol, as it were, “shines through” every object that is discussed, revealing its symbolic meaning. Chichikov and his provincial acquaintances, the surrounding landowners, by the will of the author, find themselves in the world of symbols, which at the same time remain quite real things and events.

Indeed, what is unusual, for example, in “a book of some kind” that is memorable to all readers of Dead Souls, which “always lay” in Manilov’s office, “marked on the fourteenth page, which he had been constantly reading for two years”? It seems that this is one of the many details that testify to the worthless, empty life of a dreamer, a landowner "without enthusiasm." But if you think about it, behind this information of the author who loves thoroughness, a deep meaning is guessed: Manilov's book is a magical object, a symbol of his stopped life. The life of this landowner seemed to "stumble" at full gallop and froze in the master's house, which stood "alone in the south, that is, on a hill, open to all winds." The existence of Manilov resembles a swamp with stagnant water. What has this person “constantly read” “so-so, neither in the city of Bogdan nor in the village of Seli-fan” for two years now? It is not even this that is important, but the very fact of the frozen movement: the fourteenth page does not let go of Manilov, does not allow him to move forward. His life, which Chichikov sees, is also the "fourteenth page", beyond which the "novel of life" of this landowner cannot advance.

Any Gogol detail becomes a symbolic detail, because the writer shows people and things not as “dead”, but as “resting”, “petrified”. But Gogol's "petrification" is only likening to a dead stone. The movement freezes, but does not disappear - it remains as possible and desirable, as the author's ideal. The book, even if unread, "always lay" on the Manilov table. As soon as this person overcomes his laziness and sluggishness, as soon as he returns from that “God knows where” that intoxicates people, turns them into “God knows what it is”, and the reading of the “Book of Life” will resume. Movement that has slowed down or stalled will continue. Stop and rest for Gogol is not the end of a movement, not a death. They conceal the possibility of movement, which can both lead to the "high road" and make you wander off-road.

Let's take another example. Leaving Korobochka, Chichikov asks her to tell him "how to get to the main road." “How would you do it? the hostess said. - It's tricky to tell, there are a lot of turns; unless I give you a girl to see you off. After all, you, tea, have a place on the goats, where she could sit down. Quite a normal, seemingly unremarkable conversation. But it contains not only worldly, but also symbolic meaning: it turns out if we correlate this conversation with the most important theme of the poem - the theme of the road, path, movement, and with one of the main image-symbols created by Gogol - the image-symbol of the road, directly associated with another symbolic image - the image of Russia.

"How to get to the main road"? - this is not only a question asked by Chichikov, who, by the grace of a drunken Selifan, drove off-road (“we dragged along a harrowed field” until “the cart hit the fence with the shafts and when there was absolutely nowhere to go”). This is also the question of the author, addressed to the reader of the poem: together with the writer, he must think about how to go on the "high road" of life. Behind Korobochka's answer, "strong-headed" and "club-headed," as the irritated Chichikov defined her, hides a different, symbolic meaning. Indeed, it is difficult to talk about how to "get to the big road": after all, "there are many turns", you always run the risk of turning in the wrong direction. Therefore, you can not do without an escort. In the worldly sense, it can be a peasant girl, who has a place on the goats of the Chichikovskaya britzka. The payment to her, who knows all the twists and turns, is a copper penny.

But next to Chichikov there is always a place for the author. He, moving through life with him, also knows all the "turns" in the fate of his heroes. A few chapters later, in a lyrical digression at the beginning of the seventh chapter, the author will directly say about his path: “And for a long time it is determined for me by the wonderful power to go hand in hand with my strange heroes, to look at all the enormously rushing life, to look at it through laughter visible to the world and invisible, tears unknown to him! The "pay" for the writer, who risked "bringing out everything that is every minute before our eyes and that indifferent eyes do not see", loneliness, "reproach and reproach" of the biased "modern court". In "Dead Souls" every now and then there are "strange rapprochements", semantic echoes of situations, subject matter, statements of characters and lyrically-excited monologues of the author. The everyday, subject-everyday layer of the narrative is only the first level of meaning, to which Gogol is not limited. The semantic parallels that arise in the text indicate the complexity of the "construction", the ambiguity of the text of the poem.

Gogol is very demanding of readers: he wants them not to skim over the surface of phenomena, but to penetrate to their core, to ponder the hidden meaning of what they read. To do this, it is necessary to see behind the informative or "objective" meaning of the writer's words their implicit, but most important - symbolically generalized - meaning. The co-creation of readers is just as necessary for the creator of Dead Souls as it is for Pushkin, the author of the novel Eugene Onegin. It is important to remember that the artistic effect of Gogol's prose is created not by what he portrays, what he talks about, but by how he portrays, how he tells. The word is a subtle tool of the writer, which Gogol mastered to perfection.

Whether the second volume of Dead Souls was written and burned is a complex question that does not have a clear answer, although research and educational literature usually states that the manuscript of the second volume was burned by Gogol ten days before his death. This is the main secret of the writer, carried away by him to the grave. In the papers left after his death, several draft versions of individual chapters of the second volume were found. A fundamental dispute arose between Gogol's friends S.T. Aksakov and S.P. Shevyrev about whether these chapters should be published. Copies of the manuscripts made by Shevyrev, a supporter of the publication, were distributed among readers even before the publication of what remained of the second volume, in September 1855. Thus, only fragments of the manuscript, "mounted" by people who knew the writer well, can be the result of ten years of dramatic work on the second volume.

From 1840 until the end of his life, Gogol created a new aesthetics, which was based on the task of the writer's spiritual influence on his contemporaries. The first approaches to the implementation of this aesthetic program were made at the final stage of work on the first volume of Dead Souls, but Gogol tried to fully realize his ideas while working on the second volume. He was no longer satisfied with the fact that earlier, exposing social and human vices to the public, indirectly pointed out the need to overcome them. In the 1840s the writer was looking for real ways to get rid of them. The second volume was supposed to present Gogol's positive program. From this it inevitably followed that the balance of his artistic system had to be upset: after all, the positive requires a visible embodiment, the appearance of “positive” characters close to the author. Not without reason, even in the first volume, Gogol pathetically announced the novelty of the content and new, unusual characters that would appear in his poem. In it, according to the author, “the incalculable wealth of the Russian spirit will appear, a husband gifted with divine valor will pass”, and “a wonderful Russian girl” - in a word, not only the characters “cold, fragmented, everyday”, “boring, nasty, striking and sad reality”, but also the characters in which readers will finally be able to see the “high dignity of a person”.

Indeed, in the second volume, new characters appeared that violated the homogeneity of Gogol's comic world: the landowner Kostanzhoglo, close to the ideal of the "Russian landowner", the farmer Murazov, instructing Chichikov how he should live, the "wonderful girl" Ulinka Betrishcheva, an intelligent and honest governor. The lyrical element, in which the author's ideal of true life (movements, roads, paths) was affirmed in the first volume of the poem, was objectified. At the same time, in the second volume there are also characters close to the characters in the first volume: landowners Tentetnikov, Pyotr Petrovich Petukh, Khlobuev, Colonel Koshkarev. All the material, as in the first volume, is connected by the figure of the "traveling" rogue Chichikov: he fulfills the instructions of General Betrishchev, but does not forget about his own benefit. In one of the chapters, Gogol wanted to focus on depicting the fate of Chichikov, showing the collapse of his next scam and moral revival under the influence of the virtuous farmer Murazov.

In the course of work on the second volume, Gogol came to the conclusion that “satire will no longer work and there will be no mark, but the high reproach of the lyric poet, who already relies on the eternal law, trampled on by blindness by people, will mean a lot.” According to the writer, satirical laughter cannot give people a true understanding of life, since it does not show the way to what is due, to the ideal of a person, therefore it must be replaced by "a high reproach of a lyric poet." Thus, in the 1840s. not the "high laughter" of the comic writer, who sees "everything bad", as in "The Inspector General" and partly in the first volume of "Dead Souls", but the "high reproach" coming from the lyric poet, excited by the moral truths revealed to him, became the basis of Gogol's art .

Gogol emphasized that when addressing people, the writer must take into account the uncertainty and fear that live in those who commit unrighteous acts. The word "lyric poet" should carry both reproach and encouragement. It is necessary, Gogol wrote, that "reproach should be heard in encouragement itself, and encouragement in reproach." Reflections on the dual nature of any phenomenon of life, which contains the possibility of a writer's dual attitude towards him (both reproach and encouragement) is a favorite topic of the author of Dead Souls.

It would be wrong, however, to associate the theme of rebuke-encouragement only with the period of work on the second volume. Already in the first volume, Gogol did not tire of repeating that not only in his heroes, as in the life around them, there is no purity and brightness of contrasting colors: only white or only black. Even in the worst of them, for example, in Plyushkin, whom the author angrily called "a hole in humanity", the colors are mixed. According to the writer, most often gray color prevails in people - the result of mixing white and black. There are no real people who would remain "white", could not fall out in the dirt and vulgarity of the surrounding life. Lumps of dirt will definitely stick to the cleanest gentleman, he will be “salted” with something. The following dialogue between Chichikov and Korobochka is perceived as a meaningful allegory:

“... - Oh, my father, but you, like a boar, have mud all over your back and side! where so deigned to get salty?

“Thanks to God that I just got salty, I need to thank that I didn’t break off the sides completely.”

Gogol, the author of the first volume, already perfectly imagined that in the same person lives both “Prometheus, decisive Prometheus” (“looks out like an eagle, acts smoothly, measuredly”), and a special creature: “a fly, even smaller than a fly.” Everything depends on a person's self-consciousness and circumstances: after all, a person is not virtuous or vicious, he is a bizarre mixture of both virtue and vice, which live in him in the most fantastic combinations. That is why, as Gogol notes in the third chapter of the first volume, with the same ruler of the office "in a distant state" such a transformation occurs, "which even Ovid does not invent": either this person is an example of "pride and nobility", then " the devil knows what: it squeaks like a bird and laughs all the time.

One of the main themes of the second volume of "Dead Souls" - the theme of education, mentoring - was already set in the first volume. The range of Gogol's "pedagogical" ideas expanded. In the second volume, the image of the “ideal mentor” Alexander Petrovich is created, and his education system is described in detail, based on trust in the pupils, encouraging their abilities. The author saw the root of the life failures of the landowner Tentetnikov, who was very reminiscent of Manilov, in the fact that in his youth there was no person next to him who would teach him the “science of life”. Alexander Petrovich, who knew how to have a beneficial effect on the pupils, died, and Fyodor Ivanovich, who succeeded him, demanding complete submission from the children, was so distrustful of them and vindictive that the development of “noble feelings” in them stopped, making many unsuitable for life.

In the eleventh chapter of the first volume, the author began the biography of Chichikov with a story about the upbringing of the hero, about the “lessons” of opportunism and money-grubbing taught to him by his father. It was a "bridge" to the second volume: after all, in it, in contrast to his father, who made a swindler and acquirer out of Pavlusha, Chichikov had a truly wise mentor - the rich farmer Murazov. He advises Chichikov to settle in a quiet corner, closer to the church, to simple, kind people, to marry a poor, kind girl. Worldly fuss only destroys people, Murazov is convinced, instructing the hero to acquire offspring and live the rest of his life in peace and peace with others. Murazov expresses some of Gogol's own cherished thoughts: in recent years he was inclined to regard monasticism as the ideal of human life. In the second volume, the governor-general also addresses the officials with a “high reproach”, urging them to remember the duties of their earthly position and moral duty. The image of the landowner Kostanzhoglo is the embodiment of Gogol's ideal of the Russian landowner.

Along with really fruitful ideas, the positive program of the state and human "organization", outlined by Gogol in the second volume, contains a lot of utopian and conservative. The writer did not doubt the very possibility of moral restructuring of people in the conditions of autocratic-feudal Russia. He was convinced that it was precisely a strong monarchy and its unshakable social and legal support - serfdom - that was the soil on which the sprouts of the new would sprout in people. Addressing the nobility, Gogol the moralist urged the upper class to realize their obligations to the state and people. In figurative form, in the second volume of the poem, the ideas expressed in the publicistically pointed book “Selected passages from correspondence with friends” were to be implemented.

Gogol the artist was inspired by the idea of ​​the effectiveness of the word. The writer's word, in his opinion, should be followed by a result: changes in life itself. Therefore, the drama of Gogol is not so much in the fact that in life itself there was no material for creating positive images, but in his highest demands on himself: after all, he was never a simple “photographer” of reality, who is content with what is already in life. Gogol did not get tired of repeating that the lofty truths revealed to him should be artistically translated into his main book. They should cause a revolution in the souls of readers and be perceived by them as a guide to action. It was precisely the uncertainty that his artistic word could become a "textbook of life" that led to the incompleteness of the majestic building of Gogol's epic.

We absolutely cannot agree with those scholars who believe that Gogol the artist was supplanted in the second volume by Gogol the moralist. Gogol was not only an artist in The Inspector General, and in The Overcoat, and in the first volume of Dead Souls. He did not stop being an artist during the period of work on the second volume. The book "Selected passages from correspondence with friends" - a "trial balloon" launched by Gogol in order to check how the continuation of the poem will be perceived - should not obscure the main thing. Even from the surviving fragments of the second volume, we can conclude that in the last decade Gogol has revealed himself as a writer of a new type, which has become characteristic of Russian literature. This is a writer with a high intensity of religious and moral feelings, who considers the spiritual renewal of Russia the main business of his life, directly addressing his contemporaries with the words of "high reproach" and optimistic encouragement. Gogol was the first writer who "gathered" the Russian man, inspiring him with his faith in the future greatness of Russia. Gogol's followers were F.M. Dostoevsky and L.N. Tolstoy.

Work on the second volume was for Gogol the knowledge of Russia and the Russian people: “My images will not be alive if I do not build them from our material, from our land, so that everyone feels that this is taken from his own body.” Let us note one more important feature of Gogol's new approach to depicting a person. While “reproaching” and “encouraging” people, he also addresses himself. Strict and edifying in relation to the characters, Gogol is no less picky about himself. “For me, abominations are not a novelty: I myself am rather vile,” Gogol admitted in 1846 (letter to L.O. Smirnova). The writer perceives the imperfections and delusions of the heroes as his own, as if "branching" in those whom he depicts. By "exposing" them to the public, he "exposes himself." The second volume is a kind of diary of self-knowledge. Gogol appears in him as an analyst of his own soul, its ideal impulses and subtlest feelings. Both for himself and for his characters, the author longs for one thing: for someone to finally push to action, to indicate the direction of movement and its ultimate goal. "Knowledge of the present" did not frighten him, because "the ways and roads to ... a bright future are hidden precisely in this dark and confusing present, which no one wants to recognize ...".

The idea of ​​movement, of unfettered development, is the most fruitful idea of ​​Dead Souls. In the second volume, Gogol concretizes his idea of ​​development. He now understands its content as the renewal of man - a two-pronged process of the destruction of the old and the birth of the new. The collapse of Chichikov, a money-grubber and a swindler, was the plot outline of the second volume, but his soul is destroyed in the name of creation, new construction. The cherished idea of ​​the second volume is the idea of ​​reorganizing the spiritual world of people, without which, according to Gogol, the normal development of society is impossible. Only the spiritual revival of the Russian people will give strength to the "Rus-Troika" for its flight in historical time.

Gogol's laughter in the second volume of Dead Souls became even more bitter and harsh. Some satirical images (for example, the image of Colonel Koshkarev, who arranged in his village something like a bureaucratic state in miniature) and the satirical image of the provincial city anticipated the appearance of the merciless socio-political satire of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. All the characters in the second volume are not just "old acquaintances" who have much in common with the comic characters of the first volume of the poem. These are new faces that expressed all the bad and good that the writer saw in Russia.

Gogol created, as it were, sketches of literary heroes, “finished” by writers of the second half of the 19th century. The second volume also contains the future Oblomov and Stolz (Tentetnikov, crippled by a bad upbringing and inability to do business, and the enterprising, active Kostanzhoglo). The famous character of Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov, the elder Zosima, is guessed in the schemnik. Ulinka Betrishcheva, “a wonderful Russian girl,” is the prototype of the heroines of Turgenev and Tolstoy. There is also a penitent sinner in the second volume - Chichikov. He really was inclined to change his life, but the moral revival of the hero has not yet taken place. The penitent sinner will become the central figure in Dostoevsky's novels. The image of the defenseless Russian Don Quixote, whose only weapon was the word, was also created by Gogol: this is the image of Tentetnikov.

The themes and images of the second volume of the poem were taken up and clarified by the writers of the second half of the 19th century. Even the failure of the writer, who was not satisfied with his “positive” characters, was symptomatic: this was the beginning of a difficult, sometimes dramatic, search for active, active, “positively beautiful” people, which was continued by the followers of Gogol’s “high” realism.

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 Russia 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 plan, however, Dead Souls rightfully play their very important role in the history of Russian literature.

Artwork test