Image of landowners in Gogol's poem "DEAD SOULS"
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol is a great realist writer, whose work has become firmly established in Russian classical literature.
His originality lies in the fact that he was one of the first to give the broadest image of the county landowner-bureaucratic Russia. In his poem Dead Souls, Gogol reveals to the utmost the contradictions of contemporary Russian reality, shows the failure of the bureaucratic apparatus, the withering away of serf-feudal relations, and the plight of the common people. Therefore, the poem "Dead Souls" is rightly called the encyclopedia of Russian provincial life in the first third of the 19th century. In the poem, along with negative images of landowners, officials, a new hero - a nascent entrepreneur, images of the people, the Motherland and the author himself are given.
A complete misunderstanding of the practical side of life, mismanagement, we note at the landowner Manilov. He does not manage his estate, completely entrusting this to the clerk. He cannot even tell Chichikov how many peasants he has and whether they have died since the last revision. His house "stood loneliness at a brisk pace, open to all the winds, which only take it into their head to blow." Instead of a shady garden around the manor's house, there were five or six birches "with thin tops." And in the village itself there was nowhere "a growing tree or any kind of greenery." His impracticality is also evidenced by the interior of his house, where, next to the magnificent furniture, "two chairs covered with simple matting" or "heaps of ash knocked out of a pipe" lying on an expensive polished table side by side. But we find the most vivid reflection of Manilov's character in his language, speech manner: "... Of course ... if the neighborhood were good, if, for example, such a person with whom one could in some way talk about courtesy, about good treatment, to follow some sort of science, so that it stirs the soul in such a way, it would give, so to speak, a kind of guy. Here he wanted to express something else, but, noticing that he had somewhat reported, he only fiddled with his hand in the air.
Korobochka has a completely different attitude to the household. She has a "pretty village", a yard full of all kinds of birds, there are "spacious gardens with cabbage, onions, potatoes, beets and other household vegetables", there are "apple trees and other fruit trees." She knows the names of her peasants by heart. But her mental horizons are extremely limited. She is stupid, ignorant, superstitious. The box does not see anything further than "its nose". Everything "new and unprecedented" scares her. She is a typical representative of small provincial landowners, leading subsistence farming. Her behavior (which can also be noted in Sobakevich) is guided by a passion for profit, self-interest.
But Sobakevich is significantly different from Korobochka. He is, in Gogol's words, "the devil's fist." The passion for enrichment pushes him to cunning, makes him seek various means of profit. Therefore, unlike other landowners, he uses an innovation - cash dues. He is not at all surprised by the sale and purchase of dead souls, but only cares about how much he will receive for them.
The representative of another type of landowners is Nozdrev. He is the complete opposite of Manilov and Korobochka. Nozdrev is a fidget, a hero of fairs, drinking parties, a card table. He was a drunkard, a rowdy and a liar. His business is running. Only the kennel is in excellent condition. Among dogs, he is like a "father" among a large family (one would like to compare him with Fonvizin's Skotinin). He immediately squanders the income received from the forced labor of the peasants, which speaks of his moral decline, indifference to the peasants.
Complete moral impoverishment, the loss of human qualities are characteristic of Plyushkin. The author rightly dubbed him "a hole in humanity." Speaking of Plyushkin, Gogol exposes the horrors of serfdom. Putting on the form of a light joke, Gogol reports terrible things that Plyushkin is "a swindler, he starved all people to death, that convicts live better in prison than his serfs." Over the past three years, 80 people have died at Plyushkin's. With a terrible mien of a half-madman, he declares that "the people are painfully gluttonous with him, from idleness got into the habit of cracking." About 70 peasants at Plyushkin escaped, became outlaws, unable to endure the life. His courtyards run barefoot until late winter, since the stingy Plyushkin has one boots for everyone, and even then they are put on only when the courtyards enter the canopy of the manor's house. Plyushkin and his ilk hampered the economic development of Russia: "On the vast territory of the estate Plyushkin (and he has about 1,000 souls), economic life froze: mills, felters, cloth factories, carpentry machines, spinning mills stopped moving; hay and bread rotted, stacks and stacks turned into clean manure, flour turned into stone, into cloth. canvases and household materials were scary to touch. Meanwhile, income was collected on the farm as before, the peasant still carried the dues, the woman carried the canvas. All this fell into the pantries, and all this became rotten and dust. "Truly" laughter through tears.
Plyushkin and other landowners, represented by Gogol, are "decommissioned from life;". are a product of a particular social environment. Plyushkin was once a smart, thrifty owner; Manilov served in the army and was a modest, delicate, educated officer, but turned into a vulgar, idle, sugary dreamer. With great force, Gogol indicted the feudal serf system, the Nikolaev regime, the whole way of life in which Manilovism, Nozdrevschina, Plyushkin squalor are typical, normal life phenomena.
In this display of the vicious feudal order and the political system of Russia, the great significance of the poem "Dead Souls" consisted. "The poem shook the whole of Russia" (Herzen), it awakened the self-consciousness of the Russian people.
Gogol created his works in those historical conditions that developed in Russia after the failure of the first revolutionary speech - the Decembrist uprising of 1825. The new socio-political situation posed new tasks for the figures of Russian social thought and literature, which were deeply reflected in the work of Gogol. Turning to the most important social problems of his time, the writer went further along the path of realism, which was discovered by Pushkin and Gribo-Edov. Developing the principles of critical realism, Gogol became one of the greatest representatives of this trend in Russian literature. As Belinsky notes, "Gogol was the first to look boldly and directly at Russian reality."
One of the main themes in Gogol's work is the life of the Russian landowner class, the Russian nobility as the ruling class, its fate and role in public life. It is characteristic that Gogol's main way of depicting landowners is satire. The images of the landlords reflect the process of gradual degradation of this class, revealing all its vices and shortcomings. Gogol's satire is tinged with irony and "hit right in the forehead." Irony helped the writer to talk about what it was impossible to talk about under censorship conditions. Gogol's laughter seems good-natured, but he spares no one, each phrase has a deep, hidden meaning, subtext. Irony is a characteristic element of Gogol's satire. It is present not only in the author's speech, but also in the speech of the characters. Irony - one of the essential features of Gogol's poetics - gives the story more realism, becoming an artistic means of critical analysis of reality.
In the largest work of Gogol - the poem "Dead Souls" the images of the landowners are given in the most complete and multifaceted way. The poem is built as a story of the adventures of Chichikov, an official who buys up "dead souls". The composition of the poem allowed the author
tell about different landowners and their villages. Almost half of the first volume of the poem (five chapters out of eleven) is devoted to characterizing the various types of Russian landowners. Gogol creates five characters, five portraits that are so different from each other, and at the same time, typical features of a Russian landowner appear in each of them.
Our acquaintance begins with Mani-lov and ends with Plyushkin. This sequence has its own logic: from one landowner to another, the process of impoverishment of the human personality deepens, an ever more terrible picture of the disintegration of serf society unfolds.
Opens a portrait gallery of landowners Manilov. Already in the surname itself, his character is manifested. The description begins with a picture of the village of Manilovka, which "could not lure many with its location." With irony, the author describes the master's courtyard, with a claim to "an English garden with an overgrown pond", thin bushes and with a pale inscription: "Temple of solitary reflection." Speaking of Manilov, the author exclaims: "God alone could have said what the character of Manilov was." He is kind by nature, polite, courteous, but all this has taken ugly forms with him. Mani-lov is beautiful-hearted and sentimental to the point of cloying. Relationships between people seem to him idyllic and festive. Manilov does not know life at all, reality is replaced by an empty fantasy in him. He likes to think and dream, sometimes even about things that are useful for the peasants. But his projecting is far from the demands of life. He does not know about the real needs of the peasants and never thinks about it. Manilov fancies himself a bearer of spiritual culture. Once in the army, he was considered the most educated person. Ironically, the author speaks about the situation at Manilov's house, in which "something was always missing", about his sugary relationship with his wife. At the moment of talking about dead souls, Manilov is compared with a too smart minister. Here the irony of Gogol, as it were, inadvertently invades a forbidden area. Comparing Manilov with a minister means that the latter is not so different from this landowner, and "Manilovism" is a typical phenomenon of this vulgar world.
The third chapter of the poem is devoted to the image of the Box, which Gogol refers to the number of those "small landowners who complain about crop failures, losses and hold their heads somewhat to one side, and meanwhile they are gradually collecting money in motley bags placed in boxes chest of drawers. These coins are obtained from the sale of a wide variety of subsistence products. Korobochka realized the benefits of trade and after much persuasion agreed to sell such an unusual product as dead souls. The author is ironic in describing the dialogue between Chichikov and Korobochka. The "cudgel-headed" landowner cannot understand for a long time what they want from her, infuriates Chichikov, and then bargains for a long time, afraid "just not to miscalculate." Korobochka's horizons and interests do not go beyond the boundaries of her estate. The economy and all its life are patriarchal in nature.
Gogol draws a completely different form of decomposition of the nobility in the image of Nozdryov (Chapter IV). This is a typical man of all trades. There was something open, direct, daring in his face. It is characterized by a kind of "breadth of nature." As the author ironically notes, "Nozdryov was in some respects a historical person." Not a single meeting he attended was without stories! Nozdryov, with a light heart, loses a lot of money at cards, beats a simpleton at the fair, and immediately “sips” all the money. Nozdrev is a master of "pouring bullets", he is a reckless braggart and an utter liar. Nozdryov behaves defiantly everywhere, even aggressively. The speech of the hero is saturated with swear words, while he has a passion for "shaking one's neighbor." In the image of Nozdrev, Gogol created a new socio-psychological type of “nozdrevshchina” in Russian literature.
When describing Sobakevich, the author's satire acquires a more accusatory character (Chapter V of the poem). He bears little resemblance to the previous landowners; he is a “landowner-fist”, a cunning, tight-fisted merchant. He is alien to the dreamy complacency of Manilov, the violent madness of Nozdryov, the hoarding of Korobochka. He is taciturn, has an iron grip, is smart, and there are few people who would be able to deceive him. Everything about him is solid and strong. Gogol finds a reflection of a person's character in all the surrounding things of his life. Everything in Sobakevich's house surprisingly resembled himself. Each thing seemed to say: "And I, too, Sobakevich." Gogol draws a figure striking in its rudeness. To Chichikov, he seemed very similar to "a medium-sized bear." Sobakevich is a cynic who is not ashamed of moral deformity either in himself or in others. This is a man far from enlightenment, a die-hard feudal lord who cares about the peasants only as a labor force. It is characteristic that, except for Sobakevich, no one understood the essence of the “scoundrel” Chichikov, and he perfectly understood the essence of the proposal, which reflects the spirit of the times: everything is subject to sale and purchase, everything should be benefited from.
Chapter VI of the poem is dedicated to Plyushkin, whose name has become a household name to denote stinginess and moral degradation. This image becomes the last step in the degeneration of the landlord class. The reader's acquaintance with the character Gogol begins, as usual, with a description of the village and the estate of the landowner. On all the buildings, “some special dilapidation” was noticeable. The writer paints a picture of the complete ruin of the once rich landowner's economy. The reason for this is not the wastefulness and idleness of the landlord, but painful stinginess. This is an evil satire on the landowner, who has become "a hole in humanity." The owner himself is a sexless creature resembling a housekeeper. This hero does not cause laughter, but only bitter regret.
So, the five characters created by Gogol in "Dead Souls" depict the state of the noble-serf class in many ways. Manilov, Korobochka, Nozdrev, Sobakevich, Plyushkin - all these are different forms of one phenomenon - the economic, social, spiritual decline of the class of feudal landowners.
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol is a great realist writer, whose work has become firmly established in Russian classical literature.
His originality lies in the fact that he was one of the first to give the broadest image of the county landowner-bureaucratic Russia. In his poem Dead Souls, Gogol reveals to the utmost the contradictions of contemporary Russian reality, shows the failure of the bureaucratic apparatus, the withering away of serf-feudal relations, and the plight of the common people. Therefore, the poem "Dead Souls" is rightly called the encyclopedia of Russian provincial life in the first third of the 19th century. In the poem, along with negative images of landowners, officials, a new hero - a nascent entrepreneur, images of the people, the Motherland and the author himself are given.
A complete misunderstanding of the practical side of life, mismanagement, we note at the landowner Manilov. He does not manage his estate, completely entrusting this to the clerk. He cannot even tell Chichikov how many peasants he has and whether they have died since the last revision. His house "stood loneliness at a brisk pace, open to all the winds, which only take it into their head to blow." Instead of a shady garden around the manor's house, there were five or six birches "with thin tops." And in the village itself there was nowhere "a growing tree or any kind of greenery." His impracticality is also evidenced by the interior of his house, where, next to the magnificent furniture, "two chairs covered with simple matting" or "heaps of ash knocked out of a pipe" lying on an expensive polished table side by side. But we find the most vivid reflection of Manilov's character in his language, speech manner: "... Of course ... if the neighborhood were good, if, for example, such a person with whom one could in some way talk about courtesy, about good treatment, to follow some sort of science, so that it stirs the soul in such a way, it would give, so to speak, a kind of guy. Here he wanted to express something else, but, noticing that he had somewhat reported, he only fiddled with his hand in the air.
Korobochka has a completely different attitude to the household. She has a "pretty village", a yard full of all kinds of birds, there are "spacious gardens with cabbage, onions, potatoes, beets and other household vegetables", there are "apple trees and other fruit trees." She knows the names of her peasants by heart. But her mental horizons are extremely limited. She is stupid, ignorant, superstitious. The box does not see anything further than "its nose". Everything "new and unprecedented" scares her. She is a typical representative of small provincial landowners, leading subsistence farming. Her behavior (which can also be noted in Sobakevich) is guided by a passion for profit, self-interest.
But Sobakevich is significantly different from Korobochka. He is, in Gogol's words, "the devil's fist." The passion for enrichment pushes him to cunning, makes him seek various means of profit. Therefore, unlike other landowners, he uses an innovation - cash dues. He is not at all surprised by the sale and purchase of dead souls, but only cares about how much he will receive for them.
The representative of another type of landowners is Nozdrev. He is the complete opposite of Manilov and Korobochka. Nozdrev is a fidget, a hero of fairs, drinking parties, a card table. He was a drunkard, a rowdy and a liar. His business is running. Only the kennel is in excellent condition. Among dogs, he is like a "father" among a large family (one would like to compare him with Fonvizin's Skotinin). He immediately squanders the income received from the forced labor of the peasants, which speaks of his moral decline, indifference to the peasants.
Complete moral impoverishment, the loss of human qualities are characteristic of Plyushkin. The author rightly dubbed him "a hole in humanity." Speaking of Plyushkin, Gogol exposes the horrors of serfdom. Putting on the form of a light joke, Gogol reports terrible things that Plyushkin is "a swindler, he starved all people to death, that convicts live better in prison than his serfs." Over the past three years, 80 people have died at Plyushkin's. With a terrible mien of a half-madman, he declares that "the people are painfully gluttonous with him, from idleness got into the habit of cracking." About 70 peasants at Plyushkin escaped, became outlaws, unable to endure the life. His courtyards run barefoot until late winter, since the stingy Plyushkin has one boots for everyone, and even then they are put on only when the courtyards enter the canopy of the manor's house. Plyushkin and his ilk hampered the economic development of Russia: "On the vast territory of the estate Plyushkin (and he has about 1,000 souls), economic life froze: mills, felters, cloth factories, carpentry machines, spinning mills stopped moving; hay and bread rotted, stacks and stacks turned into clean manure, flour turned into stone, into cloth. canvases and household materials were scary to touch. Meanwhile, income was collected on the farm as before, the peasant still carried the dues, the woman carried the canvas. All this fell into the pantries, and all this became rotten and dust. "Truly" laughter through tears.
Plyushkin and other landowners, represented by Gogol, are "decommissioned from life;". are a product of a particular social environment. Plyushkin was once a smart, thrifty owner; Manilov served in the army and was a modest, delicate, educated officer, but turned into a vulgar, idle, sugary dreamer. With great force, Gogol indicted the feudal serf system, the Nikolaev regime, the whole way of life in which Manilovism, Nozdrevschina, Plyushkin squalor are typical, normal life phenomena.
In this display of the vicious feudal order and the political system of Russia, the great significance of the poem "Dead Souls" consisted. "The poem shook the whole of Russia" (Herzen), it awakened the self-consciousness of the Russian people.
Bibliography
For the preparation of this work, materials from the site http://sochok.by.ru/
Image of landowners in Gogol's poem "DEAD SOULS"
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol is a great realist writer, whose work has become firmly established in Russian classical literature.
His originality lies in the fact that he was one of the first to give the broadest image of the county landowner-bureaucratic Russia. In his poem Dead Souls, Gogol reveals to the utmost the contradictions of contemporary Russian reality, shows the failure of the bureaucratic apparatus, the withering away of serf-feudal relations, and the plight of the common people. Therefore, the poem "Dead Souls" is rightly called the encyclopedia of Russian provincial life in the first third of the 19th century. In the poem, along with negative images of landowners, officials, a new hero - a nascent entrepreneur, images of the people, the Motherland and the author himself are given.
A complete misunderstanding of the practical side of life, mismanagement, we note at the landowner Manilov. He does not manage his estate, completely entrusting this to the clerk. He cannot even tell Chichikov how many peasants he has and whether they have died since the last revision. His house "stood loneliness at a brisk pace, open to all the winds, which only take it into their head to blow." Instead of a shady garden around the manor's house, there were five or six birches "with thin tops." And in the village itself there was nowhere "a growing tree or any kind of greenery." His impracticality is also evidenced by the interior of his house, where, next to the magnificent furniture, "two chairs covered with simple matting" or "heaps of ash knocked out of a pipe" lying on an expensive polished table side by side. But we find the most vivid reflection of Manilov's character in his language, speech manner: "... Of course ... if the neighborhood were good, if, for example, such a person with whom one could in some way talk about courtesy, about good treatment, to follow some sort of science, so that it stirs the soul in such a way, it would give, so to speak, a kind of guy. Here he wanted to express something else, but, noticing that he had somewhat reported, he only fiddled with his hand in the air.
Korobochka has a completely different attitude to the household. She has a "pretty village", a yard full of all kinds of birds, there are "spacious gardens with cabbage, onions, potatoes, beets and other household vegetables", there are "apple trees and other fruit trees." She knows the names of her peasants by heart. But her mental horizons are extremely limited. She is stupid, ignorant, superstitious. The box does not see anything further than "its nose". Everything "new and unprecedented" scares her. She is a typical representative of small provincial landowners, leading subsistence farming. Her behavior (which can also be noted in Sobakevich) is guided by a passion for profit, self-interest.
But Sobakevich is significantly different from Korobochka. He is, in Gogol's words, "the devil's fist." The passion for enrichment pushes him to cunning, makes him seek various means of profit. Therefore, unlike other landowners, he uses an innovation - cash dues. He is not at all surprised by the sale and purchase of dead souls, but only cares about how much he will receive for them.
The representative of another type of landowners is Nozdrev. He is the complete opposite of Manilov and Korobochka. Nozdrev is a fidget, a hero of fairs, drinking parties, a card table. He was a drunkard, a rowdy and a liar. His business is running. Only the kennel is in excellent condition. Among dogs, he is like a "father" among a large family (one would like to compare him with Fonvizin's Skotinin). He immediately squanders the income received from the forced labor of the peasants, which speaks of his moral decline, indifference to the peasants.
Complete moral impoverishment, the loss of human qualities are characteristic of Plyushkin. The author rightly dubbed him "a hole in humanity." Speaking of Plyushkin, Gogol exposes the horrors of serfdom. Putting on the form of a light joke, Gogol reports terrible things that Plyushkin is "a swindler, he starved all people to death, that convicts live better in prison than his serfs." Over the past three years, 80 people have died at Plyushkin's. With a terrible mien of a half-madman, he declares that "the people are painfully gluttonous with him, from idleness got into the habit of cracking." About 70 peasants at Plyushkin escaped, became outlaws, unable to endure the life. His courtyards run barefoot until late winter, since the stingy Plyushkin has one boots for everyone, and even then they are put on only when the courtyards enter the canopy of the manor's house. Plyushkin and his ilk hampered the economic development of Russia: "On the vast territory of the estate Plyushkin (and he has about 1,000 souls), economic life froze: mills, felters, cloth factories, carpentry machines, spinning mills stopped moving; hay and bread rotted, stacks and stacks turned into clean manure, flour turned into stone, into cloth. canvases and household materials were scary to touch. Meanwhile, income was collected on the farm as before, the peasant still carried the dues, the woman carried the canvas. All this fell into the pantries, and all this became rotten and dust. "Truly" laughter through tears.
Plyushkin and other landowners, represented by Gogol, are "decommissioned from life;". are a product of a particular social environment. Plyushkin was once a smart, thrifty owner; Manilov served in the army and was a modest, delicate, educated officer, but turned into a vulgar, idle, sugary dreamer. With great force, Gogol indicted the feudal serf system, the Nikolaev regime, the whole way of life in which Manilovism, Nozdrevschina, Plyushkin squalor are typical, normal life phenomena.
In this display of the vicious feudal order and the political system of Russia, the great significance of the poem "Dead Souls" consisted. "The poem shook the whole of Russia" (Herzen), it awakened the self-consciousness of the Russian people.
Bibliography
For the preparation of this work, materials from the site http://sochok.by.ru/
The travesty of a chivalric romance in a picaresque one sometimes leads to the fact that folklore elements also begin to have a great influence. Their influence on the formation of the genre originality of "Dead Souls" is quite large, and the work of Gogol, who was a Ukrainophile, was directly influenced by Ukrainian motifs, especially since travesty turned out to be the most common on...
He did not know life at all, his reality was replaced by an empty fantasy, and therefore he looks at everything through "rose-colored glasses". This is the only landowner who presented "dead souls" to Chichikov. Following Manilov, Gogol shows Korobochka, one of "those mothers, small landowners, who cry for crop failures and losses, and meanwhile they collect a little money in bags placed in boxes ...
And indifference. In this vulgar world, evil knows no bounds, for it is boundless. What will you take from him? Laugh at them? It is comical in its immense vulgarity. The main question asked by N.V. Gogol in the poem "Dead Souls": "Is there something bright in this world, at least some kind of appeal to the light?" No, other idols are served here: the stomach, materialism, the love of money. But these are all false values, and...
poem? The definition of the genre became clear to the writer only at the last moment, since, while still working on the poem, Gogol calls it either a poem or a novel. To understand the features of the genre of the poem "Dead Souls", you can compare this work with the "Divine Comedy" by Dante, a poet of the Renaissance. Her influence is felt in Gogol's poem. The Divine Comedy consists of three parts. In the first part...
