"Dead Souls" is a work by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, the genre of which the author himself designated as a poem. Originally conceived as a three-volume work. The first volume was published in 1842. The almost finished second volume was destroyed by the writer, but several chapters were preserved in drafts. The third volume was conceived and not started, only some information about it remained.

Gogol began work on Dead Souls in 1835. At this time, the writer dreamed of creating a large epic work dedicated to Russia. A.S. Pushkin, one of the first to appreciate the originality of Nikolai Vasilyevich's talent, advised him to take up a serious essay and suggested an interesting plot. He told Gogol about a clever swindler who tried to get rich by pledging the dead souls he bought to the board of trustees as living souls. At that time, there were many stories about real buyers of dead souls. One of Gogol's relatives was also named among these buyers. The plot of the poem was prompted by reality.

“Pushkin found,” Gogol wrote, “that such a plot of Dead Souls is good for me because it gives me complete freedom to travel all over Russia with the hero and bring out a variety of different characters.” Gogol himself believed that in order "to find out what Russia is today, you must certainly travel around it yourself." In October 1835, Gogol informed Pushkin: “I started writing Dead Souls. The plot stretched out into a long novel and, it seems, will be very funny. But now he stopped him at the third chapter. I'm looking for a good call-to-letter with whom I can get along briefly. I want to show in this novel, at least from one side, all of Rus'.

Gogol anxiously read the first chapters of his new work to Pushkin, expecting them to make him laugh. But, having finished reading, Gogol found that the poet grew gloomy and said: “God, how sad our Russia is!”. This exclamation made Gogol take a different look at his plan and rework the material. In further work, he tried to soften the painful impression that "Dead Souls" could make - he alternated funny phenomena with sad ones.

Most of the work was created abroad, mainly in Rome, where Gogol tried to get rid of the impression made by the attacks of criticism after the production of The Inspector General. Being far from the Motherland, the writer felt an inextricable connection with her, and only love for Russia was the source of his work.

At the beginning of his work, Gogol defined his novel as comic and humorous, but gradually his plan became more complicated. In the autumn of 1836, he wrote to Zhukovsky: “I redid everything I started again, thought over the whole plan more and now I keep it calmly, like a chronicle ... If I complete this creation the way it needs to be done, then ... what a huge, what an original plot!.. All Rus' will appear in it!” So in the course of the work, the genre of the work was determined - a poem, and its hero - all of Rus'. In the center of the work was the "personality" of Russia in all the diversity of her life.

After the death of Pushkin, which was a heavy blow for Gogol, the writer considered the work on "Dead Souls" a spiritual covenant, the fulfillment of the will of the great poet: turned for me from now on into a sacred testament.

Pushkin and Gogol. A fragment of the monument to the Millennium of Russia in Veliky Novgorod.
Sculptor. I.N. shredder

In the autumn of 1839, Gogol returned to Russia and read several chapters in Moscow from S.T. Aksakov, with whose family he became friends at that time. Friends liked what they heard, they gave the writer some advice, and he made the necessary corrections and changes to the manuscript. In 1840, in Italy, Gogol repeatedly rewrote the text of the poem, continuing to work hard on the composition and images of the characters, lyrical digressions. In the autumn of 1841, the writer returned to Moscow again and read to his friends the remaining five chapters of the first book. This time they noticed that the poem shows only the negative aspects of Russian life. Listening to their opinion, Gogol made important inserts into the already rewritten volume.

In the 1930s, when an ideological turning point was outlined in Gogol's mind, he came to the conclusion that a real writer should not only put on public display everything that darkens and obscures the ideal, but also show this ideal. He decided to translate his idea into three volumes of Dead Souls. In the first volume, according to his plans, the shortcomings of Russian life were to be captured, and in the second and third, the ways of the resurrection of "dead souls" were shown. According to the writer himself, the first volume of "Dead Souls" is only "a porch to a vast building", the second and third volumes are purgatory and rebirth. But, unfortunately, the writer managed to realize only the first part of his idea.

In December 1841, the manuscript was ready for printing, but censorship banned its release. Gogol was depressed and was looking for a way out of the situation. Secretly from his Moscow friends, he turned to Belinsky for help, who at that time had arrived in Moscow. The critic promised to help Gogol, and a few days later left for St. Petersburg. Petersburg censors gave permission to print Dead Souls, but demanded that the title be changed to The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls. Thus, they sought to divert the reader's attention from social problems and switch it to the adventures of Chichikov.

"The Tale of Captain Kopeikin", which is plot-related to the poem and is of great importance for revealing the ideological and artistic meaning of the work, was categorically banned by censorship. And Gogol, who cherished it and did not regret giving it up, was forced to rework the plot. In the original version, he laid the blame for the disasters of Captain Kopeikin on the tsarist minister, who was indifferent to the fate of ordinary people. After the alteration, all the blame was attributed to Kopeikin himself.

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".

On June 11, 1842, the book went on sale and, according to the memoirs of contemporaries, was snapped up. Readers immediately divided into two camps - supporters of the writer's views and those who recognized themselves in the characters of the poem. The latter, mainly landowners and officials, immediately attacked the writer, and the poem itself found itself at the center of the journal-critical struggle of the 40s.

After the release of the first volume, Gogol devoted himself entirely to work on the second (begun in 1840). Each page was created tensely and painfully, everything written seemed to the writer far from perfect. In the summer of 1845, during an aggravated illness, Gogol burned the manuscript of this volume. Later, he explained his action by the fact that the "ways and roads" to the ideal, the revival of the human spirit, did not receive a sufficiently truthful and convincing expression. Gogol dreamed of regenerating people through direct instruction, but he could not - he never saw the ideal "resurrected" people. However, his literary undertaking was later continued by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, who were able to show the rebirth of man, his resurrection from the reality that Gogol so vividly portrayed.

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 their 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.

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 understood and explained a lot of useful things there ... I thought to send it to my 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

History of Russian literature of the 19th century. Part 1. 1800-1830s Yury Vladimirovich Lebedev

The creative history of Gogol's poem "Dead Souls".

The plot of the poem was suggested to Gogol by Pushkin, who witnessed fraudulent transactions with "dead souls" during his exile in Chisinau. At the beginning of the 19th century, thousands of peasants fled to the south of Russia, to Bessarabia, from different parts of the country, fleeing the cruel landlords. They were caught and put in place. But the cunning peasants found a way out: they changed their names and surnames to the peasants and philistines who had died in the south. For example, it turned out that the city of Bendery is inhabited by “immortal” people: for many years not a single death was recorded there, because it was customary for the dead “not to be excluded from society”, and their names were given to the peasants who arrived here: local owners received an influx of manpower was beneficial.

The plot of the poem was how a clever rogue found in Russian conditions a dizzyingly bold way to enrich himself. Under serfdom, the peasants were assigned to the landowners as a labor force and their subjects. The landowners paid taxes to the state for every peasant, or, as they said then, for every peasant soul. State audits of these souls were rarely carried out - once every 12-15 years, and for years landowners contributed money for long-dead peasants. On paper, they still existed, but in reality they were "dead souls."

The hero of the poem, Chichikov, decides on such a scam: for a cheap sum, he buys “dead souls” from the landlords, declares them resettled to the south, to the Kherson province, and pledges an imaginary estate to the state for 100 rubles per capita. He then declares them to have died en masse from the epidemic and pockets the money he received. For one thousand "dead souls" he receives a net income of 100 thousand rubles.

Gogol began work on the poem in the fall of 1835, before he started The Inspector General. In the same letter, in which Gogol asks Pushkin for a plot for a comedy, he says: “I started writing Dead Souls. The plot stretched out into a long novel and, it seems, will be ridiculous ... I want to show in this novel, at least from one side, all of Rus'. In this letter, Gogol also calls "Dead Souls" a novel, specifically emphasizing that it lacks the desire to capture the fullness of Russian life with an image. Gogol's goal is different - to show only the dark sides of life, collecting them, as in "The Inspector General", "in one heap."

Before leaving abroad, Gogol introduced Pushkin to the beginning of his work: “... When I began to read the first chapters of Dead Souls to Pushkin in the form they were before, Pushkin, who always laughed when I read (he was also a hunter for laughter), began to gradually become more and more gloomy, gloomy, and finally became completely gloomy. When the reading was over, he said in a voice of anguish: “God, how sad is our Russia!”

Obviously, Gogol was alarmed by this reaction of Pushkin: after all, with his criticism, he wanted to produce a purifying influence on the soul of the reader. The failure with The Inspector General further strengthened Gogol in the correctness of his doubts. And abroad, the writer begins to refine the already written chapters. In a letter to Zhukovsky in November 1836, he reports: “... I set about Dead Souls, which I had started in St. Petersburg. I redid everything I started again, thought over the whole plan more and now I’m leading it calmly, like a chronicle ... If I complete this creation the way it needs to be done, then ... what a huge, what an original plot! What a varied bunch! All Rus' will appear in it!”

According to K. V. Mochulsky, “the production of The Inspector General, perceived as a defeat, made him reevaluate his work. The question arose before Gogol: why did his compatriots not understand him? Why did “whole estates” rise up against him? And he replied: my fault. Everything that he wrote until now was childish: he was not serious about his writing vocation and was careless with laughter ... Now he knows how dangerous the one-sidedness of the image is, and sets himself the goal of fullness. All of Russia should be reflected in the poem. Now he decides to give the story of Chichikov's journey a national scale. The plot about the tricks of a swindler and an adventurer remains, but the characters of the landowners come to the fore, recreated slowly and with epic completeness, absorbing phenomena of all-Russian significance (“Manilovshchina”, “Nozdrevshchina”, “Chichikovshchina”). The very narrative about them takes on a chronicle character, claiming to be a comprehensive recreation of Russian life, transferring the writer's interest from adventurous intrigue to a deep analysis of the contradictions of Russian life in their broad historical perspective.

The original idea to show Rus' "from one side" gives way to a more voluminous and complex task: along with everything bad, "put it in the eyes of the people" and everything good, giving hope for a future national revival. Gogol connects this revival not with social changes, but with the spiritual transformation of Russian life. He explains social vices by the spiritual mortification of people. The name "Dead Souls" takes on a symbolic meaning.

Gogol is convinced that the socio-historical life of a nation is connected by thousands of invisible threads with the state of mind of every person, it is made up of little things. It is in the minutiae of everyday life, in their contradictory diversity, that both positive and negative aspirations of social existence are formed, both the ideal, “straight road” and “deviations” from it. Hence, on the pages of "Dead Souls" a rare combination of "detailedness, detail of artistic analysis" with the scale and breadth of artistic generalizations arises.

The genre designation "novel" ceases to correspond to the nature of the developing idea, and Gogol now calls "Dead Souls" a poem. This idea is already guided by the "Divine Comedy" by Dante with its three-part construction: "hell", "purgatory" and "paradise". Accordingly, Gogol conceives the first volume of "Dead Souls" as the "hell" of modern Russian reality that has gone astray; began ("paradise").

However, the assumption of a three-part construction of the concept of "Dead Souls" has recently been challenged by a number of researchers. After all, such a tripartite structure does not correspond to the Orthodox dogma and the Orthodox type of thinking. And in general, can a believing Christian talk about the establishment of a "paradise life" on this earth? Archimandrite Theodore (Bukharev), referring to the words of Gogol himself, argued that the poem should have ended "with Chichikov's first breath for a true lasting life." The rest will also be reborn - "if they want."

If earlier Gogol was looking for the “fruitful seed” of Russian life in the historical past (“Taras Bulba”), now he wants to find it in the present. Gogol believes that the soul of a Russian Christian, having gone through terrible temptations and temptations, will return to the path of Orthodox truth. In the depths of his fall, at the very bottom of the abyss, the Christian will feel the righteous light that ignites in his soul, the voice of conscience. One of the heroes of the unfinished second volume, turning to Chichikov, says:

“Hey, it’s not about this property, because of which people argue and cut each other, just like you can start landscaping in this life without thinking about another life. Believe me, Pavel Ivanovich, that for the time being, having abandoned everything that is why they gnaw and eat each other on earth, they will not think about the improvement of spiritual property, the improvement of earthly property will not be established. There will come times of famine and poverty, both among the whole people, and separately in every one ... This is clear. Whatever you say, because the body depends on the soul ... Think not about dead souls, but about your living soul, and with God to another road!

In the same volume, the governor-general, sensing the futility of the fight against bribery by administrative measures, gathers all the officials of the provincial city and delivers the following speech to them: “The fact is that it has come for 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 has formed, much stronger than any lawful one. Their conditions have been established; everything is priced and prices are even made public. And no ruler, even if he is wiser than all legislators and rulers, is not able to correct evil, no matter how he restricts the actions of bad officials by appointing other officials as overseers. Everything will be unsuccessful, until each of us feels that, just as in the era of uprising, the people armed themselves against enemies, so they must rise up against unrighteousness ... "

The speech of the military governor to his subordinates here is reminiscent of Taras Bulba's speech about "partnership". But if the Zaporozhian hero of Gogol called on the people to unity and spiritual unity in the face of an external enemy, then the hero of the second volume of Dead Souls calls for general mobilization and militia against the internal enemy. It is in the spiritual perspective that opened up before Gogol that one can correctly understand the direction and pathos of the first volume of Dead Souls, on which he completed work in the summer of 1841.

Censorship, recognizing thirty-six places as "doubtful", also demanded a decisive alteration of "The Tale of Captain Kopeikin" and a change in the title of the poem - instead of "Dead Souls" "The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls." Gogol agreed to a revision, and on May 21, 1842, the first volume of the poem went out of print.

From the book Gogol in Russian criticism author

A few words about Gogol's poem: "The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls" Moscow. 1842. In 8th sheet, 19 pages. We didn't want to say anything about this strange pamphlet; but we were prompted to do so by the following lines in it: We know that our words will seem strange to many; but we ask them

From the book History of Russian Literature of the 19th Century. Part 2. 1840-1860 author Prokofieva Natalia Nikolaevna

Explanation for explanation about Gogol's poem "Dead Souls" Of the many articles written recently about "Dead Souls" or about "Dead Souls", four are especially remarkable. They can not be divided into two halves, in pairs. Each of the two articles in a pair

From the book History of Russian Literature of the 19th Century. Part 1. 1800-1830s author Lebedev Yury Vladimirovich

Dead Souls The end of the poem. N. V. Gogol "The Adventures of Chichikov" Vashchenko-Zakharchenko. Kyiv. 1857 What is this forgery that is so brazen? What kind of Mr. Vashchenko-Zakharchenko is this, who so boldly borrows the title of the book and the name of Gogol for his product in order to sell his

From the book Fire of the Worlds. Selected articles from the Renaissance magazine author Ilyin Vladimir Nikolaevich

The poem "Dead Souls" (1835-1852). The idea and sources of the plot of the poem It is believed that, like the plot of The Inspector General, the plot of Dead Souls was suggested to Gogol by Pushkin. There are two stories associated with the name of Pushkin and comparable to the plot of "Dead Souls". During his stay in

From the book Russian Literature in Evaluations, Judgments, Disputes: Reader of Literary Critical Texts author Esin Andrey Borisovich

Genre originality of the poem "Dead Souls" In terms of genre, "Dead Souls" were conceived as a novel of the "high road". Thus, in a certain sense, they correlated with the famous novel by Cervantes "Don Quixote", which Pushkin also pointed out to Gogol in his time.

From the book From Pushkin to Chekhov. Russian literature in questions and answers author Vyazemsky Yuri Pavlovich

The second volume of Dead Souls. Creative drama of Gogol. From the second volume, only a few fragments have survived, indicating a significant creative evolution of the writer. He dreamed of creating a positive hero who "would be able to say the almighty word:" Forward! ""

From the book Roll Call Kamen [Philological Studies] author Ranchin Andrei Mikhailovich

Gogol's Dead Souls and the Problem of Sin Gogol's main theme is Satan, sin, the Last Judgment, that is, demonology and amartology (the doctrine of sin). Amartologiya, as can be seen from the whole body of the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament and from patrological writing,

From the book Articles on Russian Literature [anthology] author Dobrolyubov Nikolai Alexandrovich author Sitnikov Vitaly Pavlovich

What and why do landlords eat in N.V. Gogol's "Dead Souls" The gastronomic tastes and inclinations of Gogol's landowners from "Dead Souls" are an important characteristic, a means of revealing characters, one of the methods of the author's assessment and a symbolization tool

From the author's book

A few words about Gogol's poem: "The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls" We do not at all undertake the important work of giving an account in this new great work of Gogol, who has already become highly previous creations; we think it necessary to say a few words to indicate

From the author's book

Dead souls Oh, you, my Rus'! My tambourine, reckless, wonderful, kiss, God love you, holy land ... I tremble and smell with tears in my eyes, I hear broad strength and manner when I look at these steppes that have lost their end. Gogol Peering into the mainland of Russian prose, hidden from us already

From the author's book

From the author's book

“Laughter through tears” in N. V. Gogol’s poem “Dead Souls” I. “Dead Souls” is “a medical history written by a masterful hand” (A. I. Herzen). II. "Dead Souls" - a brilliant satire on bureaucratic-feudal Russia.1. Depict "everything bad that is in Russia ...".2. Who are they -

From the author's book

Krupchanov L. M. N. V. Gogol's poem "Dead Souls" "Dead Souls" by Gogol is a work so deep in content and great in creative conception and artistic perfection of form that it alone would fill up the lack of books for ten years and would be lonely

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol began his painstaking and conscientious work on the poem Dead Souls in 1835. The writer dreamed of creating some majestic and comprehensive work about Russia. He wanted to show Russia from different angles, he wanted to explain the characters and images of the Russian people.

The idea for creating the poem "Dead Souls" was given to Nikolai Vasilievich by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. He told the author of the poem about a certain official who traveled around Russia and bought up "dead souls." This idea impressed Gogol so much that he immediately began to write.

When Nikolai Vasilyevich decided to read the first chapters to Alexander Sergeevich, he thought that his friend would start laughing at them. Because it seemed to the author of the poem at that time that the novel was very funny. But after reading the first chapters to Pushkin, Gogol saw a different reaction. Alexander Sergeevich was sad and thoughtful. At that time, the poem seemed very sad to Pushkin.

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol changed, corrected, and along the way made adjustments to his novel so many times in order to achieve the desired result. After Pushkin's death, Gogol continued to write a poem in memory of a friend.

For six long years the poem went to the reader. When "Dead Souls" were written and sent to print, the censorship did not miss the work. For this, the author had to lay all the blame on Chichikov himself. Although the initial version of the imposition of guilt was attributed to officials.

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol wanted to write a poem that would show the whole of Russia. I would tell about the character, life and will of the Russian people. He almost succeeded. The author wanted to write three volumes of Dead Souls. In the first volume, he showed the very people whom he considered "dead souls." The second volume would be a purgatory for these same souls, and the third would be a rebirth. But, due to the illness of the author himself, the second volume was burned. Subsequently, he explained his act by the fact that he could not find ways to revive the ideal.

In 1841, the novel Dead Souls was published. It is sold out from the shelves of bookstores at the speed of light. The people are divided into two parts: the first is on the side of the author, the second is the same landowners and officials. The second half of the people desecrated Gogol, was extremely indignant and humiliated by what the author wrote in his poem. However, it is worth noting that the poem "Dead Souls" not only showed "dead souls", but also showed Russia from different angles. She talked about people of different strata of the population and different characters.

Picture or drawing Dead souls creation story

Other retellings for the reader's diary

• Summary of the fairy tale The Gingerbread House of Charles Perrault

  Little children from a poor family got lost in the forest. There they saw a house made of gingerbread. It contained various treats and sweets.

• Summary Tale of the Sea King and Vasilisa the Wise

  In a distant kingdom lived a king with his wife. However, the couple was childless. Once the sovereign went on various business to travel, and after a while it was time for him to return. And at this time, his son was suddenly born,

• Summary of Shukshin Kalina red

  Yegor Prokudin leaves the zone. His dream is to start his own business. He has to meet his future wife. Egor and Lyubov Fedorovna know each other only by correspondence.

• Summary of Alexin My brother plays the clarinet

  In the diary, of course, Zhenya's childlike immediacy is conveyed. She herself cannot impress others with something, and she does not try. She studies for triples, because for the Sister of a great musician, grades are nonsense. Why try? After all, she has a brilliant brother

• Summary of Yakovlev Bavaklava

  Twelve-year-old Lenya Sharov returns from school. He is surprised that, as usual, he is not met by his grandmother, who takes care of him while his parents are at work. The father informs the boy that his grandmother has died.

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was born in the town of Sorochintsy, Mirgorodsky district, Poltava province. His Childhood passed in the family estate of Vasilievka. Father, a passionate admirer of the theater, wrote poems, plays, then presented them on the amateur stage with wealthy relatives of the Troshchinskys.

Gogol himself, while studying at the gymnasium (the city of Nizhyn), was also fond of theater and participated in productions. Young Gogol even played the role of Mrs. Prostakova in Fonvizin's The Undergrowth; according to witnesses, the audience laughed until colic.

In the "Author's Confession" he described his first experiences in literary work. “My first experiments, the first exercises in compositions, for which I had acquired the habit during my recent stay at school, were almost all of a lyrical and serious kind. Neither I myself, nor my companions, who also practiced with me in compositions, did not think that I would have to be a comic and satirical writer ... "

Already in those years, Gogol knew how to accept criticism: when The Brothers Tverdoslavich, a Slavic Tale was considered unsuccessful by his friends, he “did not resist or object. He quite calmly tore his manuscript into small pieces and threw it into a stoking stove, ”his classmate wrote. This was the first known burning of Gogol's works.

Classmates did not notice his talent, and a funny recollection of one of them has been preserved: “N. V. Gogol passionately loved drawing, literature, but it would be too ridiculous to think that Gogol would be Gogol.

Poor health and lack of funds did not prevent Nikolai Vasilyevich from deciding to go to St. Petersburg in search of his fate (1828).

Here is how the modern Swedish writer Chel Johansson presents his thoughts and feelings in his story “The Face of Gogol”: “I am only nineteen! I was only nineteen years old when I first breathed the winter Petersburg air. And as a result, he caught a severe cold.

With a high temperature and a frostbitten nose, I lay in bed in the apartment that we rented from Danilevsky and I rented ...

In the end I got up, staggered, crawled out into the street and went to wander. Where am I?

I'm standing at Pushkin's house! It must be warm and cozy inside. Pushkin is sitting there .. I'm calling. The footman who opened the door looks me up and down.

Pushkin, - I squeeze out at last, - I need to see Pushkin. This meeting did not take place. But she was there. Very little time passed, and he met Zhukovsky (in 1830), with Pushkin (in 1831) ... They meet, and this is what Pushkin wrote about his young friend: “Our readers, of course, remember the impression made on us by the appearance“ Evenings on a Farm”: everyone rejoiced at this lively description of a singing and dancing tribe, these fresh pictures of Little Russian nature, this cheerfulness, simple-hearted and crafty at the same time. Fonvizin!

And here is how Pushkin's conversation with Gogol appears to a modern writer: “Nikolai, I gave you the plot of The Government Inspector, here's another one for you. One rogue travels around Russia and, in order to get rich, buys up dead souls, serfs who have died, but have not yet been included in the revision tale. Do you understand? Good idea, huh? Here you can depict the whole of Russia, whatever you want!

You gave me so much, Alexander Sergeevich!.. Today you gave me "Dead Souls"... You say that you yourself

it is impossible to tell this story as long as there is censorship. Why do you think I can do it?"

Gogol proceeds to his main work. He writes it in Italy, but is constantly connected with his homeland. News comes from there. Here is an article by V. G. Belinsky in the Teleskop magazine, which says that Gogol said a new word about literature. Like everything in his stories, “simple, ordinary, natural and true, and, together, how original and new!” Gogol is glad But a few hours after reading the article, terrible news comes: Pushkin is dead ...

So, Pushkin was gone. “My loss,” wrote Gogol, “is greater than all. I didn’t do anything, I didn’t write anything without his advice… The Great One was gone.”

Meanwhile, work on "Dead Souls" was going on. Of course, it was not a continuous holiday. As in life, difficulties, failures, and disappointments are inevitable in artistic creation. “In order to succeed, you have to experience failure. ... But if you are strong enough, you can easily withstand all failures, moreover, you rejoice in them, in this continuous fiasco in front of yourself. The road will be mastered by the walking one!

I was going to create something that no one had ever created before. "Dead Souls" will become the great work that Pushkin bequeathed to me to write.

Like Dante's Divine Comedy, it will consist of three parts: Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Already the first part will highlight the whole of Russia, will expose all the evil. I knew that the book would cause outrage and protests. Such is my fate, to be at war with my compatriots. But when the second part comes out, the protests will fall silent, and with the completion of the third part, I will be recognized as a spiritual leader. For here the secret plan of this work will be revealed. Works about people without a soul and about the death of human souls. Works about the art of poetry. And the idea is this: the path of people to salvation. To life! Resurrection! Resurrection!

After three years of living abroad (Germany, Switzerland, France (Paris), Italy (Naples, Rome), he came to Moscow and read to his friends the first six chapters of the first volume of Dead Souls. Gogol called his mother to Moscow, settled his financial affairs. .. In September 1839, he was again in Rome and wrote from there to S. T. Aksakov: "My work is great, my feat is saving. I have now died for everything petty ..." And there are already signs of an illness in his state that overshadowed the end his life.

In May 1842 Dead Souls went out of print. The success of the book was extraordinary. Gogol again goes abroad, tries to be treated, spends the winter in warm regions. Six nomadic years pass abroad.

In 1845 he burned the written chapters of the second volume of Dead Souls, in 1846 he prepared the book Selected passages from correspondence with friends.

In the "Author's Confession" Gogol states: "... it is not my business to teach with a sermon ...", but this is exactly what we see on the pages of Selected Places, which have not been published in our country for many years, and now, when they are published without reductions or exceptions, once again gave rise to the most irreconcilable disputes.

After a trip to the holy places in Palestine, Gogol returned to Russia in 1848. Twice he visited the house in Vasilievka, one winter he fled from the cold in Odessa. He wrote a lot, suffered from lack of money, was sick, was treated ...

The second volume of Dead Souls was born slowly. On the night of February 12, 1852, the author burned all the newly written chapters of his great poem.

After the destruction of his creations, Gogol was greatly weakened.

He did not leave his room anymore, he did not want to see anyone. Almost stopped eating, only occasionally drank a sip or two of water. He sat motionless in armchairs for days on end, staring blankly at one point.