Dead Souls Read online

  Produced by John Bickers

  DEAD SOULS

  By Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

  Translated by D. J. Hogarth

  Introduction By John Cournos

  Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, born at Sorochintsky, Russia, on 31stMarch 1809. Obtained government post at St. Petersburg and later anappointment at the university. Lived in Rome from 1836 to 1848. Died on21st February 1852.

  PREPARER'S NOTE

  The book this was typed from contains a complete Part I, and a partialPart II, as it seems only part of Part II survived the adventuresdescribed in the introduction. Where the text notes that pages aremissing from the "original", this refers to the Russian original, notthe translation.

  All the foreign words were italicised in the original, a style notpreserved here. Accents and diphthongs have also been left out.

  INTRODUCTION

  Dead Souls, first published in 1842, is the great prose classic ofRussia. That amazing institution, "the Russian novel," not only beganits career with this unfinished masterpiece by Nikolai Vasil'evichGogol, but practically all the Russian masterpieces that have come sincehave grown out of it, like the limbs of a single tree. Dostoieffskygoes so far as to bestow this tribute upon an earlier work by the sameauthor, a short story entitled The Cloak; this idea has been wittilyexpressed by another compatriot, who says: "We have all issued out ofGogol's Cloak."

  Dead Souls, which bears the word "Poem" upon the title page of theoriginal, has been generally compared to Don Quixote and to the PickwickPapers, while E. M. Vogue places its author somewhere between Cervantesand Le Sage. However considerable the influences of Cervantes andDickens may have been--the first in the matter of structure, the otherin background, humour, and detail of characterisation--the predominatingand distinguishing quality of the work is undeniably something foreignto both and quite peculiar to itself; something which, for want ofa better term, might be called the quality of the Russian soul. TheEnglish reader familiar with the works of Dostoieffsky, Turgenev, andTolstoi, need hardly be told what this implies; it might be defined inthe words of the French critic just named as "a tendency to pity." Onemight indeed go further and say that it implies a certain tolerance ofone's characters even though they be, in the conventional sense, knaves,products, as the case might be, of conditions or circumstance, whichafter all is the thing to be criticised and not the man. But pity andtolerance are rare in satire, even in clash with it, producing in theresult a deep sense of tragic humour. It is this that makes of DeadSouls a unique work, peculiarly Gogolian, peculiarly Russian, anddistinct from its author's Spanish and English masters.

  Still more profound are the contradictions to be seen in the author'spersonal character; and unfortunately they prevented him from completinghis work. The trouble is that he made his art out of life, and when inhis final years he carried his struggle, as Tolstoi did later, back intolife, he repented of all he had written, and in the frenzy of a wakefulnight burned all his manuscripts, including the second part of DeadSouls, only fragments of which were saved. There was yet a third part tobe written. Indeed, the second part had been written and burned twice.Accounts differ as to why he had burned it finally. Religious remorse,fury at adverse criticism, and despair at not reaching ideal perfectionare among the reasons given. Again it is said that he had destroyed themanuscript with the others inadvertently.

  The poet Pushkin, who said of Gogol that "behind his laughter you feelthe unseen tears," was his chief friend and inspirer. It was he whosuggested the plot of Dead Souls as well as the plot of the earlier workThe Revisor, which is almost the only comedy in Russian. The importanceof both is their introduction of the social element in Russianliterature, as Prince Kropotkin points out. Both hold up the mirrorto Russian officialdom and the effects it has produced on the nationalcharacter. The plot of Dead Souls is simple enough, and is said to havebeen suggested by an actual episode.

  It was the day of serfdom in Russia, and a man's standing was oftenjudged by the numbers of "souls" he possessed. There was a periodicalcensus of serfs, say once every ten or twenty years. This being thecase, an owner had to pay a tax on every "soul" registered at thelast census, though some of the serfs might have died in the meantime.Nevertheless, the system had its material advantages, inasmuch as anowner might borrow money from a bank on the "dead souls" no less thanon the living ones. The plan of Chichikov, Gogol's hero-villain, wastherefore to make a journey through Russia and buy up the "dead souls,"at reduced rates of course, saving their owners the government tax,and acquiring for himself a list of fictitious serfs, which he meant tomortgage to a bank for a considerable sum. With this money he would buyan estate and some real life serfs, and make the beginning of a fortune.

  Obviously, this plot, which is really no plot at all but merely a ruseto enable Chichikov to go across Russia in a troika, with Selifan thecoachman as a sort of Russian Sancho Panza, gives Gogol a magnificentopportunity to reveal his genius as a painter of Russian panorama,peopled with characteristic native types commonplace enough but drawn incomic relief. "The comic," explained the author yet at the beginning ofhis career, "is hidden everywhere, only living in the midst of it we arenot conscious of it; but if the artist brings it into his art, on thestage say, we shall roll about with laughter and only wonder we did notnotice it before." But the comic in Dead Souls is merely external. Letus see how Pushkin, who loved to laugh, regarded the work. As Gogol readit aloud to him from the manuscript the poet grew more and more gloomyand at last cried out: "God! What a sad country Russia is!" And later hesaid of it: "Gogol invents nothing; it is the simple truth, the terribletruth."

  The work on one hand was received as nothing less than an exposure ofall Russia--what would foreigners think of it? The liberal elements,however, the critical Belinsky among them, welcomed it as a revelation,as an omen of a freer future. Gogol, who had meant to do a service toRussia and not to heap ridicule upon her, took the criticisms of theSlavophiles to heart; and he palliated his critics by promising to bringabout in the succeeding parts of his novel the redemption of Chichikovand the other "knaves and blockheads." But the "Westerner" Belinskyand others of the liberal camp were mistrustful. It was about this time(1847) that Gogol published his Correspondence with Friends, and arouseda literary controversy that is alive to this day. Tolstoi is to be foundamong his apologists.

  Opinions as to the actual significance of Gogol's masterpiece differ.Some consider the author a realist who has drawn with meticulous detaila picture of Russia; others, Merejkovsky among them, see in him a greatsymbolist; the very title Dead Souls is taken to describe the living ofRussia as well as its dead. Chichikov himself is now generally regardedas a universal character. We find an American professor, William LyonPhelps [1], of Yale, holding the opinion that "no one can travel far inAmerica without meeting scores of Chichikovs; indeed, he is an accurateportrait of the American promoter, of the successful commercialtraveller whose success depends entirely not on the real value andusefulness of his stock-in-trade, but on his knowledge of human natureand of the persuasive power of his tongue." This is also the opinionheld by Prince Kropotkin [2], who says: "Chichikov may buy deadsouls, or railway shares, or he may collect funds for some charitableinstitution, or look for a position in a bank, but he is an immortalinternational type; we meet him everywhere; he is of all lands and ofall times; he but takes different forms to suit the requirements ofnationality and time."

  Again, the work bears an interesting relation to Gogol himself. Aromantic, writing of realities, he was appalled at the commonplacesof life, at finding no outlet for his love of colour derived from hisCossack ancestry. He realised that he had drawn a host of "heroes," "onemore commonplace than another, that there was not a single palliatingcircumstance, that there was not a single place where the reader
mightfind pause to rest and to console himself, and that when he had finishedthe book it was as though he had walked out of an oppressive cellarinto the open air." He felt perhaps inward need to redeem Chichikov;in Merejkovsky's opinion he really wanted to save his own soul, buthad succeeded only in losing it. His last years were spent morbidly;he suffered torments and ran from place to place like one hunted; butreally always running from himself. Rome was his favourite refuge, andhe returned to it again and again. In 1848, he made a pilgrimage to theHoly Land, but he could find no peace for his soul. Something of thismood had reflected itself even much earlier in the Memoirs of a Madman:"Oh, little mother, save your poor son! Look how they are tormentinghim.... There's no place for him on earth! He's being driven!... Oh,little mother, take pity on thy poor child."

  All the contradictions of Gogol's character are not to be disposed ofin a brief essay. Such a strange combination of the tragic and the comicwas truly seldom seen in one man. He, for one, realised that "it isdangerous to jest with laughter." "Everything that I laughed at becamesad." "And terrible," adds Merejkovsky. But earlier his humour waslighter, less tinged with the tragic; in those days Pushkin never failedto be amused by what Gogol had brought to read to him. Even Revizor(1835), with its tragic undercurrent, was a trifle compared to DeadSouls, so that one is not astonished to hear that not only did the Tsar,Nicholas I, give permission to have it acted, in spite of its being acriticism of official rottenness, but laughed uproariously, and led theapplause. Moreover, he gave Gogol a grant of money, and asked that itssource should not be revealed to the author lest "he might feel obligedto write from the official point of view."

  Gogol was born at Sorotchinetz, Little Russia, in March 1809. He leftcollege at nineteen and went to St. Petersburg, where he secured aposition as copying clerk in a government department. He did not keephis position long, yet long enough to store away in his mind a number ofbureaucratic types which proved useful later. He quite suddenly startedfor America with money given to him by his mother for another purpose,but when he got as far as Lubeck he turned back. He then wanted tobecome an actor, but his voice proved not strong enough. Later he wrotea poem which was unkindly received. As the copies remained unsold, hegathered them all up at the various shops and burned them in his room.

  His next effort, Evenings at the Farm of Dikanka (1831) was moresuccessful. It was a series of gay and colourful pictures of Ukraine,the land he knew and loved, and if he is occasionally a little overromantic here and there, he also achieves some beautifully lyricalpassages. Then came another even finer series called Mirgorod, which wonthe admiration of Pushkin. Next he planned a "History of Little Russia"and a "History of the Middle Ages," this last work to be in eight ornine volumes. The result of all this study was a beautiful and shortHomeric epic in prose, called Taras Bulba. His appointment to aprofessorship in history was a ridiculous episode in his life. After abrilliant first lecture, in which he had evidently said all he had tosay, he settled to a life of boredom for himself and his pupils. When heresigned he said joyously: "I am once more a free Cossack." Between1834 and 1835 he produced a new series of stories, including his famousCloak, which may be regarded as the legitimate beginning of the Russiannovel.

  Gogol knew little about women, who played an equally minor role inhis life and in his books. This may be partly because his personalappearance was not prepossessing. He is described by a contemporary as"a little man with legs too short for his body. He walked crookedly; hewas clumsy, ill-dressed, and rather ridiculous-looking, with his longlock of hair flapping on his forehead, and his large prominent nose."

  From 1835 Gogol spent almost his entire time abroad; some strangeunrest--possibly his Cossack blood--possessed him like a demon, andhe never stopped anywhere very long. After his pilgrimage in 1848 toJerusalem, he returned to Moscow, his entire possessions in a littlebag; these consisted of pamphlets, critiques, and newspaper articlesmostly inimical to himself. He wandered about with these from house tohouse. Everything he had of value he gave away to the poor. He ceasedwork entirely. According to all accounts he spent his last days inpraying and fasting. Visions came to him. His death, which came in 1852,was extremely fantastic. His last words, uttered in a loud frenzy,were: "A ladder! Quick, a ladder!" This call for a ladder--"a spiritualladder," in the words of Merejkovsky--had been made on an earlieroccasion by a certain Russian saint, who used almost the same language."I shall laugh my bitter laugh" [3] was the inscription placed onGogol's grave.

  JOHN COURNOS

  Evenings on the Farm near the Dikanka, 1829-31; Mirgorod, 1831-33; TarasBulba, 1834; Arabesques (includes tales, The Portrait and A Madman'sDiary), 1831-35; The Cloak, 1835; The Revizor (The Inspector-General),1836; Dead Souls, 1842; Correspondence with Friends, 1847.

  ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS: Cossack Tales (The Night of Christmas Eve, TarassBoolba), trans. by G. Tolstoy, 1860; St. John's Eve and Other Stories,trans. by Isabel F. Hapgood, New York, Crowell, 1886; Taras Bulba: AlsoSt. John's Eve and Other Stories, London, Vizetelly, 1887; Taras Bulba,trans. by B. C. Baskerville, London, Scott, 1907; The Inspector: aComedy, Calcutta, 1890; The Inspector-General, trans. by A. A. Sykes,London, Scott, 1892; Revizor, trans. for the Yale Dramatic Associationby Max S. Mandell, New Haven, Conn., 1908; Home Life in Russia(adaptation of Dead Souls), London, Hurst, 1854; Tchitchikoff'sJourney's; or Dead Souls, trans. by Isabel F. Hapgood, New York,Crowell, 1886; Dead Souls, London, Vizetelly, 1887; Dead Souls, London,Maxwell 1887; Meditations on the Divine Liturgy, trans. by L. Alexeieff,London, A. R. Mowbray and Co., 1913.

  LIVES, etc.: (Russian) Kotlyarevsky (N. A.), 1903; Shenrok (V. I.),Materials for a Biography, 1892; (French) Leger (L.), Nicholas Gogol,1914.