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- Herausgeber: Musaicum Books
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
Nikolai Gogol's 'Dead Souls' is a classic Russian novel that delves into the themes of greed, corruption, and the complexities of human nature. Set in 19th-century Russia, the book follows the protagonist, Chichikov, as he travels through the countryside purchasing deceased serfs to exploit a legal loophole for financial gain. Gogol's satirical and humorous writing style exposes the moral decay and social issues of the time, making it a timeless piece of literature in Russian literary history. With its intricate plot and rich character development, 'Dead Souls' continues to captivate readers with its profound insights into the human condition. It is a must-read for those interested in Russian literature and social commentary. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - An Author Biography reveals milestones in the author's life, illuminating the personal insights behind the text. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Dead Souls
(English Edition)
Published by
Books
Table of Contents
Introduction
A traveler glides across a vast province where paper has more weight than breath, and by purchasing the names of the dead he exposes a living world of vanity, appetite, and restless motion that cannot decide whether it is absurd comedy or a moral reckoning.
Dead Souls, first published in 1842, is the most audacious work by Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852), a writer of the Russian Empire whose imagination reshaped the possibilities of prose fiction. Composed in the late 1830s and refined up to publication, the book announced a daring ambition: to gather the sprawl of provincial life into a single, capacious narrative. Though Gogol would continue to plan and revise the project until the end of his life, the initial volume quickly established him as a central figure in nineteenth-century literature and as a master of satire with philosophical depth.
The premise is arresting in its simplicity and shocking in its implications. Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, a courteous and elusive gentleman, travels from estate to estate in provincial Russia, seeking to buy the registration of serfs who have died since the last census but are still counted on official rolls. The scheme exploits a bureaucracy that values names over realities, allowing both seller and buyer to profit from a fiction. Without revealing developments, this starting point launches a journey into the recesses of social custom, administrative habit, and personal desire, where legal formalities become instruments of fantasy.
The book holds classic status for its breadth and for a new kind of comic vision that is inseparable from critique. Gogol fuses the picaresque with a national panorama, transforming isolated encounters into a composite portrait of a society caught between ritual and change. The narrative voice roams freely—descriptive, rhapsodic, and ironic—so that the landscape, the town, and each household acquire the clarity of caricature and the sympathy of lived detail. This hybrid energy, at once theatrical and reflective, lifted Russian prose toward the capacious realism that would dominate later in the century.
Its influence radiated widely. Later Russian novelists inherited from Dead Souls the courage to treat a single rogue’s itinerary as a mirror for an entire social order, and to mix farce with metaphysical unease. Readers can detect its imprint in the moral inquests of Dostoevsky, the civic and provincial canvases of Saltykov-Shchedrin, and the satirical phantasmagoria of twentieth-century prose, including Bulgakov. Beyond national borders, its method—amplifying bureaucratic logic until it turns surreal—anticipates strains of modernism and absurdism that examine how systems rewrite human experience, making the novel a wellspring for subsequent experiments in narrative and tone.
At the heart of the book lies a study of appetite—material, social, and spiritual. The hunger for rank and position, the itch for novelty, the compulsion to measure worth by tallies and lists: these desires propel exchanges that seem reasonable until their premises are stated plainly. Gogol’s satire does not rest on cruelty; it proceeds by exactness, by insisting that the language of property and improvement be taken literally and followed to its conclusions. In doing so, the narrative reveals a society both intimate and impersonal, where gestures of politeness coexist with indifference to the realities that politeness obscures.
Gogol’s style gives this moral inquiry its irresistible force. He delights in catalogues, sudden similes, and exaggerated portraits that border on the grotesque, yet he also grants his characters recognizable habits and longings. The laughter he solicits is unstable: it flares into hilarity and then cools to discomfort as the reader perceives familiar impulses behind each absurdity. Vivid descriptions of rooms, roads, and meals do not merely decorate the tale; they mark the texture of a world in which surfaces are oversized and the inner life is often muted, distorted, or deferred.
The social and historical context grounds the story’s audacity. Set in an era when serfdom structured the economy and administration of the Russian Empire, the novel turns a technical feature of census accounting into its engine. Estates were taxed according to registered serfs, and those who had died since the last revision could remain on the books until the next, a gap that produced expenses for owners and opportunities for schemers. By dramatizing this gap, the book depicts how law and livelihood entangle, and how a ledger can shape conduct as persuasively as conscience or tradition.
Formally, Dead Souls is a road novel and a gallery, an unfolding sequence of visits that paints a cross-section of provincial characters: officials, landowners, townspeople, intermediaries. Its momentum arises not from danger or pursuit but from curiosity—about manners, reputations, and the small negotiations that make public life run. The narrator ranges outward to describe architecture and weather, then inward to muse on vanity and hope, weaving together incident and reflection. The structure allows each encounter to stand as a comic set piece while feeding an overarching meditation on exchange and identity.
Gogol envisioned a work of epic reach, and he labored on continuations after 1842, though only the first part appeared in his lifetime, with later fragments surviving. That history has become part of the novel’s aura, a testament to both ambition and the difficulty of fixing such a fluid, expansive design. Readers need not know the drafts’ fate to appreciate how the extant text balances completion and openness: it offers closure for episodes while preserving a sense of onward movement, as if the road, the talk, and the calculations could extend indefinitely into neighboring districts.
English-language readers encounter Dead Souls through translation, where tone is everything. The book’s humor pivots on idiom, rhythm, and shifts from high rhetoric to homely speech; its images must feel freshly minted without seeming gaudy. Different translators make distinct choices about diction and tempo, but across versions the central achievements persist: an agile narrator, a choreography of encounters, and a moral argument conducted through comedy. Attentive reading rewards patience with the digressions and cadences that give the story breath, ensuring that its energy survives the passage between languages.
The novel’s contemporary relevance is unmistakable. In an age preoccupied with data, collateral, and the trade in reputations, a scheme that monetizes names while ignoring persons feels unnervingly current. Bureaucratic labyrinths, speculative bubbles, the conversion of human life into entries on a balance sheet—these remain pressing concerns. Dead Souls endures because it is both local and universal, rooted in a particular legal world yet alive to enduring human weaknesses. It invites laughter that sharpens judgment, compassion that resists sentimentality, and reflection on the values that govern exchange, making its appeal as strong now as at its debut.
Synopsis
Dead Souls (English Edition) by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842, presents a satirical journey through provincial Russia. The narrative follows Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, a personable traveler who arrives in an unnamed town and quickly ingratiates himself with officials and local notables. Through dinners, visits, and formal calls, he cultivates goodwill while keeping his ultimate aims discreet. Gogol’s narrator sketches a society governed by etiquette, paperwork, and habit, where reputation carries unusual weight. Against this bustling backdrop, the story’s tone balances humor and observation, introducing a protagonist whose courtesy and adaptability allow him to move smoothly among clerks, landowners, and the fashionably curious.
Chichikov’s project emerges gradually: he seeks to purchase “dead souls,” the names of serfs who died after the most recent census but still appear on official rolls until the next revision. Because landowners continue to pay taxes on these deceased peasants, Chichikov offers to assume the burden by buying the registrations. On paper, this enables him to assemble a large population and inflate his assets, which he can leverage for social standing and credit. Gogol frames the plan as a shrewd exploitation of administrative inertia, exposing how bookkeeping, status, and property intertwine within a system that converts people into counted units.
The first major estate visit is to Manilov, a courteous and dreamy landowner whose genteel manners conceal a lack of substance. Manilov is flattered by Chichikov’s attention and readily agrees to transfer the names of his deceased serfs. Their exchange is smooth and almost weightless, more social performance than hard negotiation. The scene showcases Chichikov’s ability to mirror others’ moods and expectations, and it depicts a provincial elite content with pleasant talk and vague plans. In this early success, Gogol reveals how the scheme thrives on politeness and the desire to feel modern, reasonable, and on good terms with the world.
Next, Chichikov visits Korobochka, a cautious widow attentive to the costs of household management. Here, the proposal meets hesitancy. She worries about the price, the legality, and the practical consequences of parting with the names. Chichikov must translate bureaucratic abstractions into terms she trusts, navigating anxieties about markets, taxes, and changing rules. Their haggling stretches over explanations and reassurances, illustrating how rural economy and custom resist simple conversion into paper transactions. When progress comes, it is incremental, achieved by soothing fears and presenting official documents, emphasizing the gap between official language and everyday understanding.
A more volatile encounter occurs with Nozdryov, a boastful, impulsive landowner fond of drink, tall tales, and games. Unlike the pliant Manilov or the cautious Korobochka, Nozdryov’s energy turns negotiation into spectacle. He veers between extravagant promises and sudden provocations, complicating any straightforward agreement. The visit underscores the dangers of Chichikov’s method: a plan dependent on personal charm can be derailed by personalities that ignore decorum. Gogol uses the episode to heighten tension and to expose a social world where swagger, chance, and caprice can override calculation. The outcome leaves Chichikov wary of entanglements that he cannot steer.
Chichikov then approaches Sobakevich, a heavy, practical landowner who values everything in utilitarian terms. Here the transaction becomes a measured bargaining process. Sobakevich inventories his deceased laborers as if they were solid assets, arguing prices and qualities with a stern exactitude that contrasts with Manilov’s airiness and Nozdryov’s theatrics. The ensuing paperwork in town offices—petitions, attestations, and notarized transfers—reveals how the bureaucracy formalizes human lives into entries and seals. With these acquisitions, Chichikov’s paper holdings expand, and he gains confidence in his ability to convert polite acquaintances and careful accounting into momentum.
The visit to Plyushkin’s estate broadens the novel’s social panorama. Plyushkin is a miser whose property has fallen into extreme neglect; hoarding and suspicion have warped every part of his household. Amid decay and waste, Chichikov finds a large roster of deceased serfs available for purchase. The episode deepens the satire: the abundance of “souls” here represents not prosperity but a moral and material collapse. By securing these names, Chichikov dramatically increases his notional wealth, yet the surrounding desolation underscores the hollowness of such accumulation. Gogol juxtaposes clever paperwork with stark human diminishment to question what, in fact, is being gained.
Back in town, Chichikov’s activity attracts attention. A grand ball and a flurry of visits place him at the center of gossip. Admiration shades into speculation: some imagine promising matches; others whisper about his origins and motives. Stories multiply, each more elaborate than the last, until conflicting narratives unsettle the cultivated harmony he has relied upon. Officials and townspeople, eager for novelty and wary of deception, begin to probe. The scrutiny destabilizes Chichikov’s careful balance between charm and concealment, suggesting that a scheme built on appearances can falter when public curiosity turns into collective suspicion and the administrative gaze sharpens.
Though Gogol’s surviving text focuses on this initial arc, the novel gestures beyond its plot toward broader reflections. Dead Souls assembles a gallery of characters to examine social vanity, bureaucratic habits, and the commodification inherent in serfdom. Its narrator shifts from caricature to lyric meditation, inviting readers to consider how ambition and self-interest migrate through institutions and private lives. Later parts of the project remained incomplete, yet the work endures for its panoramic critique and its blend of comedy and moral inquiry. Without resolving every thread, the book leaves an enduring question about value: what counts, who decides, and at what human cost.
Historical Context
Dead Souls unfolds within the Russian Empire of the early to mid-nineteenth century, largely in unnamed provincial towns far from the imperial capitals. The dominant institutions framing the narrative are autocracy, serfdom, and a sprawling, paper-bound bureaucracy. Social life revolves around the nobility’s assemblies, the governor’s authority, and the Orthodox Church’s moral presence. Everyday interactions pass through official channels stamped and sealed by clerks who rank themselves by the Table of Ranks. Travel is slow, carried by post-horses across roads that turn to mud in autumn and spring. The novel’s settings reflect a world stratified by status, property in “souls,” and the rituals of public office.
At the heart of the book’s premise stands serfdom, the legal system binding most rural peasants to landowners until the mid-nineteenth century. Serfs could be assigned corvée labor (barshchina) or quitrent (obrok), and their legal status left them subject to sale and mortgage, often apart from the land they worked. The term “soul” derives from the fiscal and legal language of the period, in which male serfs were counted as taxable persons. Gogol’s satire gains force from how this institution reduced human beings to administrative entries, allowing owners to treat lives as assets in transactions and credit arrangements.
The Russian state’s periodic censuses, recorded in “revision lists” (revizskie skazki), underpinned taxation for decades at a time. Between revisions, deaths were not immediately removed from official rolls, yet landowners still owed the capitation tax for those listed. This created a category of “dead souls” whose phantom existence persisted on paper. Landowners anxious to reduce taxes might transfer these liabilities to others willing to assume them. Gogol’s plot echoes the legal and fiscal logic of the system, where paper could drift far from reality. The novel dramatizes how such gaps in administration encouraged schemes, rumors, and opportunism in the countryside.
The novel took shape under Emperor Nicholas I (r. 1825–1855), whose reign began with the Decembrist revolt and moved swiftly to suppress dissent. The government strengthened censorship in 1826 and revised it in 1828, fostering an environment in which satire had to avoid explicit political challenge. The Third Section, the empire’s secret police, monitored publications and writers. Gogol learned to couch social criticism in comic, moral, and folkloric frames. Dead Souls emerged from this cautious climate: an officially publishable “poem” that could hold a mirror to society while sidestepping direct confrontation with state ideology.
Russia’s administrative machine, governed by the Table of Ranks since 1722, shaped provincial life that Gogol knew from travel and observation. Governors, police chiefs, marshals of the nobility, and countless clerks sat behind desks heaped with petitions and registers. Bribery and gift-giving, though illegal, persisted as lubricants of the system. Formalities—promotions, uniforms, and etiquette—conferred dignity and power. Dead Souls spotlights this world of minor officials and ritualized paperwork, where careers turn on signatures, seals, and social introductions. The comedy rests on familiar practices: deference to rank, fear of inspections, and the flattery and panic swirling through provincial offices.
Many noble estates in this era were debt-ridden, a result of mismanagement, fluctuating grain prices, and consumption patterns that outpaced income. Owners sought liquidity by mortgaging estates and serfs, as practices in state and private credit markets accepted “souls” as collateral. This created perverse incentives to inflate paper wealth and hide losses until a new census. Gogol’s scenario plays upon these realities: desperate landowners ready to sign away burdensome entries on revision lists, and speculators hoping to leverage paper holdings into social status or loans. Contemporary readers recognized how estate finances encouraged creative accounting, double books, and risky pledges.
The infrastructure of travel in the 1820s–1840s shaped both the plot and texture of Dead Souls. The imperial postal road network connected towns by stages with post-stations supplying horses. The famed troika could be fast, but journeys were still slow, subject to weather and road conditions. Inns and posting yards formed nodes of gossip and negotiation. Although Russia’s first railway opened in 1837 between St. Petersburg and Tsarskoye Selo, most of the empire remained road-bound during Gogol’s writing. The novel’s episodic encounters—postmasters, coachmen, provincial hosts—depend on this world of horse travel and the uncertainties it entails.
Provincial towns combined rigid social hierarchy with porous, rumor-filled public life. Nobles gathered at assemblies, balls, and dinner tables, while merchants organized by guilds navigated contracts, fairs, and credit. Tailors, innkeepers, and clerks depended on the patronage of officials and landed neighbors. Such towns had theaters of reputation where a newcomer’s background, carriage, servants, and calling cards were carefully weighed. Dead Souls exploits this milieu: a figure who appears respectable can, through a chain of visits and banquets, climb or fall swiftly in local esteem. Conversation, hearsay, and hospitable rituals act as engines of social mobility.
Demographic realities lent Gogol’s comic premise a somber edge. High mortality rates among peasants, fueled by poverty, disease, and periodic crop failures, meant that revision lists inevitably lagged behind life. The cholera epidemic of 1830–1831, which sparked unrest and fear across the empire, revealed the fragility of health and governance in the countryside. While Dead Souls avoids dramatizing epidemics directly, its economy of phantom taxpayers depends on a world where death commonly outpaced paperwork. The book’s laughter sits atop an awareness of loss and miscounted lives—people reduced to lines in ledgers that outlived them by years.
Gogol’s trajectory into Dead Souls ran through the vibrant but closely monitored literary culture of St. Petersburg. Alexander Pushkin, who played a central role in shaping modern Russian prose and poetry, encouraged Gogol and reportedly suggested the core plot of trading in “dead souls.” Journals such as Otechestvennye Zapiski nurtured critical debate despite censorship. Critics like Vissarion Belinsky championed social observation and literary realism. Within this milieu, Gogol crafted prose that fused folklore, grotesque humor, and documentary detail, aligning with calls for truth-telling while remaining publishable in a cautious era.
Gogol’s earlier triumph with The Government Inspector (1836), a stage satire of corrupt officialdom, prompted controversy and sharpened official scrutiny. Soon after, he left Russia for extended stays abroad, particularly in Rome, working on Dead Souls through the late 1830s. The first part appeared in 1842 and was allowed to circulate, though it stirred debate about national character and morality. Officials could read it as corrective satire; critics saw unflinching social diagnosis. Gogol continued reworking a second part but never completed it to his satisfaction, a fate that reinforced the sense of a project wrestling with the nation’s moral direction.
While Nicholas I policed political expression, the state also elaborated a cultural doctrine: “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality,” associated with Education Minister Sergey Uvarov around 1833. It promoted loyalty to throne and church and celebrated a distinct Russian spirit. This climate encouraged literature that affirmed moral order, even when satirical. Dead Souls operates within these limits by presenting social failings less as systemic political crimes than as spiritual and ethical decay. The book’s voice oscillates between mocking folly and yearning for renewal, resonating with official rhetoric about moral reform without reducing itself to didactic propaganda.
Financial policy under Nicholas I sought stability after the inflationary assignation era. Reforms associated with Finance Minister Egor Kankrin between 1839 and 1843 introduced a silver-based standard and replaced old paper with more reliable credit notes. Public discourse in these years emphasized sound money, accurate accounts, and fiscal sobriety. Gogol’s gallery of paper illusions—lists, mortgages, and reputations built on entries rather than realities—echoes this environment. Dead Souls becomes a parable about the distance between nominal wealth and real value, suggesting how an empire could chase numbers while losing sight of the people those numbers purported to represent.
Agriculture remained the empire’s backbone, but pressures mounted. Soil exhaustion, market volatility, and competition from new producers strained estates. Reforms led by Pavel Kiselev in the late 1830s targeted state peasants, improving administration, agronomy, and schooling, yet left private serfs largely untouched. The contrast underscored the stagnation of the serf-based economy on many noble lands. Dead Souls catalogues landowners shaped by these conditions: some improvise, some sink into debt and lethargy. The book’s estate visits become case studies in a system producing idiosyncratic characters, but rooted in common structural constraints and missed opportunities for reform.
The legal culture of imperial Russia revolved around papers, seals, and notarized deeds. Transactions required protocols, witnesses, stamped forms, and journeys to town offices. Notaries, police captains, and governors guarded the thresholds where entries on a page could become enforceable obligations. This environment made clever manipulation of documents both tempting and risky. Dead Souls depends on the plausibility of reshaping reality through paperwork: a signature here, a seal there, and an empire’s bureaucracy would treat fictions as facts. The satire thus rests on recognizable practices in which formal legality could mask substantive absurdity.
Religion and morality pervaded public discourse and Gogol’s own life. The Orthodox Church framed social ideals of repentance and charity, while sermons and religious festivals punctuated the calendar. In the 1840s Gogol’s outlook grew more spiritual and conservative, a development that shaped his later prose and correspondence. He struggled to craft a second part of Dead Souls aiming at moral regeneration and, shortly before his death in 1852, destroyed much of the manuscript. The unfinished arc mirrors the unresolved tension between diagnosing societal ills and imagining a credible path to inner transformation within the existing order.
By arranging a comic journey through estates, offices, and post-stations, Dead Souls offers a panorama of the empire between censuses—the interval when the state’s maps diverge from the lived landscape. Its satire targets the commodification of people under serfdom, the vanity of rank, and the faith in paperwork that sustained a creaking bureaucracy. The work’s publication in 1842 precedes the Emancipation of the serfs in 1861, but it already dissects the contradictions that reform would later confront. Read as history’s mirror, the book compresses an era’s institutions and illusions into a single itinerary of names, numbers, and uneasy laughter.
Author Biography
Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852) was a Russian-language writer from the Poltava region of the Russian Empire, in present-day Ukraine. One of the most innovative prose authors of the nineteenth century, he fused satire, the grotesque, and moral inquiry to probe social life and the instability of identity. His best-known works include the play The Government Inspector, the long prose work Dead Souls, and short stories such as The Overcoat and The Nose. By bridging late Romantic tendencies with a nascent realism, he became a foundational figure for later Russian literature. Gogol worked in St. Petersburg and abroad before his death in Moscow.
Educated at the Nizhyn Gymnasium of Higher Sciences, which he attended during the 1820s, Gogol absorbed classical rhetoric, history, and languages alongside student theatricals. Folklore from his native Ukrainian environment left a lasting imprint, as did European Romantic writing he encountered in school. In 1828 he moved to St. Petersburg seeking a post and briefly served as a minor civil servant, an experience that later fed his depictions of bureaucracy. His first publication, the narrative poem Hans Küchelgarten (1829), was poorly received; he withdrew it and turned decisively to prose, refining a style that mixed comic exaggeration with psychological unease.
His first major success came with Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka (1831–1832), story collections drawing on village customs, superstition, and carnival humor. Readers responded to their energy and the novelty of a Ukrainian-inflected setting within Russian prose. Gogol consolidated his reputation with Mirgorod (1835), which included the Cossack tale Taras Bulba, and the prose miscellany Arabesques (1835). Around this time he entered the capital's literary circles, meeting established figures such as Alexander Pushkin and Vasily Zhukovsky. Their support, together with periodical publication, accelerated his rise, while his prose grew darker and more psychologically probing amid an intensifying satiric vision.
In the mid-1830s Gogol turned decisively to the urban milieu of St. Petersburg. Stories such as The Nose, Nevsky Prospekt, and Diary of a Madman revealed a disquieting blend of bureaucratic comedy and existential disorientation. He also held teaching posts in history, including a short tenure at St. Petersburg University beginning in 1834. His dramatic breakthrough arrived with The Government Inspector (1836), a satirical play reportedly suggested by Pushkin and staged with imperial approval. Its exposure of official vanity provoked debate and secured Gogol's fame, while also driving him to seek distance from the capital's controversies and to travel abroad.
From 1836 he spent long stretches outside Russia, especially in Rome, while visiting Germany and other parts of Europe. During these years he shaped his largest project, Dead Souls (first published in 1842), which he subtitled a poem and conceived as a broad moral panorama of provincial life. He also produced late masterpieces of the short form, notably The Overcoat (1842), whose spare pathos and uncanny atmosphere became emblematic of his art. Earlier works continued to evolve; the historical novella Taras Bulba, first issued in the 1830s, was substantially revised in the early 1840s. Critical attention followed him internationally thereafter.
By the mid-1840s Gogol's outlook grew increasingly religious and didactic. Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends (1847) urged moral reform and deference to traditional authority, prompting some readers' approval and others' fierce objections; the critic Vissarion Belinsky issued a famous rebuttal. Gogol labored over a continuation of Dead Souls, but the manuscript remained unfinished. Shortly before his death in 1852, he burned substantial portions of this material, a gesture consistent with his sense of artistic and spiritual failure. He died in Moscow after a period of illness and withdrawal, leaving behind a body of work both admired and contested worldwide.
Gogol's legacy has been far-reaching. His fusion of the comic and uncanny influenced the development of Russian realism and modernist fiction alike, shaping writers from Dostoevsky and Turgenev to Bulgakov and Kafka. A famous formula, often attributed to Dostoevsky, portrays later Russian prose as emerging from Gogol's Overcoat, capturing his perceived role as a progenitor of subsequent fiction. His plays and stories continue to be translated, staged, and studied, resonating in discussions of bureaucracy, corruption, identity, and moral responsibility. Claimed by both Russian and Ukrainian traditions, he stands as a transnational figure whose unsettling art remains central to world literature and culture.
Dead Souls (English Edition)
Author’s Preface to the First Portion of this Work
From the Author to the Reader
Reader, whosoever or wheresoever you be, and whatsoever be your station — whether that of a member of the higher ranks of society or that of a member of the plainer walks of life — I beg of you, if God shall have given you any skill in letters, and my book shall fall into your hands, to extend to me your assistance.
For in the book which lies before you, and which, probably, you have read in its first edition, there is portrayed a man who is a type taken from our Russian Empire[1]. This man travels about the Russian land and meets with folk of every condition — from the nobly-born to the humble toiler. Him I have taken as a type to show forth the vices and the failings, rather than the merits and the virtues, of the commonplace Russian individual; and the characters which revolve around him have also been selected for the purpose of demonstrating our national weaknesses and shortcomings. As for men and women of the better sort, I propose to portray them in subsequent volumes. Probably much of what I have described is improbable and does not happen as things customarily happen in Russia; and the reason for that is that for me to learn all that I have wished to do has been impossible, in that human life is not sufficiently long to become acquainted with even a hundredth part of what takes place within the borders of the Russian Empire. Also, carelessness, inexperience, and lack of time have led to my perpetrating numerous errors and inaccuracies of detail; with the result that in every line of the book there is something which calls for correction. For these reasons I beg of you, my reader, to act also as my corrector. Do not despise the task, for, however superior be your education, and however lofty your station, and however insignificant, in your eyes, my book, and however trifling the apparent labour of correcting and commenting upon that book, I implore you to do as I have said. And you too, O reader of lowly education and simple status, I beseech you not to look upon yourself as too ignorant to be able in some fashion, however small, to help me. Every man who has lived in the world and mixed with his fellow men will have remarked something which has remained hidden from the eyes of others; and therefore I beg of you not to deprive me of your comments, seeing that it cannot be that, should you read my book with attention, you will have NOTHING to say at some point therein.
For example, how excellent it would be if some reader who is sufficiently rich in experience and the knowledge of life to be acquainted with the sort of characters which I have described herein would annotate in detail the book, without missing a single page, and undertake to read it precisely as though, laying pen and paper before him, he were first to peruse a few pages of the work, and then to recall his own life, and the lives of folk with whom he has come in contact, and everything which he has seen with his own eyes or has heard of from others, and to proceed to annotate, in so far as may tally with his own experience or otherwise, what is set forth in the book, and to jot down the whole exactly as it stands pictured to his memory, and, lastly, to send me the jottings as they may issue from his pen, and to continue doing so until he has covered the entire work! Yes, he would indeed do me a vital service! Of style or beauty of expression he would need to take no account, for the value of a book lies in its truth and its actuality rather than in its wording. Nor would he need to consider my feelings if at any point he should feel minded to blame or to upbraid me, or to demonstrate the harm rather than the good which has been done through any lack of thought or verisimilitude of which I have been guilty. In short, for anything and for everything in the way of criticism I should be thankful.
Also, it would be an excellent thing if some reader in the higher walks of life, some person who stands remote, both by life and by education, from the circle of folk which I have pictured in my book, but who knows the life of the circle in which he himself revolves, would undertake to read my work in similar fashion, and methodically to recall to his mind any members of superior social classes whom he has met, and carefully to observe whether there exists any resemblance between one such class and another, and whether, at times, there may not be repeated in a higher sphere what is done in a lower, and likewise to note any additional fact in the same connection which may occur to him (that is to say, any fact pertaining to the higher ranks of society which would seem to confirm or to disprove his conclusions), and, lastly, to record that fact as it may have occurred within his own experience, while giving full details of persons (of individual manners, tendencies, and customs) and also of inanimate surroundings (of dress, furniture, fittings of houses, and so forth). For I need knowledge of the classes in question, which are the flower of our people. In fact, this very reason — the reason that I do not yet know Russian life in all its aspects, and in the degree to which it is necessary for me to know it in order to become a successful author — is what has, until now, prevented me from publishing any subsequent volumes of this story.
Again, it would be an excellent thing if some one who is endowed with the faculty of imagining and vividly picturing to himself the various situations wherein a character may be placed, and of mentally following up a character’s career in one field and another — by this I mean some one who possesses the power of entering into and developing the ideas of the author whose work he may be reading — would scan each character herein portrayed, and tell me how each character ought to have acted at a given juncture, and what, to judge from the beginnings of each character, ought to have become of that character later, and what new circumstances might be devised in connection therewith, and what new details might advantageously be added to those already described. Honestly can I say that to consider these points against the time when a new edition of my book may be published in a different and a better form would give me the greatest possible pleasure.
One thing in particular would I ask of any reader who may be willing to give me the benefit of his advice. That is to say, I would beg of him to suppose, while recording his remarks, that it is for the benefit of a man in no way his equal in education, or similar to him in tastes and ideas, or capable of apprehending criticisms without full explanation appended, that he is doing so. Rather would I ask such a reader to suppose that before him there stands a man of incomparably inferior enlightenment and schooling — a rude country bumpkin whose life, throughout, has been passed in retirement — a bumpkin to whom it is necessary to explain each circumstance in detail, while never forgetting to be as simple of speech as though he were a child, and at every step there were a danger of employing terms beyond his understanding. Should these precautions be kept constantly in view by any reader undertaking to annotate my book, that reader’s remarks will exceed in weight and interest even his own expectations, and will bring me very real advantage.
Thus, provided that my earnest request be heeded by my readers, and that among them there be found a few kind spirits to do as I desire, the following is the manner in which I would request them to transmit their notes for my consideration. Inscribing the package with my name, let them then enclose that package in a second one addressed either to the Rector of the University of St. Petersburg or to Professor Shevirev of the University of Moscow, according as the one or the other of those two cities may be the nearer to the sender.
Lastly, while thanking all journalists and litterateurs for their previously published criticisms of my book — criticisms which, in spite of a spice of that intemperance and prejudice which is common to all humanity, have proved of the greatest use both to my head and to my heart — I beg of such writers again to favour me with their reviews. For in all sincerity I can assure them that whatsoever they may be pleased to say for my improvement and my instruction will be received by me with naught but gratitude.
Part I
Chapter I
To the door of an inn in the provincial town of N. there drew up a smart britchka — a light spring-carriage of the sort affected by bachelors, retired lieutenant-colonels, staff-captains, land-owners possessed of about a hundred souls, and, in short, all persons who rank as gentlemen of the intermediate category. In the britchka was seated such a gentleman — a man who, though not handsome, was not ill-favoured, not over-fat, and not over-thin. Also, though not over-elderly, he was not over-young. His arrival produced no stir in the town, and was accompanied by no particular incident, beyond that a couple of peasants who happened to be standing at the door of a dramshop exchanged a few comments with reference to the equipage rather than to the individual who was seated in it. “Look at that carriage,” one of them said to the other. “Think you it will be going as far as Moscow?” “I think it will,” replied his companion. “But not as far as Kazan, eh?” “No, not as far as Kazan.” With that the conversation ended. Presently, as the britchka was approaching the inn, it was met by a young man in a pair of very short, very tight breeches of white dimity, a quasi-fashionable frockcoat, and a dickey fastened with a pistol-shaped bronze tie-pin. The young man turned his head as he passed the britchka and eyed it attentively; after which he clapped his hand to his cap (which was in danger of being removed by the wind) and resumed his way. On the vehicle reaching the inn door, its occupant found standing there to welcome him the polevoi, or waiter, of the establishment — an individual of such nimble and brisk movement that even to distinguish the character of his face was impossible. Running out with a napkin in one hand and his lanky form clad in a tailcoat, reaching almost to the nape of his neck, he tossed back his locks, and escorted the gentleman upstairs, along a wooden gallery, and so to the bedchamber which God had prepared for the gentleman’s reception. The said bedchamber was of quite ordinary appearance, since the inn belonged to the species to be found in all provincial towns — the species wherein, for two roubles a day, travellers may obtain a room swarming with black-beetles[1q], and communicating by a doorway with the apartment adjoining. True, the doorway may be blocked up with a wardrobe; yet behind it, in all probability, there will be standing a silent, motionless neighbour whose ears are burning to learn every possible detail concerning the latest arrival. The inn’s exterior corresponded with its interior. Long, and consisting only of two storeys, the building had its lower half destitute of stucco; with the result that the dark-red bricks, originally more or less dingy, had grown yet dingier under the influence of atmospheric changes. As for the upper half of the building, it was, of course, painted the usual tint of unfading yellow. Within, on the ground floor, there stood a number of benches heaped with horse-collars, rope, and sheepskins; while the window-seat accommodated a sbitentshik[3]4, cheek by jowl with a samovar5 — the latter so closely resembling the former in appearance that, but for the fact of the samovar possessing a pitch-black lip, the samovar and the sbitentshik might have been two of a pair.
4 An urn for brewing honey tea.
5 An urn for brewing ordinary tea.
During the traveller’s inspection of his room his luggage was brought into the apartment. First came a portmanteau of white leather whose raggedness indicated that the receptacle had made several previous journeys. The bearers of the same were the gentleman’s coachman, Selifan (a little man in a large overcoat), and the gentleman’s valet, Petrushka — the latter a fellow of about thirty, clad in a worn, over-ample jacket which formerly had graced his master’s shoulders, and possessed of a nose and a pair of lips whose coarseness communicated to his face rather a sullen expression. Behind the portmanteau came a small dispatch-box of redwood, lined with birch bark, a boot-case, and (wrapped in blue paper) a roast fowl; all of which having been deposited, the coachman departed to look after his horses, and the valet to establish himself in the little dark anteroom or kennel where already he had stored a cloak, a bagful of livery, and his own peculiar smell. Pressing the narrow bedstead back against the wall, he covered it with the tiny remnant of mattress — a remnant as thin and flat (perhaps also as greasy) as a pancake — which he had managed to beg of the landlord of the establishment.
While the attendants had been thus setting things straight the gentleman had repaired to the common parlour. The appearance of common parlours of the kind is known to every one who travels. Always they have varnished walls which, grown black in their upper portions with tobacco smoke, are, in their lower, grown shiny with the friction of customers’ backs — more especially with that of the backs of such local tradesmen as, on market-days, make it their regular practice to resort to the local hostelry for a glass of tea. Also, parlours of this kind invariably contain smutty ceilings, an equally smutty chandelier, a number of pendent shades which jump and rattle whenever the waiter scurries across the shabby oilcloth with a trayful of glasses (the glasses looking like a flock of birds roosting by the seashore), and a selection of oil paintings. In short, there are certain objects which one sees in every inn. In the present case the only outstanding feature of the room was the fact that in one of the paintings a nymph was portrayed as possessing breasts of a size such as the reader can never in his life have beheld. A similar caricaturing of nature is to be noted in the historical pictures (of unknown origin, period, and creation) which reach us — sometimes through the instrumentality of Russian magnates who profess to be connoisseurs of art — from Italy; owing to the said magnates having made such purchases solely on the advice of the couriers who have escorted them.
To resume, however — our traveller removed his cap, and divested his neck of a parti-coloured woollen scarf of the kind which a wife makes for her husband with her own hands, while accompanying the gift with interminable injunctions as to how best such a garment ought to be folded. True, bachelors also wear similar gauds, but, in their case, God alone knows who may have manufactured the articles! For my part, I cannot endure them. Having unfolded the scarf, the gentleman ordered dinner, and whilst the various dishes were being got ready — cabbage soup, a pie several weeks old, a dish of marrow and peas, a dish of sausages and cabbage, a roast fowl, some salted cucumber, and the sweet tart which stands perpetually ready for use in such establishments; whilst, I say, these things were either being warmed up or brought in cold, the gentleman induced the waiter to retail certain fragments of tittle-tattle concerning the late landlord of the hostelry, the amount of income which the hostelry produced, and the character of its present proprietor. To the last-mentioned inquiry the waiter returned the answer invariably given in such cases — namely, “My master is a terribly hard man, sir.” Curious that in enlightened Russia so many people cannot even take a meal at an inn without chattering to the attendant and making free with him! Nevertheless not ALL the questions which the gentleman asked were aimless ones, for he inquired who was Governor of the town, who President of the Local Council, and who Public Prosecutor. In short, he omitted no single official of note, while asking also (though with an air of detachment) the most exact particulars concerning the landowners of the neighbourhood. Which of them, he inquired, possessed serfs, and how many of them? How far from the town did those landowners reside? What was the character of each landowner, and was he in the habit of paying frequent visits to the town? The gentleman also made searching inquiries concerning the hygienic condition of the countryside. Was there, he asked, much sickness about — whether sporadic fever, fatal forms of ague, smallpox, or what not? Yet, though his solicitude concerning these matters showed more than ordinary curiosity, his bearing retained its gravity unimpaired, and from time to time he blew his nose with portentous fervour. Indeed, the manner in which he accomplished this latter feat was marvellous in the extreme, for, though that member emitted sounds equal to those of a trumpet in intensity, he could yet, with his accompanying air of guileless dignity, evoke the waiter’s undivided respect — so much so that, whenever the sounds of the nose reached that menial’s ears, he would shake back his locks, straighten himself into a posture of marked solicitude, and inquire afresh, with head slightly inclined, whether the gentleman happened to require anything further. After dinner the guest consumed a cup of coffee, and then, seating himself upon the sofa, with, behind him, one of those wool-covered cushions which, in Russian taverns, resemble nothing so much as a cobblestone or a brick, fell to snoring; whereafter, returning with a start to consciousness, he ordered himself to be conducted to his room, flung himself at full length upon the bed, and once more slept soundly for a couple of hours. Aroused, eventually, by the waiter, he, at the latter’s request, inscribed a fragment of paper with his name, his surname, and his rank (for communication, in accordance with the law, to the police): and on that paper the waiter, leaning forward from the corridor, read, syllable by syllable: “Paul Ivanovitch Chichikov, Collegiate Councillor[4] — Landowner — Travelling on Private Affairs.” The waiter had just time to accomplish this feat before Paul Ivanovitch Chichikov set forth to inspect the town. Apparently the place succeeded in satisfying him, and, to tell the truth, it was at least up to the usual standard of our provincial capitals. Where the staring yellow of stone edifices did not greet his eye he found himself confronted with the more modest grey of wooden ones; which, consisting, for the most part, of one or two storeys (added to the range of attics which provincial architects love so well), looked almost lost amid the expanses of street and intervening medleys of broken or half-finished partition-walls. At other points evidence of more life and movement was to be seen, and here the houses stood crowded together and displayed dilapidated, rain-blurred signboards whereon boots of cakes or pairs of blue breeches inscribed “Arshavski, Tailor,” and so forth, were depicted. Over a shop containing hats and caps was written “Vassili Thedorov, Foreigner”; while, at another spot, a signboard portrayed a billiard table and two players — the latter clad in frockcoats of the kind usually affected by actors whose part it is to enter the stage during the closing act of a piece, even though, with arms sharply crooked and legs slightly bent, the said billiard players were taking the most careful aim, but succeeding only in making abortive strokes in the air. Each emporium of the sort had written over it: “This is the best establishment of its kind in the town.” Also, al fresco in the streets there stood tables heaped with nuts, soap, and gingerbread (the latter but little distinguishable from the soap), and at an eating-house there was displayed the sign of a plump fish transfixed with a gaff. But the sign most frequently to be discerned was the insignia of the State, the double-headed eagle (now replaced, in this connection, with the laconic inscription “Dramshop”). As for the paving of the town, it was uniformly bad.
The gentleman peered also into the municipal gardens, which contained only a few sorry trees that were poorly selected, requiring to be propped with oil-painted, triangular green supports, and able to boast of a height no greater than that of an ordinary walking-stick. Yet recently the local paper had said (apropos of a gala) that, “Thanks to the efforts of our Civil Governor, the town has become enriched with a pleasaunce full of umbrageous, spaciously-branching trees. Even on the most sultry day they afford agreeable shade, and indeed gratifying was it to see the hearts of our citizens panting with an impulse of gratitude as their eyes shed tears in recognition of all that their Governor has done for them!”
Next, after inquiring of a gendarme as to the best ways and means of finding the local council, the local law-courts, and the local Governor, should he (Chichikov) have need of them, the gentleman went on to inspect the river which ran through the town. En route he tore off a notice affixed to a post, in order that he might the more conveniently read it after his return to the inn. Also, he bestowed upon a lady of pleasant exterior who, escorted by a footman laden with a bundle, happened to be passing along a wooden sidewalk a prolonged stare. Lastly, he threw around him a comprehensive glance (as though to fix in his mind the general topography of the place) and betook himself home. There, gently aided by the waiter, he ascended the stairs to his bedroom, drank a glass of tea, and, seating himself at the table, called for a candle; which having been brought him, he produced from his pocket the notice, held it close to the flame, and conned its tenour — slightly contracting his right eye as he did so. Yet there was little in the notice to call for remark. All that it said was that shortly one of Kotzebue[2]’s6 plays would be given, and that one of the parts in the play was to be taken by a certain Monsieur Poplevin, and another by a certain Mademoiselle Ziablova, while the remaining parts were to be filled by a number of less important personages. Nevertheless the gentleman perused the notice with careful attention, and even jotted down the prices to be asked for seats for the performance. Also, he remarked that the bill had been printed in the press of the Provincial Government. Next, he turned over the paper, in order to see if anything further was to be read on the reverse side; but, finding nothing there, he refolded the document, placed it in the box which served him as a receptacle for odds and ends, and brought the day to a close with a portion of cold veal, a bottle of pickles, and a sound sleep.
6 A German dramatist (1761-1819) who also filled sundry posts in the service of the Russian Government.
The following day he devoted to paying calls upon the various municipal officials — a first, and a very respectful, visit being paid to the Governor. This personage turned out to resemble Chichikov himself in that he was neither fat nor thin. Also, he wore the riband of the order of Saint Anna about his neck, and was reported to have been recommended also for the star. For the rest, he was large and good-natured, and had a habit of amusing himself with occasional spells of knitting. Next, Chichikov repaired to the Vice-Governor’s, and thence to the house of the Public Prosecutor, to that of the President of the Local Council, to that of the Chief of Police, to that of the Commissioner of Taxes, and to that of the local Director of State Factories. True, the task of remembering every big-wig in this world of ours is not a very easy one; but at least our visitor displayed the greatest activity in his work of paying calls, seeing that he went so far as to pay his respects also to the Inspector of the Municipal Department of Medicine and to the City Architect. Thereafter he sat thoughtfully in his britchka — plunged in meditation on the subject of whom else it might be well to visit. However, not a single magnate had been neglected, and in conversation with his hosts he had contrived to flatter each separate one. For instance to the Governor he had hinted that a stranger, on arriving in his, the Governor’s province, would conceive that he had reached Paradise, so velvety were the roads. “Governors who appoint capable subordinates,” had said Chichikov, “are deserving of the most ample meed of praise.” Again, to the Chief of Police our hero had passed a most gratifying remark on the subject of the local gendarmery; while in his conversation with the Vice-Governor and the President of the Local Council (neither of whom had, as yet, risen above the rank of State Councillor) he had twice been guilty of the gaucherie of addressing his interlocutors with the title of “Your Excellency”— a blunder which had not failed to delight them. In the result the Governor had invited him to a reception the same evening, and certain other officials had followed suit by inviting him, one of them to dinner, a second to a tea-party, and so forth, and so forth.
Of himself, however, the traveller had spoken little; or, if he had spoken at any length, he had done so in a general sort of way and with marked modesty. Indeed, at moments of the kind his discourse had assumed something of a literary vein, in that invariably he had stated that, being a worm of no account in the world, he was deserving of no consideration at the hands of his fellows; that in his time he had undergone many strange experiences; that subsequently he had suffered much in the cause of Truth; that he had many enemies seeking his life; and that, being desirous of rest, he was now engaged in searching for a spot wherein to dwell — wherefore, having stumbled upon the town in which he now found himself, he had considered it his bounden duty to evince his respect for the chief authorities of the place. This, and no more, was all that, for the moment, the town succeeded in learning about the new arrival. Naturally he lost no time in presenting himself at the Governor’s evening party. First, however, his preparations for that function occupied a space of over two hours, and necessitated an attention to his toilet of a kind not commonly seen. That is to say, after a brief post-grandial nap he called for soap and water, and spent a considerable period in the task of scrubbing his cheeks (which, for the purpose, he supported from within with his tongue) and then of drying his full, round face, from the ears downwards, with a towel which he took from the waiter’s shoulder. Twice he snorted into the waiter’s countenance as he did this, and then he posted himself in front of the mirror, donned a false shirt-front, plucked out a couple of hairs which were protruding from his nose, and appeared vested in a frockcoat of bilberry-coloured check. Thereafter driving through broad streets sparsely lighted with lanterns, he arrived at the Governor’s residence to find it illuminated as for a ball. Barouches with gleaming lamps, a couple of gendarmes posted before the doors, a babel of postillions’ cries — nothing of a kind likely to be impressive was wanting; and, on reaching the salon, the visitor actually found himself obliged to close his eyes for a moment, so strong was the mingled sheen of lamps, candles, and feminine apparel. Everything seemed suffused with light, and everywhere, flitting and flashing, were to be seen black coats — even as on a hot summer’s day flies revolve around a sugar loaf while the old housekeeper is cutting it into cubes before the open window, and the children of the house crowd around her to watch the movements of her rugged hands as those members ply the smoking pestle; and airy squadrons of flies, borne on the breeze, enter boldly, as though free of the house, and, taking advantage of the fact that the glare of the sunshine is troubling the old lady’s sight, disperse themselves over broken and unbroken fragments alike, even though the lethargy induced by the opulence of summer and the rich shower of dainties to be encountered at every step has induced them to enter less for the purpose of eating than for that of showing themselves in public, of parading up and down the sugar loaf, of rubbing both their hindquarters and their fore against one another, of cleaning their bodies under the wings, of extending their forelegs over their heads and grooming themselves, and of flying out of the window again to return with other predatory squadrons. Indeed, so dazed was Chichikov that scarcely did he realise that the Governor was taking him by the arm and presenting him to his (the Governor’s) lady. Yet the newly-arrived guest kept his head sufficiently to contrive to murmur some such compliment as might fittingly come from a middle-aged individual of a rank neither excessively high nor excessively low. Next, when couples had been formed for dancing and the remainder of the company found itself pressed back against the walls, Chichikov folded his arms, and carefully scrutinised the dancers. Some of the ladies were dressed well and in the fashion, while the remainder were clad in such garments as God usually bestows upon a provincial town. Also here, as elsewhere, the men belonged to two separate and distinct categories; one of which comprised slender individuals who, flitting around the ladies, were scarcely to be distinguished from denizens of the metropolis, so carefully, so artistically, groomed were their whiskers, so presentable their oval, clean-shaven faces, so easy the manner of their dancing attendance upon their womenfolk, so glib their French conversation as they quizzed their female companions. As for the other category, it comprised individuals who, stout, or of the same build as Chichikov (that is to say, neither very portly nor very lean), backed and sidled away from the ladies, and kept peering hither and thither to see whether the Governor’s footmen had set out green tables for whist. Their features were full and plump, some of them had beards, and in no case was their hair curled or waved or arranged in what the French call “the devil-may-care” style. On the contrary, their heads were either close-cropped or brushed very smooth, and their faces were round and firm. This category represented the more respectable officials of the town. In passing, I may say that in business matters fat men always prove superior to their leaner brethren; which is probably the reason why the latter are mostly to be found in the Political Police, or acting as mere ciphers whose existence is a purely hopeless, airy, trivial one. Again, stout individuals never take a back seat, but always a front one, and, wheresoever it be, they sit firmly, and with confidence, and decline to budge even though the seat crack and bend with their weight. For comeliness of exterior they care not a rap, and therefore a dress coat sits less easily on their figures than is the case with figures of leaner individuals. Yet invariably fat men amass the greater wealth. In three years’ time a thin man will not have a single serf whom he has left unpledged; whereas — well, pray look at a fat man’s fortunes, and what will you see? First of all a suburban villa, and then a larger suburban villa, and then a villa close to a town, and lastly a country estate which comprises every amenity! That is to say, having served both God and the State, the stout individual has won universal respect, and will end by retiring from business, reordering his mode of life, and becoming a Russian landowner — in other words, a fine gentleman who dispenses hospitality, lives in comfort and luxury, and is destined to leave his property to heirs who are purposing to squander the same on foreign travel.
