Gogol dead souls year of writing. Dead souls - the history of the creation of Gogol's poem briefly

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 creativity. “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 high temperature and with a frostbitten nose I lay In bed in that apartment that we rented from, we rented from Danilevsky ...

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 long years were not published in our country, and now, when they are published without abridgements and withdrawals, they have again given 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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: interesting idea suggested 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 medieval poem Dante's hero travels through the afterlife: he goes through all the circles of hell, bypasses purgatory, and in the end, having become enlightened, he ends up in heaven. Gogol's plot and structure are conceived in a similar way: 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 would end up in Siberia along with several other characters, and, after going through a series of trials, all together they would 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 on literary field, and came to the conclusion that he was chosen to create great masterpiece. As Gogol wrote to his friends while working on "Dead Souls": "... sin, strong sin, grave sin 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

We can say that the poem "Dead Souls" was the life work of N.V. Gogol. After all, out of twenty-three years of his writer's biography he spent seventeen years working on this work.

The history of the creation of "Dead Souls" is inextricably linked with the name of Pushkin. In The Author's Confession, Gogol recalled that Alexander Sergeevich repeatedly pushed him to write a large, large-scale work. Decisive was the poet's story about the incident he heard in Chisinau during his exile. He always remembered him, but told Nikolai Vasilievich only a decade and a half after the incident. So, the story of the creation of "Dead Souls" is based on the real adventures of an adventurer who bought long-dead serfs from landlords in order to pawn them, as if alive, in the Board of Trustees to receive a considerable loan.

In fact, in real life, the invention of the main character of Chichikov's poem was not so rare. In those years, fraud of this kind was even common. It is quite possible that in the Mirgorod district itself there was a case with the purchase of the dead. One thing is obvious: the history of the creation of "Dead Souls" is connected not with one such event, but with several, which the writer skillfully summarized.

Chichikov's adventure is the plot core of the work. Its slightest details look reliable, as they are taken from real life. The possibility of carrying out such adventures was due to the fact that until the beginning of the 18th century, peasants were counted in the country not without exception, but by household. And only in 1718 a decree was issued to conduct a per capita census, as a result of which all male serfs began to be taxed, starting with babies. Their number was recalculated every fifteen years. If some peasants died, fled or were recruited, the landowner had to pay taxes for them until the next census or divide them among the remaining workers. Naturally, any owner dreamed of getting rid of the so-called dead souls and easily fell into the net of an adventurer.

These were the real prerequisites for writing the work.

The history of the creation of the poem "Dead Souls" on paper begins in 1835. Gogol began work on it a little earlier than on The Inspector General. However, at first she did not fascinate him too much, because, after writing three chapters, he returned to comedy. And only after finishing it and returning from abroad, Nikolai Vasilyevich took up "Dead Souls" seriously.

With every step, with every written word, the new work seemed to him grander and grander. Gogol reworks the first chapters and generally rewrites the finished pages many times. For three years in Rome, he leads the life of a recluse, allowing himself only to undergo treatment in Germany and relax a bit in Paris or Geneva. In 1839, Gogol was forced to leave Italy for a long eight months, and with it the work on the poem. Upon his return to Rome, he continued to work on it and completed it within a year. The writer has only to polish the essay. Gogol took Dead Souls to Russia in 1841 with the intention of printing them there.

In Moscow, the result of his six years of work was taken into consideration by the censorship committee, whose members showed hostility towards him. Then Gogol took his manuscript and turned to Belinsky, who was just visiting Moscow, asking him to take the work with him to St. Petersburg and help him get through the censorship. The critic agreed to help.

The censorship in St. Petersburg was less strict and, after lengthy delays, they nevertheless allowed the book to be printed. True, with some conditions: to amend the title of the poem, the Tale of Captain Kopeikin, and thirty-six more dubious places.

The long-suffering work was finally out of print in the spring of 1842. Takova Short story Creation of "Dead Souls".

In the title itself famous poem Nikolai Gogol's "Dead Souls" has already been concluded main idea and the idea behind this piece. Judging superficially, the title reveals the content of the scam and the very personality of Chichikov - he bought the souls of already dead peasants. But in order to embrace the whole philosophical meaning Gogol's ideas, you need to look deeper than the literal interpretation of the title and even what is happening in the poem.

The meaning of the name "Dead Souls"

The title "Dead Souls" contains a much more important and deeper meaning than is displayed by the author in the first volume of the work. It has been said for a long time that Gogol originally planned to write this poem by analogy with the famous and immortal "Divine Comedy" by Dante, and as you know, it consisted of three parts - "Hell", "Purgatory" and "Paradise". It was they who had to correspond to the three volumes of Gogol's poem.

In the first volume of his most famous poem, the author intended to show the hell of Russian reality, the frightening and truly terrifying truth about the life of that time, and in the second and third volumes, the rise of the spiritual culture and life of Russia. To some extent, the title of the work is a symbol of the life of the county town N., and the city itself is a symbol of the whole of Russia, and thus the author indicates that his Mother country is in a terrible state, and the saddest and most terrible thing is that this is due to the fact that the souls of people are gradually cooling down, stale and dying.

The history of the creation of Dead Souls

The poem "Dead Souls" Nikolai Gogol began in 1835 and continued to work on it until the end of his life. At the very beginning, the writer singled out for himself, most likely, the funny side of the novel and created the plot Dead Souls, both for long work. There is an opinion that Gogol borrowed the main idea of ​​the poem from A.S. Pushkin, since it was this poet who first heard real story about "dead souls" in the city of Bendery. Gogol worked on the novel not only in his homeland, but also in Switzerland, Italy and France. The first volume of "Dead Souls" was completed in 1842, and in May it was already published under the title "The Adventures of Chichikov or Dead Souls."

Subsequently, work on the novel, Gogol's original idea expanded significantly, it was then that the analogy with the three parts " Divine Comedy". Gogol conceived that his characters went through a kind of circles of hell and purgatory, so that at the end of the poem they would rise spiritually and be reborn. The author never managed to realize his idea, only the first part of the poem was completely written. It is known that Gogol began work on the second volume of the poem in 1840, and by 1845 he had already prepared several options for continuing the poem. Unfortunately, it was in this year that the author independently destroyed the second volume of the work, he irrevocably burned the second part of Dead Souls, being dissatisfied with what was written. The exact reason for this act of the writer is still unknown. There are draft manuscripts of four chapters of the second volume, which were discovered after the opening of Gogol's papers.

Thus, it becomes clear that the central category and at the same time the main idea of ​​Gogol's poem is the soul, the presence of which makes a person complete and real. This is precisely the main theme of the work, and Gogol tries to point out the value of the soul using the example of soulless and callous heroes who represent a special social stratum of Russia. In his immortal and brilliant work, Gogol simultaneously raises the topic of the crisis in Russia and shows what it is directly related to. The author talks about the fact that it is the soul that is the nature of man, without which there is no meaning in life, without which life becomes dead, and that it is thanks to it that salvation can be found.