Dead Souls (original 1842; edition 1961)

I had a lot of fun reading this book and can't believe I've taken so long to read it it. Gogol, who called it a poem and not a novel, thinking of it, as the introduction to my edition points out, as a minor epic, takes his decidedly non-heroic hero, Chichickov, and the reader, through a series of encounters that humorously (and perhaps not so humorously) illustrate life in provincial Russia. It is wildly satirical and often laugh-out-loud funny, and yet there is probably much more than a kernel of truth in the characters he creates. Through these characters, and his delicious use of language, Gogol keeps the reader wondering who Chichikov will meet next, who he really is, and why he is doing what he is doing -- just as the people who meet him wonder about him.

For what Chichikov is doing is going around the countryside, always impressing people with his appearance and manner, and trying to buy "dead souls" -- serfs who have died but who remain on the tax rolls of their masters until the next census, thus representing an expense to their masters. Clearly, this is unusual, if not downright illegal, and the reader doesn't know until the last chapter of the first part why Chichikov is doing it. Everywhere, people are charmed to meet him, and he makes inroads into the cream of provincial society, but of course he encounters obstacles and, despite his resourcefulness, eventually serious enough ones to make him leave town. In the second part of the book, which is unfinished and incomplete (Gogol burned a lot of it just before his untimely death), some years have passed, Chichikov is in another part of the country, engaging in other schemes and meeting other odd characters; however, this part doesn't have the manic energy of the first part.

What we see in the people Chichikov encounters is a cross-section of provincial Russia: corruption, greed, mismanagement, suspicion, cruelty, the desire to do good without knowing how, class distinctions, downright nuttiness, and absurdity. It is clearly a society that could be doing a lot better than it is. One of the weirdest sections involved a landowner Chichikov meets (in the unfinished second part) who has organized a whole bureaucracy on his estate, one that needless to say doesn't work, and that sounds a lot like the Soviet bureaucracy that wouldn't come on the scene for another 70 or 80 years.

It's hard to say whether the best part of this book is the characters, the satire, or Gogol's language. As he writes:

A knowledge of hearts and a wise comprehension of life resound in the word of the Briton; like a nimble fop the short-lived word of the Frenchman flashes and scatters; whimsically does the German contrive his lean, intelligent work, not accessible to all; but there is no word so sweeping, so pert, so bursting from beneath the very heart, so ebullient and vibrant with life, as an aptly spoken Russian word." p. 109

And to give a feeling for Gogol's sometimes understated satire:

"Not hindered, however, by the lawyer's skeptical appearance, Chichikov explained the difficult points of the matter and depicted in alluring perspective the gratitude necessarily consequent about good counsel and concern.

To this the lawyer responded by depicting the uncertainty of all earthly things, and artfully alluded to the fact that two birds in the bush meant nothing, and what was needed was one in the hand. p. 360

I could go on and on, but I'll just note that the edition I read was translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose translations of other Russian authors I have also thoroughly enjoyed. There is an even newer translation, published by NYRB (whose books I nearly always like), but I decided to stick with the tried and true. If I had all the time in the world, it would be interesting to compare the translations.

I know I read it, in college, but I can't really remember it. Maybe I should read it again? ( )

I need to read the new translation of this by Donald Rayfield, published by NYRB. ( )

In my effort to read more classics, Dead Souls was the perfect entry point back into the works of the Russian greats. Although I haven’t compared it to older translations, I found this one by Rayfield to be terrific. The language is easy to understand, but also manages to capture the poetics of prose wonderfully. Right off the bat, I was completely enchanted by the tone of the story as we follow our protagonist, Chichikov, around town as he goes about meeting with different landowners in a seemingly bizarre quest to buy their dead serfs, serfs whose deaths hadn’t yet been recorded by the tax authorities. Each encounter with these characters beats the previous encounter in terms of the surreal and absurd. We see how these landowners and government officials are silly, selfish, greedy, and corrupt, reflecting a society that’s become morally vapid. Gogol strings us along for a while before we find out the purpose of the dead souls, but instead of becoming impatient, I was happy to be strung along in a satire that has whimsy, a charming wink-wink tone, but also earnest exhortations to really examine the perilous path towards which society was headed.

Dead Souls in an unfinished manuscript and I was afraid that I’d be dissatisfied with the lack of true resolution at the end. Yet, even when the manuscript ends in the middle of a sentence, it luckily worked well. There’s a gathering in which a prince begins to issue a call to reform the nation, a kind of “call to arms.” The nation faces two choices (as does Chichikov, who gets punished and keeps getting second chances): to keep perpetuating the moral decay or turn over a new leaf. It seemed a very cinematic ending even though we don’t see which choice the nation (and Chichikov) opted for.
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so, i'm bored, and trying to remember some great books I have read in the past ten years. isn't that what we all do on websites like this? anyway, Gogol just pops into mind out of nowhere. seven years on and i can still vividly remember every detail of this unfinished masterpiece. surreal, haunting, satirical...in sum, everything great about russian literature and, in particular, Gogol. ( )