Gogol's Dead Souls. Images of peasants in the poem N

Works on literature: Peasants in Gogol's poem "Dead Souls"

What is the real world of Dead Souls? This is a world, typical representatives of which are Nozdrev, Sobakevich, police chief, prosecutor and many others. Gogol describes them with wicked irony, not sparing or sparing. He shows them funny and ridiculous, but this is laughter through tears. This is something terrible that has always been superfluous for Russia. The real world of "Dead Souls" is scary, disgusting, insane. This is a world devoid of spiritual values, a world of immorality, human shortcomings. It is clear that this world is not a place for Gogol's ideal, therefore his ideal in the first volume of Dead Souls is only in lyrical digressions and is removed from reality by a huge abyss.

The landlords, residents of the provincial city of N, are not the only inhabitants of the real world. The peasants also live in it. But Gogol does not distinguish living peasants from the crowd of immoral Manilovites, Nozdrevites and prosecutors. Living peasants in reality appear before the reader as drunkards and ignoramuses. Guys arguing whether the wheel will make it to Moscow; stupid uncle Mityai and uncle Minyai; the serf Manilov, asking for a living, and himself going to get drunk - all of them do not arouse sympathy either from the readers or from the author: he describes them with the same evil irony as the landowners.

But there are still exceptions. These are the main representatives of the people in the poem - Selifan and Petrushka. The evil irony is no longer visible in their description. And although there is no high spirituality and morality in Selifan, he is often stupid, lazy, but nevertheless he differs from Uncle Mityai and Uncle Minay. Often Gogol laughs at Selifan, but this is a kind laugh, a laugh from the heart. The author's reflections on the soul of the common people, an attempt to understand its psychology, are associated with the image of Selifan.

In Dead Souls, the exponent of the ideal is the people's Russia, described in lyrical digressions. Gogol presents his ideal as if in two angles: as a generalized image of the people in lyrical digressions, as a concretization of this ideal in the images of dead peasants, "dead souls." In his concluding lyrical digression, Gogol notes that such a "bird-troika" flying across vast expanses "could only be born among a lively people." Where Chichikov, rewriting the names of the dead peasants just bought him, draws in his imagination their earthly life, Gogol imagines how they lived, how their fate developed, how they died.

In general, such reasoning is not characteristic of Chichikov. One gets the impression that Gogol himself is arguing this. The images of the dead peasants in the poem are ideal. Gogol endows them with such qualities as heroism and strength. Bogatyr-carpenter Stepan Probka. This is how Sobakevich said about him: “After all, what a power it was! If he had served in the guard, God knows what they would have given him, three arshins with an inch of height! " And what hardworking, skillful people are these shoemaker Maxim Telyatnikov, coachman Mikheev. it is hard not to notice with what enthusiasm the author writes about these men! He takes pity on them, sympathizes with their hard life. Gogol contrasts this dead people, but with a living soul, to the living people of the poem, whose soul is dead.

In Dead Souls, Gogol shows us not only the strange reality of Russian life, but at the same time, in his measured digressions, Gogol draws to us his ideal of future Russia and the Russian people, which is very far from modern life. It is likely that in the second, burnt volume, Gogol planned to transfer this ideal image into real life, to translate it into reality. After all, Gogol fervently believed that Russia would one day emerge from this terrible world, that it would be reborn, and that this moment would surely come. But, unfortunately, Gogol was never able to find the ideal heroes of reality. This is the tragedy of his entire life, the tragedy of Russia.

Sep 26 2014

Images of peasants in N. V. Gogol's poem "Dead Souls". What is the real world of Dead Souls? This is a world, typical representatives of which are Manilov, Nozdrev, Sobakevich, police chief, prosecutor and many others. Gogol describes them with wicked irony, not sparing or sparing. He shows them funny and ridiculous, but this is laughter through tears. This is something terrible that has always been superfluous for Russia.

The real world of "Dead Souls" is scary, disgusting, insane. This is a world devoid of spiritual values, a world of immorality, human shortcomings. It is clear that this world is not a place for Gogol's ideal, therefore his ideal in the first volume of Dead Souls is only in lyrical digressions and is removed from reality by a huge abyss. The landlords, residents of the provincial city of N, are not the only inhabitants of the real world. The peasants also live in it.

But Gogol does not distinguish living peasants from the crowd of immoral Manilovites, Nozdrevites and prosecutors. Living peasants in reality appear before the reader as drunkards and ignoramuses. Guys arguing whether the wheel will make it to Moscow; stupid uncle Mityai and uncle Minyai; serf Manilov, asking for a living, and himself going to get drunk, all of them do not arouse sympathy either from the readers or from the author: he describes them with the same evil irony as the landowners.

But there are still exceptions. These are the main representatives of the people in the poem - Selifan and Petrushka. The evil irony is no longer visible in their description. And although there is no high spirituality and morality in Selifan, he is often stupid, lazy, but nevertheless he differs from Uncle Mityai and Uncle Minay.

Often Gogol laughs at Selifan, but this is a kind laugh, a laugh from the heart. The author's reflections on the soul of the common people, an attempt to understand its psychology, are associated with the image of Selifan. In Dead Souls, the exponent of the ideal is the people's Russia, described in lyrical digressions.

Gogol presents his ideal as if in two angles: as a generalized people in lyrical digressions, as a concretization of this ideal in the images of dead peasants, "dead souls." In his concluding lyrical digression, Gogol notes that such a "bird-troika" flying across vast expanses "could only be born among a lively people." Where Chichikov, rewriting the names of the dead peasants he had just bought, draws their earthly ones in his imagination, Gogol imagines how they lived, how their fate developed, how they died. In general, such reasoning is not characteristic of Chichikov. One gets the impression that Gogol himself is arguing this.

The images of the dead peasants in the poem are ideal. Gogol endows them with such qualities as heroism and strength. Bogatyr-carpenter Stepan Probka. This is how Sobakevich said about him: “After all, what a power it was!

If he had served in the guard, God knows what they would have given him, three arshins with an inch of height! " And what hardworking, skillful people are these shoemaker Maxim Telyatnikov, coachman Mikheev. it's hard not to notice how enthusiastically he writes about these men!

He takes pity on them, sympathizes with their hard life. Gogol contrasts this dead people, but with a living soul, to the living people of the poem, whose soul is dead. In Dead Souls, Gogol shows us not only the strange reality of Russian life, but at the same time, in his measured digressions, Gogol draws to us his ideal of future Russia and the Russian people, which is very far from modern life. It is likely that in the second, burnt volume, Gogol planned to transfer this ideal image into real life, to translate it into reality. After all, Gogol fervently believed that Russia would one day emerge from this terrible world, that it would be reborn, and that this moment would surely come.

Interest in the work of Gogol continues unabated today. Probably, the reason is that Gogol was able to most fully show the character traits of a Russian person, the grandeur and beauty of Russia.

Dead Souls begins with a depiction of city life, sketches of pictures of the city, and a description of the bureaucratic society. Five chapters of the poem are devoted to the depiction of officials, five to the landlords and one to the biography of Chichikov. As a result, a general picture of Russia is being recreated with a huge number of actors of different positions and states, which are snatched

Gogol from the general mass, after all, in addition to officials and landowners, Gogol also describes other urban and rural residents - the bourgeoisie, servants, peasants. All this adds up to a complex panorama of the life of Russia, its present.

Let's see how Gogol portrays the baptism.

Gogol is by no means inclined to idealize them. Let us recall the beginning of the poem, when Chichikov drove into the city. Two men, examining the chaise, determined that one wheel was out of order and Chichikov would not go far. Gogol did not hide the fact that the peasants were standing near the tavern. Uncle Mityai and uncle Minyay, serf Manilov, asking for work, and

Himself going to drink. The girl Pelageya does not know how to distinguish between right and left. Proshka and Mavra are hammered and intimidated. Gogol does not blame them, but rather laughs at them good-naturedly.

Describing the coachman Selifan and the footman Petrushka, Chichikov's servants, the author shows kindness and understanding. Petrushka is seized with a passion for reading, although he is more attracted not by what he reads, but by the process of reading itself, as it is from the letters "some word always comes out, which sometimes the devil knows what it means." We do not see high spirituality and morality in Selifan and Petrushka, but they already differ from Uncle Mityai and Uncle Minay. Revealing the image of Selifan, Gogol shows the soul of the Russian peasant and tries to understand this soul. Let's remember what he says about the meaning of scratching in the back of the head among the Russian people: “What did this scratching mean? and what does it mean in general? Is it a pity that the meeting with my brother planned for the next day has not gone right ... or what a sweetheart has already started in a new place ... adversity? "

The expression of the ideal future of Russia is Russia, described in lyrical digressions. The people are also represented here. Let this people consist of "dead souls", but it has a lively and lively mind, it is a people "full of creative abilities of the soul ...". It was among such people that a "bird-three" could appear, which is easily controlled by the coachman. This is, for example, a quick man from Yaroslavl who made a wonderful carriage with one ax and a chisel. Chichikov bought him and other dead peasants. Rewriting them, he draws in his imagination their earthly life: “My dears, how many of you are crammed here! what have you, my dear ones, been doing in your lifetime? " The dead peasants in the poem are contrasted with the living peasants with their poor inner world. They are endowed with fabulous, heroic features. Selling the carpenter Stepan, the landowner Sobakevich describes him as follows: “After all, what a force it was! If he had served in the guard, God knows what they would have given him, three arshins with a height ”.

The image of the people in Gogol's poem gradually develops into the image of Russia. Here, too, one can see the opposition of real Russia to an ideal future Russia. At the beginning of the eleventh chapter, Gogol gives a description of Russia: “Rus! Russia! I see you ... "and" What a strange and alluring, and carrying, and wonderful in the word: road! " But these two lyrical digressions are torn apart by phrases: "Hold, hold, you fool!" - shouted Chichikov to Selifan. “Here I am with a broadsword! - shouted a courier galloping towards him with a mustache in an arshin. - Do not you see, devil take your soul: the official carriage! .. "

In lyrical digressions, the author refers to the "immense expanse", the "mighty space" of the Russian land. In the last chapter of the poem Chichikov's chaise, the Russian troika turns into a symbolic image of Russia, rapidly rushing into an unknown distance. Gogol, being a patriot, believes in a bright and happy future for the Motherland. Gogol's Russia in the future is a great and mighty country.

In his famous address to the “bird-troika”, Gogol did not forget the master to whom the troika owes its existence: smart guy. " There is another hero in the poem about swindlers, parasites, owners of living and dead souls. Gogol's unnamed hero is serf slaves. In Dead Souls, Gogol made such a dithyramb to the Russian serf people, with such direct clarity he opposed it to the landowners and officials that it cannot go unnoticed.

The tragic fate of the enslaved people is reflected in the images of serfs. Gogol speaks of the dullness and savagery that slavery brings to man. It is in this light that we must consider the images of Uncle Mityai, the girl Pelageya, who could not distinguish between right and left, Plyushkin's Proshka and Mavra, who were beaten to the extreme. Social depression and humiliation were imprinted on Selifan and Petrushka. The latter even had a noble impulse to read books, but he was more attracted by “not what he read about, but more the reading itself, or, better to say, the process of reading itself, that now some word always comes out of the letters, which sometimes the devil knows what it means. "

The images of the people are given in two planes, forming a sharp contradiction between shadow and light. On the one hand, Gogol's humor in describing the peasants is a fool, on the other, peasant Russia is depicted with sympathy. The conversation of the peasants about the wheel of Chichikov's chaise is the melancholy of "the idiocy of village life." The theme of "idiocy", slavery, a hopeless existence repeatedly emerges in the poem, embodied in Petrushka, in Selifan, in his patience, conversations with horses, and discussions about the merits of his master. The "idiocy of village life" emanates from the peasants' explanation about Manilovka and Zamanilovka, and from the scene where a crowd of peasants cannot budge the crews of Chichikov and the governor's daughter.

The dead peasants in the poem are contrasted with the living peasants with their poor inner world. They are endowed with fabulous, heroic features. Selling the carpenter Stepan, the landowner Sobakevich describes him as follows: “After all, what a force it was! If he had served in the guard, God knows what they would have given him, three arshins with a height ”. So Chichikov, returning after successful deals with the sellers of dead souls, seized with the most incomprehensible feelings, imagines the biographies of the slaves he bought. Here Cork Stepan, a carpenter who fell from the bell tower - a hero, would be suitable for the guard. The shoemaker Maksim Telyatnikov, who learned his craft from a German, but burned out on obviously rotten raw materials and died from binge drinking. The coachman Micah created carriages of extraordinary strength and beauty. Stove-maker Milushkin could put a stove in any house. And Eremey Sorokoplekhin "brought one quitrent for five hundred rubles!" And still, and still, young, healthy, hard-working, gifted people are resurrected in the playing imagination of Chichikov. All this is strikingly different from the rest of Gogol's story - so broadly, with such a will to generalize, the author's sympathy and love for the common people is expressed. For the first time in the poem, the most lively people stand up. In Chichikov's list, runaways are also placed next to the dead. When faced with the names and nicknames of the fugitive Chichikov, he is completely delighted: “And really, where is Fyrov now? He walks noisily and merrily on the grain pier, ordering with the merchants. Flowers, ribbons on the hat, the whole gang of burlaks is having fun ... There you will find some work, barge haulers! And together, as you used to walk and rage, you will take on labor and sweat, pulling the strap under one endless, like Russia, song ... ”And here we see real images of peasants, full of life, not crushed by poverty, slavery and lawlessness.

Giving such different images of serfs, Gogol makes it clear to the reader that the squalor of peasant life is a consequence of the way of life of society. Dead Souls does not contain only negative images. Along with the collective image of social evil, the image of the Russian people was created. And the people are the positive hero of the poem.

XIX century. - truly the age of the flourishing of Russian classical literature, the century that gave birth to such titans as Pushkin and Lermontov, Turgenev and Dostoevsky ... This list can be continued further, but we will focus on the name of the great Russian writer - Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, a writer, according to V. Belinsky, who continued the development of Russian literary thought after the death of Alexander Pushkin.

Gogol, who dreamed of creating a work "in which all of Russia would appear," realized his intention by writing the poem "Dead Souls".

The title of the work, at first glance, means Chichikov's scam - the purchase of such a human soul; they are evil, greedy, careless, corrupt.

And serfs, on the contrary, are alive, even if we are talking about dead (in the physical, biological sense) people. They are the best representatives of the Russian people, they personify the truth, the people's truth, tk. they all come from the people.

To confirm our thought, let us turn to the text of "Dead Souls".

In many chapters of the poem, a description of the peasants is given (from the very beginning, where the peasants standing at the tavern are discussing "will it reach Moscow ... this is such a wheel ... or not"), but the images of serfs are most vividly presented in the fifth chapter, during the bargaining between Chichikov and Sobakevich ...

Sobakevich, wishing to win the highest price for a “soul,” talks about the dead peasants: “... For example, the coachman Mikheev! -the strength of such, he will upholster, and cover with varnish! "

And he is not alone - he is followed by a whole series of vivid, real, living images: Cork Stepan, a carpenter, a man of great strength, Milushkin, a brick-maker who "could put a stove in any house", Maxim Telyatnikov, a shoemaker, Eremey Sorokoplekhin, who brought "Rent for five hundred rubles."

This list continues in the seventh chapter, when Chichikov examines the notes of Plyushkin and Sobakevich: “When he [Chichikov] then looked at these leaves, at the peasants who, as it were, were once peasants, worked, plowed, drank, drove around, cheated the bar , or maybe they were just good men, then some strange feeling, incomprehensible to him, took possession of him. Each of the little notes seemed to have some special character. And through that, as if the peasants themselves were getting their own character ... "

It was as if the peasants were coming to life, thanks to the details: “Fedotov alone had it written: 'the father does not know who' ..., the other -“ a good carpenter, ”the third -“ he understands the matter and doesn’t take anything drunk ”and Mr. D.

They even had a softening effect on Chichikov: “he was moved by spirit and. sighing, he said: "My dears, how many of you are crammed here!"

Running through the names and surnames, Chichikov involuntarily imagined them alive, or rather, they themselves were “resurrected” thanks to their reality and “liveliness”. And then a string of truly national characters ran before the reader's eyes: Pyotr Savelyev Don't-respect-Koryto, Grigory Doezhai-you won't-get there, Eremey Karjakin, Nikita Volokita, Abakum Fyrov and many, many others.

Chichikov talked about their share: how he lived, how he died ("Oh, the Russian people! Doesn't like to die a natural death! .. Was it bad for you at Plyushkin's, or just, in your hunt, you walk through the woods and fight passers-by? ..." )

Even in this fragment one can hear the people's melancholy, the people's longing for the will, the downtroddenness, the doom of the Russian peasant to bondage or running and robbery.

In lyrical digressions, Gogol creates the image of a truly living soul of the people. The author admires the prowess, generosity, talent and intelligence of the Russian people.

Do not forget about Selifan and Petrushka, Chichikov's servants: fragments of the poem where they are present are saturated with deep sympathy along with the dot: this is Selifan's "conversation" with horses, lovingly nicknamed the Assessor and Gned, and a joint visit to a tavern and sleep after a drinking bout, and much more. They also embarked on the path of necrosis, tk. serve the master, lie to him and do not mind a drink,

Peasants, whose lot is poverty, hunger, backbreaking work, disease; and landowners using serfdom - this is the reality of the middle of the 19th century.

It is worth mentioning the author's admiration not only for the characters of the people, but also for the glibness and brightness of the words of ordinary people. Gogol says with love that the "bird-troika" flying across the vast expanses of the Russian land "could only be born of a lively people." The author's image of the “Russian troika”, which acquires symbolic meaning, is inextricably linked with the images of the “agile Yaroslavl peasant”, who made a solid carriage with one ax and chisel, and the coachman, who is perched on “God knows what,” and famously managing the troika. After all, it is only thanks to such people that Russia rushes forward, striking the beholder of this miracle. It is Russia, similar to the “unattainable troika”, forcing “other peoples and states” to give it a way, and not the Russia of the Manilovs, Sobakevichs and Plyushkins is Gogol's ideal.

Showing the truly valuable qualities of the soul by the example of ordinary people, Gogol appeals to his readers to preserve the "universal movements" from their youth.

In general, Dead Souls is a work about the contrast and unpredictability of Russian reality (the very name of the poem is an oxymoron). The work contains both a reproach to people and admiration for Russia. Gogol wrote about this in Chapter XI of Dead Souls. The writer claims that along with "dead people" in Russia there is a place for heroes, for every title, every position requires heroism. The Russian people, "full of creative abilities of the soul" - have a heroic mission.

However, this mission, according to Gogol, in the times described in the poem, is practically impracticable, since there is a possibility of manifestation of heroism, but behind something superficial and unimportant the morally crushed Russian people do not see them. This is the story of the insert of the poem about Kif Mokievich and Mokiya Kifovich. However, the author believes that if people open their eyes to their omissions, to "dead souls", then Russia will finally fulfill its heroic mission. And this Renaissance must begin with the common people.

Thus, Gogol shows in his poem Dead Souls unforgettable images of a simple Russian serf peasantry, forgotten, but spiritually alive, gifted and talented.

Other writers will continue the Gogol tradition in describing the people: Leskov, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Nekrasov, Tolstoy and others.

And, in spite of the unattractiveness of reality, of the peasantry, Gogol believes in the revival of the Russian nation, in the spiritual unity of a country stretching for many miles. And the basis of this revival is people who come from the people, images are pure and light, opposed in "Dead Souls" to the callousness and fossilism of the bureaucratic-landlord machine of tsarist Russia, based on backward serfdom.