Ideological and artistic originality of the poem "Dead Souls" by N.V. Gogol Artistic originality of the poem "dead souls Artistic features of the poem dead souls briefly

03.11.2019

Characteristics of the hero from the comedy "Minor" D

Pyotr Andreevich Grinev, the main character of the story

The image and characteristics of svidrigailov in the novel crime and punishment dostoevsky composition

The image and characteristics of Mitrofanushka in Fonvizin's "The Minor": the description of Mitrofan Prostakov

1. "Dead Souls" as a realistic work

b) The principles of realism in the poem:

1. Historicism

Gogol wrote about his modernity - around the end of the 20s - the beginning of the 30s, during the crisis of serfdom in Russia.

2. Typical characters in typical circumstances

The main trends in the depiction of landowners and officials are satirical descriptions, social typification and general critical orientation. "Dead Souls" is a literary work. Particular attention is paid to the description of nature, the estate and the interior, the details of the portrait. Most of the heroes are shown statically. Much attention is paid to details, the so-called "mud of little things" (for example, Plyushkin's character). Gogol correlates various plans: universal proportions (a lyrical digression about the bird-troika) and the smallest details (a description of a trip along extremely bad Russian roads).

3. Means of satirical typing

a) The author's characteristics of the characters, b) Comic situations (for example, Manilov and Chichikov cannot disperse at the door), c) An appeal to the heroes' past (Chichikov, Plyushkin), d) Hyperbole (the unexpected death of the prosecutor, the extraordinary gluttony of Sobakevich), e ) Proverbs ("Neither in the city of Bogdan, nor in the village of Selifan"), f) Comparisons (Sobakevich is compared with an average bear, Box - with a mongrel in the hay).

2. Genre originality

Calling his work a "poem", Gogol meant: "a lesser kind of epic ... A prospectus for an educational book of literature for Russian youth. The hero of the epics is a private and invisible person, but significant in many respects for observing the human soul. "

The poem is a genre that goes back to the traditions of the ancient epic, in which an integral being was recreated in all its contradictions. The Slavophiles insisted on this characterization of Dead Souls, appealing to the fact that elements of the poem, as a genre of praises, are also in Dead Souls (lyrical digressions). Gogol himself, later in his Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends, analyzing the translation of Zhukovsky's Odyssey, will admire the ancient epic and genius of Homer, who presented not only the events that make up the core of the poem, but also the entire ancient world in all completeness, with its way of life, beliefs, popular views, etc., that is, the very spirit of the people of that era. In his letters to friends, Gogol called Dead Souls not only a poem, but also a novel. In "Dead Souls" there are features of an adventurous, roguish, and social novel. However, it is customary not to call "Dead Souls" a novel, since there is practically no love intrigue in the work.

3. Features of the plot and composition

Features of the plot of "Dead Souls" are associated primarily with the image of Chichikov and his ideological and compositional role. Gogol: "The author leads his life through a chain of adventures and changes in order to present at the same time a true picture of everything significant in the features and customs of the time he has taken ... a picture of shortcomings, abuses, vices." In a letter to V. Zhukovsky, Gogol mentions that he wanted to show "all of Russia" in the poem. The poem is written in the form of a journey, scattered fragments of the life of Russia are combined into a single whole. This is the main compositional role of Chichikov. The independent role of the image is reduced to the description of a new type of Russian life, an entrepreneur-adventurer. In chapter 11, the author gives a biography of Chichikov, from which it follows that the hero uses either the position of an official or the mythical position of a landowner to achieve his goals.

The composition is built on the principle of "concentric circles" or "enclosed spaces" (city, landowners' estates, all of Russia).

4. The theme of homeland and people

Gogol wrote about his work: "All Russia will appear in him." The life of the ruling class and common people is given without idealization. The peasants are characterized by ignorance, narrow-mindedness, downtroddenness (the images of Petrushka and Selifan, the courtyard girl Korobochka, who does not know where is right or where is left, uncle Mityai and uncle Minyai, who are discussing whether Chichikov's chaise will reach Moscow and Kazan). Nevertheless, the author warmly describes the talent and other creative abilities of the people (a lyrical digression about the Russian language, a characterization of the Yaroslavl peasant in a digression about the Bird-Troika, the register of Sobakevich's peasants).

Much attention is paid to the popular revolt (the story of Captain Kopeikin). The theme of the future of Russia is reflected in Gogol's poetic attitude to his homeland (lyrical digressions about Russia and about the bird-three).

5. Features of the image of landowners in the poem

Gogol unfolds before the reader a whole gallery of images of landowners (leading his protagonist from the first to the last) primarily in order to answer the main question that occupied him - what is the future of Russia, what is its historical purpose, what is in modern life contains at least a small hint of a bright, prosperous future for the people, which will be the guarantee of the future greatness of the nation. In other words, the question that Gogol asks at the end, in a lyrical digression about "Russia-Troika", permeates the entire narrative as a leitmotif, and it is to him that the logic and poetics of the entire work, including the images of landowners, are subordinated (see Logic of Creativity).

The box in this respect is the complete opposite of Manilov. Unlike him, she does not hover in the clouds, but, on the contrary, is completely immersed in everyday life. However, the image of Korobochka does not give the desired ideal either. Pettiness and stinginess (old cloaks stored in chests, money put in a stocking for a "rainy day"), inertia, stupid adherence to tradition, rejection and fear of everything new, "club-headed" make her look almost more repulsive than Manilov ...

For all the dissimilarity of the characters of Manilov and Korobochka, they have one thing in common - inactivity. Both Manilov and Korobochka (albeit for opposite reasons) do not affect the reality around them. Perhaps an active person will be a model from which to take an example for the young generation? And, as if in answer to this question, Nozdryov appears. Nozdryov is extremely active. However, all his stormy activities are for the most part scandalous. He is a frequenter of all drunks and binges in the district, he changes everything that he gets on anything (he tries to foist puppies, a barrel organ, a horse, etc.) on Chichikov, cheats when playing cards and even checkers, and wastes money that he gets from the sale. harvest. He lies unnecessarily (it was Nozdryov who subsequently confirmed the rumor that Chichikov wanted to steal the governor's daughter and took him as an accomplice, without batting an eye agrees that Chichikov is Napoleon, who fled from exile, etc.). Repeatedly he was beaten, moreover by his own friends, and the next day, as if nothing had happened, he appeared to them and continued in the same spirit - "and he is nothing, and they, as they say, nothing." As a result, from the "activity" of Nozdryov comes almost more troubles than from the inaction of Manilov and Korobochka. And nevertheless, there is a feature that unites all the described three types - this is impracticality.

The next landowner, Sobakenich, is extremely practical. This is the type of "master", "fist". Everything in his house is solid, reliable, made "for centuries" (even the furniture, it seems, is full of complacency and wants to shout: "Iya Sobakevich!"). However, all the practicality of Sobakevich is aimed at only one goal - obtaining personal gain, for the achievement of which he does not stop at anything (Sobakevich's “abuse” of everyone and everything - in the city, in his words, there is one decent person - a prosecutor, “and he if you look, it’s a pig, ”Sobakevich’s“ meal ”, when he eats mountains of food and so it seems that he is able to swallow the whole world in one sitting, a scene with the purchase of dead souls, when Sobakevich is not at all surprised by the very subject of sale, but immediately feels that the case smells like money that can be ripped off Chichikov). It is quite clear that Sobakevich is even farther from the sought-after ideal than all the previous types.

Plyushkin is a kind of generalizing image. He is the only one whose path to his present state ("how he came to such a life") shows us Gogol. Giving the image of Plyushkin in development, Gogol raises this final image to a kind of symbol that includes Manilov, Korobochka, Nozdrev, and Sobakevich. The common thing for all types derived in the poem is that their lives are not sanctified by thought, a socially useful goal, not filled with concern for the common good, progress, striving for national prosperity. Any activity (or inaction) is useless and meaningless if it does not carry in itself concerns about the welfare of the nation or country. That is why Plyushkin turns into a "hole in humanity", that is why his repulsive, disgusting image of a curmudgeon who has lost all human form, steals old buckets and other trash from his own peasants, who has turned his own house into a dump, and his serfs into beggars - namely therefore, his image is the final stop for all these manila, boxes, nostrils and sobachevichs. And just like Plyushkin, Russia may turn out to be a “hole in humanity” if it does not find the strength to reject all these “dead souls” and bring to the surface of national life a positive image - active, with a mobile mind and imagination, diligent in business and, most importantly - sanctified by concern for the common good. Characteristically, this is the type that Gogol tried to portray in the second volume of Dead Souls as the landowner Kostanzhoglo (see below). However, the surrounding reality did not provide material for such images - Kostanzhoglo turned out to be a speculative scheme that had nothing to do with real life. The Russian reality supplied only manila, boxes, nostrils and Plyushkins - “Where am I? I see nothing ... Not a single human face ... Around only a snout, a snout ... "- exclaims Gogol through the mouth of the Governor in" The Inspector General "(compare with the" evil spirits "from" Evenings ... "and" Mirgorod ": a pig's snout sticking through the window at Sorochinskaya Yarmarka, sneering inhuman muzzles in the Enchanted Place). That is why the words about Russia-troika sound like a woeful warning cry - "Where are you rushing? .. Doesn't give an answer ...". The meaning of this passage, interpreted in different ways at different times, can be understood by recalling a similar, very reminiscent of this, excerpt from the "Diary of a Madman":

“No, I no longer have the strength to endure. God! what are they doing to me! .. They do not listen, do not see, do not listen to me. What have I done to them? Why are they torturing me? What do they want from me poor? What can I give them? I dont have anything. I am unable, I cannot bear all their torment, my head is on fire, and everything is spinning in front of me. Help me! take me! give me a trio of horses as fast as a whirlwind! Sit down, my coachman, rings, my bell, take off, horses, and carry me out of this light! Further, further, so that nothing could be seen, nothing. There the sky swirls in front of me; an asterisk sparkles in the distance; the forest sweeps with dark trees and moon; a gray mist creeps underfoot; the string is ringing in the fog; on the one side the sea, on the other Italy; over there the Russian huts can be seen. Is my house turning blue in the distance? Is my mother sitting in front of the window? Mother, save your poor son! drop a tear on his sick head] look how they torment him! hug the poor orphan to your chest! he has no place in the world! he is being driven! Mother! have pity on your poor child! .. "

Thus, the troika is, according to Gogol, what should sweep him away from all these Plyushkin, derzhimord, boxes and akakiev akakievichs, and Russia-troika is an image of that Russia, which, having overcome all its age-old ailments: slavery, darkness , depravity and impunity of the authorities, patience and silence of the people - will enter a new life, worthy of free, enlightened people.

But so far there are no prerequisites for this. And Chichikov rides in a chaise - a swindler, mediocrity embodied, neither this nor that - who feels at ease in the Russian expanses, who is free to take whatever lies badly and who is free to fool around and scold bad Russian roads.

So, the main and main meaning of the poem is that Gogol wanted, through artistic images, to understand the historical path of Russia, to see its future, to feel the sprouts of a new, better life in the surrounding reality, to discern the forces that would turn Russia off the sidelines of world history and turn on into the general cultural process. The image of the landowners is a reflection of this very search. Through the ultimate typification, Gogol creates figures of a nationwide scale, representing the Russian character in many guises, in all its inconsistency and ambiguity.

The types deduced by Gogol are an integral part of Russian life; these are precisely Russian types that, as bright as they are, are just as stable in Russian life - until life itself changes radically.

6. Features of the image of officials

Like the images of landowners, the images of officials, a whole gallery of which Gogol unfolds in front of the reader, perform a specific function. Showing the life and customs of the provincial town of NN, the author tries to answer the main question that worries him - what is the future of Russia, what is its historical purpose, which in modern life contains at least a small hint of a bright, prosperous future for the people.

The theme of bureaucracy is an integral part and continuation of the ideas that Gogol developed when portraying landowners in his poem. It is not by chance that the images of officials follow the images of landowners. If the evil embodied in the owners of the estates - in all these boxes, manilovs, sobachevichs, nozdrevs and Plyushkins - is scattered across the Russian expanses, then here it appears in a concentrated form, compressed by the living conditions of the provincial town. A huge number of "dead souls", gathered together, creates a special monstrously absurd atmosphere. If the character of each of the landowners left a unique imprint on his house and estate as a whole, then the city is influenced by the entire huge mass of people (including officials, since officials are the first people in the city) living in it. The city turns into a completely independent mechanism, living according to its own laws, sending its needs through offices, departments, councils and other public institutions. And it is the officials who ensure the functioning of this entire mechanism. The life of a civil servant, which does not bear the imprint of a lofty idea, a desire to contribute to the common good, becomes the embodied function of the bureaucratic mechanism. In essence, a person ceases to be a person, he loses all personal characteristics (in contrast to the landlords, who had their own, albeit ugly, but still their own physiognomy), even loses his own name, since a name is still a kind of personal characteristic, and becomes simply the Postmaster, the Prosecutor, the Governor, the Chief of Police, the Chairman or the owner of an unimaginable nickname like Ivan Antonovich Kuvshinnoe Snout. A person turns into a detail, a “cog” of the state machine, the micromodel of which is the provincial town of NN.

Officials themselves are unremarkable, except for the position they hold. To enhance the contrast, Gogol cites grotesque "portraits" of some officials - so the chief of police is famous for the fact that, according to rumors, he only needs to blink as he passes the fish row in order to secure himself a sumptuous dinner and an abundance of fish delicacies. The postmaster, whose name was Ivan Andreevich, is known for always adding to his name: "Shprechen zi deich, Ivan Andreich?" The chairman of the chamber knew Zhukovsky's “Lyudmila” by heart and “masterfully read many passages, especially:“ Bor fell asleep, the valley is asleep, ”and the word“ Chu! ”. Others, as Gogol sarcastically notes, were "also more or less enlightened people: who read Karamzin, who Moskovskie vedomosti, who did not even read anything at all."

Remarkable is the reaction of city residents, including to officials, to the news that Chichikov is buying dead souls - what is happening does not fit into the usual framework and immediately gives rise to the most fantastic assumptions - from the fact that Chichikov wanted to kidnap the governor's daughter to the fact that Chichikov - either the wanted counterfeiter, or the escaped robber, about whom the Chief of Police receives an order for immediate arrest. The grotesque situation is only intensified by the fact that the Postmaster decides that Chichikov is a disguised captain Kopeikin, a hero of the war of 1812, an invalid without an arm and a leg. Other officials assume that Chichikov is a disguised Napoleon who escaped from St. Helena. The absurdity of the situation reaches its climax when, as a result of a confrontation with insoluble problems (from mental stress), the prosecutor dies. In general, the situation in the city resembles the behavior of a mechanism in which a grain of sand suddenly fell. Wheels and cogs, intended for quite specific functions, are scrolling idle, some of them break with a bang, and the whole mechanism jingles, strumming and "is racing." It is the soulless machine that is a kind of symbol of the city, and it is in this context that the very name of the poem - "Dead Souls" - takes on a new sound.

Gogol kind of asks the question - if the first people in the city are like that, then what are the rest? Where is that positive ideal that will serve as an example for the new generation? If the city is a soulless machine that kills all living things in people, pure, destroying the very human essence, depriving them of all human feelings and even a normal name, turning the city itself into a “graveyard” of dead souls, then ultimately all of Russia can take on a similar look if he does not find the strength to reject all this "carrion" and bring to the surface of national life a positive image - active, with a mobile mind and imagination, zealous in business and most importantly - sanctified by concern for the common good.

About the second volume of "Dead Souls"

Gogol in the image of the landowner Kostanzhoglo tried to show a positive ideal (Chichikov comes to him and sees his activities). It embodied Gogol's ideas about the harmonious structure of life: reasonable management, a responsible attitude to the work of all those involved in organizing the estate, the use of the fruits of science. Under the influence of Kostanzhoglo, Chichikov had to reconsider his attitude to reality and “correct”. However, sensing in his work a "life's untruth", Gogol burned the second volume of "Dead Souls".

Home> Poem

Ideological and artistic originality of the poem "Dead Souls" 1. "Dead Souls" as a realistic work: a) In the author's digression about two types of writers, Gogol formulates the basic principles of artistic realism. Gogol ranks his work as a critical direction, b) The principles of realism in the poem:
Historicism Gogol wrote about his modernity - around the end of the 20s - the beginning of the 30s, during the crisis of serfdom in Russia. Typical characters in typical circumstances. The main trends in the depiction of landowners and officials are satirical description, social typification and general critical orientation. Dead Souls is a literary work. Particular attention is paid to the description of the nature, the estate and the interior, the details of the portrait. Most of the heroes are shown statically. Much attention is paid to details, the so-called "mud of little things" (Plyushkin's character). Gogol correlates various plans: universal proportions (a lyrical digression about the bird-three) and the smallest details (a description of a trip along extremely bad Russian roads). Means of satirical typing: a) The author's characteristics of the characters, b) Comic situations (for example, Manilov and Chichikov cannot disperse at the door), c) An appeal to the heroes' past (Chichikov, Plyushkin), d) Hyperbole (the unexpected death of the prosecutor, the extraordinary gluttony of Sobakevich), e) Proverbs (“Neither in the city of Bogdan, nor in the village of Selifan”), f) Comparisons (Sobakevich is compared with an average bear, Box - with a mongrel in the hay). 2. Genre originality: Calling his work a "poem", Gogol meant: "a lesser kind of epic ... A prospectus for an educational book of literature for Russian youth. The hero of the epics is a private and invisible person, but significant in many respects for observing the human soul ”. The poem is a genre that goes back to the traditions of the ancient epic, in which an integral being was recreated in all its contradictions. The Slavophiles insisted on this characterization of "Dead Souls", appealing to the fact that elements of the poem, as a genre of praises, are also in "Dead Souls" (lyrical digressions). In his letters to friends, Gogol called "Dead Souls" not only a poem, but also a novel. In "Dead Souls" there are features of an adventurous, roguish, and also social novel. However, it is customary not to call "Dead Souls" a novel, since there is practically no love intrigue in the work. 3. Features of the plot and composition: Features of the plot of "Dead Souls" are associated primarily with the image of Chichikov and his ideological and compositional role. Gogol: "The author leads his life through a chain of adventures and changes in order to present at the same time a true picture of everything significant in the features and customs of the time he has taken ... a picture of shortcomings, abuse, vices", In a letter to V. Zhukovsky Gogol mentions that he wanted to show "all of Russia" in the poem. The poem is written in the form of a journey, scattered fragments of the life of Russia are combined into a single whole. This is the main compositional role of Chichikov. The independent role of the image is reduced to the description of a new type of Russian life, an entrepreneur-adventurer. In chapter 11, the author gives a biography of Chichikov, from which it follows that the hero uses either the position of an official or the mythical position of a landowner to achieve his goals. The composition is built on the principle of "concentric circles" or "enclosed spaces" (city, landowners' estates, all of Russia). Homeland and people theme: Gogol wrote about his work: "All Russia will appear in him." The life of the ruling class and common people is given without idealization. The peasants are characterized by ignorance, narrow-mindedness, overbearing (the images of Petrushka and Selifan, the courtyard girl Koro-barrels, who does not know where is right or where is left, uncle Mityai and uncle Minyai, who are discussing whether Chichikov's chaise will reach Moskva and Kazan ). Nevertheless, the author warmly describes the talent and other creative abilities of the people (a lyrical digression about the Russian language, a characterization of the Yaroslavl man in a digression about the bird-three, the register of Sobakevich's peasants). Much attention is paid to the popular revolt (the story of the capitalist Kopeikin) * The theme of the future of Russia is reflected in Gogol's poetic attitude to his homeland (lyrical digressions about Russia and the bird-troika). On the second volume of Dead Souls: Gogol, in the image of the landowner Kostanzhoglo, tried to show a positive ideal. It embodied Gogol's ideas about the harmonious structure of life: reasonable management, a responsible attitude to the business of all those involved in organizing the estate, the use of the fruits of science. Under the influence of Kostan-zhoglo, Chichikov had to reconsider his attitude to reality and “correct”. Feeling in his work "life's untruth", Gogol burned the second volume of "Dead Souls". Socio-historical features are inherent in all of Gogol's heroes. The existing social reality left a deep imprint on the characters and views of the people of that time. In this work, a whole gallery of moral monsters, types that have become common nouns, are displayed. Gogol consistently portrays the landlords, officials and the main character of the poem - the businessman Chichikov. Let us dwell in more detail on the types of landowners. All of them are exploiters who suck blood from serfs. But the five portraits shown in the work are still different from each other. All of them have inherent not only socio-historical, but also universal human traits and fate. For example, Manilov. He is not just a stupid dreamer, doing nothing, unwilling to work. All his occupations consist of beating ashes out of pipes onto the windowsill or in groundless projects about a bridge over a pond and merchant shops in which all kinds of food for the peasants will be sold. The image of Manilov is a find of Gogol. In Russian literature, he will find a continuation in the work of Goncharov. By the way, both the image of Manilov and the image of Oblomov have become a household name. In another chapter, the "club-headed" Korobochka appears, but this image is not so one-sided as it is customary to write about him in criticism. Nastasya Petrov-na is a kind, hospitable woman (after all, Chichikov gets to her, having lost his way at night), hospitable. She's not as dumb as people think of her. All her "stupidity" stems from the fact that she is afraid to sell too cheap, to sell "dead souls" at a loss. Rather, she is fooling Chichikov. But the fact that she is practically not surprised by Chichikov's proposal speaks of her lack of principle, and not of stupidity. Speaking about the landowners, one cannot but recall one more feature generated by the system - this is the thirst for accumulation, profit and deep prudence in all undertaken affairs. Such is Sobakevich. This man, undoubtedly, is cunning and clever, because he was the first of the landowners to understand why Chichikov was buying up dead souls. He understood and cheated, slipping into the lists of dead peasants the female name Elizaveta Vorobei, which he wrote through "er". But the thirst for hoarding leads to its absolute opposite - to poverty. We see this in Plyushkin, the eternal image of the Miser. Plyushkin turned into an animal, even lost his gender (Chichikov even takes him for a woman), became a "hole in humanity." Bureaucracy and autocracy contribute to the emergence in Russia of businessmen, like Chichikov, who are ready to go to their goal over the heads of other, weaker people, to go to the goal, pushing others with their elbows. This is confirmed by the history of Chichikov's life: first he “cheated” his teacher, then the police officer, then his fellow customs officer. Here Go-gol shows that the passion of profit kills everything human in a person, corrupts him, deadens his soul. In the comedy "The Inspector General" we have the same stupidity, cowardice, dishonesty of the characters. The main character Khlestakov is the personification of spiritual emptiness, fanfare, stupidity. It is like an empty vessel that you can fill with anything. That is why the officials of the county town N. take him for an important person. They want to see him as an auditor, and he behaves the way they think a bribery auditor should behave. In the image of Khlestakov, Gogol ridicules the spiritual emptiness, boasting, the desire to pass off wishful thinking. In the works of Gogol, as we can see, not only socio-historical types of people are shown, but also common human vices: emptiness, stupidity, greed, the desire for profit. Gogol's heroes are immortal, because human vices are immortal. Features of the genre and composition of Gogol's poem "Dead Souls". Artistic featurespoems. Gogol has long dreamed of writing a work "in which all of Russia would appear." This was supposed to be a grandiose description of the life and customs of Russia in the first third of the 19th century. Such a work was the poem "Dead Souls", written in 1842. The first edition of the work was titled "Chichikov's Similarities, or Dead Souls." Such a name reduced the true meaning of this work, translated into the field of an adventure novel. Gogol did this for censorship reasons in order for the poem to be published. Why did Gogol call his work a poem? The definition of the genre became clear to the writer only at the last moment, since, while still working on the poem, Gogol calls it either a poem or a novel. To understand the peculiarities of the genre of the poem "Dead Souls", you can compare this work with the "Divine Comedy" by Dante, a poet of the Renaissance. Its influence is felt in Gogol's poem. The Divine Mediation consists of three parts. In the first part to the poet, there is the shadow of the ancient Roman poet Virgil, which accompanies the lyric hero to hell, they go through all the circles, a whole gallery of sinners passes before their eyes. The fantastic plot does not prevent Dante from revealing the theme of his Rodina - Italy, her fate. In fact. Gogol decided to show the same twists and turns of hell, but the hell of Russia. No wonder the title of the poem "Dead Souls" ideologically echoes the title of the first part, Dante's poem "The Divine Comedy", which is called "Hell". Gogol, along with satirical negation, introduces an element of a glorifying, creative image of Russia. Associated with this image is the "high lyrical movement", which in the poem at times replaces the comic narration. A significant place in the poem "Dead Souls" is occupied by lyrical digressions and inserted episodes, which is characteristic of the poem as a literary genre. In them, Gogol touches on the most pressing social issues in Russia. The author's thoughts about the lofty, purpose of a person, about the fate of the Motherland and the people are here opposed to the gloomy pictures of Russian life, So let's go after the hero of the poem. "Dead Souls" by Chichikov V. N. From the very first pages of the work, we feel the fascination of its plot, since the reader cannot assume that after the meeting between Chichikov and Manilov there will be meetings with Sobakevich and Nozdrev. The reader cannot guess about the end of the poem, because all its characters are built on the principle of gradation: one is worse than the other. For example, Manilov, if viewed as a separate image, cannot be perceived as positive (he has a book on the table, open on the same page, and his politeness is feigned: “Let me not allow you to do this”), but Compared to Plyushki, Manilov in many ways even wins in character traits. But Gogol put the image of the Korobochka in the center of attention, since she is a kind of single beginning of all the characters. According to Gogol, this is a symbol of the "man-box", which contains the idea of an irrepressible thirst for hoarding. The theme of exposing the bureaucracy runs through all of Gogol's work: it stands out both in the collection Mirgorod and in the comedy The Inspector General. In the poem Dead Souls, it is intertwined with the theme of serfdom. A special place in the poem is occupied by "The Tale of Captain Kopeikin". It is not connected with the poem by plot, but it is of great importance for the disclosure of the ideological content of the work. The form of the tale gives the story a vital character, it denounces the government. The lyrical image of the people of Russia, about which Gogol writes with love and admiration, is contrasted with the mass of "dead souls" in the poem. Behind the terrible world of landlord and bureaucratic Russia, Gogol felt the soul of the Russian people, which he expressed in the image of a troika rushing forward, embodying the strength of Russia: "Isn't it so you, Russia, that you are rushing a bold, unattainable troika?" So, we stopped at what Gogol portrays in his work. He portrays the social sickness of society, but one should also dwell on how Gogol manages to do this. First, Gogol uses methods of social typification. In the image of the gallery of landowners, he skillfully combines the general and the individual. Almost all of his characters are static, they do not develop (except for Plyushkin and Chichikov), captured by the author as a result. This technique emphasizes once again that all these manilovs, boxes, dogevichs, Plyushkins are dead souls. To characterize his characters, Gogol also uses a favorite technique - characterizing a character through a detail. Gogol can be called a “genius of detailing,” as sometimes details accurately reflect the character and inner world of a character. What is, for example, a description of the estate and house of Manilov. When Chichikov drove into Manilov's estate, he drew attention to the overgrown English pond, to the lopsided gazebo, to the dirt and abandonment, to the wallpaper in Manilov's room, either gray or blue, to two chairs covered with matting, up to which the hands of the owner do not reach. All these and many other details bring us to the main characteristic made by the author himself: "Neither this, nor that, but the devil knows what it is!" Let us recall Plyushkin, this “hole in humanity”, which has even lost its gender. He goes out to Chichikov in a greasy dressing gown, on his head some kind of unthinkable kerchief, everywhere desolation, dirt, dilapidation. Plyushkin is an extreme degree of degradation. And all this is conveyed through detail, through those little things in life that A.S. admired so much. Pushkin: "Not a single writer has had this gift to expose so vividly the vulgarity of life, to be able to outline in such force the vulgarity of a vulgar person, so that all that trifle that escapes the eyes would flash into everyone's eyes." The main theme of the poem is the fate of Russia: its past, present and future. In the first volume, Gogol revealed the theme of the past of his homeland. The second and third volumes conceived by him were supposed to tell about the present and future of Russia. This plan can be compared with the second and third parts of Dante's Divine Comedy: Purgatory and Paradise. However, these plans were not destined to come true: the second volume turned out to be unsuccessful in theory, and the third was never written. Therefore, Chichikov's trip remained a trip into the unknown. Gogol was lost, thinking about the future of Russia: “Rus, where are you rushing? Give an answer. Doesn't give an answer. " Author's digressions and their role in the poem "Dead Souls" In N. V. Gogol's poem "Dead Souls" there are a lot of author's digressions. These digressions are very diverse in topic and style. The digressions, organically poured into the text, help the author touch upon various problems and make a more complete description of officials and landowners. Already in the first chapters of the poem, Gogol raises serious social problems that worried the writers of the first half of the 19th century. One of such problems was female education. Belinsky mentions the education of women, speaking of Tatyana Larina. Go-gol also applies to the same question. Having said that Manilova was well educated, Gogol immediately explains what a good education is in boarding schools for noble girls. The digression is written in a journalistic style. Gogol, with the irony characteristic of his language, describes all kinds of "methods" that are used in noble boarding schools. What is the difference between these "methods"? It turns out that the difference is in what comes first: French, music or household, that is, embroidery of various souvenirs. It is this kind of upbringing that becomes the reason for ruined estates laid in the board of trustees, or estates like Manilovka, where the "happy couple" is engaged in making souvenirs or treating each other with various delicacies, not noticing poverty and desolation around. Another author's digression is devoted to the "thick" and "thin"
newcomers. Of course, the author is not interested here in body weight and health.
innovation. Gogol in a few, but very bright and expressive lines
outlines the Russian bureaucracy, "Thickness" for the author -show-
the body is not a strong stomach, but a strong social position. "Thick"
an official is the master of life in Russia. Not only subordinates depend on the negro
nye, "thin" officials, but also nobles, whose affairs are conducted in the offices; and
townspeople whose prosperity depends on the will of the "city fathers". Entire life
Russia is subordinated precisely to "fat" officials, therefore all their affairs are all
when they settle down so well, they themselves look like a blooming and cheerful
stupid. In addition to such a descriptive function, retreat provides a social
characteristics of Chichikov, about whom Gogol says that he is not too
thick and not too thin. These words about Chichikov show not only
some amorphousness of his image, but also not a well-established social position
living. - , ... -. ;; .- (^, In a digression about the shades, in circulation depending on wealth, Gogol shows the power that wealth has over the consciousness of a person. This is not even an honorific, this is an admiration for the ruble lying in * already a pocket. the author continues the theme at the end of the poem.When Chichikov returns to the city and the rumor spreads that he is a "millionaire", Gogol says: What action is produced not even by the bag of money itself, but only by the word about a million. the rumor that Chichikov has countless sums of money, evokes in everyone the desire to imitate and humiliate himself. There are author's digressions in every chapter devoted to the landowners. In these digressions, Gogol shows us the typical character of the image, concentrating the most important features of the About Manilov, he says that such people are usually called “neither one nor the other,” “neither fish nor meat,” “neither in the city of Bogdan nor in the village of Selifan.” In the chapter devoted to Korobochka, the author emphasizes that such type is very common, h then "even a state person" is often "on children a perfect Korobochka comes out, ”then explains the meaning of the nickname: any argument, even the most obvious one, bounces off such; people, "like a rubber ball from the wall." In the chapter on Nozdryov, the author notes that the reader has probably seen a lot of such people. The purpose of these digressions is to generalize the image, to show its characteristic features, as well as to prove that the derived images are typical, to make them recognizable. Gogol describes landowners as representatives of a whole type, always talking not about one specific character, but about all such people, using words in the plural. Biographical digressions play a special role in the poem. Biographies Gogol describes only two of the most important characters: Plyushkin and Chichikov. Both heroes stand out against the background of others: Plyushkin - by the extreme degree of moral and physical decay and ugliness, Chichikov - by his extraordinary activity. The function of biographical digressions is to show where such characters come from, what environment can put them forward. We see that Plyushkin and Chichikov emerged from real Russian reality under the influence of new circumstances, new times. Plyushkin is a warning image. It is his biography that testifies to this. Showing the degradation of Plyushkin from a zealous and, among other things, hospitable owner to “a hole in humanity,” Gogol makes an almost imperceptible line between the capital of Sobakevi-cha's economy, its abundant treat, between the solid structure of the Koro-barrel and the moldy roll of Plyushkin's rubbish , covered with a thick layer of dust, in the middle of his room. In front of us in an indecent dressing gown appears Plyushkin, from whom the neighbors went to learn housekeeping. Plyushkin is a symbol of the moribund serf world, the first signal of the collapse of the landlord-feudal system. Chichikov is a man of the new world. This is a bourgeois businessman. By his social origin, he is close to the "little man", but this is not the "little man" as we are used to seeing him in Pushkin, Lermontov and Gogol himself. This man is fighting for a place in the sun, he is extremely active, and in his activity he pushes aside the moldy world of landowners and deceives the bureaucracy, making his way "from the dirt to the prince." This hero, in which bribery and scrupulousness, embezzlement and honesty, obsequiousness and inflexibility are bizarrely combined, was an ugly product of the life of Gogol's Russia. It is for him in the 40s of the XIX century that the future remains, which seems to the author dark and bleak. Chichikov's biography is especially important because she paints a voluminous, complete picture of Russian reality, exposing the reverence for rank, bribery, and embezzlement of the bureaucracy. The educational system, which is incapable of giving students knowledge, and the theft of customs officials, and complete impunity for those who have money, are vividly described, which speaks of the injustice of bribed courts. Of course, Gogol was aware that not everyone would like a true story. Therefore, digressions about writers appear in the book. The language of the writer changes dramatically, irony disappears in these arguments, other notes appear, "tears invisible to the world." The most important here is the digression in the seventh chapter, where Gogol speaks of two types of writers. We see that the writer does not deceive himself about the reaction of readers to his book. He compares himself to a lonely traveler whom no one will meet at home, whom no one is happy about. Here, for the first time, the image of the road as a human life appears. Before Gogol, life lies like a difficult path, full of hardships, at the end of which he will face a cold, uncomfortable loneliness. However, the writer does not consider his path pointless, he is full of awareness of his duty to the Motherland. The theme of patriotism and writer's duty is further developed at the very end of the poem, where Gogol explains why he considers it necessary to show evil and expose vices. As proof, the author cites a story about Kif Mokievich and Mokiy Kifovich, where he exposes those writers who do not want to paint harsh reality, deducing ideal, non-existent pictures, those writers who “turned a virtuous person into a horse, and there is no writer , who would not ride it, urging him with a whip, and with anything else. " And if, in a digression to the seventh chapter, Gogol only shows such writers carried by the crowd in their arms, then in the image of Kifa Mokievich he warns of the harm that these authors bring, hushing up the dark sides of life. With this theme of writer's duty, patriotism, digressions about Russia and the people are closely related. Gogol's language takes on a new, special shade here, and one can often hear optimistic notes in it. In his speech about language, Gogol is amazed at the accuracy of the folk word, its wealth. The folk speech sounds especially vivid in contrast to the language of the provincial society, to which the digression is also devoted, completing the picture of the city. Gogol caustically ridicules the ladies who pretentiously speak Yao-Russian, fearing at least the slightest rude word, while in French they use much harsher expressions. Against such a background, the cheerful, sincere word of the people sounds especially fresh. We see a complete picture of the life of the peasants in the digression dedicated to the fate of the serfs bought by Chichikov. The people do not appear to the reader as ideal, talent and hard work are sometimes combined with drunkenness and dishonesty. There are tragic fates, like Stepan Probka's, and free ones, like Abakum Fyrov's. Poverty and the darkness of the people oppress Gogol, and the retreat is somewhat sad. However, Gogol believes in Russia. In the chapter devoted to Plyushkin, she appears before us in a digression describing the landowner's garden. Drowned out by hops, the abandoned garden continues to live, and young greenery is shown everywhere in it. In this new growth is the writer's hope for a better future. The poem ends on an optimistic note. The image of the road reappears at the end, but this road is no longer the life of one person, but the fate of the entire Russian state. Russia itself is embodied in the image of a bird-three flying into the future. And although the question: "Russia, where are you rushing?" - the author does not find an answer, he is confident in Russia, because, "looking askance, other peoples and states give way to it,". So, we see that the author's digressions help Gogol to create a complete picture of the reality of Russia, turning the book into a real “encyclopedia of Russian life” of the mid-19th century. It is the digressions, where the writer not only paints scenes of the life of various strata of the Russian population, but \ also expresses his thoughts; thoughts and hopes, allow to embody the author's intention. - "All Russia has appeared": in this: the work is complete. ,

1. "Dead Souls" as a realistic work

b) The principles of realism in the poem:

Historicism

Gogol wrote about his modernity - around the end of the 20s - the beginning of the 30s, during the crisis of serfdom in Russia.

Typical characters in typical circumstances

The main trends in the depiction of landowners and officials are satirical descriptions, social typification and general critical orientation. "Dead Souls" is a literary work. Particular attention is paid to the description of nature, the estate and the interior, the details of the portrait. Most of the heroes are shown statically. Much attention is paid to details, the so-called "mud of little things" (Plyushkin's character). Gogol correlates various plans: universal proportions (a lyrical digression about the bird-troika) and the smallest details (a description of a trip along extremely bad Russian roads).

Means of satirical typing

a) The author's characteristics of the characters, b) Comic situations (for example, Manilov and Chichikov cannot disperse at the door), c) Appeal to the heroes' past (Chichikov, Plyushkin), d) Hyperbole (unexpected death of the prosecutor, extraordinary gluttony of Sobakevich), e) Proverbs (“Neither in the city of Bogdan, nor in the village of Selifan”), f) Comparisons (Sobakevich is compared with an average-sized bear, Korobochka is compared with a mongrel in the hay).

2. Genre originality of "Dead Souls"

3. Features of the plot and composition of "Dead Souls"

Features of the plot of "Dead Souls" are associated primarily with the image of Chichikov and his ideological and compositional role. Gogol: "The author leads his life through a chain of adventures and changes in order to present at the same time a true picture of everything significant in the features and customs of the time he has taken ... a picture of shortcomings, abuse, vices." In a letter to V. Zhukovsky, Gogol mentions that he wanted to show "all of Russia" in the poem. The poem is written in the form of a journey, scattered fragments of the life of Russia are combined into a single whole. This is the main compositional role of Chichikov. The independent role of the image is reduced to the description of a new type of Russian life, an entrepreneur-adventurer. In chapter 11, the author gives a biography of Chichikov, from which it follows that the hero uses either the position of an official or the mythical position of a landowner to achieve his goals.

The composition is built on the principle of "concentric circles" or "enclosed spaces" (city, landowners' estates, all of Russia).

The theme of the homeland and people in the poem "Dead Souls"

Gogol wrote about his work: "All Russia will appear in him." The life of the ruling class and common people is given without idealization. The peasants are characterized by ignorance, narrow-mindedness, downtroddenness (the images of Petrushka and Selifan, the courtyard girl Korobochka, who does not know where is right or where is left, uncle Mityai and uncle Minyai, who are discussing whether Chichikov's chaise will reach Moscow and Kazan). Nevertheless, the author warmly describes the talent and other creative abilities of the people (a lyrical digression about the Russian language, a description of the Yaroslavl man in a digression about a bird-three, the register of Sobakevich's peasants).

About the second volume of "Dead Souls"

Gogol, in the image of the landowner Kostanzhoglo, tried to show a positive ideal. It embodied Gogol's ideas about the harmonious structure of life: reasonable management, a responsible attitude to the work of all those involved in organizing the estate, the use of the fruits of science. Under the influence of Kostanzhoglo, Chichikov had to reconsider his attitude to reality and “correct”. Feeling in his work "the truth of life", Gogol burned the second volume of "Dead Souls".

Gogol has long dreamed of writing a work "in which all of Russia would appear." This was supposed to be a grandiose description of the life and customs of Russia in the first third of the 19th century. This work was the poem "Dead Souls", written in 1842. The first edition, for censorship reasons, was entitled "The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls." This name reduced the true meaning of this work, evoked associations with an adventure novel. Gogol did this in order for the poem to be published.

Why did Gogol call his work a poem? The definition of the genre became clear to the writer only at the last moment, since, while still working on it, Gogol calls it either a poem or a novel. To understand the motivation of the author of Dead Souls, one can compare this work with the Divine Comedy by Dante, a poet of the Renaissance. Its influence is felt in Gogol's poem. The Divine Comedy consists of three parts. In the first part to the poet, there is the shadow of the ancient Roman poet Virgil, who accompanies the lyric hero to hell, they go through all the circles, a whole gallery of sinners passes in front of their eyes. The fantastic nature of the plot does not prevent Dante from revealing the theme of Rodina - Italy, her fate. In fact, Gogol conceived to show the same circles of hell, but the hell of Russia. No wonder the title of the poem "Dead souls" echoes the title of the first part of the "Divine Comedy" - "Hell".

Gogol, along with satirical denial, introduces an element of glorification, a creative one - the image of Russia. It is associated with a "high lyrical movement", which in the poem at times replaces the comic narration. A significant place in the poem "Dead Souls" is occupied by lyrical digressions and inserted episodes, which is typical for poem as a literary genre. In them, Gogol touches on the most pressing Russian social issues. The author's thoughts about the high purpose of a person, about the fate of the Motherland and the people are here opposed to the gloomy pictures of Russian life.

So, let's go after the hero of the poem "Dead Souls" by Chichikov to the city N. From the very first pages of the work we feel the harmony of the composition, although the reader cannot assume that after the meeting between Chichikov and Manilov there will be meetings with Sobakevich and Nozdrev. The reader cannot guess about the plot's denouement.

All characters are deduced according to the principle: one is worse than the other. For example, Manilov, if he is considered as a separate image, cannot be perceived as a positive hero (he has a book on the table for a long time, open on the same page, and his politeness is pretended: "Let me not allow you to do this." ), but in comparison with Bunny Manilov wins in many ways. However, Gogol put the image of the Korobochka at the center of the narrative, since she is a kind of single beginning of all the characters. According to Gogol, this is a symbol of the "box-man", which contains the idea of an irrepressible thirst for hoarding.

The theme of exposing the bureaucracy runs through all of Gogol's work: it appears in the collection "Mirgorod", and in the comedy "Revizor" it becomes key. In the poem Dead Souls, it is intertwined with the theme of serfdom.

A special place in the poem is occupied by "The Tale of Captain Kopeikin". It is connected with the plot of the poem, but is of great importance for the disclosure of the ideological content of the work. The form of the tale gives the story the character of a parable, but in fact it is a satire on government.

The world of "dead souls" in the poem is contrasted with the lyrical image of people's Russia, about which Gogol writes with love and admiration. Behind the terrible world of the landlord and bureaucratic power, Gogol felt the soul of the Russian people, which he expressed in the form of a rapidly rushing troika, embodying the strength of Russia: "Isn't it so you, Russia, that a brisk, unattainable troika rushing?"

Almost all the characters in the poem are static, they do not develop. This technique emphasizes once again that all these manilovs, boxes, dogevichs, Plyushkins are dead souls. To characterize the characters, Gogol also uses his favorite technique - characterizing a character through a detail. What is, for example, a description of the estate and house of Manilov! When Chichikov drove into the estate, he drew attention to the overgrown English pond, to the sloping arbor, to the dirt and desolation, to the wallpaper in the room - either gray or blue, on two chairs covered with matting, to which the owner's hands never reach. All these and many other details bring us to the main characteristic made by the author himself: "Neither this, nor that, but the devil knows what it is!" Let us recall Plyushkin, this "hole in humanity", even the sex of which is not immediately determined: he comes out to Chichikov in a greasy hat, on his head some kind of inconceivable scarf, everywhere desolation, dirt, dilapidation. Plyushkin is an extreme fall. And all this is conveyed through detail, through those little things in life that AS Pushkin admired so much: person, so that all that little thing that escapes the eyes would flash large into the eyes of everyone. "

The main theme of the poem is the fate of Russia: its past, present and future. In the first volume, Gogol revealed the theme of the past of his homeland. The second and third volumes conceived by him were supposed to narrate about the present and the future. This plan can be compared with the second and third parts of Dante's Divine Comedy: Purgatory and Paradise. However, these ideas were not destined to come true: the second volume turned out to be unsuccessful in theory, and the third was never written. Therefore, Chichikov's trip remained a trip into the unknown. Gogol was lost thinking about the future of Russia; “Rus, where are you rushing? Give an answer! Doesn't give an answer. "

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1. ARTISTIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE POEM

"DEAD SOULS"

1 Concept and sources of the poem "Dead Souls"

2 Genre originality of the poem

3 Features of the plot and composition of the poem

CHAPTER 2. THE POEM "DEAD SOULS" AS A CRITICAL IMAGE OF THE LIFE AND MOST OF THE XIX CENTURY

1 The image of Chichikov in the poem "Dead Souls"

2 Features of the image of landowners in the poem

3 Lyrical digressions of "Dead Souls" and their ideological content

CONCLUSION

LIST OF USED LITERATURE

dead soul chichikov retreat

INTRODUCTION

The creative peak of Gogol, one of the masterpieces of Russian and world literature, is Dead Souls. Justifying the need for the most attentive re-reading of this seemingly well-known work from school years, one can refer to V.G.Belinsky, who wrote: “Like any deep creation,“ Dead Souls ”are not revealed from the first reading: reading them a second time, as if you are reading a new, never seen work. Dead Souls need to be studied. "

The poem was published in May 1842 under the title "The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls" (the name was changed under pressure from the censorship, for the same reason the "Tale of Captain Kopeikin" was dropped from the poem). “It has been a long time since we had such a movement that we now have on the occasion of Dead Souls,” wrote one of his contemporaries, recalling the controversy caused by the appearance of the book. Some critics accused Gogol of caricature and slanderousness. Others noted their high artistry and patriotism (the last definition belonged to Belinsky). The polemic reached particular tension after the appearance of K. Aksakov's brochure "A Few Words about Gogol's Poem:" The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls ", in which the idea of resurrecting the ancient epic in the poem was developed. Behind the thought of epic and Homer-oriented was the assertion of the dispassionateness of Gogol's writing, which is generally characteristic of an epic. Belinsky was the first to enter into polemics with Aksakov. At that time, Gogol himself went abroad, to Germany, and then to Rome, having entrusted the publication of the first collection of his works to N. Ya. Prokopovich (published in 1842).

In Rome, he worked on the second volume of Dead Souls, begun back in 1840. This work with interruptions will continue for almost 12 years, that is, almost until Gogol's death. Contemporaries were eagerly awaiting the continuation of the poem, but instead of it in 1847 St. Petersburg published Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends, whose double purpose (as Gogol formulated this for himself) was to explain why the second volume has not yet been written, and prepare readers for their subsequent perception. The “Selected Places” affirmed the idea of spiritual life-building, the purpose of which would be to create an “ideal heavenly state”. The very title of the poem ("dead souls") suggested the possibility of the opposite: the existence of "living" souls). The key to this was the resurrection of the protagonist for a new "wonderful" life, as well as the emergence of new, in comparison with the first volume, "positive" characters: exemplary landowners (Kostanzhoglo and Vasily Platonov), officials, heroes who could be perceived as alter ego of the author himself (for example, Murazov) and about which we know from the five surviving chapters of the draft editions.

January 1852 Gogol finally announces that the second volume is "completely finished." At the end of January, Father Matvey, the spiritual father of Gogol, arrives in Moscow. The content of their conversations that took place these days remains unknown, but there is indirect evidence that it was Father Matvey who advised Gogol to burn some of the chapters of the poem, citing the harmful influence they might have on readers. So, on the night of February 11-12, 1852, a white manuscript of the second volume was burned. Subsequently, Andrei Bely called the fate of Gogol "a terrible revenge", comparing Father Matthew with a terrible horseman in the Carpathians: "... the earth performed its terrible revenge on him. The face seen by Gogol did not save Gogol: this face became for him a "rider in the Carpathians." Gogol was running away from him. "

Gogol died on February 21, 1852 - ten days after the burning of the manuscript of the poem. On his tombstone were carved the words of the prophet Jeremiah: "I will laugh at my bitter word."

Dead Souls is one of the most widely read and revered works of Russian classics. No matter how much time separates us from this work, we will never cease to be amazed at its depth, perfection and, probably, we will not consider our idea of it exhausted. Reading Dead Souls, you cultivate in yourself the noble moral ideas that every brilliant work of art carries with them. Gogol showed all of modern Russia, satirically depicting the local nobility and the provincial bureaucracy. But if you think about it, the disgusting and pitiful features of Gogol's characters have not been eliminated to this day and are vividly manifested today. This is the relevance of the study of this work.

The purpose of this work is to reveal the ideological and artistic originality of "Dead Souls".

The object of research is the poem "Dead Souls" by N. V. Gogol.

Subject of research: the unique ideological and artistic originality of the work.

This goal assumes the solution of the following tasks:

Consider the artistic originality of the poem "Dead Souls"

To reveal the idea and sources of the poem "Dead Souls".

Determine the genre originality of the poem

Analyze the features of the plot and composition of the poem

Explore the features of the image of Chichikov, as well as the landowners in the poem.

Understand the role of lyrical digressions in the poem "Dead Souls" and their ideological content.

Research methods: descriptive, biographical, cultural-historical, structural.

CHAPTER 1. ARTISTIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE POEM "DEAD SOULS"

1 Concept and sources of the plot of the poem

It is believed that, just like the plot of The Inspector General, Pushkin suggested the plot of Dead Souls to Gogol. There are two known stories associated with the name of Pushkin and comparable to the plot of "Dead Souls". During his stay in Bessarabia (1820-1823), administrative abuses took place in Bendery: deaths were not registered here, and the names of the dead were passed on to other persons, fugitive peasants who flocked here from all over Russia; for this reason, the inhabitants of the town were called "the immortal society." Subsequently, while already in Odessa, Pushkin asked his Bessarabian friend IP Liprandi: "Is there anything new in Bendery?" PI Bartenev wrote about another case related to Pushkin's stay in Moscow in notes to the memoirs of VA Sollogub: “In Moscow, Pushkin was on the run with one friend. There was also a certain P. (an old dandy). Pointing to him to Pushkin, a friend told about him how he bought up dead souls, pledged them and got a big profit<…>This was before 1826. " It is interesting that this episode evoked an immediate artistic reaction from Pushkin himself: "This could have been a novel," he said among other things. "

However, there is information that Gogol, regardless of Pushkin, heard a lot about stories with dead souls. According to the story of a distant relative of the writer M.G. Anisimo-Yanovskaya, her uncle, a certain Kharlampy Petrovich Pivinsky, who lived 17 miles from Yanovshchina (another name for the Gogol Vasilyevka estate) and was engaged in distilling, was frightened by rumors that such a craft would be allowed only to landowners, owning no less than fifty souls. Pivinsky (who had only thirty souls) went to Poltava “and he made a rent for his dead peasants, as if for the living ... And since his own people, and with the dead, were far from fifty, he collected vodka in the chaise and went neighbors and bought from them for this vodka of dead souls ... "Anisimo-Yanovskaya claims that this story was known" all Mirgorodchina. "

Another episode, allegedly also known to Gogol, was reported by his fellow student at the Nezhin Gymnasium of Higher Sciences PI Martos in a letter to PI Bartenev: “As for the“ Dead Souls ”I can tell you the following ... In Nezhin<…>at the gymnasium of higher sciences of Prince Bezborodko, there was a certain K-ach, a Serb; huge growth, very handsome, with the longest mustache, terrible explorer - somewhere he bought the land on which he is - it is said in the deed of the fortress - 650 souls; the amount of land is not indicated, but the boundaries are indicated definitively. ... What turned out to be? This land was a neglected cemetery. This very incident was told to Gogol abroad by Prince N. G. Repnin. "

Here it is necessary, however, to make a reservation that even if Repnin told Gogol this episode, it was already abroad, when work on Dead Souls had already begun. But at the same time it is known that abroad, in the process of writing a poem, Gogol continued to collect material and ask his acquaintances about various "incidents" that "could happen when buying dead souls" (letter to V. A. Zhukovsky from Paris on November 12, 1836) ...

With a completely mundane origin, the very formula "dead souls", included in the title of the work, was saturated with both literary and philosophical-religious themes. The actual everyday aspect of this formula was recorded by V. I. Dal in the first edition of the "Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language" (1863): "Dead souls, people who died in the interval of two popular censuses, but who are listed on the payment of taxes, on the face" (article " Soul") . However, in the religious and philosophical aspect, Gogol's formula was antithetical to the biblical concept of a "living soul" (cf.: "And the Lord God created man from the dust of the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul" , 2, 7). In addition, the oxymoric expression "dead soul" and its derivatives - "dead life", "living death" - have become widespread in Western European poetry since the Middle Ages; Wed also in the mysteries of VK Kuchelbecker "Izhora": "What could be reasonable I, // My dead soul does not believe"). In the poem, the formula "dead soul" - "dead souls" was variously refracted by Gogol, acquiring more and more semantic nuances: dead souls - dead serfs, but also spiritually dead landowners and officials, the purchase of dead souls as an emblem of the deadness of a living.

2 Genre originality of the poem

In genre terms, Dead Souls was conceived as a “high road” novel. Thus, in a certain sense, they correlated with the famous novel by Cervantes, Don Quixote, which Pushkin also pointed out to Gogol at one time (a parallel that Gogol later insisted on in The Author's Confession). As M. Bakhtin wrote, “at the turn of the XVI-XVII centuries. Don Quixote set out on the road to meet the whole of Spain on it, from a convict going to the galleys to the duke. " Also, Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov “goes out on the road” to meet here, in Gogol's own words, “all Russia” (from a letter to Pushkin on October 7, 1835). Thus, the genre characterology of Dead Souls as a travel novel is immediately outlined. At the same time, it is also predetermined from the very beginning that this journey will be of a special kind, namely the wandering of a rogue, which additionally adds Dead Souls into yet another genre tradition - a rogue novel, a picaresque, widely spread in European literature (the anonymous Life of Lasarillo with Tormesa "," Gilles Blaz "Lesage, etc.). In Russian literature, the most prominent representative of this genre before Dead Souls was the novel by VT Narezhny, Russian Zhilblaz, or the Adventures of Prince Gavrila Simonovich Chistyakov.

The linear construction of the novel, which implied a picaresque (a work whose content is the amusing adventures of a rogue), immediately gave the work an epic character: the author led his hero through “a chain of adventures and changes in order to present at the same time a true picture of everything significant in features and the customs of the time he took ”(this characteristic of the“ lesser kind of epic ”given by Gogol already in the mid-40s in the“ Educational Book of Literature for Russian Youth ”was largely applicable to“ Dead Souls ”). And yet the experience of the playwright was not in vain: it was he who made it possible for Gogol to do the almost impossible, to integrate the linear plot, seemingly the most distant from the dramatic principle, into a special “dramatic” whole. According to Gogol himself, the novel "flies like a drama, united by the lively interest of the persons themselves in the main incident, in which the characters are entangled and which, with a boiling stroke, makes the characters themselves develop and reveal their characters more strongly and quickly, increasing their passion." Similarly, in Dead Souls - their purchase by Chichikov (the main incident), expressed plots in a chain of episodes (chapters), for the most part coinciding with the hero's visit to one or another landowner, unites all the characters with a single interest. It is no coincidence that Gogol builds many episodes of the book on parallels and on the repetition of actions, events and even individual details: the reappearance of Korobochka, Nozdryov, the symmetrical visit of Chichikov to various “city dignitaries” at the beginning and at the end of the book - all this creates the impression of a ring composition. The role of a catalyst for action, which fear played in The Inspector General, is now played by gossip - "a thickened lie", "a real substratum of the fantastic," where "everyone adds and applies a little, and the lie grows like a snowball, threatening to turn into a snowy landslide." ... The circulation and growth of rumors - a technique inherited by Gogol from another great playwright, Griboyedov, additionally organizes the action, accelerates its pace, leading the action to a swift denouement in the finale: "How a whirlwind shot up, it seemed, a hitherto dormant city!"

In fact, the plan for Dead Souls was originally conceived by Gogol as a three-part combination of relatively independent, completed works. In the midst of Gogol's work on the first volume, Dante begins to interest him. In the first years of Gogol's life abroad, this was facilitated by many factors: meetings with VA Zhukovsky in Rome in 1838-1839, who was fond of the author of The Divine Comedy at that time; conversations with S.P. Shevyrev and reading his translations from Dante. Directly in the first volume of Dead Souls, the Divine Comedy responded with a parodic reminiscence in the 7th chapter, in the scene of the “completion of the deeds”: the wanderer through the afterlife Chichikov (Dante) with his temporary companion Manilov, with the help of a minor official (Virgil), find themselves on the threshold of the "sanctuary" - the office of the chairman of the civil chamber, where the new guide - "Virgil" leaves the Gogol hero (in "The Divine Comedy" Virgil leaves Dante before his ascension to Heavenly Paradise, where he, as a pagan, is prohibited from entering).

But, apparently, the main impulse that Gogol received from reading The Divine Comedy was the idea to show the history of the human soul passing through certain stages - from a state of sinfulness to enlightenment - a story that gets concrete embodiment in the individual fate of the central character. This gave a clearer outline of the three-part plan of "Dead Souls", which now, by analogy with the "Divine Comedy", began to be presented as the ascent of the human soul, passing through three stages on its way: "Hell", "Purgatory" and "Paradise".

This also led to a new genre interpretation of the book, which Gogol originally called a novel and which he now gave the genre designation of the poem, which forced the reader to additionally correlate the Gogol book with Dante's, since the designation “sacred poem” (“poema sacra”) appears in Dante himself ( "Paradise", canto XXV, line 1) and also because at the beginning of the XIX century. in Russia, "The Divine Comedy" was firmly associated with the genre of the poem (the poem was called "The Divine Comedy", for example, AF Merzlyakov in his "A Brief Outline of the Theory of Fine Literature"; 1822), well known to Gogol. But, in addition to Dante's association, Gogol's naming of "Dead Souls" as a poem also revealed other meanings associated with this concept. First, most often the "poem" was determined by a high degree of artistic perfection; such a meaning was attached to this concept in Western European, in particular, German criticism (for example, in "Critical Fragments" by F. Schlegel). In these cases, the concept served not so much a genre as an evaluative definition and could figure independently of the genre (it was in this vein that Griboyedov wrote about "Woe from Wit" as a "stage poem", V.G.Belinsky called "a poem" of Taras Bulba ", And NI Nadezhdin called the entire literature" an episode of a lofty, boundless poem, represented by the original life of the human race ").

However, in Gogol's designation, and this should also be borne in mind, there was also an element of polemics. The fact is that in terms of genre, the poem was considered a concept applicable only to poetic works, both small and large ("Any work written in poetry, imitating graceful nature, can be called a poem," wrote NF Ostolopov in "Dictionary of Ancient and New Poetry," and in this sense, "The Divine Comedy" more naturally fell under such a classification). In other cases, this concept acquired, as already mentioned, an evaluative meaning. Gogol, on the other hand, used the word "poem" in relation to the large prose form (which it would have been more natural to define as a novel from the outset) precisely as a direct designation of the genre, placing it on the title page of the book (graphically, he additionally strengthened the meaning: on the title page created from his drawing, the word " poem "dominated both the title and the author's surname). The definition of "Dead Souls" as a poem, writes Yu. V. Mann, came to Gogol along with the realization of their genre uniqueness. This uniqueness consisted, firstly, in that universal task, which overcame the one-sidedness of the comic and even more so the satirical perspective of the book (“all Russia will respond in it”), and, secondly, in its symbolic significance, since the book addressed fundamental problems destiny of Russia and human existence.

Thus, the genre origins of Dead Souls are diverse. They synthesize into a single artistic whole the elements of the rogue novel, the genre of travel and essay, the socio-psychological and satirical novel, the high and parody poem.

3 Features of the plot and composition of the poem

The composition of "Dead Souls" is slender and proportionate in the Pushkin style.

There are 11 chapters in the 1st volume. Of these, Chapter I is an expanded exposition. The next 5 chapters (II-VI), tying and developing the action, at the same time represent, as it were, 5 completed short stories-sketches, in the center of each of them is a detailed portrait of one of the landowners of the province, where Chichikov arrived in the hope of carrying out the scam he had conceived. Each portrait is a specific type.

In the next five chapters (VII-XI), mainly the officials of the provincial city are drawn. However, these chapters are no longer constructed as separate sketches with one main character in the center, but as a consistently developing chain of events that take on an increasingly tense plot.

Chapter XI completes the 1st volume and at the same time, as it were, returns the reader to the beginning of the narrative.

In Chapter I, Chichikov's entry into the city of NN is drawn, and a hint of the plot of the action is already being made. In Chapter XI there is a denouement, the hero hastily leaves the city, and here Chichikov's prehistory is given. In general, the chapter represents both the completion of the plot, its denouement, and the exposition, a "solution" to the character of the protagonist and an explanation of the secret of his strange "negotiation" associated with the purchase of dead souls.

Studying the system of images in "Dead Souls", one should especially think about the features of the typification of characters, in particular the images of landowners. Usually, for all their individual uniqueness, they emphasize the social features of the feudal landlords of the period of the disintegration of the feudal system that began in Russia, which, in particular, is said in all school and university textbooks.

On the whole, this is correct, but far from sufficient, since with this approach the unusual breadth of artistic generalization in these images remains unclear. Reflecting in each of them a variety of the social type of the landlord-serf-owner, Gogol did not limit himself to this, because for him not only the socio-specific certainty is important, but also the general human character of the depicted artistic type. A truly artistic type (including that of Gogol) is always broader than any social type, because it is depicted as an individual character, in which the social-specific, class-group is difficult to correlate with the social-generic, holistic-personal, universal - with a large or less predominance of one of these principles. That is why Gogol's artistic types contain features that are characteristic not only of landowners or officials, but also of other classes, estates and social strata of society.

It is noteworthy that Gogol himself repeatedly emphasized the openness of his heroes by social-class, social-specific, narrow group and even time frames. Speaking about Korobochka, he remarks: "He is a different and respectable, and even a state person, but in fact it turns out a perfect Korobochka." Having skillfully characterized the "broad" nature of the "historical person" of Nozdryov, the writer, even in this case, does not attribute all of his diverse properties exclusively to the landowner-serf owner of his era, claiming: "Nozdryov will not leave the world for a long time. He is everywhere between us and, perhaps, only wears a different caftan, but people are frivolously unperceptive, and a person in a different caftan seems to them a different person. "

For all their undoubted socio-psychological limitations, the characters of Gogol's characters are far from schematic one-dimensionality, they are living people with a mass of individual shades. The same, according to Gogol, “a versatile person” Nozdryov with his “bouquet” of negative qualities (a bootie, a gambler, a shameless liar, a brawler, etc.) is somewhat sympathetic in his own way: his irrepressible energy, his ability to quickly converge with people, a kind of democracy, disinterestedness and imprudence, lack of hoarding. The only trouble is that all these human qualities acquire an ugly development from him, they are not illuminated by any meaning, truly human goals.

There are positive beginnings in the characters of Manilov, Korobochka, Sobakevich, and even Plyushkin. But these are, more precisely, the remnants of their humanity, which further accentuate the lack of spirituality that triumphed in them under the influence of the environment.

If, for example, Lermontov portrayed mainly the resistance of the "inner man" to the external circumstances of life surrounding him, then Gogol in Dead Souls focuses on his submission to these circumstances, up to "dissolving" in them, focusing, as a rule, on the final the result of this process. This is how Manilov, Korobochka, Nozdrev are represented. But already in the image of Sobakevich there is also another tendency - to understand the origins of the process of spiritual mortification of a person: “Were you born like a bear,” says the poem about Sobakevich, “or was the backwater life, grain crops, fussing with peasants led you through? what is called a man-fist has become. "

The more a person loses his human qualities, the more Gogol seeks to get to the bottom of the reasons for his mental mortification. This is exactly what he does with “a hole in humanity” by Plyushkin, unfolding his life prehistory, talking about the time “when he was just a thrifty owner,” “he was married and a family man,” exemplary, when his “eyes could see the mind; his speech was imbued with experience and knowledge of the light, and the guest was pleased to listen to him; the friendly and talkative hostess was famous for hospitality; two pretty daughters, both blond and fresh as roses, came out to meet them, a son, a rude boy, ran out ... ".

And then the author, without skimping on details, shows how Plyushkin's thrift gradually turned into meaningless stinginess, how marital, paternal and other human feelings died out. His wife and youngest daughter died. The elder Alexandra Stepanovna fled with the officer in search of a free and happy life. The son, having become an officer, played cards. Instead of material or moral support, Plyushkin sent them a fatherly curse and became even more closed in himself and his all-consuming passion for hoarding, which over time became more and more meaningless.

Along with pathological stinginess, suspicion, hypocrisy develops in him, designed to create a semblance of lost spiritual properties. In some ways, here Gogol anticipated the image of Judushka Golovlev, for example, in the scene of Plyushkin's reception of a “fugitive” daughter with her “two babies”: “Alexandra Stepanovna once came twice with her little son, trying to see if it was possible to get something; apparently, the field life with the captain-captain was not as attractive as it seemed before the wedding. Plyushkin, however, forgave her and even gave her little granddaughter some button to play ... but he did not give money ... Another time Alexandra Stepanovna arrived with two babies and brought him a cake for tea and a new robe, because the priest had such a robe, which was not only ashamed to look at, but even ashamed. Plyushkin caressed both granddaughters and, setting them to himself, one on his right knee and the other on his left, shook them in exactly the same way as if they were riding horses, took a cake and a robe, but gave his daughter absolutely nothing; that's why Alexandra Stepanovna left. "

But even in such a "monster" the writer is looking for the remnants of humanity. In this respect, an episode is indicative when Plyushkin, during his "bargaining" with Chichikov, recalled his only acquaintance in the city, who was his classmate in childhood: that pale reflection of feeling ... ".

By the way, according to the plan, Plyushkin was supposed to appear in the subsequent volumes of Dead Souls, if not morally and spiritually resurrected, then realizing as a result of a strong life shock the measure of his human fall.

The prehistory of the protagonist, the "scoundrel" Chichikov, who, according to the writer's plan, had to undergo a significant internal evolution over the course of three volumes, is given in even more detail.

The types of officials, for example, a prosecutor with bushy eyebrows and an involuntarily winking left eye, are outlined more succinctly, but no less meaningfully. The rumors and rumors about the story of the purchase of dead souls by Chichikov had such an effect on him that he "began to think, to think and suddenly ... from one or the other he died." They sent, it was, for the doctor, but soon they saw that the prosecutor "was already one soulless body." And only then his fellow citizens "learned with condolence that the deceased had a soul, although he, out of his modesty, never showed it."

The comic and satirical depictions here imperceptibly pass into a different, moral and philosophical tonality: the deceased is lying on the table, “his left eye no longer blinked at all, but one eyebrow was still raised with a kind of questioning expression. What the deceased asked about, why he died or why he lived, only God knows about this. "

It is precisely that cardinal life question that has been raised - why did man live, why does man live? - a question that so little bothered all these seemingly prosperous inhabitants of the provincial city with their dead souls. Here one involuntarily recalls the words of Pechorin from The Hero of Our Time: “Why did I live? For what purpose was I born? "

We talk a lot and rightly about social satire in Dead Souls, not always noticing their moral and philosophical overtones, which over time, and especially in our time, is acquiring more and more not only historical, but also modern interest, highlighting in particular the historical content of "Dead Souls" its human perspective.

The deep unity of these two aspects was noted by Herzen. Immediately after reading Gogol's poem, he wrote in his diary: "Dead Souls" - this title itself bears something terrifying ... not revision dead souls, but all these Nozdrevs, Manilovs and tutti quaiili - these are dead souls, and we are theirs we meet at every step. Where are the common interests, living? .. Not all of us after adolescence, one way or another, lead one of the lives of Gogol's heroes? One stays with Manilov's dull daydreaming, the other rages like Nozdryov, the third - Plyushkin, etc. One active person is Chichikov, and that limited rogue. "

Gogol emphasizes the tragedy of the fate of most of them, who are increasingly "pondering" about their disenfranchised lives - like that Grigory Doezzhay-you-won't-get there, who "thought, thought, and from one thing or the other turned into a tavern, and then straight into the ice-hole. , and remember what your name was. " And the writer makes a significant conclusion: “Eh! Russian people! does not like to die a natural death! " ...

Speaking about the central conflict in the artistic structure of the poem, one must bear in mind its peculiar two-pronged nature. On the one hand, this is the conflict between the protagonist and the landowners and officials, based on Chichikov's adventure to buy up dead souls. On the other hand, it is a deep conflict between the landlord-bureaucratic, autocratic-serf elite of Russia with the people, above all with the serf peasantry. The echoes of this deep conflict now and then sound on the pages of Dead Souls.

Even the "well-meaning" Chichikov, annoyed by the failure of his cunning venture, hastily leaving the governor's ball, unexpectedly falls upon the balls, and the entire idle life of the ruling classes associated with them: “So the devil take you all who invented these balls! .. Well, why were they foolishly happy? In the province, crop failures, high prices, and so they are for balls! .. But at the expense of the peasant quitrent ... "

Chichikov occupies a special place in the figurative and semantic structure of Dead Souls - not only as the main character, but also as the ideological-compositional and plot-forming center of the poem. Chichikov's journey, which was the basis of his adventurous mercantile intentions, made it possible for the writer, in his words, to "travel ... all over Russia and bring out a multitude of the most diverse characters", to show "all of Russia" in its contradictions and dormant potencies.

So, analyzing the reasons for the collapse of Chichikov's idea of enrichment by acquiring dead souls, it is worth paying special attention to two seemingly side episodes - at the meeting of Chichikov with a young blonde who turned out to be the governor's daughter, and the consequences of these meetings. Chichikov allowed himself sincere human feelings for only a moment, but this was enough to confuse all his cards, to destroy his plan, which was so prudently carried out. Of course, the narrator says, "it is doubtful that gentlemen of this kind ... were capable of love ..." As soon as Chichikov, in his fleeting hobby, forgot about the role he had assumed and stopped paying due attention to the "society" in the person of the ladies, first of all, they were not slow to take revenge on him for such neglect, picking up the version of dead souls, spicing it up in their own way with the legend of the abduction the governor's daughter: "All the ladies did not like this treatment of Chichikov at all." And at once they "went each to their side to rebel the city", that is. set him up against the recent universal favorite of Chichikov. This "private" storyline in its own way highlights the complete incompatibility in the mercantile-calculating world of commercial prosperity with sincere human feelings and heart movements.

The plot in the 1st volume of Dead Souls is based on Chichikov's misadventures associated with his scam based on the purchase of dead souls. The news of this excited the entire provincial town. The most incredible assumptions were made as to why Chichikov needed dead souls.

The general confusion and fear were aggravated by the fact that a new governor-general was appointed to the province. "All of a sudden everyone was looking for such sins that didn't even exist." The officials wondered who Chichikov was, whom they so kindly received by his dress and manners: "is he the kind of person who needs to be detained and seized as an ill-intentioned, or is he the kind of person who can seize and detain them all as ill-intentioned" ...

This social “ambivalence” of Chichikov as a possible bearer of both law and lawlessness reflected their relativity, opposition and interconnectedness in the society portrayed by the writer. Chichikov was a mystery not only for the characters in the poem, but also in many ways for its readers. That is why, drawing attention to it, the author was in no hurry to solve it, referring the exposition explaining the origins of such a character to the final chapter.

Conclusion per chapter: Gogol strove to show the terrible face of Russian reality, to recreate the "Hell" of Russian modern life.

The poem has a circular "composition": it is framed by the action of the first and eleventh chapters: Chichikov enters and leaves the city. The exhibition in Dead Souls has been moved to the end of the work. Thus, the eleventh chapter is, as it were, the informal beginning of the poem and its formal end. The poem, however, begins with the development of the action: Chichikov begins his path to the "acquisition" of dead souls. The construction of Dead Souls is logical and consistent. Each chapter is completed thematically, it has its own task and its own subject of the image. The chapters devoted to the depiction of landowners are arranged according to the scheme: a description of the landscape, the estate, the house and life, the appearance of the hero, then the dinner and the attitude of the landowner to the sale of dead souls are shown. The composition of the poem contains lyrical digressions, inserted novellas ("The Tale of Captain Kopeikin"), a parable about Kif Mokievich and Mokiy Kofovich.

The macrocomposition of the poem "Dead Souls", that is, the composition of the entire conceived work, was suggested to Gogol by Dante's immortal "Divine Comedy": Volume 1 - the hell of serfdom, the kingdom of dead souls; Volume 2 - Purgatory; Volume 3 - Paradise. This plan remained unfulfilled. It is also possible to note the gradualness of the mental degradation of the landowners as the reader becomes acquainted with them. Such a picture creates in the reader a rather heavy emotional sensation from the symbolic steps along which the human soul moves to hell.

CHAPTER 2. THE POEM "DEAD SOULS" AS A CRITICAL IMAGE OF THE LIFE AND MOST OF THE XIX CENTURY

1 The image of Chichikov in the poem "Dead Souls"

In the image of Chichikov, Gogol introduced into Russian literature the type of bourgeois-acquirer that was taking shape in Russian reality, who relies not on titles and wealth bestowed by fate, but on personal initiative and enterprise, on a “penny” multiplied into capital that brings him everything: blessings life laid down in society, nobility, etc.

This type had undoubted advantages over the type of patriarchal noble landowner who lived according to customs inherited, like material goods, from their fathers and grandfathers.

It is no coincidence that Chichikov is always on the road, in motion, in troubles, while other characters are inactive and inert in all respects. Chichikov achieves everything in life himself. More than once he amassed a solid fortune and suffered a collapse, but again and again with the same energy he rushed to his cherished goal - to get rich by all means, by any means.

But this limited life goal, promiscuity and uncleanliness in the means of achieving it ultimately nullified his positive qualities, devastating him spiritually, ultimately also turning him into a dead soul.

At the same time, Chichikov is a very capacious image-type. It is not for nothing that the officials alternately mistake him for an official of the governor-general's office, then for a counterfeiter, then for a robber in disguise, or even for Napoleon, who was released from the island of Elena. For all the absurdity of the assumptions of the frightened officials, they are not absolutely groundless: in Chichikov there really is something in common with all these human "specimens", to each of them he ascends in some way. Even with Napoleon, he has something in common: the same active individualism, turning into egocentrism and causing the limitation of all goals; the same promiscuity in the means of achieving them; the ascent to these goals literally "over the corpses", through the suffering and death of their own kind. As soon as he arrived in the city, Chichikov wondered whether "there were any diseases in the province, general fevers, some kind of murderous fevers, smallpox and the like."

Only one of the guesses, "who really is Chichikov," turned out to be completely untenable, when the postmaster suddenly declared: "This, gentlemen ... is none other than Captain Kopeikin!" ...

It should be emphasized that "The Tale of Captain Kopeikin", despite the fact that it does not seem to be connected either with the main action of the poem or with the image of Chichikov, carries a great ideological and artistic content that complements and deepens the main meaning of "Dead Souls" ... It was not for nothing that Gogol himself valued it so much and was deeply worried about the threat of its seizure by the censorship, about which he wrote to PA Pletnev on April 10, 1842: “The destruction of Kopeikin greatly embarrassed me! This is one of the best places in the poem, and without it - a hole, which I am unable to pay and sew up ”.

In this “poem in a poem” (cf. the words of the postmaster: “this is ... in a way, a whole poem”), the narrative goes beyond the province, involving Petersburg, the highest bureaucratic and ruling circles in its sphere, and expands its scope to the utmost. covering all of Russia.

In addition, with the image of Captain Kopeikin, a hero and invalid of the Patriotic War of 1812, a representative of the country's democratic lower classes, the theme of rebellion sounds again and again with renewed vigor. Of course, Gogol, not being in any way a revolutionary, did not call for rebellion. However, as a great and honest realist artist, he could not help showing the patterns of rebellious tendencies under the existing socially unjust social and state system.

The postmaster's story about Captain Kopeikin is abruptly interrupted when the audience learns that Kopeikin, having lost faith in the "monarch's help", becomes the leader of a band of robbers in his homeland, in the Ryazan forests: "Just let me, Ivan Andreevich," said the police master, suddenly interrupting him: " after all, Captain Kopeikin, you yourself said, without an arm and a leg, but Chichikov's ... "The postmaster himself could not understand how it really did not immediately occur to him, and he only his forehead, calling himself publicly veal. " The alogism of thinking, familiar to us from Gogol's previous works, of characters and storytellers.

This technique is widely used in "Dead Souls", primarily for understanding the main storyline, and through it - and the entire displayed reality. The author forces, if not officials, then readers to ask himself the question: is there really more logic in the daily purchases and sales of "living souls", living people?

It is difficult to say with certainty how Chichikov would appear in the finale of the three-volume poem. But, regardless of the final design, in the first volume, Gogol succeeded in creating a realistic type of great generalizing force. Belinsky immediately noted its significance: "Chichikov as an acquirer is no less, if not more than Pechorin, a hero of our time." An observation that has not lost its relevance now. The virus of acquisitions, acquisitions at any cost, when all means are good, when the biblical truth bequeathed for centuries is forgotten: "man does not live by bread alone" - this virus is so strong and tenacious that it freely penetrates everywhere, bypassing not only spatial, but also temporal boundaries ... Chichikov's type has not lost its vital and generalizing significance both in our days and in our society, on the contrary, it is experiencing its powerful revival and development. Addressing his readers, Gogol invited everyone to ask themselves a question: "Isn't there some part of Chichikov in me too?" At the same time, the writer advised not to rush with an answer, not to nod at others: "Look, look, Chichikov over there ... let's go!" ... This advice is addressed to everyone living today.

2 Features of the image of landowners in the poem

The images drawn by Gogol in the poem were ambiguously perceived by his contemporaries: many reproached him for drawing a caricature of his contemporary life, depicting reality in a funny, absurd form. Gogol unfolds before the reader a whole gallery of images of landowners (leading his protagonist from the first to the last) primarily in order to answer the main question that occupied him - what is the future of Russia, what is its historical purpose, what is in modern life contains at least a small hint of a bright, prosperous future for the people, which will be the guarantee of the future greatness of the nation. In other words, the question that Gogol asks at the end, in a lyrical digression about "Russia-Troika", permeates the entire narrative as a leitmotif, and it is to him that the logic and poetics of the entire work, including the images of landowners, are subordinated.

The first of the landowners whom Chichikov visits in the hope of buying dead souls is Manilov. Main features: Manilov is completely out of touch with reality, his main occupation is fruitless hovering in the clouds, useless projection. This is evidenced by both the appearance of his estate (a house on a hill, open to all winds, a gazebo - a "temple of solitary reflection", traces of begun and unfinished buildings), and the interior of living quarters (assorted furniture, heaps of pipe ash, laid out in neat rows on the windowsill , some kind of book, the second year laid on the fourteenth page, etc.). Drawing an image, Gogol pays special attention to the details, interior, things, through them showing the characteristics of the owner's character. Manilov, in spite of his “great” thoughts, is stupid, vulgar and sentimental (lisping with his wife, “ancient Greek” names of not quite neat and well-bred children). The internal and external squalor of the type depicted prompts Gogol, starting from him, to look for a positive ideal, and to do it "by contradiction." If complete isolation from reality and fruitless hovering in the clouds lead to something like this, then perhaps the opposite type will instill in us some kind of hope? The box in this respect is the complete opposite of Manilov. Unlike him, she does not hover in the clouds, but, on the contrary, is completely immersed in everyday life. However, the image of Korobochka does not give the desired ideal either. Pettiness and stinginess (old cloaks stored in chests, money put in a stocking for a "rainy day"), inertia, stupid adherence to tradition, rejection and fear of everything new, "club-headed" make her look almost more repulsive than Manilov ... For all the dissimilarity of the characters of Manilov and Korobochka, they have one thing in common - inactivity. Both Manilov and Korobochka (albeit for opposite reasons) do not affect the reality around them. Perhaps an active person will be a model from which to take an example for the young generation? And, as if in answer to this question, Nozdryov appears. Nozdryov is extremely active. However, all his stormy activities are for the most part scandalous. He is a frequenter of all drunks and binges in the district, he changes everything that he gets on anything (he tries to foist puppies, a barrel organ, a horse, etc.) on Chichikov, cheats when playing cards and even checkers, and wastes money that he gets from the sale. harvest. He lies unnecessarily (it was Nozdryov who subsequently confirmed the rumor that Chichikov wanted to steal the governor's daughter and took him as an accomplice, without batting an eye agrees that Chichikov is Napoleon, who fled from exile, etc.). etc.). Repeatedly he was beaten, moreover by his own friends, and the next day, as if nothing had happened, he appeared to them and continued in the same spirit - "and he is nothing, and they, as they say, nothing." As a result, from the "activity" of Nozdryov comes almost more troubles than from the inaction of Manilov and Korobochka. And nevertheless, there is a feature that unites all the described three types - this is impracticality.

The next landowner, Sobakevich, is extremely practical. This is the type of "master", "fist". Everything in his house is solid, reliable, made "for centuries" (even the furniture, it seems, is full of complacency and wants to shout: "Iya Sobakevich!"). However, all the practicality of Sobakevich is aimed at only one goal - obtaining personal gain, for the achievement of which he does not stop at anything (Sobakevich's “abuse” of everyone and everything - in the city, in his words, there is one decent person - a prosecutor, “and he if you look, it’s a pig, ”Sobakevich’s“ meal ”, when he eats mountains of food and so it seems that he is able to swallow the whole world in one sitting, a scene with the purchase of dead souls, when Sobakevich is not at all surprised by the very subject of sale, but immediately feels that the case smells like money that can be ripped off Chichikov). It is quite clear that Sobakevich is even farther from the sought-after ideal than all the previous types.

Plyushkin is a kind of generalizing image. He is the only one whose path to his present state ("how he came to such a life") shows us Gogol. Giving the image of Plyushkin in development, Gogol raises this final image to a kind of symbol that includes Manilov, Korobochka, Nozdrev, and Sobakevich. The common thing for all types derived in the poem is that their lives are not sanctified by thought, a socially useful goal, not filled with concern for the common good, progress, striving for national prosperity. Any activity (or inaction) is useless and meaningless if it does not carry in itself concerns about the welfare of the nation or country. That is why Plyushkin turns into a "hole in humanity", that is why his repulsive, disgusting image of a curmudgeon who has lost all human form, steals old buckets and other trash from his own peasants, who has turned his own house into a dump, and his serfs into beggars - namely therefore, his image is the final stop for all these manila, boxes, nostrils and sobachevichs. And just like Plyushkin, Russia may turn out to be a “hole in humanity” if it does not find the strength to reject all these “dead souls” and bring to the surface of national life a positive image - active, with a mobile mind and imagination, diligent in business and, most importantly - sanctified by concern for the common good. Characteristically, this is the type that Gogol tried to portray in the second volume of Dead Souls in the image of the landowner Kostanzhoglo. However, the surrounding reality did not provide material for such images - Kostanzhoglo turned out to be a speculative scheme that had nothing to do with real life. The Russian reality supplied only manila, boxes, nostrils and Plyushkins - “Where am I? I see nothing ... Not a single human face ... Around only a snout, a snout ... "- exclaims Gogol through the mouth of the Governor in" The Inspector General "(compare with the" evil spirits "from" Evenings ... "and" Mirgorod ": a pig's snout sticking through the window at Sorochinskaya Yarmarka, sneering inhuman muzzles in the Enchanted Place). That is why the words about Russia-troika sound like a woeful warning cry - "Where are you rushing? .. Doesn't give an answer ...".

If the character of each of the landowners left a unique imprint on his house and estate as a whole, then the city is influenced by the entire huge mass of people (including officials, since officials are the first people in the city) living in it. The city turns into a completely independent mechanism, living according to its own laws, sending its needs through offices, departments, councils and other public institutions. And it is the officials who ensure the functioning of this entire mechanism. The life of a civil servant, which does not bear the imprint of a lofty idea, a desire to contribute to the common good, becomes the embodied function of the bureaucratic mechanism. In essence, a person ceases to be a person, he loses all personal characteristics (in contrast to the landlords, who had their own, albeit ugly, but still their own physiognomy), even loses his own name, since a name is still a kind of personal characteristic, and becomes simply the Postmaster, the Prosecutor, the Governor, the Chief of Police, the Chairman or the owner of an unimaginable nickname like Ivan Antonovich Kuvshinnoe Snout. A person turns into a detail, a “cog” of the state machine, the micromodel of which is the provincial town of NN. Officials themselves are unremarkable, except for the position they hold.

To enhance the contrast, Gogol cites grotesque "portraits" of some officials - so the chief of police is famous for the fact that, according to rumors, he only needs to blink as he passes the fish row in order to secure himself a sumptuous dinner and an abundance of fish delicacies. The postmaster, whose name was Ivan Andreevich, is known for always adding to his name: "Shprechen zi deich, Ivan Andreich?" The chairman of the chamber knew Zhukovsky's “Lyudmila” by heart and “masterfully read many passages, especially:“ Bor fell asleep, the valley is asleep, ”and the word“ Chu! ”. Others, as Gogol sarcastically notes, were "also more or less enlightened people: who read Karamzin, who Moskovskie vedomosti, who did not even read anything at all." Remarkable is the reaction of city residents, including to officials, to the news that Chichikov is buying dead souls - what is happening does not fit into the usual framework and immediately gives rise to the most fantastic assumptions - from the fact that Chichikov wanted to kidnap the governor's daughter to the fact that Chichikov - either the wanted counterfeiter, or the escaped robber, about whom the Chief of Police receives an order for immediate arrest. The grotesqueness of the situation is only intensified by the fact that the Postmaster decides that Chichikov is a disguised captain Kopeikin, a war hero of 1812, an invalid without an arm and a leg. Other officials assume that Chichikov is a disguised Napoleon who escaped from St. Helena.

The absurdity of the situation reaches its climax when, as a result of a confrontation with insoluble problems (from mental stress), the prosecutor dies. In general, the situation in the city resembles the behavior of a mechanism in which a grain of sand suddenly fell. Wheels and cogs, intended for quite specific functions, are scrolling idle, some of them break with a bang, and the whole mechanism jingles, strumming and "is racing."

If the city is a soulless machine that kills all living things in people, pure, destroying the very human essence, depriving them of all human feelings and even a normal name, turning the city itself into a “graveyard” of dead souls, then ultimately all of Russia can take on a similar look if he does not find the strength to reject all this "carrion" and bring to the surface of national life a positive image - active, with a mobile mind and imagination, zealous in business and most importantly - sanctified by concern for the common good.

3 Lyrical digressions of "Dead Souls" and their ideological content

Lyrical digressions are a very important part of any piece. In terms of the abundance of lyrical digressions, the poem "Dead Souls" can be compared with a work in verse by A.S. Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin". This feature of these works is associated with their genres - a poem in prose and a novel in verse.

Lyrical digressions in Dead Souls are saturated with the pathos of affirming the high calling of man, the pathos of great social ideas and interests. Whether the author expresses his bitterness and anger at the insignificance of the heroes shown by him, does he speak about the place of the writer in modern society, whether he writes about the lively, lively Russian mind - a deep source of his lyricism is thoughts about serving his native country, about its fate, its sadness, her hidden, crushed by gigantic powers.

Gogol created a new type of prose, in which the opposite elements of creativity - laughter and tears, satire and lyrics - were inextricably merged. Never before have they, as has already been established, met in one work of art.

Epic narrative in Dead Souls every now and then lo is interrupted by an agitated lyric monologue mi author, evaluating the behavior of a character or reflecting on life, about art. The true lyrical hero of this book is Gogol himself. We hear his voice all the time. The image of the author is, as it were, an indispensable participant in all the events taking place in the poem. He closely monitors the behavior of his characters and actively influences the reader. Moreover, the author's voice is completely devoid of didactics, for this image is perceived from within, as a representative of the same reflected reality as other characters in Dead Souls.

The lyrical voice of the author reaches the greatest tension on those pages that are directly devoted to the Motherland, Russia. Another theme is woven into Gogol's lyrical meditations - the future of Russia, its own historical destiny and place in the destinies of mankind.

Gogol's passionate lyrical monologues were an expression of his poetic dream of an undistorted, correct reality. The poetic world was revealed in them, in contrast to which the world of profit and self-interest was even more sharply exposed. Gogol's lyrical monologues are an assessment of the present from the standpoint of the author's ideal, which can only be realized in the future.

Gogol in his poem acts primarily as a thinker and contemplator, trying to unravel the mysterious bird-three - the symbol of Russia. 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: “Aren't you too, Russia, that a brisk, unattainable troika rushing? ... Rus! where are you rushing? Give an answer. Doesn't give an answer. "

The theme of the road is the second most important theme of "Dead Souls" related to the theme of Russia. The road is the image that organizes the entire plot, and Gogol introduces himself into lyrical digressions as a man of the path. “Before, long ago, in the years of my youth ... it was fun for me to drive up for the first time to an unfamiliar place ... Now I drive up indifferently to any unfamiliar village and look with indifference at its vulgar appearance; my chilled gaze is uncomfortable, it is not funny to me, .. and my motionless lips keep indifferent silence. Oh my youth! Oh my conscience! "

The lyrical digressions about Russia and the Russian people are of the greatest importance. Throughout the entire poem, the author's idea of a positive image of the Russian people is affirmed, which merges with the glorification and glorification of the homeland, which expresses the author's civil-patriotic position: real Russia is not Sobachevichs, nostrils and boxes, but the people, the national element. So, in the fifth chapter, the writer praises the "lively and lively Russian mind", his extraordinary ability for verbal expressiveness, that "if he rewards it with a word, then it will go to his family and posterity, he will drag him with him to the service and to retirement. , and to Petersburg, and to the ends of the world. " Chichikov's reasoning was led by his conversation with the peasants, who called Plyushkin "patched" and knew him only because he poorly fed his peasants.

The author's digression, which opens the sixth chapter, is also in close contact with lyrical statements about the Russian word and folk character.

The story about Plyushkin is interrupted by the author's angry words, which have a deep generalizing meaning: "And a person could condescend to such insignificance, pettiness, disgusting!"

Gogol felt the living soul of the Russian people, their prowess, courage, hard work and love for a free life. In this respect, the author's reasoning, put into the mouth of Chichikov, about serfs in the seventh chapter is of deep significance. What appears here is not a generalized image of Russian peasants, but specific people with real features, detailed in detail. This is the carpenter Stepan Probka - "a hero that would be suitable for the guard", who, according to Chichikov's assumption, traveled all over Russia with an ax in his belt and boots on his shoulders. This is the shoemaker Maxim Telyatnikov, who studied with a German and decided to get rich at once, making boots from rotten leather, which crawled two weeks later. On this he abandoned his work, got drunk, blaming everything on the Germans, who did not give life to the Russian people.

Lyrical digressions depict the tragic fate of an enslaved people, downtrodden and socially humiliated, which was reflected in the images of Uncle Mityai and Uncle Minay, the girl Pelageya, who could not distinguish between right and left, Plyushkinsky Proshki and Mavry. Behind these images and pictures of the life of the people lies the deep and wide soul of the Russian people.

The image of the road in lyrical digressions is symbolic. This is the road from the past to the future, the road along which the development of each person and Russia as a whole goes.

The work ends with a hymn to the Russian people: “Eh! troika! Bird three, who invented you? You could have been born with a lively people ... ”Here the lyrical digressions fulfill a generalizing function: they serve to expand the artistic space and to create an integral image of Russia. They reveal the author's positive ideal - People's Russia, which is opposed to landlord-bureaucratic Russia.

To recreate the completeness of the author's image, it is necessary to say about the lyrical digressions in which Gogol discusses two types of writers. One of them "never changed the lofty structure of his lyre, did not descend from his peak to his poor, insignificant brothers, and the other dared to call out everything that is in front of his eyes every minute and which indifferent eyes do not see."

The lot of a real writer, who dared to truly recreate the reality hidden from the eyes of the people, is such that, unlike the romantic writer, absorbed in his unearthly and sublime images, he is not destined to achieve fame and experience joyful feelings when you are recognized and praised. Gogol comes to the conclusion that the unrecognized writer-realist, the writer-satirist will be left without participation, that "his field is harsh, and he bitterly feels his loneliness."

Throughout the poem, lyrical passages are interspersed with the narrative with great artistic tact. At first, they are in the nature of the author's statements about his heroes, but as the action unfolds, their inner theme becomes wider and more multifaceted.

It can be concluded that the lyrical digressions in Dead Souls are saturated with the pathos of affirming the high calling of a person, the pathos of great social ideas and interests. Whether the author expresses his bitterness and anger at the insignificance of the heroes shown by him, does he speak about the place of the writer in modern society, whether he writes about the lively, lively Russian mind - a deep source of his lyricism is thoughts about serving his native country, about its fate, its sadness, her hidden, crushed by gigantic powers.

So, the artistic space of the poem "Dead Souls" is made up of two worlds, which can be designated as the real world and the ideal world. Gogol builds the real world, recreating the reality of his day, revealing the mechanism of distortion of man as a person and the world in which he lives. The ideal world for Gogol is the height to which the human soul strives, but due to its damage by sin it does not find a way. Representatives of the anti-world are practically all the heroes of the poem, among which the images of landowners headed by the main character Chichikov are especially vivid. With the deep meaning of the title of the work, Gogol gives the reader an angle of reading his work, the logic of seeing the characters he created, including the landowners.

CONCLUSION

The poem "Dead Souls" is one of the most remarkable works of Russian literature. The great realist writer Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol showed all of modern Russia, satirically depicting the local nobility and the provincial bureaucracy. But if you look closely, the disgusting and pitiful features of Gogol's characters have not been eliminated to this day and are vividly manifested even today, at the turn of the new century. Gogol's laughter also included a feeling of acute grief, born of pictures of spiritual extinction, "mortification" of a person, his humiliation and suppression, phenomena of social stagnation. No wonder the writer said that he had to look at life "through the laughter visible to the world and invisible, unknown to him tears." And at the same time, Gogol's laughter does not cause disappointment; it awakens the energy of resistance and protest, the energy of action.

N.V. Gogol pondered a lot about the fate of Russia, each line is saturated with love for the country, deep feelings. “Aren't you, Rus, that a brisk, unattainable troika, rushing? .. Rus, where are you rushing, give an answer. Doesn't give an answer! " The whole of Russia was embodied in the image of a troika, and to the question "Where are you rushing?" - does not give an answer, unfortunately, and the writer himself does not know where she will come, if people like Chichikov, Manilov, Plyushkin rule her.

Belinsky very expressively formulated the main feature of Gogol's "syllable", that is, his language and style: “Gogol does not write, but draws; his images breathe with living colors of reality. You see and hear them. Every word, every phrase sharply, definitely, vividly expresses his thought, and in vain you would like to come up with another word or other phrase to express this thought. "

Gogol combines the exact relationship between word and thought with the picturesqueness of the word, with the clarity, the figurativeness of the image. Gogol's word, speech characteristics are firmly correlated with the character's image, reveal his essence, his character.

All of Russia of that time - all its social strata, professions, and the most diverse styles - found expression in Gogol's language. But at the heart of his work on the language who was striving for maximum democratization speech, to the inclusion in the literary language of all gatstvo of the language of the whole people, to the destruction of the boundaries between them. This democratization of speech was especially clearly felt by contemporaries.

Gogol, as we see, was one of the first to attempt not only to pose the most important problems that writers of subsequent eras, including ours, would then struggle to overcome, but also to solve them individually in his grandiose concept of the epic poem. But this turned out to be beyond the power of even a brilliant artist like Gogol. And nevertheless, by selfless creative work, at the cost of endless trial and error, searches and discoveries, with his poem, he paved the way for the genre of the Russian socio-psychological and moral philosophical novel, which became the leading one in Russian literature in the 2nd half of the 19th century, which deservedly brought it world fame.

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol developed and deepened the traditions of Pushkin in prose and drama, at the same time signifying a new direction in Russian literature, which received the name "critical realism" thanks to revolutionary democratic aesthetics. However, Gogol was least of all concerned with criticism of reality, although many aspects of Russian life were ridiculed in his works. All of Gogol's work was inspired by the ideal of the sublime. He dreamed of seeing Russia and the Russian man free from all moral distortions and showing the way for all mankind to a divinely beautiful and majestic life. Eliminating vices through laughter and solemn striving for spiritual perfection - these are the components of Gogol, in which the writer and the prophet were united.

LIST OF USED LITERATURE

1. Andre N. Okara Creativity Gogol as a phenomenon of "all-Russian culture" / N. André Okara // # "justify">. Annensky I. Aesthetics of "Dead Souls" and its heritage / I. Annensky // # "justify">. Belinsky V.G. Complete Works / V. G. Belinsky. - M .: Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 10 volumes, 1981.

Bocharov S. G. About the style of Gogol / S. G. Bocharov // Theory of literary styles. Typology of stylistic development of modern times. - M .: Fiction, 1976 .-- 412 p.

Burkov I.A. Nikolay Gogol / I. A. Burkov. - M .: Education, 1989. - 549s.

Voropaev V. Articles about Gogol / V. Voropaev // http: // www. library.ru.

Gippius V. Gogol: Memories. Letters. Diaries / V. Gippius. - M .: Agraf, 1999. - 461 p.

Gogol N.V. Collected works in 6 volumes / N.V. V. Gogol. - M .: Fiction, 1950

V. A. Zaslonov Nikolay Gogol. Experience of spiritual biography / V. A. Zaslonov. - M .: Education, 1980 .-- 120 p.

Krivkevich A.M. Comments to the poem "Dead Souls" / A. M Krinkevich. - Minsk: Higher school, 2005 .-- 659s.

Lotman Yu. At the school of the poetic word: Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol / Yu. Lotman. - M .: Education, 1982 .-- 352 p.

Mazhinsky S. The artistic world of Gogol / S. Mazhinsky. - M .: Education, 1971. - 437 p.

Mann Yu. V. In search of a living soul / Yu. V. Mann. - M., Fiction, 1987 .-- 325 p.

Mann Yu. V. Courage of invention. Features of the artistic world of Gogol / Yu. V. Mann. - M .: Fiction, 1985 .-- 225 p.

Mann Yu.M. Poetics of Gogol / Yu. M. Mann. - M .: Fiction, 1995 .-- 413 p.

Mashinsky S. N. V. Gogol in Russian criticism and memoirs of contemporaries. M .: Education, 1959.-367 p.

V.V. Nabokov Lectures on Russian literature. Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Gorky, Tolstoy, Turgenev [trans. from English and forewords. Yves. Tolstoy] - M .: Publishing house "Nezavisimaya gazeta", 1998. - 440 p. (literary studies)

Nechiporenko Yu. Cosmogony of Gogol / Yu. Nechiporenko // www. library.ru.

Nikolaev P.A.Gogol's artistic discoveries / P. A. Nikolaev // # "justify">. Nikolaev D.P. Satire by Gogol / D.P. Nikolaev. - M .: Fiction, 1984 .-- 367 p.