The idea of the work was extremely complex. It did not fit into the framework of the genres generally accepted in the literature of that time and demanded a rethinking of views on life, on Russia, on people. It was also necessary to find new ways of artistic embodiment of the idea. The usual framework of genres for the embodiment of the author's thought was tight, because N.V. Gogol was looking for new forms to start the plot and its development.
At the beginning of work on the work, in letters to N.V. Gogol, the word "novel" is often found. In 1836, Gogol writes: “... the thing on which I am sitting and working now, and which I have been thinking about for a long time, and which I will think about for a long time, does not look like a story or a novel, long, long ...” And nevertheless, subsequently the idea of \u200b\u200bhis new work N.V. Gogol decided to embody in the genre of the poem. The writer's contemporaries were perplexed by his decision, since at that time, in the literature of the 19th century, a poem written in poetic form enjoyed great success. The main attention in it was focused on a strong and proud personality, which, in the conditions of modern society, was expected by a tragic fate.
Gogol's decision had a deeper meaning. Having planned to create a collective image of the homeland, he managed to highlight the properties inherent in different genres and harmoniously combine them under one definition of "poem". In "Dead Souls" there are features of both a picaresque novel, and a lyrical poem, and a socio-psychological novel, and a story, and a satirical work. On first impression, Dead Souls is more of a novel. This is evidenced by the system of brightly and in detail outlined characters. But Leo Tolstoy, having familiarized himself with the work, said: “Take Gogol's Dead Souls. What's this? Not a novel, not a short story. Something completely original."
The poem is based on the story of Russian life, the focus is on the personality of Russia, covered from all sides. Chichikov, the hero of Dead Souls, is an unremarkable person, and just such a person, according to Gogol, was a hero of his time, an acquirer who managed to vulgarize everything, even the very idea of evil. Chichikov's travels around Russia turned out to be the most convenient form for the design of artistic material. This form is original and interesting mainly because not only Chichikov travels in the work, whose adventures are a connecting element of the plot. Together with his hero, the author travels around Russia. He meets with representatives of various social strata and, combining them into one whole, creates a rich gallery of portraits-characters.
Sketches of road landscapes, travel scenes, various historical, geographical and other information help Gogol to present to the reader a complete picture of Russian life in those years. Escorting Chichikov along Russian roads, the author shows the reader a huge range of Russian life in all its manifestations: landowners, officials, peasants, estates, taverns, nature and much more. Exploring the particular, Gogol draws conclusions about the whole, draws a terrible picture of the customs of contemporary Russia, and, most importantly, explores the soul of the people.
The life of Russia at that time, the reality familiar to the writer, is depicted in the poem from the “satirical side”, which was new and unusual for Russian literature of the 19th century. And therefore, starting with the genre of the traditional adventure novel, N.V. Gogol, following an increasingly expanding plan, goes beyond the framework of the novel, and the traditional story, and the poem, and as a result creates a large-scale lyrical-epic work. The epic beginning in it is represented by the adventures of Chichikov and is connected with the plot. The lyrical beginning, the presence of which becomes more and more significant as events unfold, is expressed in lyrical author's digressions. In general, "Dead Souls" is a large-scale epic work that will amaze readers for a long time with a depth of analysis of the Russian character and a surprisingly accurate prediction of the future of Russia.
All topics of the book “Dead Souls” by N.V. Gogol. Summary. features of the poem. Compositions":
Summary of the poem "Dead Souls": Volume one. Chapter first
Features of the poem "Dead Souls"
- Genre originality of the poem
. "To the Question of the Genre"
Let us now look at the main features of the poetics of "Dead Souls" - the general situation, the mirage intrigue, the typology of the characters, etc. - from the point of view of the genre as a whole.
The feeling of genre novelty in Dead Souls is conveyed in the well-known words of Leo Tolstoy: “I think that every great artist should create his own forms. If the content of works of art can be infinitely varied, then so can their form... Take Gogol's Dead Souls. What's this? Not a novel, not a short story. Something completely original." The statement of L. Tolstoy, which has become a textbook, goes back to the no less famous words of Gogol: should, then this will be my first decent creation ”(letter to M. Pogodin dated November 28, 1836).
Two seemingly mutually exclusive moments attract attention in these statements. Gogol does not want to repeat any of the well-known genres; he constructs an entirely new genre whole. But to designate it, Gogol decides to use the word "poem", although it was no less familiar and traditional than, say, "novel" or "story".
Usually the key to the Dead Souls genre is sought in the Educational Book of Literature for Russian Youth, on which Gogol worked in the mid-1940s. However, these searches are not justified, or rather justified only to a certain extent.
The book conceived by Gogol is an "educational" and theoretical book. It gave a systematization of available literary material, that is, what already exists, what has even already entered, in today's language, into scientific and reader circulation. The extensive list of "examples" compiled by Gogol for the theoretical part of the book is just a list of the most typical, illustrative, characteristic examples of genre classification. Despite the fact that such a classification (like the entire “educational book” as a whole) naturally bore the imprint of the writer’s personal tastes, predilections, and creative experience, Gogol could not intentionally introduce the Dead Souls genre into it, at least because such a genre has never existed before. Consequently, the "Educational Book ..." can only serve as a well-known "springboard" for approaching "Dead Souls". It does not give us a definition of the genre of Dead Souls, but Gogol's understanding of those genres, in processing and repulsing from which the writer created his grandiose creation.
Let us take the "lesser kind of epic" indicated by Gogol - the genre to which "Dead Souls" are usually referred.
“In the new ages,” we read in the “Study Book of Literature ...” after characterizing the “epopee”, “a kind of narrative writings has occurred, constituting, as it were, the middle ground between the novel and the epic, the hero of which is, although a private and invisible person, but , however, significant in many respects for the observer of the human soul.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 took, that earthly, almost statistically grasped picture of shortcomings, abuses, vices, and everything that he noticed in the given era and time worthy of attracting the eye of any observant contemporary who is looking for living lessons for the present in the past, the past.Such phenomena from time to time appeared among many peoples (VIII, 478-479).
Gogol's approach to the "lesser kinds of epic" is rather historical: he notes that "epopee", in the true sense of the word, is no longer possible after Homer (in this, by the way, Gogol completely agreed with Belinsky and with "philosophical aesthetics"); that in the "new ages" a new genre arose - a smaller kind of epic, occupying an intermediate place between the epic proper and the novel; that “such phenomena from time to time appeared (the use of the past tense here is typical. - Yu. M.) among many peoples” and that “Furious Roland” by Ariosto and “Don Quixote” by Cervantes can serve as an example.
Certain features of the described genre are not difficult, of course, to notice in "Dead Souls" (the character here - in comparison with the epic - is "a private and invisible person"; the display of "shortcomings" and "vices", etc.), but these are precisely the features , abstracted from one constructive whole and transferred to another whole. It is impossible to agree with the commentary on the academic edition of Gogol's Works: “Gogol formulates the concept of a “lesser kind of epic” on the basis of Dead Souls (VIII, .805). The description of this genre, for example, does not at all reveal the peculiarities of the plot of Dead Souls. The sign of a “lesser kind of epic” (the author leads the hero “through the chain of adventures” in order to present “a true picture of everything significant in the features and customs of the time he took”) - this sign, despite external analogies, is too insufficient for Dead Souls. Although Gogol "leads" his hero, Chichikov, from landowner to landowner, from "adventure" to "adventure" and even from one city to another, the general plot setting of his poem is mainly not moralistic and in this sense not open. If we talk about the first volume of "Dead Souls", then it even has a harsh, novelistic "convention", as Gogol defined it in his characterization of the novel.
Almost no attention is paid to this characteristic from the same "Study Book of Literature ...", since it is believed that it has nothing to do with "Dead Souls". Meanwhile, if we keep in mind our reservation (that all Gogol's definitions point only to some of the genre premises of Dead Souls, but not to their genre itself), then it can be argued that this characteristic has no less relation to Gogol's poem than the characteristic " a small kind of epic.
“The novel,” writes Gogol, “despite the fact that it is in prose, it can be a high poetic creation. The novel is not an epic. It's more like a drama. Like a drama, it is a composition too conventional. It also contains a strictly and cleverly considered plot. All persons who must act, or, better, between whom an affair must begin, must be taken in advance by the author; the author is concerned about the fate of each of them and cannot carry and move them quickly and in multitude, in the form of phenomena flying by. Every arrival of a person, at first, apparently, not significant, already announces his participation later. Everything that is, is only because it is connected too much with the fate of the hero himself. Here, as in a drama, only too close a connection between people is allowed ... It flies like a drama, united by the lively interest of the people themselves of the main incident, in which the characters are entangled and which, with a seething course, makes the characters themselves develop and reveal themselves more strongly and quickly. their characters, increasing passion. Therefore, every person requires the final race. The novel does not take the whole life, but a remarkable event in life, one that made life appear in a brilliant form, despite the agreed space.
The similarities between the described genre and Dead Souls are greater than one might expect. In the novel, all the faces are presented in advance, before the start of the "case". In "Dead Souls" - if not all, then most of the faces - are released onto the stage in the very first chapter: almost all the officials of the provincial city, three out of five landowners, not to mention Chichikov with his two companions. In the novel, the disclosure of the “case” follows after the presentation of the persons involved in it (or simultaneously with it) and suggests a skillfully considered plot. In "Dead Souls" immediately after the exposition, at the end of the first chapter, "one strange property of the guest and enterprise" is reported, which has to be the subject of further narration. In the novel, not the whole life of the character is taken, but only one particularly characteristic incident. In Dead Souls, the focus is not on the biographies of the characters, but on one main event, namely the “strange enterprise” just mentioned (this does not exclude the background, Vorgeschichte, for two characters in the first volume - Plyushkin and Chichikov). In the novel, the "remarkable incident" involves the interests and requires the participation of all the characters. In "Dead Souls" Chichikov's scam unexpectedly determined the lives of hundreds of people, becoming for some time the center of attention of the entire "city of NN", although, of course, the degree of participation of the characters in this "incident" is different.
One of the first reviewers of "Dead Souls" wrote that Selifan and Petrushka are not connected with the main character by the unity of interest, they act "without any relation to his case."
This is inaccurate. Chichikov's companions are indifferent to his "case". But the "case" is not indifferent to them. When the frightened officials decided to make an inquiry, the turn came to Chichikov's people, but "from Petrushka they heard only the smell of residential peace, and from Selifan, who was performing the service of the state ...". This, of course, is a link in the whole chain of comic effects of the poem: Chichikov’s “negotion” acquires such a scope that it draws completely unexpected participants into its sphere: “some Sysoy Pafnutevich and Makdonald Karlovich appeared, whom they had never heard of; in the living rooms stuck up some kind of long, long ... such a tall stature that had not even been seen ... "etc.
Among the parallels that can be drawn between Gogol's definition of the novel and Dead Souls, the following is the most interesting. Gogol says that in the novel "every arrival of a person at the beginning ... announces his participation later." In other words, the characters, revealing themselves in the "main incident", involuntarily prepare changes in the plot and in the fate of the protagonist. If not to everyone, then to many faces of the "Dead Souls" this rule is applicable.
Take a closer look at the course of the poem: after five "monographic", as if independent of each other chapters, each of which is "dedicated" to one landowner, the action returns to the city, almost to the state of an exposition chapter. New meetings of Chichikov with his acquaintances follow - and we suddenly see that the information received about their "character traits" at the same time concealed the impulses for the further course of action. Korobochka, having arrived in the city to find out "how much dead souls go for", involuntarily gives the first impetus to Chichikov's misadventures - and we recall her terrible suspicion and fear of selling too cheap. Nozdryov, exacerbating Chichikov's situation, calls him at the ball a buyer of "dead souls" - and we recall Nozdryov's extraordinary passion to annoy his neighbor, and Nozdryov's characterization as a "historical person" finally finds its confirmation. The characterization of Nozdryov is introduced (in Chapter IV) with the following motivation: "...Let's say something about Nozdryov himself, who, perhaps, will have a chance to play not the last role in our poem." This is, as it were, a paraphrase of a feature of the novel already familiar to us as a genre: "Every arrival of a person, apparently insignificant at first, already announces his participation later."
Even the detail that officials in Chapter IX, in response to their questions, heard from Petrushka “only a smell” is a consequence of the well-known feature of the hero, as if without any purpose mentioned at the beginning of Chapter II (Petrushka carried “with him some kind of special air ").
"Dead Souls" also uses many other means to emphasize the "close connection between persons." This is the reflection of one event in different versions of the characters. Chichikov's visit to Korobochka (in Chapter III) is then reflected in the versions of the lady simply pleasant ("... armed from head to toe like Rinald Rinaldin and demanding ...") and Korobochka herself ("... bought de for fifteen rubles ... and promised to buy a lot of things ... ", etc.). In general, almost all of Chichikov's visits from the first half of the volume seem to be "played out" again in the second half - with the help of the versions reported by Korobochka, Manilov, Sobakevich, Nozdrev. In the penultimate chapter, the circle of Chichikov’s visits to eminent persons of the city of NN is also repeated: to the governor, to the chairman of the chamber, to the police chief, vice-governor, etc., but with a different, less happy result than in Chapter I (“.. .the porter struck him with completely unexpected words: “It is not ordered to receive!”). The reflection of the same event in reflections, reasoning, in the minds of various characters creates a stereoscopic effect. The repetition of these events at the end of the volume frames the central action as something independent, having a beginning and an end.
The roundness, or, as Gogol said, the “conventionality” of the action distinguishes the novel from the epic (including, probably, its “lesser kind”), where the action and the relationships of the characters are freer. But on the other hand, Gogol's resolute convergence of the novel with the drama is very indicative. It was in Gogol's drama, but only to an even greater extent (remember The Inspector General), that sometimes unexpected, but always internally conditioned changes in the plot followed from certain properties of the characters: from the naive curiosity of the postmaster - the fact that he perused Khlestakov's letter; from the prudence and cunning of Osip - the fact that Khlestakov leaves the city on time, etc. It was in the drama that Gogol used the effect of reflecting one fact in several subjective planes (cf. Bobchinsky's remark, retelling Dobchinsky's "opinion": "... they’ve brought fresh salmon to the tavern, he says, so we’ll have a bite”; and then Khlestakov’s remark about this: “... in the dining room this morning, two short people ate salmon ...”). Finally, it is in the drama, but only to an even greater extent, that all the characters are firmly connected with the course of the “case” and through it with each other; Let us recall the words from "Theatrical Journey...": "The tie should embrace all faces... Not a single wheel should remain as rusty and not included in the case."
Even the very swiftness of the action - a quality that seems to be contraindicated in the novel as a type of epic, but which Gogol persistently singles out in both genres (in the novel and in the drama) - even this swiftness is not so alien to Dead Souls. “In a word, rumors went on, rumors, and the whole city started talking about dead souls and the governor's daughter, about Chichikov and dead souls ... And everything rose up. Like a whirlwind, hitherto, it seemed, the dormant city shot up! By this time, that is, by the end of the poem, a turning point suddenly occurs in its epic majestic course; the action (as Gogol writes about the novel) with its "boiling course makes the most protagonists develop and reveal their characters more strongly and quickly, increasing enthusiasm."
In a word, if we digress for a moment from the novelty of the Dead Souls genre, then one could see in them a “novel of characters”, as a kind of epic version of the “comedy of characters”, embodied most clearly in The Inspector General. And if you remember what role the alogisms and dissonances noted above play in the poem, starting from style and ending with the plot and composition, then you can call it a "novel of characters with a grotesque reflection", by analogy with the same "Inspector General". But, we repeat, this can only be done by “forgetting” that the genre possibilities previously discovered (including by Gogol himself) are transformed in Dead Souls into a new whole.
Let's continue the comparison of "Dead Souls" with "Inspector". Let's take such characters as, on the one hand, Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, on the other - the lady is simply pleasant and the lady is pleasant in all respects.
And here and there - two characters, a couple. A small cell in which its own life pulsates. The ratio of the components that make up this cell is unequal; we have already spoken about this in relation to Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky. In "Dead Souls" it's the same: the lady is simply pleasant "she only knew how to worry", to supply the necessary information. The privilege of higher consideration remained with a lady who was agreeable in every way.
But pairing itself is a necessary prerequisite for "creativity". The version is born from the competition and rivalry of two persons. So the version was born that Khlestakov was an auditor and that Chichikov wanted to take away the governor's daughter.
It can be said that both couples in The Inspector General and Dead Souls are at the origins of myth-making. Since these versions came out of the psychological properties of the characters and their relationships, they shape the whole work as a whole to a large extent precisely as a drama or a novel of characters.
But there is an important difference to be noted here. In The Inspector General, Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky stand not only at the origins of myth-making, but also at the beginning of action. Other characters accept their version of Khlestakov before they get to know him, before he enters the stage. The version precedes Khlestakov, decisively shaping (together with other factors) an idea of him. None of the participants in the action has yet managed to draw up their own impressions of the alleged auditor. The version does not meet, cannot meet any active psychological opposition, it has not yet knows material that contradicts itself.
In Dead Souls, the version appears at the height of the action (in Chapter IX), after the characters saw Chichikov with their own eyes, made contact with him, made up their own idea of him (how much it coincided with the original is another question). The version intruded into the already outlined and directed action in a certain way, and although it influenced it, it did not determine it entirely, monopoly.
In The Inspector General, the version without a trace enters the track of common expectations and concerns, completely merges with it, and forms a single common opinion about Khlestakov the auditor.
In "Dead Souls" the version becomes only a private version, namely the one that was picked up by the ladies ("The male party ... paid attention to the dead souls. The female one was engaged exclusively in kidnapping the governor's daughter"). Along with it, dozens of other assumptions and interpretations are included in the game. In "Dead Souls" there is no single all-subduing version. Even in the excitement itself (more or less the same in intensity and affectation) confusion and turmoil reign, unthinkable for the "Inspector General".
All of the above leads to differences in the overall situation. In The Inspector General, the general situation is a single situation in the sense that it is closed by the idea of revision and the unified experience of all the characters associated with it. For Gogol, this was the general principle of a dramatic work: both "Marriage" and "Players" were built on the unity of the situation. In "Dead Souls" the general situation is moving, fluid. Initially, Chichikov is united with other characters in the situation of buying - selling "dead souls". Then, as the “significance” of his operations is discovered, this situation develops into another. Chichikov the millionaire partly replaces the place that Khlestakov occupies in The Government Inspector; and the attitude towards him is largely the same - that is, sincerely reverent, ingratiating; when disinterestedness (“a millionaire has the benefit that he can see completely disinterested, pure meanness ...”) is closely mixed with cunning, love with calculation (there is also the idea of marriage, reminiscent of the matrimonial plans of the Gorodnichy family).
But the situation in “Dead Souls” does not end there: Further circulation of rumors and rumors, the appointment of a new governor-general gradually force such aspects of it to come out that resemble the situation of Gogol’s comedy (they began to think, “Chichikov is not a sent official from the office of the general- governor to carry out a secret investigation") and the general excitement, fear, expectation of something significant and important for the existence of everyone resulting from this situation. Here the situation of "Dead Souls" is closest to the situation of "The Government Inspector", but let's not forget that this is only one stage of the general movement. If The Inspector General (as a dramatic work) takes, relatively speaking, one moment from the general life of the characters, then Dead Souls strives to stretch its action to a series of successive moments. The situation of the first volume of the poem is moving, epic. It can be assumed that in the following volumes the situation should have been similar.
Moreover. Let's take that stage of the "Dead Souls" situation that most resembles "The Inspector General": the expectation of a new governor-general. There is fear, anxiety of hope - everything is like in Gogol's comedy. But here one of the characters (Nozdryov) says: “And I have such an opinion about the governor-general that if he raises his nose and puts on airs, then he will definitely not do anything with the nobility. The nobility demands cordiality ... ”Somewhat previously hidden hostility, almost opposition arose against Chichikov, namely from the moment when he neglected the attention of the provincial ladies. “... It was not good; for the opinion of the ladies you need to-; to give birth: he repented of this, but after that, therefore, it was too late.
Is something like this conceivable in The Inspector General? Could anyone take any action against Khlestakov? Feel in the soul at least a shadow, if not indignation, then displeasure? Of course not. The events of The Inspector General hit his characters like a flurry, preventing them from coming to their senses or coming to their senses. In relation to the person who arrived, they remained “inferior” from the very beginning to the end. "The situation of the auditor" crushed everyone and everything, she was a comedy character, as if from the outside - from above.
In Dead Souls, both the temporal (not one, but a series of "moments") and the spatial development of the situation (Chichikov's entry into various relationships with the characters) weakened the idea of fear and surprise. Correspondingly, the role of external shocks was weakened - those that shook the sovereign life of the city in The Government Inspector. Before us is a life that becomes epic, unfinished, or, at least, has not yet found (has not discovered?) A single formula for its completeness.
Note also the difference in the type of intrigue. And in "Dead Souls" the mirage of intrigue is preserved in the sense that the purposeful actions of the character (Chichikov) do not lead to success, and in the sense that they break up against the unforeseen actions of other people. By the way, Chichikov's failure is already anticipated by his father's career: having provided his son with useful advice - "you will do everything and break everything in the world with a penny", he himself died a poor man. “Father, apparently, was versed only in the advice to save a penny, while he himself saved up a little.” We also note that in the text of the poem, mainly in Chichikov’s speech, variations of the “old rule” appear more than once: “Already wants to reach, grab with his hand, when suddenly ... the distance of the desired object to a great distance.” Let's compare the hero's remark in Chapter XI: "... Hooked - dragged, broke - do not ask." Or an almost literal paraphrase of the “old rule” in the second volume: “What kind of misfortune is this, tell me,” Chichikov complains, “every time you just start to achieve fruits and, so to speak, already touch with your hand ... suddenly a storm, a pitfall , crushing the whole ship to pieces.
But in The Government Inspector, Gorodnichiy's cunning plan is shattered by the incomprehensible to them, unintentional nature of Khlestakov's actions. In Dead Souls, Chichikov's no less thoughtful plan runs into a whole string of factors. Firstly, to the unforeseen action of the character (Korobochka’s arrival in the city), which, although it arose from the character (from the “clubhead”, fear of selling cheap), but which was difficult to foresee (who could have guessed that Korobochka would go to make inquiries about how much dead Souls?). Secondly, to the inconsistency of Chichikov himself (he knew that it was impossible to apply to Nozdryov with such a request, but still he could not resist). Thirdly, to his own oversight (insulting the provincial ladies) and the resulting indignation of the people around him. A single factor of "opposition" is divided into a number of causes and consequences, corresponding to a more complex, epic entry of Chichikov into the system of characters in the poem.
Further. The defeat of the Gorodnichiy in The Inspector General and, say, Ikharev in The Players was complete. Chichikov's defeat in the first volume of the poem, in the events that took place in the city of NN, is not complete: he is overthrown in public opinion, but not exposed. He safely goes home, taking away all his bills of sale. With all the discordance of assumptions, rumors, and gossip regarding the "dead souls," no one in the city expressed an opinion, even if it came close to the truth. Who Chichikov was and what his business was, no one guessed. On the one hand, this further strengthens the motives of alogism and confusion. But on the other hand, it leaves the possibility of further similar actions of the character in other cities and towns of the Russian Empire. What matters to Gogol is not the one-time occurrence, but the duration of these actions.
Finally, let us dwell on the nature of the uncertainty factor in the plot. In the first volume of Dead Souls, the outcome of the intrigue is unclear until the end of the action (will Chichikov leave safely?). This kind of ambiguity was characteristic of The Government Inspector, Marriage, and The Gamblers. Partly unclear is the level of "play" that Chichikov represents (this also reminds us of the undisclosed level of "play" of Uteshetelny in "Gamblers"). Although we understand from the very beginning that we are witnessing a scam, but what its specific purpose and mechanism is, it becomes completely clear only in the last chapter. From the same chapter, another “secret” not announced at the beginning, but no less important, becomes clear: what biographical, personal reasons led Chichikov to this scam. The history of the case turns into a history of character - a transformation that in Gogol's work puts "Dead Souls" in a special place as an epic work.
As an epic work, "Dead Souls" is significantly associated with the genre of the picaresque novel. It is not enough to state (as is usually done) the presence in Dead Souls of the tradition of the picaresque novel. The problem needs to be taken to another level. There is some semblance of initial situations - the one in which Dead Souls was created, and the one that brought the picaresque genre to life. In both situations, the figure of the rogue played a leading constructive role in the emergence of the novel, and therefore the novel as a genre took shape in essential terms as a rogue novel. Let's consider this problem in more detail.
M. Bakhtin showed that the emergence of the European novel occurred when interest shifted from common life to private and everyday life and from the “public person” to private and domestic. The public person "lives and acts in the world"; everything that happens to him is open and available to the observer. “Here, therefore, the problem of a special setting of a contemplative and listening to this life (“third”), of special forms of publishing it, does not arise at all.” But everything changed with the shift of the center of gravity to privacy. This life is "by nature closed." “In fact, you can only peep and eavesdrop on it. The literature of private life is, in essence, the literature of peeping and eavesdropping - "how others live." But this requires a special “technique” for entering private life, a special leverage, special powers, similar to those magical spells with which the Lame Bes lifted the roofs of the Madrid buildings in front of the astonished Don Cleofas, “like a pie crust.”
A type of rogue, adventurer, upstart, parvenu, etc. turned out to be among the most suitable for such a role, for a special setting of the character. “This is the setting of the mulberry and the adventurer, who are not internally involved in everyday life, do not have a fixed place in it, and who at the same time go through this life and are forced to study its mechanics, all its secret springs. But this is especially the setting of a servant who succeeds various masters. The servant is the eternal "third" in the private life of masters. The servant is the witness of private life par excellence. He is embarrassed just as little as the donkey (the donkey Lucius from Apuleius' Golden Ass), and at the same time he is called upon to be a participant in all the intimate aspects of private life. There are three points to note in this extremely insightful characterization:
1. The rogue is by nature capable of changing various positions, of passing through various states that give him the role of a through hero.
2. The rogue in his psychology, as well as his worldly and, one might say, professional attitude, is closest to the intimate, hidden, shady sides of private life, he is forced to be not only their witness and observer, but also an inquisitive researcher.
3. The rogue enters the private and hidden life of others in the position of a "third" and (especially if he is in the role of a servant) - a lower being who does not need to be embarrassed, and, consequently, the veils of domestic life are exposed before him without much work on his part and efforts. All these moments were subsequently refracted, albeit in different ways, in the situation of the emergence of the Russian novel.
This situation is perfectly reflected in the articles of Nadezhdin, who, perhaps more than all the critics of that time, was concerned about the problem of the original Russian novel. Nadezhdin also weighed the possibility of a Russian picaresque novel, leaning more towards a negative answer. The motives behind which the critic came to this decision are very interesting. But we will first give Nadezhdin's description of the basic scheme of the picaresque novel ("Chronicles of Russian Literature." - "Telescope", 1832). “They invent a pastor, a vagabond, a rogue who is forced to wander around the wide world, through all levels of social life, from the peasant hut to the royal chambers, from the barber’s barber’s to the minister’s office, from the contemptible dens of fraud and debauchery to the humble desert of the hermit. The remarks and stories collected by such a wanderer while wandering through various strata of society are linked into one more or less extensive whole, which, with its variety, diversity of images and liveliness of pictures, can tickle the imagination, entertain curiosity and even prick the moral sense with edifying impressions. So, Nadezhdin notes the panorama of the picaresque novel, the organization of various spheres and image planes around a through character. But he considers all this insufficient for the novel precisely in connection with the characterological weakness of such a character. “The face of the protagonist in such works is not the essential center of their aesthetic existence, but an arbitrarily invented axis around which the magic ray of Chinese shadows rotates.” A reproach that could only be heard from a critic of modern times, the beginning of the 19th century: for the author of the first picaresque novels, the psychological foundation and rounding of the picaro figure had not yet actually emerged as a creative problem.
The construction of the novel as a genre, says Nadezhdin, following the picaresque novel, was continued by the so-called "hermits" in the manner of the French writer Rui. “Here, the comic mask of Gilblaz, the rogue, has been replaced by the sedate face of a cold observer, peering around the corner at the colorful pictures of public life. But besides the fact that this way of seeing was necessarily limited to the external, so to speak, street movements of society, without penetrating into the cherished secrets of the hearth, the essays compiled by the cold observation of hermits naturally had much more dryness and much less life than phantasmagoric adventures. remote Zhilblazov". In a word, if the "hermits" and won in some respects, they lost in such an integral principle of the novel genre as the disclosure of private life ("... without penetrating into the cherished secrets of the hearth"), as well as in the dynamics of the organization of the whole. Apparently, these circumstances helped the picaresque novel to retain its appeal until modern times.
To understand the situation in which the Russian novel was born, it is important to take into account that Nadezhdin, firstly, strongly delimits the novel from the story, and secondly, the modern novel from the historical one. If we do not take into account both, it is not clear why Nadezhdin, and then Belinsky, are so strict in assessing the Russian novel in quantitative terms. Indeed, by the beginning of the 1830s, a lot of fiction had already accumulated (N. Polevoy, M. Pogodin, A. Marlinsky, O. Somov, etc., not to mention the stories of Pushkin and Gogol). But criticism stubbornly denied them the rank of a novel (cf. the title of Belinsky's programmatic article, in which the best prose writers of the 1920s and early 1930s were discussed - "On the Russian story and the stories of Mr. Gogol"). The fact is that the action of the story lies in the sphere of one family, several families, one circle (secular, merchant, military, peasant, etc.). The novel, on the other hand, requires the connection of many spheres (cf. above, Nadezhda's characterization of the picaresque novel: "... through all the stages of social life", etc.), requires panorama. Therefore, the novel is a whole, the story is a part of the whole. The story, says Nadezhdin, is "a short episode from the boundless novel of human destinies." This definition was picked up by Belinsky: “Yes, the story is a novel that has broken into pieces, into thousands of parts: a chapter torn from the novel.” This panorama is contained in the historical novel, but it is conditioned by a special, extraordinary cause. Extraordinary events, for example, the liberation wars of 1612 and 1812 (the subject, respectively, of two historical novels by M. Zagoskin “Yuri Miloslavsky ...” and “Roslavlev ...”) - these events involuntarily bring into contact various estates, classes, national and interstate forces that make it possible to articulate various spheres of reality into one whole. But where is such a connecting axis to be found in the ordinary course of life?
This question again switched attention to the genre of the picaresque novel - this time Russian. The four-volume “moral-satirical novel” by F. Bulgarin “Ivan Vyzhigin”, published in 1829, provided living material for reflection. Nadezhdin, as we have already said, rejected the possibility of creating a novel genre based on picaresque. He was embarrassed not only by the spinelessness of the central character, but, more importantly, by the very way he existed. At one time, the "class of vagabonds and strangers" had an "appearance of naturalness" and belonged to the "national idiocy" of Spanish life. But with the orderliness of civil life, its conciseness within the "framework of social order", the figure of the modern picaro turns into a fiction. The way he enters into different strata of society, and consequently, from the artistic side, the way of connecting different spheres into one whole is problematic. Therefore, the action of "Ivan Vyzhigin" exposes "a wonderful chain of strange cases, responding with a very tangible perfect unheard of", that is, under the guise of a natural connection of events, unnaturalness and alignment are hidden. In addition, the action is complicated by a moment of mystery (the secret of Ivan Vyzhigin's birth) and intrigue (intrigue around the inheritance left to him), and at the same time is constantly accompanied by obsessive moralization, "repetition of commonplaces and recitation of long predicates", the participation of reasoning heroes, like Pyotr Petrovich Virtutin, "appointed to be the ideal of moral perfection in this chaos of debauchery and outrage."
And in this situation, when few people pinned serious hopes on the scheme of a picaresque novel, Pushkin proposed, and Gogol immediately managed to appreciate the idea of a “work” built on a scam with dead souls. “Pushkin found that the plot of Md is good for me because it gives me complete freedom to travel all over Russia with the hero and bring out a lot of the most diverse characters.” We can now more fully appreciate the significance of this "hint". "Pushkin's idea, inspired by Gogol, was not in the anecdote itself, but in the fact that it can be the basis of a large work with various characters and episodes." It should be clarified that this idea made it possible to unite the most diverse spheres of Russian life (“all of Russia”), and to unite them naturally and naturally (“complete freedom to travel ...”). In other words, it became possible to bring into contact what, due to the socio-economic underdevelopment of Russia, was separated from each other, not connected by the threads of publicity, becoming a single social action (as in the developed countries of Europe), which acted as if isolated each other. from other spheres and "angles" (one of the characteristic expressions of "Dead Souls"): the life of the capital; provincial; landlord; to some extent peasant; finally, the existence of each individual landowner, who spends most of his time without a break in his “corner” and, in view of this, also represented a delimited, independent area of \u200b\u200blife (which was reflected in the monographism of the first chapters of Dead Souls). Moreover, it became possible to combine all this not in an emergency (“military”), but in an everyday (“peaceful”) situation (the background of the just past war of 1812 is important, from this point of view, as a novel background: the work offers a different unification of national life , not the one that was demonstrated at the time of the nationwide struggle against Napoleon). And to connect without deliberate coincidences, artificiality, juggling of events, and, moreover, with a complete rejection of moments of mystery (mystery of birth) or intrigue (intrigue of persecution); some details of the latter are moved from the objective to the subjective plane - the plane of Chichikov's statements, thanks to which the persecution intrigue receives a different, parodic expression. Thus, the "great work" that Gogol undertook at Pushkin's prompting was shaped, on the one hand, precisely as a novel. We say “on the one hand”, since Gogol gradually associated with Dead Souls additional genre-ideological aspirations that exceeded the requirements of the novel. But this was precisely the “exceeding”, which did not detract from the significance of what was originally found. In its primary genre formation, Dead Souls responded to the expectations of Russian criticism of the original Russian novel.
As a central character, Chichikov had all the advantages of a cross-cutting hero of a picaresque novel: he was also suitable for changing different positions, for passing through various spheres of life; in his psychological and, one might say, professional attitude, he was also close to the hidden, reverse side of human life. And the last one for Chichikov is not only an object of observation, but also an inquisitive study: the mechanics of buying and selling revision souls, their placement in the board of trustees, the technique of scam - all these are vital, vital concerns for him.
According to the way of behavior and life fate, the Gogol character is also in many respects similar to the type of picaro. In both cases, the type of character is based on polemical contrast: picaro - in contrast to the hero of a chivalric romance; Gogol's character - in contrast to the hero of romantic and secular stories, as well as to the virtuous character of Russian everyday and educational prose (including virtuous reasoning heroes like Virtutin in the picaresque novels themselves).
J. Striedter summarizes the difference between a picaresque novel and a chivalric one in the following paragraphs:
1. The central figure is not a hero, but an anti-hero.
2. "A number of knightly adventures have been replaced by a number of tricks."
3. “If a typical chivalric novel begins in medias res (in the middle of a case (Latin)) in order to then make up for the backstories of individual characters in a complex technique of insertions, then a picaresque novel begins with the birth of a hero and then linearly strings one episode onto another.”
4. “These episodes no longer aim to provide evidence of chivalrous virtues and heroic readiness for self-sacrifice, but document the cunning of a rogue in a deceitful and deceived world. And this world is no longer a fairy-tale world, full of good and evil fairy-tale creatures, but the modern surrounding world, in front of which the rogue der. the satirical mirror lives. Most of these conclusions, with some adjustment, apply to Dead Souls. Only point three is inapplicable: “Dead Souls” (their first volume) just began in medias res (with Chichikov’s scam in the city of NN) in order to then, in a complex technique of digressions, catch up with the biographies of the main characters (primarily Chichikov). This is due to the fact that Gogol departed from the technique of the old novel (not only picaresque, but also moralistic, travel novel, etc.), rounding off the action and introducing into it the principles of the dramatic organization of the whole.
Let us emphasize once again in Gogol's character the moments of repulsion, of turning. As already mentioned, the hero of a picaresque novel (Lazaro, Don Pablos, and others) often acted as an anti-hero. A similar setting is at the beginning of Chichikov's biography: "It's time to finally give rest to a poor virtuous person ... it's time to finally hide the scoundrel." The opposition of a picaresque novel to a chivalrous one began already with the upbringing of an anti-hero, who, instead of a high moral code, mastered the art of living amid "adversities and misadventures", Lazaro's dismissal during his service as a guide "from his childish innocence"; a rule of life don Pablos learned from his experience: "to be a rogue with rogues, and even more, if I can, than everyone else." With these lessons we can compare Chichikov's life experience, acquired back in his father's house. The character goes through the path of anti-education, and the result of the latter is anti-honour. “And therefore, Lazaro, with all conviction, believes his happiness in material prosperity - this undoubted reality, and not honor - an empty appearance.” But let us remember Chichikov's father's instructions: "Most of all, take care and save a penny: this thing is the most reliable thing in the world." The narration in a picaresque novel (on behalf of a rogue) was often based on a naive and, as it were, unnoticed travesty of moral norms: on "an apology for immorality delivered in a tone of offended innocence." Chichikov’s inner speech is also built: “Why me? Why did I get in trouble? Who is yawning now in office? - everyone gets ... And what am I now?
In the scheme itself, so to speak, the lines of the life fate of Chichikov and the traditional picaro also have a lot in common. This line is intermittent, consisting of ups and downs, ups and downs. Most often (but not necessarily always) coming from the bottom, picaro subordinates all his mental strength and ability to the desire to rise up, to stay on the wave of life. The tribute of involuntary sympathy that readers pay to the hero is rooted in his irresistible vitality, cunning, constant readiness to start all over again, the ability to adapt to any circumstances. The line of Chichikov's life's fate moves up and down in the same rhythm, rise and fall (service in the state chamber, elevation - and resignation; service at customs, a scam with Brabant lace - and exposure; scam with dead souls - and a hasty departure from the city; a similar alternation of successes and defeats awaited Chichikov in the subsequent action of the poem). But nothing could break the "irresistible strength of his character", the determination to start the game anew every time, with new strength and understanding of the new situation. P. Pletnev, one of the first critics of the poem, noticed a peculiarity of its perception: sometimes with sympathy you begin to enter into Chichikov's worries. “Often, the reader ceases to be an outsider, being insensibly carried away into the sphere surrounding him.” The tribute of sympathy that you involuntarily pay to Chichikov reveals in him a connection with the ancient tradition of picaro. But, of course, the psychological reaction awakened by Gogol's character does not boil down to simple sympathy or incompassion and involves a more complex set of feelings.
On the whole, the type of Gogol's character cannot be reduced to the type of picaro. The very integrity of picaro as a character is problematic; in any case, if it is possible to recognize some milestones on his life path (such as the “awakening” of a real understanding of life at the beginning and repentance, moral “resurrection” at the end), then it would be a stretch to present this whole path as logically whole and consistently motivated . Hence the compositional openness of the picaresque novel, the almost unlimited possibility of multiplying and accumulating episodes. "Dead Souls", on the contrary, is conceived on the basis of a consistent and self-contained disclosure of the Central character, which in turn leads to a "rounding" of the material and to a polemical repulsion from the compositional looseness of the old novel (not only a picaresque novel, but also a travel novel, moralistic novel, etc.). d.). In the language of Nadezhdin, Chichikov is not an “arbitrarily invented axis”, but an “essential center” of everything that happens in the work.
Related to this is a change in the very nature of the occupation, the activity of the character. Let's pay attention: the entry of the Gogol hero into various spheres of life is not traditionally determined by his position as a servant (as, in part, say, in Bulgarin's "Ivan Vyzhigin"). Instead of the “servant of several masters” situation, we see (in Chichikov’s prehistory, in the eleventh chapter) another one: an official of several institutions. The change is not so unimportant: it characterizes the modernity of the situation.
This is in Chichikov's backstory. In the main action of the first volume (as well as the subsequent one), Chichikov's entry into various spheres of life is carried out on the basis of a scam with dead souls. And it also took on a different meaning. The enterprise with the acquisition of revision souls made it possible to approach the characters from the public, social side, moreover, characteristic of feudal Russia. But at the same time, it was also a domestic, economic side: the sphere of doing business, the master's (or non-master's) attitude towards them, the sphere of the household budget, family prosperity, etc. Consequently, Chichikov's enterprise made it possible to approach the characters from the side of everyday life, family-personal, private, even ambitious and prestigious (the number of souls is adequate to the measure of public respect and self-respect). With his wandering hero, Gogol opened up the domestic sphere no worse than the author of picaresque novels with his pikaro-servant. True, Chichikov enters the life of other characters not so much as a “third”, but as a “second”, that is, as a direct partner in the transaction. From the second half of the volume - in relation to the city, to officials - Chichikov's position changes: he is no longer a partner, but a person of a higher order (although imaginary, not real), a "millionaire", forcing you to look at yourself from the bottom up. But in both cases - as a partner and as a "millionaire" - he actualizes the traditional role of an intermediary: this is not so much the role of an observer, but a catalyst for events, accelerating the self-disclosure of various spheres of life.
But the situation in "Dead Souls" is not only modern, but, as we have already said, complicated and wrong. Chichikov is buying up dead revision souls, and this moment has manifold consequences. We have just mentioned one of them: the invalid, "illusory" nature of the rise of Chichikov - the "millionaire" (similar to the invalid, "illusory" position of Khlestakov as an auditor). The incorrectness of the situation is also refracted in the nature of the disclosure of various spheres of life. It can be seen that in the sense of intimate secrets, the hidden side of life, the poem (at least its first volume) tells much less than the traditional picaresque novel. This depends, of course, not only on the psychological texture of such characters as Manilov, Korobochka, etc., but also on the attitude of the end-to-end hero Chichikov (and, accordingly, the attitude of the entire work). Chichikov is not interested in the hidden side of life, but something more: its opposite - "death". Catcher of dead souls, tracker of death, Chichikov sharpens attention to the forbidden to a grotesque climax. Already the very first inquiries of Chichikov in the city of NN record an extraordinary state of mind that exceeds the degree of traditional interest in the hidden side of life: the visitor “asked carefully about the state of the region: were there any diseases in their province, epidemic fevers, some deadly fevers, smallpox and the like. similar, and everything is so detailed and with such precision that showed more than one simple curiosity. In the future, the "strange" direction of Chichikov's interest is emphasized and varied in every possible way.
On the complicated situation of the poem, the semantics of the transition of the direct antithesis "living-dead" into figurative and symbolic, the problem of necrosis and resurrection of the human soul grew - in a word, the entire complex philosophical meaning of the work. The multi-tiered meaning, in turn, opened up the possibility of moving from one layer to another, deeper one - from the social and everyday conflict of a certain time and place to layers that are less deterministic, more philosophical, which, as you know, is the source of the enduring artistic impact of the work. For the modern generation of readers, for example, the general philosophical levels of a work are much more weighty and noticeable than the levels socially determined and localized by the specific situation of the first decades of the 19th century.
Read the passage below and complete tasks 1-9.
But Chichikov simply said that such an undertaking, or negotiation, would in no way be inconsistent with civil decrees and further types of Russia, and a minute later he added that the treasury would even receive benefits, for it would receive legal duties.
- So you think?
- I think it will be good.
“But if it’s good, that’s another matter: I don’t mind it,” said
Manilov and completely calmed down.
Now we just have to agree on a price.
- How about the price? Manilov said again and stopped. “Do you really think that I would take money for souls that, in some way, ended their existence?” If you have received such, so to speak, a fantastic desire, then for my part I pass them on to you without interest and take over the bill of sale.
A great reproach would be given to the historian of the proposed events if he neglected to say that pleasure overcame the guest after such words uttered by Manilov. No matter how sedate and reasonable he was, he almost even made a leap after the model of a goat, which, as you know, is done only in the strongest outbursts of joy. He twisted so violently in his chair that the woolen material that covered the pillow snapped; Manilov himself looked at him in some bewilderment. Prompted by gratitude, he immediately uttered so many thanks that he became confused, blushed all over, made a negative gesture with his head, and finally expressed himself that this being was nothing, that he, exactly, would like to prove in some way the heart's attraction, the magnetism of the soul, and the dead souls are, in a way, complete rubbish.
"Don't be very rubbish," said Chichikov, shaking his hand. A very deep sigh was let out here. He seemed to be in the mood for outpourings of the heart; not without feeling and expression, he finally uttered the following words: - If you only knew what service you rendered to this, apparently, rubbish, to a man without tribe and family! And indeed, what did I not tolerate? like some kind of barge among the ferocious waves ... What kind of persecution, what persecution did not experience, what grief did not taste, but for what? for keeping the truth, for being pure in his conscience, for giving a hand to both the helpless widow and the miserable orphan!
Manilov was completely moved. Both friends shook hands for a long time and looked silently into each other's eyes for a long time, in which tears were visible. Manilov did not want to let go of our hero's hand and continued to press it so fervently that he no longer knew how to rescue it. Finally, pulling it out slowly, he said that it would not be a bad thing to make the bill of sale as soon as possible and it would be good if he himself visited the city. Then he took his hat and began to take his leave.
(N. V. Gogol, Dead Souls)
Genre originality of "Dead Souls"
Starting to work on Dead Souls, N.V. Gogol did not yet know exactly what genre he would attribute his future work to. So, in 1835, in a letter to A.S. He wrote to Pushkin: "The plot stretched out into a long novel." However, already in 1836, while in Europe, Gogol decides to call "Dead Souls" a poem. While in Paris, on November 12 he writes to Zhukovsky: “ Every morning, in addition to breakfast, I wrote three pages into my poem". Gogol is aware of the unusual genre nature of "Dead Souls" and confesses on November 28, 1836 to M. Pogodin: " The thing that I sit and work on now does not look like a story or a novel, long, long, in several volumes, its name is "Dead Souls" If God helps me to complete my poem as it should, then this will be my first decent creation».
On the other hand, when the first edition of Dead Souls had already been created, he wrote to Maksimovich in January 1840: “ True, I have a novel from which I do not want to announce anything until the time of its publication.". In the text of "Dead Souls" Gogol calls his work either a poem or a story. All this points to the writer's hesitation in defining the genre, but it is obvious that the writer sought to construct a completely new "genre whole" (Yu. Mann). To designate it, Gogol decided to use the word "poem", although it was less familiar than "novel" or "story".
When the first volume of Dead Souls appeared in print in 1842, many of Gogol's contemporaries began to argue about why the writer called his new work a poem. Some believed that such a genre definition was accidental, erroneous, because traditionally poetry was called a poem, and "Dead Souls" were written in prose. Others believed that Gogol, being a satirist writer, called "Dead Souls" a poem in order to amuse, amuse his readers. Still others (among them were Aksakov and Belinsky) argued that Gogol puts a special meaning into this genre definition. So, in the seventh issue of the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski for 1842, Belinsky wrote in a review of a new Gogol work: Not jokingly, Gogol called his novel a "poem" and he does not mean a comic poem by it ...". K.S. Aksakov expressed a similar opinion, arguing that Gogol called "Dead Souls" a poem, wanting to emphasize the special significance and unusualness of his work.
It will help to understand the genre originality of "Dead Souls" "Educational Book of Literature for Russian Youth", on which Gogol worked in the mid-forties. The writer systematized the theoretical literary material and gave a list of the most typical, characteristic examples of genre classification. This book bore the stamp of the author's personal tastes and passions, but Gogol could not introduce the Dead Souls genre into it as a special and only one, since such a genre did not yet exist in literature. The Educational Book does not give us a definition of the genre of Dead Souls, but Gogol's understanding of those genres, in processing and repulsing from which he creates his artistic text. The closest "Dead Souls" to the genre "a smaller kind of epic". This genre is as if the middle between the novel and the epic". Yielding to the great (Homerian type) epic in the breadth and generality of the depiction of reality, the small epic, however, surpasses the novel in this respect, including "the full epic volume of remarkable private phenomena." The “lesser kind of epic” is also peculiar in the character of its hero. If in the big epic in the center of the narrative “a significant person”, outstanding, then in the center of the small epic - “ a private and invisible face, but, nevertheless, significant in many respects for the observer of the human soul. The author leads his life through a chain of adventures and changes in order to present a true picture of the shortcomings, abuses, vices and everything that he noticed intaken era and time worthy to attract the eye of every observant contemporary who is looking for living lessons for the present in the past, the past».
But the description of the genre of "a smaller kind of epic" does not fully reveal the features of the plot of "Dead Souls". In his work, Gogol, indeed, "leads" his hero, Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, through a chain of adventures, giving a picture of the shortcomings and vices of the Russian world of the 19th century, but the general plot setting of Gogol's text is not only moralistic.
The writer, of course, was right, not finally opposing his work to the genre novel. "Dead Souls" was created as a large epic canvas, in which a single artistic concept, the development of a through storyline united the image of a wide range of phenomena of reality. In the novel, as Gogol wrote in the Educational Book of Literature, all faces are presented in advance, " the author is concerned about the fate of each of them and cannot carry and move them quickly and in multitude, in the form of phenomena flying by. Every arrival of a person already announces his participation later". In "Dead Souls" most of the people are released "on stage" in the very first chapter: Chichikov with his servants Selifan and Petrushka, officials of the provincial city, three out of five landowners (Manilov, Nozdryov, Sobakevich). Almost all of Chichikov's visits from the first half of the volume are, as it were, "played out" again in the second half - with the help of the versions reported by Korobochka, Manilov, Sobakevich, and Nozdryov. Information about the character traits of these landowners simultaneously hides the impulses for the further course of development. So, Korobochka, having arrived in the city of NN to find out “how much dead souls go”, involuntarily gives the first impetus to Chichikov’s misadventures. Then the reader involuntarily recalls the suspiciousness of Nastasya Petrovna, her fear of selling too cheap. Nozdryov, aggravating Chichikov's position, at the governor's ball calls Pavel Ivanovich a buyer of "dead souls", and the reader recalls Nozdryov's extraordinary passion to piss off, to dirty his neighbor.
In the novel, according to Gogol, the disclosure of the "case" follows after the introduction of the persons involved in it and involves a skillfully considered plot. In "Dead Souls" at the end of the first chapter (exposition), "one strange property of a guest and an enterprise" is reported, which has to be the subject of further narration. In the novel, as indicated in the "Study Book", not the whole life of the character is taken, but only one particularly characteristic incident. In Dead Souls, the focus is not on the biographies of the characters (we know very little about the past of almost all landowners and officials), but on the main event, the “strange enterprise” (which does not exclude the prehistory-biography of Chichikov and Plyushkin). In the novel, the "remarkable incident" involves the interests and requires the participation of all the characters. In "Dead Souls" it is shown how Chichikov's scam unexpectedly determined the lives of so many people, becoming for some time the center of attention of the inhabitants of the city of NN.
How the epic work "Dead Souls" is connected with the genre picaresque novel (picaresque), whose masters are considered to be Alain Rene Lesage (“The History of Gil Blas from Santillana”), Quevedo y Villegas (“The Life Story of a Rogue named Pablos”), Grimmelshausen (“Simplicissimus”). In Russian literature, in the spirit of a picaresque novel, the works of V.T. Narezhny “Russian Zhilblas, or The Adventures of Gavrila Simonovich Chistyakov” and F. Bulgarin “Ivan Vyzhigin”, and in the 20th century, the novels by Ilf and Petrov “The Twelve Chairs” and “The Golden Calf”. Brings "Dead Souls" closer to picaresque novels, firstly, the presence of a rogue hero, a rogue, secondly, episodes united by the adventures and tricks of this hero, and thirdly, the satirical orientation of the literary text. However, the work "Dead Souls" was devoid of the compositional friability, often characteristic of picaresques of the 17th - early 17th century. XIX centuries.
The work "Dead Souls" is also associated with the genre novel way, which is represented by the texts of Cervantes (Don Quixote of Lamance), Novalis (Heinrich von Ofterdingen) and L. Tieck (The Wanderings of Franz Sternbald), where the knowledge of the truth comes to the heroes only after they have committed a strange, confusing and illogical (as it seems at first glance) a journey, the purpose and meaning of which are revealed only in the finale. (Gogol’s first poem, “Hanz Küchelgarten,” is built on this principle, where the hero needs to go a long and difficult path in order to recognize in the dear Louise he left behind that Peri, which he dreamed of in his “desert”).
Indeed, from a historical and literary point of view, "Dead Souls" is a complex fusion of various literary and folklore genres (from fairy tales, proverbs, sayings, epics to novels).
However, it is worth remembering that the author himself called his work a poem, he wrote this word in the largest letters and on the famous cover of his work. In the 19th century, the epics of Homer, and the Divine Comedy by Dante, and the works of Ariosto's Furious Roland, Pushkin's Ruslan and Lyudmila, Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage were called poems in the 19th century.
So, Gogol referred "Dead Souls" to the genre of the poem, firstly, because he wanted to emphasize the special role of his "moral-cleansing" work, with the help of which he dreamed of helping people (and himself) gain spiritual transformation. The scope of the novel seemed to the writer too tight. Most readers of the 19th century perceived novels as entertaining works, and Gogol wanted not so much to entertain as to teach people, to help them find the right path in life. Secondly, the poem "Dead Souls" makes the presence of a lyrical, subjective element. It is clear that in the britzka, next to Chichikov, there is invisibly a lyrical narrator who evaluates and explains all the events that take place. The pathos of subjectivity is manifested both in the story about the most prosaic subjects, and in the author's reflections, and in "lyrical digressions" about youth, about the Russian language, about the road, about the whole country.
The composition of the poem by N.V. Gogol "Dead Souls"
It is known that N.V. Gogol intended to create three volumes of the poem Dead Souls. The writer compared his work with a temple or a palace. In a letter to P.A. On March 17, 1842, Gogol admitted to Pletnev that the first volume was presented " nothing more than a porch to that palace, which" in him " was under construction».
The construction of the poem was supposed to remind readers of the composition of the Divine Comedy (1307-21) by the Italian Renaissance author Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy consisted of three canticles (parts): Hell, Purgatory, Paradise, respectively, the first volume of Dead Souls would be associated with Dante's Hell, the second volume with Purgatory, and the third with "Ray". Since the third volume of the poem was not written, and most of the second was burned by the writer, we can only talk about the composition of the first volume.
Conventionally, the first volume of the poem "Dead Souls" can be divided into three parts: the first - the arrival of Chichikov and his servants in the provincial town of NN, acquaintance with dignitaries, visiting the governor's house; the second is a trip to the landowners; the third is the execution of a bill of sale, communication with the governor's daughter and Chichikov's hasty departure from the city of NN due to bad rumors about the catcher of "dead souls".
The exposition of the poem can be considered the first chapter, in which readers get to know many of the heroes of the work, including Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, and residents of the city of NN (from ordinary peasants talking about the wheel of Chichikov's chaise to the governor himself), and some landowners (Manilov, Sobakevich , Nozdryov), whose estates Chichikov will visit. The first chapter gives a broad panorama of life, which will be presented in more detail later. Here the plot of the poem is also given - mention is made of Chichikov's plan, of his scam.
Particularly significant in terms of composition is the part where a series of Chichikov's trips to various estates is shown. The description of these visits is given in accordance with a clear scheme: initially, a description of the peasant huts and the entire economy as a whole is given, then follows a story about the landowner's estate, the interior of the house, the appearance of the owner (face, character, favorite pastime - "ardor", speech characteristics), after - description of the feast, conversation between Chichikov and the landowner about dead souls, Chichikov's departure from the estate.
Each previous landowner in Gogol's poem is opposed to the next. So, the mismanaged dreamer Manilov, who does not have any "enthusiasm", is opposed to the overly petty Nastasya Petrovna Korobochka, who is only interested in the domestic sphere of life and collects money in " variegated pouches placed in drawers of chests of drawers". The money-grubber Korobochka is opposed by the reckless Nozdryov, who burns life and collects greyhounds. The destroyer of the economy, Nozdryov, who often plays "down" at fairs, is given in contrast to the cunning huckster Sobakevich, a lover of delicious food. Mikhail Semenovich Sobakevich himself, who has a strong large economy, opposes himself to Stepan Plyushkin, whose estate is in ruins, and the peasants are dying of hunger: “ This is not something that some Plushkin will sell you».
There is a literary myth according to which each subsequent landowner, to whom Pavel Ivanovich comes, is “more dead than the previous one” (A. Bely). This myth arose, probably, due to a literal reading of Gogol's statement given in “Four Letters to Different Persons Concerning “Dead Souls”” (letter 3rd): “ One after another follow my heroes one more vulgar than the other».
The researcher of Gogol's creativity Yu.V. Mann succeeded in debunking this myth and proving incorrect the assumption that Manilov and Korobochka were "less dead" than Nozdryov and Sobakevich. Let us recall what Gogol writes about Manilov: You won’t expect any lively or even arrogant words from him if you touch the subject that bullies him. Everyone has his own enthusiasm: one of them turned his enthusiasm to greyhounds.(this can be said about Nozdryov), the other " master of the famous dine"(such is Sobakevich)," but Manilov had nothing". If, however, by "mortality" is meant the harm that the landlords inflict on the peasants, then in this aspect Manilov does not seem to be any more "alive". He absolutely does not know the specifics of the life of the Russian peasantry (therefore he absurdly assumes that the peasants will buy goods from merchants, climbing onto the bridge that stretches over the pond), he has no idea how many peasants work for him, and how many have already died. Sobakevich, on the other hand, knows all his peasants by name, knows which of them is capable of what kind of work. The serfs of Sobakevich live in strong huts, cut down "marvelously". All this proves that Manilov is no better than Sobakevich or Nozdryov.
Gogol opens the gallery of landlords precisely Manilov for many reasons. Firstly, Chichikov began a tour of the landowners from Manilov because, even in the governor's house, he seemed to him a hospitable and amiable person, from whom it would not be difficult to acquire dead souls. This calculation turned out to be correct. Manilov became the only landowner who presented Chichikov with dead peasants, without even thinking to ask for money for them. It is important for the writer to show that on his false path, Chichikov at first does not encounter serious obstacles and difficulties. Manilov only, dropping his chibouk in surprise, is surprised at the request of Pavel Ivanovich. Such a reaction should suggest to the reader the unusualness and strangeness of Chichikov's activities. Secondly, the general emotional tone around the image of Manilov is still serene, the colors that the writer mentions in connection with this hero are light (green, blue, yellow) or muted gray. In the future, the light spectrum changes, dark, gloomy tones begin to dominate in it, and troubles happen to Chichikov one after another. Researcher I. Zolotussky in the monograph "Gogol" (Series ZHZL) writes: " The poem began merrily and prosaically: the entrance to the city, the detour of officials, pleasant conversations, evenings. Then followed the comical Manilov, not causing alarm, then Korobochka, when something moved in the left side of the chest. Then, as if Nozdryov’s farce, as if dampening this anxiety, is Sobakevich with his soul hidden at the bottom of the hiding place, and the image of old age, foreshadowing death».
Is it possible to assume that the peculiarity of building a "gallery of landlords" is that it is more and more difficult for Chichikov to acquire dead peasants from each subsequent landowner? Indeed, for a long time Korobochka could not understand what Chichikov wanted from her (“After all, I never sold the dead”), Nozdryov began to offer to purchase a hurdy-gurdy, horses or greyhound puppies along with dead souls, and in the end did not sell peasants to Chichikov at all, and Sobakevich , probably guessing that such a deal was beneficial to Pavel Ivanovich, he asked for a hundred rubles for the dead, i.e. as much as a living peasant cost. However, Stepan Plyushkin not only sold Chichikov the largest number of dead and fugitive peasants, but he was also incredibly happy about the opportunity to get rid of the "dead souls", for which he now does not have to pay a soul tax.
The composition of the "gallery of landowners" has another important feature. It is important to note that Chichikov rarely gets to the estate he planned to get to. So, he goes to Zamanilovka, but ends up in Manilovka, goes to Sobakevich, but, having lost his way, at two in the morning he gets to Korobochka, from Korobochka again plans to go to Sobakevich, but stops by a tavern, and then goes to Nozdryov, with whom he met back in the provincial town, but was not going to visit him. After Nozdryov, Chichikov nevertheless ends up with Sobakevich, but he is not going to go anywhere from him. However, Mikhail Semyonovich reports on the landowner Plyushkin, who is starving his peasants. Interested, Chichikov goes to this landowner. Here “side passages” (A. Bely) make themselves felt: “ the wrong turns on the way to Nozdryov, to Korobochka are carefully listed...". If the poem had shown how Chichikov planned to go to Manilov and Sobakevich and ended up safely with them, then there would be something schematic in such a construction. But if Gogol showed that Chichikov, having decided to go to Manilov and Sobakevich, in the end does not end up with either of them, but comes, for example, to “Bobrov, Svinin, Kanapatiev, Kharpakin, Trepakin, Pleshakov” (these names are mentioned by Korobochka ), then in such a construction there would be something invented, unnatural.
In the third part, an image of the provincial city NN and its inhabitants is given. The static description of the estates is being replaced by a dynamic depiction of the disputes of city officials, the gossip of ladies belonging to the "secular" society.
At the end of the poem, Gogol refers to the principle of compositional inversion, used by Pushkin in the novel "Eugene Onegin", where the introduction was given in the last stanza of the seventh chapter. Gogol refers to the past of the protagonist, talks about Chichikov's childhood and youth, giving readers the opportunity to find out how the character and worldview of the acquirer was formed.
A special place in the composition of the first volume of the poem "Dead Souls" is occupied by the author's reflections and inserted stories. So, for example, at the beginning of the work, the author's reflections are mostly ironic in nature (for example, discussions about fat and thin gentlemen), but, starting from the fifth chapter, the poem includes pathetic (about the great and rich Russian language) or lyrical reflections (about " youth and freshness”, about the road and about Russia). The Tale of Captain Kopeikin and the parable of Kif Mokievich and Mokiya Kifovich become a kind of key to understanding the poem.
The composition of Gogol's poem "Dead Souls" was carefully thought out by the author. She is the embodiment of architectonic harmony and originality.
The role of inserted stories in the poem "Dead Souls"
When residents of the provincial city of NN begin to argue about who the "Kherson landowner" Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov is and assume that he is a noble robber or Napoleon Bonaparte, who escaped from St. Helena, the postmaster expresses the opinion that Chichikov " none other than Captain Kopeikin". The postmaster calls the story of this captain a poem in some way, hence we have a "micropoem" in the "macropoem" Dead Souls.
It is known that censorship in 1842 forbade Gogol to print " The Tale of Captain Kopeikin". Thus, on April 1, the censor Nikitenko informed Gogol: Kopeikin's episode turned out to be absolutely impossible to miss - no one's power could protect him from death ...". Gogol, shocked by this message, on April 9 reports N.Ya. Prokopovich: " They threw away a whole episode of Kopeikin from me, which is very necessary for me, even more than they think»; On April 10, he writes to Pletnev: “ The destruction of Kopeikin greatly embarrassed me! This is one of the best places in the poem, and without it, a hole that I can’t patch or sew up with anything.". These statements of the author make it possible to understand what place the writer assigned to "The Tale ...", considering it not an accidental inserted short story that has no connection with the general plot, but an organic part of the poem "Dead Souls".
The central character of the Tale has real, folklore and literary prototypes. The real ones include, firstly, Colonel of the Life Guards Fyodor Orlov, who was injured in the war of 1812 (lost his leg in the battle of Bautzen), and after the hostilities became a robber. The second prototype of Kopeikin is considered the soldier Kopeknikov, who turned to Arakcheev for help, but received nothing from him. The folklore prototype is the robber Kopeikin, the hero of folk songs. These songs in the records of P.V. Kireevsky were well known to N.V. Gogol. (One of them says that the leader of a gang of robbers, the thief Kopeikin, sees a prophetic dream: “ Get up, brothers are amicable, I had a bad dream. As if I was walking along the edge of the sea, I stumbled with my right foot, grabbed a brittle tree, a fragile tree, a buckthorn"- remember that Captain Kopeikin lost his leg and arm). The literary prototypes of Kopeikin are Rinaldo Rinaldini (the hero of the novel by the German writer Vulpius), Pushkin's Dubrovsky, the legless German in N.A. Field "Abadonna".
The censorship did not let The Tale of Captain Kopeikin go to print, since this part of the Dead Souls poem had a sharp satirical focus on the St. It is significant that for the sake of preserving the "Tale ..." Gogol went to weaken its accusatory sound, about which he wrote to Pletnev: " I'd rather change it than lose it altogether. I threw out all the generals, the character of Kopeikin meant more ...».
"The Tale of Captain Kopeikin" existed in three editions. The second one, which is now printed in all modern editions, is considered canonical. In 1842, censorship did not let it pass, just as it did not let the version given in the first edition. In the first edition of "The Tale ..." it was said that Kopeikin became the leader of a gang of robbers, the head of a huge detachment (" in a word, my sir, he just has an army ..."). Kopeikin, fearing persecution, goes abroad and writes a letter to the sovereign, where he explains the reasons for his revolutionary actions. The tsar stopped the persecution of Kopeikin's accomplices, formed a "disabled capital". But such a denouement was more politically ambiguous than credible.
Kopeikin's special place among the robbers – popular avengers of the literature of those years was that his revenge was purposefully directed at the bureaucratic state. It is characteristic that Gogol, who seeks justice, Kopeikin, confronts not with petty bureaucratic people, but with the largest representatives of the St. .
At first glance, it may seem that the rapprochement between Chichikov and Captain Kopeikin is absurd, ridiculous. Indeed, if the captain is a cripple, an invalid who lost his leg and arm in battle, then Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov looks completely healthy and very cheerful. However, a hidden connection between these heroes still exists. The very surname of the captain (originally the surname was Pyatkin) is associated with the slogan of Chichikov's life: "Save a penny!" A penny is a sign of gradual, slow accumulation based on patience and diligence. Both Chichikov and Captain Kopeikin do not strive to achieve the goal instantly, they are ready for a long wait, a gradual approach to the desired goal. The goal of the heroes is to receive money from the state. However, Kopeikin wants to receive a legal pension, the money that belongs to him by right. Chichikov, on the other hand, dreams of deceiving the state, with the help of a scam, a cunning trick to lure money from the Board of Trustees. The word "penny" is also associated with reckless prowess, courage (the expression "life is a penny" was in the draft version of the first volume of the poem "Dead Souls"). Captain Kopeikin showed himself in the war with the Napoleonic army as a brave and courageous person. The peculiar courage of Chichikov is his scam, the conceived "business" - buying up dead souls.
However, if the “scoundrel” and acquirer Chichikov is accepted by the high society, in the provincial city of NN they treat him with great respect, even Sobakevich speaks flattering words about him, then the honest and decent captain Kopeikin is not accepted by society: an important general, having learned that Kopeikin " expensive to live in the capital", sends him " to a treasury account". The “little man”, feeling that his life is worth a penny (penny!) The price, decides to rebel: “ When the general says that I should look for means to help myself, - well, he says, I, he says, will find means!". After two months " a gang of robbers appeared in the Ryazan forests”, whose chieftain was captain Kopeikin. (The theme of the “little man” rebellion, from whom the state has turned away, already appears in Pushkin’s poem “The Bronze Horseman” in 1833 and is especially acute in Gogol’s story “The Overcoat” and in the tenth chapter of “Dead Souls”).
If the ladies of the city of NN (the lady is simply pleasant and the lady is pleasant in all respects) compare Chichikov with the robber Rinaldo Rinaldini (“ is armed from head to toe, like Rinaldo Rinaldini”), then Kopeikin actually becomes a noble robber.
The theme of the Patriotic War clearly emerges in the story about Kopeikin. This theme not only emphasizes the selfishness and greed of landlords and officials, but also reminds of those high duties that did not exist at all for "significant persons". Precisely because the image of Kopeikin is the image of the defender of the fatherland, he carries a positive, “living” principle, which puts him much higher than any “existents” and acquirers.
The theme of the Patriotic War, closely related to The Tale of Captain Kopeikin, appears in the poem in a different form. Trying to figure out who Chichikov is, provincial officials remember Napoleon. “... they thought about it and, considering this matter, each to himself, found that Chichikov’s face, if he turns and becomes sideways, is very handy for a portrait of Napoleon. The chief of police, who served in the campaign for 12 years and personally saw Napoleon, also could not help confessing that he would in no way be taller than Chichikov, and that Napoleon, too, could not be said to be too fat and not so thin ...". In itself, the rapprochement between Chichikov and Napoleon is ironic, but the image of Napoleon appears in the poem not only as an element of comparison, but also has an independent meaning. " We all look at Napoleons”, - Pushkin wrote in “Eugene Onegin”, emphasizing the desire of his contemporaries, as if fascinated by the unusual fate of the French emperor, to be or seem like this “little great man”.
Definition of N.V. Gogol of the Dead Souls genre
Gogol, the author of critical articles and reviews in Pushkin's Sovremennik, saw the emergence of many stories and novels and their success with readers, and therefore conceived Dead Souls as "a long novel that seems to be very funny." 11 - Letter to A.S. Pushkin of October 7, 1835. The author intended Dead Souls “for the mob”, and not for the noble reader, for the bourgeoisie in its various strata, the urban bourgeoisie, dissatisfied with the landlord system, the privileged position of the nobility, the arbitrariness of bureaucratic rule. They, “almost all poor people,” as Gogol noted the social characteristics of his readers, demanded denunciation, a critical attitude towards the way of life established by the ruling class. Gogol, a “master-proletarian” (according to A. Herzen), without a noble passport, without an estate, who changed several professions in search of work, was close to these reading layers, and he began to depict Russian reality in the form of a novel, because social themes and the method of critical depiction of the life of this genre corresponded to the interests and tastes of the new reader, answered the "universal need", served as a weapon in the class struggle, and expressed the demands of advanced social groups.
Such a novel that satisfies the "worldwide ... common need" of a critical attitude to reality, giving a broad picture of life, outlining both life and the rules of morality, and Gogol wanted to create in his "long novel".
But the work on Dead Souls, capturing new aspects of life, new heroes, made us anticipate the possibilities of an ever broader development of the work, and already in 1836 Gogol called Dead Souls a poem. “The thing that I am sitting and working on now,” Gogol wrote to Pogodin from Paris, “and which I have been thinking about for a long time, and which I will be thinking about for a long time, not like a story or a novel, long, long, in several volumes, its name is "Dead Souls". If God helps me fulfill my poem, then this will be my first decent creation. All Russia will respond in it.
The explanatory dictionary of literary terms gives the following definitions:
The novel is a genre of epic. Its features: a large volume of work, a branched plot, a wide range of topics and problems, a large number of characters, the complexity of the composition, the presence of several conflicts.
The story is a genre of epic, in ancient Russian literature - a story about a real historical event. Later, the story appeared as a story about one human destiny.
A poem is a lyric-epic genre, a poetic work of great volume on a plot basis, which has lyrical features.
The understanding of the genre was divided in the mind of the author himself, and then he himself called “Dead Souls either a poem, or a story, or a novel. These contradictory definitions of the genre are preserved to the end - they remained in the printed text of both lifetime editions of "Dead Souls" in 1842 and 1846. But if in a letter to Pogodin Gogol associated with the poem the broad ideas of depicting "all Russia", then in the text of "Dead Souls" the genre of the story is associated precisely with those concepts that are usually presented as corresponding to the poem. In the second chapter, Gogol says about his work that it is " story very long, having after to move apart wider and more spacious”; even in the lyrical digressions of Chapter XI, which appeared at the end of work on Dead Souls, talking about the majestic continuation of Dead Souls and the appearance of virtuous heroes and pictures of the positive side of Russian life, Gogol wrote: “But ... perhaps, in this very same story other, hitherto unstrung strings will be felt, the incalculable wealth of the Russian spirit will appear, a husband will pass ... or a wonderful Russian girl ... ". On the same page, a few lines later, in predicting the future majestic development of the content, Gogol again wrote a “tale”: “colossal images will appear ... the innermost levers of a wide story...". Sometimes the title of the poem refers to Gogol's great intentions: telling Chichikov's biography (in the same chapter XI), he humorously thanks him for the idea of buying dead souls, because if this thought had not occurred to Chichikov, "there would not have been born this poem”, but elsewhere in the same biography he spoke of “the mystery of why this image (of Chichikov) appeared in the now poem»; further "Dead Souls" are called simply book, without defining the genre. The last time the “poem” appears again in a humorous phrase in a short story about the “patriots” - Kif Mokievich and Mokiya Kifovich, “who suddenly, like from a window, looked out at the end of our poems…».
From the analysis of Gogol's use of the expressions "story" and "poem" in the text of Dead Souls, it is impossible to conclude that the author had a firm, established understanding of the genre of his great work by the time it was published.
Also, the names of the genres of the story, poem, novel in Gogol's letters are sorted out, starting from 1835. All this proves that Gogol, while working on Dead Souls, did not decide, or rather, did not solve the question of its genre definition.
Most likely, Gogol called "Dead Souls" a poem, wanting to emphasize the importance and significance of his work.
Epic poems and epics were considered as "the crown and limit to the high works of the human mind ..." 11 - Statement by V. K. Trediakovsky; this understanding of the poem continued during the time of Gogol's teachings, in school dogmatic rhetoric and rhetoric, for example, in N. Ostolopov's Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Poetry, published in 1821. Many writers became famous for their poems - Homer, Virgil, Milton, Wolf and others. In Russia, the poems of Trediakovsky, Lomonosov, Petrov and comic ones - Bogdanovich, V. Maikov were famous. The title of "Dead Souls" exalted Gogol in the eyes of his friends like a poem.
D.E. Tamarchenko, citing an example from a letter to M.A. Maksimovich dated January 10, 1840, in which Gogol called "Dead Souls" not a poem, but novel, came to the conclusion that "it is hardly possible to agree with those researchers who refer to this letter as an example of Gogol's hesitation in designating the genre of his work." One cannot agree with this opinion. Gogol, as mentioned above, even in the printed text of "Dead Souls" left various names for the genre, which indisputably proves his uncertainty, and perhaps hesitation in resolving this issue. Subsequently, after the publication of the first volume of Dead Souls, Gogol, under the influence of the controversy between V.G. Belinsky and K. Aksakov about the Dead Souls genre, began to write the Educational Book of Literature for Russian Youth. In it, Gogol defines the genres of poetry and among them the genre of "small epic", in which, with some exaggeration, modern Gogol scholars see a description of the genre of the poem chosen by Gogol for Dead Souls.
Here is the definition: “In the new ages, a kind of narrative writings arose, constituting, as it were, the middle ground between the novel and the epic, the hero of which is, although a private and invisible person, but, nevertheless, significant in many respects for the observer of the human soul. The author leads his life through the chains 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 took, that earthly, almost statistically grasped picture of shortcomings, abuses, vices and everything that he noticed in this era and a time worthy of attracting the eye of any observant contemporary who is looking for living lessons for the present in the past, the past ... Many of them, although written in prose, can nonetheless be considered poetic creations. There is no universality, but there is and happens to be a full epic volume of remarkable private phenomena, as the poet wraps in verses.
Some features of the “small epic” (choosing a “private and invisible person” as a hero, the plot as a “chain of adventures and changes”, the desire to “present ... a true picture of ... time”, the assertion that a “small epic” can be written in prose) can be applicable to Dead Souls as well. But it should be noted that Gogol refers the content of the epic to past, to the author, "seeking in past, past living lessons for the present. In this, Gogol followed the main feature of poems and epics: they all depict the distant past. And the content of "Dead Souls" is modernity, a picture of Russia in the 30s, and it serves as a "living lesson for the present" precisely by its modernity. In addition, the “Study Book of Literature” was written from 1843 to 1844, when Gogol thought about the artistic types of Russian literature, which were unclear to him until that time.
Uncertainty in understanding the main issues of genres was a common phenomenon in society and in critical articles, due to a transitional moment in the development of Russian literature.
The second half of the 1930s, while Gogol was working on Dead Souls, was the era of the natural victory of Russian realism over literary romanticism and the epigones of sentimentalism and classicism. Realism, carrying new content and a new artistic method of depicting reality, required new artistic forms of its embodiment, the emergence of new types of literary works. This insufficiency of the old forms was reflected in the 1840s in the emergence of new genres, for example, the "physiological essays" noted by Belinsky. The uncertainty in understanding the genre was explained, according to Belinsky, also by the fact that “in the 18th century, the novel did not receive any definite meaning. Each writer understood it in his own way” 11 - V.G. Belinsky, vol. X, pp. 315 - 316 ..
The appearance in the 19th century of novels of various trends - romantic, historical, didactic, etc. - only increased the misunderstanding of the essence and features of the novel.