Part II, as it seems only part of Part II survived the adventures
described in the introduction. Where the text notes that pages are
missing from the “original”, this refers to the Russian original, not
the translation.
All the foreign words were italicised in the original, a style not
preserved here. Accents and diphthongs have also been left out.
INTRODUCTION
Dead Souls, first published in 1842, is the great prose classic of
Russia. That amazing institution, “the Russian novel,” not only began
its career with this unfinished masterpiece by Nikolai Vasil’evich
Gogol, but practically all the Russian masterpieces that have come since
have grown out of it, like the limbs of a single tree. Dostoieffsky
goes so far as to bestow this tribute upon an earlier work by the same
author, a short story entitled The Cloak; this idea has been wittily
expressed by another compatriot, who says: “We have all issued out of
Gogol’s Cloak.”
Dead Souls, which bears the word “Poem” upon the title page of the
original, has been generally compared to Don Quixote and to the Pickwick
Papers, while E. M. Vogue places its author somewhere between Cervantes
and Le Sage. However considerable the influences of Cervantes and
Dickens may have been--the first in the matter of structure, the other
in background, humour, and detail of characterisation--the predominating
and distinguishing quality of the work is undeniably something foreign
to both and quite peculiar to itself; something which, for want of
a better term, might be called the quality of the Russian soul. The
English reader familiar with the works of Dostoieffsky, Turgenev, and
Tolstoi, need hardly be told what this implies; it might be defined in
the words of the French critic just named as “a tendency to pity.” One
might indeed go further and say that it implies a certain tolerance of
one’s characters even though they be, in the conventional sense, knaves,
products, as the case might be, of conditions or circumstance, which
after all is the thing to be criticised and not the man. But pity and
tolerance are rare in satire, even in clash with it, producing in the
result a deep sense of tragic humour. It is this that makes of Dead
Souls a unique work, peculiarly Gogolian, peculiarly Russian, and
distinct from its author’s Spanish and English masters.
Still more profound are the contradictions to be seen in the author’s
personal character; and unfortunately they prevented him from completing
his work. The trouble is that he made his art out of life, and when in
his final years he carried his struggle, as Tolstoi did later, back into
life, he repented of all he had written, and in the frenzy of a wakeful
night burned all his manuscripts, including the second part of Dead
Souls, only fragments of which were saved. There was yet a third part to
be written. Indeed, the second part had been written and burned twice.
Accounts differ as to why he had burned it finally. Religious remorse,
fury at adverse criticism, and despair at not reaching ideal perfection
are among the reasons given. Again it is said that he had destroyed the
manuscript with the others inadvertently.
The poet Pushkin, who said of Gogol that “behind his laughter you feel
the unseen tears,” was his chief friend and inspirer. It was he who
suggested the plot of Dead Souls as well as the plot of the earlier work
The Revisor, which is almost the only comedy in Russian. The importance
of both is their introduction of the social element in Russian
literature, as Prince Kropotkin points out. Both hold up the mirror
to Russian officialdom and the effects it has produced on the national
character. The plot of Dead Souls is simple enough, and is said to have
been suggested by an actual episode.
It was the day of serfdom in Russia, and a man’s standing was often
judged by the numbers of “souls” he possessed. There was a periodical
census of serfs, say once every ten or twenty years. This being the
case, an owner had to pay a tax on every “soul” registered at the
last census, though some of the serfs might have died in the meantime.
Nevertheless, the system had its material advantages, inasmuch as an
owner might borrow money from a bank on the “dead souls” no less than
on the living ones. The plan of Chichikov, Gogol’s hero-villain, was
therefore to make a journey through Russia and buy up the “dead souls,”
at reduced rates of course, saving their owners the government tax,
and acquiring for himself a list of fictitious serfs, which he meant to
mortgage to a bank for a considerable sum. With this money he would buy
an estate and some real life serfs, and make the beginning of a fortune.
Obviously, this plot, which is really no plot at all but merely a ruse
to enable Chichikov to go across Russia in a troika, with Selifan the
coachman as a sort of Russian Sancho Panza, gives Gogol a magnificent
opportunity to reveal his genius as a painter of Russian panorama,
peopled with characteristic native types commonplace enough but drawn in
comic relief. “The comic,” explained the author yet at the beginning of
his career, “is hidden everywhere, only living in the midst of it we are
not conscious of it; but if the artist brings it into his art, on the
stage say, we shall roll about with laughter and only wonder we did not
notice it before.” But the comic in Dead Souls is merely external. Let
us see how Pushkin, who loved to laugh, regarded the work. As Gogol read
it aloud to him from the manuscript the poet grew more and more gloomy
and at last cried out: “God! What a sad country Russia is!” And later he
said of it: “Gogol invents nothing; it is the simple truth, the terrible
truth.”
The work on one hand was received as nothing less than an exposure of
all Russia--what would foreigners think of it? The liberal elements,
however, the critical Belinsky among them, welcomed it as a revelation,
as an omen of a freer future. Gogol, who had meant to do a service to
Russia and not to heap ridicule upon her, took the criticisms of the
Slavophiles to heart; and he palliated his critics by promising to bring
about in the succeeding parts of his novel the redemption of Chichikov
and the other “knaves and blockheads.” But the “Westerner” Belinsky
and others of the liberal camp were mistrustful. It was about this time
(1847) that Gogol published his Correspondence with Friends, and aroused
a literary controversy that is alive to this day. Tolstoi is to be found
among his apologists.
Opinions as to the actual significance of Gogol’s masterpiece differ.
Some consider the author a realist who has drawn with meticulous detail
a picture of Russia; others, Merejkovsky among them, see in him a great
symbolist; the very title Dead Souls is taken to describe the living of
Russia as well as its dead. Chichikov himself is now generally regarded
as a universal character. We find an American professor, William Lyon
Phelps [1], of Yale, holding the opinion that “no one can travel far in
America without meeting scores of Chichikovs; indeed, he is an accurate
portrait of the American promoter, of the successful commercial
traveller whose success depends entirely not on the real value and
usefulness of his stock-in-trade, but on his knowledge of human nature
and of the persuasive power of his tongue.” This is also the opinion
held by Prince Kropotkin [2], who says: “Chichikov may buy dead
souls, or railway shares, or he may collect funds for some charitable
institution, or look for a position in a bank, but he is an immortal
international type; we meet him everywhere; he is of all lands and of
all times; he but takes different forms to suit the requirements of
nationality and time.”
Again, the work bears an interesting relation to Gogol himself. A
romantic, writing of realities, he was appalled at the commonplaces
of life, at finding no outlet for his love of colour derived from his
Cossack ancestry. He realised that he had drawn a host of “heroes,” “one
more commonplace than another, that there was not a single palliating
circumstance, that there was not a single place where the reader might
find pause to rest and to console himself, and that when he had finished
the book it was as though he had walked out of an oppressive cellar
into the open air.” He felt perhaps inward need to redeem Chichikov;
in Merejkovsky’s opinion he really wanted to save his own soul, but
had succeeded only in losing it. His last years were spent morbidly;
he suffered torments and ran from place to place like one hunted; but
really always running from himself. Rome was his favourite refuge, and
he returned to it again and again. In 1848, he made a pilgrimage to the
Holy Land, but he could find no peace for his soul. Something of this
mood had reflected itself even much earlier in the Memoirs of a Madman:
“Oh, little mother, save your poor son! Look how they are tormenting
him.... There’s no place for him on earth! He’s being driven!... Oh,
little mother, take pity on thy poor child.”
All the contradictions of Gogol’s character are not to be disposed of
in a brief essay. Such a strange combination of the tragic and the comic
was truly seldom seen in one man. He, for one, realised that “it is
dangerous to jest with laughter.” “Everything that I laughed at became
sad.” “And terrible,” adds Merejkovsky. But earlier his humour was
lighter, less tinged with the tragic; in those days Pushkin never failed
to be amused by what Gogol had brought to read to him. Even Revizor
(1835), with its tragic undercurrent, was a trifle compared to Dead
Souls, so that one is not astonished to hear that not only did the Tsar,
Nicholas I, give permission to have it acted, in spite of its being a
criticism of official rottenness, but laughed uproariously, and led the
applause. Moreover, he gave Gogol a grant of money, and asked that its
source should not be revealed to the author lest “he might feel obliged
to write from the official point of view.”
Gogol was born at Sorotchinetz, Little Russia, in March 1809. He left
college at nineteen and went to St. Petersburg, where he secured a
position as copying clerk in a government department. He did not keep
his position long, yet long enough to store away in his mind a number of
bureaucratic types which proved useful later. He quite suddenly started
for America with money given to him by his mother for another purpose,
but when he got as far as Lubeck he turned back. He then wanted to
become an actor, but his voice proved not strong enough. Later he wrote
a poem which was unkindly received. As the copies remained unsold, he
gathered them all up at the various shops and burned them in his room.
His next effort, Evenings at the Farm of Dikanka (1831) was more
successful. It was a series of gay and colourful pictures of Ukraine,
the land he knew and loved, and if he is occasionally a little over
romantic here and there, he also achieves some beautifully lyrical
passages. Then came another even finer series called Mirgorod, which won
the admiration of Pushkin. Next he planned a “History of Little Russia”
and a “History of the Middle Ages,” this last work to be in eight or
nine volumes. The result of all this study was a beautiful and short
Homeric epic in prose, called Taras Bulba. His appointment to a
professorship in history was a ridiculous episode in his life. After a
brilliant first lecture, in which he had evidently said all he had to
say, he settled to a life of boredom for himself and his pupils. When he
resigned he said joyously: “I am once more a free Cossack.” Between
1834 and 1835 he produced a new series of stories, including his famous
Cloak, which may be regarded as the legitimate beginning of the Russian
novel.
Gogol knew little about women, who played an equally minor role in
his life and in his books. This may be partly because his personal
appearance was not prepossessing. He is described by a contemporary as
“a little man with legs too short for his body. He walked crookedly; he
was clumsy, ill-dressed, and rather ridiculous-looking, with his long
lock of hair flapping on his forehead, and his large prominent nose.”
From 1835 Gogol spent almost his entire time abroad; some strange
unrest--possibly his Cossack blood--possessed him like a demon, and
he never stopped anywhere very long. After his pilgrimage in 1848 to
Jerusalem, he returned to Moscow, his entire possessions in a little
bag; these consisted of pamphlets, critiques, and newspaper articles
mostly inimical to himself. He wandered about with these from house to
house. Everything he had of value he gave away to the poor. He ceased
work entirely. According to all accounts he spent his last days in
praying and fasting. Visions came to him. His death, which came in 1852,
was extremely fantastic. His last words, uttered in a loud frenzy,
were: “A ladder! Quick, a ladder!” This call for a ladder--“a spiritual
ladder,” in the words of Merejkovsky--had been made on an earlier
occasion by a certain Russian saint, who used almost the same language.
“I shall laugh my bitter laugh” [3] was the inscription placed on
Gogol’s grave.
JOHN COURNOS
Evenings on the Farm near the Dikanka, 1829-31; Mirgorod, 1831-33; Taras
Bulba, 1834; Arabesques (includes tales, The Portrait and A Madman’s
Diary), 1831-35; The Cloak, 1835; The Revizor (The Inspector-General),
1836; Dead Souls, 1842; Correspondence with Friends, 1847.
ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS: Cossack Tales (The Night of Christmas Eve, Tarass
Boolba), trans. by G. Tolstoy, 1860; St. John’s Eve and Other Stories,
trans. by Isabel F. Hapgood, New York, Crowell, 1886; Taras Bulba: Also
St. John’s Eve and Other Stories, London, Vizetelly, 1887; Taras Bulba,
trans. by B. C. Baskerville, London, Scott, 1907; The Inspector: a
Comedy, Calcutta, 1890; The Inspector-General, trans. by A. A. Sykes,
London, Scott, 1892; Revizor, trans. for the Yale Dramatic Association
by Max S. Mandell, New Haven, Conn., 1908; Home Life in Russia
(adaptation of Dead Souls), London, Hurst, 1854; Tchitchikoff’s
Journey’s; or Dead Souls, trans. by Isabel F. Hapgood, New York,
Crowell, 1886; Dead Souls, London, Vizetelly, 1887; Dead Souls, London,
Maxwell 1887; Meditations on the Divine Liturgy, trans. by L. Alexeieff,
London, A. R. Mowbray and Co., 1913.
LIVES, etc.: (Russian) Kotlyarevsky (N. A.), 1903; Shenrok (V. I.),
Materials for a Biography, 1892; (French) Leger (L.), Nicholas Gogol,
1914.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE FIRST PORTION OF THIS WORK
Second Edition published in 1846
From the Author to the Reader
Reader, whosoever or wheresoever you be, and whatsoever be your
station--whether that of a member of the higher ranks of society or that
of a member of the plainer walks of life--I beg of you, if God shall
have given you any skill in letters, and my book shall fall into your
hands, to extend to me your assistance.
For in the book which lies before you, and which, probably, you have
read in its first edition, there is portrayed a man who is a type taken
from our Russian Empire. This man travels about the Russian land and
meets with folk of every condition--from the nobly-born to the humble
toiler. Him I have taken as a type to show forth the vices and the
failings, rather than the merits and the virtues, of the commonplace
Russian individual; and the characters which revolve around him have
also been selected for the purpose of demonstrating our national
weaknesses and shortcomings. As for men and women of the better sort, I
propose to portray them in subsequent volumes. Probably much of what I
have described is improbable and does not happen as things customarily
happen in Russia; and the reason for that is that for me to learn all
that I have wished to do has been impossible, in that human life is not
sufficiently long to become acquainted with even a hundredth part
of what takes place within the borders of the Russian Empire. Also,
carelessness, inexperience, and lack of time have led to my perpetrating
numerous errors and inaccuracies of detail; with the result that in
every line of the book there is something which calls for correction.
For these reasons I beg of you, my reader, to act also as my corrector.
Do not despise the task, for, however superior be your education, and
however lofty your station, and however insignificant, in your eyes,
my book, and however trifling the apparent labour of correcting and
commenting upon that book, I implore you to do as I have said. And you
too, O reader of lowly education and simple status, I beseech you not to
look upon yourself as too ignorant to be able in some fashion, however
small, to help me. Every man who has lived in the world and mixed with
his fellow men will have remarked something which has remained hidden
from the eyes of others; and therefore I beg of you not to deprive me
of your comments, seeing that it cannot be that, should you read my book
with attention, you will have NOTHING to say at some point therein.
For example, how excellent it would be if some reader who is
sufficiently rich in experience and the knowledge of life to be
acquainted with the sort of characters which I have described herein
would annotate in detail the book, without missing a single page, and
undertake to read it precisely as though, laying pen and paper before
him, he were first to peruse a few pages of the work, and then to recall
his own life, and the lives of folk with whom he has come in contact,
and everything which he has seen with his own eyes or has heard of from
others, and to proceed to annotate, in so far as may tally with his own
experience or otherwise, what is set forth in the book, and to jot down
the whole exactly as it stands pictured to his memory, and, lastly, to
send me the jottings as they may issue from his pen, and to continue
doing so until he has covered the entire work! Yes, he would indeed do
me a vital service! Of style or beauty of expression he would need
to take no account, for the value of a book lies in its truth and its
actuality rather than in its wording. Nor would he need to consider my
feelings if at any point he should feel minded to blame or to upbraid
me, or to demonstrate the harm rather than the good which has been
done through any lack of thought or verisimilitude of which I have
been guilty. In short, for anything and for everything in the way of
criticism I should be thankful.
Also, it would be an excellent thing if some reader in the higher walks
of life, some person who stands remote, both by life and by education,
from the circle of folk which I have pictured in my book, but who knows
the life of the circle in which he himself revolves, would undertake to
read my work in similar fashion, and methodically to recall to his mind
any members of superior social classes whom he has met, and carefully to
observe whether there exists any resemblance between one such class and
another, and whether, at times, there may not be repeated in a higher
sphere what is done in a lower, and likewise to note any additional fact
in the same connection which may occur to him (that is to say, any fact
pertaining to the higher ranks of society which would seem to confirm or
to disprove his conclusions), and, lastly, to record that fact as it may
have occurred within his own experience, while giving full details of
persons (of individual manners, tendencies, and customs) and also of
inanimate surroundings (of dress, furniture, fittings of houses, and so
forth). For I need knowledge of the classes in question, which are the
flower of our people. In fact, this very reason--the reason that I do
not yet know Russian life in all its aspects, and in the degree to
which it is necessary for me to know it in order to become a successful
author--is what has, until now, prevented me from publishing any
subsequent volumes of this story.
Again, it would be an excellent thing if some one who is endowed with
the faculty of imagining and vividly picturing to himself the various
situations wherein a character may be placed, and of mentally following
up a character’s career in one field and another--by this I mean some
one who possesses the power of entering into and developing the ideas
of the author whose work he may be reading--would scan each character
herein portrayed, and tell me how each character ought to have acted
at a given juncture, and what, to judge from the beginnings of each
character, ought to have become of that character later, and what new
circumstances might be devised in connection therewith, and what new
details might advantageously be added to those already described.
Honestly can I say that to consider these points against the time when a
new edition of my book may be published in a different and a better form
would give me the greatest possible pleasure.
One thing in particular would I ask of any reader who may be willing to
give me the benefit of his advice. That is to say, I would beg of him
to suppose, while recording his remarks, that it is for the benefit of
a man in no way his equal in education, or similar to him in tastes and
ideas, or capable of apprehending criticisms without full explanation
appended, that he is doing so. Rather would I ask such a reader to
suppose that before him there stands a man of incomparably inferior
enlightenment and schooling--a rude country bumpkin whose life,
throughout, has been passed in retirement--a bumpkin to whom it is
necessary to explain each circumstance in detail, while never forgetting
to be as simple of speech as though he were a child, and at every step
there were a danger of employing terms beyond his understanding. Should
these precautions be kept constantly in view by any reader undertaking
to annotate my book, that reader’s remarks will exceed in weight
and interest even his own expectations, and will bring me very real
advantage.
Thus, provided that my earnest request be heeded by my readers, and
that among them there be found a few kind spirits to do as I desire, the
following is the manner in which I would request them to transmit their
notes for my consideration. Inscribing the package with my name, let
them then enclose that package in a second one addressed either to the
Rector of the University of St. Petersburg or to Professor Shevirev of
the University of Moscow, according as the one or the other of those two
cities may be the nearer to the sender.
Lastly, while thanking all journalists and litterateurs for their
previously published criticisms of my book--criticisms which, in spite
of a spice of that intemperance and prejudice which is common to all
humanity, have proved of the greatest use both to my head and to my
heart--I beg of such writers again to favour me with their reviews. For
in all sincerity I can assure them that whatsoever they may be pleased
to say for my improvement and my instruction will be received by me with
naught but gratitude.
DEAD SOULS