Gogol made the first sketches of the future grandiose creation in the summer of 1835, at the same time the general plan of the poem took shape. Gogol planned to write three volumes. The first volume was supposed to be something like a “facade” of a huge structure (Gogol studied architecture and often used comparisons with this type of art). The writer intended to depict in the first volume a sad reality, a depressing life, “fractured and cold characters.” The second volume was planned differently: in it the author wanted to depict a changing Rus', people who were different, but better than the gallery of types in the first volume. In the heroes of the chapters of the second volume that have come down to us, we see the same Chichikov, whom the author persistently pushes to reform, landowners, whose images are symmetrical to the landowners of the first volume, but they are much more complex and promising. The third volume, according to Gogol’s plan, was supposed to “depict” a changed Russia, which had found its way to a full-fledged and happy life. The idea of the poem and its structure, that is, the increasing optimistic tone in the depiction of the world, caused a comparison of “Dead Souls” with Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy”, also consisting of three parts: “Hell”, “Purgatory”, “Paradise”.
The further fate of Gogol’s plan is as follows: while still working on the first volume, Gogol began sketching the second (1840), but was unable to complete it or write any coherent major part. From the second volume, only four chapters have survived in different editions. It is known that several people close to Gogol read individual finished chapters of the second volume, but ten days before his death, Gogol burned his manuscript. Gogol never started writing the third volume.
Gogol made the first mention of working on Dead Souls in a letter to Pushkin dated October 7, 1835: “I began to write Dead Souls.” The plot stretches out into a long novel and, it seems, will be very funny.<...>In this novel I want to show at least from one side all of Rus'.” The message about “Dead Souls” appears in the same letter as the request for a plot for a new comedy, therefore, both works arose in Gogol’s creative mind at the same time. The desire to show “all of Rus'” testifies to the scale of the plan; the expression “albeit from one side” suggests that Gogol chooses a certain perspective in the depiction of Rus', that is, while ridiculing the bureaucracy in “The Inspector General,” he obviously intends to concentrate in “The Dead.” souls" on the image of landowner-peasant Russia. However, then Gogol was temporarily distracted by work on “The Inspector General” and other literary activities and resumed active work over “Dead Souls” only in 1836 after leaving abroad.
Please note that in a letter to Pushkin, Gogol calls his work “a very long novel.” Nevertheless, returning to his plan a year later, Gogol more clearly realized the grandiose scale of his plan and wrote in a letter to Zhukovsky: “... what a huge, what an original plot! What a varied bunch! All Rus' will appear in it!” Gogol no longer stipulates that he will show Rus' “albeit from one side,” and does not call the work a novel. Consequently, along with the expansion of the idea, the question of the nature of “Dead Souls” and its genre becomes more acute for the writer, since the author cannot designate the genre of the work arbitrarily.
Gogol wrote the first volume of Dead Souls for six years, creating most of the work in Rome. During this time, the writer called his creation differently: now a novel, now a story, now just a thing, and only by the beginning of the 1840s did he finally formulate a genre definition - a poem. In the fall of 1841, Gogol returned to Russia, for some time he sought censorship permission to publish “Dead Souls,” and finally, on May 21, 1842, the poem was published in the printing house of Moscow University under the title “The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls.”
The main significance for determining the genre of “Dead Souls” - a poem - is the fact that the work was written at the junction of two literary genres: epic and lyrical. The narrative about Chichikov's scam, that is, his travels around the province, stay in the city, meetings, forms the epic part of the poem, of which Chichikov is the main character. The lyrical purity of the poem is mainly composed of lyrical digressions that convey the author’s experiences, reflections, and emotional excitement; these lyrical digressions express the positive ideal of the author. The hero of the entire poem, in the merging of the epic and lyrical principles, appears to be Rus'. This is the genre and generic originality of “Dead Souls”.
“Dead Souls” is often compared with the epic poems of Homer, Virgil and Dante. However, Gogol's poem was created already during the existence of mature national literatures; it depicts national life and therefore represents a national poem.
At the same time, “Dead Souls” also has the genre basis of a novel, since it describes the adventures of a rogue, a swindler - a common plot of the picaresque novel genre, popular in European literature. The love plot outlined in the poem between Chichikov and the governor's daughter was not developed. As in “The Inspector General,” where Gogol also decided not to include a love conflict in the play, in “Dead Souls” this decision has an ideological explanation, because Chichikov, whose activity is built on deception and “is not worth a damn,” does not deserve love. The poem also contains signs of a morally descriptive story, in which, thanks to the plot based on the hero’s journey, a gallery of faces and characters passes before us.
The idea of “Dead Souls” did not immediately appear to Gogol in its entirety, but underwent various changes.
In 1836, while in Switzerland, he rebuilt overall plan works: “I redid everything I started again, thought over the whole plan and now I am writing it calmly, like a chronicle,” Gogol reported in a letter to V. A. Zhukovsky.
Gogol conceived a three-volume poem based on the epic poems of Homer and Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy.
Dante's poem contains three parts: “Hell” (populated by sinners), “Purgatory” (those who could cleanse their souls of sins were placed there), “Paradise” (populated by pure, immaculate souls). Gogol wanted to show in the first volume of his poem the vices of the Russian people, then the heroes had to rise from Hell to Purgatory, purify their souls through suffering and repentance. Then, in Paradise, the best qualities of the heroes were supposed to come to life and show the world all the best that is in the soul of a Russian person.
Two heroes - Chichikov and Plyushkin - had to go through all the circles and at the end of the poem reveal the ideal of man. “Dead Souls” should have been a poem about the restoration of the human spirit.
Gogol wrote: “If I complete this creation the way it needs to be accomplished, then... what a huge, what an original plot! What a varied bunch! All Rus' will appear in it!”
In May 1842, a new work by Gogol appeared in bookstores in both capitals. Let's try to figure out what the intent of the poem "Dead Souls" is. The cover of the book was extremely intricate; when looking at it, readers did not even know that it was made according to the sketch of the author himself. The drawing placed on the cover was obviously important for Gogol, as it was repeated in the second edition of the poem during his lifetime in 1846.
Let's get acquainted with the history of the concept of "Dead Souls" and its implementation, let's see how it changed, how the idea of creating a monumental epic canvas that would embrace all the diversity gradually crystallized Russian life. The embodiment of such a grandiose plan presupposed the use of appropriate artistic means, an adequate genre, and a special, symbolic name.
Based on an already established cultural tradition, Gogol bases the plot on the hero’s journey, but before us is a special journey: it is not only and not so much the movement of a person in time and space, it is the journey of the human soul.
Let's try to clarify our thought. Instead of dashingly twisted intrigue and stories about “Chichikov’s adventures,” the reader was presented with one of the Russian provincial cities. The hero's journey boiled down to visiting five landowners who lived nearby, and the author spoke about the main character himself and his true intentions a little before parting with him. As the story progresses, the author seems to forget about the plot and talks about events that seem not even related to the intrigue. But this is not negligence, but a conscious attitude of the writer.
The fact is that, when creating the concept of the poem “Dead Souls,” Gogol followed another cultural tradition. He intended to write a work that consists of three parts, modeled on Dante's Divine Comedy. In the poem of the great Italian, the journey of a person, or rather his soul, is presented as an ascent from vice to perfection, to an awareness of the true purpose of man and world harmony. Thus, Dante’s “Hell” turned out to be correlated with the first volume of the poem: like the lyrical hero of the poem, making a pilgrimage to the depths of the earth, Gogol’s Chichikov gradually plunges into the abyss of vice, the characters “one more vulgar than the other” appear before the reader. And in the finale, the anthem of Russia, the “three bird,” suddenly sounds. Where? Why? “This is still a secret,” Gogol wrote after finishing work on the first volume, “which should suddenly, to the amazement of everyone...”
In many ways, the implementation of the plan remained a secret, inaccessible to the reader, but the surviving chapters of the second volume and the statements of contemporaries allow us to say that the next two volumes should be correlated with “Purgatory” and “Paradise”.
So, before us is the journey of the soul, but what kind of soul? Dead? But the soul is immortal. This was pointed out to the author by the Moscow censorship committee, when the censor Golokhvastov literally shouted upon seeing only the title of the manuscript: “No, I will never allow this: the soul is immortal...” - and did not give permission to print. On the advice of friends, Gogol goes to St. Petersburg to show the manuscript to the censor there and publish the book there. However, history is repeating itself in some ways. Although censor Nikitenko gave permission to print, he demanded that changes be made to the text: change the title and remove “The Tale of Captain Kopeikin.” Reluctantly, Gogol made concessions, remaking “The Tale...” and slightly changing the title. Now it sounded different: “The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls.” But on the cover of the first edition, it was the old name that immediately caught the eye. At the insistence of the author, it was highlighted large print not only because it was related to the plot: “dead souls” turned out to be a commodity, around the purchase and sale of which Chichikov’s scam revolved. However, in official documents the dead peasants, who were listed as alive according to the revision tales, were called “declined.” His contemporary M.P. Pogodin pointed this out to the writer: “...there are no “dead souls” in the Russian language. There are revision souls, assigned souls, departed souls, and arrived souls.” It’s hard to believe that Gogol didn’t know this, but still put the word “dead” into the mouths of the poem’s heroes in relation to the souls Chichikov acquired. (Let us note in parentheses that when making a deal with Plyushkin, Chichikov buys not only the dead, but also runaway, that is, “declined” peasants, classifying them as “dead.”)
Thus, by using the word “dead,” Gogol wanted to give a special meaning to the entire work. This word helps reveal the general concept of "Dead Souls".
The ideological concept and construction of the poem.
In his “Author's Confession,” Gogol indicates that Pushkin gave him the idea to write “Dead Souls.” “He had been urging me to begin a large work for a long time, and finally, once, after I had read one small image of a small scene, but which, however, struck him more than anything I had read before, he said to me: “How with with this ability to guess a person and with a few features they suddenly make him appear as if he were alive, with this ability not to begin a large essay.
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This is simply a sin!..”, and, in conclusion, he gave me his own plot, from which he wanted to make something like a poem himself and which, according to him, he would not give to anyone else. This was the plot of “Dead Souls”... Pushkin found that the plot of “Dead Souls” was good for me because it gave me complete freedom to travel all over Russia with the hero and bring out many different characters.”
Gogol followed Pushkin’s advice, quickly got to work and in a letter dated October 7, 1835, informed him: “I began to write Dead Souls.” The plot is spread out over a long novel and, it seems, will be very funny... In this novel I want to show at least from one side the whole of Rus'.”
However, in the process of work, Gogol planned to give not one, but three volumes, in which it would be possible to show Rus' not “from one side,” but comprehensively. The second and third volumes of “Dead Souls” were, according to the author, supposed to bring out positive characters along with the negative ones and show the moral revival of the “scoundrel-acquirer” Chichikov.
Such breadth of the plot and the richness of the work with lyrical passages, allowing the writer to reveal in a variety of ways his attitude to the depicted, inspired Gogol with the idea of calling “Dead Souls” not a novel, but a poem.
But Gogol burned the second volume of Dead Souls, and he did not begin the third. The reason for the failure was that Gogol was looking for positive heroes in the world of “dead souls” - representatives of the dominant social strata at that time, and not in the popular, democratic camp.
Belinsky, back in 1842, predicted the inevitability of Gogol’s failure in implementing such a plan. “Much, too much has been promised, so much that there is nowhere to get what to fulfill the promise, because it is not yet in the world,” he wrote.
The chapters of the second volume of Dead Souls that have reached us confirm the validity of Belinsky’s thoughts. In these chapters there are brilliantly written characters akin to the landowners of the first volume (Petr Petrovich Petukh, Khlobuev, etc.), but the positive heroes (the virtuous governor-general, the ideal landowner Kostanzhoglo and the tax farmer Murazov, who made over forty million “in the most impeccable way”) not typical, not vitally convincing.
The idea of “travelling all over Rus' with the hero and bringing out many different characters” predetermined the composition of the poem. It is structured as the story of the adventures of the “acquirer” Chichikov, who buys souls that are actually dead, but legally alive, that is, not deleted from the audit lists.
Images of officials
The central place in the first volume is occupied by five “portrait” chapters (from the second to the sixth). These chapters, constructed according to the same plan, show how, on the basis of serfdom, different types serf owners and how serfdom in the 20-30s of the 19th century, due to the growth of capitalist forces, it led the landowner class to economic and moral decline. Gogol gives these chapters in a certain order. The economicless landowner Manilov (Chapter II) is replaced by the petty hoarder Korobochka (Chapter III), the careless waster of life Nozdryov (Chapter IV) is replaced by the tight-fisted Sobakevich (Chapter V). This gallery of landowners is completed by Plyushkin, a miser who brought his estate and peasants to complete ruin.
Painting economic collapse corvée, subsistence farming on the estates of Manilov, Nozdryov and Plyushkin is depicted vividly and convincingly. But even the seemingly strong farms of Korobochka and Sobakevich are in fact unviable, since such forms of farming have already become obsolete.
The “portrait” chapters present a picture of the moral decline of the landowner class with even greater expressiveness. From an idle dreamer living in the world of his dreams, Manilov to the “club-headed” Korobochka, from her to the reckless spendthrift, liar and cheater Nozdryov, then to the ossified fist Sobakevich and, finally, to the one who has lost everything moral qualities- “a hole in humanity” - Gogol leads us to Plyushkin, showing the increasing moral decline and corruption of representatives
Thus, the poem turns into a brilliant denunciation of serfdom as a socio-economic system that naturally gives rise to cultural and economic backwardness while being the arbiter of the destinies of the state. This ideological orientation of the poem is revealed primarily in the system of its images.
The gallery of portraits of landowners opens with the image of Manilov. “In appearance he was a distinguished man; His facial features were not devoid of pleasantness, but this pleasantness seemed to have too much sugar in it; in his techniques and turns there was something ingratiating favor and acquaintance. He smiled enticingly, was blond, with blue eyes.” Previously, he “served in the army, where he was considered the most modest, most delicate and most educated officer.” Living on the estate, he "sometimes comes to the city... to see educated people."
Compared to the inhabitants of the city and estates, he seems to be “a very courteous and courteous landowner,” who bears some imprint of a “semi-enlightened” environment.
However, revealing Manilov’s inner appearance, his character, talking about his attitude to the household and his pastime, drawing Manilov’s reception of Chichikov, Gogol shows the complete emptiness and worthlessness of this “existent”.
The writer emphasizes two main features in Manilov’s character - his worthlessness and sugary, meaningless daydreaming. Manilov had no living interests.
He did not take care of the housekeeping”, entrusting it entirely to the clerk. He could not even tell Chichikov whether his peasants had died since the last inspection. His house “stood alone on the jura, that is, on an elevation open to all the winds that might blow.” . Instead of shady garden, which usually surrounded the manor’s house, at Manilov’s only “five or six birches in small clumps here and there raised their small-leaved thin tops.” And in his village there was nowhere “a growing tree or any greenery.”
Manilov’s mismanagement and impracticality is clearly evidenced by the furnishings of the rooms of his house, where next to beautiful furniture stood two armchairs, “covered simply with matting”; “a dandy candlestick made of dark bronze with three antique graces” stood on the table, and next to it was placed “some kind of simple copper invalid, lame, curled to one side and covered in fat.”
It is no wonder that such an “owner” has “a rather empty pantry,” the clerk and housekeeper are thieves, the servants are “unclean and drunkards,” and “the whole household sleeps mercilessly and hangs out the rest of the time.”
It so happened that “Dead Souls” became such a work by Gogol, in which the work of a genius, his pinnacle creation, turned into a defeat for the artist, which brought him death.
This happened because Gogol’s plan was comprehensive and grandiose, but unfulfilled from the very beginning.
“Dead Souls” was conceived by the writer in three volumes. Gogol based his plan on the epic poems of Homer and the medieval poem by the Italian poet Dante “The Divine Comedy”.
In the spirit of Homer’s epic poems, which glorified the Greek gods and heroes, Gogol intended to create a new epic, the so-called “small epic.” Its goal was ultimately glorification, a pathetic lyrical celebration of the epic picture of the transformation of some vicious characters into exclusively positive heroes, possessing best qualities Russian person. Russia had to be cleansed from filth one volume after another and in the third volume of Gogol’s book should appear before all humanity in all the splendor of moral perfection, spiritual wealth and spiritual beauty. Thus, Russia would show other peoples and states the path to moral and religious salvation from the machinations of the primordial enemy of Christ and humanity - the devil, who sows evil on earth. The fiery praise of such a Russia and such a Russian man, cleansed of vices, becoming the subject of admiring chanting, turned “Dead Souls” into a poem. Consequently, the genre definition given by Gogol to his work applies to the entire three-volume plan.
It is necessary to note the greatest creative courage of Gogol, who conceived a work of enormous scale and universal significance. The idea of “Dead Souls” revealed the greatness of the writer’s soul and his artistic genius. However, it is absolutely clear that moral perfection cannot be achieved by humanity here and now, that many millennia are needed to establish such relations between people and states, the foundations of which will be the teachings of Christ and universal human values.
If Gogol had not tried to embody the moral greatness of the Russian person in artistic images, but had presented it precisely as an artistic ideal, then, quite possibly, he would have been able to complete his work. But to Gogol such a solution to a grandiose task seemed too insignificant and detracted from the whole plan. He needed to breathe living life into the dream, into the ideal, so that a morally perfect Russian person would consist of flesh and blood, so that he would act, communicate with other people, think and feel. With the power of imagination he tried to bring it to life. But the dream, the ideal, did not want to become a plausible reality.
Gogol did not write a utopia, where the conventions of the future are presupposed by the genre itself. His morally infallible man was supposed to look not like a utopian creation, but a life-truth. However, there was no “prototype” or model to which the artistic types imagined by Gogol were similar. Life had not yet given birth to them; they existed only in the artist’s head as abstract religious and moral ideas. It is clear that the task of creating an ideal from flesh and blood turned out to be beyond Gogol’s strength. Gogol's plan, for all its greatness and harmony, revealed a contradiction lying within it that could not be overcome. Attempts to resolve this contradiction ended in failure.
Gogol's plan also contained the greatest rise artistic idea, and its inevitable fall in the sense that it could never be completed. The victory of a genius was fraught with defeat.
The genre designation "poem" thus refers to the entire project and refers to both the epic scope and the lyrical pathos that permeates the epic narrative. In accordance with the approach to the ideal of moral perfection, lyrical pathos will increase and intensify. The artistic unconvincing nature of ideal paintings will become increasingly clearer. The epic narrative, rich in lyricism, will be replaced by religious and moral sermons, teachings and prophecies. The artistic principle will give way to the religious-ethical, mystical-moral principle, expressed in the forms of rhetorical and didactic speech. At the same time, the role of the author-prophet, author-preacher, author-teacher of life and bearer of religious and mystical insights will inevitably increase.
The genre of the poem, in addition to its connection with the epic poems of Homer, as Gogol’s contemporaries noted, had a direct literary relationship to Dante’s epic medieval poem “The Divine Comedy”. Dante's poem contained three parts - “A d”, “Purgatory”, “Paradise”. It is clear that “Hell” was inhabited by sinners; those who could cleanse their souls of sins were placed in “Purgatory”. In “Paradise” the pure, immaculate souls of the righteous ended up. Gogol's plan was consistent with the structure of Dante's poem and also ended with the kingdom of paradise, to which Russia and the Russian people rushed and achieved. At the same time, Gogol’s heroes, like Dante’s hero, committed spiritual path in the circles of Hell and, rising from Hell to Purgatory, they cleansed themselves with suffering and repentance, washing away their sins and thereby saving their souls. They went to Paradise, and their best moral qualities came to life. The Russian man was a role model and acquired the status of an ideal hero.
The first volume of “Dead Souls” corresponded to “Hell” in Dante’s poem, the second to “Purgatory,” and the third to “Paradise.” Gogol's two heroes - Chichikov and Plyushkin - were supposed to move from the circles of Hell to Purgatory, then to Paradise. Gogol's plan requires that his heroes first end up in Hell. The author revealed to all readers and the characters themselves that terrible and at the same time funny spiritual abyss into which they were brought by neglect of the title, duties and duty of a person. The characters had to see the obscene grimaces of their unsightly, ugly faces in order to laugh at their images and be horrified by them.
The first volume, or, as Gogol said, the “porch” of the entire grandiose structure, must necessarily be comic, and in some places satirical. But at the same time, an inspired lyrical voice must break through the satire, constantly reminiscent of the second and, most importantly, the third volume. He, this lyrical voice, tied all three volumes together and intensified as he moved towards the last. And at the end of the first volume, Chichikov’s small and already fairly shabby chaise, driven by a troika, before our eyes turns, as if caught by an unknown force, into a troika bird and rushes across the sky and, like it, Rus' rushes, also carried by an unknown force. These lyrical lines remind the reader of the spiritual path ahead of Russia, and at the same time announce in advance that he will be a high example for other peoples and states.
From this reasoning it would be incorrect to conclude that Gogol compared the three volumes of Dead Souls to the three parts of Dante's Divine Comedy. He lowered and even turned over the composition of Dante's poem. We can only talk about an analogy. Gogol wrote a poem about the restoration of the human spirit.
Gogol's plan is characterized by other important features. It is easy to see that the reliance on “ Divine Comedy"Dante assumed the universality of the concept of Dead Souls. Gogol thinks in extremely general categories and concepts. They can be divided into three levels: national (Russian, German, French, etc.), universal (the earthly world as a whole) and, finally, the third level, universal-religious, covering not only Russia and the earthly world as a whole, but also heavenly and beyond the grave, located beyond, on the other side of our existence. The best proof of this is the title “Dead Souls”.
In the very expression “dead souls” there is unusualness, strangeness. On the one hand, “dead souls” are deceased serfs. On the other hand, “dead souls” are characters in the poem who have ruined themselves spiritually and mentally, whose idea of the true purpose of man on earth, of his calling and the meaning of life has become distorted, deadened and dead. The characters themselves still continue to speak and move, but their souls have already died. Significant thoughts worthy of a person and deep, subtle feelings have already disappeared, sometimes forever, sometimes for a while.
There is, however, another meaning of the expression “dead souls”. According to Christian teaching, souls do not die, they remain in hell, purgatory or heaven forever alive. The word “dead” cannot be applied to the souls of people, even those who have died, in Christianity. The flesh, the body, dies, but not the spirit, not the soul. Therefore, from this point of view, the combination “dead souls” is absurd. It is impossible. Gogol plays with all meanings. His soul can become dead, die and be revealed, like the prosecutor’s, only after death.
Therefore, during his lifetime the prosecutor did not have a soul or did he possess dead soul, which, however, is the same thing. A dead, dead soul can be transformed, resurrected to a new one, eternal life and turn to good. The universal, religious and symbolic meaning of “Dead Souls” permeates the book. Suddenly, the peasants of Sobakevich, for example, come to life: they are talked about as if they were alive. The resettlement of peasants to a new land is a deception and Chichikov’s greatest sin. New land in “Revelation of St. John the Theologian (Apocalypse)" from the New Testament calls the holy city Jerusalem, "coming down from God from heaven" and meaning the Kingdom of God. He will reveal himself to people after Last Judgment when their souls are transformed. Only thus, purified and transformed, will they see God and His Kingdom.
A trace of such a symbolic migration in the most serious meaning of the word is preserved in the poem. After Chichikov bought “dead souls,” residents of the city of N reasoned: “... it’s true, no one will sell good people, and Chichikov’s men are drunkards, but you need to take into account that this is where morality is, this is where morality lies: they are now scoundrels, but having moved to a new land, they can suddenly become excellent subjects. There have been many such examples: just in the world, and in history too.” So, people's souls can be transformed. Gogol himself intended in the third volume to bring out new, completely transformed souls of Plyushkin and Chichikov.
The all-Russian, universal and universal-religious scale in “Dead Souls” is polar opposite to another - narrow, fractional, detailed, associated with penetration into the hidden corners of local life and the dark corners of a person’s “internal economy”, into the “trash and squabbles” of everyday trifles. Gogol is attentive to the details of everyday life, clothing, and furnishings.
In order to buy dead souls, Chichikov must meet the landowners, visit them and persuade them to make a deal. In “The Author's Confession,” Gogol wrote: “Pushkin found that the plot of Dead Souls was good for me because it gave me complete freedom to travel all over Russia with the hero and bring out many different characters.” Consequently, the poem includes another important genre form - the travel novel. Finally, it is known that the main character - Chichikov - was ultimately supposed to turn into an ideal person, into a hero without fear and reproach. The transformation involved re-education and self-education.
In the second volume, Chichikov had teachers-educators who made the path of moral regeneration easier for him, and he himself, repenting and suffering, gradually re-educates himself. It is clear that the novel of education also played a significant role in Gogol’s overall plan. And here at least two questions arise. Is it true that if Chichikov saves a penny and strives to get rich, then he thinks like a bourgeois, like a capitalist? To answer this question, you need to ask yourself: does Chichikov want to use his money to grow and become a moneylender? Does he dream of a plant, of a factory, does he entertain the idea of becoming an industrialist and opening his own business? No. Chichikov hopes to buy the village of Pavlovskoye in the Kherson province, become a landowner and live securely and in abundance. In his consciousness he is not a bourgeois, not a capitalist. The accumulative and bourgeois idea enters the head of the landowner, the feudal lord.
The second question is: who is Chichikov if he is not endowed with the consciousness of a bourgeois, but is still an “acquirer” and in the future dreams of becoming a landowner? The Tale of Captain Kopeikin helps to understand why Gogol chose an average, inconspicuous person for his anti-hero in the first volume.
Chichikov is a man of the new, bourgeois era and breathes its atmosphere. The ideas of the bourgeois era are uniquely refracted in his mind and character, in his entire personality. In the bourgeois era, money and capital become the universal idol. All kindred, friendly, and love connections exist insofar as they are based on monetary interests that are beneficial to both parties. Chichikov once saw a sixteen-year-old girl with golden hair and a delicate oval face, but his thoughts immediately turned to a dowry of two hundred thousand rubles. In other words, the bourgeois era produces evil, but invisible evil, nestled in people like Chichikov, “average”, unremarkable.
In order to more accurately understand what this phenomenon is, generalized in Chichikov, Gogol tells “The Tale of Captain Kopeikin.” At the same time, Chichikov is removed from the plot; instead, a fantastic double appears, created by the imagination of the inhabitants of the provincial city and living in the rumors that filled the province. City officials are eager to marry Chichikov, who is known as a “millionaire” and intends to make a big deal. They begin to look for a bride for Chichikov, and the governor’s wife introduces the rich, presumably unmarried Chichikov, to her daughter, a college student.
The ladies who showed exceptional interest in Chichikov the millionaire (one of them, in the spirit of Tatyana Larina, even sent him an unsigned letter with the words: “No, I have to write to you!” - here Gogol laughs at romantic, already vulgarized passions), did not forgive him a short infatuation with the governor’s daughter (“All the ladies did not like Chichikov’s treatment at all”). Chichikov’s reputation is gradually collapsing: either Nozdryov will directly declare to the governor, the prosecutor and all officials that Chichikov “traded... the dead,” then Korobochka, afraid of selling himself short, will find out how much dead souls are walking around these days. The ladies formed a “conspiracy” and finally ruined Chichikov’s “enterprise”. “Dead souls”, the governor’s daughter and Chichikov got lost and mixed up in the minds of the town’s inhabitants in an “extraordinarily strange way.”
At first, “just a nice lady,” referring to the words of Korobochka, told the “lady, pleasant in all respects” that Chichikov came to Nastasya Petrovna “armed from head to toe, like Rinald Rinaldin, and demands: “Sell,” he says, - all the souls who died." The box answers very reasonably and refuses. Why, however, Chichikov needed to imitate Rinaldino Rinaldini from the then popular novel by X. Vulpius, remained unknown, as well as why on earth the new Rinaldo Rinaldini - Chichikov - demanded dead souls. But still, the thought of Chichikov as noble robber need to remember.
During a further discussion of the “charming” Chichikov, the “lady, pleasant in all respects,” was struck by a guess: “This was just made up as a cover, but the point is this: he wants to take away the governor’s daughter. This assumption was unexpected and unusual in all respects.” If Chichikov wanted to take away the governor’s daughter, then why did he need dead souls in addition to her, if he intended to “buy dead souls, so why take away the governor’s daughter?” Confused in all this, the ladies felt that Chichikov could not decide on such a “brave passage” without “participants,” and Nozdryov was counted among such assistants.
Chichikov looks either like a noble robber or romantic hero stealing the object of his interest.
