Dead Souls (Barnes & Noble Classics)

412 Pages·2005·1.88 MB·English

by  Nikolai Gogol

Table of Contents

FROM THE PAGES OF DEAD SOULS
Title Page
Copyright Page
NIKOLAI GOGOL
THE WORLD OF NIKOLAI GOGOL AND DEAD SOULS
Introduction

PART I
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11

PART II
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5

INSPIRED BY DEAD SOULS
COMMENTS & QUESTIONS
FOR FURTHER READING
FROM THE PAGES OF DEAD SOULS
A rather pretty little chaise on springs, such as bachelors, half-pay officers, staff
captains, landowners with about a hundred serfs—in short, all such as are spoken
of as “gentlemen of the middling sort”—drive about in, rolled in at the gates of
the hotel of the provincial town of N.
(page 5)
In the end the fat man, after serving God and his Tsar and winning universal
respect, leaves the service, moves away and becomes a landowner, a hearty
hospitable Russian gentleman,—he gets on, and indeed gets on very well. And
when he has gone, his thin heirs in accordance with the Russian tradition make
ducks and drakes of all their father’s property. I cannot disguise the fact that such
were the reflections which occupied Tchitchikov’s mind while he was
scrutinising the company and the result was that he finally joined the fat ones,
among whom he found all the personages he knew: the public prosecutor with
very black thick eyebrows and with the left eye given to winking slightly as
though to say: “Come into the next room, my boy, I have something to tell you,”
though he was a serious and taciturn man; the postmaster, a short man who was a
wit and a philosopher; the president of the court, a very sagacious and polite
man,—all of whom welcomed him as an old acquaintance while Tchitchikov
responded to their civilities by profuse bows a little to one side but no less
agreeable for that. (page 14)
“I say, my good man, how many of our peasants have died since the census was
taken?” (page 32)
Such was Nozdryov! Perhaps he will be called a hackneyed character, and it will
be said that there are no Nozdryovs now. Alas! those who say so are wrong. It
will be many long years before the Nozdryovs are extinct. They are everywhere
among us, and the only difference perhaps is that they are wearing a different cut
of coat; but people are carelessly unobservant and a man in a different coat
seems to them a different man. (page 72)
A word aptly uttered or written cannot be cut away by an axe.
(page 109)
Another thing I must mention about the ladies of N. is that, like many Petersburg
ladies, they were distinguished by great niceness and propriety in their choice of
words and expressions. They never said: “I blew my nose, I got into a sweat, I
spat,” but used instead some such expression as: “I made use of my
handkerchief.” (page 161)

And now the officials asked themselves the question which they ought to have
asked themselves in the first chapter of my poem. It was decided to make
inquiries of the persons from whom the dead souls had been bought, so as to find
out at least what sort of transaction it was, and what was to be understood by
dead souls. (page 198)

Scratching the head signifies all manner of things among the Russian people.
(page 218)

Russia! Russia! I behold thee, from my lovely faraway paradise, I behold thee! It
is poor, neglected and comfortless in thee, no insolent marvels of nature crowned
by insolent marvels of art, no towns with many-windowed lofty palaces piled in
precipitous heights, no picturesque trees, no ivy-clad houses in the roar and
everlasting spray of waterfalls rejoice the eye or strike awe into the heart; the
head is not turned to gaze at the rocks piled up on the heights above it; no
everlasting lines of shining mountains rising into the silvery pure skies gleam in
the distance through dark arches, scattered one upon the other in a tangle of
vines, ivy and wild roses beyond number. In thee all is open, desolate, flat; thy
lowly towns lie scattered like dots, like specks unseen among thy plains; there is
nothing to allure or captivate the eye. But what mysterious inexplicable force
draws one to thee? Why does the mournful song that floats all over the length
and breadth of thee from sea to sea echo unceasingly in the ear? What is in it, in
that song? What is it that calls and sobs and clutches at my heart? What are these
strains that so poignantly greet me, that go straight to my soul, that throb about
my heart? Russia! what wouldst thou of me? What is the mysterious hidden
bond between us? Why dost thou gaze at me thus, and why is everything within
thee turning upon me eyes full of expectation? (page 223)

BARNES & NOBLE CLASSICS
NEW YORK

Published by Barnes & Noble Books
122 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10011

www.barnesandnoble.com/classics

The first part of Dead Souls was published in Russia in 1842. The surviving five
chapters of the second part were not published until after Gogol’s death.
Constance Garnett’s English translation first appeared in 1922.

Published in 2005 by Barnes & Noble Classics with new Introduction, Notes,
Biography, Chronology, Inspired By, Comments & Questions,
and For Further Reading.

Introduction, Notes, and For Further Reading
Copyright © 2005 by Jeffrey Meyers.

Note on Nikolai Gogol, The World of Nikolai Gogol and Dead Souls,
Inspired by Dead Souls, Comments & Questions, and For Further Reading
Copyright © 2005 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system,
without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Barnes & Noble Classics and the Barnes & Noble Classics
colophon are trademarks of Barnes & Noble, Inc.
Dead Souls
ISBN-13: 978-1-59308-092-1 ISBN-10: 1-59308-092-1
eISBN : 978-1-41143206-2
LC Control Number 2004116677

Produced and published in conjunction with:
Fine Creative Media, Inc.
322 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10001

Michael J. Fine, President and Publisher

Printed in the United States of America

QM
3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4
NIKOLAI GOGOL
The Russian intelligentsia was surprised when the great and famously aloof poet
Alexander Pushkin welcomed the young writer Gogol into his circle. Few
suspected that Gogol would quickly rise to such literary heights. He was, after
all, from a small village in Ukraine and had no aristocratic standing or great
wealth to speed his career. But ambition, flexibility, luck, and a heady dose of
confidence thrust him into stardom and a life of brief but legendary intensity
Born on April 1, 1809. Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol grew up on his family’s
estate in Sorochinsty, Ukraine. His father, who died when Nikolai was sixteen,
was a minor landowner and an amateur poet and playwright who acted in the
plays he wrote and directed. Nikolai received his brief education at a boarding
school in Nezhin, where he was schooled in the classics and German
Romanticism. At school he first became involved in theater and writing,
performing in amateur productions and contributing frequently to the literary
magazine.
After graduating, Gogol moved to Russia’s capital, St. Petersburg, and worked
for a time as a government clerk. His real ambitions, however, were creative and
literary. After auditioning and being rejected by the Imperial Theater, he turned
his energies to writing. In 1829 he self-published the long Romantic poem Hanz
Küchelgarten; it was a failure, excoriated by the few critics who bothered to read
it, and Gogol bought back and burned every copy he could find. A few years
later he published the first of two volumes of tales set in his native Ukraine,
Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka. These works won the hearts of Pushkin as
well as of most Russian readers.
Over the next several years, Gogol worked briefly (and unsuccessfully) as an
assistant professor of history at St. Petersburg University and published several
new works, all well received, including Arabesques, a collection of fiction,
essays, and criticism; Mirgorod, another collection of tales; and The Government
Inspector, a dramatic comedy.
In 1836 Gogol left Russia and traveled in Germany, Switzerland, and France
before settling in Rome, where he wrote his masterpiece, Dead Souls. The novel
secured Gogol’s status as the father of Russian realism and influenced
generations of writers, including Dostoevsky, Kafka, and Nabokov.
After living abroad for twelve years, Gogol returned to Russia in 1848. The
remaining years of his life were marked by spiritual upheavals and nervous
disorders. He turned to extreme religious beliefs and came under the influence
thereafter of fanatical Russian monks. Shortly before he died, Gogol destroyed
part II of Dead Souls (five chapters were later found). He stopped eating soon
afterward and died on March 4, 1852.