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yasin_alm's review against another edition
5.0
Rus edebiyatından güzel bir eser. Dönemin devlet düzeninde olan yozlaşmasıni kurgusal olarak ele alıyor.
rainbow1218's review against another edition
Stellar cheeky writing, but just lost interest became repetitive
teresatumminello's review against another edition
4.0
Perhaps due to the title, "Dead Souls" was very different from what I thought it would be. It's not gloomy or ponderous at all, but funny and satirical. It's also written in an engaging style.
It has a lot to say to and about 19th century Russia -- and to human nature in general. Because Gogol never finished it, it ends up being a picaresque novel with hints of things to come. Gogol himself seemed to have changed quite a bit (though he denied it) after writing the part that was published, and it makes me wonder how much his main character would've changed, especially after reading some of the unpublished drafts of his proposed Part Two for "Dead Souls."
It has a lot to say to and about 19th century Russia -- and to human nature in general. Because Gogol never finished it, it ends up being a picaresque novel with hints of things to come. Gogol himself seemed to have changed quite a bit (though he denied it) after writing the part that was published, and it makes me wonder how much his main character would've changed, especially after reading some of the unpublished drafts of his proposed Part Two for "Dead Souls."
taylorkibler's review
adventurous
dark
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
kardynalkaszprzak's review
emotional
inspiring
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
For the 19th century Russian society, the absence of the third part of "Dead Souls" and the incompleteness of the second part was a terrible tragedy (Gogol planned "Dead Souls" to be a three voume book, where throughout all of its parts Chichikov'ld go through hell, purgatory and heaven (as in Dante's "Divine Comedy"), would receive huge personal growth and at the end appear to be a completely different person than at the very beginning of the book. For this reason, the characters in the first part are less deep and ambiguous than in the second, and Chichikov himself shows much more humanity in the second part)
Yeah Chichikov the true Hero of our time
Yeah Chichikov the true Hero of our time
fionnualalirsdottir's review
Dead Souls Reading Diary
January 4th, 2019
I've just reached page 249 where finally the hero, to the waving of the cap of the houseman, who was standing there in the same fustian frock-coat, and in the presence of the inn-servants and someone else’s lackeys and coachmen, who had gathered to gape at the departure of someone else’s master, and amid all the other circumstances that accompany a departure, took his seat in the vehicle, and the britska, which was of the sort in which bachelors ride, and which has been standing so long in the town and thus has perhaps even become boring to the reader, finally drove out of the gate of the hostelry...
If I've felt the need to post this long passage, therefore beginning this review though I've not finished reading the book yet, it's because I'm struck by the mirror effect of the scene which occurs half-way through the book. Gogol, who is a slippery devil, has just made his main character take the reverse journey he took on page 1, when, through the gate of a hostelry in a provincial capital that will remain nameless rolled a small, rather handsome britska on springs, of the kind in which bachelors travel: retired lieutenant-colonels, staff-captains, landowners possessing a hundred or so peasant souls – in a word, all those who are known as gentlemen of the middling sort.
Of course, the travelling carriage has rolled in and out of the same gate many times during the 247 intervening pages as the mysterious 'gentleman of the middling sort', who owns it, visited the landowners of the surrounding countryside, but only on page 1 and page 249 did the carriage have all his luggage onboard.
The luggage was as odd and mysterious as the gentleman himself, and I might even say as odd and mysterious as the book inside of which he, Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, his carriage and his servants, are confined. The luggage comprises a leather trunk that takes two men to lift, a small mahogany box inlaid with Karelian birch, and sundry other items, including shoe-trees. But I'm refusing to be distracted by the shoe-trees because I suspect that it is the small mahogany box that will prove to be the most interesting item. Chichikov keeps putting pieces of paper into it, theatre bills, letters, but most mysteriously, long lists of dead souls...
So now the small mahogany box is inside the carriage, and the carriage is on the road leading out of the nameless provincial capital, and I'm turning over page 249 in hopes of discovering the mystery that's inside the box that's inside the carriage that's inside this book. I don't know how well my investigation will proceed as I'm completely in the dark at present (the leather curtains are drawn in the carriage because Chichikov is sleeping) but I'm curious to know where I'm going.
I promise to keep you updated...if I can see my way to doing it.
January 6th
Page 280
When I turned over page 249, I didn't know that it marked the beginning of an interlude that would last thirty pages. Yes, Gogol left Chichikov sleeping in his travelling carriage with the curtains closed for a considerable time during which he obligingly agreed to fill me on on Chichikov's origins. You see, I'd been very curious about events in Chichikov's life before his carriage rolled into the inn on page 1, so I got comfortable and listened carefully to the back story—which didn't come without many digressions.
Speaking of digressions, I'd been thinking about the author of Tristram Shandy from the early pages, but in this section, even more so. It's the games Gogol plays with the reader that remind me of Laurence Sterne (apart from the frequent mention of Chichikov's nose). By games, I mean not only the obvious humour that is part of character and plot but the fun that is embedded in anodyne words, linking phrases, and even punctuation (ellipses are often used in a comical way, especially when it comes to describing women...).
So, what I'm getting to is that the reader might be tempted to keep turning the pages of this book, interested only in where the plot takes the characters, but Gogol, like Sterne, challenges us to slow down and watch, as it were, the sideshows in the writing itself.
January 7th
Page 304
One of the sideshows I was thinking about yesterday, and it is a very elaborate type of sideshow, is 'The Tale of Captain Kopeykin' which begins on page 226. It's a long story told by a minor character about an army officer who becomes a brigand in order to get rich. The telling allows Gogol to demonstrate with much humour the kind of 'larded' language used by many people at the time (such a contrast to his own as can be seen in the p 304 update quote below), and which he's been making fun of from the early pages. It's the kind of language that includes a lot of unnecessary trimmings, for example: you know… in a certain sense... you can just picture it… so to speak… in a word… you understand….
But the really interesting thing about this sideshow tale is that it gives us some insight into Chichikov, but we don't realise this until we get to the backstory interlude on page 250 where we learn about Chichikov's life-long obsession with saving his kopecks (cents), and then we suddenly remember the Tale of Captain Kopeykin...
The other interesting thing about the Kopeykin tale, told after all in such a different style, was that it reminded me of inserted stories in Don Quixote and Tristram Shandy, as well as Ovid's Metamorphoses which I'm currently reading, specifically Book Four where Ovid allows a couple of his characters to tell stories in their own voices using their own verse style. Unlike Narcissus, I'm always on the lookout for echoes...
January 8th
Page 380
When I mentioned sideshows two days ago, I had no idea just what a funfair I was about to experience. The second part of this book introduces a series of characters, each more bizarre than the previous one. And as I'm still travelling with Chichikov, I've been able to step inside their strange houses and eat at their overloaded tables (there's a lot of eating in this book). Chichikov's carriage needed some repairs after he woke up so we had to knock at the door of a very lovelorn land owner who, after wining and dining us thoroughly, sent us on a mission to the fearsome father of the object of his affections. From there, having been reasonably successful, we set out to visit a relative of the fearsome father on another mission, but took the wrong road and ended up at the estate of a fisherman farmer where we ate our way through a monstrous sturgeon before making our escape to a model estate run by a very billious man who, on hearing that Chichikov might like to turn landowner, sent us off to the complete opposite kind of estate run by a most cheerfully incompetent man who needed to sell up.
Oh, and in between we visited a crazy ex-general, obsessed with administration...
January 9th
Concluding chapter
As I was saying three days ago, before I got distracted by the many sideshows in this fun-fair of a book, Gogol's announcement on page 250 of his intention to reveal Chichikov's back story was exactly what I wanted to hear. And I listened carefully to everything in the thirty pages that followed. But for all my assiduity, I still didn't learn much about the small mahogany box. And I learned even less about the list of dead souls Chichikov keeps inside it, or about his plans for those souls. There was an explanation on page 274 but it wouldn't seem to lodge in my brain no matter how many times I reread it. It was as if a spell had been cast over the words by a magician, and I had to conclude that Gogol himself was the biggest sideshow in the fun-fair. He'd bamboozled me completely; on page 275, he just moved on from the subject of the dead souls as if no further explanation was needed, saying: So it was that this strange plot took shape in our hero’s head. Whether readers will be grateful to him for it, I don’t know. As for how grateful the author is, that’s really hard to put into words. For, say what you will, if this idea hadn’t entered Chichikov’s head, this long poem would never have seen the light of day.
Isn't that a neat trick? Gogol just pushes all the responsibility for the dead souls plot onto Chichikov's shoulders and walks away.
In the concluding chapter, I had a similar bamboozling experience. This time, the explanation about the dead souls came directly from Chichikov but even while I was reading it, the meaning just wafted away from me like wisps of smoke, impossible to grasp.
Around about then, my comprehension faced an even bigger challenge because bracketed ellipses […] began to appear on every page. But instead of being humourous avoidance strategies such as Gogol used earlier in the book, now they seemed to signify genuine gaps in the text as if someone had removed entire sections. I couldn't help wondering if Chichikov himself was somehow responsible, because, in the meantime, he seemed to have acquired a mysterious fortune and was suddenly spending lots of money (which he was very reluctant to do before) and getting himself a new suit the colour of smoke and flame. What the devil!
And believe it or not, the little wooden box reentered the story in a significant though rather unholy way—and Chichikov was so happy to recover it that I wondered if, along with those mysterious lists of dead souls, it might not have contained the missing sections of this book...
The End.
January 4th, 2019
I've just reached page 249 where finally the hero, to the waving of the cap of the houseman, who was standing there in the same fustian frock-coat, and in the presence of the inn-servants and someone else’s lackeys and coachmen, who had gathered to gape at the departure of someone else’s master, and amid all the other circumstances that accompany a departure, took his seat in the vehicle, and the britska, which was of the sort in which bachelors ride, and which has been standing so long in the town and thus has perhaps even become boring to the reader, finally drove out of the gate of the hostelry...
If I've felt the need to post this long passage, therefore beginning this review though I've not finished reading the book yet, it's because I'm struck by the mirror effect of the scene which occurs half-way through the book. Gogol, who is a slippery devil, has just made his main character take the reverse journey he took on page 1, when, through the gate of a hostelry in a provincial capital that will remain nameless rolled a small, rather handsome britska on springs, of the kind in which bachelors travel: retired lieutenant-colonels, staff-captains, landowners possessing a hundred or so peasant souls – in a word, all those who are known as gentlemen of the middling sort.
Of course, the travelling carriage has rolled in and out of the same gate many times during the 247 intervening pages as the mysterious 'gentleman of the middling sort', who owns it, visited the landowners of the surrounding countryside, but only on page 1 and page 249 did the carriage have all his luggage onboard.
The luggage was as odd and mysterious as the gentleman himself, and I might even say as odd and mysterious as the book inside of which he, Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, his carriage and his servants, are confined. The luggage comprises a leather trunk that takes two men to lift, a small mahogany box inlaid with Karelian birch, and sundry other items, including shoe-trees. But I'm refusing to be distracted by the shoe-trees because I suspect that it is the small mahogany box that will prove to be the most interesting item. Chichikov keeps putting pieces of paper into it, theatre bills, letters, but most mysteriously, long lists of dead souls...
So now the small mahogany box is inside the carriage, and the carriage is on the road leading out of the nameless provincial capital, and I'm turning over page 249 in hopes of discovering the mystery that's inside the box that's inside the carriage that's inside this book. I don't know how well my investigation will proceed as I'm completely in the dark at present (the leather curtains are drawn in the carriage because Chichikov is sleeping) but I'm curious to know where I'm going.
I promise to keep you updated...if I can see my way to doing it.
January 6th
Page 280
When I turned over page 249, I didn't know that it marked the beginning of an interlude that would last thirty pages. Yes, Gogol left Chichikov sleeping in his travelling carriage with the curtains closed for a considerable time during which he obligingly agreed to fill me on on Chichikov's origins. You see, I'd been very curious about events in Chichikov's life before his carriage rolled into the inn on page 1, so I got comfortable and listened carefully to the back story—which didn't come without many digressions.
Speaking of digressions, I'd been thinking about the author of Tristram Shandy from the early pages, but in this section, even more so. It's the games Gogol plays with the reader that remind me of Laurence Sterne (apart from the frequent mention of Chichikov's nose). By games, I mean not only the obvious humour that is part of character and plot but the fun that is embedded in anodyne words, linking phrases, and even punctuation (ellipses are often used in a comical way, especially when it comes to describing women...).
So, what I'm getting to is that the reader might be tempted to keep turning the pages of this book, interested only in where the plot takes the characters, but Gogol, like Sterne, challenges us to slow down and watch, as it were, the sideshows in the writing itself.
January 7th
Page 304
One of the sideshows I was thinking about yesterday, and it is a very elaborate type of sideshow, is 'The Tale of Captain Kopeykin' which begins on page 226. It's a long story told by a minor character about an army officer who becomes a brigand in order to get rich. The telling allows Gogol to demonstrate with much humour the kind of 'larded' language used by many people at the time (such a contrast to his own as can be seen in the p 304 update quote below), and which he's been making fun of from the early pages. It's the kind of language that includes a lot of unnecessary trimmings, for example: you know… in a certain sense... you can just picture it… so to speak… in a word… you understand….
But the really interesting thing about this sideshow tale is that it gives us some insight into Chichikov, but we don't realise this until we get to the backstory interlude on page 250 where we learn about Chichikov's life-long obsession with saving his kopecks (cents), and then we suddenly remember the Tale of Captain Kopeykin...
The other interesting thing about the Kopeykin tale, told after all in such a different style, was that it reminded me of inserted stories in Don Quixote and Tristram Shandy, as well as Ovid's Metamorphoses which I'm currently reading, specifically Book Four where Ovid allows a couple of his characters to tell stories in their own voices using their own verse style. Unlike Narcissus, I'm always on the lookout for echoes...
January 8th
Page 380
When I mentioned sideshows two days ago, I had no idea just what a funfair I was about to experience. The second part of this book introduces a series of characters, each more bizarre than the previous one. And as I'm still travelling with Chichikov, I've been able to step inside their strange houses and eat at their overloaded tables (there's a lot of eating in this book). Chichikov's carriage needed some repairs after he woke up so we had to knock at the door of a very lovelorn land owner who, after wining and dining us thoroughly, sent us on a mission to the fearsome father of the object of his affections. From there, having been reasonably successful, we set out to visit a relative of the fearsome father on another mission, but took the wrong road and ended up at the estate of a fisherman farmer where we ate our way through a monstrous sturgeon before making our escape to a model estate run by a very billious man who, on hearing that Chichikov might like to turn landowner, sent us off to the complete opposite kind of estate run by a most cheerfully incompetent man who needed to sell up.
Oh, and in between we visited a crazy ex-general, obsessed with administration...
January 9th
Concluding chapter
As I was saying three days ago, before I got distracted by the many sideshows in this fun-fair of a book, Gogol's announcement on page 250 of his intention to reveal Chichikov's back story was exactly what I wanted to hear. And I listened carefully to everything in the thirty pages that followed. But for all my assiduity, I still didn't learn much about the small mahogany box. And I learned even less about the list of dead souls Chichikov keeps inside it, or about his plans for those souls. There was an explanation on page 274 but it wouldn't seem to lodge in my brain no matter how many times I reread it. It was as if a spell had been cast over the words by a magician, and I had to conclude that Gogol himself was the biggest sideshow in the fun-fair. He'd bamboozled me completely; on page 275, he just moved on from the subject of the dead souls as if no further explanation was needed, saying: So it was that this strange plot took shape in our hero’s head. Whether readers will be grateful to him for it, I don’t know. As for how grateful the author is, that’s really hard to put into words. For, say what you will, if this idea hadn’t entered Chichikov’s head, this long poem would never have seen the light of day.
Isn't that a neat trick? Gogol just pushes all the responsibility for the dead souls plot onto Chichikov's shoulders and walks away.
In the concluding chapter, I had a similar bamboozling experience. This time, the explanation about the dead souls came directly from Chichikov but even while I was reading it, the meaning just wafted away from me like wisps of smoke, impossible to grasp.
Around about then, my comprehension faced an even bigger challenge because bracketed ellipses […] began to appear on every page. But instead of being humourous avoidance strategies such as Gogol used earlier in the book, now they seemed to signify genuine gaps in the text as if someone had removed entire sections. I couldn't help wondering if Chichikov himself was somehow responsible, because, in the meantime, he seemed to have acquired a mysterious fortune and was suddenly spending lots of money (which he was very reluctant to do before) and getting himself a new suit the colour of smoke and flame. What the devil!
And believe it or not, the little wooden box reentered the story in a significant though rather unholy way—and Chichikov was so happy to recover it that I wondered if, along with those mysterious lists of dead souls, it might not have contained the missing sections of this book...
The End.
kainsbird's review
funny
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
marc129's review
3.0
Rating 3.5 stars. I read this the first time over 45 years ago, when I was only 17. Back then, I had already devoured some novellas by Puskhin and Gogol, to my delight, but this book was a different story: a solid novel, though left unfinished*. The smooth narrative style, the ironic character drawing and the unlikely but funny intrigue immediately won me over. It was the beginning of my “Russian period”, a fascination that would last two years and spread from Gogol to Turgenev and culminate, of course, in Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. I presume this 'condition' will be very recognizable to other avid readers.
Now, so many years later, I immersed myself again in 'Dead Souls'. And once again I was captivated by the detailed narrative style and the catchy story. Gogol consciously took the position of the omniscient narrator, accompanying his reader into a story with great taste, with the necessary digressions, striking character drawings, apt descriptions of landscapes and occasionally a moralizing comment. What struck me most is that the author is clearly not concerned with Chichikov himself, our would-be landowner who buys up the names of dead serfs in order to gain some status. Only in chapter 11, about halfway through the novel, does Gogol begin to elaborate on the character, youth and ambition of his protagonist. And in my opinion, the author was not so concerned with the entertaining, picaresque quality of the adventures of his (anti) hero, who did succeed in fooling a lot of people, but whose fortune goes up and down, who is both feted and humiliated. No, that picaresque aspect is – as in any picaresque novel – just the packaging that should disguise the true focus of the story.
And what is that focus? Well, especially in the long (and finished) first part, it clearly is to offer a drawing of the Russian soul, in all its diversity, of peasants and lackeys as well as of landowners and bourgeois people. Gogol portrays them with great taste, with all their nastiness, and with a moralizing undertone: great or small, rich or poor, we are all just pathetic people, who are subject to the whims of fate, and who all have our little sides. You could argue endlessly about whether Gogol's view of humanity is essentially misanthropic or not, but for me both this novel as his novellas express a genuine compassion for the human condition. That's what makes this writer so great.
It is a pity that 'Dead Souls' has come to us unfinished. The second part in particular suffers from this. It is also – in its surviving state – a bit different in character: much less picaresque, much less a kaleidoscope of the Russian people, much more moralizing. With his extensive attention to a diligent landowner, who manages his estate very efficiently, Gogol even seems to have written a treatise for fellow landowners. The same ambiguity can also be found when the author talks about Russia itself: regularly, and even more so in the 2nd part, he gives praise to his homeland and underlines the unique character of the Russian values and norms, the Russian soul, etc.; but the ease with which he exposes and ridicules his characters, and even explicitly points out Russian weaknesses, suggests that we should take that praise with a grain of salt. Therefore, it is inevitable to conclude that Gogol really focused on the universal man, and that is the supreme value of his oeuvre that will always remain appealing.
* Addendum: Apparantly, as my Goodreads friends kindly indicate, this book wasn't exactly unfinished. In a sort of religious crisis, Gogol destroyed parts of the manuscript, especially the second (and third?) part. That makes my interpretation a bit less sure, not really knowing what the original intentions of the author were.
** Addendum2: (After having read a few reviews of other Goodreads friends) You could see this Dead Souls as a condensed version of Balzac's 'Comédie Humaine', offering a broad panoramic view of humanity in its diversity. And the ironic style indeed comes near to 'Tristam Shandy', though - fortunately - Gogol is much less talkative and digressive!
Now, so many years later, I immersed myself again in 'Dead Souls'. And once again I was captivated by the detailed narrative style and the catchy story. Gogol consciously took the position of the omniscient narrator, accompanying his reader into a story with great taste, with the necessary digressions, striking character drawings, apt descriptions of landscapes and occasionally a moralizing comment. What struck me most is that the author is clearly not concerned with Chichikov himself, our would-be landowner who buys up the names of dead serfs in order to gain some status. Only in chapter 11, about halfway through the novel, does Gogol begin to elaborate on the character, youth and ambition of his protagonist. And in my opinion, the author was not so concerned with the entertaining, picaresque quality of the adventures of his (anti) hero, who did succeed in fooling a lot of people, but whose fortune goes up and down, who is both feted and humiliated. No, that picaresque aspect is – as in any picaresque novel – just the packaging that should disguise the true focus of the story.
And what is that focus? Well, especially in the long (and finished) first part, it clearly is to offer a drawing of the Russian soul, in all its diversity, of peasants and lackeys as well as of landowners and bourgeois people. Gogol portrays them with great taste, with all their nastiness, and with a moralizing undertone: great or small, rich or poor, we are all just pathetic people, who are subject to the whims of fate, and who all have our little sides. You could argue endlessly about whether Gogol's view of humanity is essentially misanthropic or not, but for me both this novel as his novellas express a genuine compassion for the human condition. That's what makes this writer so great.
It is a pity that 'Dead Souls' has come to us unfinished. The second part in particular suffers from this. It is also – in its surviving state – a bit different in character: much less picaresque, much less a kaleidoscope of the Russian people, much more moralizing. With his extensive attention to a diligent landowner, who manages his estate very efficiently, Gogol even seems to have written a treatise for fellow landowners. The same ambiguity can also be found when the author talks about Russia itself: regularly, and even more so in the 2nd part, he gives praise to his homeland and underlines the unique character of the Russian values and norms, the Russian soul, etc.; but the ease with which he exposes and ridicules his characters, and even explicitly points out Russian weaknesses, suggests that we should take that praise with a grain of salt. Therefore, it is inevitable to conclude that Gogol really focused on the universal man, and that is the supreme value of his oeuvre that will always remain appealing.
* Addendum: Apparantly, as my Goodreads friends kindly indicate, this book wasn't exactly unfinished. In a sort of religious crisis, Gogol destroyed parts of the manuscript, especially the second (and third?) part. That makes my interpretation a bit less sure, not really knowing what the original intentions of the author were.
** Addendum2: (After having read a few reviews of other Goodreads friends) You could see this Dead Souls as a condensed version of Balzac's 'Comédie Humaine', offering a broad panoramic view of humanity in its diversity. And the ironic style indeed comes near to 'Tristam Shandy', though - fortunately - Gogol is much less talkative and digressive!
daisyclements's review
mostly listened to this whilst walking to uni. I really enjoyed the humourous aspects of gogol, and have loved some of his smaller novellas, however I think I stopped at the second half of the book as the pace changed and it was difficult to get back into.