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A review by fionnualalirsdottir
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
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.