What everyone should know about immortal work Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
Text: Sergey Volkov, Evgenia Vovchenko
Photo: artists Lesha Frey/metronews.ru and Mikhail Kheifets/plakat-msh
Everyone has read “Dead Souls” by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. Whether completely or carefully is another question. In the meantime, Chichikov’s adventures are an obligatory part school curriculum, and schoolchildren patiently look for lyrical digressions, carefully analyze the life of landowners with such speaking surnames: Korobochka, Manilov, Nozdryov, are trying to understand the meaning of what has already become catchphrase“Rus, where are you going? give me the answer..."
But how many people reread Gogol after school? Are you ready to return to this mysterious work and look at it with your own adult eyes, and not with the eyes of school teacher, who is usually taken at his word. But sometimes you really want to show off your erudition among your friends, showing yourself to be an educated and well-read person. It is precisely for such people that the “Yes to Reading” project was invented, where in a few hours of intensive lectures you can fill in your gaps in literature. The project lecturer, a teacher of Russian language and literature, offers his own set of facts that everyone needs to know about the immortal “Dead Souls”.10 facts about “Dead Souls”
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It is believed that the plot of the work was suggested to Gogol by Pushkin. Most likely, he grew up from Pletnev about his imminent marriage and about his dowry, formed after mortgaging 200 souls.
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The first volume was written abroad. As I noticed, “It’s scary to say that you not only love your country more from afar, but you also see it better and understand it better. Remember that our great genius
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol created extraordinary works that caused a lot of disagreement, controversy, and reasons for thought. A particularly clear reflection of Russian reality in the 19th century is shown in the novel “Dead Souls,” work on which began in 1835. The plot of the beautiful creation was suggested famous writer Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, who was not indifferent to Gogol’s work. Work on the work lasted 17 years, because every little thing and every detail was thought out by the writer to the last, carefully.
Initially it was assumed that the novel would be humorous, but through reflection and deep reflection, Nikolai Vasilyevich decided to touch upon global problems people's lives in an indifferent world. Designating a poem as a genre of work, Gogol considered the best option divide it into three parts, where in the first I wanted to depict negative qualities modern society, in the second - this is the self-realization of the individual, ways to correct it, and in the third - the life of the characters who changed their fate in the right direction.
The first part took the writer exactly 7 years; it began in Russia, but subsequently continued abroad. Spent enough time on creation big time, because he wanted everything to be perfect. The part was already ready for printing in 1841, but, unfortunately, it failed to pass the censorship. The publication process took place only the second time, taking into account that Gogol’s friends in an influential position helped him in this. But the work was published with some reservations: Nikolai Vasilyevich was obliged to change the title to “The Adventures of Chichikov or Dead Souls”, make some adjustments, and exclude the story “about Captain Kopeikin”. But the writer agreed only to change the text, and not to remove it from the poem. So the first part was published in 1842.
After the publication of the work there was a flurry of criticism. Judges, officials, and other people of high status were categorically against accepting the work, because they believed that Gogol did not show Russia as it really is. They argued that Nikolai Vasilyevich portrayed his homeland as harsh, gray, and negative. There were disagreements about dead soul what Gogol wrote in the novel. Thoughtless people said that the soul is immortal and that what the writer is talking about is complete nonsense, nonsense. It becomes clear that they are too far from the great Gogol in terms of intelligence.
It is noteworthy that friends and colleagues considered how deeply and accurately he raised eternal problems Nikolai Vasilyevich, because what is depicted in the poem is simply amazing in its reality, severity, and truth.
Criticism from people seriously hurt Gogol, but this did not stop him from continuing to work on the novel. I wrote the second chapter until my death, without finishing it. To Nikolai Vasilyevich the work seemed imperfect, imperfect. Exactly nine days before his death, Gogol sent his own manuscripts to the fire, this was the final version. To date, some chapters have survived, their number is five, now these days they are perceived as separate an independent work. As you can see, the implementation of the third part of the novel did not happen; it remained only an idea that Gogol did not have time to bring to life.
Thus, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol is considered an unsurpassed writer, because he was able to present all the pressing problems in his work.
His long-term works are invaluable; after reading, many questions remain. I managed to express my own point of view in the novel “Dead Souls,” which is now a masterpiece of world literature. Even though Gogol did not have time to finish the third part, he left readers with something worth grasping with their hands and feet, something worth thinking about and reflecting on. Nikolai Vasilyevich would not have put anything in the poem in vain, because he cared too much about the process of writing it. All details are thought out to the smallest detail. Therefore, the work is of extraordinary value!
Option 2
Nikolai Gogol began working on the creation of the poem “Dead Souls” in 1835. The author finished his creation only towards the end own life. Initially, the author planned to create the work in 3 volumes. The main idea Gogol took the books from Pushkin. The author wrote the poem in his homeland, in Italy and Switzerland, and also in France. The writer finished the first part of the book in 1842. Gogol called this volume “The Adventures of Chichikov or Dead Souls.” In the next volume, the writer intended to depict the changing Rus' and people. In this volume, Chichikov tried to correct the landowners. In the third volume, the author wanted to describe a changed Russia.
The title of the book reflects the main idea of the poem. With a literal meaning, readers understand the essence of Chichikov’s deception. The hero was engaged in acquiring the souls of deceased peasants. The poem has a deeper meaning. At first, the author decided to compose a poem based on the work “ Divine Comedy"from Dante. Gogol intended for the characters to go through the circles of purgatory and hell. At the end of the work, the heroes must ascend and rise again.
Gogol was unable to realize his own plan. Gogol was able to complete only the first part. In 1840, the author wrote several versions of the second volume. For unknown reasons, the author himself destroyed the second part of the book. The poem has only draft manuscripts of the second part.
The writer in his works highlights the soullessness and ruthlessness of the characters. Sobakevich was very soulless, like Koschey the immortal. Apart from him, all the city officials depicted in the book had no souls. The beginning of the book describes the active and interesting existence of the city's inhabitants. In the book, a dead soul is a simple phenomenon. For characters human soul counts distinctive feature living person.
The title of the work is closely related to the symbolism of the district town N. And the city K represented the whole country. The author wanted to show that decline had set in in Russia and that the souls of the inhabitants had faded away. Gogol showed all the meanness of the existence of the fallen town. In one of his speeches, reading the names of the deceased, Chichikov revives them in his own fantasy. In the poem, the living souls are Plyushkin and Chichikov. Plyushkin's image differs from other heroes. In chapter 6 the author gave full description Plyushkin's garden. The garden is a comparison of Plyushkin’s soul.
The world described in “Dead Souls” is considered the complete opposite of the real world. WITH " dead souls“The social direction of creation is connected. Chichikov's plan is impossible and at the same time simple.
“Dead Souls” is a work by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, the genre of which the author himself designated as a poem. It was originally conceived as a three-volume work. The first volume was published in 1842. The almost finished second volume was destroyed by the writer, but several chapters were preserved in drafts. The third volume was conceived and not started, only some information about it remained.
Gogol began work on Dead Souls in 1835. At this time, the writer dreamed of creating a big epic work, dedicated to Russia. A.S. Pushkin, who was one of the first to appreciate the uniqueness of Nikolai Vasilyevich’s talent, advised him to take up a serious essay and suggested an interesting plot. He told Gogol about one clever swindler who tried to get rich by pawning the dead souls he bought as living souls in the guardianship council. At that time, many stories were known about real buyers of dead souls. One of Gogol’s relatives was also named among such buyers. The plot of the poem was prompted by reality.
“Pushkin found,” Gogol wrote, “that this plot of Dead Souls is good for me because it gives me complete freedom to travel all over Russia with the hero and bring out many different characters.” Gogol himself believed that in order “to find out what Russia is today, you must certainly travel around it yourself.” In October 1835, Gogol reported to Pushkin: “I began to write Dead Souls. The plot stretches out into a long novel and, it seems, will be very funny. But now I stopped it on the third chapter. I'm looking for a good sneaker with whom I can get along briefly. In this novel I want to show at least one side of all of Rus'.”
Gogol anxiously read the first chapters of his new work to Pushkin, expecting that they would make him laugh. But, having finished reading, Gogol discovered that the poet became gloomy and said: “God, how sad our Russia is!” This exclamation forced Gogol to take a different look at his plan and rework the material. In further work, he tried to soften the painful impression that “Dead Souls” could have made - he alternated funny phenomena with sad ones.
Most of the work was created abroad, mainly in Rome, where Gogol tried to get rid of the impression made by the attacks of critics after the production of The Inspector General. Being far from his homeland, the writer felt an inextricable connection with it, and only love for Russia was the source of his creativity.
At the beginning of his work, Gogol defined his novel as comic and humorous, but gradually his plan became more complex. In the fall of 1836, he wrote to Zhukovsky: “I redid everything that I started again, I thought about the whole plan and now I am writing it calmly, like a chronicle... If I complete this creation the way it needs to be done, then... how huge, how original plot!.. All Rus' will appear in it!” Thus, in the course of the work, the genre of the work was determined - the poem, and its hero - all of Rus'. At the center of the work was the “personality” of Russia in all the diversity of its life.
After the death of Pushkin, which was a heavy blow for Gogol, the writer considered the work on “Dead Souls” a spiritual covenant, the fulfillment of the will of the great poet: “I must continue the great work I began, which Pushkin took the word from me to write, whose thought is his creation and which from now on turned into a sacred testament for me.”
Pushkin and Gogol. Fragment of the monument to the Millennium of Russia in Veliky Novgorod.
Sculptor. I.N. Shredder
In the fall of 1839, Gogol returned to Russia and read several chapters in Moscow from S.T. Aksakov, with whose family he became friends at that time. Friends liked what they heard, they gave the writer some advice, and he made the necessary amendments and changes to the manuscript. In 1840 in Italy, Gogol repeatedly rewrote the text of the poem, continuing to work hard on the composition and images of the characters, and lyrical digressions. In the fall of 1841, the writer returned to Moscow again and read the remaining five chapters of the first book to his friends. This time they noticed that the poem only shows negative aspects Russian life. Having listened to their opinion, Gogol made important insertions into the already rewritten volume.
In the 30s, when an ideological turning point was outlined in Gogol’s consciousness, he came to the conclusion that real writer must not only put on public display everything that darkens and darkens the ideal, but also show this ideal. He decided to embody his idea in three volumes of Dead Souls. In the first volume, according to his plans, the shortcomings of Russian life were to be captured, and in the second and third the ways of resurrecting “dead souls” were shown. According to the writer himself, the first volume of Dead Souls is only “a porch to a vast building,” the second and third volumes are purgatory and rebirth. But, unfortunately, the writer managed to realize only the first part of his idea.
In December 1841, the manuscript was ready for publication, but censorship prohibited its release. Gogol was depressed and looked for a way out of this situation. Secretly from his Moscow friends, he turned for help to Belinsky, who arrived in Moscow at that time. The critic promised to help Gogol, and a few days later he left for St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg censors gave permission to publish “Dead Souls,” but demanded that the title of the work be changed to “The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls.” In this way they sought to divert the reader's attention from social problems and switch it to the adventures of Chichikov.
“The Tale of Captain Kopeikin”, plot-related to the poem and having great value to reveal the ideological and artistic meaning of the work, censorship categorically prohibited it. And Gogol, who treasured it and did not regret giving it up, was forced to rework the plot. In the original version, he laid the blame for the disasters of Captain Kopeikin on the tsar’s minister, who was indifferent to fate ordinary people. After the alteration, all the blame was attributed to Kopeikin himself.
Even before receiving the censored copy, the manuscript began to be typed at the printing house of Moscow University. Gogol himself undertook to design the cover of the novel, writing in small letters “The Adventures of Chichikov, or” and in large letters “Dead Souls.”
On June 11, 1842, the book went on sale and, according to contemporaries, was sold out like hot cakes. Readers immediately divided into two camps - supporters of the writer’s views and those who recognized themselves in the characters of the poem. The latter, mainly landowners and officials, immediately attacked the writer, and the poem itself found itself at the center of the journal-critical struggle of the 40s.
After the release of the first volume, Gogol devoted himself entirely to work on the second (begun back in 1840). Each page was created tensely and painfully; everything written seemed to the writer to be far from perfect. In the summer of 1845, during a worsening illness, Gogol burned the manuscript of this volume. Later he explained his action by saying that “paths and roads” to the ideal, revival human spirit did not receive sufficiently truthful and convincing expression. Gogol dreamed of regenerating people through direct instruction, but he could not - he never saw the ideal “resurrected” people. However, his literary endeavor was later continued by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, who were able to show the rebirth of man, his resurrection from the reality that Gogol so vividly depicted.
Draft manuscripts of four chapters of the second volume (in incomplete form) were discovered during the opening of the writer’s papers, sealed after his death. The autopsy was performed on April 28, 1852 by S.P. Shevyrev, Count A.P. Tolstoy and Moscow civil governor Ivan Kapnist (son of the poet and playwright V.V. Kapnist). The whitewashing of the manuscripts was carried out by Shevyrev, who also took care of their publication. Lists of the second volume were distributed even before its publication. For the first time, the surviving chapters of the second volume of Dead Souls were published as part of Full meeting Gogol's works in the summer of 1855.
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol follows that the work was originally created as a light humorous novel. However, as writing progressed, the plot seemed to the author more and more original. About a year after the start of work, Gogol finally identified another, deeper and more extensive literary genre for his brainchild - “Dead Souls” became a poem. The writer divides the work into three parts. In the first, he decided to show all the shortcomings of modern society, in the second - the process of correction and in the third - the life of those who have already changed in better side heroes.
Time and place of creation
Work on the first part of the work took about seven years. Gogol began it in Russia in the fall of 1835. In 1836, he continued his work abroad: in Switzerland and Paris. However, the main part of the work was created in the capital of Italy, where Nikolai Vasilyevich worked in 1838 to 1842. At house 126 of Rome's Via Sistina there is memorial plaque, perpetuating this fact. Gogol carefully over every word of his poem, reworking the written lines many times.Publication of the poem
The manuscript of the first part of the work was ready for printing in 1841, but it did not pass the stage. It was published the second time; influential friends helped Gogol, but with some reservations. So, the writer was given the condition to change the title. Therefore, the first publications of the poem were called “The Adventures of Chichikov or Dead Souls.” In this way, the censors hoped to shift the focus of the narrative from the socio-political system that Gogol describes to the main character. Another censorship requirement was to make changes or delete “The Tale of Captain Kopeikin” from the poem. Gogol agreed to significantly change this part of the work so as not to lose it. The book was published in May 1842.Criticism of the poem
The release of the first one caused a lot of criticism. The writer was attacked both by officials who accused Gogol of showing life in Russia as purely negative, which it is not, and by adherents who believed that the human soul is immortal, and therefore, by definition, cannot be dead. However, Gogol's colleagues immediately highly appreciated the significance of the work for the Russian Federation.Continuation of the poem
Immediately after the release of the first part of “Dead Souls,” Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol began working on the continuation of the poem. He wrote the second chapter almost until his death, but was never able to finish it. The work seemed imperfect to him, and in 1852, 9 days before his death, he burned the final version of the manuscript. Only the first five chapters of the drafts survived, which today are perceived as separate work. The third part of the poem remained only an idea.DEAD SOULS
Poem N.V. Gogol.
It was started by Gogol in October 1835 and completed in 1840. The first volume of the book was published in 1842 under the title “The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls.” The second volume was burned by the author in 1852; only a few chapters of the draft survived.
The story that became the basis of the plot of the poem was told to Gogol A.S. Pushkin. The events take place in the 30s of the nineteenth century. in one of the central provinces (cm.) Russia. The work is written in the travel genre. Main character poem, Pavel Ivanovich travels around the province in order to purchase the so-called “ dead souls", that is, serfs ( cm., ), who recently died, but until the new revision are listed as living. Chichikov needs “dead souls” in order to pawn them and, having received a significant amount of money and land, get rich. Chichikov's travels give the author the opportunity to depict a wide panorama Russian life, show the whole gallery satirical images landowners and officials ( cm.). In accordance with the genre, the poem, in addition to the main line, also includes lyrical digressions. The most famous of them is dedicated to Russia, which the author compares with threesome1, flying somewhere into the distance, forward: Eh, three! bird three, who invented you?
The poem "Dead Souls" remained unfinished. Gogol failed to complete the second volume, where it was supposed to bring goodies, show the possibility of correction social evil preaching moral principles.
The heroes of the book, satirically depicted by Gogol, were perceived by the reader as types of human characters, embodying such vices as stupidity, stinginess, rudeness, deceit, and boasting. It is they, and not the dead peasants, who are ultimately perceived as “ dead souls”, that is, as people “dead in spirit”.
The poem “Dead Souls” was enthusiastically received by Gogol’s contemporaries and still remains among the favorite works of Russian readers. It is regularly included in school ( cm.) programs for literature of the 19th century V.
The poem has been repeatedly illustrated, dramatized and filmed. The best illustrators“Dead Souls” were artists A.A. Agin and P.M. Boklevsky. One of the best dramatizations of the poem was made M.A. Bulgakov For Moscow Art Theater in 1932
The surnames of the main characters of the book began to be perceived as common nouns. Each of them can be used as a disapproving characteristic of a person. This is realPlyushkin can be said about a painfully stingy person; In a box they can call a mentally limited woman, a hoarder, completely immersed in the household; Sobakevich - an impolite, rude person with a strong appetite and clumsiness bear; Nozdrev - a drunkard and a brawler; Chichikov- entrepreneur-swindler.
From last name Manilov the concept was formed manilovism- that is, a dreamy and inactive attitude towards the environment.
Some phrases of the poem became popular. For example: And what Russian doesn’t like driving fast?!; A lady who is pleasant in every way; Historical man(about constantly falling into different stories); Rus', where are you going? give me the answer. Doesn't answer.
Portrait of N.V. Gogol. Artist F. Moller. 1841:
Chichikov. From the album “Types from Dead Souls.” Artist A.M. Boklevsky. 1895:
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Still from the TV movie M.A. Schweitzer "Dead Souls". Plyushkin - I. Smoktunovsky:
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Sobakevich. From the album “Types from Dead Souls.” Artist A.M. Boklevsky. 1895:
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Manilov. From the album “Types from Dead Souls.” Artist A.M. Boklevsky. 1895:
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Russia. Large linguistic and cultural dictionary. - M.: State Institute of Russian Language named after. A.S. Pushkin. AST-Press. T.N. Chernyavskaya, K.S. Miloslavskaya, E.G. Rostova, O.E. Frolova, V.I. Borisenko, Yu.A. Vyunov, V.P. Chudnov. 2007 .
See what "DEAD SOULS" are in other dictionaries:
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dead souls- noun, number of synonyms: 1 dead souls (1) ASIS Dictionary of Synonyms. V.N. Trishin. 2013… Dictionary of synonyms
"Dead Souls"- DEAD SOULS is the title of the poem by N.V. Gogol (1st volume published in 1842). Before Gogol, this expression was not used and the writer’s contemporaries were struck by it as strange, contradictory, and even unlawful. For the author of the poem, it literally means... ... Russian humanitarian encyclopedic dictionary
Dead souls- 1. Book. or publ. People fictitiously registered where l. F 1, 179. 2. Jarg. Arm. Joking. iron. Civilian soldiers (musicians, artists, athletes) who are employed in military positions and carry out special assignments from their superiors. Cor... Large dictionary of Russian sayings
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