Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was born in the town of Sorochintsy, Mirgorod district, Poltava province. His childhood was spent on the family estate of Vasilievka. My father, a passionate theater fan, wrote poems and plays, then presented them on the amateur stage with the Troshchinskys’ wealthy relatives.
Gogol himself, while studying at the gymnasium (city of Nizhyn), was also interested in theater and participated in productions. Young Gogol even played the role of Mrs. Prostakova in Fonvizin’s “The Minor”; as witnesses said, the spectators laughed until they colicked.
In the "Author's Confession" he described his first experiments in literary creativity. “My first experiments, my first exercises in essays, for which I acquired the skill in Lately stay at school, almost all of them were of a lyrical and serious nature. Neither I myself nor my companions, who also practiced writing with me, thought that I would have to be a comic and satirical writer...”
Already in those years, Gogol knew how to accept criticism: when “The Tverdoslavich Brothers, a Slavic Tale” was considered unsuccessful by his friends, he “did not resist or object. He quite calmly tore his manuscript into small pieces and threw it into the heated oven,” as his classmate wrote. This was the first known burning of his works by Gogol.
His classmates did not notice his talent, and a funny memory of one of them remained: “N. V. Gogol passionately loved drawing and literature, but it would be too funny to think that Gogol would be Gogol.”
Poor health and lack of funds did not prevent Nikolai Vasilyevich from deciding to go to St. Petersburg in search of his destiny (1828).
This is how the modern Swedish writer Kjell Johansson presents his thoughts and feelings in his story “Gogol’s Face”: “I’m only nineteen! I was only nineteen years old when I first breathed the winter air of St. Petersburg. And as a result I got a severe runny nose.
With a high fever and a frostbitten nose, I lay in bed in the apartment we rented from we rented with Danilevsky...
In the end, I stood up, staggered, crawled out into the street and began to wander. Where am I?
I'm standing at Pushkin's house! It must be warm and cozy there inside. Pushkin is sitting there... I'm calling. The footman who opened the door looks me up and down.
Pushkin,” I finally squeeze out, “I need to see Pushkin.” This meeting did not take place. But she was there. Very little time passed, and he met Zhukovsky (in 1830), Pushkin (in 1831) ... They meet, and this is what Pushkin wrote about his young friend: “Our readers, of course, remember the impression made on us by the appearance of “ Evenings on the farm": everyone was delighted with this lively description of the singing and dancing tribe, these fresh pictures of Little Russian nature, this gaiety, simple-minded and at the same time crafty. How amazed we were at the Russian book, which made us laugh, we, who had not laughed since the times. Fonvizina!
And this is how Pushkin’s conversation with Gogol seems to be to a modern writer: “Nikolai, I gave you the plot of The Inspector General, here’s another one for you. One rogue travels around Russia and, in order to get rich, buys up dead souls, serfs who have died but have not yet been included in the revision tale. Do you understand? Good idea, A? Here you can depict all of Russia, whatever you want!
You gave me so much, Alexander Sergeevich!.. Today you gave me “ Dead Souls"...You say that you yourself
It is impossible to tell this story while there is censorship. Why do you think that I can do this?”
Gogol begins his main work. He writes it in Italy, but is constantly connected with his homeland. The news comes from there. Here is an article by V. G. Belinsky in the Telescope magazine, which says that Gogol said a new word about literature. How everything in his stories is “simple, ordinary, natural and true and, at the same time, how original and new!” Gogol is happy But a few hours after reading the article, terrible news comes: Pushkin died...
So, Pushkin passed away. “My loss,” Gogol wrote, “is greater than anyone else’s. I didn’t undertake anything, I didn’t write anything without his advice... The great one was gone.”
Meanwhile, work on “ Dead souls"was walking. Of course, it was not a complete holiday. As in life, in artistic creativity difficulties, failures, disappointments are inevitable. “To achieve success, you must experience failure. ...But if you are strong enough, you can easily withstand all failures, moreover, you enjoy them, this continuous fiasco in front of yourself. The one who walks will master the road!
I was going to create something that no one had created before. “Dead Souls” will become the great work that Pushkin bequeathed to me to write.
Like Dante's "Divine Comedy", it will consist of three parts: "Hell", "Purgatory" and "Paradise". Already the first part will highlight the whole of Russia, expose all the evil. I knew the book would cause outrage and protests. Such is my fate - to be at war with my compatriots. But when the second part comes out, the protests will fall silent, and with the completion of the third part, I will be recognized as a spiritual leader. For here the secret intention of this work will be revealed. Works about people without souls and death human souls. Works about the art of poetry. And the idea is this: the path of people to salvation. To life! Risen! Risen!
After three years of living abroad (Germany, Switzerland, France (Paris), Italy (Naples, Rome), he came to Moscow and read the first six chapters of the first volume to his friends. Dead souls" Gogol summoned his mother to Moscow, settled his financial affairs... In September 1839, he was again in Rome and wrote from there to S. T. Aksakov: “My work is great, my feat is saving. I am now dead to everything petty...” And there are already signs in his condition of the illness that darkened the end of his life.
In May 1842, Dead Souls came out of print. The success of the book was extraordinary. Gogol goes abroad again, tries to get treatment, spends the winter in warmer climes. Six nomadic years are spent abroad.
In 1845, he burned the written chapters of the second volume of Dead Souls, and in 1846 he prepared the book Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends.
In the “Author's Confession” Gogol states: “...it’s not my business to teach with a sermon...”, but this is exactly what we see on the pages of “Selected Passages”, which long years were not published in our country, but now that they have been published without abbreviations and deletions, they have again given rise to the most irreconcilable disputes.
After a trip to holy places in Palestine, Gogol returned to Russia in 1848. He visited the house in Vasilyevka twice, and one winter he escaped from the cold in Odessa. I wrote a lot, suffered from lack of money, got sick, received treatment...
The second volume of Dead Souls was born slowly. On the night of February 12, 1852, the author burned all the newly written chapters of his great poem.
After the destruction of his creations, Gogol became greatly weakened.
He no longer left his room; he did not want to see anyone. I almost stopped eating, only occasionally drinking a sip or two of water. All day long he sat motionless in his chair, staring blankly at one point.
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol worked on the main work of his life, the poem “Dead Souls,” for seventeen years, from October 1835 to February 1852.
An interesting and unusual plot was offered to a promising to a young writer Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. Pushkin himself took the plot from real life during his stay in exile in Chisinau.
He was amazed amazing story that for a number of years in one of the towns on the Dniester, according to official data, no one died. The solution turned out to be simple: fugitive peasants were hiding under the names of the dead.
Story writing Dead The shower is interesting because in 1831 Pushkin told this story to Gogol, slightly modifying it, and in 1835 he received news from Nikolai Vasilyevich that the writer had begun writing a long and very funny novel based on the plot given to him. In the new plot, the main character is an enterprising figure who buys dead peasants from landowners, who are still alive in revision tales, and pawns their “souls” in the Guardian Council to obtain a loan.
Work on the future brilliant novel began in St. Petersburg, but mainly the history of writing Dead Souls developed abroad, where Gogol went in the summer of 1836. Before leaving, he read several chapters to his inspiration, Alexander Pushkin, who a few months later was mortally wounded in a duel. After such a tragic event, Gogol was simply obliged to complete the work he had begun, thereby paying tribute to the memory of the deceased poet.
In 1841, the six-year work of writing the first volume of Dead Souls was completed. But in Moscow, problems arose with passing censorship, and then the manuscript, with the help famous critic Belinsky was transported to St. Petersburg.
In the capital, on March 9, 1842, the censor A. Nikitenko finally signed the censorship permit, and freshly printed copies of the book called “The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls” were released on May 21. The original title was changed at the request of the censorship committee.
The history of writing Dead Souls is interesting because in 1831 Pushkin told this story to Gogol, slightly modifying it, and in 1835 he received news from Nikolai Vasilyevich that the writer had already begun writing it.
The last decade of Nikolai Gogol's work
Last decade The writer's life was devoted to writing the second volume of the poem "Dead Souls", and in the future there should have been a third part (like Dante Alighieri in his poem "The Divine Comedy", which includes three components). In 1845, Gogol considered that the content of the second volume was not elevated and enlightened enough, and in an emotional outburst he burned the manuscript.
It was completed in 1852 new option volumes of the poem, but he suffered the same fate: the great creation was thrown into the fire on the night of February 12. Perhaps the reason was that the writer’s confessor, Matvey Konstantinovsky, who had read the manuscript, spoke unflatteringly about some chapters of the poem. After the archpriest left Moscow, Nikolai Gogol practically stopped eating and destroyed the manuscript.
A few days later, on February 21, 1852, the great Russian writer passed away - he went into eternity following his creation. But part of the second volume still reached posterity thanks to the draft manuscripts preserved after Gogol’s death. A contemporary of Nikolai Gogol and his great admirer, Fyodor Dostoevsky, believed that the brilliant book “Dead Souls” should become a reference book for every enlightened person.
One of the most famous works Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol’s poem “Dead Souls” is considered to be. The author worked meticulously on this work about the adventures of a middle-aged adventurer for 17 long years. The history of the creation of Gogol’s “Dead Souls” is truly interesting. Work on the poem began in 1835. Dead Souls was originally conceived as comic work, but the plot kept getting more complicated. Gogol wanted to display the entire Russian soul with its inherent vices and virtues, and the conceived three-part structure was supposed to refer readers to “ Divine Comedy» Dante.
It is known that the plot of the poem was suggested to Gogol by Pushkin. Alexander Sergeevich briefly outlined the story of an enterprising man who sold dead souls to the board of trustees, for which he received a lot of money. Gogol wrote in his diary: “Pushkin found that such a 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.” By the way, in those days this story was not the only one. Heroes like Chichikov were constantly talked about, so we can say that Gogol reflected reality in his work. Gogol considered Pushkin to be his mentor in matters of writing, so he read the first chapters of the work to him, expecting that the plot would make Pushkin laugh. However great poet was darker than a cloud - Russia was too hopeless.
Creative history Gogol’s “Dead Souls” could have ended at this point, but the writer enthusiastically made edits, trying to remove the painful impression and adding comical moments. Subsequently, Gogol read the work in the Askakov family, the head of which was the famous theater critic and public figure. The poem was highly appreciated. Zhukovsky was also familiar with the work, and Gogol made changes several times in accordance with Vasily Andreevich’s suggestions. At the end of 1836, Gogol wrote to Zhukovsky: “I redid everything I started again, thought over the entire plan and now I am writing it calmly, like a chronicle... If I complete this creation the way it needs to be done, then... what a huge, what an original plot! .. All Rus' will appear in it!” Nikolai Vasilyevich tried in every possible way to show all sides of Russian life, and not just the negative, as was the case in the first editions.
Nikolai Vasilyevich wrote the first chapters in Russia. But in 1837 Gogol left for Italy, where he continued to work on the text. The manuscript went through several revisions, many scenes were deleted and redone, and the author had to make concessions in order for the work to be published. Censorship could not allow “The Tale of Captain Kopeikin” to be published, since it satirically depicted the life of the capital: high prices, the arbitrariness of the tsar and the ruling elite, abuse of power. Gogol did not want to remove the story of Captain Kopeikin, so he had to “extinguish” the satirical motives. The author considered this part to be one of the best in the poem, which was easier to redo than to remove altogether.
Who would have thought that the history of the creation of the poem “Dead Souls” is full of intrigue! In 1841, the manuscript was ready for printing, but censorship in last moment changed her mind. Gogol was depressed. In upset feelings, he writes to Belinsky, who agrees to help with the publication of the book. After a while, the decision was made in Gogol’s favor, but he was given a new condition: to change the title from “Dead Souls” to “The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls.” This was done in order to distract potential readers from relevant social problems, focusing on the adventures of the main character.
In the spring of 1842, the poem was published; this event caused fierce controversy in the literary community. Gogol was accused of slander and hatred of Russia, but Belinsky came to the writer’s defense, highly appreciating the work.
Gogol again leaves abroad, where he continues to work on the second volume of Dead Souls. The work was even more difficult. The story of writing the second part is full of mental suffering and personal drama of the writer. By that time, Gogol felt an internal discord that he could not cope with. Reality did not coincide with the Christian ideals on which Nikolai Vasilyevich was raised, and this gap grew larger every day. In the second volume, the author wanted to portray heroes different from the characters in the first part - positive ones. And Chichikov had to undergo a certain rite of purification, taking the true path. Many drafts of the poem were destroyed by order of the author, but some parts were still preserved. Gogol believed that the second volume was completely devoid of life and truth; he doubted himself as an artist, hating the continuation of the poem.
Unfortunately, Gogol did not realize his original plan, but “Dead Souls” rightfully plays its very important role in the history of Russian literature.
Work test
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 on the board of guardians. 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 such a 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 I started again, thought over 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... what a huge, what an 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 that I began, which Pushkin took from me to write, whose thought is his creation and which from now on turned into a sacred testament for me.”
In the fall of 1839, Gogol returned to Russia and read several chapters in Moscow from S.T. Aksakov, whose family he became friends with 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, 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 sides 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 importance 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.
In May 1842, the book went on sale and, according to the recollections of contemporaries, was sold out in great demand. 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.
All topics in the book “Dead Souls” by N.V. Gogol. Summary. Features of the poem. Essays":
Summary poem "Dead Souls": Volume one. Chapter first
Features of the poem “Dead Souls”
The very title of Nikolai Gogol’s famous poem “Dead Souls” already contains the main concept and idea of this work. Judging superficially, the title reveals the content of the scam and Chichikov’s very personality - he was already buying souls dead peasants. But in order to embrace everything philosophical meaning Gogol's ideas, you need to look deeper than the literal interpretation of the title and even what is happening in the poem.
The meaning of the name "Dead Souls"
The title “Dead Souls” contains a much more important and deeper meaning than that expressed by the author in the first volume of the work. It has been said for a long time that Gogol originally planned to write this poem by analogy with Dante’s famous and immortal “Divine Comedy”, and as you know, it consisted of three parts - “Hell”, “Purgatory” and “Paradise”. It was to them that the three volumes of Gogol’s poem should have corresponded.
In the first volume of his most famous poem, the author intended to show the hell of Russian reality, the terrifying and truly terrifying truth about life of that time, and in the second and third volumes - the rise of spiritual culture and life in Russia. To some extent, the title of the work is a symbol of life county town N., and the city itself is a symbol of the whole of Russia, and thus the author indicates that its Mother country is in a terrible state, and the saddest and most terrible thing is that this is due to the fact that the souls of people are gradually growing cold, hardening and dying.
The history of the creation of Dead Souls
Nikolai Gogol began writing the poem “Dead Souls” in 1835 and continued to work on it until the end of his life. At the very beginning, the writer most likely singled out for himself the funny side of the novel and created the plot of Dead Souls, both for long piece. There is an opinion that Gogol borrowed the main idea of the poem from A.S. Pushkin, since it was this poet who was first heard real story about “dead souls” in the city of Bendery. Gogol worked on the novel not only in his homeland, but also in Switzerland, Italy and France. The first volume of “Dead Souls” was completed in 1842, and in May it was already published under the title “The Adventures of Chichikov or Dead Souls.”
Subsequently, while working on the novel, Gogol’s original plan expanded significantly, and it was then that the analogy with the three parts of The Divine Comedy appeared. Gogol intended that his heroes go through peculiar circles of hell and purgatory, so that at the end of the poem they would rise spiritually and be reborn. The author never managed to realize his idea; only the first part of the poem was written in full. It is known that Gogol began work on the second volume of the poem in 1840, and by 1845 he already had several options for continuing the poem ready. Unfortunately, it was this year that the author independently destroyed the second volume of the work; he irrevocably burned the second part of “Dead Souls”, being dissatisfied with what he had written. The exact reason for this act of the writer is still unknown. There are draft manuscripts of four chapters of the second volume, which were discovered after Gogol's papers were opened.
Thus, it becomes clear that the central category and at the same time the main idea of Gogol’s poem is the soul, the presence of which makes a person complete and real. This is precisely the main theme of the work, and Gogol tries to point out the value of the soul using the example of soulless and callous heroes who represent a special social layer Russia. In his immortal and brilliant work, Gogol simultaneously raises the topic of the crisis in Russia and shows what this is directly related to. The author talks about the fact that the soul is the nature of man, without which there is no meaning in life, without which life becomes dead, and that it is thanks to it that salvation can be found.