Dead Souls

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DEAD SOULS
By Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (Trans. by D. J. Hogarth)

Etext prepared by John Bickers, jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz.

DEAD SOULS

BY

NIKOLAI VASILIEVICH GOGOL

Translated By
D. J. Hogarth

Introduction By
John Cournos

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, born at Sorochintsky,
Russia, on 31st March 1809. Obtained government
post at St. Petersburg and later an appointment
at the university. Lived in Rome from 1836 to
1848. Died on 21st February 1852.

PREPARER'S NOTE

The book this was typed from contains a complete Part I, and a
partial Part II, as it seems only part of Part II survived the
adventures described in the introduction. Where the text notes
that pages are missing from the "original", this refers to the
Russian original, not the translation.

All the foreign words were italicised in the original, a style
not preserved here. Accents and diphthongs have also been left
out.

INTRODUCTION

Dead Souls, first published in 1842, is the great prose classic of
Russia. That amazing institution, "the Russian novel," not only began
its career with this unfinished masterpiece by Nikolai Vasil'evich
Gogol, but practically all the Russian masterpieces that have come
since have grown out of it, like the limbs of a single tree.
Dostoieffsky goes so far as to bestow this tribute upon an earlier
work by the same author, a short story entitled The Cloak; this idea
has been wittily expressed by another compatriot, who says: "We have
all issued out of Gogol's Cloak."

Dead Souls, which bears the word "Poem" upon the title page of the
original, has been generally compared to Don Quixote and to the
Pickwick Papers, while E. M. Vogue places its author somewhere
between Cervantes and Le Sage. However considerable the influences of
Cervantes and Dickens may have been--the first in the matter of
structure, the other in background, humour, and detail of
characterisation--the predominating and distinguishing quality of the
work is undeniably something foreign to both and quite peculiar to
itself; something which, for want of a better term, might be called
the quality of the Russian soul. The English reader familiar with the
works of Dostoieffsky, Turgenev, and Tolstoi, need hardly be told what
this implies; it might be defined in the words of the French critic
just named as "a tendency to pity." One might indeed go further and
say that it implies a certain tolerance of one's characters even
though they be, in the conventional sense, knaves, products, as the
case might be, of conditions or circumstance, which after all is the
thing to be criticised and not the man. But pity and tolerance are
rare in satire, even in clash with it, producing in the result a deep
sense of tragic humour. It is this that makes of Dead Souls a unique
work, peculiarly Gogolian, peculiarly Russian, and distinct from its
author's Spanish and English masters.

Still more profound are the contradictions to be seen in the author's
personal character; and unfortunately they prevented him from
completing his work. The trouble is that he made his art out of life,
and when in his final years he carried his struggle, as Tolstoi did
later, back into life, he repented of all he had written, and in the
frenzy of a wakeful night burned all his manuscripts, including the
second part of Dead Souls, only fragments of which were saved. There
was yet a third part to be written. Indeed, the second part had been
written and burned twice. Accounts differ as to why he had burned it
finally. Religious remorse, fury at adverse criticism, and despair at
not reaching ideal perfection are among the reasons given. Again it is
said that he had destroyed the manuscript with the others
inadvertently.

The poet Pushkin, who said of Gogol that "behind his laughter you feel
the unseen tears," was his chief friend and inspirer. It was he who
suggested the plot of Dead Souls as well as the plot of the earlier
work The Revisor, which is almost the only comedy in Russian. The
importance of both is their introduction of the social element in
Russian literature, as Prince Kropotkin points out. Both hold up the
mirror to Russian officialdom and the effects it has produced on the
national character. The plot of Dead Souls is simple enough, and is
said to have been suggested by an actual episode.

It was the day of serfdom in Russia, and a man's standing was often
judged by the numbers of "souls" he possessed. There was a periodical
census of serfs, say once every ten or twenty years. This being the
case, an owner had to pay a tax on every "soul" registered at the last
census, though some of the serfs might have died in the meantime.
Nevertheless, the system had its material advantages, inasmuch as an
owner might borrow money from a bank on the "dead souls" no less than
on the living ones. The plan of Chichikov, Gogol's hero-villain, was
therefore to make a journey through Russia and buy up the "dead
souls," at reduced rates of course, saving their owners the government
tax, and acquiring for himself a list of fictitious serfs, which he
meant to mortgage to a bank for a considerable sum. With this money he
would buy an estate and some real life serfs, and make the beginning
of a fortune.

Obviously, this plot, which is really no plot at all but merely a ruse
to enable Chichikov to go across Russia in a troika, with Selifan
the coachman as a sort of Russian Sancho Panza, gives Gogol a
magnificent opportunity to reveal his genius as a painter of Russian
panorama, peopled with characteristic native types commonplace enough
but drawn in comic relief. "The comic," explained the author yet at
the beginning of his career, "is hidden everywhere, only living in the
midst of it we are not conscious of it; but if the artist brings it
into his art, on the stage say, we shall roll about with laughter and
only wonder we did not notice it before." But the comic in Dead
Souls is merely external. Let us see how Pushkin, who loved to laugh,
regarded the work. As Gogol read it aloud to him from the manuscript
the poet grew more and more gloomy and at last cried out: "God! What a
sad country Russia is!" And later he said of it: "Gogol invents
nothing; it is the simple truth, the terrible truth."

The work on one hand was received as nothing less than an exposure of
all Russia--what would foreigners think of it? The liberal elements,
however, the critical Belinsky among them, welcomed it as a
revelation, as an omen of a freer future. Gogol, who had meant to do a
service to Russia and not to heap ridicule upon her, took the
criticisms of the Slavophiles to heart; and he palliated his critics
by promising to bring about in the succeeding parts of his novel the
redemption of Chichikov and the other "knaves and blockheads." But the
"Westerner" Belinsky and others of the liberal camp were mistrustful.
It was about this time (1847) that Gogol published his Correspondence
with Friends, and aroused a literary controversy that is alive to
this day. Tolstoi is to be found among his apologists.

Opinions as to the actual significance of Gogol's masterpiece differ.
Some consider the author a realist who has drawn with meticulous
detail a picture of Russia; others, Merejkovsky among them, see in him
a great symbolist; the very title Dead Souls is taken to describe
the living of Russia as well as its dead. Chichikov himself is now
generally regarded as a universal character. We find an American
professor, William Lyon Phelps[1], of Yale, holding the opinion that
"no one can travel far in America without meeting scores of
Chichikovs; indeed, he is an accurate portrait of the American
promoter, of the successful commercial traveller whose success depends
entirely not on the real value and usefulness of his stock-in-trade,
but on his knowledge of human nature and of the persuasive power of
his tongue." This is also the opinion held by Prince Kropotkin[2], who
says: "Chichikov may buy dead souls, or railway shares, or he may
collect funds for some charitable institution, or look for a position
in a bank, but he is an immortal international type; we meet him
everywhere; he is of all lands and of all times; he but takes
different forms to suit the requirements of nationality and time."

[1] Essays on Russian Novelists. Macmillan.

[2] Ideals and Realities in Russian Literature. Duckworth and Co.

Again, the work bears an interesting relation to Gogol himself. A
romantic, writing of realities, he was appalled at the commonplaces of
life, at finding no outlet for his love of colour derived from his
Cossack ancestry. He realised that he had drawn a host of "heroes,"
"one more commonplace than another, that there was not a single
palliating circumstance, that there was not a single place where the
reader might find pause to rest and to console himself, and that when
he had finished the book it was as though he had walked out of an
oppressive cellar into the open air." He felt perhaps inward need to
redeem Chichikov; in Merejkovsky's opinion he really wanted to save
his own soul, but had succeeded only in losing it. His last years were
spent morbidly; he suffered torments and ran from place to place like
one hunted; but really always running from himself. Rome was his
favourite refuge, and he returned to it again and again. In 1848, he
made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but he could find no peace for his
soul. Something of this mood had reflected itself even much earlier in
the Memoirs of a Madman: "Oh, little mother, save your poor son!
Look how they are tormenting him. . . . There's no place for him on
earth! He's being driven! . . . Oh, little mother, take pity on thy
poor child."

All the contradictions of Gogol's character are not to be disposed of
in a brief essay. Such a strange combination of the tragic and the
comic was truly seldom seen in one man. He, for one, realised that "it
is dangerous to jest with laughter." "Everything that I laughed at
became sad." "And terrible," adds Merejkovsky. But earlier his humour
was lighter, less tinged with the tragic; in those days Pushkin never
failed to be amused by what Gogol had brought to read to him. Even
Revizor (1835), with its tragic undercurrent, was a trifle compared
to Dead Souls, so that one is not astonished to hear that not only
did the Tsar, Nicholas I, give permission to have it acted, in spite
of its being a criticism of official rottenness, but laughed
uproariously, and led the applause. Moreover, he gave Gogol a grant of
money, and asked that its source should not be revealed to the author
lest "he might feel obliged to write from the official point of view."

Gogol was born at Sorotchinetz, Little Russia, in March 1809. He left
college at nineteen and went to St. Petersburg, where he secured a
position as copying clerk in a government department. He did not keep
his position long, yet long enough to store away in his mind a number
of bureaucratic types which proved useful later. He quite suddenly
started for America with money given to him by his mother for another
purpose, but when he got as far as Lubeck he turned back. He then
wanted to become an actor, but his voice proved not strong enough.
Later he wrote a poem which was unkindly received. As the copies
remained unsold, he gathered them all up at the various shops and
burned them in his room.

His next effort, Evenings at the Farm of Dikanka (1831) was more
successful. It was a series of gay and colourful pictures of Ukraine,
the land he knew and loved, and if he is occasionally a little over
romantic here and there, he also achieves some beautifully lyrical
passages. Then came another even finer series called Mirgorod, which
won the admiration of Pushkin. Next he planned a "History of Little
Russia" and a "History of the Middle Ages," this last work to be in
eight or nine volumes. The result of all this study was a beautiful
and short Homeric epic in prose, called Taras Bulba. His appointment
to a professorship in history was a ridiculous episode in his life.
After a brilliant first lecture, in which he had evidently said all he
had to say, he settled to a life of boredom for himself and his
pupils. When he resigned he said joyously: "I am once more a free
Cossack." Between 1834 and 1835 he produced a new series of stories,
including his famous Cloak, which may be regarded as the legitimate
beginning of the Russian novel.

Gogol knew little about women, who played an equally minor role in his
life and in his books. This may be partly because his personal
appearance was not prepossessing. He is described by a contemporary as
"a little man with legs too short for his body. He walked crookedly;
he was clumsy, ill-dressed, and rather ridiculous-looking, with his
long lock of hair flapping on his forehead, and his large prominent
nose."

From 1835 Gogol spent almost his entire time abroad; some strange
unrest--possibly his Cossack blood--possessed him like a demon, and he
never stopped anywhere very long. After his pilgrimage in 1848 to
Jerusalem, he returned to Moscow, his entire possessions in a little
bag; these consisted of pamphlets, critiques, and newspaper articles
mostly inimical to himself. He wandered about with these from house to
house. Everything he had of value he gave away to the poor. He ceased
work entirely. According to all accounts he spent his last days in
praying and fasting. Visions came to him. His death, which came in
1852, was extremely fantastic. His last words, uttered in a loud
frenzy, were: "A ladder! Quick, a ladder!" This call for a ladder--"a
spiritual ladder," in the words of Merejkovsky--had been made on an
earlier occasion by a certain Russian saint, who used almost the same
language. "I shall laugh my bitter laugh"[3] was the inscription
placed on Gogol's grave.

JOHN COURNOS

[3] This is generally referred to in the Russian criticisms of Gogol
as a quotation from Jeremiah. It appears upon investigation,
however, that it actually occurs only in the Slavonic version from
the Greek, and not in the Russian translation made direct from the
Hebrew.

Evenings on the Farm near the Dikanka, 1829-31; Mirgorod, 1831-33;
Taras Bulba, 1834; Arabesques (includes tales, The Portrait and A
Madman's Diary), 1831-35; The Cloak, 1835; The Revizor (The Inspector-
General), 1836; Dead Souls, 1842; Correspondence with Friends, 1847.

ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS: Cossack Tales (The Night of Christmas Eve,
Tarass Boolba), trans. by G. Tolstoy, 1860; St. John's Eve and Other
Stories, trans. by Isabel F. Hapgood, New York, Crowell, 1886; Taras
Bulba: Also St. John's Eve and Other Stories, London, Vizetelly, 1887;
Taras Bulba, trans. by B. C. Baskerville, London, Scott, 1907; The
Inspector: a Comedy, Calcutta, 1890; The Inspector-General, trans. by
A. A. Sykes, London, Scott, 1892; Revizor, trans. for the Yale
Dramatic Association by Max S. Mandell, New Haven, Conn., 1908; Home
Life in Russia (adaptation of Dead Souls), London, Hurst, 1854;
Tchitchikoff's Journey's; or Dead Souls, trans. by Isabel F. Hapgood,
New York, Crowell, 1886; Dead Souls, London, Vizetelly, 1887; Dead
Souls, London, Maxwell 1887; Meditations on the Divine Liturgy, trans.
by L. Alexeieff, London, A. R. Mowbray and Co., 1913.

LIVES, etc.: (Russian) Kotlyarevsky (N. A.), 1903; Shenrok (V. I.),
Materials for a Biography, 1892; (French) Leger (L.), Nicholas Gogol,
1914.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE
TO THE FIRST PORTION OF THIS WORK

Second Edition published in 1846

From the Author to the Reader

Reader, whosoever or wheresoever you be, and whatsoever be your
station--whether that of a member of the higher ranks of society or
that of a member of the plainer walks of life--I beg of you, if God
shall have given you any skill in letters, and my book shall fall into
your hands, to extend to me your assistance.

For in the book which lies before you, and which, probably, you have
read in its first edition, there is portrayed a man who is a type
taken from our Russian Empire. This man travels about the Russian land
and meets with folk of every condition--from the nobly-born to the
humble toiler. Him I have taken as a type to show forth the vices and
the failings, rather than the merits and the virtues, of the
commonplace Russian individual; and the characters which revolve
around him have also been selected for the purpose of demonstrating
our national weaknesses and shortcomings. As for men and women of the
better sort, I propose to portray them in subsequent volumes. Probably
much of what I have described is improbable and does not happen as
things customarily happen in Russia; and the reason for that is that
for me to learn all that I have wished to do has been impossible, in
that human life is not sufficiently long to become acquainted with
even a hundredth part of what takes place within the borders of the
Russian Empire. Also, carelessness, inexperience, and lack of time
have led to my perpetrating numerous errors and inaccuracies of
detail; with the result that in every line of the book there is
something which calls for correction. For these reasons I beg of you,
my reader, to act also as my corrector. Do not despise the task, for,
however superior be your education, and however lofty your station,
and however insignificant, in your eyes, my book, and however trifling
the apparent labour of correcting and commenting upon that book, I
implore you to do as I have said. And you too, O reader of lowly
education and simple status, I beseech you not to look upon yourself
as too ignorant to be able in some fashion, however small, to help me.
Every man who has lived in the world and mixed with his fellow men
will have remarked something which has remained hidden from the eyes
of others; and therefore I beg of you not to deprive me of your
comments, seeing that it cannot be that, should you read my book with
attention, you will have NOTHING to say at some point therein.

For example, how excellent it would be if some reader who is
sufficiently rich in experience and the knowledge of life to be
acquainted with the sort of characters which I have described herein
would annotate in detail the book, without missing a single page, and
undertake to read it precisely as though, laying pen and paper before
him, he were first to peruse a few pages of the work, and then to
recall his own life, and the lives of folk with whom he has come in
contact, and everything which he has seen with his own eyes or has
heard of from others, and to proceed to annotate, in so far as may
tally with his own experience or otherwise, what is set forth in the
book, and to jot down the whole exactly as it stands pictured to his
memory, and, lastly, to send me the jottings as they may issue from
his pen, and to continue doing so until he has covered the entire
work! Yes, he would indeed do me a vital service! Of style or beauty
of expression he would need to take no account, for the value of a
book lies in its truth and its actuality rather than in its wording.
Nor would he need to consider my feelings if at any point he should
feel minded to blame or to upbraid me, or to demonstrate the harm
rather than the good which has been done through any lack of thought
or verisimilitude of which I have been guilty. In short, for anything
and for everything in the way of criticism I should be thankful.

Also, it would be an excellent thing if some reader in the higher
walks of life, some person who stands remote, both by life and by
education, from the circle of folk which I have pictured in my book,
but who knows the life of the circle in which he himself revolves,
would undertake to read my work in similar fashion, and methodically
to recall to his mind any members of superior social classes whom he
has met, and carefully to observe whether there exists any resemblance
between one such class and another, and whether, at times, there may
not be repeated in a higher sphere what is done in a lower, and
likewise to note any additional fact in the same connection which may
occur to him (that is to say, any fact pertaining to the higher ranks
of society which would seem to confirm or to disprove his
conclusions), and, lastly, to record that fact as it may have occurred
within his own experience, while giving full details of persons (of
individual manners, tendencies, and customs) and also of inanimate
surroundings (of dress, furniture, fittings of houses, and so forth).
For I need knowledge of the classes in question, which are the flower
of our people. In fact, this very reason--the reason that I do not yet
know Russian life in all its aspects, and in the degree to which it is
necessary for me to know it in order to become a successful author--is
what has, until now, prevented me from publishing any subsequent
volumes of this story.

Again, it would be an excellent thing if some one who is endowed with
the faculty of imagining and vividly picturing to himself the various
situations wherein a character may be placed, and of mentally
following up a character's career in one field and another--by this I
mean some one who possesses the power of entering into and developing
the ideas of the author whose work he may be reading--would scan each
character herein portrayed, and tell me how each character ought to
have acted at a given juncture, and what, to judge from the beginnings
of each character, ought to have become of that character later, and
what new circumstances might be devised in connection therewith, and
what new details might advantageously be added to those already
described. Honestly can I say that to consider these points against
the time when a new edition of my book may be published in a different
and a better form would give me the greatest possible pleasure.

One thing in particular would I ask of any reader who may be willing
to give me the benefit of his advice. That is to say, I would beg of
him to suppose, while recording his remarks, that it is for the
benefit of a man in no way his equal in education, or similar to him
in tastes and ideas, or capable of apprehending criticisms without
full explanation appended, that he is doing so. Rather would I ask
such a reader to suppose that before him there stands a man of
incomparably inferior enlightenment and schooling--a rude country
bumpkin whose life, throughout, has been passed in retirement--a
bumpkin to whom it is necessary to explain each circumstance in
detail, while never forgetting to be as simple of speech as though he
were a child, and at every step there were a danger of employing terms
beyond his understanding. Should these precautions be kept constantly
in view by any reader undertaking to annotate my book, that reader's
remarks will exceed in weight and interest even his own expectations,
and will bring me very real advantage.

Thus, provided that my earnest request be heeded by my readers, and
that among them there be found a few kind spirits to do as I desire,
the following is the manner in which I would request them to transmit
their notes for my consideration. Inscribing the package with my name,
let them then enclose that package in a second one addressed either to
the Rector of the University of St. Petersburg or to Professor
Shevirev of the University of Moscow, according as the one or the
other of those two cities may be the nearer to the sender.

Lastly, while thanking all journalists and litterateurs for their
previously published criticisms of my book--criticisms which, in spite
of a spice of that intemperance and prejudice which is common to all
humanity, have proved of the greatest use both to my head and to my
heart--I beg of such writers again to favour me with their reviews.
For in all sincerity I can assure them that whatsoever they may be
pleased to say for my improvement and my instruction will be received
by me with naught but gratitude.

DEAD SOULS

PART I

CHAPTER I

To the door of an inn in the provincial town of N. there drew up a
smart britchka--a light spring-carriage of the sort affected by
bachelors, retired lieutenant-colonels, staff-captains, land-owners
possessed of about a hundred souls, and, in short, all persons who
rank as gentlemen of the intermediate category. In the britchka was
seated such a gentleman--a man who, though not handsome, was not
ill-favoured, not over-fat, and not over-thin. Also, though not
over-elderly, he was not over-young. His arrival produced no stir in
the town, and was accompanied by no particular incident, beyond that a
couple of peasants who happened to be standing at the door of a
dramshop exchanged a few comments with reference to the equipage
rather than to the individual who was seated in it. "Look at that
carriage," one of them said to the other. "Think you it will be going
as far as Moscow?" "I think it will," replied his companion. "But not
as far as Kazan, eh?" "No, not as far as Kazan." With that the
conversation ended. Presently, as the britchka was approaching the
inn, it was met by a young man in a pair of very short, very tight
breeches of white dimity, a quasi-fashionable frockcoat, and a dickey
fastened with a pistol-shaped bronze tie-pin. The young man turned his
head as he passed the britchka and eyed it attentively; after which he
clapped his hand to his cap (which was in danger of being removed by
the wind) and resumed his way. On the vehicle reaching the inn door,
its occupant found standing there to welcome him the polevoi, or
waiter, of the establishment--an individual of such nimble and brisk
movement that even to distinguish the character of his face was
impossible. Running out with a napkin in one hand and his lanky form
clad in a tailcoat, reaching almost to the nape of his neck, he tossed
back his locks, and escorted the gentleman upstairs, along a wooden
gallery, and so to the bedchamber which God had prepared for the
gentleman's reception. The said bedchamber was of quite ordinary
appearance, since the inn belonged to the species to be found in all
provincial towns--the species wherein, for two roubles a day,
travellers may obtain a room swarming with black-beetles, and
communicating by a doorway with the apartment adjoining. True, the
doorway may be blocked up with a wardrobe; yet behind it, in all
probability, there will be standing a silent, motionless neighbour
whose ears are burning to learn every possible detail concerning the
latest arrival. The inn's exterior corresponded with its interior.
Long, and consisting only of two storeys, the building had its lower
half destitute of stucco; with the result that the dark-red bricks,
originally more or less dingy, had grown yet dingier under the
influence of atmospheric changes. As for the upper half of the
building, it was, of course, painted the usual tint of unfading
yellow. Within, on the ground floor, there stood a number of benches
heaped with horse-collars, rope, and sheepskins; while the window-seat
accommodated a sbitentshik[1], cheek by jowl with a samovar[2]--the
latter so closely resembling the former in appearance that, but for
the fact of the samovar possessing a pitch-black lip, the samovar and
the sbitentshik might have been two of a pair.

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