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Dead Souls (Everyman's Library, #280)

by Nikolai Gogol, Richard Pevear (Translator), Larissa Volokhonsky (Translator)

3.93 · rating details · 7,789 ratings · 541 reviews

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls is the great comic masterpiece of Russian literature–a satirical and splendidly exaggerated epic of life in the benighted provinces.

Gogol hoped to show the world “the untold riches of the Russian soul” in this 1842 novel, which he populated with a Dickensian swarm of characters: rogues and scoundrels, landowners and ...more

Hardcover, 488 pages

Published September 21st 2004 by Everyman's Library (first published 1842)

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Mar 23, 2011

Stephen rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: classics, easton-press, audiobook, literature, 1800s, classics-asian, humor-and-satire

2.0 stars. As much as I hate to say this about a book that is both a classic of Russian literature and considered one of the best satires ever written, THIS BOOK BORED ME TO DEATH!!! Okay, not quite "coffin ready" dead, but certainly bored to the point of suffering intermittent bouts of narcolepsy. I can certainly say without hyperbole that this is not a book I would recommend as an “enjoyable” experience, no matter how much Vodka you have standing by.

My assessment of the b...more2.0 stars. As much as I hate to say this about a book that is both a classic of Russian literature and considered one of the best satires ever written, THIS BOOK BORED ME TO DEATH!!! Okay, not quite "coffin ready" dead, but certainly bored to the point of suffering intermittent bouts of narcolepsy. I can certainly say without hyperbole that this is not a book I would recommend as an “enjoyable” experience, no matter how much Vodka you have standing by.

My assessment of the book arises DESPITE the fact that the novel is very well written and gives an excellent description of “old” Russia (cold, dreary and depressing but otherwise a great place to visit). The historical detail is both precise and very broad as Gogol includes in the narrative detailed discussions of many aspects of Russian life from the economy to social life to politics to the very unique mindset of the Russian people. Thus, as a historical overview of a not very well known period of Russian history the novel is very good.

In addition, the basic plot itself (or at least the idea of the plot) was very interesting. The “dead souls” of the title refers to the measuring unit (i.e., souls) used by the Russian census takers to count the numbers of serfs that landowners owned. Serfs, while not exactly the same as slaves, are similar enough for purposes of this review as they were considered property and had very few rights. The taxes that Russian landowners paid during this time were based on the number of serfs they owned. Anyway, the main character of the novel, Pavel Ivanovitch Chichikov, devises a plan to “purchase” from various landowners those serfs who have died since the last census but are still listed as alive for purposes of the taxes paid (at least until the next census which is only done every 5 to 10 years). Why he wants to do this, I will not spoil but it is very clever and I thought an excellent basis for a good story.

So we have a book that is very well written, full of superb historical detail and an original and potentially interesting plot. So what was the problem? Well, first off...NO VODKA!! No, in all seriousness, I found the book to be simply way too dull and plodding. The satirical elements were UNDERWHELMING (and that is being kind) and the story was just incredibly slow to unfold. I kept trying to give this the benefit of the doubt, it is a classic after all, but it was just determined to remian not very interesting or enjoyable. The various characters Chichikov encounters were intended to portray various types of Russians and I guess I was not familiar enough with the period to understand the nuances (and thus the intended caricature) that Gogal was trying to highlight. Therefore, the various encounters just sort of bled into one another and left me anxious for the end.

In sum, this was a book that I could appreciate on many levels (the quality of the writing, the historical detail, the cleverness of the plot) and there were certainly moments of the story that I truly liked. However, at the end of the day, from the standpoint of my enjoyment of the novel as literature, I can not rate it higher than two stars. (less)

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Jan 28, 2009

Erik Simon rated it

· review of another edition

I had long resisted reading this book because Gogol didn't finish it. But Virgil didn't finish the Aeneid, which I think ends perfectly, and Bolano didn't finish 2666, which is plenty complete for me, so I figured I'd give this thing a whirl. Besides, there's a translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky, and their translations are sublime, so it was all the more reason to read it.

My instincts were pretty right. For what is there, it is marvelous, but I sure miss what Gogol didn't have ...more

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Jan 07, 2008

Vanja Antonijevic rated it

· review of another edition

Gogol's "Dead Souls" is a true masterpiece. It is the only Russian novel that I have read that brings me as much deep satisfaction as Dostoevsky’s great novels. The novel is satirical, intellectual, political, and also entertaining.

The intriguing plot is sketched as follows:

A somewhat mysterious middle class man, named Chichikov, comes to a town and attempts to build prestige by impressing minor officials of the place. The man spends beyond his means in order t...more

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Oct 16, 2007

Simon A. Smith rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: novels-before-1980

I didn't enjoy this novel nearly as much as I enjoyed Gogol's short stories. A couple of things...

1. Several times throughout, the text breaks off and a line is inserted that reads something like, "and here there are many pages missing..." and then the story picks back up in the middle of nowhere again. I didn't know that going in and it was a little confusing.

2. The first 100 pages are very funny and highly engrossing. Starting on about 150 there begins the ...more

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Mar 03, 2011

Rick rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Gogol’s masterpiece was never finished. Volume 1 is complete but Volume 2 has missing pages and incomplete sentences and then doesn’t so much finish as just stops. (Gogol announced it as a trilogy, completed the second volume but destroyed the manuscript, and scholars rescued the existing second volume from his papers. Some insist it was never really meant to be more than one volume, though the existence of much of a second volume draft—over 130 printed pages—suggests a rather elaborate red herr...moreGogol’s masterpiece was never finished. Volume 1 is complete but Volume 2 has missing pages and incomplete sentences and then doesn’t so much finish as just stops. (Gogol announced it as a trilogy, completed the second volume but destroyed the manuscript, and scholars rescued the existing second volume from his papers. Some insist it was never really meant to be more than one volume, though the existence of much of a second volume draft—over 130 printed pages—suggests a rather elaborate red herring were that to be the truth.)

The novel’s protagonist is a low level member of the nobility named Chichikov. Educated and interested in being rich, but not necessarily becoming so in a strictly legal way, he develops a scheme where he will invest in the acquisition of serfs, or souls, as they are referred to when gauging a landowner’s wealth: he has 300 souls or he has an estate of 1000 souls. Souls are male serfs and they are counted during a census that occurs irregularly. Chichikov’s scheme involves acquiring dead souls, serfs who have passed on but whose departure is not yet granted official notice by the census. They are, in short, a tax burden and Chichikov assumes landowners will be glad to rid themselves of them, some for free and the more ignorantly canny for a few kopecks. The novel tells of his travels through Russia to acquire the serfs, accompanied by two servants, a coachman and a valet. They serve a role similar to the clowns in Shakespeare, foils for their supposed betters, and kinds of exemplars of the folly and sloth that seems to pervade tsarist society—not to mention attributes not reflected in the servant class, greed, self-importance and entitlement.

Gogol wrote with sly wit and great powers of characterization and description. The novel evokes Russia in all its raw beauty and the vast diversity of people and interests. Like Twain, he could evoke a landscape that puts a longing on the reader to see the places he wrote about. Like Dickens, he could do satire with heart. There is some debate, by the way, as to what level of satire Dead Souls pursues and whom it targets, with some even arguing that the satire is beside the point; but it seems to me a pretty strong indictment of the uselessly powerful and the selfishly short-sighted, not that that has any relevance in today’s world. It’s been a hundred and seventy or so years and the world has changed remarkably. Although it may no longer be relevant, Dead Souls remains an amusing artifact even if the world of today is far removed from one dominated by a small set of vain, self-indulgent egoists who think they are the world the sun rotates around and if they want to ruin lives, waste resources, and operate with no stronger compass than raw appetite that’s how it’s supposed to be. (less)

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Apr 28, 2011

Erik Graff rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: Russian lit fans

Recommended to Erik by: Ed Erickson

Shelves: literature

By the last two years of high school many of my friends were older fellows already in college. Most were poorer than the average Maine South student, so their colleges weren't far away. As a consequence, I was afforded opportunites to visit and sometimes stay at Roosevelt University, Loyola University, Kendall College, Oakton Community College, the University of Illinois (Chicago and Champaign), the University of Chicago, Oxford University etc.--a practice continued, by reciprocally now, when ...more

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Feb 05, 2008

Jeff Scott rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: sony-reader, 1001books, classics

Some have compared this book to the Divine Comedy. The main characters journey through early 19th century Russia. Dead Souls refers to serfs (slaves) that have died. In Russia, landowners had slaves that were counted decennial for the cenus. The landowners were taxed for these slaves, also referred to as souls, every year, even if they were dead. Chichikov, our "hero", develops a scheme to purchase these dead souls as if they were living. Therefore, relieving the burden from the landow...more

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Oct 06, 2007

Kelly rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: everyone

Shelves: favorites

Almost a decade has passed since I read Dead Souls and I still find occasion to tell the story and recommend the author. The hero of the story, Chichikov, is a poor man living in Empirial Russia. During the historical period in which the story occurs, wealth is measured in terms of a man's property, including the number of souls (or serfs) he owns. Our cunning hero travels the country relieving this landed gentry of the paperwork for their deceased and growing a notorious unreal- estate of his o...more

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Oct 30, 2011

Joselito rated it

· review of another edition

I was a bit surprised by this. Old Russian novels usually are like long, black trains loaded with ponderous themes travelling the entire length and breadth of Russia and ending up in Siberia with all its passengers dead or dying. The title of this book itself, "Dead Souls," suggests a good halloween read. I made a grave mistake.

This is more like Huckleberry Finn, except that its principal protagonist (or "hero," as Nikolai Gogol calls him), named Chichikov, is not a...moreI was a bit surprised by this. Old Russian novels usually are like long, black trains loaded with ponderous themes travelling the entire length and breadth of Russia and ending up in Siberia with all its passengers dead or dying. The title of this book itself, "Dead Souls," suggests a good halloween read. I made a grave mistake.

This is more like Huckleberry Finn, except that its principal protagonist (or "hero," as Nikolai Gogol calls him), named Chichikov, is not a young clever boy but a wily, selfish bachelor whose only aim in life is to amass wealth. This was written in the mid-19th century, still during the time of the Tsars, and apparently during those days those who work on vast landholdings, the peasants/serfs, are not treated as human beings but mere properties. Their owners pay taxes for them (like what we do now, say, for our cars) and they can be sold or encumbered. It often happens that when a peasant dies his owner would fail to report his death, even for years, so that on paper this peasant would still be alive. Chichikov buys these "dead souls" cheap (one landowner even gladly gave his "dead souls" to him for free) with the intention of mortgaging them later for profit.

Gogol mocked, ridiculed and exposed the flaws and foibles of these landowners--mostly rich, stupid and idle--the corrupt bureaucrats who connive with them, the petty royalties and the hypocrisy of high society, and placed them in one comic scene after another. But he was no social reformer. He gave no hint of disagreement with the prevailing feudal system, nor was there any perceivable effort to gain sympathy for the peasants where--

"the truth of the matter is that all sorts of foulnesses are practised amongst them. They are troubled by sectarians and all sorts of vagabonds, incited to rise against the authorities, against law and order, and if a man is oppressed he will easily be incited to rebellion....It will be bad when fists begin to fly: no good will ever come of that, only quick profit for thieves....(I)t will..be useful to comfort them with a word and still better to impress upon them that God bid us suffer without murmur and pray when we are unhappy, and not go wild and take the law into our own hands...."

Maybe this was Russian literature's last attempt at humor. About half a century after this was first published, the people will go wild, take the law into their own hands, and end up with gulags, Stalin and his twenty million murdered victims. (less)

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Sep 01, 2011

Jamie rated it

· review of another edition

When thinking of Russian literature, Dostoyevsky (Crime and Punishment) and Tolstoy (War and Peace) are usually the first, and often only, authors to come to mind. That was how it was for me anyway, before I discovered Nikolai Gogol over Summer break.
Gogol’s Dead Souls is as bizarre as it is vividly descriptive and downright hilarious. This novel’s hero (as Gogol affectionately refers to his character) is a man by the name of Chichikov, a visitor to a small town where the new and out of p...more

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Aug 18, 2011

Jan-Maat added it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: For those who've enjoyed Gogol's short stories

Shelves: 19th-century, fiction, read-in-translation, russia

What is this book?

I can't remember any more if Gogol described it as a Poem or an Epic, maybe it doesn't matter what he called it since he had great chunks of the manuscript fed into the fire on the advice of his religious advisor.

So we are left with part one, some bits of part two and an outline of the three part whole of the work, the rest having gone up in smoke.

What there is of the first part is generally read as a comedy. It is funny, but bear in mind th...more

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Jul 27, 2011

Matti rated it

· review of another edition

KUOLLEET SIELUT

Mielenkiintoinen idea, jonka merkitys paljastetaan lukijalle vasta aivan viime sivuilla. Kirjan kerrontatapa on miltei häiritsevä – tyyli, jossa tekijäksi kolmannessa persoonassa itseään kutsuva kirjailija puhuttelee lukijaa suoraan (kutsuen tätä lukijaksi) ja punnitsee kirjoittamisensa ratkaisuja. Tämä metateksti välillä vieraannuttaa tarinasta ja muistuttaa että se on nimenomaan tarinaa, juuri kun siihen alkoi eläytyä.
Omituinen ratkaisu oli myöskin täysin takavase...more

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Feb 01, 2011

James rated it

· review of another edition

I have to give the whole thing five stars just for chapter's 9 and 10 of the first part where the town becomes suspicious of Chichikov and institutes an inquiry. There, the narrative takes on the very funny and intense absurdism that you find in "The Cloak" or "Diary of Madman" or "The Nose." The whole Captain Kopeiken digression is fantastic as is the testimony of Nozdrev--the pathological liar. Both passages work a bit like Monty Python's Dead Parrot Sketch. The P...moreI have to give the whole thing five stars just for chapter's 9 and 10 of the first part where the town becomes suspicious of Chichikov and institutes an inquiry. There, the narrative takes on the very funny and intense absurdism that you find in "The Cloak" or "Diary of Madman" or "The Nose." The whole Captain Kopeiken digression is fantastic as is the testimony of Nozdrev--the pathological liar. Both passages work a bit like Monty Python's Dead Parrot Sketch. The Postmaster suggests that Chichikov's true identity is Captain Kopeikin but in the very first paragraph he tells us that the Captain had lost an arm and a leg in the war (Chichikov has all his limbs). Nonetheless the story of Kopeiken goes on and on in great detail and with ever increasing irrelevance to the matter at hand. But the more pointless the narrative becomes, the funnier it is. Similarly, the entire town (and the reader) is fully aware that Nosdrev is a pathological liar (almost everything he has said in the narrative thus far has been a lie) and yet they question him anyway and listen to his increasingly elaborate and implausible response. It's almost like he's daring the reader to believe even a single word that he says only to pull the rug out from under him or her at every occasion. It's fantastic and what's more feels incredibly vital. That brings up a second source of interest, for me, in both parts of the work. In writing the second part at least, we know almost for sure that Gogol had fallen under the shadow of the mental illness that would later kill him. (He literally starved himself to death.) He had begun to have second thoughts about his whole life, even coming to consider the writing of fiction as immoral. With this spiritual crisis happening in the background, the text takes on a kind of horrific pathos. First off, the lacunae and odd repetitions of the unfinished second part--a book that he burned twice and re-wrote one and half times before he died--suggest a consciousness in the process of disintegration. The formerly urbane Chichikov begins, for example, to repeat whole paragraphs verbatim. Even more painfully, again and again the most vital characters in the work are consistently the liars and the gourmands. Gogol does create a paragon of virtue in the person of Constantine Thedorovitch Kostanzhogio but his righteous rants can't hold a candle to Nozdrev's ridiculous lies. Lastly, the work is sprinkled with images that at first seem intended as satire but cross decidedly into a realm of horror worthy of Dante. For example, his portrait of Plushkin, the miser, after Chichikov has given him a paltry sum of money in exchange for signing over his dead serfs:

“Over Plushkin’s wooden features there had gleamed a ray of warmth—a ray which expressed if not feeling, at all events feeling’s pale reflection. Just such a phenomenon may be witnessed when, for a brief moment, a drowning man makes a last re-appearance on the surface of a river, and there rises from the crowd lining the banks a ray of hope that even yet the exhausted hands may clutch the rope which has been thrown him—may clutch it before the surface of the unstable element shall have resumed for ever its calm, dread vacuity. But the hope is short-lived, and the hands disappear. Even so did Plushkin’s face, after its momentary manifestation of feeling, become meaner and more insensible than ever.”

A man drowning in himself.(less)

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Jun 11, 2009

Matt rated it

· review of another edition

I'm not sure how much I have to add to a discussion of this book. It's awesome, especially in the first half, where Chichikov is still working out his rather obscure program, and along the way is encountering all sorts of weird and wonderfully funny folks. The writing is great, lots of really amazing similes like people always talk about, but just generally, an incredible level of energy in the writing-- it's the kind of thing that could wear you out if it wasn't so generous. I'm not certain wha...more

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Aug 09, 2011

Mike rated it

· review of another edition

Awful. Awful, awful, awful.

Here’s the story behind Dead Souls, according to translator Andrew MacAndrew: “Gogol wrote Dead Souls over a period of years, and, as the writing advanced, his mental balance became more and more precarious…[After] the publication of the first chapters of Dead Souls, a cry of outright betrayal was raised. In the later chapters, Gogol answers his critics with defensive digressions and a promise of a sequel with ‘positive’ characters and a ‘positive’ messa...more

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Jan 30, 2012

Edward Oser rated it

Wow! Fantastic so far. I know it's stupid, but I always approach literature that's more than 100 years old with a sense of 'This will probably suck, mainly because people didn't have the internet back then and didn't believe in germs,' but again I'm reading something great. With old literature, I try to think about its value as a story, and not just focus on its ability to take me back to its time, but when reading Dead Souls, I completely feel like I'm trundling along in a horse-drawn carriage ...more

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Jan 19, 2011

Dawn rated it

· review of another edition

Ah, troika, troika, swift as a bird, who was it first invented you? Only among a hardy race of folk can you have come to birth—only in a land which, though poor and rough, lies spread over half the world, and spans versts the counting whereof would leave one with aching eyes. Nor are you a modishly-fashioned vehicle of the road—a thing of clamps and iron. Rather, you are a vehicle but shapen and fitted with the axe or chisel of some handy peasant of Yaroslav. Nor are you driven by a coachman clo

...more

Ah, troika, troika, swift as a bird, who was it first invented you? Only among a hardy race of folk can you have come to birth—only in a land which, though poor and rough, lies spread over half the world, and spans versts the counting whereof would leave one with aching eyes. Nor are you a modishly-fashioned vehicle of the road—a thing of clamps and iron. Rather, you are a vehicle but shapen and fitted with the axe or chisel of some handy peasant of Yaroslav. Nor are you driven by a coachman clothed in German livery, but by a man bearded and mittened. See him as he mounts, and flourishes his whip, and breaks into a long-drawn song! Away like the wind go the horses, and the wheels, with their spokes, become transparent circles, and the road seems to quiver beneath them, and a pedestrian, with a cry of astonishment, halts to watch the vehicle as it flies, flies, flies on its way until it becomes lost on the ultimate horizon—a speck amid a cloud of dust!

And you, Russia of mine—are not you also speeding like a troika which nought can overtake? Is not the road smoking beneath your wheels, and the bridges thundering as you cross them, and everything being left in the rear, and the spectators, struck with the portent, halting to wonder whether you be not a thunderbolt launched from heaven? What does that awe-inspiring progress of yours foretell? What is the unknown force which lies within your mysterious steeds? Surely the winds themselves must abide in their manes, and every vein in their bodies be an ear stretched to catch the celestial message which bids them, with iron-girded breasts, and hooves which barely touch the earth as they gallop, fly forward on a mission of God? Whither, then, are you speeding, O Russia of mine? Whither? Answer me! But no answer comes—only the weird sound of your collar-bells. Rent into a thousand shreds, the air roars past you, for you are overtaking the whole world, and shall one day force all nations, all empires to stand aside, to give you way!

Having read Gogol's Dead Souls after The Brother's Karamazov, the final paragraphs of section one struck a particular chord. What a way to end a book! Well, it wasn't the actual end, as Gogol spent the rest of his life writing and burning subsequent sections of the book. But all-in-all, I'm going to treat it as the end, because what follows in Dead Souls (after section 1) are sort of pieced together.

The speeding troika image is one of the kinder images of Russia in Dead Souls. A story about corrupt officials and stupid nobility, Gogol cataloged every type of rascal to be found across Russia. And with gusto! The writer seems to have an amorous animus for Chichikov, our 'hero' scouring the countryside for dead souls (serfs) to use as collateral in order to get a loan. Funny that his actions by today's standards aren't all that despicable. What CEO wouldn't leverage a dead soul or two in order to mislead shareholders and inflate earnings? Roguery when exercised within a roguish system is natural, or at least understandable. Such is the line that Gogol seems to draw in sand between the self-righteous reader and the sweet-talking Chichikov. And when the hero is caught and exposed, we see our self-righteousness conflated into a gaggle of ridiculous gossip. So maybe it is a speeding troika: love it, hate it, but there's no stopping it.(less)

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Dec 20, 2011

Sandi rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: b-n-classic

Couldn't get into the story.

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Jun 05, 2011

Michael Mckinney rated it

· review of another edition

LENA
Yeah.

BARRY
So that pudding was bought, I
bought that pudding because of a
pretty interesting promotion that's
sponsored by Healthy Choice and
American Airlines. It's designed to
encourage airline travel and
obviously designed to encourage
buying Healthy Choice products.
They make frozen meals, deli meats,
pasta sauce, breads, soups and ice
creams, this sort of thing.....

LENA
Yeah?

BARRY...more

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Mar 23, 2010

Lewis rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: russian-literature, classics

Gogol wrote dead souls perhaps with a view to a kill, to warn society of the inherent dangers of federal bureaucracy, semi-fuedalistic society and underhand businessmen who will go to any means to achieve their ends.

The story portrays Chichikov, of the merchant class, a cunning individual who resolves to acquire the dead serfs (souls) of the country's land owners. These souls still appear on the census and thus the landowners arestill paying tax on them even though they are not usefu...moreGogol wrote dead souls perhaps with a view to a kill, to warn society of the inherent dangers of federal bureaucracy, semi-fuedalistic society and underhand businessmen who will go to any means to achieve their ends.

The story portrays Chichikov, of the merchant class, a cunning individual who resolves to acquire the dead serfs (souls) of the country's land owners. These souls still appear on the census and thus the landowners arestill paying tax on them even though they are not useful. Chichikov convinces each of the brilliantly realised landowners (one of gogol's fantastic abilities was the creation of truly unique characters) that he is doing them a favour even though he intends to mortgage the dead souls and thus better himself with the profits.

Though the book was never finished it is a thrill to read. The seemingly simple story is given poignancy through the use of an authorative narrator who unwittingly mocks Russian society for its inherent flaws and adds a dark comic flavour to the depiction of very real and very Russian character types.

Gogol wasn't appreciated in his time. He befriended Pushkin though who said that gogol did not so much as invent stories or characters, but depicted the world as it really was. He influenced a plethora or brilliant writers such as Turgenev, (who was imprisoned for writing gogol's eulogy)Belinksy, Tolstoy and many others.

His sole importance in this work was to depict the truth.

A perfectionist, like all truly great artists, gogol was not happy with the vast proportion of his work. He constantly asked the public (both upper and lower class, both journalist and everyman) to critique his work and he even burned the entire second part of the novel before starting to rewrite it.

As stated the work was never finished but this makes Dead Souls no less of a masterpiece. The first part is lucid, progressive and before its time. A socio-political masterpiece that was far from a pean to how great Russia was, it did not depict the society with an intention of appearing false. The second part is clunky and fragmented, vast gaps are left out and were lost and no epiphany can be found as the third part wasnt even started. None the less this is a trivial criticism and does not influence my rating. It would be unfair to criticise a man for something that he died writing.(less)

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Jul 26, 2011

Hansen Wendlandt rated it

· review of another edition

Familiarity with Gogol’s short stories prepares one for something brilliant. The first chapter of Dead Souls approaches that degree, as do many moments of subtlety and charm. And the general scope of the narrative is clever. But for the most, the novel drags with, typically Russian, too many characters, unnecessary action and interruptions of philosophical and economic theory. This is not a complete work, so perhaps it needn’t be read completely.
A few gems: “Political economy… Just one fo...more

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Jan 25, 2012

Jeremy added it · review of another edition

Shelves: russian-literature

Dead Souls has a lot to recommend it. Gogol's style is lively and wide ranging, he's capable of showing how venal, petty and corrupt every level of his society, from the poorest serfs to the most officious princes can be. And it totally demolishes the idiotic idea that people living in far flung provinces are all somehow provincial, romantic innocents. The book has a wild sort of energy to it, especially compared to a lot of subsequent 19th century Russian literature, which is really great, but ...more

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Dec 04, 2010

Abigail rated it

· review of another edition

Welcome to Gogol's Russia, a place where even the clerks at banks must be bribed for a transaction to be completed. Here, customs officials "shop" for their wives and mistresses from the piles of unreported goods they've confiscated from travellers. And here, intelligent and talented students are punished unjustly for making insecure teachers feel stupid, while obsequious and flattering students are promoted to government jobs.

One of these students is Pavel Ivanovich Chichi...moreWelcome to Gogol's Russia, a place where even the clerks at banks must be bribed for a transaction to be completed. Here, customs officials "shop" for their wives and mistresses from the piles of unreported goods they've confiscated from travellers. And here, intelligent and talented students are punished unjustly for making insecure teachers feel stupid, while obsequious and flattering students are promoted to government jobs.

One of these students is Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, who brownnosed his way to a rather respectable government position before being fired for fraud. He tries several more jobs before hitting on a new scheme. The scam involves the serfs, or peasants, the landowners possess. These peasants are owned like slaves. Peasants who die are still on the books until the next census, and the landowners still have to pay taxes on them. Chichikov's plan is to buy these "dead souls," on paper only, and mortgage them as if they were alive.

His attempts to buy these dead peasants are the focus of most of the book. The landowners prove to be mostly uncooperative; however, they do eventually relent. The strange landowners include Plyushkin, a miser who would put Scrooge to shame, Nozdrev, a gambler and pathological liar, and Tentetnikov, a landowner who attempted to make friends with his peasants and ended up being taken advantage of. There are others, as well, all with different ideas of how to run their villages and with varying degrees of success.

A major theme that runs through the book is the strange caste system that was in place in Russia at the time. There seemed to have been about a hundred tiny gradations of social rank, each requiring a specific type of speech and behavior. City officials who lived in the lap of luxury also lived in constant anxiety- one social blunder could bring down the whole house of cards. Gogol is especially harsh on the higher classes for assuming that anything from Germany or France must be better than any similar item from Russia. These officials and their families even went so far as to learn foreign languages for the express purpose of separating themselves from the lower classes, and not for any desire to actually converse with any French or German people.

Though Gogol teased Russians for their many foibles, it is obvious he loved Russia and wanted it to be a better place. The story is open-ended. Chichikov has a chance at a new, honest life, and several corrupt officials have a chance to admit their mistakes. Ambiguous endings in novels tend to be cop-outs, but I think since Gogol really didn't know what direction his country was going to take, his story hadn't really ended yet. The novel is strangely written, with long passages explaining the most insignificant things. There are many rabbit-trails of thought, and a few parts are missing completely, though the reader can piece together what happened.

Despite the dark title, the novel is really a satire, though it has a philosophical bent as well. Through it all, you get a really strong sense of Russia, Gogol's homeland. That is really what this book is about.

(less)

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May 20, 2009

Richard Springer rated it

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It is terribly sad to think that Gogol originally wanted this to be a three-part work, of which only most of Part One survives as he wanted it. He evidently burned up Part Two manuscripts several times and only an incomplete manuscript survives of it. The Third Part was sketched only in outline, evidently. Even Part one has sections of the narrative that are missing, especially some key encounters near the end of the book. Gogol has the broad satiric rapier of Mark Twain, with uproariously humor...more

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Jul 25, 2010

Milad added it · review of another edition

فکر میکنم راجع به یک کتاب مهمترین چیز حسیه که نسبت بهش داریم یا هر اثر هنری دیگه.نفوس مرده منو خیلی جذب نکرد..خوب نکته ی مثبتش پرداختن به وجوه شخصیتی مثبت و منفی یک آدم بود اما در همین مورد هم به نظر من داستایفسکی یک سر و گردن از گوگول بالاتره.شخصیت قهرمان و واکنش هاش یکنواخت و بدون فراز و فرود و تضادهای احساسات درونی هست نکته ای که داستایفسکی درش استاده.نسبت به قهرمان داستان احساس خاصی پیدا نمیکنیم،هرچند توصیفات منفی نویسنده از قهرمان قاعدتا باید این احساس منفی رو در مخاطب ایجاد کنه.

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Jan 02, 2009

Judy rated it

· review of another edition

Rascal! Villain! Wiseacre!

A satirical depiction of 19th century Russian society, including many hilarious character studies. There’s a great portrait of a miser, a pathological liar, and a glutton. The hero of the novel travels about buying up dead serfs while sleazily and bullheadedly attempting to drag himself up the social ladder. He is not entirely unlikeable, pretty much a go-getter, liked good suits. Briefly ends up in prison, crying and pulling his hair out in clumps but manag...more

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Jan 11, 2008

rachelle rated it

· review of another edition

As much as I hate to two-star Gogol, I must be honest with myself and admit that any book I can put down after 100 pages - with relief - and never return to again, can't rate much higher. I'm pleased that I gave it a shot, but ultimately, a wry contemplation of the status of the Russian serf just didn't do it for me. Funny in places, but sadly, a bore.

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Aug 25, 2010

Andrew added it · review of another edition

Shelves: russian-fiction

My first encounter with Gogol was "The Nose," read at age 19 in a combination tobacconist and espresso place occupied by a mixture of MFA students and raving homeless, and I'm sure that's how Nikolai would want it. A nose could have gotten chopped off in there at any moment. I doubt anyone would have noticed or cared.

Gogol had a theater background, and the dialogue often has a very stage-y feel, as Chichikov haggles over the price of peasant souls. No one's safe. The ca...more

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Aug 03, 2011

John rated it

Dead Souls is a provocative work of fiction from a master of blending the comic and the tragic. Gogol effectively uses absurdity and his narrator's flights of fancy to engage the reader, all the while slowly building a case that society has degraded itself, bowing at the feet of even the illusions of money, power, and fame.

Gogol cleverly avoids giving virtually any details about his protagonist, the oddly named Chichikov, until the final chapter of volume 1. Instead, the author turns h...more

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Mar 16, 2011

David Spencer rated it

· review of another edition

The surreal symbolism that flows so freely and evenly through Dead Souls is an experience everyone should have. It's a poem for sure, and a beautiful long form Russian boner of a poem. The insights into disparate mental states, the concepts delivered by individual people who are fully fleshed out people, not just a device to deliver content...it's all skillful, albeit a bit too effete and daydreamy at times (although how much of that is intentional or where Gogol drew the line in his head, if he...more

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About Nikolai Gogol

Gogol was born in the Ukrainian Cossack village of Sorochyntsi, in Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire, present-day Ukraine. His mother was a descendant of Polish nobility. His father Vasily Gogol-Yanovsky, a descendant of Ukrainian Cossacks, belonged to the petty gentry, wrote poetry in Russian and Ukrainian, and was an amateur Ukrainian-language playwright who died when Gogol was 15 years ...moreGogol was born in the Ukrainian Cossack village of Sorochyntsi, in Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire, present-day Ukraine. His mother was a descendant of Polish nobility. His father Vasily Gogol-Yanovsky, a descendant of Ukrainian Cossacks, belonged to the petty gentry, wrote poetry in Russian and Ukrainian, and was an amateur Ukrainian-language playwright who died when Gogol was 15 years old.

In 1820 Gogol went to a school of higher art in Nizhyn and remained there until 1828. It was there that he began writing. Very early he developed a dark and secretive disposition, marked by a painful self-consciousness and boundless ambition. Equally early he developed an extraordinary talent for mimicry which later on made him a matchless reader of his own works.

In 1828, on leaving school, Gogol came to Petersburg. He had hoped for literary fame and brought with him a Romantic poem of German idyllic life – Ganz Küchelgarten. He had it published, at his own expense, under the name of "V. Alov." The magazines he sent it to almost universally derided it. He bought all the copies and destroyed them, swearing never to write poetry again.

Gogol was one of the first masters of the short story, alongside Alexander Pushkin, Prosper Mérimée, E. T. A. Hoffmann, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. He was in touch with the "literary aristocracy", and was taken up by Vasily Zhukovsky and Pyotr Pletnyov, and (in 1831) was introduced to Pushkin.

In 1831, he brought out the first volume of his Ukrainian stories (Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka), which met with immediate success. He followed it in 1832 with a second volume, and in 1835 by two volumes of stories entitled Mirgorod, as well as by two volumes of miscellaneous prose entitled Arabesques. At this time, Gogol developed a passion for Ukrainian history and tried to obtain an appointment to the history department at Kiev University. His fictional story Taras Bulba, based on the history of Ukrainian cossacks, was the result of this phase in his interests.

Between 1832 and 1836 Gogol worked with great energy, though almost all his work has in one way or another its sources in his four years of contact with Pushkin. Only after the presentation, on 19 April 1836, of his comedy The Government Inspector (Revizor) that he finally came to believe in his literary vocation.

From 1836 to 1848 he lived abroad, travelling throughout Germany and Switzerland, as well as spending the winter of 1836–1837 in Paris.

Pushkin's death produced a strong impression on Gogol. His principal work during years following Pushkin's death was the satirical epic Dead Souls. Concurrently, he worked at other tasks – recast Taras Bulba and The Portrait, completed his second comedy, Marriage (Zhenitba), wrote the fragment Rome and his most famous short story, The Overcoat.

After the triumph of Dead Souls, Gogol came to be regarded as a great satirist who lampooned the unseemly sides of Imperial Russia. However, Dead Souls was but the first part of a counterpart to The Divine Comedy. The first part represented the Inferno; the second part was to depict the gradual purification and transformation of the rogue Chichikov under the influence of virtuous publicans and governors – Purgatory.

His last years were spent in restless movement throughout the country. He intensified his relationship with a church elder, Matvey Konstantinovsky. He seems to have strengthened in Gogol the fear of perdition by insisting on the sinfulness of all his imaginative work. His health was undermined by exaggerated ascetic practices and he fell into a state of deep depression. On the night of 24 February 1852, he burned some of his manuscripts, which contained most of the second part of Dead Souls. He explained this as a mistake, a practical joke played on him by the Devil. Soon thereafter he took to bed, refused all food, and died in great pain nine days later.(less)

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“You can't imagine how stupid the whole world has grown nowadays. The things these scribblers write! ” — 12 people liked it

“However stupid a fools words may be, they are sometimes enough to confound an intelligent man.” — 7 people liked it

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