Dead Souls

by Nikolai Gogol

Alas! the fat know better than the slim how to handle their affairs in this world. The slim serve mostly on special missions, or else only nominally, and shift about here and there; their existence is somehow too light, airy, and altogether unreliable. Whereas the fat never occupy indirect positions, but always direct ones, and once they sit somewhere, they sit reliably and firmly, so that the position will sooner creak and sag under them than they will fall off of it.

But the author is most ashamed to occupy his readers for so long with people of low class, knowing from experience how reluctantly they make acquaintance with the lower estate.

Such is the Russian man: strong is his passion for knowing someone at least one rank above himself, and a nodding acquaintance with a count or prince is better to him than any close relations with friends.

Mrs. Manilov had received a good education. And one gets a good education, as we know, in a boarding school. And in boarding schools, as we know, three main subjects constitute the foundation of human virtue: the French language, indispensable for a happy family life; the pianoforte, to afford a husband agreeable moments; and, finally, the managerial part proper: the crocheting of purses and other surprises.

It must be said that if we in Russia are still behind foreigners in some other things, we have far outstripped them in the art of address. Countless are all the nuances and subtleties of our address.

what was strangest of all, what can happen only in Russia—not long afterwards he would again meet the friends who had thrashed him, and they would meet as if nothing had happened, and it was, as they say, fine with him, and fine with them.

It will be long before Nozdryov passes from this world. He is among us everywhere, and is perhaps only wearing a different caftan; but people are light-mindedly unperceptive, and a man in a different caftan seems to them a different man.

“For pity’s sake, brother, what Jewish instincts you have!

Wherever in life it may be, whether amongst its tough, coarsely poor, and untidily moldering mean ranks, or its monotonously cold and boringly tidy upper classes, a man will at least once meet with a phenomenon which is unlike anything he has happened to see before, which for once at least awakens in him a feeling unlike those he is fated to feel all his life.

“A nice wench!” he said, opening his snuffbox and taking a pinch. “But what is it, chiefly, that’s so good in her? What’s good in her is that, as one can see, she has just come out of some boarding school or institute, there’s nothing about her that is female, as they say, which is precisely what is most disagreeable in them. She’s like a child now, everything is simple in her, she says what she likes, she laughs when she wants to. Anything can be made of her, she may become a wonder, or she may turn out trash, and trash is what she’ll turn out. Just let the mamas and aunties start working on her now. In a year they’ll have her so filled with all sorts of female stuff that her own father won’t recognize her. Out of nowhere will come conceit and pomposity, she’ll start turning around on memorized instructions, she’ll start racking her brains thinking up with whom, and how, and for what length of time she should speak, how to look at whom, she’ll be afraid every moment of saying more than is necessary, she’ll finally get confused, and in the end she’ll finally start lying all her life, and the result will be devil knows what!” Here he fell silent for a short time, then added: “And it would be curious to know who her people are, what and who her father is, is he a rich landowner of respectable character or simply a well-meaning man with capital acquired in the service? For if, say, to this girl there were added some two-hundred-thousand-rouble dowry, she would make a very, ve...

“They say: enlightenment, enlightenment, and this enlightenment—poof! I’d use another word, only it wouldn’t be proper at the table. With me it’s not like that. With me, if it’s pork—let’s have the whole pig on the table, if it’s lamb—drag in the whole sheep, if goose—the whole goose! Better that I eat just two courses, but eat my fill, as my soul demands.”

according to the existing regulations of this state, unequaled in glory, the souls listed in the census, once their life’s path has ended, are nevertheless counted equally with the living until the new census is taken, so as not to burden the institutions with a quantity of petty and useless documents and increase the complexity of the already quite complex state machinery … Sobakevich went on listening, his head bent—and that, nevertheless, for all the justice of this measure, it was often somewhat burdensome for many owners, obliging them to pay taxes as if for the living object, and that he, feeling a personal respect for him, would even be ready to take this truly heavy responsibility partly upon himself. With regard to the main object, Chichikov expressed himself very cautiously: he never referred to the souls as dead, but only as nonexistent.

“You want dead souls?” Sobakevich asked quite simply, without the least surprise, as if they were talking about grain.

“You don’t want any of the female sex?” “No, thank you.” “I wouldn’t ask much. One little rouble apiece, for the sake of acquaintance.” “No, I have no need of the female sex.”

how apt is everything that comes from deep Russia, where there are no German, or Finnish, or any other tribes, but all is native natural-born, lively and pert Russian wit, which does not fish for a word in its pockets, does not brood on it like a hen on her chicks, but pastes it on at once, like a passport, for eternal wear, and there is no point in adding later what sort of nose or lips you have—in one line you are portrayed from head to foot!

A knowledge of hearts and a wise comprehension of life resound in the word of the Briton; like a nimble fop the short-lived word of the Frenchman flashes and scatters; whimsically does the German contrive his lean, intelligent word, not accessible to all; but there is no word so sweeping, so pert, so bursting from beneath the very heart, so ebullient and vibrant with life, as an aptly spoken Russian word.

avarice, which, as is known, has a wolf’s appetite and grows more insatiable the more it devours;

So take with you on your way, as you pass from youth’s tender years into stern, hardening manhood, take with you every humane impulse, do not leave them by the wayside, you will not pick them up later! Terrible, dreadful old age looms ahead, and nothing does it give back again! The grave is more merciful, on the grave it will be written: “Here lies a man!”—but nothing can be read in the cold, unfeeling features of inhuman old age.