Dead Souls

by Nikolai Gogol

The landowners have gambled away everything at cards, caroused and squandered the lot well and good; everything goes off to government service in Petersburg; estates are abandoned, managed haphazardly, the taxes are harder to pay each year, so everyone will be glad to let me have them, if only so as not to pay the soul tax for them; chances are I may occasionally pick up a kopeck or two on it.

Of course, it’s difficult, worrisome, frightening, because I might get in trouble again for it, some scandal might come of it. Well, but after all, man hasn’t been given brains for nothing. And the best part of it is that the th...

True, it’s impossible to buy or mortgage them without land. So I’ll buy them for relocation, that’s what; land in the Taurida and Kherson provinces is bein...

It would be most correct to call him an owner, an acquirer. Acquisition is to blame for everything; because of it things have been done which the world dubs not quite clean.

But he is wise who does not scorn any character, but, fixing a piercing eye on him, searches out his primary causes.

Yes, my good readers, you would prefer not to see human poverty revealed.

Do we not know ourselves that there is much

in life that is contemptible ...

So they spent their life, these two inhabitants of a peaceful corner, who have suddenly peeked out, as from a window, at the end of our poem, peeked out in order to respond modestly to accusations on the part of certain ardent patriots, who for the moment are quietly occupied with some sort of philosophy or with augmentations at the expense of their dearly beloved fatherland, and think not about not doing wrong, but only about having no one say they are doing wrong.

And who among you, filled with Christian humility, not publicly, but in quiet, alone, in moments of solitary converse with himself, will point deeply into his own soul this painful question: “And isn’t there a bit of Chichikov in me, too?” Perish the thought!

Rus, where are you racing to?

Give answer! She gives no

an...

To Andrei Ivanovich Tentetnikov, landowner of the Tremalakhan district, a young gentleman, thirty-three years old, a collegiate secretary, an unmarried man.

In short, the public opinion of him was rather unfavorable than favorable.

And yet in his essence Andrei Ivanovich was neither a good nor a bad being, but simply—a burner of the daylight.

This work was to embrace Russia from all viewpoints—civic, political, religious, philosophical; to resolve the difficult problems and questions posed for her by the times; and to define clearly her great future—in short, a work of vast scope.

And thus, as alone as could be in the whole world, this young man of thirty-three spent his time, sitting around in a dressing gown without a tie.

From this journal the reader can see that Andrei Ivanovich Tentetnikov belonged to that race of people, so numerous in Russia, who are known as sluggards, lie-abeds, sloths, and the like.

Many times he did not restrain playfulness and prankishness at all: in elementary playfulness he saw the awakening development of the soul’s qualities.

He needed it in order to see precisely what lay hidden in a child.

He maintained that what man needed most was the science of life, that once he knew that, he would then know for himself what he must occupy himself with predominantly.

Those of small ability he let go into government service after the first year, maintaining that there was no need to torment them too much: it was enough for them if they learned to be patient, industrious workers, without acquiring presumptuousness or any long-range views.

Not the intelligence that knows how to taunt a fool and laugh at him, but one that knows how to endure any insult, ignore the fool—and not become irritated.

To preserve the lofty calm in which man must abide eternally amid any griefs whatever—it was this that he called intelligence! It was in this course that Alexander Petrovich showed that he indeed knew the science of life.

disaster; the extraordinary mentor, from whom one word of approval sent him into sweet tremors, unexpectedly died. Everything changed at the school: to replace Alexander Petrovich there came a certain Fyodor Ivanovich, a man both kind and diligent, but with a totally different view of things.

All this caused murmuring, especially when the new head, as if in defiance of his predecessor, announced that intelligence and success in studies meant nothing to him, that he looked only at conduct, that even if a person was a poor student, if his conduct was good, he would prefer him to a clever one.

With great difficulty, and with the help of his uncle’s connections, after spending two months studying calligraphy, he finally found a position as a copying clerk in some department.

How much higher that school preparation for the service now seemed to him than the service itself.

But the point is this: you forget that I have a different service; I have three hundred peasant souls, my estate is in disorder, and the steward is a fool. It will be no great loss to the state if someone else sits in the office copying papers instead of me, but it will be a great loss if three hundred men don’t pay their taxes. I am a landowner: the title is not a worthless one.

In short, the master began to notice that the muzhiks were simply cheating him, despite all his good turns.

In the end he stopped going out to the field work altogether, dropped entirely all administering of justice and punishments, firmly ensconced himself inside, and even stopped receiving the steward with his reports.

He decided to break off all his acquaintances and even did it quite abruptly.

After that no one came to see him. Total solitude installed itself in the house.

The master got permanently into his dressing gown, giving his body over to inaction and his mind—to pondering a big work about Russia.

Where is he who, in the native tongue of our Russian soul, could speak to us this all-powerful word: forward?

who, knowing all the forces and qualities, and all the depths of our nature, could, by one magic gesture, point the Russian man towards a lofty life?

But century follows century, half a million loafers, sluggards, and sloths lie in deep slumber, and rarely is a m...

One circumstance, however, nearly roused Tentetnikov and nearly caused a turnabout in his character. Something resembling love occurred, but here,...

Nothing in her was hidden. She would not have been afraid of displaying her thoughts before anyone, and no power could have forced her to be silent if she wished to speak.

Andrei Ivanovich Tentetnikov could by no means have said how it happened that from the very first day he felt as if he had known her forever. An inexplicable new feeling entered his soul. His dull life became momentarily radiant.

It seemed to Tentetnikov that since the very day of their arrival, the general had become somehow colder with him, scarcely noticed him, and treated him as a mute extra or a clerk employed for copying, the lowest sort. He called him now “brother,” now “my dear fellow,” and once even addressed him as “boy.”

Naturally, after that their acquaintance ceased, and love ended at its very beginning. Out went the light that had gleamed before him momentarily, and the gloom that followed became still gloomier.

The reader has perhaps already guessed that the visitor was none other than our respected, long-abandoned Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov.

But the expression of his face, the decency, the manners had remained the same. He had even become as if still more agreeable in his movements and ways, still more deftly tucked his feet under when sitting in an armchair; there was still more softness in the enunciation of his speech, more prudent moderation in his words and expressions, more skill in his comportment, and more tact in everything.

Our Pavel Ivanovich showed an extraordinary flexibility in adapting to everything.

About solitude he expressed himself rather felicitously—namely, that it nursed great thoughts in a man.

“For the first time I see a man one can get along with,” Tentetnikov said to himself. “Generally we lack this art. There are plenty of people among us who are intelligent, and educated, and kind, but people who

are constantly agreeable, people of a constantly even temper, people with whom one can live for ages without quarreling—I don’t know that we can find many such people! Here is the first, the only man I’ve seen!” Such was Tentetnikov’s opinion of his guest.

He also found out how many muzhiks had died. Not many, it turned out.