Certainly Dead Souls embodies what the critic Mikhail Bakhtin called “potential,” the capacity for a work of art to change its meaning over time, in fruitful dialogue with its readers. And this is where the phrase “dead souls” acquires a new, radiant significance: the empty space provided by the dead, unknowable peasants inspires creative imaginative play even in the soulless Chichikov, who in Chapter 7, when imagining the lives and deaths of the serfs he has bought, becomes a poet and a teller of tales, if only for a moment. Gogol’s reader is invited to join him—and many do. To
