“Dead Souls” can safely be called Gogol’s most important and final work. The writer worked on his creation for many years, from 1835 to 1842. Initially, the writer wanted to build his work following the example of Dante's Divine Comedy. In the first volume, Gogol wanted to describe hell, in the second - purgatory, in the third - paradise for Russia and the heroes of the poem. Over time, the concept of “Dead Souls” changed, and the title of the poem also changed. But the combination “dead souls” was always present in it. I think that Gogol put a lot of meaning into these words, they are very important for understanding the work.
So, why Dead Souls? The first answer that comes to mind is because it relates to the plot of the book. A business man and a big swindler, Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, travels around Russia and buys dead audit souls. He does this, allegedly, in order to take the peasants to the Kherson province and start farming there. But in fact, Chichikov wants to receive money for souls, pawning them in the guardianship council, and live happily.
With all his energy, the hero gets down to business: “having crossed himself according to Russian custom, he began to execute.” In search of dead peasant souls, Chichikov traveled through the villages of Russian landowners. Reading the description of these landowners, we gradually understand that these people are the real “dead souls”. What is the most kind, very educated and liberal Manilov worth! This landowner spends all his time in empty reasoning and dreams. In real life, he turns out to be completely helpless and worthless. Manilov is not interested in real life; deeds take the place of words for him. This is a completely empty person, vegetating in fruitless dreams.
The landowner Korobochka, whom Chichikov accidentally stopped by, is just as empty and dead. For this landowner, any person is, first of all, a potential buyer. She can only talk about buying and selling, and even about her late husband. Inner world The boxes stopped and froze long ago. This is evidenced by the hissing clock, and the “outdated” portraits on the walls, as well as the flies that simply filled Korobochka’s entire house.
Nozdrev, Sobakevich, Plyushkin... All these landowners have long ceased to live a spiritual life, their soul has died or is on the way to complete death. It is not for nothing that the author compares the landowners to animals: Sobakevich looks like a medium-sized bear, Korobochka is depicted surrounded by birds. And Plyushkin doesn’t look like anyone or anything at all: he appears before Chichikov as a sexless creature, without age or social status.
Spiritual life is replaced by gluttony among landowners. Korobochka is a hospitable housewife who loves to eat herself. She treats Chichikov to “mushrooms, pies, quick-witted cookies, shanishkas, spinning bars, pancakes, flatbreads...” Dashing Nozdryov likes to drink more than eat. This, in my opinion, is quite consistent with his broad and daring nature.
The biggest glutton in the poem is, of course, Sobakevich. His strong, “wooden” nature requires cheesecakes the size of a plate, a side of lamb with porridge, a nine-pound sturgeon, and so on.
Plyushkin has reached such a stage of mortification that he almost no longer needs food. Keeping enormous wealth, he eats scraps and treats Chichikov to the same.
Following the movements of Pavel Ivanovich, we discover more and more “dead souls”. Chichikov appears in the houses of prominent officials of the city of N; after purchasing peasants, he begins to go to various authorities, formalizing his acquisitions. And what? We understand that among officials almost all are “dead souls.” Their deadness is especially clearly visible in the ball scene. There's not one here human face. Hats, tailcoats, uniforms, ribbons, and muslins are swirling everywhere.
Indeed, officials are even more dead than landowners. This is a “corporation of corporate thieves and robbers”, taking bribes, messing around and profiting from the needs of petitioners. Officials do not show any intellectual interests. Gogol ironically remarks about the interests of these people: “some have read Karamzin, some have read Moskovskie Vedomosti, some have not even read anything at all...”
It is interesting that, serving soulless masters, serfs begin to lose themselves, their souls. An example is the black-footed girl Korobochka, and Chichikov’s servant - coachman Selifan, and the peasants Uncle Mityai and Uncle Minyai.
It is important to note that Gogol considered the soul to be the most important thing in a person. It is the soul that is the divine principle in each of us. The soul can be lost, it can be sold, it can be lost...Then the person becomes dead, regardless of the life of his body. A person with a “dead” soul does not bring any benefit either to the people around him or to his fatherland. Moreover, he can harm, destroy, destroy, because he does not feel anything. But, according to Gogol, the soul can be reborn.
Thus, calling his work “Dead Souls,” the author, in my opinion, meant primarily living people who had lost their souls and died while still alive. Such people are useless and even dangerous. Soul is divine part human nature. Therefore, according to Gogol, we need to fight for it.
Introduction
Back in 1835, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol began work on one of his most famous and significant works - the poem “Dead Souls”. Almost 200 years have passed since the publication of the poem, but the work remains relevant to this day. Few people know that if the author had not made some concessions, the reader might not have seen the work at all. Gogol had to edit the text many times just so that the censor would approve the decision to publish it. The version of the title of the poem proposed by the author did not suit the censorship. Many chapters of “Dead Souls” were changed almost completely, lyrical digressions were added, and the story about Captain Kopeikin lost its harsh satire and some characters. The author, if you believe the stories of his contemporaries, even wanted to place on the title page of the publication an illustration of a chaise surrounded by human skulls. There are several meanings for the title of the poem “Dead Souls”.
Name ambiguity
The title of the work “Dead Souls” is ambiguous. Gogol, as you know, conceived a three-part work by analogy with Dante’s “Divine Comedy”. The first volume is Hell, that is, the abode of dead souls.
Secondly, the plot of the work is connected with this. In the 19th century, dead peasants were called “dead souls.” In the poem, Chichikov buys documents for deceased peasants, and then sells them to the guardianship council. Dead souls were listed as alive in the documents, and Chichikov received a considerable sum for this.
Thirdly, the title emphasizes an acute social problem. The fact is that at that time there were a great many sellers and buyers of dead souls; this was not controlled or punished by the authorities. The treasury was emptying, and enterprising swindlers were making a fortune for themselves. The censorship strongly recommended that Gogol change the title of the poem to “The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls,” shifting the emphasis to Chichikov’s personality rather than to an acute social problem.
Perhaps Chichikov’s idea will seem strange to some, but it all comes down to the fact that there is no difference between the dead and the living. Both are for sale. Both dead peasants and landowners who agreed to sell documents for a certain reward. A person completely loses his human outline and becomes a commodity, and his entire essence is reduced to a piece of paper that indicates whether you are alive or not. It turns out that the soul turns out to be mortal, which contradicts the main postulate of Christianity. The world is becoming soulless, devoid of religion and any moral and ethical guidelines. Such a world is described epically. The lyrical component lies in the description of nature and the spiritual world.
Metaphorical
The meaning of the title “Dead Souls” by Gogol is metaphorical. It becomes interesting to look at the problem of the disappearance of boundaries between the dead and the living in the description of the purchased peasants. Korobochka and Sobakevich describe the dead as if they were alive: one was kind, the other was a good plowman, the third had golden hands, but those two did not take a drop into their mouths. Of course, there is a comic element in this situation, but on the other hand, all these people who once worked for the benefit of the landowners are presented in the readers’ imagination as alive and still living.
The meaning of Gogol's work, of course, is not limited to this list. One of the most important interpretations lies in the characters described. After all, if you look, then all the characters, except the dead souls themselves, turn out to be inanimate. Officials and landowners have been mired in routine, uselessness and aimlessness of existence for so long that the desire to live does not appear in them in principle. Plyushkin, Korobochka, Manilov, the mayor and the postmaster - they all represent a society of empty and meaningless people. The landowners appear before the reader as a series of heroes, arranged according to the degree of moral degradation. Manilov, whose existence is devoid of everything worldly, Korobochka, whose stinginess and pickiness knows no bounds, the lost Plyushkin, ignoring obvious problems. The soul in these people died.
Officials
The meaning of the poem “Dead Souls” lies not only in the lifelessness of the landowners. Officials present a much more frightening picture. Corruption, bribery, nepotism. A common person finds himself hostage to the bureaucratic machine. The piece of paper becomes the determining factor human life. This can be seen especially clearly in “The Tale of Captain Kopeikin.” A war disabled person is forced to go to the capital only to confirm his disability and apply for a pension. However, Kopeikin is unable to understand and break the management mechanisms, unable to come to terms with the constant postponement of meetings, Kopeikin commits a rather eccentric and risky act: he sneaks into the official’s office, threatening that he will not leave until his demands are heard. The official quickly agrees, and Kopeikin loses his vigilance from the abundance of flattering words. The story ends with the civil servant's assistant taking Kopeikin away. No one heard anything more about Captain Kopeikin.
Vices exposed
It is no coincidence that the poem is called “Dead Souls.” Spiritual poverty, inertia, lies, gluttony and greed kill a person’s desire to live. After all, anyone can turn into Sobakevich or Manilov, Nozdryov or the mayor - you just need to stop striving for something other than your own enrichment, come to terms with the current state of affairs and implement some of the seven deadly sins, continuing to pretend that nothing is happening.
The text of the poem contains wonderful words: “but centuries pass after centuries; Half a million Sidneys, bumpkins and boibaks sleep soundly, and rarely is a husband born in Rus' who knows how to pronounce it, this almighty word “forward.”
Work test
In May 1842, the first volume of Gogol's Dead Souls was published. The work was conceived by the author while he was working on The Inspector General. In Dead Souls, Gogol addresses the main theme of his work: the ruling classes of Russian society. The writer himself said: “My creation is huge and great, and its end will not come soon.” Indeed, “Dead Souls” is an outstanding phenomenon in the history of Russian and world satire.
"Dead Souls" - a satire on serfdom
“Dead Souls” is a work. In this, Gogol is the successor of Pushkin’s prose. He himself speaks about this on the pages of the poem in a lyrical digression about two types of writers (Chapter VII).
Here the peculiarity of Gogol's realism is revealed: the ability to expose and show in close-up all the flaws of human nature that are not always evident. “Dead Souls” reflected the basic principles of realism:
- Historicism. The work is written about modern writer time - the turn of the 20-30s of the 19th century - then serfdom experienced a serious crisis.
- Typical character and circumstances. Landowners and officials are depicted satirically with a pronounced critical focus, and the main social types are shown. Special attention Gogol pays attention to detail.
- Satirical typification. It is achieved by the author’s characterization of characters, comic situations, reference to the heroes’ past, hyperbolization, and the use of proverbs in speech.
Meaning of the name: literal and metaphorical
Gogol planned to write a work in three volumes. He took Dante Alighieri’s “The Divine Comedy” as a basis. Likewise, Dead Souls was supposed to consist of three parts. Even the title of the poem refers the reader to Christian principles.
Why "Dead Souls"? The name itself is an oxymoron, a juxtaposition of the incomparable. The soul is a substance that is inherent in the living, but not in the dead. Using this technique, Gogol gives hope that not all is lost, that the positive principle in the crippled souls of landowners and officials can be reborn. This is what the second volume should have been about.
The meaning of the title of the poem “Dead Souls” lies on several levels. On the very surface there is a literal meaning, because dead peasants were called dead souls in bureaucratic documents. Actually, this is the essence of Chichikov’s machinations: to buy up dead serfs and take money as collateral. The main characters are shown in the circumstances of the sale of peasants. “Dead souls” are the landowners and officials themselves that Chichikov encounters, because there is nothing human or living left in them. They are ruled by the thirst for profit (officials), feeble-mindedness (Korobochka), cruelty (Nozdryov) and rudeness (Sobakevich).
The deep meaning of the name
All new aspects are revealed as you read the poem “Dead Souls”. The meaning of the title, hidden in the depths of the work, makes us think about the fact that any person, a simple layman, can eventually turn into Manilov or Nozdryov. It is enough for one small passion to settle in his heart. And he will not notice how vice will grow there. To this end, in Chapter XI, Gogol calls on the reader to look deep into his soul and check: “Is there some part of Chichikov in me too?”
Gogol laid down in the poem “Dead Souls” a multifaceted meaning of the title, which is revealed to the reader not immediately, but in the process of comprehending the work.
Genre originality
When analyzing “Dead Souls,” another question arises: “Why does Gogol position the work as a poem?” Indeed, the genre originality of the creation is unique. In the process of working on the work, Gogol shared his creative discoveries with friends in letters, calling “Dead Souls” both a poem and a novel.
About the second volume of "Dead Souls"
In a state of deep creative crisis, Gogol wrote the second volume of Dead Souls for ten years. In correspondence, he often complains to friends that things are going very slowly and are not particularly satisfying.
Gogol turns to the harmonious, positive image of the landowner Kostanzhoglo: judicious, responsible, using scientific knowledge in the structure of the estate. Under its influence, Chichikov reconsiders his attitude to reality and changes for the better.
Seeing “life’s lies” in the poem, Gogol burned the second volume of “Dead Souls.”
Perhaps, main question poem, which the reader inevitably asks himself: who did Gogol have in mind when he called his work that way already at the conception stage? They answered and still answer this question in different ways, depending on the approach to the problems of the poem. The most traditional and widespread view is based on the conflict between the outdated system of serfdom, on the one hand, and vitality the peasantry, the soul of the Russian nation - on the other. It follows that Gogol considered landowners to be dead souls, and peasants to be living souls. However, if we reduce the meaning of the poem only to this, albeit a correct judgment, the ideological pathos of the poem is simplified. Firstly, in addition to landowners and peasants, the work shows different segments of the population, social types, and individual characters. Which “soul” should be considered the coachman Selifan or, for example, the prosecutor? If we determine by social criteria which category the characters belong to, then the main criteria will be the origin of the person and his status; if by moral qualities, then good people we will call “living” souls, bad ones – “dead”.
Let us recall Gogol’s exclamation in a letter to Zhukovsky about the concept of the work: “All of Rus' will appear in it!” It means that the problems of the poem will affect every person. It is also important that the work received its title from the very beginning: Gogol did not mean specific people, but a phenomenon, a state of deadness, “deadness” of the human soul, close to the spiritual dying of the individual. The very combination “dead souls” paradoxically unites incompatible entities: death and eternal life souls - and is not an ordinary literary oxymoron, but a moral and philosophical idea, a warning to man not to lose his immortal soul. Therefore, it is incorrect to point to a particular character by calling him a “living” or “dead” soul. The poem creates an ideal of spiritualized, meaningful, creative life- it should be considered a guide when giving different assessments to the heroes.
Gogol saw the purpose of his poem in awakening a person’s conscience, everyone should look at themselves with passion: “And which of us, full of Christian humility, not publicly, but in silence, alone, in moments of solitary conversations with himself, will deepen this soul into his own? a difficult question: “Isn’t there some part of Chichikov in me too?” “Therefore, Gogol insisted, one must first of all look for the “deadness” of the soul in oneself. Of course, this requirement is deep, general and goes beyond the limits of this literary work. In the poem, the most important role is played by the factor of a person’s responsibility for his life and the fulfillment of his duty. In this regard, of course, the satirical pathos of the poem is aimed at landowners and officials.
What kind of civil and human responsibility can we talk about when we see Korobochka, indifferent to everything, distrustful and limited, the unreasonable and reckless Nozdryov, the cynical and greedy, the universal abyss, the unbridled hoarder? Gogol gives the same sharp characteristics to city officials, but still attention to officials cannot be compared with detailed description the characters of the landowners, their way of life, estates and households. The “landowner” chapters differ from the general background of the poem by an unattainable level artistic expression, these five chapters can even be called five acts of human comedy.
We judge the images of peasants positively, because we know: the life of the landowner, official, and the entire population of the country depends on their labor. The source of the physical existence and spiritual life of the nation originates in the peasantry, then spreading to other strata of society. We do not see the creative work of the peasants, we do not hear folk songs, the creative talent of the Russian common people manifests itself sporadically, for example, in a lyrical digression about the Russian word or the skill of the carriage maker Mikheev. Gogol sees his task as showing how the creative will and vital activity of a person are suppressed under conditions of serfdom. That is why the fate of the serfs comes to the fore. Gogol does not hide their weaknesses, shortcomings, bad qualities, that is, he does not idealize the peasants, but he also does not look down on them as victims of serfdom. The pathos of Gogol's denunciation is higher and more complex: describing the destinies of peasants, the artist creates stories of the death of people who were initially deprived of the right to a free and dignified life. The sad fate of the carpenter Stepan Probka, whose life was broken by serfdom: he could not stop in the passion of making money, took on any job and died as a result. Gogol says here that you can earn money and buy your freedom, but you cannot buy a sense of freedom by being born in captivity.
Thus, the call to be “not dead, but living souls” was addressed by Gogol not only to the landowner or peasant - the hero of the work, but also to each of us. Gogol did not condemn the person, did not persecute him with his satire. There is a lot of sorrow in Gogol's laughter, but there is also hope. In a lyrical digression at the beginning of the seventh chapter, the writer speaks about his purpose and fate: “And for a long time it has been determined for me by the wonderful power to walk hand in hand with my strange heroes, to survey the whole enormously rushing life, to survey it through laughter visible to the world and invisible, unknown to it tears! »