Pros: Mmmmm...... satire! A merciless romp through a series of hilarious characters and encounters. Very Russian.
Cons: The plot’s funny and engaging, but doesn’t really lead anywhere. And, of course, it’s unfinished.
The Bottom Line: Gogol didn’t finish it, why should I? He didn’t want Part II published anyway. I had the same problem with Kafka’s The Castle. Unfinished books lose cohesiveness after a point.
panguitch's Full Review: Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol, Larissa Volokhonsky, Cli...
Ever feel your life’s a string of strange encounters with absurd people? Nikolai Gogol proves proto-existentialism can be fun in 1842’s (Part II: 1855) Dead Souls.
Premise
Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov is a swindler. He arrives in town with class, spends a lot of cash, and dances with all the girls. He’s on everyone’s guest list. But when he comes to call he has a business proposal: You know those serfs (dushi also means souls, thus the title) of yours who’ve died since the census? Don’t you hate paying taxes on them until the next census? Let me ease your burden. I admit it’s strange, but I collect dead serfs (I make a living by mortgaging them). Can I buy yours?
Characters
Gogol shines in satirical caricatures. Each landholder Chichikov visits is a miniature masterpiece of eccentricities reflecting aspects of Russian character. The suspicious old woman. The unrealistically stubborn bargainer. The bluff-calling drunkard. Chichikov cunningly adapts to each, convincing all sorts to sell him dead serfs. His coachman and valet, pictures of the lower classes, accompany him throughout. When a matter involving the governor’s daughter raises suspicion, Chichikov flees town. In Part II he relocates and resumes activities.
Style
Those familiar with Gogol’s short work (Nose, Overcoat, Government Inspector) will already relish his incisive wit. His descriptions are poetic, his intrusive narrator wry. This picaresque is truly satiric: through laughter Gogol exposes dysfunction. But Part I makes a circle, the plot never arriving anywhere. The parting image of Russia as a willy-nilly speeding troika didn’t satisfy, and Gogol spent his last decade on the next volume, finally burning the manuscripts and killing himself with his weird asceticism.
Reactions
I love Gogol’s dry humor, and his style is fresh and cheeky. But as great as the portraits in Dead Souls are, lack of wholeness makes it inferior to his short work. Notwithstanding, Gogol remains a literary giant “from under whose Overcoat we all came” (Dostoevsky, apocryphal).
Since its publication in 1842, Dead Souls has been celebrated as a supremely realistic portrait of provincial Russian life and as a splendidly exagger...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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