The history of the creation of Gogol's poem Dead Souls for the reader's diary. The story of one book: "Dead souls

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was born in the town of Sorochintsy, Mirgorodsky district, Poltava province. His Childhood passed in the family estate of Vasilievka. Father, a passionate admirer of the theater, wrote poems, plays, then presented them on the amateur stage with wealthy relatives of the Troshchinskys.

Gogol himself, while studying at the gymnasium (the city of Nizhyn), was also fond of theater and participated in productions. Young Gogol even played the role of Mrs. Prostakova in Fonvizin's The Undergrowth; according to witnesses, the audience laughed until colic.

In the "Author's Confession" he described his first experiences in literary creativity. “My first experiments, the first exercises in compositions, for which I got a habit in recent times stay at school, were almost all in a lyrical and serious way. Neither I myself, nor my companions, who also practiced with me in compositions, did not think that I would have to be a comic and satirical writer ... "

Already in those years, Gogol knew how to accept criticism: when The Brothers Tverdoslavich, a Slavic Tale was considered unsuccessful by his friends, he “did not resist or object. He quite calmly tore his manuscript into small pieces and threw it into a stoking oven,” wrote his classmate. This was the first known burning of Gogol's works.

Classmates did not notice his talent, and a funny recollection of one of them has been preserved: “N. V. Gogol passionately loved drawing, literature, but it would be too ridiculous to think that Gogol would be Gogol.

Poor health and lack of funds did not prevent Nikolai Vasilyevich from deciding to go to St. Petersburg in search of his fate (1828).

Here is how the modern Swedish writer Chel Johansson presents his thoughts and feelings in his story “The Face of Gogol”: “I am only nineteen! I was only nineteen years old when I first breathed the winter Petersburg air. And as a result, he caught a severe cold.

With a high temperature and a frostbitten nose, I lay in bed in the apartment that we rented from Danilevsky and I rented ...

In the end I got up, staggered, crawled out into the street and went to wander. Where am I?

I'm standing at Pushkin's house! It must be warm and cozy inside. Pushkin is sitting there .. I'm calling. The footman who opened the door looks me up and down.

Pushkin, - I squeeze out at last, - I need to see Pushkin. This meeting did not take place. But she was there. Very little time passed, and he met Zhukovsky (in 1830), with Pushkin (in 1831) ... They meet, and this is what Pushkin wrote about his young friend: “Our readers, of course, remember the impression made on us by the appearance“ Evenings on the farm": everyone rejoiced at this lively description of the singing and dancing tribe, this fresh pictures Little Russian nature, this gaiety, simple-hearted and at the same time crafty. How amazed we were at the Russian book, which made us laugh, we who have not laughed since time. Fonvizin!

And here is how Pushkin's conversation with Gogol appears modern writer: “Nikolai, I gave you the plot of the Inspector General, here's another one for you. One rogue travels around Russia and, in order to get rich, buys up dead souls, serfs who have died, but have not yet been included in the revision tale. Do you understand? A good idea, a? Here you can depict the whole of Russia, whatever you want!

You gave me so much, Alexander Sergeevich!.. Today you gave me "Dead Souls"... You say that you yourself

it is impossible to tell this story as long as there is censorship. Why do you think I can do it?"

Gogol proceeds to his main work. He writes it in Italy, but is constantly connected with his homeland. News comes from there. Here is an article by V. G. Belinsky in the Teleskop magazine, which says that Gogol said a new word about literature. Like everything in his stories, “simple, ordinary, natural and true, and, together, how original and new!” Gogol is glad But a few hours after reading the article, terrible news comes: Pushkin is dead ...

So, Pushkin was gone. “My loss,” wrote Gogol, “is greater than all. I didn’t do anything, I didn’t write anything without his advice… The Great One was gone.”

Meanwhile, work on Dead souls» was walking. Of course, it was not a continuous holiday. As in life, artistic creativity difficulties, failures, disappointments are inevitable. “In order to succeed, you have to experience failure. ... But if you are strong enough, you can easily withstand all failures, moreover, you rejoice in them, in this continuous fiasco in front of yourself. The road will be mastered by the walking one!

I was going to create something that no one had ever created before. "Dead Souls" will become the great work that Pushkin bequeathed to me to write.

Like Dante's Divine Comedy, it will consist of three parts: Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Already the first part will highlight the whole of Russia, will expose all the evil. I knew that the book would cause outrage and protests. Such is my fate, to be at war with my compatriots. But when the second part comes out, the protests will fall silent, and with the completion of the third part, I will be recognized as a spiritual leader. For here the secret plan of this work will be revealed. Works about people without a soul and about death human souls. Works about the art of poetry. And the idea is this: the path of people to salvation. To life! Resurrection! Resurrection!

After three years of living abroad (Germany, Switzerland, France (Paris), Italy (Naples, Rome), he came to Moscow and read to his friends the first six chapters of the first volume of Dead Souls. Gogol called his mother to Moscow, settled his financial affairs. .. In September 1839, he was again in Rome and wrote from there to S. T. Aksakov: "My work is great, my feat is saving. I have now died for everything petty ..." And there are already signs of an illness in his state that overshadowed the end his life.

In May 1842 Dead Souls went out of print. The success of the book was extraordinary. Gogol again goes abroad, tries to be treated, spends the winter in warm climes. Six nomadic years pass abroad.

In 1845 he burned the written chapters of the second volume of Dead Souls, in 1846 he prepared the book Selected passages from correspondence with friends.

In the "Author's Confession" Gogol states: "... it is not my business to teach with a sermon ...", but this is exactly what we see on the pages of Selected Places, which long years were not published in our country, and now, when they are published without cuts or deletions, they have again given rise to the most irreconcilable disputes.

After a trip to the holy places in Palestine, Gogol returned to Russia in 1848. Twice he visited the house in Vasilievka, one winter he fled from the cold in Odessa. He wrote a lot, suffered from lack of money, was sick, was treated ...

The second volume of Dead Souls was born slowly. On the night of February 12, 1852, the author burned all the newly written chapters of his great poem.

After the destruction of his creations, Gogol was greatly weakened.

He did not leave his room anymore, he did not want to see anyone. Almost stopped eating, only occasionally drank a sip or two of water. He sat motionless in armchairs for days on end, staring blankly at one point.

"Dead Souls"- greatest work Gogol. He began to write it as a young man, almost a youth; entered with him into maturity; approached the last line of life. " Dead souls» Gogol gave everything - his artistic genius, and the frenzy of thought, and the passion of hope. Dead Souls is Gogol's life, his immortality and his death.

Gogol began work on Dead Souls in 1835. At this time, the writer dreamed of creating a large epic work, dedicated to Russia. A.S. Pushkin, one of the first to appreciate the originality of Nikolai Vasilievich's talent, advised him to take up a serious essay and suggested interesting story. He told Gogol about a clever swindler who tried to get rich by pawning the dead souls he had bought into the board of trustees as if they were living souls. At that time, there were many stories about real buyers. dead souls. One of Gogol's relatives was also named among these buyers. Gogol anxiously read the first chapters of his new work to Pushkin, expecting them to make him laugh. But, having finished reading, Gogol found that the poet grew gloomy and said: “God, how sad our Russia is!” This exclamation made Gogol take a different look at his plan and rework the material. In further work, he tried to soften the painful impression that "Dead Souls" could make - he mixed funny phenomena with sad ones.

Most of the work was created abroad, mainly in Rome, where Gogol tried to get rid of the impression made by the attacks of criticism after the production of The Inspector General. Being far from his homeland, the writer felt inseparable bond with her, and only love for Russia was the source of his creativity. At the beginning of his work, Gogol defined his novel as comic and humorous, but gradually his plan became more complicated. After the death of Pushkin, which was a heavy blow for Gogol, the writer considered the work on "Dead Souls" a spiritual covenant, the fulfillment of the will of the great poet

In the autumn of 1839, Gogol returned to Russia and read several chapters in Moscow from S.T. Aksakov, with whose family he became friends at that time. Friends liked what they heard, they gave the writer some advice, and he made the necessary corrections and changes to the manuscript. In 1840, in Italy, Gogol repeatedly rewrote the text of the poem, continuing to work hard on the composition and images of the characters, lyrical digressions. In the autumn of 1841, the writer returned to Moscow again and read the remaining five chapters of the first book to his friends. This time they noticed that the poem shows only the negative aspects of Russian life. Listening to their opinion, Gogol made important inserts into the already rewritten volume.

In December 1841, the manuscript was ready for printing, but censorship banned its release. Gogol was depressed and was looking for a way out of the situation. Secretly from his Moscow friends, he turned to Belinsky for help, who at that time had arrived in Moscow. The critic promised to help Gogol, and a few days later left for St. Petersburg. Petersburg censors gave permission to print "Dead Souls", but demanded that the title of the work be changed to "The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls." Thus, they sought to divert the reader's attention from social problems and switch it to the adventures of Chichikov. In May 1842, the book went on sale and, according to the memoirs of contemporaries, was snapped up. Readers immediately divided into two camps - supporters of the writer's views and those who recognized themselves in the characters of the poem. The latter, mainly landowners and officials, immediately attacked the writer, and the poem itself found itself at the center of the journal-critical struggle of the 40s.

After the release of the first volume, Gogol devoted himself entirely to work on the second (begun in 1840). Each page was created tensely and painfully, everything written seemed to the writer far from perfect. In the summer of 1845, during an aggravated illness, Gogol burned the manuscript of this volume. Later, he explained his act by the fact that "ways and roads" to the ideal, the revival human spirit not received a sufficiently truthful and convincing expression. Gogol dreamed of regenerating people through direct instruction, but he could not - he never saw the ideal "resurrected" people. However, his literary undertaking was later continued by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, who were able to show the rebirth of man, his resurrection from the reality that Gogol so vividly portrayed.

MANILOV. Manilov is a sentimental landowner, the first "seller" of dead souls. He is kind by nature, polite, courteous, but all this has taken ugly forms with him. Manilov is beautiful-hearted and sentimental to the point of cloying. Relations between people seem to him idyllic and festive. Manilov did not know life at all, reality was replaced by his empty fantasy. He liked to think and dream, sometimes even about things useful to the peasants. But his projecting was far from the demands of life. He did not know about the real needs of the peasants and never thought about it.

Manilov fancies himself a bearer of spiritual culture. Once in the army, he was considered the most educated person. Ironically, the author speaks about the atmosphere of Manilov's house, in which "something was always missing", about his sugary relationship with his wife. Meanwhile, in his office lies a book that has been pawned on page fourteen for two years now. Manilov is a parody of the hero of sentimental novels, and his groundless dreams give Gogol reason to compare the landowner with a "too smart minister." Such a comparison means that a different minister may not differ too much from the dreamy and inactive Manilov, but is a typical phenomenon of this vulgar life. The irony of Gogol invades forbidden zones. At the moment of talking about dead souls, Manilov is compared with a too smart minister. Here, Gogol's irony, as it were, inadvertently intrudes into a forbidden area. Comparing Manilov with a minister means that the latter is not so different from this landowner, and "Manilovism" is a typical phenomenon of this vulgar world.

We can say that the poem "Dead Souls" was the life work of N.V. Gogol. After all, out of twenty-three years of his writer's biography he spent seventeen years working on this work.

The history of the creation of "Dead Souls" is inextricably linked with the name of Pushkin. In the "Author's Confession" Gogol recalled that Alexander Sergeevich repeatedly pushed him to write a large, large-scale work. Decisive was the poet's story about the incident he heard in Chisinau during his exile. He always remembered him, but told Nikolai Vasilievich only a decade and a half after the incident. So, the story of the creation of "Dead Souls" is based on the real adventures of an adventurer who bought up long-dead serfs from landowners in order to pawn them, as if alive, in the Board of Trustees to obtain a considerable loan.

Actually in real life the invention of the main character of Chichikov's poem was not so rare. In those years, fraud of this kind was even common. It is quite possible that in the Mirgorod district itself there was a case with the purchase of the dead. One thing is obvious: the history of the creation of "Dead Souls" is connected not with one such event, but with several, which the writer skillfully summarized.

Chichikov's adventure is the plot core of the work. Its slightest details look reliable, as they are taken from real life. The possibility of carrying out such adventures was due to the fact that until the beginning of the 18th century, peasants were counted in the country not without exception, but by household. And only in 1718 a decree was issued to conduct a poll census, as a result of which all male serfs began to be taxed, starting with babies. Their number was recalculated every fifteen years. If some peasants died, fled or were recruited, the landowner had to pay taxes for them until the next census or divide them among the remaining workers. Naturally, any owner dreamed of getting rid of the so-called dead souls and easily fell into the net of an adventurer.

These were the real prerequisites for writing the work.

The history of the creation of the poem "Dead Souls" on paper begins in 1835. Gogol began work on it a little earlier than on The Inspector General. However, at first she did not fascinate him too much, because, after writing three chapters, he returned to comedy. And only after finishing it and returning from abroad, Nikolai Vasilyevich took up Dead Souls seriously.

With every step, with every written word, the new work seemed to him grander and grander. Gogol reworks the first chapters and generally rewrites the finished pages many times. For three years in Rome, he leads the life of a recluse, allowing himself only to undergo treatment in Germany and relax a bit in Paris or Geneva. In 1839, Gogol was forced to leave Italy for a long eight months, and with it the work on the poem. Upon his return to Rome, he continued to work on it and completed it within a year. The writer has only to polish the essay. Gogol took Dead Souls to Russia in 1841 with the intention of printing them there.

In Moscow, the result of his six years of work was taken into consideration by the censorship committee, whose members showed hostility towards him. Then Gogol took his manuscript and turned to Belinsky, who was just visiting Moscow, asking him to take the work with him to St. Petersburg and help him get through the censorship. The critic agreed to help.

The censorship in St. Petersburg was less strict and, after lengthy delays, they nevertheless allowed the book to be printed. True, with some conditions: to amend the title of the poem, the Tale of Captain Kopeikin, and thirty-six more dubious places.

The long-suffering work was finally out of print in the spring of 1842. Takova Short story Creation of "Dead Souls".

Gogol makes the first sketches of the future grandiose creation in the summer of 1835, at the same time the general idea of ​​​​the poem is taking shape. Gogol planned to write three volumes. The first volume was supposed to be something like a "facade" of a huge building (Gogol studied architecture and often used comparisons with this art form). The writer intended to depict in the first volume the sad reality, the oppressive life, "fragmented and cold characters." The second volume was planned differently: in it, the author wanted to portray changing Russia, different people, but better compared to the gallery of types of the first volume. In the heroes of the chapters of the second volume that have come down to us, we see the same Chichikov, whom the author stubbornly pushes to correct, the landlords, whose images are symmetrical to the landowners of the first volume, but they are much more complex and promising. The third volume, according to Gogol's plan, was supposed to "paint" Russia changed, which found its way to a full-fledged and happy life. The idea of ​​the poem and its structure, that is, the increasing optimistic tone in the image of the world, caused the comparison of "Dead Souls" with the "Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri, also consisting of three parts: "Hell", "Purgatory", "Paradise".

The further fate of Gogol's plan is as follows: while still working on the first volume, Gogol began to make sketches of the second (1840), but neither complete it nor write any coherent most couldn't. Of the second volume, only four chapters have been preserved in different editions. It is known that several people close to Gogol read individual finished chapters of the second volume, but ten days before his death, Gogol burned his manuscript. Gogol did not start writing the third volume.

Gogol made the first mention of his work on Dead Souls in a letter to Pushkin dated October 7, 1835: “I started writing Dead Souls. The plot stretched out into a long novel and, it seems, will be very funny.<...>I want to show in this novel, at least from one side, all of Russia. The message about "Dead Souls" appears in the same letter as the request for a plot for a new comedy, therefore, both works arose in Gogol's creative mind at the same time. The desire to show “all of Russia” testifies to the scale of the idea, the expression “although from one side” indicates that Gogol chooses a certain angle in the image of Russia, that is, while ridiculing bureaucracy in The Government Inspector, he obviously intends to focus in Dead souls" on the image of landowner-peasant Russia. However, then Gogol was temporarily distracted by work on The Inspector General and another literary activity and resumes active work over "Dead Souls" only in 1836 after leaving abroad.

Please note that in a letter to Pushkin, Gogol calls his work "a long novel." Nevertheless, returning to his plan a year later, Gogol is more clearly aware of the grandiose scale of his plan and reports in a letter to Zhukovsky: “... what a huge, what original plot! What a varied bunch! All Russia will appear in it!” Gogol no longer stipulates that he will show Russia "even from one side", and does not call the work a novel. Consequently, along with the expansion of the idea, the writer is more acutely confronted with the question of the nature of "Dead Souls" and their genre, since the author cannot designate the genre of the work arbitrarily.

Gogol wrote the first volume of Dead Souls for six years, creating most of the work in Rome. During this time, the writer called his creation in different ways: either a novel, or a story, or just a thing, and only by the beginning of the 1840s did he finally have a genre definition - a poem. In the autumn of 1841, Gogol returned to Russia, for some time sought permission from the censors to print "Dead Souls", and, finally, on May 21, 1842, the poem was published in the printing house of Moscow University under the title "The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls."

The main significance for determining the genre of "Dead Souls" - a poem - is the fact that the work is written at the junction of two literary genera: epic and lyrical. The story of Chichikov's scam, that is, his trip around the province, stay in the city, meetings, forms the epic part of the poem, the main character of which is Chichikov. The lyrical purity of the poem is mainly made up of lyrical digressions that convey experiences, reflections, emotional excitement of the author; in these digressions the positive ideal of the author is expressed. The hero of the whole poem, in the fusion of the epic and lyrical beginnings, Rus appears. Such is the genre-generic originality of Dead Souls.

"Dead Souls" is often compared with the epic poems of Homer, Virgil and Dante. However, Gogol's poem was created already during the existence of mature national literatures, it depicts national life and therefore is a national poem.

At the same time, "Dead Souls" also have a genre basis of the novel, since they describe the adventures of a rogue, a swindler - a common plot of a picaresque novel genre popular in European literature. Intended in the poem love story between Chichikov and the governor's daughter did not develop. As in The Government Inspector, where Gogol also decided not to include love conflict, in "Dead Souls" this decision has an ideological explanation, because Chichikov, whose activities are based on deceit and "not worth a damn", does not deserve love. The poem also contains signs of a moralistic story, in which, thanks to the plot based on the hero's journey, a gallery of faces and characters passes before us.

February 24, 1852 Nikolay Gogol burned the second, final edition of the second volume of "Dead Souls" - the main work in his life (he also destroyed the first edition seven years earlier). walked great post, the writer practically ate nothing, and the only person to whom he gave his manuscript to read called the novel "harmful" and advised to destroy a number of chapters from there. The author threw the entire manuscript into the fire at once. And the next morning, realizing what he had done, he regretted his impulse, but it was already too late.

But the first few chapters from the second volume are still familiar to readers. A couple of months after Gogol's death, his draft manuscripts were discovered, including four chapters for the second book of Dead Souls. AiF.ru tells the story of both volumes of one of the most famous Russian books.

Title page of the first edition of 1842 and title page the second edition of "Dead Souls" in 1846 based on a sketch by Nikolai Gogol. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

Thanks to Alexander Sergeevich!

In fact, the plot of "Dead Souls" does not belong to Gogol at all: interesting idea suggested to his "colleague in pen" Alexander Pushkin. During his exile in Chisinau, the poet heard a “outlandish” story: it turned out that in one place on the Dniester, judging by official documents, no one had died for several years. There was no mysticism in this: the names of the dead were simply assigned to fugitive peasants who, in search of a better life found themselves on the Dniester. So it turned out that the city received an influx of new work force, the peasants had a chance to new life(moreover, the police could not even figure out the fugitives), and the statistics showed the absence of deaths.

Having slightly modified this plot, Pushkin told it to Gogol - this happened, most likely, in the autumn of 1831. And four years later, on October 7, 1835, Nikolai Vasilievich sent a letter to Alexander Sergeevich with the following words: “I started writing“ Dead Souls ”. The plot stretched out for a long novel and, it seems, will be very funny. Gogol's main character was an adventurer who pretends to be a landowner and buys up dead peasants who are still listed as living in the census. And he pawns the received "souls" in a pawnshop, trying to get rich.

Three circles of Chichikov

Gogol decided to make his poem (namely, this is how the author designated the genre of “Dead Souls”) in three parts - in this the work resembles “ Divine Comedy» Dante Alighieri. In a medieval poem by Dante, the hero travels through afterlife: goes through all the circles of hell, bypasses purgatory and in the end, enlightened, goes to heaven. Gogol's plot and structure are conceived similarly: main character, Chichikov, travels around Russia, observing the vices of the landowners, and gradually changes himself. If in the first volume Chichikov appears as a clever schemer who is able to ingratiate himself with any person, then in the second he falls into a scam with someone else's inheritance and almost goes to prison. Most likely, the author assumed that in the final part of his hero would end up in Siberia along with several other characters, and, after going through a series of trials, all together they would become honest people, role models.

But Gogol did not start writing the third volume, and the content of the second can only be guessed from the four surviving chapters. Moreover, these records are working and incomplete, and the names and ages of the heroes “differ”.

Pushkin's "Sacred Testament"

In total, Gogol wrote the first volume of Dead Souls (the one that we now know so well) for six years. The work began at home, then continued abroad (the writer “drove off” there in the summer of 1836) - by the way, the writer read the first chapters to his “inspirer” Pushkin just before leaving. The author worked on the poem in Switzerland, France and Italy. Then he returned to Russia in short "raids", read on secular evenings in Moscow and St. Petersburg excerpts from the manuscript and again went abroad. In 1837 Gogol received shocking news: Pushkin was killed in a duel. The writer considered that now it was his duty to finish Dead Souls: in this way he would fulfill the poet's "sacred testament", and set to work even more diligently.

By the summer of 1841, the book was completed. The author came to Moscow planning to publish a work, but faced serious difficulties. Moscow censorship did not want to let Dead Souls pass and was going to ban the poem from publication. Apparently, the censor who "got" the manuscript helped Gogol and warned him about the problem, so that the writer managed to smuggle "Dead Souls" through Vissarion Belinsky (literary critic and publicist) from Moscow to the capital - St. Petersburg. At the same time, the author asked Belinsky and several of his influential metropolitan friends to help get through the censorship. And the plan succeeded: the book was allowed. In 1842, the work finally came out - then it was called "The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls, a poem by N. Gogol."

Illustration by Pyotr Sokolov for Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls. Chichikov's visit to Plyushkin. 1952 Reproduction. Photo: RIA Novosti / Ozersky

First edition of the second volume

It is impossible to say exactly when the author began writing the second volume - presumably, this happened in 1840, even before the first part was published. It is known that Gogol worked on the manuscript again in Europe, and in 1845, during a mental crisis, he threw all the sheets into the oven - this was the first time he destroyed the manuscript of the second volume. Then the author decided that his calling was to serve God in the literary field, and came to the conclusion that he was chosen in order to create a great masterpiece. As Gogol wrote to his friends while working on Dead Souls: “... it is a sin, a strong sin, a grave sin to distract me! Only one who does not believe in my words and inaccessible to high thoughts is allowed to do this. My work is great, my feat is saving. I am dead now for everything petty.”

According to the author himself, after the burning of the manuscript of the second volume, an insight came to him. He understood what the content of the book should really be: more sublime and "enlightened". And inspired Gogol proceeded to the second edition.

Classic character illustrations
Works by Alexander Agin for the first volume
Nozdryov	Sobakevich	Plushkin	ladies
Works by Pyotr Boklevsky for the first volume
Nozdryov	Sobakevich	Plushkin	Manilov
Works by Pyotr Boklevsky and I. Mankovsky for the second volume
Pyotr Rooster	Tentetnikov	General Betrishchev	Alexander Petrovich

"Now it's all gone." Second edition of the second volume

When the next, already the second manuscript of the second volume was ready, the writer persuaded his spiritual teacher, Rzhevsky Archpriest Matthew Konstantinovsky read it - the priest was just visiting at that time in Moscow, in the house of a friend Gogol. Matthew initially refused, but after reading the editorial board, he advised to destroy several chapters from the book and never publish them. A few days later, the archpriest left, and the writer practically stopped eating - and this happened 5 days before the start of Lent.

Portrait of Nikolai Gogol for his mother, painted by Fyodor Moller in 1841, in Rome.

According to legend, on the night of February 23-24, Gogol woke up his Semyon's servant, told him to open the oven valves and bring the briefcase in which the manuscripts were stored. To the pleas of a frightened servant, the writer replied: “None of your business! Pray! and set fire to his notebooks in the fireplace. No one living today can know what motivated the author then: dissatisfaction with the second volume, disappointment or psychological stress. As the writer himself later explained, he destroyed the book by mistake: “I wanted to burn some things that had been prepared for a long time, but I burned everything. How strong the evil one is - that's what he moved me to! And I was there a lot of practical clarified and outlined ... I thought to send to friends as a keepsake from a notebook: let them do what they wanted. Now everything is gone."

After that fateful night, the classic lived for nine days. He died in a state of severe exhaustion and without strength, but until the last he refused to take food. While sorting through his archives, a couple of Gogol's friends, in the presence of the Moscow civil governor, found draft chapters of the second volume a couple of months later. He did not even have time to start the third one ... Now, after 162 years, Dead Souls is still being read, and the work is considered a classic not only of Russian, but of all world literature.

"Dead Souls" in ten quotes

“Rus, where are you going? Give an answer. Doesn't give an answer."

“And what Russian does not like to drive fast?”

“There is only one decent person there: the prosecutor; and even that one, to tell the truth, is a pig.”

"Love us black, and everyone will love us white."

“Oh, the Russian people! He does not like to die a natural death!

“There are people who have a passion to spoil their neighbor, sometimes for no reason at all.”

"Often through visible to the world laughter pours tears invisible to the world.

“Nozdryov was in some respects historical man. Not a single meeting where he was, did not do without history.

"It is very dangerous to look deeper into ladies' hearts."

"Fear stickier than the plague."

Illustration by Pyotr Sokolov for Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls. "Chichikov at Plyushkin's". 1952 Reproduction. Photo: RIA Novosti / Ozersky