History of writing dead souls. The history of the creation of the novel "Dead Souls"

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol created extraordinary works that caused a lot of controversy, disputes, and reasons for reflection. A particularly clear reflection of the Russian reality of the 19th century is shown in the novel Dead Souls, work on which began in 1835. The plot of a beautiful creation was suggested famous writer Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, who was not indifferent to the work of Gogol. Work on the work lasted 17 years, because every little thing and every detail was thought out by the writer to the last, carefully.

Initially, it was assumed that the novel would be humorous, but through reflection and deep reflection, Nikolai Vasilievich decided to touch upon global problems people's lives in an indifferent world. Denoting the genre of the work of the poem, Gogol considered it the best option to divide it into three parts, where in the first he wanted to depict negative qualities modern society, in the second it is the self-realization of the personality, the ways of its correction, and in the third - the life of the characters that changed the fate in the right direction.

The first part took exactly 7 years from the writer, the beginning was laid in Russia, but subsequently continued abroad. gave enough to creation big time because I wanted everything to be perfect. The part was already ready for printing in 1841, but, unfortunately, it failed to pass the censorship. The publication process took place only the second time, taking into account that Gogol's friends who had an influential position helped him in this. But the creation was printed with some reservations: Nikolai Vasilyevich was obliged to change the name to “The Adventures of Chichikov or Dead Souls”, make some adjustments, exclude the story “about Captain Kopeikin”. But the writer agreed only to change the text, and not to remove it from the poem. So the first part was published in 1842.

After the publication of the work, there was a flurry of criticism. Judges, officials, and other people of supreme status were categorically against accepting the work, because they believed that Gogol showed Russia not as it really is. They argued that Nikolai Vasilyevich portrayed the homeland as harsh, gray, negative. There were disagreements about dead soul that Gogol wrote in the novel. Thoughtless people said that the soul is immortal and what the writer is talking about is complete nonsense, nonsense. It becomes clear that they are too far from the great Gogol in mind.

It is noteworthy that friends and colleagues considered how deeply and accurately raised eternal problems Nikolai Vasilyevich, because what is depicted in the poem simply amazes with its reality, severity, truth.

Criticism from the people of Gogol hurt seriously, but this did not stop him from continuing to work on the novel. He wrote the second chapter until his death, never finishing it. To Nikolai Vasilyevich, the work seemed imperfect, imperfect. Exactly nine days before his death, Gogol sent his own manuscripts to the fire, it was a final version. To date, some chapters have survived, their number is five, now today they are perceived as a separate independent work. As you can see, the implementation of the third part of the novel did not happen, it remained only an idea that Gogol did not have time to bring to life.

Thus, Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol is considered an unsurpassed writer, for he was able to present all the pressing problems in his work.

His perennial works are invaluable, after reading many questions remain. I managed to express my own point of view in the novel "Dead Souls", which is now a masterpiece of world literature. Even though Gogol did not have time to finish the third part, he left the readers something worth grasping with their hands and feet, something that is desirable to think about and reflect on. Nikolai Vasilievich would not have put anything in the poem in vain, for he cared too much about the process of writing it. All details are thought out to the smallest detail. Therefore, the work is of extraordinary value!

Option 2

Nikolai Gogol began to work on the creation of the poem "Dead Souls" in 1835. The author finished his creation only towards the end own life. Initially, the author planned to create a work in 3 volumes. main idea Gogol took books from Pushkin. The author wrote the poem in his homeland, in Italy and Switzerland, also in France. The writer completed the first part of the book in 1842. Gogol called this volume "The Adventures of Chichikov or Dead Souls." In the next volume, the writer intended to portray the changing Russia and people. In this volume, Chichikov tried to correct the landowners. In the third volume, the author wanted to describe the changed Russia.

The title of the book reflects the main idea of ​​the poem. With a literal meaning, readers understand the essence of Chichikov's deception. The hero was engaged in the acquisition of the souls of the deceased peasants. The poem has a deeper meaning. At first, the author decided to compose a poem based on the work " The Divine Comedy from Dante. Gogol conceived that the characters go through the circles of purgatory and hell. At the end of the work, the heroes must ascend and rise again.

Gogol was unable to realize his own plan. Gogol was able to complete only the first part. In 1840, the author wrote several versions of the second volume. For unknown reasons, the author himself destroyed the second part of the book. The poem has only draft manuscripts of the second part.

The writer in his creations highlights the soullessness and ruthlessness of the characters. Sobakevich was very soulless, like Koschei the immortal. Apart from him, all the city officials depicted in the book had no souls. The beginning of the book describes the active and interesting existence residents of the city. In the book, a dead soul is a simple phenomenon. For characters human soul counts hallmark living person.

The title of the work is closely connected with the symbolism of the county town N. And the city K depicted the whole country. The author wanted to show that in Russia there was a decline and that the souls of the inhabitants were extinguished. Gogol showed all the meanness of the existence of a fallen town. In one of his speeches, reading the names of the dead, Chichikov revives them in his own fantasy. In the poem, Plyushkin and Chichikov are living souls. The image of Plyushkin differs from other heroes. In chapter 6 the author gave Full description Plushkin's garden. The garden is a comparison of Plyushkin's soul.

The world described in dead souls ah" is considered the exact opposite of the real world. Associated with "dead souls" social direction creations. Chichikov's idea is impossible and at the same time simple.

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Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol began his painstaking and conscientious work on the poem Dead Souls in 1835. The writer dreamed of creating some majestic and comprehensive work about Russia. He wanted to show Russia from different angles, he wanted to explain the characters and images of the Russian people.

The idea for creating the poem "Dead Souls" was given to Nikolai Vasilievich by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. He told the author of the poem about a certain official who traveled around Russia and bought " dead Souls". This idea impressed Gogol so much that he immediately began to write.

When Nikolai Vasilyevich decided to read the first chapters to Alexander Sergeevich, he thought that his friend would start laughing at them. Because it seemed to the author of the poem at that time that the novel was very funny. But after reading the first chapters to Pushkin, Gogol saw a different reaction. Alexander Sergeevich was sad and thoughtful. At that time, the poem seemed very sad to Pushkin.

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol changed, corrected, and along the way made adjustments to his novel so many times in order to achieve the desired result. After Pushkin's death, Gogol continued to write a poem in memory of a friend.

For six long years the poem went to the reader. When "Dead Souls" were written and sent to print, the censorship did not miss the work. For this, the author had to lay all the blame on Chichikov himself. Although the initial version of the imposition of guilt was attributed to officials.

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol wanted to write a poem that would show the whole of Russia. I would tell about the character, life and will of the Russian people. He almost succeeded. The author wanted to write three volumes of Dead Souls. In the first volume, he showed the very people whom he considered "dead souls." The second volume would be a purgatory for these same souls, and the third would be a rebirth. But, due to the illness of the author himself, the second volume was burned. Subsequently, he explained his act by the fact that he could not find ways to revive the ideal.

In 1841, the novel Dead Souls was published. It is sold out from the shelves of bookstores at the speed of light. The people are divided into two parts: the first is on the side of the author, the second is the same landowners and officials. The second half of the people desecrated Gogol, was extremely indignant and humiliated by what the author wrote in his poem. However, it is worth noting that the poem "Dead Souls" not only showed "dead souls", but also showed Russia from different angles. She talked about people of different strata of the population and different characters.

Picture or drawing Dead souls creation story

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"Dead Souls" is a work by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, the genre of which the author himself designated as a poem. Originally conceived as a three-volume work. The first volume was published in 1842. The almost finished second volume was destroyed by the writer, but several chapters were preserved in drafts. The third volume was conceived and not started, only some information about it remained.

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 Vasilyevich's talent, advised him to take up a serious essay and suggested an interesting plot. He told Gogol about a clever swindler who tried to get rich by pledging the dead souls he bought to the board of trustees as living souls. At that time, there were many stories about real buyers of dead souls. One of Gogol's relatives was also named among these buyers. The plot of the poem was prompted by reality.

“Pushkin found,” Gogol wrote, “that such a plot of Dead Souls is good for me because it gives me complete freedom to travel all over Russia with the hero and bring out a variety of different characters.” Gogol himself believed that in order "to find out what Russia is today, you must certainly travel around it yourself." In October 1835, Gogol informed Pushkin: “I started writing Dead Souls. The plot stretched out into a long novel and, it seems, will be very funny. But now he stopped him at the third chapter. I'm looking for a good call-to-letter with whom I can get along briefly. I want to show in this novel, at least from one side, all of Russia.

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 alternated 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 the Motherland, the writer felt an inextricable connection with her, and only love for Russia was the source of his work.

At the beginning of his work, Gogol defined his novel as comic and humorous, but gradually his plan became more complicated. In the autumn of 1836, he wrote to Zhukovsky: “I redid everything I started again, thought over the whole plan more and now I’m keeping it calmly, like a chronicle ... If I make this creation the way it needs to be done, then ... what a huge, what an original plot!.. All Russia will appear in it!” So in the course of the work, the genre of the work was determined - a poem, and its hero - all of Russia. In the center of the work was the "personality" of Russia in all the diversity of her life.

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: "I must continue what I started great work, who wrote from me took the word Pushkin, whose thought is his creation and who has turned for me from now on into a sacred testament.

Pushkin and Gogol. A fragment of the monument to the Millennium of Russia in Veliky Novgorod.
Sculptor. I.N. shredder

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 to his friends the remaining five chapters of the first book. This time they noticed that the poem shows only negative sides Russian life. Listening to their opinion, Gogol made important inserts into the already rewritten volume.

In the 1930s, when an ideological turning point was outlined in Gogol's mind, he came to the conclusion that real writer should not only put on public display everything that darkens and obscures the ideal, but also show this ideal. He decided to translate his idea into three volumes of Dead Souls. In the first volume, according to his plans, the shortcomings of Russian life were to be captured, and in the second and third, the ways of the resurrection of "dead souls" were shown. According to the writer himself, the first volume of "Dead Souls" is only "a porch to a vast building", the second and third volumes are purgatory and rebirth. But, unfortunately, the writer managed to realize only the first part of his idea.

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 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.

"The Tale of Captain Kopeikin", plot-related to the poem and having great importance to reveal the ideological and artistic meaning of the work, censorship categorically forbade. And Gogol, who cherished it and did not regret giving it up, was forced to rework the plot. In the original version, he laid the blame for the disasters of Captain Kopeikin on the tsarist minister, who was indifferent to fate. ordinary people. After the alteration, all the blame was attributed to Kopeikin himself.

Even before receiving the censored copy, the manuscript began to be typed in the printing house of Moscow University. Gogol himself undertook to design the cover of the novel, wrote in small letters "The Adventures of Chichikov, or" and in large letters "Dead Souls".

On June 11, 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 action by the fact that the "ways and roads" to the ideal, the revival of the human spirit, did not receive 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.

Draft manuscripts of four chapters of the second volume (in an incomplete form) were discovered during the opening of the writer's papers, sealed after his death. The autopsy was performed on April 28, 1852 by S.P. Shevyryov, Count A.P. Tolstoy and the Moscow civil governor Ivan Kapnist (son of the poet and playwright V.V. Kapnist). The whitewashing of the manuscripts was carried out by Shevyryov, who also took care of their publication. The listings for the second volume circulated even before its publication. For the first time, the surviving chapters of the second volume of "Dead Souls" were published as part of Complete collection Gogol's writings in the summer of 1855.

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 biography as a writer, he devoted seventeen years to 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 landlords in order to pawn them, as if alive, in the Board of Trustees to receive 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".

The beginning of work on the poem dates back to 1835. From Gogol's "Author's Confession", his letters, from the memoirs of his contemporaries, it is known that the plot of this work, as well as the plot of "The Government Inspector", was suggested to him by Pushkin. Pushkin, who was the first to discern the originality and originality of Gogol's talent, which consisted in the ability to "guess a person and make him look like a living person with a few features," advised Gogol to take up a large and serious work. He told him about a rather clever swindler (whom he himself had heard from someone) who was trying to get rich by pledging the dead souls he had bought into the board of trustees as if they were living souls.

Many stories have been preserved about real buyers of dead souls, in particular about the Ukrainian landowners of the first thirds of XIX century, quite often resorting to such an "operation" in order to acquire the qualification for the right to distill. Even one was named among this kind of buyers. distant relative Gogol. The purchase and sale of living revision souls was a fact of everyday life, everyday, ordinary. The plot of the poem turned out to be quite vital.

In October 1835, Gogol informed Pushkin: “I started writing Dead Souls. The plot stretched out into a long novel and, it seems, will be very funny.<...>In this novel I would like to show at least one side of the whole "Rus".

This letter shows the task set by the writer. The plot of the conceived "pre-long novel" was mainly built, apparently, more on positions than on characters, with a predominance of a comic, humorous tone rather than a satirical one.

Gogol read the first chapters of his work to Pushkin. He expected that the monsters that came out from under his pen would cause the poet to laugh. In fact, they made a completely different impression on him. "Dead Souls" revealed to Pushkin a new, previously unknown world, horrified him with that impenetrable quagmire, which was the then provincial Russian life. It is not surprising that as he read, says Gogol, Pushkin became more and more gloomy and gloomy, "finally became completely gloomy." When the reading was over, he said in a voice of anguish: “God, how sad is our Russia!” Pushkin's exclamation amazed Gogol, made him take a closer and more serious look at his plan, reconsider artistic method processing of vital material. He began to think "how to soften the painful impression" that "Dead Souls" could make, how to avoid the "frightening lack of light" in his "long and funny novel." Pondering further work, Gogol, reproducing dark sides Russian life, interspersing funny phenomena with touching ones, wants to create "a complete essay, where there would be more than one thing that should be laughed at."

In these statements, although in the embryo, the author's intention is already guessed, along with the dark sides of life, to give the bright, positive ones. But this did not mean at all that the writer wants to find the bright, positive aspects of life without fail in the world of landlord and bureaucratic Russia. Apparently, in the chapters read to Pushkin for Gogol, the author's personal attitude to the depicted was not yet clearly defined, the work was not yet imbued with the spirit of subjectivity due to the lack of a clear ideological and aesthetic concept.

"Dead Souls" were written abroad ( for the most part in Rome), where Gogol left after the production of The Inspector General in the spring of 1836 in the most dejected and painful state. The waves of turbid and vicious hatred that fell upon the author of The Inspector General from many critics and journalists made an amazing impression on him. It seemed to Gogol that the comedy aroused an unfriendly attitude among all sections of Russian society. Feeling lonely, not appreciated by his compatriots for his good intentions to serve them as a denunciation of untruth, he went abroad.

Gogol's letters allow us to say that he left home country not in order to survive his offense, but in order to "consider his duties as an author, his future creations" and create "with great reflection." Being far from his homeland, Gogol was connected with Russia with his heart, thought about it, tried to find out about everything that was happening there, turned to friends and acquaintances with a request to inform him about everything that was happening in the country. “My eyes,” he writes, “most often look only at Russia and there is no measure of my love for her.” Immeasurable love for the motherland inspired Gogol and guided him in his work on " Dead souls". For the sake of prosperity native land the writer intended, with the full force of his civic indignation, to stigmatize the evil, self-interest and untruth, which are so deeply rooted in Russia. Gogol was aware that “new classes and many different gentlemen” would rise up against him, but convinced that Russia needed his scourging satire, he worked hard, hard, and persistently on his creation.

Shortly after leaving abroad, Gogol wrote to Zhukovsky: “The dead are flowing alive ... and it completely seems to me as if I were in Russia<...>.. I am completely immersed in Dead Souls.”

If in a letter to Pushkin dated October 7, 1835 Gogol defined "Dead Souls" as a novel basically comic, humorous, then the further the writer's work on the work went, the wider and deeper his idea became. 12 November 1836, he informs Zhukovsky: “I redid everything I started again, thought over the whole plan and now I’m keeping it calmly, like a chronicle ... If I complete this creation the way it needs to be done, then ... what a huge, what an original plot ! What a varied bunch! All Russia will appear in it!<...>Great is my creation, and it will not end soon.”

So, genre definition works - a poem, its hero - all of Russia. After 16 days, Gogol informs Pogodin: “The thing that I am sitting and working on now and which I have been thinking about for a long time, and which I will think about for a long time, is not like a story or a novel.<...>If God helps me to fulfill my poem as it should, then this will be my first decent creation: all of Russia will echo in it. Here the title of the new work given already in the letter to Pushkin is confirmed, and again it is said that this is a poem that will cover all of Russia. The fact that Gogol wants to give a single complex image of Russia, wants his homeland to appear all “in all its bulk,” he says in 1842 in a letter to Pletnev. The definition of the genre of the future work - the poem - undeniably testified that it was based on a "general Russian scale", that Gogol thinks in terms of national ones. Hence the many common signs that carry a generalizing semantic function, the appearance of such statements as “U US in Russia" .... "at US not that" ..., "according to our custom "...," what we have there are common rooms”, etc.

So gradually, in the course of the work, “Dead Souls” turned from a novel into a poem about Russian life, where the focus was on the “personality” of Russia, embraced at once from all sides, “in full girth” and holistically.

The hardest blow for Gogol was the death of Pushkin. “My life, my highest pleasure died with him,” we read in his letter to Pogodin. “I didn’t do anything, I didn’t write anything without his advice. He took an oath from me to write." From now on, Gogol considers the work on “Dead Souls” to be the fulfillment of Pushkin’s will: “I must continue the great work I started, which Pushkin took the word from me to write, whose thought is his creation and which has turned for me from now on into a sacred testament.”

From the diary of A. I. Turgenev it is known that when Gogol was with him in Paris in 1838, he read “excerpts from his novel“ Dead Souls ”. A true, living picture in Russia of our bureaucrat, noble life, our statehood ... Ridiculous and painful. In Rome in the same year 1838, Gogol read to Zhukovsky, Shevyrev, Pogodin, who arrived there, chapters about Chichikov's arrival in the city of N, about Manilov, Korobochka.

On September 13, 1839, Gogol arrived in Russia and read four chapters of the manuscript with N. Ya. Prokopovich in St. Petersburg; relationship. Moscow friends enthusiastically greeted the new work and gave a lot of advice. The writer, taking them into account, again began to remake, "re-clean" the already completed edition of the book.

In the spring and summer of 1840 in Rome, Gogol, rewriting the corrected text of Dead Souls, again makes changes and corrections to the manuscript. Repetitions, long lengths are removed, whole new pages, scenes, additional characteristics appear, digressions, separate words, phrases are replaced. Work on the work testifies to the enormous tension and upsurge creative forces writer: "everything further loomed with him more and more purely, more and more majestic."

In the autumn of 1841, Gogol arrived in Moscow and, while the first six chapters were being whitewashed, he read the remaining five chapters of the first book to the Aksakov family and M. Pogodin. Friends were now pointing with particular insistence to the one-sided, negative character images of Russian life, noted that in the poem only “half of the girth, and not the whole girth” of the Russian world is given. They demanded to show the other, positive side of life in Russia. Gogol, apparently, heeded these advice and made important inserts into the completely rewritten volume. In one of them, Chichikov takes up arms against tailcoats and balls that came from the West, from France, and are contrary to the Russian spirit and Russian nature. In another, a solemn promise is given that in the future “a formidable blizzard of inspiration will rise and the majestic thunder of other speeches will be heard.

The ideological turning point in Gogol's consciousness, which began to emerge in the second half of the 1930s, led to the fact that the writer decided to serve his homeland not only by exposing "to general ridicule" everything that defiled and obscured the ideal to which the Russian could and should strive. man, but also showing this ideal itself. Gogol now saw the book in three volumes. The first volume was supposed to capture the shortcomings of Russian life, the people who hinder its development; the second and third are to indicate the ways of the resurrection of "dead souls", even such as Chichikov or Plyushkin. "Dead Souls" turned out to be a work in which pictures of a broad and objective display of Russian life would serve as a direct means of promoting high moral principles. The realist writer became a moralist preacher.

Of the huge plan, Gogol managed to complete only the first part.

In early December 1841, the manuscript for the first volume of Dead Souls was submitted for consideration by the Moscow censorship committee. But rumors that reached Gogol about unfavorable rumors among the members of the committee prompted him to take the manuscript back. In an effort to get "Dead Souls" through the St. Petersburg censorship, he sent the manuscript with Belinsky, who arrived in Moscow at that time, but the St. Petersburg censorship was in no hurry to consider the poem. Gogol waited, full of anxiety and confusion. Finally, in mid-February 1842, permission was obtained to print Dead Souls. However, the censorship changed the title of the work, demanding that it be called "The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls" and thereby seeking to divert the reader's attention from the social problems of the poem, focusing his attention mainly on the adventures of the rogue Chichikov.

Censorship categorically banned The Tale of Captain Kopeikin. Gogol, who cherished it very much and wished to preserve The Tale at all costs, was forced to remake it and shift all the blame for the disasters of Captain Kopeikin on Kopeikin himself, and not on the tsarist minister, indifferent to the fate of ordinary people, as it is was originally.

On May 21, 1842, the first copies of the poem were received, and two days later an announcement appeared in the Moskovskie Vedomosti newspaper that the book had gone on sale.