Dead souls historical era. The history of the creation of the poem "Dead Souls"

Over the main work of his life - the poem " Dead Souls» Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol worked for seventeen years, from October 1835 to February 1852.

An interesting and extraordinary plot was offered to a promising young writer Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. Pushkin himself learned the plot from real life during his stay in Chisinau exile.

He was struck amazing story that for a number of years in one of the places on the Dniester, according to official data, no one died. The answer turned out to be simple: fugitive peasants were hiding under the names of the dead.

History Dead writing The shower is interesting because in 1831 Pushkin told this story to Gogol, slightly modifying it, and in 1835 he received news from Nikolai Vasilyevich that the writer had begun writing a long and very funny novel based on the plot presented to him. In the new plot, the main character is an enterprising figure who buys dead peasants from the landowners, who are still alive in the revision tales, and pawns their "souls" in the Board of Trustees to obtain a loan.

The beginning of work on the future brilliant novel was laid in St. Petersburg, but basically the history of writing Dead Souls developed abroad, where Gogol left in the summer of 1836. Before leaving, he read several chapters to his inspiration, Alexander Pushkin, who was mortally wounded in a duel a few months later. After such a tragic event, Gogol was simply obliged to complete the work he had begun, thereby paying tribute to the memory of the deceased poet.

In 1841, the six-year labor of writing the first volume of Dead Souls was completed. But problems arose in Moscow with the passage of censorship, and then the manuscript, with the help of the well-known critic Belinsky, was forwarded to St. Petersburg.

In the capital, on March 9, 1842, the censor A. Nikitenko finally signed the censorship permit, and freshly printed copies of the book called "The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls" saw the light of day on May 21. original name was changed at the request of the censorship committee.

The history of writing Dead Souls is interesting in that in 1831 Pushkin told this story to Gogol, slightly modifying it, and in 1835 he received news from Nikolai Vasilyevich that the writer had already started writing it.

The last decade of Nikolai Gogol's work

The last decade of the writer's life was devoted to writing the second volume of the poem "Dead Souls", and in the future there should have been a third part (like Dante Alighieri in his poem "The Divine Comedy", which includes three components). In 1845, Gogol considered that the content of the second volume was not sufficiently sublime and enlightened, and in an emotional outburst he burned the manuscript.

Completed in 1852 new version volumes of the poem, but he suffered the same fate: the great creation on the night of February 12 was thrown into the fire. Perhaps the reason was that the confessor of the writer Matvey Konstantinovsky, who had read the manuscript, spoke unflatteringly about some chapters of the poem. After the departure of the archpriest from Moscow, Nikolai Gogol practically stopped eating and destroyed the manuscript.

A few days later, on February 21, 1852, the great Russian writer died - he went into eternity after his creation. But part of the second volume nevertheless came down to posterity thanks to the drafts of the manuscript that survived after Gogol's death. A contemporary of Nikolai Gogol and a great admirer of him, Fyodor Dostoevsky believed that the ingenious book "Dead Souls" should become a desktop for every enlightened person.

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 an interesting plot. 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 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 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 complete 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.

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 the negative aspects of Russian life. Listening to their opinion, Gogol made important inserts into the already rewritten volume.

In the 1930s, when there was an ideological turning point 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 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.

"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 the fate of ordinary people. After the alteration, all the blame was attributed to Kopeikin himself.

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 the 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.

All topics of the book “Dead Souls” by N.V. Gogol. Summary. features of the poem. Compositions":

Summary poem "Dead Souls": Volume one. Chapter first

Features of the poem "Dead Souls"

Dead Souls is Gogol's main work, not only in terms of the depth and scale of artistic generalizations. The work on the poem turned into a long process of human and literary self-knowledge of the author, aspiring to the world of high spiritual truths. “It is not at all the province and not a few ugly landowners, and not what is attributed to them, that is the subject of Dead Souls,” Gogol noted after the publication of the first volume. “This is still a mystery that should suddenly, to the amazement of everyone ... be revealed in the following volumes.”

Changes in the idea of ​​Gogol's main work, the search for a genre, work on the text of the chapters of the first and second volumes, pondering the third - everything that is called creative history works are fragments of a grandiose "construction" conceived but not implemented by Gogol. The first volume of "Dead Souls" is only a part in which the outlines of the whole are guessed. According to the writer, "this pale start that labor, which by the bright grace of Heaven will not be much useless. No wonder the author compared the first volume of the poem with a porch, hastily attached by the provincial architect to "the palace, which is planned to be built on a colossal scale." Studying the first volume is the first step to understanding general plan poems. In turn, the meaning of the only completed volume is revealed only in comparison with that hypothetical work that was never created.

The originality of the genre, the features of the plot and the composition of "Dead Souls" are associated with the development and deepening of the original idea of ​​the work. Pushkin stood at the origins of Dead Souls. According to Gogol, the poet advised him to take on a large essay and even gave the plot, from which he himself wanted to make "something like a poem." “Pushkin found that the 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 lot of the most diverse characters” (“Author's Confession”). Let us emphasize that it was not so much the plot itself, but rather the "thought" - the core of the artistic concept of the work - that was Pushkin's "hint" to Gogol. After all, the future author of the poem was well aware of everyday stories based on scams with " dead souls". One of these cases occurred in Mirgorod in youth Gogol.

“Dead souls” are dead serfs who continued to be the “living” property of the landowners until the next “revision tale”, after which they were officially considered dead. Only then did the landlords stop paying tax for them - the poll tax. Peasants that existed on paper could be sold, donated or mortgaged, which was sometimes used by swindlers who tempted landlords with the opportunity not only to get rid of serfs who did not bring income, but also to get money for them. The very same buyer of "dead souls" became the owner of quite real state. Chichikov’s adventure is the result of the “most inspired thought” that dawned on him: “Yes, if I buy all these who have died out before they have yet filed new revision tales, get them, let’s say, a thousand, yes, let’s say, the board of trustees will give two hundred rubles per capita: here already two hundred thousand capital! And now the time is convenient, there was an epidemic recently, a lot of people died, thank God, a lot.

"Anecdote" with dead souls provided the basis for an adventurous picaresque novel. This variation of the novel genre is entertaining and has always been very popular. The picaresque novels were created by Gogol's older contemporaries: V.T. Despite the low artistic level, their novels were a resounding success.

An adventurous picaresque novel is the original genre model of Dead Souls, but in the process of working on the work it has changed dramatically. This is evidenced, in particular, by the author's designation of the genre - a poem, which appeared after adjusting the main idea and the general plan of the work. Gogol's thesis "all Russia will appear in it" not only emphasized the scale of the new idea compared to the previous intention to show Russia "at least from one side", that is, satirically, but also meant a decisive revision of the previously chosen genre model. The scope of the adventurous picaresque novel has become tight: traditional genre could not contain all the wealth of the new idea. Chichikov's "Odyssey" has become just one of the ways of artistic embodiment of the author's vision of Russia.

Having lost its leading role in Dead Souls, the adventurous picaresque novel remained a genre shell for the other two main genre tendencies of the poem - moralistic and epic. Revealing the genre originality of the work, it is necessary to find out which features of the genre of the novel have been preserved and which have been decisively discarded, how the romantic, moralistic and epic genre trends interact in the poem.

One of the tricks used in adventurous picaresque novels is the mystery of the origin of the hero, who in the first chapters of the novel was either a foundling or a man from the common people, and “at the end of the last part,” in the words of Pushkin, having overcome many life obstacles, suddenly turned out to be a son "noble" parents and received a rich inheritance. Gogol resolutely abandoned this novelist template.

Chichikov is a man of the “middle”: “not a handsome man, but not bad-looking, neither too fat nor too thin; one cannot say that he is old, but it is not so that he is too young. The adventurer's life story is hidden from the reader until the eleventh and final chapter. Deciding to "hide the scoundrel", that is, to tell Chichikov's background, the writer begins by emphasizing the mediocrity, "vulgarity" of the hero:

"Dark and modest is the origin of our hero." And completing his detailed biography, he summarizes: “So, our hero is all there, what he is! But they will demand, perhaps, a final definition in one line: who is he in relation to moral qualities? That he is not a hero, full of perfection and virtue, is evident. Who is he? so a scoundrel? Why a scoundrel, why be so strict with others? Rejecting the extremes in the definition of Chichikov (not a hero, but not a scoundrel), Gogol stops at his main, conspicuous quality: "It is most fair to call him: the owner, the acquirer."

Thus, there is nothing unusual in Chichikov: this is an “average” person in whom the author has strengthened a trait common to many people. In his passion for profit, which replaced everything else, in pursuit of the ghost of a beautiful and easy life, Gogol sees the manifestation of the usual "human poverty", the paucity of spiritual interests and life goals - everything that many people carefully hide. The author needed the hero’s biography not so much to reveal the “secret” of his life, but to remind readers that Chichikov is not an exceptional, but quite an ordinary phenomenon: everyone can discover “some part of Chichikov” in himself.

The traditional plot “spring” in moralistic adventurous and picaresque novels is the persecution of the protagonist by vicious, greedy and malicious people. Against their background, the rogue hero, who fought for his rights, could seem almost like a “perfect model”. As a rule, he was helped by virtuous and compassionate people who naively expressed the author's ideals. In the first volume of Dead Souls, Chichikov is not pursued by anyone, and there are no characters who could at least to some extent become spokesmen for the author's point of view. Only in the second volume did “positive” characters appear: the farmer Murazov, the landowner Kostanzhoglo, the governor, who is implacable to the abuses of officials, however, these personalities, unusual for Gogol, are far from novel stencils.

The plots of many adventurous and picaresque novels were artificial, far-fetched. The emphasis was on "adventures", the adventures of rogue heroes. Gogol is not interested in Chichikov's "adventures" per se, and not even in their "material" result (in the end, the hero obtained a fortune by fraudulent means), but in their social and moral content, which allowed the writer to make Chichikov's roguery a "mirror", which reflected modern Russia. This is the Russia of landowners who sell "air" - "dead souls", and officials who assist the swindler, instead of grabbing his hand. In addition, the plot based on Chichikov's wanderings has a huge semantic potential: layers of other meanings, philosophical and symbolic, are superimposed on the real basis.

The author deliberately slows down the movement of the plot, accompanying each event detailed descriptions the appearance of the heroes, the material world in which they live, reflections on their human qualities. The adventurous and picaresque plot loses not only its dynamics, but also its significance: each event causes an "avalanche" of facts, details, author's judgments and assessments to come down. Contrary to the requirements of the adventure-picaresque novel genre, the plot of Dead Souls almost completely stops in the last chapters. Of the events taking place in the seventh-eleventh chapters, only two - the registration of the deed of sale and the departure of Chichikov from the city - are significant for the development of the action. The turmoil in the provincial city, caused by the desire to reveal Chichikov's "secret", not only does not bring society closer to exposing the swindler, but also enhances the feeling that there is "anarchy" in the city: confusion, stupid marking time, "a binge of idle talk."

The eleventh chapter of the first volume from the point of view of the plot is the most static, overloaded with extra-plot components: it contains three lyrical digressions, Chichikov's background and a parable about Kif Mokievich and Mokiya Kifovich. However, it is in the final chapter that the character of the adventurer is clarified (the author sets out in detail his view of him, after the points of view of other characters have already been presented). Here the “portrait” of the provincial city is completed, and most importantly, the scale of everything depicted in the first volume is determined: the majestic image of the “unbeatable” “Rus-troika” rushing into historical space, is opposed to the sleepy life of the provincial city and the run of the Chichikov troika. The author seems to convince the readers that the plot based on Chichikov's "adventures" is only one of the whole variety of life plots that life gives to Russia. The provincial city turns out to be just an inconspicuous point on its map, and the participants in the events described are only a small, insignificant part of Russia - a “mighty space”, “a sparkling, wonderful, unfamiliar land given”.

The figure of the swindler, rogue and adventurer Chichikov helped to build a variety of life material into a plot narrative. No matter how diverse the situations and episodes may be, the fraudster, thanks to his life goals and moral qualities, gives them harmony and integrity, provides through action. The motivation for events, as in any adventure-picaresque novel, is relatively simple, but it “works” flawlessly.

The thirst for winning, good luck makes the hero-adventurer quickly change position, move easily, look for acquaintances with the “right” people, seek their location. Arriving in the provincial town of NN, Chichikov did not know anyone. Chichikov's acquaintances - with the officials of the provincial city and with the surrounding landowners - allowed the author to tell in detail about each new person, to characterize his appearance, way of life, habits and prejudices, and the manner of communicating with people. The arrival of the hero, his interest in the place where he arrived, in the people he met there, is quite sufficient plot motivation for the inclusion of more and more episodes in the work. Each episode simply joins the previous one, forming a chronicle plot - a chronicle of Chichikov's journey for "dead souls".

The monotony and "programming" of Chichikov's journey is broken only in two cases: an unplanned meeting with Korobochka occurred at the mercy of a drunken Selifan, who lost his way, after which Chichikov met Nozdrev in a tavern on the "high road", to whom he was not going to go at all. But, as always with Gogol, small deviations from the general rule only confirm it. Random meetings with Korobochka and Nozdryov, knocking Chichikov out of his usual “rut” for some time, do not violate general design. The following events in the provincial town became an echo of these meetings: Korobochka comes to find out “how much dead souls go for”, and Nozdryov tells everyone about the fraud of the “Kherson landowner”. Chichikov's greatest success - a visit to Plyushkin, whose peasants are dying like flies - is also accidental: Sobakevich told him about the existence of this landowner.

"Penetrating" together with the hero into the most diverse classes, Gogol creates a broad picture of morals. Moral descriptiveness is one of the secondary genre features of an adventurously picaresque novel. Gogol, using the moralistic potential of the genre, made everyday life and morality the most important genre trend in Dead Souls. Each movement of Chichikov is followed by an essay on life and customs. The most extensive of these essays is the story of the life of the provincial town, begun in the first chapter and continued in the seventh to eleventh chapters. In the second-sixth chapters, Chichikov's visit to the next landowner is accompanied by a detailed moralistic essay.

Gogol was well aware that the psychology of an adventurer gives him additional opportunities to penetrate into the depths of the characters portrayed. To achieve his goal, an adventurer cannot be limited to a superficial look at people: he needs to know their carefully hidden, reprehensible sides. Chichikov, already at the first stage of work on Dead Souls, became, as it were, an "assistant" to the writer, who was fascinated by the idea of ​​​​creating a satirical work. This function of the hero was fully preserved even when the idea of ​​the work expanded.

Buying up "dead souls", that is, committing a crime, the swindler must be an excellent physiognomist and subtle psychologist, of course, in his own special way. Indeed, by offering to sell dead souls, Chichikov persuades the landowners to enter into a criminal conspiracy with him, to become accomplices in his crime. He is convinced that profit and calculation are the strongest motives for any act, even illegal and immoral. However, like any rogue, Chichikov cannot be careless, but must “take precautions”, since every time he risks: what if the landowner turns out to be honest and law-abiding and not only refuses to sell “dead souls”, but also surrenders him to justice ? Chichikov is not just a swindler, his role is more important: he is necessary for a satirist writer as a powerful tool in order to test other characters, to show their private life hidden from prying eyes.

The image of all landlords is based on the same microplot. His “spring” is the actions of the buyer of “dead souls”. Two characters are indispensable participants in five microplots: Chichikov and the landowner whom he visits. The author builds the story about the landlords as a successive change of episodes: entry into the estate, meeting, refreshments, Chichikov's offer to sell "dead souls", departure. These are not ordinary plot episodes: it is not the events themselves that are of interest to the author, but the opportunity to show in detail object world surrounding landowners, create their portraits. The everyday details reflect the personality of this or that landowner: after all, each estate is like a closed world, created in the image and likeness of its owner. The whole mass of details enhances the impression of the landowner, emphasizes the most important aspects his personality.

Arriving at the estate, Chichikov each time, as it were, finds himself in a new "state" that lives according to its own unwritten rules. The keen gaze of an adventurer captures the smallest details. The author uses Chichikov's impressions, but is not limited to them. The picture of what Chichikov saw is supplemented by the author's descriptions of the estate, the landowner's house, the landowner himself. Both in the “landlord” and “provincial” chapters of the poem, a similar principle of representation is used: the author, focusing on the point of view of the hero-adventurer, easily replaces it with his own, “picking up” and generalizing what Chichikov saw.

Chichikov sees and understands particulars - the author discovers in the characters and in various life situations their more general social and universal content. Chichikov is able to see only the surface of phenomena - the author penetrates into the depths. If it is important for the fraudulent hero to understand what kind of person he met and what can be expected from him, then for the author, each new plot partner of Chichikov is a person representing a very specific social and human type. Gogol seeks to elevate the individual, particular to the generic, common to many people. For example, characterizing Manilov, he remarks: “There is a kind of people known by the name: people are so-so, neither this nor that, neither in the city of God given nor in the village of Selifan, according to the proverb. Maybe Manilov should join them. The same principle is used in the author's description of Korobochka: “A minute later the hostess came in, an elderly woman, in some kind of sleeping cap, put on hastily, with a flannel around her neck, one of those mothers, small landowners who cry for crop failures, losses and keep head a little to one side, and meanwhile they are gaining a little money in motley bags placed in the drawers of chests of drawers. “Nozdryov's face is probably somewhat familiar to the reader. Everyone had to meet a lot of such people. ... They are always talkers, revelers, scorchers, prominent people, ”Nozdryov is presented to the reader in this way.

Gogol not only shows how the individuality of each landowner manifests itself in similar situations, but also emphasizes that it is the landowner who is responsible for everything that happens in this "state". The world of things surrounding the landlords, their estates and the village in which the serfs live is always an exact likeness of the landowner's personality, his "mirror". The key episode in the meetings with the landlords was Chichikov's proposal to sell the "dead souls" and the reaction of the landlords to this proposal. The behavior of each of them is individual, but the result is always the same: not one of the landowners, including the scandalous Nozdryov, refused. This episode clearly shows that in each landowner Gogol discovers only a variation of one social type - a landowner who is ready to satisfy Chichikov's "fantastic desire".

In meetings with the landlords, the personality of the adventurer himself is also revealed: after all, he is forced to adapt to each of them. Like a chameleon, Chichikov changes his appearance and demeanor: with Manilov he behaves like “Manilov”, with Korobochka he is rude and straightforward, like herself, etc. Perhaps, only with Sobakevich he fails to immediately “get into tune "- too bizarre is the thought of this man, similar to " medium size a bear”, in which all the officials in the provincial town are swindlers and Christ-sellers, “there is only one decent person there: the prosecutor; and even that one, to tell the truth, is a pig.”

The purely material reason for the hero's movements is only the plot "framework" that supports the entire "building" of the poem. To paraphrase Gogol's comparison of "Dead Souls" with a "palace", conceived "to be built on a huge scale", we can say that this building has many "rooms": spacious, bright and cramped, gloomy, it has many wide corridors and dark nooks and crannies, it is not clear where leading. The author of the poem is Chichikov's indispensable companion, never leaving him alone for a minute. He becomes something like a guide: he tells the reader the next turn of the plot action, he describes in detail the next “room” into which he leads his hero. Literally on every page of the poem, we hear the voice of the author - a commentator on ongoing events, who loves to talk in detail and in detail about their participants, to show the situation of the action without missing a single detail. They are necessary for the most complete image of a particular person or object that falls into his field of vision, and most importantly, in order to fully and in detail recreate the “portrait” of Russia and the Russian person.

The image of the author is the most important image of the poem. It is created both in the plot narrative and in the author's digressions. The author is extremely active: his presence is felt in every episode, in every description. This is due to the subjectivity of the narrative in Dead Souls. Main function the author-narrator is a generalization: in the particular and seemingly insignificant, he always strives to reveal the characteristic, typical, common to all people. The author appears not as a writer of everyday life, but as a connoisseur human soul, who carefully studied her light and dark sides, oddities and "fantastic desires". In essence, for the author, there is nothing mysterious or accidental in the life of the characters. In any person whom Chichikov meets, and in himself, the author seeks to show secret "springs" hidden from outsiders motives of behavior. According to the author, “wise is he who does not shun any character, but, fixing him with a searching look, explores him to the original causes.”

In the author's digressions, the author reveals himself as a deeply feeling, emotional person, able to escape from particulars, discarding "all the terrible, amazing mire of the little things that have entangled our lives," which he talks about in the story. He looks at Russia with the eyes of an epic writer who understands the illusory, ephemeral vulgar life the people they depict. Behind the emptiness and immobility of the “non-smokers”, the author is able to consider “the whole enormously rushing life”, the future vortex movement of Russia.

The widest range of the author's moods is expressed in lyrical digressions. Admiration for the accuracy of the Russian word and the briskness of the Russian mind (the end of the fifth chapter) is replaced by a sad and elegiac reflection on youth and maturity, about the loss of "living movement" (the beginning of the sixth chapter). A complex range of feelings expressed in digression at the beginning of the seventh chapter. Comparing the fates of two writers, the author writes with bitterness about the moral and aesthetic deafness of the “modern court”, which does not recognize that “glasses looking around the suns and transmitting the movements of unnoticed insects are equally wonderful”, that “high enthusiastic laughter is worthy to stand next to the high lyrical movement ". The author refers himself to the type of writer who is not recognized by the "modern court": "His career is harsh, and he will bitterly feel his loneliness." But at the end of the lyrical digression, the author’s mood changes dramatically: he becomes an exalted prophet, his gaze opens up the future “terrible blizzard of inspiration”, which “will rise from the head clothed in holy horror and in the brilliance” and then his readers “smell in embarrassed awe the majestic thunder of others speeches..."

In the eleventh chapter, the lyrical-philosophical meditation on Russia and the vocation of the writer, whose "head was overshadowed by a formidable cloud, heavy with the coming rains" ("Rus! Rus! I see you, from my wonderful, beautiful far away I see you ..."), replaces the panegyric of the road , a hymn to the movement - the source of "wonderful ideas, poetic dreams", "wonderful impressions" ("What a strange, and alluring, and bearing, and wonderful in the word: the road! .."). The two most important themes of the author's reflections - the theme of Russia and the theme of the road - merge in a lyrical digression that concludes the first volume. “Rus-troika”, “all inspired by God”, appears in it as a vision of the author, who seeks to understand the meaning of its movement: “Rus, where are you rushing to? Give an answer. Doesn't give an answer."

The image of Russia created in this digression, and the author's rhetorical question addressed to her, echo Pushkin's image of Russia - the "proud horse", created in The Bronze Horseman, and with the rhetorical question: "What fire is in this horse! Where are you galloping, proud horse, / And where will you lower your hooves? Both Pushkin and Gogol passionately desired to understand the meaning and purpose of the historical movement in Russia. Both in The Bronze Horseman and Dead Souls, the artistic result of the writers' reflections was the image of an uncontrollably rushing country, striving for the future, disobeying its "riders": the formidable Peter, who "raised Russia on its hind legs", stopping its spontaneous movement, and "non-smokers", whose immobility contrasts sharply with the "terrifying movement" of the country.

In the high lyrical pathos of the author, directed to the future, one of the main genre tendencies of the poem was expressed - the epic, which is not dominant in the first volume of Dead Souls. This trend was to be fully revealed in the following volumes. Reflecting on Russia, the author recalls what is hidden behind the “mud of trifles that have entangled our lives” depicted by him, behind the “cold, fragmented, everyday characters with which our earthly, sometimes bitter and boring road is teeming. It is not without reason that he speaks of the "wonderful, beautiful far away" from which he looks at Russia. This is an epic distance that attracts him with its “secret power”: the distance of the “mighty space” of Russia (“what a sparkling, wonderful, unfamiliar distance to the earth! Russia! ..”) and the distance of historical time: “What prophesies this immense expanse? Is it not here, in you, that an infinite thought is born, when you yourself are without end? Is there not a hero to be here when there is a place where to turn around and walk for him? The heroes depicted in the story of Chichikov's "adventures" are devoid of epic qualities, they are not heroes, but ordinary people with their weaknesses and vices. IN epic image In Russia, created by the author, there is no place for them: they seem to diminish, disappear, just as "like dots, icons, inconspicuously stick out among the plains of low ... cities." Only the author himself, endowed with knowledge of Russia, "terrible power" and "unnatural power" received by him from the Russian land, becomes the only epic hero of Dead Souls, a prophecy about that hypothetical hero who, according to Gogol, should appear in Russia.

One of the important features of the poem, which does not allow the work to be perceived only as a story about the "adventures of Chichikov" behind the gold placers of "dead souls", is the symbolization of the depicted. “Dead souls” is the most capacious symbol of the poem: after all, Chichikov buys dead serfs from living “dead souls”. These are landlords who have lost their spirituality, turned into "material cattle." Gogol is interested in any person who is able to "give a true idea about the estate to which he belongs," as well as about universal human weaknesses. The private, the individual, the random becomes the expression of the typical, common to all people. The characters of the poem, the circumstances in which they find themselves, the objective world surrounding them are ambiguous. The author not only constantly reminds readers of the “ordinary” nature of everything he writes about, but also invites them to reflect on their observations, to remember what they themselves can see at every step, to take a closer look at themselves, their actions and familiar things. Gogol, as it were, “shines through” every object that is discussed, revealing its symbolic meaning. Chichikov and his provincial acquaintances, the surrounding landowners, by the will of the author, find themselves in the world of symbols, which at the same time remain quite real things and events.

Indeed, what is unusual, for example, in “a book of some kind” that is memorable to all readers of Dead Souls, which “always lay” in Manilov’s office, “laid with a bookmark on the fourteenth page, which he had been constantly reading for two years”? It seems that this is one of the many details that testify to the worthless, empty life of a dreamer, a landowner "without enthusiasm." But if you think about it, behind this information of the author who loves thoroughness, a deep meaning is guessed: Manilov's book is a magical object, a symbol of his stopped life. The life of this landowner seemed to "stumble" at full gallop and froze in the master's house, which stood "alone in the south, that is, on a hill, open to all winds." The existence of Manilov resembles a swamp with stagnant water. What has this person “constantly read” “so-so, neither in the city of Bogdan nor in the village of Seli-fan” for two years now? It is not even this that is important, but the very fact of the frozen movement: the fourteenth page does not let go of Manilov, does not allow him to move forward. His life, which Chichikov sees, is also the "fourteenth page", beyond which the "novel of life" of this landowner cannot advance.

Any Gogol detail becomes a symbolic detail, because the writer shows people and things not as “dead”, but as “resting”, “petrified”. But Gogol's "petrification" is only likening to a dead stone. The movement freezes, but does not disappear - it remains as possible and desirable, as the author's ideal. The book, even if unread, "always lay" on the Manilov table. As soon as this person overcomes his laziness and sluggishness, as soon as he returns from that “God knows where”, which intoxicates people, turns them into “God knows what it is”, and the reading of the “Book of Life” will resume. Movement that has slowed down or stalled will continue. Stop and rest for Gogol is not the end of a movement, not a death. They conceal the possibility of movement, which can both lead to the "high road" and make you wander off-road.

Let's take another example. Leaving Korobochka, Chichikov asks her to tell him "how to get to the main road." “How would you do it? the hostess said. - It's tricky to tell, there are a lot of turns; unless I give you a girl to see you off. After all, you, tea, have a place on the goats, where she could sit down. Quite a normal, seemingly unremarkable conversation. But it contains not only worldly, but also symbolic meaning: it turns out if we correlate this conversation with the most important theme of the poem - the theme of the road, path, movement and with one of the main image-symbols created by Gogol - the image-symbol of the road, directly related to another symbolically- the image of Russia.

"How to get to the main road"? - this is not only a question asked by Chichikov, who, by the grace of a drunken Selifan, drove off-road (“we dragged along a harrowed field” until “the cart hit the fence with shafts and when there was absolutely nowhere to go”). This is also the author's question addressed to the reader of the poem: together with the writer, he must think about how to go to " big road» life. Behind Korobochka's answer, "strong-headed" and "club-headed," as the irritated Chichikov defined her, hides a different, symbolic meaning. Indeed, it is difficult to talk about how to "get to the big road": after all, "there are many turns", you always run the risk of turning in the wrong direction. Therefore, you can not do without an escort. In the worldly sense, it can be a peasant girl, who has a place on the goats of the Chichikovskaya britzka. The payment to her, who knows all the twists and turns, is a copper penny.

But next to Chichikov there is always a place for the author. He, moving through life with him, also knows all the "turns" in the fate of his heroes. A few chapters later, in a lyrical digression at the beginning of the seventh chapter, the author will directly say about his path: “And for a long time it was determined for me by the wonderful power to go hand in hand with my strange characters to survey the whole vastly rushing life, to survey it through laughter visible to the world and invisible, unknown to it tears! The "pay" for the writer, who risked "bringing out everything that is every minute before our eyes and that indifferent eyes do not see", loneliness, "reproach and reproach" of the biased "modern court". In "Dead Souls" every now and then there are "strange rapprochements", semantic echoes of situations, subject matter, statements of characters and lyrically-excited monologues of the author. The everyday, subject-everyday layer of the narrative is only the first level of meaning, to which Gogol is not limited. The semantic parallels that arise in the text indicate the complexity of the "construction", the ambiguity of the text of the poem.

Gogol is very demanding of readers: he wants them not to skim over the surface of phenomena, but to penetrate to their core, to ponder the hidden meaning of what they read. To do this, it is necessary to see behind the informative or "objective" meaning of the writer's words their implicit, but most important - symbolically generalized - meaning. The co-creation of readers is just as necessary for the creator of Dead Souls as it is for Pushkin, the author of the novel Eugene Onegin. It is important to remember that the artistic effect of Gogol's prose is created not by what he portrays, what he talks about, but by how he portrays, how he tells. The word is a subtle tool of the writer, which Gogol mastered to perfection.

Whether the second volume of "Dead Souls" was written and burned is a complex question that does not have a clear answer, although research and educational literature it is generally stated that the manuscript of the second volume was burned by Gogol ten days before his death. This is the main secret of the writer, carried away by him to the grave. In the papers left after his death, several draft versions of individual chapters of the second volume were found. A fundamental dispute arose between Gogol's friends S.T. Aksakov and S.P. Shevyrev about whether these chapters should be published. Copies of the manuscripts made by Shevyrev, a supporter of the publication, were distributed among readers even before the publication of what remained of the second volume, in September 1855. Thus, only fragments of the manuscript, "mounted" by people who knew the writer well, can be the result of ten years of dramatic work on the second volume.

From 1840 until the end of his life, Gogol created a new aesthetics, which was based on the task of the writer's spiritual influence on his contemporaries. The first approaches to the implementation of this aesthetic program were made at the final stage of work on the first volume of Dead Souls, but Gogol tried to fully realize his ideas while working on the second volume. He was no longer satisfied with the fact that earlier, exposing social and human vices to the public, indirectly pointed out the need to overcome them. In the 1840s the writer was looking for real ways to get rid of them. The second volume was supposed to present Gogol's positive program. It inevitably followed from this that the balance of his art system should have been violated: after all, the positive requires a visible embodiment, the appearance of “positive” characters close to the author. Not without reason, even in the first volume, Gogol pathetically announced the novelty of the content and new, unusual characters that would appear in his poem. In it, according to the author, “the incalculable wealth of the Russian spirit will appear, a husband gifted with divine valor will pass”, and “a wonderful Russian girl” - in a word, not only the characters “cold, fragmented, everyday”, “boring, nasty, amazing and sad reality”, but also the characters in which readers will finally be able to see the “high dignity of a person”.

Indeed, in the second volume, new characters appeared that violated the homogeneity of Gogol's comic world: the landowner Kostanzhoglo, close to the ideal of the "Russian landowner", the farmer Murazov, instructing Chichikov how he should live, the "wonderful girl" Ulinka Betrishcheva, an intelligent and honest governor. The lyrical element, in which the author's ideal of true life (movements, roads, paths) was affirmed in the first volume of the poem, was objectified. At the same time, in the second volume there are also characters close to the characters in the first volume: landowners Tentetnikov, Pyotr Petrovich Petukh, Khlobuev, Colonel Koshkarev. All the material, as in the first volume, is connected by the figure of the "traveling" rogue Chichikov: he fulfills the instructions of General Betrishchev, but does not forget about his own benefit. In one of the chapters, Gogol wanted to focus on depicting the fate of Chichikov, showing the collapse of his next scam and moral revival under the influence of the virtuous farmer Murazov.

In the course of work on the second volume, Gogol came to the conclusion that "satire will no longer work and there will be no mark, but the high reproach of the lyric poet, who already relies on the eternal law, trampled on by blindness by people, will mean a lot." According to the writer, satirical laughter cannot give people true understanding life, since it does not indicate the path to the proper, to the ideal of a person, therefore it must be replaced by the "high reproach of the lyric poet." Thus, in the 1840s. not the "high laughter" of the comic writer, who sees "everything bad", as in "The Inspector General" and partly in the first volume of "Dead Souls", but the "high reproach" coming from the lyric poet, excited by the moral truths revealed to him, became the basis of Gogol's art .

Gogol emphasized that when addressing people, the writer must take into account the uncertainty and fear that live in those who commit unrighteous acts. The word "lyric poet" should carry both reproach and encouragement. It is necessary, Gogol wrote, that "reproach should be heard in encouragement itself, and encouragement in reproach." Reflections on the dual nature of any phenomenon of life, which contains the possibility of a writer's dual attitude towards him (both reproach and encouragement) is a favorite theme of the author of Dead Souls.

It would be wrong, however, to associate the theme of rebuke-encouragement only with the period of work on the second volume. Already in the first volume, Gogol did not tire of repeating that not only in his heroes, as in the life around them, there is no purity and brightness of contrasting colors: only white or only black. Even in the worst of them, for example, in Plyushkin, whom the author angrily called "a hole in humanity", the colors are mixed. According to the writer, most often people are dominated by grey colour- the result of mixing white and black. There are no real people who would remain "white", could not fall out in the dirt and vulgarity of the surrounding life. Lumps of dirt will definitely stick to the cleanest gentleman, he will be “salted” with something. The following dialogue between Chichikov and Korobochka is perceived as a meaningful allegory:

“... - Oh, my father, but you, like a boar, have mud all over your back and side! where so deigned to get salty?

“Thanks to God that I just got salty, I need to thank that I didn’t break off the sides completely.”

Gogol, the author of the first volume, already perfectly imagined that in one and the same person lives both “Prometheus, decisive Prometheus” (“looks out like an eagle, acts smoothly, measuredly”), and a special creature: “a fly, even smaller than a fly.” Everything depends on a person's self-consciousness and circumstances: after all, a person is not virtuous or vicious, he is a bizarre mixture of both virtue and vice, which live in him in the most fantastic combinations. That is why, as Gogol notes in the third chapter of the first volume, with the same ruler of the office "in a distant state" there is such a transformation, "which even Ovid does not invent": either this person is an example of "pride and nobility", then " the devil knows what: it squeaks like a bird and laughs all the time.

One of the main themes of the second volume of "Dead Souls" - the theme of education, mentoring - was already set in the first volume. The range of Gogol's "pedagogical" ideas expanded. In the second volume, the image of the "ideal mentor" Alexander Petrovich is created, and his education system is described in detail, based on trust in the pupils, encouraging their abilities. The author saw the root of the life failures of the landowner Tentetnikov, who was very reminiscent of Manilov, in the fact that in his youth there was no person next to him who would teach him the “science of life”. Alexander Petrovich, who knew how to beneficially influence the pupils, died, and Fyodor Ivanovich, who succeeded him, demanding complete submission from the children, was so distrustful of them and vindictive that the development of “noble feelings” in them stopped, making many unsuitable for life.

In the eleventh chapter of the first volume, the author began the biography of Chichikov with a story about the upbringing of the hero, about the “lessons” of opportunism and money-grubbing taught to him by his father. It was a "bridge" to the second volume: after all, in it, in contrast to his father, who made a swindler and acquirer out of Pavlusha, Chichikov had a truly wise mentor - the rich farmer Murazov. He advises Chichikov to settle in a quiet corner, closer to the church, to the simple, kind people, marry a poor kind girl. Worldly fuss only destroys people, Murazov is convinced, instructing the hero to acquire offspring and live the rest of his life in peace and peace with others. Murazov expresses some of the cherished thoughts of Gogol himself: in recent years he was inclined to consider the ideal human life monasticism. In the second volume, the Governor-General also addresses the officials with a “high reproach”, urging them to remember the duties of their earthly position and moral duty. The image of the landowner Kostanzhoglo is the embodiment of Gogol's ideal of the Russian landowner.

Along with really fruitful ideas, the positive program of the state and human "organization", outlined by Gogol in the second volume, contains a lot of utopian and conservative. The writer did not doubt the very possibility of moral restructuring of people in the conditions of autocratic-feudal Russia. He was convinced that it was precisely a strong monarchy and its unshakable social and legal support - serfdom - that was the soil on which the sprouts of the new would sprout in people. Addressing the nobility, Gogol the moralist urged the upper class to realize their obligations to the state and people. In figurative form, in the second volume of the poem, the ideas expressed in the publicistically pointed book “Selected passages from correspondence with friends” were to be implemented.

Gogol the artist was inspired by the idea of ​​the effectiveness of the word. The writer's word, in his opinion, should be followed by a result: changes in life itself. Therefore, the drama of Gogol is not so much that in life itself there was no material for creating positive images how much in his highest demands on himself: after all, he has never been a simple "photographer" of reality, who is content with what is already in life. Gogol did not get tired of repeating that the lofty truths revealed to him should be artistically translated into his main book. They should cause a revolution in the souls of readers and be perceived by them as a guide to action. It was precisely the uncertainty that his artistic word could become a "textbook of life" that led to the incompleteness of the majestic building of Gogol's epic.

We absolutely cannot agree with those scholars who believe that Gogol the artist was supplanted in the second volume by Gogol the moralist. Gogol was not only an artist in The Inspector General, and in The Overcoat, and in the first volume of Dead Souls. He did not stop being an artist during the period of work on the second volume. The book "Selected passages from correspondence with friends" - a "trial balloon" launched by Gogol in order to check how the continuation of the poem will be perceived - should not obscure the main thing. Even from the surviving fragments of the second volume, one can conclude: in last decade Gogol revealed himself as a writer of a new type, which became characteristic of Russian literature. This is a writer with a high intensity of religious and moral feelings, who considers spiritual renewal Russia is the main business of his life, directly addressing his contemporaries with the words of "high reproach" and optimistic encouragement. Gogol was the first writer who "gathered" the Russian man, inspiring him with his faith in the future greatness of Russia. Gogol's followers were F.M. Dostoevsky and L.N. Tolstoy.

Work on the second volume was for Gogol the knowledge of Russia and the Russian people: “My images will not be alive if I do not build them from our material, from our land, so that everyone feels that this is taken from his own body.” Let us note one more important feature of Gogol's new approach to depicting a person. While “reproaching” and “encouraging” people, he also addresses himself. Strict and edifying in relation to the characters, Gogol is no less picky about himself. “For me, abominations are not a novelty: I myself am rather vile,” Gogol admitted in 1846 (letter to L.O. Smirnova). The writer perceives the imperfections and delusions of the heroes as his own, as if "branching" in those whom he depicts. By "exposing" them to the public, he "exposes himself." The second volume is a kind of diary of self-knowledge. Gogol appears in him as an analyst of his own soul, its ideal impulses and subtlest feelings. Both for himself and for his characters, the author longs for one thing: for someone to finally push to action, to indicate the direction of movement and its ultimate goal. "Knowledge of the present" did not frighten him, because "the ways and roads to ... a bright future are hidden precisely in this dark and confusing present, which no one wants to recognize ...".

The idea of ​​movement, of unfettered development, is the most fruitful idea of ​​Dead Souls. In the second volume, Gogol concretizes his idea of ​​development. He now understands its content as the renewal of man - a two-pronged process of the destruction of the old and the birth of the new. The collapse of Chichikov, a money-grubber and a swindler, was the plot outline of the second volume, but his soul is destroyed in the name of creation, new construction. The cherished idea of ​​the second volume is the idea of ​​reorganization spiritual world people, without which, according to Gogol, the normal development of society is impossible. Only spiritual rebirth Russian man will give strength to the "Rus-Troika" for its flight in historical time.

Gogol's laughter in the second volume of Dead Souls became even more bitter and harsh. Some satirical images(for example, the image of Colonel Koshkarev, who arranged in his village something like a bureaucratic state in miniature) and satirical image provincial city anticipated the appearance of the merciless socio-political satire M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. All the characters in the second volume are not just "old acquaintances" who have much in common with the comic characters of the first volume of the poem. These are new faces that expressed all the bad and good that the writer saw in Russia.

Gogol created, as it were, sketches literary heroes, "finished" by writers of the second half of the 19th century. The second volume also contains the future Oblomov and Stolz (Tentetnikov, crippled by a bad upbringing and inability to do business, and the enterprising, active Kostanzhoglo). Guessed in the schema famous character Dostoevsky's novel "The Brothers Karamazov" the elder Zosima. Ulinka Betrishcheva, “a wonderful Russian girl,” is the prototype of the heroines of Turgenev and Tolstoy. There is also a penitent sinner in the second volume - Chichikov. He really was inclined to change his life, but the moral revival of the hero has not yet taken place. The penitent sinner will become the central figure in Dostoevsky's novels. The image of the defenseless Russian Don Quixote, whose only weapon was the word, was also created by Gogol: this is the image of Tentetnikov.

The themes and images of the second volume of the poem were taken up and clarified by the writers of the second half of the 19th century. Even the failure of the writer, who was not satisfied with his “positive” characters, was symptomatic: this was the beginning of a difficult, sometimes dramatic, search for active, active, “positively beautiful” people, which was continued by the followers of Gogol’s “high” realism.

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 up "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 Vasilyevich 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

Other retellings for the reader's diary

• Summary of the fairy tale The Gingerbread House of Charles Perrault

  Little children from a poor family got lost in the forest. There they saw a house made of gingerbread. It contained various treats and sweets.

• Summary Tale of the Sea King and Vasilisa the Wise

  In a distant kingdom lived a king with his wife. However, the couple was childless. Once the sovereign went on various business to travel, and after a while it was time for him to return. And at this time, his son was suddenly born,

• Summary of Shukshin Kalina red

  Yegor Prokudin leaves the zone. His dream is to start his own business. He has to meet his future wife. Egor and Lyubov Fedorovna know each other only by correspondence.

• Summary of Alexin My brother plays the clarinet

  In the diary, of course, Zhenya's childlike immediacy is conveyed. She herself cannot impress others with something, and she does not try. She studies for triples, because for the Sister of a great musician, grades are nonsense. Why try? After all, she has a brilliant brother

• Summary of Yakovlev Bavaklava

  Twelve-year-old Lenya Sharov returns from school. He is surprised that, as usual, he is not met by his grandmother, who takes care of him while his parents are at work. The father informs the boy that his grandmother has died.

The very title of Nikolai Gogol's famous poem "Dead Souls" already contains the main idea and idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthis work. Judging superficially, the title reveals the content of the scam and Chichikov's personality itself - he has already bought souls dead peasants. But in order to embrace the whole philosophical meaning Gogol's ideas, you need to look deeper than the literal interpretation of the title and even what is happening in the poem.

The meaning of the name "Dead Souls"

The title "Dead Souls" contains a much more important and deeper meaning than is displayed by the author in the first volume of the work. Already long time they say that Gogol originally planned to write this poem by analogy with the famous and immortal "Divine Comedy" by Dante, and as you know, it consisted of three parts - "Hell", "Purgatory" and "Paradise". It was they who had to correspond to the three volumes of Gogol's poem.

In the first volume of his most famous poem, the author intended to show the hell of Russian reality, the frightening and truly terrifying truth about the life of that time, and in the second and third volumes, the rise of the spiritual culture and life of Russia. To some extent, the title of the work is a symbol of the life of the county town N., and the city itself is a symbol of the whole of Russia, and thus the author indicates that his home country is in a terrible state, and the saddest and most terrible thing is that this is due to the fact that the souls of people are gradually cooling down, stale and dying.

The history of the creation of Dead Souls

The poem "Dead Souls" Nikolai Gogol began in 1835 and continued to work on it until the end of his life. At the very beginning, the writer singled out for himself, most likely, the funny side of the novel and created the plot Dead Souls, both for long work. There is an opinion that Gogol borrowed the main idea of ​​the poem from A.S. Pushkin, since it was this poet who first heard real story about "dead souls" in the city of Bendery. Gogol worked on the novel not only in his homeland, but also in Switzerland, Italy and France. The first volume of "Dead Souls" was completed in 1842, and in May it was already published under the title "The Adventures of Chichikov or Dead Souls."

Subsequently, work on the novel, Gogol's original idea expanded significantly, it was then that the analogy with the three parts " Divine Comedy". Gogol thought that his characters went through a kind of circles of hell and purgatory, so that at the end of the poem they would rise spiritually and be reborn. The author never managed to realize his idea, only the first part of the poem was completely written. It is known that Gogol began work on the second volume of the poem in 1840, and by 1845 he had already prepared several options for continuing the poem. Unfortunately, it was in this year that the author independently destroyed the second volume of the work, he irrevocably burned the second part of Dead Souls, being dissatisfied with what was written. The exact reason for this act of the writer is still unknown. There are draft manuscripts of four chapters of the second volume, which were discovered after the opening of Gogol's papers.

Thus, it becomes clear that the central category and at the same time the main idea of ​​Gogol's poem is the soul, the presence of which makes a person complete and real. This is precisely the main theme of the work, and Gogol tries to point out the value of the soul using the example of soulless and callous heroes who represent a special social stratum of Russia. In his immortal and brilliant work, Gogol simultaneously raises the topic of the crisis in Russia and shows what it is directly related to. The author talks about the fact that it is the soul that is the nature of man, without which there is no meaning in life, without which life becomes dead, and that it is thanks to it that salvation can be found.