The figurative system of Gogol's poem Dead Souls. Abstract: Examination on literature the system of images in the poem by N. V. Gogol “dead souls. Essays by topic

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The figurative system of the poem is built in accordance with three main plot-compositional links: landowner, bureaucratic Russia and the image of Chichikov. The uniqueness of the system of images lies in the fact that the contrast to the heroes shown in the real plan of the poem constitutes an ideal plan, where the author’s voice is present and the image of the author is created.

A separate chapter is devoted to each of the landowners, and together they represent the face of landowner Russia. The sequence of appearance of these images is also not accidental: from landowner to landowner there is a deeper impoverishment of the human soul, absorbed in the thirst for profit or senseless waste, which is associated both with the uncontrolled possession of the “souls” of others, wealth, land, and with aimlessness an existence that has lost its highest spiritual purpose.

These characters are presented as if in a double light - as they seem to themselves, and as they really are. Such a contrast causes a comic effect and at the same time a bitter smile from the reader. Manilov seems to himself to be a bearer of high culture. In the army he was considered an educated officer. But in fact, its main feature is idle daydreaming, which gives rise to absurd projects and spiritual weakness. Even in a conversation, Manilov lacks words; his speech is burdened with meaningless phrases: “in some way,” “some kind of this.” The box is the opposite of Manilov, she is troublesome, but unusually stupid. Chichikov calls her “club-headed.” Unlike Manilov, Korobochka is busy with housework, but fussy, almost aimlessly. Her fear of selling “dead souls” to Chichikov is also absurd. She is not frightened by the item of trade itself, but is more worried about the possibility that “dead souls” will somehow come in handy on the farm.

The characters of the landowners are in some ways opposite, but also in some ways subtly similar to each other. With such opposition and juxtaposition, Gogol achieves additional depth of narration. Nozdryov is also an active person, however, his activity sometimes turns against those around him and is always aimless. He is decisive, cheats at cards, always ends up in history, buys, exchanges, sells, loses. He is not petty, like Korobochka, but frivolous, like Manilov, and, like Khlestakov, he lies on every occasion and boasts beyond measure. The essence of Sobakevich’s character becomes clear even before Chichikov meets him - everything about him is solid, clumsy, every thing from his household seems to shout: “And I am Sobakevich!” Sobakevich, unlike other landowners, is prudent in farming, he is tight-fisted and smart, he is a kulak landowner, as the author calls him. Plyushkin, whose portrait is painted at the end of this peculiar gallery, seems to be the final stage of the fall of man. He is greedy, starved his people to death (the number of dead souls attracted Chichikov to him). Previously an experienced, hardworking owner, now he is “some kind of hole in humanity.” He has no relatives, his children left him because of his father’s greed, and he cursed his own children. Plyushkin sees any person as a destroyer, the huge reserves he has accumulated are spoiled, and he and his servants are starving. Plyushkin became a slave to things.

Thus, each of the landowners has their own negative qualities, although they also have their own advantages, but in one thing they are united, while maintaining character traits - this is the attitude towards “dead souls”. They evaluate Chichikov’s enterprise differently: Manilov is embarrassed and surprised, Korobochka is puzzled, Nozd-rev shows curiosity - what if some new “story” comes out, - Sobakevich is calm and businesslike. But the fate of the people, the serfs behind the official name “dead souls,” does not interest them. This inhumanity makes the landowners themselves “dead souls”; they themselves bring mortification and death.

Such, for example, is the official Ivan Antonovich, nicknamed the jug's snout, drawn in quick strokes. He is ready to sell his own soul for a bribe, assuming, of course, that he has a soul. That is why, despite the comic nickname, he does not look funny at all, but rather scary.

Such officials are not an exceptional phenomenon, but a reflection of the entire system of Russian bureaucracy. As in “The Inspector General,” Go-gol shows “a corporation of thieves and swindlers.” Bureaucracy and corrupt officials reign everywhere. In the court chamber, into which the reader finds himself together with Chichikov, the laws are openly neglected, no one is going to deal with the case, and the officials, the “priests” of this peculiar Themis, are only concerned with how to collect tribute from visitors - that is bribes. The bribe here is so obligatory that only the closest friends of high-ranking officials can be exempted from it. So, for example, the chairman of the chamber in a friendly manner exempts Chichikov from tribute: “My friends don’t have to pay.”

But what is even more terrible is that in an idle and well-fed life, officials not only forget about their official duty, but also completely lose their spiritual needs, lose their “living soul.” Among the gallery of bureaucracy in the poem, the image of the prosecutor stands out. All the officials, having learned about Chichikov’s strange purchase, fall into panic, and the prosecutor was so frightened that when he came home, he died. And only when he turned into a “soulless body” did they remember that “he had a soul.” Behind the sharp social satire, a philosophical question arises again: why did man live? What's left after him? “But if you take a good look at the case, all you really had was thick eyebrows,” this is how the author ends the story about the prosecutor. But maybe that hero has already appeared who opposes this entire gallery of “dead souls” of Russian reality?

Gogol dreams of his appearance, and in the 1st volume he paints a truly new face of Russian life, but not in a positive light. In fact, Chichikov is a new hero, a special type of Russian person who appeared in that era, a kind of “hero of the time,” whose soul is “enchanted by wealth.” It was precisely when money began to play a decisive role in Russia, and it was possible to establish oneself in society and achieve independence only by relying on capital, this “scoundrel-acquirer” appeared. In this author’s characterization of the hero, all the accents are immediately placed: a child of his time, Chichikov, in pursuit of capital, loses the concepts of honor, conscience, and decency. But in a society where the measure of a person’s value is capital, this does not matter: Chichikov is considered a “millionaire”, and therefore accepted as a “decent person.”

In the image of Chichikov, such traits as the desire for success at any cost, enterprise, practicality, the ability to pacify one’s desires with “reasonable will”, that is, qualities characteristic of the emerging Russian bourgeoisie, combined with unprincipledness and selfishness, received artistic embodiment. This is not the kind of hero Gogol is waiting for: after all, the thirst for acquisition kills the best human feelings in Chichikov and leaves no room for a “living” soul. Chichikov has knowledge of people, but he needs this to successfully complete his terrible “business” - buying “dead souls”. He is a force, but “terrible and vile.” Material from the site

The features of this image are associated with the author’s intention to lead Chichikov through the path of purification and rebirth of the soul. In this way, the writer wanted to show everyone the path from the very depths of the fall - “hell” - through “purgatory” to transformation and spiritualization. This is why Chichikov’s role in the overall structure of the writer’s plan is so important. That is why he is endowed with a biography (like Plyushkin), but it is given only at the very end of the 1st volume. Before this, his character is not completely defined: in communicating with everyone, he tries to please the interlocutor, adapts to him. Sometimes something devilish can be seen in his appearance: after all, hunting for dead souls is the devil’s original occupation. It is not for nothing that city gossip, among other things, calls him the Antichrist, and something apocalyptic is visible in the behavior of officials, which is reinforced by the picture of the death of the prosecutor. Thus, Gogol’s realism again comes close to phantasmagoria.

But in the image of Chichikov, completely different features are visible - those that would allow the author to lead him through the path of purification. It is no coincidence that the author’s reflections often echo Chichikov’s thoughts (about Sobakevich’s dead peasants, about a young boarder). The basis of the tragedy and at the same time the comedy of this image is that all human feelings in Chichikov are hidden deep inside, and he sees the meaning of life in acquisition. His conscience sometimes awakens, but he quickly calms it down, creating a whole system of self-justifications: “I didn’t make anyone unhappy: I didn’t rob the widow, I didn’t let anyone into the world...”. In the end, Chichikov justifies his crime. This is the path of degradation, from which the author warns his hero. He calls on his hero, and with him the readers, to take “a straight path, like the path leading to a magnificent temple,” this is the path of salvation, the revival of the living soul in everyone.

“The Troika Bird” and its rapid flight are the direct antithesis of Chichikov’s chaise, its monotonous circling along the provincial roadless roads from one landowner to another. But the “three bird” is the same Chichikov’s chaise, only having emerged from its wanderings onto a straight path. Where it leads is not yet clear to the author himself. But this wonderful transformation reveals the symbolic ambiguity of the entire artistic structure of the poem and the grandeur of the author’s plan, who planned to create an “epic of the national spirit.” Gogol completed only the first volume of this epic, but all subsequent Russian literature of the 19th century worked hard on its continuation.

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Municipal secondary school No. 3

Abstract on literature

Subject: The system of images in the poem by N.V. Gogol

"Dead Souls"

Completed by: student 11 “B”

class, Kononov Anatoly

Checked it: cool

head, Lukanina L.I.

Volgorechensk, 2003

PLAN :

I. Introduction.

II. Main part.

1. “Dead Souls” - “a cry of horror and shame.”

a) the relevance of the work.

b) the history of the creation of the poem.

c) “landowner world” - its fall and decay.

2. Portrait gallery:

Mismanagement Manilov

a) “club-headed” Box

b) “knight of revelry” Nozdryov

c) “damn fist” Sobakevich

d) “a hole in humanity” Plyushkin

e) general characteristics of landowners.

3. The image of the “acquirer” Chichikov

a) father’s instruction: “Save a pretty penny.”

b) “Dead Soul” by Chichikov

4. “The kingdom of the dead” posing as the “kingdom of the living.”

5. Faith in a different Russia.

6. “It’s easier to love than to understand...”

III. Conclusion.

IV. Bibliography.

The poem “Dead Souls” is the most significant work of N.V. Gogol, the pinnacle of his creativity and a qualitatively new phenomenon in Russian literature. Its innovative essence lies, first of all, in the fact that individual aspects of Russian life, so sharply outlined by Gogol earlier, are now combined by him into a huge realistic canvas, which captures the appearance of the entire Nicholas Russia, from the provincial landowner outback and the provincial city to St. Petersburg, and where the evil of life appears in a unique change of paintings and images, closely interconnected by the unity of artistic design.

Reading “Dead Souls,” you see what a terrible, wild life there was on the great Russian land. “A cry of horror and shame” - this is what Herzen called Gogol’s work. But “Dead Souls” is also a healing book. The ulcers of life are exposed in it with such fearlessness, the covers are removed with such courage, the will, perseverance, talent of the Russian people and the writer’s love for the “fertile grain” of Russian life are connected with such force that the goal set by the author is to affirm the good, to motivate man to serve the sublime beauty - to become clearly obvious.

Gogol did not put so much creative work, so many deep and sometimes tragic thoughts into any of his artistic creations as in “Dead Souls.” It was in this work that Gogol’s position as a writer, person, and thinker was fully revealed.

In Gogol's poem there are so many problems that deeply worried progressive Russian people, so much indignation and admiration, contempt and lyrical emotion, warming humor and laughter, often striking to death, that it is not surprising that it turned out to be one of the most significant works of critical realism literature first half of the 19th century. But Gogol’s work, as a phenomenon of great art, is still relevant today. Its enduring significance in the mental and moral life of mankind is determined by the fact that it makes us think not only about the life that is depicted in it, about that terrible world called feudal noble Russia, but also about the meaning of life in general, about the purpose of man. It pushes the reader to understand himself, his spiritual world, and think about his own activities.

In his “Author's Confession” Gogol indicates that Pushkin gave him the idea to write “Dead Souls”... He had long been urging me to start writing a large essay, and finally, once after I had read one small image of a small scene, but which, however, struck him more than anything I had read before, he told me: “How can you, with this ability to guess a person and with a few features make him appear as if he were alive, not take on a large essay. It’s just a sin!”…. and, in conclusion of all, he gave me his own plot, from which he wanted to make something like a poem himself and which, according to him, he would not give to anyone else. This was the plot of “Dead Souls”. Pushkin found that the plot of “Dead Souls” was good for me because it gave me complete freedom to travel all over Russia with the hero and bring out many different characters.”

The idea of “traveling all over Rus' with the hero and bringing out many different characters” predetermined the composition of the poem. It is structured as a story of the adventures of the “acquirer Chichikov,” who buys the actually dead, but legally alive, i.e. souls not deleted from the audit lists.

Gogol himself spoke about the peculiarities of his work on the image - character: “This complete embodiment in the flesh, this complete rounding of character took place in me when I took away in my mind all this essential prosaic squabble of life, when, containing in my head all the major features character, at the same time I will collect around him all the rags, down to the smallest pin, which swirls around a person every day, in a word - when I figure everything out, from small to large, without missing anything ... "

Immersion of a person in the prosaic “squabbles of life”, “in rags”, is the means of creating the character of the heroes. The central place in volume 1 is occupied by five “portrait” chapters (images of landowners). These chapters, constructed according to the same plan, show how different types of serfdom developed on the basis of serfdom and how serfdom in the 20-30s of the 19th century, due to the growth of capitalist forces, led the landowner class to economic and moral decline. Gogol gives these chapters in a certain order.

The economicless landowner Manilov (chap. 2) is replaced by the petty hoarder Korobochka (chap. 3), the careless waster of life Nozdryov (chap. 4) is replaced by the tight-fisted Sobakevich (chap. 5). This gallery of landowners is completed by Plyushkin, a miser who brought his estate and peasants to complete ruin.

With even greater expressiveness, the “portrait” chapters provide a picture of the moral decline of the landowner class. From an idle dreamer living in the world of his dreams, Manilov to the “club-headed” Korobochka, from her to the reckless spendthrift, liar and cheater Nozdryov, then to the brutalized fist Sobakevich and, finally, to the one who has lost all moral qualities - “a hole in humanity” - Gogol leads us to Plyushkin, showing the increasing moral decline and decay of representatives of the landowner world.

Thus, the poem turns into a brilliant representation of serfdom as a socio-economic system that naturally gives rise to the cultural and economic backwardness of the country, morally corrupting the class that was at that time the arbiter of the state’s destinies. This ideological orientation of the poem is revealed, first of all, in the system of its images.

The gallery of portraits of landowners opens with the image of Manilov - “In appearance, he was a prominent man; His facial features were not devoid of pleasantness, but in this pleasantness it seemed to be too devoted to sugar; in his techniques and turns there was something ingratiating favor and acquaintance. He smiled enticingly, was blond, with blue eyes.” Previously, he served in the army, where he was considered the most modest, most delicate and educated officer “...Living on an estate, he sometimes comes to the city to see educated people.” Compared to the inhabitants of the city and estates, he seems to be a “very courteous and courteous landowner,” who bears some imprint of a “semi-enlightened environment.” However, revealing Manilov’s inner appearance, his character, talking about his attitude to the household and his pastime, drawing Manilov’s reception of Chichikov, Gogol shows the complete emptiness and worthlessness of this “existent”.

The writer emphasizes two main features in Manilov’s character - his worthlessness and sugary, meaningless daydreaming. Manilov had no living interests. He did not do the housework, entrusting it entirely to the clerk. He could not even tell Chichikov whether his peasants had died since the audit. His house “stood alone on the jura (i.e., elevation), open to all the winds that could blow. Instead of the shady garden that usually surrounded the manor’s house, Manilov only had five or six birch trees, and in his village there was no growing tree or any greenery anywhere.” Manilov’s lack of thriftiness and impracticality is clearly demonstrated by the furnishings of the rooms of his house, where next to the beautiful furniture stood two armchairs, “covered simply with matting,” a dandy candlestick made of dark bronze with three antique graces “stood on the table, and next to it was placed a “He’s just a copper invalid, lame, curled to one side and covered in fat.”

“It’s no wonder that such an owner has a rather empty pantry, the clerk and housekeeper are thieves, the servants are unclean and drunkards, and all the servants sleep mercilessly and act out the rest of the time.” Manilov spends his life in complete idleness. He has retired from all work, he doesn’t even read anything - for two years there has been a book in his office, still on the same 14th page. Manilov brightens up his idleness with groundless dreams and meaningless “projects, such as building an underground passage from the house, a stone bridge across a pond.

Not a living person, but a parody of him, another embodiment of the same spiritual emptiness is Korobochka, a typical gentle landowner - the owner of 80 serf souls.

In contrast to Manilov, Korobochka is a businesslike housewife. She has “a nice village, the yard is full of all kinds of birds, there are spacious vegetable gardens with cabbage, onions, potatoes, beets…, …. There are apple trees and other fruit trees; She knew almost all of her peasants by name by heart. Mistaking Chichikov for a buyer, she offers him all kinds of products from her farm...”

But Korobochka’s mental horizons are extremely limited. Gogol emphasizes her stupidity, ignorance, superstition, and indicates that her behavior is guided by self-interest, a passion for profit. She is very afraid of “cheapening up” when selling. Everything new and unprecedented scares her.

The “club-headed” box is the embodiment of those traditions that have developed among provincial small landowners leading subsistence farming. Pointing to the typicality of the image of Korobochka, Gogol says that such “Korobochkas” can also be found among the capital’s aristocrats.

Nozdryov represents a different type of “living dead”. “He was of average height, a very well-built fellow with full rosy cheeks, teeth as white as snow and sideburns as black as steel. He was as fresh as blood and milk, health seemed to be dripping from his face.”

Nozdryov is the complete opposite of both Manilov and Korobochka. He is a restless hero of fairs, balls, drinking parties, card tables, he has “restless agility and liveliness of character.” He is a brawler, a carouser, a liar, a “knight of revelry.” He is no stranger to Khlestakovism - the desire to appear more significant and richer. He completely neglected his farm. Only his kennel is in excellent condition.

Nozdryov plays cards dishonestly, he is always ready to “go anywhere, even to the ends of the world, enter whatever enterprise you want, exchange whatever you have for whatever you want.” However, all this does not lead Nozdryov to enrichment, but, on the contrary, ruins him.

A new stage in a person’s moral decline is the “damn fist”, as Chichikov puts it – Sobakevich.

“It seemed,” writes Gogol, “that this body had no soul at all, or it had one, but not at all where it should be, but like Kashchei the Immortal - somewhere over the mountains, and it was covered with such a thick shell that everything “Whatever was tossing and turning at the bottom of it did not produce absolutely any shock on the surface.”

In Sobakevich, a gravitation towards old feudal forms of farming, hostility towards the city and education are combined with old age towards profit and predatory accumulation. The passion for enrichment pushes him to cheat, forces him to seek various means of profit. Unlike other landowners brought out by Gogol, Sobakevich, in addition to corvée, also uses a monetary quitrent system. So, for example, one Eremey Sorokoplekhin, who traded in Moscow, brought Sobakevich 500 rubles. quitrent

The limit of a person’s moral decline is Plyushkin - “a hole in humanity.” Everything human died in him; this is, in the full sense of the word, a “dead soul.” And Gogol consistently and persistently leads us to this conclusion, from the very beginning to the end of the chapter, developing and deepening the theme of man’s spiritual death.

The description of the village of Plyushkina with its log pavement that had fallen into complete disrepair, with the “special dilapidation” of the village huts, with huge treasures of rotten bread, with the manor’s house, which looked like some kind of “decrepit invalid”, is expressive. The garden alone was picturesquely beautiful, but this beauty was the beauty of an abandoned cemetery. And against this background, a strange figure appeared before Chichikov: either a man or a woman, “in an indefinite dress,” so torn, greasy and worn out that if Chichikov had met him somewhere near the church, he would probably have given him copper penny.” But it was not a beggar who stood before Chichikov, but a rich landowner, the owner of a thousand souls, whose storerooms, barns and drying sheds are full of all sorts of goods. However, all this good rots, deteriorates, turns into dust, since the greedy stinginess that completely gripped Plyushkin erased any understanding of the real value of things and overshadowed the practical mind of the once experienced owner. Plyushkin's relationship with buyers, his walks around the village collecting all sorts of rubbish, the famous piles of rubbish on his table, hoarding, lead Plyushkin to senseless hoarding, which brings ruin to his household. Everything has fallen into complete disrepair, the peasants are “dying like flies,” and dozens of them are on the run. The senseless stinginess that reigns in Plyushkin’s soul gives rise to suspicion of people, distrust and innateness of everything around him, cruelty and injustice towards serfs. There are no human feelings in Plyushkin, not even paternal ones. Things are more valuable to him than people, in whom he sees only swindlers and thieves.

“And to what insignificance, pettiness, and disgust a person could stoop! - Gogol exclaims.”

The image of Plyushkin embodies with exceptional strength and satirical sharpness the shameful meaninglessness of hoarding and stinginess generated by a proprietary society.

Gogol reveals the inner primitiveness of his heroes with the help of special artistic techniques. When constructing portrait chapters, Gogol selects such details that show the uniqueness of each landowner. As a result, the images of landowners are clearly individualized and sharply, prominently outlined. Using the technique of hyperbole, emphasizing and sharpening the most important features of his heroes, Gogol enhances the typicality of these images, while preserving their vitality and reality; Each of the landowners is unique, not like the others. However, all of them are landowners - serf owners, and therefore they also have common class features generated by the feudal - serf system. These features are:

3) lack of socially useful activities. All of them are “Dead Souls”.

This is how Gogol himself looked at them. “Be not dead, but living souls,” he wrote to the landowners and nobles. This is how Herzen regarded them, too, who wrote down the following thoughts in his diary: “Dead souls?” – this title itself carries something terrifying. And he couldn’t call it any other way; not the revision’s dead souls, but all these Nozdryovs, Manilovs and all the others - those same dead souls, and we meet them at every step.”

If, by drawing images of landowners, Gogol gave a picture of the economic economy and moral degeneration of the ruling class, then in the image of Chichikov he showed the typical features of a predator, a “scoundrel,” an “acquirer” of the bourgeois fold.

Gogol talks in detail about Chichikov’s life path from birth until the moment when this “hero” began buying up dead souls, how Chichikov’s character developed, what vital interests, formed in him under the influence of the environment, guided his behavior. Even as a child, he received instructions from his father on how to become one of the people: “please teachers and bosses most of all..., hang out with those who are richer, so that on occasion they can be useful to you..., and most of all, take care and save a penny - this thing is more reliable everything in the world, you will do everything and ruin everything in the world with a penny.” This behest of his father made Chichikov the basis of his relationships with people from his school days. Saving a penny, but not for its own sake, but to use it as a means of achieving material well-being and a prominent position in society, became the main goal of his entire life. Already at school, he quickly gained the favor of the teacher and, possessing “great intelligence on the practical side,” successfully accumulated money.

Service in various institutions developed and polished Chichikov’s natural abilities: practical intelligence, deft ingenuity, hypocrisy, patience, the ability to “comprehend the spirit of the boss”, feel for a weak string in a person’s soul and skillfully influence it for personal purposes, energy and perseverance in achieving conceived, complete unscrupulousness and heartlessness.

Chichikov uses “irresistible strength of character,” “quickness, insight and perspicacity,” and all his ability to charm a person to achieve the desired enrichment.

The internal “many faces” of Chichikov, his elusiveness is emphasized by his appearance, given by Gogol, in vague tones.

“In the chaise sat a gentleman - not handsome, but not bad-looking, not too fat, not too thin, one cannot say that he is old, but not too young either.”

Chichikov's facial expression constantly changes, depending on who he is talking to and what he is talking about.

Gogol constantly emphasizes the external neatness of his hero, his love for cleanliness and a good, fashionable suit. Chichikov is always carefully shaven and perfumed; He always wears clean linen and a fashionable dress, “brown and reddish colors with a spark” or “the color of Navarino smoke with flame.” And this external neatness, cleanliness of Chichikov, expressively contrasting with the internal dirt and uncleanliness of this hero, fully completes the image of a “scoundrel”, an “acquirer” - a predator who uses everything to achieve his main goal - profit, acquisition.

Gogol's merit is that the hero of business and personal success was subjected to destructive laughter. The funny and insignificant Chichikov arouses the greatest contempt precisely when, having achieved complete success, he becomes an idol and a favorite of society. The author's laughter turned out to be a kind of “developer”. Everyone around began to see Chichikov’s “dead soul”, his doom, despite his external tenacity and vitality. There is not the slightest leniency in the author's impartial verdict.

The world of the masters of life appeared in “Dead Souls” as the kingdom of the dead, posing as the kingdom of the living, the kingdom of spiritual sleep, stagnation, vulgarity, dirt, self-interest, deception, money-grubbing.

In the kingdom of the living dead, everything great is vulgarized, everything sublime is degraded, everything honest, thoughtful, noble perishes.

The title of the poem turned out to be a generalizing and extremely accurate description and a kind of symbol of the serfdom system. Where does the evil laughter at the “dead souls” come from in the poem?

It is not difficult to see that the author overheard it among the people. The people's hatred of their oppressors is the source of Gogol's laughter. The people executed with laughter any absurdity, lie, inhumanity, and in this execution with laughter - mental health, a sober look at the environment.

Thus, Gogol appeared in “Dead Souls” as a representative of his people, punishing landowner and bureaucratic Russia with the laughter of popular contempt and indignation. And this condemned kingdom of “dead souls” is opposed in the book by his faith in another Russia, that country of the future, in the unlimited possibilities of the Russian people.

A work of genius does not die with its creator, but continues to live in the consciousness of society, people, and humanity. Each era, making its own judgment about it, will never express everything, leaving much to say to subsequent generations, who read the work in a new way, perceive some aspects of it more acutely than their contemporaries. They reveal wider and deeper the “undercurrent” flying at its base.

The great critic Belinsky said: “Gogol was the first to look boldly and directly at Russian reality through the eyes of a realist, and if we add to this his deep humor and his endless irony, then it will be clear why he will not be understood for a long time.

It’s easier for society to love him than to understand him...”

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

1. M. Gus “Living Russia and Dead Souls” Moscow 1981

2. A. M. Dokusov, M. G. Kachurin “Poem by N.V. Gogol “Dead Souls” Moscow 1982

3. Y. Mann “In search of a living soul” Moscow 1987

4. Modern dictionary - reference book on literature. Moscow 1999

5. Gogol in the memoirs of his contemporaries. M., GIHL, 1952

6. Yu. Mann. Gogol's poetics. Publishing house "Fiction", 1978

7. Stepanov N.L. Gogol M., “Young Guard”, ZhZL, 1961

8. Tarasenkov A.T. The last days of Gogol's life. Ed. 2nd, supplemented according to the manuscript. M., 1902

9. Khrapchenko M. B. Creativity of N. V. Gogol “Owls. writer", 1959

Introduction.

N.V. Gogol is a writer whose work is rightfully included in the classics of Russian literature. Gogol is a realist writer, but his connection between art and reality is complicated. He in no way copies the phenomena of life, but always interprets them in his own way. Gogol knows how to see and show the everyday from a completely new angle, from an unexpected perspective. And an ordinary event takes on an ominous, strange coloring. This is what happens in Gogol’s main work, the poem “Dead Souls.” The artistic space of the poem consists of two worlds, which we can conditionally designate as the “real” world and the “ideal” world. The author builds a “real” world by recreating a contemporary picture of Russian life. According to the laws of the epic, Gogol recreates a picture of life in the poem, striving for maximum breadth of coverage. This world is ugly. This world is scary. This is a world of inverted values, the spiritual guidelines in it are perverted, the laws by which it exists are immoral. But living inside this world, having been born in it and having accepted its laws, it is almost impossible to assess the degree of its immorality, to see the abyss that separates it from the world of true values. Moreover, it is impossible to understand the reason causing spiritual degradation and moral decay of society. In this world live Plyushkin, Nozdrev Manilov, the prosecutor, the police chief and other heroes, who are original caricatures of Gogol’s contemporaries. Gogol created a whole gallery of characters and types devoid of soul in the poem, they are all diverse, but they all have one thing in common - none of them have a soul.

Conclusion.

The title of the poem contains the deepest philosophical meaning. Dead souls are nonsense, because the soul is immortal. For the “ideal” world, the soul is immortal, since it embodies the divine principle in man. And in the “real” world there may well be a “dead soul”, because for him the soul is only what distinguishes the living from the dead. In the episode of the prosecutor’s death, those around him realized that he “had a real soul” only when he became “only a soulless body.” This world is crazy - it has forgotten about the soul, and lack of spirituality is the reason for the collapse. Only with an understanding of this reason can the revival of Rus' begin, the return of lost ideals, spirituality, and soul in its true, highest meaning. The Chichikov chaise, ideally transformed in the last lyrical digression into a symbol of the ever-living soul of the Russian people - a wonderful “three bird,” completes the first volume of the poem. Let us remember that the poem begins with a meaningless conversation between two men: will the wheel reach Moscow; with a description of the dusty, gray, dreary streets of the provincial city; from all sorts of manifestations of human stupidity and vulgarity. The immortality of the soul is the only thing that instills in the author faith in the obligatory revival of his heroes and all life, therefore, all of Rus'.

Municipal secondary school No. 3

Abstract on literature

Topic: System of images in the poem by N.V. Gogol

"Dead Souls"

Completed by: student 11 “B”

class, Anatoly Kononov

Checked: cool

head, Lukanina L.I.

Volgorechensk, 2003

Introduction.

II.

Main part.

1. “Dead souls” - “a cry of horror and shame.”

a) the relevance of the work.

b) the history of the creation of the poem.

c) “landowner world” - its fall and decay.

2. Portrait gallery:

Mismanagement Manilov

a) “club-headed” Box

b) “knight of revelry” Nozdryov

c) “damn fist” Sobakevich

d) “a hole in humanity” Plyushkin

e) general characteristics of landowners.

3. The image of the “acquirer” Chichikov

a) father’s instruction: “Save a pretty penny.”

b) “Dead Soul” by Chichikov

4. “The Kingdom of the Dead” posing as the “Kingdom of the Living”.

5. Faith in another Russia.

6. “It’s easier to love than to understand...”

III.

Conclusion.

IV.

Bibliography.

The poem “Dead Souls” is the most significant work of N.V. Gogol, the pinnacle of his creativity and a qualitatively new phenomenon in Russian literature. Its innovative essence lies, first of all, in the fact that individual aspects of Russian life, so sharply depicted by Gogol earlier, are now combined by him into a huge realistic canvas, which captures the appearance of the entire Nicholas Russia, from the provincial landowner backwater and the provincial city to St. Petersburg, where the evil of life appears in a unique change of paintings and images, closely related to each other by the unity of artistic concept.

Reading “Dead Souls,” you see what a terrible, wild life there was on the great Russian land. “A cry of horror and shame” is what Herzen called Gogol’s work. But “Dead Souls” is a book and a healing one. The wounds of life are exposed in it with such fearlessness, the covers are removed with such courage, the will, perseverance, talent of the Russian people and the writer’s love for the “fertile grain” of Russian life are connected with such force that the goal , set by the author - to affirm the good, to motivate a person to serve the sublime and beautiful - becomes clearly clear.

In none of his artistic creations did Gogol put so much creative work, so many deep, and sometimes tragic thoughts, as in “Dead Souls.” It was in this work that Gogol’s position as a writer, man, and thinker was fully revealed.

In Gogol's poem there are so many problems that deeply worried the advanced Russian people, so much indignation and admiration, contempt and lyrical emotion, warming humor and laughter, often striking to death, that it is not surprising that it turned out to be one of the most significant works of critical realism literature of the first half of the 19th century. But Gogol’s work, as a phenomenon of great art, is still relevant today. Its enduring significance in the mental and moral life of mankind is determined by the fact that it makes one think not only about the life that is depicted in it, about that terrible world called feudal noble Russia, but also about the meaning of life in general, about the purpose of man. It pushes the reader to knowledge of oneself, one’s spiritual world, reflection on special activities.

In his “Author's Confession” Gogol indicates that Pushkin gave him the idea to write “Dead Souls”... He had long been urging me to take on a large work, and finally, once after I had read one small image of a small scene, but which, However, what struck him most was what I had read before, he told me: “How can you, with this ability to guess a person and with a few features make him appear as if he were alive, not start a large essay with this ability.” It’s just a sin!”…. and, in conclusion of all, he gave me his own plot, from which he wanted to make something like a poem himself and which, according to him, he would not give to anyone else. This was the plot of “Dead Souls”. Pushkin found that the plot of “Dead Souls” was good for me because it gave me complete freedom to travel all over Russia with the hero and bring out many different characters.”

The idea of “travelling all over Rus' with the hero and bringing out many different characters” predetermined the composition of the poem. It is structured as a story of the adventures of the “acquirer Chichikov,” who buys the actually dead, but legally alive, i.e. souls not crossed out from the audit lists.

Criticizing “Dead Souls,” someone remarked: “Gogol built a long corridor along which he leads his reader along with Chichikov and, opening the doors to the right and left, shows the freak sitting in each room.” Is it so?

Gogol himself spoke about the peculiarities of his work on the image - character: “This complete embodiment in the flesh, this complete rounding of character took place for me when I take away in my mind all this significant prosaic squabble of life, when, containing in my head all the major character traits, I collect At the same time, all around him there are all the rags, down to the smallest pin, which swirls around a person every day, in a word - when I figure out everything from small to large, without missing a thing...”

The economicless landowner Manilov (chap. 2) is replaced by the petty hoarder Korobochka (chap. 3), the careless waster of life Nozdryov (chap. 4) - the tight-fisted Sobakevich (chap. 5). This gallery of landowners is completed by Plyushkin, a miser who brought his estate and peasants to complete ruin.

With even greater expressiveness, the “portrait” chapters provide a picture of the moral decline of the landowner class. From an idle dreamer living in the world of his dreams, Manilov to the “club-headed” Korobochka, from her to the reckless spendthrift, liar and cheater Nozdryov, then to the brutalized fist Sobakevich and, finally, to Plyushkin, who has lost all moral qualities - “a hole in humanity” Gogol leads us, showing the increasing moral decline and decay of representatives of the landowner world.

Thus, the poem turns into a brilliant image of serfdom as a socio-economic system that naturally gives rise to the cultural and economic backwardness of the country, morally corrupts the class that was at that time the arbiter of the destinies of the state. This ideological orientation of the poem is revealed, first of all, in the system of its images.

The gallery of portraits of landowners opens with the image of Manilov - “In appearance, he was a prominent man; His facial features were not devoid of pleasantness, but this pleasantness seemed to be too devoted to sugar; There was something in his manner and manner of speaking that ingratiated himself with favor and acquaintance. He smiled enticingly, was blond, with blue eyes.” Previously, he served in the army, where he was considered the most modest, most delicate and educated officer “...Living on an estate, he sometimes comes to the city to see educated people.” Compared to the inhabitants of the city and estates, he seems to be a “very courteous and courteous landowner,” who bears some imprint of a “semi-enlightened environment.” However, revealing Manilov’s inner appearance, his character, talking about his attitude to the household and his pastime, drawing Manilov’s reception of Chichikov, Gogol shows the utter emptiness and worthlessness of this “existent”.

The writer emphasizes two main features in Manilov’s character - his worthlessness and sugary, meaningless daydreaming. Manilov had no living interests. He did not do the housework, entrusting it entirely to the clerk. He could not even tell Chichikov whether his peasants had died since the audit. His house “stood alone on the jura (i.e., elevation), open to all the winds that could blow. Instead of the shady garden that usually surrounded the manor’s house, Manilov had only five or six birch trees, and in his village there was no growing tree or any greenery anywhere.” The lack of thriftiness and impracticality of Manilov is clearly demonstrated by the furnishings of the rooms of his house, where next to the beautiful furniture there were two armchairs, “covered with simple matting,” a dandy candlestick made of dark bronze with three antique graces “stood on the table, and next to it was placed some kind of simple a copper invalid, lame, curled to one side and covered in fat.”

“It’s no wonder that such an owner has a rather empty depository, the clerk and housekeeper are thieves, the servants are unclean and drunkards, and the whole household sleeps mercilessly and clowns around the rest of the time.” Manilov spends his life in complete idleness. He has abandoned all work, does not even read anything - for two years there has been a book in his office, still on the same 14th page. Manilov brightens up his idleness with groundless dreams and meaningless “projects, such as building an underground passage from the house, a stone bridge across a pond.

Instead of real feeling, Manilov has a “pleasant smile,” cloying politeness and a sensitive phrase: instead of thoughts there are incoherent, stupid reasonings, and instead of activities there are empty dreams.

Korobochka, a typical gentle landowner - the owner of 80 serf souls, is not a living person, but a parody of him, another embodiment of the same spiritual emptiness.

In contrast to Manilov, Korobochka is a businesslike housewife. She has “a nice village, a yard full of all kinds of birds, there are spacious vegetable gardens with saplings, onions, potatoes, beets…, …. There are apple trees and other fruit trees; She knew almost all of her peasants by name by heart. Mistaking Chichikov for a buyer, she offers him all kinds of products from her farm...”

But Korobochka’s mental horizons are extremely limited. Gogol emphasizes her stupidity, ignorance, superstition, indicating that her behavior is guided by self-interest, a passion for profit. She is very afraid of “cheapening” when selling. Everything new and unprecedented scares her.

Nozdryov represents a different type of “living dead man”. “He was of medium height, a very well-built fellow with full rosy cheeks, teeth as white as snow and sideburns as black as steel. He was as fresh as blood and milk, health seemed to be dripping from his face.”

Nozdryov is the complete opposite of both Manilov and Korobochka. He is a restless hero of fairs, balls, drinking parties, card tables, he has “restless agility and liveliness of character.” Onbuyan, carouser, liar, “knight of revelry.” He is no stranger to Khlestakovism - the desire to appear more significant and richer. He completely neglected his farm. Only his kennel is in excellent condition.

Nozdryov plays cards dishonestly, is always ready to “go anywhere, even to the ends of the world, enter whatever enterprise you want, exchange whatever you have for whatever you want.” However, all this does not lead Nozdryov to enrichment, but, on the contrary, ruins him.

The social significance of Nozdryov’s image lies in the fact that in it Gogol clearly shows the contradiction between the interests of the peasantry and the landowners. Agricultural products were brought to the fair from Nozdryov’s estate - the fruits of the forced labor of his peasants - and “sold at the best price,” and Nozdryov squandered it all and lost in a few days.

A new stage in the moral decline of man is the “damn fist”, in Chichikov’s words – Sobakevich.

“It seemed,” writes Gogol, “that this body had no soul at all, or it had one, but not at all where it should be, but like Kashchei the Immortal - somewhere behind the mountains, and it was covered with such a thick shell that everything that neither tossed and turned at the bottom of it, nor produced absolutely any shock on the surface.”

In Sobakevich, a gravitation towards the old feudal forms of farming, hostility towards the city and education are combined with old age towards profit, predatory accumulation. The passion for enrichment pushes him to cheat, forces him to seek various means of profit. What distinguishes Sobakevich from other landowners brought out by Gogol is that, in addition to the corvée system, he used a monetary quitrent system. So, for example, one Eremey Sorokoplekhin, who traded in Moscow, brought Sobakevich 500 rubles. quitrent

The description of the village of Plyushkina with its log pavement that had fallen into complete disrepair, with the “special dilapidation” of the village huts, with huge treasures of rotten bread, with the master’s house, which looked like some kind of “decrepit invalid”, is expressive. The garden alone was picturesquely beautiful, but this beauty was the beauty of an abandoned cemetery. And against this background, a strange figure appeared before Chichikov: either a man or a woman, “in an undefined dress,” so torn, greasy and worn that if Chichikov had met him somewhere near the church, he would probably have given him a copper penny.” But it was not a beggar who stood before Chichikov, but a rich landowner, the owner of a thousand souls, whose storerooms, barns and drying sheds are full of all sorts of goods. However, all this goodness rots, deteriorates, turns into dust, since the greedy stinginess that completely gripped Plyushkin erased from him any understanding of the real value of things, overshadowed the practical mind of the once experienced owner. Plyushkin's relationships with buyers, his walks around the village collecting all sorts of rubbish, the famous piles of rubbish on his table, hoarding, lead Plyushkin to senseless hoarding, which brings ruin to his household. Everything has fallen into complete disrepair, the peasants are “dying like flies,” and dozens of them are on the run. The senseless stinginess that reigns in Plyushkin’s soul gives rise to suspicion of people, distrust and innateness of everything around him, cruelty and injustice towards serfs. There are no human feelings in Plyushkin, not even paternal ones. Things are more valuable to him than people, whom he sees only as swindlers and thieves.

“And to what insignificance, pettiness, and disgust a person could stoop! - Gogol exclaims.”

The image of Plyushkin embodies with exceptional strength and satirical sharpness the shameful meaninglessness of hoarding and stinginess generated by a possessive society.

Gogol reveals the inner primitiveness of his heroes with the help of special artistic techniques. When constructing portrait chapters, Gogol selects such details that show the uniqueness of each landowner. As a result, the images of landowners are clearly individualized and sharply, convexly outlined. Using the technique of hyperbole, emphasizing and sharpening the most important features of his heroes, Gogol enhances the typicality of these images, while maintaining their vitality and reality; Each of the landowners is unique, not like the others. However, all of them are landowners - serf owners, and therefore they also have common class features generated by the feudal - serf system. These features are as follows:

base animal interests, absence of any high ideological motives; vulgarity, dulling of all human feelings, gross selfishness

lack of socially useful activities. All of them are “Dead Souls”.

This is how Gogol himself looked at them. “Be not dead, living souls,” he wrote to the landowners - the nobles. This is how Herzen regarded them, who wrote down the following thoughts in his diary: “Dead souls?” - this title itself carries something terrifying. And he couldn’t call it any other way; not the revision’s dead souls, but all these Nozdryovs, Manilovs and all the others - those same dead souls, and we meet them at every step.”

Gogol talks in detail about Chichikov’s life path from birth until the moment when this “hero” began buying up dead souls, how Chichikov’s character developed, what vital interests, formed in him under the influence of the environment, guided his behavior. Even as a child, he received instructions from his father on how to become one of the people: “Most of all, please teachers and bosses..., hang out with those who are richer, so that on occasion they can be useful to you..., and most of all, take care and save a penny - this thing is the most reliable thing in the world, You’ll do everything and ruin everything in the world with a penny.” This behest of his father made Chichikov the basis of his relationships with people from his school days. Saving a penny, but not for its own sake, but using it as a means of achieving material well-being and a prominent position in society, became the main goal of his entire life. Already at school, he quickly gained the favor of the teacher and, possessing “great intelligence on the practical side,” successfully accumulated money.

Service in various institutions developed and polished his natural abilities in Chichikov: practical intelligence, deft ingenuity, hypocrisy, patience, the ability to “comprehend the spirit of the boss”, feel for a weak string in a person’s soul and skillfully influence it for personal purposes, energy and perseverance in achieving his plans, complete indiscriminateness in means and heartlessness.

Chichikov uses “irresistible strength of character,” “quickness, insight and perspicacity,” and all his ability to charm a person to achieve the desired enrichment.

Chichikov’s internal “many faces”, his elusiveness is emphasized by his appearance, given by Gogol, in vague tones.

“In the chaise sat a gentleman - not handsome, but not bad-looking, not too fat, not too thin, one cannot say that he is old, but not too young either.”

The expression on Chichikov's face constantly changes, depending on who he is talking to and what he is talking about.

Gogol constantly emphasizes the external neatness of his hero, his love for cleanliness and a good, fashionable suit. Chichikov is always carefully shaved and perfumed; He always wears clean linen and a fashionable dress, “brown and reddish colors with a spark” or “the color of Navarino smoke with flame.” And this external neatness, the cleanliness of Chichikov, expressively contrasting with the internal dirt and uncleanliness of this hero, fully completes the image of a “scoundrel”, an “acquirer” - a predator who uses everything to achieve his main goal - profit, acquisition.

Gogol's merit is that the hero of business and personal success is subjected to destructive laughter. Funny and insignificant Chichikov arouses the greatest contempt precisely when, having achieved complete success, he becomes an idol and darling of society. The author's laughter turned out to be a kind of “developer”. Chichikov’s “dead soul”, his doom, despite his external tenacity and vitality, became visible to everyone around him. There is not the slightest leniency in the author's impartial verdict.

In the kingdom of the living dead, everything great is vulgarized, everything sublime is degraded, everything honest, thoughtful, noble perishes.

The title of the poem turned out to be a generalizing and extremely accurate description and a unique symbol of the serfdom system. Where does the evil laughter at the “dead souls” come from in the poem?

It is not difficult to be convinced that the author overheard his people. The people's hatred of their oppressors is the source of Gogol's laughter. The people executed with laughter any absurdity, lie, inhumanity, and in this execution with laughter - mental health, a sober look at the environment.

A work of genius does not die with its creator, but continues to live in the consciousness of society, people, and humanity. Each era, making its own judgment about it, will never express everything, leaving much to say to subsequent generations, who read the work in a new way and perceive some aspects of it more acutely than their contemporaries. They reveal wider and deeper the “undercurrent” flying at its base.

It’s easier for society to love him than to understand him...”

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

1M. Gus “Living Russia and Dead Souls” Moscow 1981

2.A. M. Dokusov, M.G. Kachurin“ Poem by N.V. Gogol “Dead Souls” Moscow 1982

3.Yu. Mann “In Search of a Living Soul” Moscow 1987

4.Modern dictionary - reference book on literature. Moscow 1999

5.Gogol in the memoirs of his contemporaries. M., GIHL, 1952

6.Yu. Mann. Poetics of Gogol. Publishing house "Khudozhestvennaya Literatura", 1978.

7. Stepanov N. L. Gogol M., “Young Guard”, ZhZL, 1961

8. Tarasenkov A.T. The last days of Gogol's life. Ed. 2nd, supplemented according to the manuscript. M., 1902

9. Khrapchenko M. B. The works of N.V. Gogol “Owls. writer", 1959

Introduction.

N.V. Gogol is a writer whose work is rightfully included in the classics of Russian literature. Gogol is a realist writer, but his connection between art and reality is complicated. He in no way copies the phenomena of life, but always interprets them in his own way. Gogol knows how to see and show the everyday from a completely new angle, from an unexpected perspective. And an ordinary event takes on an ominous, strange coloring. This is what happens in Gogol’s main work - the poem “Dead Souls”. The artistic space of the poem is made up of two worlds, which we can conventionally designate as the “real” world and the “ideal” world. The author builds the “real” world by recreating the contemporary picture of Russian life. According to the laws of the epic, Gogol recreates a picture of life in the poem, striving for maximum breadth of coverage. This world is ugly. This world is scary. This is a world of inverted values, the spiritual guidelines in it are distorted, the laws by which it exists are immoral. But living inside this world, having been born in it and having accepted its laws, it is almost impossible to assess the degree of its immorality, to see the abyss that separates it from the world of true values. Moreover, it is impossible to understand the reason that causes spiritual degradation, the moral decay of society. In this world live Plyushkin, Nozdrev Manilov, the prosecutor, the police chief and other heroes, who are original caricatures of Gogol’s contemporaries. Gogol created a whole gallery of characters and types devoid of soul in the poem, they are all diverse, but they all have one thing in common - none of them have a soul.

Conclusion.

The title of the poem has the deepest philosophical meaning. Dead souls are nonsense, because the soul is immortal. For the “ideal” world, the soul is immortal, since it embodies the divine principle in man. And in the “real” world there may well be a “dead soul”, because for him the soul is only what distinguishes the living from the dead. In the episode of the prosecutor’s death, those around him realized that he “had a real soul” only when he became “only a soulless body.” This world is crazy - it has forgotten about the soul, and lack of spirituality is the reason for the collapse. Only with an understanding of this reason can the revival of Rus' begin, the return of lost ideals, spirituality, soul in its true, highest meaning. The Chichikovskaya britchka, ideally transformed in the last lyrical digression into a symbol of the eternally living soul of the Russian people - a wonderful “bird-three,” completes the first volume of the poem. Let us remember that the poem begins with a meaningless conversation between two men: will the wheel reach Moscow; with a description of the dusty, gray, dreary streets of the provincial town; from all sorts of manifestations of human stupidity and vulgarity. The immortality of the soul is the only thing that instills in the author faith in the obligatory revival of his heroes and all life, therefore, all of Rus'.

Its enduring significance in the mental and moral life of mankind is determined by the fact that it makes us think not only about the life that is depicted in it, about that terrible world called feudal noble Russia, but also about the meaning of life in general, about the purpose of man. It pushes the reader to understand himself, his spiritual world, and think about his own activities. In his “Author's Confession” Gogol indicates that Pushkin gave him the idea to write “Dead Souls”... He had long been urging me to start writing a large essay, and finally, once after I had read one small image of a small scene, but which, however, struck him more than anything I had read before, he told me: “How can you, with this ability to guess a person and with a few features make him appear as if he were alive, not take on a large essay. It’s just a sin!”…. and, in conclusion of all, he gave me his own plot, from which he wanted to make something like a poem himself and which, according to him, he would not give to anyone else. This was the plot of “Dead Souls”. Pushkin found that the plot of “Dead Souls” was good for me because it gave me complete freedom to travel all over Russia with the hero and bring out many different characters.” The idea of “traveling all over Rus' with the hero and bringing out many different characters” predetermined the composition of the poem. It is structured as a story of the adventures of the “acquirer Chichikov,” who buys the actually dead, but legally alive, i.e. souls not deleted from the audit lists.

Criticizing “Dead Souls,” someone remarked: “Gogol built a long corridor along which he leads his reader along with Chichikov and, opening doors to the right and left, shows a freak sitting in each room.” Is it so? Gogol himself spoke about the peculiarities of his work on the image - character: “This complete embodiment in the flesh, this complete rounding of character took place in me when I took away in my mind all this essential prosaic squabble of life, when, containing in my head all the major features character, I will at the same time collect around him all the rags down to the smallest pin that swirls around a person every day, in a word - when I figure out everything from small to large without missing anything...” The immersion of a person in the prosaic “squabbles of life”, “in rags” - this is the means of creating the character of the heroes.

The central place in volume 1 is occupied by five “portrait” chapters (images of landowners). These chapters, constructed according to the same plan, show how different types of serfdom developed on the basis of serfdom and how serfdom in the 20-30s of the 19th century, due to the growth of capitalist forces, led the landowner class to economic and moral decline.

Gogol gives these chapters in a certain order.

The picture of the economic collapse of the corvée, subsistence economy on the estates of Manilov, Nozdrev, Plyushkin is drawn vividly and vitally convincingly. But even the seemingly strong farms of Korobochka and Sobakevich are in fact unviable, since such forms of farming have already become obsolete. With even greater expressiveness, the “portrait” chapters provide a picture of the moral decline of the landowner class. From an idle dreamer living in the world of his dreams, Manilov to the “club-headed” Korobochka, from her to the reckless spendthrift, liar and cheater Nozdryov, then to the brutalized fist Sobakevich and, finally, to the one who has lost all moral qualities - “a hole in humanity” - Gogol leads us to Plyushkin, showing the increasing moral decline and decay of representatives of the landowner world. Thus, the poem turns into a brilliant representation of serfdom as a socio-economic system that naturally gives rise to the cultural and economic backwardness of the country, morally corrupting the class that was at that time the arbiter of the state’s destinies. This ideological orientation of the poem is revealed, first of all, in the system of its images.

He did not do the housework, entrusting it entirely to the clerk. He could not even tell Chichikov whether his peasants had died since the audit. His house “stood alone on the jura (i.e., elevation), open to all the winds that could blow.

Instead of the shady garden that usually surrounded the manor’s house, Manilov only had five or six birch trees, and in his village there was no growing tree or any greenery anywhere.” Manilov’s lack of thriftiness and impracticality is clearly demonstrated by the furnishings of the rooms of his house, where next to the beautiful furniture stood two armchairs, “covered simply with matting,” a dandy candlestick made of dark bronze with three antique graces “stood on the table, and next to it was placed a “He’s just a copper invalid, lame, curled to one side and covered in fat.” “It’s no wonder that such an owner has a rather empty pantry, the clerk and housekeeper are thieves, the servants are unclean and drunkards, and all the servants sleep mercilessly and act out the rest of the time.” Manilov spends his life in complete idleness. He has retired from all work, he doesn’t even read anything - for two years there has been a book in his office, still on the same 14th page. Manilov brightens up his idleness with groundless dreams and meaningless “projects, such as building an underground passage from the house, a stone bridge across a pond.

Instead of real feeling, Manilov has a “pleasant smile”, cloying politeness and a sensitive phrase: instead of thoughts there are some incoherent, stupid reasonings, together with activities there are empty dreams. Not a living person, but a parody of him, another embodiment of the same spiritual emptiness is Korobochka, a typical gentle landowner - the owner of 80 serf souls. In contrast to Manilov, Korobochka is a businesslike housewife. She has “a nice village, the yard is full of all kinds of birds, there are spacious vegetable gardens with cabbage, onions, potatoes, beets…, …. There are apple trees and other fruit trees; She knew almost all of her peasants by name by heart.

Mistaking Chichikov for a buyer, she offers him all kinds of products from her farm...” But Korobochka’s mental horizons are extremely limited.

Gogol emphasizes her stupidity, ignorance, superstition, and indicates that her behavior is guided by self-interest, a passion for profit. She is very afraid of “cheapening up” when selling. Everything new and unprecedented scares her. The “club-headed” box is the embodiment of those traditions that have developed among provincial small landowners leading subsistence farming.

Pointing to the typicality of the image of Korobochka, Gogol says that such “Korobochkas” can also be found among the capital’s aristocrats. Nozdryov represents a different type of “living dead”. “He was of average height, a very well-built fellow with full rosy cheeks, teeth as white as snow and sideburns as black as steel. He was as fresh as blood and milk, health seemed to be dripping from his face.” Nozdryov is the complete opposite of both Manilov and Korobochka. He is a restless hero of fairs, balls, drinking parties, card tables, he has “restless agility and liveliness of character.” He is a brawler, a carouser, a liar, a “knight of revelry.” He is no stranger to Khlestakovism - the desire to appear more significant and richer. He completely neglected his farm. Only his kennel is in excellent condition. Nozdryov plays cards dishonestly, he is always ready to “go anywhere, even to the ends of the world, enter whatever enterprise you want, exchange whatever you have for whatever you want.” However, all this does not lead Nozdryov to enrichment, but, on the contrary, ruins him.

The social significance of Nozdryov’s image lies in the fact that in it Gogol clearly shows the entire contradiction between the interests of the peasantry and the landowners. Agricultural products were brought to the fair from Nozdryov’s estate - the fruits of the forced labor of his peasants - and “sold at the best price,” and Nozdryov squandered everything and lost in a few days. A new stage in a person’s moral decline is the “damn fist”, as Chichikov puts it – Sobakevich. “It seemed,” writes Gogol, “that this body had no soul at all, or it had one, but not at all where it should be, but like Kashchei the Immortal - somewhere over the mountains, and it was covered with such a thick shell that everything “Whatever was tossing and turning at the bottom of it did not produce absolutely any shock on the surface.” In Sobakevich, a gravitation towards old feudal forms of farming, hostility towards the city and education are combined with old age towards profit and predatory accumulation.

The passion for enrichment pushes him to cheat, forces him to seek various means of profit. Unlike other landowners brought out by Gogol, Sobakevich, in addition to corvée, also uses a monetary quitrent system. So, for example, one Eremey Sorokoplekhin, who traded in Moscow, brought Sobakevich 500 rubles. quitrent

Discussing the character of Sobakevich, Gogol emphasizes the broad generalizing meaning of this image. “The Sobakevichs,” says Gogol, “were not only among landowners, but also among bureaucrats and scientists. And everywhere they showed their qualities of a “fist man,” self-interest, narrow interests, inertia.” The limit of a person’s moral decline is Plyushkin - “a hole in humanity.” Everything human died in him; this is, in the full sense of the word, a “dead soul.” And Gogol consistently and persistently leads us to this conclusion, from the very beginning to the end of the chapter, developing and deepening the theme of man’s spiritual death.

However, all this good rots, deteriorates, turns into dust, since the greedy stinginess that completely gripped Plyushkin erased any understanding of the real value of things and overshadowed the practical mind of the once experienced owner.

Plyushkin's relationship with buyers, his walks around the village collecting all sorts of rubbish, the famous piles of rubbish on his table, hoarding, lead Plyushkin to senseless hoarding, which brings ruin to his household. Everything has fallen into complete disrepair, the peasants are “dying like flies,” and dozens of them are on the run.

The senseless stinginess that reigns in Plyushkin’s soul gives rise to suspicion of people, distrust and innateness of everything around him, cruelty and injustice towards serfs. There are no human feelings in Plyushkin, not even paternal ones. Things are more valuable to him than people, in whom he sees only swindlers and thieves. “And to what insignificance, pettiness, and disgust a person could stoop! - Gogol exclaims.” The image of Plyushkin embodies with exceptional strength and satirical sharpness the shameful meaninglessness of hoarding and stinginess generated by a proprietary society.

Using the technique of hyperbole, emphasizing and sharpening the most important features of his heroes, Gogol enhances the typicality of these images, while preserving their vitality and reality; Each of the landowners is unique, not like the others.

Saving a penny, but not for its own sake, but to use it as a means of achieving material well-being and a prominent position in society, became the main goal of his entire life. Already at school, he quickly gained the favor of the teacher and, possessing “great intelligence on the practical side,” successfully accumulated money.

Having received the position, Chichikov “became a noticeable person, everything in him turned out to be necessary for this world: pleasantness in turns and actions and agility in business affairs” - all this distinguished Chichikov in his further service; This is how he appears before us during the purchase of dead souls. Chichikov uses “irresistible strength of character,” “quickness, insight and perspicacity,” and all his ability to charm a person to achieve the desired enrichment.

The internal “many faces” of Chichikov, his elusiveness is emphasized by his appearance, given by Gogol, in vague tones. “In the chaise sat a gentleman - not handsome, but not bad-looking, not too fat, not too thin, one cannot say that he is old, but not too young either.” Chichikov's facial expression constantly changes, depending on who he is talking to and what he is talking about.

Gogol constantly emphasizes the external neatness of his hero, his love for cleanliness and a good, fashionable suit.

Chichikov is always carefully shaven and perfumed; He always wears clean linen and a fashionable dress, “brown and reddish colors with a spark” or “the color of Navarino smoke with flame.” And this external neatness, cleanliness of Chichikov, expressively contrasting with the internal dirt and uncleanliness of this hero, fully completes the image of a “scoundrel”, an “acquirer” - a predator who uses everything to achieve his main goal - profit, acquisition.

Gogol's merit is that the hero of business and personal success was subjected to destructive laughter.

The funny and insignificant Chichikov arouses the greatest contempt precisely when, having achieved complete success, he becomes an idol and a favorite of society. The author's laughter turned out to be a kind of “developer”. Everyone around began to see Chichikov’s “dead soul”, his doom, despite his external tenacity and vitality. There is not the slightest leniency in the author's impartial verdict. The world of the masters of life appeared in “Dead Souls” as the kingdom of the dead, posing as the kingdom of the living, the kingdom of spiritual sleep, stagnation, vulgarity, dirt, self-interest, deception, money-grubbing. In the kingdom of the living dead, everything great is vulgarized, everything sublime is degraded, everything honest, thoughtful, noble perishes.

The title of the poem turned out to be a generalizing and extremely accurate description and a kind of symbol of the serfdom system.

Where does the evil laughter at the “dead souls” come from in the poem? It is not difficult to see that the author overheard it among the people. The people's hatred of their oppressors is the source of Gogol's laughter. The people executed with laughter any absurdity, lie, inhumanity, and in this execution with laughter - mental health, a sober look at the environment. Thus, Gogol appeared in “Dead Souls” as a representative of his people, punishing landowner and bureaucratic Russia with the laughter of popular contempt and indignation. And this condemned kingdom of “dead souls” is opposed in the book by his faith in another Russia, that country of the future, in the unlimited possibilities of the Russian people.

A work of genius does not die with its creator, but continues to live in the consciousness of society, people, and humanity.

Each era, making its own judgment about it, will never express everything, leaving much to say to subsequent generations, who read the work anew and perceive some aspects of it more acutely than their contemporaries. They reveal wider and deeper the “undercurrent” flying at its base.

It’s easier for society to love him than to understand him...” LIST OF REFERENCES USED: 1. M. Gus “Living Russia and Dead Souls” Moscow 1981 2. A. M. Dokusov, M.G. Kachurin “Poem by N.V. Gogol “Dead Souls” Moscow 1982 3. Yu. Mann “In Search of a Living Soul” Moscow 1987 4. Modern dictionary - a reference book on literature.

Moscow 1999 5. Gogol in the memoirs of his contemporaries. M., GIHL, 1952 6. Yu. Mann.

Gogol's poetics.

Publishing house "Fiction", 1978 7. Stepanov N.L. Gogol M., "Young Guard", ZhZL, 1961 8. Tarasenkov A.T. The last days of Gogol's life. Ed. 2nd, supplemented according to the manuscript. M., 1902 9. Khrapchenko M. B. The work of N. V. Gogol “Owls. writer", 1959

Introduction. N.V. Gogol is a writer whose work is rightfully included in the classics of Russian literature.

Gogol is a realist writer, but his connection between art and reality is complicated. He in no way copies the phenomena of life, but always interprets them in his own way.

Gogol knows how to see and show the everyday from a completely new angle, from an unexpected perspective. And an ordinary event takes on an ominous, strange coloring. This is what happens in Gogol’s main work, the poem “Dead Souls.” The artistic space of the poem consists of two worlds, which we can conditionally designate as the “real” world and the “ideal” world. The author builds a “real” world by recreating a contemporary picture of Russian life. According to the laws of the epic, Gogol recreates a picture of life in the poem, striving for maximum breadth of coverage. This world is ugly. This world is scary. This is a world of inverted values, the spiritual guidelines in it are perverted, the laws by which it exists are immoral. But living inside this world, having been born in it and having accepted its laws, it is almost impossible to assess the degree of its immorality, to see the abyss that separates it from the world of true values. Moreover, it is impossible to understand the reason causing spiritual degradation and moral decay of society. In this world live Plyushkin, Nozdrev Manilov, the prosecutor, the police chief and other heroes, who are original caricatures of Gogol’s contemporaries. Gogol created a whole gallery of characters and types devoid of soul in the poem, they are all diverse, but they all have one thing in common - none of them have a soul.

Conclusion. . The title of the poem contains the deepest philosophical meaning.

Dead souls are nonsense, because the soul is immortal. For the “ideal” world, the soul is immortal, since it embodies the divine principle in man. And in the “real” world there may well be a “dead soul”, because for him the soul is only what distinguishes the living from the dead. In the episode of the prosecutor’s death, those around him realized that he “had a real soul” only when he became “only a soulless body.” This world is crazy - it has forgotten about the soul, and lack of spirituality is the reason for the collapse.

Only with an understanding of this reason can the revival of Rus' begin, the return of lost ideals, spirituality, and soul in its true, highest meaning.

The Chichikov chaise, ideally transformed in the last lyrical digression into a symbol of the ever-living soul of the Russian people - a wonderful “three bird,” completes the first volume of the poem.

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