“Dead Souls” is Gogol’s main work not only in terms of the depth and scale of artistic generalizations. Work on the poem turned into a long process of human and literary self-knowledge of the author, striving for the world of high spiritual truths. “It is not 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 secret, which should suddenly, to the amazement of everyone... be revealed in the following volumes.”

Changes in the concept of Gogol’s main work, the search for a genre, work on the text of the chapters of the first and second volumes, thinking about 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's definition, “this pale beginning that work, which by the bright grace of Heaven will not be much useless.” It is not for nothing that the author compared the first volume of the poem with a porch hastily attached by the provincial architect to “a palace that was planned to be built on a colossal scale.” Studying the first volume is the first step towards understanding the overall plan of the poem. 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, features of the plot and composition of “Dead Souls” are associated with the development and deepening of the original concept 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 him a plot from which he himself wanted to make “something like a poem.” “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 a wide variety of characters” (“Author’s Confession”). Let us emphasize that it was not so much the plot itself, but 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 involving “dead souls.” One of these cases occurred in Mirgorod during Gogol’s youth.

“Dead souls” are deceased serfs who continued to remain the “living” property of the landowners until the next “revision fairy tale,” after which they were officially considered dead. Only then did the landowners stop paying tax for them - the poll tax. Peasants who existed on paper could be sold, gifted or mortgaged, which was sometimes taken advantage of by scammers who tempted landowners with the opportunity not only to get rid of serfs who did not generate income, but also to receive money for them. The buyer himself dead souls“became the owner of a very real fortune. Chichikov’s adventure is a consequence of the “most inspired thought” that dawned on him: “Yes, if I bought all these who died out before they submitted new revision tales, buy them, let’s say, a thousand, yes, let’s say, the guardianship council will give two hundred rubles per head: here already two hundred thousand capital! But now the time is convenient, there was an epidemic recently, a lot of people died out, thank God, a lot.”

The “anecdote” with dead souls provided the basis for an adventurous picaresque novel. This type of novel genre is entertaining and has always been very popular. Pictorial novels were created by Gogol’s senior contemporaries: V.T. Narezhny (“Russian Gilblaz, or The Adventures of Prince Gavrila Simonovich Chistyakov”) and F.V. Bulgarin (“Ivan Vyzhigin”). Despite the low artistic level, their novels were a resounding success.

The adventurous picaresque novel is the original genre model of Dead Souls, but in the process of working on the work it changed greatly. This is evidenced, in particular, by the author's designation of the genre - poem, which appeared after adjusting the main idea and general plan of the work. Gogol’s thesis “all of Rus' will appear in him” not only emphasized the scale of the new plan in comparison with the previous intention to show Russia “albeit from one side,” that is, satirically, but also meant a decisive revision of the previously chosen genre model. The scope of the picaresque adventure novel became cramped: the traditional genre could not accommodate all the richness of the new concept. Chichikov’s “Odyssey” has become just one of the ways to artistically embody the author’s vision of Russia.

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

One of the techniques used in 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 obstacles in life, suddenly turned out to be a son “noble” parents and received a rich inheritance. Gogol decisively abandoned this novel template.

Chichikov is a man “in the middle”: “not handsome, but not bad-looking, neither too fat nor too thin; I can’t say that I’m old, but I can’t say that I’m too young.” The adventurer's life story is hidden from the reader until the eleventh and final chapter. Having decided to “hide the scoundrel,” that is, to tell Chichikov’s backstory, the writer begins by emphasizing the mediocrity, “vulgarity” of the hero:

"Dark and humble origins of our hero." And concluding his detailed biography, he summarizes: “So, here is our hero in full, as he is! But they will perhaps require a final definition in one line: who is he in relation to moral qualities? That he is not a hero, full of perfections and virtues, is clear. Who is he? So he's a scoundrel? Why a scoundrel, why be so strict with others?” Having rejected the extremes in Chichikov’s definition (not a hero, but not a scoundrel either), Gogol dwells on his main, conspicuous quality: “It is most fair to call him: master, acquirer.”

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

The traditional plot “spring” in morally descriptive adventure-picaresque novels is the persecution of the main character by vicious, greedy and malicious people. Against their background, the rogue hero, who fought for his rights, could seem almost “a model of perfection.” 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 persecuted by anyone, and there are no characters who, at least to some extent, could become exponents of the author’s point of view. Only in the second volume did “positive” characters appear: the tax farmer Murazov, the landowner Kostanzhoglo, the governor, irreconcilable with the abuses of officials, however, these unusual personalities for Gogol are far from novel stencils.

The plots of many picaresque novels were artificial and far-fetched. The emphasis was on “adventures”, the adventures of rogue heroes. Gogol is not interested in “Chichikov’s adventures” in themselves and not even in their “material” result (after all, the hero obtained his fortune by fraudulent means), but in their social and moral content, which allowed the writer to make Chichikov’s trickery a “mirror” in which he reflected modern Russia. This is the Russia of landowners selling “air” - “dead souls”, and officials assisting a swindler instead of grabbing him by the hand. In addition, the plot based on Chichikov’s wanderings has enormous 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 with detailed descriptions of the appearance of the characters, the material world in which they live, and reflections on their human qualities. An 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. Contrary to the requirements of the genre of picaresque adventure novel, the plot of “Dead Souls” in last chapters almost completely stops. Of the events occurring in chapters seven through eleven, only two—the registration of the deed of sale and Chichikov’s departure from the city—are significant for the development of the action. The turmoil in the provincial city, caused by the desire to reveal the “secret” of Chichikov, not only does not bring society any closer to exposing the swindler, but also strengthens 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 the parable of Kif Mokievich and Mokiya Kifovich. However, it is in the final chapter that the character of the adventurer is clarified (the author sets out his view of him in detail, 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 that is depicted in the first volume is determined: the majestic image of the “irresistible” “Rus-troika” rushing through historical space is contrasted with the sleepy life of the provincial city and the running of the Chichikov troika. The author seems to convince readers that the plot based on Chichikov’s “adventures” is only one of the whole variety of life plots that life in Russia gives. 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 Rus' - “a mighty space”, “a sparkling, wonderful, unfamiliar land of the distance”.

The figure of the swindler, swindler 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, and ensures end-to-end action. The motivation for the events, as in any picaresque adventure novel, is relatively simple, but it “works” flawlessly.

The thirst for winning and good luck forces the hero-adventurer to quickly change position, move easily, seek acquaintance with the “right” people, and achieve their favor. Arriving in the provincial town of NN, Chichikov did not know anyone. Chichikov's acquaintances - with officials of the provincial city and with the surrounding landowners - allowed the author to talk in detail about each new person, characterize his appearance, way of life, habits and prejudices, and 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 a sufficient plot motivation for including more and more new episodes in the work. Each episode simply joins the previous one, forming a chronicle plot - a chronicle of Chichikov’s journey for the “dead souls”.

The monotony and “programming” of Chichikov’s journey is broken only in two cases: an unplanned meeting with Korobochka occurred by the grace of a drunken Selifan, who had lost his way; after this, in a tavern on the “high road” Chichikov met Nozdryov, to whom he had no intention of going at all. But, as always with Gogol, small deviations from the general rule only confirm it. Chance meetings with Korobochka and Nozdrev, knocking Chichikov out of his usual “rut” for a while, do not disturb general plan. The echo of these meetings was the subsequent events in the provincial town: Korobochka comes to find out “why dead souls are walking around,” 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 characteristics of an adventurously picaresque novel. Gogol, using the moral-descriptive potential of the genre, made the description of everyday life and morality the most important genre tendency of Dead Souls. Each movement of Chichikov is followed by an outline of everyday life and morals. The most extensive of these essays is a story about the life of the provincial city, begun in the first chapter and continued in the seventh to eleventh chapters. In chapters two through six, Chichikov’s visit to yet another landowner is accompanied by a detailed moral description.

Gogol understood perfectly well that the psychology of an adventurer gives him additional opportunities to penetrate into the depths of the characters he portrays. To achieve his goal, the adventurer cannot limit himself to a superficial look at people: he needs to know their carefully hidden, reprehensible sides. Chichikov is already at the first stage of work on “ Dead souls"became, as it were, an "assistant" to the writer, passionate about the idea of ​​​​creating satirical work. This function of the hero was fully preserved even when the concept of the work expanded.

When buying up “dead souls,” that is, committing a crime, a fraudster must be an excellent physiognomist and a subtle psychologist, of course, in his own special way. After all, by offering to sell dead souls, Chichikov persuades the landowners to enter into a criminal conspiracy with him and become accomplices in his crime. He is convinced that profit and calculation are the strongest motives for any action, 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 the hands of justice ? Chichikov is not just a swindler, his role is more important: the satirical writer needs him as a powerful tool in order to test other characters, to show their private life hidden from prying eyes.

The image of all landowners is based on the same microplot. Its “spring” is the actions of the buyer of “dead souls”. Indispensable participants in the five microplots are two characters: Chichikov and the landowner whom he visits. The author constructs the story about the landowners as a successive change of episodes: entry into the estate, meeting, refreshment, 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 the objective world surrounding the landowners, to create their portraits. The personality of this or that landowner is reflected in the everyday details: 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 every time seems to find himself in a new “state”, living according to its own unwritten rules. The keen eye of the adventurer captures the smallest details. The author uses Chichikov's impressions, but is not limited to them. The picture of what Chichikov saw is complemented by the author's descriptions of the estate, the landowner's house, and the landowner himself. Both the “landowner” and “provincial” chapters of the poem use a similar principle of depiction: 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 for the hero-fraud it is important 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 strives to elevate the individual and the particular to the generic, common to many people. For example, characterizing Manilov, he notes: “There is a kind of people known by the name: so-so people, 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 entered, 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 about crop failures, losses and keep head slightly to one side, and meanwhile they collect a little money into colorful bags placed in the drawers of the chests of drawers.” “Nozdryov’s face is probably already somewhat familiar to the reader. Everyone has met many such people. ... They are always talkers, revelers, reckless drivers, prominent people” - this is how Nozdryov is introduced to the reader.

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 landowners, their estates and the villages 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 landowners is Chichikov’s proposal to sell “dead souls” and the landowners’ reaction 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 shows well that in each landowner Gogol discovers only a variation of one social type- a landowner ready to satisfy Chichikov’s “fantastic desire”.

In meetings with landowners, the personality of the adventurer himself is 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 the tone” " - the thought of this person who looks like " is too bizarre average size bear”, whose all the officials in the provincial city are swindlers and sellers of Christ, “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, light and cramped, gloomy, it has many wide corridors and dark nooks, it is unclear 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, 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 the events taking place, who likes to talk in detail about their participants, to show the context of the action, without missing a single detail. They are necessary for maximum full image a specific person or object that comes into his field of vision, and most importantly, in order to recreate a complete and detailed “portrait” of Russia and the Russian people.

The image of the author is the most important image of the poem. It is created both in the plot narration and in the author’s digressions. The author is unusually active: his presence is felt in every episode, in every description. This determines the subjectivity of the narrative in Dead Souls. The main function of the author-narrator is generalization: in the private and seemingly insignificant, he always strives to identify what is characteristic, typical, and characteristic of all people. The author appears not as a writer of everyday life, but as an expert on the human soul, who has carefully studied its bright and dark sides, oddities and “fantastic desires.” Essentially, for the author, there is nothing mysterious or random in the lives of the characters. In any person Chichikov meets, and in himself, the author strives to show the secret “springs”, the motives of behavior hidden from outsiders. As the author notes, “he is wise who does not disdain any character, but, fixing an inquiring gaze on it, probes it to its original causes.”

In the author's digressions, the author reveals himself as a deeply feeling, emotional person, capable of abstracting himself from particulars, discarding “all the terrible, stunning mud of little things that have entangled our lives,” which he talks about in the narrative. He looks at Russia with the gaze of an epic writer who understands the illusory, ephemeral nature of the vulgar life of the people he depicts. Behind the emptiness and immobility of the “sky-smokers”, the author is able to consider “all the enormously rushing life”, the future vortex movement of Russia.

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

In the eleventh chapter, a lyrical and philosophical reflection on Russia and the vocation of the writer, whose “head was overshadowed by a menacing cloud, heavy with the coming rains” (“Rus! Rus'! I see you, from my wonderful, beautiful distance I see you ...”), replaces a panegyric on the road , a hymn to the movement - the source of “wonderful ideas, poetic dreams”, “wonderful impressions” (“How strange, and alluring, and carrying, and wonderful in the word: road!..”). The two most important themes of the author’s thoughts—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? 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: “And what fire is in this horse! Where are you galloping, proud horse, / And where will you land your hooves?” Both Pushkin and Gogol passionately desired to understand the meaning and purpose of Russia's historical movement. Both in “The Bronze Horseman” and in “Dead Souls” the artistic result of the writers’ thoughts was the image of an uncontrollably rushing country, directed towards the future, disobeying its “riders”: the formidable Peter, who “raised Russia on its hind legs”, stopping its spontaneous movement, and the “sky-smokers,” whose immobility contrasts sharply with the country’s “terrifying movement.”

The high lyrical pathos of the author, directed towards the future, expressed one of the main genre tendencies of the poem - the epic, which is not dominant in the first volume of Dead Souls. This tendency was to be fully revealed in the following volumes. Reflecting on Russia, the author recalls what is hidden behind the “mud of little things that entangle our lives” he depicts, behind the “cold, fragmented, everyday characters, with which our earthly, sometimes bitter and boring road is teeming.” It is not for nothing that he speaks of the “wonderful, beautiful distance” 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 Rus' (“wow! what a sparkling, wonderful, unfamiliar distance to the earth! Rus'!..”) and the distance of historical time: “What does this vast expanse prophesy? Is it here, in you, that a boundless thought will not be born, when you yourself are without end? Shouldn’t a hero be here when there is a place for him to turn around and walk?” The heroes depicted in the story of Chichikov’s “adventures” are devoid of epic qualities; these 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, low... cities stick out inconspicuously among the plains.” Only the author himself, endowed with knowledge of Russia, “terrible strength” 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 Rus'.

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

In fact, what is unusual, for example, in “some kind of book”, memorable to all readers of “Dead Souls”, which “always lay” in Manilov’s office, “bookmarked on the fourteenth page, which he had been constantly reading for two years”? It seems that this is one of many details testifying to the worthless, empty life of a dreamer, a landowner “without enthusiasm.” But if you think about it, behind this information you can guess the author who loves thoroughness deep meaning: Manilov’s book is a magical object, a symbol of his stopped life. The life of this landowner seemed to “stumble” at full speed and froze in the manor’s house, which stood “alone on the south, that is, on a hill, open to all the winds.” Manilov's existence resembles a swamp with stagnant water. What has this man “constantly read” “so-so, neither in the city of Bogdan nor in the village of Seli-fan” for two years now? What is important is not even this, but the very fact of 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 “page fourteen”, beyond which this landowner’s “novel of life” cannot advance.

Any Gogolian detail becomes a symbolic detail, because the writer shows people and things not as “dead”, but as “at rest”, “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 Manilov’s table. Once this person overcomes his laziness and sluggishness, once he returns from that “God knows where” that stupefies people, turning them into “God knows what,” - and reading the “book of life” will resume. Movement that has slowed down or stopped will continue. Stopping and rest for Gogol are not the end of movement, not mortification. They conceal the possibility of movement, which can both lead you to the “main road” and force you to wander off-road.

Let's give another example. Leaving Korobochka, Chichikov asks her to tell him “how to get to high road" “How can we do this? - said the hostess. — It’s a tricky story to tell, there are a lot of twists and turns; Am I going to give you a girl to accompany you? After all, you, tea, have a place on the trestle where she could sit.” A completely ordinary, seemingly unremarkable conversation. But it contains not only everyday, but also symbolic meaning: it becomes clear 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 symbolic images created by Gogol - the symbolic image of the road, directly related to another symbolic image - the image of Russia.

“How to get to the main road”? - this is not only the question asked by Chichikov, who, at the mercy of the drunken Selifan, drove off-road (“dragging along a harrowed field” until “the chaise hit the fence with its 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 take the “high road” of 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 high road”: after all, “there are many turns”, you always run the risk of turning in the wrong direction. Therefore, you cannot do without a guide. IN everyday sense it could be a peasant girl who has a place on the box of Chichikov’s chaise. Her pay, who knows all the 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 walk hand in hand with my strange heroes, to look around at the whole enormously rushing life, look at it through laughter visible to the world and invisible, unknown to him tears! “Payment” for the writer who risked “bringing out everything that is every minute before the eyes and what indifferent eyes do not see,” loneliness, “reproach and reproach” of the biased “modern court.” In “Dead Souls” every now and then “strange convergences” arise, semantic echoes of situations, subjects, statements of the characters and the author’s lyrically excited monologues. The everyday, everyday layer of narration is only the first level of meaning, to which Gogol does not limit himself. The semantic parallels that arise in the text indicate the complexity of the “construction” and the polysemy 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 hidden meaning 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 as necessary for the creator of Dead Souls as it was 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 depicts, what he talks about, but by how he depicts, how he tells. The word is a subtle tool of the writer, which Gogol mastered perfectly.

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 usually states that the manuscript of the second volume was burned by Gogol ten days before his death. This is the writer’s main secret, which he took to the grave. In the papers left after his death, several draft versions of individual chapters of the second volume were discovered. 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 from fragments of the manuscript, “mounted” by people who knew the writer well, can one judge the result of dramatic work on the second volume, which lasted ten years.

From 1840 until the end of his life, Gogol created a new aesthetics, 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, by exposing social and human vices to everyone, he 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 artistic system had to be upset: after all, the positive requires visible embodiment, the appearance of “positive” characters close to the author. It is not without reason that, even in the first volume, Gogol pathetically announced the novelty of the content and the new, unusual characters that would appear in his poem. In it, according to the author, “will appear untold wealth Russian spirit, a husband gifted with divine virtues will pass by,” and a “wonderful Russian maiden” - in a word, not only characters “cold, fragmented, everyday”, “boring, disgusting, striking and sad with their reality” will appear, but also characters in which readers will finally be able to see the “high dignity of man.”

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 tax farmer Murazov, instructing Chichikov on how he should live, the “wonderful girl” Ulinka Betrishcheva, the smart and honest governor. The lyrical element, in which the author's ideal of authentic life (movement, road, path) was affirmed in the first volume of the poem, was objectified. At the same time, in the second volume there are characters close to the characters of the first volume: landowners Tentetnikov, Pyotr Petrovich Petukh, Khlobuev, Colonel Koshkarev. All material, as in the first volume, is connected by the figure of the “traveling” rogue Chichikov: he carries out 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 tax farmer Murazov.

While working on the second volume, Gogol came to the idea that “now satire will not work and there will be no mark, but the high reproach of the lyric poet, already relying on the eternal law, trampled underfoot by people from blindness, will mean a lot.” According to the writer, satirical laughter cannot give people a true understanding of life, since it does not indicate the path to what should be, to the ideal of a person, therefore it must be replaced with “the high reproach of the lyric poet.” Thus, in the 1840s. It was not the “high laughter” of a comic writer who saw “everything bad,” as in “The Government Inspector” and partly in the first volume of “Dead Souls,” but the “high reproach” coming from a lyric poet, excited by the moral truths revealed to him, that became the basis of Gogol’s art .

Gogol emphasized that when addressing people, a 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 “in the very encouragement one can hear a reproach, and in the reproach there is encouragement.” Reflections on the dual nature of any phenomenon of life, which contains the possibility of a writer’s ambivalent attitude towards it (both reproach and encouragement) is the favorite theme of the author of Dead Souls.

It would be wrong, however, to associate the theme of reproach and encouragement only with the period of work on the second volume. Already in the first volume, Gogol never tired of repeating that not only in his heroes, as well 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 in his hearts called “a hole in humanity,” the colors are mixed. According to the writer, most often the predominance in people is grey colour- the result of mixing white and black. There are no real people who would remain “white” and could not wallow in dirt and vulgarity surrounding life. Even the cleanest gentleman will certainly be stuck by lumps of dirt; he will become “greasy” with something. The following dialogue between Chichikov and Korobochka is perceived as a meaningful allegory:

“... - Eh, my father, you’re like a hog, your whole back and side are covered in mud! where did you deign to get so dirty?

“Also thank God that it just got greasy, I should be grateful that I didn’t break off the sides completely.”

Gogol, the author of the first volume, already perfectly imagined that in the same person lives both “Prometheus, decisive Prometheus” (“looks out like an eagle, acts smoothly, measuredly”), and a special creature: “a fly, smaller than even a fly.” Everything depends on a person’s self-awareness 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, such a transformation occurs with the same ruler of the office “in a distant state”, “which even Ovid would not invent”: now this person is an example of “pride and nobility”, then “ God knows what: he squeaks like a bird and keeps laughing.”

One of the main themes of the second volume of Dead Souls - the theme of education and mentoring - was already raised 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, his education system, based on trust in students and encouragement of their abilities, is described in detail. The author saw the root of the life failures of the landowner Tentetnikov, who is 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 have a beneficial influence on his pupils, died, and Fyodor Ivanovich, who replaced 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 unfit for life.

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

Along with truly fruitful ideas, the positive program of state and human “dispensation” outlined by Gogol in the second volume contains a lot of utopian and conservative things. The writer did not doubt the very possibility of a moral restructuring of people in the conditions of autocratic-serf Russia. He was convinced that it was a strong monarchy and its unshakable social and legal support - serfdom - that was the soil on which the shoots of something new would sprout in people. Addressing the nobility, Gogol the moralist called on the upper class to realize their responsibilities to the state and the people. The ideas expressed in the journalistic book “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends” were to be translated into figurative form in the second volume of the poem.

Gogol the artist was inspired by the idea of ​​the effectiveness of words. The writer’s word, in his opinion, should be followed by the result: changes in life itself. Therefore, Gogol’s drama is not so much that in life itself there was no material to create positive images, how much in his highest demands on himself: after all, he was never a simple “photographer” of reality, who is content with what he already has in life. Gogol never tired of repeating that the lofty truths that were 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 determined the incompleteness of the majestic building of Gogol’s epic.

We absolutely cannot agree with those researchers who believe that Gogol the artist was supplanted in the second volume by Gogol the moralist. Gogol was not only an artist in “The Government Inspector”, and in “The Overcoat”, and in the first volume of “Dead Souls”. He did not stop being an artist even while working on the second volume. The book “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends” - a “test balloon” launched by Gogol in order to check how the continuation of the poem would be received - should not obscure the main thing. Even from the surviving fragments of the second volume we can conclude: in last decade Gogol emerged 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 the spiritual renewal of Russia the main task of his life, directly addressing his contemporaries with words of “high reproach” and optimistic encouragement. Gogol was the first writer who “gathered” Russian people, instilling in him his faith in the future greatness of Russia. Gogol's followers were F.M. Dostoevsky and L.N. Tolstoy.

For Gogol, working on the second volume was an insight into Russia and the Russian people: “My images will not be alive unless I build them from our material, from our land, so that everyone will feel that it was taken from his own body.” Let us note another important feature of Gogol’s new approach to depicting a person. “Reproaching” and “encouraging” people, he also addresses himself. Strict and edifying towards the heroes, Gogol is no less picky about himself. “For me, abominations are nothing new: I myself am quite vile,” Gogol admitted in 1846 (letter to L.O. Smirnova). The writer perceives the imperfections and delusions of the characters as his own, as if “branching” into those whom he portrays. By “exposing” them to everyone, he is “exposing himself.” The second volume is a kind of diary of self-knowledge. Gogol appears in it as an analyst of his own soul, its ideal impulses and subtlest feelings. Both for himself and for his heroes, the author longs for one thing: for someone to finally push him to action, indicate the direction of movement and its final goal. “Knowledge of the present” did not frighten him, because “the paths and roads to... a bright future are hidden precisely in this dark and confused 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 dual process of destruction of the old and the birth of the new. The downfall of Chichikov, a money-grubber and a swindler, formed the plot 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 ​​reconstruction spiritual world people, without whom, according to Gogol, normal development of society is impossible. Only the spiritual revival of the Russian people will give strength to the “Russian 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 set up in his village something like a miniature bureaucratic state) and satirical image provincial city anticipated the appearance of the merciless socio-political satire of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. All the characters in the second volume are not just “old acquaintances”, who have a lot in common with the comic characters of the first volume of the poem. These are new faces who expressed everything good and bad that the writer saw in Russia.

Gogol created, as it were, sketches of literary heroes, “completed” by the writers of the second half of the 19th century V. In the second volume there are also future Oblomov and Stolz (Tentetnikov, crippled by bad upbringing and inability to do business, and the enterprising, active Kostanzhoglo). In the schema-monk one can guess the famous character of Dostoevsky’s novel “The Brothers Karamazov”, Elder Zosima. Ulinka Betrishcheva, “a wonderful Russian maiden,” is the prototype of the heroines of Turgenev and Tolstoy. There is also a repentant sinner in the second volume - Chichikov. He was indeed inclined to change his life, but the moral revival of the hero had not yet taken place. The repentant sinner will become a 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 picked up and clarified by 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 created extraordinary works that caused a lot of disagreement, controversy, and reasons for thought. A particularly clear reflection of Russian reality in the 19th century is shown in the novel “Dead Souls,” work on which began in 1835. The plot of the beautiful creation was suggested famous writer Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, who was not indifferent to Gogol’s work. Work on the work lasted 17 years, because every little thing and every detail was thought out by the writer to the last, carefully.

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

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

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

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

Criticism from people seriously hurt Gogol, but this did not stop him from continuing to work on the novel. I wrote the second chapter until my death, without finishing it. To Nikolai Vasilyevich the work seemed imperfect, imperfect. Exactly nine days before his death, Gogol sent his own manuscripts to the fire, this was the final version. To this day, some chapters have survived; their number is five; now these days they are perceived as a separate independent work. As you can see, the implementation of the third part of the novel did not happen; it remained only an idea that Gogol did not have time to bring to life.

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

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

Option 2

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

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

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

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

The title of the work is closely related to the symbolism of the district town N. And the city K represented the whole country. The author wanted to show that decline had set in in Russia and that the souls of the inhabitants had faded away. Gogol showed all the meanness of the existence of the fallen town. In one of his speeches, reading the names of the deceased, Chichikov revives them in his own fantasy. In the poem, the living souls are Plyushkin and Chichikov. Plyushkin's image differs from other heroes. In Chapter 6, the author gave a complete description of Plyushkin’s garden. The garden is a comparison of Plyushkin’s soul.

The world described in “Dead Souls” is considered the complete opposite of the real world. The social direction of creation is associated with “dead souls”. Chichikov's plan is impossible and at the same time simple.

Several interesting essays

• Characteristics of Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, comparative characteristics of images

  So, Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky. Probably all readers pronounce these names undividedly, as inseparable concepts - and this is logically explained

• Analysis of Gorky's story Former people

  The work “Former People” was published in 1897. The basis for writing this essay was life situation, which forced young Gorky to live in a rooming house. The author conveys to the reader the life of people of “former people”

Humor and fun - component the lives of each of us. But not all people are cheerful, some walk around sad, others dreamy or upset. Who is this funny man? What qualities are inherent in him, what are his features?

• Elizaveta Mertsalova in the story The Wonderful Doctor Kuprin essay

  Kuprin’s touching story “The Wonderful Doctor” forces the reader to plunge into the gloomy atmosphere of poverty, where life is experienced in completely different colors. In the center of the story is the Mertsalov family, who lives in a basement among the dirt

• The image and characterization of Stolz in the novel by Oblomov Goncharov, essay

  Andrei Stolts is one of the central characters in famous novel I.A. Goncharova “Oblomov”. Attentive reader immediately guesses that Stolz is the opposite of his best friend

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol

Lesson 2. Poem by N.V. Gogol's "Dead Souls". The concept, history of creation, features of the genre and composition, the meaning of the title of the poem by N.V. Gogol's "Dead Souls".

Goals: To familiarize students with the concept, history of creation, features of the genre and composition,the meaning of the title of the poem by N.V. Gogol's "Dead Souls"; develop the ability to construct an answer to a question about a work of art based on theoretical and literary knowledge; improve skills of analytical work with prose text; analytic skills;promote aesthetic and moral education students; cultivate a culture of reading perception.

Equipment : textbook, text of the poem “Dead Souls”, portraits of the writer by F.A. Moller (1840,1841), A.A. Ivanova (1841), exhibition of books, illustrative material on the topic of the lesson.

Lesson type: lesson - analysis work of art

Predicted results: students know theoretical-literary definitions of genre features of the poem, about concept, history of creation, features of the genre and composition, the meaning of the title of the poem by N.V. Gogol's "Dead Souls"., participate in the conversation, develop their point of view on the work of art in accordance with the author’s position and historical era.

During the classes

I. Organizational stage

II. Updating of reference knowledge

Conversation “Remembering what we have learned”

What can you say about the work of N.V. Gogol, based on the works with which you are familiar?

What was the name of the beekeeper on whose behalf the story is told in “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka”?

In which theater was the comedy “The Inspector General” first staged?

Who owns the words spoken after the first performance of The Inspector General: “What a play!” Everyone got it, and I got it the most!”

III. Motivation for learning activities

Not a single work of Russian literature has given rise to such contradictory interpretations as Dead Souls. And in the whirlwind of guesswork, bewilderment, ridicule and outright mockery that arose immediately after the publication of the book (1842) and resulted in a series of fierce discussions on the pages of the Russian press, in social drawing rooms and literary salons, perhaps the ill-fated the word "poem".

Informing Gogol in the fall of 1842 about the impression that “Dead Souls” made in Moscow society, K. S. Aksakov wrote: “Some say that “Dead Souls” is a poem, that they understand the meaning of this name; others see this as mockery, completely in the spirit of Gogol: here you go, squabble over this word.” “The dignity of a work of art is great when it can elude any one-sided glance,” Herzen wrote about Dead Souls.

It must be admitted that clarity on this issue has not been achieved to this day. Real work- a feasible contribution to the discussion of the artistic nature of Gogol’s work. The word “poem” with which its title begins partly clarifies the angle from which this work will be considered here, but the book was not written, of course, with the goal of proving that “Dead Souls” is a poem and not something else. something else. For this, first of all, the range of meanings that the word

Gogol deliberately structured his work with the expectation of long-term “peering” into it and only gradual comprehension. “...the book was written over a long period of time: it is necessary to take the trouble to look at it for a long time,” he declared in 1843 (XII, 144). And in 1845 he argued that the subject of “Dead Souls” is “still a mystery”, which “not a single soul of the readers has guessed” (XII, 504). Therefore, when starting to read Dead Souls, you need to know how to read them. The school, frontal, so to speak, reading ignores Gogol’s warning; it deals only with what is said “in plain text,” and therefore the full depth of the book’s poetic originality is not fully revealed. On the other hand, the approach to “Dead Souls” as a “book with a secret” opens the way to subjectivity, sometimes leading to anecdotal results. Even such a brilliant study as Andrei Bely’s book “Gogol’s Mastery,” published in 1934 and not free from vulgar sociological simplifications, is guilty of subjectivism. However, it contains a thesis that seems key for the student of Dead Souls:

“Analyzing the plot of “Dead Souls” means: bypassing the fiction of the plot, feeling the little things that have absorbed both the plot and the plot<...>There is no plot outside of the details in “Dead Souls”: it must be squeezed out of them; it is necessary to study the counterpoint of all the strokes that make up the picture of the first volume.” In other words: the main thing in the content of the poem does not coincide with what appears to be the main thing in the plot. The latter only serves as an excuse to express something immeasurably more important. But one must be able to recognize this important thing in the figurative fabric of the work, where it is hidden under the guise of “little things.”

Let's try to understand the uniqueness of Gogol's creative individuality, let's try to touch one of the most original monuments of Russian and world literature.

IV . Working on the lesson topic

Practical work with portraits of N.V. Gogol (posted on the board)

Teacher: Let's pay attention to the portraits of N.V. Gogol. What special things did you notice, what properties of the human soul can you tell when looking at these portraits? Compare your impressions with the memories of contemporaries about N.V.’s appearance. Gogol. (Handout)

Gogol’s appearance was then completely different and unfavorable for him: the crest on his head, smoothly trimmed temples, shaved mustache and chin, large and tightly starched collars gave a completely different physiognomy to his face: it seemed to us that there was something Ukrainian and roguish about him . Gogol's dress had a noticeable pretension to panache. I remember that he was wearing a motley light vest with a large chain. (S.T. Aksakov. The story of my acquaintance with Gogol)

2. Listening to messages about the concept, history of creation, features of the genre and composition, the meaning of the title of the poem by N.V. Gogol’s “Dead Souls.” (Students write theses)

a) The idea, the history of the creation of the poem “Dead Souls”.

Every artist has a creation that he considers the main work of his life, into which he has invested his most cherished, innermost thoughts, his whole heart.

For Gogol, “Dead Souls” became such a work of life. His biography as a writer lasted 23 years, 17 of them were spent working on the poem. Gogol's development proceeded unusually quickly and intensively: only 3-4 years passed between the first cycle of his stories “Evenings on a Farm...” and “Dead Souls”.

Work on the poem began in mid-1835. On October 7, 1835, the writer informed Pushkin (as is known, Gogol owes the idea of ​​the poem to Pushkin, who had long urged him to write a great epic work) that 3 chapters have already been written. But the thing did not capture Gogol then.

He really took up “Dead Souls” after “The Inspector General,” abroad, in Italy. He rewrites the chapters again, endlessly reworks the pages.

The poem was conceived as a work consisting of 3 parts (similar to Dante's Divine Comedy). The heroes, therefore, had to go through hell, purgatory, and heaven. These three hypostases corresponded to the three parts of “Dead Souls”.

The first volume seemed to Gogol “a porch to a palace of unprecedented beauty.” The whole meaning of his work is in the words from the 2nd volume: “Where is the one who would native language Our Russian soul would be able to tell us this almighty word: forward?... who... could direct us to a higher life? “With one magical wave” one could destroy a terrible obsession and help Russia “wake up” - these words are often found in Gogol’s letters.

He was inspired by the desire to overcome the evil that filled modern life, to transform his heroes, to give readers a path to ascent to good. He hoped that it was possible to raise Russia without bloody upheavals, without breaking the social order, only through the moral improvement of man.

That is why he sought to evoke disgust for vulgarity and insignificance in the 1st volume, and then to show the living virtuous people so that they become role models. Then a miracle will happen. But the miracle did not happen.The second volume did not work out, Go-gol never got around to the third.

Having started work on the poem, he was convinced that it should play some kind of role. special role in the destinies of Russia and thereby glorify the author. In June 1836, he wrote to Zhukovsky: “If I complete this creation the way it needs to be accomplished, then... what a huge, what an original plot! What a varied bunch! All Rus' will appear in it! This will be my first decent thing that will bear my name.”

Gogol is so passionate about his new work that everything written previously seems like a trifle to him. (And these are “Evenings on a Farm...”, “Mirgorod”, “Petersburg Tales” and “The Inspector General”.)

b) About the genre of “Dead Souls”.

The enormous artistic experience acquired while working on “Evenings...”, “Mirgorod”, “Petersburg Tales” and “The Inspector General” gave him the opportunity to create a brilliant poem.

In a letter to Pushkin from abroad, Gogol said that “the plot stretched out into a very long novel.” At the same time, another word pops up - “poem”; already in November 1836 he tells Zhukovsky: “Every morning... I wrote 3 pages into my poem.” In another letter: “The thing... doesn’t look like a story or a novel, it’s long, long, in several volumes, its name is DEAD SOULS - that’s all you have to find out about it for now.” Later, Gogol says with increasing conviction that this is precisely a POEM, but not in the traditional meaning of the word.

It is known that Gogol developed the theory of new genres in the “Training Book of Literature for Russian Youth.” In it, in addition to the epic and the novel as the most important types narrative literature, he identified a “lesser kind of epic” (the middle between the novel and the epic).

The main features of this SMALL EPIC are the depiction of the spiritual world of a private person, the story of his adventures, which make it possible to reveal a picture of the morals of the time, and the writer’s ability to draw a “statistically captured picture of the shortcomings, abuses, and vices” of the era. This phrase emphasizes the most important feature“lesser kind of epic” - accusatory orientation. Subsequently, Gogol insisted that his work was precisely a POEM.

Leo Tolstoy’s words are well known: “...everyone great artist must create his own forms. If the content of a work of art can be infinitely varied, then so can its form.” And about the “form” of “Dead Souls” Tolstoy said: “What is this? Neither a novel nor a story. Something completely original."

Indeed, “Dead Souls” formed a unique genre structure, previously unknown in either Russian or world literature.

By December 1841, volume 1 of the book was ready for printing and submitted to the Moscow Censorship Committee, where it met with hostility. Gogol took the book and sent it to St. Petersburg, where, thanks to the efforts of friends, after long delays, demands for amendments to 36 places and “The Tale of Captain Kopeikin”, in addition, to change the name, the censorship allowed the book to be printed.

The title “The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls” was proposed. On May 21, 1842, the poem was published.

c) About the history of the 2nd volume.

Why did Gogol burn volume 2? Moreover, he did this twice: in 1845 and 1852. It is probably impossible to give an exact answer to this question. One thing is clear - this was not the decision of a madman. A convincing and comprehensive prophetic word did not work out, as Gogol believed; positive heroes were not given to him due to personal imperfection.

Therefore, he refused not only to continue working, but also to live (he refused to take food and medicine).

d) About the plot.

The core of the plot of Dead Souls is Chichikov’s adventure. It only seemed incredible, but in fact it was reliable in all the smallest details. Reality itself created the conditions for such adventures. Dead Peasants, for which the landowner had to pay a tax to the treasury, were a burden for him. Naturally, the landowners dreamed of getting rid of dead souls. While these “souls” were a burden to some, others sought to benefit through fraudulent transactions. Pawn them to the Board of Trustees at interest. In this way, it was possible to obtain a cash loan to purchase land and become a landowner. This scam was not invented by Gogol, but taken from life.

e) Composition.

The composition of the poem is unusual. The narrative is structured as the story of Chichikov's adventures. This made it possible to travel with the hero “all the corners and crannies of the Russian province.” Chichikov is at the center of the plot and all events. The images of the landowners are compositionally almost unrelated to each other: they do not communicate with each other, each is revealed mainly in their relationship with Chichikov. Nevertheless, the poem cannot be considered as a cycle of short stories. It is enough to put any chapter out of place, and the composition is shaken.

We get to know city officials more thoroughly after the chapters devoted to landowners. And this process of personality degradation is completed by Chichikov - dexterous, cunning, resourceful; he seemed to Gogol the most terrible. This is the brief meaning of the composition “Dead Souls”.

But “Dead Souls” is not a novel, but a poem or a novel-poem. This is determined both by the composition and the emotional, lyrical tonality of the work. There are no main and minor characters in the ordinary meaning of these words. The character who speaks a few words plays an equally important role in the structure of the work. In Dead Souls, almost every character is a hero who cannot be avoided.

For example, in Chapter 1 we meet two men who begin to talk about whether the wheel of Chichikov’s chaise will reach Moscow or Kazan. They don't care about the newcomer. It won’t make it to Kazan, one reasoned, but perhaps it will make it to Moscow, replies another.

Therefore, the provincial town is located not far from Moscow! But the most important thing is that our hero’s carriage has only just entered the city, and sagacious men are wondering how far it will go from here. The text is filled with similar scenes and characters, and this creates a certain emotional atmosphere.

Let the reader not expect adventurous adventures from the heroes; the stories told will be everyday and ordinary.

Already at the beginning of the poem, we feel Gogol’s ironic smile towards the reader who is waiting for a romantic, mysterious beginning.

The narrative begins without the exposition traditional for Russian prose of the 30s and 40s of the 19th century - businesslike and energetic: we do not know how Chichikov came to the idea of ​​​​buying dead souls, we also do not know his past life (all this is discussed in the last, Chapter 11).

Such a narrative was important for Gogol - most of the characters in the poem are static, which means it was necessary to strengthen the internal dynamics of the plot. (This is the explanation for why the main character's story is given at the end of Volume 1.)

f) The meaning of the title of the poem

The title of the work “Dead Souls” is ambiguous. Gogol, as you know, conceived a three-part work by analogy with Dante’s “Divine Comedy”. The first volume is Hell, that is, the abode of dead souls.

Secondly, the plot of the work is connected with this. In the 19th century, dead peasants were called “dead souls.” In the poem, Chichikov buys documents for deceased peasants, and then sells them to the guardianship council. Dead souls were listed as alive in the documents, and Chichikov received a considerable sum for this.

Thirdly, the title emphasizes an acute social problem. The fact is that at that time there were a great many sellers and buyers of dead souls; this was not controlled or punished by the authorities. The treasury was emptying, and enterprising swindlers were making a fortune for themselves. The censorship strongly recommended that Gogol change the title of the poem to “The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls,” shifting the emphasis to Chichikov’s personality rather than to an acute social problem.

Perhaps Chichikov’s idea will seem strange to some, but it all comes down to the fact that there is no difference between the dead and the living. Both are for sale. Both dead peasants and landowners who agreed to sell documents for a certain reward. A person completely loses his human outline and becomes a commodity, and his entire essence is reduced to a piece of paper that indicates whether you are alive or not. It turns out that the soul turns out to be mortal, which contradicts the main postulate of Christianity. The world is becoming soulless, devoid of religion and any moral and ethical guidelines. Such a world is described epically. The lyrical component lies in the description of nature and the spiritual world.

3. Conversation to identify the primary perception of the read work.

Which pages of Dead Souls made you laugh, and which made you bitter?

Which of the heroes of Dead Souls seems harmless to you and who is the most terrible?

Who did you sympathize with while reading the poem? What questions did you have while reading?

4. Teamwork on compiling the table “Composition of the poem by N.V. Gogol's "Dead Souls"

“Composition of the poem by N.V. Gogol's "Dead Souls"

V . Reflection. Summing up the lesson

Teacher's summary word

The enormous artistic experience acquired while working on “Evenings...”, “Mirgorod”, “Petersburg Tales” and “The Inspector General” gave N.V. the opportunity. Gogol to create a brilliant poem. In a letter to Pushkin from abroad

VI . Homework.

2. Prepare quotation material for the images of Manilov and Korobochka.

The very title of Nikolai Gogol’s famous poem “Dead Souls” already contains the main concept and idea of ​​this work. Judging superficially, the title reveals the content of the scam and Chichikov’s very personality - he was already buying souls dead peasants. But in order to embrace everything 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 that expressed by the author in the first volume of the work. It has been said for a long time that Gogol originally planned to write this poem by analogy with Dante’s famous and immortal “Divine Comedy”, and as you know, it consisted of three parts - “Hell”, “Purgatory” and “Paradise”. It was to them that the three volumes of Gogol’s poem should have corresponded.

In the first volume of his most famous poem, the author intended to show the hell of Russian reality, the terrifying and truly terrifying truth about life of that time, and in the second and third volumes - the rise of spiritual culture and life in Russia. To some extent, the title of the work is a symbol of life in the district town of N., and the city itself is a symbol of the whole of Russia, and thus the author indicates that his native country is in a terrible state, and the saddest and most terrible thing is that that this happens due to the fact that the souls of people gradually grow cold, become callous and die.

The history of the creation of Dead Souls

Nikolai Gogol began writing the poem “Dead Souls” in 1835 and continued to work on it until the end of his life. At the very beginning, the writer most likely singled out for himself the funny side of the novel and created the plot of Dead Souls, as for a 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 the 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, while working on the novel, Gogol’s original plan expanded significantly, and it was then that the analogy with the three parts of The Divine Comedy appeared. Gogol intended that his heroes go 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 written in full. It is known that Gogol began work on the second volume of the poem in 1840, and by 1845 he already had several options for continuing the poem ready. Unfortunately, it was 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 he had 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 Gogol's papers were opened.

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 through 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 this is directly related to. The author talks about the fact that the soul 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.

The history of the creation of the poem “Dead Souls”

There are writers who easily and freely come up with plots for their works. Gogol was not one of them. He was painfully inventive in his plots. The concept of each work was given to him with the greatest difficulty. He always needed an external push to inspire his imagination. Contemporaries tell us with what greedy interest Gogol listened to various everyday stories, anecdotes picked up on the street, and even fables. I listened professionally, like a writer, remembering every characteristic detail. Years passed, and some of these accidentally heard stories came to life in his works. For Gogol, P.V. later recalled. Annenkov, “nothing was wasted.”

Gogol, as is known, owed the plot of “Dead Souls” to A.S. Pushkin, who had long encouraged him to write a great epic work. Pushkin told Gogol the story of the adventures of a certain adventurer who bought up dead peasants from landowners in order to pawn them as if they were alive in the Guardian Council and receive a hefty loan for them.

The history of fraudulent tricks with dead souls could have become known to Pushkin during his exile in Chisinau. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, tens of thousands of peasants fled here, to the south of Russia, to Bessarabia, from different parts of the country, fleeing from paying arrears and various taxes. Local authorities created obstacles to the resettlement of these peasants. They were pursued. But all measures were in vain. Fleeing from their pursuers, fugitive peasants often took the names of deceased serfs. They say that during Pushkin’s stay in exile in Chisinau, rumors spread throughout Bessarabia that the city of Bendery was immortal, and the population of this city was called “immortal society.” For many years, not a single death was recorded there. An investigation has begun. It turned out that in Bendery it was accepted as a rule: the dead “should not be excluded from society,” and their names should be given to the fugitive peasants who arrived here. Pushkin visited Bendery more than once, and he was very interested in this story.

Most likely, it was she who became the seed of the plot, which was retold by the poet to Gogol almost a decade and a half after the Chisinau exile.

It should be noted that Chichikov’s idea was by no means such a rarity in life itself. Fraud with “revision souls” was a fairly common thing in those days. It is safe to assume that not only one specific incident formed the basis of Gogol’s plan.

The core of the plot of Dead Souls was Chichikov’s adventure. It only seemed incredible and anecdotal, but in fact it was reliable in all the smallest details. Feudal reality created very favorable conditions for such adventures.

By a decree of 1718, the so-called household census was replaced by a capitation census. From now on, all male serfs, “from the oldest to the very last child,” were subject to taxation. Dead souls (dead or runaway peasants) became a burden for landowners who naturally dreamed of getting rid of it. And this created a psychological precondition for all kinds of fraud. For some, dead souls were a burden, others felt the need for them, hoping to benefit from fraudulent transactions. This is precisely what Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov hoped for. But the most interesting thing is that Chichikov’s fantastic deal was carried out in perfect accordance with the paragraphs of the law.

The plots of many of Gogol’s works are based on an absurd anecdote, an exceptional case, emergency. And the more anecdotal and extraordinary the outer shell of the plot seems, the brighter, more reliable, and more typical the real picture of life appears to us. Here is one of the peculiar features of the art of a talented writer.

Gogol began working on Dead Souls in mid-1835, that is, even earlier than on The Inspector General. On October 7, 1835, he informed Pushkin that he had written three chapters of Dead Souls. But the new thing has not yet captured Nikolai Vasilyevich. He wants to write a comedy. And only after “The Inspector General,” already abroad, Gogol really took up “Dead Souls.”

In the fall of 1839, circumstances forced Gogol to travel to his homeland and, accordingly, take a forced break from work. Eight months later, Gogol decided to return to Italy to speed up work on the book. In October 1841, he came to Russia again with the intention of publishing his work - the result of six years of hard work.

In December, the final corrections were completed, and the final version of the manuscript was submitted to the Moscow Censorship Committee for consideration. Here “Dead Souls” met with a clearly hostile attitude. As soon as Golokhvastov, who chaired the meeting of the censorship committee, heard the name “Dead Souls,” he shouted: “No, I will never allow this: the soul can be immortal - there cannot be a dead soul - the author is arming himself against immortality!”

They explained to Golokhvastov that we were talking about revision souls, but he became even more furious: “This certainly cannot be allowed... this means against serfdom!” Here the committee members chimed in: “Chichikov’s enterprise is already a criminal offense!”

When one of the censors tried to explain that the author did not justify Chichikov, they shouted from all sides: “Yes, he does not, but now he has exposed him, and others will follow the example and buy dead souls...”

Gogol was eventually forced to withdraw the manuscript and decided to send it to St. Petersburg.

In December 1841, Belinsky visited Moscow. Gogol turned to him with a request to take the manuscript with him to St. Petersburg and facilitate its speedy passage through the St. Petersburg censorship authorities. The critic willingly agreed to carry out this assignment and on May 21, 1842, with some censorship corrections, “The Adventures of Chichikov or Dead Souls” was published.

The plot of “Dead Souls” consists of three externally closed, but internally very interconnected links: landowners, city officials and the biography of Chichikov. Each of these links helps to more thoroughly and deeply reveal Gogol’s ideological and artistic concept.