Nikolay Gogol: Dead Souls

Translated by D. J. Hogarth

September 2015

This unfinished tale follows our hero Chichikov as he travels the Russian countryside attempting to purchase dead souls – serfs, who having died only since the last census and so still considered alive for administrative purposes – in the hope of making his fortune exploiting some bureaucratic loophole. This plot, a “well known contemporary anecdote” we are told in the introduction by Nikolay Andreyev, is not developed but rather serves as a vehicle for the author to satirize the various characters that populate Russia, and, as the author puts it, to “project the whole boundless wealth of Russian psychology”.

Unfortunately, I suspect most of the wit was lost on me as the objects of satire were too unfamiliar and distant for me to recognise.

The narration is conversational, reminiscent of Dickens, though unlike Dickens, quickly became tiresome, especially as the author starts indulging in frequent, uninteresting diversions (examples?).