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3.79 AVERAGE
3.79 AVERAGE
I marked this as a fave but only gave it four stars, as there may have been so much of the manuscript missing to affect my understanding of it, but as well, it seems to fall apart at the end and I wasn't quite sure what was going on. nevertheless, an enchanting and entertaining read - so glad to have discovered Gogol.
YES!!!!!!!!!
A hilarious tale, the mirror that Gogol aims at his motherland is somehow terribly bent and true all at the same time and the narrative is as unpredictable as a heart-dropping roller coaster.
A hilarious tale, the mirror that Gogol aims at his motherland is somehow terribly bent and true all at the same time and the narrative is as unpredictable as a heart-dropping roller coaster.
challenging
funny
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Very well-done; very depressing. Had I detected any true insights into the human condition, it would have been wonderful. As it was, not so much.
Probabilmente a causa della traduzione, ma magari anche per via della trama, dopo aver sofferto per qualche capitolo ho ceduto e l'ho riportato in biblioteca, magari non era il momento giusto, o magari siamo io e la letteratura russa che abbiamo litigato da piccoli.
1) This book is legit funny. Not, like, funny for an old Russian book, I mean it's funny in any era/society. Just some absurd stuff in there that translates to the modern day beautifully, so that- I did not expect it, and the fact that I was actually grinning and chuckling over these 150 year old fictional characters was cool.
2) The book does slow down towards the end. Gogol you crazy beaut, you had something wonderful here. Not sure how it shoulda ended either, but it is slightly disappointing having such a masterpiece just kinda.. fizzle out.
3) It's still 5 stars. Part absurdist exaggeration, satire, yet all (seemingly) true to how Gogol saw Russia back in the day. Like, it's brilliant because the comedy serves a purpose. It's nice by itself, but using it to highlight the inefficiencies and illogical aspects of the old serf system is just brilliant. The landowners are caricatures of the fools that run the real Russian world in Gogol's day, and the reader gets humor whilst realizing how comical it makes the actual system and country themselves seem.
Summary: Chichikov wants dead souls. Dead serf souls. Because landowners still have to pay tax on them the landowners are willing to sell dead souls. But it's still weird, so people wonder what Chichikov is up to. Turns out he just wants to use the serfs as collateral on a massive loan, smart man him, but it all blows up in his face at the end. It's an interesting enough concept, but really just serves as motivation for Chichikov's Quixotian journey.
Worth a reread, honestly, doubt I'll ever get to that though. If you're expected a dry dusty old Russian tome.. no. This book is really funny, really interesting, and is only marred by a slight letdown of an ending.
2) The book does slow down towards the end. Gogol you crazy beaut, you had something wonderful here. Not sure how it shoulda ended either, but it is slightly disappointing having such a masterpiece just kinda.. fizzle out.
3) It's still 5 stars. Part absurdist exaggeration, satire, yet all (seemingly) true to how Gogol saw Russia back in the day. Like, it's brilliant because the comedy serves a purpose. It's nice by itself, but using it to highlight the inefficiencies and illogical aspects of the old serf system is just brilliant. The landowners are caricatures of the fools that run the real Russian world in Gogol's day, and the reader gets humor whilst realizing how comical it makes the actual system and country themselves seem.
Summary: Chichikov wants dead souls. Dead serf souls. Because landowners still have to pay tax on them the landowners are willing to sell dead souls. But it's still weird, so people wonder what Chichikov is up to. Turns out he just wants to use the serfs as collateral on a massive loan, smart man him, but it all blows up in his face at the end. It's an interesting enough concept, but really just serves as motivation for Chichikov's Quixotian journey.
Worth a reread, honestly, doubt I'll ever get to that though. If you're expected a dry dusty old Russian tome.. no. This book is really funny, really interesting, and is only marred by a slight letdown of an ending.
adventurous
funny
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I'm not sure how much I have to add to a discussion of this book. It's awesome, especially in the first half, where Chichikov is still working out his rather obscure program, and along the way is encountering all sorts of weird and wonderfully funny folks. The writing is great, lots of really amazing similes like people always talk about, but just generally, an incredible level of energy in the writing-- it's the kind of thing that could wear you out if it wasn't so generous. I'm not certain what to make of the development of Chichikov as a character that (maybe) deserves a certain kind of respect and/ or sympathy-- the second half, or maybe better to say what exists of the second and third parts Gogol planned, are really different, esp after those first couple chapters.
It's an incredible treat to read this, and kind of an interesting exercise to try to fill in the gaps that are created in the second part of the book, how we could get from there to where the book ends up. But of course, where it ends up, in a kind of Christian-Carlyle styled moralism is a little hard to take, even if it prefigures Tolstoy.
It's an incredible treat to read this, and kind of an interesting exercise to try to fill in the gaps that are created in the second part of the book, how we could get from there to where the book ends up. But of course, where it ends up, in a kind of Christian-Carlyle styled moralism is a little hard to take, even if it prefigures Tolstoy.
funny
reflective
slow-paced
4 ⭐
I’m sure you’ve seen one of these wire ropes before. Working with cranes, I see the things every day which, for the life of me, is the only reason I can fathom, immediately after completing Gogol’s Dead Souls, having visualised the entire story in the form of a wire rope.
At first, and for the length of the entire first part, the story is fully realised. All the individual wires flow and interweave wonderfully to form the strands and in turn the strands are woven deftly around the core and it is as if there is some unseen load adding weight and therefore tension to the story. This is unhindered for the entirety of Part 1 in which we meet our (anti)hero, Chichikov, the charming con man, and follow him throughout his fumbling attempts to bring his latest get-rich-quick-scheme to fruition. For reasons that eventually become clear, Chichikov is going from landowner to landowner offering to purchase the names of their dead muzhiks purely from the goodness of his own heart (or so he would have us believe) in order to save the owners from paying a senseless tax on them in the time before the next census.
It is hilarious and thoughtful. The landowners whom Chichikov approaches verge on but never completely fall into the trap of being cartoonish caricatures, all embodying characteristics of the Russian gentry that Gogol wishes to highlight and/or scrutinise, most often in a satirical fashion. Though none of these landowners are fully fleshed out (as can be said of Chichikov until late in Part 1) they are entirely unforgettable!
And then the infamously fragmentary Part 2. There were two known manuscripts of the second part, both of which Gogol put to the flame as a combined result of his own self-doubt and perfectionism as well as external criticism. What remains is a text that becomes progressively more broken and incomplete with breaks in the text appearing as early as the first chapter of Part 2. Our wire rope is showing signs of wear; a kink here, a few wires unspooling themselves from a strand there; the rope has lost its structural integrity. Larger and larger chunks of character conversations and entire scenes are missing and where the translator hasn’t provided transitional material in the notes, the reader is left to guess what in the hell happened during the break.
Nevertheless, there are still inspired passages throughout Part 2 with a notably less light-hearted and more lecturey/moralistic tone. You feel as though there is still enjoyment to be had in the regrettably disconnected text but then it all ends very abruptly. As though the rope were cut in two or overloaded to the point that it snaps. The load is dropped and any tension that the rope was under is lost. All the strands that were woven so beautifully around the core and the wires from the strands unravel rapidly in a clockwise and anti-clockwise direction respectively, never to converge at their intended destination. Was Chichikov to earn his redemption or continue in his swindling ways? We’ll never know!
There were a couple of areas in Gogol’s “poema” that I found very interesting. For instance, how concerned Gogol appears to be about how his book and its characters will be perceived. He doesn’t seem to have had a lot of faith in the society of readers in Russia, perhaps justifiably so. Either way, he feels it necessary to defend at different times both his love for Russia and his philosophy and sense of certain obligations as a writer.
Gogol scorns the “so-called patriots” that will inevitably [upon reading his satirical critique of Russian ruling society] “scurry forth from all their corners, like spiders on seeing a fly entangled in their web, and suddenly raise the cry: ‘Is it really a good thing to bring that out into the light, to proclaim that publicly?... What will foreigners say? Is it really fun to hear a bad opinion of oneself?” and in the same way that Gogol anticipated Russians misinterpreting his critique, I have noted, in some modern readers, the same misunderstanding. That is that Gogol was making fun of Russia’s gentry for shits and giggles or as some kind of rebellious traitor. On the contrary, Gogol stated that he wanted to present in his work “primarily those higher qualities of the Russian nature, which have not yet been justly appreciated by all, and primarily those lower qualities that have not yet been sufficiently ridiculed and dispelled by all.” If I’m not mistaken, he is also defending his criticism of Russian society in the story of two ordinary citizens, Kifa Mokiyevich and his son Moky Kifovich. Saying, I believe, that he loves Russia as though it were a son and he has an obligation to point out areas of bad behaviour so that the son/nation can improve. After all if you love someone/something you don’t just blow smoke up their arse at every opportunity, you tell them when they need to pull their head in.
I’ll finish with what, for me, caused a complete 180° in how I interpreted the work. It came right at the end of Part 1 as Gogol, without hesitation, looked straight through me and exposed me as the sub-par and fraudulent reader I had been up until that point. I felt so blind that I almost wanted to go right back to the beginning and read the whole of Part 1 again. Here it is, thanks for reading:
”You fear the deep-penetrating gaze, you yourself are afraid to fix a deep-penetrating gaze on anything, you like to skim over everything with unthinking eyes. You will even have a hearty laugh at Chichikov, perhaps you will even praise the author, you will say: ‘Still and all, he’s been good at spotting a thing or two, he must be a jolly sort of fellow!’ And after these words you will turn to yourself with redoubled pride, a self-satisfied smile will appear on your face and you will add: ‘Really, one must agree that there are very strange and very amusing people in certain provinces, and no smaller number of scoundrels too!’ But who among you, filled with Christian humility, not publicly but silently, alone, at moments of solitary converse with yourself, will direct this weighty question into the deepest recesses of your own soul: ‘And isn’t there something of Chichikov in me too?’”
I’m sure you’ve seen one of these wire ropes before. Working with cranes, I see the things every day which, for the life of me, is the only reason I can fathom, immediately after completing Gogol’s Dead Souls, having visualised the entire story in the form of a wire rope.
At first, and for the length of the entire first part, the story is fully realised. All the individual wires flow and interweave wonderfully to form the strands and in turn the strands are woven deftly around the core and it is as if there is some unseen load adding weight and therefore tension to the story. This is unhindered for the entirety of Part 1 in which we meet our (anti)hero, Chichikov, the charming con man, and follow him throughout his fumbling attempts to bring his latest get-rich-quick-scheme to fruition. For reasons that eventually become clear, Chichikov is going from landowner to landowner offering to purchase the names of their dead muzhiks purely from the goodness of his own heart (or so he would have us believe) in order to save the owners from paying a senseless tax on them in the time before the next census.
It is hilarious and thoughtful. The landowners whom Chichikov approaches verge on but never completely fall into the trap of being cartoonish caricatures, all embodying characteristics of the Russian gentry that Gogol wishes to highlight and/or scrutinise, most often in a satirical fashion. Though none of these landowners are fully fleshed out (as can be said of Chichikov until late in Part 1) they are entirely unforgettable!
And then the infamously fragmentary Part 2. There were two known manuscripts of the second part, both of which Gogol put to the flame as a combined result of his own self-doubt and perfectionism as well as external criticism. What remains is a text that becomes progressively more broken and incomplete with breaks in the text appearing as early as the first chapter of Part 2. Our wire rope is showing signs of wear; a kink here, a few wires unspooling themselves from a strand there; the rope has lost its structural integrity. Larger and larger chunks of character conversations and entire scenes are missing and where the translator hasn’t provided transitional material in the notes, the reader is left to guess what in the hell happened during the break.
Nevertheless, there are still inspired passages throughout Part 2 with a notably less light-hearted and more lecturey/moralistic tone. You feel as though there is still enjoyment to be had in the regrettably disconnected text but then it all ends very abruptly. As though the rope were cut in two or overloaded to the point that it snaps. The load is dropped and any tension that the rope was under is lost. All the strands that were woven so beautifully around the core and the wires from the strands unravel rapidly in a clockwise and anti-clockwise direction respectively, never to converge at their intended destination. Was Chichikov to earn his redemption or continue in his swindling ways? We’ll never know!
There were a couple of areas in Gogol’s “poema” that I found very interesting. For instance, how concerned Gogol appears to be about how his book and its characters will be perceived. He doesn’t seem to have had a lot of faith in the society of readers in Russia, perhaps justifiably so. Either way, he feels it necessary to defend at different times both his love for Russia and his philosophy and sense of certain obligations as a writer.
Gogol scorns the “so-called patriots” that will inevitably [upon reading his satirical critique of Russian ruling society] “scurry forth from all their corners, like spiders on seeing a fly entangled in their web, and suddenly raise the cry: ‘Is it really a good thing to bring that out into the light, to proclaim that publicly?... What will foreigners say? Is it really fun to hear a bad opinion of oneself?” and in the same way that Gogol anticipated Russians misinterpreting his critique, I have noted, in some modern readers, the same misunderstanding. That is that Gogol was making fun of Russia’s gentry for shits and giggles or as some kind of rebellious traitor. On the contrary, Gogol stated that he wanted to present in his work “primarily those higher qualities of the Russian nature, which have not yet been justly appreciated by all, and primarily those lower qualities that have not yet been sufficiently ridiculed and dispelled by all.” If I’m not mistaken, he is also defending his criticism of Russian society in the story of two ordinary citizens, Kifa Mokiyevich and his son Moky Kifovich. Saying, I believe, that he loves Russia as though it were a son and he has an obligation to point out areas of bad behaviour so that the son/nation can improve. After all if you love someone/something you don’t just blow smoke up their arse at every opportunity, you tell them when they need to pull their head in.
I’ll finish with what, for me, caused a complete 180° in how I interpreted the work. It came right at the end of Part 1 as Gogol, without hesitation, looked straight through me and exposed me as the sub-par and fraudulent reader I had been up until that point. I felt so blind that I almost wanted to go right back to the beginning and read the whole of Part 1 again. Here it is, thanks for reading:
”You fear the deep-penetrating gaze, you yourself are afraid to fix a deep-penetrating gaze on anything, you like to skim over everything with unthinking eyes. You will even have a hearty laugh at Chichikov, perhaps you will even praise the author, you will say: ‘Still and all, he’s been good at spotting a thing or two, he must be a jolly sort of fellow!’ And after these words you will turn to yourself with redoubled pride, a self-satisfied smile will appear on your face and you will add: ‘Really, one must agree that there are very strange and very amusing people in certain provinces, and no smaller number of scoundrels too!’ But who among you, filled with Christian humility, not publicly but silently, alone, at moments of solitary converse with yourself, will direct this weighty question into the deepest recesses of your own soul: ‘And isn’t there something of Chichikov in me too?’”