Nikolai Gogol: Dead Souls (1842)

Translation: David Magarshack, 1961 (Buy from Amazon)
Edition: Penguin, 1961
Review number: 1081

Gogol's novel is better known because of its history than because of its content. Only part one and a few fragments of a draft of part two exist of the three planned; this is not in itself particularly unusual, but in fact Gogol completed the second and destroyed it, and died as the result of fasting to prepare himself for writing the third.

The story that remains in the first part was suggested to Gogol by Pushkin, as was his play The Government Inspector. The central character, the minor nobleman Chichikov, travels around a backward district of Russia buying up "dead souls". When serfdom was in existence in Russia (and it wasn't abolished until after Gogol's death), wealth was reckoned in souls, the number of serfs owned by an individual, and this also determined the amount of tax paid. Each census would reassess the number of souls owned by a landowner, and this figure would determine the level of tax they paid until the next one. Chichikov was buying the right to the names of the serfs who had died since the last census, just a liability to the owner since tax had to be paid but no work could be got out of them. It is quite a way into the novel before the purpose Chichikov has for these useless paper souls is revealed, but it is clear that it is going to be some kind of swindle. When the first part was submitted to the censors, they insisted that the title be changed, as they felt that Dead Souls sounded as though the novel was an attack on the church's doctrine of the immortality of the soul.

This kind of (to us bizarre) brush with the censor was routine for a nineteenth century Russian novelist, and was not the cause of the burning of part two. Gogol fell under the influence of a fanatically strict priest, who convinced him that the novel was sinful. This may have been a general prohibition on fiction, novels often being condemned as immoral, but it could also have been something specific to Dead Souls. After completion of the first part, Gogol decided that what he wanted to write about was the redemption of Chichikov, and he convinced himself that his work would bring a transformation in Russian society. This could well have been seen by a zealot as something prejudicial to the interests of the church. The information I have doesn't go into details of the reasons for the priest's opposition to the work; all that is certain about it is that it led to the eventual burning of the manuscript, after considerable (and understandable) agonising by Gogol. All that remains are fragments and a description of parts of the work in the journal of a friend to whom it had been read. It is clear that the destruction deprived us of some remarkable writing, especially given the quality and breadth of the first part, which Gogol considered to contain his best work. He must have been very sure that the arguments of the priest were right, for them to overcome his emotional attachment to what he had created. Indeed, the attachment was abnormally strong in this particular case: the fasting which brought Gogol's death only weeks after the destruction was motivated by the feeling that he could only really write about the reformation of Chechikov if he reformed himself too.

Gogol's writing is considerably more satirical than that of the other major Russian writers of the nineteenth century, and what is left of Dead Souls consists of a series of portraits making fun of provincial Russia, particularly of the stupidity of the small scale landowner. (And, in fact, I've now realised that I missed part of the point - these nobles are the truly "dead souls" in the novel.) These are written in a knowing way, with Gogol continually addressing a reader (as when, for example, he ridicules the fashionable habit of using a great deal of French by first describing the habit as admirable and then saying that it has no place in a Russian novel so that such phrases will be translated into that language). It is a novel full of humour, not at all a quality normally associated with Russian fiction, and would be a classic even without the strange history associated with it.

Nikolai Gogol: The Government Inspector (1836)

Translation: Stephen Mulrine, 1997
Edition: Nick Hern Books, 1997
Review number: 698

Gogol's most famous legacy may be this farce about corruption and stupidity in the local government in Tsarist Russia, but he was in fact not a political radical. He even wrote an attack on the abolition of serfdom, and spent much of his life embarrassed by the enthusiasm with which would be reformers reacted to the play. He proposed allegorical interpretations of what he had written, which would have lessened its impact if anyone had accepted them.

The plot, suggested by Pushkin, is fairly simple. The small, nameless, provincial town in which the play is set has discovered that the imperial government is sending an inspector, incognito, to look into the efficiency and probity of its institutions. Since the whole of the town's administration is corrupt, from the mayor and judge to the hospital, this causes consternation. When they hear of a young man from St Petersburg who is staying in one of the town's inns, they assume that he must be the inspector. They flatter and bribe him, but of course the joke is that he is not really the inspector at all. Shorn of its satirical elements, this plot was reused in an episode of Fawlty Towers; it's potential for farce is huge.

It is possible, of course, to attack the way in which a system is abused without wanting to destroy the system itself, but I think that it is more likely that Gogol got carried away. He was not the only one, either; the Tsar himself intervened to speed up the processes of the censorship office so that the first production of The Government Inspector could go ahead remarkably quickly. (He was the most liberal Tsar Russia ever had, and he clearly had a sense of humour.) However, aspects of the play must amount to an attack on the local governmental institutions themselves. The system - or more widespread corruption within the system - was after responsible for the appointment of such an appalling group of officials in the first place.

The reason I have for thinking that Gogol got caught up in the comedy of his theme into actually writing a radical satire is that the names of the officials are derogatory terms such as "slapdash". My favourites are just silly; the not very bright characters Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky remind an English speaking reader of Tweedledum and Tweedledee by more than just their names. Towards the end of his life, Gogol also wrote something which implies more or less what I have been suggesting, that he wanted to ridicule all that was bad in Russia, but the laughter this produced was unexpectedly overwhelming.

Nineteenth century Russian literature has a reputation for being profound and a little dull. The Government Inspector is neither. It is extremely funny, and that has ensured its survival.