A readable, unusual and ultimately frustrating novel. One gets the feeling that the author didn't really have a game plan for what he wanted to do with the story; instead he wrote by just winging it, making it all up as he went along.
Of course the academic world is no stranger to taking a largely plotless, directionless novel and rationalizing it as "modern" and "ahead of its time."[1] Which... still doesn't change the fact that it remains a largely plotless, directionless novel. With some admitted exceptions, what happens in Dead Souls doesn't matter, the characters don't matter, the specific plot points of the novel don't matter, almost none of it matters. And yes, modern literary analysis will then tell us that that's the whole point, explaining to us patiently that proto-modern novels of this sort are a satire or a send-up of the novel form itself.[2]
Note that the reader can still enjoy and appreciate aspects of this work. Like Dickens, Gogol brilliantly mocks and pokes fun at his own society, and (also like Dickens) he does it with a twinkle in his eye and a good heart, helping the reader learn the Russian character with all its beautiful idiosyncrasies, corruptions, flaws and strengths. Dead Souls is a good novel, but don't expect from it what it won't deliver.
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Footnotes:
[1] See Lautréamont's Les Chants de Maldoror as the epitome of an unreadable novel that modernists celebrated as "ahead of its time." It makes you not want to experience the future.
[2] I like to think of this as the English major's version of "Eat your bugs, plebe!"
[Dear readers: as always, what follows are notes, quotes and reactions to the text. They are meant to organize my thinking and help me remember and they are not worth reading. Don't even bother to skim the bold parts! Life is short.]
Notes:
Chapter I
1) Chichikov arrives to a town, a stranger, and calls on all the major residents, asking all sorts of odd and unusual questions; the reader doesn't know what he's up to yet.
Chapter II
2) Fun here how the author breaks the fourth wall here in various places in Chapter 2, telling the reader what's coming, which characters are important, which are not, etc. "Now the reader might well make the acquaintance of these two serfs of Chichikov's. Although, of course, they are not important characters and could be called secondary or even less--although the mainsprings and movements of this epic are not dependent on them and the narrative fairly touches them--still, the author likes to be extremely thorough in everything and, although himself a Russian, wishes in this respect to be as precise as a German. And, anyway, it will take up only a little time and space because there is no need to add much to what the reader already knows."
3) The reader now learns, sort of, what Chichikov is up to (although it isn't until the last chapter that we learn why): Chichikov asks Manilov how long it has been since he last submitted a list of his serfs to the census, and then asks how many had died since then. "I intend to acquire dead serfs who, however, were listed as alive in the last census." [If you'll indulge me briefly for some of my own thoughts on the novel's social commentary: Just as the Pringle Family history made painfully clear, no one remembers slaves/serfs, certainly no one keeps a family tree, any records kept on them are basically "property records." And so one wonders: is this strange absurdist story about "collecting dead souls" really a way of memorializing a people no one cares about nor remembers?]
Chapter III
4) Chichikov, with his driver and his other servant, gets lost in a rainstorm and stumble into a village they never intended to visit, staying overnight in a Mrs. Korobochka's house, a widowed landowner; Chichikov pitches the idea of buying her dead serfs to her too, although she simply can't wrap her mind around the idea at first; this widow is probably a trope character: she's a thrifty, perhaps miserly, landlord who can't stand the idea that somebody might get a better price that her on something. Chichikov eventually persuades her to sell him her dead serfs.
Chapter IV
5) Chichikov arrives at inn, encountering two other gentlemen, one of whom, Nozdrev, is excessively familiar and friendly; Nozdrev had just lost all his money playing cards and the author goes through a long discussion of what type of person he is: basically he's like the kid you knew in middle school who was a pathological liar. Chichikov agrees to go directly to his home, reasoning that since Nozdrev was freshly out of money from playing cards, he would enthusiastically part with his dead souls at a low price.
6) A surreal, absurdist scene here with Nozdrev:
"Tell me, then--I suppose you have many dead peasants who haven't been taken off the census list as yet?
Certainly I have, and so?
Transfer them to my name, then.
What do you want 'em for?
I need them, that's all.
But why?
I tell you I need them. That should be enough.
I bet you're up to something. Tell me what it's all about."
And then things go quickly downhill from here: Nozdrev cheats at checkers, orders his servants to beat Chichikov up, but luckily a police chief shows up, implausibly, at that very minute to arrest Nozdrev for flogging a different landowner. Chichikov quietly slips away.
Chapter V
7) As Chichikov and his servants were riding away their carriage collides and becomes tangled up with another carriage. Chichikov is entranced by a young girl in the other carriage as a group of peasants gather to separate the horses and carriages. Chichikov next arrives at Sobakievich's home, where everything--the house, the furniture, the pet bird--is bear-like and resembles Sobakievich himself. Sobakievich considers all the officials in town to be corrupt, and he has a habit of treading on other peoples' toes. Chichikov and Sobakievich have a surreal haggling session over Sobakievich's dead souls: Sobakievich demanding 100 rubles each and Chichikov offering to pay a fraction of a ruble each. They ultimately agree at two and a half rubles per soul. Sobakievich is an insufferable haggler, even haggling about the quality of the ruble notes Chichikov uses to pay him.
8) Parenthetical commentary here from the author/narrator here on how good Russian people are applying an epithet to a man (the new nickname will stick with him wherever he goes, even if he moves to Petersburg or has generations of descendants across an entire family tree), and on the aptness of the Russian word: "Thus the word of an Englishman echoes his profound knowledge of the heart and his thoughtful understanding of life; the word of Frenchman flashes with ephemeral elegance before it bursts and vanishes; the word of a German is cleverly contrived, difficult to grasp, and intellectually thin; but none of them can compare with the sweeping, boisterous vigor, the spontaneity, the ebullient vivacity of an aptly uttered Russian word."
Chapter VI
9) Plewshkin and his "estate": this is the most Dickensian, depressing and affecting chapter of the book so far. Chichikov drives up to extremely ramshackle village of peasants' huts and a castle "that called to mind a crippled old man."
10) "While Chichikov was examining this strange setting, a side door opened and the housekeeper he had met in the yard walked in. But now he realized that it was not a female housekeeper, as he had imagined, but rather a male one, since female housekeepers hardly shave, while this one did, and not too often at that." This turns out to be the master of the house, a man who had once been a thrifty and efficient landowner but who had now devolved into a hoarder. "Each year he lost more and more of his grasp on the major aspects of his estate management and turned his eyes to scraps of paper and little feathers, which he hoarded in his room."
11) Interesting here where the inn-servant Petrushka and Chichikov's servant/driver Selifan exchanged a subtle wink when Chichikov returns to the hotel.
12) Chichikov immediately falls asleep upon going to bed: "He slept deeply, wonderfully, as only the fortunate can sleep, who know nothing about hemorrhoids, lice, or overdeveloped mental faculties."
Chapter VII
13) This chapter opens with a modernist "meta" passage where the author talks about how much adulation he would receive if he talked only about the highest types of human characters, but sadly, an author who talks about real, everyday characters, who shows them accurately, will never find admiration or adulation from the public. "No sixteen-year-old girl will throw herself at him." Worse, his contemporaries "will ascribe to him the traits of his own characters... his contemporaries cannot understand how much spiritual depth it takes to present a picture of the despicable aspects of life and make a work of art out of them..."
14) Chichikov looks over the list of some 400 souls that he has purchased and imagines their lives and deaths. "Funny people, the Russians--they never think of waiting around for a natural death!"
15) He heads to the government office building, running into Manilov on the way, who has his own formal list of souls written out for him. More attempted wit from the author here: The government office building "was a very large three-story house and was chalk-white, probably to symbolize the purity of heart of those exercising their official functions within... I should perhaps describe the offices they had to go through, but the strong awe that pervades me in government offices paralyzes my hand."
16) Chichikov has to bribe his way into the government office president's office, it turns out that Sobakievich was in there with him. Sobakievich craftily asks Chichikov to explain exactly what he bought, and then word begins to get out that all of these serfs are dead. The entire party heads over to the police Chiefs house who basically extracts bribes and food and resources from the whole town: " He had organized his affairs so cleverly that he made twice as much as any of his predecessors, while earning the love of one and all." They have a huge meal and Chichikov returns to the inn completely hammered.
Chapter VIII
17) Chichikov's purchase of serfs becomes the talk of the town; a rumor spreads that he is a millionaire. There's also a long satirical discussion here of the ladies of the town: their character, their behavior, their choice of words... and the fact that once word got around that Chichikov was supposedly a millionaire they all became much more interested in him. He even receives an anonymous letter from a lady inviting him to run away with her, writing that he would guess who she was at the ball to be held soon at the governor's mansion.
18) Satirical description of the ladies at the ball, and Chichikov tries, in vain, to guess who the author of the anonymous letter might be.
19) Also amusing nested two-layer satire here from the author/narrator on how people imitate the art of their era (just like today people imitate what's on television), but also on how writers try to artificially convey their abilities. "I cannot report exactly what she said after, but it was something extremely amiable, something in the style in which characters communicate in our fashionable drawing-room novels, designed to prove that their authors are well-versed in the refined tone of society."
20) Suddenly next to the wife of the host Chichikov sees the same pretty girl who transfixed him when his carriage collided with another at the beginning of Chapter V. He runs over to sit next to her, bores the absolute crap out of her, while causing all the other ladies at the ball to feel slighted, all at once. Suddenly, Nozdrev shows up and spills the beans, shouting "'This fellow trades in dead souls! I swear he does!'... The news was so strange that everybody just stood gaping, with stupid, wooden, questioning expressions." Chichikov was rattled by the whole thing and left the party early.
21) Later, a strange watermelon-shaped carriage rolls into town: it's Mrs. Korobochka who was worried she might have been cheated. "She felt she had to find out the current price for dead souls and whether or not she'd sold hers, God forbid, for perhaps as little as a third of their worth."
Chapter IX
22) Here an unnamed lady arrives at another unnamed lady's house: what follows here is satire of how ladies interact, how they spread gossip and rumors, how their conversations circles around and then indirectly settles on its topic, and so on. It rings true in every society including our own! The one lady tells of the interaction between Mrs. Korobochka and Chichikov, but the story is already twisted beyond belief: Chichikov comes off like an aggressive and almost violent jerk.
23) The one lady actually is trying to work out what he's trying to do, while the other lady is totally unable to form intelligent opinions at all. "'Still I'd like to hear your opinion on the matter.' The pleasant lady didn't know what to say. She knew how to get upset but was quite incapable of formulating an intelligent supposition. For this she was forced, more than any of the others, to depend on the advice of intimate friends." They begin gossiping about the pretty town governor's daughter, arguing whether or not she uses rouge, and then ultimately they arrive at the absurd conclusion that Chichikov intends to abduct the governor's daughter. The rumor spreads throughout town.
24) In a way Chichikov makes the town come alive, but it rejects him like a virus.
25) "In Russia the lower classes are avidly interested in society scandals" [Just like in the West today we avidly follow Hollywood gossip].
26) The gossip and rumors about Chichikov then become tangled up with various other controversies throughout the region: the death of a policeman and near two villages, the existence of a forger in the region, etc. Town officials start getting involved, questioning the various people who sold him their dead souls, even interviewing Chichikov's servants. And then there's a meeting at the house of the police chief of all these officials in the next chapter "to decide whether he should be arrested as a dangerous felon or whether he was in a position to have them all arrested as dangerous felons."
Chapter X
27) All the town officials gather together to sort out what to do, to figure out exactly who Chichikov is; the postmaster tells a story about a Captain Kopeikin, which has absolutely nothing to do with anything, as the book descends into still more absurdism. [The reader now really can't not see that the author is not only making things up as he goes along but that he's put himself into a sort of plot black hole here.] Kopeikin, who lost an arm and a leg in the Russo-French war in 1812, traveled to St Petersburg to try to get assistance as a disabled veteran... etc., etc., until somebody reminds him that Chichikov wasn't missing an arm and a leg. Eventually the group turns its focus to Nozdrev, who is summoned; Nozdrev then tells a whole string of completely incredible lies to the group, confusing them even more. Then the prosecutor, stressed out by all this, dies suddenly.
28) In the meantime Chichikov, oblivious to all this wanders over to the governor's house and is told he's not to be admitted. Now everyone in the town either refuses to see him or receives him with weird vibes. Nozdrev shows up to Chichikov's room, telling him the town suspects him of counterfeiting and of it abducting the governor's daughter; Chichikov decides to leave town right away.
Chapter XI
29) Chichikov gets on the road, passing the funeral procession for the prosecutor on his way out of town, and then both the character and the author muse about the wonders of Russia: its size and scope, its desolation, etc. Then the author is brought back suddenly as Chichikov almost has a collision with a government carriage racing the other direction. Next the author (using the author's/narrator's voice) goes through a soaring passage musing about "The long long road," entering into a fourth wall breaking discussion of his hero and he didn't choose a man of virtue for his hero: "...the virtuous man has been turned into a sort of horse and there's no author who hasn't ridden him, urging him on with his whip or whatever comes to hand... Now I feel the time has come to make use of a rogue. So let's harness him for a change!"
30) And now, finally, the reader learns of Chichikov's origins: how he sucked up to his teachers, how he used various strategems of getting along with his teachers to graduate with "exemplary industriousness and excellent behavior"; he begins his career with a low-paying job in government service and does his best to ingratiate himself to a supervisor; then moves on to bigger graft, then navigates anti-graft measures; various satirical comments here about the corruption of government officials throughout Russia and how they do even better when anti-graft measures are put into place, "which only goes to show that Russian inventiveness is at its best when freedom of action is restricted."
31) Chichikov then moves over to the customs division of the government, recognizing that customs workers all seem to become rather wealthy; he make a show of not taking bribes or goods until he is promoted and put in charge of the entire department, with total, unlimited power of search and seizure. "Which was just what he needed." Previously he had learned of a major smuggling gang that had come into existence and in the past had tried to buy his cooperation: now that he was in control of the customs division he works out a deal with these smugglers such that "he could now amass in one year more than a high official would get in twenty years of the most zealous service." But then Chichikov has a falling out with the colleague who he brought in on the deal with him; Chichikov is caught, and loses most of his assets all over again.
32) Now we finally learn how Chichikov came up with his scheme to buy dead serfs: he would use the list of serfs to get a mortgage from the Russian national treasury which was allowing people to borrow funds against serfs. "And this is how the strange scheme grew in the brain of my hero. Now, while I can't be sure that all this will find favor with my readers, I can assure them that I myself, speaking as an author, am inexpressibly grateful to him for the idea. For if this plan hadn't occurred to Chichikov, this book would never have seen the light of day."
32) Proto-modernist discussion here where the author/narrator muses on whether Chichikov is a hero or villain, also musing on the readers reading and asking why his book airs dirty laundry about Russia ("What will foreigners say?").
33) Then the famous, poetic quote most people remember from this novel: "O troika, O birdlike troika! Who invented you? Only a people full of life could have done so, a people that refuses to be daunted by anything, people whose land spreads out evenly across half the world, so that you may race ahead full-speed and count the milestones until they flash like spots before your eyes and you grow dizzy. And to think there's nothing complicated about a troika--no screws, no metal; all it took to build it was an ax, a chisel, and a smart Russian peasant."
"And where do you fly to, Russia? Answer me!... She doesn't answer. The carriage bells break into an enchanted tinkling, the air is torn to shreds and turns into wind; everything on earth flashes past, and, casting worried, sidelong glances, other nations and countries step out of her way."
To Read:
Ivan Krylov: Krylov's Fables