Dead Souls [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

I enjoyed this book even though it is unfinished. It is considered by some to be a 'Classic' and it is easy to see why. The writing is superb and the humor is subtle. The plot is what really drives this story though. Very clever. The main character reminds me of a stereotypical used-car salesman - always plotting until the joke finally turns on him. I recommend it.

Nikolai Gogol's Dead Soul launches the 'great Russian novel form' with a satire, so apt and so funny, that the novel remains as one of the most popular Russian text ever. Gogol's own personal life may have been a dire disaster, but as a novelist he stands next to only Tolstoy and Dostovesky, as short story writer only Chekov comes close to his fame, and mind you, he preceded them and their writing. He was, alongside Pushkin, one of the major early forces in Russian literary scene. Since all other major novelists from Russia have delved into tragedies and melodramas, going down to philosophical and religious questions, Dead Souls comes as a relief fun read, rather one of the funniest reads.

In Dead Souls, he provides a cast of unforgettable and hilarious characters in episodes that leave you reeling with laughter. The hero or the anti-hero Chichikov or Tchichikov drives from town to town, buying "dead souls" i.e. dead peasants, assuring landowners that this will benefit them as they would pay less tax on their workforce. The tax was based on census numbers, and since many peasants died between two census years, landowners ended up paying taxes on people who didn't exist. Chichikov's brilliant idea was to collect a long list of (dead) peasants he had bought, and use that for getting a estate for himself. The novel tells us a story after story of his meeting his landowners and getting his purchase by a mix of tact, sweet talk, and so on, each purchase is full of absurd and funny details.

Beyond the obvious laughters, the novel provides a very detailed description of Russia in early nineteenth century. The sketches of nature bring alive similes and metaphors that Gogol (who was a failed poet) uses remarkably well. While the observations related to people, customs, bureaucracy and Russia are full of brilliant wit, they in fact recreate a lively and throbbing world to us. The world as it was. The bureaucracy has not changed much since then. Nor have the quacks and hacks and cheats who make fortunes by buying and selling dubious things. Hence Dead Souls has this undying and translatable humor that will keep this book in publication forever.

I would rank Dead Souls alongside Three Men in a Boat, Catch 22, A House for Mr Biswas and The Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy as the novels that made me laugh the most. It has shades of Tolstoy in details it provides about rural life and rich landowners, shades of both Tolstoy and Dostovesky in pointing to certain moral issues (but that is at most an undertone) and maybe he was the one who influenced the style of his more famous successors. If you haven't read Gogol, you definitely need to pick him next.

"You are on the proper road for Manilovka, but Zamanilovka---well, there is no such place. The house you mean is called Manilovka because Manilovka is its name; but no house at all is called Zamanilovka. The house you mean stands there, on that hill, and is a stone house in which a gentleman lives, and its name is Manilovka; but Zamanilovka does not stand hereabouts, nor ever has stood." "So the travelers [Chichikov included] proceeded in search of Manilovka." In "an aureate world of ever-growing dreams and fantasies, [a]ll his thoughts were in awhirl, and on a carpet of future wealth his tumultuous imagination was weaving golden patterns, while ever in his ears were ringing the words, `towards you there will run rivers and rivers of gold." Thenceforth Chichikov, Paul Ivanovich, our featured protagonist herein, spends much of the time in this novel looking for landowners with lots of deceased peasants on their tax rolls. Says one landowner: "When the assessor last called upon me I could have wept; for, though those workmen of mine are dead, I have to keep on paying for them as though they were still alive." Chichikov "wanted the dead souls in order to acquire a better standing in society, since at present he possessed little landed property, and only a handful of serfs." "What will my children say?" he is fond of asking himself herein. By "buying" dead peasant serfs [without anyone having acknowledged that they were in fact deceased] from various landlords Chichikov hoped to appear wealthy, and thereby attempt to leverage such "property" for the sake of his children, which are but imaginary throughout this novel, but which drive Chichikov to make a future success of himself.

During the first 186 pages, Chichikov makes his rounds in a town and then gets run out of it. Then the remainder of the book, almost unconnected in spirit to the first part, details how Chichikov has some more ups and downs, albeit of a somewhat different nature. And then the book ends oddly, in the sense that there isn't much of an ending.

Gogol wrote a second half of this book, but it was "lost" by Gogol before he could publish it. Interestingly, Gogol wrote "Dead Souls" while he was abroad." This may explain why some of the novel just doesn't seem part and parcel of the story he is apparently trying to relate. Consider this interlude of introspection by the author:

"Ah, Russia, Russia, from my beautiful home in a strange land I can still see you! In you everything is poor and disordered and unhomely; in you the eye is neither cheered nor dismayed by temerity's of nature which a yet more temerarious art has conquered; in you one beholds no cities with lofty, many-windowed mansions, lofty as crags, no picturesque trees, no ivy-clad ruins, no waterfalls with their everlasting spray and roar, no beetling precipices which confuse the brain with their stony immensity, no vistas of vines and ivy and millions of wild roses and ageless lines of blue hills which look almost unreal against the clear, silvery background of the sky. In you everything is flat and open; your towns project like points or signals from smooth levels of plain, and nothing whatsoever enchants or deludes the eye. Yet what secret, what invincible force draws me to you? Why does there ceaselessly echo and re-echo in my ears the sad song which hovers throughout the length and the breadth of your borders?" "What is it you seek of me, O Russia?"

This is hardy the only such interlude, as well. In a way, thus, Gogol's story makes for a great short story, but having seemingly stretched it in length past 200 pages, by including such ruminations as just quoted and having Chichikov almost perform the same routine with a slew of landowners, Gogol expends less effort to wrap up his story.

Eventually, in frustration, a landowner gives Chichikov some advice: "No matter what may be said to the contrary, the body can never dispense with the soul. Why, then, will you not try to walk in the right way, and, by thinking no longer of dead souls, but only of your only living one, regain, with God's help, the better road?" It's an inclination a reader of this novel might admit to sharing, particularly after page 186 when the story seems primed for new developments, but what "new developments" that do occur are not that different or especially interesting.

One tells Chichikov herein: "Nature loves patience: always remember that. It is a law given her of God himself, who has blessed all those who are strong to endure." A novelist too ought to recognize that readers don't have an unlimited reserve of this quality. So, yes, this book has many fine aspects---asides on Russia and the Russian sensibility, some satire, comedic flourishes---but they don't sustain this novel. My apologies to all afficinados of Russian literature (who will probably enjoy this novel), but most others, I reckon, will find other Russian novels (by Bulgakov, Zamyatin, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, etc.) far more enjoyable and interesting than this one. (08Jul) Cheers