Reader Reviews for Dead Souls: A Poem (Oxford World's Classics):
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: "For your pleasure I am prepared to assume even a loss."
Comment:
WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS
TITLE: Dead Souls
AUTHOR: Nikolai Gogol
TRANSLATOR: Christopher English
PLOT: Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov has been dismissed from civil service, but not all hope is lost. He decides to stroll across the Russian countryside in order to reach his goal. And that goal involves deceased citizens of every kind.
CHARACTERS: Chichikov almost creeps me out (he's like a Russian Sweeney Todd). He can be calm on the outside, but impatient on the inside. The mystery of his goals affect his friends and his servants as they start to have an urge on why he wants to collect the names of `dead souls'. Nozdryov is particularly a memorable supporting character. At first he's kind to his good companions, and then, as he thinks boredom strikes, he aggressively defends their friendship. Selifan and Petrushka, Chichikov's servants, provide a bit of comic relief for their parts. Khlobuev is very likeable as he helps Chichikov in dire need near the end.
PACING: Part One of "Dead Souls" has an almost perfect pacing. There are never too many descriptive narratives nor does it have too little. The journeys of Chichikov almost never drag, and the introductions of supporting characters won't make you throw this book away. It's Part Two that slows the whole story down. The introductions to new characters are much more descriptive, and the narrative paragraphs seem to last forever.
THE WRITING ITSELF: Christopher English's English translation is a mixed bag. For the good side, he perfectly selects adverbs and adjectives. He also makes sure that Gogol's dramatic language remains in his own. For the bad side, I think he might've ignored much of the ironic/satirical humor, as some passages didn't make me smile at all. But I guess it's just me, and maybe other people have enjoyed this rendition as much as Robert Maguire's rendition.
And finally, it's a good thing that the supposedly `final chapter' is included here. We would get to know how Gogol wanted to start on a non-existent Part Three.
OVERALL: Despite a mediocre translation, "Dead Souls" is a comic classic in Russian literature. It's as anti-heroic as Lermontov's "A Hero of our Time", and as lyrical as Pushkin's poem "Eugene Onegin". It's a must-read. B+
Customer Rating:
Summary: Devastatingly funny: The satire that launched modern novel in Russia
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Challenging But Worthy Read
Comment: I will spare a synopsis, and stick to my opinion of the book. This book is not a quick read and requires close focus due to the abundance of difficult, yet descriptive Russian names. The story is truely ingenious. The satire and social commentary become apparant at the end, although most people will know it is coming due to having read a description of the book beforehand. In the meantime be prepared to be read some action scenes and wity dialogue. The reason I only gave four stars is because it wasn't a book I couldn't put down. I think that is because the names wore me out, and because the repetition of serf purchase scenes, although lending themselves to the above mentioned action/dialogue, became redundant. I found myself thinking, just get on with the revelation of his motives already!
Customer Rating:
Summary: "I don't want real peasants. I want to have dead ones."
Comment: Dead Souls raises the fundamental puzzling problem of literary theory: the question of an author's personal involvement in his work, meaning, of how far, Gogol's outlook on life can impinge on the lives of his protagonists (or heroes) without leading, as in Gogol's own case, to insanity and suicide. Dead Souls is a fragmented work that upon finishing the second volume of which Gogol fell under the influence of a priest who advised him to burn it. He regarded Gogol's literary work as an abomination to the eyes of God and admonished Gogol to lead a sequestered life at the monastery to atone for his sin. There Gogol suicidally took to his bed, refused all provisions and died nine days later.
The remaining manuscripts of Dead Souls are rather fragmented as the four chapters of the second volume are recalled and put together through the word of mouth. The first volume affords the whole scaffold and theme of Gogol's ambitious work. As Gogol's work on the novel proceeded, its theme took on more and more grandiose proportions in his mind. At first he wrote without forming any concrete plan in his head but the beginning of the first volume already contains hints of how Gogol hopes to fulfill his mission of saving Russia, which was looking up to him with eyes full of expectation. But quite soon the fact that the whole of Russia would appear in his novel (in fact the skein of characters the hero encounters does represent the whole of Russia, in their skepticism, greed, fear, paranoia) was no longer enough to satiate him. Gogol was getting all the more convinced of his messiah-like mission to save Russia and he began to regard Dead Souls as the means God had given him to intercede for his fellow comrades.
Brooding over the fate of mankind in general and of his countrymen in particular, Gogol was puzzled by man's perverse habit of straying from the road which lay wide open before and which, if he followed it, would lead him to some magnificent "palace fit for an emperor to live in", and of preferring instead to follow and chase after all sorts of will-o'-the-wisps to the abyss and then asking in horror what the right road was. But Gogol's own pursuit (to the truth and meaning of existence), was unfortunately, a will-o'-the-wisps which brought him to the abyss into which he finally precipitated himself. It was through the numerous characters, with whom Gogol intended to represent all of Russia, that all the stupidities and absurdities of all the "clever fellows" were caricatured and reflected and therefore became more apparent to us. The work is therefore highly satirical of the senselessness of the noisy contemporary world, and the deceitfulness of the illusions that led mankind astray.
Notwithstanding all that remains of the second volume of Dead Souls is a number of various fragments of four chapters and one fragment of what appears to be the final chapter, the plot deduced from the context is nothing but discernible. But no final judgment of the complete second volume (and maybe another volume that was utterly lost) of Dead Souls can be based on what has been crudely recovered. Simple and uneventful the plot might have been, the essence of the book simmers on the ground that injustice cannot be rooted out by punishment and that the only way of restoring the reign of justice in Russia was to appeal to the inbred sense of honor that resided in every Russia's heart.
The plot is simple. Collegiate Councilor Pavel Ivanovich Chichiknov arrived in the town N. to buy up all the peasants who died before a new census was taken for the landowners were obligated to pay taxes for these dead serfs. With a subtle resourcefulness and perspicacity, he purchased these dead serfs for resettlement in land that was distributed for free. Was he to acquire them at a considerably lower price than what the Trustee Council would give him, a great fortune would be in store for him. Under the pretext of looking for a place to settle and under all sorts of other pretexts and chicanery, he undertook to scrutinize all parts of Russia where he could buy most conveniently and cheaply the sort of peasants he wanted. He did not approach any landowner indiscriminately, but selected those with whom he could negotiate such deals with the least difficulty, trying first to make their acquaintance and gain their confidence. Conducting himself with the utmost decorum and discretion, he was extremely meticulous in find out all the leading landowners and the number of dead souls each of them owned. But the thought that the serfs were not real serfs was never absent from his mind: a pricking thought that rendered him anxious to settle the tricky business soon as possible.
But the purchase of dead souls soon became inevitably a topic of the town's general conversation, in which views and opinions were expressed regarding whether serfs should be purchased for resettlement. No one was not astounded by the news of Chichikov's purchase. Some demanded an explanation but paradoxically the affair seemed to be deprived of any proper explanation. Readers might have raised the same question: What was the meaning of these dead souls? There is no logic in dead souls. How can one buy dead souls? Others quailed at the possible outbreak of mutiny so vast a number of rowdy peasants Chichikov contrived to transport. The vague identity of Chichikov also added to the public's paranoia.
Whether Chichikov's tricky business succeed or not, Dead Souls positions itself as Gogol's judgment of mankind, being a similitude to or even an inspiration to Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground. Dead Souls offers a quasi-biblical solution as Gogol brings about his protagonist's spiritual regeneration: think not of dead souls, but of one's own living soul and follow a path with God's help.
2004 (47) ©MY
Customer Rating:
Summary: Dead Souls
Comment: The last novel to be written by Russian author Gogol. Modern Library edition, published by Random House. Introduction by Clifford Odets. Former owner's name stamped on title page. Hardcover has wear on spine, pages have some yellowing, otherwise in perfect condition.
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