The little white attic : Gogol

Showing posts with label Gogol. Show all posts

Monday, 1 August 2016

Some top 10 lists about books

- 10 favourite novels (updated):
Anna Karenina by Lev Tolstoy
War and Peace by Lev Tolstoy
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

- 10 most important novels- 10 novels that have most influenced me or been most significant to me in some ways:
Anna Karenina by Lev Tolstoy
War and Peace by Lev Tolstoy
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Emma by Jane Austen
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

- 10 novels I hate the most:
The Book of Daniel by E. L. Doctorow
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
Corregidora by Gayl Jones
The Tattooed Girls by Joyce Carol Oates
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

(A possible candidate for 1 of the 2 empty spots might be The Sympathiser, but I have to finish the book).

- 10 novels I feel worst for not having read:

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes*

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Bleak House by Charles Dickens**

The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass**

Hunger by Knut Hamsun**

To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf**

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo**

Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

- 10 novels I very much want to read but won't read any time soon:

Ulysses by James Joyce

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov**

Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin

The Red and the Black by Stendhal

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

And Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov

The Golden Bowl by Henry James

- 10 novels I don't think I'll ever read:

Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre

Finnegans Wake by James Joyce

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys**

Min Kamp by Karl Ove Knausgård

Nỗi buồn chiến tranh by Bảo Ninh
Anything by V. S. Naipaul
or Graham Greene
or E. L. Doctorow
or Ayn Rand

*: I believe the book I read as a kid was an abridged version. Not sure.
**: I tried and gave up on these books.

Sunday, 15 May 2016

The 1st book you read by an author

I've just come across a blog post suggesting that readers intimidated by "long, challenging, and/or depressing classic novels" should read those writers' shorter/ easier works.
I won't discuss that point. But here's a record of my first dates with several authors:
William Shakespeare: Hamlet
Jane Austen: Emma
Charles Dickens: Oliver Twist
Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre
Anne Bronte: Agnes Grey
George Eliot: Adam Bede
Lev Tolstoy: Anna Karenina
Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Crime and Punishment
Nikolai Gogol: Dead Souls
Ivan Turgenev: Fathers and Sons
Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary
Henry James: "Daisy Miller" and some other short stories
Herman Melville: Moby Dick
Mark Twain: The Prince and the Pauper
Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway
George Orwell: 1984
Franz Kafka: short and ultra-short stories
Vladimir Nabokov: lecture on "The Metamorphosis"; if fiction only, Lolita
J. D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye
F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
William Faulkner: "A Rose for Emily"
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: short stories
Isabel Allende: The House of the Spirits
Milan Kundera: The Art of the Novel; if fiction only, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Elfriede Jelinek: The Piano Teacher
Toni Morrison: Beloved
Paulo Coelho: The Devil and Miss Prym
Haruki Murakami: South of the Border, West of the Sun
Patrick Suskind: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

What does it show?
1/ I don't mind long novels. But you know that.
2/ I have a different approach: often go straight to the most famous/ acclaimed work or 1 of them. If I'm impressed, most of the time it leads me to the author's other works; if I don't particularly like it, but feel intrigued, and question my own response, I might try again by reading another book by the same writer. If I hate it or am simply indifferent, at least I've read an important work often included among the greatest books we should read before we die, and know what it's like.

______________________________________________________

Now, same writers but a different list- the book that made me fall in love with the author:
William Shakespeare: Julius Caesar
Jane Austen: Mansfield Park
Charles Dickens: "A Christmas Carol"
Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre, now we're just friends
Anne Bronte: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, but I just like her
George Eliot: I don't think I'm quite in love with her yet; no chemistry
Lev Tolstoy: Anna Karenina
Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Notes from Underground
Nikolai Gogol: Dead Souls
Ivan Turgenev: Fathers and Sons
Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary
Henry James: "Daisy Miller"
Herman Melville: Moby Dick
Mark Twain: not there yet, but I'll come back to him some day
Virginia Woolf: A Common Reader or A Room of One's Own
George Orwell: 1984
Franz Kafka: "The Metamorphosis"
Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita
J. D. Salinger: 9 Stories
F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
William Faulkner: As I Lay Dying
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Isabel Allende: The House of the Spirits, but when was the last time I went out with Isabel? Portrait in Sepia? Or Ines of My Soul?
Milan Kundera: The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Elfriede Jelinek: my feeling about Jelinek is complicated
Toni Morrison: Beloved
Paulo Coelho: I fell in love (sort of), and fell out of love
Haruki Murakami: now enemies, I don't want to talk about it
Patrick Suskind: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Tuesday, 16 June 2015

Get out of the way, will you?; or George Eliot vs some other writers

Page 193 of Middlemarch:

"These were actually Lydgate's first meditations as he walked away from Mr Vincy's, and on this ground I fear that many ladies will consider him hardly worthy of their attention..."

Page 195:

"Poor Lydgate! or shall I say, Poor Rosamond!"

Page 196:

"If you think it incredible that to imagine Lydgate as a man of family could cause thrills of satisfaction which had anything to do with the sense that she was in love with him, I will ask you to use your power of comparison a little more effectively, and consider whether red cloth and epaulets have never had an influence of that sort. Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers, but, dressed in their small wardrobe of notions, bring their provisions to a common table and mess together, feeding out of the common store according to their appetite."

Then the narrative goes on, the author's presence is still felt on every page, but at least the "I" disappears or at least passes unnoticed. Then on page 224, chapter 20:

"Two hours later, Dorothea was seated in an inner room or boudoir of a handsome apartment in the Via Sistina.
I am sorry to add that she was sobbing bitterly, with such abandonment to this relief of an oppressed heart as a woman habitually controlled by pride on her own account and thoughtfulness for others will sometimes allow herself when she feels securely alone. And Mr. Casaubon was certain to remain away for some time at the Vatican."

Page 225:

"To those who have looked at Rome with the quickening power of a knowledge which breathes a growing soul into all historic shapes, and traces out the suppressed transitions which unite all contrasts, Rome may still be the spiritual centre and interpreter of the world. But let them conceive one more historical contrast: the gigantic broken revelations of that Imperial and Papal city thrust abruptly on the notions of a girl who had been brought up in English and Swiss Puritanism, fed on meagre Protestant histories and on art chiefly of the hand-screen sort; a girl whose ardent nature turned all her small allowance of knowledge into principles, fusing her actions into their mould, and whose quick emotions gave the most abstract things the quality of a pleasure or a pain; a girl who had lately become a wife, and from the enthusiastic acceptance of untried duty found herself plunged in tumultuous preoccupation with her personal lot..."

The narrator doesn't say "I", but she's addressing (some of) the readers.
Page 226:

"... Our moods are apt to bring with them images which succeed each other like the magic-lantern pictures of a doze..."

On the same page:

"Not that this inward amazement of Dorothea's was anything very exceptional: many souls in their young nudity are tumbled out among incongruities and left to "find their feet" among them, while their elders go about their business. Nor can I suppose that when Mrs. Casaubon is discovered in a fit of weeping six weeks after her wedding, the situation will be regarded as tragic. Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.
However, Dorothea was crying, and if she had been required to state the cause, she could only have done so in some such general words as I have already used: to have been driven to be more particular would have been like trying to give a history of the lights and shadows, for that new real future which was replacing the imaginary drew its material from the endless minutiae by which her view of Mr. Casaubon and her wifely relation, now that she was married to him, was gradually changing with the secret motion of a watch-hand from what it had been in her maiden dream..."

She's still there. Yes, she's still there.
Page 228:

"... How was it that in the weeks since her marriage, Dorothea had not distinctly observed but felt with a stifling depression, that the large vistas and wide fresh air which she had dreamed of finding in her husband's mind were replaced by anterooms and winding passages which seemed to lead nowhither? I suppose it was that in courtship everything is regarded as provisional and preliminary, and the smallest sample of virtue or accomplishment is taken to guarantee delightful stores which the broad leisure of marriage will reveal. But the door-sill of marriage once crossed, expectation is concentrated on the present. Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is not within sight—that, in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin."

Page 230:

"And by a sad contradiction Dorothea's ideas and resolves seemed like melting ice floating and lost in the warm flood of which they had been but another form. She was humiliated to find herself a mere victim of feeling, as if she could know nothing except through that medium: all her strength was scattered in fits of agitation, of struggle, of despondency, and then again in visions of more complete renunciation, transforming all hard conditions into duty. Poor Dorothea!..."

On page 232, George Eliot describes the 1st "argument" between Dorothea, now Mrs Casaubon, and her husband. He neglects her, noticing nothing. Dorothea feels useless, and betrays her feeling of anger. Here the intrusive narrator again speaks up:

"I fear there was a little temper in her reply."

I can't help thinking: Get out of the way, will you?
The problem is not so simple. It's not merely that the narrator constantly says "I" or addresses the readers or tries to evoke their sympathy by saying "we"/ "our"/ "us". It's not merely that the readers can see the author clearly on the page. Rather, it's the feeling that the whole book is a parable of sort, a story with a moral, told by George Eliot, an adult, to us children. Whilst telling the story, the adult comments on it, clarifies everything, keeps nothing subtle, lectures, moralises, directs our sympathy to the right people, explains for us who's good and who's bad and whom to like and whom to condemn, etc. George Eliot's description of what's going on in Mr Casaubon's mind doesn't create the impression (or illusion) of entering his mind; instead, it's still the voice of a person talking, talking to the readers.

"We are angered even by the full acceptance of our humiliating confessions—how much more by hearing in hard distinct syllables from the lips of a near observer, those confused murmurs which we try to call morbid, and strive against as if they were the oncoming of numbness!"

His thoughts and feelings are not presented for their own sake. They are there for a purpose:

"She was as blind to his inward troubles as he to hers; she had not yet learned those hidden conflicts in her husband which claim our pity."

I will not compare George Eliot to Flaubert. I've done that before. Tom at Wuthering Expectations has also done it.
Instead, I'll refer to another female writer: Jane Austen. People can think more highly of Jane Austen or George Eliot, depending not on enjoyment and preference but on their aesthetics. According to mine, Jane Austen is the superior artist, who has what Virginia Woolf calls an androgynous and incandescent mind which "consumes all impediments", who writes "without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching", who presents things as they are, who is serious but never moralistic, who doesn't let personal feelings interfere with her art. She's also the more serious artist, seen in the way she works with the form, innovates, makes fun of conventions, parodies certain kinds of novels (the sentimental novel and the Gothic novel), in later works reacts against what she has done in previous works, etc. whereas George Eliot seems to use fiction as a means to another (higher?) end. Jane Austen frequently uses the free indirect speech, which she perfects in Emma, but it's Mansfield Park that best shows her superiority. As Caroline wrote a while ago, if George Eliot had written Mansfield Park, she would have taken care to make Henry and Mary less fascinating and more shallow, she would have made sure that readers side with Fanny. Or she would have made Henry change into a better man, for Fanny, but that's another story.
George Eliot might be compared to Gogol and Tolstoy, who are not invisible. I'm thinking specifically of Dead Souls and War and Peace. The difference is that Gogol is only there in some of his digressions, and Tolstoy only appears in the essays on history and philosophy that he incorporates into his novel; neither let their private feelings and personal opinions distort their art, neither try to make the readers react and respond in a certain way, despite their didacticism. George Eliot does. That ruins her writing.
However, hopefully in the end I may, like Virginia Woolf, see Middlemarch as a great work in spite of its imperfections, a much better novel than Adam Bede and Daniel Deronda.

Wednesday, 8 April 2015

Anglicise Russian names! Anglicise them all!

European languages, you see, can have different variants of the same names, like Natasha in Russian is Natalie in French, Pyotr in Russian is Peter in English and Pierre in French, Katherine in English is Katerina in Russian...*
And we've got Leo Tolstoy**. So I'm thinking, what if we replace the names of some Russian authors with their English equivalents, just for fun?***
Consider Theodore Dostoyevsky
Michael Lermontov
Nicholas Gogol
John Turgenev
Anthony Chekhov
Nicholas Leskov
John Goncharov
John Bunin
Michael Bulgakov
Michael Sholokhov
Andrew Platonov
...
Ridiculous?

*: Personally I don't like the Maudes' decision to change Nikolai into Nicholas, Andrei into Andrew, Marya into Mary, etc. Why should anyone do that? Just to make the names easier? Luckily they keep Natasha. Don't you dare to replace Natasha with anything! Don't you dare!
**: You probably have noticed my stubborn insistence on saying Lev Tolstoy. I do so out of habit- in VN, because of the relations with the Soviet Union, people translated Russian works directly from the Russian originals and nobody ever called him Leo Tolstoy. Also, the name Leo makes me think of Leonardo da Vinci and Leonardo DiCaprio. And who knows if there's any other reason.
***: I'm not really questioning the use of the name Leo Tolstoy as some people do here and there in the internet. It's his choice. I'm just being silly.

Sunday, 15 March 2015

Top 10 favourite novels [updated]

Anna Karenina (Lev Tolstoy)
War and Peace (Lev Tolstoy)
Pnin (Vladimir Nabokov)
Notes from Underground (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

A Hero of Our Time (Mikhail Lermontov)

Dead Souls (Nikolai Gogol)
Mansfield Park (Jane Austen)
Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
Sentimental Education (Gustave Flaubert)

The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner)

Sunday, 4 January 2015

Russian Literature Challenge 2014: wrap-up

http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/04/russian-literature-2014-im-participating.html

Sunday, 14 December 2014

4 Gogol stories

I've finished reading another book by Gogol. This one is a collection of short stories, translated by Mary Struve, consisting of "Old-Fashioned Farmers", "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovich", "The Nose" and "The Overcoat".
- 1 link between the 1st and 2nd stories: both are about nothing and an exaggeration of nothing- in "Old-Fashioned Farmers", it's the changed behaviour of the cat; in "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovich", it's the gun and the word "goose". These 2 stories are too bizarre to be considered examples of realism (which makes me wonder how anybody can call Gogol a realist), but they're certainly more realistic than the other 2. The general plots don't matter, the characters do, especially in "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovich".
- 1 link between the 3rd and 4th stories: something like social satire- the obsession of Kovalyov in "The Nose" with ranks and titles (referring to himself always as a major, tolerating anything said about himself except what refers to rank or title, etc.), the absurd fact that the nose has a higher rank than Kovalyov, etc; the low social status, poverty and hardship of Akakii Akakievich in "The Overcoat", the importance of the overcoat (it becomes a life-changing event) and the absurdity of that, the depiction of the bureaucracy (the clerk, the superintendent and "the prominent personage", instead of trying to find the coat for Akakii Akakievich, interrogate him with irrelevant, insulting questions), the arrogance and disdain of "the prominent personage" (makes Akakii Akakievich wait outside just because he can, even though he's not busy), etc. However, I wouldn't call Gogol a social commentator. Look at the 1st 2 stories, for instance. The 3rd and 4th tales are too surreal, ambiguous and nuanced to be mere satires of Russian life and bureaucracy.
As Nabokov puts it, "At this superhigh level of art, literature is of course not concerned with pitying the underdog or cursing the upperdog. It appeals to that secret depth of the human soul where the shadows of other worlds pass like the shadows of nameless and soundless ships."
- 1 link between the 2nd and 3rd stories: extremely funny. "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovich": the conversation between Ivan Ivanovich and a beggar, the quarrel between the 2 Ivans, the petitions, etc. "The Nose": the scenes where Kovalyov runs into his nose, now in uniform, and where he talks to a clerk, who takes a pinch of snuff and wipes his nose and, as consolation for the disappearance of Kovalyov's nose, offers him some snuff.
"Old-Fashioned Farmers" is more melancholic, and "The Overcoat" is tragic. Akakii Akakievich is reminiscent of Herman Melville's Bartleby, copying making up almost the whole of his life; but unlike Bartleby, he enjoys his job and takes pleasure in copying and lets his job define him. He's a nonentity, a mere overcoat redefines him, becomes a life-changing event, makes people notice him and see him in a different way and then affects him even more deeply, as Akakii Akakievich goes to a party for the 1st time, then chases after some girl and apparently feels happiness for the 1st time, only to lose everything afterwards. Because the coat does affect Akakii Akakievich financially, mentally, emotionally, it cannot be dismissed as a nothing, an exaggeration of nothing, as in the case of the 1st 2 stories, even though to us it's only a coat. The coat stresses the penury and emptiness of Akakii Akakievich, who has no dream, no desire, no wish. The coat is the highest dream he can have, apparently the greatest thing he can achieve.
- 1 link that unites all these 4: life's going on normally, all of a sudden 1 small thing disrupts the whole pattern and causes disaster.
The style and characteristics of Gogol that I see in Dead Souls are found in all of these stories: a narrator who once in a while comments and who constantly messes with us, bizarre qualities, the focus on characters rather than plots and messages, seemingly irrelevant details, etc. He is a comic genius who has the ability to create art out of nothing, out of the most banal characters and details.

Monday, 8 December 2014

On volume 2 of Dead Souls: Gogol and Tolstoy

I've just read Nabokov's lecture on Dead Souls in Lectures on Russian Literature.
It will not be summarised, and should be read in full. However, there's 1 interesting point- for Nabokov, Dead Souls ends at volume 1, with Chichikov fleeing the town; volume 2 is a failure.
On my part, I don't think that the whole volume falls apart, but I do have some issues with the last chapter. Earlier I wrote, Gogol's not Tolstoy. And he's not. But there's 1 similarity- there are 2 Gogols as there are 2 Tolstoys, the artist and the preacher (Chekhov and Turgenev of course never preach; but such a dividing line, with constant conflicts between the 2 roles, I haven't seen in Dostoyevsky). In later years these 2 men were basically nuts. The difference is that Tolstoy, at his best, has balance and control, and, one can also say, sanity, and he's a realist- all the detailed descriptions add life and depth to the characters and the scenes and they all are connected so that his novels, loose as they appear, have a sense of wholeness. Gogol, in contrast, gets himself carried away by his imagination and streams of thought, crams a bunch of colourful characters into a rather thin book, fuses it with layers and layers of descriptions of irrelevant details and people who will never appear again... Dead Souls also has a sense of wholeness, but a different kind, everything fits together in their bizarre qualities and fits the overall pattern of the book. Gogol, at least according to what I perceive in Dead Souls, makes the best use of his own genius when setting himself free and getting carried away. Then he's being a pure artist. Once he wants art to have a purpose, once he turns into a moralist, a preacher, once he becomes conscious, rational and didactic, he somehow loses his touch. The persuasion, the intervention, the resolution, the speech, all of these feel slightly wrong. Note, in the previous post I wrote nothing about Kostanzoglo, Muzarov and the prince. It would be too harsh, and not entirely correct, to say that these 3 characters are there only to serve a moral purpose, but they lack something of the other characters, from Manilov, Sobakevich, Plyushkin, Korobochka and Nozdryov in volume 1 to Tentetnikov, Koshkarev, Khlobuev and Platonov in volume 2.
However, I should not exaggerate the failure of the last chapter in volume 2. The merits of the whole novel tremendously outweigh the faults, and this novel is a (flawed) masterpiece.

Ivan, Ivanovich, Ivanova...- Characters and characterisation in Dead Souls

Tom (Amateur Reader) at Wuthering Expectations describes Dead Souls as overpopulated.
That's very true. A few days ago I wrote that the plot of Dead Souls is unimportant. It feels even less important now, as though Chichikov's trip is hardly more than Gogol's excuse to have us meet a bunch of eccentric people.
In volume 1, we're introduced to:
1/ The main character, Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov
2/ Selifan, the coachman
3/ Petrushka, the lackey
4-6/ The governor, his wife and daughter
7/ Manilov
8/ Mikhailo Semyonovich Sobakevich
9/ The head magistrate Ivan Grigorievich
10/ Nozdryov
11/ The postmaster Ivan Andreevich
12/ The police chief Alexei Ivanovich
13/ The prosecutor
14/ The town mayor
15/ Manilov's wife Lizanka
16, 17/ Manilov's children Themistoclus and Alkides
18/ Natasya Petrovna Korobochka
19/ Mizhuev, Nozdryov's in-law
20/ Sobakevich's wife Feodulia Ivanova
21/ Plyushkin
22/ Ivan Antonovich, who deals with deeds
23, 24/ Sofya Ivanova and Anna Grigorievna, the 2 gossipy women
There are also 2 muzhiks who appear on the 1st page of the novel, the police chief's wife, the tutor of Manilov's children, the vice-governor, Fetinya and Pelageya- who work for Korobochka, the staff captain Potseluev, the lieutenant Kuvshinikov, Ponomaryov- who sells fake wine, a woman overcharging vodka, Porfiry and Pavluska- who work for Nozdryov, the district captain of police, Uncle Mityai and Uncle Minyai, Andryushka, Mikheev, Cork Stepan, Milushkin, Maxim Telyechnikov, Yeremey Sorokoplyokhin, a muzhik with an aptly uttered word, Plyushkin's oldest daughter Alexandra Stepanovna, Proshka and Mavra- who work for Plyushkin, Paramonov, Pimenov, Pantelimonov, Grigory Go-never-get, Father Carp and Father Polycarp, Pyotr Saveliev Disrespect- Trough, Elizaveta Sparrow, Yeremei Karyakin, Vitaly Dillydally and son Anton, Popov, Abakum Fyrov, attorney Zolotukha, inspector in the board of health Trukhachevsky, archpriest Kiril and son, Mikheych, Ilya Paramonych, the steward Pyotr Petrovich Samoilov, Mashka- Sofya Ivanova's servant, the assessor Drobyazhkin (local police force), Semyon Ivanovich- a man with a seal ring on index finger, Captain Kopeikin and the general, Derebin, Vakhramey, Likhachev, Perependev, Kifa Mokievich and son Moky, etc.
More to come in volume 2:
25/ Andrei Ivanovich Tentetnikov
26/ Teacher Alexander Petrovich
27/ Teacher Fyodor Ivanovich
28/ Fyodor Fyodorovich Lenitsyn, the head of department who makes Tentetnikov lose his job
29/ Barbar Nikolaych Vishnepokromov
30/ General Alexander Dmitrievich Betrishchev
31/ His daughter Ulinka
32/ Colonel Koshkarev
33/ Pyotr Petrovich Petukh
34, 35/ His sons Nikolasha and Alexasha
36/ Platon Mikhalych Platonov
37/ Konstantin Fyodorovich Kostanzhoglo
38/ His wife
39/ The tax farmer Afanasy Vassilyevich Muzarov
40/ Khlobuev
41/ Platon's brother Vassily
42/ Alexei Ivanovich Lenitsyn
43/ Chichikov's lawyer
44/ Khlobuev's wife
45/ Marya Yeremeevna, the rich woman that dies
46/ The prince
47/ Samosvistov, the friend that helps Chichikov
In the background we also have the butler Grigory and the housekeeper Perfilyevna, Tentetnikov's uncle Onyfry Ivanovich- a state councillor, countess Boldryev and princess Yuzyakin, Kozma, Little Foma and Big Foma, Denis- who work for Petukh, Emelyan and Antoshka, Khlobuev's aunt Alexandra Ivanovna Khanasarova, Kiryushka- works for Khlobuev and brings champagne, A. I. Lenitsyn's wife, former probate judge Burmilov and Khavanov, a muzhik who brings material to Kostanzhoglo, the merchant, the tailor, Ivan Potapych- who goes bankrupt, etc.
(The book is about 400 pages).
Terrified? Horrified? Petrified? Stupefied?
OK, I'm just messing with you. Writers have different ways to help us poor readers remember their characters. Tolstoy, for example, uses repetition- a few features, a few key phrases attached to each person. Gogol uses images and scenes, making the characters not only more distinctive and memorable but also more real. Take Manilov. We can cut him down to some words such as "sugary", "flatterer", etc. but he's brought to life through 3 scenes. 1st, Manilov and Chichikov stand at the door for a long time, each telling the other to go in. 2nd, they talk about the other people in town and praise everybody and continuously agree with each other. 3rd, they embrace and kiss each other for 5 minutes and get a toothache for hours afterwards. The 2nd scene mentioned here is contrasted with a later scene, in which Chichikov speaks in the same manner only to find Sobakevich criticising everybody. The personality and character of Sobakevich are manifested by 2 other scenes- 1st, he demands a ridiculously high price for his servants as though their excellence still matters after their death, and 2nd, he complains about having to pay in the future for never being sick his whole life.
Now take Tentetnikov, Platon and Khlobuev. All these 3 are incarnations of sloth, but they are totally different. Tentetnikov is a product of his 2 teachers, Alexander Petrovich, who emphasises on ambition and teaches his students to move forward, and Fyodor Ivanovich, who prioritises quiet, obedience and good conduct over everything else, so, funnily enough, he has aspirations but stands still and we remember him as a man sitting for hours every day doing nothing, pondering over his great project for Russia. Platon, also lazy and idle, is linked to the image of boredom and yawns, and juxtaposed with Pyotr Petrovich Petukh, the embodiment of hedonism and gluttony. Khlobuev, similar to Platon, sees his own faults, knows his life is disorder and deterioration, but has a weak will and never makes an effort to change- the 2 most memorable details of this character are the drinking of champagne in spite of debts and difficulties, and his wish, if he has money, to let his children learn dancing.
These scenes and details bring such strong images that they create a convincingness, a kind of reality for the characters, the actual people as well as the dead souls Chichikov imagines, staring at the list.

[This post is messy and incoherent, isn't it? Hard to be collected and clear after reading such a novel though. Now I need to clear my head. And like Dead Souls this post will end in...]

Tuesday, 2 December 2014

Dead Souls: "Our hero was very much concerned with his posterity"

Chapter 5, a scene of Chichikov escaping from Nozdryov's home. He already turns chicken.

"... 'Say what you like', he said to himself, 'if the police captain hadn't shown up, I might not have been granted another look at God's world! I'd have vanished like a bubble on water, without a trace, leaving no posterity, providing my future children with neither fortune nor an honest name!' Our hero was very much concerned with his posterity."

The same idea is repeated in chapter 11:

"... 'Why me? Why should the calamity have befallen me? [...] Why, then, do others prosper, and why must I perish like a worm? What am I now? What good am I? How will I look any respectable father of a family in the eye now? How can I not feel remorse, knowing that I'm a useless burden on earth, and what will my children say later? There, they'll say, is a brute of a father, he didn't leave us any inheritance!'
It is already known that Chichikov was greatly concerned with his posterity. Such a sensitive subject! A man would, perhaps, not be so light of a finger, were it not for the question which, no one knows why, comes of itself 'And what will the children say?'..."

Let's talk about morality. Chichikov doesn't believe in God and Hell (though he does talk of "God's world"). And definitely not karma. He doesn't really fear the punishment of the law. For his whole life he focuses more on creating relations with those who have power than on cultivating abilities, acts hypocritically, flatters others, uses people until they no longer have anything to take advantage of, cheats, lives dishonestly, takes bribes, etc. but feels no remorse, has no bad conscience, and justifies his actions "Who just sits and gapes on the job?- everybody profits. I didn't make anyone unhappy. I didn't rob a widow. I didn't send anyone begging, I made use of abundance, I took where anyone else would have taken, if I hadn't made use of it, others would have. Why, then, do others prosper, and why must I perish like a worm?..."
In short, he doesn't feel bad about anything. If people don't have a religion (consequences, judgement day), or a fear of the law (fear of being found out and punished, of losing all privileges), then they must have a set of principles of right and wrong, good and bad... in order to refrain from wrongdoings, but Chichikov has none of that. He has no system, no set of beliefs and principles but 1 thing: for his whole life, Chichikov lives for the future. As a young student, when others have fun and live as young, excited people, he pays attention to what the teacher wants, and does exactly that, wearing a mask of a quiet, obedient student with excellent conduct, only to get favours and opportunities later on, and then throws the teacher over. Then at work he starts courting the stern department chief and spends time and effort on the daughter, "whose face also looked as if the threshing of peas took place on it nightly", until getting what he wants, and he throws them over. Later, when he works as a customs official, he does things with zeal and efficiency, becomes a strict persecutor of falsehoods and accepts nothing other than his salary. If the novel were about his whole life and written in an absolutely detached tone, at this point we may think that Chichikov's a different man now. But no, he endures all that only to get promoted and have all power and authority for himself, and waits for something big, once and for all. Money and status and power are all that matter.
Chichikov has no fear of consequences, and if something befalls him, he can always find ways to get out of it, and start things again, only for the future.
In chapter 11, there's another quote:

"It is impossible, however, to say that our hero's nature was so hard and callous and his things were so dulled that he did not know either pity or compassion; he felt both the one and the other, he would even want to help, but only provided it was not a significant sum, provided the money he had resolved not to touch remained untouched; in short, the fatherly admonition 'Keep and save your kopeck' proved beneficial. But he was not attached to money for its own sake; he was not possessed by stinginess and miserliness. No, they were not what moved him: he pictured ahead of him a life of every comfort, of every sort of prosperity; carriages, an excellently furnished house, tasty dinners- this was what constantly hovered in his head. So as to be sure ultimately, in time, to taste all that- this was the reason for saving kopecks, stingily denied in the meantime both to himself and to others..."

This passage alone says everything you need to know about Chichikov.
Now, 1 question, raised by the narrator/ author: Don't we all find a bit of Chichikov in ourselves?

Sunday, 30 November 2014

The dead souls of Dead Souls

Lately I've been reading Dead Souls, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.
Writing about a book that has so much in it, is difficult.
The title, at the basic level, refers to the dead muzhiks that are not yet registered as dead. A man named Chichikov appears out of nowhere and arrives at the town of N. A short while later he starts buying dead souls. Chichikov is well liked, the deal is simple and advantageous for both sides, the people accepting his offer transfer the dead souls to him, get money, lose nothing and at the same time transfer all of the tax burdens to Chichikov. They simply have to keep the secret and act like the peasants are alive.
After some difficulties in persuading people, Chichikov successfully achieves the 1st step of his plan. Things appear to go well. As the whole town know he buys peasants, he tells stories of settlement and, when people spread the rumour that he may be a millionaire, he becomes more and more popular.
Until the secret is revealed. The whole town go mad- curious and puzzled and confused, people ask questions, look for answers, invent stories from nothing, spread rumours... No one questions the buying and selling of living human beings, but everyone goes mad when a strange man suddenly appears and acquires dead peasants, who clearly bring no profit, for reasons no one knows, everyone goes mad because it is mysterious, because nothing is known about Chichikov, because nobody knows what he needs the dead souls for and what is behind it all, because there are so many possibilities, because once people have an idea, however incredible, they give it flesh and make it plausible and complex, and cling to it and in the end believe in it themselves.
However it's not only that. Dead Souls is not a polemic, not a political novel, not a literary work depicting the unjust system in order to call for a social change. In fact Gogol's not even a realist. More importantly, the dead souls of the story are the living ones, the members of the town: the philistines, the flatterers, the liars, the cheats, the hypocrites, the small-minded, artificial, shallow people, the heartless misers, the opportunists, the vulgarians... They are depicted as banal and shallow from the start. They never go straight to the point in Russian, for instance, and instead use euphemisms, choose more polite, more genteel expressions... but once they start speaking French, they may use words and phrases that are a lot worse. As Chichikov arrives, they, empty as they are, quickly yield to his so-called charm, his flattery, his way of saying things people want to hear. Everyone likes him, everyone treats him as if they have been close friends for a long time, and once it is believed that he may be a millionaire, people throw heaps of favour on him. Does this sound like people's change of attitude towards Pierre in War and Peace? But Gogol is not Tolstoy. This is an absurd world, and the characters are grotesque- they are both individual (each with some exaggerated characteristics, like Manilov the flatterer, Sobakevich the greedy cynic, Nozdryov the cheat and big-mouthed liar, Mme Korobochka the paranoid idiot, Plyushkin the miser, etc.) and lumped together as a bunch of banal, conformist, empty people, and yet they have a strange quality of convincingness, or rather, Gogol has a way of telling the story and describing their characters and exploring their personalities and creates such strong images that makes us accept their existence in this bizarre world without questioning, without thinking of them as caricatures, in the negative sense of the word. They have no inner life, because they are indeed empty, and each blends with the space behind them, with their own house, their own furniture, etc.
The funniness of Dead Souls is increased when the town know Chichikov buys dead souls. Somehow, all the possibilities the members of the town think of, which start from nothing and get developed into intricate, detailed plans as though these people do know the truth, remind me of the debate surrounding Shakespeare. Little is known about him, and there are some periods in Shakespeare's life that are complete blank, about him we have almost nothing, then historians and scholars write biographies around nothing and develop so many theories about the real author that can never be proven definitely because there's not enough evidence. The little information people actually have, the more room for the imagination.
But then I've digressed.
Chichikov is a dead soul himself. At this point, I haven't finished volume I and don't know about his life before he comes to the town of N. But from the start, one can see that he praises and flatters everyone and has no opinion of his own. Then he creates a lie, tells others about it, imagines detailed plans as though they're real, brags, celebrates... almost to the point of believing in it himself. He has nothing, he is nothing.
It should be noted, the plot of Dead Souls is unimportant. The social, political ideas are unimportant. Whether it reflects Russia and the Russian soul is unimportant. Gogol, as I see here, is above all that. His art lies in the creation and depiction of this absurd world and all the people in it, lies in the way he tells the story, making it original, unexpected and bizarre, lies in the way he once having an idea gets carried away until the topic is exhausted but never seems to be off the track, lies in the flow of his prose and his vivid descriptions, lies in his strangeness and his unique vision, which makes him different from other giant Russian authors such as Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Chekhov, Leskov (though at 1st Gogol made me think of Leskov)... That's his greatness. And that's what matters.

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