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📘 Dead Souls

To the door of an inn in the provincial town of N. there drew up a smart britchka. That is the first sentence. The man inside is not over-fat and not over-thin, not over-elderly and not over-young. Two peasants at a dramshop argue only abou

3
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~15 min
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Adults
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What you’ll learn

  1. A britchka at the innState that the novel opens on an unnamed town's inn, that Chichikov buys revision-list names still taxed after death, and that Chapter VII registers them as a Kherson transfer.A middling gentleman at an inn. A police paper. A tax lag. Nearly four hundred names that start to have trades.
  2. Five sellersSeparate the four completed sales from Nozdryov's noise, and keep Plyushkin as the man mistaken for his own housekeeper.Manilov's bordered gift. Korobochka's price. Nozdryov does not sell. Sobakevich's craftsmen. Plyushkin's nightcap.
  3. Gossip, then the roadRead the scandal as collective fiction, the troika as an unanswered national image, and the 1852 burning as a reason not to import a sequel — then open Chapter I against Chapter VII tonight.Two pleasant ladies. Thick eyebrows. A troika nought can overtake. 1842 on the title page; 1852 in the stove.

Questions this course answers

What does Chichikov actually buy from the landowners?

Part I, Chapter VI: Plyushkin is still paying tax on a hundred and twenty souls since the last census revision. Chapter VII registers the names as a purchase for transfer to Kherson.

Match the landowner to what Hogarth actually puts on the page

Four sales make the Chapter VII total of nearly four hundred. Nozdryov is the noise, not a deed. Sobakevich is the one who writes trades beside the names.

Where does Chichikov tell the President the peasants are going?

Part I, Chapter VII. The company then toasts the new landowner of Kherson. The inner plan, in the Hogarth introduction and in Britannica, is that such a list can be mortgaged as living property.

Why should you not treat the novel as a finished story of Chichikov's redemption?

Britannica: he burned the presumably completed manuscript of the second volume on 24 February 1852 (11 February Old Style) and died ten days later. Modern editions print surviving chapters. They are not the moral architecture he promised.

In your own words, why is the scheme comic and also not a joke?

Chapter VI makes the tax lag explicit. Chapter VII makes the names legally movable. The satire is that the institutions already have a vocabulary for the fraud.

Grounded in trusted sources

  • Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls, translated by C. J. Hogarth. Project Gutenberg ebook 1081; Wikisource transcription of the same text. Part I, Chapter I: 'To the door of an inn in the provincial town of N. there drew up a smart britchka'; not over-fat / not over-thin; cabbage soup and a pie several weeks old; inquiries about Governor, Public Prosecutor, landowners' souls, and sickness; waiter reads 'Paul Ivanovitch Chichikov, Collegiate Councillor—Landowner—Travelling on Private Affairs.' Chapter VI: Plyushkin mistaken for the housekeeper — 'Are you blind, my good sir? I am the master.'; tax on a hundred and twenty souls since the last census revision; about seventy-eight runaways; twenty-five then thirty kopecks. Chapter VII: owner of nearly four hundred souls; highlander capers in Torzhok slippers; 'My friends, what a concourse of you is here?'; Elizabeta Vorobei; Manilov's list with a border and red riband; transferment to the province of Kherson; toast to the new landowner of Kherson. Chapter XI: Public Prosecutor's funeral and the thick eyebrows; father's kopeck injunction; 'And you, Russia of mine—are not you also speeding like a troika which nought can overtake?'; 'Whither, then, are you speeding, O Russia of mine?' John Cournos introduction in the same edition: census every ten or twenty years; tax on registered souls even if dead; an owner might borrow on dead souls no less than living ones; Chichikov meant to mortgage a fictitious list. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1081 and https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dead_Souls
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, Dead Souls. Novel by Nikolay Gogol, published in Russian as Myortvye dushi in 1842. Landowners must pay taxes on dead serfs until a new census has removed them from the tax rolls. Chichikov buys the dead serfs and mortgages them to acquire funds to create his own estate. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Dead-Souls
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, Nikolay Gogol. Dead Souls subtitled a 'poem'. He burned the presumably completed manuscript of the second volume of Dead Souls on 24 February (11 February Old Style) 1852; died ten days later, 21 February / 4 March 1852, Moscow. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nikolay-Gogol
  • Cover page of the first edition of Dead Souls, Moscow, 1842: The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls. A Poem by N. Gogol. Wikimedia Commons File:Dead Souls (novel) Nikolai Gogol 1842 title page.jpg, public domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dead_Souls_(novel)_Nikolai_Gogol_1842_title_page.jpg
  • Alexander Agin, illustrations for Dead Souls, 1846–47, including The Simply Pleasant Lady and The Lady Who Is Pleasant In All Respects, and the 1846 subscription poster for One Hundred Drawings from Gogol's Dead Souls. Wikimedia Commons File:Agin_damy.jpg and File:Alexander_Agin_003.jpg, public domain.

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