Dead Souls: A Novel

By Nikolai Gogol

Since its publication in 1842, Dead Souls has been celebrated as a supremely realistic portrait of provincial Russian life and as a splendidly exaggerated tale; as a paean to the Russian spirit and as a remorseless satire of imperial Russian venality, vulgarity, and pomp. As Gogol's wily antihero, Chichikov, combs the back country wheeling and dealing for "dead souls"--deceased serfs who still represent money to anyone sharp enough to trade in them--we are introduced to a Dickensian cast of peasants, landowners, and conniving petty officials, few of whom can resist the seductive illogic of Chichikov's proposition. This lively, idiomatic English version by the award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky makes accessible the full extent of the novel's lyricism, sulphurous humor, and delight in human oddity and error.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jun 22, 2011
• ISBN: 9780307797810

Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Gogol was a Russian novelist and playwright born in what is now considered part of the modern Ukraine. By the time he was 15, Gogol worked as an amateur writer for both Russian and Ukrainian scripts, and then turned his attention and talent to prose. His short-story collections were immediately successful and his first novel, The Government Inspector, was well-received. Gogol went on to publish numerous acclaimed works, including Dead Souls, The Portrait, Marriage, and a revision of Taras Bulba. He died in 1852 while working on the second part of Dead Souls.

Reviews for Dead Souls

[santhony_35 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I’ve read several novels by Russian authors, including Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Grossman, so I am familiar with the genre and have even been comfortable with the style and culture of the 19th century writers. While I was moderately entertained by parts of this work, I found it somewhat slower and more difficult to engage than some of the others I’ve read. Most disturbing, however, is the fact that in several places, large chunks of the original manuscript have been lost. To be reading along and suddenly come to a gap with the statement, “several pages of the original manuscript were lost”. This, along with an ending that was very much unresolved left me very unsatisfied. The story follows the adventures of a ne’er-do-well wanderer, Chichikov, who embarks on the project of acquiring title to deceased serfs for the purpose of pulling off his latest fraud. There are several interesting and comedic interactions between Chichikov and various estate owners. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the cons outweigh the pros in,this instance and I cannot recommend it. If you are looking for a 19th century Russian novel, read Crime and Punishment instead.

[jvioland_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a funny book. Bureaucratic foibles permit the collecting of the identities of the no-longer-living for profit.

[blake.rosser · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting without being captivating. Coming to the novel, I had expectations of satire and humor based on reading his short stories, but I had no idea how the book/story would take shape. It turns out that my expectations were met, as it was a very humorous and satirical volume with little in the way of story. Gogol's descriptions of the hypocrisy of the Russian nobility and life in provincial Russia are masterful. His observation of the reality beneath the surface was penetrating and scathing, and his manner of expressing it beautiful and poetic. That said, it got to be too much for me at times, and there wasn't enough plot to keep me really excited about picking the book up. I think it would have worked better as a short story, or perhaps in a larger context (for example, if he had completed the planned trilogy of which this book made up the first "Inferno" installment).

[la2bkk · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Gigol's work is essentially divided into two parts, and contains some of the best and worst aspects of 19th century Russian literature.The first section describes the exploits of Chichikov, a middle class Russian who gentleman arrives in a small town and attempts to purchase "dead souls" from local landowners as part of a scheme to live easily in the future. Part one is well written, interesting, and humorous as Gigol describes stereotypical landowners and officials with great style. Were the book to end here, I would have rated it very highly. Unfortunately, the section section, while continuing the story of Chichikov's adventures in a second town, is rambling, and mired in excessive detail and digression. One gets the impression that Gigol lost his direction and continued writing without a clear purpose.

[ramzartso-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved this book, especially the end, for some reason. This book creates an inimitable atmosphere.

[kirmuriel-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was so much fun! Maybe it was not the best translation, but it still managed to put across the author's style.
I felt like Chichikov was the Russian Sutpen, but more confident and calmed.
Normally stories begin telling the hero's life, but this one ended with it.
Schade dass the author burnt the second part.

[tjwilson_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a book to appreciate with a historical lens in front of the brain. There are tons of comedy cliches, and the plot drifts into weird ventures, often times committing that old niggle of "showing vs. telling." But, it's entertaining and definitely an interesting insight into Russian society and human nature itself. It's good enough to read and inspires enough curiosity to read the incomplete second volume which runs 150 or so pages.

[miketroll · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The novel affords fascinating insights into life in rural Russia in the 19th Century. The plot is amusing but even to outline it would be to give away too much.

[clurb · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Dead Souls suffers from being so incomplete and disjointed but the first half at least offers an amusing plot and some wonderfully crafted characters which together give an insight into Russian society at the time.

[kotwcs · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

At times sentimental, philosopical, melancholy, and hilarious, the book follows the adventures of Chichikov, a scoundrel who wants to become a man of class and stature. So, he begins a scheme to buy up the "dead souls" --those peasants who have died but whose landowners have not yet reported as dead--of the barons and lords in the Russian countryside, then passing them off as living, thus making Chichikov a landowner with many tenants. Hilarity ensues. Is it legal to sell dead souls? How much are they worth? Nothing? A great deal? This book is unfinished--Gogol was working on it when he died--and there are many holes and gaps towards the end, but it's a great book. Sometimes it's published as "Dead Souls"--but it's not dark at all. Gogol's gloomy thoughtfulness and spiritual morbidity come through sometimes, but in it he includes much hearty laughter--the sort that never issued from his own mouth during his lonely, miserable life.

[samchan_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In my effort to read more classics, Dead Souls was the perfect entry point back into the works of the Russian greats. Although I haven’t compared it to older translations, I found this one by Rayfield to be terrific. The language is easy to understand, but also manages to capture the poetics of prose wonderfully. Right off the bat, I was completely enchanted by the tone of the story as we follow our protagonist, Chichikov, around town as he goes about meeting with different landowners in a seemingly bizarre quest to buy their dead serfs, serfs whose deaths hadn’t yet been recorded by the tax authorities. Each encounter with these characters beats the previous encounter in terms of the surreal and absurd. We see how these landowners and government officials are silly, selfish, greedy, and corrupt, reflecting a society that’s become morally vapid. Gogol strings us along for a while before we find out the purpose of the dead souls, but instead of becoming impatient, I was happy to be strung along in a satire that has whimsy, a charming wink-wink tone, but also earnest exhortations to really examine the perilous path towards which society was headed.

Dead Souls in an unfinished manuscript and I was afraid that I’d be dissatisfied with the lack of true resolution at the end. Yet, even when the manuscript ends in the middle of a sentence, it luckily worked well. There’s a gathering in which a prince begins to issue a call to reform the nation, a kind of “call to arms.” The nation faces two choices (as does Chichikov, who gets punished and keeps getting second chances): to keep perpetuating the moral decay or turn over a new leaf. It seemed a very cinematic ending even though we don’t see which choice the nation (and Chichikov) opted for.

[wonderperson · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Gogol has some really important points to say but I found myself getting disinterested in it in parts despite it's potential to be a radical text.

[rincey_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It took me a while to chug through this one, but it definitely was worth a try. Some of the characters are hilariously ridiculous, which is what I think the highlight of the story is. I was kind of hoping for a slightly more exciting reason behind the collection of dead souls, but I did like the story overall.

[tzelman_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Pt. I good; Pt. II in fragments, unrewarding, pointless--perhaps worth another try since it's been 25 years since I read it

[xtien_9 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Imagine your a Russion nobleman but you're poor, you can't afford to own people. But you must own people in order to "count". So what you do is buy the papers of dead farmers, promising the previous owner to properly take care of the paperwork. At one point, a lady gets suspicious, suspecting that he makes money from these dead farmers, so she refuses to sell him her absolutely worthless dead farmers papers.The plot is brilliant, the writing is entertaining like most older Russion novels.

[john257hopper · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Despite its gloomy sounding title, this is actually quite funny on many levels, in terms of the verbal approaches Chichikov uses in order to deceive various landowners and make them give him money for the serfs who have died on their estates. At the same time, it is quite chilling in the casual assumptions of ownership over the lives and bodies of these serfs, treating them as so many possessions. I thought this book dragged slightly in the middle, but was mostly quite an easy read.

[jennyo_587543 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When you think of Russian novels, you probably think of doorstop weight ones like War and Peace or Crime and Punishment. Dead Souls feels downright slim compared to those. And considerably more lighthearted as well. It took me a long time to read the book, but that's not Gogol's fault; I've just had my mind on something else lately and have found it hard to concentrate on much of anything. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed this story of Pavlov Chichikov and his quest to buy dead souls from local landowners.The characters in this book and the situations in which Chichikov finds himself are a hoot. I think my favorite was Nozdrev, the compulsive gambler and liar, who ends up being the one to expose the truth about Chichikov to the community.I'd definitely read Gogol again, but I may save him until the future when I can pay a little closer attention to his work.

[hhornblower_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very enjoyable read. I con man travels throughout Russia, meeting along the way fawning officials, an idealist egalitarian, an extreme economic liberal and your average everyday hollow shell whose sole existence is to impress others. So in other words, very much a story that fits right at home with today's society. Not much has changed in almost 200 years.

[mattresslessness · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My reading history divides neatly along a pre-Gogol/post-Gogol line; this was the book that did it for me.

[alexrichman_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Just like Tolstoy, Gogol seems to revel in torturing the reader with agrarian strategies, but the book is punctuated with so many wicked asides and hilarious vignettes - the drafts cheat was my favourite - that I ploughed ahead and finally managed to finish it. Unlike Gogol.

[.monkey.-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I very much enjoyed this book. Gogol made me laugh out loud several times, and smile and chuckle on quite a few more occasions. His writing clearly demonstrates how intelligent and observant he was, along with his sharp wit. Gogol's style is very much his own, and I am eager to read more of his work.For some reason though, I had a very hard time getting sucked into this, even though I enjoyed it and never once thought anything truly negative about it. Hence my essentially leaving it aside for several months somewhat past the middle, before finally picking it back up and reading the last couple hundred pages. I really couldn't say why. I didn't find the pacing too slow, or really any fault with it. It just didn't grab me.That said, I would still highly recommend it to those who love a good classic. Even though it didn't grab me, it was surely an enjoyable read.

[hemlokgang · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I am sorry I had not read Gogol before now! His writing is a blend of Dostoevsky and Dickens. Absolutely hysterical characters manage to highlight a satiric view of Russian country life in the late 1800s. The protagonist, Chichikov, manages to persuade a variety of landowners to sell him the names of "dead souls" or workers who have died. Certainly Gogol was attempting to make a statement about the state of his nation and it is done with such satiric wit and wonderful prose! I think, perhaps, the best way to sum up this great piece of literature is by using a quote from one of the characters, "You must love us black, anyone can love us white." No person is blameless in this life!

[jddunn_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A rollicking, farcical road tale set in Russia in the first half of the 19th Century. Follows Chichikov, a petty bourgeois con man… a man who is “not too fat, and not too thin” in the words of the author, on a trip around the country to buy up “dead souls,” which are peasants who have died but are still counted as living until the next census happens. Chichikov hopes to make his fortune by charming lots of landowners into giving them away for nothing, and then mortaging them under new regulations that allow Russian landowners to mortage their estates to the treasury at roubles-to-the-soul. Gogol uses the misadventures of our antihero to paint a humorous and loving picture of Russian life in the first half of the 1800s. Kind of reminds me of Tristram Shandy.

[cammykitty · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lovely cynical romp through serf-filled Russia, especially if you enjoy portraits of despicable people.

[ctpress_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Here we are presented with the russian people - and russian temperament - in all its variety. All the different people our main character visits and presents his remarkable idea. To buy dead souls. We are left to guess what's going on here. I liked the beginning of the tale - but the revelation in the end and it's conclusion is not very surprising or rewarding. Not a book I will read again.

[diotima12_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The first book of "Dead Souls" is picaresque and wonderful, but the remnants of the second book are just outstanding. The depth displayed in the fragments of Book 2 elevate Gogol from a cheeky, vicious satirist to a real humanitarian artist.

[rickstill122 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I consider Gogol to be an artist first, and a writer second. It's hard to recommend him highly enough, but can we suffice it to say his fan club included Dostoyevsky, Bulgakov, Pushkin and Nabokov? I heard Mel Brooks raving about him in an interview once! I believe his four main powers as an artist are; 1) Pithy description and detail. Whether a character has a life span of eight chapters or four sentences, their image is indelible. 2) Living dialogue. The conversations of the many characters are sparkling with life. 3) A kaleidoscope of tones and voices. Fire and Brimstone Sermons, direct addresses, stand-up comedians, old fashioned yarn spinners, verbal landscape painters, whirling in a symphony of images and tones and voices. 4) The magical power to foreground both form and content simultaneously. Also, as with all the greatest literature, I suggest reading some passages out loud to truly feel the rhythm that only Gogol could establish in a novel that jumps from brilliant to goofy and sad to hilarious, as if they were all stones within leaping distance of each other across the swirling water of a creek. I suggest the Andrew R. MacAndrew translation.

[cbjames_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I started off last year reading another Russian novel, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevesky which ended up being one of my favorite reads of the year. (Dakota enjoyed the book as well. She ate it last July.) I had very little experience with Russian novels, other than the first two thirds of Anna Karinina I'd not read anything. Besides being an excellent pyschological thriller, Crime and Punishment is a very funny book. I was surprised by how funny it was. I'd always been led to believe that Russian novels were difficult stuff.Look at the cover of Dead Souls. Does it look funny to you? Dead souls? How could that be funny?Nicholai Gogol wrote one of my all-time favorite short stories, "The Nose", about a man whose nose runs out on him one day to lead a life that is much more exciting and glamorous than the life it led while a part of the man's face. It's difficult to get your nose back once it's found out how much fun it can have without you. It's a very funny story.Dead Souls is a very funny novel. The hero, Tchitchikov, is a "gentleman of the middling" sort without significant money or land. He develops a plan to become wealthy by buying up dead serfs. Serfdom in Russia was a form of slavery that lasted throughout much of the 19th century. When Gogol wrote Dead Souls the Russian government taxed landowners based on how many serfs they owned at the time of the most recent census. Since the census was only done once every ten years, if a serf died before the next census, the owner had to continue paying taxes on the 'dead soul' until it could be officially counted as dead. Tchitchikov intends to acquire as many dead souls as he can by taking them off the hands of their owners as a gracious act of kindness and then use them as collateral for a large bank loan. He'll then use the loan to purchase an estate with actual serfs on it. Unfortunately, everyone Tchitchikov encounters is immediately suspicious of his plan. They cannot figure out why he wants dead serfs but they suspect he is up to something and they all want in on it. No one will give him their dead serfs, some refuse to sell them outright, others force him to pay high prices for them. The pattern repeats in various forms as Tchitchikov travels from town to town, estate to estate, trying to explain how much money can be saved by avoiding the tax on dead serfs if only he can have them. Gogol intended to make Dead Souls the first part of a trilogy of books reflecting Dante's Divine Comedy. He burned all but five chapters of the second book before he died. Dead Souls is his only completed novel.The more you understand the subject matter, the better satire works, so I imagine that my lack of knowledge about Russian history kept me from getting all of the jokes in Dead Souls, but I enjoyed myself thoroughly none-the-less. Gogol's sense of humor is probably not for everyone, but it's right up my alley. He manages to point out the absurdity of his society without letting on how completely he is undermining it. Of course this is a man who wrote a story about a nose cutting out on a face just to spite it. And the next time someone mentions Russian novels, don't think depressing, don't thing dreary, think funny.

[soylentgreen23 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was recommended this book by a friend, and I'm very glad she did. It's a marvellous, though unfinished, study of Russian country society in the nineteenth century - their characters, their characteristics, their foibles and their concerns. Running through it all is the quest by the protagonist to purchase the so-called dead souls of each estate he passes through, so as to claim for a mortgage based on how many people he reports as his. It's all very clever, and twisted too, in that typically Russian way.

[mattviews · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.