Dead Souls

Dead Souls (, Mjórtvyje dúshi) is a novel by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842, and widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th-century Russian literature. The novel chronicles the travels and adventures of Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov (Russian: Павел Иванович Чичиков) and the people whom he encounters. These people typify the Russian middle aristocracy of the time. Gogol himself saw his work as an "epic poem in prose", and within the book characterised it as a "novel in verse". Gogol intended the novel to be the first part of a three-volume work, but burned the manuscript of the second part shortly before his death. Although the novel ends in mid-sentence (like Sterne's Sentimental Journey), it is regarded by some as complete in the extant form. Title The original title, as shown on the illustration (cover page), was "The Wanderings of Chichikov, or Dead Souls. Poema", which contracted to merely "Dead Souls". In the Russian Empire, before the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, landowners had the right to own serfs to farm their land. Serfs were for most purposes considered the property of the landowner, who could buy, sell or mortgage them, as any other chattel. To count serfs (and people in general), the classifier "soul" was used: e.g., "six souls of serfs". The plot of the novel relies on "dead souls" (i.e., "dead serfs") which are still accounted for in property registers. On another level, the title refers to the "dead souls" of Gogol's characters, all of which represent different aspects of poshlost (a Russian noun rendered as "commonplace, vulgarity", moral and spiritual, with overtones of middle-class pretentiousness, fake significance and philistinism). It is also described as a picaresque novel, a literary genre virtually non-existent in Russian literature of the times. Background Early 20th Century critics began to suggest the story contained elements that may have been inspired by Inferno of the Divine Comedy, but that idea has since diminished among scholars. "Gogol reveals to his readers an encompassing picture of the ailing social system in Russia after the unsuccessful French invasion. As in many of Gogol's short stories, the social criticism of Dead Souls is communicated primarily through absurd and hilarious satire." Unlike the short stories, however, Dead Souls was meant to offer solutions rather than simply point out problems.