The problem of the death of the human soul. Illness and death of the soul Souls dead and alive in N.V. Gogol’s poem “Dead Souls”

“This son of mine was dead” (Luke 15:22), the Gospel says about prodigal son. Mortification of this kind is invisible, but undoubted spiritual death. This is coldness towards faith and complete indifference to one’s afterlife fate.

Just as pain is no longer felt in a paralyzed hand, so in such a soul there is no longer any sympathy for anything spiritual. This condition occurs as a result of a long carefree life. Carefree, however, about her one spiritual side: about the soul, about eternity, about God, but at the same time unusually caring about her material part.

Therefore, at a young age, as a rule, there is no death of the soul. It is typical for elderly and even old people. It goes well with gentleness of character and a life that is impeccable in appearance, and is reconciled with any title, even spiritual. Mortification is a coldness already acquired by the soul, a constant quality of the soul.

For example, a person is convinced, advised, proven the benefits of faith in God, called to pray, confess, take communion; he listens, but doesn’t seem to understand anything, doesn’t contradict or even get angry, but just doesn’t seem to hear. Such a person, finding only emptiness in himself, lives entirely outside himself, in external, created things.

All the powers of his soul are directed only to the sinful, earthly, or at least to the vain. The mind is busy with a lot of knowledge, a lot of reading, curiosity; the emptiness of the heart is filled with worldly and social entertainment, worries about material things and other objects that delight his senses. The emptiness of the will is filled with many desires and striving for the vain.

But most of all, it is worthy of regret that such a person does not see the destruction of his spiritual state, does not feel any danger, and does not worry about responsibility for his sins. The thought of the need to change his life does not even occur to him. It often happens that those who are dead in spirit, but not obviously vicious, honor themselves and are considered sinless by others like them.

To get out of this extremely dangerous state, a person often needs a strong shock, intimidation and tenderness of the heart. To be touched at heart means to feel sorry for oneself in view of the terrible afterlife fate awaiting the unrepentant sinner.

Also, a cold heart will be warmed if a person begins to read the Gospel often, pray fervently, and think about the torments beyond the grave. But long-standing diseases are not quickly and easily cured. Likewise, the soul’s insensitivity to everything divine can only be healed after a considerable period of time.

The pinnacle of N.V. Gogol’s creativity was the poem “ Dead Souls" When starting to create his grandiose work, he wrote to Zhukovsky that “all of Rus' will appear in it!” Gogol based the conflict of the poem on the main contradiction of contemporary reality between the gigantic spiritual forces of the people and their enslavement. Realizing this conflict, he turned to the most pressing problems of that period: the state of the landowner economy, the moral character of the local and bureaucratic nobility, the relationship of the peasantry with the authorities, the fate of the people in Russia. Gogol’s poem “Dead Souls” displays a whole gallery of moral monsters, types that have become common nouns. Gogol consistently portrays officials, landowners and the main character of Chichikov's poem. Plot-wise, the poem is structured as the story of the adventures of Chichikov, an official who buys

"dead Souls".

Characteristics various types Almost half of the first volume of the poem is devoted to Russian landowners. Gogol creates five characters, five portraits that are so different from each other, and at the same time in each of them appear typical features Russian landowner. The images of the landowners whom Chichikov visits are presented in contrast in the poem, since they carry various vices. One after another, each spiritually more insignificant than the previous one, the owners of the estates follow in the work: Manilov, Korobochka, Nozdrev, Sobakevich, Plyushkin. If Manilov is sentimental and sweet to the point of cloying, then

Sobakevich is straightforward and rude. Their views on life are polar: for Manilov, everyone around them is beautiful, for Sobakevich they are robbers and swindlers. Manilov does not show real concern for the well-being of the peasants, for the well-being of the family; he entrusted all management to a rogue clerk, who ruins both the peasants and the landowner. But Sobakevich is a strong owner, ready to commit any scam for the sake of profit. Manilov is a careless dreamer, Sobakevich is a cynical fist-burner. Korobochka's callousness is manifested in petty hoarding; the only thing she cares about is the price of hemp and honey; “I wouldn’t go cheap” even when selling dead souls. The box reminds Sobakevich in its stinginess,

passion for profit, although the stupidity of the “clubhead” takes these qualities to a comical limit. The “accumulators”, Sobakevich and Korobochka, are opposed by the “spendthrifts” - Nozdryov and Plyushkin. Nozdryov is a desperate spendthrift and debauchee, a devastator and ruiner of the economy. His energy turned scandalous

vanity, aimless and destructive.

If Nozdryov threw away his entire fortune, then Plyushkin turned his into mere appearance. That the last line Gogol shows, to which the death of the soul can lead a person, using the example of Plyushkin, whose image completes the gallery of landowners. This hero is no longer so much funny as scary and pitiful, since, unlike previous characters, he loses not only his spirituality, but also his human appearance. Chichikov, seeing him, wonders for a long time whether it is a man or a woman, and finally decides that the housekeeper is in front of him. And yet he is a landowner, the owner of more than a thousand souls and huge storerooms.

True, in these storerooms bread rots, flour turns into stone, cloth and linens turn into dust. No less creepy picture appears in the manor’s house, where everything is covered with dust and cobwebs, and in the corner of the room “there is a heap of things that are coarser and that are unworthy to lie on the tables. What exactly was in this

heap, it was difficult to decide,” just as it was difficult to “get to the bottom of what... the robe” of the owner was made from. How did it happen that the rich educated person, the nobleman has turned into a “tear in humanity”? To answer this question. Gogol turns to the hero's past. (He writes about the rest of the landowners as already formed types.) The writer very accurately traces the degradation of man, and the reader understands that man is not born a monster, but becomes one. This means that this soul could live! But Gogol notes that over time, a person submits himself to the prevailing laws in society and betrays the ideals of his youth.

All Gogol's landowners are bright, individual, and memorable characters. But with all their external diversity, the essence remains unchanged: while possessing living souls, they themselves have long ago turned into dead souls. We do not see the true movements of a living soul either in an empty dreamer, or in a strong-minded housewife, or in a “cheerful boor,” or in a landowner-fist who looks like a bear. All this is just an appearance with a complete absence spiritual content That's why these heroes are funny. Convincing the reader that his landowners are not exceptional, but typical, the writer also names other nobles, even characterizing them by their last names: Svinin, Trepakin, Blokhin, Potseluev, Bespechny, etc.

Gogol shows the reason for the death of a person’s soul using the example of the formation of the character of the main character, Chichikov. A joyless childhood, deprived of parental love and affection, service and the example of bribe-taking officials - these factors formed a scoundrel who is like everyone around him.

But he turned out to be more greedy in his pursuit of acquisitions than Korobochka, more callous than Sobakevich and more impudent than Nozdryov in the means of enrichment. In the final chapter, which completes Chichikov’s biography, he is finally exposed as a cunning predator, acquirer and entrepreneur of the bourgeois type, a civilized scoundrel, the master of life. But Chichikov, differing from the landowners in his entrepreneurial spirit, is also a “dead” soul. The “brilliant joy” of life is inaccessible to him. Happiness " decent person» Chichikov is based on money. Calculation has driven out all human

feelings and made him a “dead” soul. Gogol shows the emergence in Russian life of a new person who has neither noble family, no title, no estate, but who, at the cost of his own efforts, thanks to his intelligence and resourcefulness, is trying to make a fortune for himself. His ideal is a penny; They see marriage as a profitable deal. His preferences and tastes are purely material. Having quickly figured out a person, he knows how to approach everyone in a special way, subtly calculating his moves. Internal diversity, elusiveness

is also emphasized by his appearance, described by Gogol in vague terms: “There was a gentleman sitting in the chaise, neither too fat nor too thin, one cannot say that he was old, but not that he was too young.” Gogol was able to discern in his contemporary society the individual features of the emerging type and brought them together in the image of Chichikov. NN city officials are even more impersonal than the landowners. Their deadness is shown in the ball scene: no people are visible, muslins, satins, muslins, hats, tailcoats, uniforms, shoulders, necks, ribbons are everywhere. The whole interest of life is concentrated on gossip, gossip, petty vanity, envy. They differ from each other only in the size of the bribe; all are slackers, they have no interests, these are also “dead” souls.

But behind the “dead” souls of Chichikov, officials and landowners, Gogol saw the living souls of the peasants, the strength national character. According to A.I. Herzen, in Gogol’s poem “behind the dead souls - living souls” appear. The talent of the people is revealed in the dexterity of the coachman Mikheev,

shoemaker Telyatnikov, brickmaker Milushkin, carpenter Stepan Probka. The strength and acuity of the people's mind is reflected in the glibness and accuracy of the Russian word, the depth and integrity of Russian feeling - in the sincerity of the Russian song, the breadth and generosity of the soul - in the brightness and unbridled fun national holidays. Unlimited dependence on the usurper power of the landowners, who condemn the peasants to forced, exhausting labor, to hopeless ignorance, gives rise to stupid Mityaevs and Minyaevs, downtrodden Prosheks and Pelageyas, who do not know “where is right and where is left,” submissive, lazy, depraved Petrushkas and

Selifanov. Gogol sees how high and good qualities are distorted in the kingdom of “dead” souls, how peasants die, driven to despair, rushing into any risky business, just to get out of serfdom.

Not finding the truth from the supreme authorities, Captain Kopeikin, helping himself, becomes the chieftain of the robbers. “The Tale of Captain Kopeikin” reminds the authorities of the threat of revolutionary rebellion in Russia.

Feudal deadness destroys the good inclinations in a person and destroys the people. Against the backdrop of the majestic, endless expanses of Rus' real pictures Russian life seems especially bitter. Having depicted Russia “from one side” in its negative essence in the poem, in “stunning pictures

triumphant evil and suffering hatred,” Gogol once again convinces that in his time “it is impossible to otherwise direct society or even an entire generation towards the beautiful until you show the full depth of its real abomination.”

V. G. Belinsky called N. V. Gogol’s poem “Dead Souls” “a creation snatched from a hiding place folk life, a creation profound in thought, social, social and historical. You had to be a poet to write such a poem in prose... a Russian national poet in every way

space of this word." Neither in a story, nor in a novel, nor in a novel can the author so freely intrude his “I” into the course of the narrative. Digressions organically introduced into the text help the author touch on various problems and aspects of life, make more full description heroes of the poem.

The theme of patriotism and literary duty is further developed at the end of the poem, where Gogol explains why he considers it necessary to show evil and expose vices. As proof, the author cites the story of Kif Mokievich and Mokiya Kifovich, exposing those writers who do not want to paint harsh reality, who “turned a virtuous man into a horse, and there is no writer who would not ride him, urging him with a whip and everything with which it's horrible."

Closely related to the theme of writer's duty and patriotism lyrical digressions the author about Russia and the people. With amazing depth, Gogol depicts the gray, vulgar feudal reality, its poverty and backwardness. Tragic fate people is especially reliably highlighted in the images of serfs and tavern servants.

Drawing the image of the runaway peasant Abakum Fyrov, who loved a free life. Gogol shows a freedom-loving and broad nature, which does not put up with the oppression and humiliation of serfdom, preferring the difficult but free life of a barge hauler. Gogol created a truly heroic image of a Russian hero, which has a symbolic character. Russia of “dead souls”, always snacking, playing cards, gossiping and building its well-being on abuse. Gogol contrasts lyrical image people's Rus'. Throughout the entire poem, the affirmation of the common people as its positive hero merges with the glorification of the Motherland, with the expression of patriotic judgments. The writer praises the “lively and lively Russian mind”, its extraordinary ability for verbal expressiveness, daring, ingenuity, and love of freedom. When the author turns to images and themes of people's life, to the dream of the future of Russia, sad notes, a soft joke, and genuine lyrical animation appear in the author's speech. The writer expressed his deep hope that Russia will rise to greatness and glory. In the poem, Gogol acted as a patriot, in whom faith lives in the future of Russia, where there will be no Sobakevichs, Nozdryovs, Chichikovs, Manilovs... Depicting in the poem

in parallel there are two Russias: local-bureaucratic and popular. Gogol in last chapter“pushed” them and thereby once again showed their hostility. A fiery lyrical digression about love and homeland, about the recognition of its great future: “Rus! Rus'!.. But what incomprehensible, secret power attracts you?.. What does this vast expanse prophesy?.. Rus'!...” - is interrupted by the rude shout of the courier, galloping towards Chichikov’s britzka: “Here I am with a broadsword!..” Thus, Gogol’s beautiful dream and the ugly autocratic reality surrounding him met and passed each other. An important role in

the poem plays on the image of the road. First it's a symbol human life. Gogol perceives life as a difficult path, full of hardships, at the end of which cold, unpleasant loneliness awaits him. However, the writer does not consider it aimless; he is full of consciousness of his duty to the Motherland. The road is the compositional core of the narrative. Chichikov's chaise is a symbol of the monotonous whirling of the soul of a Russian man who has lost his way. And the country roads along which this chaise travels are not only

a realistic picture of Russian off-road, but also a symbol of a crooked path national development. “The Troika Bird” and its rapid growth are contrasted with Chichikov’s chaise and its monotonous circling off-road from one landowner to another. “Bird-three” - a symbol of the national element

Russian life, a symbol of the great path of Russia on a global scale.

But this road is no longer the life of one person, but the fate of the entire Russian state. Rus' itself is embodied in the image of a troika bird flying into the future: “Eh, troika! bird three, who invented you? to know, you could only have been born among a lively people, in that land that does not like to joke, but has been scattered evenly across half the world.

Aren't you, too, Rus, so lively? unstoppable threesome rushing?.. and rushing, all inspired by God!.. Rus', where are you rushing? Give an answer. It doesn’t give an answer... everything that is on earth flies by... and other peoples and states give way to it.”

Literature

Answer to ticket number 12

Souls dead and alive in the poem by N.V. Gogol “Dead Souls”.

1. The main conflict of the poem by N.V. Gogol “Dead Souls”.

2. Characteristics of various types of landowners. Dead souls:

Manilov;

Sobakevich;

Box;

Nozdrev;

Plyushkin.

3. The image of Chichikov.

4. Living souls are the embodiment of the talent of the people.

5. The moral degradation of the people is the result of the moral emptiness of society.

1. The pinnacle of creativity N.V. Gogol's poem “Dead Souls”. When starting to create his grandiose work, he wrote to Zhukovsky that “all of Rus' will appear in it!” Gogol based the conflict of the poem on the main contradiction of contemporary reality between the gigantic spiritual forces of the people and their enslavement. Realizing this conflict, he turned to the most pressing problems of that period: the state of the landowner economy, the moral character of the local and bureaucratic nobility, the relationship of the peasantry with the authorities, the fate of the people in Russia. Gogol’s poem “Dead Souls” displays a whole gallery of moral monsters, types that have become household names. Gogol consistently portrays officials, landowners and the main character of Chichikov's poem. Plot-wise, the poem is structured as the story of the adventures of Chichikov, an official who buys “dead souls.”

2. Almost half of the first volume of the poem is devoted to the characteristics of various types of Russian landowners. Gogol creates five characters, five portraits that are so different from each other, and at the same time, in each of them the typical features of a Russian landowner appear. The images of the landowners whom Chichikov visits are presented in contrast in the poem, since they carry various vices. One after another, each spiritually more insignificant than the previous one, the owners of the estates follow in the work: Manilov, Korobochka, Nozdrev, Sobakevich, Plyushkin. If Manilov is sentimental and sweet to the point of cloying, then Sobakevich is straightforward and rude. Their views on life are polar: for Manilov, everyone around them is beautiful, for Sobakevich they are robbers and swindlers. Manilov does not show real concern for the well-being of the peasants, for the well-being of the family; he entrusted all management to a rogue clerk, who ruins both the peasants and the landowner. But Sobakevich is a strong owner, ready to engage in any scam for the sake of profit. Manilov is a careless dreamer, Sobakevich is a cynical fist-burner. Korobochka's callousness is manifested in petty hoarding; the only thing that worries her is the price of hemp and honey; “I wouldn’t go cheap” when selling dead souls. Korobochka resembles Sobakevich in his stinginess and passion for profit, although the stupidity of the “clubhead” takes these qualities to a comical limit. “Accumulators”, Sobakevich and Korobochka, are opposed by “spendthrifts” - Nozdryov and Plyushkin. Nozdryov is a desperate spendthrift and debauchee, a devastator and ruiner of the economy. His energy turned into a scandalous bustle, aimless and destructive.

If Nozdryov threw away his entire fortune, then Plyushkin turned his into mere appearance. Gogol shows the final point to which the death of the soul can lead a person using the example of Plyushkin, whose image completes the gallery of landowners. This hero is no longer so much funny as scary and pitiful, since, unlike previous characters, he loses not only his spirituality, but also his human appearance. Chichikov, seeing him, wonders for a long time whether it is a man or a woman, and finally decides that the housekeeper is in front of him. And yet he is a landowner, the owner of more than a thousand souls and huge storerooms. True, in these storerooms bread rots, flour turns into stone, cloth and linens turn into dust. A no less terrible picture appears in the manor’s house, where everything is covered with dust and cobwebs, and in the corner of the room “heaps of things that are rougher and that are unworthy to lie on the tables are piled up. It was difficult to decide what exactly was in this pile,” just as it was difficult to “get to the bottom of what... the robe” of the owner was made from. How did it happen that a rich, educated man, a nobleman turned into a “hole in humanity”? To answer this question. Gogol turns to the hero's past. (He writes about the rest of the landowners as already formed types.) The writer very accurately traces the degradation of man, and the reader understands that man is not born a monster, but becomes one. This means that this soul could live! But Gogol notes that over time, a person submits himself to the prevailing laws in society and betrays the ideals of his youth.

All Gogol's landowners are bright, individual, and memorable characters. But with all their external diversity, the essence remains unchanged: while possessing living souls, they themselves have long ago turned into dead souls. We do not see the true movements of a living soul either in the empty dreamer, or in the strong-minded housewife, or in the “cheerful boor,” or in the bear-like landowner-fist. All this is just an appearance with a complete lack of spiritual content, which is why these heroes are funny. Convincing the reader that his landowners are not exceptional, but typical, the writer also names other nobles, even characterizing them by their last names: Svinin, Trepakin, Blokhin, Potseluev, Bespechny, etc.

3. Gogol shows the reason for the death of a person’s soul using the example of the formation of the character of the main character, Chichikov. A joyless childhood, deprived of parental love and affection, service and the example of bribe-taking officials - these factors formed a scoundrel who is like everyone around him. But he turned out to be more greedy in his pursuit of acquisitions than Korobochka, more callous than Sobakevich and more impudent than Nozdryov in the means of enrichment. In the final chapter, which completes Chichikov’s biography, he is finally exposed as a cunning predator, acquirer and entrepreneur of the bourgeois type, a civilized scoundrel, the master of life. But Chichikov, differing from the landowners in his entrepreneurial spirit, is also a “dead” soul. The “brilliant joy” of life is inaccessible to him. The happiness of the “decent man” Chichikov is based on money. Calculation crowded out all human feelings from him and made him a “dead” soul. Gogol shows the emergence of a new man in Russian life, who has neither a noble family, nor title, nor estate, but who, at the cost of his own efforts, thanks to his intelligence and resourcefulness, is trying to make a fortune for himself. His ideal is a penny; They see marriage as a profitable deal. His preferences and tastes are purely material. Having quickly figured out a person, he knows how to approach everyone in a special way, subtly calculating his moves. The inner versatility and elusiveness are emphasized by his appearance, described by Gogol in vague terms: “There was a gentleman sitting in the chaise, neither too fat nor too thin, one cannot say that he was old, but not that he was too young.” Gogol was able to discern in his contemporary society the individual features of the emerging type and brought them together in the image of Chichikov. NN city officials are even more impersonal than the landowners. Their deadness is shown in the ball scene: no people are visible, muslins, satins, muslins, hats, tailcoats, uniforms, shoulders, necks, ribbons are everywhere. The whole interest of life is concentrated on gossip, gossip, petty vanity, envy. They differ from each other only in the size of the bribe; all are slackers, they have no interests, these are also “dead” souls.

4. But behind the “dead” souls of Chichikov, officials and landowners, Gogol discerned the living souls of the peasants, the strength of national character. According to A.I. Herzen, in Gogol’s poem “behind the dead souls - living souls” appear. The talent of the people is revealed in the dexterity of the coachman Mikheev, the shoemaker Telyatnikov, the brickmaker Milushkin, and the carpenter Stepan Probka. The strength and acuity of the people's mind was reflected in the glibness and accuracy of the Russian word, the depth and integrity of Russian feeling - in the sincerity of the Russian song, the breadth and generosity of the soul - in the brightness and unbridled joy of folk holidays. Unlimited dependence on the usurper power of the landowners, who condemn the peasants to forced, exhausting labor, to hopeless ignorance, gives rise to stupid Mityaevs and Minyaevs, downtrodden Prosheks and Pelageyas, who do not know “where is right and where is left,” submissive, lazy, depraved Petrushkas and Selifans. Gogol sees how high and good qualities are distorted in the kingdom of “dead” souls, how peasants die, driven to despair, rushing into any risky business, just to get out of serfdom.

5. Serf-like deadness destroys the good inclinations in a person and destroys the people. Against the backdrop of the majestic, endless expanses of Rus', real pictures of Russian life seem especially bitter. Having depicted Russia “from one side” in its negative essence, in “stunning pictures of triumphant evil and suffering hatred,” Gogol once again convinces that in his time “it is impossible otherwise to direct society or even an entire generation towards the beautiful until you show all the depth of its true abomination.”

15. “Dead Souls” by Gogol: poetics; controversy in literary criticism.

“Dead Souls” is a work in which, according to Belinsky, all of Rus' appeared.

Plot and compositiontion of "Dead Souls" 1835-1941 are determined by the subject of the image - Gogol’s desire to comprehend Russian life, the character of the Russian person, the fate of Russia. It's about about a fundamental change in the subject of the image compared to the literature of the 20-30s: the artist’s attention is transferred from the image of an individual to a portrait of society. In other words, the novelistic aspect of the genre content (depiction of the private life of an individual) is replaced by a moral descriptive one (portrait of society at the non-heroic moment of its development). Therefore, Gogol is looking for a plot that would provide the widest possible coverage of reality. The plot of the trip opened up such an opportunity: “Pushkin found that the plot of Dead Souls was good for me because,” Gogol said, “it gives complete freedom to travel all over Russia with the hero and bring out many different characters.” Therefore, the motive of movement, roads, the path turns out to be the leitmotif of the poem. This motif receives a completely different meaning in the famous lyrical digression of the eleventh chapter: the road with a rushing chaise turns into the path along which Rus' flies, “and, looking askance, other peoples and states turn aside and give way to it.” This leitmotif also contains the unknown paths of Russian national development: “Rus', where are you going, give me an answer? It doesn’t give an answer.” The image of the road embodies both the hero’s everyday path (“but for all that his road was difficult...”) and the author’s creative path: “And for a long time it was determined for me by the wonderful power to walk hand in hand with my strange heroes...”.

The plot of the journey gives Gogol the opportunity to create galleryimages of landowners. At the same time, the composition looks very rational: the exposition of the plot of the journey is given in the first chapter (Chichikova meets officials and some landowners, receives invitations from them), followed by five chapters in which the landowners “sit”, and Chichikov travels from chapter to chapter, buying up dead souls.

Gogol in Dead Souls, as in The Inspector General, creates absurd artisticnew world, in which people lose their human essence and turn into a parody of the possibilities inherent in them by nature. In an effort to detect signs of death in characters, loss of spirituality (soul), Gogol resorts to using household detailing. Each landowner is surrounded by many objects that can characterize him. Details associated with certain characters not only live autonomously, but also “add up” into a kind of motive. The images of the landowners whom Chichikov visits are presented in contrast in the poem, since they carry various vices. One after another, each spiritually more insignificant than the previous one, the owners of the estates follow in the work: Manilov, Korobochka, Nozdrev, Sobakevich, Plyushkin. If Manilov is sentimental and sweet to the point of cloying, then Sobakevich is straightforward and rude. Their views on life are polar: for Manilov, everyone around them is beautiful, for Sobakevich they are robbers and swindlers. Manilov does not show real concern for the well-being of the peasants, for the well-being of the family; he entrusted all management to a rogue clerk, who ruins both the peasants and the landowner. But Sobakevich is a strong owner, ready to commit any scam for the sake of profit.

Korobochka's callousness is manifested in petty hoarding; the only thing she cares about is the price of hemp and honey; “I wouldn’t go cheap” even when selling dead souls. Korobochka resembles Sobakevich in his stinginess and passion for profit, although the stupidity of the “clubhead” takes these qualities to a comical limit. The “accumulators”, Sobakevich and Korobochka, are opposed by the “spendthrifts” - Nozdryov and Plyushkin. Nozdryov is a desperate spendthrift and debauchee, a devastator and ruiner of the economy. His energy turned into a scandalous bustle, aimless and destructive.

The reason for the death of the human soul Gogol shows by the example of the formation of the character of the main character - Chichikova. A joyless childhood, deprived of parental love and affection, service and the example of bribe-taking officials - these factors formed a scoundrel who is like everyone around him.

But he turned out to be more greedy in his pursuit of acquisitions than Korobochka, more callous than Sobakevich and more impudent than Nozdryov in the means of enrichment. In the final chapter, which completes Chichikov’s biography, he is finally exposed as a cunning predator, acquirer and entrepreneur of the bourgeois type, a civilized scoundrel, the master of life. But Chichikov, differing from the landowners in his entrepreneurial spirit, is also a “dead” soul. The “brilliant joy” of life is inaccessible to him. The happiness of the “decent man” Chichikov is based on money. Calculation crowded out all human feelings from him and made him a “dead” soul.

Gogol shows the emergence of a new man in Russian life, who has neither a noble family, nor title, nor estate, but who, at the cost of his own efforts, thanks to his intelligence and resourcefulness, is trying to make a fortune for himself. His ideal is a penny; They see marriage as a profitable deal. His preferences and tastes are purely material. Having quickly figured out a person, he knows how to approach everyone in a special way, subtly calculating his moves. His inner diversity and elusiveness are also emphasized by his appearance, described by Gogol in vague terms: “There was a gentleman sitting in the chaise, neither too fat nor too thin, one cannot say that he was old, but not that he was too young.” Gogol was able to discern in his contemporary society the individual features of the emerging type and brought them together in the image of Chichikov. NN city officials are even more impersonal than the landowners. Their deadness is shown in the ball scene: no people are visible, muslins, satins, muslins, hats, tailcoats, uniforms, shoulders, necks, ribbons are everywhere. The whole interest of life is concentrated on gossip, gossip, petty vanity, envy. They differ from each other only in the size of the bribe; all are slackers, they have no interests, these are also “dead” souls.

But behind the “dead” souls of Chichikov, officials and landowners, Gogol discerned the living souls of the peasants, the strength of national character. According to A.I. Herzen, in Gogol’s poem “behind the dead souls - living souls” appear. The talent of the people is revealed in the dexterity of the coachman Mikheev, the shoemaker Telyatnikov, the brickmaker Milushkin, and the carpenter Stepan Probka. The strength and acuity of the people's mind was reflected in the glibness and accuracy of the Russian word, the depth and integrity of Russian feeling - in the sincerity of the Russian song, the breadth and generosity of the soul - in the brightness and unbridled joy of folk holidays. Unlimited dependence on the usurper power of the landowners, who condemn the peasants to forced, exhausting labor, to hopeless ignorance, gives rise to stupid Mityaev and Minyaev, downtrodden Proshek and Pelageya, who do not know “where is right and where is left. Gogol sees how high and good qualities are distorted in the kingdom of “dead” souls, how peasants die, driven to despair, rushing into any risky business, just to get out of serfdom.

Feudal deadness destroys the good inclinations in a person and destroys the people. Against the backdrop of the majestic, endless expanses of Rus', real pictures of Russian life seem especially bitter. Having depicted Russia “from one side” in its negative essence, in “stunning pictures of triumphant evil and suffering hatred” in the poem, Gogol once again convinces that in his time “it is impossible otherwise to direct society or even an entire generation towards the beautiful until you show all the depth of its true abomination."

Controversy in Russian criticism around Gogol's Dead Souls.

Konstantin Aksakov was rightly considered “the foremost fighter of Slavophilism” (S.A. Vengerov). Contemporaries remembered his youthful friendship with Belinsky in Stankevich’s circle and then his sharp break with him. A particularly violent clash between them occurred in 1842 over “Dead Souls.”

K. Aksakov wrote a brochure “Nothow many words about Gogol’s poem “The Adventures of Chichikov, or Merthigh souls" (1842). Belinsky, who also responded (in Otechestvennye zapiski) to Gogol's work, then wrote a review of Aksakov's pamphlet full of bewilderment. Aksakov responded to Belinsky in the article “Explanation about Gogol’s poem “The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls” (“Moskvityanin”). Belinsky, in turn, wrote a merciless analysis of Aksakov’s answer in an article entitled “An explanation for an explanation regarding Gogol’s poem “The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls.”

Obfuscating the significance of realism and satire in Gogol’s work, Aksakov focused on the subtext of the work, its genre designation as a “poem,” and the prophetic statements of the writer. Aksakov built an entire concept in which, in essence, Gogol was declared the Homer of Russian society, and the pathos of his work was seen not in the denial of existing reality, but in its affirmation.

In the subsequent history of European literature, Homer’s epic lost its important features and became smaller, “descending to novels and, finally, to the extreme degree of its humiliation, to the French story.” And suddenly, Aksakov continues, an epic appears with all the depth and simple grandeur, like the “poem” of Gogol among the ancients. The same deeply penetrating and all-seeing epic gaze, the same all-encompassing epic contemplation. In vain then, in polemics, Aksakov argued that he had no direct comparison between Gogol and Homer, Kuleshov believes.

Aksakov pointed to the internal quality of Gogol’s own talent, which strives to connect all the impressions of Russian life into harmonious, harmonious pictures. We know that Gogol had such a subjective desire and, abstractly speaking, Slavophil criticism correctly pointed to it. But this observation was immediately devalued by them completely, since such “unity” or such “epic harmony” of Gogol’s talent was intended in their eyes to destroy Gogol the realist. Epicness killed the satirist in Gogol - the exposer of life. Aksakov is ready to look for “human movements” in Korobochka, Manilov, Sobakevich and thereby ennoble them as temporarily lost people. The carriers of the Russian substance turned out to be primitive serfs, Selifan and Petrushka. Belinsky ridiculed all these stretches and desires to liken the heroes of “Dead Souls” to the heroes of Homer. According to the logic set by Aksakov himself, Belinsky sarcastically drew obvious parallels between the characters: “If so, then, of course, why shouldn’t Chichikov be the Achilles of the Russian Iliad, Sobakevich - the frantic Ajax (especially during dinner), Manilov - Alexander Paris, To Plyushkin - Nestor, to Selifan - Automedon, to the police chief, father and benefactor of the city - Agamemnon, and to the policeman with a pleasant blush and in patent leather boots - Hermes?..”

Belinsky, who saw the main thing in Gogol, i.e., a realist, indeed, before the release of “Dead Souls” and even, more precisely, before the controversy with K. Aksakov, did not ask the question about Gogol’s “duality” and left the preaching “manners” of the writer in the shadows

To make the comparison between Gogol and Homer not look too odious, Aksakov invented similarities between them “by the act of creation.” At the same time, he put Shakespeare on an equal footing with them. But what is the “act of creation”, “the act of creativity”? This is a far-fetched, purely a priori category, the purpose of which is to confuse the issue. Who will measure this act and how? Belinsky proposed returning to the category of content: it is this, content, that should be the source material when comparing one poet with another. But it has already been proven that Gogol has nothing in common with Homer in the area of content.

Belinsky insisted that before us is not the apotheosis of Russian life, but its exposure, before us modern novel, not an epic... Aksakov tried to deprive Gogol’s work of social and satirical meaning. Belinsky caught this well and decisively disputed it. Belinsky was alerted by the lyrical passages in “ Dead souls

It seems that already in the polemic about “Dead Souls” (1842), which ridiculed the “minority”, the privileged elite, Belinsky tried to grasp the people’s point of view from which Gogol carried out his judgment.

Belinsky highly appreciated Gogol’s work for the fact that it was “snatched from the hiding place of people’s life” and imbued with “nervous, bloody love for the fertile grain of Russian life” (“The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls”). This fertile seed was, of course, the people, Gogol had a love for them, and in the struggle for their interests he painted disgusting types of landowners and officials. Gogol understood the task of his “poem” as national, contrary to his realistic method, his satire. He believed that he was painting Russian people in general and, following the negative images of landowners, he would paint positive ones. It was on this line that the divergence between Belinsky and Gogol occurred. Even after initially praising the lyrical pathos in “Dead Souls” as an expression of “a blissful national self-consciousness,” Belinsky, during the polemics, then withdrew his praise, seeing in this lyricism something completely different: Gogol’s promises in the following parts of “Dead Souls” to idealize Rus', i.e. e. refusal to judge social evil. This meant a complete distortion of the very idea of nationality

Gogol’s mistake, according to Belinsky, was not that he had a desire to positively portray the Russian people, but that he was looking for him in the wrong place, among the propertied classes. The critic seemed to be saying to the writers: manage to be popular, and you will be national.