"Dead Souls" by Nikolai Gogol *****

• Summer Sub Club read w/Beth
• Russian author
• Originally published 1842
• Quotes I Like:
• p.14..."the fat know better than the slim how to handle their affairs in this world" - the fat sit reliably and firmly....OK...
• p.20..."He like not so much what he was reading about as the reading itself, or, better, the process of reading, the fact that letters are eternally forming some word, which sometimes even means the devil knows what."...Petrushka
• p.219..."...a woman is like a sack, she holds whatever you put in it..."...nasty
• p.278..."Acquisition is to blame for everything; because of it things have been done which the world dubs not quite clean."
• p.278..."Numberless as the sands of the sea are human passions, and no one resembles another, and all of them, base or beautiful, are at first obedient to man and only later become his dread rulers."
• p.366..."Age-old experience has proven that man in his agricultural quality has the purest morals.  Where ploughing lies at the basis of social life, there is abundance and well-being; there is neither poverty nor luxury, but there is well-being."
• p.373..."One ought to begin with a kopeck."
• Humorous:
• Petrushka slept without undressing and like to keep a smell about him of where he slept
• p.27..."And in boarding schools, as we know, three main subjects constitute the foundation of human virtue:  the French language, indispensable for a happy family life; the pianoforte, to afford a husband agreeable moments; and, finally, the managerial part proper:  the crocheting of purses and other surprises."
• p.103..."Wherever, across whatever sorrows our life is woven of, a resplendent joy will gaily race by, just as a splendid carriage with golden harness, picture-book horses, and a shining brilliance of glass sometimes suddenly and unexpectedly goes speeding by some poor, forsaken hamlet that has never seen anything but a country cart, and for a long time the muzhiks stand gaping open-mouthed, ....though the wondrous carriage has long since sped away and vanished from sight."....beautiful girl goes by
• "It is well known that there are many faces in the world over the finishing of which nature did not take much trouble....."
• p.123..."A knowledge of hearts and a wise comprehension of life resound in the word of the Briton; like a nimble fop the short-lived word of the Frenchman flashes and scatters; whimsically does the German contrive his lean, intelligent word, not accessible to all; but there is no word so sweeping, so pert, so bursting from beneath the very heart, so ebullient and vibrant with life, as an aptly spoken Russian word."
• p.123..."Aptly uttered is as good as written, an axe cannot destroy it."
• p.149...:...he fell asleep soundly, deeply, fell asleep in the wondrous way that they alone sleep who are so fortunate as to know nothing of hemorrhoids, or fleas, or overly powerful mental abilities."
• Funny names at times, i.e.....Lousy Arrogance from Cockyville
• p.234..."Hindsight is the Russian man's forte."
• p.239..."However you push and pull, you'll never get milk from a bull."
• p.257.."Not like mother, not like father, but like Roger the lodger."
• p.291..."And only when it became so unbearable that it even prevented the master from doing nothing, would he send to tell them to make their noise more quietly."
• Characters:  Chichikov (protagonist) , Selifan and Petrushka (his servants)
• Vocabulary:
• britzka:  a long horse-drawn carriage with a folding top over the rear seat and a rear-facing front seat
• finical:  finicky
• shalloon:  a light, twilled woolen fabric used chiefly for linings.
• chibouk:   a Turkish tobacco pipe with a stiff stem sometimes 4 or 5 feet (1.2 or 1.5 meters) long.
• empyrean:   the highest heaven, supposed by the ancients to contain the pure element of fire
• quitrent:  rent  paid by a freeholder or copyholder in lieu of services that might otherwise have been required.
• emendation:   a correction or change, as of a text
• gammer:   an old woman
• General Notes:
•  After the triumph of Dead Souls, Gogol came to be regarded by his contemporaries as a great satirist who lampooned the unseemly sides of Imperial Russia. Little did they know that Dead Souls was but the first part of a planned modern-day counterpart to The Divine Comedy. The first part represented the Inferno; the second part was to depict the gradual purification and transformation of the rogue Chichikov under the influence of virtuous publicans and governors — Purgatory
• Gogol burned his copy of the "Dead Souls" manuscript just prior to dying
•  Many references to Germans as role models.....
• Many anti-Semitic comments, primarily financial
• Liked the idea of a "storied" person, someone who leaves with a story of something having happened wherever they go
• The "Tale of Captain Kopeikin"...he sank into the "river of oblivion"......Chichikov's fate as well
• I usually don't like the author speaking to the reader, but I liked it in this novel
• p.279 - Gogol expresses his belief that we would have liked Chichikov if he had not dredged up his dark side
• constant reference to hemorrhoids a bit weird
• p.381..."Sometimes, really, it seems to me that the Russian is somehow a hopeless man.  There's no willpower in him, no courage for constancy.  You want to do everything - and can do nothing."....Gogol was anti-Imperialist
• Review:   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!