The dead souls

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First edition from 1842

The dead souls ( Russian Мёртвые души , emphasis: Mjórtwyje dúschi ; title of the new translation by Vera Bischitzky : Dead Souls ) is a novel by Nikolaj Gogol (1809-1852). The first part was published in 1842. A trilogy was originally planned, but Gogol only completed the first two parts, of which the second has only survived in fragments. Gogol destroyed the original manuscript of the second part shortly before his death.

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Pawel Iwanowitsch Tschitschikow (emphasis: Tschitschikow ) grows up in poor circumstances, receives a small office position in a remote tax office after a young age with deprivation, and with the help of diligence, renunciation, flattery, later also with pleasant manners, adroit demeanor and business acumen, becomes head of department and committee . First he fights corruption, but eventually succumbs to it himself, lives in luxury and loses his position, property and money after it is exposed. The same thing is repeated after another period of hardship during the ascent within the customs office, only that after the corruption has been discovered, this time he still has ten thousand rubles, a carriage and two servants. He beats himself u. a. as an angled advocate, in this function certifies the sale of serfs and learns that some are already dead. That brings him to a business idea that is prohibited, but runs through legal practice with the help of the confidentiality of business partners.

In Russia at that time , deceased serfs , also known as “souls”, were not removed from the lists until the next revision and could therefore not be identified on paper as dead and thus worthless property (see revision souls ). For these “dead souls” their owners also had to pay poll taxes, which, especially in times of crisis with high mortality ( hunger , epidemics ), led to absurd burdens for the landowners , who were troubled anyway . Since the state did not have an overview of the serfs who had died after the last revision, it was also possible to buy them legally certified. Landowners could pledge both their farms and their serfs to the state.

With the implementation of this fraudulent intent, the novel begins. Tschitschikow reaches the governor town of N. and immediately pays his respects to all dignitaries such as the governor, public prosecutor, court president, etc., as well as important officials such as the police chief, the head of the health department, etc. Due to his elegant, extremely polite appearance and his subtle, often flattering speeches, he immediately makes himself popular everywhere, is often invited to dinner and thus learns the landowners Manilow (emphasis: Manílow ), Nosdrew (emphasis: Nosdrjów ) and Sobakewitsch (emphasis: Sobakevich ) know. Tschitschikow visits her soon after to buy dead souls and learns of two other landowners from whom he also acquires dead souls. All these landowners have their property managed and do not work themselves, which allows them to live out their peculiarities and neuroses in an often bizarre behavior. After some easy, sometimes tough negotiations and a violent expulsion, Chitschikov finally collected around four hundred dead souls worth a hundred thousand rubles for less than 300 rubles, which he has certified with the help of the corrupt governor, bypassing the auditing authorities. Instead of leaving immediately, he allows himself to be invited to festivals for several weeks, the swarmed center of which he is initially until he is forced to flee away by denunciation, speculation and ludicrous rumors.

In the second part, Chichikov, who has now aged, gets to know other landowners and two military officers, but he has little luck with his cause. Only two of the ten new acquaintances leave him dead souls. In addition to again bizarre types, he gets to know landowners for the first time who lend a hand and manage their estate successfully. As a result of this influence he buys a run-down good, but finds no inner attitude to agriculture because he wants to continue to get rich quickly and without much effort. When a new governor general arrives, the past catches up with him, he is arrested, also because the previous accusations of fraud are added to the accusation of forging wills. The multimillionaire Murasov, who had previously converted a failed landowner to systematic management and responsible action, is also trying to achieve a change of heart in Chichikov, but the latter replies that he sees that he is leading a reprehensible life, “but I have no aversion to it the sin: I am numb, I feel no love for what is good ”. After undignified wailing and begging for release and interceding Murasov, Tschitschikow is pardoned in the sense of expulsion. The passage with which Tschitschikow says goodbye to the novel shows that he has actually not achieved any purification: Shortly before he leaves, he has a tailor-made suit made of fine material for double the price in night work so that he can effectively continue his life .

construction

The first part consists of eleven chapters. Chapters 2–6 are each devoted to a landowner from whom Chichikov wants to acquire dead souls. A longer description of the nature, the property and the living conditions already refer to the character of the person visited, which is further concretized in the type of conversation as well as in the negotiations and their result, so that these five chapters are based on the principle of variation. They are flanked by the first chapter, in which Chitschikov makes the contacts, and the seventh, in which the purchases are notarized. The next three chapters are devoted to celebrations and rumors, without any fundamental design principle. The narrated time is a few days in the first chapter, three days in chapters 2–7, and three weeks in chapters 8–10. In contrast, the 11th chapter summarizes the 40-year life of Chitschikov, which was before the start of the story. Only here does the reader understand why Chichikov does not leave immediately after the notarization. His long, tough struggle for social and financial advancement, his brief indulgence in luxury and his sudden end after the discovery of corruption are reflected in the content, length and structure of what was previously told: seven chapters of stringent striving to buy dead souls , three chapters of letting go of the festivals and abrupt breakdown through flight.

Due to the fragmentary tradition, it is difficult to make any statements about the structure of the second part. The first chapter is completely preserved, the third and fourth each except for two pages, the second and an unquantified one only fragmentarily. The sometimes very long descriptions of nature and life courses of the characters, but sometimes also the dense sequence of new characters in a chapter, do not reveal any compositional principle in the existing text.

characters

Tschitschikow is differentiated as an upstart who works tenaciously with all means, including unfair means and without moral concerns, on his social advancement and after reaching a prominent position indulges in luxury and is corrupt. He rigorously pursues his goal of getting rich without work, but after achieving his goal shows an astonishing instability. The Russian writer and literary scholar Vladimir Nabokov , who is active in America, found attributes of the “Poschlost” ( пошлость - the Russian word, which is difficult to translate, means middle-class presumption, banality or philistine bourgeoisie) in his character .

The five landowners have eloquent names, which, like the description of their property and its surroundings, correspond to their exaggerated character traits: Manilow (cumbersome, overly polite, generous), Nosdrew (liar, cheater, gambler, denouncer, provocateur), Sobakewitsch (roughly, angular, gruff, taciturn, with farmer's cunning), Pljuschkin (neglected messie, curmudgeon) and Frau Korobotschka (petty, stingy, backwoods-loving, suspicious). The other actors only have functional names (governor, postmaster, public prosecutor), so they are not individualized because they only accompany and do not determine what is happening, but their banality and mediocrity are also interchangeable. What they all have in common is that they are basically the actual “dead souls”, since they have no traits of humanity, but are frozen in their respective habitus.

In the second part, too, there are landowners whose life expresses itself in bizarre behavior due to a lack of work (despotism, excessive food addiction, Weltschmerz, depression, apathy). According to Gogol's program, however, to show ways of recovery in the second part, there are landlords with W. Platonow and Kostanschoglo who have a full everyday life and economic success in active work and are morally upright, even if Kostanschoglo through his know-it-all and idealization of the simplicity of the Country life also has bizarre features. Even Murasov, who has become a millionaire many times through the liquor trade, and even more so the Governor General in the end correspond more to the utopia of the generous, selfless helper or the good ruler than a human, living figure. Since they appear suddenly, they appear like foreign bodies in the fragmentary text. If one also understands it as a caricature, according to Hans Günther Gogol did not succeed in making Tschitschikov's transformation artistically believable. In both parts, all figures are static, so they do not undergo any development, but are related to Chesschikov like chess pieces and episodically so that he can test himself and his behavior on them, which, however, does not lead to any development in Chichikov either.

style

The style of the novel is somewhat antiquated and has been compared to the picaresque novels of the 16th and 17th centuries as it is divided into a number of rather disjointed episodes and the (mostly external) plot contains a swanky version of the rogue protagonist of the original picaresque novels. The characters are often humorous overdrawn (which makes the entertainment value virulent) or satirically distorted, at the same time the exaggerated representation makes it clear that the acting out quirky or bizarre peculiarities of the rich idlers is a serious grievance in Russia of the Gogol period. The authorial narrator makes extensive use of extensive descriptions of nature, changes of perspective (including multiple perspectives of the horses), evaluative comments, addressing the reader and thematic excursions in the sometimes lyrical and pathetic style, e.g. B. on manners, corruption in Russia, the mutual dependency of cheerfulness and misery. Towards the end there is also enthusiastic praise for the Russian soul.

The simplicity of the fable contrasts with the complexity of the style. In addition to the characteristic rhythm of the prose, there are often exaggerations, comical-alogical exaggerations, mosaic-like strings, the contrast between high and low language and unexpectedly naturalistic details. David Manuel Kern's assessment that the second part is overloaded with “calls to God and chattering of sins” only applies to the last (preserved) chapter.

Interpretations

The novel was intended to paint a comprehensive picture of the ailing social system in post-Napoleonic Russia . As in many of Gogol's short stories, in “The Dead Souls” the criticism of society is mainly conveyed through absurd and cheerful satire . Unlike his short stories, “The Dead Souls” should also offer solutions instead of just pointing out the problems. Gogol could not realize this great project, because the work was never completed and mainly the early, purely absurd parts of the work were remembered.

Barbara Conrad works out "the real theme of Gogol: the meanness and banality of evil, in which man with his poor passions gets entangled, so that nothing remains of himself, of his soul." The meanness and banality are also reflected reflected in the scenes. With two exceptions, rural life on the estates is depicted as backward; life in the city of N. is dominated by gossip, intrigue and banality.

DM Kern draws attention to the historical upheaval in which the novel is set, but criticizes Gogol's attempt to correct the new materialism in general by turning to religion. “Chichikov symbolizes the end of tsarist Russia and the beginning of capitalism with his actions, which are exclusively aimed at acquiring and increasing money. In spite of his humanization, the hero is marked as morally reprehensible; the capitalist who seeks to gain wealth without a social birth preference and at any cost, including illegality, fails and must be purified in order to guess the author's intention. This purification can only take place through the punishment of sins; an anti-capitalism that is legitimized by God. "

Vladimir Nabokov , in his Gogol study from 1944, rejected the view that “The Dead Souls” was a reformist or satirical work. Nabokov saw the plot of the work as unimportant and said that Gogol was a great writer whose works knew how to circumvent irrationality and whose prose style combined excellent descriptive power with the disdain for fictional clichés. Chichikov embodies an extraordinary moral rot, but the whole idea of ​​buying and selling dead souls is ridiculous to Nabokov from the start; consequently the provincial setting is a very unsuitable setting for any progressive, reformist or Christian reading of the work.

Translations into German

In other media

Illustrations

Illustrations for the dead souls were published for the first time as early as 1846 . The total of 104 sheets were drawn by Alexander Agin and implemented as wood engravings by Jewstafi Bernardski . Since Gogol refused to allow his work to be illustrated, those were made as single sheets that could be placed between the pages of the printed book afterwards. Ambroise Vollard then commissioned Marc Chagall , who knew the work well, to produce illustrations for Gogol's novel in 1923 . In four years, 96 prints were created , simple concise sketches closely based on the text. After Vollard's death, Chagall's etchings were first published in 1948 and subsequently used several times to illustrate different editions of the text and exhibited repeatedly.

radio play

In 1955, Radio Bremen produced the radio play Dead Souls based on Gogol's adaptation by Oskar Wessel and directed by Carl Nagel . Speakers were: Wolfgang Golisch (Pawel Iwanowitsch Tschitschikoff), Ernst Rottluff (Seelifan, his coachman), Wolfgang Engels (Maniloff, landowner), Günther Neutze (Nosdrjoff, landowner), Heinz Klevenow (Sobakewitsch, landowner), Trudik Daniel (Korsobatschka ), Helmuth Gmelin (Pljuschkin)

theatre

The Chekhov Art Theater in Moscow brought the story to the stage in 1932 in the form of a drama. Konstantin Stanislawski and Wladimir Nemirowitsch-Danchenko were involved in the reworking of Gogol's work .

Movie and TV

In 1960 a film adaptation of the novel was made under the direction of Leonid Trauberg . In 1984 the director Michail Schweizer shot a TV series with music by Alfred Schnittke . Gennadi Roschdestwenski created an orchestral suite from Schnittke's film music in 1993.

Opera

The existing parts of the Dead Souls were processed in the opera Dead Souls by the Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin at the end of the 20th century . In it, Shchedrin captures the different city dwellers with whom Chichikov has to deal in closed musical episodes, developing a different musical style for each in order to highlight the different characteristics of the different personalities.

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h The spelling of the names follows the common German translations. According to modern transcription of the Cyrillic script, names are written as follows: Čičikov, Manilov, Korobočka, Nozdrëv, Sobakevič, Pljuškin, Kostanšoglo, Murazov. In this form she uses z. B. Hans Günther in his article for Kindlers Literature Lexicon
  2. ↑ Hans Günther: Nikolaj Gogol: The dead souls. In: Walter Jens (Ed.): Kindlers new literature lexicon. Study edition Vol. 6, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-463-43200-5 , pp. 547-549.
  3. ↑ A more detailed description with respective examples can be found in the Kindler article by Hans Günther
  4. ↑ a b David Manuel Kern: Nicolai Gogol - The dead souls. 2008 / May. Retrieved July 14, 2012
  5. ↑ Barbara Conrad: Epilogue to the paperback edition by Nikolaj Gogol: Die toten Seelen, 9th edition. 2008, ISBN 978-3-423-12607-6 , p. 502.
  6. ↑ s. Jens Herlth: Alexander Agin - Nikolai Gogol, The Dead Souls . In: Bodo Zelinsky (ed.): Literary Imagery / Vol. 9. Russian book illustration . Böhlau, 2009, ISBN 978-3-412-22505-6 , pp. 142–152 ( online )
  7. ↑ Achim Besgen: The biblical work of Marc Chagall
  8. ↑ s. Bodo Zelinsky: Marc Chagall - Nikolai Gogol, The Dead Souls . In: Bodo Zelinsky (ed.): Literary Imagery / Vol. 9. Russian book illustration . Böhlau, Cologne, 2009, ISBN 978-3-412-22505-6 , pp. 153–168 ( online )
  9. ↑ "The Dead Souls" (drama) on the website of the Chekhov Art Theater Moscow (Russian), accessed on July 10, 2020
  10. ↑ Myortvye dushi (1960) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  11. ↑ Myortvye dushi (1984) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  12. ↑ The dead souls. Suite from the film music for orchestra . Sikorski. Retrieved March 17, 2012.
  13. ↑ The lecture can be read in extracts from Google books ( link to extract ).