Four works by great 19th-century Russian author: "The Nose," a savage satire of Russia's incompetent bureaucrats; "Old-Fashioned Farmers," a pleasant depiction of an elderly couple living in rustic seclusion; "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovich," one of Gogol鈥檚 most famous comic stories; and "The Overcoat," widely considered a masterpiece of the form.
People consider that Russian writer Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (袧懈泻芯谢邪泄 袙邪褋懈谢褜械胁懈褔 袚芯谐芯谢褜) founded realism in Russian literature. His works include The Overcoat (1842) and Dead Souls (1842).
Ukrainian birth, heritage, and upbringing of Gogol influenced many of his written works among the most beloved in the tradition of Russian-language literature. Most critics see Gogol as the first Russian realist. His biting satire, comic realism, and descriptions of Russian provincials and petty bureaucrats influenced later Russian masters Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, and especially Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Gogol wittily said many later Russian maxims.
Gogol first used the techniques of surrealism and the grotesque in his works The Nose, Viy, The Overcoat, and Nevsky Prospekt. Ukrainian upbringing, culture, and folklore influenced his early works, such as Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka . His later writing satirized political corruption in the Russian empire in Dead Souls.
楔懈薪械谢褜 = The Overcoat and Other Short Stories = The Cloak, Nikolai Gogol
The Overcoat is a short story by Ukrainian-born Russian author Nikolai Gogol, published in 1842. The story has been adapted into a variety of stage and film interpretations. The story and its author have had great influence on Russian literature, as expressed in a quote attributed to Fyodor Dostoyevsky: "We all come out from Gogol's Overcoat."
The main character, Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin, is a titular Councillor government official whose story of his purchase of a new "cape" and its theft forms the skeleton of the story. The main elements of this story correspond to the way Gogol works, which is sometimes written realistically, and sometimes imaginatively. Dostoevsky considered this story to be the source of all modern Russian literature. The value of this story, such as "Inspector" and "Dead Population", lies in the in-depth analysis of its events. The short story narrates the life and death of titular Councillor Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin, an impoverished government clerk and copyist in the Russian capital of St. Petersburg. Akaky is dedicated to his job, though little recognized in his department for his hard work. Instead, the younger clerks tease him and attempt to distract him whenever they can. His threadbare overcoat is often the butt of their jokes. Akaky decides it is necessary to have the coat repaired, so he takes it to his tailor, Petrovich, who declares the coat irreparable, telling Akaky he must buy a new overcoat. ...
Four contrasting short stories. All have satire or outright humour, but the overall mood is poignant, or even tragic.
They tend to have more detail about Russian, and 鈥淟ittle Russian鈥� (Ukrainian), life, process, and society than I wanted, but that鈥檚 my problem, not any fault of Gogol鈥檚.
1. Old-Fashioned Farmers, aka The Old World Landowners, 1835, 4*
鈥�The beautiful rain patters luxuriously on the leaves, flows in murmuring rivulets, inclining your limbs to repose.鈥�
A story of bucolic abundance, tinged with sadness. It has explicit echoes of from Greek mythology.
The narrator reminisces about staying in a manor house, with a loved-up but childless elderly couple, generous in their hospitality, and kind to their staff and locals. With so much salting, preserving, and drying, the kitchen is like a chemical lab, and the stores are always full (despite ).
Image: Cover of an old Russian edition ()
鈥�The most trifling causes produce the greatest events.鈥� A precursor to , involving a feline, rather than an insect, takes the story down a very different path.
2. The Squabble, aka The Tale of how Ivan Ivanovitch Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovich, 1835, 3*
A tragic-comic story of disproportionality and the high price of sticking to one鈥檚 guns.
The two Ivans are total opposites in many ways, but live next door to each other and have long been the best of friends. They鈥檙e comfortably off, and getting old. A potentially trivial disagreement leads to one calling the other a 鈥済oose鈥�, which is taken as a profound insult to the other鈥檚 honour. Evidently, it鈥檚 far more offensive in Russian than English.
Image: A Russian goose, by Ilya Ogarev. 鈥淎lluding to the selfish and sometimes aggressive behavior of geese, calling someone a goose would mean the person is predictably looking after himself and quite cunning.鈥� ()
The feud gets worse, petitions are made to a judge, townsfolk try to engineer a reconciliation, lawyers are engaged ( came to mind).
Noses are often mentioned, which might seem irrelevant if it weren鈥檛 for Gogol鈥檚 famous story, "The Nose" (below).
3. The Nose, 1836, 3*
A surreal, sometimes slapstick, comedy about the constraints of a rigid social hierarchy. It could be adapted as a children鈥檚 picture book (and has been: ), or perhaps a Monty Python sketch, although in its full form, it鈥檚 a satire about rank.
A barber finds a customer鈥檚 nose in his freshly-baked morning loaf of onion bread and tries to dispose of it. Meanwhile, that customer awakes and is shocked to discover that his nose is missing, so he tries to find it. When he does, it is the size of a man, is wearing a uniform of superior rank to his own, and asserts its right to independent existence.
Image: Cover of (which I鈥檝e not read)
I thought of all the nasal idioms in English: toffee-nosed, turning one鈥檚 nose up, being nosey, putting someone鈥檚 nose out of joint, and apparently there are similar ones in Russian: 鈥溾€楾orn off鈥� (if it is too curious), 鈥榣ifted up鈥� (if you have a high opinion of yourself), or 鈥榟ung up鈥� (with obvious defeat and failure). By the 19th century, there has been an extensive literature in Russian prose dedicated to nose references鈥� (from ). Indeed, Gogol makes lots of references to noses in "The Squabble" (above), and was apparently teased for his own nose.
4. The Overcoat, 1842, 5*
A tragic, Kafkaesque morality tale about social isolation, bureaucracy, and the danger of judging by appearances.
Akakii has a menial office job in a department where no one respects him and promotion is unlikely. But he is dutiful and never complains, 鈥渃ontent with his fate鈥�.
When his threadbare overcoat cannot hold yet another repair, he saves up for a year to afford a new one, excitedly planning the design with a tailor. The coat is worth the wait and sacrifices. For the first time in his life, he feels confident, visible, and respected by colleagues and strangers alike. But it seems more like mockery that he doesn鈥檛 recognise (he comes across as being on the autistic spectrum).
A twist sends him on a wild goose chase through officialdom, never able to find the right person, or to have followed the correct procedure. The ending is Dickensian, but also with echoes of Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener (see my review HERE).
Image: Cover by Igor Grabar, 1890s ()
More Gogol
I鈥檝e reviewed four Gogol short stories, including this, in a GR review, HERE.
You might think that a book called Evenings on a Farm Near Dinanka was not a guaranteed bestseller but that鈥檚 because you aren鈥檛 from 19th century Russia. They were gagging for evenings on a farm in 1832 in Moscow so Gogol鈥檚 first book made him famous at age 22 and he was on all the chat shows and was seen throwing shapes in all the best night spots. Then he wrote "The Nose" and a bunch of other stuff, he was firing on all cylinders, and then a play The Government Inspector which made all actual government inspectors hate him unto death and he became the right wing press鈥檚 favourite hate figure so he legged it to Italy and wrote Dead Souls and "The Overcoat", two more smash hits.
But he had some funny ideas. He thought God had appointed him to improve Russian society by means of satire but then he got writer鈥檚 block and thought that God was tired of him writing funny stuff and wanted him to be meaner so his next book was Selected Passages from Correspondence with My Friends (he had such a way with titles) and it turned out that (surprise!) he had become a conservative and was now supporting all the authority types he used to slag off. But this is quite normal, young firebrands always turn into reactionaries, look at Elvis. Anyway everyone hated this new version of Gogol.
By then the God thing had started to ruin Gogol鈥檚 brain to the point where it was impossible to tell if he went mad because of religion (the kind that makes you think everything is the work of the Devil), or got his crazy version of religion because he was mad. He wrote Dead Souls 2 : Deader than Ever but then he decided it was evil or something and he burned it up and died age 42.
***
鈥淭he Nose鈥� is really something. This is a Monty Python sketch 133 years before Monty Python. A guy wakes up one day and his nose has vanished. He looks for it all over the place, can鈥檛 find it, tries to put an advert in the paper asking for information leading to the recapture of the nose, then the nose is seen here and there in the town, all dressed up in fancy clothes. This is far out humour.
鈥淭he Overcoat鈥� delivers a gut punch I was not expecting. The first half is forlorn and pathetic and funny too, but then it turns savage and bites the reader in the soft parts. And right at the end Gogol adds a paragraph trashing his story and pointing out all its absurdities. I wasn鈥檛 expecting that either.
Note : the very famous 1001 Books You Must Read before the Second Wave of Corona includes "The Nose" but it鈥檚 not a book, not a novel, it鈥檚 a short story. So if they鈥檙e going to list one great short story, what about all the others. 1001 Books editorial policy can drive you slightly crazy.
I wanted to read Nikolai Gogol. his "Dead Soul" is among my purchased books. Meanwhile, I found this collection of stories, and to have his first-time experience, read one of its story "The Mantle" and very much liked it. This is a story of a short man, bald in front, face marked with smallpox and whose forehead and cheeks were deeply lined with a furrow. His name was Akaki Akakievitch, who became a titular councilor... How and who appointed him? Nobody knows!
He knew only the work of copying documents and nothing else. Even when he walked in the streets, he never took notice of anything. He walked always in thoughts of his clean and regular lines of copies. Only when he collided suddenly with a horse's nose which blew its breath noisily in his face, he observed that he was not sitting at his writing-table but walking in the street.
And then ...this is the story of his Cloak ...whose collar was getting smaller every year, for he had taken a piece of it every time to repair some part of 听the cloak. One day when he found it very worn out, he went to a 听tailor and discussed the possibility of its repair. Taylor said, " No! That is a wretched rag! It's beyond repair! So to purchase a new Cloak he suffered his body from abstinence, for months, by leaving his supper, to save some money..... Then he bought a new cloak......enjoyed a party given by his superior and while coming back from it, got robbed of his cloak.听 Feeling frozen to the marrow, he shouted with all his might ...but all in vain. He got many suggestions and ideas... 听finally went to the superintendent where he got a severe reprimand which became decisive for this strange man's existence. Then ....there emerges a new story from within this story and he gets back his cloak... Leaving a message for many! This story has depicted how even during those days, superior officials took things for granted and how they were misusing their authorities by not treating petitioners in a good manner, due to the arrogance of post and a kind of dizzy self-intoxication. Gogol has beautifully written many minute observations. I enjoyed some very natural conversations between a strange man and his tailor, as this diabolical tailor took a special pleasure in embarrassing his customers and watching the expression of their faces with his squinting single eye.
I am going to read more of Gogol after this first try. "The Nose" is next for me!
Conjuntamente a P煤chkin, G贸gol foi um dos maiores precursores do novo movimento liter谩rio russo, modificando o estilo de literatura e dando voz a tem谩tica social da 茅poca, influenciou not谩veis escritores como Dostoi茅vski, que inclusive fez das obras de G贸gol uma antecipa莽茫o dos temas que ver铆amos em Crime e Castigo, Mem贸rias do Subsolo e tantas mais obras do autor.
Buscando, portanto, retratar sob a 贸tica da escola natural o cotidiano das pessoas inseridas em seu contexto social, G贸gol transp玫e a forte censura do tsar Nicolau I e insere aos seus personagens a consci锚ncia social; ao mesmo tempo que satiriza o regime da 茅poca, tamb茅m brinca com o fant谩stico, aproximando o sobrenatural do povo e focando muitas vezes nas figuras mitol贸gicas de bruxas e dem么nios para assim compor novelas folcl贸ricas saudosas a si.
脡 nesse sentido que os contos presentes na colet芒nea se apresentam, desnuando o ser humano, tocando em suas aus锚ncias e perdas, G贸gol comp玫e uma obra recheada de elementos de terror, do c么mico, do fant谩stico e do tr谩gico. Quanto a mim, adorei a leitura, em especial os 煤ltimos contos folcl贸ricos, e de fato, n茫o h谩 como l锚-lo sem lembrar das obras de Dostoi茅vski.
鈥炁爄njel鈥�, prva Gogoljeva pripovetka koju sam pro膷itala i, po svemu sude膰i, jedina koju 膰u pamtiti.
Nesvakida拧nje pojave i precizno crtanje putanje glavnim likovima svakako govore o autorovoj ume拧nosti, ali posle nekoliko dana slike koje su pri膷e u mom umu skicirale po膷inju da blede ostavljaju膰i za sobom samo uspomenu na 膷itanje 鈥炁爄njela鈥� 拧to pak potvr膽uje zaklju膷ak Dostojevskog:
The Overcoat is my favorite story by Gogol. He writes in the absurd genre so sometimes it seems weird, but he also draws out human emotions to make his characters seem so real and makes such great commentary on life that he makes me want to read and re-read his books. There is a paragraph that talks about how all the people in Akaky's (yep, that's his name!) office mock him that stands out as one those passages that sticks with a person for the rest of their life:
"Only when the jokes were too unbearable, when they jolted his arm and prevented him from going on with his work, he would bring out: "Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?" and there was something strange in the words and in the voice in which they were uttered. There was a note in it of something that aroused compassion, so that one young man, new to the office, who, following the example of the rest, had allowed himself to mock at him, suddenly stopped as though cut to the heart, and from that time forth, everything was, as it were, changed and appeared in a different light to him. Some unnatural force seemed to thrust him away from the companions with whom he had become acquainted, accepting them as well-bred, polished people. And long afterward, at moments of the greatest gaiety, the figure of the humble little clerk with a bald patch on his head rose before him with his heartrending words: "Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?" and in those heartrending words he heard others: "I am thy brother." And the poor young man hid his face in his hands, and many times afterwards in his life he shuddered, seeing how much inhuminity there is in man, how much savage brutality lies hidden under refined, cultured politeness, and my God! even in a man whom the world accepts as a gemtleman and a man of honor..."
"The Overcoat," "The Nose," and "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich" are all about the most bland and/or odd subjects: a guy gets a new coat, someone's nose runs away, two guys become enemies over a silly insult. The fact that each story managed to keep me reading and chuckling until the end speaks to Gogol's quality as an author. It isn't what he writes about; it is how he writes that is so pleasing. Everything I have read by him is relayed through a tongue-in-cheek narrator with an aptitude for characterization. I'm not sure I'm completely satisfied with the ends of these stories, but they weren't bad.
My favorite lines:
"All at once Ivan Ivanovich uttered an exclamation, and became petrified with fear: a dead man appeared to him; but he speedily recovered himself on perceiving that it was a goose , thrusting its neck out at him."
"Whichever way you look at it, this is an impossible occurrence. After all, bread is something baked, and a nose is something altogether different."
"His name was Akakii Akakievich. It may strike the reader as rather singular and far-fetched; but he may feel assured that it was by no means far-fetched, and that the circumstances were such that it would have been impossible to give him any other name; and this is how it came about."
*Re-read March 2023- these stories remain entertaining in a ridiculous kind of way! I'd drop from a 5 star to a 3.5 star rating however. The stories are probably not ones I'd return to again though so it's off to the library for you Gogol lad, book cull victim!
Original review: As there are so many different versions of this book, it's hard to find the right one. The paperback version I read has the stories The Overcoat, The Nose, The Diary of a Madman, A May Night & The Viy.
A fabulous collection of short stories which are more like peasant folklore. Hilarious, silly, creepy, profound, delightful. The Overcoat and The Nose are probably the best of the bunch.
Took me around 1.5 hours to read the whole book; a good little distraction for a Monday evening!
Relatos que me llamaron la atenci贸n por su bell铆sima narrativa, llegan del encanto a lo sobrenatural; del amor dulce a lo oscuro. Mi historia preferida fue la de El Capote, de como la sociedad puede empeque帽ecer a un hombre, hacerlo pasar como un don nadie y as铆 en todos sus cuentos habla de una forma que llega al lector y hasta donde puede llegar la mezquindad del hombre. Desgraciadamente el autor destruyo algunas partes de sus valiosas obras, pero las que sobrevivieron, seguro tendr茅 que leerlas, son invaluables.
Gogol was one of Russia's greatest short story writers and this is an excellent introduction to his writing before you attack Dead Souls which is his masterpiece.