Books with title Dead Souls -

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

INTRODUCTIONDead Souls, first published in 1842, is the great prose classic of Russia. That amazing institution, "the Russian novel," not only began its career with this unfinished masterpiece by Nikolai Vasil'evich Gogol, but practically all the Russian masterpieces that have come since have grown out of it, like the limbs of a single tree. Dostoieffsky goes so far as to bestow this tribute upon an earlier work by the same author, a short story entitled The Cloak; this idea has been wittily expressed by another compatriot, who says: "We have all issued out of Gogol's Cloak."

Gogol in the years 1837-8 and published in 1842, is the greatest humorous novel in the Russian language. It is the most popular book in Russia, and its appeal is world-wide. Even those who have but the remotest idea of Russia and Russian life are frankly amused when they read it. Because of its literary form it has been likened to Don Quixote, Gil Bias, Tom Jones, for it is the story of the adventures of a man wandering from house to house and town to town along the ways of his country. But it has a deeper human appeal than any of these volumes. It is more broadly humorous, but it is also more tender, more serious. Though it is largely a satire there is not a line ol cynicism in the book, not a sneer, not a phrase inspired by the authors vanity or by selfish indifference to the life of the outside world. It was in reality a passionate expression of Gogol slove of his country, and though it is so pleasant to read, the writing of it broke Gogol sheart. In his black grief he even burned the whole of the volume that was to have been the sequel to Dead Souls what is sometimes referred to as the second part. In one of the wonderful conversations given in Turgeniev s Smoke, there is an occasion when some one says that if you speak to an Englishman the conversation sooner or later comes to sport, if to a Frenchman sooner or later to woman, and that when you speak to a Russian the conversation always comes round to Russia is she not a wonderful country, what a destiny her people have, will they not work out in Russia something entirely new, and so on. This is a true observation. Russia is the beloved theme of the Russians. All Russians have opinions about their own country; Russians more than people of other nationality live for their country, are ready to suffer for it, feel personal joy or pain, happiness or grief, according to its daily history. Anxiety as to what(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

Excerpt from Dead SoulsEarly in 1830, one of his stories, known in England as St. John's Eve, appeared anonymously in a Russian periodical, and shortly afterwards he secured a very insignificant appoint ment at the Ministry of Appanages. Here his official duties were paltry in the extreme, but he exercised his mind to advantage by studying the clerks and functionaries around him, portraits of many of whom are to be found in his works.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Since its publication in 1842, Dead Souls has been celebrated as a supremely realistic portrait of provincial Russian life and as a splendidly exaggerated tale; as a paean to the Russian spirit and as a remorseless satire of imperial Russian venality, vulgarity, and pomp. As Gogol's wily antihero, Chichikov, combs the back country wheeling and dealing for "dead souls"--deceased serfs who still represent money to anyone sharp enough to trade in them--we are introduced to a Dickensian cast of peasants, landowners, and conniving petty officials, few of whom can resist the seductive illogic of Chichikov's proposition.