What is the meaning of the story dead souls. The meaning of the title of the poem N.V.

The title of the work "Dead Souls" is ambiguous. , as you know, conceived a three-part work by analogy with Dante's Divine Comedy. The first volume is Hell, that is, the abode of dead souls.

Secondly, the plot of the work is connected with this. In the 19th century, dead peasants were called "dead souls". In the poem, Chichikov buys documents for dead peasants, and then sells them to the Board of Trustees. Dead souls in the documents were listed as alive, and Chichikov received a considerable amount for this.

Thirdly, the title emphasizes an acute social problem. The fact is that at that time there were a great many sellers and buyers of dead souls, this was not controlled and not punished by the authorities. The treasury was empty, and enterprising swindlers were making a fortune. The censorship urged Gogol to change the title of the poem to "The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls", shifting the focus on Chichikov's personality, and not on an acute social problem.

Perhaps Chichikov's idea will seem strange to some, but it all comes down to the fact that there is no difference between the dead and the living. Both are on sale. Both dead peasants and landowners who agreed to sell documents for a certain fee. A person completely loses his human shape and becomes a commodity, and his whole essence is reduced to a piece of paper, which indicates whether you are alive or not. It turns out that the soul is mortal, which contradicts the main postulate of Christianity. The world becomes soulless, devoid of religion and any moral and ethical guidelines. Such a world is described epic. The lyrical component lies in the description of nature and the spiritual world.

The name of this work by Gogol is primarily associated with the main character Chichikov, who bought up dead peasants. To start doing your own thing. But in fact, he wanted to sell these dead souls and get rich.

But not only this is the meaning of the title of this work, the author wanted to show the true souls of society, that they had long since hardened and died. This is evident from the fact that each character in this work does not have any spiritual development.

Chichikov travels all over Russia in order to buy more peasants for his new estate. But he sees that most rich people see almost nothing around them except their base desires. The landowner Manilov does nothing and does not do anything useful. He spends all his time in conversations and conversations, or indulges in dreams.

The landowner Sobakevich is like an animal, he eats something in his free time. And such huge portion sizes that the average person cannot afford them.

The box from which Chichikov bought the souls of dead peasants. She loves nothing in life except trade, and you can talk to her only on this topic or on the topic of food. Since she loves to eat very much and treats everyone with all kinds of dishes.

Plyushkin is generally a separate character who is not only dead at heart, but also does not fit into any framework of a normal person. To collect so much good and all sorts of things, but not to use them and not to sell or give to poor people.

This is blatant greed, in the work it is written in detail that Plyushkin has mountains of moldy bread, could it really not have been given to other people.

All landowners, such as Korobochka, Sobakevich, Nozdrev, do not live a spiritual life, but are busy stuffing their pockets and stomach, eating all kinds of dishes.

Officials are also not at all interested in anything other than their work, for profit and bribes from all the visitors who come to them. The landowners overeat and enjoy new dishes. Plyushkin, on the other hand, is not even interested in new and tasty dishes, he is busy accumulating his unprecedented wealth. He reached the handle in this matter, collects all his wealth, and eats food worse than beggars. This is the highest level of stinginess.

Initially, Gogol wanted to write the poem "Dead Souls" in three parts, raising the souls of the whole society, from the very bottom, from hell, then to purgatory, and then, when these sick souls are cured, they go to heaven.

Hence the meaning of the work of society in a terrible dead-end development. There is no spiritual development. But the author still hopes that people will come to their senses and their souls will go to heaven. And peace, high spirituality will reign in the world, and high moral and moral principles will be valued.

What is the meaning of the name?

In 1842, the first volume of one of the most famous and sensational works of N.V. Gogol - a prose poem "Dead Souls", the title of which illustrates the dominant idea of ​​the work. As N. Berdyaev said about Gogol: "The most mysterious figure in Russian literature." So what is the author hiding under such a mystical name of his offspring?

The main motive of the prose poem "The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls" is multilateral and multiplane. The idea of ​​the plot was taken on the friendly advice of Pushkin and on the basis of the plot suggested by him. All this work is a history of illness, an awareness of the horror and shame that a person experiences when he sees his real face in the mirror. Under the veil of the false, the author shows us the real truth. Gogol in his poem increasingly notes the callousness and cowardice of his heroes.

If we think in a straightforward way, then a dead soul is a person’s lack of reasonable ideology, the passivity of his activity and the primitiveness of his occupations and aspirations. In this case, it does not matter what social circle the character belongs to, because the dead soul is society as a whole. On the one hand, this is the designation of a deceased serf, a “revision soul”, which, according to documents, is listed as alive. Many characters, starting with Chichikov, are already determined by the very act of buying and selling non-existent people. Completely perverted, turned upside down relationships are formed. At first, the appearance is created that city life is seething, but in reality it is a common fuss.

A dead soul in the inner world of the poem is a common occurrence. Here, for people, the soul is only what distinguishes a dead person from a living one. Here is what A.I. wrote about the poem. Herzen: "Dead Souls" - this title itself carries something terrifying in itself. Indeed, behind all this lies another, completely different, deeper meaning: to reveal the whole plan in three parts, like Dante's three-part poem "The Divine Comedy". It is assumed that Gogol intended to create three volumes corresponding to the chapters "Hell", "Purgatory" and "Paradise", where in the first part he wanted to reveal the terrifying Russian reality, the "hell" of the modern way of life, and in the second and third parts of the three-volume book - spiritual rise of Russia.

From this we can conclude that N.V. Gogol tried to reveal the real picture of the life of the local nobility, a hopeless dead end, decline and spiritual decay on the example of the heroes of the work. The author in the first part of "Dead Souls" tries to convey the negative features of Russian life, he hints to people that their souls have become dead, and, pointing to vices, brings them back to life.

Option 3

The name of Gogol's work "Dead Souls" is associated with one of the main characters, and to be precise, it is Chichikov. All he did was buy up people who died. Mostly they were peasants. Many thought that he wanted to earn a living by doing this, but how wrong they were. He then resold dead souls and became richer.

Also here lies another problem that the author wanted to show to his reader. And it is to show people the true face of people. They don't even have social development.

And in order to buy as many souls as possible, he had to go all over the world. He also had to see that society sees practically nothing but its condition and society. He met with the landowner Manilov. He has no purpose in life, and this is considered the most terrible, because you don’t even know what to live for. Other than that, he doesn't do anything. And all he does is just communicate with other people.

He also met with another person and he is Sobakevich. He is very much like a dog that constantly eats and does nothing else. He usually eats in the largest portions, but an ordinary person cannot eat such a large portion.

The box sells dead souls, and nothing else interests him. And she talks only about money, but about various purchases. Also, more than anything, she likes to cook different dishes, and then treat them to everyone.

But Plyushkin cannot be called an ordinary person at all, and his soul is almost empty. He constantly collects everything that other people throw in the trash and brings home. As a result, he keeps things that he not only does not use, but he does not need at all.

Almost all landowners are engaged in only one thing, this is stuffing money and eating different dishes. And in order to earn a lot of money and satisfy all their needs, they try to stay at work. Sometimes, in order to help other people, they take bribes and at the same time do not feel any remorse. They always eat enough and may not think about tomorrow. But at the same time, Plyushkin tries to drag as many things as possible to his home, and it doesn’t matter at all that they are old and unnecessary to anyone.

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(Option 1)

The title of Gogol's poem "Dead Souls" is ambiguous. Undoubtedly, the influence on the poem of the Divine Comedy by Dante. The name "Dead Souls" ideologically echoes the name of the first part of Dante's poem - "Hell".

The very plot of the work is connected with the “dead souls”: Chichikov buys up the dead peasants, who are listed as “souls” in the revision tales, in order, having issued a bill of sale, to pledge the purchased peasants already as living ones to the board of trustees and get a tidy sum for them.

The concept of "dead soul" is associated with the social orientation of the work. Chichikov's idea is ordinary and fantastic at the same time. Usually because the purchase of peasants was an everyday affair, but fantastic, because those who, according to Chichikov, "left one sound that is not tangible by the senses, are sold and bought." No one is outraged by this deal, the most incredulous are only mildly surprised. “Never before has it happened to sell ... the dead. If I were alive, I would have given up two girls to the archpriest of the third year, one hundred rubles each, ”says Korobochka. In reality, a person becomes a commodity, where paper replaces people.

Gradually, the content of the concept of "dead soul" also changes. Abakum Fyrov, Stepan Cork, Mikhey the carriage-maker and other deceased peasants bought by Chichikov are not perceived as "dead souls": they are shown as bright, original, talented people. This cannot be attributed to their owners, who turn out to be "dead souls" in the true sense of the word.

But the "dead souls" are not only landowners and officials: they are "unrequitedly dead townsfolk", terrible "by the motionless cold of their souls and the barren desert of their hearts." Any person can turn into Manilov and Sobakevich if "an insignificant passion for something small" grows in him, forcing him to "forget great and holy duties and see the great and holy in insignificant trinkets." “Nozdryov will not be out of the world for a long time. He is everywhere between us and, perhaps, only walks in a different caftan. It is no coincidence that the portrait of each landowner is accompanied by a psychological commentary that reveals its universal meaning. In the eleventh chapter, Gogol invites the reader not only to laugh at Chichikov and other characters, but "to deepen this heavy inquiry into one's own soul: "Isn't there some part of Chichikov in me?" Thus, the title of the poem is very capacious and multifaceted.

For the "ideal" world, the soul is immortal, for it is the embodiment of the divine principle in man. And in the “real” world, there may well be a “dead soul”, because for the inhabitants the soul is only what distinguishes a living person from a dead person. In the episode of the prosecutor's death, those around him guessed that he "had definitely a soul" only when he became "only a soulless body."

This world is insane - it has forgotten about the soul, it is soulless. Only with an understanding of this reason can the revival of Russia begin, the return of lost ideals, spirituality, and soul. There can be no Manilov, Sobakevich, Nozdrev, Korobochka in this world. It has souls – immortal human souls. And so this world cannot be recreated epic. The spiritual world describes another kind of literature - lyrics. That is why Gogol defines the genre of his work as lyrical-epic, calling "Dead Souls" a poem.

(Option 2)

The title of N. V. Gogol's poem "Dead Souls" reflects the main idea of ​​the work. If we take the title of the poem literally, then we can see that it contains the essence of Chichikov's scam: Chichikov bought dead peasants ("souls").

There is an opinion that Gogol planned to create "Dead Souls" by analogy with Dante's "Divine Comedy", which consists of three parts: "Hell", "Purgatory", "Paradise". They had to correspond to the three volumes conceived by N.V. Gogol. In the first volume, N.V. Gogol wanted to show the terrible Russian reality, to recreate the "hell" of modern life, in the second and third volumes - the spiritual upsurge of Russia.

In himself, N.V. Gogol saw a writer-preacher who, painting a picture of the revival of Russia, brings it out of the crisis. When publishing "Dead Souls" N.V.

Gogol himself drew the title page. He drew a carriage, which symbolizes the movement of Russia forward, and around - skulls, which symbolize the dead souls of living people. It was very important for Gogol that the book should come out with this title page.

The world of "Dead Souls" is divided into two parts: the real world, where the main character is Chichikov, and the ideal world of lyrical digressions, in which the main character is N.V. Gogol himself.

Manilov, Sobakevich, Nozdrev, the prosecutor - these are typical representatives of the real world. Throughout the poem, their character does not change: for example, "Nozdryov at thirty-five was the same as at eighteen and twenty." The author constantly emphasizes the callousness and heartlessness of his characters. Sobakevich “didn’t have a soul at all, or he did have one, but not at all where it should, but, like the immortal Koshchei, somewhere beyond the mountains and covered with such a thick shell that everything that didn’t toss and turn at the bottom did not produced absolutely no shock on the surface. All the officials in the city have the same frozen souls without the slightest development. N.V. Gogol describes officials with malicious irony.

At first we see that life in the city is in full swing, but in reality it is just a senseless fuss. In the real world of the poem, a dead soul is a common occurrence. For these people, the soul is just what distinguishes a living person from a dead one. After the prosecutor’s death, everyone guessed that he “had definitely a soul” only when “only a soulless body” remained of him.

The title of the poem is a symbol of the life of the county town N., and this city, in turn, symbolizes all of Russia. NV Gogol wants to show that Russia is in crisis, that people's souls have turned to stone and died.

In an ideal world, however, there is a living soul of the narrator, and therefore it is N.V. Gogol who can notice all the vileness of the life of a sunken city. In one of the lyrical digressions, the souls of the peasants come to life when Chichikov, reading the list of the dead, resurrects them in his imagination.

N.V. Gogol contrasts these living souls of peasant heroes from the ideal world with real peasants, completely stupid and weak, such as, for example, Uncle Mityai and Uncle Minyay.

In the real world of "Dead Souls" there are only two heroes whose souls have not yet completely died, these are Chichikov and Plyushkin. Only these two characters have a biography, we see them in development, that is, before us are not just people with frozen souls, but we see how they reached such a state.

The ideal world of "Dead Souls", which appears before readers in lyrical digressions, is the exact opposite of the real world. In an ideal world, there are not and cannot be dead souls, since there are no manilovs, dogs, prosecutors. For the world of lyrical digressions, the soul is immortal, since it is the embodiment of the divine principle of man.

Thus, in the first volume of "Dead Souls" N.V. Gogol depicts all the negative aspects of Russian reality. The writer reveals to people that their souls have become dead, and, pointing out the vices of people, thereby returns their souls to life.

(Option 3)

N.V. Gogol was always concerned about the problems of spirituality - both of society as a whole and of the individual. In his works, the writer sought to show society "the full depth of its real abomination." Ironically, laughing at human vices, Gogol sought to avoid the death of the soul.

The meaning of the title of the poem "Dead Souls", firstly, is that the main character, Chichikov, buys dead souls from landowners in order to pledge two hundred rubles each to the Board of Trustees and thus make up his own capital; secondly, Gogol shows in the poem people whose hearts have hardened, and their souls have ceased to feel anything. What is ruining these officials and landlords? According to Gogol, "acquisition is the fault of everything", therefore it is the theme of the penny that appears everywhere in the work, where it is about dead souls.

Father bequeathed to Chichikov: "... most of all, take care and save a penny ..." Subsequently, following this advice, Chichikov turned from an ordinary boy into a businessman and dodger, who had almost nothing sacred left in his soul. Apparently, that is why D. S. Merezhkovsky called Chichikov "the errant knight of money."

Just as the schoolboy Pavlusha sewed up five rubles into bags, Korobochka collected "little by little money into colorful bags placed in the drawers of the chest of drawers." Gogol, through the mouth of Chichikov, calls Korobochka "a clubhead", meaning, apparently, not only that she is a narrow-minded woman, but also that she is callous in soul and heart. Korobochka, like Chichikov, had only a passion for accumulation. Plyushkin also has the same trait, only in a hypertrophied form. Every day he walked around his village, picked up everything that came across his way, and put it in a pile in the corner of the room. It was about this hero that Gogol wrote: “And a person could descend to such insignificance, filth!” If we compare a bunch of Plyushkin and Chichikov's travel box, we can conclude that these are similar things, with the only difference that Chichikov has all the items: a soap dish, razors, sandboxes, inkwells, feathers, sealing wax, business tickets, theater tickets and others, papers, money - according to the plan. None of the landlords and officials have a moral life, they are spiritually dead.

Some researchers believe that the sequence according to which Chichikov got to the landlords is similar to the nine circles of Dante's hell, where the severity of sins increases from the first circle to the ninth, actually from Manilov to Plyushkin. One can disagree with this statement, but it is quite possible to assume that every landowner is a kind of sin, the severity of which can only be judged by the Lord.

In general, “Dead Souls” is a work about the contrast, unpredictability of Russian reality (the very name of the poem is an oxymoron). In the work there is both a reproach to people and delight in front of Russia. Gogol wrote about this in Chapter XI of Dead Souls. The writer argued that along with the "dead people" in Russia there is a place for heroes, because every title, every position requires heroism. Why? Yes, because they, these places, are disgraced by bribe-takers and bureaucrats. The Russian people, "full of the creative abilities of the soul", have a heroic mission. However, this mission, according to Gogol, in the times described in the poem, is practically impossible, since there is a possibility of manifestation of heroism, but behind something superficial and unimportant, the morally crushed Russian people do not see them. About this is the plot insert of the poem about Kif Mokievich and Mokiya Kifovich. However, Gogol believes that if the people's eyes are opened to their omission, to dead souls, then Russia will finally fulfill its heroic mission.

In the poem there are also spiritually alive characters given in development. These are the peasants who died, but who had a spiritual life during their lifetime: Fedotov, Pyotr Savelyev Disrespect-Trough, Stepan Cork - “that hero who would be suitable for the guard”, Maxim Telyatnikov, Grigory Get there, you won’t get there, Eremey Karyakin, Nikita and Andrey Volokita , Popov, Abakum Fyrov and others. And most importantly - this is the living soul of the narrator, and therefore it is N.V. Gogol who can notice all the vileness of the life of a sunken city.

"Dead Souls" can be considered a confessional work, since N.V. Gogol noticed shortcomings not only in those around him, but also in himself. The writer said that he endowed the heroes of the poem "in addition to their own muck with my own rubbish." Gogol believed that his work would make readers think about their soul: is it alive or not.

The meaning of the name and originality of the genre of the poem by N.V. Gogol "Dead Souls"

Plan

Introduction

1 Main body

1.1 The meaning of the title of the poem "Dead Souls"

1.2 Definition of N.V. Gogol of the Dead Souls genre

1.3 Genre originality of the poem "Dead Souls"

2 Conclusions on the genre originality of "Dead Souls"

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

"Dead Souls" - a brilliant work of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. It was on him that Gogol pinned his main hopes.

"Dead Souls" - a poem. The history of its creation covers almost the entire creative life of the writer. The first volume was created in 1835-1841 and was published in 1842. The writer worked on the second volume from 1840-1852. In 1845 he burned the finished text for the first time. By 1851 he finished a new version of the volume - and burned it on February 11, 1852, shortly before his death.

"Dead Souls" is closely associated with the name of Pushkin and was created under his influence. Pushkin gave Gogol the plot of Dead Souls. Gogol spoke about this in The Author's Confession: “Pushkin gave me his own plot, from which he wanted to make himself something like a poem and which, according to him, he would not give to anyone else. It was the plot of Dead Souls.

Soon Gogol read the first chapters of the poem to Pushkin. He himself spoke about this: “When I began to read the first chapters of Dead Souls to Pushkin in the form in which they were before, Pushkin, who always laughed when I read (he was a hunter of laughter), began to gradually become more and more gloomy. and gloomier, and finally became completely gloomy. When the reading was over, he said in a voice of anguish: "God, how sad is our Russia." It amazed me. Pushkin, who knew Russia so well, did not notice that all this was a caricature and my own invention! It was then that I saw what a matter taken from the soul means, and in general spiritual truth, and in what a terrifying form for a person darkness and a frightening absence of light can be presented. Since then, I have already begun to think only about how to soften the painful impression that "Dead Souls" could make.

Let's remember this: Gogol in Dead Souls was looking for such a combination of darkness and light that the pictures he created would not horrify a person, but give hope.

But where is the light in his paintings? It seems that if he exists, it is only in lyrical digressions - about the healing endless road, about fast driving, about Russia, which rushes like a "brisk, unbeatable troika." So something like that, but it has long been noticed that none other than Chichikov wanders along these roads, and almost in his head a reasoning imbued with lyrical pathos is born ...

The world of the poem "Dead Souls" is a world where events, landscapes, interiors, people are as reliable as they are fantastic; to shift these images in one's consciousness to one or the other pole means to impoverish them; the tension between the poles expresses Gogol's attitude towards Russia, towards its past, present and future.

So what is the meaning of the title of the poem? Why did Gogol call "Dead Souls" a poem? How to understand it?

The purpose of this study is to find out what is the meaning of the title of the poem "Dead Souls" and to explain the features of the genre of this work.

To do this, it is necessary to solve the following tasks:

1. Creatively study the poem "Dead Souls".

2. Follow the opinion of N.V. Gogol about the poem.

3. Consider critical materials about the poem "Dead Souls".

1 Main body

1.1 The meaning of the title of the poem "Dead Souls"

The name "Dead Souls" is so ambiguous that it gave rise to a plethora of reader guesses, scientific disputes and special studies.

The phrase "dead souls" sounded strange in the 1840s, it seemed incomprehensible. F. I. Buslaev said in his memoirs that when he “heard the mysterious title of the book for the first time, he first imagined that it was some kind of fantastic novel or a story like “Viya”. Indeed, the name was unusual: the human soul was considered immortal, and suddenly dead souls!

“Dead Souls,” wrote A. I. Herzen, “this title carries something terrifying.” The impression of the name was strengthened by the fact that this expression itself was not used in literature before Gogol and was generally little known. Even connoisseurs of the Russian language, for example, Professor of Moscow University M. P. Pogodin, did not know him. He wrote to Gogol indignantly: “There are no dead souls in the Russian language. There are revision souls, assigned, lost, and profited. Pogodin, a collector of old manuscripts, a connoisseur of historical documents and the Russian language, wrote to Gogol with complete knowledge of the matter. Indeed, this expression was not found either in government acts, or in laws and other official documents, or in scientific, reference, memoir, fiction. M. I. Mikhelson, in the collection of winged expressions of the Russian language, reprinted many times at the end of the 19th century, cites the phrase "dead souls" and makes a reference only to Gogol's poem! Mikhelson did not find any other examples in the vast literary and vocabulary material that he looked through.

Whatever the origins, the main meanings of the title can only be found in the poem itself; here, and in general, every well-known word acquires its own, purely Gogolian connotation.

There is a direct and obvious meaning of the name, arising from the history of the work itself. The plot of Dead Souls, like the plot of The Inspector General, was given to him, according to Gogol, by Pushkin: he told the story of how a cunning businessman bought dead souls from landowners, that is, dead peasants. The fact is that since the time of Peter the Great in Russia, audits (checks) of the number of serfs were carried out every 12-18 years, since the landowner was obliged to pay the government a poll tax for a male peasant. Based on the results of the audit, “revision tales” (lists) were compiled. If in the period from revision to revision a peasant died, he was still listed on the lists and the landowner paid a tax for him - until new lists were compiled.

These are the dead, but considered alive, the swindler-dealer and conceived to buy on the cheap. What was the benefit here? It turns out that the peasants could be pawned in the Board of Trustees, that is, they could receive money for each "dead soul".

The highest price that Chichikov had to pay for Sobakevich's "dead soul" was two and a half. And in the Board of Trustees, he could receive 200 rubles for each “soul”, that is, 80 times more.

Chichikov's idea is ordinary and fantastic at the same time. Usually because the purchase of peasants was an everyday affair, but fantastic, because those who, according to Chichikov, "left only one sound, intangible to the senses, are sold and bought."

No one is outraged by this deal, the most incredulous are only mildly surprised. In reality, a person becomes a commodity, where paper replaces people.

So, the first, most obvious meaning of the name: “dead soul” is a peasant who has died, but exists in a paper, bureaucratic “guise”, who has become the subject of speculation. Some of these “souls” have their own names, characters in the poem, different stories are told about them, so that even if it is reported how death happened to them, they come to life before our eyes and look, perhaps, more alive than other “characters” .

« Milushkin, bricklayer! Could put the stove in any house.

Maxim Telyatnikov, shoemaker: whatever pricks with an awl, then boots, that boots, then thanks, and at least in the mouth of a drunk ...

Cart maker Mikheev! After all, he didn’t make any more crews, as soon as spring ones ...

And Cork Stepan, the carpenter? After all, what a force it was! If he had served in the guards, God knows what they would have given him, three arshins and a verst in height!

Secondly, Gogol meant by "dead souls" landowners-

feudal lords who oppressed the peasants and interfered with the economic and cultural development of the country.

But "dead souls" are not only landowners and officials: they are "irrequitedly dead inhabitants", terrible "by the motionless cold of their souls and the barren desert of their hearts." Any person can turn into Manilov and Sobakevich if "an insignificant passion for something small" grows in him, forcing him to "forget great and holy duties and see the great and holy in insignificant trinkets."

It is no coincidence that the portrait of each landowner is accompanied by a psychological commentary that reveals its universal meaning. In the eleventh chapter, Gogol invites the reader not only to laugh at Chichikov and other characters, but “to deepen this heavy inquiry into his own soul: “Isn’t there some part of Chichikov in me too?” Thus, the title of the poem is very capacious and multifaceted.

The artistic fabric of the poem is made up of two worlds, which can be conditionally designated as the "real" world and the "ideal" world. The author shows the real world by recreating the contemporary reality. For the "ideal" world, the soul is immortal, for it is the embodiment of the divine principle in man. And in the “real” world, there may well be a “dead soul”, because for the inhabitants the soul is only what distinguishes a living person from a dead person.

The title given by Gogol to his poem was "Dead Souls", but on the first page of the manuscript, submitted to censorship, the censor A.V. Nikitenko added: "The Adventures of Chichikov, or ... Dead Souls." That was the name of Gogol's poem for about a hundred years.

This cunning postscript muffled the social significance of the poem, distracted readers from thinking about the terrible title "Dead Souls", and emphasized the significance of Chichikov's speculations. A.V. Nikitenko reduced the original, unprecedented name given by Gogol to the level of the titles of numerous novels of sentimental, romantic, protective trends, which lured readers with amazing, ornate titles. The naive trick of the censor did not diminish the significance of Gogol's brilliant work. At present, Gogol's poem is being published under the title given by the author - "Dead Souls".

Lyric-epic poem by N.V. Gogol's "Dead Souls" is undoubtedly the main one in the writer's work. You can think for a long time about the genre of the work, about the image of the main character Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov. But the first question that arises even before reading the work is: why is the poem called “Dead Souls”?

True "Dead Souls"

The simplest answer to this question is related to the plot of the work: Chichikov buys up the "dead" souls of the peasants in order to pawn them and get money for it. But the further you read, the more clearly you understand that the true dead souls - the heroes of the work - are landowners, officials, and Chichikov himself.

The landowners described in the poem: Manilov, Korobochka, Nozdrev, Sobakevich and Plyushkin are soulless people. Someone lives in dreams, another thinks narrowly, the third wastes his fortune and spoils his relatives, the fourth does everything only for himself, the fifth has generally become a “hole in the body of mankind”, has lost his human appearance.

City officials N

Even more "dead" are the officials of the city of N. This is most clearly manifested in the scene at the ball, where there is not a single person, and only headdresses flicker. They are unspiritual, have lost interest in anything other than hoarding funds and bribes.

It is worth noting that, following the owners, the serfs begin to lose their souls: the coachman Chichikova Selifan, the peasants Uncle Mityai and Uncle Minyay, the yard girl Korobochka.

The main thing according to Gogol

Gogol considered the main thing in man to be the soul, which reflects the divine principle of each of us. The soul in literature was the subject of bargaining, card games, losses. Left without a soul, a person can no longer be considered alive. He cannot be useful, the only thing to be expected from him is inhuman acts, because he does not feel anything.

The loss of a soul is not only terrible, but also dangerous, because a person who has lost his soul does evil, while not experiencing embarrassment or remorse. Therefore, N.V. Gogol warns the reader that each of us can become Manilov, Korobochka or Sobakevich if he allows himself to be carried away by some soulless trifle.