Introduction

Back in 1835, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol began work on one of his most famous and significant works - on the poem "Dead Souls". Almost 200 years have passed since the publication of the poem, and the work remains relevant to this day. Few people know that if the author had not made some concessions, the reader might not have seen the work at all. Gogol had to edit the text many times only for the censorship to approve the decision to release it to print. The version of the title of the poem proposed by the author did not suit the censorship. Many chapters of "Dead Souls" were changed almost completely, lyrical digressions were added, and the story about Captain Kopeikin lost its harsh satire and some characters. The author, according to the stories of contemporaries, even wanted to place an illustration of a britzka surrounded by human skulls on the title page of the publication. There are several meanings of the title of the poem "Dead Souls".

Polysemy of the name

The title of the work "Dead Souls" is ambiguous. Gogol, 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.

metaphorical

The meaning of the title "Dead Souls" in Gogol is metaphorical. It becomes interesting to look at the problem of the disappearance of the boundaries between the dead and the living in the description of the peasants being bought. Korobochka and Sobakevich describe the dead as if they were alive: one was kind, the other was a good plowman, the third had golden hands, but those two didn’t even take drops in their mouths. Of course, there is also a comic element in this situation, but on the other hand, all these people who once worked for the benefit of the landowners appear in the imagination of readers as alive and still living.

The meaning of Gogol's work, of course, is not limited to this list. One of the most important interpretations lies in the described characters. After all, if you look, then all the characters, except for the dead souls themselves, turn out to be inanimate. Officials and landlords have been mired in routine, uselessness and aimlessness of existence for so long that they have no desire to live in principle. Plyushkin, Korobochka, Manilov, the mayor and the postmaster - they all represent a society of empty and meaningless people. The landlords appear before the reader as a series of heroes, lined up according to the degree of moral degradation. Manilov, whose existence is devoid of everything mundane, Korobochka, whose stinginess and captiousness knows no bounds, lost Plyushkin, ignoring obvious problems. These people have lost their souls.

officials

The meaning of the poem "Dead Souls" lies not only in the lifelessness of the landlords. Officials present a far more terrifying picture. Corruption, bribery, nepotism. An ordinary person becomes a hostage of the bureaucratic machine. The paper becomes the defining factor of human life. This is especially clearly seen in The Tale of Captain Kopeikin. A war invalid is forced to go to the capital only to confirm his disability and apply for a pension. However, Kopeikin, unable to understand and break the management mechanisms, unable to come to terms with the constant postponement of meetings, Kopeikin commits a rather eccentric and risky act: he sneaks into the official’s office, threatening that he will not leave until his demands are heard. The official quickly agrees, and Kopeikin loses his vigilance from the abundance of flattering words. The story ends with the fact that the assistant to the civil servant takes away Kopeikin. Nobody heard more about Captain Kopeikin.

Revealed vices

It is no coincidence that the poem is called "Dead Souls". Spiritual poverty, inertia, lies, gluttony and greed kill the desire to live in a person. After all, everyone can turn into Sobakevich or Manilov, Nozdryov or the mayor - you just need to stop striving for something other than your own enrichment, come to terms with the current state of affairs and realize some of the seven deadly sins, continuing to pretend that nothing is happening.

There are wonderful words in the text of the poem: “but centuries pass after centuries; half a million sydneys, goofs and bobakov doze soundly, and a husband is rarely born in Russia who knows how to pronounce it, this almighty word “forward””.

Artwork test

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.

Determining the main idea of ​​the poem "Dead Souls" is not entirely simple. This is explained, first of all, by the fact that we now have only a small part of this work - only the first part, and separate scattered pieces of the second - something that was not destroyed by Gogol himself. Thus, we do not have the opportunity to judge the entire ideological content of the work. And then the position of the critic is hampered by the fact that he has at his disposal the interpretations that the author himself gave to Dead Souls, and the promises that he wanted to fulfill at the end of the poem, but did not have time. By Gogol's own admission, at first he himself wrote without any serious goals. Pushkin gave him a plot grateful for his talent; Gogol was carried away by the comedy of those provisions that were easily woven into this plot - and began to write a “caricature”, “without defining a detailed plan for himself, without giving himself an account of what the hero himself should be like. I simply thought, - says Gogol, - that the ridiculous project, the execution of which Chichikov is busy with, will lead me to various faces and characters. This free, purely artistic creativity helped Gogol to create the best pages of the first part of Dead Souls - those pages that caused Pushkin to exclaim: “Lord! how sad is Russia. This exclamation struck Gogol - he saw that something large, ideologically meaningful could come out of the "prank" of his pen, from his playful, frivolous work. And so, encouraged by Pushkin, he decided to show in "Dead Souls" "from one side of Russia", that is, more fully than in "The Inspector General", to depict the negative aspects of Russian life.

The deeper Gogol went into his work, the weaker Pushkin's influence became; the more independent Gogol's attitude to his work became, the more complex, artificial, and tendentious his plans became. First of all, he was imbued with the idea of ​​expanding the limits of what was depicted - he wanted to show Russia not “from one side”, but in its entirety - evil and good, concluded in her life; then he began to think about a "plan" for his already begun work - he asked himself "anxious questions about the" purpose "and" meaning "of his work. And then the poem "Dead Souls" in his imagination grew into three parts. He probably later saw in it an allegorical meaning. According to his idea, the three parts of Dead Souls should, in their finished form, correspond to the three parts of The Divine Comedy by Dante: the first part, dedicated to depicting only evil, should have corresponded to Hell; the second part, where evil was not so disgusting, where a gap begins in the soul of the hero, where some positive types are already being deduced - would correspond to "Purgatory", - and, finally, in the final third part, Gogol wanted to present in the apotheosis all the good that was in the soul of the "Russian man" - this part had to correspond to "Paradise". Thus, that artificial, cumbersome construction of Dead Souls appeared, that cunning systematization of material that Gogol could not cope with.

But, besides this thoughtful composition, Gogol was also prevented from creating freely by a moral tendency. All the growing concerns about his "spiritual business", about the purification of his heart, had a detrimental effect on his work. And so, “Dead Souls” gradually turned into some kind of “sewer pipe”, where he poured their imaginary and real "vices". "My heroes are therefore close to the soul, he says, because they are from the soul - all my recent works are the history of my own soul." He himself admitted that when the desire to get rid of various spiritual vices intensified in him, he “began to endow his heroes, in addition to their own “nasty things” - with their own. And, according to him, it helped him to become better himself ...

So, Gogol himself gives us three interpretations of the idea of ​​"Dead Souls" - 1) its beginning (the first part) - a simple image of peculiar faces and characters taken from Russian life. A characteristic feature that unites almost all the heroes of the first part is the bleak vulgarity, the complete unconsciousness of life, the misunderstanding of its goals and meaning: from "this side" he presented "Russian society", 2) the work "Dead Souls" was supposed to cover all of Russia, - all evil and good contained in it. In such a broad interpretation of Russian reality, Gogol saw "service" to his homeland - and 3) this work was supposed to serve him personally, in the matter of his spiritual self-improvement. He looked at himself as a “moralist” who would not only point out to fellow citizens the evil that certain vicious figures bring into life, but also draw those ideals that would save the homeland.

The idea of ​​"Dead Souls" from the point of view of criticism and the reader

It is easy to understand that now this author’s idea is not entirely clear to the reader of Dead Souls: he has before his eyes only the first part of the poem, in which only random promises flash that in the future the story will take on a different character, to the personal “spiritual affair The writer doesn't care about the reader. Therefore, it was necessary to judge the work, leaving the author's intentions, without delving into his soul. And so, modern and subsequent criticism, contrary to Gogol, itself determined the idea of ​​the work. As earlier in The Inspector General, so in Dead Souls, the author’s desire to point out the ugliness of Russian life, which, on the one hand, depended on serfdom, and on the other hand, on the system of government in Russia, was seen. Thus, the idea of ​​"Dead Souls" was recognized by the majority as accusatory, the author is ranked among the noble satirists who boldly castigate the evil of modern reality. In a word, the same thing happened that happened before with The Inspector General: 1) the author had one idea, and the results of his work led to conclusions that he did not want at all, did not expect ... 2) both regarding the "Inspector General" and With regard to Dead Souls, we have to establish the idea of ​​the work not only without the help of the author, but even against his wishes: we must see in this work a picture of the negative aspects of Russian life, and in this picture, in its illumination, see the great social meaning of the work.

Why does Chichikov buy dead souls? This question often arises among readers, and not only because they may not have read the work very carefully, but due to the fact that the meaning of the Chichikov scam is not entirely clear.

The fact is that according to the laws of the Russian Empire of the 1830-1840s, the dead serfs were formally considered alive until the next revision, therefore they could be the subject of trade operations of their owners. Having bought a large number of such peasants, Chichikov could be considered a rich landowner, which would give him weight in society. However, this is not the main goal of the swindler Chichikov. He had the opportunity to realize his fictitious capital. Upon learning of an oversight in the legislation concerning dead souls, Chichikov exclaimed to himself: “Oh, I’m Akim-simplicity - I’m looking for mittens, and both are in my belt! Yes, if I buy all these who have died out, they have not yet submitted new revision tales, get them, let's say, a thousand, and, let's say, the Board of Trustees will give two hundred rubles per capita, that's two hundred thousand capital. Chichikov knows that for such an operation one must also be the owner of the land, a landowner, and intends to use another opportunity for enrichment: “True, without land one cannot either buy or mortgage. Why, I'll buy on withdrawal, on withdrawal; Now the land in the Tauride and Kherson provinces is given away for free, just populate.

So, Chichikov is going to use the state's oversight and extract his own benefit. It should be noted that such cases occurred in reality. Pushkin told Gogol about one of them, so that he would use it as the plot of a work of art. Gogol took Pushkin's advice and created a brilliant poem about Russia. What is the main idea of ​​the poem, what is criminal in Chichikov's scam?

Chichikov causes economic damage to the state, intending to fraudulently obtain land and money. After all, in fact, Chichikov will not populate these lands, and the state will give them away not only free of charge, but also in vain. No less significant is the moral damage from this scam, since Chichikov, buying dead peasants from the landowners, involves them in his crime. The poem depicts Chichikov's five visits to the landowners, and each of these visits shows how this criminal deal affects people. Manilov gives his peasants to Chichikov out of naivete, which comes from a lack of character and senseless "beautiful spirit." Through this image, Gogol warns of the dangers of carelessness and mental laziness. The box sells dead souls, obeying the pressure of Chichikov. In this case, he acted as a tempter, embarrassing the old landowner to such an extent that she, who never left her estate, went to the city to find out how much dead souls are now. By talking about dead souls, Chichikov brought the sharper and moth Nozdryov to a frenzy, and the matter almost came to assault. The offer to sell dead souls made to Sobakevich evoked an instant response from him. At the same time, the landowner discovered his inherent cynicism and greed. The landowner Plyushkin, on the other hand, sincerely rejoices at the “good luck” that has fallen to sell many dead and runaway peasants for a penny profit.

The reader, perhaps, does not immediately think, but then he understands more and more clearly the hidden damage of Chichikov's criminal enterprise - moral. Having taken possession of the formally dead people, Chichikov, along with their names, takes with him the memory of them, that is, they no longer belong to the place where they lived and died. Chichikov seems to "wash out" the fertile layer of soil - the peasants; The "soil" of the nation disappears into nowhere. This is the deepest semantic metaphor behind this story. And finally, having made the dead an object of sale, Chichikov extends his greed to the afterlife. This moral and religious idea was especially close to Gogol, it permeates all his work.

(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. It is common 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 "a little bit of money in 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 landowners 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 during their lifetime had a spiritual life: Fedotov, Pyotr Savelyev Disrespect-Trough, Stepan Cork - “the 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.