Tag: Dead Souls

Impressions on Re-Reading Nikolai Gogol’s “Dead Souls”: Characters

Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Gogol
1809-1852

Just a few quick notes:

As you may know, I have been listening to an audiobook of  Nikolai Gogol‘s Dead Souls for the second time, the first having been when I was in Russian lit class in college about 1978. I barely remember any of it from then except in a very broad, general fashion. But I remembered it was enjoyable and I remember one scene at the end of Book One (it’s divided into two books) where the protagonist is traveling across early nineteenth century Russia in his chaise with his coachman and valet in a very majestic, sweeping, epic moment as Gogol describes it.

I have been truly enjoying this like no other book I have read in the past twenty years. It is a terrific satire of not only nineteenth century Russian society, but of humanity as well. Indeed, the characters that Gogol describes are archetypes of certain types of people you probably see every day. You may well read one character’s dialog and think “I know someone just like that.” The characters are so vivid and distinctly different from each other that you can tell which character is speaking just by reading his words and their actions. There is one newlywed couple in a new home, where nothing has yet been finished being assembled or painted. This may be because they are so engrossed in and enchanted by each other, they don’t finish what they are doing. That may be because they kiss very frequently whenever they are together and they kiss so long that Gogol says you could “smoke a small cigar” while they kiss. There is another that is desperate for a friend and wants to become lifelong friends with anyone he meets. He also wants that friendship to be so intense that the Tsar will make them both general as a reward. There is another, a very fat, retired general, who pushes incredible amounts of food on his guests until they become so bloated they can hardly walk. Another is an incredible braggart who cheats at checkers and lies about his accomplishments and who he knows. There are many more.

Gogol must have had keen insight into human nature to be able to portray these people to bring them to life in the reader’s mind.

Anyway, I need to go now. I will post more later.

 

Update on Everything: June 29, 2020

Phil Slattery portrait
Phil Slattery
March, 2015

I have a few minutes to kill, so I thought I would jot down a few random notes about what I have been doing lately.

  1. I haven’t been working on Shadows and Stars as much as I ought. The wife and stepson are with me for awhile. Consequently, I am running more errands, going more places, and doing more chores than usual. Don’t misunderstand me. I am not complaining. I do manage to catch a few moments here and there to write, but not as much as I would like.
  2. When I do write, I am making some progress. The toughest part of writing now is connecting all the myriad details so that there are zero to few plot holes.
  3. I am finding out that the reason a lot of great writers write short works “in broad strokes” (as Nikolai Gogol says in Dead Souls) is so they do not have to connect them and wind up in the situation I now find myself. Unfortunately, I have a detailed way of viewing things. However, some people say this makes my works more enjoyable, easier to visualize, and more interesting.
  4. I have been reading Kerouac’s Desolation Angels, when I get the chance. I believe this is a beautiful, underappreciated, spiritual work. It seems to be Kerouac metaphorically visualizing himself as a spiritual sage (though I don’t know that Kerouac would agree) that comes down off a mountaintop and  into the hubbub and chaos of the world, which is radically different from the quiet mountaintop where he just spent two months. I am maybe a quarter of the way through, so I don’t know if Kerouac will do any proselytizing, but I doubt it. I have read On the Road, and Kerouac doesn’t seem the type to proselytize, even subtly. It may be more of a comment on the world as a whole. I am just at the point where he has come down from the mountain and is Seattle at a Burlesque show. So, I have a long way yet to go, just as Kerouac does in the novel.
  5. In the car, I am listening to an audiobook version of Gogol’s Dead Souls. This is a wonderful, beautiful, humorous work. Read it as soon as you can. It speaks to basic facets found in the human soul and will probably touch everyone deeply in some manner.

That’s all for now. Ciao!