A few factual points ought to be explained to the reader, even
though the novel itself eventually suffices to clarify some of
them. First, the title of the book. Among Russian serf-owning
gentry, the idiomatic way to assess someone's wealth was to express
it in terms of the number of "souls" he owned-that is, male, adult
serfs. Taxes on serfs had to be paid by the owner until the next
census or registration date even if they may have died in the
meantime. Gogol's "dead souls," in addition to this literal
reference to serfs who had died since the last registration date
for serfs, are also a metaphor for the dead moral and spiritual
sensibilities of the many inhabitants of Gogol's zoo. This title
ran into trouble with Gogol's censors, who held the ridiculous
suspicion that the title might be a blasphemous attack on the
immortality of the human soul. Gogol therefore added the title
"Chichikov's Adventures."
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