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Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not
used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad
quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are
images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to
keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the
original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain
imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made
available for future generations to enjoy.
Gogol has made brilliantly colored pictures of his Zaporogues,
which please by their very grotesqueness; but sometimes it is too
evident that he has not drawn them from nature. Moreover, these
character-pictures are framed in such a trivial and romantic
setting that one regrets to see them so ill-placed. The most
prosaic story would have suited them better than these melodramatic
scenes in which are accumulated tragic incidents of famine,
torture, etc. In short, one feels that the author is not at ease on
the ground which he has chosen; his gait is awkward, and the
invariable irony of his style makes the perusal of these melancholy
incidents more painful. This style which, in my opinion, is quite
out of place in some parts of "Taras Bulba," is much more
appropriate in the "Viy," or "King of the Gnomes," a tale of
witchcraft, which amuses and alarms at the same time. The grotesque
easily blends with the marvelous. Recognizing to the full the
poetic side of his subject, the author, while describing the savage
and strange customs of the old-time Cossacks with his usual
precision and exactitude, has easily prepared the way for the
introduction of an element of uncanniness. -- From Prosper
Merimee's Preface to this volume.
This is the story of a nose. No, really -- it's the story of a
nose that leaves the face of an official in St. Petersburg (the
"Russian" St. Petersburg, the one in Florida wasn't even a proper
village when Gogol was alive). The nose leaves this man's face and
wanders off to have a life of its own. It does strange stuff, too,
What's to expect? Seriously, it's a "nose."
Nikolai Gogol. You've got to love him.
DEAD 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 Vasilievich
Gogol, but practically all the Russian masterpieces that have come
since have grown out of it, like the limbs of a single tree.
Dostoevsky 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.
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