Dead Souls
14.99 €
Out of stock
Dead Souls
14.99 €
The poem "Dead Souls" by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol (1809-1852) is one of the most significant works of Russian and world literature. Initially, the author planned to create a three-volume book, but the almost finished second volume was lost, only a few chapters in drafts survived, and the third volume was never written. The present edition includes the full text of the first volume, a chapter from the appendices to the first volume and a later edition of the unfinished second volume. "Dead Souls", the work of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol (1809-1852), the genre of which the author himself designated as a "poem" - one of the most ambitious and significant works of Russian literature. The expression "dead souls" first appeared in Gogol's papers on October 7, 1835: in a letter to Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, he informed the poet that he had followed his advice to write a novel about a miser of dead peasants. Work on the first volume lasted from the middle of 1835 to the fall of 1841, and in December the manuscript was submitted to the censorship committee. With a revised "The Tale of Captain Kopeikin" and a modified title "The Phenomena of Chichikov, or Dead Souls" May 21, 1842 first saw the light. The reaction of the reading public to the novelty was ambiguous. Many connoisseurs of Gogol's work considered the picture of the surrounding reality created by him too gloomy, but the majority instantly perceived the poem with delight. Why is "Dead Souls" a poem? It is not only in the poetic perfection of Gogol's text. Initially, Nikolai Vasilyevich planned to create a three-volume book, in which the adventures of Chichikov, outwardly well-meaning and ordinary gentleman of the average hand, would be only a connecting thread between the epic paintings of life in modern Russia. The writer himself pointed out in a letter to V. A. Zhukovsky on June 26, 1842, that the published part of the poem "...seems to me like a porch hastily attached by the provincial architect to the palace, which is planned to be built in colossal dimensions ...". The grandiose idea could not be realized to the end: the almost finished second volume was lost, only a few chapters in drafts were preserved, and the third volume was never written. This edition includes the full text of the first volume of Dead Souls, a chapter from the appendices to the first volume and a later edition of the unfinished second volume. The drawings used in the design are also of great interest. In 1901, the St. Petersburg publisher Adolf Fedorovich Marx realized a luxurious illustrated edition of the poem. A large group of talented artists, working according to a single plan, were involved in the work on it; the creative team was led by art historian Pyotr Gnedich and painter Mieczyslaw Mihajlovich Dalkevich. The artists made 365 wonderful illustrations: V. A. Andreev, A. F. Afanasyev, V. I. Bystrenin, M. M. Dalkevich, F. S. Kozachinsky, I. K. Mankovsky, N. V. Pirogov and E. P. Samokish-Sudkovskaya reproduced everyday scenes of the work, N. N. Bazhin and N. N. Khokhryakhov executed landscapes, and N. S. Samokish - booklets and vignettes.
See also:
- All books by the publisher
- All books by the author
- All books in the series Library of World Literature