Comparison Essay on “Dead Souls” and “Taras Bulba”

I. The considerable achievement of prose of the XIX century (from the 1840s to the 1890s) was Russian Realism, which is be by slicey great Russian generators and Nikolai Gogol is non the last in this list. It is often mentioned that after 1830 Pushkin turned more than and more to prose, although being the superior poet of the m. However, the writer who established re anyy innovating fableistic and narrative tradition in Russian literary culture was Gogol. Gogols example, combined with the authoritative literary pronouncements of the greatest literary critic of the period, V. G. Belinsky, proved prose to be the literary medium of the future. Later, the great Russian youngist (and not the worst philosopher of religious thought) Dostoevsky have said, referring to himself and his fellow Realists, We have altogether come out from under Gogols Overcoat (meaning the famous business relationship by Gogol, Shynel or Overcoat).Vladimir Nabokov highly esteemed Gogol as a great Rus sian (in no case Ukrainian, he is sure, in spite of the fact that Nikolaj Gogol-Ianovski originates from Ukraine, Mirgorod, and his foundation outlook is obviously marked by Ukrainian national tradition) novelist, dramatist, satirist, and cave in of the so-c solelyed critical naive realism in Russian literature, outgo-known for his novel Mertvye Dushy (1842, defunct Souls). Praising the imaginative power and linguistic playfulness of the writers latest constitutes (Shynel or Overcoat, Mertvye Dushy etc), Nabokov states that Gogol is boththing just now the romantic folklore novelist.Actually, on that point can be defined two main periods in Gogols indite conservative romantic and cant intellectionlism of the Ukrainian noncurrent (which we find in Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka and Taras Bulba) and the adjoining evolutionary period of modernistic urban life reflection with all its psychological abnormality and deviations. If to believe Nabokov, in the mature age Gogol wa s discredited of the playful artificialness of his early works and as for the famous Russian critic, it is a d depictful nightmare even to imagine Gogol scribbling Ukrainian folkloristic novels volume by volume Had he chosen this path, the world would have never hear his name. So, lets compare these two antagonistic periods of Gogols written material corresponding to the most vividly representative works of his Taras Bulba and Dead Souls.II. Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka, the book of Ukrainian folklore stories, which appeared in 1831-32, was Gogols disc everyplacey work (Gogol had greatly admired Pushkin, and he used in this work the same narrative device as Pushkin did in his Tales of Belkin). It showed his skill in mixing fantastic and demonic ideas of his mess with macabre, and at the same time he said something crucial about the Russian and Ukrainian (ignoring Nabokovs imperialistic snobbism, it is important to mark Gogols Ukrainian roots) character. After calamity as an assistant lecturer of world stage at the University of St. Petersburg (1834-35), Gogol became a full-time writer. Under the title Mirgorod (1835) Gogol published a new assembling of his stories, also inspired by Ukrainian vernacular culture, beginning with old-world Landowners, which described the decay of the old way of life.The book also include the famous historical boloney (poem in prose) Taras Bulba, which according to some literary critics showed the influence of W.Scott and L.Stern. However, it is rather ignorant not to take into account the archetype Ukrainian novelistic tradition, which is widely ground on folklore (Gulak-Artemovski, Kvitka-Osnovjanenko and many other writers of Ukrainian romanticism are evidently folkloristic). The protagonist of Taras Bulba is a strong, heroic character, perfectly non- natural for Gogols later cavalcade of bureaucrats, lunatics, swindlers, and losers, numerously represented on the pages of Dead Souls.In 1569, dominion over the ri ght-coast Ukraine passed to Poland. The Polish lords (lyahy) promptly tried stamping out Ukrainian culture by savagely exploiting the peasantry, outlawing the Ukrainian language and imposing Catholicism (Unia) and Papal conquest on the Orthodox population. In response, Ukrainian male peasants flocked to join the troops groups known as the Cossacks. They founded the Zaporizhian Sitch on the Hortycya Island.The Cossacks, essentially a wild plow between mercenary crusaders and highwaymen,became the focus of resistance to the Poles, the Turks and the Crimean Tatars. Gogols novel tells the story of the old and wise warrior Taras Bulba who, with his sons Ostap and Andrij, sallies forth to join the Sitch. Gogols incontestably romantic adventure was as oft generation a propaganda piece for his own time as an requiem for a way of life that had passed. In Taras Bulba we meet conservative Gogol, who has undecomposed arrived to Petersburg and is not yet sophisticated in the city life. He is floor by the corruption and moral decay of the city dwellers. He craves for the palmy Age of his peoples history and this age, he thinks, was the glorious measure of the Zaporizhian Sitch.Taras Bulba is a remarkable example of the early romantic Gogol (if to call Gogol the writers texts). However, this novel works on both levels (historical and pshycological, more typical for the later Gogols works) and is surely one of the most exciting masterpieces in world literature.Set sometime between the mid-sixteenth and early-seventeenth century, Gogols epic tale recounts both a bloody Cossack revolt against the Poles (led by the bold Taras Bulba of Ukrainian folk mythology) and the trials of Taras Bulbas two sons. As Robert Kaplan (translator) writes, Taras Bulba has a Kiplingesque gusto . . . that makes it a pleasure to read, but central to its theme is an unredemptive, darkly cruel violence that is far beyond anything that Kipling ever touched on. We need more works like Taras Bu lba to better understand the emotional wellsprings of the threat we nerve today in places like the Middle East and Central Asia. (Jane Grayson and corporate trust Wigzell p.18).And the critic John Cournos has noted, A clue to all Russian realism may be found in a Russian critics observation about Gogol Seldom has nature created a man so romantic in bent, yet so masterly in portraying all that is unromantic in life.(The Rise of Prose Nikolai Gogol). But this arguing does not cover the whole ground, for it is easy to see in closely all of Gogols work his free Cossack soul trying to col through the wall of gloomy and non-heroic today like some antique demon, essentially Dionysian. So, through the years, this novel sounds at in one case as a reproach, a protest, and a challenge, ever calling for joy, ancient joy, that is no more with us.This wide interpretation lies far beyond previously often-uttered accusation of vernacular populist romanticism. Nikolai Gogol searched for the jo y and sadness in the Ukrainian songs he love so much. Ukrainian was to Gogol the language of the soul, and it was in Ukrainian songs rather than in old chronicles, of which he was not a little contemptuous, that he read the history of his people. So, here in this novel the writers mark is not the historical but rather the psychological picture of his people. therefore no one (even Nabokov) has the right to accuse Gogol of Ukrainian culture desecration as if following the modern literary trend of his time.Indeed, so great was his enthusiasm for his own land that after collecting material for many years, the year 1833 finds him at work on a history of unfortunate Ukraine, a work planned to take up six volumes and writing to a friend at this time he promises to say much in it that has not been said before him. However, Gogol never wrote either his history of Little Russia (Malorosiya) or his universal history, he didnt become Ukrainian Balzac but is often called Ukrainian Goffman o r Poe.Apart from several abbreviated studies not always reliable, the result of his many years application to his scholarly projects was this brief epic in prose, Homeric in mood (The Rise of Prose Nikolai Gogol). The superstar of intense living, living dangerously to cite Nietzsche the recognition of courage as the greatest virtue, the God in man, inspired Gogol, living in times which tended toward grey monotony, with admiration for his more fortunate forefathers, who humpd in a poetical time, when everything was won with the sword, when every one in his turn strove to be an alert(p) being and not a spectator. In Taras Bulba we find the people of action, and Dead Souls gives us the gallery of people of things.Russia Russia I see you now, from my wondrous, beautiful prehistorical I behold you How wretched, dispersed and uncomfortable everything is about you(Nikolai Gogol)III. Gogol began working on Dead Souls in 1835. The plot and the main idea of the story was suggested to Gogol by Pushkin who seemed to have understood Gogol as a writer quite well. Pushkin matte that the idea of a man travelling all over the Russian Impire buying up the ownership rights to villeins who had died (mertvye dushy) would allow Gogol to make at once the literary success. In fact, it was an opportunity to introduce a multitude of characters, alter settings, mountains of detail, and the scope within which to be able to elaborate the anecdotal story of the work to his hearts content and to reveal all the sins of his contemporary. Gogol had big ideas of becoming a scriptor of his age a sort of BalzacFor the succeeding(a) six years, he commit almost all of his creative energy to Dead Souls. His compulsive cunning is evident in that the entire work was revised at least(prenominal) five times the author state that some passages had been rewritten as many as twenty times. He felt that this novel should be his best one.Unfortunately, only the first part of Dead Souls, twelve chapters in all, was entire by Gogol. The second part, as we know it, (some chapters of which are often published with the first part) is a recreation from various sources of what Gogol might have through with(p) with the continuation of his work. Influenced by the fanatical priest Father Konstantinovskii, he burn what he actually had already written for the second part of the novel just nine days before his death.The situation from which the novel develops is based upon a scheme which theoretically was possible in Gogols day. The governance had a policy of loaning money to landholders, feeling that this class was its strongest support. Lands owned, however, were measured not in acres, but by the number of souls ( helots, or here, mertvye dushy) residing on them. De facto, landowners were serf owners The government was ready to accept the land (that is, the serfs) of an individual as collateral for a loan. Thus, a method was required by which the holdings of an individual lan downer could be established at any given time.This method stated that an individual possessed the number of souls recorded as such that travel to him/her in the most recent population count. The census was taken every ten years, which meant that near the end of the ten-year cycle almost every landowner would have some serfs who were not recorded in the preceding census because they had recently been born, and some serfs still recorded even though they had died eagle-eyed ago since the last census. In Dead Souls, the main character, Chichikov, schemes to buy from the serf holders a number of those souls who had died but were still counted as living until the next census. An absurd situation becomes possible dead souls are sold as being alive people, which ar estil able to work. Its cheap at the price.A rapscallion would cheat you, sell you some worthless rubbish instead of souls, but mine are as juicy as ripe nuts, all picked they are all either craftsmen or sturdy peasants, Sob akievich boasts to his weird vendee (Gogol, Nikolai Vasilievich). Once Chichikov had a number of such souls, he would apply to the government bank for a loan, using the souls as his collateral. With this low-interest loan in run he would then buy and work an actual country estate, ultimately paying back the loan and purchasing living souls to work the land. Well, deviation the whole plot, it is imporatnt to state Gogols idea of small marginal people actually decaying in their small towns and farms. The Russia of small towns is the country of odd and irreversibly narrow-minded people. What Gogol proves is that these small landowners are actually dead They have burried themselves alive in their dirty stinking flea-bitten houses.Contrudicting the wide-sprea yet contested idea of Gogols evolution as a writer, it is possible to say that either completing histoical heroic plot or conveying contemporary decompose society, Gogols intention stays the same to show the depth of a human s oul and how this soul can be filled with live brightness of heroism or by dead wickedness and silly oddity. Bibliography Gogol, Nikolai Vasilievich. Taras Bulba and Other Tales. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library// http//etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/GogTara.htmlNikolay Gogol Text and Context, ed. by Jane Grayson and Faith Wigzell (1989).N. V. Nabokov Nicolai Gogol, 1944.The Rise of Prose Nikolai Gogol// http//www1.umn.edu/lol-russ/hpgary/Russ3421/lesson6.htm