The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dead Souls, by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

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Title: Dead Souls

Author: Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

Commentator: John Cournos

Translator: D. J. Hogarth

Posting Date: July 26, 2008 [EBook #1081]
Release Date: October, 1997

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEAD SOULS ***

Produced by John Bickers

DEAD SOULS

By Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

Translated by D. J. Hogarth

Introduction By John Cournos

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, born at Sorochintsky, Russia, on 31st
March 1809. Obtained government post at St. Petersburg and later an
appointment at the university. Lived in Rome from 1836 to 1848. Died on
21st February 1852.

PREPARER'S NOTE

The book this was typed from contains a complete Part I, and a partial
Part II, as it seems only part of Part II survived the adventures
described in the introduction. Where the text notes that pages are
missing from the "original", this refers to the Russian original, not
the translation.

All the foreign words were italicised in the original, a style not
preserved here. Accents and diphthongs have also been left out.

INTRODUCTION

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 Vasil'evich
Gogol, but practically all the Russian masterpieces that have come since
have grown out of it, like the limbs of a single tree. Dostoieffsky
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."

Dead Souls, which bears the word "Poem" upon the title page of the
original, has been generally compared to Don Quixote and to the Pickwick
Papers, while E. M. Vogue places its author somewhere between Cervantes
and Le Sage. However considerable the influences of Cervantes and
Dickens may have been--the first in the matter of structure, the other
in background, humour, and detail of characterisation--the pre