GOGOL

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21400, 16 February 1935, Page 15

GOGOL

LAUGHTER IN RUSSIA {SPB CIALLT WBITTEK POR IHJ PRESS.) fB-r M. H. HOLCEOFT.] roeol stands at the beginning of ♦„e modern period in Russian ht- *? re W know him best by fnead Souls," and I want to con- , e m y attention to this book be- „«, whatever the dramatic power T'Varas Bulba," or the artistry of 1 short stories, it is here that we m P nearest to the whole man, and, Tough him. to the spirit of that Tup of immense countries which jjfflcs and curiously attracts the western mind. A Kogue i.nead Souls" is the story of a ilth person named Chichikov. S??uaSnes for a career on the 5 side of roguery by a careful ?„inine in the civil service. Iwice 6 is within reach of fortune but «nes too far and is ruined and disced. Bribery and corruption o the accepted and natural facts fhis little world. To a boldness f cnirit is added an infinite capacity for taking pains which should have made him a genius, but which rnake* him a rascal instead. He P 1 an e ye for detail, and an uictirictive 'talent for reaching the Weaknesses of other people. With he wealthy he suits himself to manners and conversation with a mrt of manly deference; m the fashionable salons he is a dapper, round little man-not altogether tat Md not altogether thin, although inclined to shine from much good feeding—with an air of extreme rjoliteness, a delightful way of flopping back a step or two to make lis bow, and a trick of holding his 'head sideways in an attitude of resnectful attention. All hearts warm ' to him The officials of a provincial town find him a noble fellow; the ladies accept him as heaven-sent to relieve their boredom in the absence of scandal: and Chichikov glides everywhere in his faint breeze of perfume and feels that with a few roubles and his share of luck it is the easiest thing in the world to make a fortune. We meet him at a critical stage in his historv. For the second time he has been ruined. Expelled with dishonour from- the customs department, he has nevertheless managed to save ten thousand roubles from his store of bribes, and with a coachman and a personal servant he now drives sedately in his britchka, seeking corners of vast Russia where his name is unknown and where he may find opportunities of bringing forward his favourite scheme. This is no less than to fyjy up a few thousand dead souls —ftiat is, dead serfs. Landowners find them a nuisance, because, until the next census, they are compelled to pay taxes on the dead as well as the living. Obliging Chichikov undertakes to relieve them of this burden, and contrives to build up a mythical estate occupied solely by the shades of serfs. His plan is to claim the ownership of _ these serfs and to use them as his security in raising a government loan. ■ The Russian Types The landowners, of course, have no idea of his intention, and are puzzled to explain his strange behaviour. Their reactions to it are delightfully human'. Some are pleased to be rid of encumbrances, ai.d give the dead serfs willingly. Others are cautious and suspicious; they have never heard of anyone wanting to buy dead serfs before, but there may possibly be something in it. Thoughts of a new source of income tempt them to delay, to haggle over the prices and finally to accept the buyer's figure with an uneasy sense of being defrauded. After the first surprise they discuss the matter and do the bargaining as gravely as if they were selling cattle or grain. And in the course of his quest he meets strange people. Russia has accepted them as national types; and Maniloff, Scbakevitch and Nozdreff are in the Russian language as permanently and as übiquitously as Falstaff and Pickwick are in our own. To many of us, perhaps, the humour is robbed of its point here and there, because we know little of the ramshackle empire of the Tsars beyond what has been given us in novels. And when we read of it now we read with a sense of separation. This is an empire of the past. For the Russian there must be an awareness of continuity; he sees where the older national life merges with the new, and finds his Nozclreff and Maniloff in workshops and laboratories where formerly they had to be sought in ugly mansions on a neglected countryside. True, they have changed a little. Nozdreff is undergoing a course of discipline in a construction camp, where the wildness and uncouth impulses and ingrained habits of deceit are being purged away. And Maniloff, the dreamer and sentimentalist, has surrendered his acres to those who can cultivate them adequately, and is now in Moscow, established where his temperament can best respond to the inspiration of the new age. But they are human beneath the metamorphosis; and there are times when the animal in Nozdreff sets all the camp ] n an uproar, and moments in Moscow when Maniloff reverts to his unsatisfied passion for friendship and is caught up into a conflict of moods which opens the way for a spiritual tragedy of the kind which Ofoevski loved to depict. It is t->n that peoDle remember the characters of Gogol, and find them still in their midst. And when s ome official, hitherto trusted and Popular, is accused of sabotage and hurried into exile, there are some Who shake their heads and say to one another, rather sadlv: "This fellow Chichikov goes a little too *ar. He has bought his dead souls once too often." Vision Russian critics describe "Dead •?V* S " as a P rose Poem, and possibly there are finer qualities in the original which do not survive translation. There is at least one passage which comes with the strength of poetry into our own language. Chichikov is departing from a provincial town where he has been exposed and derided. He is in a troika, which appears to be a sledge or cart drawn by three horses travelling abreast, usually at a gal¥>P- As a description of fast traveling In an age which knew not the tootor-car, this is an exciting piece tf work; and as the pace quickens ••author hurries far ahead of his ..an^toesseAjpasfc.

sionate words to his country: "Is it not thus, like the bold troika which cannot be overtaken, that thou art dashing along, O Russia, my country? ..." A sort of poetic fury possesses him in the passage which opens from these words and which, alas, is too long to be quoted and would suffer too painfully from abridgement. Only here does Gogol show any true claim to be considered a poet. But there are sentences and phrases scattered through the book which break into the English version as if with an impatient emphasis. The original Russian is too vigorous to be denied, and at such times the sense of strangeness is in abeyance. We see where formerly we have been trying to imagine; the alien countryside opens around, and the dismal pine forest lowers its shade upon us with something of the effect which strikes a native heart. "The green grove, illumined by the sun, parted here and there, disclosing unlighted depths within it, looking like the dark throats of wild beasts." And again: "The noise made by the pens as they went scratch, scratch, was very great, and resembled that of several telyegas loaded with brushwood passing through a forest, where the dry leaves lay fully a quarter of an arshin high." This sort of thing is Russian. If it shares anything with our western literature it is merely the robust and spontaneous imagery' which belongs to the early days of writing, when words are still bright and new, and the homely metaphors are best. Gogol was writing "Dead Souls" in 1837. He was native to his own soil, a natural genius who responded joyfully to the influences of his country and went abroad in spirit to its farthest places: to the mountains which loom above the forests of the south, where life quickens in a milder climate and dreams are born which penetrate even to the frozen north; to roads which go ever onwards across the black soil plains until the turf encroaches and the fences fall away into the swell and dip of the steppes and the grey sky brings slow thoughts and the dimness of melancholy. He knew his country with a quick, instinctive knowledge; not from, much travelling across it. but from the outward reaching of a sensitive mind. The Penalty There is always a frailty in a talent of this kind. Something of the Russian robustness may have been at the foundations, but not enough to carry him forward in the confidence and high hope of a man like Scott. He wavered. A seriousness came upon him; or perhaps it should be said that his natural seriousness (for the comic genius is only a visitor) deepened into melancholy. His early success could not be followed up and repeated, and somehow Chichikov had become too much for him. In the later years of his short life he wrote a second part to "Dead Souls," but knew unmistakably that the old power had left him. The latent seriousness might have seemed to bring its compensations, for when he turned finally from imaginative writing he was certain that he had a mission for mankind. How often have sensitive artists turned aside from their own natural work into this illusion! Much the same thing happened to Tolstoy at /a later time; but in his case there was a strength of intellect which had been denied to Gogol. He had been poorly educated, and in the best years of his life had been drained of his strength for the building up of an imaginary world. As the creative impulse grew weaker there was no weakening of the wistful vision which lives always beyond the story and the poem. He still looked abroad among his fellow beings and loved and pitied them; but now he was not able to come to the relief of expression. Pity and horror are consumed in the joy of writing; but Gogol's pen was idle. Relief was sought in pilgrimage, but the religious vein in his nature was fitted for sudden outpourings of fervour rather than the attitude of settled mildness or stern fanaticism which is needed to carry a man through a long journey to discipline. This side of him can be traced in the latter part of "Dead Souls." We are away from the plains. The mountains rise before us: the little bird-troika bowls along" roads that skirt majestic woods and rivers in which the sunlight sparkles warmly. Everything is fresh and gleaming; there is a brightness over the page which comes partly from.the ebullience of renewed creativeness, and partly from the mood of devotion which opens beyond it. Men who know these moods are not to be expected to show equable lives to the world; the writer who knows the flush of inspiration will seldom undergo the mystery of conversion. For conversion could be described as a breaking in of force which has accumulated in the silent reaches of personality until the moment ot vision strikes in upon the brain; whereas in the case of Gogol the force has had its rhythmic inflow. He ventured to deliver a little 01 his "message," but was misunderstood and reproved: and ma despair which sank into apathy he burned his manuscripts and shut himself up to die. In this way the ioyousness of Gogol .was extinguished, coming to that ending which so often follows the last -choes of laughter, and which Ss to explain for us the deeper relations of comedy with the tragic facts of life.