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A Catalogue of Commercialism in Nikolai Gogol´'s Dead Souls

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Russell Scott Valentino
Russell Scott Valentino*
Affiliation:
Department of Russian, University of Iowa
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Extract

In the comparatively peaceful, tranquil and business-minded Europe of the period after the Congress of Vienna, the world suddenly appeared empty, petty, and boring and the stage was set for the Romantic critique of the bourgeois order as incredibly impoverished in relation to earlier ages–the new world seemed to lack nobility, grandeur, mystery, and, above all, passion

–Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 57 , Issue 3 , Fall 1998 , pp. 543 - 562
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1998

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References

I delivered earlier versions of the present essay at the 1997 conference of the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages in Washington, D.C., and at the 1998 meeting of the British Association for Slavic and East European Studies in Cambridge, England. Funding support for the project was provided by the University of Iowa's Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. I am indebted to Ray J. Parrott, Harry Weber, and Irina Paperno for their comments and suggestions.

1. Gogol', Nikolai, Mertvye dushi, in Mordovchenko, N. E., ed., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Moscow, 1951), 6: 205 Google Scholar. All subsequent page references are to this edition. Translations from the Russian are my own.

2. See Leighton, Lauren G., “Numbers and Numerology in ‘The Queen of Spades, ’ “ Canadian Slavonic Papers 19, no. 4 (December 1977): 417—43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Pushkin, Alexander, The Captain's Daughter and Other Stories, trans. Keane, T. (New York, 1936), 250, 252.Google Scholar

4. Bayley, John, Pushkin: A Comparative Commentary (Cambridge, Eng., 1971), 316.Google Scholar

5. Lotman, Jurij M., “Theme and Plot: The Theme of Cards and the Card Game in Russian Literature of the Nineteenth Century,” PTL 3 (1978): 476–77.Google Scholar

6. It is likely for this reason that fate and chance are intimately linked in Pushkin's depiction of Hermann. On the role of chance in “The Queen of Spades” and in Pushkin's thought in general, see Lotman, “Theme and Plot.” Hermann's attempt to control chance is similar to Chichikov's attempts to control his chance encounters—with Korobochka, Nozdrev, and the Governor's daughter—that in the end prove to be his undoing. On chance and the patterning of planned versus unplanned encounters in Dead Souls, see Fusso, Susanne, Designing Dead Souls: An Anatomy of Disorder in Gogol (Stanford, 1993), 20–51.Google Scholar

7. Part 1 of the book is often thought of as a “gallery of portraits,” with litde or no organic unity besides, perhaps, the road itself. See, for instance, Fanger, Donald, The Creation of Nikolai Gogol (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), 164–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gippius, V. V., Gogol', ed. and trans. Maguire, Robert A. (Durham, 1989), 119 Google Scholar; and Stepan Shevyrev, “Gallereiia portretov vMertvykh dushakh,” in V. Pokrovskii, comp., Nikolai Vasil'evich Gogol': Ego zhizn’ isochineniia—Sbornik istoriko–literaturnykh statei, 4th supplemental ed. (1915; reprint, Oxford, 1978), 282–90. While I by no means wish to suggest diat the ordering principle proposed in the present analysis either supersedes all others or exhausts the interpretive potentials of Gogol “s character–creations, my approach presupposes that the landowners are neither “completely unconnected with one another” (D. Tamarchenko, “Mertvye dushiN. V. Gogolia,” Russkaia literatura, 1959, no. 2: 18–19), nor occurring “without logical order” (Richard Freeborn, The Rise of the Russian Novel: Studies in the Russian Novel fromEugene Onegin to War and Peace [Cambridge, Eng., 1973], 91). Gogol “s own statement to the effect that his sequence is based on an increasing degree of poshlost’ (Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 8: 293), while certainly suggestive, is secondary to the evidence of the text itself. Nevertheless, there is little reason to exclude the possibility of an equivalency of sorts, in Gogol “s estimation, of poshlost’ and the gradually increasing spiritual commodifkation suggested in Dead Souls.

8. Cf. Frank Friederberg Seeley's similar suggestion that “the new world of Dead Souls is a new psychological world reflecting the transformation of society in the sixty years spanned by [Pushkin's Captain's Daughter, Lermontov's Hero of Our Time, and Gogol “s Dead Souls]; the new age is that of incipient capitalism.” Seeley, “Gogol “s Dead Souls,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 4, no. 1 (January 1968): 33–44. While the suggestion of a commercial sequence in Gogol “s landowners is, to my knowledge, my own, my analysis does occasionally converge with Seeley's, especially in his suggestion that “from his school–days onward [Chichikov] has used his fellow–humans; his life has been organised in terms not of personal feelings but of the cash nexus” (42). I am indebted to Professor Ray Parrott of the University of Iowa for bringing Seeley's article to my attention.

9. On the importance of the concept of soul in the book, see also Fanger, The Creation of Nikolai Gogol, 168–69, 178–81.

10. The term comes from Daly, Herman E. and Cobb, John B. Jr., For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future (Boston, 1989), 34.Google Scholar

11. Onegin is a reader of Adam Smith and is described as a “profound economist” (glubokii ekonom); see Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 16 vols, in 20 and suppl. (Moscow and Leningrad, 1937–59), l: vii.

12. Pintner, Walter McKenzie, Russian Economic Policy under Nicholas I (Ithaca, 1967), 5, 184–85Google Scholar. On banks and credit institutions, see also Peushkina, S. N., Gosudarstvennyi bank dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii (Moscow, 1993)Google Scholar; Gindin, I., Gosudarstvennyi bank i ekonomicheskaia politika tsarskogo pravitel'stva, 1861–1892 (Moscow, 1960)Google Scholar; Borovoi, S. Ia., Kredit i banki Rossii (seredina XVII V.–1861 g.) (Moscow, 1958).Google Scholar

13. Riasanovsky, Nicholas, A History of Russia, 4th ed. (New York, 1984), 341.Google Scholar

14. The views expressed by such figures as Nikolai Novikov; Mikhail Speranskiy N. Mordvinov; the Decembrists P. Pestel', N. Turgenev, and M. Orlov; as well as Aleksandr Herzen and Nikolai Ogarev were widely known and show an implicit familiarity with those of Uieir west European contemporaries. For brief summaries, see Borovoi, Kredit i banki Rossii, 98–101, 136–55, 244–47, 258–74.

15. I am indebted to an anonymous Slavic Review reader for this succinct phrasing. Borovoi's summaries make clear the fact that the question of credit was intimately associated with the question of serfdom in the minds of Russian intellectual leaders from the early nineteenth century on. Of particular interest in this connection is the economic work of the pseudo–Decembrist, Nikolai Turgenev, who concluded his 1818 Essay on the Theory of Taxes widi the following proclamation: “The age of credit is dawning for all of Europe. The improvement of the system of credit will go hand in hand widi the improvement of public representation [sistema predstavitel'stva narodnogo].” Turgenev, N. I., Opyt teorii nalogov, 3d ed. (Moscow, 1937), 171.Google Scholar

16. Heroes from Nikolai Karamzin's “Poor Liza” (1792) and “Iuliia” (1801), respectively. Robert Maguire suggests these (Gogolian) names “serve the double purpose of mocking the recent vogue for things classical and establishing a decidedly non–Russian presence in this estate.” See Maguire, Exploring Gogol (Stanford, 1994), 30. Such a vogue, of course, was characteristic of Russian culture from at least the age of Catherine the Great.

17. See, for instance, Pososhkov, Ivan, The Book of Poverty and Wealth, ed. and trans. Vlasto, A. P. and Lewitter, L. R. (London, 1987), 103–6Google Scholar. The issue of the podushnaia podat’ is treated at length by Pososhkov, whose 1724 Kniga o skudosti i bogatstve was first printed only in 1842, the same year as Gogol “s Dead Souls. It was brought to light and published by Mikhail Pogodin, professor of history at Moscow State University and Gogol “s friend and correspondent of many years. While I am currendy developing a more detailed treatment elsewhere, suffice it to say here that the appearance and content of Pososhkov's work provide further evidence of an implicit association in the minds of early nineteenth–century Russians between aspects of commerce, credit, taxation, and the institution of serfdom. For the Russian text, see Pososhkov, I. T., Kniga o skudosti i bogatstve i drugie sochineniia, ed. Kafengauz, B. B. (Moscow, 1951)Google Scholar. I am indebted to David Herman of the University of Virginia for bringing this important text to my attention.

18. Hirschman, Albert O., The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Princeton, 1977), 61.Google Scholar

19. Susanne Fusso has discussed Nozdrev's lying as a spontaneous and creative phenomenon, linked to the health and vitality of his character, and contrasted to Chichikov's carefully planned fabrications. Fusso, Designing Dead Souls, 45–47.

20. Cf. Sobakevich's consistency in assigning a labor function to each of the serfnames he is preparing to sell, a fact noted by Zeldin, Jesse in Nikolai Gogol's Quest for Beauty: An Exploration into His Works (Lawrence, 1978), 100.Google Scholar

21. Prince Alexandres Mavrokordatos (1791–1835), Theodoras Kolokotronis (1770–1843), Andreas Miaoulis (1768–1835), and Konstantinos Kanaris (1790–1877) were all participants in the Greek struggle for liberation against the Turks. Prince Petr Bagration was a Russian general who distinguished himself during the Napoleonic Wars.

22. Bobelina was “an Albanian woman who equipped three naval ships at her own expense and fought alongside the Greeks against the Turks; murdered in 1825.” Gibian, George, ed., Dead Souls: The Reavey Translation, Backgrounds and Sources, Essays in Criticism (New York, 1985), 97n7.Google Scholar

23. Cf. Gavriel Shapiro's discussion of the accuracy of Gogol “s portraits vis–á–vis chapbooks of the time in Nikolay Gogol and the Baroque Cultural Heritage (University Park, 1993), 71–73. Michael Holquist advances an interpretation of “Diary of a Madman” along lines similar to what I have suggested here: Peter I's willful changing of the calendar (from the Orthodox to the Julian) in order to bring it into conformity with European temporality is seen as analogous to the madman's arbitrary diary datings, not to mention his delusions of grandeur. See Holquist's introduction to Dostoevsky and the Novel (Princeton, 1977).

24. Bagration died in the battle of Borodino, which slowed but did not halt Napoleon's advance on Moscow.

25. See, for instance, Hirschman, “The Idea of Glory and Its Downfall,” The Passions and the Interests, 9–12; and Pocock, J. G. A., The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, 1975), 133–35.Google Scholar

26. For an alternative reading of the conception of value in Dead Souls, especially as it relates to questions of meaning and interpretation as a whole, see Morson, Gary Saul, “Gogol's Parables of Explanation: Nonsense and Prosaics,” in Fusso, Susanne and Meyer, Priscilla, eds., Essays on Gogol: Logos and the Russian Word (Evanston, 1992), 200–239 Google Scholar, esp. 206–15.

27. This line, “Pravo, u vas dusha chelovecheskaia vse ravno, chto parenaia repa,” has often been rendered in English as, “Your soul is like a boiled turnip” (Cf., for instance, Constance Garnett, David Magarshak, George Reavey; Reavey adds the word human before “soul,” which helps only somewhat). There is ambiguity in the Russian sentence because of the peculiar combination of u vas, which suggests the personal, and chelovecheskaia, which suggests the general. The immediately following phrase, “Give me at least three rubles each,” renders two clear possibilities: if Sobakevich's comment is directed at Chichikov's person, it implies the latter is too cheap to offer a fair price; if it is directed at Chichikov's notions of the world (as in, pravo, u vas liudi—drian1), the comment accords widi Sobakevich's other attempts to increase the market value of his wares and might be paraphrased as, “Do you really think the human soul is worth so little?” The latter appears to me more accurate; or, as Bernard Guerney's translation has it: “Really, you hold a human soul at the same value as a boiled turnip. “

28. See Fusso's fascinating speculation on Nozdrev's “figurative androgyny,” the sexual connotations of his name, and its apparent connection to the vulgar woman's synechdoche nozdria, in Designing Dead Souls, 160–61 n29; the original suggestion, that of an early listener to GogoK's text, was pardy corroborated by Gogol’ himself, who responded, “If such an idea occurred to one person, that means it could occur to many. It must be corrected.” See P. V. Annenkov's account, “N. V. Gogol’ v Rime letom 1841 goda,” in Mashinskii, Semen Iosifovich, ed., Gogol’ v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov (Moscow, 1952), 244.Google Scholar

29. It is significant that the last object noted on Pliushkin's table is the completely yellowed toothbrush, with which “the master, perhaps, picked his teeth, back before the French invasion of Moscow” (115, emphasis added). In Pliushkin's entire collection, this is the only item located historically.

30. On the importance of the word as romantic medium in Gogol's opus, see Maguire, Exploring Gogol', pt. 3.

31. Cf. also Fanger's discussion of the narrator's lament on lost freshness and youth inThe Creation of Nikolai Gogol, 188–89.

32. For a discussion of the distinctive disintegration of Pliushkin, see, for instance, Woodward, James B., Gogol's Dead Souls (Princeton, 1978), chap. 5.Google Scholar

33. The term is suggested by Morson in his “Gogol's Parables of Explanation,” 210.

34. The runaways are a marginal case, neither strictly dead nor provably living, but merely absent. Their place between the living and the dead may be part of a general tendency in the novel for the qualities of the serfs being purchased to become more lifelike while the landowners more and more resemble death, e.g., the absence of soul in Sobakevich, the deadi imagery surrounding Pliushkin. Thus, Chichikov is struck by several of the names and nicknames among the peasants he acquires at Korobochka's; Sobakevich then insists on the living nature of the serfs he is selling, on their very real qualities and works; finally, Chichikov assigns not only qualities but also dialogue to his serf purchases when reviewing the lists in his hotel room. What were before merely names and, in Chichikov's own words, “but a dream,” become very real indeed, as Chichikov portrays them to himself in imagined living situations (chap. 7).

35. As noted above, an equivalent subjection of the sacred or divine to a commercial relation is evident in “The Portrait,” where moneylending begins the chain of worldly evil. In diis connection, it is important to realize diat, in the absence of a regularized and widely accessible system of credit, Chichikov is, in effect, after a loan.

36. The phrase, which is introduced by the conjunction “but,” suggests it indeed marks the turning point, but no further reason for Pliushkin's transformation is offered, except perhaps the suggestion in the next line that, “like all widows, Pliushkin became more suspicious and stingier. “

37. According to Riasanovsky, by the middle of the nineteenth century, the state heldin mortgage two–thirds of all serfs. A History of Russia, 341.

38. Montesquieu, in a not–so–veiled reference to the practice of national stock in the Bank of England, wrote, “Elle [la nation] aurait un crédit sûr, parce qu'elle emprunterait à elle–méme. Il pourrait arrivait qu'elle entreprendrait au–dessus de ses forces naturelles, et ferait valoir contre ses ennemies d'immenses richesses de fiction, que la confiance et la nature de son gouvernement rendraient réelles.” It is tempting to think of Chichikov's dead serfs as something like the immenses richesses de fiction that the Russian state counted on to support its military and economic system. Montesquieu used the term richesses de fiction ou de signe to refer to gold, silver, paper money, or credit, which he contrasted to richesses réelles, which, issuing from work or land, were characterized by a natural usage and consumed on that basis. See his Considérations sur les richesses de I'Espagne, article 2. The above quotation may be found in De I'esprit des lois, in Oeuvres complètes (Paris, 1951), 2: 577.

39. For definitions and for examples of Gogol “s use, see Shapiro, Nikolay Gogol and the Baroque Cultural Heritage, 194–99. Asyndeton usually refers to parts of a sentence, not to sequences of scenes or chapters. I suggest it here as a means of describing the effect of gradual accumulation in Gogol “s sequence.

40. On Chichikov as catalyst, and for a series of insightful character readings, some of which touch on my own, see Zeldin, Nikolai Gogol's Quest for Beauty, 95–104.

41. See Sochineniia i perepiska P. A. Pletneva (St. Petersburg, 1885), 491. That such commercial interest could function as a fundamentally positive and progressive social force was a widely held notion of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries; this presupposition is evident in Montesquieu's statement concerning “moeurs douces” quoted above. The subject is treated at length in Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests; Holmes, Stephen, Passions and Constraint: On the Theory of Liberal Democracy (Chicago, 1995);Google Scholar

Pocock, J. G. A., Virtue, Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, Eng., 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, all of which have furnished epigraphs for sections of this essay.