Nikolai Gogol - Dead Souls

"Hold up, hold up, you fool!" Chichikov shouted to Selifan.

"You'll get a taste of my saber!" shouted a courier with yard-long mustaches, galloping in the opposite direction. "The hairy devil take your soul: don't you see it's a government carriage?" And like a phantom, the troika disappeared in thunder and dust.

What a strange, and alluring, and transporting, and wonderful feeling is in the word: road! and how wondrous is this road itself: the bright day, the autumn leaves, the chill air . . . wrap up tighter in your traveling coat, pull your hat over your ears, squeeze closer and more cozily into the corner! A shiver runs through your limbs for a last time, yielding now to the pleasant warmth. The horses fly. . . drowsiness steals up so temptingly, and your eyes are closing, and now through sleep you hear “‘Tis not the white snows ..." and the breathing of the horses, and the noise of the wheels, and you are already snoring, having squeezed your neighbor into the corner. You wake up: five stations have raced by; the moon, an unknown town, churches with ancient wooden cupolas and black spires, houses of dark logs or white stone. The crescent moon shines there and there, as if white linen kerchiefs were hung on the walls, the pavement, the streets; they are crossed by slant shadows, black as coal; the slantly lit wooden roofs gleam like shining metal, and not a soul anywhere—everything sleeps. Perhaps, all by itself somewhere, a light glimmers in a window: a town tradesman mending his pair of boots, a baker poking in his little oven—what of them? But the night! heavenly powers! what a night is transpiring in the heights! And the air, and the sky, far off, far up, spreading so boundlessly, resoundingly, and brightly, there, in its inaccessible depths! . . . But the cold breath of night breathes fresh in your eyes and lulls you, and now you are dozing, and sinking into oblivion, and snoring, and your poor neighbor, pressed into the corner, turns angrily, feeling your weight on him. You wake up—again there are fields and steppes before you, nothing anywhere—everywhere emptiness, all wide open. A milestone with a number flies into your eyes; day is breaking; on the cold, whitening curve of the sky a pale golden streak; the wind turns fresher and sharper: wrap up tighter in your overcoat! . . . what fine cold! what wonderful sleep enveloping you again! A jolt—and again you wake up. The sun is high in the sky. "Easy! easy!" a voice is heard, a cart is coming down a steep hill: below, a wide dam and a wide, bright pond shining like a copper bottom in the sun; a village, cottages scattered over the slope; to one side, the cross of the village church shines like a star; the chatter of muzhiks and an unbearable appetite in your stomach . . . God! how good you are sometimes, you long, long road! So often, perishing and drowning, I have clutched at you, and each time you have magnanimously brought me through and saved me! And there were born of you so many wonderful designs, poetical reveries, so many delightful impressions were felt! . . . But our friend Chichikov was also feeling some not altogether prosaic reveries at that time. Let us have a look at what he was feeling. At first he felt nothing, and only kept glancing behind him, wishing to make certain that he had indeed left the town; but when he saw that the town had long disappeared, that neither smithies, nor windmills, nor anything found around towns were to be seen, and even the white tops of the stone churches had long sunk into the ground, he occupied himself only with the road, kept looking only to right and left, and the town of N. was as if it had never been in his memory, as if he had passed by it long ago, in childhood. Finally, the road, too, ceased to occupy him, and he began to close his eyes slightly and lean his head towards the cushion. The author even confesses to being glad of it, finding, in this way, an occasion for talking about his hero; for up to now, as the reader has seen, he has constantly been hindered, now by Nozdryov, now by the balls, the ladies, the town gossip, and finally by thousands of those trifles that only seem like trifles when they are set down in a book, but while circulating in the world are regarded as very important matters. But now let us put absolutely everything aside and get straight to business.

It is highly doubtful that readers will like the hero we have chosen. The ladies will not like him, that can be said positively, for the ladies demand that a hero be a decided perfection, and if there is any little spot on his soul or body, it means trouble! However deeply the author peers into his soul, reflecting his image more purely than a mirror, it will be of no avail. The very plumpness and middle age of Chichikov will do him great harm: plumpness will in no way be forgiven a hero, and a great many ladies will turn away, saying: "Fie, ugly thing!" Alas! all this is known to the author, yet for all that he cannot take a virtuous man as his hero, but . . . perhaps in this same story some other, as yet untouched strings will be felt, the inestimable wealth of the Russian spirit will step forth, a man endowed with divine valor will pass by, or some wondrous Russian maiden such as can be found nowhere in the world, with all the marvelous beauty of a woman's soul, all magnanimous aspiration and self-denial. And all virtuous people of other tribes will seem dead next to them, as a book is dead next to the living word! Russian movements will arise . . . and it will be seen how deeply that which has only grazed the nature of other peoples has sunk into the Slavic nature . . . But wherefore and why speak of what lies ahead? It is unbecoming for the author, a man long since taught by a stern inner life and the refreshing sobriety of solitude, to forget himself like a youth. Everything in its turn, its place, its time! But all the same the virtuous man has not been taken as a hero. And it is even possible to say why he has not been taken. Because it is time finally to give the poor virtuous man a rest, because the phrase "virtuous man" idly circulates on all lips; because the virtuous man has been turned into a horse, and there is no writer who has not driven him, urging him on with a whip and whatever else is handy; because the virtuous man has been so worn out that there is not even the ghost of any virtue left in him, but only skin and ribs instead of a body; because the virtuous man is invoked hypocritically; because the virtuous man is not respected! No, it is time finally to hitch up a scoundrel. And so, let us hitch up a scoundrel.

Obscure and modest was our hero's origin. His parents were of the nobility, but whether ancient or honorary—God knows; in appearance he did not resemble them: at least the relation who was present at his birth, a short, brief woman of the kind usually called a wee thing, on taking the child in her arms, exclaimed: "Quite different than I thought! He should have taken after his grandmother on his mother's side, that would have been best, but he came out just as the saying goes: 'Not like mother, not like father, but like Roger the lodger.'" Life, at its beginning, looked upon him somehow sourly, inhospitably, through some dim, snow-covered window: not one friend, not one childhood companion. A small room with small windows, never opened winter or summer, the father an ailing man, in a long frock coat trimmed with lambskin and with knitted slippers on his bare feet, who sighed incessantly as he paced the room, spitting into a box of sand that stood in the corner, the eternal sitting on the bench, pen in hand, ink-stained fingers and even lips, the eternal maxim before his eyes: "Do not lie, obey your elders, keep virtue in your heart"; the eternal shuffling and scraping of the slippers in the room, the familiar but ever stern voice: "Fooling again!" that resounded whenever the child, bored with the monotonous work, attached some flourish or tail to a letter; and the eternally familiar, ever unpleasant feeling when, after these words, the edge of his ear was rolled up very painfully by the nails of long fingers reaching from behind: this is the poor picture of his early childhood, of which he barely preserved a pale memory. But in life everything changes swiftly and livelily: and one day, with the first spring sun and the flooding streams, the father, taking his son, drove off with him in a cart, dragged by a runty piebald horse known among horse traders as a magpie; she was driven by a coachman, a hunchbacked little man, progenitor of the only serf family belonging to Chichikov's father, who filled almost all the positions in the house. This magpie dragged them for a little over a day and a half; they slept on the road, crossed a river, lunched on cold pie and roast lamb, and only on the morning of the third day did they reach town. In unsuspected magnificence the town streets flashed before the boy and left him gaping for a few minutes. Then the magpie plopped together with the cart into a hole at the head of a narrow lane, all straining downhill and clogged with mud; she toiled there for a long time, using all her strength and kneading away with her legs, urged on by the hunchback and by the master himself, and finally dragged them into a little yard that sat on a slope, with two flowering apple trees in front of a little old house, and with a garden behind, low, puny, consisting only of a mountain ash, an elder, and, hidden in its depths, a little wooden shed, roofed with shingles, with a narrow matte window. Here lived their relative, a wobbly little crone, who still went to market every morning and then dried her stockings by the samovar. She patted the boy on the cheek and admired his plumpness. Here he was to stay and go every day to study at the town school. The father, after spending the night, set out on the road the very next day. On parting, the parental eyes shed no tears; fifty kopecks in copper were given for expenses and treats, and, which was more important, a wise admonition: "Watch out, then, Pavlusha, study, don't be a fool or a scapegrace, and above all try to please your teachers and superiors. If you please your superior, then even if you don't succeed in your studies and God has given you no talent, you will still do well and get ahead of everybody. Don't keep company with your schoolmates, they won't teach you any good; but if you do, then keep company with the richer ones, on the chance that they may be useful to you. Do not regale or treat anyone, but rather behave in such a way that they treat you, and above all keep and save your kopeck: it is the most reliable thing in the world. A comrade or companion will cheat you and be the first to betray you in trouble; but a kopeck will never betray you, whatever trouble you get into. You can do everything and break through everything with a kopeck." Having delivered this admonition, the father parted from his son and dragged himself back home with his magpie, and after that he never saw him again, but his words and admonitions sank deeply into his soul.