Nikolai Gogol - Dead Souls

And it has happened more than once that some passion, not a broad but a paltry little passion for some petty thing, has spread through one born for better deeds, making him forsake great and sacred duties and see the great and sacred in paltry baubles. Numberless as the sands of the sea are human passions, and no one resembles another, and all of them, base or beautiful, are at first obedient to man and only later become his dread rulers. Blessed is he who has chosen the most beautiful passion; his boundless bliss grows tenfold with every hour and minute, and he goes deeper and deeper into the infinite paradise of his soul. But there are passions that it is not for man to choose. They are born with him at the moment of his birth into this world, and he is not granted the power to refuse them. They are guided by a higher destiny, and they have in them something eternally calling, never ceasing throughout one's life. They are ordained to accomplish a great earthly pursuit: as a dark image, or as a bright apparition sweeping by, gladdening the world—it makes no difference, both are equally called forth for the good unknown to man. And it may be that in this same Chichikov the passion that drives him comes not from him, and that his cold existence contains that which will later throw man down in the dust and make him kneel before the wisdom of the heavens. And it is still a mystery why this image has appeared in the poem that is presently coming into being.

But the hard thing is not that readers will be displeased with my hero, what is hard is that there lives in my soul an irrefutable certainty that they might have been pleased with this same hero, this same Chichikov. If the author had not looked deeply into his soul, had not stirred up from its bottom that which flees and hides from the light, had not revealed his secret thoughts which no man entrusts to another, but had shown him such as he appeared to the whole town, to Manilov and the others, everyone would have been happy as can be and would have taken him for an interesting man. Never mind that neither his face nor his whole image would have hovered as if alive before their eyes; instead, once the reading was over, the soul would not be troubled by anything, and one could turn back to the card table, the solace of all Russia. Yes, my good readers, you would prefer not to see human poverty revealed. Why, you ask, what for? Do we not know ourselves that there is much in life that is contemptible and stupid? Even without that, one often chances to see things which are by no means comforting. Better present us with something beautiful, captivating. Better let us become oblivious! "Why, brother, are you telling me that things aren't going well with the management of the estate?" says the landowner to his steward. "I know that without you, brother, haven't you got something else to talk about? You ought to let me forget it, not know it, then I'll be happy." And so the money that would have helped somehow to straighten things out is spent on the means for making oneself oblivious. The mind sleeps, the mind that might find some unexpected fount of great means; and then, bang! the estate gets auctioned, and the landowner takes his oblivion and goes begging, his soul ready in its extremity for such baseness as once would have horrified him.

Accusation will also fall upon the author from the side of the so-called patriots, who sit quietly in their corners, occupied with completely unrelated matters, and stash away small fortunes for themselves, arranging their lives at the expense of others; but as soon as something happens which in their opinion is insulting to the fatherland, if some book appears in which the sometimes bitter truth is told, they rush out of all corners like spiders seeing a fly tangled in their web, and suddenly raise a cry: "But is it good to bring it to light, to proclaim about it? Because all this that's written here, all this is ours—is that nice? And what will foreigners say? Is it cheery to hear a bad opinion of oneself? Do they think it doesn't hurt? Do they think we're not patriots?" To these wise observations, especially concerning the opinion of foreigners, I confess it is impossible to find an answer. Unless it is this: in a remote corner of Russia there lived two inhabitants. One was a father of a family, Kifa Mokievich by name, a man of meek character who spent his life in a dressing-gown way. He did not occupy himself with his family; his existence was turned more in a contemplative direction and was occupied with the following, as he called it, philosophical question: "Take, for instance, a beast," he would say, pacing the room, "a beast is born naked. And why precisely naked? Why not like a bird, why not hatched from an egg? So you see: the deeper you go into nature, the less you understand her!" Thus reasoned the inhabitant Kifa Mokievich. But that is still not the main thing. The other inhabitant was Moky Kifovich, his own son. He was what is known in Russia as a mighty man, and all the while that his father was occupied with the birth of a beast, his broad-shouldered twenty-year-old nature kept wanting to display itself. He could not go about anything lightly: it was always someone's arm broken or a bump swelling on someone's nose. In and around the house everything, from the serf wench to the yard bitch, ran away from him on sight; he even broke his own bed to pieces in the bedroom. Such was Moky Kifovich, who nevertheless had a good heart. But that is still not the main thing. The main thing is the following: "For pity's sake, dear master, Kifa Mokievich," his own and other house serfs used to say to the father, "what's with your Moky Kifovich? He won't leave anyone in peace, he's such a roughneck." "Yes, a prankster, a prankster," the father usually replied to that, "but what can I do? It's too late to beat him, and I'd be the one accused of cruelty; then, too, he's a proud man, if I reproached him in front of just a couple of people, he'd calm down, but publicity—there's the trouble! They'd find out in town and call him a downright dog. What do they think, really, that it doesn't hurt me? that I'm not a father? That I occupy myself with philosophy and sometimes have no time, and so I'm not a father anymore? No, I'm a father all right! a father, devil take them, a father! I've got Moky Kifovich sitting right here in my heart!" Here Kifa Mokievich beat himself quite hard on the breast with his fist and flew into a complete passion. "Let him even remain a dog, but let them not find it out from me, let it not be me who betrays him." Then, having shown such paternal feeling, he would leave Moky Kifovich to go on with his mighty deeds, and himself turn again to his favorite subject, suddenly asking himself some such question as: "Well, and if an elephant was born from an egg, then I suppose the shell would be mighty thick, a cannonball couldn't break it; some new firearms would have to be invented." So they spent their life, these two inhabitants of a peaceful corner, who have suddenly peeked out, as from a window, at the end of our poem, peeked out in order to respond modestly to accusations on the part of certain ardent patriots, who for the moment are quietly occupied with some sort of philosophy or with augmentations at the expense of their dearly beloved fatherland, and think not about not doing wrong, but only about having no one say they are doing wrong. But no, neither patriotism nor primal feeling is the cause of these accusations, something else is hidden behind them. Why conceal the word? Who, then, if not an author, must speak the sacred truth? You fear the deeply penetrating gaze, you are afraid to penetrate anything deeply with your own gaze, you like to skim over everything with unthinking eyes. You will even have a hearty laugh over Chichikov, will perhaps even praise the author, saying: "He did cleverly catch a thing or two, though; must be a man of merry temperament!" And after these words you will turn to yourself with redoubled pride, a self-satisfied smile will appear on your face, and you will add: "One can't help agreeing, the most strange and ridiculous people turn up in some provinces, and no small scoundrels at that!" And who among you, filled with Christian humility, not publicly, but in quiet, alone, in moments of solitary converse with himself, will point deeply into his own soul this painful question: "And isn't there a bit of Chichikov in me, too?" Perish the thought! But if some acquaintance of yours should pass by just then, a man of neither too high nor too low a rank, you will straightaway nudge your neighbor and tell him, all but snorting with laughter: "Look, look, there goes Chichikov, it's Chichikov!" And then, like a child, forgetting all decorum incumbent upon your age and station, you will run after him, taunting him from behind and repeating: "Chichikov! Chichikov! Chichikov!"