Gogol's “Dead souls” in the plot of the novel “City En” by Leonid Dobychin

The article discusses the reception and forms of semantic transformation of images of Gogol’s “Dead Souls” in the novel “City En” by L. Dobychin. It is noted that the narrative organization of the novel is associated with the reader’s outlook of its hero, a little boy and then a teenager, endowed with the function of a storyteller. The author seeks to show how the reader’s reflection of the hero feeds the hero’s imagination and expresses a naive idea of the fictional reality, where the characters of “Dead Souls”, which he loved, live. The hero, as the author proves, sees himself literally through the text of the poem. Assuming Gogol’s characters for himself, he becomes like them not only in his dreams, but also, as it were, in reality. The hero projects his own idea of Gogol’s world, generated by the reader’s fantasies, onto the surrounding reality, which limits his imagination to the framework of everyday routine. Having read Gogol, he begins to see the world according to Gogol. The author draws special attention to the fact that with the help of characteristic roll-overs, the novel conveys the atmosphere of life in a provincial town, which, like Gogol’s, is uniquely fantastic. As the author of the article proves, revealing the logic of the development of the plot, as the hero grows up and turns from a little boy to a teenager, captured by new experiences caused by changing external circumstances, his attitude towards the characters of Gogol’s poem and Gogol’s city En, the city of his childhood dreams, changes. The analysis shows that closer to the finale in the plot of the novel, the theme of the origin of evil, touched upon in the biography of Chichikov, which did not previously attract the attention of a young reader, carried away by his own fantasies, is actualized. The article concludes an observation that is important for understanding the comparison of Gogol’s poem and Dobychin’s novel. The open ending of “City En”, where the narrator gains a new perspective and the opportunity to see everything in a new way, echoes the open ending of “Dead Souls”, which prophesies a new turn in the story of the protagonist.