From “The Carriage” to “Dead Souls”: the Transformation of Two “Poems” by N. V. Gogol

The article discusses numerous interpretative problems related to the short novel “The Carriage” (1835‒1836) by Nikolai Gogol. It is proposed to solve the problem of an adequate reading of the short novel by identifying the maximum possible number of “end-to-end” and nodal themes and motifs that are constant in all of Gogol’s work. Numerous reminiscences of “The Carriage” are noted with other works of the writer, i.e., the short novels “The Night Before Christmas,” “Ivan Fedorovich Shponka...,” “Old World Landowners,” “Taras Bulba,” “The Story of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich,” the poem “Dead Souls,” the comedies “The Inspector,” “Marriage,” “Players,” etc. Based on the analysis, a special place of the short novel in Gogol’s legacy is established. An important feature of “The Carriage” is its significant “intermediate” position among Gogol’s other works, not only chronologically, but also in terms of genre. In “The Carriage” the writer’s transition from the depiction of Little Russian everyday life to the all-Russian scale takes place: the creation of the short novel was preceded by work on the short novels of two Ukrainian cycles — “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” and “Mirgorod”; after “The Carriage” Gogol turned to the image of the “prefabricated” city in “The Inspector” and a wide panorama of Russian life in “Dead Souls.” “The Carriage” occupies an “intermediate” place in Gogol’s understanding of the problems of the capital and the province in relation to the realities of traditional Russian life and European influence. The writer’s characteristic desire for an encyclopedic coverage of phenomena during the creation of “The Carriage” received the most complete expression at that time. The short novel served as a preliminary step to the creation of Gogol’s main poem, and by many indications, it can be considered as the writer’s full-fledged experience in creating a small poem. The spiritual and moral intent of the short novel is analyzed in detail, the problems of realism of “Dead Souls” and “The Carriage” are touched upon, Pushkin’s influence on Gogol’s work and the autobiographic nature of “The Carriage” are noted.