The subject of "Dead Souls"—so strange as never to be forgotten—gives Gogol a wide range for his pungent satire. Tchitchikof—there's a name, indeed!—an ex-official, having been caught in some nefarious affair, and ruined and dishonored by the discovery, conceives a bright idea as to regaining his fortune. He knows that the serfs, called in Russia by the generic name of souls, can be pawned, mortgaged, and sold; and that on the other hand the tax-collector obliges the owners to pay a per capita tax for each soul. He remembers also that the census is taken on the Friday before Easter, and in the mean time the lists are not revised, seeing that natural processes compensate for losses by death. But in case of epidemic the owner loses more, yet continues to pay for hands that no longer toil for him; so it occurs to Tchitchikof to travel over the country buying at a discount a number of dead souls whose owners will gladly get rid of them, the buyer having only to promise to pay the taxes thereon; then, having provided these dead souls (though to all legal intents still living) with this extraordinary nominal value, he will register them as purchased, take the deed of sale to a bank in St. Petersburg, mortgage them for a good round sum, and with the money thus obtained, buy real live serfs of flesh and blood, and by this clever trick make a fortune. No sooner said than done. The hero gives orders to harness his britchka, takes with him his coachman and his lackey,—two delicious characters!—and goes all over Russia, ingratiating himself everywhere, finding out all about the people and the estates, meeting with all sorts of proprietors and functionaries, and falling into many adventures which, if not quite as glorious as those of the Knight of La Mancha, are scarcely less entertaining to read about. And where is such another diatribe on serfdom as this lugubrious burlesque furnishes, or any spectacle so painfully ironical as that of these wretched corpses, who are neither free nor yet within the narrow liberty of the tomb,—these poor bones ridiculed and trafficked for even in the precincts of death?
This remarkable book, which contains a most powerful argument against the inveterate abuses of slavery, unites to its value as a social and humanitarian benefactor that of being the corner-stone of Russian realism,—the realism which, though already perceptible in the prose writings of the romantic poets, appears in Gogol, not as a confused precursory intuition, nor as an instinctive impulsion of a national tendency, but as a rational literary plan, well based and firmly established. A few quotations from "Dead Souls," and some passages also from Gogol's Letters, will be enough to prove this.
"Happy is the writer,"[1] he says sarcastically, "who refrains from depicting insipid, disagreeable, unsympathetic characters without any charms whatever, and makes a study of those more distinguished, refined, and exquisite; the writer who has a fine tact in selecting from the vast and muddy stream of humanity, and devoting his attention to a few honorable exceptions to the average human nature; who never once lowers the clear, high tone of his lyre; who never puts his melodies to the ignoble use of singing about folk of no importance and low quality; and who, in fact, taking care never to descend to the too commonplace realities of life, soars upward bright and free toward the ethereal regions of his poetic ideal!... He soothes and flatters the vanity of men, casting a veil over whatever is base, sombre, and humiliating in human nature. All the world applauds and rejoices as he passes by in his triumphal chariot, and the multitude proclaims him a great poet, a creative genius, a transcendent soul. At the sound of his name young hearts beat wildly, and sweet tears of admiration shine in gentle eyes.... Oh, how different is the lot of the unfortunate writer who dares to present in his works a faithful picture of social realities, exactly as they appear to the naked eye! Who bade him pay attention to the muddy whirlpool of small miseries and humiliations, in which life is perforce swallowed up, or take notice of the crowd of vulgar, indifferent, bungling, corrupt characters, that swarm like ants under our feet? If he commit a sin so reprehensible, let him not hope for the applause of his country; let him not expect to be greeted by maidens of sixteen, with heaving bosom and bright, enthusiastic eyes.... Nor will he be able to escape the judgment of his contemporaries, a tribunal without delicacy or conscience, which pronounces the works it devours in secret to be disgusting and low, and with feigned repugnance enumerates them among the writings which are hurtful to humanity; a tribunal which cynically imputes to the author the qualities and conditions of the hero whom he describes, allowing him neither heart nor soul, and belittling the sacred flame of talent which is his whole life.
"Contemporary judgment is not yet able or willing to acknowledge that the lens which discloses the habits and movements of the smallest insect is worthy the same estimation as that which reaches to the farthest limits of the firmament. It seems to ignore the fact that it needs a great soul indeed to portray sincerely and accurately the life that is stigmatized by public opinion, to convert clay into precious pearls through the medium of art. Contemporary judgment finds it hard to realize that frank, good-natured laughter may be as full of merit and dignity as a fine outburst of lyric passion. Contemporary judgment pretends ignorance, and bestows only censure and depreciation upon the sincere author,—knows him not, disdains him; and so he is left wretched, abandoned, without sympathy, like the lonely traveller who has no companion but his own indomitable heart.
"I understand you, dear readers; I know very well what you are thinking in your hearts; you curse the means that shows you palpable, naked human misery, and you murmur within yourselves, 'What is the use of such an exhibition? As though we did not already know enough of the absurd and base actions that the world is always full of! These things are annoying, and one sees enough of them without having them set before us in literature. No, no; show us the beautiful, the charming; that which shall lift us above the levels of reality, elevate us, fill us with enthusiasm.' And this is not all. The author exposes himself to the anger of a class of would-be patriots, who, at the least indication of injury to the country's decorum, at the first appearance of a book that dwells on some bitter truths, raise a dreadful outcry. 'Is it well that such things should be brought to light?' they say; 'this description may apply to a good many people we know; it might be you, or I, or our friend there. And what will foreigners say? It is too bad to allow them to form so poor an opinion of us.' Hypocrites! The motive of their accusations is not patriotism, that noble and beautiful sentiment; it is mean, low calculation, wearing the mask of patriotism. Let us tear off the mask and tread it under foot. Let us call things by their names; it is a sacred duty, and the author is under obligation to tell the truth, the whole truth."
These passages just quoted are sufficiently explicit; but the following, taken from one of Gogol's letters concerning "Dead Souls," is still more so.
"Those who have analyzed my talents as a writer have not been able to discover my chief quality. Only Puchkine noticed it, and he used to say that no author had, so much as I, the gift of showing the reality of the trivialities of life, of describing the petty ways of an insignificant creature, of bringing out and revealing to my readers infinitesimal details which would otherwise pass unnoticed. In fact, there is where my talent lies. The reader revolts against the meanness and baseness of my heroes; when he shuts the book he feels as though he had come up from a stifling cellar into the light of day. They would have forgiven me if I had described some picturesque theatrical knave, but they cannot forgive my vulgarity. The Russians are shocked to see their own insignificance."
"My friend," he writes again, "if you wish to do me the greatest favor that I can expect from a Christian, make a note of every small daily act and fact that you may come across anywhere. What trouble would it be to you to write down every night in a sort of diary such notes as these,—To-day I heard such an opinion expressed, I spoke with such a person, of such a disposition, such a character, of good education or not; he holds his hands thus, or takes his snuff so,—in fact, everything that you see and notice from the greatest to the least?"
What more could the most modern novelist say,—the sort that carries a memorandum-book under his arm and makes sketches, after the fashion of the painters?
Thus we see that a man gifted with epic genius became in 1843, before Zola was dreamt of, and when Edmond de Goncourt was scarcely twenty, the founder of realism, the first prophet of the doctrine not inexactly called by some the doctrine of literary microbes, the poet of social atoms whose evolution at length overturns empires, changes the face of society, and weaves the subtle and elaborate woof of history. I will not go so far as to affirm with some of the critics that this light proceeded from the Orient, and that French realism is an outcome of distant Russian influence; for certainly Balzac had a large influence in his turn upon his Muscovite admirers. But it is undeniable that Gogol did anticipate and feel the road which literature, and indeed all forms of art, were bound to follow in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
Certain critics see, in this doctrine of literary microbes preached by Gogol in word and deed, nothing less than an immense evolution, characteristic of and appropriate to our age. It is the advent of literary democracy, which was perhaps foreseen by the subtle genius of those early novelists who described the beggar, the lame, halt, and blind, thieves and robbers, and creatures of the lowest strata of society; with the difference that to-day, united to this spirit of æsthetic demagogy, there is a shade of Christian charity, compassion, and sympathy for wretchedness and misery which sometimes degenerates, in less virile minds than Gogol's, into an affected sentimentality. George Eliot, that great author and great advocate of Gogol's own theories, and the patroness of realism of humblest degree, speaks in words very like those used by the author of "Taras," of the strength of soul which a writer needs to interest himself in the vulgar commonplaces of life, in daily realities, and in the people around us who seem to have nothing picturesque or extraordinary about them. If there be any who could carry out this rehabilitation of the miserable with charity and tenderness, it would be the Saxon and the Sclav rather than the refined and haughty Latin, and in both these the seed scattered by Gogol has brought forth fruit abundantly. Modern Russian literature is filled with pity and sincere love toward the poorer classes; one might almost term it evangelical unction; at the voice of the poet (I cannot refuse this title to the author of "Taras") Russia's heart softened, her tears fell, and her compassion, like a caressing wave, swept over the toiling mujik, the ill-clad government clerk, the ragged, ignorant beggar, the political convict in the grasp of the police, and even the criminal, the vulgar assassin with shaven head, mangled shoulders, blood-stained hands, and manacled wrists. And more; their pity extends even to the dumb beasts, and the death of a horse mentioned by one great Russian novelist is more touching than that of any emperor.
Gogol is the real ancestor of the Russian novel; he contained the germs of all the tendencies developed in the generation that came after him; in him even Turguenief the poet and artist, Tolstoï the philosopher, and Dostoiëwsky the visionary, found inspiration. There are writers who seem possessed of the exalted privilege of uniting and accumulating all the characteristics of their race and country; their brain is like a cave filled with wonderful stalactites formed by the deposits of ages and events. Gogol is one of these. The peculiarities of the Russian soul, the melancholy dreaminess, the satire, the suppressed and resigned soul-forces, are all seen in him for the first time.
To quote from "Dead Souls" would be little satisfaction. One must read it to understand the deep impression it made in Russia. After looking it through, Puchkine exclaimed, "How low is our country fallen!" and the people, much against their will, finally acknowledged the same conviction. After a hard fight with the censors, the work of art came off at last victorious; it captured all classes of minds, and became, like "Don Quixote," the talk of every drawing-room, the joke of every meeting-place, and a proverb everywhere. The serfs were now virtually set free by force of the opinion created, and the whole nation saw and knew itself in this æsthetic revelation.