During this same period Gogol wrote several plays, among which the masterpiece is The Inspector. This play, which is still immensely popular in Russia, and draws crowded houses on Sundays and holidays, is a good-humoured, scathing satire on the Russian Bureaucracy. As a translation of this play is easily to be obtained, and as it has been performed in London by the Stage Society, I need not dwell on it here, except to mention for those who are unacquainted with it, that the subject of the play is a misunderstanding which arises from a traveller being mistaken for a government inspector who is expected to arrive incognito in a provincial town. A European critic in reading or seeing this play is sometimes surprised and unreasonably struck by the universal dishonesty of almost every single character in the play. For instance, one of the characters says to another: “You are stealing above your rank.” One should remember, however, that in a translation it is impossible not to lose something of the good-humour and the comic spirit of which the play is full. It has often been a matter of surprise that this play, at the time when Gogol wrote it, should have been passed by the censorship. The reason of this is that Gogol had for censor the Emperor of Russia himself, who read the play, was extremely amused by it, commanded its immediate performance, was present at the first night, and led the applause.
Hlestakov, the hero of The Inspector, is one of the most natural and magnificent liars in literature. Gogol himself, in his stage directions, describes him as a man “without a Tsar in his head,”—a man who speaks and acts without the slightest reflection, and who is not capable of consecutive thought, or of fixing his attention for more than a moment on any single idea.
In 1836, Gogol left Russia and settled in Rome. He had been working for some time at another book, which he intended should be his masterpiece, a book in which he intended to say everything, and express the whole of his message. Gogol was possessed by this idea. The book was to be divided into three parts. The first part appeared in 1842, the second part, which was never finished, Gogol threw in the fire in a fit of despair. It was, however, subsequently printed from an incomplete manuscript which had escaped his notice. The third part was never written. As it is, the first fragment of Gogol’s great ambition remains his masterpiece, and the book by which he is best known. It is called Dead Souls. The hero of this book is a man called Chichikov. He has hit on an idea by which he can make money by dishonest means. Like all great ideas, it is simple. At the time at which the book was written the serfs in Russia had not yet been emancipated. They were called “souls,” and every landlord possessed so many “souls.” A revision of the list of peasants took place every ten years, and the landlord had to pay a poll-tax for the souls that had died during that period, that is to say, for the men; women and children did not count. Between the periods of revision nobody looked at the lists. If there was any epidemic in the village the landlord lost heavily, as he had to continue paying a tax for the “souls” who were dead.
Chichikov’s idea was to take these “dead souls” from the landlords, and pay the poll-tax, for them. The landlord would be only too pleased to get rid of a property which was fictitious, and a tax which was only too real. Chichikov could then register his purchases with all due formality, for it would never occur to a tribunal to think that he was asking them to legalise a sale of dead men; he could thus take the documents to a bank at St. Petersburg or at Moscow, and mortgage the “souls,” which he represented as living in some desert place in the Crimea, at one hundred roubles apiece, and then be rich enough to buy living “souls” of his own.
Chichikov travelled all over Russia in search of “dead souls.” The book tells us the adventures he met with; and the scheme is particularly advantageous to the author, because it not only enables him to introduce us to a variety of types, but the transaction itself, the manner in which men behave when faced by the proposition, throws a searchlight on their characters. Chichikov starts from a large provincial town, which he makes his base, and thence explores the country; the success or failure of his transactions forms the substance of the book. Sometimes he is successful, sometimes the system breaks down because the people in the country want to know the market value of the “dead souls” in the town.
The travels of Chichikov, like those of Mr. Pickwick, form a kind of Odyssey. The types he introduces us to are extraordinarily comic; there are fools who give their “souls” for nothing, and misers who demand an exorbitant price for them. But sometimes Chichikov meets with people who are as clever as himself, and who outwit him. One of the most amusing episodes is that where he comes across a suspicious old woman called Korobotchka. Chichikov, after arriving at her house late at night, and having spent the night there, begins his business transactions cautiously and tentatively. The old woman at first thinks he has come to sell her tea, or that he has come to buy honey. Then Chichikov comes to the point, and asks her if any peasants have died on her land. She says eighteen. He then asks her to sell them to him, saying that he will give her money for them. She asks if he wishes to dig them out of the ground. He explains that the transaction would only take place upon paper. She asks him why he wants to do this. That, he answers, is his own affair.
“But they are dead,” she says.
“Whoever said they were alive?” asked Chichikov. “It is a loss to you that they are dead. You pay for them, and I will now save you the trouble and the expense, and not only save you this, but give you fifteen roubles into the bargain. Is it clear now?”
“I really can’t say,” the old woman replies. “You see I never before sold dead ‘souls.’” And she keeps on repeating: “What bothers me is that they are dead.”
Chichikov again explains to her that she has to pay a tax on them just as though they were alive.