Dead Souls (Wordsworth Classics)

Ever since I was a kid I always loved astronomy. I remember when Haley's Comet flew by (very disappointing), I remember watching another comet hit Jupiter (much cooler), I will always remember where I was when the Challenger exploded and when the Columbia disintegrated. For a number of years I ever worked with a man who designed, built, and sold telescopes; an eccentric who lived with his wife and 6 kids in a bus on the side of the mountain. When we weren't installing personal 8" mirrors ground by a friend who eventually moved onto to making the mirror for the Next Generation Hubble Space Telescope down in Arizona, he was smoking 2 packs a day, endlessly delaying creditors, yelling at his wife, talking endlessly about how we were all on the cusp of becoming extremely wealthy (something he also told the creditors), and praising Jesus with the local pastor who, I kid you not, believed the angels in the Bible were aliens; he too owned a telescope - a nice $10,000 affair because his church had over 5000 members and so he could afford it.And what the hell does that have to do with Dead Souls?Two things: 1) People are not as crazy once you get to know them and 2) There's a visual phenomena that happens because of the cones in your eye where if you look directly at a faint star it seems to disappear but if you look slightly away from it it snaps into focus nice and clear.Let's start with point #2 first. The dead souls in Dead Souls are mostly invisible, they can't be seen because they are, well, dead. There are no dead peasants walking around and taking up space (unlike the land owners who do little more). No, the dead souls can only be seen by looking off to the side a little, to the census, to the graveyard, to people's memories. They exist just out of sight. Yet they are there and they can be quite useful to someone willing to take advantage of them, to 'put them back to work', if you will.Of course, as we know, it's all very morbid and immoral and our hero eventually pays the price for dealing in such a corruption. Yet that's what someone who is good at corruption relies on - of remaining hidden in plain sight, to deal with everything just off to the side, to be clever to game the system to their advantage and, if one is really talented, make it seem as if you are doing the other person the real favor.This is one of the points Gogol was trying to make.Now let's get back to point #1 - the eccentric people and characters.The funny thing about trying to describe something that is real is that it requires you do so with something that isn't in its place. For example, the 'poshlust' (bad taste) Gogol goes on about in Dead Souls (and whom Nabokov famously infused into his interpretation of the novel) is an untranslatable word in English but well understood in Russian, yet even Russians, when confronted with 'poshlust', would on the one hand recognize it in someone else but probably not in themselves. "Surly I have better taste that that, right?" They would say. In essence it's not even translatable to oneself no matter what language.So Gogol invented satiric characters to inhabit 'poshlust'. Had he created realistic characters he'd also have to give a sympathetic reason for them engaging in such kitsch. In short, once you actually get to know someone, their bad taste isn't really bad taste anymore, it's their own unique taste. Yet bad taste still exists just like a star you can only see at night by not looking directly at it. The only way to see it clearly is to look off to the side a bit - in this case by looking at a wildly exaggerated character- to see it.And what if everyone has bad taste? A universal 'poshlust'? Well, it's like trying to define 'art', it's different for everyone and doesn't really have a solid definitive. An elitist would say it's 'the fine arts', the junkyard welder would say something more urban. And they'd both be right because they will only see the bad, the 'poshlust', the corruption, in someone else and not once in themselves.That's probably why because the way the books ends in the middle of a passionate appeal to morality, the pages are lost and it just ends. There's such futility going on because everyone is corrupt in one way or another, that you might as well buy and sell dead souls to make a living than try and get everyone to do the right thing.Anyway, the novel is brilliant and is just as relevant today than when it was written over 150 years ago in Russian by someone who didn't even spend that much time living in Russia.

Five Russian novels have been rated among the 25 greatest novels of all time. Two by Tolstoy (W&P,AK), two by Dostoyevsky (BK,C&P), and this one by Gogol.. Once the modern reader gets why the hero is buying dead serf souls, this comic masterpiece can take off. It is full of absurdity and humorous characters and oddball situations. The hero is a likable rogue. And Czarist Russia in its expanse is described as we move through this work. I admit my favorite section is the early part when the first souls are sold or not sold. These are Dickensian folks in many ways. I accompanied my reading with an audio version narrated by Arthur Morey and the two weaved a remarkable tapestry and each enhanced the other.

I love all the free editions of classic (and not-so-classic) literature that Amazon has made available for the Kindle. The free edition of Dead Souls is very readable, with a helpful introduction and linked footnotes that explain some of the more exotic terms used by Gogol.There is just one flaw that readers should be aware of. Book II (as is well known) was never completed by Gogol and ends partway through chapter 4. In addition, much of chapter 4 exists only in fragments, with connecting material missing. The problem is that this edition of Dead Souls does not give the reader any indication of where the gaps in chapter 4 occur. At first I thought that this edition was missing text. When I went to Project Gutenberg to check, I discovered that the gaps actually occur in Gogol's manuscript. So be forewarned that when you get toward the end of chapter 4 in book II, the setting will suddenly jump without warning.

This review is of the book, and not the Kindle rendering of it, though this is the version I downloaded and read. Dead Souls is unquestionably a classic of Russian Literature and one of the foundation stones of the Russian novel. As a Russophile and a strong proponent of Russian literature, I often run into those who hesitate to dive in because they are afraid that Russian novels are too dry, too depressing, or too "foreign". Dead Souls is the PERFECT introduction to Russian Literature, because it is accessible, humorous, educational, and entertaining. This is a book that should be read by anyone who desires to be conversant in world literature, and it is a deep and engaging study into the mind and heart of Russia and Russians.

somehow i find myself in a phase of obsessing over russian literature, and i thought this was really well written the detail was so exact at times i was wondering if i really did need know every scene so precisely, however i was really excited to read this because (and i may be wrong) I heard it finished mid-sentence, but in this translation it doesn't seem to? since that was what i thought this book was so famous for i was a little disappointed, though the ending was still fitting, so I'm not sure if this just isn't the best translation in this sense. being the only version of this book i've read i can't say anything in reccomending other translations, i just went for the cheapest one, so it may be my fault for not looking around! it is a good story though you need to stick with it, i did find myself dozing off sometimes as it is long and challenging, but it is good, i always love a scheming lead character!

Very intriguing novel, once you start reading it you've just got to keep turning the pages. Much in the vein of the great classics by Theodore Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, but not as accomplished a writer. Bit sketchy and vague in parts but overall a good tale!

An excellent book for the first half, although the second half (written at a later date, never completed and with sections missing) is not nearly so enjoyable or well-written.I would highly recommend reading the first half (which was written as a stand-alone novel) but if you don't want to be disappointed stop there.Don't let the cover put you off! Not a horror story, nor is it dark and depressing.

Book in great condition and arrived on time. Content quite hard to get into butturned out to be a really good read

The translation from the french at the end is very different than Gogol's writing, and I found it difficult to finish, but Gogol's writing is great and I wonder if he didn't want to finish Chichikov's story because he liked the character too much