Nikolai Gogol – författare

'Rus! Russ!...Everything within you is open, desolate, and flat; your squat towns barely protrude above the level of your wide plains, marking them like little dots, like specks; here is nothing to entice and fascinate the onlooker's gaze. Yet whence this unfathomable, uncanny force that draws me to you?' Although Dead Souls (1842) was largely composed by Gogol during self-imposed exile in Italy in the late 1830s, his last work remains to this day the most essentially Russian of all the great novels in Russian literature. As we follow its hero Chichikov, a dismissed civil servant turned unscrupulous confidence man, about the Russian countryside in pursuit of his shady enterprise, there unfolds before us a gallery of characters worthy in comic range of Chaucer, Rabelais, Fielding and Sterne. With its rich and ebullient language, ironic twists and startling juxtapositions, Dead Souls stands as one of the most dazzling and poetic masterpieces of the nineteenth century. This brilliant new translation by Christopher English is complemented by a superb introductory essay by the pre-eminent Gogol scholar, Robert Maguire. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Four works by great 19th-century Russian author: "The Nose," a savage satire of Russia's incompetent bureaucrats; "Old-Fashioned Farmers," a pleasant depiction of an elderly couple living in rustic seclusion; "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovich," one of Gogol’s most famous comic stories; and "The Overcoat," widely considered a masterpiece of form.

A mysterious stranger named Chichikov arrives in a small provincial Russian town andproceeds to visit a succession of landowners, making each of them an unusual andsomewhat macabre proposition. He offers to buy the rights to the dead serfs who arestill registered on the landowner’s estate, thus reducing their liability for taxes. It is notclear what Chichikov’s intentions are with the dead serfs he is purchasing, and despitehis attempts to ingratiate himself, his strange behaviour arouses the suspicions of everyonein the town.A biting satire of social pretensions and pomposity, Dead Souls has been reveredsince its original publication in 1842 as one of the funniest and most brilliant novels ofnineteenth-century Russia. Its unflinching and remorseless depiction of venality in Russiansociety is a lasting tribute to Gogol’s comic genius.

Since its publication in 1842, Dead Souls has been celebrated as a supremely realistic portrait of provincial Russian life and as a splendidly exaggerated tale; as a paean to the Russian spirit and as a remorseless satire of imperial Russian venality, vulgarity, and pomp. As Gogol''s wily antihero, Chichikov, combs the back country wheeling and dealing for "dead souls"--deceased serfs who still represent money to anyone sharp enough to trade in them--we are introduced to a Dickensian cast of peasants, landowners, and conniving petty officials, few of whom can resist the seductive illogic of Chichikov''s proposition. This lively, idiomatic English version by the award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky makes accessible the full extent of the novel''s lyricism, sulphurous humor, and delight in human oddity and error.

Widely held to have led the realist revolution in Russian drama, Gogol liberated comedy from a tradition of didacticism and sentimentality. The Government Inspector, Gogol's masterpiece, was regarded by Vladimir Nabokov as the greatest play in the Russian language. This is the poet and playwright Adrian Mitchell's version of Gogol's classic satire on human vanity with its story of a penniless nobody from Moscow who is mistaken for a government inspector by the corrupt and self-seeking officials of a small town in Tsarist Russia. Methuen Drama Student Editions are expertly annotated texts of a wide range of plays from the modern and classic repertoires. As well as the complete text, the volume contains a chronology of the playwright's life and works, an introduction with background, a discussion of various interpretations, and notes on words and phrases.

An NYRB Classics OriginalThe first of the great Russian novels and one of the indisputable masterpieces of world literature, Dead Souls is the tale of Chichikov, an affably cunning con man who causes consternation in a small Russian town when he shows up out of nowhere proposing to buy title to serfs who, though dead as doornails, are still property on paper. What can he have up his sleeve, the local landowners wonder, even as some rush to unload what isn’t of any use to them anyway, while others seek to negotiate the best deal possible, and others yet hold on to their dead for dear life, since if somebody wants what you have then no matter what don’t give it away. Chichikov’s scheme soon encounters obstacles, but he is never without resource, and as he stumbles forward as best he can, Gogol paints a wonderfully comic picture of Russian life that also serves as a biting satire of a society as corrupt as it is cynical and silly. At once a wild phantasmagoria and a work of exacting realism, Dead Souls is a supremely living work of art that spills over with humor and passion and absurdity.       Donald Rayfield’s vigorous new translation corrects the mistakes and omissions of earlier versions while capturing the vivid speech rhythms of the original. It also offers a fuller text of the unfinished second part of the book by combining material from Gogol’s two surviving drafts into a single compelling narrative. This is a tour de force of art and scholarship—and the most authoritative, accurate, and readable edition of Dead Souls available in English.

A few factual points ought to be explained to the reader, even though the novel itself eventually suffices to clarify some of them. First, the title of the book. Among Russian serf-owning gentry, the idiomatic way to assess someone’s wealth was to express it in terms of the number of “souls” he owned—that is, male, adult serfs. Taxes on serfs had to be paid by the owner until the next census or registration date even if they may have died in the meantime. Gogol’s “dead souls,” in addition to this literal reference to serfs who had died since the last registration date for serfs, are also a metaphor for the dead moral and spiritual sensibilities of the many inhabitants of Gogol’s zoo. This title ran into trouble with Gogol’s censors, who held the ridiculous suspicion that the title might be a blasphemous attack on the immortality of the human soul. Gogol therefore added the title “Chichikov’s Adventures.”

Nikolai Gogol’s novel Dead Souls and play The Government Inspector revolutionized Russian literature and continue to entertain generations of readers around the world. Yet Gogol’s peculiar genius comes through most powerfully in his short stories. By turns—or at once—funny, terrifying, and profound, the tales collected in The Nose and Other Stories are among the greatest achievements of world literature.These stories showcase Gogol’s vivid, haunting imagination: an encounter with evil in a darkened church, a downtrodden clerk who dreams only of a new overcoat, a nose that falls off a face and reappears around town on its own, outranking its former owner. Written between 1831 and 1842, they span the colorful setting of rural Ukraine to the unforgiving urban landscape of St. Petersburg to the ancient labyrinth of Rome. Yet they share Gogol’s characteristic obsessions—city crowds, bureaucratic hierarchy and irrationality, the devil in disguise—and a constant undercurrent of the absurd. Susanne Fusso’s translations pay careful attention to the strangeness and wonder of Gogol's style, preserving the inimitable humor and oddity of his language. The Nose and Other Stories reveals why Russian writers from Dostoevsky to Nabokov have returned to Gogol as the cornerstone of their unparalleled literary tradition.

Nikolai Gogol’s novel Dead Souls and play The Government Inspector revolutionized Russian literature and continue to entertain generations of readers around the world. Yet Gogol’s peculiar genius comes through most powerfully in his short stories. By turns—or at once—funny, terrifying, and profound, the tales collected in The Nose and Other Stories are among the greatest achievements of world literature.These stories showcase Gogol’s vivid, haunting imagination: an encounter with evil in a darkened church, a downtrodden clerk who dreams only of a new overcoat, a nose that falls off a face and reappears around town on its own, outranking its former owner. Written between 1831 and 1842, they span the colorful setting of rural Ukraine to the unforgiving urban landscape of St. Petersburg to the ancient labyrinth of Rome. Yet they share Gogol’s characteristic obsessions—city crowds, bureaucratic hierarchy and irrationality, the devil in disguise—and a constant undercurrent of the absurd. Susanne Fusso’s translations pay careful attention to the strangeness and wonder of Gogol's style, preserving the inimitable humor and oddity of his language. The Nose and Other Stories reveals why Russian writers from Dostoevsky to Nabokov have returned to Gogol as the cornerstone of their unparalleled literary tradition.

Gogol's 1842 novel Dead Souls, a comic masterpiece about a mysterious con man and his grotesque victims, is one of the major works of Russian literature. It was translated into English in 1942 by Bernard Guilbert Guerney; the translation was hailed by Vladimir Nabokov as "an extraordinarily fine piece of work" and is still considered the best translation of Dead Souls ever published. Long out of print, the Guerney translation of Dead Souls is now reissued. The text has been made more faithful to Gogol's original by removing passages that Guerney inserted from earlier drafts of Dead Souls. The text is accompanied by Susanne Fusso's introduction and by appendices that present excerpts from Guerney's translations of other drafts of Gogol's work and letters Gogol wrote around the time of the writing and publication of Deal Souls. "I am delighted that Guerney's translation of Dead Souls [is] available again. It is head and shoulders above all the others, for Guerney understands that to 'translate' Gogol is necessarily to undertake a poetic recreation, and he does so brilliantly."-Robert A.Maguire, Columbia University "The Guerney translation of Dead Souls is the only translation I know of that makes any serious attempt to approximate the qualities of Gogol's style-exuberant, erratic, 'Baroque,' bizarre."-Hugh McLean, University of California, Berkeley "A splendidly revised and edited edition of Bernard Guerney's classic English translation of Gogol's Dead Souls. The distinguished Gogol scholar Susanne Fusso may have brought us as close as the English reader may ever expect to come to Gogol's masterpiece. No student, scholar, or general reader will want to miss this updated, refined version of one of the most delightful and sublime works of Russian literature."-Robert Jackson, Yale University

Using, or rather mimicking, traditional forms of storytelling Gogol created stories that are complete within themselves and only tangentially connected to a meaning or moral. His work belongs to the school of invention, where each twist and turn of the narrative is a surprise unfettered by obligation to an overarching theme.Selected from Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka, Mirgorod, and the Petersburg tales and arranged in order of composition, the thirteen stories in The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogolencompass the breadth of Gogol''s literary achievement. From the demon-haunted “St. John''s Eve ” to the heartrending humiliations and trials of a titular councilor in “The Overcoat,” Gogol''s knack for turning literary conventions on their heads combined with his overt joy in the art of story telling shine through in each of the tales.This translation, by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, is as vigorous and darkly funny as the original Russian. It allows readers to experience anew the unmistakable genius of a writer who paved the way for Dostevsky and Kafka.

Part of the Norton Library series“As Kate Holland notes in her fine introduction to these new translations, Nikolai Gogol is a hybrid: Ukrainian-Russian, Romantic-Realist, equal parts nightmare and satire. Michael Katz hears this hybrid tension. We sense the terror and fantasy of Ukrainian folklore flooding Petersburg space, revealing a Gogol for our haunted times.”—Caryl Emerson (Princeton University)The Norton Library edition of Selected Tales features a collection of Nikolai Gogol’s most regarded short fiction: “Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Auntie,” “Nevsky Prospect,” “Notes of a Madman,” “The Nose,” “The Carriage,” “The Portrait,” and “The Overcoat” newly translated by Michael R. Katz. An introduction by Kate Holland situates the stories in the historical context of imperial St. Petersburg, inviting readers to appreciate Gogol’s incisive social critique and the transformative vision of his writing.The Norton Library is a growing collection of high-quality texts and translations—influential works of literature and philosophy—introduced and edited by leading scholars. Norton Library editions prepare readers for their first encounter with the works that they’ll re-read over a lifetime.Inviting introductions highlight the work’s significance and influence, providing the historical and literary context students need to dive in with confidence.Endnotes and an easy-to-read design deliver an uninterrupted reading experience, encouraging students to read the text first and refer to endnotes for more information as needed.An affordable price (most $10 or less) encourages students to buy the book and to come to class with the assigned edition.About the Authors:Michael R. Katz is C. V. Starr Professor Emeritus of Russian and East European Studies at Middlebury College. He has published translations of more than fifteen Russian novels, including Crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground, and The Brothers Karamazov.Kate Holland is Associate Professor of Russian Literature in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Toronto. She is the author of The Novel in the Age of Disintegration: Dostoevsky and the Problem of Genre in the 1870s. She is President of the North American Dostoevsky Society.

This is the poet and playwright Adrian Mitchell's version of Gogol's classic satire on human vanity with its story of a penniless nobody from Moscow who is mistaken for a government inspector by the corrupt and self-seeking officials of a small town in Tsarist Russia."The greatest artist that Russia has yet produced" Vladimir Nabokov

This collection contains Gogol's three completed plays The Government Inspector, which satirises a corrupt society was regarded by Nabokov as the greatest play in the Russian language and is still widely studied in schools and universities: "I resolved to gather into one heap everything that was bad in Russia which I was aware of at that time, all the injustices being perpetrated in those places, and in those circumstances that especially cried out for justice, and tried to hold them all up to ridicule, at one fell swoop." (Nikolai Gogol) Marriage is a comedy about the business of matchmaking and matrimony; The Gamblers is an exoriating piece about the excesses of the Moscow aristocracy."Two and two make five, if not the square root of five, and it all happens quite naturally in Gogol's world...Gogol was a strange creature, but then genius is always strange" (Vladimir Nabokov)

This series presents a wide choice of 20th-century drama. The books offer scene-by-scene analysis, structured questions and assignment suggestions for GCSE. In this Russian comedy, a young traveller in a provincial town is mistaken for a government inspector.

A stranger arrives in a Russian backwater community with a bizarre proposition for the local landowners: cash for their "dead souls," the serfs who have died in their service. Gogol's comic masterpiece offers a vast and satirical painting of 19th-century Russia. A work of great symbolism, it continues to inspire 21st-century authors and readers.

The news that a government inspector is due to arrive in a small Russian town sends its bureaucrats into a panicked frenzy. A simple case of mistaken identity exposes the hypocrisy and corruption at the heart of the town in this biting moral satire.David Harrower's version of Nikolai Gogol's Government Inspector premiered at the Warwick Arts Centre in May 2011 and transferred to Young Vic, London in June.

The news that a government inspector is due to arrive in a small Russian town sends its bureaucrats into a panicked frenzy. A simple case of mistaken identity exposes the hypocrisy and corruption at the heart of the town in this biting moral satire.David Harrower's version of Nikolai Gogol's Government Inspector premiered at the Warwick Arts Centre in May 2011 and transferred to Young Vic, London in June.

One of five beloved Christmas classics Written in 1831 by the father of Russian literature, this uproarious tale tells of the blacksmith Vakula’s battle with the devil, who has stolen the moon and hidden it in his pocket, allowing him to wreak havoc on the village of Dikanka. Both the devil and Vakula are in love with Oksana, the most beautiful girl in Dikanka. Vakula is determined to win her over; the devil, equally determined, unleashes a snowstorm to thwart Vakula’s efforts. Zany and mischievous, and drawing inspiration from the folk tales of Gogol’s far-flung village in Ukraine, The Night Before Christmas is the basis for many movie and opera adaptations, and is still read aloud to children on Christmas Eve in Ukraine and Russia. Penguin Christmas Classics Give the gift of literature this Christmas. Penguin Christmas Classics honor the power of literature to keep on giving through the ages. The five volumes in the series are not only our most beloved Christmas tales, they also have given us much of what we love about the holiday itself. A Christmas Carol revived in Victorian England such Christmas hallmarks as the Christmas tree, holiday cards, and caroling. The Yuletide yarns of Anthony Trollope popularized throughout the British Empire and around the world the trappings of Christmas in London. The holiday tales of Louisa May Alcott shaped the ideal of an American Christmas. The Night Before Christmas brought forth some of our earliest Christmas traditions as passed down through folk tales. And The Nutcracker inspired the most famous ballet in history, one seen by millions in the twilight of every year. Collect all five Penguin Christmas Classics: A Christmas Carol by Charles DickensChristmas at Thompson Hall: And Other Christmas Stories by Anthony TrollopeA Merry Christmas: And Other Christmas Stories by Louisa May AlcottThe Night Before Christmas by Nikolai GogolThe Nutcracker by E. T. A. Hoffmann

It is the night before Christmas and devilry is afoot. The devil steals the moon and hides it in his pocket. He is thus free to run amok and inflicts all sorts of wicked mischief upon the village of Dikanka by unleashing a snowstorm. But the one he’d really like to torment is the town blacksmith, Vakula, who creates paintings of the devil being vanquished. Vakula is in love with Oksana, but she will have nothing to do with him. Vakula, however, is determined to win her over, even if it means battling the devil.Taken from Nikolai Gogol’s first successful work, the story collection Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, The Night Before Christmas is available here for the first time as a stand-alone novella and is a perfect introduction to the great Russian satirist.

An Ace Double paperback featuring the screenplay to Alex Cox's 'last' film - Dead Souls - plus the original Nikolai Gogol text.Dead Souls, directed by and starring Alex Cox, is a surreal, lean, meditative, low-budget Spaghetti Western adaptation of Nikolai Gogol's classic novel, transposed to the 19th-century American West, that feels both literary and rebellious.The film follows Strindler (Alex Cox), a conniving preacher buying up names of deceased Mexicans, blending political satire on greed and corruption with meta-humour, stop-motion, and musical numbers.The story mirrors Gogol's original novel, set in a dusty, morally bankrupt frontier town where Strindler travels, collecting the names of 'dead souls' to gain power and money.