The Nose and Other Stories

by Nikolai Gogol

  Then there are the features of innate artistic instinct and feeling: He had seen a simple woman point out to an artist an error in his painting; he had seen how this feeling was involuntarily expressed in picturesque clothing, in church decorations, how in Genzano the people would deck the streets with carpets made of flowers, how the multicolored flower petals turned into colors and shadows, on the pavement would emerge patterns, cardinals’ coats of arms, a portrait of the Pope, monograms, birds, beasts, and arabesques.33 How on the eve of Easter Sunday the sellers of victuals, the pizzicaroli, would deck out their shops: hams, sausages, white bladders, lemons, and leaves were turned into a mosaic and formed a plafond; rounds of parmesan and other cheeses, lying one on top of another, were turned into columns; tallow candles formed the fringe of a mosaic curtain that was draped over the inner walls; whole statues were molded out of fatback as white as snow, historical groups of Christian and Biblical content, which the amazed spectator mistook for alabaster—the whole shop turned into a bright temple, shining with gilded stars, skillfully illuminated by hanging bottles, and reflecting endless piles of eggs in the mirrors.34 For all this, taste is needed, and the pizzicarolo did this not for the sake of earnings, but in order that other people would admire it and he himself could admire it.

  Finally, the Italians are a people in whom a feeling of their own worth is alive: Here they are il popolo, not the mob, and they bear in their nature the direct elements of the times of the original quirites; they could not be perverted even by the incursions of foreigners, who debauch inactive nations and engender in the taverns and along the roads a despised class of people by whom the traveler often judges the people as a whole. The very absurdity of government decrees, that incoherent pile of all sorts of laws, which originated at all different times and relations and have not been abolished to this day, among which there are even edicts from the time of the ancient Roman republic—all this did not eradicate the lofty feeling of justice in the people. The people condemn the unjust claimant, they hiss at the coffin of the deceased, and they magnanimously harness themselves to the chariot carrying the body of one who is dear to the people. The very acts of the clergy, which are often seductive and in other places would engender debauchery, have almost no effect on the Italian people: They know how to separate religion from its hypocritical practitioners and have not been infected by the cold idea of unbelief. Finally, need and poverty themselves, the inevitable lot of a stagnant state, do not lead the people to grim villainy: They are cheerful and endure everything, and only in novels and stories do they cut people’s throats on the streets. All this seemed to him to be the nature of a powerful, untapped people, for whom some kind of serious task was being prepared in the future. It was as if European enlightenment had intentionally not touched this people and instilled its cold process of improvement in its breast. The very clerical administration, that strange surviving phantom of past times, remained as if in order to protect the people from outside influence, so that none of their ambitious neighbors could infringe on the people’s personality, in order that its proud national character could remain hidden until the proper time. Moreover, here in Rome there was no sense of something dead; in the very ruins and magnificent poverty of Rome there was not that oppressive, penetrating feeling that involuntarily envelops a person who contemplates the monuments of a nation that has died while still alive. Here there was the opposite feeling; here there was a luminous, solemn serenity. And every time he pondered all this, the prince involuntarily gave himself up to his meditations and started to suspect a kind of mysterious significance in the words “eternal Rome.”

  The result of all this was that he tried to come to know his people more and more. He watched them on the streets, in the cafés, each of which had its set of customers: antique dealers in one, shooters and hunters in another, cardinals’ servants in a third, artists in a fourth, all of Roman youth and Roman foppishness in a fifth; he watched them in the osterias, the purely Roman osterias, where foreigners do not go, where a high Roman nobleman sometimes sits down next to a minente, and the whole company takes off their frock coats and ties on hot days; he watched them in the picturesquely unsightly little suburban taverns with airy paneless windows, where the Romans would flock in whole families and companies to dine, or as they put it, far allegria.* He would sit down and have dinner with them, entering eagerly into conversation, very often amazed at the simple common sense and lively originality of the tales of these simple, illiterate city dwellers. But most of all he had occasion to come to know the people at the time of the rites and festivals, when the whole population of Rome would come to the surface and an innumerable multitude of beautiful women, unsuspected up to now, would suddenly appear—beauties whose images flicker only in bas-reliefs and in ancient anthology poems.35 These full gazes, alabaster shoulders, pitch-black hair styled in a thousand different ways—raised up on the head or thrown back and pierced by a golden arrow, the arms, the proud gait, everywhere the features and hints of serious classical beauty, not the light charm of graceful women. Here women seemed like the buildings of Italy—they are either palaces or hovels, either beauties or hideous; there is no middle ground: There are no pretty women. He delighted in them as he delighted in lines in a beautiful narrative poem that struck one as different from the rest and that visited a refreshing trembling on the soul.

  But soon these delights were joined by a feeling that declared powerful battle on all other things—a feeling that summoned from the depths of his soul powerful human passions, that raised a democratic rebellion against the lofty autocracy of the soul: He saw Annunziata. And that is how we have finally made our way to the bright image that illumined the beginning of our tale.

  It was at the time of Carnival.

  “I won’t go to the Corso today,” the Principe* said to his maestro di casa as he left the house. “I’m getting tired of the Carnival, I prefer the summer festivals and rites…”

  “But is this really a Carnival?” the old man said. “This is a Carnival for children. I remember the Carnival: when there was not a single coach on the entire Corso, and music thundered all night long; when painters, architects, and sculptors invented whole groups, histories; when the people—the prince must understand: all the people, all—all the goldsmiths, frame-makers, mosaicists, the beautiful women, the whole Signoria, all the nobili,* all, all, all… o quanta allegria!† That is when it was a real Carnival, but what kind of Carnival is it now? Eh!” the old man said and shrugged his shoulders, then said “Eh!” again and shrugged his shoulders; and then again he said: “E una porcheria.”‡36

  Then in his spiritual spasm the maestro di casa made an unusually strong gesture with his arm, but he quieted down when he saw that the prince was long gone. He was already on the street. Not wishing to participate in the Carnival, he had taken with him neither a mask, nor an iron netting on his face, and throwing on a cloak, wanted only to make his way across the Corso to get to the other half of the city. But the crowd of people was too dense. Hardly would he shove his way between two people when he was treated to some flour poured on him from above; a motley harlequin hit him on the shoulder with a rattle as he flew by with his columbine; confetti and bunches of flowers flew into his face; from both sides his ears started to hum: on one side a count, on the other a physician, reading him a long lecture about what was contained in his gastric intestine.37 He did not have the strength to make his way between them, because the crowd of people was growing; a string of carriages, no longer able to move, had stopped. The attention of the crowd was occupied by a daredevil who was striding on stilts as high as the houses, risking at any minute to be knocked off his feet and to crash down to his death on the pavement. But it seemed he had no worries about that. He was toting on his shoulders the effigy of a giant, holding it with one hand and bearing in the other a sonnet written on a piece of paper with a paper tail affixed to it of the kind one sees on a paper kite, and shouting at the top of his voice: “Ecco il gran poeta mort
o. Ecco il suo sonetto colla coda!” (“Here is the great deceased poet! Here is his sonnet with a tail!”)38 This daredevil had caused the crowd behind him to become so dense that the prince could hardly catch his breath.

  Finally, the whole crowd moved forward, behind the daredevil and the deceased poet; the chain of carriages started to move, which made him very happy, although the movement of the people had knocked off his hat, which he now rushed to pick up. After he picked up his hat, he also raised his eyes and was rooted to the spot: Before him stood an unheard-of beauty. She was wearing a shining Albano costume, in a row with two other beautiful women, who compared with her as the night to the day. This was a miracle in the highest degree. Everything had to turn darker in the presence of this brilliance. Looking at her, it became clear why Italian poets compared beautiful women to the sun. This truly was the sun, complete beauty. Everything that is scattered and gleams separately in the beauties of the world, all this was gathered together here. Glancing at her chest and bosom, it became obvious what was lacking in the chests and bosoms of other beauties. Compared to her thick, gleaming hair, all other hair would seem sparse and dull. Her arms existed in order to turn everyone into an artist—like an artist, he would have looked at them eternally, not daring to breathe. Compared to her legs, the legs of Englishwomen, German women, French women, and the women of all other nations would seem like splinters of wood; only the ancient sculptors had retained the lofty idea of their beauty in their statues. This was complete beauty, created in order to blind all and sundry!

  Here one did not need to have some particular kind of taste—here all tastes had to merge, everyone had to prostrate themselves—the believer and the unbeliever would fall before her as before the sudden appearance of a divinity. He saw how all the people that were there stared at her in wonderment, how the women expressed an involuntary amazement, mixed with delight, in their faces, and repeated: “O bella!”*—how everyone there seemed to have turned into artists and were looking fixedly at her alone. But on the face of the beauty was written nothing but attention to the Carnival: She was looking only at the crowd and the masks, not noticing the eyes directed at her, barely hearing the men standing behind her in velvet jerkins, probably relatives who had come with them. The prince set about questioning the people standing near him, asking who this marvelous beauty was and where she was from. But everywhere he got in answer only a shrug of the shoulders accompanied by a gesture and the words: “I don’t know, she must be a foreigner.”39 Immobile, holding his breath, he devoured her with his eyes. The beauty finally turned her full eyes to him, but immediately became embarrassed and turned them away in another direction. He was awakened by a shout: In front of him a huge cart had stopped. The crowd of people in the cart, wearing masks and pink smocks, called him by name and started shaking flour onto him, accompanying it by one long exclamation: “Ooh, ooh, ooh!” And in a single moment he had been sprinkled from head to toe with white dust, to the loud laughter of all the neighbors surrounding him. White as snow all over, with even his eyelashes white, the prince hurried home to change his clothes.

  By the time he ran home and changed his clothes, only an hour and a half remained before the Ave Maria.40 Empty coaches were returning from the Corso: The people who had been sitting in them had moved to the balconies, to watch the crowd that never ceased to move, awaiting the horse race. At the turn onto the Corso he encountered a cart full of men in jerkins and radiant women with wreaths of flowers on their heads, with tambourines and drums in their hands. It seemed that the cart was merrily returning home, its sides were decorated with garlands, the spokes and rims of the wheels were entwined with green branches. His heart stopped when he saw that the beauty who had so impressed him was sitting in the cart among the women. Her face was lit up by sparkling laughter. The cart rushed quickly by, accompanied by shouts and songs. The first thing he did was try to run after the cart, but his way was blocked by a huge train of musicians: On six wheels they were transporting a violin of terrifyingly large proportions. One person was sitting astride the bridge; another, walking alongside, was drawing an enormous bow across four cables that had been stretched onto it instead of strings. The violin had probably cost great effort, expense, and time. In front of it walked a gigantic drum. The crowd of people and urchins flocked closely after the musical train, and at the rear of the procession came a pizzicarolo who was famous in Rome for his fatness, carrying an enema pipe as tall as a bell tower.

  When the street had been cleared of the train, the prince saw that it would be foolish and too late to run after the cart, and moreover he didn’t know which roads it was now rushing along. Nevertheless, he could not give up the idea of seeking her out. That radiant laughter and the open lips with marvelous rows of teeth floated in his imagination. “It is the brilliance of lightning, not a woman,” he kept repeating to himself and at the same time added: “She is a Roman. Such a woman could be born only in Rome. I must see her without fail. I want to see her not in order to love her, no—I wish only to look at her, to look at all of her, to look at her eyes, to look at her arms, at her fingers, at her gleaming hair. I wish not to kiss her, but only to look at her. And what of that? After all, that’s how it must be, it’s in the law of nature; she has no right to hide and carry away her beauty. Complete beauty is given to the world in order for everyone to see it, in order that everyone would preserve the idea of it eternally in their hearts. If she were simply beautiful, and not such supreme perfection, she would have the right to belong to one person, she could be carried off to a desert and hidden from the world. But complete beauty must be seen by everyone. Does an architect build a magnificent temple in a cramped lane? No, he places it on an open square, so that people can look at it from all sides and be amazed at it. Is a lamp lit, said the Divine Teacher, so that one would hide it and put it under a table? No, the lamp is lit in order to stand on the table, so that everyone can see, so that everyone can move by its light. No, I must see her without fail.”41

  These were the prince’s thoughts, and he then pondered and went over all the means by which he could achieve this—finally, he seemed to settle on one of them and immediately set off without delay to one of those remote streets, of which there are many in Rome, where there is not even a cardinal’s palace with coats of arms painted on oval wooden shields, where there is a number over every window and door of a cramped little house, where the pavement bulges in a hump, where no foreigners ever drop in, except perhaps a rascal of a German artist with a folding stool and paints and a goat that has fallen behind its herd and has stopped to look with amazement at this street it’s never seen before. Here the prattle of the Roman women rings out resonantly: From all sides, out of all the windows fly gossip and crosstalk. Here everything is open and frank, and the passerby can learn absolutely all the domestic secrets; even a mother and daughter conduct all their conversations by sticking their heads out the window onto the street; there are no men visible here at all. As soon as the morning begins to gleam, the window opens and Siora Susanna sticks her head out, then from a different window appears Siora Grazia, putting on her skirt.42 Then Siora Nanna opens her window. Then Siora Lucia leans out, combing out her plait; finally, Siora Cecilia sticks her arm out of her window in order to get the washing that’s hanging on a stretched-out rope, and the washing is immediately punished for taking a long time to let itself be gotten, punished by being wadded up and thrown on the floor with the words: “Che bestia!”* Everything here is lively, everything seethes: a shoe from someone’s foot flies out the window at a mischievous son or at a goat that has approached the basket in which a year-old child is placed and has started to sniff him, and with bent head has gotten ready to explain to him what it means to have horns. Nothing here is unknown—everything is known. The signoras all know every last thing: what kind of kerchief Siora Giuditta bought, who was going to have fish for dinner, who was Barbaruccia’s lover, which Capuchin was the best at hearing confession. Only rarely does a husband interj
ect a word, usually standing on the street, leaning with his elbows on the wall, with a short pipe in his teeth, and considering it necessary when he hears about the Capuchin to add the short phrase: “They’re all crooks,” after which he continues emitting smoke under his own nose. No coach ever drives in here, except perhaps a two-wheeled rattletrap harnessed with a mule, bringing flour to the baker, and a sleepy donkey that is hardly able to drag its saddle-basket full of broccoli, despite all the encouragement of the urchins who bless its insensitive sides with stones. There are no stores here except pitiful little shops that sell bread and rope, with large glass bottles, and a dark, narrow café on the very corner of the street, where one constantly sees the bottega coming out to bring the signori coffee or hot chocolate made with goat’s milk in the little tin coffeepots known by the name Auroras. The houses here belong to two, three, and sometimes even four owners, of which one has only a life interest, another owns one floor and has the right to profit from it for only two years, after which, as a result of a last will and testament, the floor must pass from him to Padre Vincenzo for ten years, but a relative from the padre’s former family who lives in Frascati wants to evict him and has already begun a lawsuit well ahead of time. There were also owners who owned one window in a house, and two other windows in another house, and who shared the income from the window with their brother, a window for which, however, the irresponsible tenant never paid—in short, the object of inexhaustible lawsuits and providing subsistence for the lawyers and curiales* that Rome is full of. The ladies we were just speaking of—all of them, the first-class ones who were honored with full names, as well as the second-class ones, called by nicknames, all the Tettas, Tuttas, Nannas—for the most part did not work; they were spouses: of a lawyer, a petty clerk, a petty tradesman, a facchino,† but most often of an unemployed citizen who knew only how to drape himself beautifully in a not very reliable cloak.