Dead Souls: A Novel

by Nikolai Gogol

  “That’s not the point, dear uncle,” said the nephew. “It’s not hard for me to apologize, the more so as I am indeed to blame. He is my superior, and I should never have spoken to him in that way. But the point is this: you forget that I have a different service; I have three hundred peasant souls, my estate is in disorder, and the steward is a fool. It will be no great loss to the state if someone else sits in the office copying papers instead of me, but it will be a great loss if three hundred men don’t pay their taxes. I am a landowner: the title is not a worthless one. If I take care to preserve, protect, and improve the lot of the people entrusted to me, and present the state with three hundred fit, sober, and industrious subjects—will my service be in any way worse than the service of some department chief Lenitsyn?”

  The actual state councillor stood gaping in astonishment. He had not expected such a torrent of words. After a moment’s thought, he began in the following vein:

  “But all the same … all the same … why go perish yourself in the country? What sort of society is there among muzhiks? Here, after all, you can come across a general or a prince in the street. If you wish, you can walk past some handsome public buildings, or else go and look at the Neva, but there whatever comes along is either a muzhik or a wench. Why condemn yourself to ignorance for the rest of your life?”

  So spoke his uncle, the actual state councillor. He himself had never once in his life walked any other street than the one that led to his place of service, where there were no handsome public buildings; he never noticed anyone he met, either general or prince; he had not the foggiest notion of the fancies that are the attraction of a capital for people greedy for license, and had never once in his life even been in a theater. He said all this solely in order to stir up the young man’s ambition and work on his imagination. In this, however, he did not succeed: Tentetnikov stubbornly held his own. He had begun to weary of the departments and the capital. The countryside had begun to appear as a sort of haven of freedom, a nourisher of thoughts and intentions, the only path for useful activity. Some two weeks after this conversation, he was already in the vicinity of the places where his childhood had flown by. How it all started coming back to him, how his heart began to beat when he felt he was nearing his father’s estate! He had already completely forgotten many places and gazed curiously, like a newcomer, at the beautiful views. When the road raced through a narrow ravine into the thick of a vast, overgrown forest, and he saw above, below, over, and under himself three-century-old oaks of enormous girth, mixed with silver firs, elms, and black poplars that overtopped the white, and when, to the question, “Whose forest?” he was told, “Tentetnikov’s”; when, emerging from the forest, the road raced across meadows, past aspen groves, willows, and vines young and old, with a view of the distant mountains, and flew over bridges which in various places crossed one and the same river, leaving it now to the right, now to the left of him, and when, to the question, “Whose fields and water meadows?” he was answered, “Tentetnikov’s”; when, after that, the road went uphill and over a level elevation past unharvested fields of wheat, rye, and oats on one side, and on the other past all the places he had just driven by, which all suddenly appeared in the picturesque distance, and when, gradually darkening, the road started to enter and then did enter under the shade of wide-spreading trees, scattered over a green carpet right up to the estate, and before him peasant cottages and red-roofed manor buildings began to flash; when the ardently pounding heart knew even without asking where it had come to—the constantly accumulating feelings finally burst out in almost these words: “Well, haven’t I been a fool all this while? Destiny appointed me the owner of an earthly paradise, a prince, and I got myself enslaved as a scrivener in an office! After studying, being educated, enlightened, laying up quite a large store of information necessary precisely in order to direct people, to improve the whole region, to fulfill the manifold duties of a landowner as judge, manager, keeper of order, I entrusted this place to an ignorant steward! And instead of that chose what?—copying papers, which a cantonist who never went to any school can do incomparably better!” And once again Andrei Ivanovich Tentetnikov called himself a fool.

  And meanwhile another spectacle awaited him. Having learned of the master’s arrival, the population of the entire village gathered by the porch. Gay-colored kerchiefs, headbands, scarfs, homespun coats, beards of all sorts—spade, shovel, wedge-shaped, red, blond, and white as silver—covered the whole square. The muzhiks boomed out: “Our provider, we’ve waited so long!” The women wailed: “Gold, the heart’s silver!” Those who stood further away even fought in their zeal to press forward. A wobbly crone who looked like a dried pear crept between the others’ legs, accosted him, clasped her hands, and shrieked: “Our little runny-nose, what a weakling you are! the cursed Germans have starved you out!” “Away with you, granny!” the spade, shovel, and wedge-shaped beards all shouted at her. “Watch where you’re shoving, you old scraggy one!” Someone tacked on a little word, at which only a Russian peasant could keep from laughing. The master could not help himself and laughed, but nevertheless he was deeply touched in his soul. “So much love! and what for?” he thought to himself. “For never having seen them, for never concerning myself with them! I give my word that henceforth I will share all your labors and concerns with you! I’ll do everything to help you become what you ought to be, what the good nature that is in you meant you to be, so that your love for me will not be in vain, so that I will indeed be your provider!”

  And in fact Tentetnikov began managing and giving orders in earnest. He saw on the spot that the steward was an old woman and a fool, with all the qualities of a rotten steward—that is, he kept a careful account of the hens and the eggs, of the yarn and linen the women brought, but did not know a blessed thing about harvesting and sowing, and on top of that suspected the peasants of making attempts on his life. He threw out the fool steward and chose another to replace him, a perky one. He disregarded trifles and paid attention to the main things, reduced the corvée, decreased the number of days the muzhiks had to work for him, added more time for them to work for themselves, and thought that things would now go most excellently. He began to enter into everything himself, to appear in the fields, on the threshing floor, in the barns, at the mills, on the wharf where barges and flatboats were loaded and sent off.

  “He’s a quick-stepper, that he is!” the muzhiks started saying, and even scratched their heads, because from long-standing womanish management they had turned into a rather lazy lot. But this did not last long. The Russian muzhik is clever and intelligent: they soon understood that though the master was quick and wanted to take many things in hand, yet precisely how, in what way to take them in hand—of this he still knew nothing, he spoke somehow too literately and fancifully, puzzling for a muzhik and beyond his ability. As a result, while there was not really a total lack of comprehension between master and muzhik, they simply sang to different tunes, never able to produce the same note. Tentetnikov began to notice that everything turned out somehow worse on the master’s land than on the muzhik’s: the sowing came earlier, the sprouting later. Yet it seemed they worked well: he himself was there and even ordered a reward of a noggin of vodka for diligent work. The muzhiks had long had rye in the ear, oats swelling, millet bushing out, while his grain was still in the shoot and the ears had not yet begun to form. In short, the master began to notice that the muzhiks were simply cheating him, despite all his good turns. He made an attempt to reproach them, but received the following answer: “How can it be, your honor, that we haven’t been zealous for the master’s profit? You yourself were pleased to see how diligently we ploughed and sowed: you ordered us given a noggin of vodka each.” What objection could he make to that? “But why has it turned out so badly now?” the master persisted. “Who knows! Must be worms gnawed it from below, and just look at this summer: no rain at all.” But the master could see that worms had not gnawed the muzhiks’ crops from below, and it ra
ined somehow oddly, in strips: the muzhiks got it, while the master’s fields did not get so much as a single drop. It was harder still for him to get along with the women. They asked so often to be excused from work, complaining about the heaviness of the corvée. How strange! He had abolished outright all bringing in of linen, berries, mushrooms, and nuts, and reduced the other tasks by half, thinking that the women would spend this time on housework, sewing, making clothes for their husbands, improving their kitchen gardens. Not a bit of it! Such idleness, fights, gossip, and all sorts of quarrels set in among the fair sex that the husbands kept coming to him with such words as: “Master, quiet down this demon of a woman! Just like some devil! she won’t let me live!” Several times, with heavy heart, he wanted to introduce severity. But how could he be severe? The woman would come as such a woman, get into such shrieking, was so sick, so ailing, would wrap herself up in such poor, vile rags—God only knows where she got them. “Go, just leave my sight, God be with you!” poor Tentetnikov would say, after which he would have the pleasure of seeing how the sick woman, coming out, would start squabbling with a neighbor over some turnip and give her such a drubbing as even a healthy man would not be capable of. He decided to try and start some sort of school among them, but such nonsense came out of it that he even hung his head—it would be better not to think about it! All this significantly chilled his enthusiasm both for management and for acting as judge, and generally for all activity. He was present at the field work almost without noticing it: his thoughts were far away, his eyes searched for extraneous objects. During the mowing he did not watch the quick raising of sixty scythes at once, followed by the measured fall, with a faint sound, of rows of tall grass; instead he looked off to the side at some bend of the river, on the bank of which walked some red-nosed, red-legged stalker—a stork, of course, not a man; he watched the stork catch a fish and hold it crosswise in its beak, as if considering whether to swallow it or not, and at the same time looking intently up the river, where, some distance away, another stork could be seen who had not yet caught a fish, but was looking intently at the one who already had. During the harvest, he did not look at how the sheaves were piled in shocks, in crosses, or sometimes simply in heaps. He hardly cared whether the piling and stacking was done lazily or briskly. Eyes closed, face lifted up to the spacious sky, he allowed his nose to imbibe the scent of the fields and his ears to be struck by the voices of the songful populace of the air, when it comes from everywhere, heaven and earth, to join in one harmonious chorus with no discord among themselves. The quail throbs, the corncrake crakes in the grass, linnets warble and twitter as they fly from place to place, the trilling of the lark spills down an invisible stairway of air, and the whooping of cranes rushing in a line off to one side—just like the sounding of silver trumpets—comes from the emptiness of the resoundingly vibrant airy desert. If the field work was close to him, he was far away from it; if it was far away, his eyes sought out things that were close. And he was like the distracted schoolboy who, while looking into his book, sees only the snook his comrade is cocking at him at the same time. In the end he stopped going out to the field work altogether, dropped entirely all administering of justice and punishments, firmly ensconced himself inside, and even stopped receiving the steward with his reports.

  From time to time a neighbor would stop by, a retired lieutenant of the hussars, a thoroughly smoke-saturated pipe smoker, or the firebrand colonel, a master and lover of talking about everything. But this, too, began to bore him. Their conversation began to seem to him somehow superficial; lively, adroit behavior, slappings on the knee, and other such casualness began to seem much too direct and overt to him. He decided to break off all his acquaintances and even did it quite abruptly. Namely, when that representative of all firebrand colonels, he who was most pleasant in all superficial conversations about everything, Barbar Nikolaych Vishnepokromov, came calling precisely in order to talk his fill, touching on politics, and philosophy, and literature, and morality, and even the state of England’s finances, he sent word that he was not at home, and at the same time was so imprudent as to appear in the window. The guest’s and host’s eyes met. One, of course, grumbled “Brute!” through his teeth, while the other also sent after him something like a swine. Thus ended their acquaintance. After that no one came to see him. Total solitude installed itself in the house. The master got permanently into his dressing gown, giving his body over to inaction and his mind—to pondering a big work about Russia. How this work was being pondered, the reader has already seen. The day came and went, monotonous and colorless. It cannot be said, however, that there were not moments when he seemed to awaken from his sleep. When the mail brought newspapers, new books, and magazines, and in the press he came across the familiar name of a former schoolmate, who had already succeeded in some prominent post of the government service, or made a modest contribution to science and world knowledge, a secret, quiet sadness would come to his heart, and a doleful, wordlessly sad, quiet complaint at his own inactivity would involuntarily escape him. Then his life seemed revolting and vile to him. Before him his past schooldays rose up with extraordinary force and suddenly Alexander Petrovich stood before him as if alive … A flood of tears poured from his eyes, and his weeping continued for almost the whole day.

  What was the meaning of this weeping? Was his aching soul thereby revealing the doleful mystery of its illness—that the lofty inner man who was beginning to be built in him had had no time to form and gain strength; that, not tried from early years in the struggle with failure, he had never attained the lofty ability to rise and gain strength from obstacles and barriers; that, having melted like heated metal, the wealth of great feelings had not been subjected to a final tempering, and now, lacking resilience, his will was powerless; that an extraordinary mentor had died too soon, and there was no longer anyone in the whole world capable of raising and holding up those forces rocked by eternal vacillation and that feeble will lacking in resilience—who could cry out in a live and rousing voice—cry out to his soul the rousing word: forward!—which the Russian man everywhere, at every level of rank, title, and occupation, yearns for?

  Where is he who, in the native tongue of our Russian soul, could speak to us this all-powerful word: forward? who, knowing all the forces and qualities, and all the depths of our nature, could, by one magic gesture, point the Russian man towards a lofty life? With what words, with what love the grateful Russian man would repay him! But century follows century, half a million loafers, sluggards, and sloths lie in deep slumber, and rarely is a man born in Russia who is capable of uttering it, this all-powerful word.

  One circumstance, however, nearly roused Tentetnikov and nearly caused a turnabout in his character. Something resembling love occurred, but here, too, the matter somehow came to nothing. In the neighborhood, six miles from his estate, lived a general, who, as we have already seen, spoke not altogether favorably of Tentetnikov. The general lived like a general, was hospitable, liked his neighbors to come and pay their respects; he himself, naturally, paid no visits, spoke hoarsely, read books, and had a daughter, a strange, incomparable being, who could be regarded more as some fantastic vision than as a woman. It happens that a man sometimes sees such a thing in a dream, and afterwards he dwells on this dream all his life, reality is lost to him forever, and he is decidedly good for nothing anymore. Her name was Ulinka. Her upbringing had been somehow strange. She was brought up by an English governess who did not know a word of Russian. She had lost her mother while still a child. The father had no time. Anyway, loving his daughter to distraction, he would only have spoiled her. It is extraordinarily difficult to paint her portrait. This was something as alive as life itself. She was lovelier than any beauty; better than intelligent; trimmer and more ethereal than a classical woman. It was simply impossible to tell what country had set its stamp on her, because it was difficult to find such a profile and facial form anywhere, except perhaps on antique cameos. As a child brought up in freedom,
everything in her was willful. Had anyone seen the sudden wrath all at once gather wrinkles on her beautiful brow, as she ardently disputed with her father, he would have thought she was a most capricious being. Yet she was wrathful only when she heard of some injustice or cruel act done to anyone. But how this wrath would suddenly vanish, if she saw misfortune overtake the one against whom she was wrathful, how she would suddenly throw him her purse, without reflecting on whether it was smart or stupid, or tear up her own dress for bandages if he were wounded! There was something impetuous in her. When she spoke, everything in her seemed to rush after her thought: the expression of her face, the expression of her speech, the movements of her hands, the very folds of her dress seemed to rush in the same direction, and it seemed as if she herself were about to fly off after her own words. Nothing in her was hidden. She would not have been afraid of displaying her thoughts before anyone, and no power could have forced her to be silent if she wished to speak. Her charming, peculiar gait, which belonged to her alone, was so dauntlessly free that everything inadvertently gave way to her. In her presence a bad man became somehow embarrassed and speechless, and a good one, even of the shyest sort, could get to talking with her as never with anyone in his life before, and—strange illusion!—from the first moments of the conversation it would seem to him that he had known her sometime and somewhere, that it had been in the days of some immemorial infancy, in his own home, on a gay evening, with joyful games amid a crowd of children, and after that for a long time he would remain somehow bored with sensible adulthood.

  Andrei Ivanovich Tentetnikov could by no means have said how it happened that from the very first day he felt as if he had known her forever. An inexplicable new feeling entered his soul. His dull life became momentarily radiant. The dressing gown was abandoned for a while. He did not linger so long in bed, Mikhailo did not stand for so long holding the washbasin. The windows got opened in the rooms, and the owner of the picturesque estate would spend a long time strolling along the shady, winding paths of his garden, standing for hours before the enchanting views in the distance.