“The Government Inspector” by Nikolaj Gogol

“That’s the way God made the world,

and the Voltairean free-thinkers can talk against it all they like,

 it won’t do any good.”

Most people are familiar with the literary anecdote of how Nikolaj Gogol, the famous 18th century Russian – Ukrainian writer, burned his last book, the second part of “Dead Souls”, in a moment of enlightened insanity, a few days before his death. Few people however know that, following a negative appraisal, Gogol also burned his first book.

A book Nikolaj Gogol didn’t burn was the play “The Government Inspector”.
An omission he deeply came to regret.

Not that there is something wrong with the play, on the contrary. With one blow, Gogol shattered the notions of what a comedy should be and set the standard for future generations. Kropotkin voiced the general opinion: “[ The Government Inspector is] a starting point for the Russian drama--a model which every dramatic writer after Gogol has always kept before his eyes”.The producer Meyerhold confirmed that although the play was “constructed according to various established dramatic premises, there could be no doubt  that far from being the culmination of a tradition, it was the start of a new one”.

Notwithstanding its epochal importance and huge commercial success, this satirical play, a genial comedy of errors portraying human greed, stupidity and corruption was a disaster for Gogol. Not only did it divide and antagonize Gogol’s earlier admirers but it also brutally shoved the fragile and emotional author into the spotlight of a vicious political controversy which would tip him over on a mental slope and which would culminate in the writer’s final mental breakdown.

The success of the play however has never withered.

***

The corrupt “Gorodnichiy” or Governor of a small provincial Russian town is warned by a friend that a “Revizor”, a Government inspector will soon arrive from St Petersburg, to inquire into the conditions of the local administration. Worse, the inspector will arrive incognito in order to catch the corrupt functionaries “in flagrante delicto”.

The Governor immediately convokes the chief functionaries of the town: The head of the hospital, the chief Magistrate and the chief of the Post office. He warns them to put immediately order in their respective offices. The sick in the hospital for example live in linen “so dirty that you might take them for chimney sweeps”. The chief magistrate, a hunter, keeps his hunting gear in the Court, and accepts hunting dogs as bribes.

The Governor himself, at the top of the pyramid is the most rapacious corrupt of the bunch. He has levied unlawful taxes, pocketed Government money, accepted ludicrous bribes and even flogged the wife of a non-commissioned officer!

While everybody is hastily covering up their misdeeds, a suspicious person is spotted at the local inn. His name we learn is Khlestakov, a young civil servant, an upper-class twit en route to his father’s estate. Khlestakov is in big trouble, as he is penniless and the inn-keeper refuses to further serve him food and threatens to involve the Police. By a turn of circumstances and Khlestakov’s funnily arrogant behavior, the Governor, terrified of the upcoming control, suspects the stranger to be the “incognito” Revizor. The reader, or better the audience, immediately understands that Khlestakov is not the Inspector.

A most comic scene, where the young man thinks that the Governor comes to arrest him, and the Governor thinking that he is speaking to the Inspector-General trying to conceal his identity, unleashes a wild polka of misunderstandings, comical situations, farces, misdeeds and a diabolical string of developments who will culminate in a hilarious “coup de theater”.

Gogol promised a “comedy funnier than hell” and there is indeed something brilliantly diabolic in it. From the comical situation, to the characters like the idiotic Dobtchinski and Bobtchinski, the word-play, the farcical slapstick situations, all elements contribute to this masterpiece.The funniest aspect of all is that there is not one honest character in the whole play! Not only is there the wild Khlestakov character, with his opportunism and arrogance that every time proofs to work, but everybody on stage is involved in one way or another in lying, cheating and bribing. Still they remain sympathetic for they chase wild, unrealistic dreams and we know they will not get away with it.
There is the hilarious Mother – daughter relation, who are both competing for the attention and love of diabolical Khlestakov. The Mother constantly contradicts her moral clichés in order to send away her daughter – rival and have the young man for herself.

On a deeper level, there is of course the biting satire of Tsarist civil servants. The judge cannot make himself understood; the hospital director is the cause of illness of his patients by blatantly transgressing the lowest hygienic standards.

From beginning till the end, the play succeeds in its wild ballet to captivate and mesmerize the public. It was a comical success then as it still is today.

***

Like with “Dead Souls”, the subject was proposed by the great Pouchkine. Gogol, in a letter dated, October 7, 1835, begged for an “authentic Russian” subject, preferably a comical anecdote, which Gogol promised to turn into a comedy. Comical subjects were no problem for Pouchkine, for he replied soon enough with an anecdote of what happened to journalist Paul Svinine while traveling the Bessarabia province. Svinine had arrived at a fair – was taken for someone else – welcomed by the Governor, “an honest fool”, – the governor's wife flirting with him – Svinine wooing the daughter.

Gogol immediately went to work and finished all five acts of the play already before Christmas1835. While an influential friend, the intoxicating Mme Smirnov, convinced Czar Nicholas to endorse Gogol’s play, the writer prepared “The Revizor” for the stage.

It went “en première”, before the Czar and his family, the court dignitaries and members of the high society on the evening of 19 April 1936 in the Alexander Theater in St Petersburg.

It was a great evening. Spectators were delighted. They laughed, they applauded. Even Czar Nicholas, enjoyed himself and remarked amused that “There was something in it for everybody, even for him”

The content and meaning of the play still had to sink in, but by the next day, Gogol reading the opinions of the critics, understood that what he had meant as a comedy of errors, had turned at least for him into an error of a comedy.

The play and its presentation in the presence of the Czar was of course “Gefundeness fressen” for the reactionary press. Their general outcry ignited a storm of hostile criticism on the part of all reactionary Russia. The play’s huge success turned into a « succès de scandale » for the only thing which was noted was the « denunciation of the moral turpitude of the Czarist administration ». The conservative camp howled as they found the play undermining the very bases of society and they started to take down the merits of the play. Its topic was, they said, not original. It was improbable, even impossible, it was coarse, simply vulgar and lacked plot. It was based on a stale anecdote that everybody knew. It was a rank farce and the characters were mere caricatures. “What sort of a town was it – they shouted - that did not hold a single honest soul?”

Gogol, himself a strong defender of the Government administration which he saw as « Providence represented on earth » was turned, against his will, into the mouthpiece of the liberal and the champion of the revolutionary intelligentsia. But Gogol was not a radical, nor even a liberal. He was strictly conservative. While hating the bureaucracy, yet he never found fault with the system itself or with the autocracy. His satire and ridicule were aimed not at causes, but at effects.
Introducing a subject-matter that attacked the officialdom of the Russian bureaucracy, Gogol must have been quite naïve, if he did not expect at least part of the reaction. But his sensitive nature made him unable to cope with the situation and by the time the great Chtchepkine incarnated the Governor, in the successful June opening of the play in the little theater in Moscow, Gogol had already fled Russia.

Still, during his self-inflicted exile, the play occupied Gogol’s mind. In a letter to his friend Pogodine, he rejected his work as “a stupidity” and wished a “mite” would devour all the existing copies of the “Revizor”. Gogol even started to rewrite the play, changing whole scenes. At the same time he wrote several drafts of the second part of “Dead Souls” but each time disgusted threw them to the flames. The once ambitious young man had turned into a hypochondriac riddled with self doubt.

Ten years after that first staging before the Tsar, Gogol was still desperately trying to settle the matter. He went so far as to rewrite the end of the play as an allegory, explaining that the lost town in the Russian Tundra where “The Revizor” took place was a metaphor for our lost soul; he tried to convince the spectators that every character represented a specific passion and that Khlestakov was the devil who disturbed it all. But the author proved to be a poor critic of his own work. His creation overshadowed the creator and Actors, who had a feast starring in “The Revizor” and the public, simply refused this new version.

The Actor Chtchepkine took the time to write Gogol a letter after which the author agreed to lessen the mystical interpretation of his play. And in the end it was the annoyed Bielinski who in his famous letter voiced the general opinion: “Gogol should have remained a Genius – Artist instead of the “Thinker” he was not prepared to be…”

***

It is a pity I could only “read” the play instead of attending a live performance of the “Revizor”. Only a stage representation where talented actors would express the hearty humor and develop the comical scenes in an interaction with an appreciative public, could do justice to what most Russians find “the best comedy in existence”.

It is true that in Russia “The Revizor” has grown into a national institution. Even today, it expresses “all collective wrongs and sorrows”, “all collective hopes and strivings”. It still shows the rottenness and corruption that can thrive in an uncontrolled administration and in the instruments through which a government functions. But not only in Russia, in any government! One opinion in the play has a fatalistic resonance:

“That’s the way God made the world, and the Voltairean free-thinkers can talk against it all they like, it won’t do any good.”

Even 175 years later and far away from Saint Petersburg, “The Revizor” has kept its universal appeal. It can be played today, quasi unchanged in every situation where an inspector visits a corrupt hierarchy and disturbs a picking order: Applicable in a business -, school- or any other environment, The Revizor’s satire will always work.

And that is a good thing, for not willing to shed blood or burn buildings, our laugh might be the only protest we have left.

Jean-Louis Benoit, « Le Revizor », in Nikolaï Gogol, Le Revizor, Le programme

Petr Alekseevic Kropotkin, Russian Literature.. London: Duckworth & Co., 1905.

Thomas Seltzer, “The Inspector General”

Reviews from Absurdistan part II : Dead Souls by N. Gogol

- Good morning Mr. Gogol. Thank you for allowing some time for this interview on your book “Dead Souls”. I brought you a small present from Belgium: Chocolate Bonbons.

- Oh, delicious, great ! I was once in Belgium, did you know that? I spend some time in Ostend. Beautiful place. But let me thank you, young man, for still showing interest in this old book.

- Funny that you call me “young man”

- Well I am after all 201 years old and you are only what… forty – five?

- ( Grinning ) Let’s get to the book. It is considered your most important work, do you agree?

- What I think doesn’t really matter; it is what the readers think that is important. Fact is that “Dead Souls” is considered one of the most prominent works of 19th-century Russian literature and has become a Universal classic, time and again listed in “best books” lists or “best read” lists. It stands today proudly on the shelf of the Western literary Canon, rubbing shoulders with books like Don Quixote, Moby Dick and other Remembrances of things past ….transcending all geographical borders, literary fashions and … time.

- Can you tell us shortly what it is about?

- Oh, it is a quiet simple story: In the early 1830’s, a man named Chichikov arrives in an unnamed provincial Russian town. He introduces himself to the upper-class milieu and tours the neighboring estates in the countryside. In his meetings with the squires, he proposes to buy up their so called “dead souls”, deceased man-servants who are still administratively considered alive and on which the owners still have to pay taxes. Most of the people are of course suspicious of this morbid deal. In the final chapters, irrational rumors on Chichikov’s untruthful reputation flare up in the midst of the gossip-hungry townspeople. The disgraced traveler is ostracized from the company he had been enjoying and has no choice but to flee the town in disgrace.

- What were your intentions when you wrote this book?

- Initially, I wanted to write another funny book. That is what I do: write funny sometimes absurd, stories. Remember my Folkloric Ukrainian tales like that Christmas story in Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, remember the ghost story Viy, the Nose? All funny entertaining stories which were after all the one’s that made me famous, that established my reputation. Did you read “Dead Souls”?

- Yes I did.

- Was it funny?

- It was very funny. I laughed aloud several times, surprising people around me. It was very witty and freshly entertaining.

- Well what did you like exactly?

- The characters and the conversations and your superb ironic descriptive power.

- You see, isn’t it fantastic that my stories can still make you laugh over a gap of 150 years? Let me tell you something. Try to get a copy of “Dead Souls” illustrated by Marc Chagall. Nobody captures the marvelous, unexpected mood of my book better than he does.

- I did read a Chagall illustrated copy and you are right, they are great, especially with that fabulous cast of characters you bring forth. Can you tell us more about them ?

- All of them are typical "humors". They are made funny by exaggeration. There is for instance Sobakevich, the strong, silent, economical man who looks like a bear and lives like one; There is Manilov, the silly sentimentalist; Mme Korobochka, the mother of all stupidity; There is nasty Nozdryov, the cheat and bully, Plyushkin, the miser and so on.

- Sobakevich the “bear man” is absolutely hilarious.

- Yes, it was a laugh creating him.

- Was the idea originally yours? I read somewhere that the story was Pouchkine’s idea?

- No, well yes, it is true that Pouchkine told us ( I was not alone ) the anecdote of a scam he heard … someone buying up dead souls, which would serve as a collateral for a loan or a purchase or something… I picked up the idea and developed it. I was young and like everyone, very much in awe for the great Pouchkine. Once he was teasing me about not finishing the book and I promised him to do it. It was only when he was killed in that cursed duel in 1837 that I realized that I hadn’t fulfilled my promise. Oh, it was such a drama when I heard the news of his death. I was devastated. Much more than when my own father died. I thought I could not write anymore after that. And then I realized that I owed it to Pouchkine to finish “Dead Souls” as I promised him  and I rushed back to the manuscript. So I started in ’35 but finished it only in ’41. But don’t forget that in the mean time I wrote the Revizor.

- Was it a success on publication?

- There was as much a paranoid edge to Mother Russia in my days as today, so the censors had to have their go at it. I had to negotiate 5 months with the administrators of the commission to get “Dead Souls” printed. The stupid comments of the employees of the commission of Moscow might as well be an additional chapter of the book, but I had to accept some minor changes. I had to add for example the subtitle “the adventures of Chichikov” to make sure that the reader would understand that it was a piece of fiction. And so on. I left the country just before publication because I knew that the Government could still try to intervene after the public reaction of the critics. If it turned out that people saw it as an attack against our Government, country or Czar, I could even be in danger. The publication was a scandal. Everybody read it as a social critic, especially a critic of serfdom. Don’t forget that there were still legal slaves in America too in these days! Everybody found something in my book to underscore their political issues: corruption of the administration, misery of the lowest social classes, lazy Aristocracy etc,etc.

- And what happened?

- Well the positive critics matched the bad one’s so in the end I could return to Russia. But in any case the publication of ‘Dead Souls” established me as the most successful writer of my time.

- It is during this trip trough Europe that things were starting to change?

- ( After taking a deep breath )Yes they did. I got depressed by my loneliness, the reception of my book and my poor health situation ( some called me a hypochondriac ), I came up with a bad plan. With the success and the expectations of my readers of “Dead Souls” I wanted to build further on that subject. I got the idea to turn DS in an even greater masterpiece. I wanted to turn it into some triptique, a Dantic “Divina Commedia”. Dead Souls would have been the Inferno, the hell, all that was wrong in Russia, then there would be the “Purgatario” in a second part, a moral education, an evolution to a higher mental state to arrive at a Paradise. That already was bad enough, but I got the idea that I needed to lead by example and to start living a more moral live, to try to attain moral perfection. I never intended "Dead Souls" as a trilogy, people made me do it. I wanted to add a moral dimension but for my sins I lost my spontaneity, my joy, my talent.

- So, there should never have been a second and third part?

- No and some critics have understood that better than me. Susanne Fusso for example argues in her book Designing Dead Souls that Dead Souls is complete in Part One, that there was never meant to be a Part Two or Part Three, and that it is entirely consistent with my method to create the expectation of sequels, and even to break off my narrative in mid-story, or mid-sentence, and that I was only persuaded to embark on the composition of the second part by the expectation of the Russian reading public"

- What went wrong then?

- What went wrong? The thing is I wanted to become a great writer, in the way the public expected, in a how to say it … in a more serious way, a more moral way…I had a mission to write a serious book. I always wanted to write like a…masterpiece…something big… I used the word “Leviathan” at a certain moment…not a work for an ordinary man. What I did not realize was that I already wrote “the great book”… There it was: “Dead Souls” … right in front of me, but I wanted to explain it, to elaborate on it… It was completely stupid… I was erring. I was like these stupid boys who first tell a joke and then try to explain it to you, spoiling all the fun and the mood. A scandelous underestimation of my readers, I understand now.

- (…)

- ( trembling ) And then I met the wrong people. People, who strengthened me in my wrong way of thinking, people like that cursed Church elder, Matvey Konstantinovsky, who should have protected me against myself but used me instead as an instrument in his religious fanaticism.

(During a long uneasy moment of silence, Gogol stares out of the window)

- Sir, should I read “Dead Souls” as a social critic, an attack on the Government, a reformist or satirical work?

- No, No, No, please read it for what is… A funny entertaining story…you were entertained you said?

- Yes, I was … very much

- Well then… forget about all this social critic, governmental critic and all that…See it as a “Comedie Humaine”. Think about the Chichikovs you meet in everyday life. They are everywhere. Wait …you expect some “serious stuff” in this interview I sense… I tell you something. What I have done and what other great writers have done is that we implant “human markers” in the head of our readers, some types of people, which you will encounter in your live, not as extreme as I have depicted them, but by describing them extremely, you will recognize them. If you recognize these people at once, you will avoid much unhappiness in you life or at least you will be able to laugh with your misfortunes.
You will or you already have met Tchitchikov – like people haven’t you ?

- ( smiling ) well…

- And, Manilovs, that happy moron; and these Korobotchka – like women, old and stupidly vicious; you knew what lying Nozdriov was up to before Tchitchikov did, didn’t you not? Look at greedy Pliouchkine, he is as bad as Scrooge. ( laughing ) Molière’s Harpagon is a joke besides Pliouchkine .

- What about that posh-lust interpretation by Nabokov?

- Did you understand what Nabokov meant by that?

- Not fully I guess, it had something to do with an “accusation of mediocrity”.

- Forget about it. It’s Nabokov’s interpretation. Read Nabokov’s memories; there are some of my characters in his family! (Laughing). Vladimir was an Intellectual Literary Russian living in America so everybody bought this Posh-lust or lost or whatever idea. The word stands for "self-satisfied inferiority", moral and spiritual, with overtones of middle-class pretentiousness, fake significance, and philistinism. But if you have read my book well, than you understand that mediocrity is just an aspect, a small part, of that larger Human comedy. Pinning me down, like a butterfly, as a criticizer of Mediocrity is insufficient.

- What happened on the night of February 24, 1852?

- I hoped, you would not ask that question, but here it is. I was a very confused man at that time. Remember, I would die only nine days later. Today, I see it like this: I burned some of my manuscripts which contained most of the second part of Dead Souls. If I did that, it means that I was not satisfied with it. I did burn manuscripts before in my career; there was nothing new to that. The day after that Auto-dafé, I explained this as a mistake to Konstantinovsky. I said that it was a practical joke played on me by the Devil. But if I defended my action, with this explanation to that specific man, means that what I have written was in his eyes good stuff. If it was good to him, then the burning of the manuscript proofs that I finally understood that I was completely on the wrong path and that it was better for me to destroy that ridiculous second part. It was my last intelligent revolt. I saved my “Dead Souls”by doing this . You understand?

- I try.

- Never mind.

- Should I visualize what happened like the scene in the Ilja Repin painting?

- Ilja Yefimovitsch Repin was not a witness to what occurred on the 24 th. I know that he represents the realist school and I agree that he is a great painter, but in this case, it was artistic freedom at its worst. It only contributed in confirming a certain viewpoint on me burning the manuscript.

- Sir, I am coming to the end of my interview and allow me to say once more that “Dead Souls” is one of the funniest books I ever read. It truly is a masterpiece.

- ( Laughing ) Thank you, young man.

- Shall we hug?

- You mean a big Russian bear hug ?

- Yes !

Reviews from Absurdistan part 1: The Collected Stories of Gogol

The Ukrainian writer and socialite Nikolas Gogol made quiet a sensation yesterday when he arrived at the Guggenheim Balboa amidst throngs of photographers and fans who had flocked together at the entrance to get a glimpse of the famous writer.
Mr. Gogol who cut a fine figure in his dark Brioni suit was escorted by stunning beauty Ruslana Korshunova who has recently joined our ranks and not by Anna Loginova who seemed lately to have fallen in disgrace. Mr. Gogol , named ‘The greatest artist that Russia has ever produced’ by his colleague Vladimir Nabokov, had chosen the superb artistic setting of the Guggenheim to present the new Folio Society edition of thirteen of his most celebrated masterpieces.
Mr.Gogol, reminded the attendance that some of the stories who had previously appeared in the volume “ Evenings at the farm near Dikanka”, lay very close to his hart, because they had, when they appeared, put him immediately at the forefront of the Russian literary establishment and that at such a young age. The Dikanka stories were based on the Ukrainian folktales young Nicolas remembered from his childhood days.
“The Night before Christmas”, the Slavic answer to Dickens Christmas Carroll for instance tells the story of the blacksmith Varushka who tries to win the hart of proud Oksana, an exceptionally beautiful village girl. Both Mr. Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, who were both present in the Audience had turned this story into superb Ballet performances. This exuberant story which has a small Ukrainian village buried under the snow as a setting, mixes Russian folktale elements like witches and devils with simple village humour and a captivating narrative. The Devil for example who burns his fingers when he tries to put the moon into his pocket to darken the sky has, without fault, brought a smile on countless generations of amused readers,
The Author of the highly acclaimed “Death souls” and “The inspector general”, himself influenced by Hoffman and Chamisso emphasized the major influence he had had on future generations of writers and on literature in general.
“The Nose” for example, which Gogol claimed to be a work of Magic Realism “avant la lettre”, with its Brechtian verfremdungseffekt and general absurdity, prefigures Kafka and many of the twentieth century South American writers.
“The overcoat”, a story about a shy and downtrodden clerk and his fatal desire for an expensive new coat was a landmark in Russian naturalism and in the development of the short story as a literary form. With its pessimism it announces Knut Hamsun, D’Haese and other Zola’s.
Mr. Gogol, did not mention his huge influence on Russian writers and especially on Mr. Bulgakov. It is clear that the dispute over the tombstone of the Danilov Monastery has troubled the relation between the two writers.

Mr. Gogol then amused the audience with his interpretation of the story "Vij". It has, he said, always been explained as a Horror story, but that he saw it now, like most of the readers from this side, as a Love story.
Mr. Gogol added that the real horror was to find in the last years of his life and less in his fiction. As Mrs. Korshunova laid a gentle hand on the writer's arm at these words the room flared up from a salvo of photographic flashes.
It is indeed so that Mr.Gogol’s last days and his death, read like an awful Gothic horror story. From his mystic starving, to his last moments with his emaciated face covered with bloodsuckers, to a possible live burial (the body lay face-down when his coffin was reopened), the desecration of his unearthed body;untill the final insult of using his tombstone to cover another death writer, poor Mister Gogol was spared nothing.

The story”Viy” was published earlier in the first volume of his collection of tales entitled Mirgorod The title refers to the name of a demonic entity central to the plot.

Three young students from the Bratsky Monastery at Kiev when travelling home get lost in the Ukrainian countryside and eventually come up at an isolated farm. An old lonely woman living there, agrees to let them stay. At night, the woman, her eyes glowing strangely, approaches the student named Khoma and tries to seduce him. She leaps on his back, and Khoma finds himself galloping with her all over the countryside. He eventually slows her by chanting exorcisms and prayers, manages to get on her back and rides on her. Finally he beats her with a piece of wood. The old woman collapses, and her suffering body changes into a beautiful girl.

Khoma escapes to Kiev. After some time a rich Cossack, living in the countryside, summons him and brings Khoma to his village by force . The Cossack’s beautiful daughter was found in the countryside, dying, Her last wish w that a student named Khoma from the Bratsky Monastery would read psalms over her corpse for three days after her death.

When he is shown the corpse, Khoma immediately recognizes the beautiful witch of his nightride. Rumors among the Cossacks are that the daughter was in league with the devil and they tell horror stories about her evil ways.
Khoma is locked up three nights with the death girl in a ruined church to exorcise her demons with incessant prayers.
As the student is a typical Gogolian character, an imposter, the reader knows that the student will not survive the exorcisme.

He manages to survive two nights with the undead corpse, fighting off his death lover and her army of winged demons, The last night as the death girl summons Viy, a horrific creature, Khoma has no chance to escape and collapses. In their excitement, the army of monsters misse the first crowing of the rooster and are unable to escape the church when daylight comes.
The priest and villagers find the monsters frozen in the windows as they fled the church and the temple is forever forsaken, eventually overgrown by weeds and trees.

Mr. Gogol explained to the excited audience that a witch does not always seeks to kill somebody, she can also fall in love with mortals. Critics, especially French, have hinted at Gogol’s love for his dominating Mother as an explanation of the deeper meaning of this story.The beautiful girl in her shape as an old witch dominates the man and rides him but when Khoma is able to inverse his role through prayers and evocations and assumes the male situation on top, the old woman turns into a beautiful girl but does not survive.


The Collected stories are as varied as the characters that inhabit them, but all share a liveliness and strangeness that is unmistakably Gogolian and are a breathtaking proof of his idiosyncratic genius.

Mr. Gogol and Mrs. Korshunova did not answer questions about their relation.

From the literary supplement of the “Hell Times” ( October issue )

"The Collected Stories" by Nikolai Gogol

What a treat ! I am reading the The Collected Stories of Gogol in a superb edition of the Folio Society, introduced by Philip Hensher and beautifully illustrated by Peter Suart.

This Folio edition gathers together, for the first time, 13 of his most celebrated stories – each one a masterpiece.