The film without the cuts. And the book itself.
A carriage rolls into town carrying a man who is neither handsome nor plain, neither young nor old, neither rich nor poor — and everyone in N. is about to find him utterly charming.
Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov
A smooth traveler steps from a light carriage with papers, servants, and a plan to buy the dead.
Provincial Town of N.
A pleasant, ordinary town welcomes a stranger warmly, then rumor about him outruns the law.
An utterly ordinary arrival hints that this unremarkable stranger may unsettle everything.
Read →Arrival at the Inn
To the door of an inn in the provincial town of N. there drew up a smart britchka--a light spring-carriage of the sort affected by bachelors, retired lieutenant-colonels, staff-captains, land-owners possessed of about a hundred souls, and, in short, all persons who rank as gentlemen of the intermediate category. In the britchka was seated such a gentleman--a man who, though not handsome, was not ill-favoured, not over-fat, and not over-thin. Also, though not over-elderly, he was not over-young. His arrival produced no stir in the town, and was accompanied by no particular incident, beyond that a couple of peasants who happened to be standing at the door of a dramshop exchanged a few comments with reference to the equipage rather than to the individual who was seated in it. “Look at that carriage,” one of them said to the other. “Think you it will be going as far as Moscow?” “I think it will,” replied his companion. “But not as far as Kazan, eh?” “No, not as far as Kazan.” With that the conversation ended.
Chichikov, the man the whole novel will follow, arrives defined by everything he is not: not handsome yet not ugly, not fat, not thin, not old, not young. He refuses to come into focus, which is exactly the point about a swindler who wants to pass unremembered. The two peasants confirm it beautifully by ignoring him completely and debating instead how far his carriage might roll. To them the vehicle is worth a guess; the passenger is not worth a look.
A Stranger of No Particular Qualities
A carriage rolls into town carrying a man who is neither handsome nor plain, neither young nor old, neither rich nor poor — and everyone in N. is about to find him utterly charming.
Dead-souls list
Dead men's names on paper carry more legal weight than the lives they lost.
Narrator / Narrative Voice
A laughing voice keeps widening the joke until Russia itself begins to look back.
Dead Souls
The cast, locations, objects of note, core concepts, and selected passages in the Author’s Pen - at your own pace.
The Dead Souls World, as it plays on your phone
- Meet the people. 30 characters, each with a portrait, who they are and what they want.
- Walk the places. 12 places, each pictured, and what happens there.
- Follow the plot. The turns of the story, in order, so you always know where you are.
- Taste the original. 46 key passages in Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol’s own words, each with a short reading of what it is doing.
- The complete book. Every word, in a reader made for your phone. From any passage, one tap opens the book at that very page.
Step inside Dead Souls
Free, in your inbox in about a minute: the World and the complete book, on your phone.