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The Explicator
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Poema: A Look at Transformation in

Nikolai Gogol's DEAD SOULS
a
Brenda F. Buchanan
a
Warner Pacific College
Published online: 11 Dec 2013.

To cite this article: Brenda F. Buchanan (2013) Poema: A Look at Transformation in Nikolai Gogol's
DEAD SOULS, The Explicator, 71:4, 233-235, DOI: 10.1080/00144940.2013.841631

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2013.841631

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 The Explicator, Vol. 71, No. 4, 233–235, 2013
Copyright 
C Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0014-4940 print / 1939-926X online
DOI: 10.1080/00144940.2013.841631

BRENDA F. BUCHANAN
Warner Pacific College

Poema: A Look at Transformation in Nikolai Gogol’s

DEAD SOULS
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Keywords: Nikolai Gogol, nineteenth century, Russian literature

Since the publication of Nikolai Gogol’s masterpiece, Dead Souls, there

has been a broad scope of criticism concerning the author and the “Gogolian
universe.” Victor Erlich writes, “Gogol scholarship is a gaudy mixture of
obtuseness and irrelevance with brilliance and critical acumen” (vii). There
is a wealth of criticism that examines the cultural implications in Dead Souls
and the self-consciousness of Gogol as a writer. However, very few critics
closely explore the nature of the chosen genre of Dead Souls. Donald Fanger
stands out in his analysis of Dead Souls as having a higher aesthetic aim.
Quoting Gogol, Fanger states that his aim is to “illumine a picture taken from
[the level of] a contemptible life and elevate it to a pearl of creation” (165).
Fanger goes on to say, “The word poema in all its suggestive vagueness
is a promissory note signifying an intention of originality on the highest
artistic level” (167). Gogol goes out of his way to emphasize that Dead
Souls is a poema and not prose, even declaring it so on the cover above the
title. In the same way that a poem transforms the ordinary into something
beautiful by shedding new light, the very nature of this work is to show the
transformation of the ordinary into something new. Gogol’s emphasis on
the genre, the poema, warrants further investigation to better understand the
message of Dead Souls.
Victor Erlich comments, “Gogol was often the center of what he himself
called a whirlwind of misunderstandings” (1). Dead Souls is such a full and,
despite its missing second half, complete work it is no wonder there is such
a diversity of interpretation. Vsevolod Setchkarev states that critics who
do not speak the Russian tongue are incapable of fully grasping Gogol’s
art. He writes that “these translations communicate only a very faint idea
233
 234 The Explicator

of what Gogol is really like as an artist” (vi). With respect to Setchkarev

and the Russian language that Gogol exalts, there is yet much of Gogol
that can be discovered in the translated text. Dead Souls is a work about
transformations. It is a collection of transformations that begs the audience
to recognize ordinary events, objects, and people in a new light.
The nature and indeed the very value of poetry is in its ability to take an
ordinary, often overlooked object and through rhythm and beauty reveal it
to the audience in a new way. Poetry illuminates the ordinary to showcase
its beauty and value. In “Art as Technique,” Victor Shklovsky expounds
on the definition of poetry as imagistic thought. Shklovsky proposes that
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poetry does not introduce images but rather takes hold of age-old familiar
images and infuses them with meaning apropos to the current times (3).
Dead Souls is written in this way. It is poetry that reaches the audience with
familiar, digestible themes and then transforms the ordinary into something
transcendent. Transformation is the essence of poetry. By requiring the
audience to recognize his prose as poetry he is pushing readers to open their
eyes to other subsequent transformations.
For almost two pages in chapter 6, Gogol describes the glory of youthful
curiosity. He writes of his youth:

I used to rejoice when I approached an unknown place for the

first time: no matter whether it was a little village, a wretched
provincial town, a settlement, a hamlet—much that was curious
in it revealed itself to a child’s curious eyes . . . nothing escaped
my fresh, keen attention . . . I gazed at never-before-seen cut of
some frock coat, and at the wooden boxes of nails, of sulfur
yellowing from afar, of raisins and soap . . . and mentally I would
be carried off with them into their poor lives. (110)

This vision is juxtaposed against his current “adult” state of mind: “Now it is
with indifference that I approach any unknown estate, and with indifference
that I gaze at its trite appearance” (111). Gogol is very intentionally centering
his audience with these opposing views. Through this description of his loss
of attentiveness he is calling his reader to begin paying closer attention to
the ordinary.
A few pages later, Gogol describes a nature scene and notices, “finally,
a young maple bough, stretching from the side its green pawlike leaves,
one of them suddenly transformed by the sun, which got under it God
knows how, into something transparent and fiery, shining wondrously in
that dense darkness” (113). Gogol steps away from the plot of the text to
 Poema: A Look at Transformation in Nikolai Gogol’s DEAD SOULS 235

describe a moment of transformation of a single ordinary object. These

moments of brilliant discourse call the reader’s attention to these objects
of transformation. However, Gogol’s higher goal is to remind the reader
that it takes only a single unsuspecting moment for an ordinary object to
be transformed if one is paying enough attention to notice. It is to the less
arresting portions of the text that Gogol is urging us to look closely.
As Gogol brings part I of Dead Souls to a close, he comments, “Ev-
erything transforms quickly in man. . . . Numberless as the sands of the sea
are human passions, and no one resembles another, and all of them, base or
beautiful, are at first obedient to man and only later become his dread rulers”
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(248). This is the heart of Dead Souls. Gogol is showing how passion can
transform for better or for worse. Gogol’s passion drove him to struggle over
this masterful work. His protagonist, Chichikov, is transformed throughout
the text by love and greed. Other characters in the text are shown transformed,
and even nature itself is transformed as Gogol casts new light on each subject.
The very motif of light is used repeatedly to show the illumination
of objects and people. A branch becomes “wild and menacing” when it
is lit up by “lights and lampions” (Gogol, 120). Chichikov is described
as having a “warm ray pass suddenly over his face” when he reads the
names and recognizes the lives of his dead souls (126). At a party, guests’
faces seem contorted as “shadow and light were thoroughly mingling” over
them (131). Light is used to reveal an unseen side of things. In his passage
on the glories of the road, Gogol writes that the one straight road “is lit by
the sun and illumined all night by lamps, yet people have flowed past it in
the blind darkness” (214). Here, Gogol bluntly notes that no matter how
brilliantly something may be transformed before one’s eyes, it can still go
unnoticed.
Dead Souls is about a poet and about poetry. It is an urge to see the
transformations in front of us. Gogol writes, “Evidently it can happen in
this world: evidently the Chichikovs, too, for a few moments of their lives,
can turn into poets” (171). To be a poet is to be wide-eyed and driven by a
passion to reveal what has been seen in the light for those whose eyes have
not been opened. Transformation is the mantra of Dead Souls.
Works Cited
Erlich, Victor. Gogol. London: Yale University Press, 1969. Print.
Fanger, Donald. The Creation of Nikolai Gogol. Cambridge, MA: Presidents and Fellows of Harvard
College, 1979. Print.
Setchkarev, Vsevolod. Gogol: His Life and Works. New York: New York UP, 1965. Print.
Shklovsky, Viktor. “Art as Technique.” Russian Formalist Criticsim: Four Essays. Ed. Lee T. Lemon
and Marion J. Reiss. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1965. 3–24. Print.