Dead Souls-Dead End?

Oh troika, winged troika, tell me who invented you?

Oh troika, winged troika, tell me who invented you? —Dead Souls.¹

Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol (1809 – 1852), Ukrainian-born Russian writer, burned the second part of his 1842 masterwork, Dead Souls.² This lost manuscript has haunted the literary world until the present time.

Dead Souls has spawned a vast extra-textual mythology on the subject of its continuation....However the novel was first conceived, Gogol' came to see it as the first part of a Dantesque trilogy. From 1842, when Dead Souls was published, until the author's death ten years later, the ever imminent Part 2 was promoted with an untutored skill that would be sheer joy to any advertising manager: dark intimations, public and rancorous debates, burnings of manuscripts ('accidentally'). All Russia was in trepidation for the appearance of the masterpiece. Part 2 of Dead Souls was to be his new and oracular word. ³

The "Troika" is one of the most important characters, which represents Russia and her path in history.⁴ It is not a dead end, but as Gogol writes,"Which of us does not at times yearn to give his horses their head, and to let them go, and to cry, “To the devil with the world!” At such moments a great force seems to uplift one as on wings; and one flies, and everything else flies… Yes, out of a dim, remote distance the road comes towards one, and while nothing save the sky and the light clouds through which the moon is cleaving her way seem halted, the brief glimpses wherein one can discern nothing clearly have in them a pervading touch of mystery.”⁵ 

Gogol’s troika in Dead Souls was showcased in the pageantry of the 2014 Sochi Olympics. It was the nineteenth-century writer Nikolai Gogol who made this image into Russia’s most revered national symbol.⁶

1. There are many translations of Dead Souls. Suggested is Donald Rayfield’s translation, 2012.

2. Mann, Yury. 2009. “‘Why Was the Second Volume of Dead Souls Burnt?’” Social Sciences 40 (4): 37–46; Perlina, Nina. 1993. “The Unfinished Episodes of Gogol’s Plan for Dead Souls and Their Fate in Russian Literature of the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century.” In Literary Tradition and Practice in Russian Culture, edited by Valentina Polukhina, Joe Andrew, and Robert Reid, 278–89. Studies in Slavic Literature and Poetics: 20. Amsterdam: Brill/Rodopi; Editions Rodopi B.V.; Brill Academic Publishers.

3. Franklin, Simon. 1984. “Novels without End: Notes on ‘Eugene Onegin’ and ‘Dead Souls.’” Modern Language Review 79 (2): 372–83.

4. Maroshi, V.V. Troika as a symbol of Russia’s historical path in Russian literature of the twentieth century. Sections of the Journal «Филология и Культура. Philology and Culture» No.40; Deutsch, Judith. 1987. “Perspective from the Threshold: The Troika of Dead Souls.” Ulbandus: The Slavic Review of Columbia University 5: 3–17.

5. Gogol, Dead Souls, end, Part I.

6. Bojanowska, Edyta (2014). All the King’s Horses: Ukraine, Russia, and Gogol’s Troika. NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia (Apr. 22).