Lectures on Russian literature

with a rich hiccup on the festive outskirts of the very same sentence. Gogol's trick consists in using as a link the word 'vprochem' ('for the rest,' 'otherwise,' 'd'ailleurs') which is a connection only in the grammatical sense but mimics a logical link, the word

'soldiers' alone affording a faint pretext for the juxtaposition of 'peaceful'; and as soon as this false bridge of 'vprocbem'

has accomplished its magical work these mild warriors cross over, staggering and singing themselves into that peripheral existence with which we are already familiar.

When Chichikov comes to a party at the Governor's house, the chance mention of black-coated gentlemen crowding around the powdered ladies in a brilliant light leads to a fairly innocent looking comparison with buzzing flies—and the very next instant another life breaks through:

'The black tailcoats flickered and fluttered, separately and in clusters, this way and that, just as flies flutter over dazzling white chunks of sugar on a hot July day when the old housekeeper [here we are] hacks and divides it into sparkling lumps in front of the open window: all the children [second generation now!] look on as they gather about her, watching with curiosity the movements of her rough hands while the airy squadrons of flies that the light air [one of those repetitions so innate in Gogol's style that years of work over every passage could not eradicate them] has raised, fly boldly in, complete mistresses of the premises [or literally: 'full mistresses,' 'polnya khozyaiki,' which Isabel F. Hapgood in the Crowell edition mistranslates as 'fat housewives'] and, taking advantage of the old woman's purblindness and of the sun troubling her eyes, spread all over the dainty morsels, here separately, there in dense clusters.'

It will be noticed that whereas the dull weather plus drunken trooper image comes to an end somewhere in the dusty suburban distance (where Ukhovyortov, the Ear-Twister, reigns) here, in the simile of the flies, which is a parody of the Homeric rambling comparison, a complete circle is described, and after his complicated and dangerous somersault, with no net spread under him, as other acrobatic authors have, Gogol manages to twist back to the initial 'separately and in clusters.' Several years ago during a Rugby game in England I saw the wonderful Obolensky kick the ball away on the run and then changing his mind, plunge forward and catch it back with his hands . . . something of this kind of feat is performed by Nikolay Vasyilievich. Needless to say that all these things (in fact whole paragraphs and pages) were left out by Mr. T. Fisher Unwin who to the 'considerable joy' of Mr. Stephen Graham (see preface, edition of 1915, London) consented to re-publish Dead Souls. Incidentally, Graham thought that 'Dead Souls is Russia herself' and that Gogol

'became a rich man and could winter at Rome and Baden-Baden.'

22

Vladimir Nabokov: Lectures on Russian literature

The lusty barking of dogs which met Chichikov as he drove up to Madame Korobochka's house proves equally fertile:

'Meanwhile the dogs were lustily barking in all possible tones : one of them, with his head thrown back, indulged in such conscientious ululations as if he were receiving some prodigious pay for his labors; another hammered it out cursorily like your village sexton; in between rang out, similar to the bell of a mailcoach, the persistent treble of what was probably a young whelp; and all this was capped by a basso voice belonging presumably to some old fellow endowed with a tough canine disposition, for his voice was as hoarse as that of a basso profundo in a church choir, when the concerto is in full swing with the tenors straining on tiptoe in their eagerness to produce a high note and all the rest, too, throwing their heads back and striving upwards—while he alone with his bristly chin thrust into his neckerchief, turns his knees out, sinks down almost to the ground and issues thence that note of his which makes the window-panes quake and rattle.'

Thus the bark of a dog breeds a church chorister. In yet another passage (where Pavel arrives at Sobakevich's house) a musician is born in a more complicated way remindful of the 'dull sky drunken trooper' simile.

'As he drove up to the porch he noticed two faces which almost simultaneously appeared at the window : one belonged to a woman in a ribboned cap and it was as narrow and long as a cucumber; the other was a man's face and round and broad it was, like those Moldavian pumpkins, called gorlyanki from which in our good country balalaikas are made, two-stringed light balalaikas, the adornment and delight of a nimble young rustic just out of his teens, the cock of his walk and a great one at whistling through his teeth and winking his eye at the white-bosomed and white-necked country-lasses who cluster around in order to listen to the delicate twanging of his strings.' (This young yokel was transformed by Isabel Hapgood in her translation into 'the susceptible youth of twenty who walks blinking along in his dandified way.') The complicated maneuver executed by the sentence in order to have a village musician emerge from burly Sobakevich's head consists of three stages: the comparison of that head to a special kind of pumpkin, the transformation of that pumpkin into a special kind of balalaika, and finally the placing of that balalaika in the hands of a young villager who forthwith starts softly playing as he sits on a log with crossed legs (in brand new high boots) surrounded by sunset midgets and country girls. Especially remarkable is the fact that this lyrical digression is prompted by the appearance of what may seem to the casual reader to be the most matter-of-fact and stolid character of the book.

Sometimes the comparison-generated character is in such a hurry to join in the life of the book that the metaphor ends in delightful bathos:

'A drowning man, it is said, will catch at the smallest chip of wood because at the moment he has not the presence of mind to reflect that hardly even a fly could hope to ride astride that chip, whereas he weighs almost a hundred and fifty pounds if not a good two hundred.'

Who is that unfortunate bather, steadily and uncannily growing, adding weight, fattening himself on the marrow of a metaphor? We never shall know—but he almost managed to gain a footing.

The simplest method such peripheral characters employ to assert their existence is to take advantage of the author's way of stressing this or that circumstance or condition by illustrating it with some striking detail. The picture starts living a life of its own—rather like that leering organ-grinder with whom the artist in H. G. Wells' story The Portrait struggled, by means of jabs and splashes of green paint when the portrait he was making became alive and disorderly. Observe for instance the ending of chapter 7, where the intention is to convey the impressions of night falling upon a peaceful provincial town. Chichikov after successfully clinching his ghostly deal with the landowners has been entertained by the worthies of the town and goes to bed very drunk; his coachman and his valet quietly depart on a private spree of their own, then stumble back to the inn, most courteously propping up each other, and soon go to sleep too.

'... emitting snores of incredible density of sound, echoed from the neighboring room by their master's thin nasal wheeze.

Soon after this everything quieted down and deep slumber enveloped the hostelry; one light alone remained burning and that was in the small window of a certain lieutenant who had arrived from Ryazan and who was apparently a keen 23

Vladimir Nabokov: Lectures on Russian literature

amateur of boots inasmuch as he had already acquired four pairs and was persistently trying on a fifth one. Every now and again he would go up to his bed as though he intended to take them off and lie down; but he simply could not; in truth those boots were well made; and for a long while still he kept revolving his foot and inspecting the dashing cut of an admirably finished heel.'

Thus the chapter ends —and that lieutenant is still trying on his immortal jackboot, and the leather glistens, and the candle burns straight and bright in the only lighted window of a dead town in the depth of a star-dusted night. I know of no more lyrical description of nocturnal quiet than this Rhapsody of the Boots.

The same kind of spontaneous generation occurs in chapter 9, when the author wishes to convey with special strength the bracing turmoil which the rumors surrounding the acquisition of dead souls provoked throughout the province. Country squires who for years had been lying curled up in their holes like so many dormice all of a sudden blinked and crawled out:

'There appeared a certain Sysoy Pafnutievich, and a certain Macdonald Carlovich [a singular name to say the