Окно в мир евангельских истин: стихия русской народной речи в поэме Н. В. Гоголя «Мертвые души»

Abstract

The article studies the function of Russian folk speech and its underlying evangelical message in Nikolai Gogol's poetics. Folk proverbs and parables is the key source of national identity in Gogol's aesthetics, which should inspire all Russian poets. The paper asserts that the «proverbial» method of generalization is one of the most significant principles of typification in Gogol's novel Dead Souls. The article also reveals the hidden message of the Russian proverb «All Russians are good at thinking in hindsight» («Russky chelovek zadnim umom krepok»). This characteristic of the Russian mind is the one with which Gogol connects the great destiny of Russia. At the end of the first volume, the author resorts to the allegorical form of parable that plays the key role in the perception of the novel. Being developed into the generalized symbols, its personages accumulate the most significant generic features and qualities of Dead Souls' characters. The grotesque images of Kifa Mokiyevich and Moky Kifovich help to look at the characters of the novel from all possible angles, not only the one that shows them as petty and mean persons. Gogol's characters do not possess inherently disgusting and ugly qualities, which should be eliminated for the sake of people's improvement. Sobakevich's powerful physique and pragmatism, Plushkin's thrift, Manilov's meditativeness and cordiality, as well as Nozdryov's valor are not bad qualities at all and do not deserve condemnation. However, all of them, as Gogol liked to say, go to extremes and take the perverse and exaggerated forms.