The history of the creation of "Dead Souls" by N. V. Gogol

We can say that the poem "Dead Souls" was the work of N. Gogol. After all, out of twenty-three years of his writing biography seventeen years, he gave work on this work.

The history of the creation of "Dead Souls" is inseparably linked with the name of Pushkin. In the "Authors' Confession," Gogol recalled that Alexander Sergeevich had repeatedly pushed him to write a large, large-scale work. The decisive was the story of the poet about the case he heard in Chisinau during the exile. He always remembered him, but told Nikolai Vasilyevich only a decade and a half after what had happened. So, the history of the creation of the "Dead Souls" is based on the real adventures of the adventurer, who bought long-dead serfs from the landlords in order to lay them, as if alive, in the Board of Trustees for a considerable loan.

In fact, in real life, the fiction of the main character of the poem Chichikov was not so rare. In those years, fraud of this kind was even common. It is possible that in the Myrhorod Uyezd there was a case with the purchase of the deceased. One thing is clear: the history of the creation of Dead Souls is not connected with one such event, but with several that the writer skillfully summarized.

Chichikov's adventure is the plot core of the work. The slightest details of it look authentic, since they are taken from real life. The possibility of such adventures was conditioned by the fact that, prior to the beginning of the 18th century, peasants were considered not in the country, but in the courtyards. And only in 1718 issued a decree to conduct a poll tax census, as a result of which all male serfs began to be taxed, beginning with infants. Their number was recalculated every fifteen years. If some peasants died, ran away, or were given into recruits, the landowner had to pay taxes for them until the next census or share them among the remaining workers. Naturally, any owner dreamed of getting rid of the so-called dead souls and easily came across the adventurer's net.

These were the real prerequisites for writing a work.

The history of the creation of the poem "Dead Souls" on paper begins in 1835. Gogol began work on it a little earlier than on the "Auditor". However, at first she was not too attracted to him, because, having written three chapters, he returned to the comedy. And only after finishing it and returning from abroad, Nikolai Vasilyevich took up the "Dead Souls" seriously.

With each step, with each written word, a new work seemed to him all grandiose and larger. Gogol re-makes the first chapters and generally rewrites the finished pages many times. Three years in Rome, he leads the life of a recluse, allowing himself only to undergo a course of treatment in Germany and a little rest in Paris or in Geneva. In 1839, Gogol is forced to leave Italy for a long eight months, and with it work on the poem. Upon his return to Rome, he continued to work on it and completed it within a year. The writer had only to polish the composition. Gogol "Dead Souls" was taken to Russia in 1841 with the intention to print them there.

In Moscow, the result of his six-year labor was taken up by the censorship committee, whose members showed hostility towards him. Then Gogol took his manuscript and turned to Belinsky, who was just staying in Moscow, asking to take the work with him to Petersburg and help him through censorship. The critic agreed to help.

Censorship in St. Petersburg was less strict and after lengthy delays nevertheless allowed the book to be printed. The truth is with some conditions: amend the title of the poem, the "Story of Captain Kopeikin" and another thirty-six questionable places.

The long-suffering work finally came out of print in the spring of 1842. Such is the brief history of the creation of Dead Souls.