Gogol initially conceived the book as three volumes to echo Dante’s Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Incidentally, the author himself described the work as a poem, apparently for its numerous lyrical digressions and reflections on the fate of Russia: “And you, Russia of mine – are not you also speeding like a troika which nought can overtake?” Chichikov’s get-rich-quick scheme is to purchase as many as possible to acquire social status.
The middle-class official Chichikov arrives in a nameless provincial town and visits the local landowners asking them to sell their “dead souls.” The “souls” in question are serfs that have died (and hence of no use to the landowners), but are still listed in the most recent census as alive. Like many of Gogol’s plots, the storyline is quite intricate. Most of this book was written in Italy, giving rise to the belief ever since that a Russian writer needs to view the country from the outside in order to peel away all the layers on the inside (and write a good book in the process). Great actor Alexander Kalyagin starring Chichikov
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