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Gogol followed this amazingly powerful romance by two other works, which seem to have all the marks of immortality the comedy "Revizor," and a long, unfinished novel, "Dead Souls." This latter book is the first of the great realistic novels of Russia, of which "Fathers and Children, "Crime and Punishment," and "Anna Karenina" are such splendid examples.
In 1831 he had the good fortune to meet the poet Pushkin, and a few months later in the same year he was presented to Madame Smirnova; these friends gave him the entree to the literary salons, and the young author, lonesome as he was, found the intellectual stimulation he needed. It was Pushkin who suggested to him the subjects for two of his most famous works, "Revizor" and "Dead Souls."
In "Revizor," at the last dumb scene, after all the mirth, the real trouble is about to begin; and the spectators depart, not merely with the delightful memory of an evening's entertainment, but with their imagination aflame. Furthermore, "Revizor" has that combination of the intensely local element with the universal, so characteristic of works of genius.
Half of the audience praised the play, the other half condemned it, but not on artistic grounds." "Revizor" is one of the best-constructed comedies in any language; for not only has it a unified and well-ordered plot, but it does not stop with the final fall of the curtain.
Russian drama does not compare for an instant with Russian fiction: I have never read a single well-constructed Russian play except "Revizor." Most of them are dull to a foreign reader, and leave him cold and weary. Mr.
For dramatic material they have never been at a loss, though their art has suffered, and depth of feeling has been gained at a sad waste of other qualities. That grand old humourist Gogol has had no successors. Humour in Russia is a suspected thing. Even if there were a second Gogol he would never be allowed to put on the boards a second Revizor.
The two most important are, his comedy "The Revizor," where he stigmatizes the abuses of administration, and "Dead Souls," that classic work which de Vogüé judges worthy of being given a place in universal literature, between "Don Quixote" and "Gil Blas," and which, in a series of immortal types, flagellates the moral emptiness and the mediocrity of life in high Russian society at that time.
Toward the end of his life he wrote: "In "Revizor" I tried to gather in one heap all that was bad in Russia, as I then understood it; I wished to turn it all into ridicule. The real impression produced was that of fear. Through the laughter that I have never laughed more loudly, the spectator feels my bitterness and sorrow."
O my youth! O my fine simplicity!" Gogol spent the last fifteen years of his life writing this book, and he left it unfinished. Pushkin gave him the subject, as he had for "Revizor."
Despite Gogol's undoubted claim to be regarded as the founder of Russian fiction, it is worth remembering that of the three works on which rests his international fame, two cannot possibly be called germinal. The drama "Revizor" is the best comedy in the Russian language; but, partly for that very reason, it produced no school.
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