Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Impressions of Russian Literature - IV
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living, carrying them to a worthless tract of land, and then
mortgaging them to a bank.
The drama, “The Reviser,” on the other hand, is perfectly
intelligible everywhere, and is as pointed as it is
simple in its plot. More than twenty-five years were
demanded to raise the Norse drama, under Henrick
Ibsen, to this height; the German drama has not yet
attained it.
It is said that it was Pushkin who gave Gogol the
idea of “The Reviser.” If so, he deserves just as much
honor for it as for any finished work of his own of any
kind whatever. For there is hardly a single play in
modern literature which can compare with it in wit.
But it is improbable that Gogol is greatly indebted to
Pushkin for this. For a careful examination shows that
his two great modern works, “The Reviser” and “Dead
Souls,” notwithstanding all the differences required by
the forms of drama and romance, are alike in all
essential points. In both, the fundamental defects of
different ranks and types of a whole community are subjected
to a test, in which all these men are brought in
connection with a single person, a rather common but shameless
sort of a being, before whom they stand as before a
mystery they are not sure of having penetrated. In the
play, this person makes, directly or indirectly, unusual
claims upon them, because he is regarded by them as a
superior officer sent by the government to inquire into
their conduct, and whom, with their guilty consciences,
they meet with bent backs and full hands. In the
novel, this person makes an unusual proposal to them,
because he offers them a bargain never heard of before, —
the disposal of their dead souls; but in both cases he
compels them to unveil their true characters and
disclose their weakest points.
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