Nouvelles de Pétersbourg:- La perspective Nevski- Le portrait- Le journal d'un fou- Le nez- Le manteau

Le Journal d'un fou, Le Manteau et autres nouvelles

An NYRB Classics OriginalThe first of the great Russian novels and one of the indisputable masterpieces of world literature, Dead Souls is the tale of Chichikov, an affably cunning con man who causes consternation in a small Russian town when he shows up out of nowhere proposing to buy title to serfs who, though dead as doornails, are still property on paper. What can he have up his sleeve, the local landowners wonder, even as some rush to unload what isn’t of any use to them anyway, while others seek to negotiate the best deal possible, and others yet hold on to their dead for dear life, since if somebody wants what you have then no matter what don’t give it away. Chichikov’s scheme soon encounters obstacles, but he is never without resource, and as he stumbles forward as best he can, Gogol paints a wonderfully comic picture of Russian life that also serves as a biting satire of a society as corrupt as it is cynical and silly. At once a wild phantasmagoria and a work of exacting realism, Dead Souls is a supremely living work of art that spills over with humor and passion and absurdity.       Donald Rayfield’s vigorous new translation corrects the mistakes and omissions of earlier versions while capturing the vivid speech rhythms of the original. It also offers a fuller text of the unfinished second part of the book by combining material from Gogol’s two surviving drafts into a single compelling narrative. This is a tour de force of art and scholarship—and the most authoritative, accurate, and readable edition of Dead Souls available in English.

Les Âmes mortes

Cette nouvelle raconte le souvenir émouvant d’Athanase Ivanovitch et de Pulchérie Ivanovna avec de belles descriptions et riches commentaires sur la vie rurale en Russie au temps de Gogol. Extrait: “ Je ne puis oublier deux petits vieux du siècle passé : ils ne sont plus de ce monde, hélas ! mais la pitié me gagne et j’éprouve toujours au cœur un serrement bizarre en songeant que si le sort m’amène quelque jour devant leur domaine abandonné, je découvrirai peut-être au lieu de chaumières un monceau de décombres, un marécage à la place de l’étang, et sur l’emplacement de leur demeure une douve envahie par les ronces… et rien de plus. Oui, il me suffit d’y penser pour que je me sente triste, affreusement triste à l’avance.”

Ménage d'autrefois

Nicolas Vassilievitch Gogol (1809-1852) croyait vraiment au diable. Mais le Malin, pour corrompre le malheureux peintre Tchartkov, delaisse ici son attirail de fumees, de goules et de harpies: un vieux portrait et quelques ducats d'or suffiront. Dans cette version petersbourgeoise de "Faust," le fantastique a valeur d'allegorie: la creation artistique est-elle sans danger pour l'ame?"

Le Portrait

Le journal d'un fou est un conte absurde dans lequel les personnages étranges laissent peu à peu place à leurs caractères réels, le rire cédant le pas à l'angoisse tout au long de ce journal. Poprichtchine est préposé au taillage des plumes dans un ministère de Saint-Petersbourg. Celui-ci sombre peu à peu dans une douce folie s'imaginant être en Espagne. 

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Le journal d'un fou

Conceive the joy of a lover of nature who, leaving the art galleries, wanders out among the trees and wild flowers and birds that the pictures of the galleries have sentimentalised. It is some such joy that the man who truly loves the noblest in letters feels when tasting for the first time the simple delights of Russian literature. French and English and German authors, too, occasionally, offer works of lofty, simple naturalness; but the very keynote to the whole of Russian literature is simplicity, naturalness, veraciousness.

Another essentially Russian trait is the quite unaffected conception that the lowly are on a plane of equality with the so-called upper classes. When the Englishman Dickens wrote with his profound pity and understanding of the poor, there was yet a bit; of remoteness, perhaps, even, a bit of caricature, in his treatment of them. He showed their sufferings to the rest of the world with a "Behold how the other half lives!" The Russian writes of the poor, as it were, from within, as one of them, with no eye to theatrical effect upon the well-to-do. There is no insistence upon peculiar virtues or vices. The poor are portrayed just as they are, as human beings like the rest of us. A democratic spirit is reflected, breathing a broad humanity, a true universality, an unstudied generosity that proceed not from the intellectual conviction that to understand all is to forgive all, but from an instinctive feeling that no man has the right to set himself up as a judge over another, that one can only observe and record.

Classical Russian Short Stories

Vii" par Nicolas Vassilievitch Gogol. Nicolas Vassilievitch Gogol etait un ecrivain russe d'origine ukrainienne (1809-1852).

In Imperial Russia, Chichikov, a middle-class man, arrives in a small town and approaches landowners to collect their "dead souls"-serfs who have passed away but who are still registered as the landowner's property. Although Chichikov initially reveals little about his purpose except to say that he does have a use for the souls, when his motive is exposed, the novel takes a dramatic turn, revealing the absurdity of the middle class. Dead Souls was first published by Nikolai Gogol in 1842, and is widely regarded as one of the best known Russian political satires. Written in the style of Dante's Inferno, Dead Souls was meant to be the first of a trilogy that introduced a solution to this ailing system, although Gogol did not complete the following two novels. HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

Le Journal d'un fou, Le Manteau et autres nouvelles

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