TO THE QUESTION OF THE TRADITIONS OF HOMER’S ODYSSEY IN GOGOL’S “DEAD SOULS”

Abstract

The relevance of the work is connected with the need to broaden the horizon of understanding the Gogol’s poem. The aim of the work is to clarify the ideas about the attitude of Gogol to Homer. The work is based on the principles of hermeneutics and historical poetics. When developing the theory of the modern epic in the early 1830s, V. Kuchelbecker could not accept the overturning – with a certain historical continuation – of the archaic epos, observed by him from Byron and Pushkin. However, Gogol, declaring in Selected Places the necessity of following Homer, will not abandon Byron’s and Pushkin’s way. The figure of Odysseus has long been included in the number of possible parallels to Chichikov’s image. Introspection in the Odyssey is less than in Dead Souls, where Chichikov’s inner world is often opened to the reader by the same hero. A. Zaitsev showed that the heroes of the Homeric epic do their actions not so much at the behest of the gods, as by free will. This dilemma – free will or coercion of God – is also relevant for Dead Souls. In the first volume Gogol writes about “born” “passions”, invisibly leading people to the truth. Thus, the leadership of heroes, whatever they were, is recognized by God. However, subsequently, Gogol rejects this idea because it justifies the negative in the person. In connection with the dilemma of free choice or some kind of coercion, there is an association to the bird-troika as a “modification” of Homeric sirens from Odyssey – semi-flitches-half-women, enchanting with their singing of travelers, free to give in to him or not. In Gogol’s work, the later interpretation of the “sweet-haired wise sirens” is manifested, creating “the great harmony of the cosmos with his singing.” The roll-calls between Odyssey and Dead Souls exist at the level of concrete images (the bird-troika as a modification of the Homeric sirens) and poetics in general (a certain genre affinity), and also at the level of the general problems of theology and metaphysics raised by the authors (the question of freedom of will or divine coercion).

References

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