in short, the same as everywhere;
No one equals him in power - he is God! But such is not the lot, and other is the destiny of the writer who has dared to call forth all that is before our eyes every moment and which our indifferent eyes do not see - all the terrible, stupendous mire of trivia in which our life is entangles, the whole depth of cold, fragmented, everyday characters that swarm over our often bitter and boring earthly path, and with the firm strength of his implacable chisel dares to present them roundly and vividly before the eyes of all people! (skip) This contemporary judgement does not recognized writer; with no sharing, no response, no sympathy, like a familyless wayfarer, he will be left alone in the middle of the road. Grim is his path, and bitterly will he feel his solitude.
Strange people these gentlemen officials, and other degrees along with them: They knew very well that Nozdryov was a liar, that not a single word of his could be trusted, not he least trifle, and nevertheless they resorted precisely to him.
What the deceased was asking - why he had died, or why he had lived - God alone knows.
What a strange, and alluring, and transporting, and wonderful feeling is in the word: road! and how wondrous is this road itself:
and think not about not doing wrong, but only about having no one say they are doing wrong. (skip) You fear the deeply penetrating gaze, you are afraid to penetrate anything deeply with your own gaze, you like to skim over everything with unthinking eyes.
But Kostanzhoglo was angry now, his bile was seething, and the words came pouring out.
And often, unexpectedly, in some remote, forsaken backwater, some deserted desert, one meets a man whose warming conversation makes you forget the pathlessness of your paths, the homelessness of your nights, and the contemporary world full of people's stupidity, of deceptions for deceiving man. Forever and always an evening spent in this way will vividly remain with you, and all that was that took place then will be retained by the faithful memory: who was there, and who stood where, and what he was holding - the walls, the corners, and every trifle.
He still did not know that in Russia, in Moscow and other cities, there are such wizards to be found, whose life is an inexplicable riddle. He seems to have spent everything, is up to his ears in debt, has no resources anywhere, and the dinner that is being given promises to be the last; and the diners think that by the next day the host will be dragged off to prison. Then years pass after that - that wizard is still holding out in the world, is up to his ears in debt more than ever, and still gives a dinner in the same way, and everybody thinks it will be the last, and everybody is sure that the next day the host will be dragged off to prison. Khlobuev was such a wizard. Only in Russia can one exist in such a way. Having nothing, he welcomed visitors, gave parties, and even patronized and encouraged all sorts of actors passing through town, boarded them and lodged them in his house.
Believe me, as soon as circumstances get critical, the first thing to do is confuse. One can get it so confused, so entangled, that on one can understand anything. (skip) The crayfish thrives in trouble waters.
<from Translator's Introduction>
because the road is also writing itself,
Gogol wrote in a letter of 1843;
I have been much talked about by people who have analyzed some of my aspects but failed to define my essence. Pushkin alone sensed it. He always told me that no other writer before has had this gift of presenting the banality of life so vividly, of being able to describe the banality of the banal man with such force that all the little details that escape notice flash large in everyone's eyes. That is my main quality, which belongs to me alone, and which indeed no other writer possesses.
Gogol's characters; they are all external, like landscapes.
The unresolved mystery of banality is the lining of the extraordinary behind it. It is Chichikov's chest with its double bottom, in which he stores all sorts of meaningless trash, but from which his "dead souls" also emerge in procession and move across all Russia. It is the renewal and futurity inherent in the road.
- 처음 접하는 N. Gogol의 책에서 러시아에 이런 작가가 있었다니 하는 감탄을 금치 못했다. 책을 읽고 나서 처음 "가벼움의 무게"라는 생각이 들었다. 인간의 허영과 실체를 쪽집게처럼 뽑아내어 풍자적으로 묘사하는 문장들을 읽으면서 실소를 터뜨리면서도, 씁쓸한 뒷맛을, 개운치 않은 뒤통수를 느끼게 하는... 진부한 삶의 의미없음을 세세한 문장으로서 다루고 있으면서도 그 의미없음이 곧 삶이고 우리가 개탄해 마지 않는 인물들이 이 시대를 또 이루고 살아가고 있음을 부인치 못한다는 것이 200년이 넘은 소설이 오늘날까지 가슴 뜨끔하게 다가오는 이유인 것 같다.
Tolstoy의 소설에서의 moral과 Dostoevsky의 인간의 본성의 고뇌의 진중한 무거움에만 길들여졌던 러시아 소설에서 가벼운 실소를 터뜨리며 가슴과 생각은 채워 줄 좋은 책을 만난 듯하다.
