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Gogol's “Overcoat”—Thematic Pattern and Origins

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Leon Stilman
Leon Stilman*
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Extract

In the parish register of one of Moscow's churches the entry was made of the death, on February 21, 1852 (March 4, new style), of retired collegiate assessor Nikolaj Vasiljevič Gogol, aged fortythree.

Collegiate assessor Gogol outranked the hero of “The Overcoat,” Akakij Akakievič Bašmačkin, a mere titular councilor. Titular councilor was a rank of the ninth class; collegiate assessors ranked one class above.

“The Overcoat” is traditionally associated with a story which, according to the reminiscences of Gogol's friend Annenkov, was once told in his presence: the story of a poor government clerk who after months of privation and overtime work, saved enough money on his meager salary to buy a shotgun, which he lost, however, the very first time he went hunting with the weapon. Unlike “The Overcoat,” the story had a happy ending: a new gun was offered by his colleagues to the luckless Nimrod who lay in bed, sick with grief.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , April 1952 , pp. 138 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1952

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References

1 Durylin, S. N., “‘Delo’ ob imuščestve Gogolja,” N. V. Gogol: Materialy i issledovanija (Moscow-Leningrad, 1936), 1, 362.Google Scholar

2 Annenkov, P. V., Literaturnye vospominanija, Eichenbaum, B. M., ed. (Leningrad, 1928), pp. 61–62.Google Scholar

3 N. V. Gogol, Polnoe sobranie sočinenij (1937–1940), X, 93; the letter is dated April 17, 1827.

4 N. V. Gogol, Sočinenija (10th ed., Moscow and St. Petersburg, 1889–1896), II, 734; the note is intercalated in the first draft of “Nevskij Prospekt“; see description of the notebook in op. ch., VII, 900; and G. Georgievskij and Romodanovskaja, A., Rukopisi Gogolja, katalog (Moscow, 1940), pp. 56–57.Google Scholar

5 See the communication by Rostislavskij, V. I., Besedy v Obščestve ljubitelej rossijskoj slovesnosti (Moscow, 1871), III, 140 Google Scholar, quoted in N. V. Gogol, Sočinenija, 10th ed., II, 743, note 2.

6 N. V. Gogol, Polnoe sobranie sočinenij (1937–1940), III, 214.

7 Ibid., p. 522, note 9.

8 Ibid., p. 446; cf., on coprological symbolism in the portrayal of Akakij, Ermakov, I. D., Očerki po analizu tvorčestva N. V. Gogolja (Moscow-Petrograd, 1924), p. 139.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., p. 205.

10 Ibid., pp. 446–50.

11 Ibid., p. 456.

12 Ibid., p. 168.

13 Dnevnik Puškina, Modzalevskij, B. L., ed. (Moscow-Petrograd, 1923), p. 5.Google Scholar

14 Gogol, N. V., Polnoe sobranie sočinenij, III, 398 Google Scholar.

15 Ibid., p. 460.

16 Ibid., p. 173.

17 Ibid., p. 170.

18 Ibid., X, 290.

19 N. V. Gogol, Sočinenija, 10th ed., V, 105–6.

20 “Pokhoždenija Čičikova ili Mërtvye Duši,” Otečestvennye zapiski, XXIII, No. 7 (1842), 1–12; quoted after Belinskij o Gogole, S. Mašinskij, ed. (Moscow, 1949), p. 167.

21 See “Objasnenija na objasnenija po povodu poemy Gogolja ‘Mërtvye Duši,’” Otečestvennye zapiski, XXV, No. n (1842), 13–30, in Mašinskij, op. cit., pp. 231, 232.

22 Gogol, N. V., Polnoe sobranie sočinenij (1937–1940), III, 195.Google Scholar