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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: sad country Russia is!" And later he said of it: "Gogol invents
nothing; it is the simple truth, the terrible truth."
The work on one hand was received as nothing less than an exposure of
all Russia--what would foreigners think of it? The liberal elements,
however, the critical Belinsky among them, welcomed it as a
revelation, as an omen of a freer future. Gogol, who had meant to do a
service to Russia and not to heap ridicule upon her, took the
criticisms of the Slavophiles to heart; and he palliated his critics
by promising to bring about in the succeeding parts of his novel the
redemption of Chichikov and the other "knaves and blockheads." But the
"Westerner" Belinsky and others of the liberal camp were mistrustful.
Dead Souls |
