'No, my dear fellow, don't call me a fetyuk. 'I can't stand these namby-pamby sentimentalists.' And he added in a loud voice: 'Oh, to hell with you! Go and make love to your wife, you fetyuk!' 'Let him go,' Chichikov said softly to Nozdryov. 'Oh, to hell with your wife! As if you had anything important to do with her.' You see, my dear fello, I simply must do something to please her. 'Please have one yourself, my dear fellow. 'Nonsense, nonsense, we'll have a game of cards.' You will make a lot of trouble for me, you know.' 'Please don't make it difficult for me, my dear fellow,' the brother-in-law said.

They are sitting at the dinner table, but where do they go? Where is time? When do they move? 'They had all sorts of names and most of them in the imperative mood.' Consider this remarkable scene built out of dialogue. The novel is surreal, grotesque, a dream. The reader is probably to some extent familar with Nozdryov's personality.Īnd on he goes for a few pages until they arrive at Nozdryov's house. Since the conversation which our travellers conducted with one another is of no great interest to the reader, we shall do better if we say a few words about Nozdryov himself, for he will perhaps play a not inconsiderable part in our poem. But his monologue occurs in real time with the narrative he takes opportunities wherein nothing important happens to tell me something. Yet he controls the camera, he forces my gaze on a scene, and afterwards, or at any moment, he tears the world away from me and I am in a dark room with no one but Gogol as he looks me dead in the face and tells me what I've just seen, what it means, or he may poke fun at the characters, all of them, ridicule them.

I am there with him, as if together we are watching a drama unfold. I'm reading Dead Souls right now.the narrative structure! Oh! Gogol is with us throughout, I'm conscious of his physical proximity to the novel at all times.

Dead souls russian novel