Author's website Alexander Korotko

Gogol – celestial. His “Dead Souls” – a large symphonic work. Simplicity of exposition and depth of penetration into the essence of phenomena akin to the music of Mozart. 

In “Dead Souls” is no single positive hero, but each of them evokes sympathy and a smile. They are naive and good-natured. They manage to steal skuperdyaynichat and swagger in a special way, like a child. Through the prism of the implausibility of the plot appear the souls of heroes not only novel, but also the soul of the whole of Russia. 

In the literature, Gogol – Bosch and Bruegel in one person. Creators of this magnitude outside of time. One line, one bend brush Modigliani, two or three words in Gogol – portrait ready. It’s like Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Several primary chords – and the whole life before my eyes. 

If the “Dead Souls” many colors, then “The Overcoat” monochrome. There is not brilliant Petersburg Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin” and gloomy, bleak, gray city filled with loneliness and indifference. He appears as a huge phantom immense pain all Akaky world. Comes to mind “The Castle” Kafka. Petersburg and Castle – two monster sizzling souls cruelty and contempt. Nobody Gogol do not humanize the area cultivated by the swamp Peter. 

Akaky who he is – an outcast, crushed pyatoyu time or future general, arrogant and unfeeling? After all, General Gogol – the same Akaky. How so? And that’s it. This is Mother Russia – with serfdom and without. And this is not an individual sentence and a specific era, and eras and humanity. 

And finally, “The Inspector General.” If the novel “Dead Souls”, by definition, the author, the poem, the “Inspector” – a poem twice. The play seems to me a great poetic text, intuition, touching the word of Gd grace.

Writer considers Russian soul under the microscope, dissects unexpectedly in Gogolevskoi and its irrationality is rational and valid, as befits a genius.