Satire galore today in Nikolai Gogol’s Petersburg Tales. The work consists of a wickedly bizarre set of short stories written between the 1830s and 1840s.
The stories are: Nevsky Prospect, The Nose, The Overcoat, and Diary of a Madman.
Despite their age they remain exceptionally fresh, even after over 100 years of sitting there on the page ageing. Truly, Gogol was a genius.
And whilst Gogol’s most celebrated work is Dead Souls (1842), these short stories are a match for that. For once again he brilliantly mixed surrealism, satire, and dark humour with the macabre.
Societal Alienation and Satire in Gogol’s Razor Sharp Petersburg Tales
“Ivan Yakovlevich, like any honest Russian working man, was a terrible drunkard. And although he spent all day shaving other people’s beards, he never touched his own.”
That’s the type of sardonic look at 19th century life you can expect here. Rather biting, isn’t it? Free from any sense of patriotic glory.
We reviewed a rather British satire in The Diary of a Nobody (1892) recently.
It’s very twee. Of its time, with a twinge of British “oops missus” type of casual farce. In comparison to what’s on display here from Gogol it’s very poor.
The fact Gogol wrote this when he did is incredible. This is very sharp, very intriguing, and laid the foundations for future writers (such as Kafka and his famous Metamorphosis in 1915).
We’re going through each story one by one to break them down a bit
Nevsky Prospect
Get used to Nevsky Prospect in the opener, as Gogol mentions it a lot! It follows the plight of two love-struck individuals and how they deal with their infatuation.
The Nose
Our favourite from the bunch, there’s actually a fantastic in-depth review of Gogol’s The Nose available on that link.
It’s a glorious tale and takes the book from being a bit odd, to outright metaphysical surrealism.
ASIDE! The Nose Got a 1963 Surrealist Pinboard Animated Adaptation
Yes, so as you can see there was an adaptation in 1963. The pinboard animation style shown is no longer in use (not that we know of, anyway).
But it’s interesting to see Gogol’s vision adapted over 100 years after he wrote the short story. To note, a new score has been added over the top of the original’s.
The Overcoat
This is taken a step further in The Overcoat, where a dullard fusses about the nature of his coat.
Diary of a Madman
The Diary of a Madman. The closer really goes all out for it, with a man keeping a diary suddenly leaping to the year 2000 and announcing himself to be the King of Spain to his colleagues.
The closer really goes all out for it, with a man keeping a diary suddenly leaping to the year 2000 and announcing himself to be the King of Spain to his colleagues.
Later, on the “86th Marchtober, Between day and night” our resident lunatic informs us of this.
“Today our administrator came round to order me to go to the office, since it’s already over three weeks that I haven’t been to work. I went to the office for a laugh.”
Outwardly this is one of the least shocking announcements in this story, but as a duty-bound office employees of the world must note, we can’t help but aspire to one day being able to go to work for a laugh.
