A brief summary of the Notes of a Madman. Reflections on the story of N.V. Gogol

The topic of this article could be simplified as much as possible, calling it briefly and standardly: "Notes of a Madman". Summary". Gogol, however, does not deserve such an attitude. He is a classic, so to seek and find in his writings fresh non-trivial thoughts is a thankful business. Why did he take up writing this story?

If in the "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka" Nikolai Vasilievich wrote about what he likes, then in "Notes of a Madman" he ridiculed what he himself faced, but what did not accept his "soul alive".

Gogol is a connoisseur of the bureaucratic world

Twenty-five-year-old Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol knew the inner life of small officials of Northern Palmyra not by hearsay. He himself, arriving in the city of Peter, hungry for immediate literary victories, was forced to serve for some time. Particular enthusiasm of the official's career he did not cause, rather, came the realization of the uselessness of such a "mouse life." However, Gogol would not be a classic without making a lemonade from the lemon suggested to him by destiny.

The supervising writer, becoming an insider in the St. Petersburg office, collected material for the story. The summary of the "Notes of a Madman" is the topic of this article.

General information about the work

The story is written in the form of a personal diary of the main character, a small clerk, the head clerk in the department of Aksenti Ivanovich Poprishchina. There are no chapters in it. There are clear dates for entries (11 of them), they follow from October 3 to December 8. Behind them appear the entries written in the chronology of the clouded mind (9 of them). "Mad chronology" begins on April 43, 2000, continues in March, then in the "day without number", in the number without months, the number without the month and year, etc. However, the word "February" sometimes occurs in this flight of fantasy We have some grounds to believe that the last record was still made in February next after the beginning of the diary of the year.

Thus, we summarize the foregoing:

1. Non-standard written "Notes of a Madman". The summary of the chapters of this work, therefore, can not be written (there are no chapters).
2. The diary covers the period of the progressive megalomania of Poprishina for 5 months. It begins with the appearance of hallucinations (talking dogs) and ends with putting him in a madhouse.

The plot of the narrative

The summary of the "Notes of a Madman" should begin from 03.10.1833, when Poprishchin, seeing in the window of the office for rainy weather, sees the young unmarried daughter of her boss Sophie coming out of the carriage and entering the building of the department. She brings with her a dog Megy, who enters into a conversation with another dog, Fidelka, following two women passing by. A girl likes a poor clerk.

Interested, he leaves the cabinet, follows the ladies and learns that they live at Kokushkin's bridge, in Zverkov's house on the 5th floor. By the way, the house is real: it was inhabited by an official familiar with the joint service of Gogol.

What is this story about? The summary of the "Notes of the Madman" in our presentation follows the logic of the classic's narrative: the arisen love finally destroys a person who was previously demented from a hard-working collective, dissatisfaction with unpromising work, poverty and hopelessness.

However, let us return to the logic of Gogol's narrative. The next day, when the main character as usual cleans and repairs the feathers on the desk of his boss, the head of the department, Sophie is still in the cabinet. Raising her handkerchief, which has been dropped by her, Poprishchin already clearly feels love.

He starts over the next month, not controlling himself, to give the girl the foolish signs of attention. The head of the department reads it for it and puts it in its place. But a mad lover does not stop it. He wondered if Sophie was feeling tender feelings for him.

Sumburrous style of Gogol's presentation is as much as possible adapted to the personality of the protagonist. Nikolai Vasilyevich can not be replayed, but we do not set such goals before ourselves. Our summary of the story "Notes of a Madman" notes the details of the logic of insanity. Puzzled Aksentium again resorts to the help of the above-mentioned dogs (many have friends in the book!).

At first he enters the house of his boss in the hope of finding out something about Sophia from Megi, but the tactful doggie is gently silent. Then Poprishchin should go to Zverkov's house, where Fidelka's sleeping place reveals scraps of broken letters. "Genius" mind Popriscina understands that this is the correspondence of the two above-mentioned doggies, which is inherently similar to women's gossip. From letters the poor clerk learns the disappointing news: his boss was awarded the Order, a certain camera-junker Teplov has quite reasonable views on Sophia, and the girl himself does not even perceive with irony, but with open sarcasm, calling "a turtle in a sack".

Trying to escape, Axenti reads the newspapers. However, the effect turns out to be the opposite: unhappy love paradoxically causes it to deeply survive (obviously, there is a split personality), the renunciation of the King of Spain from the throne. He associates himself with the monarch. Illness comes in megalomania. He after a three-week absence from the habit goes to work, but he behaves inadequately (the monarch does not presume to notice the dignity of a director of the department). On working papers, he signs his new signature - Ferdinand VIII. Then the "Spanish King" makes his way to the house to Sophia, to reveal her feelings to her, having come to the philosophical conclusion that the ladies, on a big account, are only nice to the devil alone.

After that, the sick person is hospitalized, but he does not realize what happened, considering shaved patients at home mad by Spanish grandees and wondering why they are beaten with sticks.

Reasoning about the author's style

Our article does not just disclose the summary of the "Notes of a Madman". The important thing is how the work is composed. You probably read it. The protagonist, the head of the department, Aksenti Ivanovich Poprischin, falls into an altered state of consciousness (suffers from delusions of grandeur), which allows Gogol to speak with his lips exclusively to the nuances of bureaucratic worldview, with a stunning artistic force to sneer at the emptiness of the souls of people "in the service of the state power". In the story, besides the main character, there are three more distinctive images of petty officials - Petrushevich, Schneider, Kaplunov. Petrushevich Gogol sympathizes, because he behaves adequately to his social status: he is not a walker for balls for "office plankton of the XIX century" and "Bostonchiki." There is also an unpleasant bribe taker Zakatischev. The image of Sophie is ironic, he "is empty to the point of ringing" and is in some way consonant with Sophia Famusova from Griboedov's "Woe from Wit". Images of characters at the time of writing - absolutely alive, causing adequate emotions of readers.

Conclusion

What thoughts break into our analyzing "Notes of a Madman" summary? Gogol is first and foremost a talent that knows no time frame, no genre. He, joking and creating, as if Mozart, admiring the brilliance of his thoughts, created whole genres, which later developed in different kinds of literature and arts. Let us recall at least his "terrible revenge", written in the classic style of the thriller ... But not about it now.

Who from the modern classics uses the reception of the altered consciousness of the protagonist, discovered by the great Gogol? That's right, Victor Pelevin.

Suffice it to recall his novel "Generation P", where Vavilen Tatarsky is moving along the canvas of the work in a similar way: from one revelation received in an inadequate state to another. Excuse me, why is it that now venerable literary critics quite seriously claim that the father of Russian postmodernism is Pelevin? Is this a fake author?

It was Gogol in the story "Notes of a Madman" who used an unusual technique - combining the real world with the imaginary to achieve the maximum artistic effect, but he, unfortunately (and perhaps fortunately), was ahead of his time. And, following this logic, we come to the understanding that Nikolai Vasilyevich half a century ago developed an artistic style, which later received the name of postmodernism.