Diary of a Madman and Other Stories

DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS
GENERAL EDITOR: MARY CAROLYN WALDREP
EDITOR OF THIS VOLUME: THOMAS CRAWFORD

Copyright

Note copyright © 2006 by Dover Publications, Inc.

Bibliographical Note

Diary of Madman and Other Stories is a new work, first published by Dover Publications, Inc., in 2006. In addition to the title story, this edition includes “Nevski Prospect,” and “The Portrait.” All three stories originally appeared in Arabesques, a collection of Gogol’s essays and stories published in 1835.

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Note

“I AM destined by the mysterious powers to walk hand in hand with my strange heroes,” Gogol once wrote, “viewing life in all its immensity as it rushes past me, viewing it through laughter seen by the world, and tears unseen and unknown by it.”

Although not properly a realist himself—his fiction includes strong elements of the fantastic and the macabre—Gogol nevertheless may be considered to have stood at the beginning of the development of the Russian realistic novel. (Dostoyevsky is reported to have remarked that all Russian realists “had come from under Gogol’s greatcoat.”) In any case his stories are rich in detail, full of imaginative power and linguistic playfulness, and haunted by moral and religious problems. He also expresses a fierce nationalistic pride and admiration of the simple Cossack life.

Gogol’s nationalism no doubt originated in childhood. He was born in Sorochintsy, near Poltrava, in the Ukraine in 1809. His true surname was Ianovskii, but the writer’s grandfather had adopted the name “Gogol” to suggest a noble Cossack ancestry. The young Gogol grew up on his family’s country estate, where he imbibed a love of and respect for the customs, traditions, and folklore of the Ukrainian peasants. His literary talents, which blossomed early, had a familial precedent: his father was an educated and gifted man, who wrote plays, poems, and sketches in Ukrainian.

After unsuccessful stints as an actor, a professor of history, and in the civil service, Gogol determined on a career as a writer. His breakthrough work, Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka, was a collection of tales and anecdotes inspired by his childhood memories of the Ukraine. This volume made him famous overnight and injected new life into Russian literature. Gogol, of course, went on to become one of the towering figures of Russian literature, author of such great works as Dead Souls, The Inspector General, Taras Bulba, and many more stories and poems.

The present volume contains three of his most celebrated stories. “The Diary of a Madman” concerns a frustrated, delusional office worker who becomes convinced that he is the King of Spain. Not surprisingly, he winds up in a lunatic asylum, but his illness and his reactions to his treatment by the authorities, give Gogol an opportunity for some biting humor and hilarious swipes at the Russian bureaucracy. In “Nevski Prospect” the author contrasts a tragic, romantic dreamer with an adventurous vulgarian in an affecting story of disillusionment and destruction. “The Portrait” seems to suggest that evil is ineradicable in this world.

Full of humor, absurdity, and pathos, these stories offer an excellent introduction to the greater body of Gogol’s work, inviting readers to enter a vibrant fictional world and meet the writer’s “cavalcade of bureaucrats, lunatics, swindlers, and humiliated losers.” In the process they will glean insight into Gogol’s mastery, and discover why his work influenced Dostoyevsky, Kafka, and many other great writers.

Table of Contents

Title Page
Copyright Page
Note
DIARY OF A MADMAN
NEVSKI PROSPECT
THE PORTRAIT

DIARY OF A MADMAN

OCTOBER 3

AN unusual occurrence took place to-day. I got up rather late in the morning, and when Mavra brought in my cleaned boots I asked her the time. Being told it was long past ten, I hastened to dress as quickly as possible. To tell the truth, I would rather not have gone to the Department at all to-day, knowing the sour face the chief of my section would show me. For a long time past he has been saying to me: “Why is it, my good fellow, that your head is all topsy-turvy? Sometimes you rush about like mad, and make such a muddle of your work that the Devil himself could not make head nor tail of it, and write the Imperial title with a small letter, and forget to put in the date and reference number.” The damned stork! he must be jealous of me that I sit in the Director’s study and mend His Excellency’s pens. In a word, I should never have gone to the Department had it not been for the hope of meeting the treasurer and, with luck, extracting out of that Jew some part of next month’s salary. There’s a creature, that treasurer! Do you expect him to give you your month’s pay in advance, once in a way? Good Lord! you would have to wait till doomsday. You may beg till you burst, you may be on the verge of starving,—the grey-haired devil won’t give you a farthing. At the same time, all the world knows that his cook at home boxes his ears. I can’t see the advantage of serving in a Department: there are absolutely no opportunities in it. Now, in a provincial police-board, or in a civil tribunal, or in a local treasury-branch it is quite a different matter. There you may sometimes find a fellow scribbling away squeezed up right in a corner; a nasty old coat on him; an ugly mug you would like to spit on; but you should see the villa he rents! Don’t attempt to offer him a gilt china cup. “This,” he will say, “is good for a doctor.” What he expects is a pair of pedigree horses, or a carriage, or a beaver-coat worth three hundred roubles. He looks quite harmless, and asks you in such a refined way: “Will you kindly oblige me with a penknife to allow me to mend my pen,” and after that he will fleece the petitioners so that they will be happy to escape with their shirts on their backs. On the other hand, one has to admit that our work here is much genteeler: everything is kept cleaner than it can ever hope to be in a provincial office; the tables are all mahogany; and your chiefs address you in the second person plural.