The Night Before Christmas by Nikolai Gogol

He has absolutely no money, not even for lunch. The main protagonist, a minor official by the name of Khlestakov, pays a visit. Number 2 in the list is a play, once again set in a small provincial town. Over time, the burning of the second volume by the impulsive Gogol has acquired meme-like status in the Russian literary consciousness.

However, when it came to “Purgatory,” Gogol realized that his aptitude for portraying good characters was not so sharp, and, according to legend, he burned it (only a fragment survived). the first volume bequeathed to us) flowed off the pen and, as its proposed title suggests, probes the darkest aspects of the Russian character (embezzlement, bribery, hypocrisy, not to mention bad roads) in a lively and humorous manner. Gogol initially conceived the book as three volumes to echo Dante’s Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Incidentally, the author himself described the work as a poem, apparently for its numerous lyrical digressions and reflections on the fate of Russia: “And you, Russia of mine – are not you also speeding like a troika which nought can overtake?” Chichikov’s get-rich-quick scheme is to purchase as many as possible to acquire social status. The middle-class official Chichikov arrives in a nameless provincial town and visits the local landowners asking them to sell their “dead souls.” The “souls” in question are serfs that have died (and hence of no use to the landowners), but are still listed in the most recent census as alive. Like many of Gogol’s plots, the storyline is quite intricate. Most of this book was written in Italy, giving rise to the belief ever since that a Russian writer needs to view the country from the outside in order to peel away all the layers on the inside (and write a good book in the process). Great actor Alexander Kalyagin starring Chichikov

The Night Before Christmas by Nikolai Gogol