Summary of "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, therefore, to seek and find fresh non-trivial thoughts in his works is a thankful task. Why did he start writing this story?

If Nikolai Vasilievich wrote in “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” about what he loves, then in “Notes of a Madman” he ridiculed what he himself encountered, but which his “living soul” did not accept.

Gogol - a connoisseur of the bureaucratic world

Twenty-five-year-old Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol knew the insides of the life of the petty officials of Northern Palmyra firsthand. He himself, having arrived in the city of Peter craving for immediate literary victories, was forced to serve for some time. He was not particularly enthusiastic about the career of an official; rather, the realization of the futility of such a “mouse life” came. However, Gogol would not have been a classic without making lemonade from the lemon that was offered to him by fate.

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

General information about the work

The story is written in the form of a personal diary of the protagonist, a petty clerk, head clerk at the department of Aksenty Ivanovich Poprishchina. There are no chapters in it. There are clear dates for the records (there are 11 of them), they follow from October 3 to December 8. Behind them are records written in the reckoning of a clouded mind (there are 9 of them). “Crazy reckoning” begins on April 43, 2000, lasts in March October, then on “day without a day”, on a day without a month, day without a month and a year, etc. However, the word “February” sometimes occurs in this fantasy flight gives we have some reason to believe that the last record was nevertheless made in February of the year following the beginning of the diary.

Thus, we summarize the above:

1. Non-standard written "Notes of a Madman." Thus, a summary of the chapters of this work is impossible to write (no chapters).
2. The diary covers the period of progressive megalomania Poprishchina for 5 months. It begins with the appearance of hallucinations (talking dogs) and ends with putting him into a madhouse.

Storytelling plot

The summary of “Notes of a Madman” should begin on 10/03/1833, when Poprishchin, observing rainy weather through the office window, sees a young unmarried daughter of her boss Sophie emerging from the carriage and entering the department building. She brings with her a dog Medzhi, who enters into a conversation with another dog - Fidelka, following the two women passing by. The girl likes the poor clerk.

Interested, he leaves the office, follows the ladies and finds out that they live near the Kokushkin bridge, in the Zverkov house on the 5th floor. By the way, the house is real: an official familiar to Gogol lived in it.

What is this story about? The summary of the “Notes of a Madman” in our presentation follows the logic of the classic’s narrative: the love that has arisen finally destroys a person who has already gone mad from a squabble collective, dissatisfaction with hopeless 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 table of his boss, the department head, the same Sophie enters the office. Raising her handkerchief dropped by her, Poprishchin already clearly feels love in himself.

He begins over the next month, without controlling himself, to give the girl ridiculous signs of attention. The head of the department reads it for it and puts it in place. But this does not stop the mad lover. He wonders if Sophie has tender feelings for him.

Gogol's chaotic style of presentation is maximally adapted to the personality of the protagonist. It’s impossible to replay Nikolai Vasilyevich, but we do not set such goals. Our summary of The Madman’s Note notes details of the logic of insanity. The puzzled Axentius again resorts to the help of the aforementioned dogs (he has many friends in the book!).

First, he enters the house of his boss in the hope of finding out something about Sophia from Medzhi, but the tactful dog is delicately silent. Then Poprishchin follows to Zverkov’s house, where on Fidelka’s sleeping place he discovers scraps of torn letters. The “ingenious” mind Poprishchina understands that this is a correspondence of the two aforementioned little dogs, which in its essence is similar to gossip of women. From the letters the poor clerk learns disappointing news: his boss is awarded the order, Sophia has a certain kind of camera junk Teplov, and the girl perceives him himself not even with irony, but with open sarcasm, calling it "a tortoise in a poke."

Trying to get distracted, Axentius reads newspapers. However, the effect is the opposite: unhappy love paradoxically makes him deeply survive (obviously, there is a split personality) the abdication of the king of Spain from the throne. He associates himself with the monarch. The disease enters into megalomania. After a three-week absenteeism, he goes to work out of habit, but he behaves inappropriately (after all, monarchy dignity does not mean to notice any director of the department there). On working papers, he affixes his new signature - “Ferdinand VIII.” Then the “Spanish king” sneaks into Sofia’s house to reveal her feelings to her, having come to the philosophical conclusion that the ladies, by and large, are pretty damn one.

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

Arguments about the author's style

Our article does not just reveal the summary of Notes of a Madman. What matters is how the piece is composed. You probably read it. The main character, the head of the department, Aksenty Ivanovich Poprishchin, falls into an altered state of consciousness (suffers from megalomania), which allows Gogol to touch with his mouth exclusively the nuances of a bureaucratic worldview, with tremendous artistic force to ironize over the emptiness of the souls of people “in the service of the sovereign”. In the story, besides the main character, there are three more quite distinctive images of small officials - Petrushevich, Schneider, Kaplunov. Gogol sympathizes with Petrushevich, because he behaves appropriately to his social status: he is not a goer for balls for “office plankton of the 19th century” and for “Boston”. There is also an unpleasant bribe-taker Zakatishchev. The image of Sophie is ironic, it is “soullessly ringing to the tinkle” and is somewhat in tune with Sofya Famusova from Griboedov’s “Woe from Wit”. The images of the characters at the time of writing are absolutely lively, evoking adequate emotions of readers.

Conclusion

What thoughts burst into our analyzing “Notes of a Madman” summary? Gogol is primarily a talent who knows neither the time frame nor the genre. He, joking and creating, as if Mozart, admiring the brilliance of his thoughts, created entire genres, which later developed in various types of literature and arts. Let’s recall his “Terrible Revenge”, written in the classic thriller style ... But it’s not about her now.

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

It is enough to recall his novel “Generation P”, where Vavilen Tatarsky moves along the outline of the work in the same way: from one revelation received in an inadequate state to another. Excuse me, so why now venerable literary critics in all seriousness claim that Pelevin is the father of Russian postmodernism? Is this a fraud by the author?

It was Gogol who used the unusual trick in the Notes of the Madman - combining the real world with the imaginary to achieve the maximum artistic effect, but he, unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) was ahead of his time. And following this logic, we come to the understanding that Nikolai Vasilievich a century and a half ago developed an artistic style, then called postmodernism.