Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls: the Russian Troika. Dead Souls (Мёртвые души), Full Text in English. Nikolay Vasilyevich Gogol (Никола́й Васи́льевич Го́голь)

Presented below is the famous passage from 'Dead Souls' (Мёртвые души) (full translation in English, in the excellent translation by D. J. Hogarth), whereby the Ukrainian-born Russian writer Nikolai Gogol compares Russia to a magical, omniscient troika, in one of the most well known piece of narration of Russian literature of all times.

Dead Souls (Мёртвые души), by Nikolaj Vasil'evič Gogol',  First Original Edition, 1842

For what Russian does not love to drive fast? Which of us does not at times yearn to give his horses their head, and to let them go, and to cry, "To the devil with the world!"? At such moments a great force seems to uplift one as on wings; and one flies, and everything else flies, but contrariwise—both the verst stones, and traders riding on the shafts of their wagons, and the forest with dark lines of spruce and fir amid which may be heard the axe of the woodcutter and the croaking of the raven. Yes, out of a dim, remote distance the road comes towards one, and while nothing save the sky and the light clouds through which the moon is cleaving her way seem halted, the brief glimpses wherein one can discern nothing clearly have in them a pervading touch of mystery. Ah, troika, troika, swift as a bird, who was it first invented you? Only among a hardy race of folk can you have come to birth—only in a land which, though poor and rough, lies spread over half the world, and spans versts the counting whereof would leave one with aching eyes. Nor are you a modishly-fashioned vehicle of the road—a thing of clamps and iron. Rather, you are a vehicle but shapen and fitted with the axe or chisel of some handy peasant of Yaroslav. Nor are you driven by a coachman clothed in German livery, but by a man bearded and mittened. See him as he mounts, and flourishes his whip, and breaks into a long-drawn song! Away like the wind go the horses, and the wheels, with their spokes, become transparent circles, and the road seems to quiver beneath them, and a pedestrian, with a cry of astonishment, halts to watch the vehicle as it flies, flies, flies on its way until it becomes lost on the ultimate horizon—a speck amid a cloud of dust!

And you, Russia of mine—are not you also speeding like a troika which nought can overtake? Is not the road smoking beneath your wheels, and the bridges thundering as you cross them, and everything being left in the rear, and the spectators, struck with the portent, halting to wonder whether you be not a thunderbolt launched from heaven? What does that awe-inspiring progress of yours foretell? What is the unknown force which lies within your mysterious steeds? Surely the winds themselves must abide in their manes, and every vein in their bodies be an ear stretched to catch the celestial message which bids them, with iron-girded breasts, and hooves which barely touch the earth as they gallop, fly forward on a mission of God? Whither, then, are you speeding, O Russia of mine? Whither? Answer me! But no answer comes—only the weird sound of your collar-bells. Rent into a thousand shreds, the air roars past you, for you are overtaking the whole world, and shall one day force all nations, all empires to stand aside, to give you way!

Nikolai Gogol's 'Dead Souls': Russia and Poshlost, the picaresque odissey of Chichikov

In his 'Dead Souls', Nikolai Gogol recounts the journey of a small bourgeois, Chichikov, through remote provinces of eighteen-century Russia, in his quest for the acquisition of dead serfs' names that were still registered in the census as taxable assets for their proprietors' accounts. While the story line is well known and the satirical and merciless rendering of Russian society paints a vivid fresco that is not bound to fall into oblivion anytime soon, there's still much to research, in order to unearth the complexities  of this "epic poem in Prose" and bring them to light.

Chichikov in the house of M.me Korobochka.

With the exception of the protagonist, none of the characters that we encounter along the way are truly alive: neither Sobakevich, Manilov, Korobochka, Nozdryov, nor any of the other grotesque silhouettes, not even the tragic Plyushkin perhaps; they only appear real - in their neurotic habits, in the exterior, whimsical toiling of their pathetic daily struggles - thanks to the narrator's astonishing, golden craftsmanship. In Gogol's majestic depiction, only mother nature is intrinsically alive: the animals, the eternal steppe, the boundless skies... Chichikov alone is engaged in a quest to change his own destiny, albeit through cheat, deceive, greed, cynicism. He indeed cherished the right aspirations  of forming his own family, achieving social recognition, prestige and wealth - himself, a cast-out with no familiar or social ties, lacking means and opportunities.

It is believed that Gogol intended to offer his anti-hero a possibility of redemption in the second part of 'Dead Souls', the continuation that he had envisioned in his literary design, whose manuscript was burnt by the author in the crepuscular days of his life. If we rule out the hypothesis of some sort of dissatisfaction of strictly literary nature, then the act of burning itself was indeed the missing conclusion of this masterpiece - perfectly unfinished. 

Could Chichikov have only encountered absurdity, nothingness and 'poshlost', for no truly meaningful or noteworthy things existed amongst the community of men or within the grasp of human existence? Burning the manuscript, was it an artistic statement in itself? Or was it only an act of human despair, at the time the end was closing down on the writer's body? No one will ever know, at least not until the very moment a soul reaches out to grim death.