GOGOL, THE FIRST RUSSIAN REALIST

Professor William Lyon Phelps has noted that the year 1809 gave many

great men to literature, among them Darwin, Tennyson, Poe, Lincoln,

Gladstone, Holmes, and Gogol. Thus in a period of expanding ideas the

Russian genius was born, March 19 (March 31), of a small land-owner’s

family, at the town of Sorotchintzi, government of Poltava, in the land

of the Cossacks--in Little Russia, or the Ukraine, as it is variously

called.

When the lad of twelve was sent to school at Niéjine, a town near

Kiev, he found that the pupils prided themselves upon having their

own college journal. In this he soon published an early novel, “The

Brothers Tviérdislavitchy,” and later a tragedy, “The Robbers.” He

also contributed certain satires and ballads--all equally sophomoric.

Certainly in these beginnings there were no deep marks of genius. To

record that Gogol was a poor student is to bring to mind amusingly the

number of great littérateurs who were either dismissed from college

or showed no genius for application. I have often wondered how, in

the face of such alluring evidence, professors of literature succeed

in convincing ambitious young quill-drivers that their better course

would be conscientious devotion to the curriculum. At all events, Gogol

really derived more benefit from the training he secured while writing

for the school theatre than from his mathematical and linguistic

studies.

Upon leaving college, in 1828, the young enthusiast--romantic,

dreaming of great deeds for his country, and taking himself much too

seriously--went to the inevitable St. Petersburg, thinking that he

could easily secure employment there. But he was disillusionized, for

his talent excited no interest whatever. So, taking some hardly-saved

money which his mother had sent him for another purpose, he embarked

for foreign parts--some say for America. But his heart failed him, and

he got no farther than Lübeck, where he left the boat, and, after three

days’ wandering about the city, returned to St. Petersburg and secured

employment as a copying clerk in the Ministry of Domain. Let us not

forget this experience as we read “The Cloak.”

In this billet he remained for a year, chafing under the grinding

routine, whose pressure at length compelled him to resign. He took up

acting next, but his voice was not considered to be strong enough, and

he then became a tutor in the families of the nobility in the Russian

capital. Eventually he was appointed to a professorship of history in

the University. His opening address was altogether brilliant, but,

never a thorough student, he soon sounded the depths of his knowledge,

and his students complained that he put them to sleep. That ended his

teaching.

All these successive failures--for such they really were--drove him to

the one means of self-expression: literature. He now published a few

modest essays in the leading journals. These attracted some attention

and brought about his introduction to Pushkin, who received him warmly,

and advised him to write of the land and people that he knew so well.

This wise counsel resulted in a collection of brilliant fictional

sketches entitled “Evenings at a Farm Near Dikanka” (1828-1831).

The most important of these is probably “St. John’s Eve.” It is

instinct with the superstitious beliefs of his native province. The

story is soon told, how that a young man, finely favored of body,

falls in love with the daughter of his farmer-employer. His attentions

having been discovered, he is flatly dismissed, whereupon a certain

Mephistophelian character who has been doing tricksy things about

the village offers to procure for the youth a plentiful supply of

gold wherewith to win the favor of the girl’s father. This leads to

a night meeting with a witch, accompanied with all the traditional

manifestations. Under an incantation, the young man digs, finds a

coffer, and is about to take out the gold, when the witch admonishes

him that he first must perform a duty--thrust a knife into a large bag

which stands before him. He refuses, and tears open the bag, when to

his horror the form of his sweetheart’s little brother is disclosed.

The demon-man pictures all that the youth is about to lose by his

unwillingness to murder the child; and, thus tempted, he plunges in the

knife.

Thereafter all things go according to promise--he has plenty of gold,

wins the favor of the father, and marries the girl, but he can never

get over his settled melancholy as he thinks upon his terrible deed.

Eventually--quite in the manner of all the tales which involve the sale

of the soul to the devil--he disappears and goes to his Master.

The whole story is told with a remarkable handling of the weird.

Perhaps no tale of witchcraft was ever more vividly and brilliantly

handled--it is typical, both in matter and manner, of the Ukraine.

And this leads me to say that those writers are most interesting who

are the most distinctly national, and by “national” I mean those who

temperamentally exhibit the typical characteristics of their land, who

glory in its peculiar traits, and who in their writings picture and

interpret its spirit.

Little Russia is neither north nor south, but, for reasons which the

scientists may explain, displays quite marvellously the elements of

both north and south in the two great seasons of the year. The few

short summer months are saturated with flaring sunshine, causing the

fields fairly to leap toward the farmer, full-handed with harvests. In

these halcyon days the people revel in the miraculous transformation of

nature, but when winter comes, the land of the Dnieper feels the sweep

of icy northern winds quite as bitterly as do the dwellers on the Neva.

The population, too, is just as antipodal--in fact, it is really

complex. Little Russia was at one time dominated by the Turks, who left

many of their oriental traits among the people they had conquered;

later, the Ukraine was subdued by Poland, which “transmitted something

of its savage luxury to its vassals;” then Tartar hordes constantly

swept across its borders and kept alive the joy of savage warfare;

finally the Cossack leagues established themselves in the Ukraine and

set up a wild chivalry upon whose picturesque exploits the Little

Russian has ever since dwelt with prideful interest.

Gogol was born with a full measure of the Cossack spirit, descended, as

he was, directly from this stock. His native Poltava is the very heart

of the Cossack country, and Gogol’s grandfather, who was his first

teacher, infused the young spirit with all the imagery and fanciful

extravagance of Cossack folk-lore. His mother, too, of whom he speaks

most tenderly in his “Confessions of an Author,” poured into his ears

the legends of her land.

This primal literary equipment was bestowed upon a temperament

that never ceased to be mystical, religious, and at the last

melancholy--traits that are characteristic of almost every great

Russian writer.

Gogol was also a humorist, but from the strangest reason, a reason

which, unhappily, several other humorists shared with him: he wrote

grotesque and laughter-provoking conceits to keep his mind from

brooding on dark and depressing visions. Perhaps it may have been

bodily weakness--for Gogol was small, weazened, unlovely to look upon,

and often ill--or perhaps the result of an intensely religious nature

turned in upon itself, but some cause constantly evoked in him the

wildest hallucinations. Once while suffering the extremes of chilling

penury in St. Petersburg, he contemplated suicide. He saw Death, and

thus writes of the vision to his mother:

Mother, dearest mother, I know you are my truest friend.

Believe me, even now, though I have shaken off something

of the dread, even now, at the bare recollection of it, an

indescribable agony comes over my soul. It is only to you that

I speak of it. You know that I was in my boyhood endowed with

a courage beyond my years. Who, then, could have expected I

should prove so weak? But I saw her--no, I cannot name her--she

is too majestic, too awful for any mortal, not merely for me,

to name. That face, whose brilliant glory in one moment burns

into the heart; those eyes that quickly pierce the inner soul;

that consuming, all-penetrating gaze: these are the traits of

none that is born of woman. Oh, if you only had seen me in that

moment! True, I could hide myself from all, but how hide myself

from myself? The pains of hell, with every possible torture,

filled my breast. Oh, what a cruel condition! I think, whatever

the hell prepared for sinners may be, its tortures cannot equal

mine. No, that was not love. At least, I never heard of love

like that.... And then, my heart softened; I recognized the

inscrutable finger of Providence that ever watches over us, and

I blessed Him, who thus marvellously had pointed out the path

wherein I should walk. No; this being whom He sent to rob me of

quiet, and to topple down my frail plans, was no woman.... But

I pray you, do not ask me who she is. She is too majestic, too

awful, to be named.

A later series of short-stories and sketches appeared from 1831 to 1833

under the title of “Mirgorod.”

The first part of this collection constitutes one of the great romances

of history--“Taras Bulba.” It is long enough to be a short novel,

and, indeed, it is a novel in plot. Briefly, it tells the story of

a mighty Cossack colonel, whose name gives the work its title. The

romance opens with his two sons, Ostap and Andríi, coming home from

school and meeting their Homeric old father and gentle, homely, and

adoring mother. The father cannot be convinced that his boys have not

been injured by their course at school until he engages in violent

fisticuffs with Ostap. Almost immediately, to the heart-breaking of the

old lady, who plays a small part in the whole scheme of her husband’s

life, Taras Bulba personally takes his boys away to the great Cossack

camp, where these corsairs of the steppes are gathered waiting for some

chance of foray, or a war that may promise them spoils. The revelling

scenes of the camp are pictured with tremendous verve, and the doughty,

fear-despising, Jew-abusing Cossack is pictured to the life.

At length, a cause of war against the Tartars is cooked up and their

city besieged. One night, Andríi, the younger son of Taras Bulba, is

awakened by the gliding of a woman’s figure near his sleeping quarters.

She proves to be the servant of a beautiful Tartar maiden, the daughter

of the Governor of the beleaguered city, who with all the other

inhabitants is dying of starvation. Andríi gathers some provisions and

follows the old woman by a secret underground passage into the city,

where he meets the young beauty, who had previously enchanted him with

a single glance while he was on the march from his home to the Cossack

camp. For the sake of her love he renounces his own people and fights

tremendously against them in the subsequent battle. During the mêlée

he meets his father, who slays him with a single blow and scarcely

regrets the death of his traitorous son. Ostap is captured and carried

away to a distant city. Knowing that his son is to be executed with

torture, old Taras Bulba arises from his bed of many wounds and, after

a long journey, makes his way to the foot of the scaffold in the public

square. The boy suffers terribly, but is brave to the end.

But when they took him to the last deadly tortures, it seemed

as though his strength were failing. He turned his eyes about.

Oh, God! all strangers, all unknown faces! If only some of his

relatives were present at his death! He would not have cared

to hear the sobs and anguish of his feeble mother, or the

unreasoning cries of a wife, tearing her hair and beating her

white breast; he would have liked to see the strong man who

could refresh him with a wise word, and cheer his end. And his

strength failed him, and he cried in the weakness of his soul,

“Father, where are you? Do you hear all?”

“I hear!” rang through the universal silence, and all that

million of people shuddered in concert.

Force is its prime quality--physical, mental, religious. “In this

story,” writes Professor Phelps, “the old Cossacks, centuries dead,

have a genuine resurrection of the body. They appear before us in all

their amazing vitality, their love of fighting, of eating and drinking,

their intense patriotism, and their blazing devotion to their religious

faith. Never was a book more plainly inspired by passion for race and

native land. It is one tremendous shout of joy”--which even tragedy

cannot silence.

Gogol was a stylist of no mean order, as “Taras Bulba” well

demonstrates. It is full of Homeric passages, whose pungent vigor even

survives translation. And for sheer beauty what can surpass this, the

opening passage of “Night in May”?

Do you know the beauty of the nights of Ukraine? The moon looks

down from the deep, immeasurable vault, which is filled to

overflowing and palpitating with its pure radiance. The earth

is silver; the air is deliciously cool, yet almost oppressive

with perfume. Divine, enchanting night! The great forest

trees, black, solemn, and still, reposing as if oppressed with

thought, throw out their gigantic shadows. How silent are the

ponds! Their dark waters are imprisoned within the vine-laden

walls of the gardens. The little virgin forest of wild cherry

and young plum-trees dip their dainty roots timidly into the

cold waters; their murmuring leaves angrily shiver when a

little current of the night wind stealthily creeps in to caress

them. The distant horizon sleeps, but above it and overhead

all is palpitating life; august, triumphal, sublime! Like the

firmament, the soul seems to open into endless space; silvery

visions of grace and beauty arise before it. Oh, the charm of

this divine night!

Suddenly life, animation, spreads through forest, lake, and

steppe. The nightingale’s majestic trill resounds through the

air; the moon seems to stop, embosomed in clouds, to listen.

The little village on the hill is wrapt in an enchanted

slumber; its cluster of white cottages gleams vividly in the

moonlight, and the outlines of their low walls are sharply

clear-cut against the dark shadows. All songs are hushed;

silence reigns in the homes of these simple peasants. But here

and there a twinkling light appears in a little window of some

cottage, where supper has waited for a belated occupant.

Gogol’s reputation as a humorist is strongly supported by his comedy

“Revizor” (“The Inspector-General”). It is held to be the best comedy

in the Russian language, and, while it brought out no immediate

followers, it did arouse an immense amount of amused discussion at the

time of its production.

The plot is simple enough. The officials of a provincial government

office are looking for the arrival of an inspector, who is supposed to

be coming _incognito_ to inspect their accounts. A traveller happens

to arrive at the inn, and him they all suppose to be the dreaded

official. Made anxious by their guilty consciences, each attempts to

plead his own cause with the supposed judge, and no one hesitates to

denounce a colleague in order to better his own standing. The traveller

is at first amazed, but he is astute enough to accept the situation

and pocket the money. The confusion grows until the crash of the final

thunderbolt, when the real inspector arrives upon the scene.

In his “Confessions of an Author,” Gogol says: “In the ‘Revizor,’ I

tried to present in a mass the results arising from the one crying evil

of Russia, as I recognized it in that year; to expose every crime that

is committed in those offices, where the strictest uprightness should

be required and expected. I meant to satirize the great evil. The

effect produced upon the public was a sort of terror; for they felt the

force of my true sentiments, my real sadness and disgust, through the

gay satire.”

The play was received with uproarious laughter all over the empire, but

it is a singular comment upon the Russian character of the period to

observe that, while it produced so great a furor that the Czar read it

with tears of laughter and afterwards handsomely pensioned the author,

it led to no official reforms.

A single specimen of its dry humor will illustrate. I quote from

Turner’s “Studies in Russian Literature.”

The prefect is alarmed at the intelligence that his superior,

the revising [inspecting] officer, may be expected on any

day or at any hour, and begs the postmaster to open all the

letters that may in the meantime pass through his office.

That exemplary official informs him that such has always been

his custom, “not from any state reason,” as he takes care to

explain, “but from curiosity;” some of the letters he had

opened being so entertaining that he really could not find the

heart to send them on, but had kept them in his desk. When

reminded by a cautious colleague that this is likely to get

him into trouble with the public, the prefect cuts short the

remonstration by crying out, “Oh, _batoushka_ [a diminutive

term of endearment, meaning practically ‘little father’],

don’t you see this is a family affair of our own? What have the

public to do with it?”

Gogol founded the realistic school in Russia when he produced his

masterpiece “Dead Souls,” a work sufficiently powerful to raise him at

once to the pinnacle of literary fame. The idea of the book consists of

the ingenious plan of a certain Tchitchikoff, who had lost his place

in consequence of his misdemeanors in the custom-house having been

discovered. In order to retrieve his fortune he visits different landed

proprietors and buys from them the names of all their serfs who have

died since the last census. Having thus established an ownership, he

succeeds in borrowing large sums of money by giving the names of the

dead serfs as security, since these dead souls have been legally made

over to him. Naturally, the bankers think that they are making the loan

upon good live collateral. What becomes of Tchitchikoff, we do not

know, for Gogol destroyed the manuscript of the last section of his

work--some say, in a fit of abstraction; others, under the influence of

religious enthusiasm.

Upon this framework, the author has produced a series of remarkable

descriptions--not pure realism, indeed, in our modern acceptation of

the term, but rather akin to the realism of Dickens. Its truthful

picture of Russian life, its repellent yet attractive qualities, its

penetratingly keen analysis of character, caused Pushkin to exclaim

when Gogol read him the first chapters of his book, “God, how miserable

life is in Russia!”

Rarely do power and delicacy unite in a stylist as they do in Gogol.

For the one, we may find an origin in his love for the sun-steeped

and snow-blown plains of his native Cossack country--a love which

constantly manifested itself in a real nostalgia, yet never brought

him back for long from his wanderings, especially in Italy. But for

the other, that delicate power of evocation--that compound of Loti’s

subtlety of nature-sense, Hoffmann’s light fantasy, and Daudet’s

airy narrative manner, half-humorous, half-pathetic--for this we

must look to some inborn faculty. In any other writer we might trace

this gossamer lightness to much commerce with the thoughts of women.

But no woman ever entered largely into Gogol’s life, and when he

died, on March 4, 1852, being not yet forty-three years of age, his

mother--always his mother--was still his only love. His last days were

shadowed by a growing ineptitude. His frail body weakened by religious

fastings, his resources scattered by prodigal gifts, his mind enfeebled

and depressed--his passing was sad, lonely, and almost unnoticed.

Gogol was the first great prose artist in Russian literature. In the

tale and the sketch, in comedy, in romance, and in realism, he not only

blazed new trails but penetrated so far into the unknown that others

for a long time followed only at a distance. But follow they did, for,

as one of his compatriot wits has observed, “We have all hidden under

‘The Cloak.’”

The masterpiece of fantastic narration and character delineation which

follows in translation was published, under the title “Shinel,” in

1839, when Gogol was thirty. It is overlong, according to our modern

standards, yet not as a piece of artistic workmanship. Its humor, its

suggestiveness, its pathos, its whimsicality, all rank it with the

world’s great short fictions.

THE CLOAK

_By Nikolai Gogol_

In the department of ------ but it is better not to name the

department. Nothing is more annoying than all kinds of departments,

regiments, law courts--in a word, any branch of public service.

Nowadays things have come to such a pass that every individual

considers all society offended in his person. Only lately, I have

heard it told, a complaint has been received from a district chief of

police--I don’t remember of what town--in which he sets forth clearly

that the Imperial institutions are on the wane, and that the Czar’s

sacred name is being uttered in vain; and in proof of his assertion

he appended to the petition a voluminous romance, in which a district

chief of police is made to appear at least once every ten pages,

often in a hopelessly drunken condition. Therefore, to avoid all

unpleasantness, it is better to designate the department in question as

a _certain department_.

* * * * *

So, in a _certain department_ there served a _certain official_--in no

way a remarkable official, at least in appearance; short of stature,

somewhat pockmarked, somewhat red-haired, somewhat even dull-sighted,

with a bald forehead, wrinkled cheeks, and a complexion that is known

as hemorrhoidal. Poor man--the St. Petersburg climate was to blame!

As for his official rank--with us a man’s rank comes before all!--he

was what is called a perpetual titular councillor, a type which, as

is well-known, has evoked the jests of many writers, following the

praiseworthy custom of belaboring those who cannot bite back.

The official’s name was Bashmachkin. As is quite evident, it

was derived from _bashmak_ [shoe]; but when, at what period,

and in what manner, nothing is known. It is certain that his

father and grandfather, and even brother-in-law--in fact, all the

Bashmachkins--wore shoes, which were reheeled three times a year.

His name was Akaki Akakievich. Perhaps it may seem to the reader as

somewhat odd and far-fetched; but he may rest assured that it was by no

means far-fetched, and that, owing to the circumstances which led to

it, any other name would have been impossible. This is how it happened.

Akaki Akakievich, if my memory serves me right, was born in the evening

of the 23rd of March. His mother, the wife of an official, and a very

good woman, made all the proper preparations for baptizing the child.

She lay on her bed opposite the door, and at her right hand stood the

godfather, a most excellent man, Ivan Ivanovich Eroshkin by name, who

served as the chief clerk of the Senate; and the godmother, Arina

Semenovna Bielobrushkova, the wife of an officer, and a woman of rare

virtues. They offered the mother her choice of three names: Mokiya,

Sossiya, and that of the martyr Khozdazat.

“No,” said the mother. “What a lot of names!”

So as to please her, they turned to another page in the calendar, and

hit upon the names of Traphili, Dula, and Varakhasi.

“That sounds like a judgment!” muttered the sick woman. “What names!

I truly never heard the like. Varadat and Varukh would have been bad

enough, but Traphili and Varakhasi!”

They turned to another page. The result was: Povsikakhi and Vakhtisi.

“Enough,” said the mother. “I now see that it is fate. And since it is

so, I think he had better be called after his father. Akaki was his

father’s name, let the son too be Akaki.”

In such manner he became Akaki Akakievich. The child was christened,

at which he wept and made a bad grimace, as if he foresaw that he was

to be a titular councillor. That is how it all came about. We have

mentioned it so the reader might judge for himself that it was entirely

due to circumstance, and that to have given him any other name would

have been impossible.

When and how he entered the department, and who appointed him, no one

could remember. However much the directors and chiefs were changed, he

was always to be seen in the one and same spot, the same attitude, the

same occupation, always the letter-copying official, so that afterwards

the conviction grew that he came into the world as he was, in uniform

and with his bald spot. No one showed him the slightest respect in the

department. The porters not only did not rise from their seats when he

passed, but did not even glance at him; he might have been a common fly

that flew through the reception room. His chiefs treated him with a

sort of cold despotism. Some insignificant assistant to the head clerk

would thrust a paper under his very nose, without saying so much as

“Copy,” or “Here is an interesting little case,” or, in fact, anything

pleasant, as is usual among well-bred officials. And he would accept

the paper, without looking to see who gave it to him, and whether he

had a right to do so; he would take it and immediately start to copy it.

The young officials made merry at his expense so far as their official

wit would permit. In his presence they invented stories about his

life. Of his seventy-year-old landlady they said that she beat him;

they asked him when their wedding would be, and, strewing small pieces

of paper over his head, called it snow. Not a single word would Akaki

Akakievich answer to this, as though no one were near him. It did not

even affect his tasks; in the midst of all these taunts he made not

a single error in copying. Once, however, when the jesting became

unbearable, because they pushed his elbow while he was at his work, he

exclaimed:

“Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?”

And there was something strange in these words and the voice in which

they were uttered. There was something in it which stirred one’s

pity; so that, in fact, a young man, only recently appointed, who,

following the example of others, permitted himself to make fun of

him, suddenly stopped short, like one stunned, and from that time

everything seemed to him to undergo as it were a transformation and

to assume a new aspect. Some invisible power repelled him from his

companions, with whom he had become acquainted on the assumption that

they were well-bred, estimable men. And for a long time afterward,

even in his merriest moments, there appeared before his eye the little

official with the bald forehead, and his penetrating words: “Leave me

alone! Why do you insult me?” And in these touching words other words

resounded: “I am thy brother!” At this thought the young man would

cover his face with his hands, and many a time later in the course of

his life he shuddered at seeing how much inhumanity there is in man,

how much savage uncouthness hidden under the delicate and cultivated

worldliness, and, oh, God! even in the man whom the world acknowledges

as honorable and honest.

It would be no easy matter to find another man who attended so

faithfully to his duties. It is not enough to say that he labored

with zeal; no, he labored with love. This copying presented to him a

sufficiently varied and agreeable existence. Enjoyment showed on his

face; he had his favorites among the letters, and when they came his

way he was not himself; he would smile, wink, and work his lips, so

that by looking at his face it seemed that you could read every letter

which his pen put down. Were he rewarded according to the measure of

his ardor, he would, to his own astonishment, have been made even a

councillor of state. But his companions had their little joke about his

work.

It would be untrue to say that _no_ attention was paid him. One kindly

director, wishing to reward him for his long service, ordered him to

be given something more dignified to do than mere copying; namely, he

was requested to draw up some sort of report to another office of an

already concluded affair; all that he was required to do was to change

the heading, and to alter certain words from the first to the third

person. This entailed him such labor that he began to perspire, to

wipe his forehead, saying finally, “No, better give me copying.” From

that time on he was let alone in his copying. Aside from this copying,

nothing seemed to exist for him.

He gave no thought to his dress. His uniform was not green, but rather

a reddish-mealy color. Its collar was narrow and low, so that his neck,

though not really long, seemed inordinately long as it projected from

the collar, quite like the necks of the plaster cats with wagging heads

that one sees carried upon the heads of foreign peddlers. And something

always clung to his uniform; it was a bit of straw, or perhaps a

thread. Besides, he had the unfortunate tendency, while walking in

the street, to go past a window precisely at the moment when they

threw out of it all kinds of rubbish; hence he always carried about

on his hat pieces of melon-rind and articles of a similar nature. Not

once in his life did he direct his attention upon what was happening

daily in the street--quite unlike his colleague, the young official,

whose glance was sufficiently far-reaching and keen to observe when

any one’s trouser-straps became undone on the opposite sidewalk, which

always called forth upon his face a smile of gratification. But Akaki

Akakievich, when he happened to look at all, saw in everything only the

clear, even strokes of his written lines, and only when, from goodness

knows where, a horse’s head suddenly popped over his shoulder and sent

a whole gust of wind from its nostrils into his face, did he begin to

notice that he was not in the middle of a line, but in the middle of

the street.

On arriving home, he would sit down immediately at the table, gulp

down quickly his cabbage-soup, eat a piece of meat with onion without

noticing their taste, consuming everything--together with flies or

anything else which the Lord happened to send at the moment.

Becoming conscious of the swelling of his stomach, he would rise from

the table, take down a bottle of ink, and begin to copy papers which

he had brought home. If such were wanting, he had the habit of making a

special copy for his personal gratification, particularly if the paper

happened to be remarkable, not indeed so much on account of the beauty

of its style, but of its being addressed to some new or important

person.

Even in those hours when the gray sky of St. Petersburg became

altogether extinct, and the entire official multitude had already dined

to satiety, each as he could, according to his means and whim; when all

had rested after the departmental grating of pens, running about for

one’s own affairs and those urgent ones of strangers--indeed, all the

work which tireless man had willingly created for himself, even far

beyond any actual need; when officials hasten to devote the rest of

the evening to pleasure--the more alert going to the theatre; those on

the street employing their time looking at the bonnets; one spending

his evening in paying compliments to some pretty girl, the star of

a small official circle; another--and this being the more frequent

rule--visiting a colleague on the fourth or third floor, in two small

rooms, with an antechamber or kitchen, and some fashionable pretensions

such as a lamp or another article costing many sacrifices, perhaps

a dinner or an outing; in a word, at the very hour that all the

officials scatter among the confined quarters of their friends to play

whist, at the same time sipping their tea out of glasses with cheap

sugar, smoking long pipes, relating now and then titbits of gossip

emanating from superior society, which the Russian can never, under any

circumstances, deny himself, even when there is nothing to talk about,

repeating the eternal anecdote concerning the commandant to whom word

had been sent that the tails of the horses on the Falconet monument

had been cut off; in short, just at the hour when all seek to divert

themselves, Akaki Akakievich indulged in no kind of diversion. No one

could say that he had ever been seen at any kind of evening party.

Having written to his heart’s desire, he would go to bed, smiling

anticipatingly at the thought of the morrow: what will the Lord send

him for the next day’s copying?

So flowed on the peaceful life of this man, who on a salary of four

hundred rubles a year was yet content with his lot; and perhaps it

would have continued to flow on to a good old age, were it not for the

fact that the path of human life is strewn with all sorts of ills, not

alone for titular councillors, but also for private, actual, court, and

various other councillors, even for those who render counsel unto no

one, and take none themselves.

St. Petersburg contains a powerful enemy to all those receiving four

hundred rubles a year salary or thereabouts. This foe is none other

than our northern cold, though otherwise it is said to be very healthy.

At nine o’clock in the morning, precisely at the hour when the streets

are filled with officials on their way to their departments, the cold

begins to give them all, without discrimination, such powerful and

biting nips upon their noses that the poor officials are at a loss

where to hide them. At such a time, when even those occupying superior

positions suffer the pain of cold in their foreheads, and tears start

to their eyes, the poor titular councillors are sometimes unprotected.

Their only salvation lies in their ability to scamper quickly over

five or six streets in their scant cloaks, and then warm their feet in

the porter’s room; incidentally thawing out in the process all their

faculties and abilities for official service which had become frozen on

the way.

Akaki Akakievich had for some time felt the cold piercing his back and

shoulders with unwonted vigor, notwithstanding the fact that he tried

to cover the distance from his house to the department as quickly as

possible. He finally thought to see whether the fault did not lie in

his cloak. Examining the garment very carefully at home, he made a

discovery: that in two or three places--to be precise, in the back and

shoulders--it had become like a thin canvas; the cloth, in fact, was

threadbare to the point of transparency, while the lining too had gone

to pieces.

It should be mentioned that the cloak of Akaki Akakievich served as

an object of ridicule to the officials; they even had deprived it

of the dignified name of cloak and called it a cape. To confess the

truth, it was of a rather curious construction; year by year its collar

diminished more and more, because it served to patch other parts. The

patching itself did not exhibit much sartorial art; and was, in fact,

ill done and ugly. Seeing where the trouble lay, Akaki Akakievich

decided to take the cloak to Petrovich, a tailor who lived somewhere

on the fourth floor, up a dark staircase, and who, notwithstanding his

one eye and pockmarked face, busied himself, with fair success, mending

trousers and frocks of officials and others; that is to say, when he

was in sober condition and was not up to something or other.

It is really not necessary to speak much concerning this tailor, but

as it is customary that in a story the character of each person be

clearly defined, there is no help for it; so let us have Petrovich

too. Once he was known simply as Grigori and was a gentleman’s serf;

he began to call himself Petrovich when he received his release, and

started to drink in no small measure on all holidays, at first only

on the great ones, and afterwards indiscriminately upon all church

celebrations which were marked by a cross in the calendar. Again,

he was faithful to traditional custom, and in quarrelling with his

wife called her a street woman and a German. As we have mentioned

the wife, it becomes necessary for us to say a word or two about her

also; unfortunately, little is known about her, except that she was

Petrovich’s wife, that she wore a cap instead of a shawl, and could

not boast of good looks; at least, only the soldiers of the guard ever

looked under her cap upon meeting her, giving vent to their feelings by

fingering their mustaches and mumbling something in a peculiar voice.

Ascending the staircase leading to Petrovich, a staircase wet with

dishwater and reeking of that smell of spirits which affects the eyes,

and which is, as is well-known, a never-absent characteristic of all

dark stairways of St. Petersburg houses--ascending the staircase, Akaki

Akakievich was thinking of what Petrovich would demand for the job,

and he mentally decided not to give him more than two rubles. The door

was open, because the housewife was frying some sort of fish, and had

so filled the room with smoke that you could not see so much as the

roaches. Akaki Akakievich passed through the kitchen, unobserved even

by the housewife, and finally entered the room where he saw Petrovich

sitting on a large, unpainted wooden table, his legs tucked in under

him like a Turkish pasha. His feet, after the manner of tailors sitting

at their work, were bare, and first of all that caught one’s eye was

the big toe, very familiar to Akaki Akakievich, with its mutilated

nail as thick and as powerful as a turtle’s shell. On his neck hung

a skein of silk and thread, and upon his knees lay a garment. He had

already spent some three minutes in trying to thread his needle, and

was therefore very wroth at the darkness and even at the thread, and

growled under his breath: “It won’t crawl through, the barbarian!

You’ve pricked me, confounded rascal, you!”

Akaki Akakievich felt unhappy because he had come precisely at the

moment when Petrovich was angry; he preferred to deal with Petrovich

when that individual was somewhat discouraged, or, as his wife

expressed it, when “he had sunk down with brandy, the one-eyed demon!”

In such a condition Petrovich, as a rule, readily came down in price,

and thanked you profusely into the bargain. Afterwards, it is true,

his wife would visit the customer, saying, with weeping eyes, that

her husband had been drunk, and had charged too cheaply. Well, you

would add a ten-copeck piece, and have the best of it at that. On the

present occasion, however, Petrovich to all appearances was sober, and

therefore gruff, uncommunicative, and in a condition to demand the

devil only knows what a price! Akaki Akakievich felt this, and would

gladly have beat a retreat, but it was too late. Petrovich had already

fixed his one eye intently upon him, and Akaki Akakievich greeted him

rather unwillingly:

“How are you, Petrovich?”

“And how are you, sir?” returned Petrovich, and slanted his gaze

towards the hands of Akaki Akakievich, in order to see what sort of

booty he had brought.

“Ah--here I am to you, Petrovich, this----”

It should be noted that Akaki Akakievich expressed himself chiefly by

means of prepositions, adverbs, and particles of speech which have no

meaning whatsoever. And if the matter was very difficult, he was in

the habit of not completing his phrases, so that very often when his

sentence began with the words, “This, in fact, is quite----” nothing

would come of it, and he himself would forget to continue, thinking he

had said what he had to say.

“Well, what is it?” asked Petrovich, and at the same time surveyed with

his one eye the entire uniform from the collar to the cuffs, the back,

the coat-flaps, and the button-holes; they were all familiar to him,

for they were his own work. Such is the tailor’s habit; it is the first

thing he does upon meeting one.

“Well, I here--this, Petrovich--about the cloak--the cloth, you see,

everywhere in other places, is quite strong--it is a trifle dusty, and

looks old, but it is new, only here in one place, just a little on the

back, and a trifle too on the shoulder--bit worn through, and on this

shoulder a bit--do you see?--and that’s all. Not much to do----”

Petrovich took the cape, spread it on the table, examined it for a long

time, shook his head, and reached out his hand towards the window-sill

for his round snuff-box, on the lid of which was the portrait of some

general or other, whose identity was lost, however, because a finger

had been thrust straight through the face and the hole glued over with

a square bit of paper. Having taken a pinch of snuff, Petrovich held

up and examined the cape against the light, and again shook his head;

then turned it, lining upwards, and once more shook his head. Again

he removed the lid of his snuff-box, and, having applied some of its

contents to his nose, he pocketed the case, and finally said:

“No, it is impossible to mend it. It’s a miserable garment!”

Akaki Akakievich’s heart sank at these words.

“And why impossible, Petrovich?” he asked in a voice almost that of

an imploring child. “There’s nothing--only a bit worn-out at the

shoulders. You surely have some pieces----”

“It’s easy enough to find pieces,” answered Petrovich, “but how is one

to sew them on? The cloth is all rotten. Put a needle to it--and it

goes apart.”

“Let it; you can put another patch there.”

“There’s nothing to lay the patches on; there’s no way of strengthening

it--it is beyond all help. You may thank the stars that it’s cloth; or

else a wind would come along and blow it away.”

“Well, yes, better strengthen it. How is it, in fact, this----”

“No,” said Petrovich decisively, “nothing can be done. It’s a

thoroughly bad job. You’d better make gaiters out of it for cold

winter days, because stockings are not sufficiently warm. The Germans

invented them, in order to make more money.” (Petrovich took advantage

of every opportunity to make thrusts at the Germans.) “As for the

cloak, it’s quite evident you want a new one.”

At the word _new_ all grew dark before the eyes of Akaki Akakievich,

and everything in the room began to go round. Only one object he saw

clearly: the general with the mutilated face on the lid of Petrovich’s

snuff-box.

“How a new one?” he asked, as if he were in a dream. “Why, I have no

money for it.”

“Yes, a new one,” repeated Petrovich, with a savage calm.

“Well, and if I order a new one, how will it----?”

“That is, you want to know how much it would cost?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you’d have to put down a hundred and fifty,” said Petrovich, and

compressed his lips significantly. He liked powerful effects, he liked

to stun suddenly and completely, and then to look askance in order to

see what kind of face the victim might make after such words.

“A hundred and fifty rubles for a cloak!” shrieked the poor Akaki

Akakievich, perhaps for the first time since his birth, for he had

always been distinguished for the subdued quality of his voice.

“Yes-s,” said Petrovich; “and that’s for a cheap one. If you wish a bit

of marten fur on the collar, and to line the hood with silk, it will

mount up to two hundred.”

“Petrovich, please!” said Akaki Akakievich in a pleading voice, not

hearing, and not trying to hear, the words of Petrovich and all his

effects. “Mend it somehow, so it will last just a little while longer.”

“No, it’s of no use--it will only be a waste of time and money,”

answered Petrovich.

After these words Akaki Akakievich left the place completely crushed.

As for Petrovich, he remained standing for a long time, compressing

his lips significantly; nor did he resume his work, but thought with

gratification of how he upheld his own dignity and at the same time did

not prove a traitor to sartorial art.

Akaki Akakievich went into the street feeling as in a dream. “Well,

what an affair!” he said to himself. “Well, really, I never thought

it would come to that!” After a brief silence he added: “So that’s

how it is! So at last it has come to that! And I, really, never even

imagined that the matter stood like that!” Another silence followed,

after which he muttered: “So that’s how it is! Well, really, somehow

unexpected--it’s impossible--a kind of predicament!” Having said this,

instead of going home, he went in the exactly opposite direction,

altogether unconscious of the fact.

On the way he collided with a chimney sweep, who blackened his

shoulder; a whole hatful of lime fell upon him from the top of an

unfinished house. He did not notice the things that happened to him,

and only when he ran against a watchman, who, having placed his halberd

beside him, was shaking snuff out of a case upon his horny hand, did he

become slightly conscious of where he was, and that only because the

watchman said: “Why do you push yourself into a man’s very face? What’s

a sidewalk for?” This caused him to look around and to turn homeward.

It was only at home that he began to collect his thoughts, and to view

the situation in its true and clear aspect. He began to argue with

himself no longer in an incoherent manner, but reasonably and frankly,

as with a sensible companion, with whom one might discuss any intimate

and personal matter.

“Well, no,” said Akaki Akakievich. “Just now Petrovich is not in the

right mood to talk with; he now that--his wife, it seems, must have

given him a beating. I had better go to him on Sunday morning; after

Saturday night he will be cross-eyed and sleepy; he will want to get

drunk, and his wife won’t give him the money, and at such a time a

ten-copeck piece in his hand--and he will be more sociable, and the

cloak then and there----”

So argued Akaki Akakievich with himself. He now felt more cheerful, and

waited until the first Sunday, when, seeing from afar Petrovich’s wife

leave the house, he made haste to carry out his plan. Petrovich was, in

fact, squint-eyed after Saturday; his head drooped, and he was quite

sleepy; notwithstanding all this, the moment he knew what the business

was about he at once grew alert, as if the very Satan prompted him.

“Impossible,” he said. “You must order a new one.”

At this, Akaki Akakievich slipped a ten-copeck piece into his hand.

“Thank you, sir; I will drink a bit to your health,” said Petrovich.

“As for the cloak, you need not worry about it; it is nothing but a

rag. I will make you a handsome new cloak; let us settle that.”

Akaki Akakievich still insisted on his mending it, but Petrovich would

not listen, and said:

“There’s no way out of it; I shall have to make you a new one; and

you may depend upon it, I will do my best. It is even possible that I

shall make it according to the new fashion: the collar will fasten with

silver hooks underneath.”

When Akaki Akakievich began to comprehend that a new cloak was an

absolute necessity, his spirits sank utterly. How indeed was it to be

done? Where was the money to come from? He could of course depend for a

great part of it upon his customary holiday gift. But there was a new

pair of trousers to order; there was the old debt to pay the cobbler

for putting on new tops to old boots; he also needed three shirts and

at least two undergarments which it is impolite to mention in print;

in a word, there would not be a copeck left, and even if the director

should prove so generous as to allot as his share forty-five or fifty

rubles instead of forty, there would be the merest trifle left, which,

considered in connection with the cloak money, would seem as a drop in

the sea; though of course he knew that Petrovich would sometimes get a

sudden notion to charge the devil knows what an exorbitant price, so

that even his wife could not restrain herself from exclaiming: “Are you

out of your wits, you fool! At one time he will take almost nothing

for his work, but at another time he is mad enough to ask more than

the thing is worth!” Although Akaki Akakievich knew quite well that

Petrovich would undertake to make the cloak for eighty rubles, where

were even the eighty rubles to come from? He could manage to provide

half of it, perhaps even a trifle more; but where was he to find the

other half?

First of all, the reader should be informed where the first half was to

come from. Akaki Akakievich had the habit of putting away, for every

ruble he spent, a two-copeck piece into a small box, kept under lock,

and with a small hole in the top for the dropping in of the money. At

the expiration of every six months he would exchange the collected

coppers for silver. He had been doing this for a long time, and in the

course of several years had managed in this manner to save more than

forty rubles.

With the first half in hand, the question now was: how to procure the

other half? After much deliberation, Akaki Akakievich decided that it

would be necessary to curtail the ordinary expenses for at least a

period of one year, to deprive himself of his evening tea, to light no

candles; and if there was anything that had to be done, to do it in

the landlady’s room by her candle. He also could, when in the street,

step more lightly and cautiously upon the stones, almost on tiptoe,

and save thereby his heels from wearing out too quickly. He could give

his laundress as little wash as possible; and, in order not to wear his

clothes out, could throw them off upon arriving home and remain solely

in his cotton dressing-gown, an ancient garment spared mercifully by

time.

To tell the truth, these deprivations came hard in the beginning, but

gradually he became used to them; he even learned to go hungry in

the evening; but in compensation he nourished himself spiritually,

eternally bearing in his thoughts the idea of the new cloak. From this

time on, it seemed as if his existence had become fuller, as if he had

married, as if some other person was living with him, as if he were

not alone, but some pleasant companion had consented to share his lot

in life with him--and this companion was none other than the cloak,

thickly wadded and so strongly lined as never to wear out. He became

as it were livelier, even more characterful, as befits a man who has

a clear and a firm aim in life. Doubt and indecision seemed to have

vanished from his face and manner, and indeed all his wavering and

more undefined characteristics became less noticeable. At times even a

sparkle showed in his eyes, and his mind indulged in the most daring

thoughts. Why not, for instance, marten on the collar? Such a thought

made him absent-minded; and upon one occasion, in copying a paper, he

almost made an error, which caused him to cry almost aloud, “Oh!” and

to make a sign of the cross.

At least once a month he visited Petrovich, to talk over the cloak

with him--where best to buy the cloth, the question of its color, and

its price--and, though somewhat agitated, he always returned feeling

happier in the thought that the time was at last approaching when

everything would be bought and the cloak made.

The matter went even faster than he anticipated. Surpassing all his

hopes, the director allotted him not forty or forty-five rubles, but

sixty! Perhaps he felt that Akaki Akakievich needed a cloak, or else it

was an accident, but the fact was, Akaki Akakievich found himself with

twenty unexpected rubles. This circumstance hastened matters. Another

two or three months of hunger, and Akaki Akakievich found himself with

eighty rubles. His heart, usually tranquil, began to throb.

On the first free day he went shopping with Petrovich. They purchased a

very good cloth, and at a reasonable price, because they had considered

the matter for a full six months before, and hardly a month passed

but that they visited the shops to inquire prices; besides, Petrovich

himself said that better cloth couldn’t be found. For lining, they

selected a cotton cloth, but so strong and thick that, to use the words

of Petrovich, it was better than silk, and in appearance even showy

and shiny. Marten fur proved too expensive, and so in its place they

purchased the very best obtainable cat-skin, which in the distance

could be mistaken for marten. Petrovich worked on the cloak two weeks;

there was much quilting, otherwise it would have been finished sooner.

For his labor Petrovich charged twelve rubles--he couldn’t possibly

take less; it was all done with silk, in small double stitches, which

afterwards Petrovich went over with his own teeth, creating various

patterns in the process.

It was--it is difficult to say precisely on what day; but probably

the most triumphant day in Akaki Akakievich’s life was when Petrovich

at last brought the cloak. He brought it in the morning, just before

the time necessary to start for the department. It could not have

arrived at a more opportune moment, because a severe cold had set in,

and it seemed to threaten to become even colder. Petrovich himself

brought the cloak, as befits a good tailor. His face expressed such

an extraordinary significance as Akaki Akakievich never had beheld

there before. It was evident that he felt he had done no small

thing, and that he had suddenly revealed in himself the abyss which

separates these tailors who sew on mere linings and do mending, from

those who make an entire new garment. He drew out the cloak from a

handkerchief in which he brought it. The handkerchief had just come

from the laundress; so, folding it, he put it in his pocket for use.

Holding up the cloak proudly in both hands, he very deftly threw it

on Akaki Akakievich’s shoulders, after which he pulled it down with

his hand from behind, and let it hang unbuttoned. Akaki Akakievich,

like a man wise in years, wished to try the sleeves. Petrovich helped

him into them. The sleeves too fitted well. In short, the cloak was

all that was wanted of it. Petrovich did not let the opportunity pass

to remark that only because he conducted his establishment without a

signboard and in a small street, and had known Akaki Akakievich for so

long, had he charged him so cheaply, and that on Nevski Prospect they

would have charged him seventy-five rubles for the work alone. Akaki

Akakievich did not wish to argue the matter with Petrovich, and feared

all large amounts, of which the tailor loved to speak soundingly. Akaki

Akakievich paid and thanked Petrovich, and set forth in his new cloak

to the department. Petrovich followed him, and for a long time his

gaze lingered on the cloak from a distance; then, making a short cut

through a side street, he reappeared to view the cloak from another

point--namely, directly in front.

As for Akaki Akakievich, he walked on, experiencing exultation in every

part of his body. At every step he felt conscious of the new cloak

upon his shoulders, and several times he even smiled from internal

gratification. Indeed, the cloak had two advantages: it was warm and

it was handsome. He did not notice the road at all, and suddenly found

himself in the department. He threw off the cloak in the porter’s room,

and, after surveying it, he confided it to the special care of the

attendant. It is impossible to tell how every one in the department

suddenly knew that Akaki Akakievich had a new cloak, and that the cape

no longer existed. All at once ran into the porter’s room to inspect

the garment. They began to congratulate him, so that at the beginning

he smiled and afterwards even felt ashamed. When, however, every one

surrounding him said that the new cloak should be christened, and

that at least he should give them all a party some evening, Akaki

Akakievich lost his head completely, and did not know what to do,

what to say, and how to get out of it. For several minutes, blushing,

he tried to assure them, in a sufficiently naïve manner, that the

cloak was not at all a new one, that it was, in fact, an old cloak.

In the end, one of the officials, who served as assistant to the head

clerk, evidently wishing to show that he was not at all proud and did

not condescend towards his inferiors, said: “So be it. I, instead of

Akaki Akakievich, will give the party, and I invite you all to my house

tonight. As it happens, it is my birthday.” Naturally, the officials

then congratulated the head clerk’s assistant, and accepted the

invitation eagerly. Akaki Akakievich at first wished to decline, but

every one started to impress upon him how discourteous it was, and that

it was a shame and a disgrace, so that he could not refuse. Besides, he

afterwards began to feel pleasure in the thought that he would have an

opportunity to spend an evening in his new cloak.

That entire day was like a triumphant holiday for Akaki Akakievich.

He returned home in the happiest possible frame of mind, threw off

his cloak, and hung it carefully on the wall, his eye revelling once

more in the cloth and the lining; he afterwards held up beside it for

comparison the old cape, now all fallen to pieces. He laughed, so

great was the difference. And even a long time after dinner he smiled

each time the condition of his old cape occurred to him. He dined

cheerfully, and did not copy any papers afterwards, but rested upon

his bed until it grew dark. Afterwards, wasting no time, he dressed

himself, placed the cloak across his shoulders, and went into the

street.

Just where the inviting official lived, we unfortunately cannot say;

our memory is beginning to fail us, and the St. Petersburg streets

and houses have so badly massed and mixed themselves in our head that

it is most difficult to establish any kind of order out of all the

chaos. However that may be, at least it is certain that the official

lived in the better part of the city, from which may be guessed that

it was anywhere but near Akaki Akakievich’s neighborhood. At first he

had to pass through several dimly lighted, deserted streets, but in

proportion as he approached the official’s residence the streets grew

more lively, more populous, and more brightly illuminated; pedestrians

grew in greater numbers; women too, handsomely dressed, began to

appear; some of the men even wore beaver collars; peasants with their

wooden fence-rail sledges, hammered over with yellow-headed nails, were

more rarely met with; on the other hand, drivers with red velvet caps,

in lacquered sledges, with bearskin coverings, were becoming more

frequent; and beautifully ornamented carriages flew swiftly through the

street.

Akaki Akakievich gazed upon all this as upon a novelty; it was now

several years since he had passed an evening in the streets. He paused

with curiosity before a lighted shop-window, to look at a picture in

which was represented a handsome woman taking off her shoe and baring

her entire foot very prettily, while behind her a man with whiskers

and a handsome mustache peeped through the door of another room.

Akaki Akakievich shook his head and laughed, and then continued his

journey. Why did he laugh? Was it because he had met a thing altogether

unfamiliar to him, but for which, however, every one cherishes some

sort of feeling, or was it because he thought about it as many other

officials would? “Ah, those French! What is there to say? When they

want to do anything like that, they do it rather well!” And it is

possible that he did not think such a thing at all. After all, it is

impossible to steal into a man’s soul and to discover all that he

thinks.

At last he reached the house in which lived the head clerk’s assistant.

This man resided in grand style; the staircase was lighted by a lamp;

his quarters were on the second floor. Entering the vestibule, Akaki

Akakievich observed several rows of galoshes on the floor. Among

them, in the middle of the room, stood the samovar; it was humming

and emitting clouds of steam. The walls were covered with cloaks and

mantles, among which were even a few with beaver collars or with velvet

lapels. Behind the wall were audible the noise and conversation, which

suddenly grew clear and loud when the door opened and the servant came

out with a trayful of empty glasses, a cream-jug, and a sugar-bowl. It

was evident that the officials had arrived some time ago and had had

their first glass of tea.

Akaki Akakievich, having hung up his cloak himself, entered the room,

and his astonished gaze took in at once the lights, the officials,

the pipes, and the card-tables, and he was confused by the sound of

conversation rising from all sides and the noise of moving chairs. He

paused very awkwardly in the middle of the room, pondering what he

should do. But he had already been noticed, and he was received with

shouts; every one running towards the vestibule to survey his cloak

anew. Although Akaki Akakievich was somewhat astonished, still, being

a simple-hearted man, he could not help but feel flattered, seeing how

well his cloak was liked. Afterwards, it goes without saying, they

forgot him and his cloak, and returned quite properly to the tables

appointed for whist. All this--the noise, the conversation, and the

size of the gathering--all this was strange to Akaki Akakievich. He

simply did not know what to do with himself, where to put his hands,

his feet, and his entire body; finally he seated himself near the

players, looked at the cards, or into the face of now one, now another,

and after a time began to grow drowsy, and to feel a certain feeling of

weariness, all the more because his accustomed hour for going to bed

had long passed. He wished to bid his host good-night, but he was not

permitted to depart; they insisted that he drink a glass of champagne

in honor of his new garment. In another hour supper was served; it

consisted of a relish, cold veal, pastry, sweets, and champagne. Akaki

Akakievich was made to drink two glasses of champagne, after which

the room assumed to him a livelier aspect; nevertheless, he could

not forget that it was twelve o’clock, and that he should have been

home long ago. In order that the host might not detain him, he stole

silently out of the room, sought out in the anteroom his cloak, which,

to his sorrow, he found lying on the floor. He brushed it, removed

every speck of dust from it, put it on his shoulders, and descended

the stairs into the street.

The street was as yet all alight. Some of the petty shops, those

permanent clubs of servants and all sorts of people, were open; others,

however, which were closed, showed a long streak of light through

the entire length of the door-crack, suggesting that they did not

lack company, probably servants of both sexes, who were concluding

their gossip and conversation, and keeping their masters in complete

ignorance of their whereabouts. Akaki Akakievich walked on in a happy

frame of mind, started even to run, for an unknown reason, after a

woman who flashed by him like lightning. After this, however, he paused

and resumed his former leisurely pace, wondering at his own sudden

spurt. Very soon there stretched before him the deserted streets, not

particularly cheerful even by day, and much less so by night. Now they

seemed even more than usually dark and lonely; the lights were growing

further apart; then came wooden houses and fences; not a soul anywhere;

only the snow sparkled in the streets; and the slumbering, low-roofed

cabins with closed shutters looked melancholy against the snow. He was

approaching the spot where the street cut through a vast square, with

houses on the other side barely visible across the desert space.

In the distance, God knows how far, a tiny flame glimmered in a

watchman’s box, which seemed to verge on the edge of the world. Akaki

Akakievich’s cheerfulness diminished here perceptibly. He entered

the square not without a certain involuntary fear; not without some

foreboding of evil. He glanced behind him and on both sides--a sea

appeared to surround him. “No, it is better not to look,” he thought,

and walked on with closed eyes; and when he opened them to see whether

or not he had reached the end of the square, he suddenly beheld before

him, almost under his very nose, some bearded individuals, precisely

what sort he could not distinguish. Everything grew dark before his

eyes, and his heart began to throb.

“But, I say, the cloak is mine,” said one of the men in a loud voice,

seizing him by the collar.

Akaki Akakievich wished to cry out, “Help!” when the other man put his

fist, the size of an official’s head, to his very mouth, and said,

“Just try to make a noise!”

Akaki Akakievich only felt conscious of how they removed the cloak from

his shoulders, then gave him a parting kick, which sent him headlong

into the snow; after that he felt no more.

In a few minutes he recovered consciousness and rose to his feet, but

no one was to be seen. He felt cold, and the absence of his cloak; he

began to shout, but his voice did not seem to reach the bounds of the

square. Desperate, not ceasing to shout, he started to run across the

square straight towards the watchman’s box, beside which stood the

watchman, leaning upon his halberd, and looking, as it were, with eager

expectancy for an explanation as to this strange fellow’s running and

shouting. Akaki Akakievich, having reached him, began to shout in a

gasping voice that he was asleep and did not attend to his business,

and let people rob a man. The watchman replied that he saw nothing

except two men stop and talk to him in the middle of the square, and

that he thought they were his friends; he also suggested that rather

than waste time on talk he should report the matter to the police

captain, and that he would find the man who had taken the cloak.

Akaki Akakievich arrived home in complete disorder. His hair, which

thrived in no large numbers upon his temples and the back of his head,

was in a dishevelled state; while his entire body was covered with

snow. His old landlady, on hearing a loud knocking on the door, sprang

quickly out of bed, and with only one shoe on ran to open the door,

holding her night-gown, out of modesty, to her breast. Having opened

the door, she drew back upon seeing the condition of her lodger. When

he explained what had happened she wrung her hands and advised him to

inform the district chief of police at once; that a lesser official

would only promise without doing anything; besides, she had some

acquaintance with the chief, because Anna, her former cook, had just

become a nurse at his house. She saw him very often pass her house,

and, moreover, she knew that he went to church every Sunday, and

that as he prayed he looked cheerily at the same time upon all, and

therefore was, to all appearances, a good man. Having listened to this

suggestion, Akaki Akakievich very sadly betook himself to his room,

and how he spent the night there may be imagined by those who have the

faculty of putting themselves in the place of others.

Early next morning he visited the district chief and was told that he

was asleep; he went again at ten, with the same result; at eleven they

told him the chief was not at home; when he went at dinner-time, the

clerks in the anteroom would not admit him, but demanded to know the

business that brought him; so that finally Akaki Akakievich for once

in his life showed a spark of courage and said firmly that he must

see the district chief personally, that they dared not refuse him, as

he came from the department upon official business, and that if they

persisted he would present a complaint against them, which would make

them sorry. The clerks dared not reply to this, and one of them went in

to call the chief.

Instead of directing his attention to the important point of the case,

he began to cross-examine Akaki Akakievich. Why was he returning

home so late? Did he stop on the way in any disorderly house? In the

end Akaki Akakievich was so completely confused that he went out not

knowing whether anything would be done about the cloak or not.

The entire day he did not appear in the department--the first time

in his life. The next day he arrived at his place looking very pale

and in his old cape, which had grown even sadder-looking. The news of

the robbery of the cloak--notwithstanding the fact that some of the

officials did not permit even this opportunity to pass without laughing

at Akaki Akakievich--nevertheless touched many. They decided to take up

a collection for him, but succeeded in obtaining a mere trifle; as the

officials had already spent considerable money in subscribing for the

director’s portrait, and for a book, at the suggestion of the chief of

the bureau, who was a friend of the author; hence the insignificance of

the sum.

Some one, out of pity, wished at least to help Akaki Akakievich with

good advice; and so he told him not to go to the captain, for though

the captain might really wish to earn the approbation of the chiefs

and find the cloak in some way or other, the cloak itself would

nevertheless remain with the police, unless he could show legal proof

that it was his; he ought therefore to apply to a certain _important

personage_; and this _important personage_, by dealing with the proper

persons, could hasten and expedite matters. There was nothing else to

do but to turn to the _important personage_.

What was the precise function of the _important personage_ remains

unknown to this day. One point should be made clear: that this

particular _important personage_ only recently had become an important

personage, and that until quite lately he had been an unimportant

personage. And aside from that, his position was not even now

considered important when compared with that of other more important

personages. There will always be, however, a circle of people to whom

what is unimportant to other people is sufficiently important. Then,

again, he bent all his efforts to increase his importance through

numerous other means, as, for instance, he instituted the custom of

having his inferiors lined up on the stairway to greet his arrival

at the department; he also insisted that no one should venture to

appear before him directly, but that everything should follow in

most unrelenting order: the collegiate registrar should report to

the government secretary, the government secretary to the titular

councillor, or to whoever was the proper official, and that in this

manner the business should finally come to him.

This habit of imitation has infected all of Holy Russia: every one

imitates and mimics his superiors. It is even said that a certain

titular councillor, when promoted to the head of some small separate

office, immediately partitioned off a private room, calling it the

“audience chamber;” he placed at the door two attendants in red collars

and braid, whose sole duty consisted in taking the door by the handle

and opening it to every comer, although the “audience chamber” had

barely room enough to contain an ordinary writing-table.

The ways and manners of the _important personage_ were impressive and

imposing, but somewhat overdone. The main principle of his system

was strictness. “Strictness, strictness--and strictness,” he used

to say generally: and always when pronouncing the last word looked

significantly at the person whom he was addressing; although this

was altogether unnecessary, because the ten officials, constituting

the entire mechanism of his office, were afraid of him; and, seeing

him even from afar, they would stop all work and assume a respectful

attitude until their chief had passed through the room. His usual

conversation with his inferiors consisted almost entirely of three

phrases: “How dare you? Do you know to whom you are speaking? Do you

realize who stands before you?” Otherwise, he was a good-natured man

and solicitous towards his comrades; but the rank of general unhinged

his mind completely. Upon receiving this rank, he lost his head, and

did not know what to do with himself. When he happened to be in the

company of his equals he still managed to do the proper thing, to be

a gentleman, and in many respects quite a clever fellow; but once in

the company of folk even a single rank below him, he simply became

helpless; he was silent, and his condition aroused sympathy, the more

so as he himself felt that he could have passed the time incomparably

happier. At times the desire to join in some conversation or circle

was strongly evident in his eyes; but the following thought always

arrested him: would it not be regarded as a familiarity, and would it

not detract from his importance? In consequence of such reasoning, he

remained in the same eternal mood of silence, uttering only rarely some

monosyllabic sounds; and thereby earning the name of a most wearisome

person.

Before an _important personage_ of this type appeared our Akaki

Akakievich, and at a most inopportune moment--that is to say, for

himself, but opportune for the _important personage_. The _important

personage_ was in his cabinet, conversing very cheerfully with an

old acquaintance and friend of his youth, whom he had not seen for

many years. It was at such a time that they told him of a certain

Bashmachkin who wished to see him. He asked abruptly, “Who is he?”

They answered him, “Some sort of official.” “Ah, let him wait, now

is not the time,” said the _important personage_. It is necessary to

mention here that the _important personage_ simply lied: he had the

time to spare; he had already talked over everything with his friend,

and the conversation had begun some time ago to lag with long silences;

and they merely continued to tap each other on the leg, and exclaim,

“That’s how it is, Ivan Abramovich!” “That’s so, Stephen Varlamovich!”

Nevertheless, he caused the official to wait, in order to show his

friend, a man some time out of the service and living in a village, how

long he compelled officials to wait for him in the anteroom.

Finally, having conversed to his heart’s content, and having had also

his fill of silence and smoked a cigar in a very comfortable chair with

an easy back, he bethought himself all of a sudden, as it were, and

said to the secretary who stood at the door with papers needing his

signature, “Oh, yes, I believe an official is waiting to see me; tell

him to come in.” On seeing Akaki Akakievich’s humble aspect and his

shabby uniform, he suddenly turned to him and said, “What is it you

wish?” He put this question abruptly and in a hard voice, which he had

practised in his own room, when alone, and before the mirror, a full

week before receiving his present position and rank.

Akaki Akakievich, who already felt a certain timorousness, became

somewhat confused, and, so far as his power of speech would permit,

explained, with an even more frequent employment than usual of the

word “that,” that his cloak was quite new, and had been stolen in a

most inhuman manner, and that he was now applying to him to use his

influence with the chief of police or some one else to find his cloak.

The general, for some reason or other, regarded such conduct as

familiar. “What, dear sir,” said he in his abrupt manner, “are you

ignorant of the rules? Why do you come to me? Do you not know how such

matters are managed? You should have first presented a petition to the

office; it would have then gone to the chief clerk, then to the clerk

of the division, then to the secretary, and the secretary would have

reported it to me----”

“But, Your Excellency,” said Akaki Akakievich, gathering together

his final remnant of courage, and breaking out into a terrible

perspiration, “I, Your Excellency, have presumed to trouble you

because, you see, the secretaries are that--an untrustworthy race----”

“What! what! what!” ejaculated the _important personage_. “Where do

you get the courage? Where did you get such ideas? What a spirit of

impertinence has spread among the young generation against their chiefs

and superiors!”

The _important personage_, apparently, had not noticed that Akaki

Akakievich was already a man of about fifty, and that if he could be

called a young person, it was only in comparison with one who was

seventy.

“Do you know to whom you are speaking? Do you realize who stands

before you? Do you realize it? Do you realize it? Answer me!”

At this point he stamped his foot, and raised his voice to such a

high pitch that even a man different from Akakievich would have been

frightened. Akaki Akakievich grew faint; he reeled; trembled from head

to foot; then his legs gave way under him; if several attendants had

not run in to support him, he would have fallen to the floor. They

carried him out more dead than alive. The _important personage_, much

gratified that the effect he produced far exceeded all expectation,

and thoroughly intoxicated with the thought that even a word from him

could deprive a man of his senses, looked askance at his friend, to

see how that individual regarded the matter, and observed, not without

satisfaction, that his friend was in a most uncomfortable state, and

was beginning to show on his part certain signs of fear.

How he managed to descend the stairway and into the street--of this

Akaki Akakievich remembered nothing. He was unconscious of either

hands or feet. Never before in his life had he been so reprimanded by

a superior, let alone an unfamiliar one. He walked in the snow-storm

which whistled through the streets; his mouth open, he staggered along

the sidewalks; the wind blew upon him in St. Petersburg fashion from

all four sides and every crossing. In an instant it had blown a quinsy

down his throat, and he arrived at home all swollen and too weak to

utter a word. He lay down on his bed.

The next day a high fever developed. Thanks to the generous assistance

of the St. Petersburg climate, the illness advanced more rapidly than

could be expected; and when the doctor appeared and felt his pulse,

there was nothing for him to do except to prescribe a poultice, for no

other reason but that the patient be not deprived of the beneficent

aid of medicine; at the same time he predicted his inevitable end in

thirty-six hours, after which he turned to the landlady and said: “And

you, my woman, had better not lose any time about it, and order a pine

coffin for him, as an oak one will be too expensive.”

Did Akaki Akakievich hear these fatal words? And if he heard them,

did they agitate him? Did he bewail the bitterness of his life? It

is uncertain, because he spent his last hours in fever and delirium.

Visions, one stranger than the other, continued to appear before him.

Now he saw Petrovich and ordered him to make a cloak with traps for

thieves who he imagined were constantly under his bed; and he more

than once called for his landlady to drag a thief from under his

bed-cover. Then he inquired why the old cloak hung in front of him when

he had a new one. Several times he fancied himself as standing before

the general, addressing him as “Your Excellency,” and pleading with

him after the reprimand; and finally he began to utter imprecations,

employing the most terrible words, so that the aged housekeeper, never

before having heard the like, made a sign of the cross, all the more

since these curses usually followed after the words “Your Excellency.”

Later he began to utter sheer nonsense; one thing, however, was

evident: all his incoherent words and thoughts hovered around the one

and the same cloak.

At last poor Akaki Akakievich gave up his spirit. The usual legal

procedure with regard to his room and his effects was not followed,

because in the first place there were no heirs, and in the second,

because he left so little property, namely, a bundle of goose-quills,

a quire of white official paper, three pairs of socks, two or three

buttons that had come off his trousers, and the cape already familiar

to the reader. To whom all this fell, God knows; this, I must confess,

did not interest even him who relates this story.

They bore Akaki Akakievich away and buried him. And so St. Petersburg

was left without Akaki Akakievich, as though he had never been

there. A being disappeared, who was protected by none, dear to none,

interesting to none, and who did not even attract to himself the

attention of the student who does not let an opportunity slip by to put

a pin through a common fly and to examine it under the microscope--a

being who endured humbly the ridicule of his brother officials and went

to his grave without having experienced a single notable event, but

for whom nevertheless, at the very close of his life, came a radiating

guest in the shape of a cloak, which cheered for an instant his sorry

existence; and upon whom there afterwards descended an intolerable

misfortune, such as descends even on the heads of the mighty of this

world!

A few days after his death, an attendant was sent to his house to

request him to report immediately at the department; but the attendant

returned to his chief with the rather unsatisfactory answer that he

could not come, and to the question, “Why?” replied, “Well, you see,

he’s dead. He was buried four days ago.” In this manner did they hear

of Akaki Akakievich’s death in the department, and the next day, in

his place sat a new official, much taller in stature, and forming his

letters not quite so upright, but very much inclined and aslant.

But who could have imagined that this was not the end of Akaki

Akakievich, and that he was destined to live through several stirring

days after his death, in compensation, as it were, for his unnoticed

life? But it so happened, and our poor history takes an unexpectedly

fantastic conclusion.

St. Petersburg was suddenly startled by rumors that on the Kalinkin

Bridge and in its vicinity there had begun to appear nightly a corpse,

in the shape of an official, seeking a stolen cloak, and that, under

the pretense that it was the stolen cloak, he dragged off, regardless

of rank or calling, every one’s cloak from his shoulders, whether it

was cat-skin, beaver, raccoon, fox, or bear--in short, every variety

of fur and skin which man had thought of for his covering. One of the

department officials saw the dead with his own eyes, and immediately

recognized in him Akaki Akakievich; this, however, so frightened him

that he began to run with all his might, and was therefore unable to

observe him closely, but only saw him raise a threatening finger from

afar.

Complaints began to come in from all quarters that the backs and

shoulders, not alone of titular, but even of court, councillors were

being exposed to the danger of a cold, because of this frequent

deprivation of their cloaks. The police made arrangements to catch the

corpse, at all costs, either alive or dead, and to deal with him most

severely, as an example to others. In this they almost succeeded. A

watchman in Kirishkin Lane seized the corpse by the collar on the very

spot of his misdeeds; for he was in the act of dragging off the frieze

cloak of a retired musician, who in his day had blown the flute. The

watchman’s shout for help fetched two comrades to his side, and into

their hands he committed the marauder, while he himself thrust his

hand for a moment into his boot for his snuff-box, in order to refresh

temporarily his frozen nose. The snuff, however, must have been of such

poor quality that even the corpse could not stand it. Ere the watchman,

who had closed his right nostril with his thumb, had time to apply

a half-handful of the snuff to his left nostril, the corpse sneezed

so violently that the three of them were soon wiping their eyes; and

while they were doing this he vanished so completely that they were

not even sure whether he had been actually in their hands. Henceforth

the watchmen were so apprehensive of dead men that they even refrained

from laying their hands on the living, and only dared to exclaim at a

distance, “Hey, there, go your way!” As for the dead official, he began

to appear even beyond the Kalinkin Bridge, creating no slight terror

among all timid people.

We have, however, wholly neglected a _certain important personage_,

who had been the actual cause of the fantastic turn taken by this true

history. First of all, in justice to the _certain important personage_,

it is necessary to say that immediately after the departure of the

poor, totally crushed Akaki Akakievich he experienced an emotion akin

to pity. It was not new to him--this feeling of sympathy; his heart

was really accessible to many good impulses, notwithstanding the fact

that his rank often interfered with their outward manifestation. No

sooner had his friend gone than he began to think about the poor Akaki

Akakievich. And nearly every day thereafter there appeared before him

the pale Akaki Akakievich, who was unable to bear up under an official

reprimand. The thought agitated him to such an extent that after a

week had passed he resolved even to send an official to learn his

condition, and to see whether he could really assist him. When it was

reported to him that Akaki Akakievich had died suddenly of fever, he

was dumbfounded, suffered the reproaches of conscience, and was in poor

spirits all day long.

Desiring some diversion and to drive away the disagreeable impression,

he went in the evening to the house of one of his friends, where he

found a likely crowd, all the more pleasant because nearly every

one was of the one and the same rank, so that he was not in any way

embarrassed. This fact had a most astounding effect on his spirits.

He opened his heart, made himself very agreeable in conversation; in

short, he passed a charming evening. After supper he drank two glasses

of champagne, an excellent method, as every one knows, of arousing

cheerfulness.

The champagne communicated in him an inclination towards various

enterprises, and he decided not to go directly home, but to visit a

certain well-known lady named Karolina Ivanovna--probably of German

extraction--with whom he was on quite friendly terms. It should be

mentioned that the _important personage_ was no longer a young man, but

a good husband and the respectable father of a family. His two sons,

one of whom was already in the government service, and a good-looking,

sixteen-year-old daughter, with a trifle arched but rather pretty

little nose, came in every morning to kiss his hand, and say, “_Bon

jour, Papa_.” His wife, a woman still fresh and not at all bad-looking,

first gave him her hand to kiss and then kissed his. The _important

personage_, however, though content with his domestic caresses, thought

it elegant to maintain friendly relations in another part of the city.

This friend was hardly prettier or younger than his wife; but many such

mysteries exist on earth, and to solve them is none of our affair.

The _important personage_, therefore, descended the staircase, entered

his sledge, and said to the driver, “To Karolina Ivanovna!” Then,

wrapping himself luxuriously in his warm cloak, he settled into that

happy mood, better than which cannot be even imagined by the Russian.

It is that state when you are not thinking of anything in particular,

but the thoughts crowd in upon you of themselves, one pleasanter than

the other, and calling for no exertion on your part to pursue them or

seek them. Gratified beyond measure, he recalled all the gay features

of the evening, all the remarks and all the stories that made the

little circle laugh. Many of these he repeated in a low voice, and

found them just as funny as before.

Occasionally, however, he was hindered by an impetuous wind, which,

arising suddenly, God only knows whence and why, cut his face, and beat

snow into it, or caused the collar of his cloak to burst out like a

sail, and then blew it back over his head, with a supernatural force,

as it were, and this gave him no end of trouble to disentangle his head

out of its folds.

Suddenly the _important personage_ felt some one grip him by the

collar. Turning around, he noticed a man of small stature, dressed in

a shabby old uniform, and, not without terror, recognized in him Akaki

Akakievich. The face of the man was pale as snow, like that of a dead

man. But the horror of the _important personage_ exceeded all bounds

when he saw the mouth of the corpse open, and, while it breathed upon

him the terrible odor of the grave, he heard it utter the following

remarks: “Ah, so here you are at last! At last I have you that--caught

you by the collar! I need your cloak! You didn’t give a thought to

mine, and even reprimanded me. Well, now give me yours!”

The poor _important personage_ almost died of fright--despite his

manifestation of character in his office and before his inferiors

generally, and although every one, on noting his manly figure and

aspect, could not help but remark, “What a strong character!” Here,

however, he, like many others possessed of an heroic exterior, was so

terrified that, not without cause, he felt as though he would die on

the spot. With his own hands he flung the cloak off his shoulders, and

shouted to the driver in an unnatural voice, “Home, at full speed!” The

driver, hearing the tone, generally employed in critical moments, and

accompanied in this case by something much more emphatic, assumed the

physical attitude of an emergency, flourished his whip, and darted off

like an arrow.

In six minutes or so, the _important personage_ was before his own

house. Pale, frightened, and without his cloak, instead of being at

Karolina Ivanovna’s, he was in his own house; and he managed somehow

to reach his own room, where he passed the night in great agitation,

so that the next morning at tea his daughter said, “You are very pale

today, Papa.” But Papa was silent, and said not a word to any one about

what had happened, where he had been, and whither he was bound. This

event made a powerful impression on him. He even much more rarely said

to his subordinates, “How dare you? Do you realize who stands before

you?” and if he did utter these words, it was not until he had heard

out all the facts of the case.

Still more remarkable was it that from that day on the corpse of the

official ceased to appear. Evidently the general’s cloak fitted his

shoulders perfectly; at least, no more stories were heard about the

dragging-off of cloaks. Many active and anxious people, however, were

very apprehensive, and insisted that the corpse was still at large in

certain remote sections of the city. In fact, one watchman in the

Kolomen district saw with his own eyes the apparition stalk forth

from behind a house; but, being rather weak physically, he dared not

arrest him, but simply followed him in the darkness, until at last the

apparition suddenly turned upon him and said, “What do you want?” and

displayed such a fist as is never seen on a living man. The watchman

replied, “Nothing,” and started back. The apparition, however, looking

very tall and wearing enormous mustaches, directed his footsteps

seemingly towards the Obukhov Bridge and vanished in the nocturnal

darkness.