Vii

The first story in this volume, How the Two Ivans Quarrelled, is an amusing portrayal of two exceptionally close friends, the mortal insult that drives them apart, and the ensuing chaos that occurs. This is Gogol's humour at its best, where the most irrelevant-seeming details and turns of phrase take on a bizarre life of their own. Ivan Krylov's Panegyric in Memory of My Grandfather has an ingenuous narrator praise the nobility and modesty of a landowner whose actions prove him to be...

Russia in the 1840s. There is a stranger in town, and he is behaving oddly. The unctuous Pavel Chichikov goes around the local estates buying up 'dead souls'. These are the papers relating to serfs who have died since the last census, but who remain on the record and still attract a tax demand. Chichikov is willing to relieve their owners of the tax burden by buying the titles for a song. What he does not say is that he then proposes to take out a huge mortgage against these fictitious citizens...

Gogol's works constitute one of Russian literature's supreme achievements, yet the nature of their brilliant originality, comic genius, and complex workings is difficult to summarize precisely. The Government Inspector, a perennial favourite on stage and screen, is considered a national institution in Russia, and Gogol's stories present us with one of the most marvellous worlds a writer has ever created. . . . . . . . .

Some call him a Russian Mark Twain. And with his special blend of comedy, social commentary, and fantasy, Nikolai Gogol paved the way for his countrymen Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. This sampling of Gogol's works includes the increasingly fantastic entries of "The Diary of a Madman," followed by the wonderfully surrealistic "The Nose," in which the title character embarks on some unlikely activities when separated from its owner's face. In "The Carriage," a pompous landowner gets his...

Un episode imaginaire de la lutte des cosaques contre les Polonais dans l'Ukraine du XVIIe siecle. Le vieux Taras Boulba, cosaque des temps heroiques, apres avoir initie a la guerre ses deux fils, perd l'aine sous les coups de l'ennemi et tue de ses propres mains le cadet qui, amoureux d'une Polonaise catholique, a trahi sa famille et la foi orthodoxe. A la suite de deux grandes batailles, Taras Boulba est fait prisonnier et meurt brule vif sur le bucher. La reussite du recit, ecrit par Gogol...

Trois nouvelles representatives de l'age d'or de la litterature russe du XIXe siecle : Le Nez de Gogol, Le Marchand de cercueils de Pouchkine et Apparitions de Tourgueniev. Trois recits etranges et intrigants, ou se cotoient humour et inquietude, realisme et fantastique. L'edition Classiques & Cie college Soigneusement annote, le texte des nouvelles est associe a un dossier illustre, qui comprend : - un guide de lecture (avec des reperes, un parcours de l'oeuvre et un...