"Notes of a Madman" is Gogol's only work written on behalf of the hero, as his story about himself. Poprishchin (the hero's surname comes from the word field) conducts his internal monologue, in the external life, in front of the general and his daughter, he would like to say and ask a lot, but his tongue does not turn. This contradiction of external position and internal self-consciousness is reflected in his notes, and it is this that drives him crazy. Poprishchina is tormented by the question of his own human value. Since no one recognizes him as such, he tries to decide this for himself. The hero talks in notes with himself. Here, for example, is his playful remark: “What kind of beast is our brother official! By God, he will not yield to any officer: come in some one in a hat, he will certainly hook you. This tone of light vulgarity shows that the hero is the same as many others, that he loves to joke. However, Poprishchin is not Lieutenant Pirogov or Major Kovalev, who have everything in order in their heads, and this is really their tone. And Poprishchin would only like to be like them. If in other St. Petersburg stories vulgarity and tragedy - two colors of the St. Petersburg world - appear separately and are difficult to combine in the author's narrative speech, then in the "Notes of a Madman" in every vulgar word of the hero one can hear the tragedy of his attempts to realize himself as a normal person. “You are still laughing at a simpleton, but your laughter is already dissolved by bitterness,” Belinsky wrote.

In these attempts, Poprishchin has nothing to rely on, except for the concepts of human value known to him in the form of ranks and titles. Therefore, he wants to "take a closer look at the life of these gentlemen." He fantasizes that "we will become a colonel and make a reputation for ourselves." Questions come to his mind: Why do all these differences come about? Why am I a titular councillor, and why am I a titular councilor?” Or: "Maybe I don't know who I am." The proud feeling of a distorted consciousness elevates him to the Spanish kings.

The final monologue of the hero is no longer the speech of the former Poprishchin, but the voice of Gogol himself. A person's consciousness of his misfortune gives rise to Gogol's favorite image of the road, the troika and the bell. The road rushes through the whole world into the heavenly distances - where does it carry the hero? "... Soar, horses, and carry me from this world!" .

This is how the search for a flawed person of his place in the world is allowed: not a titular adviser, and not a colonel, and not a Spanish king, but - “he has no place in the world!” .

Dostoevsky is credited with the phrase: “We all came out of Gogol's Overcoat. Whether he actually said these words, we do not know for sure. But whoever said them, it is no accident that they became winged. A lot of important things came out of Gogol's "The Overcoat", from Gogol's St. Petersburg stories. These stories are not only about St. Petersburg and St. Petersburg residents, they provide symbolic images of a global scale and therefore are included in the treasury of world literature.

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol in "Notes of a Madman" shows us the world through the eyes of a man who is going crazy, and how his perception of the outside world changes over the course of several months.

The protagonist of the work is the poor nobleman Poprishchin Aksenty Ivanovich. He is 42 years old, and he has no family, no friends, he has not made a career. Serves as a state councilor and goes to the office to only sharpen feathers. Poprishchin sees that he is not a member of the circle of people who surround him. He is envious and insulting, because even the director only talks to him about the weather.

And then Aksenty Ivanovich had the imprudence to fall in love with the director's daughter Sophie. He wants to marry her, but he understands that for this he needs to become a different person - rich and noble. This became his obsession and, apparently, served as an impetus for the disease to begin to progress.

Poprishchin begins to have auditory hallucinations (he hears the conversation of dogs, the owner of one of which is Sophie). At first he is surprised, but then he himself finds confirmation of this and recalls (or invents) similar examples that have already happened in the world: talking fish, cows. Aksenty Ivanovich already ceases to adequately perceive the world and begins to live in his own, invented, world, where his goal is to become a different person.

Although from October to December main character can still adequately assess the surrounding reality (goes to the theater, does not confuse dates and months in his diary), at the same time, the disease manifests itself more and more. He "succeeds" in getting hold of the correspondence of those same dogs, from where he learns that Sophie will soon marry a certain chamber junker.

Poprishchin wonders why everything goes to the chamber junkers or generals? What if he, too, is in fact a general, and only seems to be an adviser? And he finds confirmation of his thoughts, recalling examples from life, "when a simple person suddenly turns out to be some kind of nobleman."

Aksenty Ivanovich still does not lose touch with the outside world, reads newspapers, from where he learns that Spain is left without a king. However, Poprishchin is sure that the king is somewhere, just hiding for some reason. Reflections on all this have not gone out of the head of the protagonist since then, he even stopped going to work, thinking about it all day long.

Finally, according to Poprishchin, the great day came when the Spanish king was found. On this day, April 43, 2000 (according to the entry in his diary), everything suddenly fell into place, and he realized that the missing king of Spain was himself!

Then the newly-minted king sews himself a mantle and waits for a royal deputation to appear before the people. The deputies finally came, put the unfortunate man in a carriage and took him to Spain. Once in a psychiatric hospital, Aksenty Ivanovich takes people with shaved heads for soldiers, and the doctor for the chancellor. And that he beat him with a stick - so this is "such a knightly custom." In the hospital, he gets worse, his thoughts are even more confused, and he finally lost touch with reality.

The author finishes the work when Poprishchin still had glimpses of consciousness: he remembers his mother, cries, asks to have pity on him and save him from suffering, because he does not understand why he, the Spanish king, is being tortured, beaten painfully with sticks and poured cold water on his head .

Seeing the title - "Notes of a Madman" - at first you can mistakenly assume that this is a comedy story, but after reading it, you understand that this is a tragedy. This is the tragedy of a person who has no meaning in life, who has not realized himself in anything (family, work, hobbies - to each his own). Instead of just living, solving his problems, such a person finds a way to isolate himself from the outside world and, existing in a parallel reality convenient for him, finally loses himself, his personality.

Mental illness and self-indulgence are two different things, and sick people cannot help themselves, but they are piece of art in which the author used certain literary techniques. In life, people also get away from their problems through drunkenness, drugs, even suicide. They do not want to change anything and thus also make their choice.

Updated: 2018-09-03

Attention!
If you notice an error or typo, highlight the text and press Ctrl+Enter.
Thus, you will provide invaluable benefit to the project and other readers.

Thank you for your attention.

"Diary of a Madman"- story Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol written by him in 1834. The story was first published in 1835 in the collection " Arabesque” with the title “Scraps from the Notes of a Madman”. Later it was included in the collection "Petersburg Tales".

Main character

The hero of the Notes of a Madman, on behalf of whom the narration is being conducted, is Aksenty Ivanovich Poprishchin, a petty Petersburg official, a copyist of papers in the department, a head clerk (one of the records explicitly states that he is a head clerk, although this title was mainly assigned to court advisers), a petty nobleman in the rank of titular adviser (another Gogol character, Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin, had the same profession and the same rank).

Researchers have repeatedly paid attention to the basis of the surname of the hero of the Notes of a Madman. Aksenty Ivanovich is dissatisfied with his position, he, like any crazy person, is dominated by one idea - the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bfinding his unknown “field”. Poprishchin is unhappy that he, a nobleman, is pushed around by the head of the department: “He has been telling me for a long time: “What is it with you, brother, is there always such a jumble in your head? Sometimes you rush about like a madman, sometimes you confuse things so much that Satan himself won’t understand, you put a small letter in the title, you don’t set either a number or a number.

Plot

The story is a diary of the protagonist. In the beginning, he describes his life and work, as well as the people around him. He then writes about his feelings for the director's daughter, and soon afterward, signs of insanity begin to appear - he talks to her dog, Maggie, after which he gets the letters that Maggie wrote to another dog. After a few days, he completely breaks away from reality - he realizes that he is the king of Spain. His madness can be seen even by the numbers in the diary - if the diary starts on October 3, then the understanding that he is the king of Spain comes, according to his dates on April 43, 2000. And the further the more the hero plunges into the depths of his fantasy. He ends up in a lunatic asylum, but perceives it as an arrival in Spain. At the end of the recording, they completely lose their meaning, turning into a set of phrases. The last phrase of the story: “Do you know that the Algerian dey has a bump right under his nose?”.

In some editions, the last phrase looks like this: “Do you know that the Algerian Bey has a bump right under his nose?”.

History of creation

The plot of Notes of a Madman goes back to two different ideas of Gogol in the early 1930s: Notes of a Mad Musician, mentioned in the famous list of contents " Arabesque”And to the unrealized comedy“ Vladimir of the 3rd degree ”. From Gogol's letter Ivan Dmitriev dated November 30, 1832, and also from a letter Pletnev Zhukovsky dated December 8, 1832, one can see that at that time Gogol was carried away by stories Vladimir Odoevsky from the House of Madmen cycle, later included in the Russian Nights cycle and, indeed, devoted to the development of the theme of imaginary or real madness among highly gifted ("brilliant") natures. The involvement of Gogol's own plans in 1833-1834 in these stories by Odoevsky is evident from the undoubted similarity of one of them - "The Improviser" - with " portrait". From the same passion for Odoevsky's romantic plots, apparently, the unrealized plan of "Notes of a Mad Musician" arose; The Notes of a Madman, which is directly related to him, is thus connected, through Odoevsky's Madhouse, with the romantic tradition of stories about artists.

The work of N.V. Gogol most significantly influenced literature of the 19th century. He had a rather peculiar vision of the world around him - fantastic, mystical, satirical, grotesque. The work “Notes of a Madman” shows life as if through a distorted mirror, which allows us to consider the processes taking place in the then society from a completely different perspective. Thanks to this, many manifestations in it are evaluated differently, which often escape people's attention.

The story "Notes of a Madman" is one of the most tragic works from the cycle "Petersburg Tales". Here, almost all the heroes either die in an unequal struggle with the conditions of cruel reality. All this fills Gogol's Notes of a Madman. Summary This work, of course, does not give the full volume of sensations. That is why you should definitely read the original text.

Gogol, Notes of a Madman. Summary

The protagonist of the work - 42-year-old Aksenty Ivanovich Poprishchin - works as a titular adviser in the St. Petersburg department. For four months he has been keeping his strange records. One rainy day, Tuesday, October 3, 1833, he went to work in the hope of asking the treasurer for a salary in advance. The weather was nasty, it was raining. Suddenly, Poprishchin saw that a carriage had stopped near the shop he was passing by, from which the daughter of the director of the department, Sophie, fluttered out like a bird. He somehow immediately wrapped himself up and was embarrassed by his appearance, his overcoat was of an old style, and stained with street dirt.

Meji the dog

The dog barely had time to drop into the store for the mistress and remained on the street. Aksenty Ivanovich recognized this dog, her name was Medzhi. At the same moment, more ladies were passing by with a dog named Fidel, who began sniffing at Maggie and talking to her in a friendly way. Poprishchin was surprised that he understood dog speech. But then he found his own scientific explanation, because in the newspapers I had already read about such miracles, about a talking fish and a cow.

He was more interested in the fact that Maggie was asking her friend about her letters. This fact intrigued the titular adviser, because he believed that only a nobleman could write, merchants and serfs could only mechanically add, without dots, commas and syllables. Then Aksenty decided to follow this little dog and the two ladies in order to find out where they lived, and then to find out from Fidel what Maggie was writing about his mistress. As it turned out, they all live in Zverkov's house near Kokushkin Bridge.

Sophie

The next day, he came to the boss's office early to fix all his feathers. And suddenly he is face to face with his daughter. Sophie asked about her dad and accidentally dropped her handkerchief. Poprishchin immediately picked it up and could not really utter a word. Then she quietly left. Then a footman came and told Aksenty Ivanovich to go home as well, since the boss had already left.

At home, he spent almost all the time lying on the bed, writing poems like those of Pushkin. Then in the evening, wrapped in his overcoat, he went to the boss's entrance to see his beautiful daughter once more. However, this did not happen.

Rising passion

Soon everyone in the department noticed Poprishchin's great passion for the director's daughter. And then the head of the department invited him to his place and reprimanded him for obscene behavior. Aksenty Ivanovich decided that the boss was simply jealous of him, because he was 42 years old, he was a nobleman and could rise to the rank of colonel.

Poprishchin dreamed of Sophie, he so wanted to look into her rooms and see how she was there, and in what luxury she lived there. And then it dawned on him - he remembered the conversation between two dogs. Then he went to that address and decided to interrogate the dog Fidel. And maybe he can intercept Maggie's letters. That's how it all happened. He went into Zverkov's house and went up to the floor. The door was opened by a girl with freckles, she was at a loss from what she saw, as Poprishchin immediately went to the basket and took the papers hidden in it. The dog tried to bite him, but it was all in vain.

In the evening he already enjoyed the correspondence. From there, he learns a lot about his director and about his daughter Sophie, whom for some reason the chamber junker began to look after. Aksenty Ivanovich immediately became so upset that he tore all the papers to shreds.

The Spanish King and the Infamous Inquisition

And here Gogol's Notes of a Madman saturates with real tragedy. The summary begins to describe the main fatal event. One day, on December 5, Poprishchin reads the news and learns about the abolition of the Spanish throne and that now the donna should ascend the throne. Poprishchin thought that the king was gone, and began to look for him, and then completely decided that he was King Ferdinand VIII of Spain. He even sewed himself a mantle and waited for the Spanish deputies. Confused in his thoughts, he completely forgot about the time and about the work, which he had not been for three weeks. Then, nevertheless, he came there, but when the chief came in, he did not even think to get up, but on the paper where the director of the department signs, he signed - Ferdinand VIII. Then he snuck into the director's office, where Sophie was, and told her that she would be happy with him, despite the intrigues of numerous enemies.

Soon Aksenty Ivanovich Poprishchin was fired from his job. And after a while it seemed to him that his royal retinue had come for him, but they were orderlies from a lunatic asylum. Then he inspired himself that he had fallen into the hands of the Inquisition, which was torturing him and mocking him in every possible way. They shaved his head, hit him with a stick, and he was already shouting about his unwillingness to be king.

"Diary of a Madman". Analysis

When Nikolai Vasilyevich arrived in St. Petersburg, he learned from his own experience about the plight of officials. The story "Notes of a Madman" Gogol wrote in this terrible and insane city, in which there is no life for his hero, Aksenty Ivanovich Poprishchin. After all, he became both a product and a victim of this world, like many others.

The story "Notes of a Madman" is filled with deep meaning. An analysis of it gives a complete picture of that time. Everything is confused and displaced, justice and reason are trampled, where whole tragedies are played out. All this is what Gogol “decorates” with “Notes of a Madman”. The summary of this work clearly indicates all aspects of social inequality and humiliation, the perversion of moral principles and rules, traumatizing the subtle and vulnerable psyche of Poprishchin.