to enable Chichikov to go across Russia in a troika, with Selifan
the coachman as a sort of Russian Sancho Panza, gives Gogol a
magnificent opportunity to reveal his genius as a painter of Russian
panorama, peopled with characteristic native types commonplace enough
but drawn in comic relief. "The comic," explained the author yet at
the beginning of his career, "is hidden everywhere, only living in the
midst of it we are not conscious of it; but if the artist brings it
into his art, on the stage say, we shall roll about with laughter and
only wonder we did not notice it before." But the comic in Dead
Souls is merely external. Let us see how Pushkin, who loved to laugh,
regarded the work. As Gogol read it aloud to him from the manuscript
the poet grew more and more gloomy and at last cried out: "God! What a
sad country Russia is!" And later he said of it: "Gogol invents
nothing; it is the simple truth, the terrible truth."

The work on one hand was received as nothing less than an exposure of
all Russia--what would foreigners think of it? The liberal elements,
however, the critical Belinsky among them, welcomed it as a
revelation, as an omen of a freer future. Gogol, who had meant to do a
service to Russia and not to heap ridicule upon her, took the
criticisms of the Slavophiles to heart; and he palliated his critics
by promising to bring about in the succeeding parts of his novel the
redemption of Chichikov and the other "knaves and blockheads." But the
"Westerner" Belinsky and others of the liberal camp were mistrustful.
It was about this time (1847) that Gogol published his Correspondence
with Friends, and aroused a literary controversy that is alive to
this day. Tolstoi is to be found among his apologists.

Opinions as to the actual significance of Gogol's masterpiece differ.
Some consider the author a realist who has drawn with meticulous