“A Traveling Salesman from Hades”. On the Critique of the Acquisitive Mindset in Nikolai V. Gogol’s Novel Dead Souls (1842)

Abstract

In Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol’s (1809–1852) Dead Souls (1842), a novel belonging to the global literary canon, the middleclass, economic concept of the honourable businessman is evoked ex negativo: by the foil Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, a dubious profiteer and fraudulent speculator. Chichikov plans large-scale credit fraud in provincial Russia based on the illegal idea of taking out a loan against so-called “dead souls”, i.e. dead serfs. Referring to more recent contributions on the relationship between literary and economic discourses and taking into account the social-historical situation in nineteenth century Russia as well as the literary context, this contribution investigates the legal, moral, economic, metaphysical and anthropological implications of this fictive planned deception. From the perspective of ‘economic literature’, Gogol’s novel can be read as a result of dealing with disconcertment through fiction, but also as a product of the fascination sparked by the spirit of modern capitalism that was perceived as new and predominantly ‘un-Russian’, by the eldritch and uncanny way in which money works, and by the credit economy, still unusual in Russia. Furthermore, this contribution also shows that Gogol’s satirical novel reveals striking structural parallels to current literary and filmic portrayals of today’s financial crises.