The Nose (Gogol)

The Nose (Russian Нос - Nos ) is a narrative of the Russian poet Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol.

Action

The narrative mixes real everyday things with the absurd: The barber Ivan Yakovlevich place at breakfast in his bread a nose that belongs to the colleges Assessor Kovalev, he shaved on Wednesdays and Sundays. Frightened, he packed his nose and throws it off a bridge into the Neva River. Accordingly, those Kovalev fixed upon awakening that is missing his nose. When he therefore makes his way to report this to the police prefect, he hits the road in the uniform of a State Council his own nose. He pursued stunned, she talks to, but is rejected by her. The Chief of Police shall not come to a newspaper rejects an indication of the nose from. Kovalev returns stumped back home, as is reported to him that the nose at the moment, because she wanted to climb the stage-coach to Riga, had been arrested because they own a fake passport. The policeman who arrested her nose, she wrapped in a piece of paper and bring them Kovalev. The joy is but only briefly, because the nose does not want to stick to their old place, all attempts fail, even the doctor can not help. Meanwhile, the rumor has a nose that go for a walk every day on the Nevsky Prospekt, distributed. But one day Kovalyov wakes up with his nose in the face, as if nothing had happened.

Interpretation

In this story Gogol absolute absurdities has connected with everyday events. The absurd events is told like a normal banality. The story has been interpreted in many ways and different. But it is certainly an example of Gogol's understanding of the world: so it goes on in a world in which the devil is at work. Man is torn by the loss of his nose from his security and loses his safety. By the grotesque events that reality is distorted. The beautiful appearance, the facade has been destroyed. But where many Russian authors failed in the interpretation, recognizes the thoughtful reader that it was all a grotesque dream. The narrative is considered the first surrealist prose piece.

Adaptations

• The Nose, opera in three acts by Dmitri Shostakovich ( Op 15, in 1927/28 ).