The Collected Tales (Everyman's Library) [Hardcover]

Nikolai Gogol (Author), Richard Pevear (Translator), Larissa Volokhonsky (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 7, 2008

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

From the acclaimed translators of War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, and The Brothers Karamazov, a brilliant translation of Nikolai Gogol’s short fiction.

Collected here are Gogol’s finest tales—stories that combine the wide-eyed, credulous imagination of the peasant with the sardonic social criticism of the city dweller—allowing readers to experience anew the unmistakable genius of a writer who paved the way for Dostoevsky and Kafka. All of Gogol’s most memorable creations are here: the minor official who misplaces his nose, the downtrodden clerk whose life is changed by the acquisition of a splendid new overcoat, the wily madman who becomes convinced that a dog can tell him everything he needs to know. The wholly unique blend of the mundane and the supernatural that Gogol crafted established his reputation as one of the most daring and inventive writers of his time.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“The present translators have contrived to reveal [Gogol’s qualities] to the non-Russian reader at last, and virtually for the first time.” —John Bayley, The New York Review of Books

“A superb translation.” —The New Yorker

About the Author

Nikolai Gogol was born in 1809. The author of such classic works as Dead Souls, The Government Inspector, and Taras Bulba, he died in 1852.

Together, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have translated works by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, and Gogol. They live in Paris.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 472 pages
• Publisher: Everyman's Library (October 7, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307269698
• ISBN-13: 978-0307269690
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 1.2 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #133,824 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Rave with a Caveat, November 25, 2008

By 

Michael A. Roberts - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Collected Tales (Everyman's Library) (Hardcover)

The reborn Everyman's Library is so uniquely head and shoulders above every other publishing venture available today that it seems ungrateful to append even a small caution about this newest title in the series. Especially so as the fresh translation really is a miraculous breakthrough--a huge improvement over previous efforts. What then is the problem? Simply that this is NOT a "collected" tales in the common understanding of that term, but a "selected" one. Not a great problem unless one is seeking a particular omitted piece, but it does raise some question about at least one link in the editorial chain--a failure of oversight that has marred certain series titles irretrievably and that is uncomfortably disrespectful to the quality of the project overall.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The first modern Russian writer, November 17, 2010

By 

R. M. Peterson (Santa Fe, NM) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Collected Tales (Everyman's Library) (Hardcover)

Nikolai Gogol wrote the stories included in this volume between 1831 and 1842, yet many of them are so modern that one could readily believe that they had been written between 1931 and 1942. Given their 19th-Century vintage, some of these tales are indeed classics of literature.

It might be useful to specify which tales are included in this volume and who the translators are. Despite the "collected" of the title, this volume does not gather together ALL of Gogol's tales. Instead, it offers seven "Ukrainian Tales" and six "Petersburg Tales", presented in the order of their composition.

The seven Ukrainian Tales are:
St. John's Eve
The Night Before Christmas *
The Terrible Vengeance
Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt *
Old World Landowners
Viy
The Story of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich *

The six Petersburg Tales are:
Nevsky Prospect *
The Diary of a Madman *
The Nose
The Carriage
The Portrait
The Overcoat *

(The asterisks denote the stories that are classics in my personal pantheon.) The most conspicuous omission from this volume is "Taras Bulba".

The translators are Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, who seem to have made it their mission to translate into English all of the major works of 19th-Century Russian Literature. Their "style" has been criticized by some, but I (though not at all literate in Russian) suspect it well-suited to the informal, irreverent, even madcap prose of Nikolai Gogol. Over the years I ended up with three other collections of Gogol's tales and I sense that the P&V translations are more appropriate for Gogol than those by Constance Garnett and pretty much on a par with those by David Magarshack.

Gogol was born and raised in the Ukraine, the son of an undistinguished country squire. Although Russian was not his native language, at the age of 19 he went to St. Petersburg to make his fortune as a writer. But he never became a fully assimilated Russian; he forever was, like many of his characters, an outsider.

One of the reasons Gogol strikes me as a modern writer is that the vast majority of his characters are drawn from the common folks - the Ukrainian peasant, the village blacksmith, the retired sub-lieutenant, the earnest but impoverished artist, and the clerk at the very bottom of the government bureaucracy. Gogol's protagonists are not dandified aristocrats like Pushkin's Eugene Onegin or dashing warriors like Lermontov's Pechorin. They are the hoi polloi of Russia and Little Russia.

The supernatural in the form of magic, witches, and devils permeates these tales. There is much that is grotesque or gothic, harking back to E.T.A. Hoffmann, and much that is surreal, pointing ahead to, among others, Bruno Schulz. (I would bet a modest sum that Schulz was well-acquainted with the tales of Gogol.) One theme that is repeatedly played out in different variations is the contest between Good and Evil. Another is the contrast of dreams and reality and the sad gulf for most people that exists between their hopes and desires and their actual lots in life. If asked to choose an epigraph for this volume of Gogol's tales I would be very tempted to go with the lines from T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men": "Between the idea / And the reality / * * * Falls the Shadow."

Gogol was a great writer - but he also was human, and I must add that for me it was impossible to overlook in his tales the repeated deprecation of Jews. This anti-Semitism is more prevalent in the "Ukrainian Tales" and some might argue in defense of Gogol that he was simply reflecting, realistically, the prejudices that Ukrainians of that time had against not only Jews but also Muscovites, Poles, and Roman Catholics. Still, when a Jew is impliedly equated with the antichrist and is depicted engaging in cabalistic sorcery, a post-WWII reader gets a very queasy feeling.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully Written (Translated) Must Read!, March 4, 2009

By 

Nigel Keniry "nigel1228" (CHICAGO, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Collected Tales (Everyman's Library) (Hardcover)

After seeing "The Namesake" [...]
I was intrigued with references made to both "The Overcoat" and its author Nikolai Gogol and chose this "Everyman's Library" edition "The Collected Tales" which includes this short story. Published in 1842, the story and its author have had great influence on Russian literature, thus spawning Fyodor Dostoevsky's famous quote: "We all come out from Gogol's 'Overcoat'."

The stories are marvelous and the writing is good and this particular translation must be good, as I can't wait to read it each day. Highly recommended!