Speranza
"Il naso" is a satirical short story by Nikolai Gogol.
Written
in 1835, it tells of a St. Petersburg official whose nose leaves
his face and develops a life of its own.
The story is in three parts:
On the
25th of March, the barber Ivan Yakovlevich finds a nose in his bread during
breakfast.
With horror he recognizes this nose as that of one of his regular
customers, Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov (pretentiously known as 'Major Kovalyov').
He tries to
get rid of it by throwing it in the Neva River, but he is caught by a police
officer.
At the onset of “Il naso,” Major Kovalyov awakens
to discover that his nose (metaphorically, his profile) is missing, leaving a smooth, flat patch of skin in
its place.
The collegiate assessor's nose is already pretending to be a human.
The collegiate assessor finds and confronts
his nose in the Kazan Cathedral.
But, from its clothing it is apparent that the nose
has acquired a higher rank in the Civil Service than he and refuses to return to
his face.
Kovalyov visits the newspaper office to place an ad about the loss of
his nose, but is refused.
Kovalyov returns to his flat, where the police
officer who caught Ivan finds him and returns the nose (which he caught at a
coach station, trying to flee the city).
Kovalyov's joy is cut short when he
finds that he is unable to re-attach the nose, even with the help of the doctor.
The next day, Kovalyov writes a letter to Madam Podtochina Grigorievna, a woman
who wants him to marry her daughter, and accuses her of stealing his nose.
He
believes that she has placed a curse on him for his fickleness toward her
daughter.
He writes to ask her to undo the spell, but she oddly misinterprets the
letter as a proposal to her daughter.
Her reply convinces him that she is
innocent.
In the city, rumours of the nose's activities have spread, and crowds
gather in search of it.
On the 7th of April, Kovalyov
wakes up with his nose reattached.
He is carefully shaved by the barber and
happily promenades about the city to show off his
nose.
-----
Critics note that the story's title in Russian ("nos") is the reverse of the Russian word for "dream" ("son").
As the
unreliable narrator himself notes, the story "contains much that is highly
implausible", while an earlier version of the story ended with Kovalyov waking
and realizing that the story was indeed a dream.
Without the awakening, however,
the story becomes a precursor of magical realism (or theatre of the absurd), as an unreal element is woven
into a realistic narration.
The story can be interpreted as referring to a castration complex: the removal of Kovalyov's nose
(and its developing a mind of its own) threaten both his chances of acquiring a
position of power -- a profile -- and of being a success with women.
In Russia, a version
appeared which substituted "..." for the word "nos" so that the reader
would be inclined to interpret it as "khui", the Russian word for
penis.
It is obvious that Kovaliov equates the loss of his nose with
castration, emasculation, and impotence to a certain degree
At the end
the story drifts away and it appears Gogol is talking directly to the reader.
It
is never explained why the Kovaliov's nose fell off in the first place, why it could talk,
nor why it found itself reattached.
By doing this, Gogol is playing on the
assumptions of readers, who may happily seek absurd stories, but at the same
time still having the desire for a normal explanation.
The Nose is a piece of sheer play, almost sheer
nonsense.
In it more than anywhere else Gogol displays his extraordinary magic
power of making great comic art out of
nothing.
Dimitri Shostakovich's opera "Il naso", first
performed in 1930 -- also in FLORENCE and ROME -- is based on this story.
A short film based on the story was
made by Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker in 1963 and used pinscreen
animation.
A play for radio based on the story was written by UK author
Avanti Kumar and first produced and broadcast in Ireland by RTÉ in 1995.
In
April 2002, the BBC Radio 4 comedy series Three Ivans, Two Aunts and an Overcoat
broadcast an adaptation of the story starring Stephen Moore.
An album in
Romanian, Nasul, based on the story was released by Ada Milea and Bogdan
Burlăcianu in 2007.
A play based on the short story was written by Tom Swift
and produced by The Performance Corporation in 2008.
The Fat Git Theatre
Company performed their adaptation of the short story in 2011.
WMSE (91.7 FM
in Milwaukee, WI) broadcast an adaptation by Wisconsin Hybrid Theater (Radio
WHT)in 2011.
The Moscow Museum of Erotic Art put on an adaptation
based on Vladimir Putin losing his genitalia to coincide with the 2012
presidential election.
References:
Jump up ^ Bocharov, Sergey
(2008). Гоголь в русской критике: антология. p. 357.
Jump up ^ Lauren Lydic
(2010). “Noseological” Parody, Gender Discourse, and Yugoslav Feminisms:
Following Gogol'’s “Nose” to Ugrešić’s “Hot Dog on a Warm Bun”. Comparative
Literature, 62(2). University of Oregon. doi:10.1215/00104124-2010-004
Jump
up ^ Mirsky, D. S. (1858). Francis J. Whitfield, ed. A History of Russian
Literature. Alfred A. Knopff. p. 152.
Jump up ^
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nsnhd
Jump up ^
http://web.thedailyherald.com/people/18-entertainment/25833-russian-poll-satire-takes-putins-manhood-away-.html
External
links[edit]
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
The
Nose
The Nose, English translation, from Project
Gutenberg
Bibliomania: Free Online Literature and Study Guides: The
Nose
Гоголь Николай Васильевич. Нос (Cyrillic text)
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Works by Nikolai Gogol
NovelsDead Souls
Taras
Bulba
PlaysThe Government Inspector
Marriage
The
Gamblers
Short story
collectionsEvenings on a Farm Near
Dikanka
Mirgorod
Arabesques
Short storiesPreface to Evenings on
a Farm Near Dikanka
"The Fair at Sorochyntsi"
"St. John's Eve"
"May
Night, or the Drowned Maiden"
"The Lost Letter: A Tale Told by the Sexton of
the N...Church"
"Christmas Eve"
"A Terrible Vengeance"
"Ivan
Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt"
"A Bewitched Place"
"The Old World
Landowners"
"Taras Bulba"
"Viy"
"The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich
Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich"
"The Portrait"
"A Chapter from an
Historical Novel"
"Nevsky Prospect"
"The Prisoner"
"Diary of a
Madman"
"The Nose"
"The Carriage"
"The Overcoat"
PoetryOde
to Italy
Hans Küchelgarten
Essays"Woman"
Selected Passages from
Correspondence with his Friends
Meditations on the Divine
Liturgy
Bibliography
Categories:
Short stories by Nikolai Gogol
1836 short
stories
Magic realism
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
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