The Terrible VengeanceThe story opens at the wedding of the Cossack yesaul Gorobets's son in a neighborhood of Kiev.

Among the guests are the recently married Cossack, panDanilo Burulbash, and his wife, pani Katerina,

who live just across the Dnieper River. They are honored guests, Danilo is Gorobets's sworn brother.

Not present, though, is Katerina's father, who was expected to appear after having spent 21 years in

foreign lands.

During the celebration, the yesaul brings out two holy icons, at the sight of which a stranger, dressed

like a Cossack, stops his festive as well as mocking dance, and transforms into a sorcerer with a sharp

chin, a beak, green eyes, and bluish lips. In sight of the shocked crowd, he disappears.

Danilo and Katerina discuss the sorcerer in a boat, paddled by two men, on their way home across

the Dnieper. As they pass a cemetery, corpses come out of the ground, each more terrifying than the

previous one and each screaming "I'm suffocating". Danilo tells her and their baby son Ivan that

Cossacks do not fear sorcerers.

As soon as Katerina's father arrives at her and Danilo's home the next morning, an argument starts

when he demands that she explain her late return the previous night. Danilo also notices that, unlike the

Cossacks, his father-in-law refuses to eat halušky and pork, only pretends to drink mead, and generally

acts more like the Poles and Turks than one of their own. In the ensuing saber and gun fight, Katerina's

father shoots Danilo in the arm before she intervenes and begs them to forgive one another.

Katerina then tells Danilo about her dream the previous night about a sorcerer who wants to marry her,

which Danilo takes to be a grave sign. Later in the evening, Danilo notices unexpected flashes from a

distant, abandoned castle. He makes sure Katerina is safe at home and goes to investigate. When he

climbs up a tree outside the lit window, he sees Katerina’s father calling up spells, and her soul appears

in a blue haze. The sorcerer commands her to marry him, Danilo is horrified to discover that his father-

in-law is a sorcerer. Once Danilo returns home, his wife recounts to him a strange incestuous dream,

which matches what Danilo witnessed in the castle. She accepts Danilo's explanation that her father is

the Antichrist.

The Cossacks capture the sorcerer and chain him in the cellar of Danilo and Katerina's house. Her

father tells Katerina that the chains do not confine him, but that the walls are ensorcelled as they were

built by a starets, an Orthodox monk. He imposes on Katerina to release him for his soul's deliverance.

Convinced that he will repent and be saved, Katerina sets him free and soon curses herself for doing

so.

A group of Poles, organized by the sorcerer, come to take Danilo's land but they are struck down one

by one by him and his fellow Cossacks. At the end of the battle, though, the sorcerer shoots Danilo

dead from behind a tree. A desperate Katerina falls asleep at night, has a dream about her son being

killed, wakes up from the nightmare, and finds the baby dead in its cradle.

Katerina turns mad until a traveler stops at her house one day and appears to bring her back to sanity.

But when he claims that Danilo once told him to marry her should Danilo die, Katerina recognizes him

as the sorcerer and tries to stab him, but he gets hold of the knife, kills her and flees on horseback.

After the famous impressionist description of the Dnieper (one of the most celebrated passages in

Russian literature), a miracle happens: both the Crimea and the Carpathians become visible from Kiev.

As clouds clear off towering Mount Kriváň, the sorcerer sees a hulking knight with a boy on a horse

riding down its slopes and grows increasingly agitated as the bogatyr gets ever closer. He pleads with

a starets at the Kiev Monastery of the Caves to help him, but he will not, for the sorcerer is already

damned, so the sorcerer kills the starets.

Eventually, the hulking knight catches up with the sorcerer and casts him into an abyss where corpses

await to eternally gnaw on his body. The largest of the corpses is a man named Petro, punished so by

God for murdering his brother Ivan and Ivan's son out of greed. The knight and boy appear to be their

spirits.

The Story of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan NikiforovichThis story takes place in a bucolic small town of Mirgorod (Myrhorod in Ukrainian), written in the style

featuring grotesque, realistic portrayals of the characters. The two Ivans are gentlemen landowners,

neighbors and great friends, each one almost being the opposite image of the other. Ivan Ivanovich is

tall, thin, and well-spoken, for example, while Ivan Nikiforovich is short, fat, and cuts to the point with a

biting honesty.

One day, Ivan Ivanovich notices his friend's servant hanging some clothes out to dry as well as some

military implements, especially a Turkish rifle that interests him. He goes over to Nikiforovich’s house

and offers to trade it for a brown pig and two sacks of oats, but his friend is unwilling to part with it and

calls Ivan Ivanovich a goose, which terribly offends him. After this, they begin to hate each other.

Nikiforovich erects a goose pen with two posts resting on Ivanovich’s property, as if to rub in the insult.

To retaliate, Ivan Ivanovich saws the legs off in the night and then fears that his former friend is going to

burn his house down. Eventually, Ivan Ivanovich goes to the courts with a petition to have Ivan

Nikiforovich arrested for his slander. The judge cannot believe what is occurring and tries to convince

him to make amends, but he disregards their suggestions and leaves the courthouse.

Shortly after this, Ivan Nikiforovich comes into the court with his own petition, to the amazement of

those gathered there. Strangely enough, shortly after Ivan Nikiforovich leaves, the petition is stolen by a

brown pig belonging to Ivan Ivanovich. The police chief’s attempt to have the pig arrested and to

convince Ivanovich to reconcile with his friend is unsuccessful. Because of the pig a new petition is

filed, which is quickly duplicated and filed within a day, but sits in the archives for a few years.

Eventually, the chief of police has a party that Ivan Ivanovich is attending, but his old friend does not,

because neither will go anywhere where the other is present. The party guest Anton Prokofievich goes

to Ivan Nikiforovich’s house to convince him to come, unknown to the other Ivan. When he convinces

him, he sits down to dinner and both Ivans notice each other sitting across the table and the party

grows silent. However, they continue eating with nothing occurring. At the end of dinner both try to

leave without the other noticing, and some of the party members push them towards each other so they

make up. They begin to, but Nikiforovich mentions the word "goose" again, and Ivanovich storms out of

the house.

The narrator returns to Mirgorod many years later and sees the two Ivans again, completely worn out.

Each is convinced that their case will be concluded in his favour the following day, and the narrator

shakes his head in pity and leaves, stating: "It is a depressing world, gentlemen!"

The Diary of a MadmanDiary of a Madman centres on the life of Poprishchin, a low-ranking civil servant and titular

counsellor who yearns to be noticed by a beautiful woman, the daughter of a senior official, with whom

he has fallen in love. His diary records his gradual slide into insanity. As his madness deepens, he

begins to suspect two dogs of having a love affair and believes he has discovered letters sent between

them. Finally, he begins to believe himself to be the heir to the throne of Spain. When he is hauled off

and maltreated in the asylum, the madman believes he is taking part in a strange coronation to the

Spanish throne. Only in his madness does the lowly anti-hero attain greatness. As he said in his first

sight of her, just after being a beast of a civil servant himself, “A footman opened the carriage door and

out she fluttered, just like a little bird.”

The story satirizes the rampant petty officialdom of the bureaucracy in the 1830s in St Petersburg, and

some have interpreted it as going beyond this to become an allegory about the political state

of Russia at the time, revealing Gogol's view of the government from the standpoint of a lowly citizen.

The story also portrays the average man's quest for individuality in a seemingly indifferent, urban city.

The NoseThe story is in three parts:

Part one[edit]

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

(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.

Part Two[edit]

At the onset of “The Nose,” Major Kovalyov awakens to discover that his nose is missing, leaving a

smooth, flat patch of skin in its place. His nose is already pretending to be a human being. He finds and

confronts it 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 it 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 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.

Part three[edit]

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.

The OvercoatThe story narrates the life and death of titular councillor Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin (Акакий

Акакиевич Башмачкин), an impoverished government clerk and copyist in the Russian capital of St.

Petersburg. Akaky is dedicated to his job, though little recognized in his department for his hard work.

Instead, the younger clerks tease him and attempt to distract him whenever they can. His threadbare

overcoat is often the butt of their jokes. Akaky decides it is necessary to have the coat repaired, so he

takes it to his tailor, Petrovich, who declares the coat irreparable, telling Akaky he must buy a new

overcoat.

The cost of a new overcoat is beyond Akaky's meager salary, so he forces himself to live within a strict

budget to save sufficient money to buy the new overcoat. Meanwhile, he and Petrovich frequently meet

to discuss the style of the new coat. During that time, Akaky's zeal for copying is replaced with

excitement about his new overcoat, to the point that he thinks of little else. Finally, with the addition of

an unexpectedly large holiday salary bonus, Akaky has saved enough money to buy a new overcoat.

Akaky and Petrovich go to the shops in St. Petersburg and pick the finest materials they can afford

(marten fur was too expensive, so they use cat fur for the collar). The new coat is of impressively good

quality and appearance and is the talk of Akaky's office on the day he arrives wearing it. His clerk

superior decides to host a party honoring the new overcoat, at which the habitually solitary Akaky is out

of place; after the event, Akaky goes home from the party, far later than he normally would. En route

home, two ruffians confront him, take his coat, kick him down, and leave him in the snow.

Akaky finds no help from the authorities in recovering his lost overcoat. Finally, on the advice of another

clerk in his department, he asks for help from a "Person of Consequence", a general recently promoted

to his position who belittles and shouts at his subordinates to solidify his position. After keeping Akaky

waiting, the general demands of him exactly why he has brought so trivial a matter to him, personally,

and not presented it to his secretary. Socially inept Akaky makes an unflattering remark concerning

departmental secretaries, provoking so powerful a scolding from the general that he nearly faints and

must be led from the general's office. Soon afterward, Akaky falls deathly ill with fever. In his last hours,

he is delirious, imagining himself again sitting before the general; at first, Akaky pleads forgiveness, but

as his death nears, he curses the general.

Soon, a corpse, identified as Akaky's ghost, haunts areas of St. Petersburg, taking overcoats from

people; the police are finding it difficult to capture him. Finally, Akaky's ghost catches up with the

general — who, since Akaky's death, had begun to feel guilt over having mistreated him — and takes

his overcoat, frightening him terribly; satisfied, Akaky is not seen again. The narrator ends his narration

with the account of another ghost seen in another part of the city.