Bottemless Wine Bottle Candles

"The Overcoat" by Nikolai Gogol

of Gianni Quilici

Start with great pleasure to read "The Overcoat" for the way in which it takes shape the protagonist, the clerk Akaki Akàkievic.

first he has been completely absorbed in his work to the point of continuity in the evening at home. A simple mechanical work, from which, however, yields a true happiness, even under the eyes of derisive colleagues. This pleasure will continue when he is forced to take to the tailor sew a new coat, which he absolutely needed, since the old no longer repairable. The coat cost him sacrifices not indifferent, but this very process of conquest makes him happy, his coat is not his eyes just a tool to use, but a companion, a goal that is worth living. There

in Akaki Akàkievic for a sale to a (bilingual: in work and in the coat) that closes into that very poor, on the other hand there is happiness, because he does not recognize other possibilities, that's his way of being and existence, paradoxically, re-created. Does not exist for the monotony of Akaki Akàkievic copy passively, without any processing staff is also the pleasure to perform a task without any further liability.

gaze enjoyed Gogol, is similar to the look of a spectator who tells his readers, to whom it is addressed directly, what he saw and who knows, sometimes playing with them, because they all know, everyone has seen.

There will, as expected, the catastrophe: the coat is stolen by force, the clerk will contact the competent authorities and a "piece grosso”. Tutti lo tratteranno con alterigia e disprezzo. Di questo morirà. Una morte rapidissima.

Da qui, da questo momento il cambiamento di stile dello scrittore: da realistica la prosa di Gogol diventa fantastica.

Akàkii Akàkievic muore, infatti, ma il suo fantasma continuerà ad agitare la notte dei pietroburghesi attraverso “inafferrabili ma efficaci azioni sui vivi”, sopratutto verso l'ultimo delizioso ritratto (insieme a quello mirabile del sarto), il cosiddetto “Pezzo grosso”.

Clemente Rebora , traduttore, in un'analisi particolareggiata, nel complesso molto sottile, scriveva: “ Fra la parte realistica del racconto and that wonderful welding is morally perfect, and almost succeeded artistically (...)".

seems to me, however, that the weakest part of the story, because the shift given by Gogol seems kind of ideology. It 's more the revenge of the writer than the character. In fact, the Russian writer gives objectively devilishly symbolic dimension to the poor clerk, who had not realistically, making him a ghost of persecution, and likewise it seems unlikely the deep sense of guilt, which remains gripped by the "big shot".

Yet viewed through the eyes of the time, this shift is a reason. He wrote that even Clemente Rebora these effects were supernatural " a foothold in the intuitive happy superstitions of the time, when it was believed that the souls of the dead would return to work here Enlighten, and above all we are to believe in the apparitions of ghosts (...)".

Nikolai Gogol '. The coat. Translation, notes and annotations Clemente Rebora. SE.