The Old World Landowners

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Old World Landowners (1835) is the first tale in the Mirgorod collection by Nikolai Gogol.

This story represents the mature Gogol and hints at his later works. The tale is simple, Gogol opens by providing a very romantic description of landowners in the countryside, with particular attention given to minute details, turned into almost forms of fantasy using extremely descriptive terms. The two landowners, Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulkheria Ivanovna Tovstogub live peacefully together in a remote village. The descriptions of them fit into the Slavophile tradition, comparing them strikingly against urbuan Russians (particularly in Petersburg), referred to as “paltry contemptible creatures.” The two old landowners live in peace, with a mutual love that brings a sense of sympathy. The bulk of the opening focuses on their day-to-day lives, eating jelly, making jokes and so forth. Eventually, Gogol introduces into the story Pulkheria’s grey cat, which Afanasy jokes about, wondering why anyone would waste time with such a creature. The cat is introduced with a sense of foreboding, with Gogol commenting that little things can effect the stability of the most strong of realities ("a melancholy incident that transformed forever the life of that peaceful nook" is the line). Her cat gets away at one point, and she finds it shortly thereafter in a feral state. Though it comes back to her and goes inside the house to be fed, the cat seems strangely different and eventually flees the house to never return. Pulkheria then sinks into thought, believing that death will soon come for her. She grows ill and weary and dies, leaving Afanasy alone. He progressively breaks down, disturbed by the smallest things for they remind him of Pulkheria, and himself dies in time after he believes he hears her calling to him outside, the entire area he had control over slowly becoming more degradaded as his condition worsens. A distant kinsman from an unknown location takes over control of the estate, who was a lieutenant, and soon everything falls into ruin. He puts everything under the care of a board of trustees, bringing things like a fine English sickle to clear the area, and the huts on the property soon fall down, leaving some peasants drunken and hopeless and others to run away to find better lives. The new owner rarely visits the estate, and the story ends commenting on his visits to local markets to buy nothing over a ruble in price.