The Comparative Studies of 「Madman's Diary」 and 「The Overcoat」

김문황

doi:10.21049/ccs.2009.13.1.5

The purpose of this paper is to draw out the symbolic theme of 「 Madman's Diary」through the careful textual examinations and some comparative researches with 「The Overcoat」. During the 19th century many critics of Realism including Vissarion Belinskij have considered Gogol's 「The Overcoat」and 「Madman's Dair y」as excellent Russian Realism works, even though they contain some fantastic and romantic elements such as demon, ghost, madman's fantastic thoughts. As a reaction of Realists' assertion, from the beginning of the 20th century Андрей Белый, Валерий Брюсов, Дмитрий Мер жковский, Василий Гиппиус, Вячеслав Иванов, Иван Еремаков, Г. А. Гуковский, Владимир Набоков, and В.И. Еремина, who have shed the light on innumerable unexplored aspects of Gogol's art, have insisted that it is hardly founded any realistic elements in the both works. As I have researched 「The Overcoat」and 「Madman's Dairy」, there is a big difference between both protagonists ― Акакий Акакиевич Ба шмачкин and Аксентий Иванович Поприщин. They are same age(42 years old) and the 9th rank officer of the government office at Petersburg. However their attitudes towards the outer world are quite different. Башмачкин's reaction is passive to them, otherwise Поприщи н's is active and aggressive toward them. Especially the latter puts himself into the fantastic world, then he believe himself that he could achieve his aims through it. In both works Gogol used his own literary device so-called 'the elimination of the limit in between reality and dream'. In the course of the driving Поприщин refuses his identity and even recreates a new identity for himself. However he does not know the fact that he drives himself into the destruction. In the long run his lust and sexual desire have crushed himself.

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