The Ghost of Gogol. Phantasmagoria. Lana Ignatieva

one should describe the children of the heroes of the second tome, it’s about fifteen characters in total. If you want to die, I’m ready to dictate to you.

      – In your letters you wrote that a man would come and write in two weeks what you had been writing for five years. Who it was said about?

      – A Belarusian living in your time will finish it and he’ll immediately die. Everyone who understand the meaning and read the book will die.

      No one can finish it only if I dictate myself but then the man will die in agony. I wrote, rooting for the country and people.

      – Is this the fate of all people?

      – Anyone who starts writing will die.

      – Did you burn “Dead Souls” because of your fear of death or there was another reason?

      – Because I knew that I would die if I put it on the air, and everyone who reads it will die, everyone who understands the meaning of this book will die, they will die in agony.

      – What did you understand over the years when you wrote “Dead Souls”?

      – I did not write a humorous work, but was rooting for the country and people, I was revolutionary all in all.

      – Why did Pushkin give you “Dead Souls” for writing?

      – He was too busy finishing writing in France after imitating his death in a duel to get rid of his large financial debts, the only way was to move to another place, creative people do not know how to handle money.

      – There is a four-tome edition of my letters an edition of Marx. It is located in two libraries, in Moscow “Leninka” and the Presidential library, there are all the answers about “Dead Souls”. There you can understand everything. Dead souls can be found everywhere. They are existing in all activities. For example, an official gets his relatives to work, none of them work, but they make money.

      – What way did you see the way of Plyushkin’s redemption?

      – He should become generous in the second part, he should have give everything away, then go to the monastery and there regret the things he did. But if you start writing about them, you will die.

      – Where did Chichikov hide the money?

      – He had a suitcase with banknotes, he also kept banknotes in the bank.

      – Why didn’t Pannochka eat well?

      – When demons come, people don’t eat well.

      – Can I continue your story “Alfred”?

      – In the Museum of Great Britain, in Moscow there is an old English yard. There are books, they are under a cap in public view.

      – Is this King Alfred? History play?

      – Yes, a drama, a Shakespearean story.

      – Was everything including looting of the monastery fictional at the beginning of this work?

      – It was a real story that I heard from Ulan.

      – Did the nuns really cut their faces up there?

      – They did this because they wanted to put an earmark on the face, on the cheek under the eye.

      – An earmark?

      – Yes.

      – And what for?

      – An earmark means the property of the landowner. It was too harsh for the mores of the time.

      – Does it make sense for me to try to finish it?

      – Yes, it does, everything is fine with it, it will be interesting.

      – Won’t I die?

      – No.

      – What do you regret?

      – I regret not having children.

      – So, was there no woman you could love?

      – No, I had other passions – to explore a person. I gave my best to art. I felt like a miserable person and then I unleashed the conflict, leading to rebellion, a rout from humility to rebellion, this was an important internal feature for me, I used to demonstrate in my characters, but the characters were not mine.

      – What was the letter to Prokopovich about?

      – It was the plan of the work, he had to save it in the archives so that I could go back and finish writing, this is another “Evenings on the farm”.

      – Did you enjoy living in Rome?

      – Yes, it was comfortable there. Nobody approached me.

      – The maid of honor Alexandra wrote: “I sold myself for six thousand souls for the brothers,” what was she talking about?

      – It’s about the second tome of “Dead Souls”. She read it in pieces. She really liked this work, she began to live with this work, forced herself to live righteously.

      – Do you know that she has been sad about you for thirty years after your death?

      – I do know.

      – Did you have feelings for her?

      – No one knew how to make raspberry jam like the way she did.

      – What was the letter to Pushkin on October 7, 1835 about.

      I stopped at the third chapter, I’m looking for a snitch, I want to show Russia from one side?

      – At that moment the bureaucracy began to run the state and stopped interacting with those they called people. So I started to mock and writing characters in grotesque manner.

      – How did you manage to be so courage under the royal mode? What worth the “Inspector” had!

      – I was considered a fool, I could say anything not being taken to jail.

      – I felt like a miserable person in society. I demonstrated a rebellion in my heroes, an uprising, I was a revolutionary. There was a plan in one of my letters; one more “Evenings on the Farm…”

      – Where is the first tome now?

      – In America, in the library.

      – The second tome was about alien languages, what is it about?

      – Sanskrit and Russian are the only terrestrial languages, all the rest of the unearthly, were brought in.

      – Were you left-handed or right-handed?

      – I was left-handed at first, but retrained, could not quickly write, when one hand got tired, I began to write with the other.

      – What happened to your health?

      – They could not make a diagnosis, in those days there was no such

      some diagnoses, something with the coronary vessels, I had an advanced bipolar disorder, had malaria since childhood.

      – But I wasn’t out of my mad! They thought a lot about me. I was not going to die, I expected to live till my 98 years.

      – And what are the fears about being buried alive and where are the fears

      about your death come from?

      – I had a meeting with Turgenev, we were talking about “between life and death”, that’s where I turn it on and fears appeared. There were only four meetings, and he

      all the time freaked out and ran away from me.

      – Have you really seen the Devil?

      – Yes. He shook hands with me.

      – What for?

      – It’s better not to talk