Ryker (dead Souls Mc: Prospects #4)

Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, Russian writer, was first published in 1842, and is one of the most prominent works of 19th-century Russian literature. Gogol himself saw it as an “epic poem in prose”, and within the book as a “novel in verse”. Despite supposedly completing the trilogy’s second part, Gogol destroyed it shortly before his death. Although the novel ends in mid-sentence (like Sterne’s Sentimental Journey), it is usually regarded as complete in the extant form…

Gogol's poem Dead Souls formed a compulsory part of the school literature programme. Pupils were tormented by writing essays on the characters of Chichikov, Plyushkin and Nozdryov, serfdom, or rather the lawless state of the Russian people prior to the Bolshevist revolution. In a word, instead of joy, the writer was burdened by enmity and boredom. And he was even forced to cut the text of the lyrical deviation "Eh, a troika, a troika-bird..." This text contained a literary interpretation of the belief of the writer in the bright future of his people. And that future was our Soviet life... And so when I took to considering the libretto for the opera, the first thing I resolved was the following: not to include the text of the "Troika-Bird", to do without it. That was, probably, my first impulse in creating the idea of the opera Dead Souls. This dream lived within me for ten whole years. First consideration, then reading and rereading the great book, notes of the most important things for the musical dramaturgy of the text, sketching the music. And, lastly, the joys and the tortures of working every single day. No contracts, promises, guaranteed theatres or production dates - absolutely nothing of that kind at all.
Rodion Shchedrin. Autobiographical Notes