The Overcoat

Implications and Indeterminacy in Gogol's â€Å"The Overcoat† Author(s): Victor Brombert Reviewed work(s): Source: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 135, No. 4 (Dec. , 1991), pp. 569-575 Published by: American Philosophical Society Stable URL: http://www. jstor. organization/stable/986817 . Gotten to: 25/01/2012 04:09 Your utilization of the JSTOR file shows your acknowledgment of the Terms and Conditions of Use, accessible at . http://www. jstor. organization/page/data/about/strategies/terms. sp JSTOR is a not-revenue driven assistance that helps researchers, specialists, and understudies find, use, and expand upon a wide scope of substance in a confided in advanced file. We use data innovation and apparatuses to expand profitability and encourage new types of grant. For more data about JSTOR, it would be ideal if you contact [emailâ protected] organization. American Philosophical Society is teaming up with JSTOR to digitize, save and stretch out access to Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. http://www. jstor. organization Indeterminacy Meanings and in Gogol's The Overcoat* VICTOR BROMBERT Henry Putnam University Professorof Romanceand ComparativeLiterature Princeton University kaky Akakyevich is the focal characterof Gogol's story TheOvercoat. In spite of the fact that Dostoyevsky gave normal money to the term â€Å"antihero† in Notes from Underground,it is Gogol's Akaky Akakyevich who is the authentic, unmitigated, and apparently unredeemable wannabe. For Dostoyevsky's enemy of brave paradoxalist, harassed with hypertrophia of the awareness, is very much perused, cerebral, seriously adademic, and garrulous. Akaky Akakyevich is not really mindful, and practically awkward. Gogol's masterful bet was to attempt to verbalize this incoherence. The story, in its plot line, is basic. A most unremarkable replicating agent in a St. Petersburg service uncovered, pitted, limited, and the substitute of his partners who concoct unfeeling methods of deriding himdiscovers one day that his despicably tattered coat no longer ensures him against the furious winter wind. The tailor he counsels completely will not fix the coat which is currently destroyed, and empts Akaky Akakyevich into having another jacket made, one absolutely too far in the red, yet which by dint of huge penances, he figures out how to obtain and wear with a newfound feeling of pride. However, his joy keeps going just one brief day. Intersection an abandoned quarter around evening time, he is assaulted by two cheats who thump him to the ground and take his jacket. Doused, solidified, profoundly annoyed, fiercely condemned by a prevalent whose help he challenged look for, Akaky builds up a fever, gets ridiculous, and bites the dust. One can barely talk about an intriguing plot line. However this straightforward story fits bashes of translations. Truth be told, there might be the same number of translations as there are perusers. The Overcoatcan be perused as a story, a hermeneutic riddle, an activity in triviality. Be that as it may, regardless, there is the compulsion to peruse it truly as parody with a social and * Read 9 November 1990. Procedures OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, VOL. 135, NO. 4, 1991 569 570 VICTOR BROMBERT moral message. In The Nose, Gogol had a great time of the rankconsciousness and dishonesty of government workers. In The Overcoat, he appears to ridicule deliberately the parasitical, languid, fake, universe of Russian officialdom, whose individuals are the weak middle people of a chain of importance of incapable force structure in which each subordinate feelings of dread and chimps his boss. Early Russian pundits, persuaded that writing must have an ethical message, read such a denunciatory and remedial mocking goal into the story despite the fact that obviously Gogol continually moves his tone, shields no clear standard, and efficiently ironizes any conceivable â€Å"serious† message. There is obviously the impulse to peruse The Overcoatas a story of sympathy, as a request for fellowship. The regrettably unprotected little agent, provoked and abused by the gathering, remains happily absent to the unfeeling tricks of which he is the butt, plan on his modest replicating movement. Just when the jokes become excessively over the top, or meddle with his work, does he fight gently. Be that as it may, here the tone of the story appears to change. For Gogol presents a youngster, as of late named to a similar office, who is about to start partaking in the general fun, and who is out of nowhere sent out by the abnormal notes in Akaky's voice which contact his heart with pity and make him abruptly observe everything in an altogether different light. A genuine disclosure radiating from a â€Å"unnatural† (neestestvennyi) power permits him to hear different words behind Akaky's trite supplication to be disregarded. What he hears are the profoundly entering, implicit words resounding with powerful importance: â€Å"I am thy sibling. Furthermore, with this voice from behind the voice comes the stunned consciousness of how much â€Å"inhumanity† there is in individuals, how much ruthlessness sneaks in what goes as cultivated society and edified conduct. The clear exercise in humankind given by the substitute casualty appears, in the quick setting, to have a practically strict character, particularly in the event that on e relates it to the storyteller's remarks, after Akaky's demise, on how a man of submission who bore the scoffs and abuse of his kindred people vanished from this world, however who, before his misery, had a dream of the splendid visitant (svetluy gost). The man of compliance, the man of distresses, similar to the implicit however plainly heard â€Å"I am thy brother,† appears to have a Christian, if not Christological, reverberation. In any case, we overlook Akaky's name, and that we are not permitted to do. For the patronymic label not just anxieties the standard of redundancy (Akaky's first name being actually equivalent to his father's), yet the clever sound reiteration is significantly more interesting in light of the fact that the syllable kak = like (tak kak = similarly as) inserts the rule of equivalence in Akaky's name, deciding, no doubt, his resolute, long lasting movement of replicating and certain judgment to equality. With respect to numerous years Akaky served in a similar office, Gogol sees that he â€Å"remained in the very same spot, in the very same situation, in the very same activity, doing the very same sort of work, to mind duplicating official reports. † But there is better (or more awful) particularly to Russian ears, for kakatj GOGOL'S THE OVERCOAT 571 (from the Greek cacos = terrible, detestable) is kids' discussion for poo, and caca in numerous dialects alludes to human stool. To be harrowed with such a name plainly identifies with the trash being routinely dumped on Akaky as he strolls in the road, and to his being treated without any regard by the guardians than a typical fly. The savage verbal fun around the syllable kak stretches out past the character's name, and debases Gogol's content. Gogol enjoys apparently unlimited minor departure from the words tak, kak,kakoi,kakoi-to,kakikh-to,vot-kak,neekak,takoi, takaya,kaknibut, (just in this way, that is the means by which, not the slightest bit, by one way or another, etc) which in the interpretation vanish through and through. The misuses of audio effects or sound implications unmistakably compare to an artist's interest with the esteemed cacophonic assets of customary discourse. 1 One last point about the decision of Akaky's name, explicitly the Christian demonstration of â€Å"christening†: as per custom, the schedule was opened indiscriminately and a few holy people's names (Mokkia, Sossia), including the name of the saint Khozdazat, were thought of, just to be dismissed by the mother since they sounded so odd. Akaky was picked on the grounds that that was the name of the dad. Be that as it may, Acacius, a heavenly priest of Sinai, was additionally a holy person and saint, and we get ourselves-particularly since the Greek prefix an (Acacius) connotes: not awful, along these lines great, mild, modest, submissive back to the strict theme. On the off chance that Akaky keeps on duplicating for his own pleasure at home, this is in enormous part in light of the fact that the euphoria of replicating has an explicitly ascetic reverberation. Gogol does for sure allude to his duplicating as a â€Å"labor of adoration. † Here another allurement pounces upon the peruser. Should The Overcoatnot be perused as hagiography in a trite present day setting, or at any rate as a satire of hagiography? Various components appear to loan backing to such a perusing of the story in or against the viewpoint of the conventional existences of the holy people: the modest errand of replicating records, reference to the subject of the saint (muchenik),salvational wording, conciliatory themes or fellowship (â€Å"I am thy brother†), Akaky's dreams and euphorias, his own specters from past the grave. Be that as it may, the most telling similarity with hagiographic legend is the change impact on others, first on the youngster who has a disclosure of a voice that isn't of this world (svet), and at the end he self-respecting, overbearing, Very Important Person on whom Akaky's phantom like ghost establishes a neverto-be-overlooked connection. 2 The jacket itself can take on strict implications since attire, in the imagery of the Bible and conventional ritual, frequently speaks to uprightness and salvation. The main issue with such an understanding and Gogol has composed Meditations on the D ivine Liturgy which 1 Boris Eichenbaum talks about Gogol's â€Å"phonic inscriptions† and â€Å"sound-semantics† in â€Å"How ‘The Overcoat' is Made,† in Gogol from the Twentieth Century, ed. Robert A. Maguire, Princeton University Press, 1974, p. 280. 2 See John Schillinger, â€Å"Gogol's ‘The Overcoat'as a Travesty of Hagiography,† Slavic and East EuropeanJournal, Spring 1972, 16, 1: 36-41. 572 VICTOR BROMBERT allude to the cleric's robe of honesty as a piece of clothing of salvation3-is that the coat can have an inverse emblematic centrality, that of concealing reality. Consequently the conventional picture of stripping to uncover the exposed self. Moreover, there are numerous other conceivable