SOURCE: Bowman, Herbert E. “‘The Nose.’” Slavonic and East European Review 31, no. 76 (December 1953): 204–11.

[In the following essay, Bowman surveys the critical reaction to “The Nose” and offers his own interpretation of Gogol's story.]

‘… Nevertheless, if you think over all this, there really is something in it.’

—N. Gogol', ‘The Nose’

I

In September 1836 Aleksandr Pushkin published in his literary journal The Contemporary a story entitled ‘The Nose’, written by Nikolay Gogol'. Pushkin prefaced the story with a note, which constitutes at the same time something like the blurb of an eminent fellow-author and the inducement of a cautious editor: ‘For a long time N. V. Gogol' would not agree to publishing this farce. But we have found in it so much that is unexpected, fantastic, amusing, and original, that we have persuaded him to allow us to share with the public the pleasure which his manuscript has afforded us.’¹ The critical studies and scholarly analyses which have followed ‘The Nose’ since its first appearance lead us to conclude that the public of Pushkin's day and since has not always shared the pleasure which the poet found in Gogol''s farce.

The story concerns mainly a young St. Petersburg bureaucrat, Major Kovalyov, who wakes up one morning to find himself without a nose. In desperation he chases from one city office to another in an effort to recover his nose. At the beginning of this search he chances to have an astonishing encounter with the nose itself, tricked out in the paraphernalia of a general.

Just when the nose seems to have eluded the major's pursuit, it is suddenly returned to him by a police officer. But even then Kovalyov naturally fails to make the amputated nose stick to his face.

When his plight has thus become hopeless, the whole incident, like a bad dream, is brought to a sudden close; the major simply wakes up with his nose, just as he had once, several weeks before, woken up without it.

To those who found ‘The Nose’ a mere wild fantasy, signifying nothing, Gogol' provided the troubling reassurance of his own full agreement. As the author's last thoughts come to an end at the end of the story, he is himself brought to exclaim: ‘No, no, I don't understand it at all.’

More than one reader and even professional student of ‘The Nose’ has been led to repeat, in honest dismay, Gogol''s mocking protestation of ignorance. Among the numerous studies of Gogol' and editions of his works one finds strikingly few efforts made to interpret ‘The Nose’. One can find, indeed, more than one example in critical works of what is clearly deliberate avoidance of the story. Thus, in a collection of essays on Gogol', edited by V. I. Pokrovsky, there is a chapter entitled ‘Gogol''s St. Petersburg Stories’, in which no study is made of ‘The Nose’.² Similarly, another collection of essays, edited by I. V. Posadsky, contains interpretations of almost all of Gogol''s stories except ‘The Nose’.³

Certain of the critics who do make some mention of ‘The Nose’ refuse to interpret it, and some have found it meaningless. Examples of the former are Louis Léger, who in his book Nicolas Gogol (Paris, 1914) leaves the story completely out of his account, and Enrico Pappacena (Gogol, Milan, 1930), who is satisfied merely to recount the story. Among critics who find the story essentially pointless might be mentioned N. Kotlyarevsky, who ascribes to ‘The Nose’ such an ‘insignificance of content’ that, in his opinion, ‘it would be strange to look for any idea in it’.⁴

Even where criticism has drawn closer to the spirit of Gogol''s story, it has not always been fully enlightening. Thus Innokenty Annensky ends his brief essay on ‘The Nose’ with a speculation upon the ‘main point of the story’—which he finds at the end of the story in the reconciliation of the major and the barber, ‘who, looking into the abyss in which their existence had nearly been swallowed up, continue on their way arm in arm’.⁵ At least one would prefer to see a critical essay devoted to and not merely concluded by so original a judgment.

Finally, as was to be expected, the possibility of seeing ‘The Nose’ as a castration fantasy has called forth at least one thoroughgoing Freudian analysis.⁶

The biographer and literary historian have added their contribution to an understanding of Gogol''s story. What they have especially provided is an impressive display of reasons why Gogol' should have thought of the nose as the possible protagonist of a story. First of all, Gogol''s own nose was conspicuous, and he was sensitive about it. His private correspondence contains more than one joking reference to his own nose. In this connection it will be remembered that numerous references to noses are made throughout Gogol''s literary works—for example in ‘The Nevsky Prospect’ and ‘The Diary of a Madman’.

This personal fixation was likely to have made Gogol' particularly attentive to the prominence of the nose in both the scientific and the literary world of his time.⁷ Medical science had lately recorded advance in rhinoplastic surgery. (Cf. the newspaper official's advice to Major Kovalyov: ‘They say there are people who can fix you up with any kind of nose you want.’⁸)

As a literary theme, the nose had been treated by Russian authors at least ever since the translation, completed in 1807, of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, in which the subject of noses is elaborately dealt with, especially in ‘Slawkenbergius's Tale’. Noses, and even heads, which run about on their own, which disappear and then return, which are even baked in bread (as in Part I of Gogol''s story), are to be found in Russian literature of the 1820's and 1830's.⁹

A further consideration, noted by Nabokov in his book on Gogol',¹⁰ might be inserted here, namely that the Russian language, perhaps even more than the English language, is rich in expressions dealing with the nose—and Gogol''s writing makes extensive use of them.

Thus a great variety of biographical and historical considerations can be called upon to show why Gogol' might have been attracted to the nose as the protagonist of a story. But they hardly help at all to explain the particular story which Gogol' wrote.

II

After accepting all the preceding considerations as quite relevant so far as they go—that is, in providing the setting in which Gogol' worked out his story—we are still left with the problem of explaining ‘The Nose’.

If, in an effort to understand Gogol''s fantasy, one turns from the intricacies of plastic surgery, Slawkenbergian caprice, and even Gogolian psychology—to say nothing of the labyrinth of castration fears—if one stands aside from all this and fixes one's full attention on the nose itself, one can make several easy discoveries.

The discovery which may provide the key to Gogol''s story is the simplest one of all, namely, that the nose (taken as a physical structure independent of the sense of smell) is perhaps the least important organ of the human body—yet it is at the same time the most conspicuous. And it is conspicuous not only by reason of its protuberant location in the head but by being extremely and proverbially individual in its shape and size.

A second striking fact about the nose is that, with all its conspicuousness, it is seen only by others and hardly at all by its owner, unless, like Major Kovalyov, he keeps a mirror handy. Perhaps only the madman Poprishchin has attempted to explain this physiological circumstance: ‘The Diary of a Madman’, it may be recalled, explains, in one of Poprishchin's last entries, that we cannot see our noses, because they all live on the moon.

As a third important feature of the nose we might take the somewhat odd, but nevertheless evident fact that there is something ridiculous about the nose. It is likely to appear in expressions that carry a note of ridicule or disparagement. A nose that is too conspicuous makes its owner something of a clown—either a sad clown, like Cyrano de Bergerac, or a happy one, like Jimmy Durante.

These are at least several of the distinctive traits of the nose. They suffice to make of the nose a perfectly appropriate vehicle for Gogol'. A ridiculous appurtenance, performing no real function, yet occupying the most advanced position in the human form, in the very middle of the face itself; a lazy, empty, foolish member; a thing of no value to its owner except for purposes of public show—what better object than the nose could have provided Gogol' with a humorous representation of his characteristic world of hollow and ludicrous ‘appearance’?

That Major Kovalyov, who loses his nose, is the epitome of empty appearance, is emphatically clear. His first act on awaking is to call for his mirror. He is the world's slave and the world's darling. His objectives in life are chiefly two—to win promotion and to marry ‘well’. His very title ‘major’ is a reminder of his self-regard: ‘… in order to give himself still more weight and distinction he never called himself simply a collegiate assessor, but always a major’. As a promising young official and a dashing young Don Juan, he dresses smartly, scrutinises the least pimple on his nose, wears ornate side-whiskers, and strolls along the Nevsky Prospect every day. ‘Therefore the reader may judge for himself what the major's position was when he saw, instead of a … nose, a ridiculously flat smooth place.’

The loss of his nose troubles the major for only one reason: it ruins his appearance. All his thought is of how he will look—to his friends, sweethearts, colleagues. ‘Where in the world can I let myself be seen, looking like such a buffoon? I have respectable acquaintances.’ It is, indeed, his sense of personal importance that makes the loss of his nose so particularly painful: ‘It is possible for some huckster-woman selling peeled oranges on the Voskresensky Bridge to sit there without a nose, but I have prospects …’

Of all the parts of his body which the major might have lost, it is his considered opinion—and one which we can share—that the most grievous to lose is precisely the insignificant and idiotic nose. To lose his nose is a worse calamity for the major than to lose even a hand or a foot (or both ears¹¹). Here the major's natural reluctance keeps him from pressing his argument to an even fuller conclusion, which we, with none of our bodily parts in danger, are at greater leisure to consider, namely, that for a man to lose even both arms or both legs is less destructive of his ‘appearance’ than it would be to lose his nose! And, as the major goes on to perceive, even a nose might be lost in some way so as to leave its owner's dignity intact, especially if it were lost for a respectable purpose, as in war or in a duel, whereas even that final dignity is denied the major now.

Gogol''s use of the nose as a gauge of personal esteem perhaps finds its most incisive dramatic statement in the major's encounter with his nose in the streets of St Petersburg. For it turns out that the nose is the major's superior by several grades: the nose appears, in fact, in the accoutrements of a state councillor, so that when Kovalyov addresses his nose, he stands as a major addressing a general. In this farcical scene, we are given a sharp perception both of the major's deference to rank and of Gogol''s mockery of rank. Even to his own nose, once it gets into the uniform of a superior, the major is ready to bow and scrape, with frequent ‘dear sir's’. By this same scene Gogol' reveals that the major's nose is the best part of him—indeed, the major's nose is the major's superior, for the nose is now clearly all that the major has lost, in brief, his standing in the world. When and if the major succeeds in becoming a general, it will be through the good offices of his ‘nose’. Thus Gogol' takes a bitter pleasure in showing us how the major, perfect creature of worldly ambition, is led around by the nose.

Gogol''s indulgence in grotesque fantasy—achieving, through fantasy, spiritual vision—is characteristically supported here by a refreshing and diverting concreteness. If it is true that the nose can appear as an officer, because it is the very sign of external appearance; it is also true that the nose makes a passable officer, because any general, muffled up in the habiliments of office, appears to any passerby as hardly more than a disembodied nose.

Gogol' thus makes the two-sided suggestion that a nose is an officer and an officer is a nose. Not content with cutting off the major's nose to spite his face, Gogol' proceeds to tweak the nose of all generals.

III

If ‘The Nose’ is taken as a grotesque laugh at the absurd importance of appearance in a world of appearance, then it becomes easy to interpret the central figure of the major and the strange accident which befalls him.

Around this focus Gogol' proceeded to fill out the canvas of his story, primarily by the episodes built out of various responses to the major's predicament. Thus we are given a scene at the newspaper office where Kovalyov tries in vain to insert an advertisement for his nose. There follows a scene at the office of the police inspector, who finally outrages the major by his reaction of stupid complacency when he announces that ‘no decent man would get into such a predicament’. The doctor whom Kovalyov summons, after the police have brought the nose back, turns out to be similarly useless, although full of medical advice. Kovalyov's next step, a desperate accusation of a staff-officer's wife as the cause of his nose-trouble, leads only to an exchange of letters hopelessly entangled in double-meanings. Meanwhile, the general public demonstrates its morbid curiosity about the major's nose, which is rumoured to be walking about in various parts of the city.

Gogol' has thus availed himself of the occasion for satirising a variety of stock attitudes, stock figures, stock responses within the official and public life of St Petersburg. The loss of his nose reduces the major to playing the part of a sad and anxious Khlestakov, calling out in the society around him its own absurd reactions to his absurd personal situation.

This series of encounters, which occupies so much space in the story, is, however, essentially additional and complementary to the principal theme of ‘The Nose’. To argue that Gogol' took the major's nose away merely in order to create out of the nose-chase a picaresque adventure among the institutions of St Petersburg is, in other words, to miss the first point of the story.¹²

In this connection, the documentary evidence is revealing: the history of the original manuscripts of the story shows that part of the detailed account of the reaction of St Petersburg to Major Kovalyov's strange case was a later development in Gogol''s composition.¹³

Not only this question of where the main emphasis of the story lies, but other minor structural features also are thrown into perspective once we are clear about Gogol''s original ‘inspiration’.

Psychologically, if not historically, this thought stands at the source of ‘The Nose’: Here am I, Major Kovalyov, a young man with a promising future, influential acquaintances, fascinating lady-friends—clearly a man on the make. What if I were to wake up one morning with some absurd disfigurement! What would be the most demoralising accident that could happen to me? To lose a hand, perhaps. Or a foot. Both ears? My nose! … Imagine the figure I should cut if my nose suddenly disappeared!

It is surely some such reflection in Gogol''s imagination that found its way into Major Kovalyov's nightmare. However Gogol' was to tell the major's story, it was certain that the main idea would retain its character of playful hypothesis: ‘What would happen if …’

As it turned out, Gogol' first considered telling his story as a dream (Son¹⁴). To cast the imaginative hypothesis into the form of a dream is obviously the most straightforward procedure. But the major's dream is more real than reality itself. However fantastic, the major's story is not mere fantasy. Perhaps to strengthen that realisation in the mind of the reader, Gogol' abandoned the dream-mechanism and made his story ‘real’—thus making it, of course, all the more fantastic.

In order to provide a setting of ‘reality’ for the fantasy, Ivan Yakovlevich, the barber of Part I, serves a primary purpose: by his confusing and complicating presence in the story, he prevents the major's tale from reverting to its original simplicity as a nightmare or a daydream. We may not have believed the major's denial that his nose-trouble was a dream or a pink elephant, but we are forced to take his story seriously when a second person, the barber, clearly not the creature of Kovalyov's imaginings, gets mixed up in the incident.

To sure, the barber's tale (Part I) and the major's tale (Part II) never mesh. Perhaps this is a defect in Gogol''s creation. On the other hand, this very incongruity increases the power of the narrative to engage and mystify.

Another structural detail which has been frequently criticised may likewise be made understandable by the foregoing interpretation. The story seems to suffer from a structural incoherence, a fragmentariness which seems to become extreme at the end of both Part I and Part II, which fade away in an all-enveloping ‘mist’, as well as in the character of Part III, obviously tacked on for the purpose of making an unceremonious restitution of his nose to its proper position on Major Kovalyov's face.

We may be less inclined to consider this narrative off-handedness a defect if we refer again to the ‘origin’ of the story. The major's accident and all that follows from it (Part II) are the literary illustration of an hypothesis, an imaginary situation, to which the barber's adventures (Part I) are attached. If Gogol' had kept his story in the form of a dream, the dream would have simply ended in an abrupt awakening—as is actually the case in the earlier version.¹⁵ In its final form the story ceases to be a dream and becomes a fantasy of real life. But it does not thereby lose its original character as a mental mustering of imagined consequences attendant on a man's loss of his nose. Once those consequences are envisaged, once the imagination has had its sport with the idea, it simply lets the train of thought evaporate into ‘mist’ and hands the major back his nose.

And it is not as if a real major had had a real nose taken from him. Gogol' never seems to try to make his protagonist into a real person. All the major's characteristics conduce to turning him into an epitome—the typical man of ambition, with all the hackneyed attitudes that belong to the world of appearance, whose creature he is. Although required to move through the thin air of purest fantasy, he is the very embodiment of a moral type. He is a major not only without a nose, but without any face at all.

Notes

1. Quoted in N. Tikhonravov, ‘Primechaniya redaktora i varianty’, in Sochineniya N.V. Gogolya, II (10th edition), Moscow, 1889, p. 571.

2. V. I. Pokrovsky, ‘Peterburgskiye povesti Gogolya’, N.V. Gogol', sbornik statey, Moscow, 1915, pp. 219-24.

3. I. V. Posadsky, Pamyati Gogolya, Warsaw, 1909.

4. N. Kotlyarevsky, N.V. Gogol', St Petersburg, 1908, p. 238.

5. I. F. Annensky, ‘Nos’, Kniga otrazheniy, St Petersburg, 1906, pp. 13-14.

6. I. D. Yermakov, ‘Nos’, Ocherki po analizu tvorchestva N.V. Gogolya, Moscow and Petrograd, 1924, pp. 167-216.

7. A full account of the literary and scientific tradition of nose-lore is given in V. V. Vinogradov, ‘Naturalisticheskiy grotesk: syuzhet i kompozitsiya povesti Gogolya “Nos”,’ pp. 7-88 in Evolyutsiya russkogo naturalizma, Leningrad, 1929.

8. This quotation, as well as all others given herein, is a translation from the original complete text of Nos included in vol. II of N. Tikhonravov, Sochineniya N.V. Gogolya (10th edition), Moscow, 1889, pp. 3-28.

9. Vinogradov, op. cit., pp. 8-51.

10. Vladimir Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol, Norfolk, Conn., 1945.

11. An earlier manuscript (from the Pogodin Archives) contains a line which Gogol' omitted from the finished version: ‘… if I were without both ears, even that would be more endurable. …’ Tikhonravov, op. cit., p. 582. One may wonder, on reconsideration, whether Gogol' did not feel that the ears do not provide so good an illustration for his purpose here as does the hand or the foot. The ears—if taken, again, only as physical structures—are like the nose in being odd protuberances of only minor functional importance.

12. More than one critic finds little sense in ‘The Nose’ except as a caricature of St Petersburg life. Thus A. Slonimsky (ed., N. V. Gogol', Povesti, Leningrad, 1935, p. 289) suggests this as his whole interpretation of the story: ‘The popular theme on noses was turned by Gogol' into a bitter caricature of the whole bureaucratic and Philistine world of St Petersburg. … Fantasy serves here as a means of depicting, in telling satire, the officialdom, the police, … the petty-bourgeois (Ivan Yakovlevich), and the whole of St Petersburg “society”, in its stupidity, laziness, and love of the sensational, however absurd it might be.’

13. Cf. the earlier text from the Pogodin Archives, quoted in Tikhonravov, op. cit., pp. 582-4.

14. The quite arbitrary, and in any case incomplete, explanation given by more than one commentator on Gogol''s change of title from Son to Nos is summed up by Janko Lavrin, who supposes that Gogol' was ‘probably seduced by the play of words’. Janko Lavrin, Gogol, London and New York, 1925, p. 116.

15. In the manuscript from the Pogodin Archives the story ends with the words: ‘… Everything described here came to the major in a dream. …’ Tikhonravov, op. cit., p. 584.