"What do you want?" she said.
"I must have a talk with your dog."
"Today is a day of great triumph. There is a king of Spain. That king is me."
"I need people, not dogs!"
"Save me! Take me away! Give me a troika with horses sift as the whirlwind! Climb up, driver, and let the bells ring! Soar away, horses, and carry me from this world! Further, further, where nothing can be seen, nothing at all! Over there the sky whirls round. A little star shines in the distance; the forest rushes past with its dark trees and the moon shines above. A deep blue haze is spreading like a carpet; a guitar throngs in the mist."
"A strange phenomenon! The earth is going to land on the moon (...) I confess I felt deeply troubled when I considered how delicate and insubstantial the moon is. The moon, as everyone knows, is usually made in Hamburg, and they make a complete hash of it. I'm surprised that the English don't do something about it. The moon is manufactured by a lame cooper, and it's obvious the idiot has no idea what it should be made of. The materials he uses are tarred rope and linseed oil. That's why there's such a terrible stink oil over the earth, which makes us stop our noses up. And it also explains why the moon is such a delicate sphere, and why people can't live there- only noses. For this reason we can't see our own noses anymore, as they're all on the moon. When I reflected how heavy the earth is and that our noses might be ground in to the surface when it landed, I was so worried I put my socks and shoes on and hurried into the state council room to instruct the police not to let the earth land on the moon."
The beautiful thing about this is how "scientific" it all appears to be.
The Nose
"But nothing is lasting in this world. Even joy begins to fade after only one mintue. Two minutes later, and it is weaker still, until finally it is swallowed up in our everyday, prosaic state of mind, just a ripple made by a pebble gradually merges with the smooth surfaces of the water."
My goodness, how depressing and yet how incredibly true. What if did last? What would happen then? .. Then the whole of humanity would not need God, or anything else, but to depend on happenings. Then small coincidental details of life would be worshiped... People catching precious moments, and clipping their wings off...
The Overcoat
"So vanished and disappeared for ever a human being whom no one ever thought of protecting, who was dear to no one, in whom no one was the least interested, not even the naturalist who cannot resist sticking a pin in a common fly and examining it under a microscope: a being who endured the mockery of his colleagues without protesting, who went to his gave without any undue fuss, but to whom, nonetheless (although not until his last days) a shining visitor in the form of an overcoat suddenly appeared, brightening his wretched life for one fleeting moment; a being upon whose head disaster had cruelly fallen, just as it falls upon the kings and great ones of this earth..."
At first Gogol said that he was even more inferior than the "common fly" and yet then he compared him to Kings and "great ones of this earth". Such people lived and died by the millions- nobodys who have not impacted any life whatsoever, who have not made any imprint on humanity. And yet these people, their existence pushed humanity forward, because they filled the spaces that the great could not fill, like molecules- they filled the cracks...Without this "glue" humanity would have been unstable and fallen apart.
This story made quite an impression- for it so cruel and yet dives deep down into the heart of such a nonentity, has such a poetic significance about it. That even though he might as well not existed, he DID exist, and DID experience a single moment of joy on this earth. And maybe that was enough, maybe that is all that he had wanted. He probably treasured that fleeting moment more than anyone else- because that is all he had had.
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This was also one of my favorite book (which ones aren't though?) by Gogol- it was so hilarious, and yet had such a beautiful layer of the romantic. What a man he must've been! And such interesting topics he discusses. The Diary of a Madman is purely genius! Such interesting humor put into such an odd and ridiculous situation...I really enjoyed it. The king of Spain!
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