"Dead Souls" N.V. Gogol is a legendary work. A raid of mystery has been surrounding him since the publication of the first volume, and one of the legends says that one February night the writer burned the second volume of his creation. Literary scholars are still arguing about what made a genius so cruelly crack down on his creation.
There are several versions of what happened. According to one of them, there really was a burning. Two reasons are usually called - that Gogol was not satisfied with the quality of the writing, he was extremely dissatisfied with himself and decided not to publish a creation that did not suit him. This is very likely, since the first volume is actually a finished work, and a person as sophisticated in literature as N.V. Gogol, could not help but feel this. Plus, in the second volume, we should talk about the rebirth of Chichikov, and it was very difficult to describe convincingly.
The second explanation of the same version is less harmless. Some literary historians believe that the writer had an attack of mental illness, which caused him to commit irreparable. The writer really suffered from mental illness, and his condition ten days before his death was by no means unsuccessful.
The manuscript burning version has one significant flaw. It is based on a single testimony - the story of a writer’s servant, who at that time was still too young to be well versed in events. In addition, it is unlikely that he penetrated so deeply into the affairs of his master and realized that Gogol burned the Dead Souls and the second volume. Perhaps the servant’s testimonies only indicate that on the night of February 11-12, 1852, Gogol burned some kind of document. Some literary scholars believe that the manuscript of the second volume of "Dead Souls" really died in the fireplace, but got there by accident, and the writer simply could not save her.
There are versions that there was no burning. One of the opinions - Gogol was going to write a continuation of his poem, talked a lot about it, made sketches, but did not bother to put his plan into practice. Another version is that the manuscript was, but it was stolen.
The version with the burning remains the most likely, and the reason is that Gogol appreciated himself too much and could not afford to leave the poorly written work to his descendants. It is also likely that it was creative failure that caused an aggravation of mental illness and ultimately brought death closer.
