Notes of a madman, main character, plot, history of creation. "Notes of a Madman": description and analysis of the story from the encyclopedia Notes of a Madman, main character

What is the idea behind Gogol's work Notes of a Madman? ? The idea (topic) of the text. and got the best answer

Answer from Natalya Troshina[guru]
Notes of a Madman” is undoubtedly one of the most tragic stories in the “Petersburg Tales” cycle. The entire story is told from the perspective of the main character and the author of the “Notes” - Aksentiy Ivanovich Poprishchin - a petty census official who is offended by everyone in his service in the department. Poprishchin is a man of noble origin, but very poor and has no aspirations for anything. From morning to evening he sits in the director’s office and, filled with the greatest respect for his boss, trims the feathers of “His Excellency.” “All the learning, such learning that our brother doesn’t even have an attack... What importance is there in the eyes... No match for our brother! ” - speaks of director Poprishchin, according to whom, a person’s reputation is created by his rank. It is the person who is decent who has a high rank, position, money - this is what Aksenty Ivanovich believes. Poprishchin has his own socially legitimized tastes, his own cultural and political interests, his own ideas about honor and personal dignity, his own habits and even cherished dreams. Within this little world, he leads a familiar, complacent existence, not noticing that his whole life is... actual violation of personality and human dignity.
Poprishchin’s consciousness is upset, and the question suddenly pops into his head: “Why am I a titular councilor? ” and “Why a titular advisor? “Poprishchin finally loses his mind and starts a rebellion: his insulted human dignity awakens in him. He thinks about why he is so powerless, why everything “that is best in the world goes to either the chamber cadets or the generals.” The highest point of Poprishchin's crazy thought is his conviction that he is the Spanish king. This very idea is a fantastic projection of the perversion of concepts characteristic of the life around him. At the end of the story, Poprishchin, having momentarily gained moral insight, cries out: “No, I no longer have the strength to endure. God! What are they doing to me! . What have I done to them? Why are they torturing me? “Blok noticed that in this cry one could hear “the cry of Gogol himself.”
“Notes of a Madman” is a cry of protest against the unjust foundations of a maddened world, where everything is displaced and confused, where reason and justice are violated. Poprishchin is a product and victim of this world. And at the same time, choosing a petty official as his hero, Gogol tries not only to reveal the pitiful and comical features of his inner world, but also to convey the tragic feeling of anger and pain for public humiliation, the perversion of all normal properties and concepts in Poprishchin’s psychology.
Source: Oleg Voroshilov User menu Oracle (81287)

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Titular Councilor Aksentiy Ivanovich Poprishchin, forty-two years old, keeps his diary entries on

We invite you to familiarize yourself with one interesting work of the Russian classic and read its summary. “Notes of a Madman” is a story written by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol in 1834. It was first published in the collection "Arabesques" in 1835. Later, the work was included in another collection of this writer called “Petersburg Tales”. "Notes of a Madman" is briefly presented in this article.

Aksentiy Ivanovich Poprishchin, on whose behalf the story is told, is a titular councilor, 42 years old. He began his diary entries about four months ago.

Let us now describe the first events of the work and their brief content. "Notes of a Madman" opens the next episode. On October 3, 1833, on a rainy day, the main character goes in an old-fashioned overcoat, late, to a service that he does not like, to one branch of the department of St. Petersburg in the hope of getting some money in advance from his salary from the treasurer. On the way, he notices a carriage approaching the store, from which the beautiful daughter of the department director gets out.

The hero overhears a conversation between Medzhi and Fidelka

Poprishchin accidentally overhears a conversation that took place between Medzhi, his daughter’s little dog, and the dog Fidelka, which belongs to two ladies who passed by. The hero, surprised by this fact, goes after the women instead of serving and finds out that they live on the fifth floor of a house owned by Zverkov, located near the Kokushkin Bridge.

Aksentiy Ivanovich enters the director's house

The summary continues. "Notes of a Madman" consists of the following further events. The next day, Aksenty Ivanovich, in the director’s office, while sharpening his pens, accidentally meets his daughter, who captivates him more and more. He hands the girl a handkerchief that has fallen to the floor. His dreams and immodest behavior for a month regarding this lady finally become noticeable to those around him. Even the head of the department reprimands the issue. But he still secretly enters the director’s house and, wanting to find out something about the object of his adoration, enters into a conversation with the little dog Medzhi. She avoids him.

Aksentiy Ivanovich enters Zverkov’s house

What goes on tells about the following further events. Aksentiy Ivanovich comes to Zverkov’s house, goes up to the sixth (Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol’s mistake) floor, where Fidelka lives with her mistresses, and steals a heap of papers from her corner. It was, as the main character expected, a correspondence between two dog friends, from which he finds out a lot of important things: that the director of the department was awarded another order, that Sophie (that’s his daughter’s name) is being looked after by Teplov, the chamberlain. cadet, and even about Poprishchina himself, supposedly a complete freak like a “turtle in a bag”, seeing whom the girl is unable to stop herself from laughing.

Correspondence between Medzhi and Fidelka

These notes, like the rest of Gogol's prose, are full of various references to random characters like Bobrov, who looks like a stork in his frill, or Lidina, who is sure that her eyes are blue, while in fact they are green, or dogs with a neighboring yard named Trezor, who is dear to Medzhi’s heart. Poprishchin learns from them that the girl’s affair with Teplov is clearly heading towards a wedding.

Poprishchin fancies himself a Spanish king

The main character's sanity is finally damaged, as well as alarming reports from various newspapers. Poprishchina is concerned about the attempt to abolish the throne in connection with the death of the Spanish king. What if he is the secret heir, a noble man who is revered and loved by those around him? Mavra, a Chukhonka serving Poprishchin, is the first to learn the news. This “Spanish king,” after a three-week absence, finally comes to his office, does not stand in front of the director, signs “Ferdinand VIII” on the paper, and then sneaks into his boss’s apartment, tries to explain himself to the girl, while making the discovery that ladies fall in love only to hell.

Poprishchina is taken to a psychiatric clinic

Gogol ends “Notes of a Madman” as follows. The main character's tense anticipation of the arrival of the Spanish deputies is resolved by their appearance. However, the land where he is taken is very strange. It is inhabited by many different grandees, whose heads are shaved, cold water is dripped onto their crowns and they are beaten with sticks. Here, obviously, the Great Inquisition rules, Poprishchin decides, and it is she who prevents him from making great discoveries worthy of his post. The main character writes a tearful letter to his mother asking for help, but his meager attention is distracted by a lump located right under the Algerian Bey’s nose.

This is how Gogol ends Notes of a Madman. According to psychiatrists and psychologists, the author did not set out to describe madness as such. Gogol (“Notes of a Madman”) analyzes the state of society. He only showed the wretchedness of spirituality and morals of the secular and bureaucratic environment. Real notes from crazy people, of course, would look different, although the writer vividly and plausibly described the delirium of the main character.

The nature of the official's madness, as experts note, refers to delusions of grandeur, which occurs in the so-called paranoid form of schizophrenia, paranoia and syphilitic paralysis. In progressive paralysis and schizophrenia, ideas are significantly poorer intellectually than in paranoia. Consequently, the hero’s delusions are precisely paranoid in nature.

"Diary of a Madman"- a story by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, written by him in 1834. The story was first published in 1835 in the collection “Arabesques” with the title “Scraps from the Notes of a Madman.” Later it was included in the collection “Petersburg Tales”.

Main character

The hero of “Notes of a Madman”, on whose behalf the story is told, is Aksentiy Ivanovich Poprishchin, a minor St. Petersburg official, a copyist of papers in the department, a clerk (one of the entries directly states that he is a clerk, although this title was mainly assigned to court advisers), a petty nobleman in the rank of titular councilor (another Gogol character, Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin, had the same profession and rank).

Researchers have more than once paid attention to the basis of the surname of the hero of “Notes of a Madman.” Aksenty Ivanovich is dissatisfied with his position; he, like any madman, is dominated by one idea - the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bsearching for his unknown “field”. Poprishchin is dissatisfied that he, a nobleman, is being pushed around by the head of the department: “He has been telling me for a long time: “What is it, brother, that there is always such a jumble in your head?” Sometimes you rush around like crazy, sometimes you confuse things so much that Satan himself can’t figure it out, you put a small letter in the title, you don’t put in a number or a number.”

Plot

The story is a diary of the main character. At the beginning, he describes his life and work, as well as the people around him. Next, he writes about his feelings for the director's daughter, and soon after this, signs of madness begin to appear - he talks to her dog Medji, after which he gets hold of letters that Medji wrote to another dog. A few days later he is completely detached from reality - he realizes that he is the king of Spain. His madness is visible even from the numbers in the diary - if the diary begins on October 3, then the understanding that he is the king of Spain comes from his dates on April 43, 2000. And the further the hero plunges deeper into his fantasy. He ends up in a madhouse, but perceives it as arriving in Spain. At the end, the recordings completely lose their meaning, turning into a bunch of phrases. The last phrase of the story: “Do you know that the Algerian dey has a bump right under his nose?”

In some publications, the last phrase looks like this: “Did you know that the Bey of Algeria has a bump right under his nose?”

History of creation

The plot of “Notes of a Madman” goes back to two different plans of Gogol in the early 30s: to “Notes of a Mad Musician”, mentioned in the well-known list of contents of “Arabesque” and to the unrealized comedy “Vladimir of the 3rd Degree”. From Gogol’s letter to Ivan Dmitriev dated November 30, 1832, as well as from Pletnev’s letter to Zhukovsky dated December 8, 1832, one can see that at that time Gogol was fascinated by the stories of Vladimir Odoevsky from the series “The Madhouse”, which were later included in the series “Russian Nights” and, indeed, devoted to the development of the topic of imaginary or real madness in highly gifted (“genius”) natures. The involvement of Gogol’s own plans in 1833-1834 in these stories of Odoevsky is visible from the undoubted similarity of one of them - “The Improviser” - with “Portrait”. From the same passion for Odoevsky’s romantic plots, the unrealized idea of ​​“Notes of a Mad Musician” arose, obviously; Directly related to him, “Notes of a Madman” are thereby connected, through Odoevsky’s “Madhouse”, with the romantic tradition of stories about artists.

" Poprishchin is dissatisfied that he, a nobleman, is being pushed around by the head of the department: “He has been telling me for a long time: “What is it, brother, that there is always such a jumble in your head?” Sometimes you rush around like crazy, sometimes you confuse things so much that Satan himself can’t figure it out, you put a small letter in the title, you don’t put in a number or a number.”

Plot

The story is a diary of the main character. At the beginning, he describes his life and work, as well as the people around him. Next, he writes about his feelings for the director's daughter, and soon after this, signs of madness begin to appear - he talks to her dog Medji, after which he gets hold of letters that Medji wrote to another dog. A few days later he is completely detached from reality - he realizes that he is the king of Spain. His madness is visible even from the numbers in the diary - if the diary begins on October 3, then the understanding that he is the king of Spain comes from his dates on April 43, 2000. And the further the hero plunges deeper into his fantasy. He ends up in a madhouse, but perceives it as arriving in Spain. At the end, the recordings completely lose their meaning, turning into a bunch of phrases. The last phrase of the story: “Do you know that the Algerian dey has a bump right under his nose?”

History of creation

The plot of “Notes of a Madman” goes back to two different plans of Gogol in the early 30s: to “Notes of a Mad Musician,” mentioned in the well-known list of the contents of “Arabesques,” and to the unrealized comedy “Vladimir of the 3rd Degree.” From Gogol’s letter to Ivan Dmitriev dated November 30, as well as from Pletnev’s letter to Zhukovsky dated December 8, 1832, one can see that at that time Gogol was fascinated by the stories of Vladimir Odoevsky from the series “Madhouse of Madmen”, which were later included in the series “Russian Nights” and , indeed, devoted to the development of the topic of imaginary or real madness in highly gifted (“genius”) natures. The involvement of Gogol's own plans in -34 in these stories by Odoevsky is visible from the undoubted similarity of one of them - “The Improviser” - with “Portrait”. From the same passion for Odoevsky’s romantic plots, the unrealized idea of ​​“Notes of a Mad Musician” arose, obviously; Directly related to him, “Notes of a Madman” are thereby connected, through Odoevsky’s “Madhouse”, with the romantic tradition of stories about artists. “Vladimir of the 3rd degree,” if it had been completed, would also have had a madman as its hero, significantly different, however, from the “creative” madmen in that he would have been a man who had set himself the prosaic goal of receiving the cross of Vladimir of the 3rd degree; Having not received it, he “at the end of the play... went crazy and imagined that he himself was” this order. This is a new interpretation of the theme of madness, also approaching, in a certain sense, Poprishchin’s madness.

From the idea of ​​a comedy about officials, abandoned by Gogol in 1834, a number of everyday, stylistic and plot details passed into the “Notes” created then. The general, who dreams of receiving an order and entrusts his ambitious dreams to a lapdog, is already given in “The Morning of an Official,” that is, in the surviving fragment of the beginning of the comedy, dating back to the year. In the surviving subsequent scenes of the comedy, one can easily find comedic prototypes of Poprishchin himself and his environment - in the petty officials brought up there, Schneider, Kaplunov and Petrushevich. Poprishchin's review of officials who do not like to visit the theater directly goes back to the dialogue between Schneider and Kaplunov about the German theater. At the same time, the rudeness especially emphasized in Kaplunov convinces even more strongly that it is Poprishchin who is aiming at him, calling the official who does not like the theater “a man” and a “pig.” In Petrushevich, on the contrary, we must recognize Gogol’s first attempt at that idealization of the poor official, which found its embodiment in Poprishchina himself. “He served, he served, and what did he serve,” says Petrushevich “with a bitter smile,” anticipating a similar statement by Poprishchin at the very beginning of his notes. Petrushevich’s then refusal from both the ball and the “Boston boy” marks the break with the environment that leads Poprishchin to madness. Both Kaplunov and Petrushevich were then placed in the same humiliating relationship with the boss’s lackey as Poprishchin. From Zakatishchev (later Sobachkin), on the other hand, threads stretch to that bribe-taker of “Notes” to whom “give a couple of trotters or a droshky”; Zakatishchev, in anticipation of a bribe, dreams of the same thing: “Eh, I’ll buy some nice trotters... I would also like a stroller.” Let us also compare the clerical dialectisms of the comedy (for example, the words of Kaplunov: “And he lies, the scoundrel”) with similar elements in the language of Poprishchin: “Even if you are in want”; Wed also Schneider’s office nickname: “damned little thing” and “damned heron” in “Notes”.

Thus connected with Gogol’s first comedic idea, the picture of departmental life and morals in “Notes” goes back to the personal observations of Gogol himself during his own service, from which the idea of ​​“Vladimir of the 3rd degree” grew. The story also contains biographical details of the author himself: “Zverkov’s House” near Kukushkin Bridge is the house in which Gogol himself had a friend in the 1830s and where, in addition, he himself lived at one time. The smell that Poprishchina greets this house is mentioned in Gogol’s letter to his mother dated August 13, 1829. The “Ruchevsky tailcoat” - Poprishchin’s dream - is mentioned in Gogol’s letters in 1832 to Alexander Danilevsky, the same “friend” who lived in Zverkov’s house. The hairstyle of the head of the department, which irritates Poprishchin, is also noted by Gogol in “Petersburg Notes”, as a feature drawn, apparently, from personal observations.

During the publication of the story, there were censorship difficulties, which Gogol reported in a letter to Pushkin: “Yesterday a rather unpleasant censorship notice came out regarding “Notes of a Madman”; but, thank God, today is a little better; at least I should limit myself to throwing out the best passages... If not for this delay, my book might have been published tomorrow.”

Poetics of the story

“Notes of a Madman” precisely as notes, that is, the hero’s story about himself, have no precedents or analogies in Gogol’s work. The forms of storytelling cultivated by Gogol before and after “Notes” were inapplicable to this plan. The theme of madness in three aspects at the same time (social, aesthetic and personal-biographical), which Gogol found in it, could most naturally be developed by the direct speech of the hero: with a focus on speech characteristics, with a selection of sharp dialecticisms of the official taking his notes. On the other hand, aesthetic illusionism, which suggested to Gogol the first idea of ​​such notes, made it possible to include elements of the fantastic grotesque in them (borrowed from Hoffmann's correspondence with dogs); At the same time, the hero’s well-known involvement in the world of art was natural. However, the music originally intended for this purpose did not reconcile with the finally determined type of hero, and the place of music in the official’s notes was taken by theater, a form of art with which all three aspects of the theme were equally successfully combined. The Alexandrinsky stage is therefore included in “Notes of a Madman” as one of the main places of the social drama unfolding in them. But the illusory world of theatrical aestheticism in Gogol is completely different from that of Hoffmann. There it is established as the highest reality; in Gogol, on the contrary, he is purely realistically reduced to madness in the literal, clinical sense of the word.

According to literary critic Andrei Kuznetsov, the choice of the female name Sophie is not accidental: “Among other characters in Russian literature bearing this name, Sofya Pavlovna Famusova from Griboedov’s comedy “Woe from Wit”, which is adjacent to Gogol’s story by developing the theme of madness (and denouncing those around him as crazy) stands out. society, - let’s remember Poprishchin’s: “These patriots want rent, rent!”). Poprishchin, as can be seen, correlates (in the case of comedy) with Chatsky after “going crazy,” that is, starting from the passage “The Year 2000...”, and before this passage he is comparable to Molchalin: his duties and attitude towards the director are very similar to Molchalin's attitude towards Famusov. Accordingly, the shaky love line between Poprishchin and Sophie receives more weight (the irony regarding Sophie’s disposition towards Poprishchin is greatly enhanced). And the remark made by Poprishchin at the moment when he remembers Sophie (a remark that has become a catchphrase): “Nothing... nothing... silence!” - directly leads us to the name of the hero Griboyedov, that is, to Molchalin.

Directly related to the idea of ​​the story is Khlestakov’s remark, which was present in the original edition of the comedy “The Inspector General”: “And how strangely Pushkin composes, imagine: in front of him stands in a glass of rum, the most glorious rum, a bottle of one hundred rubles each, which is saved only for one Austrian emperor, - and then as soon as he starts writing, the pen only tr... tr... tr... Recently he wrote this play: A cure for cholera that makes your hair stand on end. One of our officials went crazy when he read it. That same day a carriage came for him and took him to the hospital...”

Criticism

Contemporary criticism of “Arabesques” generally turned out to be friendly to Gogol’s new story.

“In the scraps from the notes of a madman,” according to the review of “Northern Bee” (1835, No. 73), “there is ... a lot of witty, funny and pitiful things. The life and character of some St. Petersburg officials is captured and sketched in a lively and original way.”

Senkovsky, who was hostile to Arabesques, also responded sympathetically, seeing in “Notes of a Madman” the same merits as in the “funny story” of Lieutenant Pirogov. True, according to Senkovsky, “Notes of a Madman” “would be better if they were connected by some idea” (“Library for Reading”, 1835, February).

Belinsky’s review turned out to be much brighter and deeper (in the article “On the Russian Tale and Gogol’s Stories”): “Take “Notes of a Madman,” this ugly grotesque, this strange, whimsical dream of the artist, this good-natured mockery of life and man, pitiful life, pitiful man, this caricature, in which there is such an abyss of poetry, such an abyss of philosophy, this mental history of illness, presented in poetic form, amazing in its truth and depth, worthy of the brush of Shakespeare: you still laugh at the simpleton, but your laughter is already dissolved in bitterness; This is laughter at a madman, whose delirium both makes him laugh and arouses compassion.” - Belinsky repeated this review in his review (1843) of “The Works of Nikolai Gogol”: “Notes of a Madman” is one of the most profound works...”

Gogol's story and psychiatry

According to psychologists and psychiatrists, “Gogol did not set himself the goal of describing the madness of an official. Under the guise of “Notes of a Madman,” he described the squalor of morals and spirituality of the bureaucratic and secular environment. Both the “friendly correspondence” of the dogs Mezhe and Fidel, and the official’s diary are filled with such sharp irony and good humor that the reader forgets about the fantastic nature of the plot of the story.

As for the nature of the official’s madness, it refers to megalomania. It occurs in the paranoid form of schizophrenia, progressive syphilitic paralysis and paranoia. In schizophrenia and progressive paralysis, delusions of megalomania are intellectually much poorer than in paranoia. Therefore, the systematized delirium of the hero of the story is of a paranoid nature, and Gogol described it vividly and believably.”

Quotes and reminiscences from “Notes of a Madman”

Leo Tolstoy has an unfinished story called “Notes of a Madman.” However, in the text of the story there are no obvious allusions to Gogol.

In our time, many texts have been written under the same name and with a similar composition, which also describe the gradual descent of a person into madness, but in a modern setting. Also, “Notes of a Madman” is a popular blog subtitle.

The diaries of Venedikt Erofeev have a similar name - “Notes of a Psychopath”.

The history of Gogol’s occasionalism “March” is curious (one of Poprishchin’s letters is dated March 86). Nabokov used it in his translation of Carroll's Anya in Wonderland, describing how the Hatter and the March Hare quarreled with Time. One of the poems in the “Part of Speech” cycle by Joseph Brodsky begins with the words “From nowhere with love, on the eleventh of March.”

According to literary critic Viktor Pivovarov, many writers of the Russian underground “came out of Notes of a Madman.”

Who are we? Andrei Monastyrsky, for example, with his “Kashirskoye Shosse” and the metaphysics of VDNKh, Prigov, screaming his sacred alphabet and writing 27 thousand poems, Zvezdochetov and his “Fly Agarics”, Yura Leiderman with delusional texts inaccessible to anyone, Kabakov with his “Man, flew into space,” Igor Makarevich, carving Pinocchio’s skull from wood. I’m silent about the St. Petersburg psychos, because I only know about them by hearsay, but they say they have a nest there. Any reader can easily add to this list.

Productions

Film adaptations

• "Notes of a Madman", Soviet film.

Theater productions

Starring Maxim Koren, production director Marianna Napalova.

Notes

Links

Still from the film “Notes of a Madman” (1968)

Titular councilor Aksentiy Ivanovich Poprishchin, forty-two years old, has been keeping his diary entries for more than four months.

On a rainy day, Tuesday, October 3, 1833, Poprishchin, in his old-fashioned overcoat, sets off late for his unloved service in one of the branches of the St. Petersburg department, hoping only to get some money from his salary in advance from the treasurer. On the way, he notices a carriage approaching the store, from which the lovely daughter of the director of the department where he works flutters out. The hero accidentally overhears a conversation between his daughter’s dog Medzhi and the dog Fidelka, which belongs to two ladies passing by. Surprised by this fact, Poprishchin, instead of going to work, goes to pick up the ladies and finds out that they live on the fifth floor of Zverkov’s house, near the Kokushkin Bridge.

The next day, Poprishchin, while sharpening his pens in the director's office, accidentally meets his daughter, with whom he becomes increasingly fascinated. He even hands her a handkerchief that fell on the floor. Over the course of a month, his immodest behavior and dreams regarding this young lady become noticeable to others. The head of the department even reprimands him. Nevertheless, Poprishchin secretly enters the house of His Excellency and, wanting to find out something about the young lady, enters into a conversation with the dog Medzhi. The latter avoids the conversation. Then Poprishchin goes to Zverkov’s house, goes up to the sixth floor (Gogol’s mistake!), where the dog Fidelka lives with his mistresses, and steals a heap of small pieces of paper from her corner. This turns out, as Poprishchin expected, to be a correspondence between two dog friends, from which he learns a lot of important things for himself: about awarding the director of the department another order, about courting his daughter, who, it turns out, is called Sophie, a certain chamber cadet Teplov, and even about himself, a complete freak like a “turtle in a sack”, at the sight of whom Sophie cannot stop laughing. These little dogs' notes, like all of Gogol's prose, are full of references to many random characters, like a certain Bobov, who looks like a stork in his frill, or Lidina, who is sure that she has blue eyes, while she has them green, or Trezor's dog from the neighboring yard, dear to the heart of Medzhi who writes these letters. Finally, Poprishchin learns from them that Sophie’s affair with the chamberlain Teplov is clearly heading towards a wedding.

Unhappy love, coupled with alarming newspaper reports, completely damages Poprishchin's sanity. He is concerned about the attempt to abolish the Spanish throne due to the death of the king. Well, how is he, Poprishchin, the secret heir, that is, a noble person, one of those who are loved and revered by those around him? Chukhonka Mavra, who serves Poprishchin, will be the first to learn this amazing news. After more than three weeks of absenteeism, the “Spanish king” Poprishchin comes to his office, does not stand up in front of the director, signs “Ferdinand VIII” on the paper, after which he makes his way into the director’s apartment, tries to explain to Sophie, making the discovery that women fall in love with the same devil. Poprishchin's tense wait for the Spanish deputies is finally resolved by their arrival. But “Spain”, to which he is taken, is a very strange land. There are a lot of grandees with shaved heads, they are beaten with sticks, cold water is dripped onto the top of their heads. It is obvious that the Great Inquisition rules here, which prevents Poprishchin from making great discoveries worthy of his post. He writes a tearful letter to his mother with a plea for help, but a bump under the very nose of the Algerian Bey again distracts his poor attention.