SOURCE: Seifrid, Thomas. “Suspicion Toward Narrative: The Nose and the Problem of Autonomy in Gogol's ‘Nos.’” Russian Review 52 (July 1993): 382–96.

In the following essay, Seifrid situates “The Nose” within the context of Russian history.

In the final version of “Nos” that Gogol prepared for his 1842 Sochineniia, it is 25 March when Kovalev discovers he has no nose and 7 April when the appendage mysteriously reappears.¹ In light of Russian cultural history these dates can hardly appear innocent: the twelve-day gap between them is precisely that obtaining in the nineteenth century between Russia's Julian calendar and the Gregorian chronography of the West, so that the nose is in fact lost and restored overnight. The dates could, of course, be mere artifacts of the dream device Gogol had used in an earlier version of the story to explain away its absurdities (“Vprochem vse eto, chto ni opisano zdes', videlos' maioru vo sne”).² But...