SOURCE: Peace, Richard. “‘The Nose.’” In The Enigma of Gogol: An Examination of the Writings of N. V. Gogol and Their Place in the Russian Literary Tradition, pp. 130–41. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

In the following excerpt, Peace discusses the element of absurdity in “The Nose.”

Major Kovalev had the habit of strolling every day along the Nevsky Prospekt. The collar of his shirt front was always extremely clean and starched. His side whiskers were of the sort that one can see even now on provincial and Ukrainian regional land surveyors, architects and regimental doctors, as well as those performing various police duties, and in general on all those men, who have full ruddy cheeks, and play boston whist very well. These whiskers go along the very middle of the cheek and stretch right up to the nose.

(iii, 53)

Thus major Kovalev appears to be one of the ‘thousand...