Diary of a Madman

“She did not recognize me, and I tried to conceal myself deeper in the folds of my coat, because the coat was covered with stains and, to make matters worse, quite out of fashion. Nowadays people wear cloaks with tall collars, while mine had several collars one on top of the other, and all of them short, and the cloth was of very inferior quality.”

This quote also exhibits Poprishchin’s propensity for superfluous details; the coat is not only filthy but also out of fashion. It also illustrates Gogol’s propensity for including absurd details. For example, it is hard to imagine what a coat with “several” collars even looks like, or what purpose all of these collars could serve.

“I swear—I’d stake my salary on it!—never in my life have I heard of a dog that could write. Only a gentleman knows how to write properly. There are of course a few shopkeepers and even the occasional serf who can copy things, but their writing is largely mechanical: without commas, full-stops, or any sort of style.”

After admitting to himself—absurdly—that dogs’ ability to speak is perhaps not so surprising, Poprishchin reserves his shock for dogs’ ability to write. Rather than contrasting dogs with humans generally, he instead contrasts them with aristocrats, and he also makes distinctions between the “proper” and sophisticated writing of the learned nobility and the ungrammatical, less stylized writing associated with poorer and less educated people. What surprises him is the dogs’ appearance of possessing a characteristic of human aristocrats—proper writing.

“‘Papa hasn’t been in, has he?’ Heavens, what a voice! As sweet as a canary’s. ‘Your Ladyship,’ I was on the point of saying, ‘do not have me put to death, but if it is your will, let me be executed by your imperial little hand.’ But, confound it, my tongue stuck to my palate and all I could blurt out was ‘No ma’am.’”

This exchange demonstrates the extent of Poprishchin’s interactions with Sophie, which for him are momentous affairs, but for her are of no importance. Poprishchin imagines responding with a gallant speech to her mundane question, and even thinks himself of being on the verge of uttering this speech, but he can only provide a mundane answer. The juxtaposition between his imagined answer with his real one presents a view into how he imagines himself and how he really behaves.

“And that’s not the worst of it: once one of these rascals had the presumption to offer me some of his snuff, without even rising from his seat. I will have you know, you stupid peasant, that I am an official, I am of noble extraction. Still, I took my hat and put on my coat myself, because these characters will never hold it for you, and departed. Most of the day I spent at home lying on my bed.”

This quote demonstrates Poprishchin’s extreme pride regarding his social position, and his quickness to take offense if those he views as inferior fail to show him the respect he believes he deserves. It also shows the manner in which Poprishchin bottles up his anger, since he does not confront the man in person. He only expresses his contempt later on in writing. Finally, this passage also contains one of Poprishchin’s admissions that he spends most of his time lying in bed and doing nothing, which demonstrates the manner in which he is isolated and closed off from the world.

“Now listen here: after all, you’re over 40 now—time you had your wits about you. What do you think you’re up to? Do you imagine I don’t know about all your goings-on? Fancy chasing around after the director’s daughter! Now just take a look at yourself, and ask yourself who you think you are? You’re nothing, less than nothing. You haven’t a brass copeck to your name. Take a look in the mirror at your face—how can you even think of such things!”

This speech in which the section head confronts Poprishchin about his obsession with the director’s daughter reveals that Poprishchin has not been especially good at hiding his infatuation. The section head reprimands him and tells him how inappropriate Poprishchin’s infatuation is and how “delusional” he is in entertaining it, but Poprishchin’s response to this confrontation with reality is to say that the section head is telling him this out of envy.

“Oh, for a look into the bedroom…In there I reckon you would see something truly wondrous, you would find a paradise to surpass even that in heaven. You would see the little stool on which she places her dainty foot as she alights from her bed, and see her drawing on her snow-white stocking…Oh, rats! Never mind…my lips are sealed.”

Here, Poprishchin is fantasizing about seeing Sophie’s bedroom and the image of her drawing on her stocking indicates that his fantasy is veering into the sexual domain. Poprishchin catches himself, however, as he does in other places in the story, and applies a self-censorship that appears to be at odds with the freely expressive form of the diary.

“Then, ma chère, papa came home a week later overjoyed about something. All that morning gentlemen in uniforms came to see him and congratulated him on something. At table papa was in better spirits than I’ve ever seen him before, telling jokes, and after dinner he lifted me up to his neck and said: ‘Look at that, Madgie, what do you think that is?’ I saw some ribbon. I sniffed it, but could not discern any interesting smell at all. So then, stealthily, I licked it: it was slightly salty.”

This passage, from one of Madgie’s letters, views the world of human affairs and concerns from the perspective of a dog. While the director views the award of the ribbon as an honor and source of pride, it holds no interest for Madgie. The world of human affairs and concerns is viewed as only meaningful from a human perspective. This meaning evaporates when the world is viewed from the eyes of a dog.

“I’m afraid if she likes the Kammerjunker she’ll soon start liking that clerk who sits in papa’s office. Oh, ma chère, if only you could see that gargoyle. Just like a tortoise in an old sack….”

This passage, another from one of Madgie’s letters, presents a view of Poprishchin from somebody other than himself. While Madgie views the Kammerjunker as “ugly” relative to the dog with whom she is in love, she describes Poprishchin as “ugly” and comical in human terms. With this, Poprishchin begins to get an idea of how he is viewed in the director’s household, including by Sophie herself.

“So what if he is a Kammerjunker? After all. That’s only a rank; it isn’t something you can see, or you can hold in your hand. Just because you’re a Kammerjunker it doesn’t mean you get a third eye in the middle of your forehead. It’s not as if his nose is made of hold; it’s no different from mine or anyone else’s.”

Here, amid Poprishchin’s mental health crisis, he decries the social structure that places a Kammerjunker above him and that makes a Kammerjunker a suitable match for Sophie. He implies that social and Class Distinctions and Anxieties are only superficial phenomena and that biologically everyone is equal. He begins to rebel against the identity and position that the world assigns to him.

“43rd day of April in the year 2000.”

This date which Poprishchin provides for a diary entry demonstrates his impacted mental state. While he has previously used ordinary dates, he now transitions to nonsensical dates. This occurs simultaneously with the conviction that he is the missing king of Spain.

“Today we celebrate a most illustrious event! Spain has a king. He has been found. I am this king. And it was only today that I discovered this. I must admit it suddenly dawned on me, in a flash. I can’t understand how I could ever have thought I was a titular councillor. How could I have got this absurd idea into my head? It’s a lucky thing no one put me in a madhouse. Now everything has been revealed to me.”

Poprishchin’s rebellion against the world’s idea of himself is to plunge further into delusion, and his rebellion against society is to place himself at the top of it, marking his total break with reality. Poprishchin’s claims of clarity on the matter are ironic. Furthermore, his mention of the “madhouse” prefigures his actual confinement in one, which happens because of the actions he takes under the belief that he is the king of Spain.

“Well, here I am in Spain, and it all happened so quickly that I have not yet regained my senses. This morning the Spanish deputies came to see me and I got into a carriage together with them. I was astonished by its extraordinary speed. We moved at such velocity that in half an hour we had reached the Spanish frontier.”

Rather than believe that he has been taken somewhere other than Spain and by people other than Spanish deputies, Poprishchin is so convinced that he is the king of Spain that he believes a carriage has taken him thousands of miles in less than half an hour. The final sentence in this passage serves as a sort of punchline of a joke, since at this point the reader realizes that he cannot possibly be in Spain.

“I’m starting to wonder, from all the signs, whether I haven’t perhaps fallen into the hands of the Inquisition, and the chap I took to be the Chancellor isn’t in fact the Grand Inquisitor. The only thing I can’t understand is how a king could be subjected to the Inquisition. Of course, the whole thing might have been planned in France, by Polignac.”

Poprishchin finally revises his interpretation of the situation around him, but instead of considering that he might not be in Spain and might not be its king, he only makes a minor change. He writes that the chancellor, whom the reader understands to be a prison guard, may in fact be the Grand Inquisitor. When a problem arises in this interpretation, he quickly invents a new conspiracy theory.