A jumble of my thoughts on Gogol’s The Nose:
- When I read through Gogol’s The Nose, I couldn’t help but constantly grimace at the fact that Kovalyov had a smooth patch of skin where his nose was. Didn’t it hurt?
- I smirked when the nose had a higher rank than Kovalyov, since I thought it was rather comical that a body part would have higher status than the actual person.
- When I learned that the nose was human size, my mind immediately went to this:
- The fact that the question of why the nose fell off and why it couldn’t be re-attached just makes me more curious. The reason for leaving a solid explanation out was most likely so the audience could make their own assumptions, but I like having closure and would actually want to have a concrete interpretation from the author.
- Despite how strange yet humorous this story was, I couldn’t really bring myself to like it. The story was too unrealistic for me (I like fiction and fantasy, but I’m not really into this kind of fiction). However, I will have to give Kovalyov credit for having a normal reaction to the loss of his nose compared to Gregor who had a one-track mind even after being turned into a bug.
- When I read both the libretto and short story, I never thought how the nose and the entire story could represent social status. It’s intriguing how reading between the lines can make a whole different meaning come to life.
I never wondered if missing a nose hurt Kovalyov. I just assumed that it didn’t because he never complained about the pain. But I agree with you, that the idea of Kovalyov missing a nose makes me grimace too while I was reading. I thought your picture was hilarious, I never made the connection between Nosepath and the story. But now that I think about it, that’s how I imagined how the nose would look (except maybe skin colored). Even though I also like fantasy and fiction stories, I didn’t like how unrealistic the whole story was and how they gave no explanation to why his nose fell off.
My mind was loaded with questions as well when I was reading the story. I agree that Gogol left too much unexplained; I really dislike how he cuts off stories by saying “the events were lost.” Also I couldn’t find an interpretation of the nose. I guess I was just too enthralled with the absurdity of this story. I like how you imagined Nosepass to be the human-sized nose. I couldn’t finalize my image; it was stuck between a giant nose and a person.
I basically agree with every point that you made. I thought of how Kovaloff’s nose must have been detached for it not to hurt, and where the patch of skin came from. I found it odd and funny that Kovaloff’s nose was of a higher rank, and when Kovaloff found his nose, he had to be very polite to it, even though it’s part of him. I usually like it when the author doesn’t provide closure because I can let my imagine run wild and, I can create my own scenarios to fill in the gaps. However, with this piece, I struggled to find explanations. Hopefully the opera will help.
I also disliked the short story because of how much was left up to the readers’ interpretation. Although I do like this once in a while, I thought Gogol just left too many patches for us to fill. I had a lot of questions that were not answered even after finishing the story.