Upon reading Gogol’s The Nose, a lot of feelings and emotions ran through my mind.  Images and pieces of music ran through my mind along with these emotions.  Here are some of the things that came to my mind:

I actually felt a lot more shock as I read about Ivan Yakovlevich finding a nose in a random loaf of bread than Gregor’s transformation in Kafka’s Metamorphosis.  The appearance of the nose seems so random and obscure that I was in disbelief when I first read it.  How could it be possible that a fresh loaf of bread contain a nose?  This caught me off-guard and I was left in disbelief of the events that happened throughout the story.

Paper Toss Fail

Ivan Yakovlevich’s failure to throw away the nose reminded me of this video of a guy unable to throw paper into a garbage pail.  Like the guy in the video, Ivan Yakovlevich struggles to dispose of the nose.  He is approached by an acquaintance and interrogated by the police.  I feel that he would have been frustrated just like the guy in the video who cannot throw paper into a garbage pail.

I tried to imagine how Major Kovaloff would look like without a nose.  Instead of showing a picture of the bloody mess I imagined him to be, I find that this picture of a Greco-Roman sculpture is appropriate.  The statue looks incomplete without his nose just as Kovaloff felt when he thought about how people would view him.  The sculpture looks sad to me and the lack of a nose reinforces this.  Kovaloff was depressed without his nose and he would not stop until he could get it back on his face.

“Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath”, from Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique

When Major Kovaloff spoke of how he believed that Madame Podtotchina hired two sorceresses to curse him.  Major Kovaloff thought he was cursed because he refused to marry Madam Podtotchina’s daughter.  His talk of witches made me think of this classic movement from Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique.  In the piece, the artist is attending his own funeral where those attending are witches and monsters.  The dance on his grave and his beloved, now in a more wretched form, joins the festivities.  The piece compares to the story by having the “witches” thrive during the character’s struggle.  Major Karloff assumes that Madame Podtotchina is responsible for and enjoying his suffering.  In Berlioz’s piece, the witches celebrate the death of the artist and dance about his misfortunes.