The Arts in New York City | Baruch Fall 2013 Macaulay Seminar 1

Mood Diary of The Nose by Gogol

Posted on October 9, 2013 by katie

The Nose by Nikolai Gogol, like Kafka’s Metamorphosis, is a bizarre story that, for me, was uncomfortable to read. While Metamorphosis was a metaphor for the randomness of life, The Nose was a satirical look at Gogol’s society. Immediately, I was annoyed at Ivan’s wife for her groundless hostility; while there may have been a backstory to her disdain for her husband that was not mentioned, her mean spirit seems unnecessary. This may be an allusion to how people in real life change in worse ways, possibly for no specific reason. In the classic example of old married couples, people change as they get older and the “nagging wife” may not have been so when the two were younger.

The strangeness of the plot certainly throws the reader off at first. Why does it appear in a roll of bread? How is it that no one can recognize a nose running around? How can a nose outsmart everyone around it?

While much of the play seems like nonsense, small details that allude to characteristics of Russian society could be picked out. The fact that the townspeople are so blind and easily tricked by a nose posing as a person points out the obliviousness of the society in Gogol’s day. This is made especially clear by Gogol’s choosing the nose as the facial feature to run around, as the nose literally sticks out of a face and should be obvious. They are concerned with petty and superficial things, such as status, wealth and looks. Kovalyov can’t even bring himself to take proper control of his nose, initially intimidated by the nose’s apparent rank. The story also focuses on the potential marriage between Kovalyov and Grigorievna’s daughter. He is overly concerned with missing his nose that he doesn’t want anyone to see him without it. When he does get his nose back, he decides again that he is too good to marry the daughter and flaunts his nose in town. Marriages in then-Russian society were clearly not based off love.

While I like the unconventionality of The Nose and Metamorphosis, I felt that The Nose was too abstract for my liking. I would have preferred if the story had more coherence. At least with Metamorphosis, there is Grete’s transformation into a graceful woman at the end, the result of a terrible and random occurrence. Kovalyov simply wakes up one day without his nose and wakes up another day with it. As a reader, I am left wanting more at the end.

The Nose Mood Diary

Posted on October 9, 2013 by Nicholas Arniotes

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.

Mood Diary for “The Nose”

Posted on October 9, 2013 by Olivia Sztanga

I often feel like maybe I’m missing my nose… as if I, like Major Kovalyov, have misplaced something that everyone else has and I am now on some wild goose chase to get it back. While his loss is symbolic of rigid social structure, and mine is something a little different, it helps in truly understanding the chaotic structure of the characters’ thoughts, as well as of the plot as a whole. In fact, the ludicrous and farcical nature of the story points out the absurdity of society as a whole. Why should someone care about their societal standing? Why should someone fear approaching another person, especially because of rank? Why should someone care what others think of him or her in the first place? Perhaps our society is actually more bizarre than Gogol’s “The Nose.” Hard to believe, right?

I was also really impressed to learn that Gogol utilized a nose as the central symbol of “The Nose” because its reverse is the word for dream. There’s something very beautiful that goes into the word choice of a story that I often feel robbed of while reading a translated text. I’m sure there was more wordplay in Russian than in the English version of the text, especially with the story being so metaphorical at its core. Nevertheless, Gogol left the reader with many other things to interpret.

I think I actually really appreciated this story!

Well at least he didn’t have this problem!

Mood Diary: The Nose

Posted on October 9, 2013 by Khrystyna Melnyk

While reading this story and then the libretto, I felt many different emotions. At first, I thought it was going to be as weird as Metamorphosis when Ivan cut the loaf and found the nose. Then, I thought this was really bizarre – can you imagine eating breakfast and all of a sudden you find a nose in your bread? How did it get there in the first place? I also enjoyed how the entire time that Kovaloff is looking for his nose and then finds it and realizes that he is now a rank higher than him, he continues to treat it as a person and worries how to approach it. While reading I remember thinking, who cares how you approach him? It’s your nose, why did it leave your face in the first place? Also, on that same note, what I was wondering about was if Ivan recognized the nose in the first place, why didn’t he just return it? He went to throw it out and just caused more problems.

The scene where there was a choir involved and more than one gentleman or police officer, reminded me of the munchkins gathering around Dorothy when she landed on the Wicked Witch and just kept shouting everything in unison as if it was supposed to make her believe them even more! And also, I didn’t like either of the translations of those scenes either because in English it was grammatically wrong, but since I know both Russian and Ukrainian, the Russian translate didn’t make much sense either. Maybe the language has changed that much throughout the decades, but the wording and some of the analogies seemed very off. I found myself jumping back and forth between the English and the Russian translations at times when neither made sense.

The person that I really liked from the being was the mother of the daughter that Kovaloff was supposed to marry. I just thought she was so great in her character because she interprets the letter in a totally different way and thinks that she has offended Kovaloff in some way instead of doing anything wrong. She is so worried about marrying her daughter off that she apologizes for leaving him with only his nose when he had just accused her of stealing his nose. I thought that was a great moment.

Mood Diary of “The Nose”

Posted on October 9, 2013 by Donald Fung

The Nose’s image in my head:

I’m not sure if the nose had a face, arms, and legs; but it’s the only way I can imagine a nose walking around and acting on its own. If the nose was really big though, I don’t know how it will fit on Kovaloff’s face and if the nose was regular size, I’m not sure how people will see it walking around. My guess is that the size of the nose grows when it is removed from Kovaloff’s face and it shrinks back when it returns in the same spot. I really don’t know. I think logic is suspended for the existence of the nose.

I’m also not sure how Kovaloff’s face looked like without the nose. I imagine his face would look like the face of the Great Sphinx since Gogol described it as a flat surface in place of the nose.

Throughout the novel, you can clearly see Kovaloff’s deep concerns about his social status and his lady friends. I was shocked by how little he cared about his health and his lost of the sense of smell without the nose. To me, losing a nose has much more effect than simply looking bad to society. This highlights the importance of the social ladder during the 1800s in Russia. His social role has such a large impact on him to the point that that is all he cares about after losing an essential body part. Also, I found it ironic that his nose was of a higher status than him. As the libretto stated, the reverse spelling of the Russian word “нос” is “сон” which means dream. After I read that, I pictured Kovaloff in his state-councillor attire dreaming of climbing up the social ladder to the position of his nose.

After Kovaloff finally receives his nose back, his immediate thought was that he is back to his social position and he could talk to the ladies now. He was really unaffected by this experience and did not grow as a character at all. He’s still the same guy, which once again, emphasizes how social status dominated the lives of the people in his society.

Despite the serious intention of the story, I actually found The Nose very comical. For example, when Jakovlevitch discovers a nose in his bread, he has a very calm reaction and decides to walk outside with it wrapped up and throw in down from a bridge. I find it funny how he’s taking such a huge risk to do unnecessary work. He could’ve just thrown it in the trash. Another comedic part is when advertisement official offered him snuff right after Kovaloff tells him he is missing his nose. I’m not sure if the official wanted to make fun of him or it was a genuine act of pity and he just wasn’t thinking, but either way, that really gave me a good laugh.

I would also like to point out that I find The Nose by Nikolai Gogol very similar to Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Both stories take place in a realistic world while its main character experience unexplainably catastrophic events that seems weird and unrealistic. In both novels, the main character has a very narrow mindset and has a rather abnormal reaction to their situation.

Before I end my blog, I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed this short story and I liked how Gogol utilized the nose to symbolize the problems of social status rather than directly stating it. The symbolism was hidden so well that if it wasn’t for Monday’s class in the Skylight Room, I wouldn’t have noticed it. However, I was disappointed by how Gogol left so many questions unanswered and open for interpretation. Because the rest of the story is so realistic, I am still asking myself how a nose could possibly be taken off, put back off, and have a life of its own. Anyways, I can’t wait to see someone dressed as a nose at the opera!

Kovaloff and The Nose at the Opera

Work Citied:

“Great Sphinx of Giza.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 10 June 2013. Web. 08 Oct. 2013.

Khan, Hasnain. “Climbing the Social Ladder.” DeviantART. DeviantART, 2006. Web. 08 Oct. 2013.

Wilkins, David. “Shostakovich’s Opera ‘The Nose'” Web log post. Music and Vision, 23 May 2006. Web. 08 Oct. 2013.

Link to Clip Art Image

Nobody NOSE What’s Going On Here!

Posted on October 9, 2013 by rschneider

Reading Gogol’s The Nose, I was thoroughly confused. One of my first thoughts were “What is up with these Eastern European guys writing about someone turning into a giant insect…and now about a runaway nose?” (after having read Kafka’s Metamorphosis as well of course). Forget all of the Soviet Russia jokes, what really is going on there?

When the nose was discovered in the loaf of bread, I immediately thought of Sweeney Todd and Ms. Lovett’s meat pies (people pies, actually) especially being that Ivan is a barber himself (much like Sweeney)

I also couldn’t help trying to picture what someone would look like without their nose. So, here’s a nose-less Tom Cruise. It’s also one of the only non-grotesque pictures I found when searching for face without a nose. Enjoy Tom Cruise in his nose-less glory.

I was also reminded of the children’s game “I’ve got your nose” which has frightened me many a times in the past (pictured above). However, I overcame my fear when I realized my nose is in fact too big to fit in anyone’s hand.

During my reading of the libretto and short story, I grew increasingly interested in the fact that we will see a performance of the opera. I began to picture how it would play out on stage.

When I pictured the nose as a separate entity, I saw something like this.

Just Another Russian Thing

Posted on October 9, 2013 by Rebecca Drabczyk

The Russian names (patronymics included), the common Russian expressions, the Russian humor that only other Russians find funny, and the Russian emphasis of social status featured in Nikolai Gogol’s “The Nose” made me feel like I was in high school all over again. I imagined myself in the hallways of Staten Island Technical High School surrounded by a plethora of Russians whose conversation, although easily translatable, was still not understandable. Jumping from the English to the Russian text of Gogol’s work, I attempted to place myself in the shoes of one of those Russians in the hallway. I pretended I was an insider who understood the ambiguous dialogue and the strange wittiness. I humored myself into believing that because I could semi-comprehend the Russian dialogue I knew all there was to know about the story.

All the women in “The Nose”
(Dverin)

For the entirety of the short story I believed the talking nose beheld the physical stature of a giant nose dressed in a trench coat sporting a pair of conspicuous black-rimmed glasses – the ideal disguise for anyone, or thing, incognito. Albeit, I deducted this was not really a tale of a man losing his nose, I still could not create a human image for the said nose in question. On the other hand, I was immediately able to create Russian guises for the other characters. Ivan, the barber, was a tall, skinny, black haired Russian geezer who did not speak Russian or English, but a mumbled combination of the two. His conversational skills were limited; yet because of his hair-cutting mastery he was able to maintain a healthy status in the Russian hierarchy.

Just two of the ten
(Russian Police)

Kovalev, the unfortunate man who loses his pimpled nose, was the uniformed Danny Zuko of Russians pre-losing his nose, and a combination of Michael Jackson and Lord Voldermort post-losing his nose. Concerned with his appearance, Kovalev walked around with a handkerchief in order to hide his missing sense. The police officers were drunken fools; the female characters all babushkas. I lump these two groups together because there seemed to be no disparities between the different police officers, or any disparities between the different women roles.

The man without a nose was by far my favorite character because he epitomized Russian culture. So concerned with his high-ranking status, Kovalev’s nose is even socially aware. “Judging by the buttons on your uniform,” the nose proclaims to Kovalev, “there can’t be any close relations between us.” This reveals that in Russia in the 1830s, class was everything. It defined relationships and decided who was “in” and who was “out”. Those of different social distinctions did not speak, nor interact. Not being able to know your own nose because he’s in a different department serves as a clear indicator of the rigidity of the 1830s Russian social hierarchy.

Luckily, the conclusion of the short story ends on a happy note. Kovalev becomes Danny Zuko again. Although he opts not to have his prized, high-ranking Sandy, he instead chooses to invite a local shirt-vender who’s “a real beauty” to come over to his house. Proving yet again, the high (ranking) always get what they want, and the low are just happy to obey.

Works Cited

Dverin, Anatoly. Babushka. N.d. Pastel on paper. From Russia with Art Gallery.Fromrussiawithart.org. 2012. Web. 9 Oct. 2013.

“Russian Police.” Russia In Pictures. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Oct. 2013.

“Sign – Parking for Russians Only – Splash of Pride.” Sign – Parking for Russians Only – Splash of Pride. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Oct. 2013.

The Nose (or anything really)

Posted on October 9, 2013 by Cindy Chan

I expected a lot from this story, since I was told that it’s weirder than “The Metamorphosis” in some ways. That’s not to say that “The Nose” wasn’t weird. I just felt that it took a backseat to Kafka’s work. In any case, my first impression of this story was that it tried hard to be weird in the most ordinary sense. It didn’t take the apparent subject matter – the guys lost his nose, people – at hand very seriously. It was light-hearted and there was a general vibe of “don’t worry readers, everything will turn out fine.”

The story is simply about a guy who lost his nose; it could’ve been anything – chin, butt, potbelly (Once seen as a symbol of wealth.), you name it. The point is not what’s missing, but how humdrum the story seems to be. Now I know some people will disagree with me on what I just said. I understand that there’s an apparent theme of social/class status throughout the story and it’s all very satirical, but that’s not what I gleaned from the first reading. Before trying to interpret anything (After all, what one interprets might be slightly different than what the author was trying to convey.) I usually try to read it at face value and try to feel what strikes me personally.

These last two paragraphs from the story struck me the most:

“But the most incomprehensible thing of all is, how authors can choose such subjects for their stories. That really surpasses my understanding. In the first place, no advantage results from it for the country; and in the second place, no harm results either.

All the same, when one reflects well, there really is something in the matter. Whatever may be said to the contrary, such cases do occur — rarely, it is true, but now and then actually.”

Okay, I get it. The “something in the matter” might actually bring us back to the themes throughout the story, but honestly, it doesn’t have to be that complicated. It can really just be about the idea that pockets of strange occurrences may or may not have popped up in the stream of time and sometimes, interpret as one might, it’s just what it is. It’s just about a really stubborn and egotistical prick and his missing nose; with a dish of something that might whet your philosophical/interpretational appetite on the side. That’s my two cents.

Mood Diary: “The Nose”

Posted on October 9, 2013 by Andrew Chen

Words cannot be used to describe how I felt while reading The Nose by Nikolai Gogol.

As soon as I read “He poked two fingers in and pulled out – a nose!” I had to stop reading and put my head down. The absurdity of this story just didn’t settle with me. Used as a metaphor or not, I couldn’t take Gogol seriously, as the image of a nose running around, talking, giving orders, and acting high and mighty ruined the seriousness (if it even had seriousness) of the short novel. I was too busy distracting myself with comedic scenes in my head and trying to fit different voices to the pompousness of the nose.

Another event that bothered me throughout the story was the obliviousness of the people. How could they not realize a nose walking around and interacting with things? I also questioned how big the nose appeared to be. Was it still the same size, walking around in a grown man’s uniform and conversing with its owner or was it enlarged tremendously? How exactly does a nose “[pray] with an expression of profound piety” again? How do the people not question Kovalyov’s lack of a nose on his face? What would Kovalyov sound like, as it definitely can’t be nasally due to his lack of a nose. Would a person even be able to speak without a nose in real life? I couldn’t concentrate on Gogol’s main point with his ridiculous topic.

Works Cited:

Sam Weir. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Oct. 2013. <http://25.media.tumblr.com/bc2bd9ae52d427ae25f20d5c2dba7824/tumblr_mhs1nultQc1rd37xho4_r1_250.gif>.

Gogol, Nikolai. The Nose. Diary of a Madman and Other Stories, translated by Ronald Wilks, Penguin Books, 1987 reprint, pp. 42-70

Mood Diary: The Nose

Posted on October 9, 2013 by carmela13

Confusion. That’s what I felt while reading Nikolai Gogol’s The Nose. The story didn’t exactly follow a logical pattern. One moment there was a man who discovered a nose, a nose that he could hold in his hand. The next a man was frantically chasing his own nose, which for some inexplicable reason was human sized. I understood this obviously stood for something deeper and more meaningful then actually misplacing one’s nose.

We discussed in class how the short story reflected the emphasis of social standings. But as I was reading I was also considering how important physical appearance is to some. The story made me recollect a movie I once saw called Penelope. A girl is cursed with a pig nose from birth and could only break the curse by marrying a blue blood, one of high social status and/or wealth. The themes between the two are very similar. The Major also kept reffering to the difficulties he would have with women were he to not discover the whereabouts of his nose. Women who he continued to reference because of their high social status, as though this made losing his nose all the more tragic.

Similar to Kafka’s Metamorphosis, there was no previous explanation of how his nose was able to “run away” just as there was no logical explanation for Gregor’s transformation. Both protagonists were struck with these unfortunate events with no fair warning. However, the Major was able to take action and attempted to solve his dilemma. Which is exactly what losing his nose meant to him, it acted as a dilemma. I wondered about the physical implications losing his nose had on his breathing. I imagined breathing only through my mouth and become exhausted and irritated just thinking about all the effort and consciousness involved in doing so.

I found the entire short story comical. How could you not? There’s a walking talking nose dressed in human garments galavanting about.