‘The Nose’ by Nikolai Gogol is a masterclass in gaslighting and absurdist humour. A St Petersburg barber is alarmed one morning when he discovers a disembodied nose – recognisably that of a regular customer – embedded in his breakfast. The barber’s wife accuses her husband of being involved in violent crime, and encourages him to take the nose to a nearby bridge and throw it in the river. But in attempting to do so, the barber is apprehended by a police officer who wants to know what he is doing.
Nearby, Major Kovalyov wakes up to discover that, inexplicably, he no longer has a nose. Had he lost it? On his way to report the incident to the police, he sees his nose as a human sized figure dressed in gold, stepping out of a carriage. Major Kovalyov confronts his nose – who is now a high-ranking state official – encouraging the nose to return to his face. However, Major Kovalyov’s nose is not having any of it, and admonishes the Major for lying, and for accusing a higher ranking official, making some vague threats before slipping away in a crowd. The Major goes to the police, and to anyone else who will listen, but is treated as mad, and condescendingly offered snuff by the head of police as consolation for his loss. Social class essentially determines whose truth is more valuable in ‘The Nose’, a brilliantly weird story in which Gogol – with great invention – uses supernatural humour mixed with social realism to depict societal corruption.
First published in Russian in 1836. This translation by Dora O’Brien, collected in Petersburg Tales, Alma Classics, 2014
A Personal Anthology 