Russian Tsar Era Classics — The Overcoat, by Nikolai Gogol
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Nikolai Gogol's "The Overcoat" (1842) — the tale Russian literature is said to have walked out of — in a fresh in-house English translation, performed by the KacheliTV cast.
Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin is a quiet copying clerk in a St. Petersburg department, mocked by everyone and content with his letters — until the winter frost defeats his threadbare old coat. The tailor Petrovich will not mend it: a new one must be made. Akaky saves kopeck by kopeck, starves his little life down to a single shining goal — and for one evening, in a new overcoat with a fur collar, he is the happiest man in Petersburg. Then, crossing a deserted square at night, he meets two men with mustaches. What follows — the great Personage who could not be troubled, the fever, and the ghost afterward seen near the Kalinkin Bridge — is Gogol's tender, funny, and quietly terrifying masterpiece, told complete and uncut.
The parts:
0:38 — Part One: a clerk named for his father, the copying room, and a young man's small mercy
15:19 — Part Two: the frost, Petrovich the tailor, the great saving, and the new overcoat
40:17 — Part Three: the great day, the name-day party, and the walk home across the square
50:56 — Part Four: the robbery, the Important Personage, the fever, and the end of Akaky Akakievich
71:40 — Part Five: the ghost by the Kalinkin Bridge, the general's overcoat, and the last apparition
Source: Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852), «Шинель» ("The Overcoat"), first published 1842 — public domain. Russian text via ilibrary.ru. Fresh in-house English translation made for this performance; no existing translation used.
Dramatized performance by the KacheliTV cast: narrated by Amos, with Felix as Akaky Akakievich, Orson as Petrovich the tailor, Silas as the Important Personage, Violetta as the Mother, Scratch as the Watchman, Bruno as the Assistant Superintendent, Benedetto as the Doctor, and Lulu as the Daughter — with Felix returning as the Ghost.
Music: the theme (Pastoral Awe) opens the tale, returns briefly between the parts, and closes it. No music plays under the narration. A licensed recording of howling wind (CC0, Wikimedia Commons) touches two winter scenes.
Season 147 — Russian Tsar Era Classics, Episode 3. The shelf so far: Lefty, by Nikolai Leskov · The Queen of Spades, by Alexander Pushkin · The Overcoat, by Nikolai Gogol.
KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
