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34 Perhaps they are doubles, parts of each in each. Piskarev, the dreams seem to suggest, could become Pirogov; Pirogov must already be partly Piskarev. There is a common denominator—flight. Both run from reality, both dream to escape: Piskarev of what he cannot be, Pirogov of what will make him forget what the world is. His cynicism is as escapist oriented as Piskarev’s romanticism. He is perhaps Piskarev turned inside out. NOTE 34. Dostoevskij loathed philistines and philistinism. His rejection of posˇ lost’ is apparently not negative, as it is in Gogol’s grotesques, but is a mystical vision of salvation through suffering.

Petersburg to seek a position for himself, both in terms of a career and an advantageous marriage. He is obsessed by rank and its manifestations. This obsession with external appearances makes the disappearance of his nose all the more of a hardship for him. The Nose is Kovalev’s nose in the guise of a person. He is a state councillor, which is three ranks above Kovalev’s own position, adding to Kovalev’s distress. He is apprehended while trying to leave St. Petersburg and is returned to Kovalev.

Whenever it seems as if the meaning of these events is about to be revealed, everything is shrouded in fog. 61 NOTES 58. The chance happening is of interest, but it is legitimate in a work of art only when the writer puts it there not by chance. In a work of art, what may look like a chance happening on the surface is actually subject to the inner laws of the work. 61. Such dreams are by no means rare. I will mention, by way of example, the case of a twelve-year-old boy who dreamed that his nose had been cut off by a streetcar, and of a five-year-old boy who dreamed that he caught a scampering mouse, which he identified with his sex organ, after actually grasping his organ.