The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol (Heathen Short)

The Overcoat

Heathen Short #11
Author
Nikolai Gogol
Translator
Constance Garnett
First Edition
1842 / 1923
Heathen Edition
2025
Refreshed
Pages
46
Heathen Genera
Arriving Soon-ish, Existentialicious
ISBN
979-8-90075-011-8

It was . . . it is hard to say precisely on what day, but probably on the most triumphant day of the life of Akaky Akakyevitch that Petrovitch at last brought the overcoat. He brought it in the morning, just before it was time to set off for the department. The overcoat could not have arrived more in the nick of time, for rather sharp frosts were just beginning and seemed threatening to be even more severe. Petrovitch brought the greatcoat himself as a good tailor should. There was an expression of importance on his face, such as Akaky Akakyevitch had never seen there before. He seemed fully conscious of having completed a work of no little moment and of having shown in his own person the gulf that separates tailors who only put in linings and do repairs from those who make up new materials. Petrovitch helped him to put it on, and it appeared that it looked splendid too with his arms in the sleeves. In fact it turned out that the overcoat was completely and entirely successful.

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol (1809–1852) was a Russian author and playwright of Ukrainian origin, whose deep influence has been widely recognized in world literature. In 1842, he published the short story “The Overcoat” (sometimes translated as “The Cloak”), which is now seen as “the greatest Russian short story ever written.” At its center is Akaky Akakyevitch, a humble copyist whose life is marked by ridicule, invisibility, and quiet endurance. When his threadbare coat disintegrates, Akaky commissions a new one — a modest garment that rapidly transforms his fate. With it, he is seen, celebrated, and even welcomed. Without it, the fragile dignity it conferred vanishes, and Akaky’s sudden ascent collapses under the gravity of indifference. Gogol’s tale fractures along this spectral seam — between visible and invisible, poverty and pride, body and soul, coat and man. In its duality, “The Overcoat” becomes both elegy and indictment, and, in its misalignment, reveals the spiritual cost of being seen too late.

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"The greatest Russian short story ever written."
Vladimir Nabokov

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