In this first volume, the supernatural plays a predominant part throughout; the stories tell of water-nymphs, the Devil, who steals the moon, witches, magicians, and men who traffic with the Evil One and lose their souls. In the second series, _Mirgorod_, realism comes to the fore in the stories of "The Old-Fashioned Landowners" and "The Quarrel of the Two Ivans." These two stories contain between them the sum and epitome of the whole of one side of Gogol's genius, the realistic side. In the one story, "The Old-Fashioned Landowners," we get the gentle good humour which tells the charming tale of a South Russian Philemon and Baucis, their hospitality and kindliness, and the loneliness of Philemon when Baucis is taken away, told with the art of La Fontaine, and with many touches that remind one of Dickens. The other story, "The Quarrel of the Two Ivans," who are bosom friends and quarrel over nothing, and are, after years, on the verge of making it up when the mere mention of the word "goose" which caused the quarrel sets alight to it once more and irrevocably, is in Gogol's richest farcical vein, with just a touch of melancholy.
And in the same volume, two _nouvelles_, _Tarass Bulba_ and _Viy_, sum up between them the whole of the other side of Gogol's genius. _Tarass Bulba_, a short historical novel, with its incomparably vivid picture of Cossack life, is Gogol's masterpiece in the epic vein. It is as strong and as direct as a Border ballad. _Viy_, which tells of a witch, is the most creepy and imaginative of his supernatural stories.
Later, he published two more collections of stories: _Arabesques_ (1834) and _Tales_ (1836). In these, poetry, witches, water-nymphs, magicians, devils, and epic adventure are all left behind. The element of the fantastic still subsists, as in the "Portrait," and of the grotesque, as in the story of the major who loses his nose, which becomes a separate personality, and wanders about the town. But his blend of realism and humour comes out strongly in the story of "The Carriage," and his blend of realism and pathos still more strongly in the story of "The Overcoat," the story of a minor public servant who is always shivering and whose dream it is to have a warm overcoat. After years of privation he saves enough money to buy one, and on the first day he wears it, it is stolen. He dies of melancholia, and his ghost haunts the streets. This story is the only begetter of the large army of pathetic figures of failure that crowd the pages of Russian literature.