In his brief, brilliant study "Nikolai Gogol, " Vladimir Nabokov accounts for Gogol's artistry through this and what he calls Gogol's "four dimensional" prose, a sinuous style that captures characters in their inner being.
"Dead Souls, " meanwhile, is among that small number of uncompleted masterpieces that includes Tchaikovsky's Unfinished Symphony, and Robert Musil's "The Man Without Qualities, " but with the important qualification that Nikolai Gogol's great work is all the better for remaining unfinished.