person
Sobakevich
The bearish, food-obsessed landowner of Gogol's 'Dead Souls' (1842), known for his contempt for refinement; his name signs a closing joke here about refusing a sugared frog.
Reading notes
- This and That (Letters and Telegrams) §49 Sobakevich
The bearish, food-obsessed landowner from Gogol's 'Dead Souls' (1842), famous for his contempt for refinement; signing off with his name turns the closing joke about the sugared frog into a knowing literary wink.
- Revenge §8 your Sobakevich
See the entities-mentions sidecar: a Gogolian nickname for Turmanov, invoking the bearish, boorish landowner of Dead Souls.
- Lights §37 the lyricism of an old gravestone with the crudeness of a Sobakevich
Sobakevich, the blunt, heavyset, furniture-like landowner of Gogol's Dead Souls (1842), is invoked here as a byword for graceless, over-solid design -- Ananyev's description of the seaside gazebo mixes that crudeness with a note of cemetery poetry, in keeping with his fondness for combining a "high" register with something coarser.