THE contrast of verbal and visual adumbrated at the end of " Rome"
finds fuller representation in many of Gogol's other works. The first few
pages of "The Fair at Sorochintsy," which opens Evenings on a Farm Near
Dikanka, are a revel for the eye, a portrait of a luxuriant summer landscape
and its picturesque inhabitants. The scene is static and timeless. Suddenly
spoken words intrude, followed by movement, change, development, the
beginning of the action, and a disclaimer of the power of seeing: "Our fair
maiden mused, gazing at the glorious view, and even forgot to crack the
sunflower seeds with which she had been busily engaged all the way, when
all at once the words, 'What a girl!' caught her ear." She looked around to
see who could have uttered them, noticed a young man with "fiery eyes,
which seemed to look right through her," and then "lowered her eyes"--
disconnecting, as it were, from the visual--"at the thought that he might
have uttered those words" ( I, 11). Like the scene before her, the girl had
been immobile as long as she had been using her eyes alone.

Five years later, in "The Two Ivans," the contrast is posed far more
starkly and with far weightier consequences. Ivan Ivanovich is a "visual"
being, who inhabits a well-ordered, scrupulously detailed physical world,
in contemplation of which he spends many satisfied hours. He takes for
granted that he can possess and therefore control anything that swims into
his line of sight. When he enters Ivan Nikiforovich's room to ask for the
gun, however, he not only discovers that his eyes fail him but even expe-
riences a visual dislocation:

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