Ever since "The Nose" appeared in print in 1836, it has baffled and inspired literary critics and readers alike. The body of literary criticism attempting to penetrate the text's meaning itself comprises its own genre and tradition.
One school of interpretation takes Freudian psychoanalysis as its inspiration. These scholars posit that the nose in the story represents a phallic object, and Major Kovalev's hysteria over the surreal loss of his nose represents castration anxiety at the heart of his masculine self-identification. An extension of this school was advanced by Simon Karlinsky in his 1976 book, The Sexual Labyrinth of Nikolai Gogol, which argues that Gogol repressed his homosexuality and that was at the root of much of his work. In this reading, the loss of the nose represents a fear of impotence.
Still another reading of "The Nose" casts it as a piercing social critique, set in the context of extreme inequality and an inflated civil service in Russia. These readers find satirical humor in Major Kovalev's obsession with appearance as indicator of social class, and his obsession with gaining a promotion in the ranks of the bureaucracy. According to this reading, the absurdist loss of the nose is a literary device that emphasizes the absurd superficiality at the heart of these class distinctions and social aspirations.
A final school of thought argues that "The Nose" is a perfect example of the absurdist and nonsensical school of writing. An important theme developed in the text is the juxtaposition between fantasy and reality, or between the absurd and the commonplace. In the midst of a flurry of banal details about his butler, the whiskers of a fellow bureaucrat, pretty women, and uniform badges, Major Kovalev's nose simply goes missing. Major Kovalev's shock and dismay has no existential ring to it, as we might expect of a man experiencing the impossible loss of a nose. Major Kovalev does not fear insanity or apocalypse, only social exclusion. In addition, the narrator describes both the quotidian and the unreal events in the same tone. This absurd logic contaminates the "normal" events, and sets up the entire story as a farce. According to this interpretation, "The Nose" is thus "unreadable," in the sense that it has no underlying message or critique.
A myriad of other interpretations can be found in the scholarship surround Gogol's writing and, in particular, "The Nose." To some, this cacophony of readings suggest an incoherence or deviousness at the heart of Gogol's oeuvre. To others, it is his central genius.
