Plyushkin
Encyclopedia
Plyushkin is a fictional character in Nikolai Gogol
's novel Dead Souls
. He is a landowner who obsessively collects and saves everything he finds, to the point that when he wants to celebrate a deal with the protagonist, he orders one of his serf
s to find a cake that a visitor brought several years ago, scrape off the mold, and bring it to them. At the same time, his estate is incredibly inefficient; the cut wheat rots on the ground and any potential income is lost.
Today in Russia
, the name "Plyushkin" is semi-humorously applied to people who collect and amass various useless things, a behavior known as compulsive hoarding
. Sometimes the terms "Plyushkin symptom" or "Plyushkin syndrome" are used to describe such people (Cybulska E."Senile Squalor: Plyushkin's not Diogenes Syndrome". Psychiatric Bulletin.1998;22:319-320).
In English
, the words "pack rat
" and hoarder are used for such people.
Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...
's novel Dead Souls
Dead Souls
Dead Souls is a novel by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842, and widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th-century Russian literature. Gogol himself saw it as an "epic poem in prose", and within the book as a "novel in verse". Despite supposedly completing the trilogy's second part, Gogol...
. He is a landowner who obsessively collects and saves everything he finds, to the point that when he wants to celebrate a deal with the protagonist, he orders one of his serf
SERF
A spin exchange relaxation-free magnetometer is a type of magnetometer developed at Princeton University in the early 2000s. SERF magnetometers measure magnetic fields by using lasers to detect the interaction between alkali metal atoms in a vapor and the magnetic field.The name for the technique...
s to find a cake that a visitor brought several years ago, scrape off the mold, and bring it to them. At the same time, his estate is incredibly inefficient; the cut wheat rots on the ground and any potential income is lost.
Today in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, the name "Plyushkin" is semi-humorously applied to people who collect and amass various useless things, a behavior known as compulsive hoarding
Compulsive hoarding
Compulsive hoarding is the acquisition of possessions in excess of socially normative amounts, even if the items are worthless, hazardous, or unsanitary...
. Sometimes the terms "Plyushkin symptom" or "Plyushkin syndrome" are used to describe such people (Cybulska E."Senile Squalor: Plyushkin's not Diogenes Syndrome". Psychiatric Bulletin.1998;22:319-320).
In English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, the words "pack rat
Compulsive hoarding
Compulsive hoarding is the acquisition of possessions in excess of socially normative amounts, even if the items are worthless, hazardous, or unsanitary...
" and hoarder are used for such people.