Nikolai Gogol’s 1835 short story “Diary of a Madman” utilizes a series of diary entries by its protagonist, Aksenty Ivanovich Poprishchin, to track his descent into “madness.” Like Gogol’s other famous short stories, such as “The Overcoat” and “The Nose,” as well as his novel Dead Souls and his play The Government Inspector, this story satirizes people’s anxieties about their social rank and their determination to appear important in the eyes of others.

This summary guide references Christopher English’s translation of the story collected in Plays and Petersburg Tales, published in 2009 by Oxford University Press.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide use the term “madness” as a general descriptor for mental instability or illness.

“Diary of a Madman” consists of a series of diary entries by its protagonist. Poprishchin, the “madman” of the title, who has a large ego despite his relatively low rank and menial job. He describes a chance encounter with his departmental director’s daughter and her dog, Madgie. Poprishchin sees the director’s coach in the street and waits to see if the director’s daughter, with whom he is infatuated, will get out. After she darts into a shop, he is surprised to overhear Madgie and another dog, Fidèle, talking about the letters they send to one another. Poprishchin decides to follow Fidèle home so he can find out more information about his boss and his daughter from the dogs.

The narrative then follows Poprishchin at his job, where he appears to split time between a government office and the director’s house. In the director’s study, Poprishchin is sharpening quills and daydreaming about the director’s greatness when the director’s daughter, Sophie, walks in. He imagines making a gallant speech to her in what he takes to be high-sounding rhetoric, but after she asks if her father has been in, he only stammers out, “No ma’am” (161). After she drops her handkerchief Poprishchin clumsily picks it up for her, but he describes the handkerchief and Sophie’s mundane reaction in poetic language that inflates the importance of the encounter.

The next diary entry is not for another month, and readers learn that Poprishchin’s obsession with Sophie is not very well hidden, as he is berated by his section head for entertaining ideas of such an unlikely romance. Poprishchin is told that he is 42 years old and of a relatively low rank, but Poprishchin nurtures his wounded pride in his diary by angrily dismissing the section head as envious and inflating his own importance with the delusional expectation of rapid promotions.

After a couple of relatively uneventful days in which Poprishchin goes to the theater, fantasizes about Sophie, and walks by the director’s house to try to catch a glimpse of her, Poprishchin is sharpening quills at the director’s house again and daydreaming about Sophie. He comes up with the plan to go to Fidèle’s house to retrieve the letters Madgie sent. When he gets to the house, a girl he had seen outside the shop opens the door, and Poprishchin imagines she is smitten with him. After a brief tussle with Fidèle in which he is bitten, Poprishchin spies Fidèle’s dog bed and runs over in order to look for Madgie’s letters. When he finds them, Poprishchin runs out of the apartment and returns home, leaving the girl in a state of alarm.

The next day, Poprishchin reads the letters and offers his commentary on what Madgie has written. While he first has a high opinion of the intelligence of dogs, even going so far as to say that they are smarter than humans, his judgment sours after he wades through frivolous gossip and snobbish remarks. Finally, Poprishchin finds letters that talk about Sophie. He learns that Sophie has been going to balls and that a Kammerjunker, with whom she is infatuated, has recently been paying visits to her. Moreover, Poprishchin reads insulting comments that Madgie makes about him, calling him a “gargoyle,” and he learns that Sophie cannot help laughing at Poprishchin when she sees him. After Poprishchin reads that Sophie is set to marry the Kammerjunker, he tears the letters apart.

A few weeks pass before Poprishchin writes again in his diary, but his anger at the revelation of Sophie’s love for the Kammerjunker has not subsided. He rants about ranks being meaningless and arbitrary, and begins to imagine he may not be a mere titular councilor after all. As proof of this idea, he points to stories in which ordinary people, even peasants, are discovered to be kings. Poprishchin heaps scorn on the director, now viewing him as a snob, and imagines that Sophie would love him if he only had a higher rank.

Poprishchin writes in his diary about an affair in Spain that has left the country without a monarch. He declares that he himself is the lost king of Spain, and he starts to write incomprehensible or nonexistent dates in his entries. Under this belief, Poprishchin goes back to work after a long absence, behaves condescendingly, and shocks his coworkers when he signs a document with his imagined title, Ferdinand VIII. Then, Poprishchin forces himself into the director’s house, storms into Sophie’s room, promising her happiness and a life with him, before he leaves again.

Poprishchin next rants about society’s hypocrisy and lust for money, and he attributes these deficiencies to an elaborate conspiracy involving a barber and the Turkish sultan. After Poprishchin sees the emperor pass in his carriage, he begins wondering how to present himself publicly as the king of Spain. He goes to the post office to ask if the official deputies from Spain have arrived to take him to Spain but is told that there have been no deputies.

One day, Poprishchin writes that he has been taken to Spain, as the reader is made to understand that he has only been brought to an “asylum.” He takes the men with shaved heads with whom he is confined to be Spanish monks. He understands the beatings he gets from a guard to be the customary initiation of the Spanish king by the Chancellor of State. After the beatings continue, he begins to wonder whether he has not fallen victim to the Spanish Inquisition and whether the Chancellor is not in fact the Grand Inquisitor, whom he imagines to be, in another conspiracy theory, the pawn of the English.

The story ends with the desperate pleas of Poprishchin, among his misery and torture, for mercy. In his anguish, he cries out for his mother, before his statements return to a bit of nonsense in the last line: “But did you know that the king of France has a wart right under his nose” (178).