During the period from 1929 to 1936 when Bulgakov was working on Molière, two other writers also came particularly to occupy his attention. His 1930 stage adaptation of Gogol's Myortvye dushi (Dead Souls) was followed in 1934 by a film scenario of the same novel, as well as a second film scenario, this time of Revizor (The Government Inspector). And in 1934–5 he wrote his biographical play about Pushkin, Posledniye dni (The Last Days). But where Bulgakov's response to Molière had engendered a compact and coherent series of works, the return to the nineteenth century and to Russian subjects produced a rather more fragmented response. Pushkin is absent from the play which treats of his biography; and Bulgakov shied away from writing any works about Gogol, preferring instead to evoke his presence through lyrical narrative devices. The question naturally arises as to whether this is due to any particular feelings on Bulgakov's part about his Russian forebears, as opposed to the European tradition; whether he felt that in the Molière works he had expressed his views on the writer in such a comprehensive manner that there was now room to embrace new concerns as well as consolidating his earlier themes; or, indeed, whether the painful lessons he had learned from the hostile reception of his Molière works had not simply made him wary of treating too explicitly in print of his favourite theme of the writer.