This sampling of Gogol’s works includes the increasingly fantastic entries of ‘The Diary of a Madman,’ followed by the wonderfully surrealistic ‘The Nose,’ in which the title character embarks on some unlikely activities when separated from its owner’s face. In ‘The Carriage,’ a pompous landowner gets his comeuppance when he attempts to impress a general. Rounding out the collection are the woefully comic tale of a clerk’s acquisition of ‘The Overcoat’ and the celebrated novella ‘Taras Bulba’ about the Ukrainian mythic hero said to have led a bloody Cossack revolt against the Poles.