The setting of the Nose in St. Petersburg is important and helps make sense of the story. The events are concretely set in the city, with many references to the city’s landmarks throughout. These concrete, realistic details are juxtaposed with the absurd, dreamlike events of the story (Kovalyov having lost his nose without noticing; the strange fog that obscures the ending of scenes, which the narrator waves away). The Russian title is actually “Нос” (Nose), which is the Russian word for dream (“сон”) backwards.

The strangeness of the story is less surprising given this particular setting, because it corresponds with the strangeness of the city itself. The fact that it appeared remarkably quickly and became a focal point of the culture; the fact that it was built on swamps and water, seemingly impossible; the surreal white nights of the far north; all of these make the reality of the city seem more uncertain.

In previous texts, (like Alexander Herzen’s comparison of Moscow and St. Petersburg), the city was criticized for its bureaucracy, the political pressure and ladder-climbing. Gogol parodies this importance of political rank above all else when Kovalyov is afraid to talk to his own nose because it outranks him. No one else seems to notice anything strange about it, either, and pay all due respect to it.