THE REPUTATION OF A NEWSPAPER
After Kovalyov has attempted, unsuccessfully, to talk to his nose in the cathedral he goes to a newspaper office to place an advertisement offering a reward for the return of his nose. But the clerk in the newspaper office refuses to accept the advertisement. It does not fit into any of the acceptable categories for classified notices. Kovalyov leaves the office, defeated.
At the end of the story Gogol, reflecting on the tale he has just told, says that while the separation of a man from his nose is indeed fantastic and implausible, what is far more implausible is that a man as sensible as Kovalyov would have thought, even for a minute, that a newspaper would accept advertisements about noses. (He does add that the most unbelievable thing of all is that anyone should have written a story like this in the first place.)
This text by William Kentridge appears alongside the illustration of this print in William Kentridge Nose: Thirty Etchings, edited by Bronwyn Law-Viljoen and published by David Krut Publishing in 2010.