The comedy by V. V. Kapnist “The Yabeda”, created in 1796, at the end of the century, inherits the tradition of national drama in its entirety.
"Sneaky" and "Undergrowth": the tradition of prose
high comedy in the poetic variety of the genre
"Sneak" is specifically associated with the mirror of life in the minds of close contemporaries.
Generic identification of theater and drama with a mirror by the end of the 18th century. became an indispensable reality of the emerging aesthetics and theatrical criticism. It was the comedy Yabeda, perceived by contemporaries as a mirror of Russian morals, that became a kind of semantic focus of Russian high comedy of the 18th century. First of all, the closeness of the love line of "Yabeda" to the corresponding plot motif of "The Undergrowth" is obvious. In both comedies, the heroine, bearing the same name Sophia, is loved by an officer (Milon and Pryamikov), who was separated from her by the circumstances of the service.
In both comedies, the heroine was brought up in an environment far from the material life of the Prostakov estate and the Krivosudov house. In both "The Undergrowth" and "The Yabed", the heroine is threatened with a forced marriage for the mercenary motives of the groom's family.
In both comedies, the lovers owe their final happiness to the intervention of an outside force.
The punning word becomes the main means of differentiating the figurative system and an artistic device for recreating the world image split into an idea and a thing.
Functions of the punning word in the comedy "Yabeda": characterological, effective, genre-forming, world-modelling.
The word in "Sneak" begins to play with meanings, the word "sneak" is a self-exposure of that "social disaster", which means: "Sneak" - "I - trouble." the very name of the comedy marks the playful nature of its verbal plan, thereby forcing us to see the main action of the comedy precisely in it.
The pun in "Yabed" has not only a game, but also a functional purpose: it differentiates the figurative system of comedy, the first level on which it shows its activity is characterology.
Being applied to “food” and “drink” in the words of Thekla Krivosudova, it emphasizes the everyday, material perversion of the spiritual concept of “good”. It is equally used by all the characters of the comedy, its meaning in this speech characteristic becomes the main method of the general characterization of the character.
A wallet can symbolize only one thing: self-interest, incompatible with the dignity of a human concept.
For Pryamikov, the main thing in litigation is not material good (estate), but spiritual good - law and love.
But for Krivosudov’s group of characters, “good” and “good” are tangible material things, and the word “thank” means literally “to give good” - to give a bribe with food, clothes, money and material values
The pun "Yabedy" emphasizes two functional aspects in the word, speech and action. Both of them are covered by the same verbal form, but at the same time, the word means one thing, and the deed designated by it looks completely different.
The semantic leitmotif of Kapnist's comedy - the opposition of the concepts of "word" and "deed" - is realized in the stage action.
In "Yabed" "word" and "deed" are absolutely opposite: the right word of Pryamikov and the false deed of Pravolov.
The plot of Yabeda is based on a trial, and therefore the concept of “case” immediately appears in comedy in its two lexical meanings: action-act and document. As for Pryamikov, in his understanding, a court case can be resolved by a verbal action, attempts run into a blank wall of irrevocableness of a pure word in the material environment of the Krivosudov court house, where the material embodiment of the word in a written document, paper is preferable.
Features of the denouement and typology of the hero-ideologist in Russian high comedy.
"Sneak" has a double denouement: the first is internal, emanating from the very action of the comedy, the second is external, provoked by forces invading the comedic world image from beyond its limits. The first denouement of "Yabeda" - the decision of the Civil Chamber in the case of Pryamikov-Pravolov is typically tragic. In the verbal and colloquial matter of the Russian drama, the deprivation of a name is tantamount to murder, and this is exactly what happens to Pryamikov in a court order, on paper; moreover, the deprivation of a name is complemented by the deprivation of an estate.
Thus, by the decision of the Civil Chamber, Pryamikov was immediately deleted from two spheres of reality of the 18th century: the ideal, where a person is identical to his name, and the material, where he is the owner of his estate; therefore, Bogdan Pryamikov is recognized as non-existent, which is functionally tantamount to violent death.
The second denouement of Yabeda has also long and rightly raised doubts among researchers about their well-being. The Senate Court turns out to be nothing more than an "empty word" with no visible consequences:
The highest good of power and law, which in its everyday interpretation turns into its own punning antonym: the whim of tyrannical arbitrariness and judicial lawlessness.
The word "law" in the singular in "Yabed" is practically synonymous with the concept of "good" in the highest sense (goodness, justice, justice).
Already in these remarks, where the concept of "law" is translated into the plural of the word "laws", the opposition of meanings is obvious: the clear unambiguity of the law - and the infinite variability of laws, turning them into a plastic mass, obedient to the subjective arbitrariness of a self-serving official.
The law that justifies the guilty, and the law that ruins the right, is no longer law, but lawlessness.
It is no coincidence that the quantitative opposition "one - many" has already been formed in Yabed by the opposition of the law-truth and the laws-falsehood.
The potential associativity of the hero to the Gospel Son of God, the incarnate Word, the Logos, whose integral attribute is his goodness and his truth, is steadily growing, this potential associativity is especially clearly manifested in the image of Pryamikov:
First of all, in "Yabed" it is not known where Pryamikov came from in the settled life of the Krivosudov house
The motive for the desecration of the highest truth and the nominal murder of Pryamikov: deprivation of the name and estate.
In one of the intermediate versions of the text, "Sneak" was supposed to end with a kind of "silent scene", allegorically depicting Justice - the idea of the Last Judgment.
Most clearly, the tendency towards the synthesis of odic and satirical, ideological and everyday, conceptual and plastic world images was expressed in lyrics, which are still especially clearly differentiated by their genre features.
Vasily Kapnist
Comedy in five acts
To His Imperial Majesty Sovereign Emperor Paul the First
Monarch! having accepted the crown, you are the truth on the throne
He reigned with himself: a nobleman in a magnificent share
And the servant who eats the bread of the day in the sweat of his face,
As before God, so before you are equal.
You are the image of the law for us without hypocrisy:
Perun of power there, from the exalted throne,
Villainy, slander, addiction strike;
Here you invigorate innocence with a scepter of bounty,
You raise the truth, you reward merits
And so you attract all the Russians to the staff.
Sorry monarch! that I, with the zeal of grief,
My work, like a drop of water, pours into the depths of the sea.
You know different people of obstinate morals:
Others are not afraid of execution, but the evil ones are afraid of glory.
I painted vice with the brush of Thalia,
Bribery, sneaks exposed all the infamy
And now I give it to the ridicule of the world;
I am not vindictive from them, I am afraid of slander:
Under the Paul Shield, I am unharmed;
But, being your companion as far as possible,
I dare to dedicate this weak work to you,
Yes, I crown his success with your name.
Loyal subject Vasily Kapnist
Actors
Pravolov, retired assessor.
Krivosudov, Chairman of the Civil Chamber.
Fekla, his wife.
Sofia, his daughter.
Pryamikov, lieutenant colonel employee.
Bulbulkin, Atuev, Radbyn, Parolkin are members of the Civil Chamber.
Hwataiko, prosecutor.
Kokhtin, secretary of the Civil Chamber.
Dobrov, booster
Anna Sophia's maid
Naumych, Pravolov's attorney.
Arkhip, Pravolov's servant.
The action takes place in the house of Krivosudov.
In the corner of the room is a table covered with red cloth. There are three doors in the room.
Act I
Phenomenon 1
Pryamikov And Dobrov.
Pryamikov
Dobrov
Yes, sir, why did you turn into this house?
Is it really for sins what kind of attack you
Or litigation, God save, dragged into this mouth?
Pryamikov
That's right: the process was imposed on the neck;
I tried my best to get away from him.
He reconciled, yielded, but lost all his work.
And so the county and the upper district court
Having passed where my adversary was not flattered,
Your case has entered the Civil Chamber.
Dobrov
Pryamikov
My neighbor Pravolov clung to me for no reason...
Dobrov
Who? Pravolov?
Pryamikov
Yes he. Why were you surprised?
Dobrov
I marvel, I'm right, as with a smart head
Could you contact such a plague, sir?
Pryamikov
He is cunning, but he is not dangerous.
Dobrov
Who? He?
Pryamikov
Already in two courts his labor was in vain.
Dobrov
You don't know, sir, what a fine fellow you are.
There is no other such daring in the world.
In vain in two courts! Yes, they just understand
But in the Civil, they suddenly decide and execute.
What a misfortune to him that they blame him for those;
Only for him in the Chamber there would be a harmony,
Then he will suddenly receive both the right and the estate.
You and Pravolov to court? What boldness!
Pryamikov
Why is he so scary to me? Please say.
I, serving in the army, could not know the neighbors.
After reconciliation, I asked for leave;
Only in the house - he jumped on me with the process,
And then I learned not from one,
That he is an evil tell-tale, and that's all.
Characteristic is also the cult of ancient poetry, the “Horacianism” and epicureanism of Kapnist, who, beginning in the late 1790s, translated and freely translated Horace a lot. Here, the craving for a distant ancient culture, unlike the living social reality, and the craving for a complete and aestheticized poetic style, also affected. Kapnist sees Horace as a teacher in the renunciation of the vital interests of life, in the disappointment of careless hopes; he interprets anacreonism as the poetry of light and somewhat sentimental consolation, revealing dreamy happiness in the fleeting joys of the soul. The refinement of the language, the harmony of the sound composition of the verse, the calculation in each turn of the phrase, the selection of a specific poetic dictionary - all this fine work on the verse in Kapnist's lyrics goes in the direction of creating the poetic culture that the young Pushkin perceived from Karamzinists.
However, Kapnist's refusal to be politically active in the field of his lyrical work, the pessimistic and sentimental moods that had seized him especially from the very end of the 1790s, did not make him a reactionary at that time in principle. Back in the 1790s, he could resent the order of the Russian autocracy, he could openly oppose them. And even later - one must not forget that the sons of Kapnist were members of the Decembrist organizations, and the sons of his closest friend I.M. Muravyov-Apostol were the most prominent figures of the Decembrist uprising.
"Sneak" Kapnist. Kapnist's free-thinking was clearly expressed in his most significant work, the famous comedy "Snake", which was popular until the middle of the 19th century.
Yabeda is a comedy-satire about officials and, in particular, about judicial officials, about injustice, not only not eradicated by Catherine's legislation, but still spreading after its introduction. When writing his comedy, Kapnist used the material of the trial, which he himself had to conduct, defending himself from a certain landowner Tarkovsky, who illegally appropriated part of his estate. This litigation served as a pretext for the composition of "The Yabeda". The comedy was completed by Kapnist no later than 1796, still under Catherine II, but then it was neither staged nor printed. Then Kapnist made some changes to it and shortened it in places), and in 1798 it was published and simultaneously staged on the St. Petersburg stage. She was successful; There were four performances in a row. On September 20, the fifth was appointed, when suddenly Paul I personally ordered that the comedy be banned from being staged and that copies of its publication be withdrawn from sale. "Yabeda" was released from the ban only in 1805, already under Alexander I.
The plot of Yabeda is a typical story of one trial. "Yabednik", a clever swindler, a specialist in litigation, Pravolov, wants to take away the estate from an honest, straightforward officer Pryamikov without any legal grounds; Pravlov acts for sure: he diligently distributes bribes to judges; the chairman of the civil judicial chamber is in his hands, takes bribes from him and even intends to intermarry with him, marrying his daughter to him. Pryamikov, firmly relying on his right, is convinced that nothing can be done about the right against bribes. The court had already awarded Pravolov his estate, but, fortunately, the government intervened in the matter, to whose attention the outrages of the civil chamber and Pravolov reached. The latter is arrested, and the members of the court are put on trial; Pryamikov marries the judge's daughter, the virtuous Sophia, whom he loves and who loves him.
The theme of "Yabeda", rampant arbitrariness and robbery of officials, was an acute, topical topic, necessary in the time of Kapnist and even much later, in the 19th century, which did not lose its interest. The comedy was written in the 1790s, at the time of the final strengthening of the bureaucratic and police apparatus created by Potemkin, then by Zubov and Bezborodko, and finally flourished especially under Paul I. Bureaucracy has long been an enemy of independent social thought; the bureaucracy carried out the arbitrariness of the despot and repeated it on a smaller scale “on the ground”. The bureaucracy, people loyal to the government, bought by the fact that they were given the opportunity to rob the people with impunity, was opposed by the government to attempts to create and organize an advanced society of the nobility. Even a nobleman felt the fetters of the chancelleries, the clerk's tricks of the "sneak", if he himself did not want or could not become a partner in the mutual responsibility of the authorities, higher or lower, if he could not be a nobleman and did not want to be some kind of assessor-bribe taker. On the "sneak", i.e. Kapnist attacked the bureaucracy, its wild arbitrariness, corruption, arbitrariness in his comedy also from the standpoint of the nobility. Belinsky wrote that "The Yabed" belongs to the historically important phenomena of Russian literature, as a bold and decisive attack of satire on chicanery, sneak and extortion, which so terribly tormented the society of the former time "(op. cit.).
