Idea design and features of the composition.
In The Inspector General, - Gogol later recalled, I decided to collect in one heap everything that was bad in Russia, which I then knew, all the injustices that are done in those places and in those cases where justice is most required of a person, and for one laugh at everything at once.
This plan of Gogol found a brilliant implementation in his comedy, defining its genre as socio-political comedy. The driving spring in The Inspector General is not a love affair, not events privacy, but the phenomena of social order. The plot of the comedy is based on a commotion among the officials who are waiting for the auditor, and their desire to hide their "sins" from him. Thus, such a compositional feature comedy as the absence in it central hero; such a hero in the "Inspector" was, in the words of Belinsky, "a corporation of various official thieves and robbers," the bureaucratic mass.
This bureaucracy is given, first of all, in his official activity, which, of course, entailed the inclusion in the play of the images of the merchant class and the bourgeoisie.
The Inspector General is a broad picture of the bureaucratic and bureaucratic rule of feudal Russia in the 1930s.
The ingenious writer Gogol, painting this picture, managed to write each image included in it in such a way that, without losing his individual originality, at the same time he is a typical phenomenon of the life of that time.
The comedy also ridicules the everyday life of the inhabitants of the city: mustiness and vulgarity, insignificance of interests, hypocrisy and lies, swagger, a complete lack of human dignity, superstition and gossip.
This everyday life of provincial Russia of that time is also revealed in the images of the landowners Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, the wife and daughter of the mayor, in the images of merchants and bourgeois women.
Images of officials
The action in The Inspector General dates back to the early 1930s. All sorts of abuses of power, embezzlement and bribery, arbitrariness and disdain for the people were characteristic, ingrained features of the then bureaucracy. This is exactly how Gogol shows the rulers of the county town in his comedy.
At the head of them is the mayor. He is not stupid: he judges more sensibly than his colleagues about the reasons for sending an auditor to them;
The mayor is a convinced bribe-taker: “This is how God himself arranged it, and the Voltaires speak against it in vain.”
He is an embezzler: he constantly embezzles state money.
The goal of his aspirations is "over time ... to get into the generals." Why does he need it? “According to the concept of our mayor,” Belinsky says, “to be a general means to see humiliation and meanness from the lower ones in front of you, to persecute all non-generals with your swagger and arrogance.” These traits are still evident in him today. In dealing with subordinates, in relation to the population of the city, he is self-confident, rude and despotic: “And whoever is dissatisfied, then after the ladies of such displeasure ...”; "Here I am them, canals ..."; “What, samovar makers, yardsticks ...” Such rude shouts and abuse are characteristic of the mayor.
But otherwise he keeps himself in front of his superiors. In a conversation with Khlestakov, whom he mistook for an auditor, the mayor tries to show himself as an executive official, speaks ingratiatingly respectfully, filling his speech with expressions adopted in the official circle: “In other cities, I dare to report to you, city governors and officials care more about their own there is a benefit; and here, it can be said, there is no other thought than to earn the attention of the authorities with diligence and vigilance.
The second most important person in the city is Judge Lyapkin-Tyapkin. Unlike other officials, he is a representative of the elected authorities: "elected as a judge by the will of the nobility." Therefore, he keeps freer with the mayor, allows himself to challenge him. He is regarded in the city as a "freethinker" and an educated man, having read five or six books. Officials speak of him as an eloquent speaker: “You have no word,” Strawberry tells him, “Cicero 1 flew off his tongue.” Taking a great interest in hunting, the judge takes bribes with greyhound puppies. He does not deal with cases at all, and the court is a complete mess.
The trustee of charitable establishments Strawberry - "a fat man, but a thin rogue." In the hospital under his jurisdiction, the sick are dying like flies; the doctor "does not know a word of Russian." On occasion, Strawberry is ready to denounce his colleagues. Introducing himself to Khlestakov, he slanders both the postmaster, and the judge, and the superintendent of schools.
Shy, frightened, mute is Khlopov, the superintendent of schools, the only one among the officials who is not a nobleman.
Postmaster Shpekin is opening letters. His speech is poor in thoughts and words.
All officials are drawn by Gogol, as if alive, each of them is unique. But at the same time, they all create the total image of the bureaucracy that governs the country, reveal the rottenness of the socio-political system of feudal Russia,
Destroying laughter Gogol scourging bureaucracy tsarist Russia: the officials' complete lack of understanding of their duty, their bureaucracy, bribery and embezzlement, sycophancy, low cultural level.
Khlestakov
This whole world of provincial officials and townsfolk sets into motion and exposes itself with its speeches and deeds in anticipation of the auditor and after the arrival of the imaginary auditor - Khlestakov.
The image of Khlestakov is written with exceptional artistic power and breadth of typical generalization. According to Gogol's definition, Khlestakov is “one of those people who are called empty in the offices. He speaks and acts without any consideration. Khlestakov himself does not know what he will say the next minute; "It's all a surprise and a surprise" for himself. “He lies with feeling; in his eyes is expressed the pleasure he received from this. But the most basic, characteristic feature of Khlestakov is "the desire to play a role at least one inch higher than the one assigned to him." This is the essence of "Khlestakovism", it gives the image of Khlestakov a broad typicality, a huge generalizing power.
Osip
Among the heroes of The Inspector General, drawn sharply satirically, Osip occupies a special place. Gogol shows a serf yard, although spoiled by life "under the lords" and the city, but still retained positive features Russian peasant: sobriety of mind, people's ingenuity, the ability to see through his master, all his emptiness: “... he doesn’t do business: instead of taking office, he goes for a walk around the prefecture, plays cards.”
The nationality of comedy and the typicality of its images
According to V.Ya. Bryusov, in his work N.V. Gogol strove for “eternal and infinite”. The artistic thought of N.V. Gogol always strove for a broad generalization, his goal in many works was to draw the most complete picture Russian life. Speaking about the concept of The Inspector General, Gogol noted that in this work he decided to “... gather together everything that was bad in Russia, which he then knew ... and at one time laugh at everything ...”. Thus, the city of the “Inspector General” arose, which the author called “the prefabricated city of the entire dark side.”
The comedy presents all aspects of Russian reality. N.V. Gogol depicts the most diverse strata of the urban population. The main representative of the bureaucracy is the mayor, Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky. City landowners are represented by Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, the merchant class - by Abdulin, the bourgeoisie - by Poshlepkina. The choice of characters is due to the desire to cover all sides as widely as possible. public life and management of society. Each sphere of life is represented by one person, and the author is primarily interested not in the social function of the character, but in the scale of his spiritual or moral values.
The charitable establishments in the city are run by Strawberry. His people are dying “like flies”, but this does not bother him at all, because “a simple man: if he dies, then he will die anyway; If he recovers, then he will recover.” The court is headed by Lyapkin-Tyapkin, a man who "has read five or six books." Drunkenness and rudeness flourish in the police. People are starved in prisons. The policeman of Derzhimorda, without any embarrassment, enters the shops of merchants as if in his pantry. Postmaster Shpekin, out of curiosity, opens other people's letters... All the officials in the city have one thing in common: each of them considers his state position as an excellent means of living without worries, without spending any effort. The concept of public good does not exist in the city, outrages are happening everywhere and injustice flourishes. Surprisingly, no one even seeks to hide their criminal attitude to their duties, their own idleness and idleness. Bribery is generally considered a normal thing, even, rather, all officials would consider it abnormal if a person suddenly appeared who considers taking bribes a very shameful occupation. It is no coincidence that all officials are deep in their hearts sure that they will not offend the auditor when they go to him with offerings. “Yes, and it’s strange to say. There is no person who would not have some sins behind him, ”the Governor says with knowledge of the matter.
The city in the play is depicted through an abundance of everyday details in remarks, but, above all, of course, through the eyes of the owners of the city themselves. Therefore, we know about real streets, on which “tavern, uncleanness”, and about geese, which were bred in the waiting room of the court. Officials do not try to change anything before the arrival of the auditor: it is enough just to embellish the city and its offices, put a straw milestone near the garbage dump, so that it looks like a “layout”, and put clean caps on the unfortunate patients.
In his play, N.V. Gogol creates a truly innovative situation: torn apart by internal contradictions, the city becomes a single organism due to the general crisis. The only sad thing is that the common misfortune is the arrival of the auditor. The city is united by a feeling of fear, it is fear that makes city officials almost brothers.
Some researchers of the work of N.V. Gogol believe that the city in the "Inspector" - allegorical image Petersburg and that Gogol, only for censorship reasons, could not say that the action takes place in northern capital. In my opinion, this is not entirely true. Rather, we can say that the city in the play is any Russian city, so to speak, a collective image of Russian cities. Gogol writes that from this city to the capital “at least three years of galloping” - you won’t get there. But this does not make us begin to perceive the city in the play as a separate island of vice. No, N.V. Gogol does everything to make the reader understand that nowhere is there a place where life would proceed according to other laws. And the proof of this is the “auditor”, who came from St. Petersburg. Of course, it could also happen that the auditor would not take bribes. But there is no doubt that if this happened to any of the characters in the play, he would regard this case as his own personal bad luck, and not at all as a victory for the law. All the officials in the play know, they are simply sure that their norms and customs will be close and understandable to others, like the language they speak. IN " Theatrical junction” N.V. Gogol himself wrote that if he had depicted the city differently, readers would have thought that there was another, bright world, and this one was just an exception. No, it is not, unfortunately. The city in the "Inspector General" is striking in Its enormity. Before us is a picture of the disunity of people, their remoteness from the true meaning of life, their blindness, ignorance of the true path. People have lost the natural ability to think, see, hear. Their behavior is predetermined by one single passion to acquire: position in society, rank in the service, wealth. Man gradually loses his human appearance. And such a fate awaits all who. far from morality, spiritual values. It becomes sad when you think that all the officials in the play are the same, that there is not a single bright image. And yet there is a positive hero in comedy. This hero is laughter, “that laughter that all emanates from the bright nature of man ... without the penetrating power of which the trifle and emptiness of life would not frighten a person like that.”
About "The Examiner's Denouement"...
- Why did it become necessary to write the “Decoupling of the Inspector General”, which explains the idea of the play? Why couldn't people understand the hidden spiritual meaning of comedy without her?
The works of Gogol have a multifaceted and complex artistic structure. At the same time, they are so bright, original, that they are not fully revealed from the first reading, even for thinking people. At the same time, it cannot be said that the innermost, spiritual meaning of The Inspector General was not understood by his contemporaries. For example, Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich understood him very accurately. It is known that he not only attended the premiere himself, but also ordered the ministers to watch The Inspector General. During the performance, he clapped and laughed a lot, and leaving the box, he said: “Well, a play! Everyone got it, but I - more than anyone! Isn't it a very correct, Gogol's reaction. Unlike other spectators who were sitting in the hall.
“Maybe the emperor had something else in mind?” Maybe he felt responsible for the officials?
Probably it was too. But the main thing is to apply to yourself what is happening on the stage. As Gogol said, “application to oneself is an indispensable thing that every spectator must do from everything, not even the Inspector General, but which is more fitting for him to do about the Inspector General.
And then, the Sovereign Nikolai Pavlovich, no doubt, recognized himself in the fantasies of Khlestakov. Let us recall the episode when Khlestakov finally lies and says that he visits the Winter Palace every day and that the State Council itself is afraid of him. Who can be afraid of the State Council - the highest legislative body of the Russian Empire, whose members were personally appointed by the tsar? “I go to balls every day,” Khlestakov boasts. “There we had our own whist: the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the French envoy, the English, German envoy and myself.” I wonder with whom the Minister of Foreign Affairs and envoys of European states can play whist? To the timid Luka Lukich Khlopov, superintendent of schools, the unforgettable Ivan Alexandrovich declares: “But in my eyes there is definitely something that inspires timidity. At least I know that no woman can stand them, right? It is known that Sovereign Nikolai Pavlovich had such a piercing and penetrating look that no one could lie to him. That is, Khlestakov is already trying on Monomakh's cap, and the Emperor could not help but feel it. That's for sure, everyone got it, and he - more than anyone.
However, in general, the audience regarded the comedy as a farce, as they were not ready for this kind of performance. Audiences were brought up on vaudeville and foreign plays, the repertoire of the time.
The image of Khlestakov
The most striking image of comedy is Khlestakov, the one who was the culprit of extraordinary events. Gogol immediately makes it clear to the viewer that Khlestakov is not an auditor (anticipating Khlestakov's appearance with Osip's story about him). However, the whole meaning of this character and his attitude to his audit "duties" do not immediately become clear.
Khlestakov does not experience any process of orientation upon arrival in the city - for this he lacks elementary powers of observation. He does not build any plans to deceive officials - for this he does not have sufficient cunning. He does not consciously use the benefits of his position, because he does not even think about what it consists of. Only just before leaving, Khlestakov vaguely realizes that he was taken "for a statesman", for someone else; but for whom exactly, he did not understand. Everything that happens to him in the play happens as if against his will.
Gogol wrote: "Khlestakov, by himself, insignificant person. Even empty people call it empty. Never in his life would he have happened to do a deed capable of drawing anyone's attention. But the power of universal fear created a wonderful comic face out of him. Fear, clouding the eyes of all, gave him scope for a comic role.
Khlestakov was made a nobleman by those fantastic, perverted relations in which people are placed with each other. But, of course, for this, some qualities of Khlestakov himself were also needed. When a person is frightened (and in this case, not one person is frightened, but the whole city), then the most effective thing is to give people the opportunity to continue to intimidate themselves, not to interfere with the catastrophic increase in "universal fear." The insignificant and narrow-minded Khlestakov successfully does this. He unconsciously and therefore most faithfully leads the role that the situation requires of him.
Subjectively, Khlestakov was perfectly prepared for this "role". In the St. Petersburg offices, he accumulated the necessary stock of ideas about how an authoritative person should behave. "Cut off and cut off hitherto in everything, even in the manner of walking a trump card along Nevsky Prospekt," Khlestakov could not help but try on the experience he had gained, not dream of personally producing everything that was produced daily over him. He did this disinterestedly and unconsciously, childishly interfering with the reality and the dream, the real and the desired.
The situation in which Khlestakov found himself in the city suddenly gave scope for his "role". No, he did not intend to deceive anyone, he only graciously accepted those honors and offerings, which - he is convinced of this - were due to him by right. “Khlestakov does not cheat at all; he is not a liar by trade; he himself will forget that he is lying, and he himself almost believes what he says,” wrote Gogol.
The mayor did not foresee such a case. His tactics were designed for a real auditor. He would, no doubt, have figured out even the alleged auditor, the swindler: the situation where cunning collides with cunning was familiar to him. But Khlestakov's sincerity deceived him. The auditor, who was not an auditor, did not intend to impersonate him, and nevertheless successfully played his role - officials did not expect this ...
And why, in fact, should Khlestakov not be an "auditor", an authoritative person? After all, an even more incredible event could have happened in the Nose - the flight of the nose of Major Kovalev and his transformation into a state adviser. This is “inconsistency”, but, as the writer assures with a laugh, “there is something in all this, really.
In a world where it is so strange and incomprehensible that "our fate plays with us," it is possible that something happens and not according to the rules. Aimlessness and randomness itself becomes "correct". "There are no definite views, no definite goals - and the eternal type of Khlestakov, repeating from the volost clerk to the king," said Herzen.
Gogol's element is laughter, through which he looks at life both in stories and in the poem " Dead Souls", however, in dramatic works("The Inspector General", "Marriage", "Players") the comic nature of Gogol's genius came to light especially fully. IN best comedy"Inspector" art world Gogol the comedian appears original, integral, animated by the clear moral position of the author.
Since working on The Inspector General, the writer has thought a lot about the deep spiritual conditioning of laughter. According to Gogol, the "high" laughter of a true writer has nothing in common with the "low" laughter generated by light impressions, quick witticisms, puns, or caricatured grimaces. "High" laughter comes "straight from the soul", its source is the dazzling brilliance of the mind, endowing laughter with ethical and pedagogical functions. The meaning of such laughter is to ridicule the "hidden vice" and maintain "lofty feelings".
In the writings that have become literary companions of The Inspector General ("Excerpt from a letter written by the author after the first presentation of The Inspector General to one writer", "Theatrical tour after the presentation of a new comedy", "Decoupling of the Inspector General"), Gogol, diverting accusations of unprincipled comedy, comprehended his laughter as “high”, connecting the sharpness of criticism with a high moral task that opened up to the writer and inspired him. Already in The Inspector General, he wanted to appear before the public not only as comic writer but also as a preacher, teacher. The meaning of comedy is that in it Gogol laughs and teaches at the same time. In Theatrical Journey, the playwright emphasized that the only “honest, noble face” in The Inspector General is precisely laughter, and specified: “... that laughter that all emanates from the bright nature of man, emanates from it because at the bottom its eternally beating spring is enclosed, which deepens the subject, makes something that would slip through brightly come out, without the penetrating power of which the trifle and emptiness of life would not frighten a person like that.
The comic in a literary work is always based on the fact that the writer selects in life itself what is imperfect, low, vicious and contradictory. The writer discovers a “hidden vice” in the discrepancy between the external form and the internal content of life phenomena and events, in the characters and behavior of people. Laughter is the writer's reaction to comic contradictions that objectively exist in reality or created in a literary work. Laughing at social and human shortcomings, the comic writer establishes his own scale of values. In the light of his ideals, the imperfection or depravity of those phenomena and people who seem or pretend to seem to be exemplary, noble or virtuous is revealed. Behind the "high" laughter lies an ideal that allows you to give an accurate assessment of what is depicted. In "high" comedy, the "negative" pole must be balanced by the "positive". The negative is associated with laughter, the positive - with other types of evaluation: indignation, preaching, protection of genuine moral and social values.
In the "accusatory" comedies created by Gogol's predecessors, the presence of a "positive" pole was mandatory. The viewer found him on the stage, the reader - in the text, since among the characters, along with "negative" characters, there were always "positive" characters. The author's position was reflected in their relationships, in the characters' monologues, which directly expressed the author's point of view, and was supported by off-stage characters.
The most famous Russian comedies - "Undergrowth" by D.I. Fonvizin and "Woe from Wit" by A.S. Griboyedov - have all the signs of a "high" comedy. The "positive" characters in "Undergrowth" are Starodum, Pravdin and Milon. Chatsky is also a character expressing the author's ideals, despite the fact that he is by no means a “perfect model”. Chatsky's moral position is supported by non-stage characters (Skalozub's brother, Prince Fyodor, nephew of Princess Tugoukhovskaya). The presence of "positive" characters clearly indicated to readers what was due and what was deserving of condemnation. Conflicts in the comedies of Gogol's predecessors arose as a result of a clash between vicious people and those who, according to the authors, could be considered an example to follow - honest, fair, truthful people.
The Inspector General is an innovative work, in many respects different from the previous one and contemporary Gogol comedyography. The main difference is that in comedy there is no "positive" pole, "positive" characters expressing the author's ideas about what officials should be like, there are no reasoning heroes, "mouthpieces" of the author's ideas. The writer's ideals are expressed by other means. In essence, Gogol, having conceived a work that was supposed to have a direct moral impact on the public, abandoned the forms of expression of the author's position traditional for public, "accusatory" comedies.
Spectators and readers cannot find direct author's indications of what “exemplary” officials should be, and there are no hints of the existence of any other moral way of life than the one depicted in the play. It can be said that all Gogol's characters are of the same "color", created from a similar "material", and line up in one chain. The officials depicted in The Inspector General represent one social type- these are people who do not correspond to those " important places' which they occupy. Moreover, none of them ever even thought about the question of what an official should be like, how one should perform his duties.
The “greatness” of “the sins committed by everyone” is different. Indeed, if we compare, for example, the curious postmaster Shpekin with the obliging and fussy trustee of charitable establishments Strawberry, then it is quite obvious that the “sin” of the postmaster is reading other people’s letters (“death loves to know what is new in the world”) - it seems more lighter than the cynicism of an official who, on duty, must take care of the sick and the elderly, but not only does not show official zeal, but is generally devoid of signs of philanthropy (“A simple man: if he dies, then he will die; if he recovers, then he will recover anyway "). As Judge Lyapkin-Tyapkin thoughtfully remarked to the mayor’s words that “there is no person who does not have any sins behind him”, “sins are different for sins. I tell everyone openly that I take bribes, but why bribes? Greyhound puppies. It's a completely different matter." However, the writer is not interested in the scale of the county officials' sins. From his point of view, the life of each of them is fraught with a comic contradiction: between what an official should be and who these people really are. Comic "harmony" is achieved by the fact that there is no character in the play who would not even be ideal, but simply a "normal" official.
Depicting officials, Gogol uses the method of realistic typification: the general, characteristic of all officials, is manifested in the individual. The characters of Gogol's comedy have unique human qualities inherent only to them.
The appearance of the mayor Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky is unique: he is shown as “a very intelligent person in his own way”, it is not without reason that all district officials, with the exception of the “somewhat free-thinking” judge, are attentive to his remarks about the disorder in the city. He is observant, accurate in his rough opinions and assessments, cunning and prudent, although he seems simple-minded. The mayor is a bribe taker and embezzler, confident in his right to use administrative power for his own interests. But, as he noted, parrying the judge’s attack, “he is firm in faith” and every Sunday he goes to church. The city for him is a family estate, and the colorful police officers Svistunov, Pugovitsyn and Derzhimorda do not so much keep order as they act as servants of the mayor. Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky, despite his mistake with Khlestakov, is a far-sighted and insightful person who deftly uses the peculiarity of the Russian bureaucracy: since there is no official without sin, it means that anyone, even if he is a governor, even a “capital thing”, can be “buyed” or “deceived ".
Most of the events in the comedy take place in the mayor’s house: it is here that it turns out who is holding “under the heel” of the luminary of the county bureaucracy - wife Anna Andreevna and daughter Marya Antonovna. After all, many of the "sins" of the mayor are the result of their whims. In addition, it is their frivolous relationship with Khlestakov that reinforces the comedy of his position, gives rise to completely ridiculous dreams of a general's rank and service in St. Petersburg. In "Remarks for gentlemen of the actors", preceding the text of the comedy, Gogol indicated that the mayor began "heavy service from the lower ranks." This is an important detail: after all, the "electricity" of the rank not only exalted Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky, but also ruined him, making him a man "with roughly developed inclinations of the soul." Note that this is a comic version of Pushkin's captain Mironov, a straightforward and honest commandant Belogorsk fortress("Captain's daughter"). The mayor is the exact opposite of Captain Mironov. If in the hero of Pushkin a person is above the rank, then in Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky, on the contrary, bureaucratic arrogance kills the human.
Bright personality traits there is in Lyapkin-Tyapkin and in Strawberry. The judge is a county "philosopher" who has "read five or six" books and loves to talk about the creation of the world. 11 rand, from his words, according to the mayor, "the hair just rises on end" - probably not only because he is a "Voltarian", does not believe in God, allows himself to argue with Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky, but also simply because of the absurdity and the absurdity of his "philosophizing". As the wise mayor subtly remarked, "well, otherwise a lot of intelligence is worse than it would not exist at all." The trustee of charitable institutions stands out among other officials with a penchant for flattery and denunciation. Probably not for the first time he did what he did during the "audience" with Khlestakov: violating the mutual responsibility of officials, Zemlyanika said that the postmaster "does absolutely nothing", the judge - "reprehensible behavior", the superintendent of schools - "worse than a Jacobin ". Strawberry, perhaps, is a truly terrible person, a werewolf official: he not only starves people in his charitable institutions and does not treat them (“we do not use expensive medicines”), but also destroys human reputations, interfering with truth with lies and slander . Luka Lukich Khlopov, superintendent of schools, is an impenetrably stupid and cowardly person, an example of a learned serf who looks into the mouth of any boss. “God forbid to serve in the scientific part! Khlopov complains. “You are afraid of everything: everyone gets in the way, everyone wants to show that he is also an intelligent person.”
The individualization of comic characters is one of the basic principles of Gogol the comedian. In each of them he finds a comic, "hidden vice", worthy of ridicule. However, regardless of their individual qualities, each official is a variant of "universal evasion" from true service to the tsar and the Fatherland, which should be the duty and honor of a nobleman. At the same time, it must be remembered that the socially typical in the characters of The Inspector General is only a part of their human appearance. Individual shortcomings become a form of manifestation of universal human vices in each Gogol character. The meaning of the depicted characters is much larger than their social position: they represent not only the county bureaucracy or the Russian bureaucracy, but also “a person in general” with his imperfections, who easily forgets about his duties as a citizen of heavenly and earthly citizenship.
Having created one social type of an official (such an official either steals, or takes bribes, or simply does nothing at all), the playwright supplemented it with a moral-psychological typification. Each of the characters has features of a certain moral and psychological type: it is easy to see in the mayor an imperious hypocrite who knows for sure what his benefit is; in Lyapkin-Tyapkin - a "philosopher" - a grumbler who loves to demonstrate his learning, but flaunts only his lazy, clumsy mind; in Strawberry - an earphone and a flatterer, covering up his "sins" with other people's "sins"; in the postmaster, "treating" officials with a letter from Khlestakov, a curious, lover of peeping through a keyhole ... And of course, the imaginary "auditor" Ivan Aleksandrovich Khlestakov himself is the embodiment of thoughtless lies, an easy attitude to life and a common human weakness- to ascribe to oneself other people's affairs and another's glory. This is a "labardan" man, that is, a mixture of stupidity, nonsense and nonsense, which pretend to be taken for intelligence, meaning and order. “I am everywhere, everywhere,” Khlestakov says about himself and is not mistaken: as Gogol noted, “everyone, even for a minute, if not for a few minutes, has been or is being made by Khlestakov, but, naturally, he just does not want to admit it ... ".
All characters are purely comic characters. Gogol does not depict them as some kind of extraordinary people - he is interested in what is found everywhere and what the ordinary, everyday life. Many secondary characters reinforce the impression that the playwright portrays quite ordinary people, not higher than "ordinary height". The second spectator in "Theatrical Journey" in response to the remark of the First spectator "... Do such people really exist? And meanwhile, they are not exactly villains, ”he remarked:“ Not at all, they are not villains at all. They are exactly what the proverb says: "Not a bad soul, but just a rogue." The situation itself, caused by the self-deception of officials, is exceptional - it stirred them up, tore them out of the usual order of life, only by enlarging, in the words of Gogol, "the vulgarity vulgar person". The officials' self-deception caused a chain reaction in the city, making both the merchants and the locksmith with the non-commissioned officer, offended by the mayor, accomplices in the comic action. A special role in the comedy was played by two characters who are called "city landowners" in the list of actors - the "poster" of the comedy: Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky. Each of them is a simple doubling of the other (their images are created according to the principle: two people - one character). They were the first to report the strange young man seen at the hotel. These worthless people("city gossips, damned liars") and caused a commotion with the imaginary "auditor", purely comical persons who led the county bribe-takers and embezzlers to a tragic denouement.
The comedy in The Government Inspector, unlike the pre-Gogol comedies, is consistent and all-encompassing. To reveal the comic in the public environment, in the characters of district officials and landowners, in the imaginary "auditor" Khlestakov - such is the principle of the author of the comedy.
The comic character in The Inspector General is revealed in three comedic situations. The first is a situation of fear caused by the received message about the imminent arrival of an auditor from St. Petersburg, the second is a situation of deafness and blindness of officials who suddenly ceased to understand the meaning of the words that Khlestakov uttered. They misinterpret them, they don't hear or see the obvious. The third situation is the situation of substitution: Khlestakov was mistaken for an auditor, the true auditor was replaced by an imaginary one. All three comedy situations are so closely interconnected that the absence of even one of them could destroy comic effect plays.
The main source of the comic in The Inspector General is fear, which literally paralyzes county officials, turning them from imperious tyrants into fussy, ingratiating people, from bribe takers into bribe givers. It is fear that deprives them of their reason, makes them deaf and blind, of course, not literally, but figuratively. They hear what Khlestakov says, how he lies improbably and every now and then “tricks”, but the true meaning of what was said does not reach them: after all, according to officials, in the mouth of a “significant person” even the most impudent and fantastic lie turns into truth. Instead of shaking with laughter, listening to stories about a watermelon "at seven hundred rubles", about "thirty-five thousand one couriers" galloping through the streets of St. Petersburg in order to invite Khlestakov "to manage the department", about how "in one evening" he wrote all the works of Baron Brambeus (O.I. Senkovsky), and the story "Frigate" Nadezhda "" (A.A. Bestuzheva) and even the magazine "Moscow Telegraph", "the mayor and others are shaking with fear", encouraging the intoxicated Khlestakov “to get excited more,” that is, to carry complete nonsense: “I am everywhere, everywhere. I go to the palace every day. Tomorrow they will make me into the field march ... ". Even during the first meeting with Khlestakov, the mayor saw, but did not “recognize” in him a complete insignificance. Both fear and the deafness and blindness caused by it became the soil on which a situation of substitution arose, which determined the “ghostly” nature of the conflict and the comedic plot of The Government Inspector.
Gogol used in The Inspector General all the possibilities of situational comedy available to a comedian. Three main comedy situations, each of which can be found in almost any comedy, in Gogol's play convince the reader with the whole "mass" of the comic that everything that happens on the stage is rigidly determined. “... Comedy should tie itself together, with all its mass, into one big, common knot,” Gogol noted in Theatrical Traveling.
There are many farcical situations in The Inspector General, which show the stupidity and inappropriate fussiness of county officials, as well as the frivolity and carelessness of Khlestakov. These situations are designed for 100% comic effect: they cause laughter, regardless of the meaning of what is happening. For example, feverishly giving the last orders before a trip to Khlestakov, the mayor "instead of a hat wants to put on a paper case." In phenomena XII-XIV fourth act Khlestakov, who had just declared his love to Marya Antonovna and was kneeling before her, as soon as she left, expelled by her mother, "throws herself on her knees" and asks for hands ... from the mayor's wife, and then, caught suddenly running in, Marya Antonovna, asks "mother "bless them with Marya Antonovna "constant love." The lightning-fast change of events caused by Khlestakov's unpredictability ends with the transformation of "His Excellency" into a groom.
The comic homogeneity of The Inspector General determines two of the most important features of the work. Firstly, there is no reason to consider Gogol's laughter only "exposing", scourging vices. Gogol saw "cleansing", didactic and preaching functions in "high" laughter. The meaning of laughter for the writer is richer than criticism, denial or scourging: after all, laughing, he not only showed the vices of people and the imperfection of the Russian bureaucracy, but also took the first, most necessary step towards their deliverance.
In Gogol's laughter there is a huge "positive" potential, if only because those whom Gogol laughs at are not humiliated, but, on the contrary, are exalted by his laughter. The comic characters portrayed by the writer are not at all ugly human mutations. For him, these are, first of all, people, with their shortcomings and vices, "black ones", those who especially need the word of truth. They are blinded by power and impunity, they are used to believing that the life they lead is the real life. For Gogol, these are people who have lost their way, blinded, never knowing about their "high" social and human destiny. Can it be explained like this main motive Gogol's laughter in The Inspector General and in the works that followed it, including Dead Souls: only when they see themselves in the mirror of laughter, people are able to experience spiritual shock, think about new life truths, about the meaning of their “high” earthly and heavenly " citizenship."
Secondly, Gogol's consistent comedy leads to an almost limitless semantic expansion of comedy. It is not the individual shortcomings of individual people whose life offends the moral sense of the writer and causes him bitterness and anxiety for the desecrated “title” of a person, but the whole system of relations between people, that is ridiculed. Gogol's "geography" is not limited to a county town, lost somewhere in the Russian outback. The county town, as the writer himself noted, is a “prefabricated city”, a symbol of Russian and general disorder and delusion. The county town, so absurdly deceived in Khlestakov, is a fragment of a huge mirror, in which, according to the author, the Russian nobility, the Russian people in general, should look at themselves.
Gogol's laughter is a kind of "magnifying glass", with which you can see in people what they themselves either do not notice or want to hide. In ordinary life, the "distortion" of a person, camouflaged by a position or rank, is not always obvious. "Mirror" of comedy shows true essence person, makes visible real-life shortcomings. Mirror reflection life is no worse than life itself, in which people's faces have turned into "crooked faces." This is what the epigraph to The Inspector General reminds of.
The comedy uses Gogol's favorite technique - the synecdoche. Having shown the "visible" part of the world of the Russian bureaucracy, having laughed at the unlucky "fathers" of the county town, the writer pointed to a hypothetical whole, that is, to the shortcomings of the entire Russian bureaucracy and to universal human vices. The self-deception of officials of the county town, due to specific reasons, primarily the natural fear of retribution for what they have done, is part of the general self-deception that makes people worship false idols, forgetting about true life values.
The artistic effect of Gogol's comedy is determined by the fact that the real world "participates" in its creation - Russian reality, Russian people who have forgotten about their duty to the country, about the importance of the place they occupy, the world shown in the "mirror" of laughter, and the ideal world, created by the height of the copyright moral ideal. The author's ideal is expressed not in a head-on collision of "negative" (more precisely, denied) characters with "positive" (ideal, exemplary) characters, but in the entire "mass" of comedy, that is, in its plot, composition, in the variety of meanings contained in each comic character, in every scene of the work.
The originality of the plot and composition of The Inspector General is determined by the nature of the conflict. It is due to the situation of self-deception of officials: they take what they wish for reality. Allegedly recognized, exposed by them, an official - "incognito" from St. Petersburg - makes them act as if in front of them was real auditor. The resulting comic contradiction makes the conflict ghostly, non-existent. After all, only if Khlestakov was actually an auditor, the behavior of officials would be quite justified, and the conflict would be a completely ordinary clash of interests between the auditor and the “audited”, whose fate completely depends on their dexterity and ability to “splurge” .
Khlestakov is a mirage that arose because “fear has big eyes”, since it was the fear of being taken by surprise, not having time to hide the “disorder” in the city, that led to the emergence of a comic contradiction, an imaginary conflict. However, Khlestakov's appearance is quite concrete, from the very beginning (the second act) his true essence is clear to the reader or viewer: he is just a petty Petersburg official who lost at cards and therefore got stuck in the backwoods of the county. Only “uncommon lightness in thoughts” helps Khlestakov not to lose heart in absolutely hopeless circumstances, out of habit hoping for “maybe”. He is passing through the city, but it seems to the officials that he came precisely for their sake. As soon as Gogol replaced the real auditor with an imaginary one, the real conflict became also an imaginary conflict, a ghostly one.
The unusualness of the comedy is not so much that Gogol found a completely new plot move, but in the reality of everything that happens. Each of the characters seems to be in its place, conscientiously playing its role. The county town has turned into a kind of stage platform, on which a completely “natural” play is played, striking in its plausibility. The script and the list of actors are known in advance, the only question is how the "actors"-officials will cope with their "roles" in the future "performance".
Indeed, one can evaluate acting skills each of them. The main character, the real "genius" of the county bureaucratic scene, is the mayor Anton Ivanovich Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky, who successfully played his "role" three times in the past ("he deceived three governors"), the rest of the officials - who is better, who is worse - also cope with their roles , although the mayor sometimes has to prompt them, “prompt”, as if reminiscent of the text of the “play”. Almost all of the first action is like " dress rehearsal", carried out in a hurry. It was immediately followed by an unplanned "performance". After the beginning of the action - the message of the mayor - a very dynamic exposition follows. It presents not only each of the "fathers" of the city, but also the county town itself, which they consider their fiefdom. Officials are convinced of their right to commit lawlessness, take bribes, rob merchants, starve the sick, rob the treasury, read other people's letters. The fussy Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, who rushed to the "secret" meeting and alarmed everyone with a message about a strange young man they found in the hotel, hurried to push the "curtain" aside.
The mayor and officials try to “throw dust in the eyes” of an imaginary important person and tremble in front of her, sometimes losing the power of speech, not only out of fear of possible punishment, but also because one must tremble before any superiors (this is determined by the role of “audited”). They give bribes to Khlestakov when he asks for a "favor", because they should be given in this case, while usually they receive bribes. The mayor is kind and helpful, but this is just component his "role" caring "father" of the city. In a word, everything goes like clockwork with the officials.
Even Khlestakov easily enters the role of an important person: he meets officials, accepts petitions, and begins, as befits a "significant person", for no reason to "scold" the owners, forcing them to "shake with fear." Khlestakov is incapable of enjoying power over people, he simply repeats what he himself probably experienced more than once in his St. Petersburg department. An unexpected role transforms Khlestakov, elevating him above everyone, making him a smart, powerful and strong-willed person, and a mayor who really possesses these qualities, again in full accordance with his “role”, for a while turns into a “rag”, “icicle” , complete nothingness. The comic metamorphosis is provoked by the "electricity" of the rank. All characters- and county officials who have real power, and Khlestakov, the “cog” of the St. Petersburg bureaucratic system, are as if struck by a powerful discharge of current that was generated by the Table of Ranks, which replaced a person with a rank. Even an imaginary bureaucratic "value" is capable of leading the movement of generally intelligent people, making obedient puppets out of them.
Readers and viewers of the comedy are well aware that a substitution took place that determined the behavior of officials until the fifth act, before the appearance of the postmaster Shpekin with Khlestakov's letter. The participants in the “performance” are unequal, since Khlestakov almost immediately guessed that he was confused with someone. But the role of "significant person" is so well known to him that he brilliantly coped with it. Officials, fettered both by unfeigned and by the fear set by them according to the "scenario", do not notice the blatant inconsistencies in the behavior of the imaginary auditor.
The Inspector General is an unusual comedy, since comic situations do not exhaust the meaning of what is happening. Three dramatic plots coexist in the play. One of them - a comedic one - was realized in the second, third, fourth and at the beginning of the fifth act: the imaginary (Khlestakov) became a magnitude (auditor) in the eyes of officials. The plot of the comedy plot is not in the first, but in the second act - this is the first conversation between the mayor and Khlestakov, where they are both sincere and both are mistaken. Khlestakov, in the words of an observant mayor, "nondescript, short, it seems like he would have crushed him with a fingernail." However, from the very beginning, the imaginary auditor in the eyes of the frightened "mayor of the local city" turns into a gigantic figure: Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky "becomes shy", listening to Khlestakov's "threats" "stretching out and trembling with his whole body." The mayor is sincerely mistaken and behaves as one should behave with the auditor, although he sees that he is a nonentity. Khlestakov enthusiastically “whips”, putting on the appearance of a “significant person”, but at the same time he speaks the real truth (“I am going to the Saratov province, to my own village”). The mayor, contrary to common sense, takes the words of Khlestakov as a lie: “Nicely tied a knot! Lies, lies - and it will not break anywhere!
At the end of the fourth act, to the mutual satisfaction of Khlestakov and the officials, who are still unaware of their deceit, the imaginary "auditor" is carried away from the city by the fastest three, but his shadow remains in the fifth act. The mayor himself begins to "whipping", dreaming of a career in St. Petersburg. It seems to him that he received “what a rich prize” - “with what a devil they intermarried!” With the help of his future son-in-law, Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky hopes to “hit a big rank, because he is a friend of all ministers and goes to the palace.” The comic contradiction at the beginning of the fifth act reaches its peak.
The climax of the comedy plot is the scene of the triumph of the mayor, who behaves as if he had already received the rank of general. He became above all, ascended above the county bureaucrats. And the higher he ascends in his dreams, taking what he wishes for reality, the more painful it is for him to fall when the postmaster "in a hurry" brings a printed letter - Khlestakov the writer, a scribbler appears on the stage, and the scribbler of the mayor cannot stand the spirit: for him they are worse than the devil . It is the position of the mayor that is especially comical, but it also has a tragic connotation. The unlucky hero of the comedy himself considers what happened as God's punishment: "Well, truly, if God wants to punish, he will first take away the mind." Add to this: and deprive irony and hearing.
In Khlestakov's letter, everyone discovers even more " bad news"than in the letter of Andrei Ivanovich Chmykhov, read by the mayor at the beginning of the play: the auditor turned out to be imaginary," helicopter, "icicle", "rag". Reading the letter is the denouement of the comedy. Everything fell into place - the deceived side both laughs and is indignant, fearing publicity and, which is especially insulting, laughter: after all, as the mayor noted, now “you will go into a laughing stock - there will be a clicker, a paper maraca, they will insert you into a comedy. That's what's embarrassing! Chin, the title will not spare, and they will all bare their teeth and clap their hands. The mayor is most of all not saddened by his human humiliation, but outraged by the possible insult to his "rank, title." There is a bitter comic connotation in his indignation: a person who has soiled his rank and title falls upon the “clickers”, “paper-scrapers”, identifying himself with the rank and therefore considering himself closed to criticism.
Laughter in the fifth act becomes universal: after all, every official wants to laugh at others, recognizing the accuracy of Khlestakov's assessments. Laughing at each other, savoring the jabs and slaps given in the letter by the exposed "auditor", the officials laugh at themselves. Laughing scene - laughing auditorium. The famous remark of the mayor - “What are you laughing at? - You are laughing at yourself!.. Oh, you!.. "- addressed both to those present on the stage and to the audience. Only Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky does not laugh: he is the most injured person in this whole story. It seems that with the reading of the letter and the clarification of the truth, the circle has closed, the comedic plot has been exhausted. But after all, the whole first act is not yet a comedy, although there are many comic incongruities in the behavior and words of the participants in the meeting with the mayor, in the appearance of Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky and in the hasty gathering of the mayor.
Two other plots - dramatic and tragic - are outlined, but not fully implemented. The first words of the mayor: “I invited you, gentlemen, in order to tell you the unpleasant news: an auditor is coming to us”, supplemented by clarifications that this auditor is coming from St. Petersburg (and not from the province), incognito (secretly, without publicity), “ and also with a secret order, ”caused a serious commotion. The task that arose before the county officials is quite serious, but doable: “take precautions”, how to prepare for a meeting with a formidable “incognito”: to cover up, patch up something in the city - maybe it will blow over. The plot of the action is dramatic, vital: the terrible auditor will not fall like snow on his head, the ritual of receiving the auditor and swindling him could be realized. There is no inspector in the first act yet, but there is a plot: the officials woke up from their hibernation, began to fuss. There is no hint of a possible substitution, only the fear that they might not be in time worries officials, especially the mayor: “So you are waiting for the door to open and - walk ...”
So, in the first act, the contours of the future drama are outlined, in which a favorable outcome of the audit could depend only on the officials. The message of the mayor about the letter he received and the possible arrival of the auditor is the basis for the emergence of a dramatic conflict, quite common in any situation associated with the sudden arrival of the authorities. From the second act to the finale of the play, a comedic plot unfolds. In the comedy, as in a mirror, the real world of bureaucratic bureaucracy was reflected. In laughter, this world, shown from the inside, revealed its usual features: falsehood, show-off, hypocrisy, flattery and the omnipotence of the rank. Hurrying to the hotel where the unknown visitor from St. Petersburg was staying, the mayor hurried into the comedic "behind the mirror", into the world of false, but quite plausible ranks and relations between people.
If the action in The Inspector General had ended with the reading of Khlestakov's letter, Gogol would have accurately realized the "thought" of the work suggested to him by Pushkin. But the writer went further, completing the play with “The Last Appearance” and “A Silent Scene”: the finale of “The Inspector General” brought the heroes out of the “mirror room”, in which laughter reigned, reminding them that their self-deception did not allow them to “take precautions”, dulled their vigilance . In the finale, a third plot is planned - a tragic one. The suddenly appeared gendarme announces the arrival of not an imaginary, but a genuine auditor, terrible for officials not with his “incognito”, but with the clarity of the task set before him by the tsar himself. Each word of the gendarme is like a blow of fate, this is a prophecy about the imminent retribution of officials - both for sins and for carelessness: “An official who arrived by personal order from St. Petersburg demands you to himself this very hour. He stayed at a hotel." The fears of the mayor, expressed in the first act, came true: “That would be nothing, - damned incognito! Suddenly he looks: “Ah, you are here, my dears! And who, say, is the judge here? - Lyapkin-Tyapkin. - “And bring Lyapkin-Tyapkin here! And who is the trustee of charitable institutions? - "Strawberry". - “And bring Strawberries here!” That's bad!" The appearance of the gendarme is the imposition of a new action, the beginning of the tragedy, which is taken out of the stage by the author. A new, serious "play", in which everyone will not be laughing, should, according to Gogol, not be played in the theater, but be accomplished in life itself.
Her three plots begin with messages: a dramatic one - with a message from the mayor, a comic one - with a message from Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, a tragic one - with a message from a gendarme. But only the comic ghost plot is fully developed. In a dramatic plot that remained unrealized, Gogol discovered comic potential, demonstrating not only the absurdity of the behavior of fooled officials, but also the absurdity of the action itself, in which the roles are pre-scheduled: both the auditor and the auditees diligently throw dust in each other's eyes. The possibility of embodying the author's ideal is outlined in the finale of the comedy: the last and most important emphasis is made by Gogol on the inevitability of punishment.
The play ends with the "petrification" scene. This is a sudden stop of the action, which from that moment could turn from a comedy, ending with the exposure of Khlestakov, into a tragedy. Everything happened suddenly, suddenly. The worst happened: the officials were no longer hypothetical, but real danger. "Silent scene" - the moment of truth for officials. They are made to “petrify” by a terrible guess about imminent retribution. Gogol the moralist asserts in the finale of The Inspector General the idea of the inevitability of the trial of bribe-takers and embezzlers of public funds who have forgotten their official and human duty. This court, according to the writer, should be carried out by personal command, that is, by the will of the king himself.
In the finale of the comedy “Undergrowth” by D.I. Fovizina, Starodum says, pointing to Mitrofanushka: “Here they are, malevolence worthy fruits!" In Gogol's comedy there is no one who even remotely resembled Starodum. The “silent scene” is the pointing finger of the author himself, this is the “moral” of the play, expressed not by the words of the “positive” hero, but by means of composition. The gendarme is a messenger from that ideal world created by Gogol's imagination. In this world, the monarch not only punishes, but also corrects his subjects, wants not only to teach them a lesson, but also to teach them. The pointing finger of Gogol the moralist is also turned towards the emperor, not without reason that Nicholas I remarked, leaving the box after the performance on April 19, 1836: “Well, a play! Everyone got it, but I - more than anyone! ” Gogol did not flatter the emperor. Directly pointing out where retribution should come from, the writer, in essence, "taunted" him, confident in his right to preach, teach and instruct, including the king himself. Already in 1835, when the first edition of the comedy was being created, Gogol was firmly convinced that his laughter was laughter inspired by high moral ideal, and not the laughter of a scoff or an indifferent critic of social and human vices.
Gogol's belief in the triumph of justice, in the moral effect of his play can be assessed as a kind of social and moral utopia generated by his enlightening illusions. But if it were not for these illusions, there would be no "Inspector General". In it, the comic and laughter turned out to be in the foreground, but behind them stands Gogol's belief that evil is punishable, and the punishment itself is carried out in the name of liberating people from the ghostly power of the rank, from the "bestial", in the name of their spiritual enlightenment. “Having seen his shortcomings and errors, a person suddenly becomes higher than himself,” the writer emphasized. “There is no evil that cannot be corrected, but you need to see what exactly the evil consists of.” The arrival of the auditor is not a “duty” event at all. The inspector is important not as a specific character, but as a symbol. It is, as it were, the hand of an autocrat, just and merciless to iniquity, reaching out to the backwaters of the county.
In The Denouement of The Inspector General, written in 1846, Gogol emphasized the possibility of a broader interpretation of the comedy's finale. The inspector is “our awakened conscience”, sent “by the Nominal Supreme Command”, by the will of God, reminding a person of his “high heavenly citizenship”: “Whatever you say, but the inspector who is waiting for us at the door of the coffin is terrible. As if you don't know who this auditor is? What to pretend? This auditor is our awakened conscience, which will make us suddenly and at once look with all eyes at ourselves. Nothing will hide before this auditor. ... Suddenly it will open before you, in you, such a monster that a hair will rise from horror. Of course, this interpretation is only one of the possible interpretations of the comedy's symbolically ambiguous finale, which, according to the author's intention, should affect both the mind and the soul of viewers and readers.
The image of the city
The image of the city in the comedy develops as complete system. The three most important principles in the image of the city are:
1. Hierarchy (the city is shown in the form of a social ladder: urban lower classes (philistines), merchants, city landlords, officials, mayor);
2. Universality (Gogol drew an ordinary, typical city);
3. Encyclopedic character (practically all aspects of the life of a Russian city are reflected, many aspects of the life of Russia, all classes and estates (there are no only peasants who do not play a role in the life of the city), all state institutions: the highest city government, court, post office, educational and charitable institutions, police; only the army (for reasons of censorship) and the church (Gogol was a believer) are missing; there is a wide display of reality: the abuses of officials, the idle life of urban landlords, the oppression of merchants by the authorities and their own deception of buyers, the hard life of the burghers).
In the theme of St. Petersburg, associated with the image of Khlestakov, artistic generalization reaches supreme power, the hierarchical ladder is completed to the very top. The author does not limit satire to a county town, but pushes its boundaries to an all-Russian scale. The central place in the image of the city is occupied by the images of officials.
Characteristic features of bureaucracy
1. Bribery: a) Lyapkin-Tyapkin takes bribes with greyhound puppies; b) A letter from a friend of the Governor: “Since I know that you, like everyone else, have sins, because you are a smart person and do not like to miss what floats in your hands”; c) The scene of giving bribes to Khlestakov.
2. Embezzlement: a) Strawberries: “The closer to nature, the better, we do not use expensive medicines. A simple man: if he dies, he will die anyway; if he recovers, he will recover anyway”, b) the Church, which was pulled apart in parts.
3. Rough arbitrariness: a) Gorodnichiy's attitude towards merchants. “He will come to the shop and whatever he gets, he takes everything ... But try to contradict - he will bring a whole regiment to your house to stay”, b) Attitude towards the locksmith and non-commissioned officer, c) The postmaster prints letters. “I do this not so much as a precaution, but more out of curiosity: death loves to know what is new in the world.”
the only goodie comedy is laughter.
H. G. Chernyshevsky
"Starting with Gogol, criticism becomes entirely artistic." The comic in Gogol is built on internal contradictions, and not on denunciations from outside; in comedy there is no positive hero-denunciator. Gogol's task was to reveal the contradictions between external significance and internal insignificance (the image of the Gorodnichiy).
Means of satirical typing
1. The "auditor's situation" is a situation of fear that entails self-exposing and mutual exposing of characters.
2. Speech characteristics: a) idioms("unusual lightness of thought", "yes" said Pyotr Ivanovich and I, etc.); b) alogisms (“patients recover like flies”); c) hyperbole in the scene of Khlestakov's lies (watermelon for seven hundred rubles, soup in a saucepan from Paris, 35,000 couriers alone, etc.).
3. Speaking surnames (Lyapkin-Tyapkin, Derzhimorda).
4. Comic situations (the fall of Bobchinsky, the Mayor puts on a case instead of a hat).
5. Paired characters (Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky).
6. Love affair is parodic and comic.
a) remarks for gentlemen of the actors: “Especial attention should be paid to the last scene. The last spoken word should produce ... a shock for everyone at once, all of a sudden ”; b) author's remarks ("to the side", "in reflection", "bringing papers", "accepting money"); c) The silent scene is given as a descriptive text. Its meaning: God's judgment, the judgment of history on officials, the author's judgment. Although Gogol does not precisely define the meaning of the scene in the text, it is obvious that its idea is connected with the inevitability of retribution and with the author's belief in the triumph of justice.
The comedy "The Inspector General" is a work critical realism. It vividly depicts the era of the 30s. XIX century, typical characters are shown in typical circumstances. The features of Gogol's satire are the pathos of sociality and the pathos of denial.
Genre originality of comedy
There is no dramatic conflict as such in The Inspector General. Gogol is interested in comedy as a genre of morality, as satirical work. The love affair is relegated to the background. It is customary to consider The Inspector General a socio-political comedy.
Conflict in comedy
By tradition, the external and internal sides of the conflict are distinguished. External: between Khlestakov as an auditor and city officials. The relationship of the characters is based on a misunderstanding, and not on deep contradictions between them. This side of the conflict is very important for the overall construction of the work. Internal: between the authorities and the people. Gogol seeks to show that all abuses and extremes do not correspond to the ideal of man and society. The most important artistic task of the author was to unmask the "well-intentioned persons".
vices human society, the dark beginning of the human soul (see above the Concept of creativity) here takes on quite specific social outlines. Opening in human nature"demonic" and exploring its forms, Gogol presents a whole gallery of types taken from the surrounding life. Each of these heroes is typical, and this is the essence of a variety, a kind of mask that the devil puts on himself, trying to destroy the human soul, to kill it.
The comedy "The Government Inspector" is one of the best works of N.V. Gogol. The plot of the comedy was suggested to him by A. S. Pushkin. Grateful to Pushkin, Gogol claimed that his comedy would be "funnier than the devil." Laughter really pervades every episode, every scene of the comedy. However, this is a special kind of laughter, laughter through tears, revealing laughter. Gogol takes the action of comedy beyond the framework of an anecdotal incident. In the comedy The Inspector General, he created a gallery of incredibly funny characters. However, they all turned out to be easily recognizable types of people. This was confirmed even by Tsar Nicholas. After one meeting with provincial officials, he said to the provincial marshal of the nobility: "I know them ..." - and then added in French that he saw them at the performance of Gogol's "Inspector General".
Gogol really painted not just officials of a single county town. He created collective, typical images.
So, the head of the city is Anton Antonovich Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky. The mayor is dishonest, robs merchants without a twinge of conscience, indulges lawlessness, does not fulfill his official duties, cheats, and wastes government money. The city under the leadership of Anton Antonovich is mired not only in lawlessness, but also in mud. Around garbage, drunkenness, immorality. The mayor turns out to be a fool when he finds out that Khlestakov is not an auditor at all, and he himself is not the future father-in-law of a high-ranking Petersburg official. Anton Antonovich is funny. Gogol mercilessly castigates embezzlement, corruption, abuse of office. In the person of Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky's wife and daughter, the author ridicules empty coquetry and stupidity.
About Judge Lyapkin-Tyapkin, the writer already in his “Remarks for Messrs. Actors” ironically notes that he read “five or six books”, and Khlestakov in his letter calls the judge a man of bad taste. By the nature of his service, Lyapkin-Tyapkin is called upon to administer justice. But instead, he breaks the law himself - he takes bribes, which he speaks openly about. Lyapkin-Tyapkin turns a blind eye to many judicial disturbances. For example, on geese with goslings, bred in the front. He just doesn't have time to do it. The judge does not fulfill his official duties, he prefers to "follow hares" and visit Dobchinsky's wife. The trustee of charitable institutions Strawberry - a big "slicker and rogue"; he is very helpful and fussy. With extraordinary promptness, Strawberry offers Khlestakov to put his denunciation of his recent friends on paper. It seems that in return he hopes to receive forgiveness of his own sins, and the trustee of charitable institutions has a lot of them: the sick go around in dirty caps, instead of habersup cabbage is always and everywhere for lunch, expensive medicines are not used anywhere. The money allotted for charitable purposes goes straight to Strawberry's pocket.
Postmaster Shpekin "simple-minded to the point of naivety." This author's definition is full of sarcasm. Shpekin loves to read other people's letters, and he leaves the ones he likes as a keepsake, so that later he can read aloud to his friends at his leisure.
V. G. Belinsky in one of his letters to Gogol called the "Inspector" "a corporation of various service thieves and robbers", and this assessment is very fair. The characters of the comedy are well aware of their sins and turn out to be so frightened by the news of the arrival of the auditor and the possible exposure that they mistake an ordinary petty official for an inspector from the capital.
Khlestakov is a young man of about twenty-three, somewhat stupid and "without a king in his head." Already in this description sounds a caustic author's mockery. Khlestakov is an ordinary helicopter, reveler, fanfaron. He blows his father's money into the wind, thinks only of pleasures and outfits. In addition, it is a tireless liar. He is on friendly footing with the "himself" head of the department, they even wanted to make him a collegiate assessor, he lives in the mezzanine. Already this lie makes those present numb, and Khlestakov enters into real excitement and simply chokes on his enchanting fantasies: he is closely acquainted with Pushkin, he writes himself; belong to his pen famous works, afraid of him state council, soon he will be promoted to field marshals ... Without thinking about the consequences, Khlestakov begins to openly molest the mayor's wife and daughter and even promises to marry both. He does not think about his words or his actions.
The action of the comedy takes place in an ordinary county town. Gogol does not give him a name, emphasizing by this that he painted Russia in miniature, that such customs are common throughout the Russian side. Everywhere, according to the writer, they steal, cheat, mess around, take and give bribes, and this is especially bitter. Gogol does not make laugh, but cruelly ridicules, castigates the vices of contemporary society. But how could he know that in the lines of his comedy the reader of the twenty-first century will painfully recognize and modern Russia where the draft-Dmukhanovskys, Lyapkins-Tyapkins, strawberries rule the ball? ..
