The world famous writer - the father of the classic comedy Molière - was born in France (Paris) in 1622. Read below a brief biography of Jean-Baptiste Molière to form your own opinion about the life and work of the writer.

Family, education and early career

Jean-Baptiste's father belonged to a very interesting profession - he glued wallpaper at court, was a decorator, and even the valet of Louis XIII himself. His mother died when his son was only ten years old, and he stayed with his father, who fervently hoped that Jean-Baptiste would continue family tradition.

The boy at that time received an excellent education, studied at the Jesuit College (Clermont), perfectly comprehended Latin, and also, according to some information, studied the basics of jurisprudence.

Undoubtedly, such knowledge could make it possible to build a great career, but the young Moliere decided to put the theater in the first place in his life. At twenty s small years he was already deeply immersed in theatrical art, and in 1643 he laid the foundation of the "Brilliant Theater", which, however, experienced bankruptcy after only two years. Jean-Baptiste fell heavily in debt in connection with this course of events, and for some time he was even taken under arrest. Unfortunately, there are "dark spots" in the biography of Jean-Baptiste Moliere, so it is not known for certain who paid the debt - his father or one of the members of the troupe, but after a short time Jean-Baptiste is out of jail.

In those days in France, being an actor was not fashionable, and even somewhat despised by society, so Jean-Baptiste decided not to put his father in an unsightly light. He took the pseudonym Molière.

The heyday of the actor and the scandalous personal life

After leaving prison, Moliere went on tour - he actively, for 12 years, gave theatrical performances and performances, traveling around the country. In the end, the success of the troupe attracted the attention of an important person - they were patronized by Philippe d'Orleans. A little later, Moliere returned to Paris, and the troupe played in front of the king. An interesting fact in the creative biography of Jean-Baptiste Molière is that in 1659 the public saw the comedy "The Funny Pretenders", for which the troupe was provided with the Petit Bourbon Theater. Although the comedy caused a lot of talk and offended the ladies of the time, it went on to become a huge success. Since that time, the fame and glory of Molière has grown more and more.

In 1662, after Moliere moved to the Palais-Royal theater, he entered into a legal marriage with Armande. Their marriage gave rise to many rumors, since the origin of the girl was not completely known. This marriage caused such a strong resonance in society that even some of Moliere's friends were hostile. It was rumored that his wife was actually the daughter of an actor. However, the king still showed favor to Jean-Baptiste and in every possible way protected him from the attacks of either the church or representatives higher strata society. Despite this, some of Molière's plays were banned.

In 1672, Moliere felt that his health had deteriorated greatly, and although he began to work less, in his literary biography at that time, such works as “Scientific Women”, “Tricks of Scapien”, “Imaginary Sick” appear. At the performance of the last play, Molière, who himself was an actor in it, had an attack, accompanied by a strong cough and bleeding - this made itself felt by pulmonary tuberculosis. It is believed that Jean-Baptiste acquired this disease in his youth while in prison. Although the king was determined to stop the performance, Molière decided to play to the end. As a result, the actor was overtaken by a second attack, which he could not stand.

Due to the ban on burying actors in the cemetery, which was in force at that time, Molière, despite the efforts of the king, could not be buried as expected. It turned out only to ensure that the great actor was buried in that part of the cemetery that was reserved for unbaptized children. Many years later, in 1817, he was reburied in Paris, at the cemetery in Père Lachaise.

Only preference in us will aggravate feelings;
And he who loves everyone loves no one.
But since you like the vices of our days,
You, damn it, are not one of my people.
That heart, which is equally indifferent to everyone,
It's too spacious and I don't need it.
I want to be excellent - and I'll tell you straight:
Who mutual friend for everyone, so I do not value!

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Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (theatrical pseudonym - Molière) - French comedian of the 17th century, creator of classical comedy, actor and director of the theater, better known as Molière's troupe - was born January 15, 1622 in Paris.

He came from an old bourgeois family, for several centuries engaged in the craft of upholsterers and draperies. Jean-Baptiste's mother, Marie Poquelin-Cressé (d. May 11, 1632), died of tuberculosis, father, Jean Poquelin (1595-1669), was a court upholsterer and valet of Louis XIII and sent his son to the prestigious Jesuit school - Clermont College (now Lyceum Louis the Great in Paris), where Jean-Baptiste thoroughly studied Latin, so he freely read Roman authors in the original and even, according to legend, translated into French philosophical poem Lucretius "On the Nature of Things" (translation lost). After graduating from college 1639 Jean-Baptiste passed the exam in Orleans for the title of licentiate of rights.

A legal career attracted him no more than his father's craft, and Jean-Baptiste chose the profession of an actor, taking the theatrical pseudonym Molière. After meeting the comedians Joseph and Madeleine Béjart, at the age of 21, Molière became the head of the Illustre Théâtre, a new Parisian troupe of 10 actors registered by the capital's notary. June 30, 1643. Having entered into fierce competition with the troupes of the Burgundy Hotel and the Marais, already popular in Paris, the Brilliant Theater is losing in 1645. Molière and his fellow actors decide to seek their fortune in the provinces by joining a troupe of itinerant comedians led by Dufresne.

Molière's wanderings in the French province for 13 years ( 1645-1658 ) in years civil war(Fronde) enriched him with worldly and theatrical experience.

From 1645 Molière and his friends come to Dufresne, and in 1650 he leads the troupe. The repertory hunger of Molière's troupe was the impetus for the beginning of his dramaturgical activity. So years theater studies Molière became years and his author's works. Many farcical scenarios he composed in the provinces have disappeared. Only the plays “The Jealousy of Barbouille” (La jalousie du Barbouillé) and “The Flying Doctor” (Le médécin volant) have survived, the belonging of which to Molière is not entirely reliable. The titles of a number of similar plays played by Moliere in Paris after his return from the provinces are also known (“Gros-Rene schoolboy”, “Doctor-pedant”, “Gorgibus in a bag”, “Plan-plan”, “Three Doctors”, “Kazakin” , “The feigned goof”, “The brushwood binder”), and these titles echo the situations of Moliere’s later farces (for example, “Gorgibus in a sack” and “Scapin's Tricks”, d. III, sc. II). These plays testify to the influence of the old farce tradition on the major comedies of his adulthood.

The farcical repertoire performed by the troupe of Molière under his direction and with his participation as an actor contributed to the strengthening of its reputation. It increased even more after Molière composed two great comedies in verse - "Naughty, or Everything at random" (L'Étourdi ou les Contretemps, 1655 ) and "Love Annoyance" (Le dépit amoureux, 1656 ), written in the manner of the Italian literary comedy.

Molière's troupe gradually achieved success and fame, and in 1658, at the invitation of the 18-year-old Monsieur, the younger brother of the king, she returned to Paris.

Molière's troupe debuts in Paris October 24, 1658 at the Louvre Palace in the presence of Louis XIV. The lost farce "Doctor in Love" was a huge success and decided the fate of the troupe: the king gave her the court theater Petit Bourbon, in which she played before 1661, until she moved to the Palais Royal theater, where she already remained until the death of Molière. From the moment Moliere settled in Paris, a period of his feverish dramatic work began, the intensity of which did not weaken until his death. For 15 years from 1658 to 1673, Moliere created all his best plays, which, with few exceptions, provoked fierce attacks from those hostile to him. community groups.

The Parisian period of Moliere's activity opens with the one-act comedy Les précieuses ridicules (1659). In this first, completely original, play, Molière made a bold attack against the pretentiousness and mannerisms of speech, tone and manner that prevailed in aristocratic salons, which was widely reflected in literature and had a strong influence on young people (mainly its female part). Comedy painfully hurt the most prominent minnows. Moliere's enemies achieved a two-week ban on the comedy, after which it was canceled with double success.

For all its great literary and social value, "Zhemannitsa" is a typical farce that reproduces all the traditional techniques of this genre. The same farcical element, which gave Molière's humor an areal brightness and juiciness, also pervades Molière's next play Sganarelle, or the Illusory Cuckold (Sganarelle, ou Le cocu imaginaire, 1660 ).

January 23, 1662 Molière signed marriage contract with Armande Bejart, Madeleine's younger sister. He is 40 years old, Armande is 20. Against all the decorum of the time, only the closest people were invited to the wedding. The wedding ceremony took place February 20, 1662 in the Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois church in Paris.

Comedy "School of Husbands" (L'école des maris, 1661 ), which is closely related to the even more mature comedy "The School for Wives" (L'école des femmes, 1662 ), marks Molière's turn from farce to socio-psychological comedy of education.

Such satirically pointed comedies could not but provoke fierce attacks from the enemies of the playwright. Molière answered them with a polemical piece, La critique de L'École des femmes, Criticism of the School for Wives. 1663 ).

Molière parried the new blows of the enemies in the play “Impromptu of Versailles” (L’impromptu de Versailles, 1663 ). Original in concept and construction (its action takes place on the stage of the theater), this comedy provides valuable information about Moliere's work with actors and the further development of his views on the essence of the theater and the tasks of comedy.

From the battle that followed the "School of Wives", Moliere emerged victorious. Along with the growth of his fame, his ties with the court were also strengthened, in which he increasingly performs with plays composed for court festivities and giving rise to a brilliant spectacle. Molière creates here special genre“comedy-ballet”, combining ballet (a favorite type of court entertainment, in which the king himself and his entourage acted as performers) with comedy, giving plot motivation to individual dance “outputs” (entrées) and framing them with comic scenes.

Molière's first comedy-ballet - The Unbearables (Les fâcheux, 1661 ). It is devoid of intrigue and presents a series of disparate scenes strung on a primitive plot core.

The success of The Unbearables prompted Molière to further develop the comedy-ballet genre. In Marriage involuntarily (Le mariage forcé, 1664 ) Molière raised the genre to great height, having achieved an organic connection between comedic (farcical) and ballet elements. In "Princess of Elis" (La princesse d'Elide, 1664 ) Moliere went the opposite way, inserting clownish ballet interludes into a pseudo-antique lyric-pastoral plot. This was the beginning of two types of comedy-ballet, which were developed by Molière and further. The first farcical-everyday type is represented by the plays “Love the Healer” (L’amour médécin, 1665 ), "The Sicilian, or Love the Painter" (Le Sicilien, ou L'amour peintre, 1666 ), "Monsieur de Pourceaugnac" (Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, 1669 ), "The tradesman in the nobility" (Le bourgeois gentilhomme, 1670 ), "The Countess d'Escarbagnas" (La comtesse d'Escarbagnas, 1671 ), "The Imaginary Sick" (Le malade imaginaire, 1673 ). These plays differ from his other comedies only in the presence of ballet numbers, which do not at all reduce the idea of ​​the play: Moliere makes almost no concessions to court tastes here. The situation is different in comedies-ballets of the second, gallant-pastoral type, which includes: “Melicerte” (Mélicerte, 1666 ), "Comic pastoral" (Pastorale comique, 1666 ), "Brilliant Lovers" (Les amants magnifiques, 1670 ), "Psyche" (Psyché, 1671 - written in collaboration with Corneille).

Comedy "Tartuffe" (Le Tartuffe, 1664-1669 ), directed against the clergy, in the first edition contained three acts and depicted a hypocrite-priest. In this form, it was staged at Versailles at the festival "The Amusements of the Magic Island" May 12, 1664 called "Tartuffe, or the Hypocrite" (Tartuffe, ou L'hypocrite) and caused discontent from the religious organization "Society of Holy Gifts" (Société du Saint Sacrement). In a new form, the comedy, which had 5 acts and was entitled "The Deceiver" (L'imposteur), was allowed to be presented, but after the first performance August 5, 1667 taken off again. Only a year and a half later, Tartuffe was finally presented in the 3rd final edition.

If in "Tartuffe" Moliere attacked religion and the church, then in "Don Juan, or the Stone Feast" (Don Juan, ou Le festin de pierre, 1665 ) the object of his satire was the feudal nobility. Molière based the play on the Spanish legend of Don Juan, the irresistible seducer of women, who violates the laws of God and man.

If Molière introduced a number of tragic features into Tartuffe and Don Juan, appearing through the fabric of comedic action, then in Le Misanthrope 1666 ) these features have become so intensified that they almost completely pushed aside comic element. A typical example of a “high” comedy with an in-depth psychological analysis of the characters’ feelings and experiences, with a predominance of dialogue over external action, with a complete absence of a farcical element, with an excited, pathetic and sarcastic tone of the protagonist’s speeches, The Misanthrope stands apart in Moliere’s work.

Too deep and serious comedy "The Misanthrope" was coldly received by the audience, who were looking for entertainment in the theater first of all. In order to save the play, Molière added to it the brilliant farce Le Médécin malgré lui, 1666 ). During these years, Molière wrote such masterpieces of entertaining comedy-intrigue as "Monsieur de Poursonac" and "The Tricks of Scapin" (Les fourberies de Scapin, 1671 ). Moliere returned here to the primary source of his inspiration - to the old farce.

The main theme of this period is the ridicule of the bourgeois, who seek to imitate the aristocracy and intermarry with it. This theme is developed in "George Danden" (George Dandin, 1668 ) and in "The tradesman in the nobility".

In the famous comedy "The Miser" (L'avare, 1668 ), written under the influence of Plautus' Aulularia, Molière masterfully paints the repulsive image of the miser Harpagon (his name has become a household name in France), whose passion for accumulation has taken on a pathological character and drowned out everything human feelings.

Molière also poses the problem of family and marriage in his penultimate comedy Les femmes savantes, 1672 ), in which he returns to the theme of "Zhimaninitsy", but develops it much wider and deeper. The object of his satire is here female pedants who are fond of science and neglect family responsibilities.

The question of the disintegration of the petty-bourgeois family was also raised in Molière's last comedy The Imaginary Sick (Le malade imaginaire, 1673 ). This time, the reason for the breakup of the family is the mania of the head of the house, Argan, who imagines himself sick and is a toy in the hands of unscrupulous and ignorant doctors. Molière's contempt for doctors ran through all his dramaturgy.

Written by the mortally ill Molière, the comedy "Imaginary Sick" is one of his most cheerful and cheerful comedies. On her 4th performance February 17, 1673 of the year Molière, who played the role of Argan, felt ill and did not finish the performance. He was taken home and died a few hours later. The Parisian Archbishop Arles de Chanvallon forbade the burial of an unrepentant sinner (the actors on his deathbed were supposed to repent) and lifted the ban only at the direction of the king. The greatest playwright of France was buried at night, without rituals, outside the cemetery fence, where suicides were buried.

Artworks:

The first edition of the collected works of Molière was carried out by his friends Charles Varlet Lagrange and Vino in 1682.

Plays that have survived to this day:
Barbullie's jealousy, farce ( 1653 )
Flying doctor, farce ( 1653 )
Shaly, or Everything out of place, a comedy in verse ( 1655 )
Love Pain, comedy 1656 )
Funny cutesy, comedy ( 1659 )
Sganarelle, or the Imaginary Cuckold, comedy ( 1660 )
Don Garcia of Navarre, or the Jealous Prince, comedy ( 1661 )
Husbands school, comedy ( 1661 )
Boring, comedy ( 1661 )
School for Wives, comedy ( 1662 )
Criticism of "School for Wives", comedy ( 1663 )
Versailles Impromptu ( 1663 )
Reluctant marriage, farce ( 1664 )
Princess of Elis, gallant comedy ( 1664 )
Tartuffe, or the Deceiver, comedy ( 1664 )
Don Juan, or the Stone Feast, comedy ( 1665 )
Love is a healer, comedy ( 1665 )
Misanthrope, comedy ( 1666 )
Doctor involuntarily, comedy ( 1666 )
Melisert, pastoral comedy ( 1666 , not completed)
comic pastoral ( 1667 )
Sicilian, or Love-painter, comedy ( 1667 )
Amphitrion, comedy ( 1668 )
Georges Dandin, or The Fooled Husband, comedy ( 1668 )
Stingy, comedy ( 1668 )
Monsieur de Poursonac, comedy-ballet ( 166 9)
Brilliant Lovers, comedy ( 1670 )
Tradesman in the nobility, comedy-ballet ( 1670 )
Psyche, tragedy-ballet ( 1671 , in collaboration with Philippe Cinema and Pierre Corneille)
Scapin's tricks, comedy-farce ( 1671 )
Countess d'Escarbagna, comedy ( 1671 )
learned women comedy 1672 )
Imaginary patient, comedy with music and dancing ( 1673 )

French literature

Jean-Baptiste Molière

Biography

Molière (Poquelin), Jean-Baptiste (Molire (Poquelin) Jean-Baptiste) (1622−1673), French poet and actor, creator of classic comedy.

Born January 13, 1622 in Paris; son of Jean Poquelin, court upholsterer and royal valet, and Marie, daughter of the private upholsterer Louis Cresset. At the age of ten, he lost his mother. In 1631-1639 he studied at the Jesuit Clermont College, where, in addition to theological disciplines, they taught ancient literature and ancient languages; showed big interest to study; translated into French the poem On the Nature of Things by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius. In 1640 he studied law at the University of Orleans, at the beginning of 1641 he passed the exam for the title of licentiate of law. In April-June 1642, he replaced his father as a royal valet. January 6, 1643 refused the title of royal upholsterer. On June 30, 1643, together with the Bejart family, he organized the "Brilliant Theater"; staged tragedies, tragicomedies, pastorals; adopted the surname Molière. After a series of failures, the theater ceased to exist. With the remnants of the troupe he left for the province.

In 1645-1658 the troupe performed in the cities and castles of Normandy, Brittany, Poitou, Gascony and Languedoc. By 1650 Molière had become its recognized head. Gradually in her repertoire leading place took on comedy performances. In the conditions of competition with Italian comedians, Moliere began to compose small pieces (divertissements) himself, adding elements of the Italian comedy of masks (commedia dell'arte) to the French medieval farce. Their success prompted him to turn to more large forms: in 1655 he created his first five-act comedy in verse Madness, or Everything out of place (L "Etourdi, ou Les Contretemps); it was followed in 1656 by Love Quarrel (Le Dpit amoureux).

By 1658 Molière's troupe had become the most popular in the French provinces. Thanks to the patronage of the Duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIV, she had the opportunity to speak to the royal court on October 24, 1658 with the tragedy of P. Corneille Nicomede and the farce of Molière The Doctor in Love; Nicomedes was coldly received, but the Doctor in Love made a splash, which decided the fate of the troupe: she was awarded the title of "Troup of the King's Brother" and provided the stage of the Petit Bourbon Theater. From that time on, Molière finally abandoned tragic roles and began to play only comedic characters.

In 1659, he staged a one-act comedy in prose, Les Prcieuses ridicules, in which he ridiculed the unnaturalness and pomposity of the precision style cultivated in literature (a group of poets led by J. Chaplin) and secular salons (See also CLASSICISM). She had resounding success, but at the same time spawned many enemies in the world. From that day on, Molière's life turned into a constant struggle with them. In 1660, the situation comedy Sganarelle, or the alleged cuckold (Sganarelle, ou le Cocu imaginaire), which treated the traditional theme of adultery, was played with no less success. In the same year, the king granted the Molière troupe the building of the Palais Royal theatre.

Theatrical season on new stage opened on February 4, 1661 with the play Don Garcia of Navarre, or the Jealous Prince (Dom Garcie de Navarre, ou le Prince jaloux), but its philosophical comedy was not accepted by the general public. In June, the School of Husbands (L "Ecole des maris), which ridiculed paternal despotism and defended the principles of natural education, was successfully held; it marked the author's turn to the comedy of manners genre; it already had features of high comedy. The first truly classic comedy was the School of Wives (L "Ecole des femmes", staged in December 1662; it was distinguished by a deep psychological development of the traditional theme of family and marriage. In 1663, Moliere responded to accusations of plagiarism, weakness of the plot and bad taste with the comedies Criticism of the School of Wives (La Critique de l'Ecole des femmes) and Versailles Impromptu (L "Impromptu de Versailles), in which he cheerfully and evilly mocked his ill-wishers ( marquises, salon ladies, precision poets and actors of the Burgundy Hotel). godfather his first son, put an end to gossip. Since 1664, he began to constantly participate in organizing court festivities, composing and staging comedy-ballets: in January 1664, a Forced Marriage (Le Mariage forc) was played, in May - the Princess of Elis (La Princesse d'Elide) and Tartuffe, or the hypocrite (Le Tartuffe, ou l'Hypocrite), a cruel parody of religious bigotry. A scandal erupted; the king forbade the play. They even demanded that the author be sent to the stake. In the spring of 1665, Don Juan, or the Stone Feast (Dom Juan, ou le Festin de pierre), which had a sharply anti-clerical character, was also banned. In 1666, Molière staged the high comedy Misanthrope (Le Misanthrope), indifferently accepted by the general public. He continued to compose comedy-ballets and pastoral plays for court festivities. On the stage of the Palais Royal, two comedies in the style of folk farces were held with great success, where medical science and its ministers were ridiculed - Love the Healer (L "Amour mdecin) and The Doctor involuntarily (Le Mdecin malgr lui). In August 1667, Molière decided to present in the Palais Royal, a softened version of Tartuffe under the new name of the Deceiver (L "Imposteur), but immediately after the premiere it was banned by the Paris Parliament. In February 1668, the comedy Amphitryon was played. This was followed by Georges Danden, or Fooled Husband (George Dandin, ou le Mari confondu), on the well-known folk story about a cunning wife and a gullible husband (July 1668), and Miserly (L "Avare), in which usury and a thirst for enrichment turned out to be the object of ridicule (September 1668).At the beginning of 1669, Molière achieved the lifting of the ban on Tartuffe.In 1669-1671, he staged several comedies-ballets one after another: Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, Brilliant Lovers (Amants magnifiques), Countess d'Escarbaria ( La Comtesse d'Escarbagnas) and the best of them - The tradesman in the nobility (Le Bourgeois gentilhomme), as well as the tragedy-ballet Psyche (Psych). Played in May 1671, the farcical comedy Les Fourberies de Scapin caused a new round of controversy - the author was reproached for indulging plebeian tastes and deviating from classic rules.In March 1672, Molière presented the public with the high comedy Women Learned (Les Femmes savantes), ridiculing the parlor passion for science and philosophy and women's neglect of family responsibilities. 1672 proved to be a difficult year for Molière. Many of his friends and relatives passed away, his relations with the king cooled; health deteriorated significantly. In the winter of 1672−1673 he wrote his last comedy-ballet The imaginary patient (Le Malade imaginaire), where he returned to the theme of charlatans and gullible patients. On February 17, 1673, at her fourth performance, he suffered a stroke and died a few hours later. Church authorities refused to bury him according to the Christian rite. Only after the intervention of the king, Moliere's body was buried on February 21 in the cemetery of St. Joseph. In 1817, his remains were transferred to the Père Lachaise cemetery. Molière left a rich legacy - more than 32 dramatic works written in the most various genres: farce, divertissement, comedy-ballet, pastoral, sitcom, comedy of manners, everyday comedy, high comedy, etc. He constantly experimented, created new forms and transformed old ones. His first experience as a playwright was divertissement, which combined the medieval farce with the Italian commedia dell'arte. Madcap and Love Spat became the first major (in five acts) verse comedies with extensive intrigue, a large number of characters and a variety of plot points. Nevertheless, his connection with the folk (farcical) tradition was never interrupted: he not only introduced separate farcical elements into his great comedies (Tartuffe, Monsieur de Poursonyac, the Philistine in the nobility), but also constantly returned to the farcical form in one-act and three-act comedies. (Funny simpering women, Scapen's tricks, Forced marriage, Love-healer, Doctor involuntarily). Moliere tried to develop the genre of heroic comedy created by P. Corneille in Don Garcia, but abandoned it after the failure of this play. In the early 1660s, he created a new comedy genre - high comedy that meets the classic rules: five-act structure, poetic form, unity of time, place and action, intrigue based on clash of views, intellectual characters (School of Wives, Tartuffe, Don Juan, Misanthrope , Miser, Scholars). Learned women are considered an example of the classic comedy genre, while Don Juan goes beyond the classic rules - it is written in prose, all three unities are violated in it. The essential feature of high comedy was the element of the tragic, most clearly manifested in Misanthrope, which is sometimes called tragicomedy and even tragedy. An important achievement of Moliere was the creation of a special form of comedy - comedy-ballet, where he combined poetic word, music and dance. He gave a comic interpretation to ballet allegories, dramatized dance numbers and organically included them in the action of the play (The Unbearable, Forced Marriage, The Princess of Elis, Tartuffe and many others). He is seen as the herald of French opera. Molière's comedies deal with a wide range of issues modern life: relations between fathers and children, upbringing, marriage and family, the moral state of society (hypocrisy, greed, vanity, etc.), class, religion, culture, science (medicine, philosophy), etc. This complex of topics is solved on the basis of Parisian material , with the exception of the Comtesse d'Escarbagna, which takes place in the province. Molière takes subjects not only from real life; he draws them from ancient (Plavt, Terence) and Renaissance Italian and Spanish dramaturgy (N. Barbieri, N. Secchi, T. de Molina), as well as from the French medieval folk tradition (fablios, farces). Main feature Moliere's characters - independence, activity, the ability to arrange their happiness and their destiny in the fight against the old and obsolete. Each of them has his own beliefs, his own system of views, which he defends before his opponent; the figure of the opponent is obligatory for classic comedy, because the action in it develops in the context of disputes and discussions. Another feature of Moliere's characters is their ambiguity. Many of them have not one, but several qualities (Alceste from Misanthrope, Don Juan), or in the course of action there is a complication or change in their characters (Agnès in the School of Wives, Argon in Tartuffe, Georges Dandin). But everyone negative characters unites one thing - a violation of the measure. Measure is the main principle of classical aesthetics. In the comedies of Molière, it is identical to common sense and naturalness (and hence morality). Their carriers often turn out to be representatives of the people (a maid in Tartuffe, a plebeian wife of Jourdain in the Philistine in the nobility). Showing the imperfection of people, Moliere implements the main principle of the comedy genre - through laughter to harmonize the world and human relations. However, in Tartuffe, Don Giovanni, Misanthrope (partly in the School of Wives and the Miser) he deviates from this principle. Evil triumphs in Misanthrope; in Tartuffe and Don Giovanni, although its bearers are punished, it remains essentially undefeated, for it is too deeply rooted in people's lives. This is the deep realism of Molière. The work of Moliere, the great comedian, creator of classic comedy, had a huge impact not only on the dramatic art of France (Lesage, Beaumarchais), but also on the entire world drama (Sheridan, Goldoni, Lessing, etc.); in Russia, his followers were Sumarokov, Knyazhnin, Kapnist, Krylov, Fonvizin, Griboyedov.

Molière (Poquelin) Jean-Baptiste (1622-1673) - worldwide famous poet, author of classic comedy. Moliere's birthplace is France, Paris. On January 13, 1622, the son of Jean-Baptiste was born to Jean Poquelin, the royal valet, and Mary, the daughter of a private upholsterer. His mother died when he was ten years old.

Until 1639, the boy was a student at Clermont College. There he studied theology, ancient literature, languages ​​of antiquity. Jean-Baptiste was a diligent student. After college, he studied the basics of jurisprudence at the University of Orleans. In the summer of 1642, instead of his father, he worked as a valet at court. In January of the following year, he resigned from the position of an upholsterer, and in June, together with the Bejart family, he opened the "Bistatelny Theater". The repertoire consisted of tragedies, tragicomedies and pastorals. Decides to change his name to the pseudonym Molière. The theater turned out to be a failure, and soon the troupe fled. With the remaining members, Molière left for the wilderness.

During the tour (1645-1658) he traveled through the cities of Normandy, Poitou, Gascony, Languedoc. Over time, Molière became director of the theatre.

Over time, comedy performances occupy the main place in the repertoire. In 1658, Molière's theater troupe was on everyone's lips. The Duke of Orleans contributed to the staging of the tragedy Nicomedes and the farce The Doctor in Love, at court. What, in fact, provided the future of the actors. They are called "The Troupe of the King's Brother", and they make available the Petit Bourbon stage. At this time, Molière forever refuses tragic roles. The success was not cloudless, the courtiers pestered Moliere with intrigues and gossip.

Life at court was bright, constant organization of festivities, new and new plays. In total, Moliere left behind more than 32 dramatic works to the world heritage.

1672 knocked down Molière, relations with the king did not develop, many friends were gone. At that time, he writes the comedy Imaginary Ill, which turns out to be fatal for the author. At her fourth production on February 17, 1673, Moliere becomes ill. They didn't save him. The church refused to bury according to Christian rites, but the king insisted, and on February 21 he was buried in the cemetery of St. Joseph.

Comedian of France and new Europe, creator of classical comedy, actor and theater director by profession.

Molière came from an old bourgeois family, who for several centuries had been engaged in the trade of upholsterers and draperies. Molière's father, Jean Poquelin (1595-1669), was court upholsterer and valet to Louis XIII. Moliere was brought up in a fashionable Jesuit school - Clermont College, where he thoroughly studied Latin, so he freely read Roman authors in the original and even, according to legend, translated Lucretius's philosophical poem "On the Nature of Things" into French (translation lost). After graduating from college in 1639, Moliere passed the examination in Orleans for the title of licentiate of rights. But the legal career attracted him no more than his father's craft, and Moliere chose the profession of an actor. In 1643, Moliere became the head of the "Brilliant Theater" (Illustre Théâtre). Thinking of himself as a tragic actor, Moliere played the roles of heroes (it was here that he adopted his pseudonym "Molière"). When the troupe broke up, Molière decided to seek his fortune in the provinces, joining a troupe of itinerant comedians led by Dufresne.

Molière's troupe in the provinces. First plays

Moliere's youthful wanderings in the French provinces (1645-1658) during the years of the civil war - the Fronde - enriched him with worldly and theatrical experience. Since 1650, Molière takes over Dufresne, leads the troupe. The repertory hunger of Molière's troupe was the impetus for the beginning of his dramatic work. So the years of Molière's theatrical studies became the years of his author's studies. Many farcical scenarios he composed in the provinces have disappeared. Only the plays “The Jealousy of Barbouille” (La jalousie du Barbouillé) and “The Flying Doctor” (Le médécin volant) have survived, the belonging of which to Molière is not entirely reliable. The titles of a number of similar pieces played by Molière in Paris after his return from the provinces are also known (“Gros-Rene schoolboy”, “Doctor-pedant”, “Gorgibus in a bag”, “Plan-plan”, “Three Doctors”, “Kazakin” , “The feigned goof”, “The brushwood binder”), and these titles echo the situations of Moliere’s later farces (for example, “Gorgibus in a sack” and “Scapin's Tricks”, d. III, sc. II). These plays testify to the fact that the tradition of the old farce nurtured the dramaturgy of Molière and became an organic component in the main comedies of his mature age.

The farcical repertoire, excellently performed by Moliere's troupe under his direction (Moliere himself found himself as an actor in farce), contributed to the strengthening of her reputation. It increased even more after Moliere composed two great comedies in verse - "Naughty" (L'étourdi, 1655) and "Love Annoyance" (Le dépit amoureux, 1656), written in the manner of Italian literary comedy. Borrowings from various old and new comedies are layered on the main plot, which is a free imitation of Italian authors, in accordance with Molière's favorite principle of "taking your good wherever he finds it." The interest of both plays, according to their entertainment setting, is reduced to the development of comic situations and intrigue; the characters in them are still very superficially developed.

Parisian period

October 24, 1658 Molière's troupe made their debut at the Louvre Palace in the presence of Louis XIV. The lost farce "Doctor in Love" was a huge success and decided the fate of the troupe: the king gave her the Petit Bourbon court theater, in which she played until 1661, until she moved to the Palais Royal theater, where she already remained until the death of Molière. From the moment Moliere settled in Paris, a period of his feverish dramatic work began, the intensity of which did not weaken until his death. During these 15 years, Moliere created all his best plays, which, with few exceptions, provoked fierce attacks from social groups hostile to him.

Early farces

The Parisian period of Molière's activity opens with the one-act comedy Les précieuses ridicules (1659). In this first completely original play, Molière made a bold attack against the pretentiousness and mannerisms of speech, tone and manner that prevailed in aristocratic salons, which was widely reflected in literature (see Precise Literature) and had a strong influence on young people (mainly female). Comedy painfully hurt the most prominent minnows. Moliere's enemies achieved a two-week ban on the comedy, after which it was canceled with double success.

For all its great literary and social value, "Zhemannitsa" is a typical farce that reproduces all the traditional techniques of this genre. The same farcical element, which gave Molière's humor an areal brightness and juiciness, also permeates Molière's next play, Sganarelle, ou Le cocu imaginaire (1660). Here, the clever rogue servant of the first comedies - Mascaril - is replaced by the silly, ponderous Sganarelle, who was later introduced by Moliere into a number of his comedies.

comedy parenting

The comedy The School of Husbands (L'école des maris, 1661), which is closely related to the even more mature comedy The School of Wives (L'école des femmes, 1662), which followed it, marks Molière's turn from farce to socio-psychological comedy. education. Here Molière raises questions of love, marriage, attitudes towards women and family arrangements. The lack of monosyllabism in the characters and actions of the characters makes the "School of Husbands" and especially the "School of Wives" a major step forward towards the creation of a comedy of characters, overcoming the primitive schematism of the farce. At the same time, the "School of Wives" is incomparably deeper and thinner than the "School of Husbands", which in relation to it is, as it were, a sketch, a light sketch.

Such satirically pointed comedies could not but provoke fierce attacks from the enemies of the playwright. Molière answered them with a polemical play, La critique de "L'École des femmes", 1663. Defending himself against accusations of gaerstvo, he expounded here with great dignity his credo of a comic poet (“to delve into the ridiculous side of human nature and amusingly depict the shortcomings of society on stage”) and ridiculed the superstitious admiration for the “rules” of Aristotle. This protest against the pedantic fetishization of the "rules" reveals Moliere's independent position in relation to French classicism, to which, however, he adjoined in his dramatic practice. Another manifestation of the same independence of Moliere is his attempt to prove that comedy is not only not lower, but even “higher” than tragedy, this main genre of classical poetry. In “Criticism on the “School of Wives””, through the mouth of Dorant, he gives criticism classic tragedy from the point of view of inconsistency with her "nature" (sc. VII), that is, from the standpoint of realism. This criticism is directed against the themes of classical tragedy, against its orientation towards court and high-society conventions.

Molière parried the new blows of the enemies in the play “Impromptu of Versailles” (L’impromptu de Versailles, 1663). Original in concept and construction (its action takes place on the stage of the theater), this comedy provides valuable information about Moliere's work with actors and the further development of his views on the essence of the theater and the tasks of comedy. Subjecting his rivals, the actors of the Burgundy Hotel, to devastating criticism, rejecting their method of conventionally pompous tragic acting, Molière at the same time rejects the reproach that he brings certain people onto the stage. The main thing is that he, with unprecedented courage, mocks the court shamblers-marquises, throwing the famous phrase: “The current marquis makes everyone laugh in the play; and just as ancient comedies always depict a simpleton servant who makes the audience laugh, in the same way we need a hilarious marquis who amuses the audience.

mature comedies. Comedy-ballets

In the end, Molière emerged victorious from the battle that followed the School for Wives. Along with the growth of his fame, his ties with the court were also strengthened, in which he increasingly performed with plays composed for court festivities and giving rise to a brilliant spectacle. Moliere creates here a special genre of “comedy-ballet”, combining ballet, this favorite form of court entertainment (in which the king himself and his entourage acted as performers), with comedy, giving plot motivation to individual dance “outputs” (entrées) and framing them comic scenes. Molière's first comedy-ballet is The Unbearables (Les fâcheux, 1661). It is devoid of intrigue and presents a series of disparate scenes strung on a primitive plot core. Molière found here so many well-aimed satirical and everyday features to depict secular dandies, players, duelists, projectors and pedants that, for all its formlessness, the play is a step forward in the sense of preparing that comedy of manners, the creation of which was the task of Molière (“The Unbearables” were set to "Schools for Wives").

The success of The Unbearables prompted Molière to further develop the comedy-ballet genre. In Le mariage forcé (1664), Moliere raised the genre to great heights, achieving an organic connection between comedic (farcical) and ballet elements. In The Princess of Elis (La princesse d'Elide, 1664), Moliere went the opposite way, inserting clownish ballet interludes into a pseudo-antique lyric-pastoral plot. This was the beginning of two types of comedy-ballet, which were developed by Molière and further. The first farcical-everyday type is represented by the plays Love the Healer (L'amour médécin, 1665), The Sicilian, or Love the Painter (Le Sicilien, ou L'amour peintre, 1666), Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, 1669), “The tradesman in the nobility” (Le bourgeois gentilhomme, 1670), “The Countess d'Escarbagnas” (La comtesse d'Escarbagnas, 1671), “The Imaginary Sick” (Le malade imaginaire, 1673). Despite the enormous distance separating such a primitive farce as The Sicilian, which served only as a frame for the "Moorish" ballet, from such developed social comedies as "The Tradesman in the Nobility" and "The Imaginary Sick", we still have development here. one type of comedy - a ballet that grows out of an old farce and lies on the highway of Molière's creativity. These plays differ from his other comedies only in the presence of ballet numbers, which do not at all reduce the idea of ​​the play: Moliere makes almost no concessions to court tastes here. The situation is different in the comedies-ballets of the second, gallant-pastoral type, which include: “Melicerte” (Mélicerte, 1666), “Comic Pastoral” (Pastorale comique, 1666), “Brilliant Lovers” (Les amants magnifiques, 1670), "Psyche" (Psyché, 1671 - written in collaboration with Corneille). Since Molière made some compromise with feudal-aristocratic tastes in them, these plays have a more artificial character than comedies-ballets of the first type.

If in his early comedies Moliere pursued the line of social satire relatively carefully and touched mainly on secondary objects, then in his mature works he takes under fire the very top of the feudal-aristocratic society in the person of its privileged classes - the nobility and clergy, creating images of hypocrites and debauchees in a priest's cassock or in a powdered wig.

"Tartuffe"

Their exposure is dedicated to "Tartuffe" (Le Tartuffe, 1664-1669). Directed against the clergy, this mortal enemy of the theater and all secular bourgeois culture, this comedy contained only 3 acts in the first edition and depicted a hypocrite priest. In this form, it was staged in Versailles at the festival "The Amusements of the Magic Island" on May 12, 1664 under the name "Tartuffe, or the Hypocrite" (Tartuffe, ou L'hypocrite) and caused an uproar from the "Society of Holy Gifts" (Société du Saint Sacrement ) - a secret religious and political organization of aristocrats, major officials and clergy who carried out the idea of ​​orthodox Catholicism. In the image of Tartuffe, the Society saw a satire on its members and achieved the prohibition of Tartuffe. Molière courageously defended his play in the "Placet" (Placet) in the name of the king, in which he directly wrote that "the originals have achieved the prohibition of the copy." But this request came to nothing. Then Molière loosened sharp places, renamed Tartuffe to Panyulf and took off his cassock. In a new form, the comedy, which had 5 acts and was entitled "The Deceiver" (L'imposteur), was allowed to be presented, but after the first performance on August 5, 1667, it was withdrawn. Only a year and a half later, Tartuffe was finally presented in the 3rd final edition.

Although Tartuffe is not a clergyman in it, however latest edition hardly softer than the original. Expanding the outlines of the image of Tartuffe, making him not only a hypocrite, a hypocrite and a libertine, but also a traitor, an informer and a slanderer, showing his connections with the court, the police and court spheres, Molière significantly increased the satirical sharpness of the comedy, turning it into an indignant pamphlet on modern France, which is actually run by a reactionary clique of saints, in whose hands is the well-being, honor and even life of the modest bourgeois. The only light in this realm of obscurantism, arbitrariness and violence is for Moliere the wise monarch, who cuts the tight knot of intrigue and provides, like deus ex machina, a happy ending to the comedy, when the viewer has already ceased to believe in its possibility. But precisely because of its contingency, this denouement seems purely artificial and does not change anything in the essence of the comedy, in its basic idea.

"Don Juan"

But the image of Don Juan is not woven from one negative traits. For all his viciousness, Don Juan has great charm: he is brilliant, witty, brave, and Molière, denouncing Don Juan as the bearer of the vices of a class hostile to him, at the same time admires him, pays tribute to his knightly charm.

"Misanthrope"

If Molière, animated by class hatred, introduced a number of tragic features into Tartuffe and Don Juan, appearing through the fabric of comedic action, then in Le Misanthrope (1666) these features were so intensified that they almost completely pushed aside the comic element. A typical example of a “high” comedy with an in-depth psychological analysis of the characters’ feelings and experiences, with a predominance of dialogue over external action, with a complete absence of a farcical element, with an excited, pathetic and sarcastic tone of the protagonist’s speeches, The Misanthrope stands apart in Moliere’s work. He marks the moment in his literary activity when the poet, hunted by enemies and suffocating in the stuffy atmosphere of the court of Versailles, could not stand it, threw off his comic mask and spoke in a verse "drenched in bitterness and anger." Bourgeois scholars willingly emphasize the autobiographical character of The Misanthrope, the reflection in it family drama Molière. Although the presence of autobiographical features in the image of Alceste is undoubted, however, reducing the whole play to them means glossing over its deep social meaning. The tragedy of Alceste is the tragedy of an advanced lone Protestant who does not feel support in the broad strata of his own class, which is not yet ripe for a political struggle against the existing system.

Undoubtedly, in the indignant speeches of Alceste, Molière's own attitude towards modern social orders is manifested. But Alceste is not only the image of a noble exposer of social vices, looking for "truth" and not finding it: he is also distinguished by some duality. On the one hand, this is a positive hero, whose noble indignation arouses the sympathy of the viewer for him; on the other hand, he is not devoid of negative traits that make him comical. He is too hot, unrestrained, tactless, devoid of a sense of proportion and a sense of humor. He turns his accusatory speeches to insignificant people who are unable to understand him. By his behavior, at every step, he puts himself in a ridiculous position in front of those people whom he himself despises. Such an ambivalent attitude of Moliere towards his hero is ultimately explained by the fact that, despite his advanced views, he has not yet completely freed himself from alien class influences and from the prejudices that reigned in the society he despised. Alceste is made ridiculous because he decided to go against everyone, even if from the best of intentions. Here the point of view of the well-intentioned bourgeois of the feudal era, who was still firmly seated in Molière, prevailed. That is why the revolutionary bourgeoisie of the 18th century overestimated the image of Alceste, throwing a reproach to Molière that he gave the only honest person in his theater to the scoundrels (Rousseau) to ridicule, and later (in the era of the Great French Revolution) turned Alceste into a "patriot", sans-culotte, friend of the people (Fabre d'Eglantin).

Later plays

Too deep and serious comedy, "The Misanthrope" was coldly received by the audience, who were looking for entertainment in the theater. In order to save the play, Molière added to it the brilliant farce The Doctor in Captivity (Le médécin malgré lui, 1666). This trifle, which had a huge success and is still preserved in the repertoire, developed the theme of Moliere's favorite theme of charlatans and ignoramuses. It is curious that just in the most mature period of his work, when Molière rose to the height of a socio-psychological comedy, he increasingly returns to a farce splashing with fun, devoid of serious satirical tasks. It was during these years that Molière wrote such masterpieces of entertaining comedy-intrigue as "Monsieur de Poursonac" and "The Tricks of Scapin" (Les fourberies de Scapin, 1671). Moliere returned here to the primary source of his inspiration - to the old farce.

In literary circles, several dismissive attitude to these rude, but sparkling, genuine "inside" comic plays. This prejudice goes back to the very legislator of classicism, Boileau, the ideologist of bourgeois-aristocratic art, who reproached Molière for buffoonery and pandering to the coarse tastes of the crowd. However, it was in this lower genre, uncanonized and rejected by classical poetics, that Molière, more than in his “high” comedies, dissociated himself from alien class influences and exploded feudal-aristocratic values. This was facilitated by the "plebeian" form of farce, which has long served the young bourgeoisie as a well-aimed weapon in its struggle against the privileged classes of the feudal era. Suffice it to say that it was in farces that Molière developed that type of intelligent and dexterous raznochintsy, dressed in a lackey's livery, who, half a century later, would become the main spokesman for the aggressive moods of the rising bourgeoisie. Scapin and Sbrigani are in this sense the direct predecessors of Lesage's servants, Marivaux, and others, up to and including the famous Figaro.

Apart from the comedies of this period is "Amphitryon" (Amphitryon, 1668). Despite the independence of Molière's judgments manifested here, it would be a mistake to see in the comedy a satire on the king himself and his court. Moliere retained his faith in the alliance of the bourgeoisie with the royal power until the end of his life, expressing the point of view of his class, which had not yet matured before the idea of ​​\u200b\u200ba political revolution.

In addition to the attraction of the bourgeoisie to the nobility, Molière also ridicules its specific vices, of which the first place belongs to stinginess. In the famous comedy The Miser (L'avare, 1668), written under the influence of Plautus' Aulularia, Molière masterfully portrays the repulsive image of the miser Harpagon (his name has become a household name in France), who has a passion for accumulation, specific to the bourgeoisie. as a class of money people, took on a pathological character and drowned out all human feelings. Demonstrating the harm of usury for bourgeois morality, showing the corrupting effect of stinginess on the bourgeois family, Moliere at the same time considers stinginess as a moral vice, without revealing the social causes that give rise to it. Such an abstract interpretation of the theme of avarice weakens the social significance of the comedy, which, nevertheless, is - with all its advantages and disadvantages - the purest and most typical (along with The Misanthrope) example of a classic comedy of characters.

Molière also poses the problem of family and marriage in his penultimate comedy Les femmes savantes (1672), in which he returns to the theme of the “Chematics”, but develops it much wider and deeper. The object of his satire is here female pedants who are fond of science and neglect family responsibilities. Mocking, in the person of Armande, a bourgeois girl who is condescending towards marriage and prefers to “take philosophy as her husband,” M. opposes her to Henrietta, a healthy and normal girl who shuns “high matters,” but on the other hand, she has a clear and practical mind, thrifty and economic. Such is the ideal of a woman for Molière, who here again approaches the patriarchal-petty-bourgeois point of view. Before the idea of ​​women's equality, Molière, like his class as a whole, was still far away.

The question of the disintegration of the bourgeois family was also raised in Molière's last comedy, Le malade imaginaire, 1673. This time, the reason for the breakup of the family is the mania of the head of the house, Argan, who imagines himself sick and is a toy in the hands of unscrupulous and ignorant doctors. Moliere's contempt for doctors, which runs through all his dramaturgy, is quite understandable historically, if we remember that medical science in his time was based not on experience and observation, but on scholastic speculation. Molière attacked charlatans-doctors in the same way as he attacked other pseudo-scientific pedants and sophists who raped "nature".

Although written by the mortally ill Molière, the comedy "Imaginary Sick" is one of his most cheerful and cheerful comedies. At her 4th performance on February 17, 1673, Molière, who played the role of Argan, felt ill and did not finish the performance. He was taken home and died a few hours later. The archbishop of Paris forbade the burial of an unrepentant sinner (the actors on his deathbed were supposed to repent) and lifted the ban only at the direction of the king. The greatest playwright of France was buried at night, without rituals, outside the cemetery fence, where suicides were buried. Behind his coffin were several thousand people of the "common people", who had gathered to pay their last respects to their beloved poet and actor. Representatives of high society at the funeral were absent. Class animosity haunted Molière after death, as well as during his lifetime, when the "despicable" craft of the actor prevented Molière from being elected a member of the French Academy. But his name entered the history of the theater as the name of the founder of French stage realism. No wonder the academic theater of France "Comédie Française" still unofficially calls itself the "House of Molière".

Characteristic

When evaluating Molière as an artist, one cannot proceed from certain aspects of his artistic technique: language, style, composition, versification, etc. This is only important for understanding the extent to which they help him to express figuratively his understanding of reality and attitude towards it. Molière was an artist rising in the feudal environment of the French bourgeoisie of the era of primitive capitalist accumulation. He was a representative of the most advanced class of his era, whose interests included the maximum knowledge of reality in order to strengthen his being and domination in it. That is why Molière was a materialist. He recognized the objective existence of a material reality independent of human consciousness, nature (la nature), which determines and shapes the human consciousness, is for him the only source of truth and good. With all the force of his comic genius, Moliere falls upon those who think differently, who try to force nature, imposing their subjective conjectures on it. All the images of pedants, literal scholars, charlatans, charlatans, simps, marquises, saints, etc., drawn by Molière, are ridiculous primarily because of their subjectivism, their pretensions to impose their own ideas on nature, to disregard its objective laws.

The materialistic worldview of Moliere makes him an artist who bases his creative method on experience, observation, the study of people and life. An artist of the advanced rising class, Moliere has relatively great opportunities for the knowledge of the being of all other classes. In his comedies, he reflected almost all aspects of French life in the 17th century. At the same time, all phenomena and people are depicted by him from the point of view of the interests of his class. These interests determine the direction of his satire, irony and buffoonery, which are for Moliere the means of influencing reality, its alteration in the interests of the bourgeoisie. Thus, Molière's comedic art is permeated with a certain class attitude.

But the French bourgeoisie of the 17th century was not yet, as noted above, "a class for itself." She was not yet a hegemon historical process and therefore did not possess a sufficiently mature class consciousness, did not have an organization that would unite it into a single cohesive force, did not think about a decisive break with the feudal nobility and about a violent change in the existing socio-political system. Hence - the specific limitations of Molière's class knowledge of reality, his inconsistency and hesitation, his concessions to feudal-aristocratic tastes (comedies-ballets), noble culture (the image of Don Juan). Hence the assimilation by Molière of the canonical for the noble theater of the ridiculous image of people of low rank (servants, peasants) and, in general, partial subordination of it to the canon of classicism. Hence, further, there is an insufficiently clear separation of the nobles from the bourgeois and the dissolution of both in the indefinite social category “gens de bien”, that is, enlightened secular people, to which most of the positive heroes-reasoners of his comedies belong (up to and including Alceste). Criticizing the individual shortcomings of the modern noble-monarchist system, Moliere did not understand that the specific perpetrators of the evil to which he directed the sting of his satire should be sought in the socio-political system of France, in the alignment of its class forces, and not at all in the distortions of the all-good "nature" , that is, in explicit abstraction. The limited cognition of reality, specific for Moliere as an artist of an unconstituted class, is expressed in the fact that his materialism is inconsistent, and therefore not alien to the influence of idealism. Not knowing that it is the social being of people that determines their consciousness, Molière transfers the question of social justice from the socio-political sphere to the moral sphere, dreaming of resolving it within the existing system through preaching and denunciation.

This was reflected, of course, in artistic method Molière. It is characterized by:

a sharp distinction between positive and negative characters, the opposition of virtue and vice;

the schematization of images, inherited by Molière from the commedia dell'arte, the tendency to operate with masks instead of living people;

mechanical unfolding of action as a collision of forces external to each other and internally almost motionless.

True, the plays of Molière are characterized by a great dynamism of comedic action; but this dynamic is external, it is different from the characters, which are basically static in their psychological content. This was already noticed by Pushkin, who wrote, opposing Molière to Shakespeare: “The faces created by Shakespeare are not, like those of Moliere, types of such and such a passion, such and such a vice, but living beings, full of many passions, many vices ... Moliere has a mean stingy and nothing more."

If in his best comedies (“Tartuffe”, “The Misanthrope”, “Don Juan”) Moliere tries to overcome the monosyllabic nature of his images, the mechanistic nature of his method, then basically his images and the whole structure of his comedies still bear a strong imprint of mechanistic materialism characteristic of the worldview of the French bourgeoisie of the 17th century. and her artistic style - classicism.

The question of Moliere's attitude towards classicism is much more complicated than it seems. school history literature, unconditionally sticking the label of a classic on him. There is no doubt that Molière was the creator and the best representative of the classical comedy of characters, and in a whole series of his "high" comedies, Molière's artistic practice is quite consistent with the classical doctrine. But at the same time other plays by Molière (mainly farces) sharply contradict this doctrine. This means that in his worldview Molière is at odds with the main representatives of the classical school.

As you know, French classicism is the style of the top of the bourgeoisie that merged with the aristocracy and the most sensitive to economic development strata of the feudal nobility, on which the first had a certain impact by the rationalism of its thinking, being in turn influenced by the feudal-noble skills, traditions and prejudices. The artistic and political line of Boileau, Racine, and others is the line of compromise and class cooperation between the bourgeoisie and the nobility on the basis of serving the tastes of the court and the nobility. Classicism is absolutely alien to any bourgeois-democratic, "popular", "plebeian" tendencies. This is literature designed for the “chosen ones” and contemptuously referring to the “rabble” (cf. Boileau's “Poetics”).

That is why for Moliere, who was the ideologist of the most advanced layers of the bourgeoisie and waged a fierce struggle with the privileged classes for the emancipation of bourgeois culture, the classical canon had to be too narrow. Moliere approaches classicism only in its most general stylistic principles, expressing the main tendencies of the bourgeois psyche of the era of primitive accumulation. These include such features as rationalism, typification and generalization of images, their abstract-logical systematization, strict clarity of composition, transparent clarity of thought and style. But even standing mainly on the classical platform, Molière at the same time rejects a number of core principles of the classical doctrine, such as the regulation of poetic creativity, the fetishization of "unities", which he sometimes treats quite freely ("Don Juan", for example, by construction - typical baroque tragicomedy of the preclassical era), the narrowness and limitations of the canonized genres, from which he deviates either towards the “low” farce or towards the court ballet comedy. Developing these non-canonized genres, he introduces into them a number of features that contradict the prescriptions of the classical canon: he prefers the external comedy of situations, theatrical buffoonery, the dynamic deployment of farcical intrigue, to the restrained and noble comedy of spoken comedy; polished salon-aristocratic language. - lively folk speech, dotted with provincialisms, dialectisms, common folk and slang words, sometimes even words of the gibberish language, pasta, etc. All this gives Molière's comedies a democratic grassroots imprint, for which he was reproached by Boileau, who spoke of his "excessive love for the people ". But this is by no means Molière in all of his plays. On the whole, despite his partial subordination to the classical canon, despite sporadic adjustments to court tastes (in his comedies-ballets), Moliere still wins democratic, “plebeian” tendencies, which are explained by the fact that Moliere was an ideologist of a non-aristocratic the top of the bourgeoisie, but the bourgeois class as a whole, and sought to draw into the orbit of its influence even its most inert and backward layers, as well as the masses of the working people who were following the bourgeoisie at that time.

This desire of Molière to consolidate all layers and groups of the bourgeoisie (which is why he was repeatedly awarded the honorary title of "people's" playwright) determines the great breadth of his creative method, which does not quite fit into the framework of classical poetics, which served only a certain part of the class. Outgrowing these limits, Moliere is ahead of his time and outlines such a program of realistic art, which the bourgeoisie was able to fully implement only much later.

This explains the enormous influence exerted by Moliere on the entire subsequent development of bourgeois comedy both in France and abroad. Under the sign of Molière, the entire French comedy of the 18th century developed, reflecting the entire complex intertwining of the class struggle, the entire contradictory process of the formation of the bourgeoisie as a “class for itself”, entering into a political struggle with the noble-monarchist system. She relied on Molière in the 18th century. both the entertaining comedy of Regnard and the satirically pointed comedy of Le Sage, who developed in his "Turcar" the type of tax-farmer-financier, briefly outlined by Moliere in "Countess d'Escarbagnas". The influence of the "high" comedies of Moliere was also experienced by the secular everyday comedy of Piron and Gresse and the moral-sentimental comedy of Detouche and Nivelle de Lachausse, reflecting the growth of the class consciousness of the middle bourgeoisie. Even the new genre of petty-bourgeois or bourgeois drama that follows from this (see "Drama", section "Bourgeois Drama"), this antithesis of classical dramaturgy, was prepared by Molière's comedies of manners, which so seriously developed the problems of the bourgeois family, marriage, and the upbringing of children - these are the main themes of petty-bourgeois drama . Although some ideologists of the revolutionary bourgeoisie of the XVIII century. in the process of reassessing the noble monarchical culture, they sharply dissociated themselves from M. as a court playwright, but the famous creator of The Marriage of Figaro, Beaumarchais, the only worthy successor to Molière in the field of social satirical comedy, came out of the Molière school. Less significant is the influence of Molière on the bourgeois comedy of the 19th century, which was already alien to the main installation of Molière. However, Molière's comedy technique (especially his farces) is used by the masters of the entertaining bourgeois comedy-vaudeville of the 19th century from Picard, Scribe and Labiche to Meilhac and Halévy, Paleron and others .

No less fruitful was the influence of Molière outside of France, and in various European countries, translations of Molière's plays were a powerful stimulus for the creation of a national bourgeois comedy. This was the case first of all in England during the Restoration (Wycherley, Congreve), and then in the 18th century by Fielding and Sheridan]. So it was in economically backward Germany, where acquaintance with the plays of Molière stimulated the original comedy creativity of the German bourgeoisie. Even more significant was the influence of Moliere's comedy in Italy, where, under the direct influence of Moliere, the creator of the Italian bourgeois comedy Goldoni was brought up. Moliere had a similar influence in Denmark on Golberg, the creator of the Danish bourgeois-satirical comedy, and in Spain on Moratin.

In Russia, acquaintance with the comedies of Molière begins already at the end of the 17th century, when Princess Sophia, according to legend, played “The Doctor in Captivity” in her tower. At the beginning of the XVIII century. we find them in the Petrine repertoire. From the palace performances Molière then moves on to the performances of the first state-owned public theater in St. Petersburg, headed by A.P. Sumarokov. The same Sumarokov was the first imitator of Molière in Russia. The most “original” Russian comedians of the classical style, Fonvizin, Kapnist and I. A. Krylov, were also brought up at the Molière school. But the most brilliant follower of Moliere in Russia was Griboedov, who in the image of Chatsky gave Moliere a congenial version of his "Misanthrope" - however, a completely original version, which grew up in the specific situation of Arakcheev-bureaucratic Russia of the 1920s. 19th century Following Griboyedov, Gogol also paid tribute to Molière by translating one of his farces into Russian (“Sganarelle, or the Husband who thinks he is deceived by his wife”); traces of Molière's influence on Gogol are noticeable even in The Government Inspector. The later aristocratic (Sukhovo-Kobylin) and bourgeois comedy (Ostrovsky) also did not escape the influence of Molière. In the pre-revolutionary era, bourgeois modernist directors attempted a stage reassessment of Moliere's plays from the point of view of emphasizing in them elements of "theatricality" and stage grotesque (Meyerhold, Komissarzhevsky).

The October Revolution did not weaken, but, on the contrary, increased interest in Molière. The repertoire of the national theaters of the former USSR, formed after the revolution, included Molière's plays, which were translated into the languages ​​of almost all nationalities of the USSR. Since the beginning of the reconstructive period, when the problems of the cultural revolution were raised to a new, higher level, when the theater was given the task of critically mastering the artistic heritage, attempts were made to take a new approach to Molière, to reveal his consonance with the social tasks of the theater of the Soviet era. Of these attempts, a curious, albeit spoiled by formalist-aesthetic influences, staging of Tartuffe at the Leningrad State Drama Theater in 1929 deserves mention. modern religious obscurantism and hypocrisy, and along the line of "Tartuffe" in politics itself (social compromisers and social fascists).

In Soviet times, it was believed that for all the deep social tone of Molière's comedies, his main method, based on the principles of mechanistic materialism, was fraught with dangers for proletarian dramaturgy (cf. Bezymensky's The Shot).

A crater on Mercury is named after Molière.

Legends about Molière and his work

In 1662, Molière married a young actress from his troupe, Armande Bejart, the younger sister of Madeleine Bejart, another actress from his troupe. However, this immediately caused a number of gossip and accusations of incest, since there is an assumption that Armande is, in fact, the daughter of Madeleine and Moliere, who was born during the years of their wanderings around the province. To stop these conversations, the King becomes the godson of the first child of Molière and Armande.

In 1808, Alexandre Duval's farce "Wallpaper" (French "La Tapisserie") was played at the Odeon Theater in Paris, presumably an adaptation of Molière's farce "Kazakin". It is believed that Duval destroyed Molière's original or copy in order to hide obvious traces of borrowing, and changed the names of the characters, only their characters and behavior suspiciously resembled Molière's heroes. The playwright Guillot de Sey tried to restore the original source and in 1911 presented this farce on the stage of the Foley Dramatic theater, returning its original name.

On November 7, 1919, the Comœdia magazine published an article by Pierre Louis "Molière - the creation of Corneille". Comparing the plays "Amphitrion" by Moliere and "Agésilas" by Pierre Corneille, he concludes that Moliere only signed the text composed by Corneille. Despite the fact that Pierre Louis himself was a hoaxer, the idea known today as the "Molière-Corneille Affair" was widely disseminated, including in such works as "Corneille under the mask of Moliere" by Henri Poulay (1957), "Molière , or The Imaginary Author" by lawyers Hippolyte Wouter and Christine le Ville de Goyer (1990), "The Molière Case: A Great Literary Fraud" by Denis Boissier (2004) and others.

Biography of Molière

Paris, 1622. In the family of Jean Poquelin, a wealthy bourgeois, a hereditary decorator who worked at the court, a son, Jean-Baptiste, was born. The mother died when the boy was 10 years old. The father wanted his son to continue his work and provide the heir with a good education. Jean-Baptiste graduated from the Jesuit College, passed the exam for the title of licentiate of rights in Orleans.

But the magnificent prospects did not seduce the young man, he dreamed of the theater. In June 1643, at the age of 21, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin left his family and opened the Théâtre Brilliant in Paris. This, as we would say today, the project lasted only two years and suffered a financial collapse. There were only debts that Jean-Baptiste had nothing to pay. For this reason, he even happened to spend some time in prison.

After this story, the father cursed his son, forbade him to dishonor his surname. At that time, the acting profession was considered the lowest and was called nothing more than a contemptuous "comedian". It is with this that the appearance of the pseudonym Moliere is associated. Jean-Baptiste preferred to renounce his family name, because he could not imagine his life without the theater.

Moliere took up his favorite business, organizing a traveling troupe, with which he traveled from one city to another. The repertoire was small, so he took up the pen himself. He began by writing one-act plays. This is how the “Flying Doctor”, “Anemone”, “Jealousy of Barbuye” appeared (these are those that have come down to us, but there were others).

Gradually, the popularity of the Moliere troupe grew, they began to perform in large cities. One day, in Languedoc, Molière met with a school friend, the Prince of Conti, who recommended him to the king's brother. And so Jean-Baptiste Moliere, along with his actors, got the opportunity to play in the theater at the court, in the Louvre.

The last decade and a half of Moliere's life (1658 - 1673) were the most productive times in terms of dramaturgy. At this time, such masterpieces as "Funny Fashionistas", "The Imaginary Cuckold", "The Tradesman in the Nobility", "Don Giovanni, or the Stone Guest", "Tartuffe", "The Misanthrope", "The Imaginary Sick" were created. His plays mercilessly ridicule the vices of people: greed, hypocrisy, hypocrisy.

The staging of the comedy "Tartuffe" at the court dealt a serious blow to the Catholic Church. In the play, Moliere showed the criminality of church authority, the deceitfulness of its morality. Of course, the play was banned, and in order to save it, Molière "removed" his spiritual dignity from the protagonist, made him an ordinary saint and a hypocrite.

Other plays were also forbidden to be staged - this is how the criticism of the playwright acted. Once, his theater was even closed, and for three whole months the actors waited for the opportunity to play again, although all this time they did not even receive money.

Molière himself was far from being a poor man, receiving an annual pension of 1,500 livres from the king. But he treated money easily, spent it with pleasure. He spent not only on himself, he helped those in need, and not one of those who turned to him with a request was offended. Contemporaries spoke of him as a kind, generous, helpful person.

The personal life of Jean-Baptiste Molière was not very happy. He married at the age of forty, the young wife of Armand Bejart deceived him. His friendship with Jean Racine did not work out either. After the premiere of Racine's play "Alexander the Great" at the Moliere Theater, it was transferred to another troupe for staging. Molière took it as a betrayal

Jean-Baptiste Moliere died in 1673 after the play "Imaginary Sick", in which he played the main role. Despite the fact that he felt bad, the performance did not cancel. Having played the part to the end, he himself could no longer leave the theater and died a few hours later.

In addition to the essay on the life and work of Molière, there are other materials: