55. Dramatic innovation n.V. Gogol in the comedy "The Inspector General".
Answer: Gogol was in love with theater since childhood. He saw his father's comedies. Kapnist lived not far from Gogol. At the Nizhyn Lyceum, Gogol played roles. Gogol himself was a theatrical person. His prose was characterized by theatricality. Gogol organically approached dramaturgy. In 1833, the idea of the comedy “Vladimir of the Third Degree” arose, connected with the madness of an official, creating a space for unusual Gogol heroes. But the idea was followed by “Little Comedies” (by analogy with “Little Tragedies”: “Litigation”, “The Morning of a Man”, “Lackey”. Then, from the idea of a comedy about a game, the play “Players” was born. The fear of marriage gave rise to the comedy “Marriage” Gogol created his own theater. In his articles “Theater Travel” and “St. Petersburg Stage” he created the theory of theater.
Gogol believed that Russian comedy has a rich tradition of high comedy, prepared by Fonvizin and Griboyedov. He considered the clash of characters important. The Gogol Theater is a theater of bright characters. The basis of action is social relations, “the electricity of rank.” He believed that the word organizes comedic action. Gogol's original expression of words is laughter. His laughter cleanses and revives. Drama for him is missionary, creating his own world. Gogol first poses the problem of a special “mirror”. He believed that theater performs an important educational function and compared the theater to a university. Gogol was deeply connected with Aristophanes.
The high purpose of the theater for Gogol was associated with comedy. Gogol considered the theater a democratic institution. The core of Gogol's aesthetics is laughter. Gogol reveals the ambivalence of laughter.
The premiere of The Inspector General in St. Petersburg at the Alexandrinsky Theater took place on April 19, 1836 and became available to the entire public. The emperor himself was present at the premiere. Nicholas I felt the satirical overtones, and the writer’s contemporaries (“Pushkin’s circle”) felt the social significance of comedy. The general public did not take The Inspector General very well. Gogol considered the performance a failure. In “Theatrical Travel” he gives an auto-review of his work and leaves Russia.
The play is named after an off-stage character. He is not mentioned in the list of characters, he appears only at the beginning and at the end. He is not there, but he is dissolved in the space of comedy in the person of the false auditor and the space of the auditor. The auditor is a kind of symbol. This word contains the semantics of vision. The whole intrigue lies in the fact that there is an auditor, but he is not there.
"The Inspector General" is a five-act comedy. Gogol created a truly social comedy. Events are developing in the form of a formidable cleansing. For Gogol, the image of high comedy is important. Five acts include 51 phenomena. Dynamics of action is created. The silent scene is the key to understanding Gogol's catharsis.
Epigraph – folk proverb. The epigraph brings the text to life. In the first edition there was no epigraph in the text. The epigraph focuses on the social meaning of the action. It contains the semantics of a mirror - a stage mirror into which Gogol makes the audience look. Dialogue with the audience is very important. Mirror - a look into your soul.
Gogol has 25 named characters. They form a hierarchy, in the center of which is the mayor. All members of the city government leave him. Khlopov correlates with the image of a donkey, Lyapkin-Tyapkin personifies refereeing. Among the 25 characters, only 5 are women. Male characters have an advantage, so love affairs are not decisive.
Gogol's chronotope - “ prefabricated city the entire national team,” the quintessence of Russian existence. A window to the world opens through the city. Troika is a worldwide image for Gogol, this is the time of Gogol’s life. Gogol calculates time in minutes. Then time freezes, then pulsates, then fades to nothing. Reading Khlestakov’s letter is a stop of time, recorded in a silent scene. Playing with time is fundamental for Gogol, since absurdity knows no time.
In The Inspector General there is a conflict of laughter and fear. Conflict defines mirage intrigue. Gogol's city is a kingdom of the absurd. The “Perepetua effect” is created. The appearance of an imaginary auditor creates an absurd situation. Khlestakov turns into an impostor. The heart of the situation is deception and a general atmosphere of fear. Fear is personified - in the nominations of the characters, the interjection “an” is visible, meaning both “maybe” and “here, take a bite.”
The main engine of intrigue is Khlestakov. In the list of characters, Khlestakov is in the middle. This is an object of influence, an invented character. He's the only one who doesn't think about what he says. He's an actor and doesn't have many lines of his own. He continues the tradition of comedic braggadocio, but for him deception is an art. A whole image of “Khlestakovism” is created: hypocrisy and lies, absurdity. Khlestakov improvises on ready-made plots. The whole action is based on bribes. Petitioners turn into extortionists. The bribe-taker is formed from an impostor. He also benefits from intimate situations. And Gogol makes this scene incredibly comical. The situation is given a cosmic overtones. The situation is humanized. Tears imperceptibly invade an absurd situation. Gogol sees human souls in heroes. In the farewell scene, the music of a voice appears in which pain sounds.
The figure of Khlestakov largely determines the original synthesis of high comedy and absurd comedy. He is a capacitor of mirage intrigue. Sinyavsky defined “The Inspector General” as two turns of a key, one of which is a mirage, and the other is human existence. “The Inspector General” is a celebration of theatricality, but behind the theatricality sounds the living voice of a man crushed by existence.
Fifth act in to the greatest extent synthesizes the absurdity of existence. Khlestakov’s truth shocked everyone, it resurrects the heroes. The reading of the letter ends with a silent scene, a kind of sixth act. Gogol attached symbolic meaning to this scene. The silent scene refers to “Boris Godunov”, but this is a judgment of the soul. A symbolic resurrection and insight occurs. The mayor and 12 acting figures - parodia sacra, a reduction in the biblical image of Christ and the 12 apostles. Laughter revives people's souls.
N.V. Gogol is one of the key figures in literary process first half of the 19th century V. The second half of the century is often called the “century of prose.” It was Gogol and Pushkin who became the “father” of Russian realistic prose. Gogol is a unique author's individuality. His works have always made a special impression on readers. An important role in his work is played by dramatic works.
Gogol's predecessors in Russian drama can be called Fonvizin and Griboedov. Griboedov acted as an innovator, moving away in his work from the basic principles of comedy (he pushed aside the love affair by introducing a plot developing in conjunction with it social conflict; filled the comedy negative characters and portrayed only one positive face, etc.).
Gogol's innovation lies in the choice of conflict, which is the basis of the work. Looking back at the works of his predecessors, Gogol comes to the conclusion that the love affair has already exhausted itself. Seeing that she was becoming the basis dramatic conflict too often, Gogol decides to choose a different path. He finds a new plot, more relevant for modern times: the plot of the auditor. The figure of the auditor has always been scary for city officials who live in constant fear of an audit. And it is precisely “the fear of expectation, the very horror, the thunderstorm of the law moving in the distance” (Gogol), which takes hold of officials, and forms the dramatic situation in The Government Inspector.
Gogol resorts to the technique of compositional inversion: the plot appears before the exposition. The action in the comedy begins instantly, with the very first phrase of the mayor: “I invited you, gentlemen, in order to tell you the most unpleasant news. An auditor is coming to us.” The plot includes almost all the characters, which corresponds to Gogol’s theoretical idea of the composition of a social comedy: “The comedy should knit itself, with its entire mass into one large, common knot. The plot should embrace the entire face, and not one or two.”
The exposition turns out to be the dialogues of officials in the first act, revealing the real state of affairs in the city and showing the internal contradiction in the minds of officials between their dishonest activities and a completely clear conscience. Believing that every person has “minor sins,” they classify their activities in this category. Gogol shows the peculiar psychology of city officials: the whole world is divided into two parts for them - the one surrounding them real life, based on the unwritten laws of bribery and lies. and a life unknown to them according to written laws, which require them to care not about their own benefit, but about the public good. The horror of the visiting auditor is due to the uncertainty of the situation: to which world does the visiting auditor belong? But the fear of officials is combined with hope, based on previous experience and a high opinion of themselves (“I deceived swindlers on swindlers... I deceived three governors!”).
All actions of the play are based on the behavior of the characters in the emergency situation of the arrival of the auditor, corresponding to the character of each of them. City officials represent a kind of holistic system in the comedy, but at the same time the characters are sharply individualized. They are unique in their individual characteristics, which makes it interesting to receive their “alternate” report on the state of affairs in the entrusted institution, “alternate” presentation to Khlestakov, “alternate” reading of the ill-fated letter. In constructing a system of characters, Gogol resorts to another innovative technique: he refuses to portray a positive hero. If in Griboyedov’s comedy Chatsky was such a hero-ideologist, a partial hero-reasoner, then Khlestakov cannot be called a positive hero, he is an “icicle, a rag” with poverty of thinking and narrow interests. Thus, comedy has absolutely no tall hero. The author called laughter a positive hero.
The unusual construction of the character system increases the breadth of generality of what is depicted. Gogol, generalizing as much as possible. strives to show the typicality of the described city and the officials living in it, the “speaking” surnames (private bailiff Ukhovertov, policeman Derzhimorda, judge Lyapkin-Tyapkin) serve not so much to characterize individuals, carriers of vices, but rather to typify the image of society as a whole. All city officials are characterized by illogical thinking. It, coupled with fear, leads them to self-deception. They mistake the “helicopter” for an auditor, and the emergence of the so-called “mirage” intrigue, which turns out to be nothing, is based on this fact. At the first meeting of the mayor with Khlestakov, fear of the auditor makes him not believe his eyes (“But what a nondescript, short one, it seems that he would crush him with a fingernail”), not believe his ears: Khlestakov speaks the honest truth - the mayor admires his “cunning” ( “Oh, a thin thing! It lies, lies and never stops.” The main goal of the mayor is to force the auditor to spill the beans, and Khlestakov, a minor official who fears that he will be sent to prison for non-payment, suddenly, before the eyes of the audience, turns into important person: “I confess, I would not demand anything more, as soon as you show me devotion and respect, respect and devotion.” Khlestakov seems to accept the terms of the game proposed by the mayor.
The image of Khlestakov is the discovery of Gogol. This is a rogue, but a rogue according to the situation. He did not want to deceive anyone, and only fear and the illogical thinking of officials turned him into an auditor. Khlestakov is simple-minded. And that is precisely why he appears in the eyes of the mayor as a real auditor, because he speaks from the heart, sincerely, and the mayor looks for tricks in his words. Innocence allows Khlestakov not to deceive anyone, but only to play the roles that officials impose on him. Khlestakov fully justifies the description given to him by Gogol: “He speaks and acts without any consideration.” However, the mirage dissipates and two imaginary endings follow (Khlestakov’s departure and the reading of the letter). Khlestakov’s departure does not arouse suspicion among anyone, since he, who has proven himself to be a decent person, will definitely return if he promised. But the reading of Khlestakov’s letter that followed his departure puts everything in its place and brings the officials down to earth. It is noteworthy that when reading the letter, everything described in it with negative side officials think only about the insult inflicted on them by Khlestakov. They do not understand that the danger that awaits them ahead and is already approaching them is much worse than “becoming a laughing stock.”
Following the reading of the letter, the true denouement occurs: the “silent scene” that followed the news of the arrival of a real auditor in the city. "Silent scene" is a flexible way of expressing the author's idea. Gogol's comedy is addressed not to a narrow circle of select, enlightened readers, but to the entire mass of the reading public. This led to Gogol’s rejection of the “fourth wall” principle. The line between actors comedy and the audience in the hall are erased within a few minutes, during which the “petrified group” stands motionless on the stage. There is a feeling of unity between the characters and the audience. Heroes frozen in a moment of great crisis. overshadowed by the idea of inevitable retribution. Instilling in the reader the idea of this supreme court was Gogol's main task, which he expressed in a “silent scene.”
The only "honest and noble face in comedy there is laughter" (Gogol). But laughter in comedy is not directed at a specific person, an official, or at a specific county town, but on the vice itself. Gogol shows how terrible the fate of a person struck by him is. The play combines comedy and drama, which lies in the discrepancy between a person’s initially high purpose and its unrealization. exhaustion in pursuit of life's mirages. The final monologue of the mayor and the scene of Khlestakov's matchmaking are full of drama, but the culmination of the tragic, when the comic completely fades into the background, is the final “silent scene”.
Gogol's comedy, in many ways developed the traditions of Griboedov’s social comedy, continues the search for new expressive and visual arts. Gogol's bold experiments led to the creation of a unique work that embodied many innovative features.
Essay on the topic “Innovation of Gogol the playwright”,
N.V. Gogol is one of the key figures in the literary process of the first half of the 19th century. The second half of the century is often called the “century of prose.” It was Gogol and Pushkin who became the “father” of Russian realistic prose. Gogol is a unique author's individuality. His works have always made a special impression on readers. Dramatic works play an important role in his work. Gogol's predecessors in Russian drama can be called Fonvizin and Griboedov. Griboyedov acted as an innovator, moving away in his work from the basic principles of comedy construction (he pushed aside the love affair, introducing a social conflict developing in conjunction with it; he filled the comedy with negative characters and portrayed only one positive person, etc.).
Gogol went even further in his work. Developing Griboyedov's tendencies, he creates a comedy that is completely new in its principles of construction and subjects of exposure. This comedy was "The Inspector General".
Gogol's innovation lies in the choice of conflict, which is the basis of the work. Looking back at the works of his predecessors, Gogol comes to the conclusion that the love affair has already exhausted itself. Seeing that it became the basis of dramatic conflict too often, Gogol decides to choose a different path. He finds a new plot, more relevant for modern times: the plot of the auditor. The figure of the auditor has always been scary for city officials who live in constant fear of an audit. And it is precisely “the fear of expectation, the very horror, the thunderstorm of the law moving in the distance” (Gogol), which takes hold of officials, and forms the dramatic situation in The Government Inspector.
Gogol resorts to the technique of compositional inversion: the plot appears before the exposition. The action in the comedy begins instantly, with the very first phrase of the mayor: “I invited you, gentlemen, in order to tell you the most unpleasant news. An auditor is coming to us.” The plot includes almost all the characters, which corresponds to Gogol’s theoretical idea of the composition of a social comedy: “The comedy should knit itself, with its entire mass into one large, common knot. The plot should embrace the entire face, and not one or two.”
The exposition turns out to be the dialogues of officials in the first act, revealing the real state of affairs in the city and showing the internal contradiction in the minds of officials between their dishonest activities and a completely clear conscience. Believing that every person has “minor sins,” they classify their activities in this category. Gogol shows the peculiar psychology of city officials: the whole world is divided into two parts for them - the real life surrounding them, based on the unwritten laws of bribery and lies. and a life unknown to them according to written laws, which require them to care not about their own benefit, but about the public good. The horror of the visiting auditor is due to the uncertainty of the situation: to which world does the visiting auditor belong? But the fear of officials is combined with hope, based on previous experience and a high opinion of themselves (“I deceived swindlers on swindlers... I deceived three governors!”).
All actions of the play are based on the behavior of the characters in the emergency situation of the arrival of the auditor, corresponding to the character of each of them. City officials represent a kind of holistic system in the comedy, but at the same time the characters are sharply individualized. They are unique in their individual characteristics, which makes it interesting to receive their “alternate” report on the state of affairs in the entrusted institution, “alternate” presentation to Khlestakov, “alternate” reading of the ill-fated letter. In constructing a system of characters, Gogol resorts to another innovative technique: he refuses to portray a positive hero. If in Griboyedov’s comedy Chatsky was such a hero-ideologist, a partial hero-reasoner, then Khlestakov cannot be called a positive hero, he is an “icicle, a rag” with poverty of thinking and narrow interests. Thus, the comedy appears absolutely without a high hero. The author called laughter a positive hero.
The unusual construction of the character system increases the breadth of generality of what is depicted. Gogol, generalizing as much as possible. strives to show the typicality of the described city and the officials living in it, the “speaking” surnames (private bailiff Ukhovertov, policeman Derzhimorda, judge Lyapkin-Tyapkin) serve not so much to characterize individuals, carriers of vices, but rather to typify the image of society as a whole. All city officials are characterized by illogical thinking. It, coupled with fear, leads them to self-deception. They mistake the “helicopter” for an auditor, and the emergence of the so-called “mirage” intrigue, which turns out to be nothing, is based on this fact. At the first meeting of the mayor with Khlestakov, fear of the auditor makes him not believe his eyes (“But what a nondescript, short one, it seems that he would crush him with a fingernail”), not believe his ears: Khlestakov speaks the honest truth - the mayor admires his “cunning” ( “Oh, a thin thing! It lies, lies and never stops.” The main goal of the mayor is to force the auditor to spill the beans, and Khlestakov, a minor official who fears that he will be sent to prison for non-payment, suddenly, before the eyes of the audience, turns into an important person: “I confess, I would not demand anything more as soon as you show me loyalty and respect, respect and loyalty." Khlestakov seems to accept the terms of the game proposed by the mayor.
The image of Khlestakov is the discovery of Gogol. This is a rogue, but a rogue according to the situation. He did not want to deceive anyone, and only fear and the illogical thinking of officials turned him into an auditor. Khlestakov is simple-minded. And that is precisely why he appears in the eyes of the mayor as a real auditor, because he speaks from the heart, sincerely, and the mayor looks for tricks in his words. Innocence allows Khlestakov not to deceive anyone, but only to play the roles that officials impose on him. Khlestakov fully justifies the description given to him by Gogol: “He speaks and acts without any consideration.” However, the mirage dissipates and two imaginary endings follow (Khlestakov’s departure and the reading of the letter). Khlestakov’s departure does not arouse suspicion among anyone, since he, who has proven himself to be a decent person, will definitely return if he promised. But the reading of Khlestakov’s letter that followed his departure puts everything in its place and brings the officials down to earth. It is noteworthy that when reading the letter, all the officials described in it from a negative side think only about the insult inflicted on them by Khlestakov. They do not understand that the danger that awaits them ahead and is already approaching them is much worse than “becoming a laughing stock.”
Following the reading of the letter, the true denouement occurs: the “silent scene” that followed the news of the arrival of a real auditor in the city. "Silent scene" is a flexible way of expressing the author's idea. Gogol's comedy is addressed not to a narrow circle of select, enlightened readers, but to the entire mass of the reading public. This led to Gogol’s rejection of the “fourth wall” principle. The line between the characters in the comedy and the audience in the hall is blurred for several minutes, during which the “petrified group” stands motionless on the stage. There is a feeling of unity between the characters and the audience. Heroes frozen in a moment of great crisis. overshadowed by the idea of inevitable retribution. Instilling in the reader the idea of this supreme court was Gogol's main task, which he expressed in a “silent scene.”
The only “honest and noble face in comedy is laughter” (Gogol). But laughter in comedy is directed not at a specific person, an official, or at a specific county town, but at the vice itself. Gogol shows how terrible the fate of a person struck by him is. The play combines comedy and drama, which lies in the discrepancy between a person’s initially high purpose and its unrealization. exhaustion in pursuit of life's mirages. The final monologue of the mayor and the scene of Khlestakov's matchmaking are full of drama, but the culmination of the tragic, when the comic completely fades into the background, is the final “silent scene”.
Gogol's comedy, in many ways, developed the traditions of Griboedov's social comedy, and continues to search for new expressive and visual means. Gogol's bold experiments led to the creation of a unique work that embodied many innovative features.
The plot of “The Inspector General” is based on a fairly common motif in literature of mistaking a small official for important person. However, the plot is not the main thing.
Gogol's innovation lies in the fact that he introduced into his comedy whole line elements that make it high social comedy, which focus the viewer’s attention on the fact that the situations and absurdities shown in the comedy are not accidental, they are a natural phenomenon of modern life.
Khlestakov is by no means a conscious rogue who planned to deceive the provincial “donkeys”; he did not intend to declare himself an impostor, but turned out to be one by accident. Moreover, all his further lies and boasting about his life in St. Petersburg are also due to circumstances: officials persistently encourage him to tell utter lies, waiting for him to add something extraordinary about himself. And Khlestakov lies impromptu.
Khlestakov is by no means distinguished by cunning and intelligence. He, according to author's description, “somewhat stupid and, as they say, without a king in his head.” This is especially important to understand ideological meaning comedies. If Khlestakov were an intelligent, cunning person, then one could easily assume that, due to character traits and dishonest motives, he decided to take advantage of the opportunity for personal gain, and therefore the very similar fact would seem exceptional, atypical and would lose its incriminating power.
“The typical confusion of social reality itself,” writes V. Gippius, “would be replaced by its artificial confusion as a result of individual evil will.” In his “Notice” for actors, Gogol emphasized that “the power of general fear” creates a “significant person” out of such a nonentity as Khlestakov.
In the depiction of character images and in the construction of the plot, Gogol avoided generally accepted templates - exceptional events, crimes, etc.
P.A. Vyazemsky noted that the comedy “is not based on any disgusting and criminal action”; there is no “oppression of innocence in favor of strong vice, no selling of justice.”
There is not a single positive hero in The Inspector General, although, as Vyazemsky correctly noted, Gogol does not have “vile heroes.” Gogol doesn't make his own negative heroes exceptional villains. And their very vices are perceived as a natural phenomenon of a generally vicious social system. “Sins” that everyone has
officials depicted in comedy are by no means connected with the individual psychological qualities of their characters. “You don’t like to miss what’s floating in your hands,” says the mayor. The following episodes involving bribes are very typical in this regard.
Khlestakov becomes a bribe-taker, like an auditor, due to a combination of circumstances, while his bribes are not at all connected with any oppression; at first they even take on an innocent form - “the favor is reciprocal,” politely offered by the mayor (Act 11).
Then Khlestakov entered into the role, and the “reciprocal favor” turns into blatant extortion (Act IV). At the same time, the latter does not offend “suffering persons”, because it is thought of as “in the order of things.” If Gogol had featured positive heroes in a comedy, contrasted with bribe-takers and swindlers, exposing them, the comedy would have lost its deep generalizing social meaning, and its accusatory pathos would have turned into a moral and edifying maxim, boiling down to the fact that it is wrong to take bribes and oppress people etc.
Gogol managed to avoid this by abandoning the positive type, which further enhanced the sharpness of his satire, focusing the viewer’s attention on “everything bad in Russia.” Gogol himself later explained that the only positive hero of his comedy is “laughter, merciless and evil, it carries out judgment on the characters.”
The close-knit camp of officials is contrasted with “citizenship,” which is introduced only occasionally in the comedy. Gogol undoubtedly has sympathy for these defenseless people suffering from tyranny. We know about them as the passive object of arbitrariness and extortion of the Skvoznikov-Dmukhanovskys, Lyapkins-Tyapkins, Derzhimords and other representatives of state power.
This is a non-commissioned officer's widow, flogged by order of the mayor without any reason, for the order is such that Derzhimorda “puts up lanterns for everyone - the right and the wrong”; this is a locksmith whose husband the mayor “made into a soldier” only because he did not receive a bribe from him; these are, finally, all those who came to Khlestakov to ask for protection from the arbitrariness of the mayor and officials, whose voice is heard behind the stage and “hands stick out of the window, with requests,” and also in the future appear in the doorway after some figure “in a frieze overcoat, with an unshaven beard, a swollen lip and a bandaged cheek,” the petitioners themselves.
The merchants depicted in the comedy, despite the fact that they also suffer from the mayor’s extortions, are not among those with whom the writer sympathizes. They are presented in a clearly ironic manner. Gogol understood perfectly well that in their hands there was money that was capable of taming any rage of the “derzhimorords”, that the merchants themselves were making money at the expense of ordinary people.
The heroes of Gogol's comedy are complete characters, living people, not masks. Moreover, they are shown in aspect popular perception their actions and deeds. Therefore, there was no need for the writer to read lectures about the dangers of bribes or about the impermissibility of assault practiced by the Derzhimords, this is clear and without moralizing maxims. The writer, with the entire content of the comedy, expresses his indignation towards all forms of despotism, bureaucracy, bribery, embezzlement, etc.
Gogol's goal was to “cut off evil at the root, not at the branches.” Therefore, comedy is perceived not as a criticism of official abuses or the vices of individual people, but as a satirical denunciation of the entire social system, its “disease” as a whole.
Gogol's innovation as a playwrightIn response to Aksakov's remark that modern Russian life does not provide material for comedy, Gogol said that this is not true, that comedy is hidden everywhere, that, living in the midst of it, we do not see it; but that “if the artist transfers it into art, onto the stage, then we will laugh at ourselves.” It seems that this phrase is general meaning Gogol's innovations in dramaturgy: the main task is the transfer of comedy Everyday life to the stage. As Grigoriev said in one of his articles, “it is obvious that a new ore was discovered by the great poet, the ore of analysis of everyday ordinary reality *. This choice of subject matter dictated artistic media. Gogol's plays are comedies, but comedies opposed to classical works this genre, firstly, in terms of plot (in comparison with high comedy), and secondly, the types derived in Gogol’s comedies are contrasted with the types of plays of that time. Instead of cunning lovers and intractable parents, living, everyday national characters. Gogol banishes murder and poison: in his plays, madness and death become the result of gossip, intrigue, and eavesdropping. Gogol rethinks the principle of “unity of action” as the unity of the plan and its execution by the main character. In Gogol's plays, it is not the hero who controls the plot, but the plot, which develops logically gambling, carries the hero. The hero’s goal is opposed by the end result; approaching the goal turns out to be moving away from it “at a huge distance” (“Vladimir of the third degree”).
Gogol creates a situation unusual for the play: instead of one personal or domestic intrigue, the life of an entire city is depicted, which significantly expands the social scale of the play and makes it possible to realize the goal of writing the play: “to collect everything bad in Russia into one pile.” The city is extremely hierarchical; the development of all comedy is concentrated within it. Gogol creates an innovative situation when a city torn apart by internal contradictions becomes capable of integral life, thanks to a general crisis, a general feeling of fear of higher powers. Gogol covers all sides public life management, but without “administrative details”, in a “universal human form”. In “Theatrical Travel” it is said: “humanity is found everywhere.” In his comedy, with a wide system of officials, a wide range of spiritual properties is displayed: from the good-natured naivety of the postmaster to the trickery of Strawberry. Each character becomes a symbol of sorts. But a certain psychological property correlates with the character not as his main feature, but rather as a range of certain mental movements (the postmaster, as Gogol himself says, “is only a simple-minded person to the point of naivety,” but with no less simple-minded malice, when reading Khlestakov’s letter, he repeats three times: “The mayor is stupid, like a gray gelding”). All the characters’ feelings are transferred from artificial to the sphere of their real manifestation, but at the same time human life is taken by the writer in all its depth. And when Bobchinsky says to Khlestakov: “I humbly ask you, when you go to St. Petersburg, tell all the different nobles there: senators and admirals, that your Excellency, or Excellency, lives in such and such a city, Pyotr Ivanovich Bobchinsky. Just say so: Pyotr Ivanovich Bobchinsky lives.” Gogol shows in this request the desire to “mean his existence in the world,” the highest moment of his life.
In his play, Gogol tries to limit comic effects. “The Inspector General” is a comedy of characters. We laugh, according to Gogol, not at the “crooked nose” of the characters, but “at the crooked soul.” The comic in the play is subordinated to the depiction of types and arises from the manifestation of their psychological and social properties.
In “Theatrical Travel” Gogol writes: “Yes, if we take the plot in the sense in which it is usually taken, then it definitely does not exist. But it seems it’s time to stop relying on this eternal tie. Now the drama is more strongly tied to the desire to get an advantageous place, to “shine and outshine, at all costs, the other, to mark for neglect, for ridicule. Isn’t it now more important to have electricity, money capital, and a profitable marriage than love? “So, Gogol abandons the traditional structure of the play. Nemirovich-Danchenko quite clearly expressed the new principles of constructing the play: “The most remarkable theater masters could not begin the play except in the first few scenes. In “The Inspector General” there is one phrase: “I invited you, gentlemen, in order to convey the most unpleasant news: the inspector is coming to us,” and the play has already begun. The denouement is similar. Gogol finds stage movement in surprises, which manifest themselves in the characters themselves, in the versatility human soul, no matter how primitive it may be. External Events the play is not moving. A general thought, an idea is immediately set: fear, which is the basis of action. This allows Gogol to dramatically change the genre at the end of the play: with the revelation of Khlestakov’s deception, the comedy turns into tragedy.”
If in 1832 Gogol wrote to Pogodin: “Drama lives only on the stage. Without it, she is like a soul without a body,” then in 1842 Gogol prefaced his play with the epigraph “There is no point in blaming the mirror if your face is crooked,” clearly intended for the reader, which gave critics a reason to talk about the general lack of stage presence of the comedy. And, although comedy is indeed very difficult for stage embodiment, and Gogol himself wrote about dissatisfaction with its productions, the comedy was still intended specifically for the viewer. The principle of the “fourth wall” is observed, except for: “Why are you laughing? You’re laughing at yourself!” there are no replicas to the hall. But Gogol, for the first time in Russian comedy, paints not a separate island of vice into which virtue can rush in, but a part of a single whole. In fact, he does not have a denunciation, as in the comedy of classicism; the critical beginning of the play is that his model of the city can be expanded to an all-Russian scale. The broad vital significance of the “Inspector General” situation is that it could arise almost anywhere. This is the vitality of the play.