Dramaturgy by N. Gogol and Russian theater in the first half of the 19th century

In response to Aksakov's remark that modern Russian life does not provide material for comedy, Gogol said that this is not true, that the comic is hidden everywhere, that, living in the midst of it, we do not see it, but that "if the artist transfers it into art, on scene, then we ourselves will wallow with laughter. It seems that this phrase is the general meaning of Gogol's innovation in drama: the main task is to transfer the comic of everyday life to the stage. Such a choice of the subject of creativity dictated artistic means. Gogol's plays are comedies, but comedies opposed to the classical works of this genre, firstly, in terms of plot (in comparison with high comedy), and secondly, the types derived in Gogol's works are opposed to the types of plays of that time. Instead of cunning lovers, intractable parents, living faces, typical national characters, appeared on the stage. Murders, poison Gogol excludes from his plays. He rethinks the principle of "unity of action", interpreting it as the unity of intent and execution. In Gogol's plays, it is not the hero who controls the plot, but the plot, which develops according to the logic of gambling, leads the hero.
Gogol creates an unusual situation for the play: instead of one personal or domestic intrigue, the life of the whole city is depicted, which significantly expands the social scale of the play and makes it possible to achieve the goal: “To gather everything bad in Russia into one heap”. The city is extremely hierarchical, the development of the whole comedy is concentrated inside it. Gogol creates an innovative situation, when a city torn apart by internal contradictions becomes capable of a whole life thanks to a general crisis, a general sense of fear of the lower before the higher. Gogol covers all aspects of social life, but without "administrative details", in a "common human form". In his comedy, a wide range of spiritual properties is characteristic of a wide system of officials: from the good-natured naivety of the postmaster to the trickiness of Strawberry. Each character becomes a kind of symbol. But a certain psychological property correlates with the character not as his main feature, but rather as a range of certain mental movements inherent in him (the postmaster, as Gogol himself says, “is just a simple-hearted person to the point of naivety,” but nevertheless, with ingenuous malice when reading Khlestakov’s letter repeats three times: “The mayor is stupid, like a gray gelding”). All the feelings of the characters are transferred from the artificial sphere to the sphere of their real manifestation, but at the same time, the writer takes human life in all its depth. And when Bobchinsky says to Khlestakov: “I humbly ask you, when you go to Petersburg, tell all the different nobles there: senators and admirals, that here, Your Excellency, or Excellency, Peter Ivanovich Bobchinsky lives in such and such a city. So say: Pyotr Ivanovich Bobchinsky lives, ”Gogol shows in this request the desire to“ signify his existence in the world ”, the highest moment in the life of the character.
In his play, Gogol tries to functionally 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 description of types, arises from the manifestation of their psychological and social properties.
Gogol wrote: “Yes, if you take the plot in the sense that it is usually accepted ... then it definitely does not exist. But it seems that it is time to stop relying on this eternal plot. Now the drama is more strongly tied up by the desire to get a favorable place, to shine and outshine the other at all costs, to avenge neglect, for ridicule. Don't rank, money capital, advantageous marriage now have more than love? So, Gogol abandons the traditional structure of the play. Nemirovich-Danchenko quite clearly expressed Gogol's new principles for constructing a play: “The most remarkable masters of the theater could not start a play otherwise than in the first few scenes. In The Inspector General, there is one phrase: "I invited you, gentlemen, in order to inform you of the unpleasant news: the auditor is coming to us," and the play has already begun. The connection is similar. Gogol finds stage movement in the surprises that manifest themselves in the characters themselves, in the versatility of the human soul, no matter how primitive it may be. External events do not move the play. A general thought, an idea is immediately set: fear, which is the basis of action. This allows Gogol to drastically change the genre at the end of the play: with the revelation of Khlestakov's deceit, 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 he prefaces his play with an epigraph:“ There is nothing to blame on the mirror if the face is crooked, ”clearly designed for the reader, which gave critics a reason to talk about the general lack of stage comedy. And although comedy is indeed very difficult to stage, and Gogol himself wrote about dissatisfaction with its productions, the comedy was nevertheless designed specifically for the viewer. Gogol, for the first time in the history of Russian comedy, draws not a separate island of vice, which is about to flood "virtue", but vice as part of a single whole. He actually has no denunciations, as in the comedy of classicism; the play's critical opening is that its model of the city can be expanded to a nationwide scale. The wide vital significance of the “Inspector General” situation is that it could arise almost anywhere. This is the relevance of the play.

Petersburg stories.

The stay in St. Petersburg widened the horizons of Gogol's experience, expanded his knowledge of the "mean modernity", the "mindless class" that rules the homeland. The deeply negative impressions and sorrowful reflections caused by Gogol's life on the banks of the Neva were largely reflected in the so-called "Petersburg Tales", created in 1831-1841 (they began to appear in print from 1835).

All "Petersburg Tales" are connected by a common theme (the power of ranks and money), the unity of the main character (a raznochinets, a "little" person), the integrity of the leading ideological pathos (the corrupting power of money, exposing the flagrant injustice of the social system). They truthfully recreate a generalized picture of St. Petersburg in the 1930s, reflecting the concentrated social contradictions characteristic of our entire country at that time.

With the supremacy of the satirical principle of representation, Gogol especially often turns in these stories to fantasy and his favorite method of extreme contrast. He was convinced that "the true effect lies in the sharp contrast." But fantasy is more or less subordinated to realism here.

In "Nevsky Prospekt", published in the second part of the collection "Arabesques" (1835), Gogol reflected a noisy, fussy crowd of people of various classes, the discord between the lofty dream (Piskarev) and the vulgar reality, the contradictions between the insane luxury of the minority and the terrifying poverty of the vast majority , the triumph of selfishness, venality, "boiling commercialism" (Pirogov) of the capital city. In the story The Nose, first published in Sovremennik (1836, vol. 3), the monstrous power of chinomania and servility is depicted. Deepening the display of the absurdity of human relationships in the conditions of despotic-bureaucratic subordination, when the individual, as such, loses all significance, Gogol skillfully uses fantasy. The absurdity of reality also determines the absurdity of the form of its artistic embodiment.

In the story "Portrait", Gogol, responding to a wide range of problems related to art, more deeply set out his judgments about its essence and purpose. The initial edition of this program work was included in the first part of "Arabesques" (1835). Condemning naturalism and false idealization, the writer considered only the beautiful as the subject of art, the highest expression of which is the divine, the Christian. In this limitation of the subject of art, the influence of reactionary-romantic theories affected the writer. Critical literature pointed to the echoes of this work with stories about artists not only by Hoffmann, but also by Balzac (“Unknown Masterpiece”), Wackenroder and Tieck (“On Art and Artists. Reflections of a Hermit, Lover of the Fine”).

In the second edition of The Portrait, published in Sovremennik (1842), which is an apology for realism, the whole of reality, its beautiful and ugly, high and low, is already proclaimed as an object of art. Rightly asserting the high ideal of art, Gogol at the same time tries to bring it closer to religion. Succumbing to the influence of reactionary-idealistic aesthetics, falling into error, the writer sets before art the task of calming and reconciling. Thus, in the contradictory worldview of the author of the Portrait, the beginnings of religious and mystical judgments broke through. But in both editions of the Portrait, the pernicious, corrupting power of money is revealed.

In the story “Notes of a Madman”, which was included in the second part of “Arabesques” (1835), the writer displayed the vulgarity of the aspirations of the bureaucratic class, limited by ranks, orders, career, and the tragic fate of a “little” person who feels the obvious injustice of the circumstances surrounding him, suffering from social disadvantage and inferiority.

"Petersburg Tales" reveal a clear evolution from social satire ("Nevsky Prospekt") to grotesque socio-political pamphlet ("Notes of a Madman", "The Nose"), from the organic interaction of romanticism and realism with the predominant role of the latter ("Nevsky Prospekt" ) to more and more consistent realism ("The Overcoat"). Here fantasy is skillfully subordinated to the depiction of the truth of life. The story "The Overcoat", begun in 1839 and completed in the spring of 1841, first appeared in 1842 in the 3rd volume of the writer's works. Its theme is the position of a "little" person, and the idea is spiritual suppression, grinding, depersonalization, robbery of the human person in an antagonistic society. The story "The Overcoat" continues the theme of the "little" man outlined in "The Bronze Horseman" and "The Stationmaster" by Pushkin. But in comparison with Pushkin, Gogol strengthens and expands the social sounding of this theme. Bashmachkin, the hero of the story, a copyist, a zealous worker who knew how to be satisfied with his miserable lot, suffers insults and humiliations from coldly despotic "significant persons" personifying bureaucratic statehood, from young officials mocking him, from street robbers who took off his new overcoat . And Gogol boldly rushed in defense of his trampled rights, offended human dignity. Recreating the tragedy of the "little" man, the writer arouses feelings of pity and compassion for him, calls for social humanism, for humanity, reminds Bashmachkin's colleagues that he is their brother. But the ideological meaning of the story is not limited to what has been said. In it, the author convinces that the wild injustice that reigns in life is capable of causing discontent, a protest even of the quietest, most humble unfortunate.

Intimidated, downtrodden, Bashmachkin could only show his dissatisfaction with significant persons who roughly belittled and insulted him, only in a state of unconsciousness, in delirium. But Gogol, being on the side of Bashmachkin, defending him, carries out this protest in a fantastic continuation of the story. Justice, trampled in reality, triumphs in the writer's dreams.

Gogol outlined the real motivation in the fantastic conclusion of the chapter. A significant person who mortally frightened Akaky Akakievich was driving down an unlit street after drinking champagne at a friend's party, and to him, in fear, the thief could seem to be anyone, even a dead man.

In the story "The Overcoat", Gogol with truly artistic art recreates the contrast between the inhuman environment, which causes indignation, and its victim, which arouses compassion. To depict the environment, especially its more or less important persons, personifying the soullessness of the government mechanism, satire is used: in the form of a devastating pun, a caustic joke, etc.

In the critical literature, it was rightly pointed out that the elements of Bashmachkin's comic depiction should not be directly addressed to Gogol, they are associated with the image of the narrator, who is not identical to the author. When portraying Akaky Akakievich, Gogol, along with sympathetic and good-natured humor, also used dramatic, and sometimes even tragic colors. Let us recall the hero’s appeal to young officials not to laugh at him (“and in these penetrating words other words rang: “I am your brother”), his experiences after Petrovich’s refusal to repair his overcoat (“Going out into the street, Akaki Akakievich was like in a dream”) and after the theft of a fur coat (“Desperate, not tired of screaming, he started running across the square straight to the booth”), after a shout from a significant person (“Akaky Akakievich froze, staggered”).

Emphasizing the social typicality of Bashmachkin, the writer gives him the properties of universality: "So, one official served in one department."

Herzen recalls in “The Past and Thoughts” how Count S. G. Stroganov, the trustee of the Moscow educational district, addressing the journalist E. F. Korsh, said: each of us has an overcoat from the shoulders.

The theme of the “small”, disenfranchised person, the ideas of social humanism and protest, which sounded so loudly in the story “The Overcoat”, made it a landmark work of Russian literature. It became the banner, the program, the manifesto of the natural school, opened a string of works about the humiliated and insulted, unfortunate victims of the autocratic-bureaucratic regime, crying out for help, and paved the way for consistently democratic literature. This great merit of Gogol was noted by both Belinsky and Chernyshevsky.

Paphos of "chosen places"

In Gogol's letters of the early 1940s, one can come across hints of an event that, as he would later say, "produced a significant revolution in the matter of creativity" of him. In the summer of 1840, he experienced an illness, but rather not of the body, but of the soul. Experiencing severe bouts of "nervous breakdown" and "painful melancholy" and not hoping for recovery, he even wrote a spiritual testament. According to S. T. Aksakov, Gogol had “visions” about which he told N. P. Botkin, who was courting him at that time (brother of the critic V. P. Botkin). Then followed the "resurrection", "miraculous healing", and Gogol believed that his life "is necessary and will not be useless." A new path opened up for him. “From here,” writes Aksakov, “Gogol’s constant striving to improve himself as a spiritual person and the predominance of the religious trend, which subsequently, in my opinion, reached such a high mood, which is no longer compatible with the bodily shell of a person, begins.”

Pavel Annenkov also testifies to the turning point in Gogol’s views, who states in his memoirs: “The one who confuses Gogol of the last period with the one who then began life in St. already when an important upheaval had taken place in his existence. Annenkov dates the beginning of Gogol's "last period" to the time when they lived together in Rome: "In the summer of 1841, when I met Gogol, he stood at the turn of a new direction, belonging to two different worlds" knows the business and human qualities of his peasants.
The ultimate degree of human decline is captured by Gogol in the image of the richest landowner of the province (more than a thousand serfs) Plyushkin. The biography of the character allows you to trace the path from the "thrifty" owner to the half-crazy miser. “But there was a time when he ... was married and a family man, and a neighbor stopped by to dine with him ... two pretty daughters came out to meet him ... a son ran out ... The owner himself appeared at the table in a frock coat ... But kind the hostess died, some of the keys, and with them minor worries passed to him. Plyushkin became more restless and, like all widowers, more suspicious and stingy. Soon the family completely breaks up, and unprecedented pettiness and suspicion develop in Plyushkin. “... He himself finally turned into some kind of hole in humanity.” So, it was by no means social conditions that led the landowner to the last frontier of moral decline. Before us is a tragedy (precisely a tragedy!) of loneliness, growing into a nightmarish picture of lonely old age.

34 N. V. Gogol's poem "Dead Souls"- the greatest work of world literature. In the necrosis of the souls of the characters - landowners, officials, Chichikov - the writer sees the tragic mortification of humanity, the dull movement of history in a vicious circle.
The plot of "Dead Souls" (the sequence of Chichikov's meetings with the landowners) reflects Gogol's ideas about the possible degrees of human degradation. In fact, if Manilov still retains some attractiveness in himself, then Plyushkin, who closes the gallery of feudal landowners, has already been openly called "a hole in humanity."
Creating images of Manilov, Korobochka, Nozdrev, Sobakevich, Plyushkin, the writer resorts to general methods of realistic typification (image of a village, a manor house, a portrait of the owner, an office, talking about city officials and dead souls). If necessary, a biography of the character is also given.
The image of Manilov depicts the type of an idle, dreamer, “romantic” loafer. The landowner's economy is in complete decline. “The manor’s house stood on a jura, that is, on a hill, open to all the winds, whatever it takes to blow ...” The housekeeper steals, “stupidly and uselessly preparing in the kitchen”, “empty in the pantry”, “unclean and drunken servants” . Meanwhile, a "gazebo with a flat green dome, wooden blue columns and the inscription: "Temple of Solitary Reflection" has been erected. Manilov's dreams are absurd and absurd. “Sometimes ... he talked about how good it would be if all of a sudden to lead an underground passage from the house or build a stone bridge across the pond ...” Gogol shows that Manilov is gone and empty, he has no real spiritual interests. “In his office there was always some kind of book, bookmarked on the fourteenth page, which he had been constantly reading for two years.” The vulgarity of family life (relationship with his wife, the upbringing of Alcides and Themistoclus), the sugary sweetness of speech (“May Day”, “name day of the heart”) confirm the insight of the character’s portraiture. “In the first minute of a conversation with him, you can’t help but say: “What a pleasant and kind person!” In the next minute of the conversation you will not say anything, but in the third you will say: “The devil knows what it is!” - and move away if you don’t move away, you will feel mortal boredom.” Gogol, with amazing artistic power, shows the deadness of Manilov, the worthlessness of his life. Behind external attractiveness lies spiritual emptiness.
The image of the hoarder Korobochka is already devoid of those “attractive” features that distinguish Manilov. And again we have a type in front of us - “one of those mothers, small landowners who ... little by little collect money in motley bags placed in drawers of chests of drawers”. Korobochka's interests are entirely focused on the household. “Strong-headed” and “club-headed” Nastasya Petrovna is afraid to sell cheap, selling “dead souls” to Chichikov. Curious is the "silent scene" that occurs in this chapter. We find similar scenes in almost all chapters showing the conclusion of a deal between Chichikov and another landowner. This is a special artistic technique, a kind of temporary stoppage of the action, which makes it possible to show the spiritual emptiness of Pavel Ivanovich and his interlocutors with particular convexity. At the end of the third chapter, Gogol talks about the typical image of Korobochka, about the insignificant difference between her and another aristocratic lady.
The gallery of dead souls is continued in Nozdrev's poem. Like other landowners, he is internally empty, age does not concern him: “Nozdryov at thirty-five years old was the same perfect as he was at eighteen and twenty: a hunter for a walk.” The portrait of a dashing reveler is satirical and sarcastic at the same time. “He was of medium height, a very well-built fellow with full ruddy cheeks ... Health seemed to be squirting from his face.” However, Chichikov notices that one of Nozdryov's sideburns was smaller and not as thick as the other (the result of another fight). Passion for lies and card games largely explains the fact that not a single meeting, where Nozdryov was present, could do without “history”. The landowner's life is absolutely soulless. In the study “there were no traces of what happens in studies, that is, books or paper; only a saber and two guns hung...” Of course, Nozdryov's household was ruined. Even lunch consists of dishes that are burnt or, on the contrary, not cooked.
Chichikov's attempt to buy dead souls from Nozdrev is a fatal mistake. It is Nozdryov who blabs a secret at the governor's ball. The arrival in the city of Korobochka, who wished to find out “how much dead souls go”, confirms the words of the dashing “talker”.
The image of Nozdrev is no less typical than the image of Manilov or Korobochka. Gogol writes: “Nozdryov will not leave the world for a long time. He is everywhere between us and, perhaps, only walks in a different caftan; but people are frivolously impenetrable, and a person in a different caftan seems to them a different person.
The typification techniques listed above are also used by Gogol for the artistic perception of the image of Sobakevich. Descriptions of the village and the landowner's household testify to a certain prosperity. “The yard was surrounded by a strong and excessively thick wooden lattice. The landowner, it seemed, was fussing a lot about strength ... The village huts of the peasants were also cut down marvelously ... everything was fitted tightly and as it should.
Describing the appearance of Sobakevich, Gogol resorts to zoological analogy: he compares the landowner with a bear. Sobakevich is a glutton. In his judgments about food, he rises to a kind of “gastronomic” pathos: “When I have pork - put the whole pig on the table, lamb - drag the whole ram, goose - the whole goose!” However, Sobakevich (in this he differs from Plyushkin and most other landowners) has a certain economic streak: he does not ruin his own serfs, achieves a certain order in the economy, sells dead souls to Chichikov profitably, excellent

Dramaturgy N.V. Gogol and the Russian theater of the first half of the 19th century.

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol (1809-1852) came to Russian culture after Pushkin, and his work can be seen as a continuation and development of Pushkin's method. At the same time, Gogol, as an independent phenomenon, immediately becomes a "literary belief", a central figure in the aesthetic life of an entire era. His dramaturgy is a major aesthetic shift taking place in Russian culture in the age of vaudeville and melodrama; it is a change of codes in art, the birth of new connections between the author and the reader-spectator.

Gogol spoke in a different aesthetic language, he demanded a serious and sober introspection from the viewer, because in the "lining" of his works there is a bitter, tragic feeling of the author, pain for a person. He turned to reality, destroyed the wall between art and life. Both viewers and readers did not want to recognize in the artistic world of Gogol, in this ordinary, philistine, philistine life - their own, in ʼʼherolessʼʼ characters - themselves. Οʜᴎ were used to going to the theater, where vaudeville and melodrama were able to replace their gray, ordinary existence with a holiday. It took time, cultural experience, to learn to understand new aesthetic principles.

The playwright suggested a new type of theater that bursts into real life, explodes a calm, conflict-free consciousness, awakens a person from utopian dreams and turns theater into a fact of high culture. For Gogol, a true dramatic work is not only a school of the actor's skill, but directs him along the path of spiritual concentrated activity. In this theater, the stage artist must understand the grain of the role, his most important task, the ʼʼnail that has stuck in the head of his heroʼʼ. Small and private details Gogol calls paints, "which must be laid already when the drawing is composed and done correctly. Οʜᴎ is the dress and body of the role, not the soul of itʼʼ. The actors, having the experience of stage existence in vaudeville, tried to make the audience laugh with caricature grimaces or shameless antics. It's not that ʼʼInspectorʼʼ or ʼʼMarriageʼʼ failed in St. Petersburg and Moscow. The problem is much deeper. The theater did not yet know such dramaturgy and did not understand how to play it. Gogol, on a deep and structural level, breaks with the banal conventionality of his contemporary repertoire, refuses the intriguing play, external spectacle, the showiness of melodrama and vaudeville, the strange combination of rationalism with frank sensitivity, stilted heroes, the hackneyed conflict built on love intrigue and etc. Gogol's world is based on the idea that combines various destinies and events into a whole, where there are no secondary characters, the plot (setting, conflict, denouement) captures all the characters, and the action ʼʼknits into a large common knotʼʼ. Gogol uses the technique of generalization and enlargement, he creates the dramaturgy of the general situation.

Gogol also renews the nature of the conflict; he replaces the comedy's love mechanism with a social one and gives several possible examples: a profitable marriage, money capital, offended pride, a career, the "electricity of the rank" - these are the true springs of the action of a social comedy. At the same time, with Gogol, the traditional conflict is transformed and takes on a special form. There is no fundamental struggle in his artistic world, because there are no ideological opponents, no outright ideological clashes. This is a homogeneous world (of homogeneous evil or mediocrity), in which there is no opposition to vice: there is no positive hero in Gogol's dramaturgy. As you know, laughter takes its place as ʼʼthe only honest and punishing faceʼʼ. Laughter is not indifferent, not cynical, not an outside observer's laughter, but through tears (besides, it is difficult to find funnier plays in literature), laughter directed at ourselves, at each of us.

In dramaturgy, Gogol creates a heroless, idealless, empty world of ʼʼlittle peopleʼʼ, who have lost the true meaning of existence. Gogol's concept of "little man" is ambivalent. This is not only a humiliated and insulted hero, causing pity and sympathy, but also a spiritual tradesman. An average person, with an erased face - ʼʼ neither this nor thatʼʼ, as Gogol says about Khlestakov. This is not only Bashmachkin, Dobchinsky, Bobchinsky, Zhevakin, but also Khlestakov, Kochkarev, Gorodnichiy. They all live by petty, utilitarian interests, imaginary values. They are driven by exorbitant ambitions, unsatisfied pride, complexes, claims. At the same time, everyone wants to appear different, to break out of the insignificant, gray shell, from their own space into someone else's. The eternal desire to put on someone else's costume, to look formally better than you really are, more significant, weightier, smarter, richer, etc., is typical of Gogol's heroes. Οʜᴎ dress up in a different image, like a servant who always dreams of getting into the master's costume. The motive of dressing up, reincarnation of characters is very important for Gogol. It is connected with the theme of substitution, trickery. There is a falsification of the true meaning, a substitution of life purpose at all levels. On the social side: honest service to the fatherland is replaced by the achievement of material wealth (bribery of officials).

Substitution occurs at the level of private life. True, noble, lyrical, passionate love turns into Gogol's works either as Khlestakov's farce, or as marriage, that is, as a social phenomenon. The characters have no "intimate" life at all, no one loves anyone, no one talks about love. Agafya Tikhonovna dreams of taking a noble as her husband, and although he is not there yet, and by and large she doesn’t care what kind of person he is, the wedding dress has long been ready. For Yaichnitsa, the goal of marriage is a stone foundation, it is extremely important for Anuchkin that his wife speak French, although, of course, he himself does not know the language, etc. Podkolesin has been lying on the sofa for the third month and thinking aloud about the extremely important importance of marriage - in general but there is no love. In ʼʼPlayersʼʼ there are no female characters at all: Adelaida Ivanovna is the name of the card deck.

This theme is intertwined with the motif of peeping. Gogol's heroes spy on someone else's life. First of all, of course, one should name Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky. In ʼʼMarriageʼʼ Kochkarev and all the others peep into the well for Agafya Tikhonovna. In ʼʼPlayersʼʼ, the company of Consolation finds out from Ikharev's servant who his master is, where he is from, what he does. And vice versa, Ikharev asks the servant in the tavern about the company of the Comforter. All these are examples of not simple curiosity, these are not only means to obtain information about a stranger (although, of course, there is a moment). Another thing is also important - awareness of oneself as an insignificant person, always dependent, provokes peeping: such a hero feels undressed, naked, confused in an unknown space. Becoming a spy, the character joins some secret knowledge, ĸᴏᴛᴏᴩᴏᴇ elevates him above the rest - they, from his point of view, know less, and therefore, they are a whole step lower.

At the root of all Gogol's great plays is deceit, as the central situation of the plot. Everything is built on deception (conscious or unconscious), lies, falsification. Not to mention junctions. The whole city will be deceived, Marya Antonovna in ʼʼInspectorʼʼ; deceived by Agafya Tikhonovna or Zhevakin's hopes in ʼʼMarriageʼʼ. In ʼʼPlayersʼʼ - ʼʼone continuous falsificationʼʼ, while the viewer does not understand the full extent of the lie until the last minute. At the end of each comedy, the characters actually ask one question: ʼʼWhere are they (he)?ʼʼ Escape, disappearance is also a common situation associated with deceit. Suddenly Khlestakov leaves, as if falling into a black hole, suddenly jumps out of the window Podkolesin, suddenly the company of Consolation disappears. The central link is lost in that life that should have developed for everyone, settled down (officials would have escaped punishment, Khlestakov’s marriage to Marya Antonovna would have transferred Gorodnichiy and his wife to a different space, to a different status; Ikharev, having received 200 thousand, became would be ʼʼpossessing princeʼʼ, etc.).

And one more important topic: the structure of Gogol's plays. It seems possible to say that it is synonymous with the shape of a circle. It is known that for Gogol himself the final scene of the Inspector General is a universal punishment, exposure, hence the petrification, a silent scene, a comparison with Bryullov's painting The Last Day of Pompeii. But you can interpret the ending differently: the situation with the auditor can be repeated, and more than once. The arrival of a real auditor will not be a punishment and exposure of the city officials, but only a new round, along which the characters will run in order to get out, get out, and escape. Save yourself not in a sacred sense, not from a global deception. No, at the domestic and social level. And then the officials will work more seriously: give more bribes, better food and drink, “put” a wife or daughter in the bed of the auditor (depending on who they like best), etc. This situation can be repeated endlessly. After all, the mayor claims that he deceived three governors, and “what governors!” (Yes, and the fact that the situation of the ʼʼInspectorʼʼ, written in 1836, has changed little to this day, testifies to many things.) This gives the right to say that the repetition, cyclicity of events at the semantic level corresponds to the shape of a circle. At the end of ʼʼMarriageʼʼ, Kochkarev says that he will run, catch up, return Podkolesin (he does this constantly and in the course of action). Zhevakin, after the failure at Agafya Tikhonovna's, will go to woo again, for the eighteenth (!) time. Fried eggs left the department for a minute to look at Agafya Tikhonovna's dowry, tomorrow he will also run to another bride, at the suggestion of the matchmaker. Ikharev, despite the sudden defeat, will be just as fraudulent as the company of Consolationist, etc. Strictly speaking, there are no traditional denouements in Gogol's comedies. Enclosed space, inability to exit, moving in circles or running in place. The characters of the plays do a lot of things, fuss, worry, they seem to live tensely, fully. In fact, their life is mud. The inner, mental state of numbness instantly transforms into the exalted behavior of the characters.

Gogol's heroes exist not only in the modern, everyday social world, but at the same time in some kind of fictional, empty space. The author paradoxically combines signs of reality and grotesque, almost fantastic elements. It is impossible to get rid of the feeling that the world of Gogol's realistic works is illogical, absurd, phantasmagorical.

In ʼʼInspectorʼʼ the symbols of the city are not family and household signs, but rats from the dream City-nothing (ʼʼblack, unnatural size!ʼʼ) and an unbuilt church. There is no home, a hearth, as a warm, cozy, habitable environment, in the plays at all. For this reason, the idea immediately arises that a person is not rooted in everyday life, that he has been torn out of his normal state. At the same time, Gogol gives quite definite geographical landmarks of the city: Khlestakov travels from St. Petersburg, through Penza to the Saratov province. But at the same time - ʼʼfrom here, even if you ride for three years, you will not reach any state!ʼʼ. There is an image of some mystical, surreal, fabulous city. Or in ʼʼMarriageʼʼ, the events of which unfold in St. Petersburg. But when Fekla explains to Kochkarev the way to the bride, the playwright piles up so many details and details that this path seems to us illogical and non-existent. In ʼʼGamblersʼʼ, next to the mention of real Russian cities (Ryazan, Smolensk, Kaluga, Nizhny) - some kind of city tavern with a gang of scammers, which ʼʼdisappears to no one knows whereʼʼ, disappears like a phantom.

Gogol achieves the effect of absurdity and phantasmagoric action, firstly, by piling up details. Secondly, the playwright organizes the facts in such a way, builds such a context that there are signs of reality that are incomparable, incompatible in their nature, meaning, level (sick people who look like blacksmiths; a doctor who does not speak Russian; a monument - garbage pit; greyhound puppies and a visit to the church; hungry Khlestakov, looking into the plates - therefore, he is an auditor and much more). There are real facts: goslings͵ judicial presence; smells of vodka, the mother dropped the child; the famine of an official, a letter about the auditor... But together, in the context - this is absurd. The writer deliberately violates the cause-and-effect relationships, their logic and creates a Homeric funny, but phantasmagoric picture, a kind of tragic farce (can be compared with Tarelkin's Death ʼʼ Sukhovo-Kobylin).

This surreal, grotesque artistic world, from Gogol's point of view, is a model of reality. Formal receptions are filled with deep meaning. For the writer, modern life, in which falsification and substitution of its true meaning, purpose, destruction of genuine values, is perceived as absurd. The improbability of Gogol's life is expressed not in a vaudeville game (ʼʼin the elderberry garden, but in Kiev uncleʼʼ), but in the fact that a person does not realize in what coordinates he lives, what are the true criteria and guidelines for his path. Gogol himself dreamed of ʼʼeternal beautyʼʼ, of ʼʼspiritual limiteʼʼ and went to him all his conscious life.

The theater is slowly beginning to master the stage possibilities of Gogol's drama, trying to penetrate into the depths of their meaning. And by the middle of the century, Gogol's plays forever become a fact of the repertoire poster.

Dramaturgy N.V. Gogol and the Russian theater of the first half of the 19th century. - concept and types. Classification and features of the category "Dramaturgy by N.V. Gogol and Russian theater of the first half of the 19th century." 2017, 2018.

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Introduction

1. Dramaturgy N.V. Gogol

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

Faced with the dramaturgy of N.V. Gogol, it is impossible not to notice the originality of the images of his characters. Nikolai Vasilyevich is an innovative playwright. He not only continued the traditions of Russian comedy, but was able to move to a new stage, which served as a great impetus to the development of Russian drama.

Vivid satirical images and "typical" character traits still attract the attention of the audience to this day, and make the actor look deeply into the soul of a particular character.

For many years there have been disputes about the types and images of Gogol's dramaturgy. Opponents of N.V. Gogol is found in them only masks, but the majority sees living people under the masks. Therefore, the actors always face the question of how to play Gogol's comedies.

1. Dramaturgy N.V. Gogol

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol (1809-1852) came to Russian culture after Pushkin, and his work can be seen as a continuation and development of Pushkin's method. At the same time, Gogol, as an independent phenomenon, immediately becomes a "literary belief", the central figure in the aesthetic life of an entire era. His dramaturgy is a serious aesthetic shift taking place in Russian culture in the era of vaudeville and melodrama; this is a change of codes in art, the birth of new connections between the author and the reader-spectator.

Gogol spoke in a different aesthetic language, he demanded a serious and sober introspection from the viewer, because in the “lining” of his works there is a bitter, tragic feeling of the author, pain for a person. He turned to reality, destroyed the wall between art and life. Both viewers and readers did not want to recognize in the artistic world of Gogol, in this ordinary, philistine, philistine life - their own, in the "heroless" characters - themselves. They were used to going to the theater, where vaudeville and melodrama were able to replace their gray, ordinary existence with a holiday. It took time, cultural experience, to learn to understand new aesthetic principles.

The playwright suggested a new type of theater that bursts into real life, explodes a calm, conflict-free consciousness, awakens a person from utopian dreams and turns theater into a fact of high culture. For Gogol, a true dramatic work is not only a school of the actor's skill, but directs him along the path of spiritual concentrated activity. In this theater, the stage designer must understand the grain of the role, his most important task, "the nail that has stuck in the head of his hero." Small and private details Gogol calls paints, “which must be laid already when the drawing is composed and done correctly. They are the dress and body of the role, not its soul. The actors, having the experience of stage existence in vaudeville, tried to make the audience laugh with caricature grimaces or shameless antics. It's not that The Government Inspector or The Marriage failed in St. Petersburg and Moscow. The problem is much deeper. The theater did not yet know such dramaturgy and did not understand how to play it. Gogol, at a deep and structural level, breaks with the banal conventionality of his contemporary repertoire, refuses from the play-intrigue, from external spectacle, the showiness of melodrama and vaudeville, from a strange combination of rationalism with frank sensitivity, from stilted heroes, from a hackneyed conflict built on a love intrigue and etc. Gogol's world is based on the idea that combines various destinies and events into a whole, where there are no secondary characters, the plot (set, conflict, denouement) captures all the characters, and the action "knits into a big common knot." Gogol uses the technique of generalization and enlargement, he creates the dramaturgy of the general situation. play gogol playwright theater

Gogol also renews the nature of the conflict; he replaces the love "mechanism" of comedy with a social one, and gives several possible examples: a profitable marriage, money capital, offended pride, a career, the "electricity of rank" - these are the true springs of the action of a social comedy. At the same time, with Gogol, the traditional conflict is transformed and takes on a special form. There is no fundamental struggle in his artistic world, because there are no ideological opponents, no outright ideological clashes. This is a homogeneous world (of homogeneous evil or mediocrity), in which there is no opposition to vice: there is no positive hero in Gogol's dramaturgy. As you know, its place is taken by laughter as "the only honest and punishing face." Laughter is not indifferent, not cynical, not an outside observer's laughter, but through tears (besides, it is difficult to find funnier plays in literature), laughter directed at ourselves, at each of us.

In dramaturgy, Gogol creates a heroless, idealless, empty world of "little people" who have lost the true meaning of existence. Gogol's concept of the "little man" is ambivalent. This is not only a humiliated and insulted hero, causing pity and sympathy, but also a spiritual tradesman. The average person, with an erased face - "nothing else," as Gogol says about Khlestakov. This is not only Bashmachkin, Dobchinsky, Bobchinsky, Zhevakin, but also Khlestakov, Kochkarev, Gorodnichiy. They all live by petty, utilitarian interests, imaginary values. They are driven by exorbitant ambitions, unsatisfied pride, complexes, claims. At the same time, everyone wants to appear different, to break out of the insignificant, gray shell, from their own space into someone else's. The eternal desire to put on someone else's costume, to look formally better than you really are, more significant, weightier, smarter, richer, etc., is typical of Gogol's heroes. They dress up in a different image, like a servant who always dreams of fitting into his master's costume. The motive of dressing up, reincarnation of characters is very important for Gogol. It is connected with the theme of substitution, trickery. There is a falsification of the true meaning, a substitution of life purpose at all levels. On the social side: honest service to the fatherland is replaced by the achievement of material wealth (bribery of officials).

Substitution occurs at the level of private life. True, noble, lyrical, passionate love turns into Gogol's works either as Khlestakov's farce, or as marriage, that is, as a social phenomenon. The characters have no "intimate" life at all, no one loves anyone, no one talks about love. Agafya Tikhonovna dreams of taking a noble as her husband, and although he is not yet there, and by and large she does not care what kind of person he is, the wedding dress has long been ready. For Yaichnitsa, the goal of marriage is a stone foundation, Anuchkin needs his wife to speak French, although, of course, he himself does not know the language, etc. Podkolesin has been lying on the sofa for the third month and thinking aloud about the need for marriage - in general, but there is no love. In "Gamblers" there are no female characters at all: Adelaida Ivanovna is the name of a card deck.

This theme is intertwined with the motif of peeping. Gogol's heroes spy on someone else's life. First of all, of course, one should name Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky. In The Marriage, Kochkarev and everyone else peep into the well for Agafya Tikhonovna. In the "Gamblers", the company of Consolation finds out from Ikharev's servant who his master is, where he is from, what he does. And vice versa, Ikharev asks the servant in the tavern about the company of the Comforter. All these are examples of not simple curiosity, these are not only means to obtain information about a stranger (although, of course, this moment exists). Another thing is also important - awareness of oneself as an insignificant person, always dependent, provokes peeping: such a hero feels undressed, naked, confused in an unknown space. Becoming a spy, the character joins a certain secret knowledge that elevates him above the rest - they, from his point of view, know less, and therefore, they are a whole step lower.

All of Gogol's great plays are based on deceit as the central situation of the plot. Everything is built on deception (conscious or unconscious), lies, falsification. Not to mention junctions. The whole city will be deceived, Marya Antonovna in The Inspector General; deceived by Agafya Tikhonovna or Zhevakin's hopes in "The Marriage". In "Players" - "one continuous falsification", while the viewer does not understand the full scale of the lie until the last minute. At the end of each comedy, the characters actually ask one question: “Where are they (he)?” Escape, disappearance is also a common deception situation. Suddenly Khlestakov leaves, as if falling into a black hole, suddenly jumps out of the window Podkolesin, suddenly the company of Consolation disappears. The central link is lost in that life that should have developed for everyone, settled down (officials would have escaped punishment, Khlestakov’s marriage to Marya Antonovna would have transferred Gorodnichy and his wife to a different space, to a different status; Ikharev, having received 200 thousand, would become “ sovereign prince”, etc.).

And one more important topic: the structure of Gogol's plays. It seems possible to say that it is synonymous with the shape of a circle. It is known that for Gogol himself the final scene of The Inspector General is a universal punishment, exposure, hence the petrification, a silent scene, a comparison with Bryullov's painting The Last Day of Pompeii. But you can interpret the ending differently: the situation with the auditor can be repeated, and more than once. The arrival of a real auditor will not be a punishment and exposure of the city officials, but only a new round, along which the characters will run in order to get out, get out, and escape. Save yourself not in a sacred sense, not from a global deception. No, at the domestic and social level. And then officials will work more seriously: give more bribes, better food and drink, “put” a wife or daughter in the bed of the auditor (depending on who they like best), etc. This situation can be repeated endlessly. After all, the mayor claims that he deceived three governors, and “what governors!”, That is, he does not turn out such deeds for the first time. (And the fact that the situation of The Inspector General, written in 1836, has changed little to this day, testifies to many things.) This gives the right to say that the repetition, cyclicity of events at the semantic level corresponds to the shape of a circle. At the end of The Marriage, Kochkarev says that he will run, catch up, and return Podkolesin (he does this constantly and in the course of the action). Zhevakin, after Agafya Tikhonovna's failure, will go to woo again, for the eighteenth (!) time. Fried eggs left the department for a minute to look at the dowry of Agafya Tikhonovna, tomorrow he will also run to another bride, at the suggestion of the matchmaker. Ikharev, despite the sudden defeat, will be just as fraudulent as the company of Consolationist, etc. Strictly speaking, there are no traditional denouements in Gogol's comedies. Enclosed space, inability to exit, moving in circles or running in place. The characters of the plays do a lot of things, fuss, worry, they seem to live tensely, fully. In fact, their life is mud. The inner, mental state of numbness instantly transforms into the exalted behavior of the characters.

In The Inspector General, the symbols of the city are not family and everyday signs, but rats from the dream City-nothing (“black, unnatural size!”) And an unbuilt church. There is no home, a hearth, as a warm, cozy, habitable environment, in the plays at all. Therefore, the thought immediately arises that a person is not rooted in everyday life, that he is torn out of his normal state. At the same time, Gogol gives quite definite geographical landmarks of the city: Khlestakov travels from St. Petersburg, through Penza to the Saratov province. But at the same time - "from here, even if you ride for three years, you will not reach any state!" There is an image of some mystical, surreal, fabulous city. Or in "Marriage", the events of which unfold in St. Petersburg. But when Fekla explains to Kochkarev the way to the bride, the playwright piles up so many details and details that this path seems to us illogical and non-existent. In "Gamblers" next to the mention of real Russian cities (Ryazan, Smolensk, Kaluga, Nizhny) - some kind of city tavern with a gang of scammers, which "disappears to no one knows where", disappears like a phantom.

Gogol achieves the effect of absurdity and phantasmagoric action, firstly, by piling up details. Secondly, the playwright organizes the facts in such a way, builds such a context that there are signs of reality that are incomparable, incompatible in their nature, meaning, level (sick people who look like blacksmiths; a doctor who does not speak Russian; a monument - - a garbage pit; greyhound puppies and a visit to the church; hungry Khlestakov, looking into the plates - therefore, he is an auditor and much more). There are real facts: goslings, judicial presence; smells of vodka, the mother dropped the child; an official's hunger, a letter about an auditor... But taken together, in context, this is absurd. The writer deliberately violates the cause-and-effect relationships, their logic and creates a Homeric funny, but phantasmagoric picture, a kind of tragic farce (can be compared with Sukhovo-Kobylin's Death of Tarelkin).

This surreal, grotesque artistic world, from Gogol's point of view, is a model of reality. Formal receptions are filled with deep meaning. For the writer, modern life, in which falsification and substitution of its true meaning, purpose, destruction of genuine values, is perceived as absurd. The improbability of Gogol's life is expressed not in a vaudeville game ("in the elderberry garden, but in Kiev the uncle"), but in the fact that a person does not realize in what coordinates he lives, what are the true criteria and guidelines for his path. Gogol himself dreamed of "supreme eternal beauty", of a "spiritual limit" and went to it all his conscious life.

Conclusion

Having studied the features of the dramaturgy of N.V. Gogol, one can understand why his plays still resonate with the audience. In Gogol's plays, everything is unusual, from their structure to the multitude of possible solutions to them. No wonder N.V. Gogol is considered an innovative playwright, because it was he who was able to change Russian comedy, abandoning the canons of classicism and showing the viewer a series of living images.

It is not surprising that the special attention of actors to the comedies of N.V. Gogol. In the plays of Nikolai Vasilievich there is no clear division into positive and negative characters, therefore each character is multidimensional, which gives the actor the opportunity to reveal any image in his own way, to create a unique face using "typical" character traits.

Bibliography

1. Belinsky V. G. Collected works [text] / Belinsky V. G. - M .: Fiction, 1996. - 719 p.

2. Gorky M. Collected works in 30 volumes [text] / Gorky M. - M.: Fiction, 1953. - T. 27. - 590 p.

3. Gogol N.V. Auditor [text] / Gogol N.V. - M.: School classics, 2012. - 120 p.

4. Zhdanov V. N. V. Gogol. Essay on creativity [text] / Zhdanov V. - M .: State publishing house of fiction, 1953. - 119 p.

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Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol (1809-1852) came to Russian culture after Pushkin, and his work can be seen as a continuation and development of Pushkin's method. At the same time, Gogol, as an independent phenomenon, immediately becomes a "literary belief", the central figure in the aesthetic life of an entire era. His dramaturgy is a major aesthetic shift taking place in Russian culture in the age of vaudeville and melodrama; it is a change of codes in art, the birth of new connections between the author and the reader-spectator.

The playwright suggested a new type of theater that bursts into real life, explodes a calm, conflict-free consciousness, awakens a person from utopian dreams and turns theater into a fact of high culture. For Gogol, a true dramatic work is not only a school of the actor's skill, but directs him along the path of spiritual concentrated activity. In this theater, the stage designer must understand the grain of the role, his most important task, "the nail that has stuck in the head of his hero." Small and private details Gogol calls paints, “which must be laid already when the drawing is composed and done correctly. They are the dress and body of the role, not the soul of it.” The actors, having the experience of stage existence in vaudeville, tried to make the audience laugh with caricature grimaces or shameless antics. It's not that The Government Inspector or The Marriage failed in St. Petersburg and Moscow. The problem is much deeper. The theater did not yet know such dramaturgy and did not understand how to play it. Gogol, at a deep and structural level, breaks with the banal conventionality of his contemporary repertoire, refuses from the play-intrigue, from external spectacle, the showiness of melodrama and vaudeville, from a strange combination of rationalism with frank sensitivity, from stilted heroes, from a hackneyed conflict built on a love intrigue and etc. Gogol's world is based on the idea that combines various destinies and events into a whole, where there are no secondary characters, the plot (set, conflict, denouement) captures all the characters, and the action "knits into a big common knot." Gogol uses the technique of generalization and enlargement, he creates the dramaturgy of the general situation.

Gogol also renews the nature of the conflict; he replaces the love "mechanism" of comedy with a social one and gives several possible examples: a profitable marriage, money capital, offended pride, a career, the "electricity of rank" - these are the true springs of the action of a social comedy. At the same time, with Gogol, the traditional conflict is transformed and takes on a special form. There is no fundamental struggle in his artistic world, because there are no ideological opponents, no outright ideological clashes. This is a homogeneous world (of homogeneous evil or mediocrity), in which there is no opposition to vice: there is no positive hero in Gogol's dramaturgy. As you know, its place is taken by laughter as "the only honest and punishing face." Laughter is not indifferent, not cynical, not an outside observer's laughter, but through tears (besides, it is difficult to find funnier plays in literature), laughter directed at ourselves, at each of us.

In dramaturgy, Gogol creates a heroless, idealless, empty world of "little people" who have lost the true meaning of existence. Gogol's concept of the "little man" is ambivalent. This is not only a humiliated and insulted hero, causing pity and sympathy, but also a spiritual tradesman. An average person, with an erased face - "neither this nor that," as Gogol says about Khlestakov. This is not only Bashmachkin, Dobchinsky, Bobchinsky, Zhevakin, but also Khlestakov, Kochkarev, Gorodnichiy. They all live by petty, utilitarian interests, imaginary values. They are driven by exorbitant ambitions, unsatisfied pride, complexes, claims. At the same time, everyone wants to appear different, to break out of the insignificant, gray shell, from their own space into someone else's. The eternal desire to put on someone else's costume, to look formally better than you really are, more significant, weightier, smarter, richer, etc., is typical of Gogol's heroes. They dress up in a different image, like a servant who always dreams of fitting into his master's costume. The motive of dressing up, reincarnation of characters is very important for Gogol. It is connected with the theme of substitution, trickery. There is a falsification of the true meaning, a substitution of life purpose at all levels. On the social side: honest service to the fatherland is replaced by the achievement of material wealth (bribery of officials).

Substitution occurs at the level of private life. True, noble, lyrical, passionate love turns into Gogol's works either as Khlestakov's farce, or as marriage, that is, as a social phenomenon. The characters have no "intimate" life at all, no one loves anyone, no one talks about love. Agafya Tikhonovna dreams of taking a noble as her husband, and although he is not yet there, and by and large she does not care what kind of person he is, the wedding dress has long been ready. For Oyichnitsa, the goal of marriage is a stone foundation, Anuchkin needs his wife to speak French, although, of course, he himself does not know the language, etc. For the third month Podkolesin lies on the sofa and thinks aloud about the need for marriage - in general, but love No. In "Players" there are no female characters at all: Adelaida Ivanovna is the name of the card deck.

At the heart of all Gogol's great plays is deceit, as the central situation of the plot. Everything is built on deception (conscious or unconscious), lies, falsification. Not to mention junctions. The whole city will be deceived, Marya Antonovna in The Inspector General; deceived by Agafya Tikhonovna or Zhevakin's hopes in "The Marriage". In "Gamblers" - "one continuous falsification", while the viewer does not understand the full scale of the lie until the last minute. At the end of each comedy, the characters actually ask one question: “Where are they (he)?” Escape, disappearance is also a common situation associated with deceit. Suddenly Khlestakov leaves, as if falling into a black hole, suddenly jumps out of the window Podkolesin, suddenly the company of Consolation disappears. The central link is lost in that life that should have developed for everyone, settled down (officials would have escaped punishment, Khlestakov’s marriage to Marya Antonovna would have transferred Gorodnichy and his wife to a different space, to a different status; Ikharev, having received 200 thousand, would become “ sovereign prince”, etc.).

And one more important topic: the structure of Gogol's plays. It seems possible to say that it is synonymous with the shape of a circle. It is known that for Gogol himself the final scene of The Inspector General is a universal punishment, exposure, hence the petrification, a silent scene, a comparison with Bryullov's painting The Last Day of Pompeii. But you can interpret the ending differently: the situation with the auditor can be repeated, and more than once. The arrival of a real auditor will not be a punishment and exposure of the city officials, but only a new round, along which the characters will run in order to get out, get out, and escape. Save yourself not in a sacred sense, not from a global deception. No, at the domestic and social level. And then officials will work more seriously: give more bribes, better food and drink, “put” a wife or daughter in the bed of the auditor (depending on who they like best), etc. This situation can be repeated endlessly. After all, the mayor claims that he deceived three governors, and “what governors!”, That is, he does not turn out such deeds for the first time. (And the fact that the situation of The Inspector General, written in 1836, has changed little to this day, testifies to many things.) This gives the right to say that the repetition, cyclicity of events at the semantic level corresponds to the shape of a circle. At the end of The Marriage, Kochkarev says that he will run, catch up, and return Podkolesin (he does this constantly and in the course of the action). Zhevakin, after Agafya Tikhonovna's failure, will go to woo again, for the eighteenth (!) time. Fried eggs left the department for a minute to look at the dowry of Agafya Tikhonovna, tomorrow he will also run to another bride, at the suggestion of the matchmaker. Ikharev, despite the sudden defeat, will be just as fraudulent as the company of Consolationist, etc. Strictly speaking, there are no traditional denouements in Gogol's comedies. Enclosed space, inability to exit, moving in circles or running in place. The characters of the plays do a lot of things, fuss, worry, they seem to live tensely, fully. In fact, their life is mud. The inner, mental state of numbness instantly transforms into the exalted behavior of the characters.

In The Inspector General, the symbols of the city are not family and everyday signs, but rats from the dream City-nothing (“black, unnatural size!”) And an unbuilt church. There is no home, a hearth, as a warm, cozy, habitable environment, in the plays at all. Therefore, the thought immediately arises that a person is not rooted in everyday life, that he is torn out of his normal state. At the same time, Gogol gives quite definite geographical landmarks of the city: Khlestakov travels from St. Petersburg, through Penza to the Saratov province. But at the same time - "from here, even if you jump for three years, you will not reach any state!" There is an image of some mystical, surreal, fabulous city. Or in "Marriage", the events of which unfold in St. Petersburg. But when Fekla explains to Kochkarev the way to the bride, the playwright piles up so many details and details that this path seems to us illogical and non-existent. In "Players" next to the mention of real Russian cities (Ryazan, Smolensk, Kaluga, Nizhny) - some kind of city tavern with a gang of scammers, which "disappears to no one knows where", disappears like a phantom.

Gogol achieves the effect of absurdity and phantasmagoric action, firstly, by piling up details. Secondly, the playwright organizes the facts in such a way, builds such a context that there are signs of reality that are incomparable, incompatible in their nature, meaning, level (sick people who look like blacksmiths; a doctor who does not speak Russian; a monument - garbage pit; greyhound puppies and a visit to church; hungry Khlestakov, looking into the plates - therefore, he is an auditor and much more). There are real facts: goslings, judicial presence; smells of vodka, the mother dropped the child; the famine of an official, a letter about the auditor... But together, in the context - this is absurd. The writer deliberately violates the cause-and-effect relationships, their logic and creates a Homeric funny, but phantasmagoric picture, a kind of tragic farce (can be compared with Sukhovo-Kobylin's Death of Tarelkin).

This surreal, grotesque artistic world, from Gogol's point of view, is a model of reality. Formal receptions are filled with deep meaning. For the writer, modern life, in which falsification and substitution of its true meaning, purpose, destruction of genuine values, is perceived as absurd. The improbability of Gogol's life is expressed not in a vaudeville game ("in the elderberry garden, but in Kiev the uncle"), but in the fact that a person does not realize in what coordinates he lives, what are the true criteria and guidelines for his path. Gogol himself dreamed of "supreme eternal beauty", of a "spiritual limit" and went to it all his conscious life.

Dramaturgy of Gogol. Comedy "Inspector".

Back in the period of Mirgorod and Arabesques, Gogol felt the need to express his understanding and appreciation of contemporary reality in comedy. On February 20, 1833, he informed M.P. Pogodin: “I didn’t write to you: I’m obsessed with comedy. She, when I was in Moscow, on the road, and when I arrived here, did not get out of my head, but so far I have not written anything. The plot had already begun to be drawn up the other day, and the title was already written on a thick white notebook: Vladimir of the 3rd degree and how much anger! laughter! salt! ... But suddenly he stopped, seeing that the pen was pushing against such places that censorship would not let through for anything ... There was nothing left for me but to invent the most innocent plot, which even a quarterly could not be offended. But what is a comedy without truth and malice! So, I can’t take on comedy.” From the words of the writer it is clear that he was attracted by a sharp comedy, incompatible with the "innocent" plot. But the comedy "Vladimir of the 3rd degree" was not written (the work stopped at the second act). The sharpest thoughts of this comedy Gogol "transferred" to the crazy Poprishchin. The prepared materials were published in the form of dramatic scenes: “Morning of a Businessman”, “Litigation”, “Lakeyskaya”, “Excerpt”.

From an acute desire to write a comedy, Gogol moved on to the everyday play "Grooms" (later "Marriage", finally completed in 1841). According to I. V. Kartashova, Gogol here anticipates Ostrovsky, referring to the image of the merchant and bureaucratic environment, to the topic of vulgarization of love and marriage. Comedy reveals the mercantile basis of human relations in the modern world. The grooms, who flocked in a greedy flock to the house of Agafya Tikhonovna, see in her only a “commodity”, although the “material interests” of each are expressed in different ways. Gogol perfectly used the situation of matchmaking, revealing through it the inner qualities of the characters and exposing their spiritual poverty, vulgar tastes. Executor Fried eggs, for example, evaluates the bride solely by her dowry, he is not interested in the spiritual content: “Of course, it would be better if she were smart, but by the way, a fool is also good. There would only be surplus articles in good order. Anuchkin, who has nothing to do with "high society" and does not know French, "absolutely needs" that his future wife "know French." Zhevakin, according to the matchmaker, wants "the bride to be in the body, but does not like fried ones at all." In the face of the indecisive, lazy Podkolesin, who is terribly afraid of life changes, Gogol creates Oblomov's comedic predecessor. The depth of social and psychological generalizations is combined with the sharpest comedy, with grotesque situations (the famous flight of Podkolesin through the window just before the wedding).

“While working on The Marriage,” says I. V. Kartashova, “Gogol did not leave the thought of public comedy. In the "Petersburg Notes" of 1836, in later articles and letters, as well as in "Theatrical Journey", he expresses remarkably deep judgments about dramaturgy and theater. Gogol sharply opposed the entertainment theater, against the empty vaudevilles and "entertaining" melodramas that flooded the Russian stage. Continuing the educational traditions, Gogol develops the “high” idea of the theater, its great importance in the life of society, because from the stage you can speak with the general public, causing it to be disgusted by the ugly and “directing” it to the beautiful and good. Gogol's views on the theater reveal the realism of his aesthetic position. From dramatic works, he requires the truth of life, deep modern content and national form, typical characters. Gogol shows particular interest in social comedy, defining it as "a true list of society moving before us." Comedy is based on laughter. Considering its different types, Gogol develops the theory of "bright", noble laughter, which "deepens the subject, makes something that would slip through come out brightly." Laughter is "perceptive", it reveals the "little things and emptiness" of life, it is born from the realization of its deepest inconsistency with the ideal.

The "high" social comedy "Inspector General" was the link between "Dead Souls" and all the writer's previous work. In it, Gogol wanted to "collect everything bad in Rus' into one heap and laugh at it at once." He believed in the cleansing power of such laughter and prefaced his comedy with an epigraph: “There is nothing to blame on the mirror if the face is crooked.” Folk proverb. Each viewer had to first of all see himself in the mirror of Gogol's laughter and feel in himself the "auditor" - the voice of his own conscience.

The plot of the comedy was given to Gogol by Pushkin. On October 7, 1835, Gogol wrote to him at Mikhailovskoye: “Do yourself a favour, give some kind of plot, at least some kind of funny or not funny, but a purely Russian anecdote. The hand trembles to write ... a comedy. Pushkin told how once in Nizhny Novgorod, on the way to Boldino, he was mistaken for an auditor. For a little over a month, Gogol has been intensively working on The Inspector General and completing the comedy on December 4, 1835.

Without doubting its cleansing influence on souls mired in the mud of sin, Gogol asks Zhukovsky to intercede with the sovereign for the immediate staging of the comedy on the St. Petersburg and Moscow stages. Nicholas I read The Inspector General in the manuscript and approved it.

The premiere of the comedy took place in St. Petersburg on April 19, 1836 on the stage of the Alexandrinsky Theatre. At the same time, its first edition was published. The sovereign himself was present at the performance among many ministers, whom he advised to watch The Inspector General. The premiere was a success. “The general attention of the audience, applause, sincere and unanimous laughter, the challenge of the author ... there was no shortage of anything,” recalled P. A. Vyazemsky. Nicholas I “clapped and laughed a lot, and leaving the box, he said:“ Well, a play! Everyone got it, but I got it more than anyone! ”However, Gogol was deeply disappointed and shocked:“ The Inspector General ”was played - and my heart is so vague, so strange ... I expected, I knew in advance how things would go, and for all that, I feel sad and vexatious and burdensome clothed me. My creation seemed to me disgusting, wild and as if not mine at all.

What caused the disappointment? Firstly, the play of the actors who presented The Inspector General in an exaggeratedly funny way. The heroes of the comedy were portrayed as people irreparably vicious, worthy only of deep ridicule. Gogol's goal was different: “Most of all, you need to be afraid not to fall into a caricature. Nothing should be exaggerated or trivial even in the last roles. Secondly, Gogol was disappointed with the reaction of the audience. Instead of trying on the vices of the characters on themselves and thinking about the need for internal self-purification, the audience perceived everything that happened on the stage from a distance. They laughed at other people's shortcomings and vices.

Gogol's idea was designed for a different perception of comedy. He wanted to touch the soul of the viewer, to make him feel that all the vices presented on the stage are primarily characteristic of himself. Gogol wanted, by his own admission, to direct the viewer's attention not to "reproaching the other, but to contemplating oneself." “In comedy they began to see a desire to ridicule the legal order of things and government forms, while I had the intention to ridicule only the arbitrary retreat of some individuals from the formal and legal order.” Gogol hoped not for the political, but for the spiritual and moral impact of the comedy, believing that its presentation on stage would contribute to the resurrection of the soul of the fallen Russian man. The county town was conceived by him as a "spiritual city", and the officials inhabiting it - as the embodiment of the rampant passions in it. He wanted the appearance of the messenger about the real auditor at the end of the comedy to be perceived by the audience not in a literal, but in a symbolic sense.

Literally understood, the appearance of the auditor at the end of the comedy meant that the action in it returned “to normal”: after all, no one prevents the officials from “playing out” the whole play from the beginning. In this case, the content of the comedy turned into a denunciation of the entire bureaucratic system, its fundamental imperfection, requiring social reforms. Gogol was a resolute opponent of any change of this kind.

It is impossible to fix the world with the help of state audits and external reforms. And the fear that officials experience when they hear about the revision is not a saving fear, because it does not concern the main thing - the conscience in a person, but only encourages officials to cunning and hypocrisy. Therefore, the finale of The Inspector General, together with the silent scene, hinted, according to the author, at the will of Providence, at the inevitability of the Supreme Court and retribution.

The main pathos of Gogol's comedy was not to expose specific abuses, not to criticize bribe-takers and embezzlers of public funds, but to depict a vulgar society that had lost the image of God and plunged into general deception and self-deception. Administrative crimes of officials, from Gogol's point of view, are only a particular manifestation of this disease, which has engulfed not only the main, but also secondary heroes of the comedy.

Why, for example, does Gogol need a non-commissioned officer's widow in The Government Inspector? If she appeared in comedy as a victim of arbitrariness, we would sympathize with her. School teachers often did this, remembering Gogol's love for the "little man." But it is ridiculous because it is busy not about the restoration of justice, not about violated human dignity, but about something else. Like her offenders, she wants to profit from the insult inflicted on her. She morally flogs and humiliates herself.

The genius of universal deception and self-deception is Khlestakov in the comedy. Gogol said of him: “This face must be a type of many, scattered in various Russian characters, but which here is combined by chance in one person, as is very often found in nature. Everyone, even for a minute, if not for a few minutes, was or is being made by Khlestakov ... ”Gogol builds his comedy in such a way that those features that are characteristic of all other heroes of the Inspector General are concentrated in Khlestakov to the maximum. Servant Osip alone knows the truth about the "imaginary" Khlestakov the auditor. But, without realizing it, laughing at Khlestakov, he laughs at himself. Here, for example, Khlestakov's monologue of Osip:

“If only there was money, but life is thin and political: theaters, dogs dance for you, and whatever you want. He speaks everything in a subtle delicacy, which is only inferior to the nobility; you go to Shchukin - the merchants shout to you: “Reverend! “; you will sit in a boat with an official; If you want company, go to the shop... If you are tired of walking, you take a cab and sit like a gentleman, but if you don’t want to pay him, you’re welcome: every house has through gates, and you will scurry about so that no devil will find you.

But doesn’t Ivan Alexandrovich Khlestakov peep out of such, for example, the mayor’s monologues: “After all, why do you want to be a general? - because, it happens, you go somewhere - courier and adjutants will jump forward everywhere: “Horses! “- And there at the stations they won’t give it to anyone, everything is waiting: all these titular, captains, governors, and you don’t even blow your mustache. You dine somewhere with the governor, and there - stop, mayor! Heh, heh, heh! ... That's what, channeling, it's tempting!

Anna Andreevna “whips” in her dreams of life in St. Petersburg: “I just want our house to be the first in the capital and that I have such amber in my room that it would be impossible to enter and you just need to close your eyes that way. (Closes his eyes and sniffs.) Oh, how good! "I'm everywhere, everywhere!" Khlestakov shouts. “Khlestakov“ everywhere ”and in the play itself,” says N. N. Skatov. - Her heroes are drawn together not only by the general attitude towards Khlestakov, but also by Khlestakovism itself. She is a quality that unites almost all the faces of the play, seemingly distant to each other.

Khlestakov is an ideal for all comedy heroes. It embodies a disease characteristic of St. Petersburg society - “unusual lightness in thoughts”, terrifying in its breadth of exchanging a person for everything and everything. According to Gogol's characterization, "Khlestakov is not able to stop constant attention on any thought." And this is a characteristic feature of modern civilization, which has lost its faith and lost its spiritual center that holds the personality together: “Our age is so shallow, our desires are so scattered all over, our knowledge is so encyclopedic that we can’t concentrate on any one subject of our thoughts, and therefore unwillingly we break all our works into trifles and lovely toys.

The spiritual origins of Khlestakovism were not caught and understood by Gogol's contemporaries. The “Khlestakovism” of the heroes of his comedy is by no means a product of social circumstances. The root of Khlestakovism is hidden in a spiritual illness that has struck the upper layer of Russian society and, like an epidemic, is penetrating the people's environment.

Shocked by the failure of The Inspector General, not understood in his best intentions, Gogol leaves Russia in 1836, travels around Western Europe and finds shelter for many years in Rome. He considers his removal from the fatherland to be a kind of retreat into the "seclusion" in order to complete the main work of his life - the poem "Dead Souls". He calls his stay in Italy "artistic and monastic".

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