What the comedy auditor pokes fun at. An essay on the topic: What is Gogol laughing at? in the comedy The Examiner

Dead Souls is Gogol's greatest creation, about which many mysteries still circulate. This poem was conceived by the author in three volumes, but the reader can only see the first, since the third volume, due to illness, was never written, although there were ideas. The original writer wrote the second volume, but just before his death, in a state of agony, he accidentally or deliberately burned the manuscript. Several chapters of this Gogol volume have survived to this day.

Gogol's work has the genre of a poem, which has always been understood as a lyric-epic text, which is written in the form of a poem, but at the same time has a romantic direction. The poem, written by Nikolai Gogol, deviated from these principles, so some writers found the use of the genre of the poem as a mockery of the author, while others decided that the original writer used the technique of hidden irony.

Nikolai Gogol gave such a genre to his new work not for the sake of irony, but in order to give it a deep meaning. It is clear that Gogol's creation embodied irony and a kind of artistic preaching.

For Nikolai Gogol, the main method of depicting landowners and provincial officials is satire. Gogol's images of landowners show the developing process of degradation of this estate, exposing all their vices and shortcomings. The irony helped to tell the author about what was under literary ban and allowed him to bypass all censorship barriers. The laughter of the writer seems kind and good, but after all, there is no mercy from him to anyone. Every phrase in the poem has a hidden connotation.

Irony is present everywhere in Gogol's text: in the author's speech, in the speech of the heroes. Irony is the main feature of Gogol's poetics. It helps the story to reproduce the real picture of reality. Having analyzed the first volume of Dead Souls, one can note a whole gallery of Russian landowners, whose detailed description is given by the author. The main characters, which are described by the author in such detail that it seems that the reader is personally familiar with each of them, are only five.

Gogol's five landlord characters are described by the author in such a way that they seem different, but if you read their portraits more deeply, you will notice that each of them has the features that are characteristic of all landowners in Russia.

The reader begins his acquaintance with the Gogol landowners from Manilov and ends with a description of the colorful image of Plyushkin. Such a description has its own logic, since the author smoothly transfers the reader from one landowner to another in order to gradually show that terrible picture of the feudal world, which is rotting and its decay occurs. Nikolai Gogol leads from Manilov, who, according to the author's description, appears before the reader as a dreamer, whose life passes without a trace, smoothly passing to Nastasya Korobochka. The author himself calls her "club-headed".

This landlord's gallery is continued by Nozdryov, who appears in the author's image as a card sharper, a liar and a moto. The next landowner is Sobakevich, who is trying to use everything for his own good, he is economic and calculating. The result of this moral decay of society is Plyushkin, who, according to Gogol's description, looks like a "hole in humanity." The story about the landowners in such an author's sequence reinforces the satire, which is designed to expose the vices of the landowners' world.

But the landowner's gallery does not end there, since the author also describes the officials of the city he visited. They have no development, their inner world is at rest. The main vices of the bureaucratic world are meanness, honor, bribery, ignorance and arbitrariness of the authorities.

Along with Gogol's satire, which denounces Russian landlord life, the author introduces an element of glorification of the Russian land. Lyrical digressions show the author's sadness that some segment of the path has been passed. This raises the theme of regret and hope for the future. Therefore, these lyrical digressions occupy a special and important place in Gogol's work. Nikolai Gogol thinks about many things: about the high purpose of a person, about the fate of the people and the Motherland. But these reflections are contrasted with pictures of Russian life, which oppress a person. They are gloomy and dark.

The image of Russia is a lofty lyrical movement that evokes a variety of feelings in the author: sadness, love and admiration. Gogol shows that Russia is not only landowners and officials, but also the Russian people with their open soul, which he showed in the unusual image of a troika of horses that rushes forward quickly and without stopping. This troika contains the main strength of the native land.

My heart hurts when I see how people are deluded. They talk about virtue, about God, but meanwhile they do nothing. From a letter from Gogol to his mother. 1833 "The Inspector General" - the best Russian comedy. And in reading, and in staging on stage, she is always interesting. Therefore, in general, it is difficult to talk about any failure of the "Inspector". But, on the other hand, it is also difficult to create a real Gogol performance, to make those sitting in the hall laugh with a bitter Gogol laugh. As a rule, something fundamental, deep, on which the whole meaning of the play is based, escapes from the actor or spectator. The premiere of the comedy, which took place on April 19, 1836 on the stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, was a tremendous success, according to contemporaries. The mayor was played by Ivan Sosnitsky, Khlestakov Nikolai Dyur - the best actors of that time. "The general attention of the audience, applause, sincere and unanimous laughter, the challenge of the author ..." recalled Prince Pyotr Andreevich Vyazemsky, "there was no shortage of anything." At the same time, even the most ardent admirers of Gogol did not fully understand the meaning and significance of the comedy; the majority of the public took it as a farce. Many saw in the play a caricature of the Russian bureaucracy, and in its author - a rebel. According to Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov, there were people who hated Gogol from the moment The Inspector General appeared. Thus, Count Fyodor Ivanovich Tolstoy (nicknamed the American) said in a crowded meeting that Gogol was "an enemy of Russia and that he should be sent to Siberia in shackles." Censor Alexander Vasilyevich Nikitenko wrote in his diary on April 28, 1836: "Gogol's comedy" The Inspector General "made a lot of noise ... Many believe that the government in vain approves of this play, in which it is so cruelly condemned." Meanwhile, it is reliably known that comedy was allowed to be staged on stage (and, therefore, to print) at the highest resolution. Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich read the comedy in manuscript and approved it. On April 29, 1836, Gogol wrote to Mikhail Semyonovich Shchepkin: "If it had not been for the high intercession of the Tsar, my play would never have been on the stage, and there were already people who were trying to ban it." The Sovereign Emperor not only attended the premiere himself, but also ordered the ministers to watch The Inspector General. During the performance, he clapped and laughed a lot, and leaving the box, he said: “Well, a play! Everyone got it, but I got it more than everyone else! " Gogol hoped to meet the support of the tsar and was not mistaken. Soon after the staging of the comedy, he answered his ill-wishers in the "Theatrical passing": "The generous government, deeper than you, saw the purpose of the writer with a high mind." A striking contrast to the seemingly undoubted success of the play is Gogol's bitter confession: “The Inspector General” is played - and in my heart it is so vague, so strange ... the painful clothed me. My creation seemed to me disgusting, wild and as if not mine at all "(Excerpt from a letter written by the author shortly after the first presentation of the" Inspector "to a writer). Gogol was, it seems, the only one who perceived the first production of The Inspector General as a failure. What is the matter here that did not satisfy him? This was partly due to the discrepancy between the old vaudeville techniques in the design of the performance, to the completely new spirit of the play, which did not fit into the framework of an ordinary comedy. Gogol insistently warned: “One must fear most of all in order not to fall into caricature. Nothing should be exaggerated or trivial, even in the last roles "(A warning for those who would like to play the" Inspector "properly). Creating images of Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, Gogol imagined them "in the skin" (in his words) Shchepkin and Vasily Ryazantsev - famous comic actors of that era. In the play, in his words, "it was just a caricature that came out." “Before the start of the show,” he shares his impressions, “seeing them in costume, I gasped. These two little men, in their essence rather neat, plump, with decently smoothed hair, found themselves in some kind of awkward, tall gray wigs, tousled, unkempt, disheveled, with huge bibs pulled out; but on the stage they turned out to be antics to such an extent that it was simply unbearable. " Meanwhile, the main setting of Gogol is the complete naturalness of the characters and the credibility of what is happening on the stage. “The less an actor thinks about making laugh and being funny, the more the funny will be revealed in the role he has taken. The funny will reveal itself by itself precisely in the seriousness with which each of the persons depicted in the comedy is busy with his own business. " An example of such a "natural" manner of performance is the reading of The Inspector General by Gogol himself. Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, who was once present at such a reading, says: “Gogol ... struck me with the extraordinary simplicity and restraint of his manner, with some important and at the same time naive sincerity, which, as if it doesn’t matter, whether there are listeners here and what they think. It seemed that Gogol only cared about how to penetrate into an object that was new to him, and how to more accurately convey his own impression. The effect was extraordinary - especially in comic, humorous places; there was no way not to laugh - a good, healthy laugh; and the culprit of all this amusement continued, without being embarrassed by the general gaiety and as if inwardly amazed at it, to plunge more and more into the matter itself - and only occasionally, on the lips and near the eyes, the master's sly smile trembled faintly. With what bewilderment, with what amazement Gogol uttered the famous phrase of the Governor about two rats (at the very beginning of the play): "Come, smell it and go away!" - He even slowly looked around us, as if asking for an explanation of such an amazing incident. It was only then that I realized how wrong it is, superficially, with what desire to make fun of it as soon as possible - The Inspector General is usually played out on the stage. During the work on the play, Gogol mercilessly expelled from it all elements of external comic. Gogol's laugh is a contrast between what the hero says and how he says it. In the first act, Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky argue over which of them should start telling the news. This comic scene shouldn't only make you laugh. It is very important for the heroes who exactly will tell. Their whole life is to spread all kinds of gossip and rumors. And suddenly two of them got the same news. This is a tragedy. They argue over the case. Bobchinsky must be told everything, not to miss anything. Otherwise, Dobchinsky will complement. Why - let us ask again - was Gogol dissatisfied with the premiere? The main reason was not even the farcical nature of the performance - the desire to make the audience laugh, but the fact that with the caricatured manner of acting the actors in the audience perceived what was happening on the stage without applying to themselves, since the characters were exaggeratedly funny. Meanwhile, Gogol's plan was designed for just the opposite perception: to involve the viewer in the play, to make it feel that the city indicated in the comedy does not exist somewhere, but to one degree or another anywhere in Russia, and the passions and vices of officials are in the soul of each of us. Gogol addresses everyone and everyone. This is the enormous social significance of the "Inspector". This is the meaning of the famous remark of the Governor: “Why are you laughing? You are laughing at yourself! " - facing the audience (specifically to the audience, since no one is laughing on the stage at this time). This is indicated by the epigraph: "There is no reason to blame the mirror if the face is crooked." In a kind of theatrical commentary on the play - "Theatrical passing" and "The Inspector General's Denouement" - where the audience and the actors discuss the comedy, Gogol seeks to destroy the invisible wall separating the stage and the auditorium. Regarding the epigraph, which appeared later, in the 1842 edition, let us say that this popular proverb means the Gospel under the mirror, which Gogol's contemporaries who spiritually belonged to the Orthodox Church knew very well and could even reinforce the understanding of this proverb, for example, the famous fable of Krylov “ Mirror and Monkey ". Here the Monkey, looking in the mirror, turns to the Bear: “Look,” he says, “my dear godfather! What kind of mug is that? What grimaces and jumps she has! I would have strangled myself with melancholy, If only a little was like her. But, admit, there are five or six of my gossips such antics; I can even count them on my fingers. " - "What should be considered as gossips to work, Isn't it better to turn to yourself, godfather?" - Mishka answered her. But Mishenka’s advice was wasted. Bishop Barnabas (Belyaev) in his major work "Foundations of the Art of Holiness" (1920s) connects the meaning of this fable with attacks on the Gospel, and this (among others) was Krylov's meaning. The spiritual concept of the Gospel as a mirror has long and firmly existed in the Orthodox consciousness. For example, St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, one of Gogol's favorite writers, whose works he read repeatedly, says: “Christians! that the children of this world are a mirror, that let the Gospel and the immaculate life of Christ be to us. They look in the mirrors and correct their bodies and cleanse the vices on their faces ... Let's offer a clean mirror in front of our soulful eyes and look into that: is our life consistent with the life of Christ? " The holy righteous John of Kronstadt in his diaries published under the title "My Life in Christ" remarks "to those who do not read the Gospel": "Are you pure, holy and perfect, without reading the Gospel, and you do not need to look into this mirror?" Or are you very ugly mentally and are afraid of your ugliness? .. "In Gogol's extracts from the holy fathers and teachers of the Church, we find the entry:" Those who want to cleanse and whiten their face, usually look in the mirror. Christian! Your mirror is the essence of the Lord's commandments; if you put them in front of you and look at them intently, then they will reveal to you all the spots, all the blackness, all the ugliness of your soul. " It is noteworthy that in his letters Gogol also referred to this image. So, on December 20 (New Style), 1844, he wrote to Mikhail Petrovich Pogodin from Frankfurt: "... always keep on your table a book that would serve you as a spiritual mirror"; and a week later - to Alexandra Osipovna Smirnova: “Look also at yourself. For this, have a spiritual mirror on the table, that is, some book that your soul can look into ... ”As you know, a Christian will be judged according to the Gospel law. In "The Inspector General's Denouement" Gogol puts into the mouth of the First Comic Actor the idea that on the day of the Last Judgment we will all find ourselves with "crooked faces": And the best of us, do not forget this, they will lower their eyes from shame to the ground, and we will see if any of us will then have the spirit to ask: “But do I have a crooked face? ". It is known that Gogol never parted with the Gospel. “Above that, one cannot invent what is already in the Gospel,” he said. "How many times has humanity recoiled from him and how many times it has been converted." It is impossible, of course, to create some other "mirror" like the Gospel. But just as every Christian is obliged to live according to the Gospel commandments, imitating Christ (to the extent of his human strength), so Gogol the playwright, to the best of his talent, arranges his mirror on the stage. Any of the spectators could be the Krylov Monkey. However, it turned out that this viewer saw "gossips ... five or six", but not himself. Gogol later said the same in his address to readers in Dead Souls: "You will even laugh heartily at Chichikov, maybe even praise the author ... And you add:" But I must agree, there are strange and ridiculous people in some provinces , and besides, they are not insignificant scoundrels! " And who of you, full of Christian humility ... will deepen this difficult inquiry into your own soul: "Isn't there any part of Chichikov in me too?" Yes, no matter how it is! " The Governor's replica, which appeared, like the epigraph, in 1842, also has its parallel in Dead Souls. In the tenth chapter, reflecting on the mistakes and delusions of all mankind, the author notes: “Now the current generation sees everything clearly, marvels at the delusions, laughs at the foolishness of their ancestors, not in vain that ... a piercing finger is directed at him from everywhere, at the current generation; but the current generation laughs and presumptuously, proudly begins a series of new delusions, which the descendants will also laugh at later. " In The Inspector General, Gogol made his contemporaries laugh at what they were used to and what they had ceased to notice. But most importantly, they are accustomed to carelessness in spiritual life. The audience laughs at the heroes who die spiritually. Let us turn to examples from the play that show such a death. The governor sincerely believes that “there is no person who does not have any sins behind him. This is already so arranged by God Himself, and the Volterians are in vain to speak against it. " To which the judge Ammos Fedorovich Lyapkin-Tyapkin objects: “What do you think, Anton Antonovich, are sins? Sin to sin - strife. I tell everyone openly that I take bribes, but why bribes? Greyhound puppies. This is a completely different matter. " The judge is sure that bribes as greyhound puppies and bribes cannot be considered, "but, for example, if someone has a fur coat worth five hundred rubles, and a shawl for his wife ..." you never go to church; and at least I am firm in the faith, and every Sunday I go to church. And you ... Oh, I know you: if you start talking about the creation of the world, your hair just stands on end. " To which Ammos Fedorovich replies: "Why, he came by himself, with his own mind." Gogol is the best commentator of his works. In the "Warning ..." he remarks about the Judge: "He is not even a hunter to do lies, but he has a great passion for hunting dogs ... He is busy with himself and his mind, and is an atheist only because in this field there is room for him to show himself." The governor believes that he is firm in the faith; the more sincerely he expresses this, the funnier it is. Going to Khlestakov, he gives orders to his subordinates: “But if they ask why a church was not built at a charitable institution, for which a sum was allocated five years ago, then do not forget to say that construction began, but it burned down. I presented a report on this. And then, perhaps, someone, having forgotten, will foolishly say that it never began. " Explaining the image of the Governor, Gogol says: “He feels that he is sinful; he goes to church, even thinks that he is firm in the faith, even thinks of repenting sometime later. But the temptation of everything that floats into the hands is great, and the blessings of life are tempting, and grabbing everything, without missing anything, has become with him, as it were, just a habit. " And so, going to the imaginary auditor, the Governor laments: “Sinful, sinful in many respects ... Give only, God, to get away with it as soon as possible, and there I’ll put a candle like that, which no one else has put: I will put on every beast of a merchant deliver three pounds of wax each ”. We see that the Governor has found himself, as it were, in a vicious circle of his sinfulness: in his repentant reflections, unnoticed by him, sprouts of new sins arise (the merchants will pay for the candle, not he). Just as the Governor does not feel the sinfulness of his actions, because he does everything according to an old habit, so do the other heroes of The Inspector General. For example, postmaster Ivan Kuzmich Shpekin opens other people's letters solely out of curiosity: “I love death to learn what is new in the world. I can tell you that this is the most interesting reading. You will read another letter with pleasure - this is how different passages are described ... and what edification is ... better than in Moskovskiye Vedomosti! " The judge remarks to him: "Look, you will get it someday for this." Shpekin exclaims with childish naivete: "Oh, priests!" It never occurs to him that he is engaged in an illegal business. Gogol explains: “The postmaster is an ingenuous to the point of naivety, who looks at life as a collection of interesting stories to pass the time, which he reads in printed letters. There is nothing left for the actor to do, how to be as simple-minded as possible. " The innocence, curiosity, the habitual doing of any untruth, the freethinking of officials when Khlestakov appears, that is, according to their concepts, an auditor, are suddenly replaced for a moment by an attack of fear inherent in criminals awaiting severe retribution. The same inveterate freethinker Ammos Fedorovich Lyapkin-Tyapkin, being in front of Khlestakov, says to himself: “Lord God! I don’t know where I’m sitting. Like hot coals under you. " And the Governor, in the same position, asks for pardon: “Do not ruin! Wife, small children ... do not make a person unhappy. " And further: “Out of inexperience, by God, out of inexperience. Insufficiency of the state ... You can judge for yourself: the state salary is not even enough for tea and sugar. " Gogol was especially dissatisfied with the way Khlestakov was played. “The main role is gone,” he writes, “as I thought. Dyur didn’t even understand what Khlestakov was. ” Khlestakov is not just a dreamer. He himself does not know what he is saying and what he will say in the next moment. As if someone sitting in him speaks for him, tempting all the characters in the play through him. Isn't this the very father of lies, that is, the devil? It seems that this is exactly what Gogol had in mind. The heroes of the play, in response to these temptations, without noticing it, reveal themselves in all their sinfulness. Tempted by the crafty Khlestakov himself, as it were, acquires the features of a demon. On May 16 (New Style), 1844, Gogol wrote to Aksakov: “All this your excitement and mental struggle is nothing more than the work of our common friend, everyone knows, namely, devil. But do not lose sight of the fact that he is a clicker and all consists of inflating ... You beat this brute in the face and do not be embarrassed by anything. He is like a petty official who has climbed into the city as if for an investigation. The dust will start up for everyone, print out, scream. One has only to chicken out a little and move back - then he will go to be brave. And as soon as you step on him, he will also hold his tail. We ourselves make a giant out of him ... A proverb is never a gift, but a proverb says: The devil boasted to take possession of the whole world, but God did not give him power over the pig either. " This is how Ivan Aleksandrovich Khlestakov is seen in this description. The heroes of the play more and more feel a sense of fear, as evidenced by the replicas and author's remarks (stretching out and trembling all over). This fear, as it were, spreads to the audience. After all, there were those in the hall who were afraid of auditors, but only the real ones - the sovereigns. Meanwhile, Gogol, knowing this, called them, in general, Christians, to the fear of God, to the cleansing of their conscience, which would not fear any inspector, but even the Last Judgment. Officials, as if blinded by fear, cannot see Khlestakov's real face. They always look at their feet, and not at the sky. In The Rule of Living in the World, Gogol explained the reason for this fear: “… everything is exaggerated in our eyes and frightens us. Because we keep our eyes down and do not want to raise them up. For if they lifted them up for a few minutes, then they would see from above all only God and the light emanating from Him, illuminating everything in its present form, and then they would laugh at their own blindness. " The main idea of ​​the "Inspector General" is the idea of ​​the inevitable spiritual retribution that every person should expect. Gogol, dissatisfied with the way The Inspector General is staged on the stage and how the audience perceives it, tried to reveal this idea in The Inspector General's Denouement. “Look closely at this city, which is shown in the play! - says Gogol through the mouth of the First Comic Actor. - Everyone agrees that there is no such city in all of Russia ... Well, what if this is our spiritual city and it sits with each of us? .. Say what you like, but the inspector who is waiting for us at the door of the coffin is terrible ... As if you don't know who this auditor is? What to pretend? This inspector is our awakened conscience, which will make us suddenly and at once look with all eyes at ourselves. Nothing will hide before this auditor, because according to the Named Supreme Command, he was sent and will announce him when it will not be possible to take a step back. Suddenly, before you, in you, such a monster will open up that a hair will rise from horror. It is better to revise everything that is in us, at the beginning of life, and not at the end of it. " We are talking here about the Last Judgment. And now the final scene of The Inspector General becomes clear. It is a symbolic picture of the Last Judgment. The appearance of the gendarme, announcing the arrival of the present inspector from St. Petersburg "by name", has a stunning effect on the heroes of the play. Gogol's remark: “The spoken words strike everyone with a thunderbolt. The sound of amazement unanimously flies out of the ladies' lips; the whole group, having suddenly changed the position, remains petrified. " Gogol attached exceptional importance to this "silent scene". He defines its duration at one and a half minutes, and in "An excerpt from a letter ..." he even speaks of two or three minutes of "petrification" of the heroes. Each of the characters with the whole figure, as it were, shows that he can no longer change anything in his fate, move at least a finger - he is in front of the Judge. According to Gogol's plan, at this moment in the hall there should be a silence of general reflection. In The Denouement, Gogol did not offer a new interpretation of The Inspector General, as is sometimes thought, but only laid bare his main idea. On November 2 (New Style) 1846 he wrote to Ivan Sosnitsky from Nice: “Pay your attention to the last scene of The Inspector General. Think it over, think it over again. From the final play, The Inspector General's Denouement, you will understand why I care so much about this last scene and why it is so important to me that it has its full effect. I am sure that you yourself will look at the Inspector General with different eyes after this conclusion, which, for many reasons, could not have been given to me then and only now is possible. " It follows from these words that "The Denouement" did not attach new meaning to the "silent scene", but only clarified its meaning. Indeed, at the time of the creation of The Inspector General in the Petersburg Notes of 1836, Gogol's lines appear directly preceding The End: “Great Lent is calm and formidable. A voice seems to be heard: “Stop, Christian; look back at your life. " However, Gogol's interpretation of the county town as a "spiritual city" and its officials as the embodiment of the passions raging in it, made in the spirit of the patristic tradition, was a surprise to contemporaries and aroused rejection. Shchepkin, who was intended to play the role of the First Comic Actor, after reading a new play, refused to play in it. On May 22, 1847, he wrote to Gogol: “... until now I have studied all the heroes of The Inspector General as living people ... Do not give me any hints that these are not officials, but our passions; no, I don’t want such a remake: these are people, real living people, between whom I grew up and almost grew old ... you want to take them away from me. " Meanwhile, Gogol's intention did not at all imply that “living people” - full-blooded artistic images - were made into some kind of allegory. The author only laid bare the main idea of ​​the comedy, without which it looks like a simple denunciation of morals. "Inspector" - "Inspector", - Gogol answered Shchepkin around July 10 (New Style) 1847, - and applying to oneself is an indispensable thing that every spectator must do with everything, not even the "Inspector", but which is more appropriate for him to do about the "Inspector". In the second revision of the end of The Denouement, Gogol explains his idea. Here, the First Comic Actor (Michal Mikhalch), when one of the heroes doubts that the interpretation of the play proposed by him meets the author's intention, says: “The author, even if he had this thought, would have acted badly if he had revealed it clearly ... The comedy would then have strayed into an allegory, some pale moral sermon might have emerged from it. No, his job was to portray just the horror of the material riots not in an ideal city, but in the one that is on earth ... His job is to portray this dark so strongly that they feel everything that needs to be fought with it, so that the viewer is thrown into awe - and horror from the riots would have permeated him through everything. Here's what he had to do. And this is our business to deduce moralizing. Thank God we are not children. I thought about what moralizing I can deduce for myself, and attacked the one that I have now told you. " And then to the questions of those around him, why was he the only one who deduced moral teachings that were so distant in their concepts, Michal Mihalch replies: “First, why do you know that I was the only one who brought this morality? And secondly, why do you consider it distant? I think, on the contrary, our own soul is closest to us. At that time I had my soul in my mind, I thought about myself, that's why I brought out this moral teaching. If others had in mind before themselves, probably, they would have deduced the same moral teaching that I deduced. But does each of us approach the work of a writer, like a bee to a flower, then, in order to extract from it what we need? No, we are looking in everything for moralizing for others, not for ourselves. We are ready to stand up and defend the whole society, cherishing the morality of others with care and forgetting about ours. After all, we love to laugh at others, and not at ourselves ... ”It is impossible not to notice that these reflections of the main character of the“ Denouement ”not only do not contradict the content of the“ Inspector General ”, but exactly correspond to it. Moreover, the thoughts expressed here are organic for the entire work of Gogol. The idea of ​​the Last Judgment was to be developed in Dead Souls, as it follows from the content of the poem. One of the rough sketches (obviously for the third volume) directly draws a picture of the Last Judgment: "" Why did you not remember about Me, that I am looking at you, that I am yours? Why did you expect rewards and attention and encouragement from people and not from Me? What then would it be for you to pay attention to how an earthly landowner will spend your money when you have a heavenly landowner? Who knows what would have ended if you had reached the end without fear? You would have surprised you with the greatness of your character, you would have finally got the upper hand and made you wonder; you would leave your name, as an eternal monument of valor, and shed streams of tears, streams of tears about you, and like a whirlwind you would wave a flame of goodness in your hearts. " The steward dropped his head, ashamed, and did not know where to go. And after him many officials and noble, wonderful people, who began to serve and then abandoned the field, sadly bowed their heads. In conclusion, let us say that the theme of the Last Judgment permeates all of Gogol's work, which corresponded to his spiritual life, his desire for monasticism. And a monk is a person who has left the world, preparing himself for an answer at the Judgment Seat of Christ. Gogol remained a writer and, as it were, a monk in the world. In his writings, he shows that it is not a person who is bad, but sin acting in him. The same has always been affirmed by Orthodox monasticism. Gogol believed in the power of the artistic word, which could indicate the path to moral rebirth. It was with this faith that he created The Inspector General.

"Gogol believed in miracles, in mysterious events"

Surrounded by controversy during his lifetime, Gogol's work still causes controversy among literary scholars, historians, philosophers, and art workers. In the anniversary year of 2009, the Complete Works and Letters of Gogol in seventeen volumes, unprecedented in volume, were published. It includes all of Gogol's artistic, critical, journalistic, spiritual and moral works, as well as notebooks, materials on folklore, ethnography, extracts from the works of the holy fathers, and extensive correspondence, including replies from the addressees. We talked about the legacy of Gogol, the mysteries of his personality and work with one of the compilers of the publication, a professor at Moscow State University, chairman of the Gogol Commission at the Scientific Council of the Russian Academy of Sciences "History of World Culture" Vladimir Voropaev. Culture: How did you manage to carry out this project - a 17-volume collection of works and letters? Voropaev: On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the writer, it turned out that the complete collection was never published: the last fourteen-volume edition was published in the early 1950s, and naturally, the Soviet censorship did not miss much then. I went to various authorities, but no one took up this business - after all, the project is not commercial. Igor Zolotussky, the late Savva Yamshchikov - members of the Committee for the celebration of the 200th anniversary of Gogol - appealed to our ministers of culture, first to Alexander Sokolov, then to Alexander Avdeev. But there was no point. Finally, Hieromonk Simeon (Tomachinsky), director of the publishing house of the Sretensky Monastery, a candidate of philological sciences - by the way, from my university Gogol seminar, got down to business. He acted as the coordinator of a joint Russian-Ukrainian project. There were also sponsors in Ukraine. Voropaev: The publication was published with the blessing of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia and His Beatitude Metropolitan of Kiev and All Ukraine Vladimir. The blessing came when I was touring Gogol's places: Nizhyn, Poltava, Mirgorod, Vasilievka ... Igor Vinogradov and I, my student, now a famous literary scholar, Doctor of Philology, and I got down to business. We slept a little, worked a lot ... A significant body of texts was printed from manuscripts. Among them are Taras Bulba, Old World Landowners, individual chapters of Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends, rough sketches of the second volume of Dead Souls, and much more. For the first time, folk songs (Russian and Little Russian) collected by Gogol were printed using autographs. Our publication is not academic (there is no set of options for different editions), but complete. Moreover, we strove for maximum completeness: not only all editions of Gogol's works were taken into account, but even receipts to bankers, homeowners, album records, dedicatory inscriptions on books, notes and notes on the Bible owned by Gogol, and so on, and so on. All volumes are accompanied by comments and accompanying articles. Illustrated edition. Gogol's herbarium was first printed here. Few people know that Nikolai Vasilievich was fond of botany. For example, here is his entry in the margins: “Gorse. When the mad dog bites. " Culture: No matter how much we study Gogol, ideas about him seem one-sided. Some consider him a mystic, others - a writer of everyday life. Who do you think he really is? Voropaev: Gogol does not fit into any of the definitions, he is the whole Universe. Was he a mystic? This question is often asked. Gogol was a mystic in the Orthodox sense of the word. He believed in miracles - without this there is no faith. But miracles are not fabulous, not fantastic stories, but mysterious and great events created by God. However, Gogol was not a mystic in the sense of ascribing to himself unjustified spiritual merits, such that it seems that God communicates with him every minute, that he has prophetic dreams, visions ... None of Gogol's letters contain a trace of mystical exaltation. By his own admission, many misunderstandings arose from the fact that he too early began to talk about what was clear to him and what he could not express with dark speeches ... culture: But what about ghouls, devils, "Viy" and "Terrible revenge "? Voropaev: Yes, in "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka" there is devilry, but here the meaning is different. Remember, when Vakula the blacksmith runs to drown himself, who is behind him? Demon. He is also happy to push a person to a nasty action. All of Gogol's early works are spiritually edifying: this is not just a collection of funny stories in the spirit of the people, but also an extensive religious teaching, in which the struggle between good and evil takes place and good invariably triumphs, and sinners are punished. Culture: Didn't Gogol like to remember the evil one? "The devil knows what it is!" - one of the most frequent sayings of his heroes. Voropaev: Yes, Gogol's heroes often curse. I remember that once many years ago, Vladyka Pitirim, who at that time headed the Publishing Department of the Moscow Patriarchate, in a conversation about Gogol, noticed that he had the ability to flirt carelessly with evil spirits and that he, apparently, did not quite feel the danger of such a game. Be that as it may, Gogol went ahead, did not stop in his spiritual development. In "Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends" one of the chapters is called "The Christian Goes Forward." culture: But, probably, it is also just a means of speech characterization of heroes? Voropaev: Of course, this too. culture: Gogol received a lot of punches during his lifetime for creating ideal heroes, for inventing certain utopias. He was blamed for "Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends", for "The Denouement of the Inspector General," for the second volume of "Dead Souls". Voropaev: In my opinion, Gogol did not create any utopias. As for the chapters of the second volume of Dead Souls that have come down to us, there are no “ideal” characters in them. Yes, and Gogol did not intend to make Chichikov a "virtuous man." In all likelihood, the author wanted to lead his hero through the crucible of trials and sufferings, as a result of which he had to realize the unrighteousness of his path. With this inner upheaval, from which Chichikov would have emerged as a different person, Dead Souls should apparently have ended. By the way, even Nabokov, being an opponent of Gogol's Christian ideas, believed that the heroes of the second volume were in no way inferior to the heroes of the first in artistic terms. So Chernyshevsky, who also never shared Gogol's convictions, said, for example, that the speech of the Governor-General from the second volume was the best of everything that Gogol wrote. “Selected passages from correspondence with friends” is a separate topic. What is the reason for their rejection by the public? A man in a tailcoat, not a cassock, started talking about spiritual matters! Gogol, as it were, deceived the expectations of his former readers. He expressed his views on faith, the Church, tsarist power, Russia, the word of the writer. Gogol pointed out two conditions without which no good transformation in Russia is possible. First of all, you need to love Russia. But what does it mean to love Russia? The writer explains: those who wish to truly honestly serve Russia need to have a lot of love for her, which would have swallowed up all other feelings - you need to have a lot of love for a person in general and become a true Christian in all the sense of the word. Second, no transformation can be done without the blessing of the Church. Note that this was a secular writer speaking. All questions of life - everyday, social, state, literary - have a religious and moral meaning for Gogol. Culture: Meanwhile, in The Inspector General or in Dead Souls such a mercilessly critical, devastatingly negative picture of Russian life is given that, if Gogol were our contemporary, he would have been accused of “chernukha”. Voropaev: This is only the upper layer. Gogol, for example, was very dissatisfied with the production of The Inspector General on stage. He did not like the caricatured roles, the desire of the actors to make the audience laugh at all costs. He wanted people not to look at monsters, but to see themselves, as in a mirror. Gogol explained the deep moral and didactic meaning of the comedy in The Denouement of The Inspector General: "... the inspector who is waiting for us at the door of the coffin is terrible." The main idea of ​​the "Inspector General" is the idea of ​​the inevitable spiritual retribution that awaits every person. This idea is also expressed in the final "silent scene", which is an allegorical picture of the Last Judgment. Each of the characters with the whole figure, as it were, shows that he can no longer change anything in his fate, move at least a finger - he is in front of the Judge. According to Gogol's plan, at this moment in the hall there should be a silence of general reflection. The main creation of Gogol, the poem "Dead Souls", has the same deep subtext. On the external level, it is a series of satirical and everyday characters and situations, while in its final form the book was supposed to show the way to the rebirth of the soul of a fallen person. The spiritual meaning of the plan was revealed by Gogol in his death record: “Be not dead, but living souls. There is no other door besides the one indicated by Jesus Christ ... ”culture: The so-called Gogol's depression has been discussed many times in literary criticism. Some suspected that the writer was sick with schizophrenia, while others were inclined to think that he had too delicate and vulnerable mental organization. Voropaev: There is a lot of indisputable evidence that the writer considered his bodily and mental ailments sent down from above and accepted them with humility. It is known that Gogol died in a state of spiritual enlightenment and his last words, spoken in full consciousness, were: "How sweet it is to die!" Culture: But what about the fact that he has not gone to bed in recent days? They said that from childhood he was afraid of the Last Judgment and during the period of his dying illness, this fear intensified. Voropaev: Do you mean that he slept while sitting in an armchair? There is, I suppose, another reason. Not the one that Gogol sat in armchairs for fear of dying in bed. Rather, it was in some way an imitation of the monastic custom of spending a night's rest not on a bed, but on a chair, that is, sitting in general. This is what Gogol did before, for example, when he was in Rome. Testimonies of contemporaries have been preserved about this. Culture: And yet there is something mystical even in Gogol's "life after death." All these stories with the burial alive, with the skull that disappeared from the coffin ... What do you think about this? Voropaev: Since 1931, when the remains of the writer were moved to the Novodevichy cemetery, the most incredible rumors have spread. For example, that Gogol was buried alive. This rumor is partly based on the words from Gogol's will, published in the book Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends: “I will not bury my body until there are clear signs of decomposition. I mention this because even during the illness itself they found moments of vital numbness on me, my heart and pulse stopped beating ... ”The fears were not justified. After his death, the body of the writer was examined by experienced doctors who could not make such a gross mistake. In addition, Gogol was buried. Meanwhile, not a single case is known of a person returning to life after a church funeral. This is impossible for spiritual reasons. For those who find this argument unconvincing, we can cite the testimony of the sculptor Nikolai Ramazanov, who removed the death mask from Gogol. In general, in this story with the reburial of the writer's remains, there are many strange and unclear things. There is not even complete certainty that the grave was found and Gogol's ashes were actually transferred to the cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent. Whether this is so, we do not know. But why bother digging?

"Gogol can do anything, and preach too."

Part 1

Interview with the Chairman of the Gogol Commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor of Moscow State University Vladimir Alekseevich Voropaev.

A chivalric novel about a religious war

- Vladimir Alekseevich, what work of Gogol do you read when you want to relax, for the soul? - None. - And at the moment? - Now there are so many worries ... - What is your favorite work of Gogol? - Everything is excellent with Gogol, everything is classic, there is no one favorite. - And what was Gogol's first work? - In my opinion, the story "Overcoat". There was such a Soviet film, I watched it several times. And when the words were spoken: "And the greatcoat is mine!", I climbed under the blanket and was very worried. I have always felt very sorry for Akaki Akakievich. - Recently the film "Taras Bulba" was released. How do you rate it? - More likely positive than even neutral. The film is useful. True, it is made in a Hollywood manner, so colorful, and it seems to me that he arouses interest in Gogol, although there are some plot points that Gogol does not have. And it is clear why they were made by the director: to explain the motives of Taras Bulba's actions and the war in general. Gogol describes a religious war. And here the director is trying to give a certain personal character to the actions and actions of many Cossacks, in particular Taras Bulba. If you remember, Gogol has no moment connected with the death of his wife. And here the death of his wife, killed by the Poles, is shown, and Taras Bulba seems to have another motive for revenge. - Yes, it is hardly possible to believe that the Cossacks, people for whom fighting was a profession, fleeing from the Poles, carried with them tens of kilometers the corpse of a woman ... - Yes, this moment is implausible and does not give anything for understanding. Or, for example, the storyline of the love of Andriy, the son of Taras Bulba, to the beautiful Polish woman. In Gogol, this love is described in a completely different way: one of the sources of this episode is the book of Esther (Gogol knew the Bible well), and the relationship of the heroes is interpreted exactly as a temptation. And in the film they have a child, it turns out that this is already love, a blessing from God. But for Gogol it is still a temptation, temptation and treason, betrayal. - Your anniversary report says that "Taras Bulba" is in some way a chivalric romance. And where is the ideal in him, for the sake of which, apparently, the director made the film, for the sake of which Gogol wrote this work? - Many are confused by the Cossacks. They are treated as hawkers, drunkards, murderers. With Gogol, of course, this is not the case. The feat of the Cossacks lies in the fact that they give their souls for their friends, they fight for the faith and for the Motherland, for the Fatherland. And this is the sacredness of their feat, although they are not at all ideal heroes. And Taras Bulba is not the best representative of the Cossacks, but his most characteristic, typical representative. He is the same sinner as everyone else, but he gives his life and soul for his friends. This is both his feat and the feat of other Cossacks. In general, the central question raised by Gogol in Taras Bulba - this is evident from his rough notes and extracts from the Holy Fathers of the Church - is it possible to defend the sacred things of faith by force of arms? Remember Ivan Ilyin, his famous book "On Resisting Evil by Force"? This is a very important question, a historical, philosophical and theological question. It is precisely this that Gogol raises and reflects on. Extracts from the works of the Holy Fathers also speak of this. Some say that it is impermissible to kill a Christian, that the sword is primarily a spiritual sword, it is vigilance, fasting. Other extracts say that although it is impermissible to kill a Christian, it is permissible to kill on the battlefield and worthy of praise. Gogol follows this path. In the book "Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends" he cites as an example St. Sergius of Radonezh, who blessed the monks for the battle with the Tatars. They took up swords in their hands, as Gogol writes, contrary to a Christian. For Bulba, this issue was resolved. The duty of a Christian is to defend his homeland, family, and faith. There is nothing in common with non-resistance to evil by violence in Christianity, this is Tolstoyism. And Gogol was a man of deep faith. Not being a clergyman, he embarked on the path of preaching, spiritual meditation, and gave correct answers to all these reproaches. Gogol wrote from the depths of a believing heart. An artist like Gogol can do anything, I think. And preach too.

Teacher and preacher or crazy? ..

- You said about Gogol's preaching. Indeed, many clergy of his time, for example, St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, Father Matthew, with whom Gogol communicated a lot, had a negative attitude towards his role as teacher and preacher. - You know, this is a rather difficult question. The fact is that there were no fundamental differences between Gogol and Saint Ignatius. Both the one and the other carried the light of Christ into the world. Saint Ignatius has a rather critical opinion: he claims that Gogol's book "Selected Places ..." publishes both light and darkness, advises his children to read first of all the Holy Fathers, and not Gogol. But Gogol said that he wrote his book for those who do not go to Church, for those people who are still on this path. And for him, art is the invisible steps to Christianity. He said that if after reading the book a person picks up the Gospel - this is the highest meaning of his work. This is his goal as a writer. And in this sense, he achieved a lot. Many non-church people came to Orthodoxy through the book of Gogol. - Is there such evidence? - Of course, and this is indisputable. For example, Clement Zedergolm, a friend of Konstantin Leontiev. He was the son of a German pastor and himself told the novice of Optina Hermitage Leonid Kaverin, who later became archimandrite, rector of the Holy Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, that it was Gogol's book that led him to Orthodoxy after he read it for the first time. Incidentally, in my last book, Nikolai Gogol: An Experience of a Spiritual Biography, I cite examples of such a beneficial influence of Gogol's book. It worked, but on a few, of course. - It is known that contemporaries who read Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends did not understand this book and did not accept it; Gogol's advice on how to govern Russia, how to love her, what to do for men, women, priests and so on, aroused strong rejection from them ... What, in your opinion, was the main reason? - They did not accept, firstly, because they did not expect this from Gogol. Works of art were expected from him, and he set foot on the path of spiritual preaching. A man without a cassock suddenly began to preach - this seemed strange to many. You probably know that after his book, many called Gogol crazy, and Belinsky directly stated that he needed to rush to get treatment. And many others thought he was just crazy. Read, for example, the memoirs of Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev. He writes that when he went to Gogol with the actor Shchepkin, Gogol's friend (this was in the fall of 1851, just a few months before Gogol's death), they went to him as to a person who had something in his head. All Moscow was of that opinion about him. - It turns out that even his friends did not understand him ... Is this a consequence of the fact that Gogol did not write what was expected of him, or rejection of his religious point of view? - I think that Gogol was a little ahead of his time, as befits a genius writer. When Leo Tolstoy read Selected Places in 1847, he was terribly annoyed. 40 years later, in 1887, he re-read this book, included individual chapters in his collection of selected thoughts of great people and wrote to one of his correspondents about Gogol that our Pascal lay hidden for forty years and vulgar people did not understand anything. And that he is trying with all his might to say what Gogol said before him. Tolstoy called it a great, slandered book. Here's a complete reversal. Blok wrote in one of his articles that we are again facing this book, and it will soon go into practice.

What does it mean to "love Russia"?

This book is now, perhaps, more modern and relevant for us than for Gogol's contemporaries. We have such a philosopher - Viktor Nikolaevich Trostnikov, a well-known church publicist. So he once wrote that contemporaries considered Gogol to be crazy, and now we are beginning to understand that Gogol was one of the few sane people of his time. And his book is now much more relevant than what, for example, Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote. He was also a very talented writer, a classic, one might say, and rooted for Russia. Do you remember his brochure How We Can Set Up Russia? It was published in millions of copies. So what? Where are these ideas? Has anything of what Solzhenitsyn proposed come true? And Gogol is modern and relevant. In his last book, he pointed out two conditions without which no good transformation in Russia is possible. First of all, you need to love Russia. And secondly, one should also not do anything without the blessing of the Church. - But Belinsky also loved Russia. - Probably in its own way. But what does it mean to "love Russia"? Gogol also has an answer to this question. He said: "Anyone who wishes to truly honestly serve Russia must have a lot of love for her, which would have swallowed up all other feelings - one must have a lot of love for a person in general and become a true Christian in all the sense of the word." All revolutionaries hated historical Russia, Holy Russia. For Gogol, patriotism has a spiritual meaning. He even wrote to one of his friends, Count Alexander Petrovich Tolstoy, that one should live not in Russia, but in God. If we live according to God's commandments, then the Lord will take care of Russia, and everything will be all right. Very correct words, exact. Many of our patriots do not understand this. And in the book "Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends" this is frankly said. This is what caused the irritation of Belinsky and others in the first place. For Gogol, Christianity is higher than civilization. Many of our saints wrote about the departure of the educated society from the Church, about the fall of the religious spirit among the people: Theophan the Recluse and Ignatius Brianchaninov. This is the most important topic. And among the secular writers, Gogol spoke about this with all the power of his word. He saw what awaited Russia, he had a presentiment of a terrible catastrophe. - Gogol was probably the first teacher in Russian literature. After him there were both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Then the well-known formula arose that a poet in Russia is more than a poet ... This teaching function, which Russian literature has assumed, is characteristic of literature, do you think? Did it not ultimately lead to spiritual collapse, to revolution? - Literature has nothing to do with it. Although Konstantin Leontyev wrote that Gogol was harmful, albeit unconsciously. Remember, like Lenin's: the Decembrists woke Herzen up. Who woke Belinsky? Gogol, I guess.

Part 2

Who, if not the chairman of the Gogol Commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor of Moscow State University, Vladimir Alekseevich Voropaev, can tell whether “we all really left Gogol's Overcoat”, where Gogol's head disappeared in 1931, and why it is useful for teenagers to read Gogol's reflections on the Liturgy.

A writer must teach if he is a writer

- A writer must teach, if he is a writer - It turns out that our writers have taken upon themselves this burden - to teach - that's why they taught ... - You know, in general, it depends on who will teach. When Gogol was reproached for teaching, he replied that he was not yet a monk, but a writer. And the writer must teach - teach to understand life. The purpose of art is to serve as an invisible stepping stone to Christianity. According to Gogol, literature should fulfill the same task as the works of spiritual writers - to enlighten the soul, to lead it to perfection. And this is the only justification for art for him. - But here a problem may arise: our ideas about the path to perfection are somewhat different ... - Gogol has the correct criteria for perfection, spiritual. He said that if someone only thinks about becoming the best, then he will certainly meet Christ later, seeing as clearly as day that it is impossible to become better without Christ. In the publishing house of the Sretensky Monastery, in the series "Letters on Spiritual Life", a collection of Gogol's letters was published, which contain the richest church-ascetic experience of the writer. According to S.T. Aksakov, Gogol expresses himself perfectly in his letters, in this respect they are much more important than his printed works. This is the first secular author to have the honor of being published in this series, by the way, very popular among readers. Creators such as Gogol, in their meaning in history, words are similar to the Holy Fathers in Orthodoxy. So in Gogol's teaching, it seems to me, there is nothing soulful, seductive. A writer must teach if he is a writer. Why else is literature needed if it does not teach, does not develop a person ... - Well, it is one thing to develop, and another is to be a teacher of life. Even as Christians, we all have somewhat different points of view on some subjects. - We have a common point of view on the most important subjects, but we confess with like-mindedness. - But if we all have the same ideas, then why do we need a writer as a teacher? "And Dead Souls?" Isn't this teaching literature? " - Not the same ideas - we have criteria for good and evil, truth and lie. And Gogol, and Dostoevsky, and all Russian writers understood this perfectly. “If there is no God, then everything is allowed” is a very accurate and fair formula of Dostoevsky. Everything is allowed - the credo of many modern writers. Sometimes people think that Gogol taught only in his journalism, in spiritual prose. This is not true. And Dead Souls? Isn't this teaching literature? Many do not understand who dead souls are. These are you and me, dead souls. Gogol, in his suicide note, revealed the secret meaning of the title of his poem: “Be not dead, but living souls. There is no other door besides the one indicated by Jesus Christ ... ". Gogol's heroes are spiritually dead because they live without God. This is said about all of us ... And the "Inspector" ... "The inspector who is waiting for us at the door of the coffin is scary," Gogol said. This is the meaning of the famous comedy.

Dead Souls, Female Images and Reflections on the Liturgy

- How do you see why Gogol was unable to write the second volume of Dead Souls? Maybe because he failed to create a positive image? - A positive image - where can I get it? There is no positive person in nature. Man is sinful, he is a sinful being. Gogol did not denounce man, but sin in man. A Russian proverb edifies: "Fight against a sin, but put up with a sinner." Here Gogol fought against sin ... - It was also believed that Gogol has no positive female images, that he was afraid of women and therefore never married ... - Gogol has no positive images at all. There are heroic ones. For example, Taras Bulba. And can a writer create a positive image? It is highly doubtful. - But there are positive images in literature after Gogol, say, of Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, Natasha Rostova ... - Conditionally positive, of course. As one of Gogol's heroes says: "All the women in the bazaar in Kiev are witches." Gogol has a slightly popular attitude to this. He was not afraid of women, as is sometimes thought. He had very interesting and friendly relations, and in correspondence he consisted with many wonderful women of his time, with Alexandra Osipovna Smirnova, for example. He was aware of himself in the role of her mentor, many said that he was in love. But I think this is not true - there was a different relationship here. And with Countess Anna Mikhailovna Vielgorskaya, whom he taught to be Russian. After all, these were people of an aristocratic circle, there was little Russian in them. Gogol understood this and tried to influence them to the best of his ability. So Gogol was not afraid of women. He took great care of his mother and sisters. - So, we can say that there is no separate problem of positive female images? - Yes. Although Gogol tried to create in the second volume of Dead Souls a positive image of Ulinka (Ulyana), the bride of one of the heroes, Tentetnikov. Many believe that this is an artificial image, although from what has come down to us, in my opinion, the image turned out to be successful. It is generally difficult to create a positive image, especially a female one. - And what did he intend to write the second volume about? .. - The heroes of the second volume are not virtuous heroes. As Gogol said, they had to be more significant than the heroes of the first volume. Chichikov had to finally realize the falseness of his path. To come to an understanding of the gospel truth that there is no benefit to a person if he gains the whole world, and damages his soul. - Why then did the second volume not work? - Because the goals that Gogol set for himself as a writer went beyond the framework of fiction. It is no coincidence that one of his last works was "Reflections on the Divine Liturgy." Gogol said that in Dead Souls he wanted to show the reader the path to Christ so that it would be clear to everyone. This path has long been indicated to everyone. And Gogol wrote that for someone who wants to go forward and become better, it is necessary to attend the Divine Liturgy as often as possible. She insensibly builds and creates man. And this is the only way. A writer cannot do anything better than to give such a lyrical interpretation, an explanation similar to Gogol's "Reflections ...". In my opinion, this is one of the best examples of Russian spiritual prose, still underestimated. But the thought in this book is the same as in Dead Souls. - But in our time there are other interpretations of the Liturgy, more professional, perhaps ... - There are, of course, other interpretations, and more professional, as you say. But there is nothing like Gogol's, artistic, imbued with a "lyrical view of the subject" (as the Optina monks said, the first listeners of this work). It is no coincidence that Gogol's book was a favorite among our royal passion-bearers. Already in captivity, in Tobolsk, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, together with Tsarevich Alexy, read it. For children and adolescents, this is the best book.

Gogol's head

- The big question is the mystery of Gogol's death, as well as the reburial of his remains in 1931. The story is downright mystical ... - There is a lot of confusion and obscurity in this story. As you know, eyewitnesses, participants in the reburial, give completely different testimonies. They say that until late in the evening they could not make any decision, and only when it was completely dark did they receive permission from the higher authorities to transport what they found after the opening of the grave to the Novodevichy cemetery. But what they transported is still unknown. There is a version that the grave was not found at all, and it is still unclear what was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery. Yes, it is not worthwhile to understand this, it is better to put an end to Gogol's grave. This must be done indisputably. At the place of the previous burial in the Holy Danilov Monastery, it is also worth putting some kind of memorial sign or cross. I don't think there is much of a problem here. And now it is hardly possible to find out everything with certainty. There are different, mutually exclusive versions of this story. - Do you think all this interest in Gogol's death has become somewhat unhealthy? - Of course. But Gogol himself gave a reason for this when, in his will, published in the book "Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends," he asked his body not to bury him until there were obvious signs of decomposition. " He wrote this during his illness, as if anticipating death. And yet Gogol really died. He was examined by the best doctors, they could not make such a gross mistake. There is also a spiritual explanation: after the church funeral service, the soul can no longer return to the body, this is impossible for spiritual reasons. For some people, this is not an argument, they can be given materialistic evidence. The sculptor Ramazanov, who was removing the death mask, had to do this procedure twice, and even the skin of the nose was damaged, signs of decomposition were visible. Also, if you remember, in the 70s there was a poem by Andrei Voznesensky "The Funeral of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol", where the author described this event in poetic colors, which also gave a certain stimulus and impetus to all sorts of rumors and conversations. - There was also a legend that Gogol's head was absent during the opening of the grave. I remember the famous Bulgakov story with the head of Berlioz ... - Yes, it is certainly connected. Rumors in Moscow were very persistent, and Bulgakov, of course, knew about them. I have no doubt that this episode has a direct connection with the talk about Gogol's head, but how it actually happened, I repeat, is now almost impossible to establish. The most complete study, where these events are covered, is the book by Pyotr Palamarchuk "The Key to Gogol", which was republished, by the way, this year. - There is an expression “we all left Gogol's Overcoat”. And why exactly from "The Overcoat" by Gogol, and not from "Onegin" by Pushkin, or from something else? - This is a humanistic pathos, attention to an ordinary person, which was so clearly manifested in Gogol's story. Of course, the humanistic pathos does not exhaust Gogol's story; it also contains a very deep Christian thought. But most importantly, after Gogol it was impossible to write as if Gogol had not existed. - But there was a humanistic pathos even before that. Why exactly from "The Overcoat" and precisely from Gogol? - Gogol really has such works that are of particular importance for the history of literature. Do you remember the St. Andrew's monument, which now stands in the courtyard of the house where Gogol died and where the museum is now created? When this monument was opened in 1909, it was said that the sculptor reflected in it two works by Gogol - "The Nose" and "The Overcoat". The very name - "Overcoat" - sounds like a shot, without it it is impossible to imagine our literature. This is almost the first time a thing was used as a name. It seems to me that this is the correct idea - that Russian literature, albeit not all of it, came out of The Overcoat. Few have come out of Dead Souls, and the work is unfinished ... - That is, the main thing is Gogol's attention to the "little" person? - He revealed the problems of these people. Indeed, in the "Overcoat" one can feel the traditions of patristic literature. Gogol knew hagiographic, hagiographic literature very well, this layer is very noticeable in his work. There is a whole literature on the hagiographic tradition in the "Overcoat". No work of Gogol is reducible to an unambiguous meaning. - What do you mean by humanistic pathos? - Attention to the person. After all, any Gogol hero is written about us. For many of us, the thing becomes the most important thing in life. As one of the critics, a contemporary of Gogol, wrote: “In the image of Akaki Akakievich, the poet traced the last line of shallowing God's creation to the extent that a thing, and the most insignificant thing, becomes for a person a source of boundless joy and destructive grief, to the point that the greatcoat becomes tragic fatum in the life of a creature created in the image and likeness of the Eternal ... ”. - At school we were taught that Gogol is the founder of the natural school. What do literary critics think now? - During his lifetime, Gogol was appreciated primarily as a humorist and satirist. Much in his work became clear later. And now any literary trend or trend can rightfully see it as its forerunner. And of course, Gogol became the father of the so-called natural school. A number of writers appeared who became imitators of Gogol. They described reality from nature as it is, although without the genius of Gogol, who in this kind of description had an abyss of spiritual meaning. Gogol really gave birth to this school, and the whole period in literature is rightly called Gogol. I repeat, after Gogol it was impossible to write as if Gogol had not existed. - Now we have a year of Gogol. Do any of the events seem successful to you? - Of course. First of all, the Gogol Museum appeared for the first time in Russia. Oddly enough, so far we have not had a single Gogol museum. This is a full-fledged museum, in which a cultural and educational center has now been formed, in the house where Gogol lived and died, on Nikitsky Boulevard. - Is he already working? - Yes. Now it is already open, you can come and have a look. The museum is still in its infancy, expositions are changing, something is being finalized, but since the end of April it has been open to visitors. In addition, an anniversary conference dedicated to the 200th anniversary of Gogol's birth was held, which was held by Moscow University, our philological faculty, together with the opened museum and the Gogol Commission under the Scientific Council “History of World Culture” of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The forum brought together scientists from all over the world, about 70 participants from 30 countries. This was the centerpiece of the jubilee celebrations. A number of Gogol publications were presented at the conference. So gogol studies are developing.

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It is better to write laughing than with tears, for laughter is a peculiarity of a person.

F. Rabelais.

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What is Gogol laughing at in the poem "Dead Souls"?

It’s better to write laughing than with tears,

for laughter is a peculiarity of man.

F. Rabelais.

Gogol has long dreamed of writing a work in "which

all Russia. "This should have been a grandiose description of life and customs

Russia in the first third of the 19th century. The poem became such a work

"Dead Souls", written in 1842. The author makes extensive use of satirical pictorial means in his work. What is Gogol laughing at in the poem "Dead Souls"?

First, in Gogol's poem "Dead Souls" there is irony in the description of the provincial town N.

So, Chichikov quite liked the city: he found that "the city was in no way inferior to other provincial cities." What is its appeal? The author gives the answer to this question, ironing at first about the appearance of the city: yellow paint on stone houses (government offices and dwellings of the powerful), as it should be, is very bright, gray on wooden houses is modest. Then he emphasizes that the houses have a "perpetual mezzanine", very beautiful, "in the opinion of the provincial architects."
Particularly ironic is the news in the newspaper about the alley of "wide-branching trees that give coolness on a hot summer day." Here, the author's sense of humor is especially clearly visible, who ridicules the grandiloquent speeches, which in fact do not represent anything significant.
He also laughs at the townsfolk of the city, on whom "Chichikov's entrance made absolutely no noise and was not accompanied by anything special." “Moreover, when the chaise drove up to the hotel, a young man in white rosin trousers, very narrow and short, in a tailcoat with attempts at fashion, met from under which a shirt front was visible, fastened with a Tula pin with a bronze pistol. The young man turned back, looked at the carriage, held his cap with his hand, which almost flew off from the wind, and went his own way. " And here two men are just discussing the wheel of Chichikov's spring chaise.
The city officials are quite decent people. They all live in peace, tranquility and harmony. The chief of police for the inhabitants is a benefactor and a dear father, like the mayor. They all live in harmony with each other, the relationship between them is very warm, one might even say, family.
Chichikov is very comfortable in their world. He shows himself to be a very secular person, being able to say what is needed, to joke where it is required, in general, appears to be "the most pleasant person."
Gogol also pays attention to the tavern where Chichikov is staying. A detailed description of the common hall with paintings is given: “What these common halls are - every traveler knows very well: the same walls, painted with oil paint, darkened at the top from pipe smoke and glazed from below with the backs of different travelers, and even more native merchants, for merchants on trading days they came here ... to drink their famous pair of tea; the same smoky ceiling; the same smoked chandelier with many hanging pieces of glass that jumped and jingled every time the chandelier ran over the worn oilcloths, waving briskly a tray on which sat the same abyss of tea cups as birds on the seashore; the same pictures on the whole wall, painted with oil paints - in a word, everything is the same as everywhere ... ".

The central place in Gogol's poem "Dead Souls" is occupied by five chapters, which represent the images of landowners: Manilov, Korobochka, Nozdrev, Sobakevich and Plyushkin. The chapters are arranged in a special sequence according to the degree of degradation of the heroes.
The image of Manilov seems to grow out of the proverb: a person is neither one nor the other, neither in the city of Bogdan, nor in the village of Selifan. He is out of touch with life, unadapted. His house stands on the Jura, “open to all winds”. In the pavilion with the inscription "Temple of Solitary Reflection" Manilov makes plans to build an underground passage and build a stone bridge across the pond. These are just empty fantasies. In reality, Manilov's household is falling apart. The peasants get drunk, the housekeeper steals, the servants mess around. The landowner's leisure is occupied with aimlessly folding the ashes from the pipe into the hills, and the book has been in his study for two years with a bookmark on page fourteen.
The portrait and character of Manilov were created on the principle that "it seemed that sugar was too much transferred to pleasantness." On Manilov's face there was "an expression not only sweet, but even sugary, similar to the potion that the clever socialite doctor had mercilessly sweetened ..."
The love of Manilov and his wife is too corny and sentimental: "Razin, darling, my mouth, I'll put this piece for you."
But, despite the "excessiveness", Manilov is really a kind, amiable, harmless person. He is the only one of all landowners who gives Chichikov "dead souls" for free.
The box is also distinguished by "excessiveness", but of a different kind - excessive frugality, distrust, fearfulness, and narrow-mindedness. She is "one of those mothers, small landowners who cry about crop failures, losses and keep their heads a little to one side, and meanwhile they are gaining a little money in motley bags." The things in the house reflect her naive idea of ​​wealth and beauty, and at the same time, her pettiness and narrow-mindedness. “The room was covered with old striped wallpaper; pictures with some kind of birds; between the windows there are antique small mirrors with dark frames in the form of curled leaves; behind every mirror were either a letter, or an old deck of cards, or a stocking; wall clock with painted flowers on the dial ”. Gogol calls Korobochka “clubhead”. She is afraid to sell "dead souls" too cheap in order to "not incur a loss" somehow. Korobochka decides to sell souls only out of fear, because Chichikov wished: “... but perish and roundabout your whole village!”
Sobakevich outwardly resembles an epic hero: a gigantic boot, cheesecakes "much larger than a plate", "I have never been sick." But his actions are by no means heroic. He scolds everyone in a row, sees all scoundrels and swindlers in all. The whole city, according to him, - “the swindler sits on the swindler and drives him away with the swindler ... there is only one decent person there - the prosecutor; and that, if you tell the truth, is a pig. " The portraits on the walls, depicting heroes, speak of the unrealized heroic possibilities of Sobakevich's "dead" soul. Sobakevich is a “fist-man”. He expresses a universal human passion for the heavy, earthly.

Sobakevich is quite calm about selling souls: “Do you need dead souls? - Asked Sobakevich very simply, without the slightest surprise, as it were about bread.
“Yes,” answered Chichikov, and again softened his expression, adding: “nonexistent.
- There will be, why not be ... - said Sobakevich. But at the same time, he demands 100 rubles for each dead soul: "Yes, so as not to ask too much from you, a hundred rubles apiece!"

Nozdryov is a "broken guy", a bootie. His main passion is “to screw up your neighbor”, while continuing to be his friend: « The closer he got to him, the closer he got to everyone: he let loose a fable, which is more stupid than it is difficult to invent, upset the wedding, the bargain, and did not consider himself your enemy at all;
on the contrary, if the occasion brought him to meet with you again, he treated himself again in a friendly way and even said: "After all, you are such a scoundrel, you will never come to see me." In many respects, Nozdryov was a versatile person, that is, a man of all trades. " "A sensitive nose heard him for several tens of miles, where there was a fair with all sorts of congresses and balls." In Nozdryov's office, instead of books, there are sabers and Turkish daggers, one of which reads: “Master Savely Sibiryakov”. Even the fleas in Nozdryov's house are "stubborn insects." Nozdryov's food expresses his reckless spirit: “Something burnt, some didn’t cook at all ... in a word, go ahead, it would be hot, but some taste would probably come out”. However, the activity, the activity of Nozdryov is devoid of meaning and, moreover, of social benefit.

Plyushkin appears in the poem as a sexless creature, whom Chichikov takes for a housekeeper: “At one of the buildings Chichikov soon noticed some figure,
who began to quarrel with a man who arrived in a cart. For a long time he could not
recognize what gender the figure was: a woman or a man. She was wearing a dress
completely indefinite, very similar to a female hood, a cap on the head,
which village courtyard women wear, only one voice seemed to him
somewhat husky for a woman. "Oh, woman!" He thought to himself, and immediately
added: - Oh, no! "-" Of course, woman! "- he finally said, considering
take a closer look. The figure, for its part, was staring at him, too.
It seemed that the guest was a wonder for her, because she looked at not only
him, but also Selifan, and horses, from the tail to the muzzle. Hanging from
her keys are in her belt and because she scolded the man with rather obnoxious
in words, Chichikov concluded that this was, indeed, a housekeeper.
- Listen, mother, - he said, leaving the chaise, - what is the master? ..
- No home, - interrupted the housekeeper, without waiting for the end of the question, and
then, after a minute, she added: - What do you want?
- There is a case!
- Go to the rooms! - said the housekeeper, turning away and showing him
back, stained with flour, with a large hole below ... Well, sir? At home, or what?
“The owner is here,” said the housekeeper.
- Where? Chichikov repeated.
- What, father, are you blind, or what? - asked the keykeeper. - Ehwa! And whit
I am the owner! "

The images surrounding this hero are a moldy rusk, a greasy robe, a roof like a sieve. Both objects and the owner himself are subject to decay. Once an exemplary host and family man, Plyushkin has now become a hermit spider. He is suspicious, stingy, petty, mentally degraded: “But there was a time when he was just a thrifty owner! was married, and a neighbor stopped by to dine with him, listen and learn from him
housekeeping and wise parsimony. Everything flowed lively and was done in a measured course:
mills, felt mills were moving, cloth factories, carpentry machines were working,
spinning mills; everywhere the keen gaze of the owner entered everything and, like a hardworking
spider, ran busily, but quickly, at all ends of its economic
cobwebs. Too strong feelings were not reflected in his facial features, but in
the mind was visible to the eyes; his speech was imbued with experience and knowledge of the light,
and the guest was pleased to listen to him; friendly and talkative hostess was famous
hospitality; two pretty daughters came out to meet her ... But the kind mistress died; part of the keys, and with them minor concerns, passed to him. Plyushkin became more restless and, like all widowers, more suspicious and stingy. He could not rely on the eldest daughter, Alexandra Stepanovna, in everything, and he was right, because Alexandra Stepanovna soon ran away with the captain-captain, God knows what a cavalry regiment, and married him somewhere hastily in a village church, knowing that her father he does not like officers for a strange prejudice, as if all military gamblers and motes. "
Sequentially showing the life and character of the five landowners, Gogol depicts the process of gradual degradation of the landlord class, reveals all its vices and shortcomings.

Chichikov is the main character of the poem, he is found in all chapters. It was he who came up with the idea of ​​a scam with dead souls, it was he who travels around Russia, meeting with a variety of characters and finding himself in a variety of situations.
The characteristic of Chichikov is given by the author in the first chapter. His portrait is given very vaguely: “not handsome, but not bad-looking, neither too thick nor too thin; one cannot say that he is old, but not so that he is too young. Gogol pays more attention to his manners: he made an excellent impression on all the guests at the governor's party, showed himself as an experienced socialite, maintaining a conversation on a variety of topics, skillfully flattering the governor, chief of police, officials and made the most flattering opinion of himself. Gogol himself tells us that he did not take a "virtuous man" into his heroes; he immediately stipulates that his hero is a scoundrel. The author tells us that his parents were nobles, but pole or personal - God knows. Chichikov's face did not resemble his parents. As a child, he had neither a friend nor a comrade. His father was ill, the windows of the little "gorenka" did not open either in winter or summer. Gogol says about Chichikov: “At the beginning, life looked at him somehow sourly, through some muddy window covered with snow ...”
“But in life everything changes quickly and vividly ...” Father brought Paul to the city and instructed him to go to classes. From the money that his father gave him, he did not spend a penny, but, on the contrary, made an increment to it. Chichikov learned to speculate from childhood. After leaving school, heimmediately set to work and service. With the help of speculation ChichikovI was able to get a promotion from the chief. After the arrival of the new chief, Chichikov moved to another city and began to serve at customs, which was his dream. "Of the assignments he got, by the way, one thing: to solicit the placement of several hundred peasants in the board of trustees." And then the idea occurred to him to crank up one little business, which is being discussed in the poem.

In addition to the ironic characteristics of the heroes, Gogol saturates the poem with comic situations and positions. For example, the scene between Chichikov and Manilov is remembered, who for several minutes have not been able to enter the living room, because they persistently concede this honorable privilege to each other, as cultured, delicate people.

One of the best comic scenes of the poem is the episode of Chichikov's visit to the landowner Korobochka. In this dialogue between Nastasya Petrovna and an enterprising businessman, the whole gamut of the heroine's feelings is conveyed: bewilderment, confusion, suspicion, and economic prudence. It is in this scene that the main character traits of Korobochka are fully and psychologically convincingly revealed: greed, perseverance and stupidity.

Thirdly , comic situations in the poem are associated not only with landowners and officials, but also with people from the people. Such a scene, for example, is the conversation of the coachman Selifan with the courtyard girl Pelageya, who, pointing the way, does not know where is right and where is left. This episode says a lot: about the extreme ignorance of the people, their underdevelopment and darkness, which was the result of centuries of serfdom. The same negative traits of the people are emphasized by the comic scene between Uncle Mitya and Uncle Minyay, who, obligingly rushing to take apart the horses, got entangled in the lines.

The poem "Dead Souls" by N. V. Gogol is a satirical work. In this poem, the author ironically draws portraits of landowners and officials. With the same irony, Gogol describes the signs of a typical provincial town. Also, this poem is filled with comic situations associated with landowners, officials and people from the people. The irony helped the writer talk about what it was impossible to talk about under censorship. With the help of her, Gogol revealed all the vices and shortcomings of the landowners and officials.

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Explaining the meaning of The Inspector General, Gogol pointed to the role of laughter: “I am sorry that no one noticed the honest person who was in my play ... This is an honest, noble face - there was laughter. "
The writer set himself the goal of "laughing hard" at what is deserving of ridicule
universal, for in laughter Gogol saw a powerful means of influencing society.
Gogol's close friend, Aksakov, wrote that "modern Russian life does not provide material for comedy."
To which Gogol replied: “The comic is hidden everywhere .... living among him, we do not see him. "
The peculiarity of Gogol's laughter lies primarily in the fact that the object of satire is not the tricks of any hero, but modern life itself in its comically ugly manifestations.
Khlestakov does not impersonate anyone. The officials were deceived by his sincerity. An experienced rogue would hardly have led a mayor who "cheated out of swindlers from swindlers." It was the unintentional nature of Khlestakov's actions that confused everyone. Happening
revealed the true ugly and funny face of people, caused laughter at them, at their life, the life of all of Russia. “You are laughing at yourself” is, after all, turned into a laughing audience.
Gogol laughs both at the entire district town as a whole and at its individual inhabitants, at their vices. Lawlessness, embezzlement, bribery, selfish motives instead of concern for the public good - all this is shown in the "Inspector General".
“The Inspector General” is a comedy of characters. Gogol's humor is psychological. Laughing at the characters of The Inspector General, we, in the words of Gogol, laugh not at their "crooked nose, but at their crooked soul." The author himself wrote: "Most of all one must be afraid not to fall into a caricature."
Denouncing everything bad, Gogol believed in the triumph of justice, which will triumph as soon as people realize the perniciousness of the “bad.” Laughter helps him to realize this task.
Not that laughter that is generated by temporary irritability or bad character, not that light laughter that serves for idle entertainment, but that one that "all flies out of the light nature of man."
This comedy retains its relevance today, forcing the reader to think about the causes of many negative phenomena of modern life.
In the comedy, there is not a single honest hero, from any class. Some hold important government posts and use their power to improve their own well-being. Others, subordinate to them, hate the first, try to cajole them with gifts, and at the first opportunity they write a complaint to Khlestakov, mistaking him for an important Petersburg official.
The vices of the bureaucracy are not ridiculed by Gogol. They are taken from real life.
Residents of the county town do not know about the existence of such qualities as kindness, nobility, and mutual assistance. They are ready to mercilessly destroy each other only in order to exalt themselves. As soon as the residents of the city find out that an inspector is to come to them, they diligently begin to create a vision of success and well-being. And no one even thinks about what it is possible to realistically change and do something useful in the city.
Gogol painted a portrait of officials very accurately. Reading this work, you will involuntarily try it on to the present time and, unfortunately, no fundamental changes have taken place over such a large number of years. Everything that Gogol ridiculed in his immortal comedy has been present for many years to the present day….

Vladimir Alekseevich Voropaev

What Gogol was laughing about.

On the spiritual meaning of the comedy "The Inspector General"

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For he who hears the word and does not obey is like a person examining the natural features of his face in a mirror: he looked at himself, walked away and immediately forgot what he was.

Jac. 1.22-24

My heart hurts when I see how people are deluded. They talk about virtue, about God, but meanwhile they do nothing.

From a letter by N.V. Gogol to his mother. 1833

"The Inspector General" is the best Russian comedy. And in reading, and in staging on stage, she is always interesting. Therefore, in general, it is difficult to talk about any failure of the "Inspector". But, on the other hand, it is also difficult to create a real Gogol performance, to make those sitting in the hall laugh with a bitter Gogol laugh. As a rule, something fundamental, deep, on which the whole meaning of the play is based, escapes from the actor or spectator.

The premiere of the comedy, which took place on April 19, 1836 on the stage of the Alexandria Theater in St. Petersburg, according to contemporaries, had colossal success. The mayor was played by Ivan Sosnitsky, Khlestakov - by Nikolai Dyur, the best actors of that time. "... The general attention of the audience, applause, sincere and unanimous laughter, the challenge of the author ... - Prince Pyotr Andreevich Vyazemsky recalled, - there was no shortage of anything."

At the same time, even the most ardent admirers of Gogol did not fully understand the meaning and significance of the comedy; the majority of the public took it as a farce. Many saw in the play a caricature of the Russian bureaucracy, and in its author - a rebel. According to Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov, there were people who hated Gogol from the very appearance of the "Inspector General". Thus, Count Fyodor Ivanovich Tolstoy (nicknamed the American) said at a crowded meeting that Gogol was "an enemy of Russia and that he should be sent to Siberia in shackles." Censor Alexander Vasilyevich Nikitenko wrote in his diary on April 28, 1836: "Gogol's comedy" The Inspector General "made a lot of noise.<...>Many believe that the government is wrong to approve of this play, in which it is so severely condemned. "

Meanwhile, it is reliably known that comedy was allowed to be staged on stage (and, therefore, to print) due to the highest resolution. Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich read the comedy in manuscript and approved; according to another version, "The Inspector General" was read to the king in the palace. On April 29, 1836, Gogol wrote to the famous actor Mikhail Semyonovich Shchepkin: "If it were not for the high intercession of the Tsar, my play would never have been on the stage, and there were already people who were trying to ban it." The Emperor not only attended the premiere himself, but also ordered the ministers to watch The Inspector General. During the performance he clapped and laughed a lot, and, leaving the box, he said: "Well, the play! Everyone got it, but I got it more than anyone else!"

Gogol hoped to meet the support of the tsar and was not mistaken. Soon after the staging of the comedy, he replied to his ill-wishers in the "Theatrical passing": "The generous government, deeper than you, has seen the purpose of the writer with a high mind."

In striking contrast to the seemingly undoubted success of the play, Gogol's bitter confession sounds: "... a sad and annoyingly painful feeling clothed me. My creation seemed to me disgusting, wild and as if not mine at all "(" Excerpt from a letter written by the author shortly after the first presentation of the "Inspector" to a writer ").

Gogol was, it seems, the only one who perceived the first production of "The Inspector General" as a failure. What is the matter here that did not satisfy him? In part, the discrepancy between the old vaudeville techniques in the design of the performance is the completely new spirit of the play, which did not fit into the framework of an ordinary comedy. Gogol insistently warns: "One must fear most of all in order not to fall into a caricature. Nothing should be exaggerated or trivial, even in the last roles" ("A warning for those who would like to play" The Inspector General ").

Why, let us ask again, was Gogol dissatisfied with the premiere? The main reason was not even the farcical nature of the performance - the desire to make the audience laugh - but the fact that with a caricatured manner of play, those in the audience perceived what was happening on the stage without applying to themselves, since the characters were exaggeratedly funny. Meanwhile, Gogol's plan was designed for just the opposite perception: to involve the viewer in the play, to make it feel that the city indicated in the comedy does not exist somewhere, but to one degree or another anywhere in Russia, and the passions and vices of officials are in the soul of each of us. Gogol addresses everyone and everyone. This is the tremendous social significance of the "Inspector General". This is the meaning of the famous remark of the Governor: "What are you laughing at? You are laughing at yourself!" - facing the audience (specifically to the audience, since no one is laughing on the stage at this time). This is also indicated by the epigraph: "There is no reason to blame the mirror if the face is crooked." In a kind of theatrical commentary on the play - "Theatrical passing" and "The denouement of the Inspector General" - where the audience and the actors discuss the comedy, Gogol seeks to destroy the wall separating the stage and the audience.

Regarding the epigraph, which appeared later, in the edition of 1842, let us say that this popular proverb means the Gospel under the mirror, which Gogol's contemporaries, spiritually belonging to the Orthodox Church, knew very well and could even reinforce the understanding of this proverb, for example, the famous fable of Krylov " Mirror and Monkey ".

Bishop Barnabas (Belyaev) in his major work "Foundations of the Art of Holiness" (1920s) connects the meaning of this fable with attacks on the Gospel, and this (among others) was Krylov's meaning. The spiritual concept of the Gospel as a mirror has long and firmly existed in the Orthodox consciousness. So, for example, St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, one of Gogol's favorite writers, whose works he reread many times, says: "Christians! As the sons of this age are a mirror, so let us have the Gospel and the immaculate life of Christ. They look in the mirrors and correct the body. they cleanse their own and the vices on the face.<...>Let us offer you a clean mirror in front of our spiritual eyes and look in it: is our life in accordance with the life of Christ? "

The holy righteous John of Kronstadt in his diaries published under the title "My Life in Christ" remarks to those who "do not read the Gospel": "Are you pure, holy and perfect, without reading the Gospel, and you do not need to look into this mirror? Or are you very ugly? mentally and afraid of your ugliness? .. "