An essay on the topic “The bureaucratic world in Gogol’s comedy “The Inspector General. In the world of Gogol's comedy

Lesson objectives:

continue to develop the ability to selectively work with text;
continue work on developing students’ oral and written speech;
promote the development of students' creative abilities;
to cultivate in students a cognitive interest in studying classical works.

Lesson type: generalization and consolidation of what has been learned.

Lesson equipment:

computer presentation made in Powerpoint;

Handout;

printable sheets to complete literary dictation and creative work.

DURING THE CLASSES:

Epigraph for the lesson:

Those who think that this comedy is funny and nothing more are mistaken. Yes, she is funny, so to speak, on the outside, but inside she is a grief-sorrower... N.V. Gogol

Organization of the beginning of the lesson.
Goal setting.
introduction teachers.

There is now an unusually wide interest in Gogol's work all over the world. His books are published everywhere, plays and dramatizations are staged. prose works, create movies. Gogol created books that were a true discovery in artistic culture, had a great influence on the development of Russian literature and art in general.

For several lessons we studied Gogol's great work "The Inspector General". On the pages of the comedy, various heroes with all their vices and shortcomings appeared before us, the readers. The heroes are frivolous and wise, good and evil, funny and sad. Analyzing the actions of the heroes, we talked about the complexity of their characters. Some episodes of the work brought a smile to our faces, and sometimes a cheerful laugh. But today our acquaintance with the work is coming to an end. And we have to answer the eternal questions that concern each of us. And, besides this, get to know the new hero of the work, about whom we knew nothing until today. But more on that a little later, but now write down the topic of the lesson “From the pages of Gogol’s comedy...”.

Working with an epigraph for the lesson.

How do you understand the meaning of N.V. Gogol’s statement?

In Russian there is popular expression"Laughter through tears". Does it have anything to do with The Inspector General?

At the very beginning of work on the comedy, Gogol planned to call it “Governor”. Why do you think?

What episodes do you remember most? Why?

What heroes appeared before you? Which of them evokes sympathy and antipathy?

Describe any comedy image?

Now let’s check how carefully you read the work and understood the essence of the characters. To do this you need to complete the following task. On the board on the left are written acting heroes, and on the right are the behavioral and character traits characteristic of them. Your task is to make the right choice. (Oral work). Slide number 3.

Key to the task:

If you were an actor, what character would you play on stage? Why?

What do you think is the purpose of Gogol’s characterization of each of the characters at the beginning of the work?

What character traits are reflected in the poster: positive or negative? Why didn’t the playwright endow the heroes with something bright and kind?

Pay attention to the statement of A. I. Herzen “Gogol lifted one side of the curtain and showed us Russian bureaucracy in all its ugliness." How do you understand the meaning of these words?

Among the living heroes of the comedy there is an image that each of us may consider as such, or maybe not, but, according to Gogol, the main character of the work is laughter. Why did the playwright think so?

What episodes make you laugh?

Which character do you think is the funniest?

What are we all laughing at?

Each of the characters plays their role brilliantly. Now let’s try to find out how well you remember the content of the lines belonging to the heroes of the comedy.

Literary dictation. (work is performed on printed sheets)

Read phrases from the comedy. Identify the hero to whom these words belong. Slides No. 5 -14.

CITYMAN. It was as if I had a presentiment: today I dreamed all night about two extraordinary rats. Really, I’ve never seen anything like this: black, of unnatural size! They came, smelled it, and left.

OSIP. Damn it, I’m so hungry and there’s a chattering in my stomach as if a whole regiment had blown its trumpets. We won’t get there, and that’s all, home! ... he squandered some expensive money, my dear, now he sits with his tail curled up and doesn’t get excited.

KHLESTAKOV. Why not? I saw it myself, walking past the kitchen, there was a lot of cooking going on there. And in the dining room this morning, two short men were eating salmon and a lot of other things.

MARYA ANTONOVNA. Fi, mama, blue! I don’t like it at all: Lyapkina-Tyapkina wears this, and Zemlyanika’s daughter also wears blue. No, I'd rather wear a colored one.

BEAR. Yes, uncle, nothing is ready for you yet. You won’t eat simple dishes, but when your master sits down at the table, you will be given the same food.

AMMOS FEDOROVYCH. (entering and stopping, to himself). God, God! Bring it out safely; and so he breaks his knees. (Aloud, stretched out and holding the sword with his hand.) I have the honor to introduce myself: judge of the local district court, collegiate assessor Lyapkin-Tyapkin.

ARTEMY FILIPPOVICH. It may very well be. (After a pause.) I can say that I do not regret anything and perform my service zealously. (Moves closer with his chair and speaks in a low voice.) The local postmaster does nothing at all: everything is in great disrepair, parcels are delayed... The judge, too... keeps dogs in public places and behaves... in the most reprehensible way.

CITYMAN. (hits himself on the forehead). How am I - no, how am I, an old fool? Survived, you stupid sheep, out of your mind!.. I’ve been in the service for thirty years... I’ve deceived swindlers after swindlers... I’ve deceived three governors!...

LUKA LUKICH. Of course. They came running like crazy from the tavern: “He’s here, he’s here and he’s not paying any money...” They found an important bird!

GENDARME. An official who arrived by personal order from St. Petersburg demands you to come to him this very hour. He stayed at a hotel.

Working with illustrations for the work made by students.

Reading this or that work, characterizing the characters, various pictures appear in our minds. We imagine what the characters look like, what they are wearing, and what environment they are in. For today's lesson, the students prepared illustrations for the work, which they will now show us.

What episodes are shown in the illustrations?

Title them?

Why did you capture this particular episode?

And at the end of the lesson you should solve a crossword puzzle. (work is done in groups). Self-test. Slide number 15.

1. Where does the work begin?

2. Genre of the work?

3. Who informed the mayor in a letter about the arrival of the auditor?

4. What was Khlestakov’s name?

5. Who wrote “The Inspector General”?

6. Name of the county doctor?

7. Name of the last scene?

8. How many actions are there in a comedy?

9. How did Khlestakov dream of returning home?

Summarizing. Homework assignment.

What impressions did N.V. Gogol’s comedy make on you?

Do Gogol's heroes exist in the modern world?

Expressive reading of a silent scene.

What is the role of this scene?

Come up with a continuation of Gogol's comedy. Write home essay(volume 50-80 words).

Bibliography.

Here you can download the Lesson Summary on Literature “Comedy by N.V. Gogol “The Inspector General”. The history of creation in the theme of comedy. The role of the first act in the composition of the play" 8th grade for the subject: Literature. This document will help you prepare good and high-quality material for the lesson.

Plan – summary of the lesson by N.V. Gogol “The Inspector General”.

Full name Kazmina Natalya Sergeevna

Place of work MBOU Shiroko - Atamanskaya main

comprehensive school

Position teacher of Russian language and literature

Subject literature

Class 8

The topic and number of the lesson is “Comedy by N.V. Gogol “The Inspector General”. History of creation

on the topic of comedy. The role of the first act in the composition of the play"

1st lesson.

Basic textbook Textbook V.Ya. Korovina “Literature” 8th grade.

Lesson type Lesson on learning new material.

Topic: “Comedy by N.V. Gogol “The Inspector General”. The history of comedy. The role of the first act in the composition of the play."

Planned educational results:

Subject: Provide information about the writer’s creative biography; make connections literary work with the era of its creation.

Metasubject: Semantic reading. Formation and development of competence in the field of ICT use. Plan the goal of your activity and the way to achieve it.

Personal: Formation of a civic position through awareness of social and human shortcomings.

Educational problems to be solved:

Consider the main milestones in Gogol’s creative biography; get acquainted with the history of the comedy and provide information about the first productions of “The Inspector General”; initial acquaintance with the characters and their characteristics; definition of social conflict; the role of the first action in determining the conflict.

Teaching methods: Analytical conversation, commented reading.

Methodological purpose of ICT tools: strengthen motivation, increase interest and expand the cognitive needs of students. Strengthen visibility in learning, increase the level of visualization of the material being studied.

Organizational structure of the lesson.

Stage 1. Entering into the topic of the lesson and creating conditions for conscious perception of new material.

Formulation of the goals and objectives of the lesson. Preparation for the perception of a work of art.

The topic of today's lesson is “The Comedy by N.V. Gogol “The Inspector General”. The history of comedy. The role of the first act in the composition of the play." We will continue our acquaintance with the work of N.V. Gogol and get acquainted with the history of his creation of the comedy “The Inspector General”; During the lesson we will learn about the impression the first productions of “The Inspector General” made on the public; consolidate knowledge about the dramatic genre of literature; Let's get acquainted with the 1st act of the comedy, find out which event is the beginning.

Preparing to communicate lesson objectives, organization various types activities.

Organizes work to prepare students to learn and master new material.

Stage 2. Organization and self-organization of students during further learning of the material. Organization of feedback.

Formation of specific educational material

Summarizing and systematizing information prepared for the lesson independently by showing presentation slides.

Teacher's message about ideological plan and the history of comedy.

Organization of reading the textbook article “On the conception, writing and production of “The Inspector General” and its discussion.”

Features of a dramatic work.

The main type of activity aimed at creating educational results .

There was a preliminary to the lesson individual task prepare a presentation about life and creative path Gogol.

Presentation of presentations prepared by students for the lesson.

Teacher's word. The history of the comedy and the source of the plot.

N.V. Gogol was very fond of theater and had a remarkable ability to guess a person and portray him humorously and playfully. A. S. Pushkin, noticing this inclination of Gogol, advised him to take on a large essay and suggested a plot for the poem “ Dead Souls”, and then for the comedy “The Inspector General”.

Once upon a time in Nizhny Novgorod, which Pushkin passed while collecting information about Pugachev, he was mistaken for an important government official. This made Pushkin laugh and was remembered as a plot, which he gave to Gogol. Such stories were very common.

Gogol's ideological plan. “In The Inspector General, I decided to collect in one pile everything bad in Russia that I knew then, all the injustices that are done in those places and in those cases where justice is most required from a person, and at once laugh at everything.”

Reading the textbook article “On the conception, writing and production of The Inspector General” and discussing it.

What type of literature is comedy? (to drama)

How is drama different as a form of literature? ( Dramatic works intended for performance on stage. The author's speech is present only in the form of remarks, brief remarks for actors. Drama is at the intersection of two arts - literature and theater).

How did the future writer develop an interest in theater?

For what purpose did Gogol accompany his comedy with a mass of explanatory comments? (Gogol was very attentive to his reader. With comments on the play, he sought to help perceive the comedy, to help see it as if through the eyes of the author).

Description of the first productions of the comedy on the stages of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Implementation of individual homework.

Student 1. The first production of “The Inspector General” in St. Petersburg.

The comedy surprised the actors even during the first reading by its author. It seemed difficult and incomprehensible. Being present at the rehearsals, Gogol saw the confusion in which the actors were: they were embarrassed by the unusual characters of the play, the lack of love intrigue, and the language of comedy. The actors did not attach importance to Gogol's advice and ignored his instructions. The only actor Sosnitsky who played the Mayor suited Gogol.

The actors did not appreciate or understand the social content of the play. And yet “The Inspector General” made a stunning impression on the public. And the day of the first production - April 19, 1836 - became a great day for Russian theater. The Tsar was present at this premiere. When leaving, he said: “Everyone got it here, but most of all I did.”

Student 2. Production of “The Inspector General” in Moscow.

After the premiere in St. Petersburg, Gogol's mood changed: he sent the play to the Moscow actors. In a letter to the actor Shchepkin, he asked “to take over the entire production of The Inspector General,” and offered Shchepkin himself to take the role of the Mayor.

Gogol was asked to come to Moscow and begin rehearsals, but this did not happen. However, he corresponded with Shchepkin and shared his thoughts about the production.

On May 25, 1836, the premiere of The Inspector General took place at the Maly Theater. Only aristocrats who were unable to appreciate the comedy entered the hall. The actors essentially did not understand Gogol's plan.

Subsequent performances were a success. The play became the topic of general conversation.

Form of organization of student activities.

Submitting individual homework, reading a textbook article, discussing the article, and searching for answers to questions.

The main activities of a teacher.

Organizing a conversation, reporting on the ideological concept and history of the comedy.

Presentation.

Stage 3. Workshop.

Organization of commented reading of the poster and “Notes for gentlemen actors”. Listening to an audio recording of act 1 of the comedy (read by: Androvskaya O., Belokurov V., Monyukov V., Petker B., Gribov A.); analytical conversation.

The main type of activity aimed at creating educational results . Teacher's opening speech.

Reading the poster. After reading the list characters, we discover that there is no auditor there. What's the matter? Does the title character turn out to be an off-stage character? We still have to find out about this.

What can a poster tell you about before you get acquainted with comedy? (Already reading the poster makes it possible to assume that the comedy shows big picture life, the peculiar anatomy of a county town)

Flip through the play, determine how many acts are in it and how many phenomena does each act consist of?

Let's get acquainted with the 1st act of the comedy.

Listening to an audio recording of act 1 of a comedy.

Conversation on issues.

What role does the first phrase of the comedy play? (Gogol outlines the plot of the comedy: city officials, led by the mayor, are afraid of the auditor; his arrival is “unpleasant news.” The mayor introduced the “auditor situation.” The essence of this situation is a special kind of game, built on the mutual deception of its two participants – the auditor and the audited. One wants to “find and punish”, the other “to hide and evade responsibility." At the same time, the goals and tactics of the “enemy” are not a secret to either side. Thus, an audit can sometimes lead to dire consequences even for its successful participants (This is why even non-employees Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky are afraid of the auditor).

What do we learn from Andrei Ivanovich Chmykhov’s letter?

What is the role of this character? (This character is off-stage, he does not appear before the audience, he is not even mentioned again. But his role is very important: from Chmykhov’s letter we learn that the mayor, “like everyone else, has sins.” The fear of exposing these sins is what pushes officials to “covering up tracks.” Pangs of conscience are unfamiliar to these people; it is not the expectation of fair retribution, but precisely the fear of exposure that is the driving force of the plot.

How do the mayor's councils characterize officials?

What is the self-characteristic of officials?

What official crimes did the postmaster commit?

Why do you think the officials believed the report of Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky about the auditor?

How do officials behave when they hear that the auditor has already arrived?

Can we tell where and when the action takes place? What is the significance of place and time of action?

Form of organization of student activities.

Listening to audio recordings, working with literary text, participation in an analytical conversation.

The main activities of a teacher.

Organization of an analytical conversation.

ICT tools for implementing this type of activity.

Audio recording.

Stage 4. Checking the results. Correction.

Formation of specific educational material.

Observations, conclusions.

The main type of activity aimed at creating educational results . Teacher's word.

The author's originality lay in the fact that the exposition in the comedy follows the plot. The plot of the play is the first phrase of the mayor: “... an auditor is coming to us.” And only after that we plunge into the atmosphere of life in the county town, find out what kind of order there is, what local officials do.

Recording the output in a notebook. Already from the first act of the play one can tell that things in city life are not going well. But the worst thing is that people living in this city have no idea that they can live differently.

The main activities of a teacher.

Systematization and generalization.

Stage 5. Summing up, homework.

Reflection on achieved or unachieved results.

Returning to the topic of the lesson, restoring the sequence of actions performed, studying the sequence of actions from the point of view of its effectiveness, productivity, and compliance with the assigned tasks.

Homework.

Repeat information about satire and its means, prepare characteristics of the characters according to the table:

Official name

From the Pushkin era to the Gogol period in the history of Russian literature. The formation of a writer (1809-1830). Gogol entered Russian literature in the golden age, when it had already reached its peak. To win readers and become on a par with Pushkin, Zhukovsky, Griboyedov, it was not enough to have enormous talent. It was necessary to suffer through your own theme, to create your own unique picture of life.

The overarching theme of Gogol’s work was the struggle of impersonal reality for the human soul, the attack on it by evil. Evil has a truly diabolical ability to change masks. In one era it seems demonically powerful, in another it pretends to be gray and inconspicuous. But if the struggle stops, spiritual destruction awaits humanity. Literature is the field of this battle; the writer is able to influence its outcome.

Gogol’s literary weapon in the romantic struggle for the fate of the world was soul-cleansing laughter “through invisible tears unknown to the world.” His laughter is not just satirical castigation social vices and not only forces the reader to treat natural human shortcomings and small weaknesses with condescension and humor. He can be joyful, sad, tragic, carefree, sarcastic, and kind. He washes away from life everything superficial, everything vulgar, returns it to the radiant foundation inherent in every thing, in every Living being By God. And you have to pay the highest price for it - the price of boundless pain that the writer passes through his heart. (It was in this that Gogol was in many ways close to the late German romantics, primarily to Hoffmann.) And in the last years of his life and work, Gogol would increasingly resort to lyrical preaching, directly addressing the reader, trying to instill in him “good thoughts” and indicate the path to correction.

Ultimately, Gogol, as a writer, came close to the line separating the literature of modern times from religious service. Art for the late Gogol is no longer so much “a deception that elevates us,” but rather a direct mouthpiece of truth, an echo of Divine truth. Why, then, was he unable to complete his great novel “Dead Souls,” the ultimate goal of which was to “correct” all of Russia? Why did Gogol’s last years pass under the sign of a severe creative and mental crisis? A comprehensive answer to these questions is simply impossible. There is a secret of human life, a secret of the soul, a secret of the writer's path, which every person, every artist takes with him. But you can and should think about them. You just shouldn't rush. First, let us remember how Gogol’s personal fate and creative biography took shape.

The estate of the Ukrainian landowners Gogol-Yanovsky was located in a fertile and historical legends region - in the Poltava region. From the very first years of his life, Gogol absorbed two national cultures - Ukrainian and Russian. He loved Little Russian folklore and knew well the work of Little Russian writers. For example, Ivan Kotlyarevsky, the author of a comic adaptation of Virgil’s epic poem “Aeneid”:

Aeneas was a poor boy
And the lad is no matter how Cossack,
Quick at tricks, unlucky,
He outshone the regular revelers.
When Troy in the terrible battle
Leveled with a pile of dung,
I grabbed the knapsack and gave it some traction;
Taking the Trojans with him,
Shaven-headed beggars,
And he showed the Greeks his heels...

Gogol's father, Vasily Afanasyevich, himself free time composed. Mother, Maria Ivanovna, nee Kosyarovskaya, raised her six children in a strictly religious spirit. Young Gogol knew the Bible well and was especially keenly aware of the prophecies of the Apocalypse (the final book of the New Testament) about the last times humanity, the coming of the Antichrist and Last Judgment. Subsequently, these childhood experiences will echo in his disturbing and exciting prose.

From 1821 to 1828, Gogol studied at the newly opened Gymnasium of Higher Sciences in Nizhyn. It was a good gymnasium: teachers and students staged school plays; Gogol painted scenery and played serious and comic roles. And yet, Gogol’s active character and carefully hidden ambition did not give him peace. He dreamed of a career in government, wanted to become a lawyer (“Injustice, the greatest misfortune in the world, tore my heart,” he wrote to P. P. Kosyarovsky in 1827) and, naturally, thought about moving to St. Petersburg.

But the northern capital of the great empire quickly cooled the southern ardor of the young provincial. It was not possible to find a profitable job; there was not enough money; literary debut - the semi-student poetic idyll "Ganz Küchelgarten", published under the pseudonym V. Alov, caused friendly ridicule from the capital's critics. In a gloomy mood, the twenty-year-old writer burns copies of unsold editions, just as they burn bridges behind them. Suddenly leaves St. Petersburg abroad, to Germany. It returns just as suddenly. Tries to become an actor. Until, finally, he enters the clerical service.

This convulsiveness of actions, nervous overstrain will henceforth precede outbursts creative activity(and later seem to replace it). Already in 1830, Gogol’s first story “Bisavryuk, or the Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala” was published, which marked the beginning of the brilliant cycle “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” (1831-1832).

"Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka". Stories published by the pasichnik Rudy Panko" (1829-1831). Gogol's stories from Little Russian life, sometimes scary, sometimes frivolous, very colorful and melodious, appeared just in time. “Everyone rejoiced at this living description of a singing and dancing tribe,” wrote Pushkin, who supported Gogol until his death in 1837. (Even the plots of the two main Gogol's works, the comedy “The Inspector General” and the novel “Dead Souls”, were generously donated to their author by Pushkin.)

Gogol attributed the authorship of the stories in the cycle to Rudy Panko, a simpleton and joker. At the same time, invisible characters-storytellers seem to be hidden in the texts of the stories. This is the sexton Foma Grigorievich, who believes in his horror stories, inherited from his grandfather (and to him, in due course, from his grandfather’s aunt). And a certain “pea panic.” He loves Dikanka, but was brought up on “books” (Foma Grigorievich considers him a “Muscovite”). And Stepan Ivanovich Hen from Gadyach...

All of them, with the exception of the well-read “pea panic,” are naive. And Rudy Panko, with each new story, reveals less and less innocence and more and more literary cunning. In addition, the image of the provincial, cheerful, folk and semi-fairy-tale Dikanka is shaded in the cycle “Evenings...” by the image of grandiose, regal (but also semi-fairy-tale) St. Petersburg. Only a pasichnik who grew up here, knows everyone, and is connected with everyone, can truly tell about Dikanka’s life from the inside. A metropolitan writer, some kind of “pea panicer,” cannot do this. And vice versa, only a serious writer - well-read, involved in “high” culture - can tell about the “big” world, about St. Petersburg. So it turns out that Panko is not so much a “full-fledged” character, like Pushkin’s Belkin, but rather a literary mask of Gogol himself, who felt himself equally a St. Petersburger and a native of Dikanka (an estate with that name, owned by Count Kochubey, was located nearby from Vasilyevka).

Russian literature was waiting for the appearance of just such a romantic writer, capable of recreating a bright local flavor, preserving the free breath of his own in prose. small homeland, a fresh sense of the province, but at the same time striving to fit the image of the outskirts into a vast cultural context. Most readers immediately realized that Gogol was not limited to “literary painting,” colorful details of Ukrainian life, and “tasty” Little Russian words and phrases. His goal is to portray Dikanka as both real and fantastic, as a small universe from where you can see in all directions.

You have already studied Gogol’s cycle “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka”. But now, with in-depth repetition, let’s try to rediscover it for ourselves. Let’s re-read two stories from “Evenings...”, which seem polar in style, opposite in everything - “The Night Before Christmas” and “Ivan Fedorovich Shponka and His Aunt”.

As befits a story directly related to folklore tradition and shrouded fabulous atmosphere, the main character of "The Night Before Christmas" blacksmith Vakula must win evil spirits, turn the enemy devil into a magical assistant.

All the heroes of the cycle live and act in different eras. Some (like Petrus from the story “The Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala”) - in terrible and majestic antiquity, when evil reigned supreme over the world. Others (like Vakula) were in the conditional golden age of Catherine the Great, on the eve of the abolition of the Zaporozhye freemen, when magic was no longer as formidable as in mythological times. Witches and demons are sometimes downright funny. The devil that Vakula rides on is “completely German in front,” with a narrow, fidgety muzzle, a round snout, and thin legs. He looks more like a “nimble dandy with a tail” than a devil. And what is funny can no longer be scary.

In addition, Vakula comes into contact with evil spirits not just sometime, but precisely on the night before Christmas. In the semi-folklore world of “Evenings...”, the closer to Christmas and Easter, the more active the evil is - and the weaker it is. The pre-Christmas night gives the evil spirits the last chance to “play pranks”, and it also puts a limit to these “pranks”, for everywhere they are already caroling and praising Christ.

It is not at all by chance that the episode with the Cossack Cossacks who arrived in St. Petersburg to visit Catherine II appears in the plot of the story. The fact is that soon after this meeting the Empress will abolish the Zaporozhye Sich. That is, the romantic era will end, not only the mythical antiquity to which the heroes of the “terrible” stories of the cycle belong (“Terrible Revenge”, “The Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala”), but also the legendary past to which cheerful and successful heroes like Vakula belong . The path to a non-scary but boring modernity is open. The little child of the blacksmith and Oksana is destined to live in a world where adventures similar to those that befell Vakula will no longer be possible, for antiquity will finally move from reality to the realm of Rudy Panka’s fables...

It is in this era that Ivan Fedorovich Shponka, the main character of the story told to the narrator Stepan Ivanovich Kurochka from Gadyach, happens to live. Due to poor memory, the simple-hearted narrator writes down the plot, but (remember “Belkin’s Tale” again) his old woman eats up half the notebook on pies, so the story breaks off in the middle. This break in the storyline sharply enhances the impression of randomness and inappropriateness coming from the story about a worthless hero, so unlike the rest - the bright, colorful characters of “Evenings...”.

The story about Ivan Fedorovich is based on the technique of disappointed expectations. The reader of “Evenings...” has already become accustomed to certain patterns of the plot (everyday scenes often culminate in a fantastic outcome; fantasy is reduced to the level of everyday details). He expects the same from the story “Ivan Fedorovich Shponka and His Aunt,” intuitively bringing it closer to “The Night Before Christmas.”

In vain. The only event throughout the story that goes beyond the ordinary is Ivan Fedorovich's dream. Having fallen in love with the younger of Storchenka's neighbor's two sisters, Shponka ponders with horror: what is a wife? And will it really be that, having married, he will now not be alone, but there will always be two of them? The dream he had that same night was terrible. Then his goose-faced wife appears to him; then there are several wives, and they are everywhere - in a hat, in a pocket; then the aunt is no longer an aunt, but the bell tower, Shponka himself is the bell, and the rope with which they drag him to the bell tower is the wife; then the merchant offers him to buy fashionable material - “for his wife.” But the dream resolves itself into nothing - the manuscript of the story breaks off.

By creating the image of Ivan Fedorovich, Gogol outlines a new type of hero, who will soon find himself at the center of his artistic world. This is a hero, torn from a semi-fairytale time and placed in modern space, in a shredding era. He is not connected with anything except everyday life - neither with good nor with evil. And, oddly enough, this complete “fallout” of modern man from the integral world, this final “liberation” from the power of the fears of hoary antiquity, this separation from Dikanka (Ivan Fedorovich has no connection with her at all!) makes him in a new way defenseless from evil. It can easily invade the “empty” consciousness of the hero (remember Shponka’s terrible dream) and shake him to the core.

Tiny Dikanka as depicted by Gogol is truly universal. If the healthy and natural beginning of national life has been preserved in it, it means that it has not disappeared from the world as a whole. And vice versa, if ancient connections in it imperceptibly, gradually begin to disintegrate, if day by day it becomes a little less fabulous, a little more prosaic, insipid - all the more so this applies to everything around it.

The second cycle of stories “Mirgorod” Stories that serve as a continuation of “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka” (1832-1834). "Taras Bulba". Success could easily turn your head to a young writer. But Gogol did not stop there and continued to search for new themes, plots, and characters. He tried to study Ukrainian folklore as an ethnographer, even tried to occupy a department general history at Kiev University, however, his mobile and very nervous character excluded the possibility of leisurely desk work. Moreover, secretly from his closest friends, he had already begun work on the next prose cycle. Later this cycle would be called “Mirgorod”, but initially the “Mirgorod” stories appeared as part of the collection “Arabesques” along with several works that in 1842 Gogol would combine into the cycle of “Petersburg stories”.

The collision of terrible antiquity with boring (but no less terrible) modernity becomes the main artistic principle here. The “Mirgorod” cycle has two parts, each with two stories, one of them from the “Gogol” era, the other from the legendary past. The stories from the “Gogol” era are close in style to the “natural” style of “Ivan Fedorovich Shponka and his aunt”; the stories from the legendary past are written in the same romantically elevated spirit as “Terrible Vengeance” or “The Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala” . The composition of the cycle has also been adjusted down to the millimeter. The first part opens with a “modern” story (“Old World Landowners”) and ends with a “legendary” story (“Taras Bulba”). The second opens with the “legendary” (“Viy”) and ends with the “modern” (“The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich”). It’s as if time, having described a circle, returns to the same point - to the point of complete disappearance of meaning.

Let us dwell in more detail on just one, “legendary”, and at the same time very familiar to you, story “Taras Bulba”. Having understood how it works, we will understand how other stories of “Mirgorod” are arranged.

There is such a thing literary concept- artistic time. That is, the time that is depicted by the writer. It is both similar and unlike real historical time; it can flow faster or slower than real time, it can swap past, present and future or combine them into a bizarre whole. For example, the hero acts in the present, but suddenly remembers the past, and we seem to move into the past. Or the author uses the present tense form to talk about long-standing events - and an unexpected effect arises of shifting chronological boundaries. Or, as in the case of Taras Bulba, the writer places heroes acting simultaneously, as if in different historical eras.

The action of Gogol’s story seems to date back to the time of the Union of Brest in 1596, when on the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian kingdom of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth a religious union was forcibly concluded between Orthodox and Catholics, in which the Orthodox retained the language and “external” rituals of their worship, but became subordinate to the pope Roman and were obliged to profess all the main provisions (dogmas) of the Catholic Church. However, if you read carefully, you will notice that the plot covers the events of Ukrainian history of the 15th, 16th and even the mid-17th centuries. The narrator seems to be trying to remind the reader once again that everything energetic, everything strong and impressive is already in the past, and now Mirgorod boredom has settled in the vastness of the Ukrainian region, as well as in the vastness of the whole world. Therefore, when exactly the events took place is not so important. The main thing is that it was a very long time ago.

It is not for nothing that in the story, which is stylized as a heroic epic about the legendary times of Little Russian “knighthood,” different stages are contrasted human history. The Cossacks, living according to the laws of the epic, do not yet know statehood; they are strong in their disorder, wild freemen. And the Polish nobility, which had already united into a state “where there are kings, princes and everything that is best in noble knighthood,” forgot what true brotherhood is.

Taras Bulba is a real epic hero. From the narrator’s point of view, he is always right in everything. Even when he acts like an ordinary robber: in the scene of a Jewish pogrom or beating babies, committing violence against women and the elderly. The narrator wants to become like a folk storyteller, majestic and objective. Therefore, he portrays even the unseemly actions of Taras Bulba as epic deeds, sanctified by the power of the hero and not subject to ethical assessment. Moreover, in the episodes in which Taras participates, the narrator deliberately dissolves his point of view in the point of view of the title character. This fully corresponds to the plan - to portray an ideal, self-sufficient hero of Slavic antiquity, when other morals reigned, other ideas about good and evil, and when the world had not yet been taken over by vulgar everyday life, which, like swamp duckweed, covers the present life.

But the time in which the immaculately correct Cossack Taras Bulba had to live is no longer completely epic. Many Cossacks, unlike Taras, his worthy heir Ostap and loyal associates, like Dmitro Tovkach, succumbed to the pernicious Polish influence, calmed down, reconciled with evil, “gotten crazy”, got used to luxury and bliss. The Cossacks not only conclude a peace treaty with the Turks, but also swear by their faith that they will be faithful to the treaty with the infidels! Later, having once again returned to the Sich after being seriously wounded, Taras does not recognize his “spiritual fatherland” at all. Old comrades will die, only hints will remain of the glorious past times. The next “holy war” against Catholics, which he will raise after the Warsaw execution of Ostap, will be as much revenge for his son as a desperate attempt to save the partnership from decay, to return the “abusive meaning” of Zaporozhye existence.

But Bulba, the bearer of a truly Cossack tradition, does not want to put up with this: life without war, without feat, without glory and robbery is meaningless: “So what are we living on, what the hell are we living on, explain this to me!” And at the first opportunity he raises the Cossacks on a campaign to the Polish southwest to fight against the union.

For Taras, this is not just a war. This is a kind of bloody confession of faith in the Holy Fatherland, in fellowship, to which he relates as a believer relates to the Creed. No wonder the Cossacks in the very literally words join in the mystical “companionship” with wine and bread during their endless feasts. In the scene before the Battle of Dubnovo, Taras rolls out a barrel of old wine and “communes” with it to the Cossacks, who are facing a glorious death that leads straight to eternal life: “Sit down, Kukubenko, at my right hand! - Christ will tell him. “You haven’t betrayed the partnership...”

At the same time, Orthodoxy itself for Taras Bulba (as, indeed, for all the Cossacks in Gogol’s depiction) is not so much a church teaching as a kind of religious password: “Hello! What, do you believe in Christ? - “I believe!”... “Come on, cross yourself!” ... “Well, okay... go to the smoking room you know.”

In a merciless campaign against the “distrustful”, the sons of Taras mature. But here Taras is destined to learn that his youngest son, the overly sensitive Andriy, crushed by the charms of a beautiful Polish woman, goes over to the side of the enemy. If until this moment Taras’s goal was revenge for the desecrated faith, then from now on he is an avenger for treason, he is a formidable judge to his son. No one, nothing will force him to leave the walls of the besieged fortress until retribution is accomplished. And it comes true. Andriy is ambushed, and the sternly fair father, ordering his son to get off his horse, executes him: “I gave birth to you, I will kill you!”

But let's reread completely different scenes related to the image of Andriy. It would seem that he is in no way inferior to Ostap: powerful, fathom tall, brave, good-looking, infinitely brave in battle, lucky. However, a slight shadow constantly falls on his image. In the very first scene of the story - the scene of his return - he too easily lets Taras ridicule him. (Whereas Ostap, the “correct” son, goes fist bump with his father.) In addition, Andriy hugs his mother too warmly. In the stylized epic world of “Taras Bulba”, a real Cossack must place his friend higher than the “baba”, and his family feelings must be much weaker than the feeling of brotherhood and camaraderie.

Andriy is too humane, too refined, too soulful to be a good Cossack and a real hero of the epic. During his first - still in Kyiv - date with a beautiful Polish woman, a beauty, white as snow and piercingly black-eyed, he allows her to make fun of himself. The Polish woman puts an earring on the uninvited guest's lip and throws on a muslin chemisette, that is, she dresses him up as a woman. This is not just a game, not just a mockery of a capricious Polish beauty at the Ukrainian boy who crept into her room through the chimney. (Which in itself is significant and casts a dubious demonic shadow on the hero.) But this is also a kind of ritual of dressing a man as a woman. Anyone who agreed to play such a game, who betrayed his “masculine” Cossack nature, in the militarized world of Gogol’s story is doomed sooner or later to betray his faith, fatherland, and comradeship.

And the changeling hero takes the next step away from the Zaporozhye Cossacks (and therefore away from the epic towards a love story). A few days after the date, he accidentally sees his beloved in the church. That is, in the midst of religious hostility between Orthodox and Catholics, on the eve of the union, because of which the Sich will soon rise to war against Poland, Andriy enters catholic church. Therefore, beauty for him is already higher than truth and more valuable than faith.

It is not surprising, therefore, that in the end he falls out of the great Cossack unity and camaraderie. Having learned from the exhausted maid of the Polish beauty that everything in the besieged city has been eaten, even mice, Andriy immediately responds to his beloved’s plea for help. But the enemy’s daughter cannot and should not be of interest to a real Cossack, even as a concubine. Having pulled out a bag of bread from under Ostap’s head, Andriy goes to the enemy side.

This transition is described by the author as a transition from the world of life to the otherworldly kingdom of death. Just as Andriy once entered the Polish woman’s room through an “unclean”, demonic chimney, so now he descends underground - into a secret tunnel, a semblance of the underworld. The first time it happened at night, during the reign of darkness, and now Andriy sneaks towards the underground passage in the uncertain light of the moon. The dungeon itself, within the walls of which stand the coffins of Catholic monks, is compared to the Kyiv caves, where righteous monks performed their feat of prayer. Only if the path through the Kyiv caves symbolizes the road through death to eternal life, then this dungeon leads from life to death. The Madonna depicted in the Catholic icon bears a seductive resemblance to Andria's beloved. Are such refined experiences, such details, such plot twists possible in a traditional epic? Of course no; the narrator selects a completely different genre for the story about Andria; as we have already said, this genre is a novel.

In Dubno, too, everything is painted in deathly tones. But Andriy doesn’t seem to notice this. In the midst of decay, the beauty of the Polish woman, her wonderful, “irresistibly victorious pallor,” her pearly tears (“why has fierce fate enchanted the heart to the enemy?”) seems especially bright, especially mysterious, especially alluring? There is also something deadly in this beauty: it is not for nothing that the narrator ultimately compares it to a beautiful statue. That is, with a statue devoid of life.

But the narrator - no matter how close his position is to the epically integral position of Taras - himself falls under the charm of the polka. Condemning Andriy ideologically, he describes the sensual perfection of the beauty in such detail and so expressively that, unbeknownst to himself, he temporarily turns from an epic storyteller into a novelist.

To finally be convinced of this, let’s compare the scene of the death of Andriy, who rushes towards death like a real novel hero - in flowing white and gold clothes, with the name of his beloved on his lips, and the episode of Ostap’s execution.

The younger brother goes over to the enemies voluntarily - the older one is captured. The younger one, at the moment of death, calls on an alien, female name, trembles with horror; the eldest silently endures terrible torment and grieves only that none of his relatives are around. He addresses his dying cry to his father (not knowing that he is standing in the square): “Father! where are you? Can you hear? This cry echoes the words of Christ on the Cross: “My God! My God! Why have you left me? "(Gospel of Matthew, chapter 27, verse 46) and "Father! I commend my spirit into Your hands!” (Gospel of Luke, chapter 23, verse 46). The fact that at this very moment they are going to break Ostap’s bones should also bring to mind the reader the Gospel episode: “...soldiers came, and they broke the legs of the first, and of the other, who was crucified with Him. But when they came to Jesus, when they saw Him already dead, they did not break His legs” (Gospel of John, 19, 32-33).

Taras himself remains faithful to the same epic beauty of courage, and therefore camaraderie. His path to death runs through the all-purifying element of fire (he must burn at the stake). And it is not without reason that this death gives him his last joy: from his “frontal” elevation on the top of the cliff, from the height of his “Olympic Calvary”, Taras sees how the Cossack brothers are fleeing the Polish pursuit (and even manages to shout to warn them of the danger). And most importantly, he witnesses the death of the brother of the hated Polish woman, who seduced Andria with her fatal beauty.

The first edition of the story ended with this. In the second edition (1842), Gogol put an epic monologue into the mouth of Taras Bulba: “Farewell, comrades! - he shouted to them [the Cossacks] from above. - Remember me... What, you damn Poles took it! ...Wait, the time will come, the time will come, you will learn what the Orthodox faith is! Even now, distant and close peoples sense: their king is rising from the Russian land, and there will be no power in the world that will not submit to him!..”

The last words of the Cossacks who died in the battle for Dubno were a praise to the Fatherland and the Orthodox faith. Andriy's last word was about the Polish lady. Ostap's last cry was addressed to his father. The last word of Taras Bulba turns into prophetic praise of Russian power, which nothing can overcome, into a prophecy about the future rise of the Russian land. The Sich does not perish, but retreats into the mythological depths of history to give way to something new, highest manifestation Slavs - to the Russian kingdom.

These prophetic and seemingly optimistic words were not a tribute to the ideology of the “official nationality” of the era of Nicholas I, that is, the concept on which the entire internal policy of Russia in the 1830s was oriented and the essence of which was expressed by the formula “Orthodoxy - Autocracy - Nationality.” They had to connect the particular theme of the story with the general context of “Mirgorod”. And in this context, the final “imperial” prophecy romantic hero It sounds hysterical and almost more hopeless than the ending of the first edition sounded. Everything came true: Russian kingdom rose, but in the end he suffered the same fate that once befell the Sich. It lost its greatness, drowned in the Mirgorod puddle, which is mockingly described in the preface to “The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich Quarreled.”

And the story itself about two Mirgorod landowners, Ivan Ivanovich Pererepenko and Ivan Nikiforovich Dovgochkhun, almost indistinguishable from each other, turns into a tragicomic epilogue to the sublime story of the life and exploits of Taras Bulba. The less distinguishable the heroes of the story, the more detailed the simple-minded narrator from Mirgorod, whose intonation and style are sharply contrasted with the author’s, compares them in the introductory chapter. Ivan Ivanovich has a nice bekesha with smushki; in the heat he lies under a canopy in only a shirt; has no children, “but” his girl Gapka has them. Ivan Nikiforovich, extremely pleasant to talk to, has never been married. Ivan Ivanovich is thin and tall; Ivan Nikiforovich is shorter, “but” thicker. Meaningless comparison formulas (“Ivan Ivanovich is of a somewhat timid character. Ivan Nikiforovich, on the contrary, has trousers in<...>wide folds") parody the classic ancient book of biographies of great people - “Parallel Lives” by Plutarch. The shredded characters themselves, in turn, parody historical heroes. And their quarrel parodies serious battles - both those waged by Taras Bulba and those waged by “our king” in the era to which the events of the story are dated. (The quarrel takes place on July 10, 1810, two years after the conclusion of the Peace of Tilsit in 1808 and two years before Patriotic War.) It is no coincidence that the reason for the quarrel is purely “military” - a gun, which Ivan Ivanovich is trying in vain to exchange for a pig and two sacks of oats. The bargaining ends with Ivan Ivanovich comparing Ivan Nikiforovich to a fool, Ivan Nikiforovich calling Ivan Ivanovich a gander, and the characters as heroes ancient tragedy, freeze in a silent scene, so that after it they can begin a battle not for life, but for death - for the death of the soul.

The ordinary life of Mirgorod is so motionless and empty, so plotless that Ivan Ivanovich, before his quarrel with Ivan Nikiforovich, even compiled a “chronicle” of the melons eaten: this melon was eaten on such and such a date... so and so participated. Now both sides of the conflict, ordinary people, and especially the city authorities feel like participants in truly historical events. Everything - any detail, even an insignificant story about Ivan Ivanovich's brown pig who stole Ivan Nikiforovich's petition - grows into an epically extensive episode about the visit of the lame mayor to Ivan Ivanovich.

Ultimately, everything in the story points to the root cause of the terrible fragmentation of the Mirgorodians: they lost religious meaning life. Arriving in Mirgorod after twelve years of absence, the author (who does not coincide with the narrator) sees autumn dirt and boredom all around (in church language this word is a synonym for sinful despondency). The aged heroes whom the author meets in church and who think not about prayer, not about life, but only about the success of their lawsuits “harmonize” with the appearance of the city.

Romanticism and naturalism in the artistic world of Gogol. "Petersburg Tales". In full accordance with his new sense of life, Gogol changes his style. In those stories of "Mirgorod" that were based on modern material, he followed the principle: “The more ordinary the object, the higher the poet needs to be in order to extract the extraordinary from it and so that this extraordinary is, among other things, the perfect truth.” And in stories from the legendary past, he continued to adhere to a “sweeping”, elevated, fantastic style. And the more impressive and powerful this past seemed, the more petty and insignificant modern life looked.

Let's try to express this idea differently, in the language of literary criticism. In a language a little more complex, but more accurate.

“Evenings on the Farm...” was created according to the laws of romantic prose. According to the laws that many Russian prose writers of the 30s followed. For example, a literary friend of Gogol, a fellow admirer of Hoffmann, German and French romantics, Vladimir Fedorovich Odoevsky.

The heroes of his philosophical short stories “Beethoven's Last Quartet” (1831) and “The Improviser” (1833) were poets, artists, and musicians who received their great gift in exchange for everyday peace of mind. Any mistake along this path, any manifestation of distrust in the mysterious, unpredictable nature of creativity turns into a tragedy.

On the contrary, the heroines of Odoevsky’s secular stories “Princess Mimi” and “Princess Zizi” (both 1834) are too ordinary, their souls completely belong to the deathly, inhuman world. But here, too, the plot paths lead the characters to disaster. Princess Mimi spreads a false rumor about a love affair between Baroness Dauertal and Granitsky, “a beautiful, stately young man.” Gossip sets in motion an inexorable mechanism of mutual destruction; The result is two deaths, broken destinies.

Finally, in Odoevsky’s fantastic stories “Sylphide” (1837) and “Salamander” (1841) the characters come into contact with another, invisible life, with the kingdom of natural spirits. And this often ends in tears for them: the “one-dimensional” world either expels the “spirit-seers” from its confines, or subjugates them to itself, to its “worldly views.”

It was in this romantic direction that the early Gogol developed. Only in the story about Ivan Fedorovich Shponka did he begin to master the principles of a naturalistic, that is, life-like, emphatically everyday depiction of reality. In the stories from the “Mirgorod” series, everything is somewhat different. Art world From now on it is impossible to reduce Gogol to one thing - either romanticism or naturalism. The writer uses narrative techniques either romantic poetics, or the natural school - depending on the artistic task that he is solving at the moment. And this means that from now on, no literary system can completely exhaust his plan, contain the images created by his all-encompassing genius. What was once the main method of artistic representation becomes one of several artistic techniques, which the writer keeps at the ready, like a master keeps at the ready a set of various tools.

The final combination of the two artistic systems, romantic and naturalistic, occurred in a cycle later called “Petersburg stories,” which was created by the writer in 1835-1840. Grotesque and everyday life, extreme fantasy and attention to the smallest realities - all this is equally present in the stories “The Nose”, “Nevsky Prospect”, “Portrait”, “Notes of a Madman”, “The Overcoat”. Fantasy is immersed here in the very thick of everyday life. The heroes of the cycle are the strange inhabitants of the northern capital, an official city in which everything is a lie, everything is deception, everything fluctuates in the uncertain light of flickering lanterns. Let's look in more detail at two stories from this series - "Nose" And "Overcoat" .

The plot of “The Nose” is incredible to the point of absurdity: Gogol in advance eliminated the possibility of a rational explanation of the adventures that befell his hero. It would seem that Major Kovalev’s nose could well have been cut off by the barber Ivan Yakovlevich, who finds this nose baked in bread. Moreover, Ivan Yakovlevich is a drunkard. But he shaves the major on Sundays and Wednesdays, but it happens on Friday, and the entire Thursday (that is, Thursday) his nose sat on Kovalev’s face! Why after two weeks the nose suddenly “wants” to return to its original place is also unknown. And this absurdity of the situation sharply highlights the social meaning of the plot collision.

The narrator draws the reader's attention to the fact that Kovalev is not just a major. He is a collegiate assessor, that is, a civil rank of the 8th grade. According to the Table of Ranks, this rank corresponded to the military rank of major, but in practice it was valued lower. Major Kovalev is a collegiate assessor of the “second freshness”. By ordering to be called a major, he deliberately exaggerates his bureaucratic status, because all his thoughts are aimed at taking a higher place in the service hierarchy. He is, in essence, not a person, but a bureaucratic function, a part that has supplanted the whole. And Major Kovalev’s nose, which voluntarily left his face to become a state councilor, only grotesquely continues the life path of its owner. A part of the body that has become whole symbolizes the bureaucratic world order, in which a person, before becoming someone, loses face.

But the narrow social meaning of the story is opened into an immense religious and universal context. Let's pay attention to the “little things” that sometimes play a role in a work of art decisive role. What date does Kovalev discover that his nose is missing? March 25. But this is the day of the Annunciation, one of the main (twelfth) Orthodox holidays. Where does the barber Ivan Yakovlevich live? On Voznesensky Avenue. On what bridge does Major Kovalev meet the orange seller? On Voskresensky. Meanwhile, Resurrection (Easter) and Ascension are also twelve holidays. But the actual religious meaning of these holidays in the world depicted by Gogol is lost. Despite the Annunciation, there are few people in one of the main cathedrals of the capital, where Major Kovalev follows his nose; the church also became one of the bureaucratic fictions, a present (or rather “absent”) place. Only the disappearance of the nose can crush the heart of a formal Christian, as Major Kovalev is depicted, like the majority.

The main character of another story in the St. Petersburg cycle, Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin, also has a clear social “registration”. He is the “eternal titular adviser.” That is, a civil servant of the 9th class who does not have the right to acquire personal nobility (if he was not born a nobleman); in military service this rank corresponds to the rank of captain. “A little man with a bald spot on his forehead,” just over fifty years old, serves as a copyist of papers “in one department.”

And yet this is a completely different type, a different image. Kovalev himself strives for bureaucratic impersonality, he himself reduces his life to a set of official characteristics. Akaki Akakievich did not lose face for the simple reason that he had practically nothing to lose. He is depersonalized from birth, he is a victim of social circumstances. His name, Akaki, translated from Greek means “kindly.” However, the etymological meaning of the name is completely hidden behind its “indecent” sound, meaningless by it. Equally “indecent” are the names that allegedly came across in the calendar for Akaki Akakievich’s mother before his baptism (Mokiy, Sossiy, Khozdazat, Trifilliy, Dula, Varakhisy, Pavsikaky). Gogol rhymes the “undignified” sound of names with the insignificance of the hero. His last name is also meaningless, which, as the narrator ironically notes, came from a shoe, although all of Akaki Akakievich’s ancestors and even his brother-in-law (despite the fact that the hero is not married) wore boots.

Akaki Akakievich is doomed to life in an impersonal society, therefore the entire story about him is built on formulas like “one day”, “one official”, “one significant person" In this society, the hierarchy of values ​​has been lost, so the speech of the narrator, who almost in no way coincides with the author, is syntactically illogical, overloaded with “extra” and similar words: “His name was: Akaki Akakievich. Perhaps it will seem somewhat strange and searched out to the reader, but we can assure that they were not looking for him in any way, but that such circumstances happened of their own accord that it was impossible to give another name, and this is exactly how it happened.”

However, the tongue-tiedness of the talkative narrator cannot be compared with the tongue-tiedness of the hero: Akaki Akakievich expresses himself practically only in prepositions and adverbs. So he belongs to a different literary and social type than Major Kovalev - the “little man” type that occupied Russian writers of the 1830s and 1840s. (Remember Samson Vyrin from Belkin’s Tales or poor Evgeniy from Bronze Horseman"Pushkin.) This type of hero (which we have already talked about) concentrated the thoughts of Russian writers of the 19th century about the contradictions of Russian life, about the fact that too many of their contemporaries, having become impoverished, seemed to fall out of the historical process, becoming defenseless before fate.

The fate of the “little man” is hopeless. He cannot, does not have the strength to rise above the circumstances of life. And only after death does Akaki Akakievich turn from a social victim into a mystical avenger. In the deathly silence of the St. Petersburg night, he tears off the overcoats of officials, not recognizing the bureaucratic difference in ranks and operating both behind the Kalinkin Bridge (in the poor part of the capital) and in the rich part of the city.

But it is not without reason that the story about the “posthumous existence” of the “little man” contains both horror and comedy. The author does not see a real way out of the impasse. After all, social insignificance inexorably leads to the insignificance of the individual himself. Akaki Akakievich had no passions or aspirations, except for the passion for the meaningless rewriting of departmental papers, except for the love of dead letters. No family, no rest, no entertainment. His only positive quality is determined by a negative concept: Akaki Akakievich, in full agreement with the etymology of his name, is good-natured. He does not respond to the constant ridicule of his fellow officials, only occasionally begging them in the style of Poprishchin, the hero of “Notes of a Madman”: “Leave me alone, why are you offending me?”

Of course, Akaki Akakievich’s gentleness has a certain, albeit undisclosed, unfulfilled spiritual power. It is not for nothing that a “side” episode was introduced into the story with “one young man”, who suddenly heard in the pitiful words of the offended Akaki Akakievich the “biblical” exclamation: “I am your brother” - and changed his life.

Thus, social motives suddenly become intertwined with religious ones. The description of the icy winter wind that torments St. Petersburg officials and ultimately kills Akaki Akakievich is connected with the theme of poverty and humiliation of the “little man.” But the St. Petersburg winter in Gogol’s depiction also acquires the metaphysical features of eternal, hellish, godless cold, in which the souls of people are frozen, and the soul of Akaki Akakievich, first of all.

The very attitude of Akaki Akakievich to the coveted overcoat is both social and religious. The dream of a new overcoat feeds him spiritually, turns for him into an “eternal idea of ​​a future overcoat,” into an ideal image of a thing. The day when Petrovich brings renewal becomes for Akaki Akakievich “the most solemn in life” (note the incorrect stylistic construction: either “the most” or “the most solemn”). This formula likens this day to Easter, “the triumph of triumphs.” Saying goodbye to the deceased hero, the author notes: before the end of his life, a bright guest flashed before him in the form of an overcoat. It was customary to call an angel a bright guest.

The hero's life catastrophe is predetermined by the bureaucratic, impersonal, indifferent social world order, at the same time, by the religious emptiness of reality, to which Akaki Akakievich belongs.

Comedy “The Inspector General”: philosophical subtext and “insignificant hero”. In 1836, Gogol made his debut as a playwright with the comedy The Inspector General.

By this time, the Russian comedy tradition had fully developed. (Remember our conversation about how lyrics and drama adapt more quickly and easily to changes in the literary situation.) The first viewers of The Inspector General knew by heart many of the moralizing comedies of the Enlightenment, from Fonvizin to Krylov. Of course, they also remembered the caustic poetic comedies of the playwright of the early 19th century, Alexander Shakhovsky, in whose comedic characters the public easily guessed the features of real people, prototypes. A stable set of comedic situations has formed; the authors masterfully varied them, “twisting” a new funny plot. Comedy characters had recognizable and unchanging features, since a system of theatrical roles was developed a long time ago. For example, the role of a false groom: a stupid hero, blinded by love, claims in vain for his hand main character and doesn’t notice that everyone is making fun of him. And a hero-reasoner, like Fonvizin’s Starodum, was generally exempt from comedy duties; he was not so much a participant in funny adventures as a mocking judge, a kind of representative of the author’s (and audience’s) interests on the theater stage...

So it was much easier for Gogol to make his debut in the comedy genre than in the story genre. And at the same time much more difficult. It was not for nothing that after the more than successful premiere, Gogol could not come to his senses for a long time. He was literally shocked by the general misunderstanding of the essence of comedy; he believed that the audience, like the heroes of The Government Inspector, did not know what they were laughing at. What was the matter? Habit is second nature not only in life, but also in art; it is difficult to make the viewer cry where he is accustomed to laughing, or to think about what he is accustomed to perceive thoughtlessly. Gogol had to overcome the stereotype of spectator perception. The actors (especially those performing the role of Khlestakov) did not understand Gogol’s plan and introduced a vaudeville element into the comedy. Trying to explain to the public what the essence of his creation is, Gogol writes, in addition to “The Inspector General,” the play “Theatrical Travel after the Presentation of a New Comedy” (1836), then within ten years he returns to this topic and creates several articles. The most important of them is “A warning for those who would like to play “The Inspector General” properly (1846).

If the author's intention could not be comprehended even experienced actors, what was expected from the main part of the audience? Few people thought about why Gogol confined the action of the comedy to the narrow confines of a county town, from which “even if you ride for three years, you won’t reach any state.” But such a “middle” city was supposed to serve as a symbol provincial Russia at all. Moreover, later in the dramatic “Dénouement of The Inspector General” (1846), Gogol gave an even broader, even more allegorical interpretation of his comedy. The city is a metaphor human soul, the characters personify the passions that overcome the human heart, Khlestakov portrays a flighty secular conscience, and the “real” auditor who appears in the finale is the court of conscience, waiting for a person beyond the grave. This means that everything that happens in this “collective city” (this is Gogol’s formula) applies to Russia, mired in bribery and extortion, and to humanity as a whole.

But isn’t it strange that at the center of the symbolic plot of “The Inspector General” there is a completely insignificant, worthless hero? Khlestakov is not a bright adventurer, not a clever swindler who wants to deceive thieving officials, but a stupid fanfare. He reacts to what is happening, as a rule, inappropriately. It is not his fault (and certainly not his merit) that everyone around him wants to be deceived and tries to find deep hidden meaning in his thoughtless remarks.

For Gogol there was not the slightest contradiction in all this. The funnier the situations in which Khlestakov finds himself, the sadder the author’s “bright” laughter through invisible, unknown to the world tears, which Gogol considered the only positive face of comedy. It’s funny when Khlestakov, after a “fat-bellied bottle” with provincial Madeira, from cue to cue, raises himself higher and higher on the hierarchical ladder: they wanted to make him a collegiate assessor, then “once” the soldiers mistook him for the commander-in-chief, and now to him couriers are rushing, “thirty-five thousand couriers alone” with a request to take over the management of the department... “I am everywhere, everywhere... Tomorrow they will promote me to field marshal now...” But what seems funny, at the same time infinitely tragic. Khlestakov's lies and boasting are not like the empty chatter of the fanfare Repetilov from the comedy "Woe from Wit", or the carelessly excited lies of Nozdryov from "Dead Souls", or the fantasies of some vaudeville naughty. By lying, he overcomes the limitations of his social life, becomes a significant personality, destroys social barriers that in real life he will never be able to overcome.

In that phantasmagoric world that was created in Khlestakov’s deceitful imagination, an insignificant official is promoted to field marshal, an impersonal copyist becomes famous writer. Khlestakov seems to jump out of his social ranks and rush up the social ladder. If it weren’t for the censorship “limiters,” he would never have stopped at being a field marshal and would certainly have imagined himself as a sovereign, as another Gogol official, Poprishchin, does (“Notes of a Madman”). Poprishchina frees his madness from social constraint, Khlestakov - his lies. At some point, he looks from this unimaginable height at his real self and suddenly speaks with boundless contempt about his current position: “... and there was an official for writing, a kind of rat, with only a pen - tr, tr... went to write "

Meanwhile, many of the heroes of The Inspector General want to change their class-bureaucratic status and rise above their petty fate. So, Bobchinsky has one single “lowest request” for Khlestakov: “... when you go to St. Petersburg, tell all the different nobles there: senators and admirals... if the sovereign has to do this, then tell the sovereign that, well, , Your Imperial Majesty, Pyotr Ivanovich Bobchinsky lives in such and such a city.” Thus, he, too, essentially wants to “elevate” himself to the highest officials of the empire. But since he is not endowed with Khlestakov’s bold imagination, he timidly begs to “transfer” at least one of his names across class barriers and to sanctify its insignificant sound with the “divine” ear of the sovereign.

With the help of Khlestakov and Gorodnichy, he hopes to change his life. After departure imaginary auditor he seems to continue to play the “Khlestakov” role - the role of a liar and a dreamer. Thinking about the benefits of being related to an “important person,” he mentally makes himself a general and instantly gets used to the new image (“Oh, damn it, it’s nice to be a general!”). Khlestakov, imagining himself as the head of a department, is ready to despise his current fellow scribe, the paper clerk. And the Mayor, imagining himself a general, immediately begins to despise the mayor: “The cavalry will be hung over your shoulder. ...you go somewhere - couriers and adjutants will gallop ahead everywhere: “Horses!” ...You dine at the governor's, and there - stop, mayor! Hehe, hehe, hehe! (He bursts into tears and dies with laughter.) That’s how tempting it is, the sewer!” Unexpected discovery: Khlestakov “is not an auditor at all,” insults the Governor to the depths of his soul. He is really “killed, killed, completely killed,” “stabbed to death.” The mayor is thrown from the top of the social ladder, which he has already mentally climbed. And, having experienced an incredible, humiliating shock, the Mayor - for the first time in his life! - for a moment he begins to see clearly, although he himself believes that he is blind: “I don’t see anything. I see some pig snouts instead of faces, but nothing else.” Such is the city he governs, such is he himself. And at the peak of the shame he has experienced, he suddenly rises to real tragedy, exclaiming: “Who are you laughing at? You’re laughing at yourself.” And he does not realize that in this cleansing laughter of a person at himself, at his passion, at his sin, the author sees a way out of the semantic collisions of comedy.

But this is just one moment from the life of the Governor. And Khlestakov, largely thanks to his carelessness, his inspired lies, is much more courageous. His stupid prowess, even if directed “in the wrong direction,” allowed Gogol from the very beginning to consider Khlestakov “a type of much that is scattered in Russian characters.” In him, in his social behavior, the hidden desires of the officials of the county town are collected, summarized, and realized; associated with it are the main socio-psychological, philosophical problems plays. This makes it the plot center of the comedy. V. G. Belinsky, who named the main character Gorodnichy, and considered the subject of the play a satirical exposure of officialdom, later recognized Gogol’s arguments.

Foreign travel. On the way to "Dead Souls". The comedy turned out to be very funny. And at the same time very sad. After all, vice triumphs without anyone’s visible efforts, on its own. Simply because he completely captured the souls of people. And the famous denouement of “The Inspector General,” when the participants in the events learn about the arrival of the “real” inspector and freeze in a silent scene, does not at all indicate that the vice is punished. Because who knows how the arriving auditor will behave? On the other hand, this silent scene generally transferred the meaning of comedy to another plane - religious. It reminded us of the coming Last Judgment, when our true conscience will awaken in each of us, appear to the soul like some kind of heavenly auditor, and expose the deeds of a false, lulled, lulled conscience.

And again, Gogol’s creative upsurge was followed by a crisis. And again, deciding that no one understood his comedy and that his great idea had fallen victim to general vulgarity, he suddenly left abroad, to Germany. Then he moved to Switzerland and here he continued the interrupted work on a new work, which was supposed to reflect “all of Rus', albeit from one side.” This work was destined to become Gogol's pinnacle creation, his literary triumph and at the same time his most bitter defeat.

What was conceived was not just a novel, but (according to Gogol’s definition) a “small epic” from modern life, but in the spirit of the ancient Greek epic of Homer and Dante’s medieval epic poem “The Divine Comedy”. That is why Gogol gave his new prose creation, which he called “Dead Souls,” the subtitle “Poem.” This genre designation indicated that the pathetic lyrical principle would permeate the entire space of the epic work and intensify from chapter to chapter, from book to book. Precisely from book to book, because the subtitle referred to the idea as a whole, and the essay was conceived in three plot-independent parts.

Just as the hero of “The Divine Comedy” climbs the spiritual ladder from hell to purgatory, and from purgatory to heaven, like the heroes of Balzac’s “Human Comedy” move unstoppably through the circles of social hell, so the heroes of “Dead Souls” had to step by step get out of the darkness of the Fall , purifying and saving their souls. First volume Gogol's poem corresponded to Dante's Inferno. The author (and the reader along with him) seemed to take the heroes by surprise and showed their vices with laughter. And only from time to time his lyrical voice soared upward, under the dome of the majestic novel vault, sounding solemn and at the same time sincere. In the second volume, the author intended to talk about the purification of the heroes through suffering and repentance. And in the third - to give them a chance in the story to show their best qualities, to become role models. For Gogol, who believed in his special spiritual calling, such an ending was fundamentally important. He hoped to teach all of Russia a lesson, to show the way to salvation. Moreover, after Pushkin’s death in 1837, Gogol comprehended his work on “ Dead souls" How " sacred testament"of the great poet, as his last will, which must be fulfilled.

Gogol lived in Paris at that time; later, after long travels around Europe, he moved to Rome. The Eternal City, which laid the foundation for Christian civilization, made an indelible impression on the Russian writer. He, who yearned in St. Petersburg, in “northern Rome,” for the southern sun, warmth, and energy, experienced an upsurge of mental and physical strength in Rome. From here, as if from a beautiful distance, he returned in thought and heart to Russia. And the image of the beloved Fatherland was freed from everything random, small, too detailed, and grew to a worldwide scale. This could not have been more accurately consistent with Gogol’s artistic principles and coincided with his novel concept.

Returning briefly to Moscow (1839) and reading some chapters of the poem in the houses of his closest friends, Gogol realized that complete success awaited him. And he hurried to Rome, where he worked so well. But at the end of the summer in Vienna, where he stayed on literary business, Gogol was first overtaken by an attack of severe nervous disease, which from now on will haunt him until his grave. It’s as if the soul could not withstand the overwhelming obligations to the world that the writer assumed: it’s not easy to create artistic image Russia and literary types contemporaries. And it’s not even just about teaching society a moral lesson. But, having accomplished his feat of writing, mystically save the Fatherland, give it a spiritual recipe for correction.

For what famous work did Gogol navigate world literature when he conceived a novel in three volumes? What path should the main characters of Dead Souls have taken from the first volume to the third?

"Judge of Contemporaries." “Selected passages from correspondence with friends.” It is not for nothing that the style of Gogol’s letters changed so much in the early 40s: “My work is great, my feat is saving; I am dead to everything petty.” They are more similar to the letters of the apostles, the first disciples of Christ, than to the letters of an ordinary (even brilliantly gifted) writer. One of his friends called Gogol “the judge of his contemporaries,” speaking to his neighbors “like a man whose hand is filled with decrees, arranging their fate according to their will and against their will.” A little later, this inspired and at the same time very painful state will be reflected in Gogol’s main journalistic book, “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends.” The book, conceived in 1844-1845, consisted of fiery moral and religious sermons and teachings on a wide variety of issues: from embezzlement to the correct structure of family life. (Despite the fact that Gogol himself did not have a family.) It testified that the author of “Dead Souls” finally believed in his chosenness and became a “teacher of life.”

However, by the time “Selected Places...” was published and caused a storm of the most controversial responses in criticism, Gogol had managed to publish the first volume of “Dead Souls” (1842). True, without the insert “The Tale of Captain Kopeikin,” which was banned by censorship, with numerous amendments and under a different name: “The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls.” This name reduced Gogol’s intention and referred the reader to the tradition of the adventure-descriptive novel. The main theme of the poem was not the spiritual death of humanity, but the funny adventures of the charming swindler Chichikov.

But something else was much worse. Gogol, who in 1842 again went abroad for three years, could not cope with his overly large-scale plan, exceeding the measure of ordinary human strength, and after another attack of nervous illness and mental crisis in the summer of 1845, he burned the manuscript of the second volume.

Later, in “Four Letters to Various Persons Regarding “Dead Souls” (the letters were included in the book “Selected Places..."), he explained this “act of burning” by the fact that in the second volume “paths and roads” were not clearly indicated to the ideal." Of course, the real reasons were deeper and more varied. Here is a sharp weakening of health, and a deep contradiction between the “ideal” plan and the real nature of Gogol’s talent, his tendency to depict the dark sides of life... But the main thing - it can be repeated again and again - was the unbearableness of the task, which literally crushed Gogol’s talent . Gogol, in the most literal and terrible sense of the word, went crazy.

Torture by silence (1842-1852). The public, with the exception of the closest friends, did not notice this anguish. After all, Gogol’s books continued to be published. In 1843, his Works were published in 4 volumes. Here the story “The Overcoat” was first published, where the writer spoke with such poignant force about the fate of the “little man” that the story literally turned the literary consciousness of an entire generation of Russian writers upside down. The great Russian novelist Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, who made his debut during these years, would later say that they all came out of Gogol’s “The Overcoat.” In the same collection of works, the comedies “Marriage”, “Players”, and the play-afterword to “The Inspector General” “Theater Travel...” saw the light of day for the first time. But not everyone knew that “The Overcoat” was started back in 1836, and “Marriage” - in 1833, that is, before “The Inspector General”. But Gogol never created any new works of art after the first volume of Dead Souls.

“Selected Passages...”, as well as “The Author's Confession”, begun in 1847 and published only posthumously, were written instead of the “small epic” promised to the public. Essentially last decade Gogol's life turned into an incessant torture of silence. As intensely and joyfully as he worked in the first ten years of his writing (1831-1841), he suffered so painfully from creative incompleteness in the second decade (1842-1852). It was as if life demanded that he pay an unimaginable price for the brilliant insights that visited him in the 1830s.

Continuing to wander along the roads of Europe, living first in Naples, then in Germany, then again in Naples, Gogol in 1848 makes a pilgrimage to holy places, prays in Jerusalem at the Holy Sepulcher, asks Christ to help “gather all our strength to produce creations, by us cherished..." Only after this does he return to his beloved fatherland. And it never leaves him for the rest of his life.

Outwardly he is active, sometimes even cheerful; meets young writers in Odessa who consider themselves his followers - Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov, Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov, Dmitry Vasilyevich Grigorovich. In December he communicates with the aspiring playwright Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky. Gogol is finally trying to arrange his family life and wooed A.M. Vielgorskaya. The offer was followed by a refusal, which wounded Gogol to the very heart and once again reminded him of everyday loneliness. About that very loneliness that he sought to overcome with the help of creativity, becoming an absentee interlocutor, friend, and sometimes mentor to thousands of readers.

In 1851, he reads to his friends the first six or seven chapters of the rewritten (or rather, rewritten) second volume of Dead Souls. On January 1, 1852, he even informed one of them that the novel was completed. But hidden internal dissatisfaction with the results of many years of work was imperceptibly growing and was ready to break through at any moment, like water breaking through a dam during a flood. The crisis broke out again suddenly and led to catastrophic consequences.

Having learned about the death of the sister of the poet Nikolai Mikhailovich Yazykov, his close friend and like-minded person, the shocked Gogol foresees his own imminent death. And in the face of impending death, which sums up everything that man has done on earth, he re-examines the manuscript of the second volume, is horrified, and after a conversation with his confessor, Fr. Matvey Konstantinovsky again burns what he wrote. (Only drafts of the first five chapters survive.)

Gogol regarded his creative failure as the collapse of his entire life and fell into severe depression. Ten days after the burning of the manuscript of the second volume of Dead Souls, Gogol died, as if his own life burned in the flames of this fire...

Thousands of people came to say goodbye to the great Russian writer. After the funeral service, held in the university church of St. Tatiana, professors and students of Moscow University carried the coffin in their arms to the burial place. A monument was erected over the writer’s grave with words from the biblical book of the prophet Jeremiah. The ends and beginnings came together, the epitaph became an epigraph to all of Gogol’s work: “I will laugh at my bitter word.”

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Slide captions:

The language of N.V. Gogol’s comedy “The Inspector General” Compiled by: teacher of Russian language and literature MBOU “Urakhchinskaya secondary school” Akhmetzyanova L.I.

N.V. Gogol was one of the greatest figures of classical Russian literature, who had a huge influence on the development of advanced culture of all mankind.

One of Gogol’s best works is the comedy “The Inspector General,” which was written in 1836. “In The Inspector General, I decided to collect in one pile everything bad in Russia that I knew, all the injustices that are done in those places and in those cases where justice is most required from a person, and at one time laugh at everything,” - this is how Gogol translated the main idea of ​​his comedy from the language of art into the language of logic.

Language in Gogol’s comedy “The Inspector General” is a means of typification and individualization of images and characters.

The richest and relatively diverse speech is that of the mayor. This is understandable: he is smarter than other officials: “he deceived swindlers after swindlers” and “he deceived three governors.”

Lexical composition of the mayor's speech Clericalisms: notify, reliable, subordinate institutions, post office, allocated amount, report, report, titular, progress of business, authorized person. , Vernacular: such, prank, bad, hear, sniff out, just now, especially, cheat, put on airs, fight off, they say, she-she. Vulgarisms: mug, old devil, belly, pig snouts, devil's seed, damned rattles, stupid ram, lying, old fool.

Phraseology of the mayor’s speech: Religious: “What are you, God be with you!” “Lord, have mercy on us sinners!” “Take it out, holy saints!” “Maybe God will bear it now.” “God, just grant that everything gets away with it as soon as possible.” “Lord, my God, how can I arrange it so that the authorities see my jealousy and have enough?!”

Phraseology of the mayor’s speech: Bureaucratic: “My responsibilities, as the mayor of this city, are to ensure that there is no harassment for visitors and all noble people.” Book: “There is no person who does not have some sins behind him. This is how God himself arranged it, and the Voltairians are in vain to speak against it.” “The more it breaks, the more it means the activity of the city ruler.” Colloquial: “We know whose garden a pebble is thrown into!” “Having been out for a walk, a person brings everything out: what’s in his heart is on his tongue.” “And you don’t even blow on your mustache.” “Your hair stands on end.” “What will happen, then it will be, try it at random.”

Intonation of the mayor's speech

“I invited you, gentlemen, at the first news, in order to tell you the most unpleasant news. An auditor is coming to see us!” Characteristics of intonation: calm, businesslike, reasonable, with friendly advice to his fellow officials. “Look, I’ve made some orders for my part, and I advise you to do the same.”

At the first meeting with Khlestakov. Outwardly: passionately polite. Internally: roguish, calculating, accompanied by assessment and weighing of circumstances. Out loud: “Do I dare to ask: where and what places would you like to go?” To myself: “To the Saratov province! A? and doesn't blush! Oh, yes, you need to be careful with him!”

Characteristics of intonation when meeting with servants and soldiers Condescending, patronizing and ingratiating. “And I really like your face. Friend, you must be an honest person."

In a conversation with merchants. Ironic, malicious, rude. “Great, falcons!...Seven devils and one witch in your teeth.”

The mayor is very affectionate with his wife and daughter.

After her daughter’s engagement to Khlestakov. Self-satisfied, openly solemn, almost screaming. “Yes, announce to everyone so that they know: what, they say, what honor has God sent to the mayor, that he is marrying off his daughter, not just to some simple a person, but for something that has never existed in the world, that can do everything, everything, everything!”

In the last monologue: Passionately frantic, excited, filled with self-flagellation and anger. “Look, the whole world, all of Christianity, everyone, look how the mayor has been fooled! He took an icicle and a rag for an important person! There he is now ringing bells all over the road! That's what's offensive! ...Why are you laughing? Laughing at yourself!...Oh, you! I would tie everyone up in a knot and grind them into flour...

All this individualizes the image of the mayor, distinguishes him from a number of other characters in the comedy, and at the same time emphasizes the typical features of an official of the serf era, who began his service with small ranks, made his way with the help of a natural mind, resourcefulness and trickery, externally polished by constant communication with the nobility and officialdom environment, but essentially a rude, uncultured person.

Speech by Judge Lyapkin-Tyapkin

The speech of Judge Lyapkin-Tyapkin is equally one-line and poor. Unlike the speech of the superintendent of schools, it is based on intonations of self-satisfaction. The judge has a reputation and considers himself a “freethinker” because he has read “five or six books” in his life

Being a self-satisfied person, he, according to Gogol’s remark, “gives weight to every word,” and at the same time likes to keep a “significant mien” on his face.

The postmaster's speech The speech of the ignorant postmaster, who likes to read other people's letters, is not rich either. His speech amazes with stupid conjectures, abrupt, jumping phrases inherent in him as a stupid and limited person.

The speech of the trustee of Zemlyanika charitable institutions is of a slightly different nature. He is a subtle, convinced rogue, and also a sycophant and a secret informer to his superiors. Even the mayor did not comprehend all the subtleties and meanness of dealing with his superiors, which Strawberry has learned and skillfully applies.

His language is typical of a sycophantic official and bureaucrat. His speech is dominated by pronounced bureaucratic phraseology.

Analysis of Khlestakov’s speech Khlestakov’s language is also, in general, a literary language, but other features are striking in it. One is the desire (of a comical nature) for secular things, the second is the rude words with which he addresses the servants.

“How happy I am, madam, that I have the pleasure of seeing you in my own way.” This appeal from Khlestakov should show Khlestakov’s secularism, but it is spoiled by the words he inappropriately inserted: “in his own way.”

"Fool! Rude animal! Piglet, you are! Kanaglia! This is how Khlestakov addresses Osip and the tavern servant in moments of irritation.

To Anna Andreevna’s question what kind of balls are given in St. Petersburg, Khlestakov replies: “Just don’t tell me. On the table, for example, there is a watermelon - a watermelon costs seven hundred rubles. The soup in a saucepan arrived straight from Paris on the boat...”

The main property and vice of Khlestakov’s speech is its greed: it is devoid of all common sense and sober concepts.

Khlestakov’s speech is abrupt in tone, and the words fly out of his mouth completely unexpectedly. The content of the hero's speech is chaotic. He can talk about anything and everything at once. According to Gogol himself, Khlestakov is “stupid and, as they say, without a king in his head, one of those people who in the offices are called empty”

Speaking about the language of The Inspector General, it is necessary to dwell on one more side of Gogol’s mastery: his ability to make the language of comedy as effective and expressive as possible. For a word spoken from the stage, it is important not only that it affects the feelings of the viewer, excites him, and makes him experience more deeply what is happening on stage. One of the means of enhancing this emotional impact is the selection of descriptive, effective words and special construction of sentences. In the original version, the mayor, responding to the judge’s offer to treat him to a little dog, said: “God be with them now, with your hares!... I just expect that the door will open and he will come in...” Now we hear from the stage: “Father, I don’t like your hares now... You just wait for the door to open and go!” Latest edition more alive and active: you wait and walk more expressively than you expect and will enter.

Thus, it is not difficult to show, by comparing the mayor’s remarks in the two editions, that Gogol’s work on language followed the line of greater liveliness of dialogue, greater emotionality and expressiveness of each statement. And the analysis of the speech of the characters in the comedy “The Inspector General” showed us that in the very language of the characters, Gogol the realist was able to irresistibly clearly and convincingly show the social and individual, typical and individual in the appearance of each of the heroes of his immortal comedy.

The bureaucratic world in Gogol's comedy "The Inspector General"

Comedy by N.V. Gogol "The Inspector General" - bright image life and customs of bureaucratic Russia in the 30s of the 19th century. Using the example of a small Russian town, lost in the very outback, the customs of Russia at that time are revealed to us. Such as bribery, complete lawlessness, which has become the norm, embezzlement and violation of all human dignity, widespread landlord tyranny and inactive neglect of state institutions.

The author proposes to recognize not the auditor himself as the main character in the comedy, but the entire group of officials along with him. mayor. Resourceful, intelligent, with a long history of service, accustomed to not missing out on everything that “floats into his hands,” i.e. a bribe-taker and a hypocrite - this is how the head of officials of the district town of Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky appears before us. He himself admits that “he has deceived swindlers upon swindlers, tricked swindlers and swindlers such that they are ready to rob the whole world.” He elevated competition in fraud, embezzlement and forgery into the norm of life. And bribery is so close and related to the mayor that he does not doubt its legality: “This was ordained by God himself.” Always rude and impudent with his subordinates, Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky changes dramatically when communicating with his superiors: his politeness, courtesy and ostentatious cordiality know no bounds. Such metamorphoses are explained by the mayor’s irrepressible desire, the lifelong dream of becoming a general, becoming a high-flying bird. Similar interests dominate the minds of all the mayor’s assistants - this is Judge Lyapkin-Tyapkin, and the trustee of charitable institutions Zemlyanika, and the superintendent of schools Khlopov, and the postmaster Shpekin - the behavior of these heroes is like two peas in a pod like the behavior of the mayor himself.

The most significant people in the city, like the judge, who enjoys the authority of an educated person, an orator, are in fact worthless and inactive. Lyapkin-Tyapkin is not only completely ignorant of judicial matters, but also does not deal with them at all. Being carried away by hunting, he takes bribes with greyhound puppies and finds a sure way to get away from the audit by giving Khlestakov money “on loan”.

The trustee of charitable institutions, Strawberry, is also known in society as an “honest man,” but in reality he is a “subtle” rogue. He is not only an embezzler and a slacker, but also a sneak: at the first opportunity, he slanders Khlestakov about his own comrades, trying to whitewash himself. Meanwhile, in his hospital, people are “dying like flies.”

Postmaster Shpekin is a mentally limited person who has neither merits nor moral principles. His only interest in life is petty curiosity. Shpekin gets true pleasure when, abusing his official position, he prints out other people's letters. He is not tormented by either conscience or embarrassment; in this he sees almost his duty.

Timid and downtrodden, always shaking with fear, school superintendent Khlopov does not seek to change anything: he is gripped by constant fear of possible revisions and all his actions boil down to constant complaints and whining. This attitude towards their official duties is typical for all city officials. Such “statesmen” do not care at all about the people or the improvement of the city. Their personal interests and their own peace of mind are more important to them than anything in the world.

By ridiculing and criticizing the bureaucracy, Gogol reveals the entire inconsistency of the administrative structure of Russia. It is not for nothing that the writer says: “In The Inspector General, I decided to collect all the bad things in Russia that I knew then, all the injustices that are done in those places and in those cases where justice is most required from a person, and at the same time laugh at everyone."

Bibliography

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