Tragic and comic in Gogol's Inspector General. On the relationship between the comic and the tragic in Gogol's play "The Inspector General"

Gogol's dramatic talent was revealed very early. While still at the Nezhin gymnasium, he takes an active part in student productions. According to the testimony of classmates, young Gogol was very successful in the role of Mrs. Prostakova from the famous “Minor” by D. I. Fonvizin. It is probably no coincidence that the close interweaving of the comic and tragic in the character of Fonvizin’s heroine will be so fruitfully perceived by the future author of the dramatic endings of “Marriage”, “Players”, “The Government Inspector”, in which the comedy heroes’ experience of the “deception” of life unexpectedly reaches a truly Shakespearean scale of generalization.

Gogol began writing comedies simultaneously with the completion of work on the cycle of stories “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka.” The drafts of the first unfinished comedy “Vladimir of the Third Degree” date back to the end of 1832 - beginning of 1833. St. Petersburg official Ivan Petrovich Barsukov dreams of the order of a saint Vladimir III degree, and in the end this dream takes the form of an obsession that everyone mental strength hero. The denouement of this situation, which in some ways anticipates the idea of the story “The Overcoat,” is comical and tragic at the same time: the hero goes crazy, imagining that he himself is the Order of Vladimir, III degree. IN last scene a madman, imagining himself as a cross (this is the form the order has), stands in front of a mirror, raises his hands so that he makes himself into the semblance of a cross, and cannot look at the image enough. Thus, in the plot of this unfinished comedy, one of Gogol’s “trademark” techniques of the comic is realized: the identification of a person with a thing, the living with the dead, which takes on fantastic, grotesque proportions in the minds of the heroes. This technique in Gogol’s work will subsequently acquire a universal meaning and go beyond comedy genre, will receive the status of a unique symbol of Russian life in St. Petersburg stories and, of course, in the poem “ Dead Souls" Probably, Gogol’s desire to generalize the comedic situation, starting with the concept of the first comedies, was the reason for the failure of Vladimir of the Third Degree. “He wanted to embrace too much in it... and therefore, out of frustration, he did not write anything,” Gogol’s contemporary and friend P. A. Pletnev testified in one of his letters. However, about failure in in this case one can speak very conditionally, since in 1842, while preparing a collection of his works, Gogol revised the drafts of “Vladimir III degree” into independent plays, which subsequent criticism dubbed “little comedies” (by analogy with Pushkin’s “little tragedies”): “Morning business person" (first published in Pushkin's magazine "Contemporary" in 1836), "Litigation", "Lackey" and "Excerpt".

By 1842, the ideas of Gogol's other comedies, begun in 1832–1837, received their artistic solution. “Marriage” and “Players” are being added and the final edition of “The Inspector General” is being created. The very chronology of work on comedies allows us to speak of a kind of final authorial will, which was equally manifested in the final edition of the style of almost all comedies, including The Inspector General. This will can be understood by remembering the importance the author himself attached to laughter as the only “positive face” of his comedies. In our opinion, it is possible to raise the question of a single funny world Gogol's plays, internal laws which began to take shape even at the time of writing “Vladimir III degree” and, having gone through artistic polishing in the style of “small comedies”, “Marriage” and “Players”, found their perfect artistic embodiment in the style of "The Inspector General".

So, a whole series of stable comic techniques runs through all of Gogol’s comedies. They form a certain system world-modeling meanings, from which the content of the “world of laughter” of Gogol the comedian is composed. Let us define these techniques, and also give examples that allow us to draw a conclusion about the content of each.

1. Unmotivated inclusion of unnecessary, inappropriate details in the hero’s speech."Morning of a business man." Alexander Ivanovich begins his story about the visit to the minister, which is important for the careers of both interlocutors, from afar, with a mention of what the weather was like that day and what underwear he was wearing: “This morning it was a little cold. After all, as I think you know, I am in the habit of wearing a leggings sweatshirt: it is much better than a flannel one and, moreover, does not get hot. And on this occasion I ordered a fur coat to be brought to me.” Alexander Ivanovich reports that he wears a leggings sweatshirt (the incomparable Gogolian “as I think you know”) with the conviction that the details of his underwear should be no less interesting to others than the details of his conversation with the minister. "Marriage". Matchmaker Fekla explains to Kochkarev how to find Agafya Tikhonovna’s house: “But when you turn into the alley, there will be a booth right for you, and as you pass the booth, turn left, and there you are, right in your eyes - that is, so right in your eyes and there will be a wooden house where the seamstress lives, who previously lived with the Senate chief seklekhtar. Don’t go to the seamstress, but now there will be a second house behind her.” etc. Zhevakin, introducing himself to Arina Panteleimonovna, for no apparent reason began to talk in detail about some of his namesake, who was wounded “under the knee, and the bullet passed so strangely that the knee itself did not touch, but I grabbed the vein - like sewing it with a needle, so that when you used to stand with him, it seemed like he wanted to hit you from behind with his knee.” "Inspector". No less colorful is the story of Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky about how they “identified” the “real” auditor in the poor official Khlestakov, who was passing through. This “unexpected news” somehow strangely coexists in the heads of two gossips with the “booth where pies are sold”, with the mayor’s housekeeper Avdotya, who was sent to Philip Antonovich Pochechuev for a barrel of French vodka... The following is about Peter’s “stomach shaking” Ivanovich, about the innkeeper Vlas, whose wife three weeks ago gave birth to a “perky boy,” etc.

At first glance, it seems that Gogol is simply laughing at the pathological verbosity of his heroes, striving to fill the “emptiness” of consciousness with all sorts of petty nonsense. Of course there is in this comic device and such a purely farcical purpose. But still, the essence is not limited to them. The very desire to elevate petty interests to the status of a state matter, to give them almost global significance is significant. Heroes they themselves wish to be deceived, mistaking the small for the big, the insignificant for the great. Therefore, Khlestakov did not have to try particularly hard, posing as an auditor: the understanding of the difference between a “wimp” and an important official had long been lost by those around the mayor. It is also significant that among the unnecessary “details” there are people. They are blasphemously equated in the speech of the heroes with a “elk sweatshirt”, various “booths”, “pies”, “a barrel for French vodka” (the very presence of a mysterious “French vodka” in a Russian provincial town can cause surprise), “stomach shaking ", etc. The spiritual (person) is equated with the carnal (food), it becomes a “detail” of the material environment, the interior. Gogol, in his own way, uses the technique of including so-called “off-stage characters” into the action, typical of Russian comedy. Unlike the comedies of Fonvizin or Griboedov, these characters, as a rule, do not typify or expand anything. “The beauty is,” V. Nabokov astutely notes, “that these minor characters then never appear on stage. All guns hang in the air and do not fire; I must say that the charm of his hints lies in the fact that they never materialize.” Yes, all that the reader and viewer knows about these off-stage characters is their positions or, in best case scenario, names (sometimes patronymics and surnames). The housekeeper Avdotya, Anton Filippovich Pochechuev, the innkeeper Vlas, the seamstress, the “ober-seklekhtar” - these are not people, but certain mysterious phantoms, whose names and surnames are often don't mean anything. For they are called ghosts. The use of the satirically significant surname Gogol is gradually beginning to be removed from the arsenal artistic techniques Russian comedy (although, of course, there are still a significant number of “Proletovs”, “Gibners”, “Derzhimords”). And this is important, because it is in comedies that Gogol begins to show the tragic process of denomination (denaming) of a person, the loss of his face, and with it his name. More and more names and surnames are being introduced, representing an incoherent set of sounds, outright nonsense (Proldyukovsky, Pochechuev, Yaichnitsa, Kochkarev, Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky, Shvokhnev, etc.).

2. Unmotivated deviation in the hero’s speech from main topic, an unexpected switch of attention to another object or person in a conversation, a sharp change of intentions, a swing from one extreme of behavior to another.

« Morning of a business man." Alexander Ivanovich, approaching the central episode of his visit to the minister in the story (His Excellency asked about Ivan Petrovich Barsukov), suddenly “raises his eyes” and interrupts the story with a strange question: “Your ceilings are painted quite well: at your own expense or the owner’s?” . It takes a lot of effort for Ivan Petrovich to bring his interlocutor back to the essence of the conversation, which, however, ended in vain for him. "Inspector". Hungry Khlestakov in the hotel, waiting in vain for dinner, is already thinking about the possibility of “putting something into circulation.” But he immediately abandons this intention, wanting to “come home in a St. Petersburg suit.” Developing this theme, he completely forgets about the feeling of hunger, fantasizes how he “like a devil,” in a carriage with lanterns, with Osip, dressed in livery, will come to his neighbor-landowner, how he will be greeted at a ball, etc. And just as unexpectedly as he forgot about the feeling of hunger, he remembers it at the end of the monologue: “Madam, how do I... (Rubs his hands and shuffles his foot). Ugh! (spits) even vomits, as if I want to eat.” Sometimes the transition from one desire to the exact opposite occurs in Khlestakov’s consciousness instantly, without any transition. “Governor: ...Will you order me to rest? Khlestakov: Nonsense - rest. If you please, I’m ready to rest.” " Marriage". Kochkarev almost forcibly brings Podkolesin to a decisive meeting with future bride and, in fact, he himself proposes to her for Podkolesin. However, here his indecisive ward suddenly awakens to the desire to marry the bride in the church immediately. And now the final monologue of Podkolesin, who has made the final decision to get married, develops the theme of marriage as a matter of national importance (“If I were a sovereign somewhere, I would give the order to everyone, absolutely everyone, to get married...”). Then suddenly he is overcome by a feeling of fear before the inevitability of the event (“... and after that there was no excuse, no repentance, nothing, nothing - it’s all over, everything is done”). Then, after a series of “digression” questions (“Is it really impossible to leave?”; “What if you don’t have a hat? It’s awkward”; “What if you try?”), Podkolesin’s famous dizzying jump out the window follows.

These unexpected transitions from one intention to another, directly opposite, the ability of heroes to easily be distracted “to the side” from main idea or threads of conversation (hence the often comical cases of “conversation of the deaf”), the inability to concentrate for a long time on any one object or phenomenon - all together testify to the irrationality of the consciousness of Gogol’s characters as a result of the immediacy, spontaneity of their reaction to what is happening. The behavior of the characters is situational, it is entirely determined by the framework of the present moment, this specific situation. The character of the heroes, as a rule, lacks any specific moral core (Khlestakov’s famous “extraordinary lightness of thoughts”). They are not evil, but not good either. They none, for they commit good or evil deeds without any intended purpose. They derive the content of their actions by instinctively anticipating the expectations of others. In this sense, their amorphous characters can be compared to water, which easily takes the shape of the vessel into which it is poured. It was Khlestakov’s spinelessness and facelessness that gave Gogol the basis to call him “a phantasmagoric face, deceitful, deception personified.” Thus, this technique of the comic sharpens the image of Gogol’s contemporary world and man as a ghostly, mirage reality.

3. Cause-and-effect inconsistencies in the consciousness and actions of the characters, a pointedly inadequate reaction to the situation or actions of the interlocutor.

On this illogic is built greatest number comic situations in Gogol's plays. Thus, for failure to comply with the fields, Ivan Petrovich threatens his secretary Schrader with arrest (“Morning of a Business Man”). As soon as a ram bleated under the window of a woman in labor, a catastrophe occurred “from an insignificant circumstance”: an “assessor” was born, whose entire lower part of the face was that of a ram (“Litigation”). A similar misfortune befell another “assessor” - a subordinate of Ammos Fedorovich Lyapkin-Tyapkin (“The Inspector General”). It turns out that “his mother hurt him as a child, and since then he’s smelled like vodka.” These are the unpredictable consequences of the seemingly completely innocent pranks of a gymnasium teacher, who tends to make grimaces during lessons. Luka Lukich Khlopov is powerless to correct the situation: “He made it from kind heart, and I am reprimanded: why are free-thinking thoughts being instilled in young people.” In the very fact of the audit, Ammos Fedorovich sees a “political reason”: “This means this: Russia... yes... wants to wage war, and the mini-steria, you see, sent an official to find out if there is any treason.” After all that has been said, is it any wonder that Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky mistook Khlestakov for an auditor because “there is such reasoning in the face... physiognomy... actions, and here (Bobchinsky twirls his hand near his forehead) there is a lot, a lot of everything.”

So, in the world where Gogol’s heroes live, there are no clear guidelines. Trouble should be expected not from tragic events, but from “minor circumstances.” That is why it is the “wizard” Khlestakov, and not a high-ranking official, who causes panic in the mayor and his entourage. Moreover, the more Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky comprehends the smallness and insignificance of Khlestakov’s figure, the more the feeling of the catastrophic nature of what is happening contrasts with this figure. This feeling is fully expressed by the words of Artemy Filippovich: “It’s just scary. And why, you yourself don’t know.”

Thus, an analysis of only a small group of comic techniques in Gogol’s plays allows us to come to the conclusion that the subject of exposure in them is not only “social vices” (corruption of officials, bureaucracy of authorities, etc.), but, first of all, the fundamental disorder of the world as a whole . Taken together, the comic techniques used by Gogol create a feeling of the absurdity of what is happening. One more step - and this absurdity will turn into grotesque, monstrous fantasy. But Gogol, as Yu. V. Mann writes, does not go beyond this line, keeping the image within the framework of everyday verisimilitude, creating “a comedy of characters with a grotesque reflection”; in fact, the poetics of the comic creates that “mirage intrigue” in his plays, which is most full expression finds in the plot of “The Inspector General”.

Related information.

"authorized person" was printed, and it became clear to everyone that Khlestakov was not a person at all.
Having subordinated the comic to the psychological depiction of characters, Gogol consistently abandoned the methods of external comedy: all kinds of brawls, blows with a stick, funny falls, distortion of words, stuttering, tongue twisters, puns, characteristic of contemporary vaudevilles. In “The Inspector General” there are only a few scenes close to the tradition of rude comedy. Giving urgent orders to receive the “auditor”, the Governor confuses the words and says that “everyone should pick up the street,” instead of saying “by broom.” A minute later he wants to put on a paper case instead of a hat. Bobchinsky, who overheard the conversation between Gorodnichy and Khlestakov, falls along with the door. An amusing confusion is contained in the note received by Anna Andreevna from her husband, which mentions “God’s mercy for two pickled cucumbers” and “half a portion of caviar, a ruble and twenty-five kopecks.” Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, congratulating Anna Andreevna on her daughter’s “engagement,” “approached at the same time and butted heads.”
However, even ridiculous confusion in comedy can be motivated by the situation. So, the Mayor is in a hurry and worried when he wants to write one line to his wife in the presence of Khlestakov. There is no blank paper in the room, but there are unpaid bills, which the viewer learns about from Khlestakov’s previous conversation with Osip. One of these accounts was the cause of the misunderstanding.
Bobchinsky's eavesdropping, which became the reason for his absurd fall, can be explained not by the desire to find out the secret, since the Governor would have told about the content of his conversation with the "auditor", but by the desire to see the "actions" of the nobleman, that is, the desire of Gogol's hero to join something lofty and mysterious. It is not for nothing that later the same Bobchinsky, trying to signify his existence in the world, will ask Khlestakov to tell “all the different nobles there” in St. Petersburg, “that Peter Ivanovich Bobchinsky lives in such and such a city.”
One of the meanings of rude comedy in Gogol is to expose vice to the public, to neutralize it with laughter. In this sense, Gogol's farcical elements come closest to the traditions of folk humor. However, none of these amusing misunderstandings becomes a source of action in The Inspector General. They characterize the atmosphere of haste, confusion, and fear, but are not the reason for changes in the plot.
“The Inspector General” is a comedy of characters. The comic in it is almost entirely subordinated to the depiction of types and arises from the manifestation of their psychological and social properties. Gogol finds opportunities for the development of the plot not in external shocks - events coming from outside, but in those “surprises” that manifest themselves in the characters themselves. Laughing at the characters of a comedy, the viewer laughs not at their “crooked nose, but at their crooked soul.”

This feature of Gogol’s utopia also attracts attention. The most important thing must happen outside the immediate perception of the “Inspector General”. The experiences that renew the reader or viewer and all the spiritual work they generate should unfold only when the reading or performance is already left behind (remember that everything stage action“Decoupling” recreates the situation after the performance). Gogol’s correspondence regarding “The Inspector General” also takes the problem of transforming the audience beyond its direct contact with The Inspector General himself. The project is interesting in this regard practical implementation utopian ideas presented in the new play. We're talking about something new separate publication and a new performance of “The Inspector General”, dedicated to the benefit performance of M. S. Shchepkin. And it is impossible not to notice that Gogol sets two mandatory, from his point of view, conditions. Firstly, “” should be presented in the form in which it acquired after revision in 1841–1842, when the presence of a utopian plan in the comedy became more noticeable. Secondly, “The Inspector General” should be staged only together with “The Inspector General’s Denouement” (“with the addition of a tail,” as Gogol put it in a letter to Shchepkin on October 24, 1846). The author of The Inspector General insisted especially stubbornly on the second condition. Having encountered resistance from Shchepkin and partly from S.P. Shevyrev, whom he also tried to attract to the implementation of his project, Gogol tries to convince them and even makes concessions by reworking a new play. When it becomes clear that “The Inspector General’s Denouement” in any version is unacceptable to his correspondents, he abandons his project. The logic of his position is clear: either his comedy will be re-published along with the play that complements it (essentially, together with a teaching, instruction, sermon), or it should not be published or staged. theater stage. It turns out that his utopian plan seems impossible to him without combining the two plays into one whole. Apparently, Gogol suspected that “The Inspector General” by itself could not create the effect necessary to achieve his goal, that in the very artistic nature of his comedy there was some kind of obstacle that prevented it from being turned into a force that brings “formidable purification.”

In the search for this internal obstacle, one cannot ignore two obvious patterns that can be traced in the stage and creative stories of The Inspector General. The first of them boiled down to the following: in those productions in which it was possible to achieve stunning tragedy in the sound of the finale (in the production of V. E. Meyerhold, for example), the play ceased to be funny

Apparently, Gogol was not mistaken. Both laughter principles are combined inseparably in The Inspector General, and they are combined throughout the entire duration of the action. On the one hand, the most important law of satirical structure is observed all the time: none of the characters are corrected throughout the action, their original qualities remain the same, only revealing themselves more deeply and fully. But on the other hand, comedic metamorphoses occur here all the time, “upsetting,” as Galich would say, “the actual forms and relationships” of the depicted world.

Already the news of the upcoming appearance of the auditor disrupts the routine in the life of Gogol’s city. The street immediately becomes entangled with a broom, a case with a hat, a marital letter with a tavern bill. Things and ideas are shifted new situation From their places, chaos penetrates the system, and this chaos gives rise to something like creative fermentation. The primary impetus is given from the outside, but it awakens the internal elements of “urban” life. In the characters of the characters, some kind of latent obsession, or, rather, many different obsessions, reminiscent of the “enthusiasm” of the heroes of “Dead Souls”, intensifies and takes on an explosive character. The judge, without ceasing, is being smart, the trustee of charitable institutions is constantly spoiling his colleagues, the postmaster, obeying impulses of curiosity, every now and then opens and keeps other people's letters forever, etc. Everyone has their own such obsession, but they are all brought together by the ability to almost instantly reach extreme tension and pour out uncontrollable pressure into words, into action, into emotional excitement that captivates those around you.

Here lie the sources of irrational energy, grotesquely transforming the world depicted by Gogol. This energy is emitted primarily by Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky: they not only announce the appearance of the expected inspector, but also literally create him from the few details at their disposal. The desire to be the first to meet the auditor and the first to announce him to everyone becomes almost magical power. They need an auditor, and Khlestakov immediately becomes an auditor, for now only for them. Then their passionate impulse is transferred to other characters.

The power of this collective obsession ignites Khlestakov's own ambitions and his own energy. In the lying scene, he really looks the way people around him need to see him. And then the act of universal joint creativity creates new reality. In the scenes of the fourth act, Khlestakov seems to become the inspector expected by everyone, fully fulfilling all his expected functions. And everyone else, as if infected by his lightness, is drawn into his game and already dares to do previously unimaginable desires, requests, actions, ascending in unbridled dreams to ranks, fame, luxury, and comfort unattainable in reality.

Even later, the rapid, almost vaudeville pace of the action makes it possible to weave another eccentric metamorphosis into its dynamics: sitting down to write a letter to his friend Tryapichkin, Khlestakov instantly turns into a lively accuser-feuilletonist. And in the scene of reading this letter, intercepted by the postmaster, several officials, as if in a clown show, alternately act as Khlestakov’s deputies, repeating and emphasizing the scathing assessments and characteristics given to him.

The news of the real auditor and the general “petrification” turn out to be another metamorphosis. Of course, this is a metamorphosis of a completely different kind than all the previous ones. The finale is a miracle in the precise sense of the word: it is a sharp violation of the already outlined laws of the depicted world. And yet, this is yet another metamorphosis, and, in a certain sense, prepared. It is prepared at least by the fact that the consciousness of the reader or viewer is already accustomed to the very possibility of continuous transformations of one thing into another. The depicted world is plastic enough for a miracle to happen in it. And at the same time, it is insolvent enough for a catastrophe to occur within it. Both main qualities of this world are united in the potential aspiration to another existence.

We can talk about a kind of interference between satirical denunciation and the actual comedic dynamics. The growing tension of the “auditor situation” contributes to the merciless exposure of social untruth: it is this that reveals its laws and “mechanism”. But it also introduces comedic “cheerful turmoil” (the expression of N. Ya. Berkovsky) into the world of familiar forms of life and consciousness, transforming absurdity into creative chaos, causing a “Dionysian” ferment of awakened elements and a rapid flow of destructive-creative transformations. Both functions are not only combined, but also connected: metamorphoses reveal the “obsessions” of the characters, “obsessions” generate the energy of metamorphoses.

True, the inseparability of two interacting structural and semantic principles creates contradictions that require resolution. What fun game the creative forces of life and consciousness are constantly embodied in transformations, with all their tangibility - deceptive, giving the dynamics of action obvious ambivalence. It is this that requires an outcome: the metamorphoses that transform the comedic world captivate the consciousness that perceives them, but cannot satisfy it. There is something seductive and at the same time untrue about them: the feeling of the miraculous is excited, but also held back by the constant feeling that all transformations are not happening “for real.” And satirical ridicule - the very thing that with its sharpness holds back the ready to soar into boundless comedic delight - it, in turn, is held back by the fact that it cannot manifest itself in unconditional purity, by the fact that it is complicated by the cheerful adventurism of comedic laughter, by the fact that pleasure, Delivered by a comedy game with depicted reality, it can turn any ugliness into a “pearl of creation.” “Gogol involuntarily reconciles with laughter,” Herzen wrote about this in the book “Past and Thoughts”

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This feature of Gogol’s utopia also attracts attention. The most important thing must happen outside the immediate perception of the “Inspector General”. The experiences that renew the reader or viewer and all the spiritual work generated by them should unfold only when the reading or performance is already left behind (remember that the entire stage action of “Dénouement” recreates the situation after the performance). Gogol’s correspondence regarding “The Inspector General” also takes the problem of transforming the audience beyond its direct contact with The Inspector General himself. In this regard, the project of practical implementation of the utopian ideas outlined in the new play is interesting. We are talking about a new separate edition and a new performance of “The Inspector General”, dedicated to the benefit performance of M. S. Shchepkin. And it is impossible not to notice that Gogol sets two mandatory, from his point of view, conditions. Firstly, “The Inspector General” should be presented in the form in which it acquired after revision in 1841–1842, when the presence of a utopian plan in the comedy became more noticeable. Secondly, “The Inspector General” should be staged only together with “The Inspector General’s Denouement” (“with the addition of a tail,” as Gogol put it in a letter to Shchepkin on October 24, 1846). The author of The Inspector General insisted especially stubbornly on the second condition. Having encountered resistance from Shchepkin and partly from S.P. Shevyrev, whom he also tried to attract to the implementation of his project, Gogol tries to convince them and even makes concessions by reworking a new play. When it becomes clear that “The Inspector General’s Denouement” in any version is unacceptable to his correspondents, he abandons his project. The logic of his position is clear: either his comedy will be re-published along with the play that complements it (essentially, together with teaching, instruction, sermon), or it should not be published or staged on the theater stage. It turns out that his utopian plan seems impossible to him without combining the two plays into one whole. Apparently, Gogol suspected that “The Inspector General” by itself could not create the effect necessary to achieve his goal, that in the very artistic nature of his comedy there was some kind of obstacle that prevented it from being turned into a force that brings “formidable purification.”

Already the news of the upcoming appearance of the auditor disrupts the routine order in the life of Gogol’s city. The street immediately becomes entangled with a broom, a case with a hat, a marital letter with a tavern bill. Things and ideas are shifted from their places by the new situation, chaos penetrates the system, and this chaos gives rise to something like creative ferment. The primary impetus is given from the outside, but it awakens the internal elements of “urban” life. In the characters of the characters, some kind of latent obsession, or, rather, many different obsessions, reminiscent of the “enthusiasm” of the heroes of “Dead Souls”, intensifies and takes on an explosive character. The judge, without ceasing, is being smart, the trustee of charitable institutions is constantly spoiling his colleagues, the postmaster, obeying impulses of curiosity, every now and then opens and keeps other people's letters forever, etc. Everyone has their own such obsession, but they are all brought together by the ability to almost instantly reach extreme tension and pour out uncontrollable pressure into words, into action, into emotional excitement that captivates those around you.

Here lie the sources of irrational energy, grotesquely transforming the world depicted by Gogol. This energy is emitted primarily by Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky: they not only announce the appearance of the expected inspector, but also literally create him from the few details at their disposal. The desire to be the first to meet the auditor and the first to announce him to everyone acquires almost magical power. They need an auditor, and Khlestakov immediately becomes an auditor, for now only for them. Then their passionate impulse is transferred to other characters.

The power of this collective obsession ignites Khlestakov's own ambitions and his own energy. In the lying scene, he really looks the way people around him need to see him. And then the act of universal joint creativity creates a new reality. In the scenes of the fourth act, Khlestakov seems to become the inspector expected by everyone, fully fulfilling all his expected functions. And everyone else, as if infected by his lightness, is drawn into his game and already dares to do previously unimaginable desires, requests, actions, ascending in unbridled dreams to ranks, fame, luxury, and comfort unattainable in reality.

True, the inseparability of two interacting structural and semantic principles creates contradictions that require resolution. The fact that the cheerful play of the creative forces of life and consciousness is constantly embodied in transformations, with all their tangibility - deceptive, gives the dynamics of action obvious ambivalence. It is this that requires an outcome: the metamorphoses that transform the comedic world captivate the consciousness that perceives them, but cannot satisfy it. There is something seductive and at the same time untrue about them: the feeling of the miraculous is excited, but also held back by the constant feeling that all transformations are not happening “for real.” And satirical ridicule - the very thing that with its sharpness holds back the ready to soar into boundless comedic delight - it, in turn, is held back by the fact that it cannot manifest itself in unconditional purity, by the fact that it is complicated by the cheerful adventurism of comedic laughter, by the fact that pleasure, Delivered by a comedy game with depicted reality, it can turn any ugliness into a “pearl of creation.” “Gogol involuntarily reconciles with laughter,” Herzen wrote about this in the book “Past and Thoughts”

Gogol's element is laughter , through which he looks at life both in the stories and in the poem “Dead Souls”, however, it was in the dramatic works (“The Inspector General”, “Marriage”, “Players”) that the comic nature of Gogol’s genius was revealed especially fully. In the best comedy« Auditor» art world Gogol the comedian appears original, whole, animated by a clear moral position author.

Since working on " Auditor"The writer thought a lot about the deep spiritual conditioning of laughter.

According to Gogol, the “high” laughter of a true writer has nothing in common with the “low” laughter generated by light impressions, quick witticisms, puns or caricatured grimaces. “High” laughter comes “straight from the soul”; its source is the dazzling brilliance of the mind, which endows laughter with ethical and pedagogical functions. The meaning of such laughter is to ridicule the “hidden vice” and maintain “elevated feelings.”

In the works that became literary companions to The Inspector General (“Excerpt from a letter written by the author after the first performance of The Inspector General to one writer,” “Theatrical excursion after the presentation of a new comedy,” “The denouement of The Inspector General”), Gogol, deflecting accusations of lack of ideas comedy, conceptualized his laughter as “high,” combining the severity of criticism with a high moral task that was revealed to the writer and inspired him. Already in The Inspector General, he wanted to appear before the public not only as a comic writer, but also as a preacher and teacher.

The meaning of comedythe fact that in it Gogol laughs and teaches at the same time. In “Theatrical Travel,” the playwright emphasized that the only “honest, noble face” in “The Inspector General” is laughter, and clarified:“... that laughter, which all flows out of the bright nature of a person, flows out of it because at its bottom there is an eternally beating spring of it, which deepens the subject, makes to appear brightly that which would have slipped through, without the penetrating power of which trifle and emptiness life would not frighten a person like that ».

Comedy in literary work is always based on the fact that the writer selects from life itself what is imperfect, base, vicious and contradictory. The writer discovers a “hidden vice” in the discrepancy between the external form and internal content of life’s phenomena and events, in the characters and behavior of people. Laughter is the writer’s reaction to comic contradictions that objectively exist in reality or are created in a literary work. By laughing at social and human shortcomings, a comic writer establishes his own scale of values. In the light of his ideals, the imperfection or depravity of those phenomena and people who seem or pretend to appear exemplary, noble or virtuous is revealed. Behind the “high” laughter lies an ideal that allows one to give an accurate assessment of what is being depicted. In “high” comedy, the “negative” pole must be balanced by the “positive”. Negative is associated with laughter, positive - with other types of assessment: indignation, preaching, defense of genuine moral and social values.

"Inspector"is an innovative work, differing in many ways from the comedy that preceded and contemporary Gogol. The main difference is that in comedy there is no “positive” pole, “positive” characters expressing the author’s ideas about what officials should be, there are no heroes-reasoners, “mouthpieces” of the author’s ideas. The writer's ideals are expressed through other means. Essentially, Gogol, having conceived a work that was supposed to have a direct moral impact on the public, abandoned the traditional forms of expressing the author’s position for social, “accusatory” comedies.

Spectators and readers cannot find direct authorial instructions about what “exemplary” officials should be, and there are no hints at the existence of any other moral way of life than the one depicted in the play. We can say that all Gogol's characters- of the same “color”, created from a similar “material”, lined up in one chain. The officials depicted in The Inspector General represent one social type- these are people who do not correspond to the “important places” they occupy. Moreover, not one of them ever even thought about the question of what kind of official should be, how to carry out his duties.

Portraying officials, Gogol uses the method realistic typification: the general characteristic of all officials is manifested in the individual. The characters of Gogol's comedy have unique human qualities inherent only to them.

The unique appearance of the mayor Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky : he is shown as a “very intelligent person in his own way”; it is not for nothing that all the district officials, with the exception of the “somewhat free-thinking” judge, are attentive to his comments about the disorders in the city. He is observant, accurate in his rough opinions and assessments, cunning and calculating, although he seems simple-minded. The mayor is a bribe-taker and embezzler, confident in his right to use administrative power for personal interests. But, as he noted, parrying the judge’s attack, “he is firm in his faith” and goes to church every Sunday. For him, the city is a family patrimony, and the colorful policemen Svistunov, Pugovitsyn and Derzhimorda do not so much keep order as they act as servants of the mayor.

Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky , despite his mistake with Khlestakov, he is a far-sighted and insightful person who deftly takes advantage of the peculiarity of the Russian bureaucracy: since there is no official without sin, it means that anyone, even a governor, even a “metropolitan little thing,” can be “bought” or “deceived.”

Most of the events in the comedy take place in the mayor's house: here it becomes clear who is keeping the luminary of the district bureaucracy under his thumb - wife Anna Andreevna and daughter Marya Antonovna. After all, many of the mayor’s “sins” are a consequence of their whims. In addition, it is their frivolous relationship with Khlestakov that enhances the comedy of his position and gives rise to completely ridiculous dreams of the rank of general and service in St. Petersburg. In “Notes for Gentlemen Actors,” preceding the text of the comedy, Gogol indicated that the mayor began “hard service from the lower ranks.” This important detail: after all, the “electricity” of the rank not only elevated Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky, but also ruined him, making him a man “with crudely developed inclinations of the soul.” Note that this is a comic version of Pushkin’s captain Mironov, the straightforward and honest commandant of the Belogorsk fortress (“The Captain’s Daughter”). The mayor is the complete opposite of Captain Mironov. If in Pushkin’s hero a person is above rank, then in Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky, on the contrary, bureaucratic arrogance kills humanity.

Bright personality traits is inLyapkin-Tyapkin and in Zemlyanika. The judge is a district “philosopher” who has “read five or six” books and loves to speculate about the creation of the world. His words, according to the mayor, “just make my hair stand on end” - probably not only because he is a “Valterian”, does not believe in God, allows himself to argue with Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky, but also simply because of the absurdity and absurdity of it “ philosophizing."

As the wise mayor subtly noted, “well, otherwise a lot of intelligence is worse than not having it at all.” The trustee of charitable institutions stands out among other officials due to his penchant for gossip and denunciation.

Strawberries, perhaps, a truly terrible person, a werewolf official: he not only starves people in his charitable institutions and does not treat them (“we do not use expensive medicines”), but also ruins people’s reputations, mixing the truth with lies and slander. Luka Lukich Khlopov, superintendent of schools, is incredibly stupid and cowardly man, an example of a learned serf who looks into the mouth of any boss. “God forbid that I serve in an academic capacity! - Khlopov complains. “You’re afraid of everything: everyone gets in the way, you want to show everyone that he is also an intelligent person.”

Individualization of comic characters is one of the main principles of Gogol the comedian. In each of them he finds something comic, a “hidden vice” worthy of ridicule. However, regardless of their individual qualities, each official is a variant of “general deviation” from true service to the Tsar and the Fatherland, which should be the duty and matter of honor of a nobleman. At the same time, it is necessary to remember that the socially typical in the heroes of The Inspector General is only part of their human appearance. Individual shortcomings become a form of manifestation of universal human vices in each Gogol character. The meaning of the characters depicted is much larger than their social status: they represent not only the district bureaucracy or the Russian bureaucracy, but also “man in general” with his imperfections, who easily forgets about his duties as a citizen of heavenly and earthly citizenship.

Having created one social type of official (such an official either steals, or takes bribes, or simply does nothing at all), the playwright supplemented it with a moral-psychological typification. Each of the characters has traits of a certain moral and psychological type: in the mayor it is easy to see an imperious hypocrite who knows exactly what his benefit is; in Lyapkin-Tyapkin - a grumpy “philosopher” who loves to demonstrate his learning, but flaunts only his lazy, clumsy mind; in Strawberry - an earphone and a flatterer, covering up his “sins” with other people’s “sins”; in the postmaster, “treating” officials with a letter from Khlestakov, a curious person who likes to peek through the keyhole... And of course, himself imaginary "auditor" Ivan Aleksandrovich Khlestakov is the embodiment of thoughtless lies, easy attitude to life and a common human weakness - to attribute to oneself other people's deeds and other people's glory. This is a “labardan” man, that is, a mixture of stupidity, nonsense and nonsense that pretends to be accepted as intelligence, meaning and order. “I am everywhere, everywhere,” Khlestakov says about himself, and he is not mistaken: as Gogol noted, “everyone, at least for a minute, if not for several minutes, has been or is becoming Khlestakov, but, naturally, he just doesn’t want to admit it... "

All characters are purely comic characters . Gogol does not portray them as some kind of extraordinary people - he is interested in them in what is found everywhere and what ordinary, everyday life. Many minor characters reinforce the impression that the playwright portrays quite ordinary people, no higher than “ordinary height.” The second spectator in “Theater Travel” in response to the First Spectator’s remark “... Do such people really exist? And yet they’re not exactly villains,” he noted: “Not at all, they’re not villains at all. They are exactly what the proverb says : "Not with my soul thin, but just a rogue." The situation itself, caused by the self-deception of officials, is exceptional - it stirred them up, tore them out of the usual order of life, only enlarging, in Gogol’s words, “the vulgarity of a vulgar person.” The self-deception of officials caused a chain reaction in the city, making both the merchants and the mechanic and non-commissioned officer, offended by the mayor, accomplices in the comic action. Special role In the comedy, two characters played, who in the list of characters - the “poster” of the comedy - are called “city landowners”: Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky. Each of them is a simple doubling of the other (their images are created according to the principle: two people - one character). They were the first to report something strange young man who was seen at the hotel. These insignificant people (“city gossips, damned liars”) caused a commotion with the imaginary “auditor”, purely comical persons who led the district bribers and embezzlers to a tragic denouement.

The comedy in The Government Inspector, unlike pre-Gogol comedies, is consistent and comprehensive. To reveal the comic in the social environment, in the characters of district officials and landowners, in the imaginary “auditor” Khlestakov - this is the principle of the author of the comedy.

The comic nature of the characters in The Inspector General is revealed in three comedic situations. The first is a situation of fear caused by the message received about the imminent arrival of an auditor from St. Petersburg, the second is a situation of deafness and blindness of officials who suddenly ceased to understand the meaning of the words that Khlestakov pronounces. They misinterpret them, do not hear and do not see the obvious. The third situation is a situation of substitution: Khlestakov was mistaken for an auditor, the true auditor was replaced by an imaginary one. All three comedy situations are so closely interconnected that the absence of at least one of them could destroy comic effect plays.

The main source of comic relief in The Inspector General is fear, literally paralyzing district officials, turning them from powerful tyrants into fussy, ingratiating people, from bribe-takers into bribe-givers. It is fear that deprives them of reason, makes them deaf and blind, of course, not literally, but in figuratively. They hear what Khlestakov says, how he lies implausibly and every now and then “falsifies”, but the true meaning of what is said does not reach them: after all, according to officials, in the mouth of a “significant person” even the most blatant and fantastic lie turns into the truth. Instead of shaking with laughter, listening to stories about a watermelon “worth seven hundred rubles”, about “thirty-five thousand couriers alone” galloping along the streets of St. Petersburg in order to invite Khlestakov to “manage the department”, about how “in one evening” he wrote all the works of Baron Brambeus (O.I. Senkovsky), and the story “Frigate “Nadezhda”” (A.A. Bestuzheva) and even the magazine “Moscow Telegraph”,

“The mayor and others are shaking with fear,” encouraging the intoxicated Khlestakov to “get hotter,” that is, talk complete nonsense: “I’m everywhere, everywhere. I go to the palace every day. Tomorrow I will be promoted to field marshal..." Even during the first meeting with Khlestakov, the mayor saw, but did not “recognize” his complete insignificance. Both fear and the deafness and blindness it caused became the basis on which the situation of substitution arose, which determined the “ghostly” nature of the conflict and the comedic plot of “The Inspector General.”

Gogol used in The Inspector General all the possibilities of situational comedy available to a comedian. Three main comedic situations, each of which can be found in almost any comedy, in Gogol’s play convince the reader with the entire “mass” of the comic in the strict conditionality of everything that happens on stage. “... Comedy must knit itself, with its entire mass, into one big, common knot,” Gogol noted in “Theater Road”.

In "The Inspector General" there are many farcical situations in which the stupidity and inappropriate fussiness of district officials, as well as the frivolity and carelessness of Khlestakov, are shown. These situations are designed for a 100% comic effect: they cause laughter, regardless of the meaning of what is happening. For example, feverishly giving the last orders before going to Khlestakov, the mayor “wants to put on a paper case instead of a hat.” In phenomena XII-XIV fourth act Khlestakov, who had just declared his love to Marya Antonovna and was on his knees in front of her, as soon as she left, driven out by her mother, “throws himself on his knees” and asks for the hand... of the mayor’s wife, and then, caught by Marya Antonovna who suddenly ran in, asks for “mama “bless them with Marya Antonovna “constant love.” The lightning-fast change of events caused by Khlestakov’s unpredictability ends with the transformation of “His Excellency” into a groom.

The comic homogeneity of The Inspector General determines two of the most important features of the work. Firstly, there is no reason to consider Gogol’s laughter only as “accusatory”, castigating vices. In “high” laughter Gogol saw “cleansing”, didactic and preaching functions. The meaning of laughter for a writer is richer than criticism, denial or castigation: after all, laughing, he not only showed the vices of people and the imperfections of the Russian bureaucracy, but also took the first, most necessary step towards their deliverance.

Gogolevsky laughter- a kind of “magnifying glass” with which you can see in people what they either do not notice to themselves or want to hide. In ordinary life, a person’s “curvature,” camouflaged by position or rank, is not always obvious. The "mirror" of comedy shows true essence of a person, makes real existing deficiencies visible. Mirror reflection life is no worse than life itself, in which people’s faces have turned into “crooked faces.” The epigraph to “The Inspector General” reminds us of this.

The comedy uses Gogol's favorite technique - synecdoche. Having shown the “visible” part of the world of the Russian bureaucracy, laughing at the unlucky “fathers” of the district town, the writer pointed to a hypothetical whole, that is, to the shortcomings of the entire Russian bureaucracy and to universal human vices. The self-deception of officials of the county town, due to specific reasons, primarily the natural fear of retribution for what they have done, is part of the general self-deception that forces people to worship false idols, forgetting about the true values of life.

The originality of the plot and composition of The Inspector General is determined by the nature of the conflict. It is due to the situation of self-deception of officials: they take what they want for reality. The supposedly recognized official, exposed by them - “incognito” from St. Petersburg - forces them to act as if there was a real auditor in front of them. The comic contradiction that arises makes the conflict illusory and non-existent. After all, only if Khlestakov were actually an auditor, the behavior of officials would be completely justified, and the conflict would be a completely ordinary clash of interests between the auditor and the “audited”, whose fate depends entirely on their dexterity and ability to “show off” .

Khlestakov- a mirage that arose because “fear has big eyes,” since it was the fear of being caught by surprise, not having time to hide the “disorder” in the city, that led to the emergence of a comic contradiction, an imaginary conflict. However, Khlestakov’s appearance is quite specific; the reader or viewer from the very beginning (second act) understands him true essence: he is just a petty St. Petersburg official who lost at cards and therefore got stuck in the provincial backwater. Only “extraordinary ease of thought” helps Khlestakov not to lose heart in absolutely hopeless circumstances, out of habit hoping for “maybe.” He is passing through the city, but it seems to the officials that he came precisely for their sake. As soon as Gogol replaced the real auditor with an imaginary one, the real conflict also became an imaginary, illusory conflict.

The unusualness of the comedy lies not so much in the fact that Gogol found a completely new plot device, but in the reality of everything that happens. Each of the characters seems to be in its place, conscientiously playing its role. The county town has turned into something like stage area, on which a completely “natural” play is performed, striking in its verisimilitude. The script and the list of characters are known in advance, the only question is how the “actors”-officials will cope with their “roles” in the future “performance”.

Indeed, one can appreciate acting each of them. The main character, the real “genius” of the county bureaucratic scene, is the mayor Anton Ivanovich Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky, who in the past successfully played his “role” three times (“he deceived three governors”), the rest of the officials - some better, some worse - also cope with their roles , although the mayor sometimes has to prompt them, “prompt”, as if reminiscent of the text of the “play”. Almost the entire first act looks like a “dress rehearsal”, carried out in a hurry. It was immediately followed by an unplanned “performance”. After the beginning of the action - the mayor's message - a very dynamic exposition follows. It represents not only each of the “fathers” of the city, but also the district city itself, which they consider their patrimony. Officials are convinced of their right to commit lawlessness, take bribes, rob merchants, starve the sick, rob the treasury, read other people's letters. The “curtain” was quickly pushed aside by the fussy Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, who rushed to the “secret” meeting and alarmed everyone with the message about the strange young man they discovered in the hotel.

Mayor and officials they try to “show off” an imaginary important person and are in awe of her, sometimes losing the power of speech not only for fear of possible punishment, but also because they must be in awe of any superiors (this is determined by the role of the “audited”). They give bribes to Khlestakov when he asks for a “favor”, because they must be given in this case, whereas usually they receive bribes. The mayor is kind and helpful, but this is just an integral part of his “role” as a caring “father” of the city. In short, everything is going according to plan for the officials.

Even Khlestakov easily assumes the role of an important person: he gets acquainted with officials, accepts petitions, and begins, as befits a “significant person,” to “scold” the owners for nothing, causing them to “shake with fear.” Khlestakov is not able to enjoy power over people; he simply repeats what he himself probably experienced more than once in his St. Petersburg department. An unexpected role transforms Khlestakov, elevating him above everyone else, making him an intelligent, powerful and strong-willed person, and the mayor, who actually possesses these qualities, again in full accordance with his “role”, temporarily turns into a “rag”, “icicle” , complete nonentity. The comic metamorphosis is provoked by the “electricity” of the rank. All characters- both the district officials who have real power, and Khlestakov, the “cog” of the St. Petersburg bureaucratic system, seem to be struck by a powerful discharge of current that is generated by the Table of Ranks, which has replaced a person with a rank. Even the imaginary bureaucratic “greatness” is capable of bringing generally intelligent people into the movement, turning them into obedient puppets.

Readers and viewers of the comedy understand perfectly well that a substitution has occurred that determined the behavior of officials until the fifth act, before the appearance of postmaster Shpekin with Khlestakov’s letter. The participants in the “performance” have unequal rights, since Khlestakov almost immediately realized that he had been confused with someone. But the role of a “significant person” is so well known to him that he coped with it brilliantly. Officials, shackled by both real and scripted fear, do not notice the glaring inconsistencies in the behavior of the imaginary auditor.

"Inspector"- an unusual comedy, because comic situations the meaning of what is happening is not exhausted. Three dramatic plots coexist in the play. One of them - comedic - was realized in the second, third, fourth and at the beginning of the fifth act: the imaginary (Khlestakov) became a magnitude (auditor) in the eyes of officials. The beginning of the comedy plot is not in the first, but in the second act - this is the first conversation between the mayor and Khlestakov, where they are both sincere and both are mistaken. Khlestakov, according to the observant mayor, “nondescript, short, seems like he could crush him with a fingernail.” However, from the very beginning, the imaginary auditor in the eyes of the frightened “mayor of the local city” turns into a gigantic figure: Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky “becomes timid,” listening to Khlestakov’s “threats,” “stretching out and trembling with his whole body.” The mayor is sincerely mistaken and behaves as one should behave with an auditor, although he sees that in front of him is a nonentity. Khlestakov enthusiastically “lashes”, putting on the appearance of a “significant person”, but at the same time he speaks the absolute truth (“I’m going to the Saratov province, to my own village”). Khlestakov’s words, mayor, in spite of common sense, takes it for a lie: “Nicely tied the knot! He lies, he lies, and he never stops!”

At the end of the fourth act, to the mutual satisfaction of Khlestakov and the officials, who are still unaware of their deception, the imaginary “auditor” is carried away from the city by the fastest troika, but his shadow remains in the fifth act. The mayor himself begins to “whip”, dreaming of a St. Petersburg career. It seems to him that he received “what a rich prize” - “what a devil they became related to!” With the help of his future son-in-law, Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky hopes to “get into high rank, because he is friends with all the ministers and goes to the palace.” The comic contradiction at the beginning of the fifth act reaches particular acuteness.

Comedy Climax - a scene of triumph for the mayor, who behaves as if he had already received the rank of general. He became higher than everyone, ascended above the district bureaucratic brethren. And the higher he rises in his dreams, taking wishful thinking, the more painfully he falls when the postmaster “hurriedly” brings a printed letter - Khlestakov the writer, a scribbler, appears on the stage, and the mayor cannot stand scribblers: for him they are worse than the devil . It is the position of the mayor that is especially comical, but it also has a tragic undertone. The unlucky hero of the comedy himself views what happened as God’s punishment: “Now, truly, if God wants to punish, he will first take away his reason.” Let's add to this: irony will also deprive you of your hearing.

In Khlestakov’s letter, everyone discovers even more “unpleasant news” than in the letter from Andrei Ivanovich Chmykhov, read by the mayor at the beginning of the play: the auditor turned out to be an imaginary, “helicopter,” “icicle,” “rag.” Reading the letter is the denouement of the comedy.

Everything fell into place - the deceived side both laughs and is indignant, fearing publicity and, what is especially offensive, laughter: after all, as the mayor noted, now “if you become a laughing stock, there will be a clicker, a paper maker, who will insert you into a comedy. That's what's offensive! Rank and title will not be spared, and everyone will bare their teeth and clap their hands.” The mayor is most of all not saddened by his human humiliation, but indignant at the possible insult to his “rank, title.” There is a bitter comic shade to his indignation: a person who has sullied his rank and title attacks the “clickers” and “paper makers”, identifying himself with the rank and therefore considering it closed to criticism.

Laughter in the fifth act becomes universal: after all, every official wants to laugh at others, recognizing the accuracy of Khlestakov’s assessments. Laughing at each other, savoring the pokes and slaps that the exposed “auditor” gives in a letter, officials laugh at themselves. The stage laughs - the audience laughs. The mayor’s famous remark is “Why are you laughing? “Laughing at yourself!.. Oh, you!..” - addressed both to those present on stage and to the audience. Only Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky is not laughing: he is the most injured person in this whole story. It seems that with reading the letter and finding out the truth, the circle has closed, the comedy plot has been exhausted. But the entire first act is not yet a comedy, although there are many comic incongruities in the behavior and words of the participants in the mayor’s meeting, in the appearance of Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, and in the mayor’s hasty preparations.

Two other plots - dramatic and tragic - are planned, but not fully realized. The first words of the mayor: “I invited you, gentlemen, in order to tell you very unpleasant news: an auditor is coming to us,” supplemented by clarifications that this inspector is coming from St. Petersburg (and not from the province), incognito (secretly, without publicity), “ and also with a secret order,” caused a serious commotion. The challenge facing county officials, - quite serious, but doable: “take precautions”, how to prepare for a meeting with the formidable “incognito”: cover up, patch up something in the city - maybe it will blow through. The plot of the action is dramatic, life-like: the terrible auditor will not fall out of the blue, the ritual of receiving the auditor and defrauding him could be realized. There is no auditor in the first act yet, but there is a plot: the officials have awakened from their hibernation and are fussing about. There is no hint of a possible substitution, only the fear that they may not make it in time worries the officials, especially the mayor: “You just wait for the door to open and go…”

So, in the first act the contours of the future drama are outlined, in which the favorable outcome of the audit could depend only on the officials. The mayor's message about the letter he received and the possible arrival of the auditor is the basis for the emergence of a dramatic conflict, which is quite common in any situation associated with the sudden arrival of the authorities. From the second act to the finale of the play, a comedy plot unfolds. The comedy reflected the real world of official bureaucracy as if in a mirror. In laughter, this world, shown from the inside out, revealed its usual features: falsehood, window dressing, hypocrisy, flattery and the omnipotence of rank. Hastening to the hotel where the unknown visitor from St. Petersburg was staying, the mayor hurried into the comedic “behind the mirror”, into the world of false, but quite plausible ranks and relationships between people.

If the action in The Government Inspector had ended with the reading of Khlestakov’s letter, Gogol would have accurately realized the “thought” of the work suggested to him by Pushkin.

But the writer went further, ending the play with “The Last Appearance” and “Silent Scene”: the finale of “The Inspector General” brought the heroes out of the “looking glass” in which laughter reigned, reminding them that their self-deception did not allow them to “take precautions” and dulled their vigilance . In the finale, a third plot is planned - tragic. A gendarme who suddenly appears announces the arrival of not an imaginary, but a real auditor, terrible for officials not because of his “incognito”, but because of the clarity of the task set before him by the tsar himself. Every word of the gendarme is like a blow of fate, this is a prophecy about the imminent retribution of officials - both for sins and for carelessness: “The official who arrived by personal order from St. Petersburg demands you to come to him this very hour. He was staying at a hotel." The mayor’s fears expressed in the first act came true: “That would be nothing, damned incognito! Suddenly he’ll look in: “Oh, you’re here, my dears! And who, say, is the judge here? - "Lyapkin-Tyapkin." - “And bring Lyapkin-Tyapkin here! Who is the trustee of charitable institutions?” - “Strawberry”. - “And serve Strawberries here!” That’s what’s bad!” The appearance of the gendarme is the imposition of a new action, the beginning of a tragedy that the author takes beyond the stage. A new, serious “play”, in which no one will be laughing, should, according to Gogol, not be played in the theater, but take place in life itself.

Three plots begin with messages: the dramatic - with the message of the mayor, the comic - with the message of Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, the tragic - with the message of the gendarme. But only the comic ghost plot is fully developed. In a dramatic plot that remained unrealized, Gogol discovered comic potential, demonstrating not only the absurdity of the behavior of fooled officials, but also the absurdity of the action itself, in which the roles were pre-determined: both the auditor and the auditees diligently throw dust in each other’s eyes. The possibility of embodying the author's ideal is outlined in the finale of the comedy: the last and most important emphasis is placed by Gogol on the inevitability of punishment.

The play ends with the “petrification” scene. This is a sudden stop to the action, which from that moment could turn from comedic, ending with the exposure of Khlestakov, into tragic. Everything happened suddenly, unexpectedly. The worst happened: the officials were no longer in hypothetical, but in real danger. The “silent scene” is the moment of truth for officials. They are made to “petrify” by a terrible guess about imminent retribution. Gogol the moralist affirms in the finale of The Inspector General the idea of the inevitability of the trial of bribe-takers and embezzlers who have forgotten about their official and human duty. This trial, according to the writer’s conviction, must be carried out according to a personal command, that is, according to the will of the king himself.

The gendarme is a messenger from that ideal world created by Gogol’s imagination. In this world, the monarch not only punishes, but also corrects his subjects, wants not only to teach them a lesson, but also to teach them. The pointing finger of Gogol the moralist is also turned towards the emperor; it is not for nothing that Nicholas I remarked, leaving the box after the performance on April 19, 1836: “Well, a play! Everyone got it, and I got it more than everyone else!” Gogol did not flatter the emperor. Having directly indicated where retribution should come from, the writer essentially “insolently” him, confident in his right to preach, teach and instruct, including the king himself. Already in 1835, when the first edition of the comedy was created, Gogol was firmly convinced that his laughter was laughter inspired by high moral ideal, and not the laughter of a scoffer or an indifferent critic of social and human vices.

Gogol's faith in the triumph of justice and in the moral effect of his play can be assessed as a kind of social and moral utopia generated by his enlightenment illusions. But if there were no these illusions, there would be no “Inspector General”. In it, comedy and laughter are in the foreground, but behind them stands Gogol’s belief that evil is punishable, and punishment itself is carried out in the name of liberating people from the illusory power of rank, from “bestial”, in the name of their spiritual enlightenment. “Having seen his shortcomings and mistakes, a person suddenly becomes higher than himself,” the writer emphasized. “There is no evil that cannot be corrected, but you need to see what exactly the evil is.” The arrival of the auditor is not at all a “duty” event. The Inspector is important not as a specific character, but as a symbol. It’s like the hand of an autocrat, just and merciless to lawlessness, reaching out to the provincial backwater.

In “The Inspector General's Denouement,” written in 1846, Gogol emphasized the possibility of a broader interpretation of the comedy's ending. The inspector is “our awakened conscience,” sent “by the Named Supreme Command,” by the will of God, reminding man of his “high heavenly citizenship”: “Whatever you say, the inspector who is waiting for us at the door of the tomb is terrible. As if you don’t know who this auditor is? Why pretend?Auditorthis one is our awakened conscience, which will force us to suddenly and at once look at ourselves with all our eyes. Nothing can be hidden from this auditor. ...Suddenly such a monster will be revealed to you, within you, that your hair will stand up in horror.” Of course, this interpretation is only one of the possible interpretations of the symbolically polysemantic ending of the comedy, which, according to the author’s plan, should influence both the mind and soul of the audience and readers.
(based on Internet materials)