Review of the book "Inspector General" by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, written as part of the competition "My Favorite Book". Reviewer: Anastasia Khalyavina. Other works by Anastasia:
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“I know that there are some of us who are ready to laugh at the crooked nose of a person from the heart and do not have the spirit to laugh at the crooked soul of a person”
I read The Inspector just a few days ago. I can't say that I really liked this piece. Rather, I liked the idea that Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol wanted to convey to readers. And he did it. He, like Krylov, ridiculed human vices in his little funny story.
I was surprised how the writer was able to accurately convey very important problems that were relevant in his 19th century. Unfortunately, involuntarily trying them on today, you will notice that no cardinal changes for the better have occurred. These problems remain unresolved to this day. Each hero had his own vices, and, it should be noted, Gogol was able to build his comedy in this way. So that there was not a single positive hero. Probably, to do it so gracefully and inconspicuously, one must be a real master of the pen!
The problem of lies. Perhaps it is the basis for all others. It is like a wire on which beads are strung and held - other problems in the work. Lies are everywhere. Both in the book and in real life now and before. One can only imagine what would have happened to this story if one day the mayor Anton Antonovich did not pretend (that is, lie) that he did not know that the guest from the tavern was the auditor. Everything could have been very different. And this clearly shows what lies do. There are dozens, hundreds, and perhaps even thousands of such examples throughout the text. But I was most impressed by the case when Khlestakov said: “Actually, there are many of my works: “The Marriage of Figaro”, “Robert the Devil”, “Norma”. I don't even remember the names." At that moment, I laughed heartily. Firstly, the fact that the "auditor" lied so shamelessly. After all, everyone knows that The Marriage of Figaro is a play by Beaumarchais and an opera by Mozart. That “Robert the Devil” was composed by Meyerbeer, and “Norma” by Bellini. And it was precisely the fact that everyone knows about it that became the second reason for my grin. After all, Marya Antonovna and Anna Andreevna, knowing perfectly well the real authors of these operas, did not reproach the high-ranking guest with a lie. And it is from this that the second problem in the work is born.
The problem of flattery and helpfulness to high ranks. This problem, like the first, is still called the "problem" because it remained unresolved. In the work, one can clearly trace how the speech of the mayor changes in relation to different strata of society. His appeals to ordinary peasants are very rude, full of abuse and humiliation. But he treated the “auditor” differently, showing himself as a faithful servant of the people, an honest benefactor. From here just to appear still it is a problem.
The problem of duplicity and hypocrisy. Almost all the characters in the play were not without this vice. In almost every action, especially the mayor and Khlestakov, duplicity looms. The constant change of position clearly does not paint the heroes. For example, I was struck by how radically the “auditor” changed his mind. When merchants complained to him about Anton Antonovich, he spoke of his own savior: “Oh, what a swindler! Yes, for this just to Siberia. But, after he told the mayor that the merchants were very deceitful and evil people, Khlestakov changed his position, not answering the words of Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky at all.
And there are many more such problems. For example, corruption, bribery, inequality and others.
Indicate the genre to which the play by N.V. Gogol "The Inspector General" belongs ??? Mayor. It is my duty, as the mayor of this city, to take care ofno harassment to those passing by and to all noble people ... KHLESTAKOV (at first he stutters a little, but towards the end of the speech he speaks loudly). But what can I do?.. It's not my fault... I really will cry... They will send me from the village. Bobchinsky looks out of the door. He is more to blame: he gives me beef as hard as a log; and the soup - he the devil knows what he splashed there, I had to throw it out the window. He starved me for whole days... The tea is so strange: it stinks of fish, not tea. Why am I... Here's the news! Mayor (timid). Sorry, it's not my fault. I always have good beef in the market. Kholmogory merchants bring them, sober people and good behavior. I don't know where he gets this from. And if something is wrong, then ... Let me suggest that you move with me to another apartment. Khlestakov. No I do not want to! I know what it means to - another apartment: that is - to prison. What right do you have? How dare you?.. Yes, here I am... I serve in St. Petersburg. (Invigorates.) I, I, I ... Mayor (aside). Oh my God, you're so angry! I learned everything, the damned merchants told me everything! Khlestakov (bravely). Yes, here you are even here with your whole team - I won’t go! I'm going straight to the minister! (Bangs his fist on the table.) What are you? What do you? Mayor (stretching out and trembling all over). Have mercy, do not lose! Wife, little children... don't make a man unhappy. Khlestakov. No I do not want! Here's another! what do I care? Because you have a wife and children, I have to go to prison, that's fine! Bobchinsky looks out the door and hides in fright. No, thank you very much, I don't want to. Mayor (trembling). Inexperience, by golly, inexperience. Insufficiency of the state ... If you please, judge for yourself: the state salary is not enough even for tea and sugar. If there were any bribes, then just a little: something on the table and for a couple of dresses. As for the non-commissioned officer's widow, engaged in the merchant class, whom I allegedly flogged, this is slander, by God, slander. My villains invented this: they are such a people that they are ready to encroach on my life. Khlestakov. What? I don't care about them. (Thinking.) I don’t know, however, why you are talking about villains and some non-commissioned officer’s widow ... A non-commissioned officer’s wife is completely different, but you don’t dare to flog me, you are far from that ... Here's another! Look what you are!.. I will pay, I will pay money, but now I don't have any. I'm sitting here because I don't have a penny. Mayor (aside). Oh, subtle thing! Ek where tossed! what a fog! Find out who wants! You don't know which side to take. Well, give it a try. (Aloud.) If you definitely need money or something else, then you are ready to serve this minute. My duty is to help passers-by. Khlestakov. Give, lend me! I'll pay off the innkeeper right now. I would only like two hundred rubles, or at least even less. Mayor (bringing papers). Exactly two hundred rubles, though don't bother counting. N.V. Gogol "Inspector"
Megamind
I recently read it and am glad to help. I want to reflect my impression of the comedy I read by N.V. Gogol's "Inspector". I chose this work because it is very interesting, the author shows in a funny way all the events that happen to the characters. He contrasts the worthlessness of the ruling elite of society and the slavish obedience of the Russian peasantry. I think this work is based on the self-disclosure of the characters. It has no positive characters. All actions are motivated by the characters and psychology of her characters. The image of the mayor Skvoznik - Dmukhanovsky is presented as a rude, cynical administrator. The image of Khlestakov is a frivolous braggart, an insignificant and vulgar person. I will give a few examples. A petty official who, on his way from St. Petersburg to his father in the country, lost all his money on the way and has been living on credit in a hotel in a county town for two weeks, without funds to continue his journey. In this county town, an auditor is expected, who should arrive incognito. The mayor, the postmaster, the judge, the trustee of charitable institutions and other officials, all strongly dishonest, out of fear, or rather, foolishly take Khlestakov for this auditor. They take him around the city, regale him and lend him money in order to captivate the terrible man in their favor and make him turn a blind eye to the omissions and disturbances in their service. Seeing their willingness to lend money, Khlestakov got so greedy on bribes that he no longer asks those who come to him who they are, and from the first word demands tax from them. Two landowners, two provincial originals, living in a county town and inviolable for service, Pyotr Ivanovich Dobchinsky and Pyotr Ivanovich Bobchinsky, come to him with respect at the very moment of this predatory mood, and here is the scene of the highest comedy. The author nowhere names the province in which his county town lies: therefore, the town can be located everywhere. City officials are too frivolously convinced that Khlestakov is the very auditor they expect. As a character, I remember Khlestakov more, but not as a positive hero, but as a cunning one, essentially no different from the deceived officials. The Inspector General collected all the bad things in Russia, all the injustices that are done in those places and in those cases where justice and decency are most required of a person. Administrative abuses in remote and little visited places exist all over the world, and there is no sufficient reason to attribute them to Russia alone. These are the questions that this book made me think about.
Title of the work: Auditor
Genre: comedy
Year of writing: 1836
Main characters: Khlestakov- small landowner mayor, his wife And daughter, officials county town.
Plot
The mayor of a small county town received news that an auditor was coming to them from St. Petersburg - incognito. He himself and all the officials are greatly frightened by this news, since each of them is dishonest and violates the laws in his service. Khlestakov, having lost on the road, cannot continue on his way to his estate, therefore he lives in a hotel for the second week and does not pay for anything. Out of fright, local officials mistake him for a visiting auditor. They meet him with great honor, treat him, give money, flatter and please. Khlestakov, a man himself nothing of himself, “spread his tail in front of them” and began to brag and splurge, which even more scared the officials. In the end, he gets married to the daughter of the mayor, receives consent, travel and money, and leaves in style, allegedly on business, in order to return soon and have a wedding. After his departure, the postmaster opens Khlestakov's letter, and the whole truth about him is revealed. At this moment, the real auditor arrives.
Conclusion (my opinion)
People like Khlestakov are still found today. Probably, a part of Khlestakov lives in each of us, and we often want to seem better and more significant than we really are. Not without reason, the term “Khlestakovism” has firmly entered Russian literature, meaning bragging, idle talk from a stupid, empty person.
/P.A. Vyazemsky "The Government Inspector" comedy, op. N. Gogol. St. Petersburg, 1836 /
This comedy was a complete success on the stage: the general attention of the audience, applause, heartfelt and unanimous laughter, the challenge of the author after the first two performances, the greed of the public for subsequent performances and, most importantly, her lively echo, which was heard afterwards in widespread conversations, which was not lacking. In reading, the comedy has withstood the theatrical success, if it has not yet surpassed it, as it should be in a comedy written with intelligence and talent, with true comic gaiety, but with less concern for acting and the collisions of dramatic surprises.<...>
However, no matter how brilliant the success of The Inspector General was, it cannot but be subject to certain reservations, criticisms and condemnations.<...>General remarks about Mr. Gogol's comedy can be summarized under three sections: literary, moral and social. In examining these remarks and in objecting to them, we will pay more attention to what was said about the "Inspector General" than to what was written about him.<...>
Let's turn to the comments.
Some say that The Inspector General is not a comedy, but a farce. It's not about the title: you can write a brilliant farce and a vulgar comedy. In addition, there is not a single scene in The Inspector General like Scapin's Deceptions, The Doctor Unwillingly, Pursonjak, or the Rasinovs: Les Plaideurs (Sutyags (French)); there is nowhere a fictional caricature, disguise and so on. and so on. With the exception of the fall of Bobchinsky, there is not a single minute that lapses into farce. There is a caricature nature in The Inspector General: this is a different matter. In nature, not everything is graceful; but in imitation of nature, artistic elegance may be inelegant.<...>
Of course, The Inspector General is not a high comedy, in the sense of The Misanthrope or Tartuffe 2: courtiers, persons of the highest circle are not brought on stage here, nor are persons marked by a common human character. Scene in the county. The author, by one choice of the scene, already gives you the measure and quality of the requirements to which he undertakes to answer. To transfer the so-called high comedy to a district town would already be the first sign of the author's thoughtlessness and imprudence.
They say that the language is low. High and low are high and low in comparison and relation: low when it is in place, not low: it fits and is in measure.<...>Meanwhile, it would be superfluous to note to admirers of classical legends that Fonvizin read his "Brigadier" and his "Undergrowth" at the enlightened and magnificent court of Catherine II,<...>but here is a small caveat: when they played "Undergrowth" under the empress and after before the public, they mercilessly reduced the noble roles of Starodum and Milon, because they are boring and inappropriate, but the low roles of Skotinin, Prostakov, Kuteikin were preserved in an integral integrity, despite their morals quite elegant and their language is not at all academic.<...>
Others say that in The Inspector General there is no credibility, no fidelity, because comedy is a description of the manners and customs of a certain era, and this comedy lacks proper certainty. Therefore, where the viewer cannot recognize by the face and dress who is of what parish and in which year he was born, there is no comedy? Someone said that comedy is the history of society, but here you demand statistics from comedy! Let me ask now: what about a comedy that simply describes a person with passions, with weaknesses, with his vices, for example, a mean, jealous, gambler, vain - or types that do not belong exclusively to either one or the other century, or that, nor another degree of longitude and latitude, but simply human nature and Adam's generation, do they not come into comedy?<...>
Who says that the fundamental basis of the "Inspector" is implausible, that the mayor could not so gullibly go into deception, but had to demand a road trip, and so on. Of course it is; but the author in this case remembered a more psychological proverb than a police order, and for a comedian, it seems he was not mistaken. He remembered that fear has large eyes, and on this he strengthened his fable. Moreover, and bypassing the proverb, in the very essence of the matter there is not the slightest violence to plausibility. It is known that the auditor will arrive incognito, therefore, he may come under a false name. The news of the stay of an unknown person in the hotel falls on the mayor and his associates at a critical moment of panic fear, after reading the fatal letter. Further, why not think to the mayor that Khlestakov has two travellers, two types, of which the real one will be presented when necessary?
There is no stretch in the author's assumption: everything is natural. The action performed by a metropolitan resident in the wilderness of a county town, from where, according to the mayor, even if you ride for three years, you will not reach any state, presents the comedian with an extensive field for unrealizable improbability. Self-praise, lies, empty talk of the capital pour over with awe and gullibility people and prudent, but uneducated people - such a hoax is marketable everywhere.<...>
There are critics who are dissatisfied with the language of comedy, horrified by its vulgarity, forgetting that such a language is characteristic of bred faces. Here the author is not a prompter for the characters, he does not suggest his expressions to them: the author is a stenographer. It is probable that some faults can be found that have escaped the writer's pen; but it's funny to catch words grammatically in comedy. The main thing in the writer is the style: if he has an expressive physiognomy, on which the thoughts and feelings of the writer are reflected, then the sympathy of the readers vividly responds to his voice. Perhaps the talkers are right, and Mr. Gogol's language is not always infallible; but his style is remarkably alive everywhere.<...>For example, Osip in The Government Inspector speaks a purely lackey language, we hear the lackey in him a village one who lived for some time in the capital:<...>
<...>they say that The Inspector General is an immoral comedy, because only human vices and stupidities are brought out in it, that the mind and heart have no one to rest from indignation and disgust, there is no bright side of humanity to reconcile spectators with humanity, to edify them, and so on. .<...>But how to demand that every artist devote himself to the position of a school teacher or an uncle? What do you need honest people in comedy if they were not part of the comic writer's plan? At a certain moment, in this position, he looked at several faces - and drew them in the form, with those shades of light, the outrages that they presented to his eyes.<...>Is it possible that from the fact that the comedian did not bring out a single honest person, it should be concluded that the author had the goal of proving that there are no honest people at all?<...>Look for good and decent people for yourself when you leave the theater, then you will need them more and even more pleasantly after the impressions left in you by stage faces. Who among the audience of The Government Inspector would wish to be Khlestakov, Strawberry, Shpekin, or even the innocent Petr Ivanovich, Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky? That's right, no one! Therefore, there is nothing immoral in the action performed by comedy. Perhaps the action, the impression made upon you, is unpleasant, as in any satire depicting the ills of society: this is a different matter and the consequence is inevitable, but this unpleasant action is moderated and, so to speak, painted with laughter.
The essence of the public remarks we have heard about The Government Inspector stray in many respects to the above remarks. They say that this comedy, this depiction of morals, is a slander on Russian society, that there is not a single county town in Russia that could present such a miserable gathering of people.<...>. Therefore, comedy is a lie, slander, unrealizable and unacceptable fiction, almost a libel! Again statistical demands from the comedian, again complaints against the dramatic publicist. But who told you that the author was targeting such and such a city?<...>Why look for insults to the people's ambition in the comic fiction of the author? Are there people in the world who are similar to those who are shown in comedy? Undoubtedly, there is. Enough of this! What does it matter that a comedian noticed one of them on the banks of the Volga, another on the Dnieper, a third on the Dvina and brought them together, as a painter gathered the features and charms of many beauties into one of his Venus?<...>
Khlestakov is an anemone, and by the way, maybe a good fellow; but not a bribe taker, but a borrower, somewhat easy-going, it's true, but still not dishonest! These differences are clearly marked in his face. Other people give him money because he asks for money from them. Where is it seen that people refuse to serve a person in need, when this person can be useful to them - all this is natural; all this is so common not only in the wilderness of a Russian county town, but everywhere where people live.<...>
They say that not a single intelligent person is seen in Gogol's comedy; not true: the author is smart. It is said that in Gogol's comedy not a single honest and well-meaning person is seen; not true: an honest and well-thought person is a government that, by the force of law, smite abuses, and allows talent to correct them with a weapon of mockery. In 1783, it allowed the performance of "Undergrowth", in 1799 "Snake", and in 1836 "The Government Inspector".
<...>When the "Inspector General" appeared, as mentioned above, there was a lot of talk and judgment in society and in magazines. In addition to its very literary merit, the contradictory considerations about it also included a back, hidden thought. The comedy has been recognized by many as a liberal statement, like, for example, Beaumarchais' comedy: "The Barber of Seville"<...>. This impression, this prejudice, of course, must have divided the public into two opposite sides, into two camps. Some welcomed it, rejoiced at it as a bold, albeit covert, attack on those in power. In their opinion, Gogol, having chosen the battlefield of his county town, aimed higher.<...>
From this point of view, others, of course, looked at the comedy as an attempt on the state: they were excited, frightened by it, and in an unfortunate or happy comedian they saw almost a dangerous rebel. The thing is, they were both wrong. In vain did the liberals meet in Gogol a like-minded person and ally to themselves, others in vain denied him, as from a monster, as from an evil spirit. There was nothing political in Gogol's intention. He wrote "The Government Inspector", as he later wrote "The Overcoat", "The Nose" and his other humorous works. The eyes of the liberals were deceived by their own seduction; the conservatives were great.<...>Much has been written, and much is still being written, about Gogol; but by the way to say here: in polyverb there is neither salvation nor truth.
