by Dmitry Gubin
[REGNUM] 190 years ago, on May 1 (or April 19, old style), 1836, the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg premiered Nikolai Gogol's satirical comedy "The Government Inspector" to a full house and in the presence of Nicholas I. The audience discussed not only the adventures of the "capital city darling" Khlestakov in the provincial town but also the author's personality.
The young playwright (just a couple of weeks past his 27th birthday) was patronized by masters such as Prince Pyotr Vyazemsky and Vasily Zhukovsky himself, tutor to the heir to the throne. It was they who appealed directly to the emperor when the play failed censorship—they deemed the story of the cowardly mayor and the thieving officials of city N sedition. But Nicholas I permitted the production, and the censors could not object.
After the premiere, rumor had it that the Tsar, leaving the royal box, said, "Well, what a play! Everyone got it, but I got it worst of all!" This story, which still appears in popular publications, is most likely a historical anecdote. At least, that's what researchers believe. However, it is known that Nicholas ordered his ministers to familiarize themselves with the play while it was running at the Alexandrinsky Theatre and learn from it.
The history of the emergence and production of the great comedy is generally full of such “half-truths” and myths.
For example, the question still remains: did Gogol himself come up with the plot of “The Inspector General”?
ON FRIENDLY TERMS WITH PUSHKIN
From the late 1830s to this day, a version has been circulating: the story of how “an icicle, a rag, was mistaken for an important person” was given to a young literary colleague by Alexander Pushkin.
"Legs Grow" from the memoirs of Count Vladimir Sollogub, a successful official and second-ranking writer. This younger contemporary of Pushkin and Gogol, unlike them, lived long and left behind memoirs, published in two editions, the last in the 1880s.
Sollogub left two contradictory versions. First, Pushkin recounted how, in the town of Ustyuzhna in Novgorod Governorate (now a district center in Vologda Oblast), a passing gentleman impersonated a ministry official and robbed the locals who rushed to the inspector with envelopes.
According to the second version, Pushkin himself was the prototype for Khlestakov. Nizhny Novgorod Governor Mikhail Buturlin mistook him for the inspector general.
But this is another joke.
Alexander Sergeyevich did indeed visit Nizhny Novgorod, but not incognito. "Our everything" was then listed as an official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and arrived with the royal permission of the court. He had no time to interact, even jokingly, with officials and merchants—Pushkin was gathering material for "The History of the Pugachev Rebellion."
The story happened to Pushkin, but not in Novgorod or Nizhny Novgorod, but in Oryol province—this version was put forward in 1890 in the magazine “Russian Antiquity” by Oryol lawyer and amateur historian Vasily Ptitsyn.
He was quite a famous figure: he corresponded with Anton Chekhov, published books about the great lawyers of antiquity, traveled around Siberia, but this time he reported that he had found a sensation in the archives of the district town of Maloarkhangelsk in the Oryol province:
"Pushkin was passing through, in the last period of his life, when his fame thundered throughout Russia. It was known that he was a gentleman of the bedchamber, well received at court... The final circumstances... gave Pushkin the status of a high-ranking official in the capital, at least a general.
This misconception was the cause of a major misunderstanding that occurred between the poet and the Maloarkhangelsk authorities.”
Then, they say, the local authorities - from the judge to the trustee of charitable institutions - came to his hotel in full dress uniform.
The story of how "our everything" ended up in the role of Khlestakov has become part of local history. But modern Oryol historians doubt its veracity. Pushkin did indeed pass through Maloarkhangelsk on his way to the Caucasus—but that was in 1829, and he was only granted the rank of chamberlain in 1834.
The poet didn't report any "major misunderstandings" with local officials. And if something like that had happened, he would certainly have written to Zhukovsky or Vyazemsky.
There's no direct evidence that Pushkin "gifted" the story (whether it happened to him or not) to Gogol. But there's another theory: that Nikolai Vasilyevich borrowed the plot from one of his contemporaries.
KHLESTAKOV, PUSTOLOBOV AND THE FURIOUS ROLAND
In 1835, a year before the premiere of The Government Inspector, the story of the St. Petersburg writer Alexander Veltman, Furious Orlando, was published (also published under the title Provincial Actors).
According to the plot, the poor actor Zaretsky, thanks to his appearance and skill at "presenting himself," convinces the mayor that he's practically the governor-general. A theater entrepreneur accidentally recognizes the impostor, and a sort of silent scene ensues.
Even earlier, in 1827, the Kharkov landowner and writer Grigory Kvitka-Osnovyanenko published the play “A Visitor from the Capital, or Turmoil in a Provincial Town.”
The plot is very similar: a Moscow resident named Pustolobov accidentally ends up in a provincial town, and the officials mistake him for an inspector. The characters' surnames are "speaking," not even Gogol-esque, but in the spirit of 18th-century comedies: the mayor is named Trusilkin, and the district judge is named Spalkin, because he likes to nap during meetings.
Researchers note that the plot of the "self-proclaimed incognito" appears even earlier: in the early 1820s, in the vaudevilles of Mikhail Zagoskin, better known as the author of the novel "Yuri Miloslavsky, or the Russians in 1612." He is also mentioned in this capacity in "The Government Inspector":
Anna Andreevna. So, right, “Yuri Miloslavsky” is your composition?
Khlestakov: Yes, this is my composition.
Marya Antonovna: Ah, mother, it says there that this is Mr. Zagoskin's composition.
…
Khlestakov: Oh yes, that's true, that's definitely Zagoskina's; but there's another "Yuri Miloslavsky," and that one's mine.
Gogol knew Zagoskin and Veltman personally, and Kvitka-Osnovyanenko was part of the circle of people who had grown up with the future author of "The Inspector General." Kvitka was outraged by the production of "The Inspector General," believing the plot had been stolen from him.
However, Gogol didn't copy lines from Veltman, Zagoskin, or Kvitka-Osnovyanenko. As for the plot, it seems that the story of a simpleton mistaken for an important person is a wandering plot.
The technique with the Latin name qui pro quo ("who instead of whom") - when a person is mistaken for another, and this confusion reveals the shortcomings of those around him - has been known in drama since the time of the Roman comedy writer Plautus.
Only Zagoskin, Veltman and Kvitka produced moralizing vaudevilles, while Gogol produced social satire with multi-dimensional characters (just look at the mayor’s monologue: “Who are you laughing at…”).
PROTOTYPES OF THE CHARACTERS
If Gogol “stole” anything, it was the traits of real people, using them for the characters in the play.
According to a number of researchers, it was the Little Russian nobility that became the prototypes for the heroes of The Inspector General, and their surnames are similar to the lists of noble assemblies of the Poltava and Chernigov provinces.
There, one can find, for example, the district marshal Alexander Malyavka, the police chief Alexander Lizogub, and the clerk Ivan Bublik-Pogorelsky. The mayor Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky is reminiscent of the retired minister and privy councilor Dmitry Troshchinsky.
And then - in accordance with the position held: in the judge Lyapkin-Tyapkin - the father of field marshal Fyodor Paskevich, and in the trustee of charitable institutions Zemlyanika - Ivan Kotlyarevsky, the author of the retelling of the Aeneid and the play Natalka-Poltavka.
All of them were in the constant circle of Vasily Gogol, the playwright's father. And each of these respected figures could have repeated the line of the mayor, Svoznik-Dmukhanovsky:
" Not only will you become a laughingstock - some scribbler, a scribbler, will find you and insert you into a comedy... He will not spare your rank, your title, and everyone will bare their teeth and clap their hands."
PUSHKIN WAS ROLLING WITH LAUGHTER, GOGOL WAS DISSATISFIED
The comedy was written quickly and easily. Gogol began work on the play in the fall of 1835, and in January 1836, he read it for the first time at Zhukovsky's, in the presence of Pushkin and Vyazemsky.
The future classic of Russian drama was not to everyone's taste—for example, it was met with hostility by Baron Yegor Rosen, the author of the libretto for Mikhail Glinka's opera A Life for the Tsar.
The writer Ivan Panaev recalled: Rosen “was the only one present who did not show the author the slightest approval and did not even smile once, and he felt sorry for Pushkin, who was carried away by this farce, offensive to art, and was rolling with laughter throughout the reading.”
Some spoke out against it for—what we would now call—social reasons, since Gogol was an author from an outsider's circle. Opponents included Nestor Kukolnik (Gogol's classmate at the Nizhyn gymnasium, but an author outside Pushkin's circle in the 1830s) and Pushkin's enemy, the writer and publisher Faddey Bulgarin. But this did not harm the popularity of "The Government Inspector."
The main critic turned out to be the author himself.
After the premiere at the Alexandrinsky Theatre, Gogol criticized the performance of actor Nikolai Duras, the first performer of the role of Khlestakov.
Incidentally, the Tsar was very pleased with the performance. Dür received a ring from Nicholas I worth 800 rubles—at least 12 million rubles in today's money. A similar ring was given to Ivan Sosnitsky, who played the mayor.
But Gogol wrote to Mikhail Shchepkin, who was preparing a production of The Government Inspector at Moscow's Maly Theatre: "Dur didn't understand a thing about Khlestakov. Khlestakov had become something like... a whole line of vaudevillian pranksters..."
The premiere plunged Nikolai Vasilyevich into a prolonged depression, and he did not go to the next production in Moscow, but only wrote his wishes to Mikhail Shchepkin, who played the mayor.
THE TSAR AND THE HEIR DECIDED THE FATE OF THE "STUPID FARCE"
Censor Alexander Nikitenko, a professor at St. Petersburg University and, as some recall, one of the most respectable and educated employees of the censorship department, wrote about how the satire on provincial authorities was perceived by the "powers that be."
Nikitenko noted in his diary: Finance Minister Count Georg Kankrin quipped, "Was it worth going to see this stupid farce?" War Minister Count Alexander Chernyshev, on the other hand, was delighted—thankfully, the officers weren't touched upon in the satire.
"The play is quite amusing, except for the unbearable abuse of the nobility, officials, and merchants," Colonel Alexander Khrapovitsky, the repertoire inspector for the Russian drama troupe, wrote down out of duty. But he also mentioned what made the premiere a success:
“The Emperor and his heir suddenly deigned to be present and were extremely pleased, laughing heartily.”
The heir was the future Alexander II. Who knows, perhaps the zemstvo reform of the 1860s, which affected the "district towns of N," was a result of Gogol's brilliant caricature of bureaucracy. Ultimately, satire is not only an excuse to laugh, but also an opportunity to correct morals.