Dramatic Works

Chapter seven from Gogol's Art : A Search for Identity by Laszlo Tikos

Gogol's Art was published in paperback in 1997 by Bati Publishers, PO Box 263, Leverett, MA 01054. (Price $15). You can reach the author at that address or by email at Tikos@slavic.umass.edu.

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The book CD "Gogol and Russian Literature" is built around Gogol's Art: a Search for Identity by Laszlo Tikos, the best book ever written about Russia's most enigmatic and intriguing author. Nikolay Gogol (1809-1852) created a new direction in Russian letters, which was further developed in the 19th century by writers like Dostoyevsky and Rozanov, and in the 20th century by Bely, Bulgakov and Sinyavsky. In addition to Gogol's Art, this CD includes the full text of Dead Souls, Tara Bulba, The Inspector General, and St. John's Eve by Gogol, plus great books by Dostoeyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Pushkin, Turgenev, Andreyev, Gorky, Kuprin, and Lermontov, plus works on Russian history, plus two "Country Studies" -- Russia and Belarus (birthplace of Gogol) -- which were originally published as printed books by the Library of Congress between 1987 and 1995. For details, see our online store http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat/russian.html

Chapter Seven --

Dramatic Works

Gogol was well prepared for writing plays. His father not only wrote plays himself, but performed them at neighboring festivities -- as did Gogol while he was in school. Further, the Ukrainian puppet theater ( vertep ) was alive and well in Gogol's days in St. Petersburg. He had tried his luck for a while as an actor, though without much success. Indeed, Gogol's short stories read much like ready-made scenarios for the theater. Thus, driven perhaps by financial needs, and having achieved the reputation as an entertainer and a wit, Gogol found it natural to turn his attention to the theater.

His first play was " The Order of St. Valadimir, Third Class" (1832) . ² This was to remain a fragment, probably because of Gogol's inability to deal with the complicated plot, not to mention his desire to avoid trouble with the censors.

"The Marriage", begun in 1836, after some reworking was completed in 1842. This is a hilarious comedy in two acts about a matchmaking venture in which Agafya Tixonovna , the daughter of a merchant, is having the time of her life. Despite her advanced age -- she is twenty-seven, and thus, according to society, virtually beyond the possibility of marriage ! But she has now to decide among five different suitors, all of whom are congregating in her apartment at the same time, thanks to the bad -- or perhaps, too good -- offices of the matchmaker Fyokia Ivanovna . The audience sees the action not from the vantage point of the prospective bride, but through the eyes of one of her suitors, Podkolesin, Ivan Kuzmic and his friend Kockarev, Ilya Fomic . Kockarev is actually the catalyst for the action. He appears at his friend Podkolesin's apartment at the moment when Podkolesin is making a pronouncement to himself: "Yes," he intones, "When you are alone with nothing to do, you realize that marriage is the only answer." ³

Like Ivan Sponka before him, Podkolesin is both drawn to marriage and afraid of it. Somewhat along in years (like the bride), he has secretly engaged the services of a matchmaker, but he has been stalling over a visit to his prospective bride for the past three months. At this point, his friend turns up. It transpires that he, too, has had recourse to the matchmaker. Gleefully, he realizes that Podkolesin has been, like him, nibbling on the sly at the idea of marriage, though without asking his advice or help. Now Kockarev, jealous and hurt, especially since his own marriage has turned out to be less than blissful, takes over with a sort of dare-devil recklessness (like Nozdryov in Dead Souls ) and with considerable e´lan impels his friend into action.

Apart from the resulting slapstick, the play is actually a study of characters and the motivation for their actions, though this is hidden behind a smokescreen of verbiage. Everyone in the play is a cheat and a deceiver. All the characters want to appear to be different from what they actually are: As we know, this contradiction between secret motivation and apparent innocence which permeates the play is the driving force of Gogol's oeuvre as a whole.

The five suitors rounded up by the matchmaker appear at the prospective bride's house at the same time and create a comic situation replete with uneasy pretension, and bombastic bragging. Underlying their foolishness, nevertheless, is a poignant sense of the sadness of the human lot where sexual relations and, by extension, marriage, are merely a farce, a barely camouflaged ritual of human baseness. Gogol has left behind his earlier vision of the happy marriages of attractive young people in "The Fair at Sorocinsk" . All the suitors here are really after the property and wealth promised as the bride's dowry. They also have the most ridiculous pretensions as to what is important in a bride, or what it is they expect from their future partner for life. Thus, for example, the question of the bride's knowledge of French comes up repeatedly, and even though none of the prospective husbands speaks a word of French, they expect that their wife should be proficient in that language. When the matchmaker wants to know what they would need her French for, one of the suitors --Anuckin --gets very upset and the following conversation ensues:

"Oh, no ! It seems that she can speak only Russian." To which Fyokla, the matchmaker returns, " What's the harm in that? Russian is easier to understand, so she speaks Russian. And if she should talk like some heathen, so much the worse for you. You wouldn't understand! I don't have to explain what Russian is --All the saints spoke Russian!" ⁴

Such non-sequiturs abound in the play, which virtually bounces from one to the next, from topsy-turvy folk logic to plain nonsense, from self-promoting boasting to the straightforward elbowing and tripping of the competitions that characterize the contemporary puppet theater. And all the time, a meanness, a self-serving, deceptive cunning overshadow the action, despite its comic effects.

The hilarity of the situation is enhanced by the names Gogol invented for his characters: Podkolesin may be derived from the word for wheel (koleso ) and the preposition pod , meaning under, thus suggesting "under the wheel" and indicating one who is being run over, that is, a man whose situation is continuously dangerous. His friend Kockarev's name can be linked to the word for ram, (kochkar' ) and may indicate that he is a bully, very much like Nozdrev later in Dead Souls. Not only is he a bully, but he is sneaky and revengeful, regrets his recent marriage, and now, instead of advising his friend against the disastrous state of wedlock, insists on propelling him into that state because he does not want to see him in a better position than his own. He is also a fanatic, not to mention a magician, when it comes to arranging other people's lives. He makes things happen, as Gogol would say, "the Devil only knows why " . His is a character basic to Gogol's oeuvre, the Russian happy-go-lucky bully, the liar who lies not from premeditation, but from quasi-poetic inspiration (see Khlestakov later): He sees reality and fantasy as absolutely interchangeable, especially since the exercise in prestidigitation costs him nothing.

Viewing such characters from the vantage-point of the twentieth century and comparing them to such well-known literary figures as Ilf and Petrov's ⁵ Ostap Bender in The Twelve Chairs or Koroviev in Bulgakov'sMaster and Margareta , it is clear that Gogol here created, or perhaps discovered is a better word, a national Russian type in the inspired liar. From Kockaryov to the blatnye of modern Soviet writing, we can see a direct line of development.

Agafya Tikhonovna's other suitors are not much of an improvement on the other two rogues, as their names indicate: There is Mr. Omlet ( Yaichnikov ), a name that offers many opportunities for puns; Anuckin, whose etymology goes back to onuchi , the Russian word for the footcloth which peasants and soldiers wore instead of socks -- sure enough, Anuckin is a retired infantry officer. He finds his counterpart in Zhevakin whose name comes from the Russian word zhevat' to chew, as he endlessly chews over the details of his life in the Navy, whether or not anyone wants to listen. And finally, there is the storekeeper, Starikov , whose name means "old man".

The quintet provide a regular freak show, supplemented by the figure of the prospective bride. Agafya Tixonovna, unsurprisingly, pretends to the old-fashioned religious values of Moscow, though, of course, she does not live up to them at all. Alas, she is Gogol's typical, empty-headed foolish hypocrite, whose counterpart will reappear in "The Inspector General" as the mayor's wife Anna Andreevna.

The tension in the play develops in watching Kockaryov, the Russian crook, in action: his managing by hood or crook, his lies and promises, as well as his every imaginable manipulation in the attempt to eliminate one suitor after another from the lists in order to arrange matters according to his own liking. Finally, he manages to get Podkolesin and Agafya Tixonovna together for a "confidential" talk, during which they give vent to the utmost nonsense, very much like "Ivan Sponka" when he was left alone with his prospective bride.

The plot rests upon speedy action: on minutes rather than hours, or days, and the audience watches Kockaryov's juggling with bated breath -- will he or will he not be able to pull this marriage off? And what if he does? What is his advantage? Actually, nothing. The insight is important to our understanding of the fact that Kockaryov's only motivation is the love of speed and his delight in being the center of the action. We remember that at the end of the first volume ofDead Souls, Gogol exclaims, "Cicikov was fond of fast driving ...and what Russian does not love fast driving?" ⁶ The characters drive on merely for the love of the opportunity to create a new world out of nothing, a new order of things, for no other reason at all.

The audience is convinced that Kochkaryov has succeeded in pulling off the marriage when the tables are turned in a final moment of surprise. Podkolesin, temporarily left to his own devices, wakes up as if from the fog of breathtaking action and does what his better judgement suggests: He jumps out the window and escapes. Not only does he avoid getting married, but the audience has a final laugh at the expense of the self-appointed matchmaker.

Besides being great fun, the play is revealing in our tracing of Gogol's search for his "own pace "which we have so often noticed -- both for himself and now for his characters. For one thing, marriage is clearly not in the cards for the Gogolian hero. Where "Ivan Sponka" left off, the nightmare vision of a wife's different disguises is continued in "The Marriage ". Though here in a more matter-of-fact, less fantastic fashion, as Podkolesin escapes through the open window.

The play itself illustrates Gogol's theoretical considerations in the mid-30's about the place of theater. In "The Petersburg Notes " (1836), he comments that "...comedy [is] the true record of society, rigorously planned and producing laughter through the depths of its irony; not the laughter born of frivolous impressions, superficial witticisms and puns; not the laughter of the coarse crowd which requires convulsions and the grimacing caricatures of nature; but electric, life-giving laughter, erupting spontaneously, freely and unexpectedly from a soul struck by the dazzling brilliance of true wit."

Gogol then reviews the situation in which the Russian theater of the day found itself, and maintains that poor German and French vaudeville has dominated the scene. The time has come, he insists, to create national, purely Russian comedies: "For heaven's sake," he exclaims, "give us Russian characters, give us ourselves, our scoundrels, our eccentrics! On to the stage with them! Let everybody laugh! Laughter is a great thing: it does not deprive us of life nor property, but in its presence the guilty individual is like a hare caught in a trap. We have become so accustomed to tame French plays that we are timid about seeing ourselves [face to face]...What a pity. Truly, it is high time we learned that only in a faithful rendering of characters -- not in general stereotyped features, but in national forms so striking in their vitality that we are compelled to exclaim: "Yes, that person seems familiar to me!" -- only in such rendering can [our plays] be of genuine service." ⁷

Finally, Gogol announces the need for a call to battle: A new theater must be created: "We have turned the theater into a plaything," he warn, "something like a rattle used to entice children, forgetting that it is a rostrum from which a living lesson is spoken to an entire multitude, a place where in the presence of festive, brilliant lighting, thundering music and general laughter, secret vice shows its face and elevated emotions, timidly hidden from view, make themselves known before the hushed murmuring of common sympathy." ⁸

The principles developed in Gogol's theoretical writings and his view of the requirements of contemporary Russian drama are further illustrated in his magnificent play, The Inspector General, which was destined to become the foundation of a new Russian comedy and guaranteed his fame as a playwright of genius.

The letter in which Gogol begged Pushkin to provide him with a topic for comedy says, among other things, "Do me a favor: Send me a subject, comical or not, but an authentically Russian anecdote. My hand is itching to write a comedy... Give me a subject and I'll knock off a comedy in five acts -- I promise, funnier than hell. For God's sake, do it! My mind and stomach are both famished." ⁹

Gogol's letter to Pushkin is dated October 7, 1835. By May of 1836, the play had already been performed. Gogol must indeed have worked fast and hard in order to get the play written and prepared for the boards by that date. There is no need to repeat the play's conception, nor the circumstances under which it was written, nor how it passed the censors, since all these details are a matter of record in the voluminous criticism surrounding the play. Suffice it to say that the censors passed the play only because Gogol and his friends managed to attract the attention of the Tsar himself, who thought it hilariously funny and gave his permission for its performance, almost in an imitation of Gogol's penchant for presenting art as imitating life. ¹⁰

Despite all its innovations, "The Inspector General"does not deal with a new topic in the corpus of Gogol's fiction. It is actually merely an extension of elements now familiar -- the basic plot of the deceiver deceived of the early Cossack stories. Beyond this general principle which was to take on new subtleties in the course of Gogol's developing spiritual crisis, the play again portrays Russian provincial life with all its depressing banalities ( poslost' ) where events are different from what the characters pretend, and from what their position in life requires them to be. We find here an undermining of the concept of one's own place previously formulated in the dilemma proposed in the Selected Passages, where the powers that be in this imaginary town -- or in human society in general -- feeling themselves safe in their backwater anonymity, turn into bullies, bribe-takers, scandal mongers, liars -- all well organized into a hierarchy based on the rule that everyone can be corrupt, within limits, within the structure of that society in which one must, nevertheless, establish one's own place. Important in this regard is the mayor's scolding of one of the policemen who was found to have extorted bribes: "You take more than your rank permits," he roars, meaning, apparently, that there is a certain justice in the world's order, wherein each soul has its own place and its own necessities, however corrupt the system from the point of view of an imagined, ideal justice.

Surely, all the characters are aware of the nature of their misdeeds. They know that they are not doing the right thing --the mayor calls this having one's little sins ( greshki ). But they have been behaving in this manner for so long that they have only a vague recollection of what constitutes real justice, or the right way of doing things. But their vague recollection is enough to remind them that somewhere out there is justice, that there are different norms of human behavior which can be enforced by the Government. Now, of necessity, different interpretations are brought forward as to what kind of government Gogol had in mind: the government of Nicholas I, or the equally absolute concept of the Corrupt Town Government whose deviation from the moral norms of some higher powers (perhaps those of God himself) may not be present on an every-day level of experience, though it persists and one day will present a bill for all the wrong-doing of the denizens of earth.

Thus far, we have merely presented the perimeters of the play, without going into the different possibilities it offers to interpretation. Actually, the play is so straight-forward that it can be taken on one level merely as a statement of Gogol's criticism of 19th-Century social realities. On the other hand, it is broad enough to allow for a metaphysical interpretation. The gap between the two extremes of interpretation is wide enough to allow one to see Gogol as a social critic who later was to desert his "high calling", or to detect here the onset of the spiritual crisis which will dominate his later thinking. Apparently, Gogol was at first interested merely in creating a comedy as proof of his craft -- or even as a pot-boiler designed to make ends meet: But later critics have observed that Gogol can here be seen as hesitating between the two poles of social commentary and a catering to public opinion. His various explanations of the play's meaning, or its "key". changed several times between 1836 and 1848, during which period he repeatedly reworked parts and supplied lengthy interpretations of its content.

The play, as it now stands, is bout some twenty people, headed by the mayor of a small town, and a stranger who has happened on the scene and is stranded there without the funds to continue on his journey, since he has gambled away all his money on his trip from St. Petersburg to his own village, which is located somewhere in the provinces. Though these two groups of people have little to do with each other, chance has brought them together -- and as happens in the comedies of Aristophanes -- with results disastrous to the townspeople, and a subsequent comedy of errors of magnificent proportions.

The play begins with the mayor's informing his colleagues that according to some vague information which has come to his attention, the town may soon be visited by an Inspector General who is said to be traveling incognito. Vague though the information is, and though an Inspector's reasons for coming to this particular area are unclear, the news creates a general trembling and the town officials foresee chaos...for obvious reasons, since each is aware of his own little sins of corruption . Suddenly, their feeling of security has been blown away by an inexplicable, and, to their way of thinking, unjust intrusion of a mysterious external power into their affairs. Hastily, they do what they have always done: they devise plans for deception. The audience watches with growing amusement as the play unfolds, revealing the speedily improvised deceptions of the local dignitaries which are intended to fool, or at least to confuse the "Inspector General" when he appears. The deceptions are childish -- putting new bedsheets on hospital beds, taking the hunting whip off the wall in the judge's office -- was it there as a symbol of Justice ? -- or telling the police to start sweeping the streets in order to create the impression that theirs is a clean and well-organized little town. The individual steps undertaken or merely discussed are funny enough, while the ceaseless, constant piling of detail on detail creates a breathless expectation of calamities that will occur when the "Inspector General" appears.

In such an atmosphere, any spark can explode the situation --and, indeed, the spark comes from an unexpected incident: Two busy-body landowners, Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, "Two little pot-bellied dumplings" or homunculi, as Nabokov describes them -- whose only function in town and in the play is to spread gossip, breathlessly report on the presence of a mysterious stranger in the town's inn. He must be the expected Inspector General, since he has not paid his bills for a week. This is a sure sign that he must be a high official. Also, he has been behaving suspiciously:

Bobchinsky: Yes, Sir, that's him. That's the Official!

Mayor: What official?

Bobchinsky: The Official! The one you received a warning about: The government inspector.

Mayor (in terror): My God! What are you saying? It can't be he.

Dobchinsky: It is he! He doesn't pay his bills and he doesn't go on his way. Who else could it be?

Bobchinsky: It is he, it is he, it must be he! He's very sharp. I was scared stiff.

Mayor : God save us. What room is he in? ¹¹

Corrupt they may be, but these officials cannot be said to be lazy. They know by experience that their only rescue lies in speedy action and in trying to gull the official investigating them to their side. And their instinct proves right. The Official, they reason, must be the same sort of person as themselves. He must, therefore, have his own agenda , that is, his own weak point. Going by the scant information or rather, the hair-brained rumors provided by Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky, the mayor decides to visit the inn in order to figure out what kind of bird the visitor may be. A funny situation develops: the mayor accosts the stranger; both are trembling (the mayor because of his assumption of the identity of the stranger and the stranger because he assumes that the mayor has come to arrest him for not paying his bills. Each tries to figure out the other's identity and intentions. But the mayor, who is a sly old fox, soon realizes that he merely has a young fop before him who can be bribed. Thenceforth he believes he has the game in his hands and "invites" the stranger, a young man called Ivan Alexandrovic, on a tour of the town and to his own house in order to dine, wine and bribe him.

For a while, the plan seems to be working -- as a matter of fact, too well and too fast. Here again is a hallmark of the Gogolian scene, the breathtakingly fast development of action, wherein neither the characters nor the audience are given any time to pause to consider what is going on. Like lightning or a thunderclap, the flash and the sound of the action leave no room for second thought.

The stranger's name is Khlestakov -- its etymology has something to do with a whip ( khlest ), but as we pointed out earlier, it may also be related to khlyst , in this case, a whip with a religious, sacred connotation. ¹² He is certainly whipping these garrulous town officials into a trembling state of fright, and later into unbounded hope and expectations. Much has been written about Khlestakov, who is the play's most important figure. He has been invested with many metaphysical qualities, and has been interpreted as the Devil's "traveling salesman" 13, or as Christ's substitute, or even as the Anti-Christ himself. And certainly, there is much to be said for these interpretations, though for the time being we can state only that in him we have a recognizable Gogolian type, the braggart, the liar, the light-headed windbag, the fop and the scatter-brained good-for-nothing young provincial who has made a career as a pusher of pens in some office in St. Petersburg. In the literary tradition of Russia, the name itself has become synonymous with the highflying liar who, in his mindless and brainless braggadocio, takes in even solid scam artists: they cannot be shaken out of their routine by an earthquake, nevertheless, they are taken in by this weightless nobody, this zero, for reasons of Gogol's own.

For this is the very character needed to show up the rottenness of the moral foundations upon which the town's government rests. ¹⁴ Gogol himself hinted at the possibility that it is the Devil who has descended on the town in order to teach them the fear of God. In the twentieth Century, another Russian writer, Mikhail Bulgakov, will avail himself of the tradition and exploit the same basic insight in The Master and Margarita, where the Devil descends upon the sinful town of Moscow with a similar purpose in mind.

The situation develops quickly and naturally. The mayor picks up Khlestakov at the hotel under the pretext that it is his duty as mayor to see to the well-being of travellers. Khlestakov is wined and dined, and given every opportunity to behave as a corrupt Inspector General. He accepts bribes, he tells tall stories, he tries to seduce the mayor's wife, Anna Andreevna, the provincial coquette who reminds us of other such women in Gogol's arsenal. Then he switches his attention to the mayor's young daughter (the"Governor's daughter" in a new disguise) and ... and... nothing else really happens, except that the limits of disbelief are pushed almost into infinity. Thus we find ourselves dealing not with a town official's being reprimanded by an important functionary, but rather the Important Official's becoming one of the provincial dignitaries by marrying the mayor's daughter. Instead of being subjected to infamy, the town and its corrupt officials are going to be glorified by the presence of such an illustrious, such an Important Person ( znachitel'noe litso ) (q.v. the General in "The Overcoat "). The wedding day with the mayor's daughter is already fixed when Khlestakov suddenly makes another about-face: he decides, on the suggestion of his servant, that enough is enough, and the time has come to stop the game while the going is good. He skips town with both the blessing and money of the townsfolk.

The last thing we see is the mayor's celebration party: the mayor is accepting congratulations from the town officials for his daughter's betrothal as well as for his impending promotion to General, or some such, as soon as Khlestakov returns from his trip which is ostensibly to notify his uncle of the proposed marriage. But instead of their basking in the reflected glory of an imagined luxury in St. Petersburg, the horrible news is broken to the gathering: The Post-master, who has intercepted a letter written by Khlestakov to a crony in St. Petersburg, reports that Khlestakov is an imposter and that the entire visit of the "Inspector General" has been a mirage, a figment of their own frightened imagination. And now, in an almost impossible speeding up of the action, a messenger arrives with the news that the real Inspector General has arrived and is requesting the immediate presence of the town officials now fortunately gathered --for the wrong reasons, of course.

Gogol's meticulous stage instructions stipulate that the play end with a frozen, "silent scene" to express the utter disbelief of the town in the face of the horrendous deception to which they have been subjected. The final words spoken, before everything and everyone freezes on the stage, are the mayor's proverbial words when he turns to the laughing audience: "What are you laughing at?" he asks, "You are laughing at yourself." The turn, logical though unexpected, gives Gogol, the playwright, the last word.

Thus the town officials who were originally the victimizers of all their fellow-citizens, have in turn become Khlestakov's victims. But the flip-flop of positions does not stop here. In a split second, the mayor's outburst changes everything. His indignation and his sense of outrage at having been victimized expresses itself through the pitiable and all-too human plea: Don't laugh at me, because you -- the audience, everybody -- are in the same boat. His cry raises the final moral from the level of voyeuristic vaudeville to the classic heights of a morality play: Everyone is guilty, everyone has been taken in by the phoney Inspector General, and everyone is at the mercy of the new, the real Inspector General.

Given the broad range of its possible interpretations, the play has earned a permanent place in the lexicon of both the Russian and the international stage. Many of its statements, sentences and situations have entered the vernacular: To list a single example, the mayor, at the beginning, checking off the various sins that the Inspector General might notice in the various departments of the town government, mentions among others, responsible, the school inspector, who should warn the history teacher in the local school not to behave so strangely, so violently in his presentation of history, not to destroy chairs and other furniture during his lecture, just to show his devotion to the great passions of history ( "Of course, Alexander the Great was a hero, but why break chairs? " )

In this wonderfully logical non-sequitur, the proverb is used precisely to point out that two things which one tries to connect may have nothing to do with each other whatsoever. It also highlights the author's wonderfully ironic sense of self: At the time when he wrote it, Gogol was still a teacher of history; in his essays on history in the Arabesques he frequently recommended personal involvement and passion as prerequisites for successful teaching. These moments of self parody are numerous as in Khlestakov's braggadocio, when he begins by telling that he works in an office as a clerk (as Gogol, also, did) and ends by hinting that he is on intimate terms with everybody famous and important even Pushkin (as Gogol himself was), or the Tsar himself. Gogol had been given his teaching job on Zhukovsky's recommendation to the Tsar's family . Further, Khlestakov boasts that he is the author of all the well-known writings of the day, and that all the plays presented in the Russian theaters are his work -- a claim which certainly can be understood as Gogol's mockery of his own literary aspirations. We realize now that his element of ironic self-mockery makes of Gogol a character in the play, just as in "The Fair at Sorocints " he wrote himself into the scene as one of the narrators.

The unwitting imposter, Khlestakov, is nevertheless a liar in his own right. But he is a liar of a particular kind, as most commentators agree. There is more to his speech and general behavior than lying: a kind of playful, poetical exaggeration. He seems to wear an impish grin, a little like Gogol himself; to anticipate the "rap" of the modern American street, in which truth and logic fall secondary to the particular poetic beat of the intoxicating rhythms of slang. There is an element of the hilarious put-down, an outrageous kind of kidding, like the "hutzpah" that characterizes the heroes of Yiddish tales, though this presupposes a deliberate flaunting of accepted standards, whereas Khlestakov's behavior is not premeditated but is more like the result of an intoxication with self, the poetical inspiration of an unfettered imagination.

Dostoyevsky understood precisely this feature of Gogol's characters. He pointed to their behavior as particularly Russian. For this reason, he, too, created as basic characters in his fiction, a series of inspired liars, people who lie for the sake of creating a new reality for themselves, always seeking an escape from the confinement of existing reality. (A prime example is the hero of his "Dream of a Ridiculous Man ", who seduces and destroys an entire Paradise with the beauty of his lies.) ¹⁵

Similarly, many of Gogol's heroes use language, truth and logic as freely interchangeable and personal inventions which can be idiosyncratically navigated. Thus lies are not lies in the ordinary sense, but rather the expression of that psychological arena in which the boundaries between truth and fiction, reality and fantasy are freely and easily obscured. For this reason, perhaps, many statements of the characters in Gogol's play have become proverbial sayings in Russian, which identify the smile of an insider as reflecting an understanding of outrageously incongruous behavior.

If Khlestakov's name, which, as we have noted, suggests a whip, has fatal consequences, so also do the names of other characters. The mayor is Anton Antonovich Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky -- Ehre has explained that the word suggests "a bag of wind", or "a crook" squared. The superintendent of school is Luka Khlopov, a "slave, a serf" , but also as both first name and patronymic suggest, a peasant, reeking of onions, since luk means onions. Ehre does not notice yet another possibility, the name's link to the word lukavyj ," sly", with its connotations of deviltry. The judge's name is Lyapkin-Tyapkin -- the onomatopoeia suggests mumbling-fumbling, or a slip-shod way of going about life. Zemlyanika is the Director of Charities: the name refers to the word "strawberries", though the contrast between the name and his behavior is obvious. The Director of the Hospital is a German, a Dr. Huebner, or Gibner; the Russian pronunciation of the name suggests an allusion to the verb "to perish, to die" , while the German Hubner can also be referred to the word ueber, above, or over. The policeman also have suggestive names: Ukhovertov means "twisting one's ear" ; Svistunov is the "whistler"; Derzhimorda is the crude Russian way of saying, "Keep you mouth shut".

Gogol was greatly concerned with the way in which the play was to be presented and, in order to help the actors realize his intentions, he added precise instructions to the first version. Accordingly, he starts out with a general warning that the play should not be understood as a caricature. "Nothing ought to be exaggerated nor hackneyed," he warns, "not even the minor roles. The ridiculous will emerge spontaneously through the very seriousness with which each character is occupied with his own affairs. They are all caught up in their own interests, bustling and fussing, even fervent as if they were faced with the most important task of their lives. Only the audience, from its detached position, can perceive the vanity of their concerns."

Almost as if he were a literary critic, he supplies a detailed analysis of the individual characters, down to physical details: Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky, for example, "are round-faced, neatly dressed, with sleeked hair. Dobchinsky is even blessed with a small bald spot in the middle of his head -- it is evident that he is not a bachelor like Bobchinsky, but married." ¹⁶ The two are basically like the characters in "How Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Fyodorovich Quarrelled ". The most telling description is reserved for Khlestakov, the mayor, and his wife and daughter. The final dumb scene, Gogol says, is the crucial moment of the play which may decide its success or failure: It "must be performed with particular intelligence. Now the joking is over, and the plight of the characters is almost tragic." ¹⁷ The statement points up his basic concern with the intermingling of boundless fun and comedy with a kind of existential sadness underlying its religious implications like the lights and shadows of a medieval mystery play.

Still in his role as director, Gogol keeps underscoring these points in different letters to the actors, as well as his evidently growing apprehension of being misunderstood. This must explain his otherwise inexplicable decision to leave Russia on the heels of the play's performance. A letter dated April 29, 1836, to the actor M. S. Shchepkin is revealing: "The reaction to " The Inspector General", " he says there, "has been extensive and tumultuous. Everybody is against me. Respected officials, middle-aged men, scream that I hold nothing sacred in having had the effrontery to speak of officialdom as I did. The police are against me, the merchants are against me, and the literati are against me. They rail at me and run off the play; it is impossible to get tickets for the fourth performance. Were it not for the intervention of the Emperor, my play would never have remained on the stage, and yet there were people seeking to have it banned. Now I see what it means to be a writer of comedies: the faintest glimmer of truth -- and all the classes are up in arms against you." ¹⁸ The same note of despair is sounded in a further letter, dated May 15, 1836, to M. P. Pogodin: "Call a crook a crook, and they consider it an undermining of the state apparatus; show a true and living feature, and they translate it to read as a defamation of an entire class and an incitement of other or subordinate classes against it. Consider the plight of the poor author who nevertheless loves his country and countrymen intensely." ¹⁹

Some ten days later, May 25, 1836, writing to "a man of letters", Gogol reiterates his disappointment:" "The Inspector General" has been performed -- and I have such a troubled and strange feeling my creation struck me as repellent, bizarre, and not at all mine." In discussing the play's failure, Gogol emphasizes its miscasting and misdirecting. He harps on the fact that Khlestakov is lying sincerely: "Khlestakov doesn't bluff at all; he is not a liar by vocation: he forgets he is lying and almost believes what he says. He is sincere, completely frank, and in telling lies, he shows the stuff he is made of-- to lie, one must speak in a tone so close to the truth, [a tone] so natural, so naive as only truth can be spoken -- the comedy of lying consists precisely in this--Khlestakov does not lie with calculation like a theatrical braggart; he lies with feeling; his eyes convey the pleasure it gives him. It is the finest and the most poetic moment of his life -- almost a kind of inspiration."

Not only in private letters, but also in his own play-like reviews, Gogol keeps returning to the "misunderstanding" of the performers and the audience; and in continuing the debate, he seems to be supplying new shades of interpretation: In Gogol's mind, the play assumes spiritual and later religious significance. So, for example in the excerpt, "Leaving the Theater after the Performance of a New Comedy", written probably in 1836 but published only in 1842, Gogol offers a public debate between the author of the play and some "random members of the public" as they leave the theater after a performance. Characteristic is Gogol's explanation as to why he wants to know the opinion of the audience: "I need to know these things because I am a writer of comedies. All other works and genres are subject to the judgment of the few; only the writer of comedies is subject to the judgment of all." ²⁰

It is not difficult to recognize here the Gogol who once begged his mother for the raw material for his Ukrainian stories or, later, who urged his "fellow citizens " ( sootechestvenniki ) to provide him with details of Russian life, so that he can "correctly portray" actual life. The various voices, identified only as "First", "Second", and so forth, express not chance remarks but serious critical commentaries and objections to Gogol's dealing with plot, heroes, and development of action. We are reminded of his earlier critical sallies, as in the discussion of "Pushkin's Boris Godunov" by the two young book lovers in the Arabesques . Here it suffices to quote as an example the Second viewer's statement about the permissibility of mixing comedy and tragedy in the same play: "Are not the positive and the negative capable of serving the same end? Cannot comedy and tragedy express the same lofty ideas? Does not the thoroughly contorted soul of a base and dishonest man potentially convey the image of an honest man?" ²¹

Of interest in this regard is another much debated issue, Gogol's view of the role of government in literature. Upon the remark of the First Partner that "it is odd that our writers of comedy cannot get by without the government; without it, not one of our comedies would have a de'nouement" -- the Second explains that "it has come to constitute a distinguishing feature of our [i.e. Russian] comedy. Our hearts contain a hidden trust in the government. What of it? There is nothing wrong in that. May God help the government heed its calling at all times and in all places -- to act as the representative of Providence on earth. May we trust in it as the ancients trusted in a fate that pursues crimes." ²²

Thus comedy and tragedy are seen as having the same goals, namely, to bring about a catharsis, either through laughter or through tears, or even through a combination of both. The other element in understanding Gogol's aesthetics is provided by this equation of the Russian government with the Greek concept of Fate, on which many of his progressive fellow citizens would not readily have agreed, but whose seeds were already sowed in his poorly received Selected Passages.

In a final speech, the author steps forward and presents the key to the play, an appreciation of the positive role of laughter: "I heard more than I anticipated. What a variety of opinion! Fortunate is the writer of comedies born into a nation where society has not yet been molded into a single inert mass, where it has not become enveloped in the crust of ancient prejudice, conforming everyone's thoughts to the same mold, and where each person has his own viewpoint and is the creator of his own character. What a diversity of viewpoints and how the firm Russian intelligence have sparkled throughout! But why, then, is my heart so heavy? It is a strange thing: I regret that no one has noticed the honorable character who is present in my play. Yes, there is an honorable, noble character acting over its course. This honorable, noble character is Laughter [the italics are Gogol's]." ²³

This startling statement, often quoted though often disbelieved, is a serious expression of Gogol's theory that the tragic and the comic serve the same purpose, namely, to edify the audience. Indeed, as he further explains, "It [laughter] is noble because it dares to make an appearance despite the slight importance the world attaches to it...Yes, laughter is more significant and profound than men imagine." ²⁴ In defending laughter as a positive force, Gogol defines the term: Laughter can be shallow, of course, but this is not the sort of laughter that he has in mind, rather, "the kind of laughter that soars from man's bright nature, from the depths that contain its eternally surging spirit."

Gogol develops a whole theory about the social effect of laughter: It serves as a catalyst in the recognition of evil as a ridiculous, nonessential aspect of human nature, and it also serves as a weapon against scoundrels: "He [the scoundrel] senses that everyone has been left [after seeing the play] with an indelible image, that one wrong move on his part is enough to make his image his eternal designation. And even he who fears nothing in the world is afraid of ridicule!" ²⁵ Thus, Gogol surmises, laughter can provide a means of radical change in society or, for that matter, of mankind in general: "All men are come together like brothers," he insists, " in a single spiritual motion, and a hymn of gratitude rings out in a burst of applause."

A universal brotherhood thus established will bring down all evil, without bloodshed or war, and mankind will unite in brotherly love. "The world", [he concludes] "resembles a whirlpool; opinions and doctrines are in perpetual flux, but time threshes everything. Things considered groundless may afterwards appear armed with rigorous meaning. At the heart of cold laughter one may find fiery sparks of an eternal and mighty love. And who can tell? Perhaps everyone will then recognize why, by the force of the same laws, the proud and powerful appear weak and pitiful in misfortune, while the weak grow into giants; and why, by the force of the same laws, whoever often sheds heartfelt tears also laughs the most in this world." ²⁶ Thus the key to "The Inspector General" can be recognized as an intensely religious impulse. Again,in"The De nouement of The Inspector General" which he wrote in 1846, though it was published only posthumously, Gogol provides several imaginary characters with statements about the play. "The First Comic Actor" explains, "Now suppose this town is actually our spiritual city and is to be found in each of us--Say what you will, the Inspector who awaits us at the portals of the grave is terrible. Can you really be ignorant of this Inspector's identity? Why deceive ourselves? He is our awakening conscience, who will force us, once and for all, to take a long and hard look at ourselves. Nothing will remain hidden from this Inspector, for he is sent by the command of the Almighty." Khestakov later is pronounced to be the decoy of the Devil, who can easily be duped, though the real Inspector will never be deceived.

Finally, in a letter to his friend Zhukovsky dated December 29, 1847-January 10, 1848, he explains once again that the public's misunderstanding of his play and of the significance of laughter, has made him so pitifully aware of his failure to make himself understood, that he must now leave Russia: "The performance of "The Inspector General" made a painful impression upon me. I was angry at the audience, who failed to understand me, and at myself for being at fault in not making myself understood. I wanted to run away from it all." ²⁷

Gogol's experiments in theater resulted in at least one more completed play, "The Gamblers ( An Incident out of the Remote Past). " It was probably also begun in 1836, was published for the first time in 1842, and was performed the next year in 1843. Not nearly so well known as "The Inspector General" it nevertheless shares a number of characteristics which reflect his thinking during that period. It, too, concerns a Russian province, a chance traveller, a cheat and card-sharp who is cleaned out of all his possessions by locals lying in wait at the inn for just such an opportunity. Here again, we find the deceiver deceived, a traveller called Ikharev .His name seems to rhyme with the sound one makes in sneezing: The connotation of the nose seems clear, as in Nozdrev or even Chi-chi-kov, the hero of Dead Souls (also a traveler in provincial Russia as well as a cheat and an impostor). Ikharev has the obligatory servant, Gavryushka, whose name stems from Gabriel -- perhaps he is Ikharev's guardian angel.

Alexey (the Man of God?) and six local gamblers split up into two groups for the sake of appearances. The first group masquerades as travellers who are staying in the inn: Krugel -- the name sounds German and perhaps means round or, as Ehre has suggested, "a stacked deck" of cards; it also suggests in the Russian peasant dialect krivoj, a curving road of many deceptive turns. Shvohknev is probably again onomatopoetic suggesting the shvokh, as cards are slapped forcefully on a table. Uteshitelny from the Russian verb "to quiet down, to pacify" , is apparently a "good guy" , as opposed to a "bad cop", for instance. Finally, the name of Zamukhryshkinseems to come from a rare, provincial slang word , which means "thief, or deceiver" -- he masquerades as an official. A second team pretend to be landowners from the provinces, a father-and-son team. The father, Glov Mikhail Alexandrovich, gets his name from golova, head, or chief; while his son, Glov Alexandr Mikhailovich (Glov Jr.) pretends like him to be the victim of the aforementioned "crooks".

The plot revolves around the possibilities inherent in a double or even triple deception, the old mirror within the mirror within the mirror trick. As the play opens, Ikharev, apparently a professional gambler, is traveling through Russia. He arrives at a provincial inn, the next lap of his journey. One cannot help but wonder why Gogol, himself a tireless traveler, is so much fascinated by the various professional crooks he finds along the byroads of Russia -- At least two of his major works hinge on the idea: Chichikov's journey through the provinces with the purpose of buying dead souls comes to mind, as do Khlestakov's adventures in the provincial town where he unwittingly cleans out the seasoned bribe-takers and corrupt town officials. Now again, we see a similar situation in "The Gambler". Ikharev's appetite for gambling gets him quickly into trouble. A trio of local card-sharps, Krugel, Shvokhnev and Uteshiteliny challenge him to a quick game, pretending to lose to Ikharev's "talent". But in the next step of their plan, they admit to being con-artists themselves, and offer Ikharev a share in a partnership whose purpose is to clean out the other guests at the inn. As if on cue, the pro- posed victims arrive: Glov, Senior, who pretends to be a provincial landowner who has just mortgaged his estate for 250,000 rubles in order to provide his daughter with a dowry; and his son Glov. Glov Senior does not play cards, but he confides in the conspirators that he has to leave town since he has important things to do back home, and that he can no longer wait for his money from the bank. He tells them that he is leaving his twenty-two year-old son at the Inn to wait next day for the money and to return home with it. Glov Senior admits that the young man has a problem: he is young and inexperienced and also he wants to join the cavalry, so he can lead "a loose life ". Ostensibly, his father is pleading with Ikharev and new-found "friends" to look after the boy in his absence and to send him home as soon as he collects the money. Sure enough, he departs and his son promptly appears, is quickly won over to play cards, and is cleaned out in no time by Ikharev and his friends. Since he does not yet have the money, they make him sign an IOU which, after some fancy footwork, is passed on to Ikharev, for cash, at the rate of fifty copecks to the ruble. The partners even produce a bank official named Zakhmuryshkin . The deception of Ikharev thus accomplished, he unsuspectingly pays out cash for the IOU. At the end, Ikharev realizes his fatal mistake, just like the mayor in" The Inspector General"after discovering Khlestakov's true identity.

The play is fast-paced from the very beginning, like" The Inspector General". It is crammed with witty asides, unintended puns, funny coincidences which the public can appreciate, though, of course, not Ikharev, the main victim of this multi-layered deception. It is also peopled with characters now familiar to Gogol's readers. Speech patterns, themes and the play's well-crafted structure meet our expectations. It begins in media res with a conversation between Ikharev, the confidence man, and the hotel servant Alexei:

Alexei: Step in, Your Honor! Here we have the quietest room in the house. You won't be bothered by noise.

Ikharev: No noise, but swarms of cavalry, eh?

Alexei: Cavalry, Sir? Oh, fleas? No problem, your Honor! If a flea or a bedbug bites a guest, we assume full responsibility! " ²⁸

Ikharev does not waste a minute to debate the point, but immediately bribes the waiter, hoping to milk him for information about the other guests: "Do they play cards, are there any cardsharps among them, whom have they cleaned out? His talk is highly professional, the sort that characterizes more recent tensely structured conversations in American gangster movies. The characters speak in the tradition of the famous professional crooks of modern Russian literature in such novels as Ostap Bender, The Great Combinator, Ilf, and Petrov's famous Twelve Chairs, not to mention the greatest novel of this kind,Bulgakov'sThe Master and Margareta. Clearly, Gogol created a tradition for Russian literature where it still resonates: characters, situations and idioms have been borrowed unreservedly as masterful vehicles for the description of character.

Ikharev knows how to get the information he needs. He also knows that every bit of information costs money, but he is undeterred. He is no miserly Tartuffe , but a professional, a businesslike specialist who knows how to handle his affairs:

Ikharev: Here is another ten rubles. Play ball with me, and you'll get even more. Now, own up: you have been buying the decks for them, haven't you?

Alexei: No, Sir, they bring their own.

Ikharev: Where do they get them?

Alexei: At the store in town.

Ikharev: You are lying, you thief. ²⁹

Structural symmetry is preserved when Gavrilushka, Ikharev's manservant, is milked for information in the same way by the triumvirate who are already in place, Drugel, Uteshitel'nu, and Svokhnev. The only difference -- or perhaps there is actually no difference except that the audience has not yet been informed -- is that Gavrilushka is serving as a double informant and tells his master immediately about his former confidants -- for the consideration of yet another bribe, of course.

Now Ikharev, ostensibly the innocent traveler, left alone in his room, opens his suitcase and pulls out a box in which his marked cards have been deftly arranged, Oh, those eternal boxes in Gogol's fictions! Still more remarkably, Ikharev looks at the cards and the money which he won at his last stop, some 80,000 rubles -- and which he will soon lose to the Svokhnev gang -- and exclaims happily, "Here, indeed, is an inheritance for my children!" ³⁰

Ironically, from Ikharev to Chichikov, the idea of family happiness, of the bliss of married life and the role of the doting father who looks after his promising children abets these cardsharps and bachelors in their avid pursuit of quick winnings. But as we have seen, the deceiver is deceived again, and only the Devil wins.

Besides the completed plays, Gogol left several fragments unfinished. One of these is "The Order of Vladimir of the Third Class" . Some sections of the play have appeared under a different title:"The Morning of a Busy Man". Begun in 1832, it never got beyond a few scenes, because, as Gogol told Pushkin, he was afraid of the objections of censors. In actual reality, Gogol's fear of such interference was probably quite justified, yet there may have been other reasons for the play's never having been completed. According to Ehre, Gogol found himself unable to coordinate its individual details, and therefore left it unfinished, even though he used many of the situations, dialogues and characters in later plays.

As it stands, "The Morning of a Busy Man"'s five scenes introduce two "busy" men .These are familiar Petersburg types who will ultimately resurface in Khestakov. Of course, they are not really busy, but are the sort of office fops whom Gogol must have encountered during his short stint as a civil service hopeful: empty-headed loafers intent only on getting ahead in the hierarchy through pull, that is, through knowing the right person and saying the right things.

Ivan Petrovich is the first character we meet. He has a "very important" morning occupation: He must tie a piece of paper to the tail of his small pet dog (instead of toiling away in the office, of course.) In this important civil service, he is interrupted by a colleague, Alexandr Ivanovich, who seems just as busy with official matters as his friend. He has dropped by to inform Ivan Petrovich of some tidbits of gossip from last night's card game: who was there and who said what that can be put to use in the service of their mutual advancement within the office hierarchy. Their superior, Lukjan Feodoseevich was also there. During Alexandr Ivanovich's account(which greatly resembles the stories and narrative style of Dobchinskiy and Bobchinskiy in "The Inspector General"), he lets drop a most important bit of information, namely that when Ivan Petrovich (whose family name is Barsukov ) was mentioned, Lukjan said, "Hm!" after which he added, "He is a civil servant and works in my department." ³¹ This information sets Ivan Petrovich's mind to working: what if his superior had said, "Such and such Barsukov, in recognition of his such and such merits, I recommend."Clearly, he is the prototype of the dreamer, Khlestakov, for whom the imagined world is of larger significance than ordinary reality.

In the fragment's fifth and last scene, we are told that Alexandr Ivanovich has been approached by his friend to start the promotion process by proposing to "His Excellency" that he grant a medal of distinction to Ivan Petrovich. This, of course, will never happen, since Alexandr Ivanovich considers his friend's request as undercutting his own position in the office hierarchy. But he promises his intercession with His Excellency -- which the audience knows he will never urge.

Gogol also manages to bring in some female characters, including Ivan Petrovich's wife Katerina Ivanovna, who talks the same coquettish nonsense as the mayor's wife in" The Inspector General" , but the role is never developed.

Despite its many possibilities, the fragment remains abortive and we do not know which way Gogol wanted it to unfold: Perhaps towards Ivan Petrovich's disappointment when he does not receive the converted order. Some critics guess that he was intended to go mad, imagining himself to be the Order itself (in the manner that Poprishchev imagined himself as the Spanish King). Others suggest that he was planning to lambast the mindless Petersburg office seekers and to set off in some other direction. But, at any rate, gogol's imagination is by now firmly in control of the character types, dialogue, and situations which will make up "The Inspector General". Also garnered here are the mindless non-sequiturs that characterize conversations of the bureaucrats, especially the characters' servility towards others just slightly beneath them in rank and position. We see also the slovenly servants, the dreamer who interprets each scrap of gossip as if his desired goal will be easily within reach, provided he does the right things and talks to the right people. The fragment also underscores Gogol's uncanny feel for the riciculousness of the atmosphere, language, and the characters whom he has set adrift in an entire poshlost ' of his imagined universe.

Another fragment,"Lawsuit"which dates to 1839 or 1840, is merely a sketch of a scene now familiar to readers of Gogol's earlier tales and shows how the endless litigations of the provincial gentry can result only in financial ruin while they make the lawyers of St. Petersburg rich. Here we are introduced to the lawyer Proletov, who is a dead-ringer for Alexandr Ivanovich. (His name may come from the verb proletat' ,to pass rapidly, or to fly by.) At any rate, we find him reading the newspaper in his study and discover all kinds of news of people who have been promoted or given orders for their supposed merits. All this irritates him, since he knows them personally and has a very low opinion of their capabilities. Now an unexpected visitor appears, the brother of one of the people mentioned in the paper. He is Khristofor Petrovich Burdyukov, who has come from his provincial town of Tambov to initiate a lawsuit against his famous brother, Pavel Petrovich, who has supposedly cheated him out of his inheritance. Proletov accepts the assignment with the greatest pleasure, since he stands to make a great deal of money on a lawsuit which promises to be endless. The interest in the sketch lies not so much in this meager plot as in its characters. Burdyukov, for instance, is given to violently undisciplined non-sequiturs which remind us of Nozdrvov from Dead Souls.

Another sketch belongs to the same year (1839): "In the Servants' Quarters ".Its plot is not quite developed, but was apparently intended to focus on a ball given for and by the servants of several Petersburg noblemen, and was probably supposed to offer a mirror image of the great balls given by the nobility. Like their masters, the servants are shown as interested in appearing favorably to their betters rather than in showing off before their peers. In this respect, the monologue of the Steward is characteristic of Gogol's general concerns about the importance of recognizing one's place in life: "That's what it's all about," he says, "Every man should know his duty! If you are a servant, then be a servant; if you are a nobleman, then be a nobleman; and if you are an archpriest, then you are an archpriest! Because if that were not so, then everybody could...I could, for example, say that I'm not a steward, but a governor, or someone from the infantry. But then, everybody would tell me, no, you are lying, you are a steward and not a general." Popryshcin ³² , in "The Diary of a Madman" , would vigorously disagree, protesting against the notion that we are locked into an identity and insisting that he can become anyone he wants to be, even a Spanish King. But as we know, that role did not end very well for him and we have no idea how this play would have dealt with the problem, nor in which direction Gogol would have jumped had he completed it.

In the 1842 edition of Gogol's Collected Works, there was one more unfinished play, simply called "Fragment" ³³ .Gogol had reworked it several times, starting apparently in 1837, but never getting beyond these few scenes. The plot is a familiar one, left undeveloped for reasons known only to Gogol, but he must have encountered artistic difficulties and contradictions as he tried to work it through. As it stands, it opens with a conversation between a certain Marya Aleksandrovna, a middle-aged woman, who is scolding her son Misha for not having chosen a suitable profession. He is in the civil service, but his mother wants him to change over to a military career. She also upbraids him for not wanting to marry a young woman she has chosen for him. The situation is vaguely familiar to readers of Gogol's short stories, especially "Ivan Ivanovich Spon'ka and His Aunt".The nagging, bossy, scatterbrained mother grinds away at her not so young son (Misha is almost thirty). Misha, nevertheless, decides that he must speak up if he does not want to marry the woman of his mother's choice. Indeed, he confesses that he is in love with another woman. Now the play begins to move away from the expected line of development with the introduction of another young man, a certain Sobachkin ,an acquaintance of Misha, whose assistance Marya Alexandra wants to enlist in coercing her son into marrying the young woman she has chosen for him. Sobachkin is to compromise Misha's lady-love so that Misha will be more willing to listen to his mother's plans. Now the double-crossing of the double-crosser which we have come to expect in Gogol's plots becomes into play. Though Marya Alexandrovna expects Sobachkin to work on her behalf, it turns out that he intends to exploit her for his own purposes. On the pretext of having accidentally left his purse at home, he demands money of her --just as the waiter in "The Gamblers"was willing to divulge information to Ikharev for, of course, a price.

Here the fragment stops. Even in its unfinished state, it has produced some memorable characters and situations, as well as a wealth of linguistic details like those to be found in "The Inspector General". As usual, the names indicate the drift of Gogol's thinking: the name Sobachkin, for instance derives from the word sobaka ,dog, and will appear in Dead Souls as Sobakievich, while the character himself, a scheming, neer-do-well Petersburg fop is preproduced in Khestakov; while the nagging , empty-headed mother prefigures Anna Andreevna, the mayor' wife in "The Inspector General",even though here she functions only in relation to her daughter. The fragments certainly indicate Gogol's talent in the field of comedy. They also suggest some unwillingness on his part, or perhaps lack of interest in pursuing shaping, and finishing plays which might have earned him the success of "The Inspector General". But in the following decade, Gogol's interest turns to other matters, and the ridicule of human folly which permeates these dramatic words will take a back seat in the development of Gogol's increasingly spiritual concerns.

1. In a letter to Pushkin, Oct. 7, 1835, Gogol writes that neithr Mirgorod, nor the Arabeski were selling well, and that he was in a dire need of money.  apparently he thought that plays would be better money makers.  He also talks aobut the MS of a play, The Marriage (Zhenit'ba), which he left with Pushkin for reading. He wanted to know if Pushkin read the MS, and if he could rturn it to him.  V.V. Veresaev: Gogol' v zhizni, op. cit. p. 177

2. Arabesqus, op. cit. Ardis. p. 3

3. Arabesques, op. cit. Ardis. p. 3.

4. N. V. Gogol': Poln. Sobr. Soch. (1898) p. 119 (My translation L.T.)

5. Professional criminals

6. N.V. Gogol': Pol. Sobr. Soch. (1898) op. cit. p. 121

7. N.V. Gogol': Pol. Sobr. Soch. (1898) op. cit. p. 123

8. N.V. Gogol': Pol. Sobr. Soch. (1898) op. cit. p. 123

9. V.V. Veresaev: Gogol' v Zhizni, op. cit. p. 168

10. N.V. Gogol': Poln. Sobr. Soch. (1898) op. cit. p. 168

11. (More than 100 years lateer, similar situation was recorded in the history of Russian letters, when Solzhenitsyn's firt novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, was cleared for publication because A. Tvardovsky, the editor of the magazine Novy Mir managed to get the MS to Nikita Krushchev's attention, who, for his own political purposs found the novel useful and gave his permission for publication over the tacit disapproval of his less powerful colleagues. See: A.I. Solzhenitsyn: The Calf and the Oaktree.)

12. Ehre, op. cit. p. 12.

13. The khlysty, a religious sect, usually referred to as the "flagellants" for their ceremonial actions. See i.e. Dostoyevsky's novel The Idiot in which this religious sect plays an important role.

14. See: D. Merezhkovsky; Gogola dn the Devil in R. Maguire's Gogol from the Twentieth Century. op. cit. p. 56-102.

15. See Vyacheslav Ivanov: Gogol's Inspector Gneral and the Comedy of Aristophanes. in R. Maguire's Gogol from the Twentieth Century, op. cit. p. 200-214.

16. The presence of this element in the national character has been recognized in the 20th Century as basic to the behavior and speech of the blatnye, the criminal udnerworld, which in rejecting existing reality as a sham, as created its own order, language and hierarchy.  Andrey Sinyavsky, a writer in the vein established by Gogol, is perhaps the best expositor of this aspect of the blatnye in his prison memoirs: A Voice form the Choir. (A. Terts: Golos iz khora) As he remarks, the blatnye "sing" instead of talking, or use "fenya", as this language is called, speak of a person who is a liar, a teller of tall tales, as a Pushkin.  Sinyavsky quotes a number of proverbial statements from the idiom, such as "Who is going to pay for this? Answer: Pushkin!: or, "Who is responsible for this? Answer: Pushkin!"  Story telling, according to this concept, is merely a form of lying, adn the practitioners of this concept, is merely a form of lying, and the practitioners of literature are recognized as liars, or, in Sinavsky's terms, "criminal", because any writer or artist necessarily falsifies, or "counterfeits" language by using it, not in its normal meanring, but according to its own counterfeit context.

17. Ehre. ed. op. cit. p. 196

18. ibid. p. 172

19. ibid. p. 175

20. Ehre. ed. op. cit. p. 181

21. ibid. p. 175

22. ibid. p. 184

23. Ehre. ed. op. cit. p. 184

24. ibid.

25. ibid. p. 181

26. Ehre. ed. op. cit. p. 184

27. ibid.

28. Ehre. ed. op. cit. p. 185

29. ibid. p. 187

30. Ehre. ed. op. cit. p. 187

31. ibid. p. 191

32. Ehe ed. op. cit. p. 134

33. Ehre. ed. op. cit. p. 134

34. ibid.

35. N. V. Gogol': Sobr. Soch. t. 3. str. 496

36. N. V. Gogol': Sobr. Soch. t. 3. str. 514

37. N. V. Gogol': Sobr. Soch. t. 3. str. 514

38. meaning "the little dog."

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Epilogue, Bibliography

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