The Inspector General
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Nicolay Gogol >> The Inspector General
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7 Produced by Judy Boss.
The
Inspector-General
A comedy in five acts translated by
Thomas Seltzer from the Russian of
Nicolay
Gogol
INTRODUCTION
The Inspector-General is a national institution. To
place a purely literary valuation upon it and call it the
greatest of Russian comedies would not convey the significance
of its position either in Russian literature or in
Russian life itself. There is no other single work in the
modern literature of any language that carries with it
the wealth of associations which the Inspector-General
does to the educated Russian. The Germans have their
Faust; but Faust is a tragedy with a cosmic philosophic
theme. In England it takes nearly all that is implied in
the comprehensive name of Shakespeare to give the same
sense of bigness that a Russian gets from the mention
of the Revizor.
That is not to say that the Russian is so defective in
the critical faculty as to balance the combined creative
output of the greatest English dramatist against Gogol's
one comedy, or even to attribute to it the literary value
of any of Shakespeare's better plays. What the Russian's
appreciation indicates is the pregnant role that
literature plays in the life of intellectual Russia. Here
literature is not a luxury, not a diversion. It is bone
of the bone, flesh of the flesh, not only of the intelligentsia,
but also of a growing number of the common
people, intimately woven into their everyday existence,
part and parcel of their thoughts, their aspirations, their
social, political and economic life. It expresses their
collective wrongs and sorrows, their collective hopes and
strivings. Not only does it serve to lead the movements
of the masses, but it is an integral component element of
those movements. In a word, Russian literature is completely
bound up with the life of Russian society, and its
vitality is but the measure of the spiritual vitality of that
society.
This unique character of Russian literature may be
said to have had its beginning with the Inspector-General.
Before Gogol most Russian writers, with few exceptions,
were but weak imitators of foreign models.
The drama fashioned itself chiefly upon French patterns.
The Inspector-General and later Gogol's novel, Dead
Souls, established that tradition in Russian letters which
was followed by all the great writers from Dostoyevsky
down to Gorky.
As with one blow, Gogol shattered the notions of the
theatre-going public of his day of what a comedy should
be. The ordinary idea of a play at that time in Russia
seems to have been a little like our own tired business
man's. And the shock the Revizor gave those early
nineteenth-century Russian audiences is not unlike the
shocks we ourselves get when once in a while a theatrical
manager is courageous enough to produce a bold modern
European play. Only the intensity of the shock was
much greater. For Gogol dared not only bid defiance
to the accepted method; he dared to introduce a subject-matter
that under the guise of humor audaciously attacked
the very foundation of the state, namely, the
officialdom of the Russian bureaucracy. That is why
the Revizor marks such a revolution in the world of Russian
letters. In form it was realistic, in substance it was
vital. It showed up the rottenness and corruption of the
instruments through which the Russian government functioned.
It held up to ridicule, directly, all the officials
of a typical Russian municipality, and, indirectly, pointed
to the same system of graft and corruption among the
very highest servants of the crown.
What wonder that the Inspector-General became a sort
of comedy-epic in the land of the Czars, the land where
each petty town-governor is almost an absolute despot,
regulating his persecutions and extortions according to
the sage saying of the town-governor in the play, "That's
the way God made the world, and the Voltairean free-thinkers
can talk against it all they like, it won't do any
good." Every subordinate in the town administration,
all the way down the line to the policemen, follow--not
always so scrupulously--the law laid down by the same
authority, "Graft no higher than your rank." As in
city and town, so in village and hamlet. It is the tragedy
of Russian life, which has its roots in that more comprehensive
tragedy, Russian despotism, the despotism that
gives the sharp edge to official corruption. For there is
no possible redress from it except in violent revolutions.
That is the prime reason why the Inspector-General,
a mere comedy, has such a hold on the Russian people
and occupies so important a place in Russian literature.
And that is why a Russian critic says, "Russia possesses
only one comedy, the Inspector-General."
The second reason is the brilliancy and originality
with which this national theme was executed. Gogol
was above all else the artist. He was not a radical, nor
even a liberal. He was strictly conservative. While
hating the bureaucracy, yet he never found fault with
the system itself or with the autocracy. Like most born
artists, he was strongly individualistic in temperament,
and his satire and ridicule were aimed not at causes, but
at effects. Let but the individuals act morally, and the
system, which Gogol never questioned, would work beautifully.
This conception caused Gogol to concentrate
his best efforts upon delineation of character. It was
the characters that were to be revealed, their actions to
be held up to scorn and ridicule, not the conditions which
created the characters and made them act as they did.
If any lesson at all was to be drawn from the play it was
not a sociological lesson, but a moral one. The individual
who sees himself mirrored in it may be moved to
self-purgation; society has nothing to learn from it.
Yet the play lives because of the social message it
carries. The creation proved greater than the creator.
The author of the Revizor was a poor critic of his own
work. The Russian people rejected his estimate and
put their own upon it. They knew their officials and
they entertained no illusions concerning their regeneration
so long as the system that bred them continued to
live. Nevertheless, as a keen satire and a striking exposition
of the workings of the hated system itself, they
hailed the Revizor with delight. And as such it has remained
graven in Russia's conscience to this day.
It must be said that "Gogol himself grew with the
writing of the Revizor." Always a careful craftsman,
scarcely ever satisfied with the first version of a story or
a play, continually changing and rewriting, he seems to
have bestowed special attention on perfecting this comedy.
The subject, like that of Dead Souls, was suggested
to him by the poet Pushkin, and was based on a
true incident. Pushkin at once recognized Gogol's
genius and looked upon the young author as the rising
star of Russian literature. Their acquaintance soon
ripened into intimate friendship, and Pushkin missed no
opportunity to encourage and stimulate him in his writings
and help him with all the power of his great influence.
Gogol began to work on the play at the close of
1834, when he was twenty-five years old. It was first
produced in St. Petersburg, in 1836. Despite the many
elaborations it had undergone before Gogol permitted it
to be put on the stage, he still did not feel satisfied, and
he began to work on it again in 1838. It was not
brought down to its present final form until 1842.
Thus the Revizor occupied the mind of the author over
a period of eight years, and resulted in a product which
from the point of view of characterization and dramatic
technique is almost flawless. Yet far more important is
the fact that the play marked an epoch in Gogol's own
literary development. When he began on it, his ambitions
did not rise above making it a comedy of pure
fun, but, gradually, in the course of his working on it,
the possibilities of the subject unfolded themselves and
influenced his entire subsequent career. His art broadened
and deepened and grew more serious. If Pushkin's
remark, that "behind his laughter you feel the sad
tears," is true of some of Gogol's former productions, it
is still truer of the Revizor and his later works.
A new life had begun for him, he tells us himself,
when he was no longer "moved by childish notions, but
by lofty ideas full of truth." "It was Pushkin," he
writes, "who made me look at the thing seriously. I saw
that in my writings I laughed vainly, for nothing, myself
not knowing why. If I was to laugh, then I had better
laugh over things that are really to be laughed at. In
the Inspector-General I resolved to gather together all
the bad in Russia I then knew into one heap, all the injustice
that was practised in those places and in those
human relations in which more than in anything justice
is demanded of men, and to have one big laugh over it
all. But that, as is well known, produced an outburst
of excitement. Through my laughter, which never before
came to me with such force, the reader sensed profound
sorrow. I myself felt that my laughter was no
longer the same as it had been, that in my writings I
could no longer be the same as in the past, and that the
need to divert myself with innocent, careless scenes had
ended along with my young years."
With the strict censorship that existed in the reign
of Czar Nicholas I, it required powerful influence to
obtain permission for the production of the comedy.
This Gogol received through the instrumentality of his
friend, Zhukovsky, who succeeded in gaining the Czar's
personal intercession. Nicholas himself was present at
the first production in April, 1836, and laughed and applauded,
and is said to have remarked, "Everybody gets
it, and I most of all."
Naturally official Russia did not relish this innovation
in dramatic art, and indignation ran high among them
and their supporters. Bulgarin led the attack. Everything
that is usually said against a new departure in
literature or art was said against the Revizor. It was
not original. It was improbable, impossible, coarse, vulgar;
lacked plot. It turned on a stale anecdote that
everybody knew. It was a rank farce. The characters
were mere caricatures. "What sort of a town was it
that did not hold a single honest soul?"
Gogol's sensitive nature shrank before the tempest
that burst upon him, and he fled from his enemies all the
way out of Russia. "Do what you please about presenting
the play in Moscow," he writes to Shchepkin
four days after its first production in St. Petersburg.
"I am not going to bother about it. I am sick of the
play and all the fussing over it. It produced a great
noisy effect. All are against me . . . they abuse me
and go to see it. No tickets can be obtained for the
fourth performance."
But the best literary talent of Russia, with Pushkin
and Bielinsky, the greatest critic Russia has produced, at
the head, ranged itself on his side.
Nicolay Vasilyevich Gogol was born in Sorochintzy,
government of Poltava, in 1809. His father was a Little
Russian, or Ukrainian, landowner, who exhibited considerable
talent as a playwright and actor. Gogol was
educated at home until the age of ten, then went to
Niezhin, where he entered the gymnasium in 1821.
Here he edited a students' manuscript magazine called
the Star, and later founded a students' theatre, for which
he was both manager and actor. It achieved such success
that it was patronized by the general public.
In 1829 Gogol went to St. Petersburg, where he
thought of becoming an actor, but he finally gave up the
idea and took a position as a subordinate government
clerk. His real literary career began in 1830 with the
publication of a series of stories of Little Russian country
life called Nights on a Farm near Dikanka. In 1831
he became acquainted with Pushkin and Zhukovsky, who
introduced the "shy Khokhol" (nickname for "Little
Russian"), as he was called, to the house of Madame
O. A. Smirnov, the centre of "an intimate circle of literary
men and the flower of intellectual society." The
same year he obtained a position as instructor of history
at the Patriotic Institute, and in 1834 was made professor
of history at the University of St. Petersburg.
Though his lectures were marked by originality and
vivid presentation, he seems on the whole not to have
been successful as a professor, and he resigned in
1835.
During this period he kept up his literary activity
uninterruptedly, and in 1835 published his collection of
stories, Mirgorod, containing How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled
with Ivan Nikiforovich, Taras Bulba, and others.
This collection firmly established his position as a leading
author. At the same time he was at work on several
plays. The Vladimir Cross, which was to deal with the
higher St. Petersburg functionaries in the same way as
the Revizor with the lesser town officials, was never concluded,
as Gogol realized the impossibility of placing
them on the Russian stage. A few strong scenes were
published. The comedy Marriage, finished in 1835, still
finds a place in the Russian theatrical repertoire. The
Gamblers, his only other complete comedy, belongs to a
later period.
After a stay abroad, chiefly in Italy, lasting with some
interruptions for seven years (1836-1841), he returned
to his native country, bringing with him the first part of
his greatest work, Dead Souls. The novel, published
the following year, produced a profound impression and
made Gogol's literary reputation supreme. Pushkin,
who did not live to see its publication, on hearing the
first chapters read, exclaimed, "God, how sad our Russia
is!" And Alexander Hertzen characterized it as "a
wonderful book, a bitter, but not hopeless rebuke of contemporary
Russia." Aksakov went so far as to call it
the Russian national epic, and Gogol the Russian Homer.
Unfortunately the novel remained incomplete. Gogol
began to suffer from a nervous illness which induced
extreme hypochondria. He became excessively religious,
fell under the influence of pietists and a fanatical priest,
sank more and more into mysticism, and went on a pilgrimage
to Jerusalem to worship at the Holy Sepulchre.
In this state of mind he came to consider all literature,
including his own, as pernicious and sinful.
After burning the manuscript of the second part of
Dead Souls, he began to rewrite it, had it completed and
ready for the press by 1851, but kept the copy and
burned it again a few days before his death (1852), so
that it is extant only in parts.
THOMAS SELTZER.
CHARACTERS OF THE PLAY
ANTON ANTONOVICH SKVOZNIK-DMUKHANOVSKY, the
Governor.
ANNA ANDREYEVNA, his wife.
MARYA ANTONOVNA, his daughter.
LUKA LUKICH KHLOPOV, the Inspector of Schools.
His Wife.
AMMOS FIODOROVICH LIAPKIN-TIAPKIN, the Judge.
ARTEMY FILIPPOVICH ZEMLIANIKA, the Superintendent of
Charities.
IVAN KUZMICH SHPEKIN, the Postmaster.
PIOTR IVANOVICH DOBCHINSKY. }
PIOTR IVANOVICH BOBCHINSKY. } Country Squires.
IVAN ALEKSANDROVICH KHLESTAKOV, an official from St.
Petersburg.
OSIP, his servant.
CHRISTIAN IVANOVICH HÜBNER, the district Doctor.
FIODR ANDREYEVICH LlULIUKOV. } ex-officials,
}esteemed
IVAN LAZAREVICH RASTAKOVSKY. }personages
STEPAN IVANOVICH KOROBKIN. }of the town.
STEPAN ILYICH UKHOVERTOV, the Police Captain.
SVISTUNOV. }
PUGOVITZYN. }Police Sergeants.
DERZHIMORDA. }
ABDULIN, a Merchant.
FEVRONYA PETROVA POSHLIOPKINA, the Locksmith's wife.
The Widow of a non-commissioned Officer.
MISHKA, the Governor's Servant.
Servant at the Inn.
Guests, Merchants, Citizens, and Petitioners.
CHARACTERS AND COSTUMES
DIRECTIONS FOR ACTORS
THE GOVERNOR.--A man grown old in the service, by
no means a fool in his own way. Though he takes
bribes, he carries himself with dignity. He is of a
rather serious turn and even given somewhat to ratiocination.
He speaks in a voice neither too loud
nor too low and says neither too much nor too little.
Every word of his counts. He has the typical hard
stern features of the official who has worked his way
up from the lowest rank in the arduous government
service. Coarse in his inclinations, he passes
rapidly from fear to joy, from servility to arrogance.
He is dressed in uniform with frogs and wears
Hessian boots with spurs. His hair with a sprinkling
of gray is close-cropped.
ANNA ANDREYEVNA.--A provincial coquette, still this
side of middle age, educated on novels and albums
and on fussing with household affairs and servants.
She is highly inquisitive and has streaks of vanity.
Sometimes she gets the upper hand over her husband,
and he gives in simply because at the moment
he cannot find the right thing to say. Her
ascendency, however, is confined to mere trifles and
takes the form of lecturing and twitting. She
changes her dress four times in the course of the
play.
KHLESTAKOV.--A skinny young man of about twenty-three,
rather stupid, being, as they say, "without a
czar in his head," one of those persons called an
"empty vessel" in the government offices. He
speaks and acts without stopping to think and utterly
lacks the power of concentration. The words burst
from his mouth unexpectedly. The more naiveté
and ingenousness the actor puts into the character
the better will he sustain the role. Khlestakov is
dressed in the latest fashion.
OSIP.--A typical middle-aged servant, grave in his address,
with eyes always a bit lowered. He is argumentative
and loves to read sermons directed at his
master. His voice is usually monotonous. To his
master his tone is blunt and sharp, with even a touch
of rudeness. He is the cleverer of the two and
grasps a situation more quickly. But he does not
like to talk. He is a silent, uncommunicative rascal.
He wears a shabby gray or blue coat.
BOBCHINSKY AND DOBCHINSKY.--Short little fellows,
strikingly like each other. Both have small
paunches, and talk rapidly, with emphatic gestures
of their hands, features and bodies. Dobchinsky is
slightly the taller and more subdued in manner.
Bobchinsky is freer, easier and livelier. They are
both exceedingly inquisitive.
LIAPKIN-TIAPKIN.--He has read four or five books and
so is a bit of a freethinker. He is always seeing a
hidden meaning in things and therefore puts weight
into every word he utters. The actor should preserve
an expression of importance throughout. He
speaks in a bass voice, with a prolonged rattle and
wheeze in his throat, like an old-fashioned clock,
which buzzes before it strikes.
ZEMLIANIKA.--Very fat, slow and awkward; but for all
that a sly, cunning scoundrel. He is very obliging
and officious.
SHPEKIN.--Guileless to the point of simplemindedness.
The other characters require no special explanation,
as their originals can be met almost anywhere.
The actors should pay especial attention to the last
scene. The last word uttered must strike all at once,
suddenly, like an electric shock. The whole group should
change its position at the same instant. The ladies must
all burst into a simultaneous cry of astonishment, as if
with one throat. The neglect of these directions may
ruin the whole effect.
THE INSPECTOR-GENERAL
ACT I
A Room in the Governor's House.
SCENE I
Anton Antonovich, the Governor, Artemy Filippovich,
the Superintendent of Charities, Luka Lukich, the Inspector
of Schools, Ammos Fiodorovich, the Judge,
Stepan Ilyich, Christian Ivanovich, the Doctor, and two
Police Sergeants.
GOVERNOR. I have called you together, gentlemen, to
tell you an unpleasant piece of news. An Inspector-General
is coming.
AMMOS FIOD. What, an Inspector-General?
ARTEMY FIL. What, an Inspector-General?
GOVERNOR. Yes, an Inspector from St. Petersburg,
incognito. And with secret instructions, too.
AMMOS. A pretty how-do-you-do!
ARTEMY. As if we hadn't enough trouble without an
Inspector!
LUKA LUKICH. Good Lord! With secret instructions!
GOVERNOR. I had a sort of presentiment of it. Last
night I kept dreaming of two rats--regular monsters!
Upon my word, I never saw the likes of them--black
and supernaturally big. They came in, sniffed, and then
went away.-- Here's a letter I'll read to you--from
Andrey Ivanovich. You know him, Artemy Filippovich.
Listen to what he writes: "My dear friend, godfather
and benefactor--[He mumbles, glancing rapidly down
the page.]--and to let you know"-- Ah, that's it--
"I hasten to let you know, among other things, that an
official has arrived here with instructions to inspect the
whole government, and your district especially. [Raises
his finger significantly.] I have learned of his being
here from highly trustworthy sources, though he pretends
to be a private person. So, as you have your little peccadilloes,
you know, like everybody else--you are a
sensible man, and you don't let the good things that come
your way slip by--" [Stopping] H'm, that's his junk
--"I advise you to take precautions, as he may arrive
any hour, if he hasn't already, and is not staying somewhere
incognito. --Yesterday--" The rest are family
matters. "Sister Anna Krillovna is here visiting us
with her husband. Ivan Krillovich has grown very fat
and is always playing the fiddle"--et cetera, et cetera.
So there you have the situation we are confronted with,
gentlemen.
AMMOS. An extraordinary situation, most extraordinary!
Something behind it, I am sure.
LUKA. But why, Anton Antonovich? What for?
Why should we have an Inspector?
GOVERNOR. It's fate, I suppose. [Sighs.] Till now,
thank goodness, they have been nosing about in other
towns. Now our turn has come.
AMMOS. My opinion is, Anton Antonovich, that the
cause is a deep one and rather political in character. It
means this, that Russia--yes--that Russia intends to
go to war, and the Government has secretly commissioned
an official to find out if there is any treasonable activity
anywhere.
GOVERNOR. The wise man has hit on the very thing.
Treason in this little country town! As if it were on
the frontier! Why, you might gallop three years away
from here and reach nowhere.
AMMOS. No, you don't catch on--you don't-- The
Government is shrewd. It makes no difference that our
town is so remote. The Government is on the look-out
all the same--
GOVERNOR [cutting him short]. On the look-out, or
not on the look-out, anyhow, gentlemen, I have given you
warning. I have made some arrangements for myself,
and I advise you to do the same. You especially, Artemy
Filippovich. This official, no doubt, will want first of all
to inspect your department. So you had better see to it
that everything is in order, that the night-caps are clean,
and the patients don't go about as they usually do, looking
as grimy as blacksmiths.
ARTEMY. Oh, that's a small matter. We can get
night-caps easily enough.
GOVERNOR. And over each bed you might hang up a
placard stating in Latin or some other language--that's
your end of it, Christian Ivanovich--the name of the
disease, when the patient fell ill, the day of the week and
the month. And I don't like your invalids to be smoking
such strong tobacco. It makes you sneeze when you
come in. It would be better, too, if there weren't so
many of them. If there are a large number, it will instantly
be ascribed to bad supervision or incompetent
medical treatment.
ARTEMY. Oh, as to treatment, Christian Ivanovich
and I have worked out our own system. Our rule is:
the nearer to nature the better. We use no expensive
medicines. A man is a simple affair. If he dies, he'd
die anyway. If he gets well, he'd get well anyway.
Besides, the doctor would have a hard time making the
patients understand him. He doesn't know a word of
Russian.
The Doctor gives forth a sound intermediate between
M and A.
GOVERNOR. And you, Ammos Fiodorovich, had better
look to the courthouse. The attendants have turned the
entrance hall where the petitioners usually wait into a
poultry yard, and the geese and goslings go poking their
beaks between people's legs. Of course, setting up
housekeeping is commendable, and there is no reason
why a porter shouldn't do it. Only, you see, the courthouse
is not exactly the place for it. I had meant to tell
you so before, but somehow it escaped my memory.
AMMOS. Well, I'll have them all taken into the kitchen
to-day. Will you come and dine with me?
GOVERNOR. Then, too, it isn't right to have the courtroom
littered up with all sorts of rubbish--to have a
hunting-crop lying right among the papers on your desk.
You're fond of sport, I know, still it's better to have
the crop removed for the present. When the Inspector
is gone, you may put it back again. As for your assessor,
he's an educated man, to be sure, but he reeks of
spirits, as if he had just emerged from a distillery.
That's not right either. I had meant to tell you so long
ago, but something or other drove the thing out of my
mind. If his odor is really a congenital defect, as he
says, then there are ways of remedying it. You might
advise him to eat onion or garlic, or something of the
sort. Christian Ivanovich can help him out with some of
his nostrums.
The Doctor makes the same sound as before.
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