Is the "Auditor" up-to-date? Gogol is really relevant

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Gogol, as you know, created the comedy "Inspector General" using the idea presented by Pushkin. The prototype of the impostor auditor was a real historical figure - a certain Pavel Svinin. A difficult and interesting task - to put together and ridicule the Russian mechanism of provincial power - was pursued by a comedy written by Gogol, The Government Inspector.

The heroes of the work are typical contemporaries of the author of "Dikanka": the mayor Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky, who takes large bribes and knows everything about everyone; judge Lyapkin-Tyapkin, "administering justice" on the basis of personal gain and "twisting the law like a drawbar"; the chronically cowardly warden of the schools, Khlopov, "rotten with onions", who is afraid of both his superiors and his subordinates; the unscrupulous trustee of charitable establishments Strawberry (for whom people in hospitals were dying like flies); unscrupulous postmaster Shpekin, who opens envelopes and reads letters "out of curiosity." The whole essence of the activities of the authorities: outwardly - fussy chores, deeper - bribery, theft was shown by N. V. Gogol. "Inspector"also exhaustively clearly defines what motivates these people to work together. Everything is extremely simple - the mechanism of fear of losing a “place” launched by the mayor. After all, everyone knows everything. Everyone "sits on his sixth". It is amazing that Anton Antonovich himself (the mayor), breaking the law more than others, sincerely considers himself a bearer of morality and a believer.

The petty insignificant official Khlestakov, despised even by the servant Osip, by chance stopped in a hotel in a provincial city. He follows to Saratov to his father. His success in the service is not brilliant. The father, obviously, is going to give his son a "suggestion" and a "reset" of his service career. But the twenty-three-year-old blockhead loses pocket money, remaining "on the beans." At this time, the gossips and chatterboxes, the landowners Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, spurred on by an egoistic desire to be the first to “figure out” the auditor who arrived in the city, decide by virtue of their stupidity that Khlestakov is the auditor.

Gogol shows how they manage to convince even the mayor of this. Then the circus begins. Khlestakov, realizing who they take him for, decides on a desperate deception, introducing himself as an auditor from the capital. The young man is not burdened with either mind, or conscience, or decency. He lies with inspiration and selflessly about his high connections and patrons. He asks high officials, starting with the mayor, to borrow money. They willingly give them, without even assuming their return, considering the amount transferred to Khlestakov as a banal next bribe. When the young rogue, wooing his daughtermayor, at the same time "knocks wedges" to his wife - the culmination of the theater of the absurdity of the comedy "The Government Inspector" is reached. Gogol, however, does not bring matters to a wedding. The deceiver, having obeyed the wise servant Osip, runs away from the imminent exposure, taking the money.

At the end of the play, Skvoznik-Dmukhanovskiy's character "says the bitter truth" through the author's mouth, saying the key phrase that the anecdotal situation described in the comedy is Russians laughing at themselves. The work ends with the famous scene of "stupefaction" of the provincial beau monde from the news received about the arrival of a real auditor in the city.

Is the "Auditor" up-to-date? Gogol, by the way, has long been familiar to Israeli theater audiences. The real success for the production of the comedy came after the localization of the plot and its complete transfer to the soil of this country. Israeli directing proceeds from the fact that the classical playwright Gogol gave the main thing - the instrument for staging the play, but modern mayors, judges, trustees of institutions - are much more sophisticated than those originally shown by the writer. Therefore, the production was made in modern colloquial language, using slang. The success exceeded all expectations. The inner potential inherent in Gogol's idea later allowed the author of the Israeli performance to write the script for an entire series, which also proved to be in demand.