The comedy of “The _Revizor_” (The Inspector-General) is therefore a
satire,--a satire on Russian functionaryism. The action takes place in
a small provincial city. The _tchinovniks_ of the district have met at
the mayor’s, for news has just been brought of the approaching visit of
the _revizor_. “What can you expect?” asks the mayor[16] with a sigh:
“it is a judgment from God! Hitherto it has fallen on other cities. It
is our turn now.”
Like a prudent man, he has taken his measures, and he advises the
other employees to do likewise. “You,” he says to the director of the
hospital,--“you will do well to take pains that every thing is on a
good footing.... Let ’em put on white cotton nightcaps, and don’t allow
the patients to look like chimney-sweeps as they usually do.--And you,”
he says to the doctor, “you must look out that each bed has its label
in Latin, or some other language.... And it would be better not to
have so many patients, for they won’t fail to throw the blame on the
administration.” The director of the hospital explains the method of
treatment which is adopted. No costly medicines: man is a simple being;
if he dies, he dies; if he recovers, he recovers. Besides, any other
method would be scarcely practicable with a German doctor who does
not understand Russian, and consequently cannot tell at all what his
patients say.
“You,” he says to the justice of the peace, “pay attention to your
tribunal! Your boy brings his geese into your great hall, and they
come quacking between the legs of the plaintiffs.... And your
audience-chamber looks like--the Devil knows what! a horsewhip in the
midst of briefs! and the assessor, who always exhales an odor as though
he had just come out of a distillery!” But the most serious part of the
matter is the rumors of corruption. “A trifle,” replies the justice:
“a few grey-hounds as presents.” And he immediately returns allusion
for allusion: “Ah! I did not say that if some one had presented me
with a five-hundred-ruble _shuba_, and a shawl for my wife”--The mayor
interrupts warmly, with that tone of hypocrisy so common to the Russian
_tchinovnik_, “That’s all right! Do you know why you take presents of
dogs? It’s because you don’t believe in God. You never go to church. I
at least have some religion: Fridays I go to mass. But you--Ah! I know
you well. When you begin to descant on the way the world was made, your
hair stands up on your head.
“And you,” he says to the principal of the college,--“you watch over
your professors. Their actions are suspicious; there is one who so far
forgets himself in his chair as to put his fingers behind his cravat,
and to scratch his chin: it is not necessary to teach the young habits
of independence.” The postmaster remains. The mayor urges him to open a
few letters, so as to assure himself that there are no denunciations.
“You need not teach me my trade,” replies the postmaster: “I have
nothing else to do.” In fact, it is his daily amusement: he could
not do without this reading. Some letters are as well composed as the
Moscow journals. He has at this very moment in his pocket a young
lieutenant’s letter,--reminiscences of a ball, an elegant description.
The mayor begs him to hold back every petition of complaint. “There’s
nothing to fear any other way. It would be a different thing if this
were generally the custom; but it’s just a little family affair, the
way we do it.”
Two loungers of the place,[17] two self-important bustlers, in their
eager rivalry of tittle-tattle and gossip, run up all out of breath,
and, after a great deal of desultory talk, are delivered of the great
news. He has come, the government _tchinovnik_, the _revizor_; he saw
them eating salmon at the hotel; he cast a terrible look at their
plates. “_Akh!_ God in heaven,” cries the mayor; “have pity upon us,
miserable offenders!”
And here follows a general confession, a recapitulation of the most
recent sins of moment: an under-officer’s wife whipped, prisoners
deprived of their rations, wine-shops established in open defiance of
the law, the streets not swept. “How old is he? He’s a young man; then
there’s more hope than with an old devil. Quick! orders, measures; and
let us get ahead of him. My hat! my sword! but the sword is ruined.
“That cursed hatter! He sees that the mayor has an old sword, and
does not send him a new one. What a pack of villains! _Akh!_ my fine
fellows! I am perfectly sure they have their complaints all ready, and
that they will rise up right out of the cobble-stones. Let everybody
take hold of the street. The Devil take the street! Fetch me a broom, I
say, and have the street cleaned in front of the hotel; and let it be
well done.--Listen! Take care there, _you_! I know you well. You put
on a saintly look, and yet you hide the silver spoons in your boots.
You look out! Don’t you dare to stir me up! What kind of a job did you
concoct at the tailor’s? He gave you two arshins of cloth to make you a
uniform, and you gobbled up the whole piece. Attention! You steal too
much for your rank.”
That phrase has taken its place among the popular proverbs in Russia,
and our Molière has not many more pointed. Exactly as in Molière, the
situation is spun out and renewed with a liveliness which suffers no
loss of force. On the mayor’s lips, command follows command; ideas
crowd upon one another; words get tripped up; exclamations of fury,
of terror, fly out; the note of hypocrisy mingles with his main
characteristic, the violence of which forces its way to the surface
under false appearances. And this inward trouble is rendered visible,
as it were, by stage tricks, not free from vulgarity, but extremely
amusing. “You have the hat-box in your hand: here is your hat.” All
this forms a rude, rough, but new and irresistible element of comedy.
The personage who thus sets a whole city by the ears is a poor devil,
himself in a peck of trouble. Kléstakof has left Petersburg, where he
is a small official, in order to spend his vacation in the province.
On the way he has gambled, has emptied his pockets, and he is waiting
for his father to send him a fresh supply of funds to pay travelling
expenses and the landlord’s bill. We learn all these details from his
valet Osip. He it is who, in his description of the situation, gives
us the key to his master’s character. “One day he lives like a lord,
the next he perishes with starvation. But we must have carriages. Every
day he sends me to get theatre-tickets. This lasts a week, and then he
tells me to bring him his new suit of clothes from the nail. A suit
costs him a hundred and fifty rubles. He spends twenty rubles for a
waistcoat. I won’t answer for the trousers: it’s impossible to tell
what that amounts to. And the wherefore of all this? the wherefore? I
will tell you. He does not attend to his business; he goes for a walk
on the _Preshpektive_ (the Nevsky Prospekt). He plays his game. _Akh!_
if the old gentleman knew all this business, he would not bother his
head whether his son held a place in government: he would take off his
shirt, and give him such a drubbing as would warm him up for a week.”
In this comedy of “The _Revizor_,” the valet Osip fills a comic _rôle_
quite like that of the fool in Shakspeare, or the _gracioso_ in the
Spanish comedy. The Russian buffoon, however, is a clown rather than
a joker. He does not enliven the scene with jests: he makes the
spectator split his sides by his artless blunders. This smacks of
farce, and may seem overdone. But exaggeration in this way is not in
the power of every one. It is the splendid fault of Aristophanes, and
even of Molière. Let us remember what Fénelon, La Bruyère, and Rousseau
said of it. And after all, in spite of the famous definition, is it not
the greatest triumph of the comic poet to make the fastidious laugh,
and especially smile? An excellent actor of our own time defined the
great comedian as one who has only to show his grimace at the opening
of a door, to make the whole public shout with laughter. Are not the
author and the actor of genius told by the same characteristic? Have
not both of them the secret of this grimace?
To return to the analysis of the piece: Kléstakof scolds his valet
because he no longer dares to report the traveller’s complaints at
the office. The landlord treats this stranger as a man who does not
pay his bills. After many negotiations he permits him to have some
dish-water as apology for soup, and some burned sole-leather in place
of the roast. Amid the vociferations wrung from him by such an outrage,
Kléstakof beholds Osip returning to announce a call from the mayor.
He imagines that the official has come in order to put him in arrest,
with which he was threatened only a few moments since; and he endeavors
immediately to exonerate himself in the mayor’s eyes. His explanations,
enigmatical for the still more anxious visitor, clear only for the
reader or the audience, have no other effect than to increase the
terror of the high functionary, who thinks that he is in the presence
of a crafty inspector-general. In the incoherent remarks, full of
ingenuous confessions, which the little _tchinovnik_ makes to him, the
mayor hears only certain portentous words,--the prison, the minister.
He is only half re-assured when the conversation offers him a chance to
proffer some money and insist on its acceptance.
Kléstakof finally blurts out how matters really stand. “I am here,
and I have not a kopek.” The mayor sees in this avowal only a further
illustration of cunning. He immediately offers his services. The
stranger borrows two hundred rubles of him. “Take it,” he says
eagerly; “don’t trouble to count it, it isn’t worth while:” and instead
of two hundred rubles, he slips four hundred into his hand. And now
behold our two sharpers delighted to find themselves so easily in
agreement. Kléstakof suspects that there is some misunderstanding, but
he takes pains not to say a word which may bring about an explanation.
The mayor thinks that he can detect, under Kléstakof’s ambiguous
actions, an immensely profound plan. “He wants his _incognito_
respected. Two can play that game. Let us make believe not know who
he is.” While the traveller’s baggage is transported to a place more
worthy of him,--that is, to the mayor’s own dwelling,--they drive off
in a drozhsky to visit the college and the hospital. They hastily turn
their backs on the prison, which offers not the slightest attraction
for Kléstakof. “What’s the good of seeing the prison? It would be much
better to give our attention to institutions of beneficence!”
Here we are now in the mayor’s house. They are waiting for Kléstakof;
and the entrance of this important personage is very well led up to by
two or three scenes of chattering, in which the voices of the mayor’s
wife and daughter are dominant. At last he appears, followed by the
mayor and other _tchinovniks_ of the district. They have just returned
from visiting the hospital; that is to say, from enjoying a bounteous
collation at the superintendent’s. The ice is broken: tongues are
unloosed; Kléstakof’s performs wonders.
First come the exquisite courtesies of the introduction, then the
expatiation on the charms of the capital; and instantly there begins a
series of inventions grafted by Kléstakof one upon the other.
Here is the summing-up which loses the devil-possessed movement, but
not the comic value of the scene.
At the ministry, Kléstakof is the intimate of the _direktor_; on the
street, he is recognized as he is out walking; the soldiers leave
the guard-house, and present arms; at the theatre, he frequents the
green-room; he composes vaudevilles; he is the friend of Pushkin,
“that great original;”[18] he writes for the magazines; he wrote the
articles on the “Marriage of Figaro,” “Robert le Diable,” “Norma.”
It is he who writes under the signature of the Baron de Brambeus. A
book is mentioned: “I wrote it;” the daughter objects that it bears
on the title-page the name of Iuri Miloslavski; he replies to the
objection [by declaring that there is another book by the same name,
which he wrote]. The balls which he gives at Petersburg are marvellous
beyond description; he collects around his whist-table the minister of
foreign affairs, the ambassadors of France and of Germany. From time to
time a glimpse of the truth shines through this tissue of improvised
boastings, but he leisurely recalls the phrase imprudently uttered. His
importance increases at every new effort of his imagination. Once he
had been offered the direction of the ministry: he would have been glad
to decline, but what would the Emperor have said? Therefore he accepts
the office, and with what hands! He inspires everybody with awe; all
bow in the dust before him; the council of state trembles at sight of
him; at a moment’s notice he will be made field-marshal.
The adventurer would not make any end of speaking, did not intoxication
become a factor, and cut short his flow of words. The _tchinovniks_,
whose dismay has reached the highest pitch, respectfully assist him
to leave the dining-room, to sleep off the effects of his glory and
his wine on a bed in a neighboring room. “Charming young man!” say
the mayor’s wife and daughter in chorus. “Terrible man!” declares the
mayor, in an anxious and dubious tone, for he has detected in all this
braggadocio some grains of falsehood. “But how can one speak of any
thing without a little prevarication? The certain thing is that he
makes fools of the ministers, that he goes to court.” And while the
false _revizor_ is snoring peacefully, taking his mid-day nap, they
turn to his valet Osip as a make-shift. He also unflinchingly receives
flatteries, compliments, and fees.
But now follows the truly new and powerful part of this bold satire.
How to wheedle the ferocious inspector? Is he a man to accept money?
This attempt at corruption may lead to Siberia. The justice essays the
risk with fear and trembling. The bank-note which he held in his hand
slips out. To his great dismay, he sees the _revizor_ make a dash for
the note; to his great delight, he hears the words, “You would do me
great pleasure by lending me this.”--“Why, certainly, only too much
honor.” And discreetly he allows another to take his place.
The postmaster enters in great style, and assumes his most official
attitude. Kléstakof cuts short the formalities of the interview: “Could
you not lend me three hundred rubles?” A new and eager acquiescence; a
new and still more eager disappearance.
The college principal appears: Kléstakof, now in good humor, offers him
a cigar, indulges in rollicking conversation, all of which completely
dumbfounds the poor man’s brain, which is already full of perplexity.
But a new forced loan of three hundred rubles is accomplished in four
words; and the principal takes to his heels, crying, “God have mercy,
he has not visited my classes yet!”
The director of the hospitals has hoped to whiten himself at the
expense of the other _tchinovniks_. He has brought against them a
complaint which our adventurer has but to take action upon. The false
_revizor_ consents that all the details should be transcribed for him.
What the director does not think to proffer is the sum of four hundred
rubles; but this is finally demanded of him, and paid over without a
word.
It is more difficult to extract a little money from the two gossips who
were the first to discover, in the traveller at the inn, the stuff of
which an inspector-general is made. This devil of a man nevertheless
has the skill to extort a little something from them. They are not
_tchinovniks_, to be sure, but how gayly they swell the ranks of the
procession! Gogol justifies their visit in showing them up in the
capacity of petitioners. The one wants to legitimize a bastard son of
his, “born, so to speak, in wedlock,” and consequently half legitimate.
The other would like to have his name mentioned, on some suitable
occasion, before the court and the Emperor: “nothing but these words,
‘in such and such a village lives such and such a person;’ yes, nothing
more,--‘such an one lives in such a village.’”
This train of _tchinovniks_ has its counterpart full of eloquent, and
even melancholy, humor. Kléstakof has just finished counting his money;
he finds the part easy to play, and full of profit. But Osip, whose
dull head contains more sense than his master’s giddy pate, advises
him to have his post-horses put in, and to pack off while yet there is
time. Kléstakof admits that his reasoning is good; still, the farce is
so pleasant that he cannot refrain from writing to one of his friends,
a Petersburg journalist. It is easy to conjecture that this letter will
never reach its destination, and that it will serve to bring about the
_dénoûment_.
Suddenly voices are heard outside the house. It is the merchants, the
hatter at their head, coming to bring their complaints before the
_revizor_. The mayor steals from them shamelessly: when they complain,
he slams the door in your face, saying, “I will not apply the knout,
for that’s against the law; but I will make you eat humble pie.” A
woman comes, complaining that her husband had been forcibly conscripted
as a soldier, in place of two others who had escaped service through
the aid of bribes. “Your husband is a thief: he is already, or he will
be,”--that is the excuse offered her by this “blackguard of a mayor.”
But it is a real inspector-general’s business to perform the functions
of his office. Kléstakof has enjoyed the profits, and thinks that he
can confine his duties to that. At this moment the sick appear in their
hospital dressing-gowns, fever and pestilence in their faces: the false
_revizor_ rudely drives away all this importunate throng, and shuts the
door fast.
In happy contrast to the lugubrious impression of these scenes, the
author introduces some inventions of charming buffoonery. The mayor’s
daughter enters. To beguile the time, Kléstakof makes love to her,
kisses her, falls on his knees before her. The mother appears, and
expresses her astonishment--but in the fashion of Bélise, in the
“Femmes Savantes;” such homage as that is befitting. The daughter
departs after a sharp reprimand. The extempore lover, now addressing
the mother, continues the wooing which he had begun with the daughter,
who returns just as he throws himself on his knees for the second
time. The mayor comes in unexpectedly, and almost chokes with surprise
to hear an inspector-general ask for his daughter’s hand. How can he
deny himself such an honor? The agreement is made on the spot, and the
two lovers fall into each other’s arms.
Just at this moment the valet Osip comes, and, twitching his master
by the tail of his coat, announces that the horses are ready. The
adventurer, recalled to reality, ventures a brief explanation: a very
wealthy uncle to visit, a day’s journey distant. The post-chaise
departs; and the act ends with the postilion’s command to his horses,
“Off with you, on wings!”
The _dénoûment_ has been unnecessarily anticipated. It has a gayety, a
dash, a variety in its detail, which make it amusing, fascinating, rich
in surprises. Nevertheless it is only the identical _dénoûment_ of our
“Misanthrope,” the all-revealing letter in which each character of the
drama receives his share of epigrams. Gogol’s humor is given free play
in this series of rapidly sketched portraits, the originals of which
are united around the reader, who is spared no more than the rest.
The development of the idea has an inexhaustible _verve_; but the idea
itself belongs to Molière, and Merimée long ago ascribed to him all the
honor of it.
What belongs to Gogol, what gives the _dénoûment_ of “The _Revizor_”
an original coloring, is the mayor’s comic fury at finding that he has
been cheated in such a fine fashion. His new title of father-in-law
of an inspector-general had already begun to exalt him, to intoxicate
him. He has crushed the merchants with it. He has overwhelmed them
with the lightning of his glance. He has dismissed them with one of
those deep phrases, such as paint the Russian _tchinovnik_ with his
redoubtable hypocrisy: “God commands us to forgive: I have no spite
against you. You will only be good enough to remember that I am giving
my daughter in marriage, and not to the first noble that comes along.
Endeavor to have your congratulations suitable to the occasion. Don’t
expect to get off with a smoked salmon or a sugar-loaf. Do you hear
me? Go, and God protect you!” The sly old dog has already begun to
dream of a general’s epaulets: it can be seen how he is puffed up; he
receives with the air of a prince the unctuous compliments of the other
_tchinovniks_. Suddenly the pail of milk falls, and the milk is spilt;
the balloon bursts! In all that comes to pass, there is only sheer
comedy; a skilful sharper, and duped rascals. The one who is most duped
of all, the mayor, gives himself up to a storm of the most amusing
frenzy. “You great fool!” he says to himself, pounding himself, “idiot!
you have taken a dish-clout for a great personage! And this very
moment he is galloping off down the road to the sound of the bells. He
will tell the story to everybody. Worse than all, he will find some
penny-a-liner, some scribbler, to cover you with ridicule! Behold the
disgrace of it! He will not spare your rank or your office, and he
will find people to applaud him with their voices and their hands. You
laugh? Laugh at yourselves, yes. [He stamps with passion.] If I only
had ’em! these scribblers! Cursed liberals! Spawn of the Devil! I’d put
a bit on ’em! I’d put a curb on ’em! I’d crush the whole brood of ’em.”
And behold what adds a still keener flavor to this adventure.
At the very moment when the mayor, out of his wits at having
been capable of mistaking this fop for an inspector-general, is
trying to find the one who egged him on to commit this blunder, a
policeman enters, and says, “You are requested to repair instantly
to the _revizor_, who has come on a mission from Petersburg. He
has just arrived at the hotel.” The whole company are, as it were,
thunderstruck; and the curtain falls on a scene of silence, the
arrangement of which Gogol provided for with the minute accuracy of
a realistic writer, for whom attitudes and facial expression are the
indispensable complement of a moral painting. In point of fact, they
are, especially at times when a lively emotion tears away all masks,
the faithful and legible translation of character.