The role of Fonvizin as an artist-playwright and author of satirical essays in the development of Russian literature is enormous, as well as the fruitful influence he had on many Russian writers not only of the 18th century, but also of the first half XIX century. Not only the political progressiveness of Fonvizin’s work, but also his artistic progressiveness determined the deep respect and interest in him that Pushkin quite clearly showed.
Elements of realism arose in Russian literature of the 1770-1790s simultaneously in different areas and in different ways. This was the main trend in the development of Russian aesthetic worldview of this time, which prepared - at the first stage - the future Pushkin stage of it. But Fonvizin did more in this direction than others, not to mention Radishchev, who came after him and not without dependence on his creative discoveries, because it was Fonvizin who first raised the question of realism as a principle, as a system of understanding man and society.
On the other hand, realistic moments in Fonvizin’s work were most often limited to his satirical task. It was precisely the negative phenomena of reality that he was able to understand in a realistic sense, and this narrowed not only the scope of the topics he embodied in the new manner he discovered, but also narrowed the very principles of his formulation of the question. Fonvizin is included in this regard in the tradition of the “satirical direction,” as Belinsky called it, which constitutes a characteristic phenomenon of Russian literature of the 18th century. This trend is unique and, almost earlier than it could be in the West, prepared the formation of the style critical realism. In itself, it grew in the depths of Russian classicism; it was associated with the specific forms that classicism acquired in Russia; it ultimately exploded the principles of classicism, but its origins from it are obvious.
Fonvizin grew up as a writer in the literary environment of Russian noble classicism of the 1760s, in the school of Sumarokov and Kheraskov. Throughout his life, his artistic thinking retained a clear imprint of the influence of this school. The rationalistic understanding of the world, characteristic of classicism, is strongly reflected in Fonvizin’s work. And for him, a person is most often not so much a specific individual as a unit in a social classification, and for him, a political dreamer, the social, the state can completely absorb the personal in the image of a person. The high pathos of social duty, subordinating in the writer’s mind the interests of the “too human” in a person, forced Fonvizin to see in his hero a pattern of civic virtues and vices; because he, like other classics, understood the state itself and the very duty to the state not historically, but mechanistically, to the extent of the metaphysical limitations of the Enlightenment worldview of the 18th century in general. Hence, Fonvizin was characterized by the great advantages of the classicism of his century: clarity, precision of the analysis of man as a general social concept, and the scientific nature of this analysis is at the level of scientific achievements of his time, and social principle assessments of human actions and moral categories. But Fonvizin also had the inevitable shortcomings of classicism: the schematism of abstract classifications of people and moral categories, the mechanistic idea of a person as a conglomerate of abstractly conceivable “abilities,” the mechanistic and abstract nature of the very idea of the state as the norm of social existence.
In Fonvizin, many characters are constructed not according to the law of individual character, but according to a pre-given and limited scheme of moral and social norms. We see the quarrel, and only the quarrel of the Advisor; Gallomaniac Ivanushka - and the entire composition of his role is built on one or two notes; martinet Brigadier, but, apart from martinet, there is little in him characteristic features. This is the method of classicism - to show not living people, but individual vices or feelings, to show not everyday life, but a diagram of social relationships. Characters in comedies and satirical essays by Fonvizin are schematized. The very tradition of calling them “meaningful” names grows on the basis of a method that reduces the content of a character’s characteristics primarily to the very trait that is fixed by his name. The bribe-taker Vzyatkin appears, the fool Slaboumov, the “khalda” Khaldina, the tomboy Sorvantsov, the truth-lover Pravdin, etc. At the same time, the artist’s task is not so much the image individuals, as much as a depiction of social relations, and this task could and was carried out by Fonvizin brilliantly. Social relations, understood as applied to the ideal norm of the state, determined the content of a person only by the criteria of this norm. The subjectively noble character of the norm of state life, built by the Sumarokov-Panin school, also determined a feature characteristic of Russian classicism: it organically divides all people into nobles and “others.” The characteristics of the nobles include signs of their abilities, moral inclinations, feelings, etc. - Pravdin or Skotinin, Milon or Prostakov, Dobrolyubov or Durykin; the same is the differentiation of their characteristics in the text of the corresponding works. On the contrary, “others”, “ignoble” are characterized primarily by their profession, class, place in the social system - Kuteikin, Tsyfirkin, Tsezurkin, etc. Nobles for this system of thought are still people par excellence; or – according to Fonvizin – vice versa: best people must be nobles, and the Durykins are nobles only in name; the rest act as carriers common features their social affiliation, assessed positively or negatively depending on the attitude of this social category to the political concept of Fonvizin, or Sumarokov, Kheraskov, etc.
It is typical for a classicist writer to have the same attitude towards tradition, towards established mask roles literary work, to familiar and constantly repeating stylistic formulas, representing the established collective experience of humanity (the author’s anti-individualistic attitude towards the creative process is characteristic here). And Fonvizin freely operates with such ready-made formulas and masks given to him by ready-made tradition. Dobrolyubov in “The Brigadier” repeats Sumarokov’s ideal lovers’ comedies. The Clerical Advisor came to Fonvizin from the satirical articles and comedies of the same Sumarokov, just as the petimeter-Counselor had already appeared in plays and articles before Fonvizin’s comedy. Fonvizin, within the limits of his classical method, does not look for new individual themes. The world seems to him to have long been dissected, decomposed into typical features, society as a classified “mind” that has predetermined assessments and frozen configurations of “abilities” and social masks. The genres themselves are established, prescribed by rules and demonstrated by examples. A satirical article, a comedy, a solemn speech of praise in a high style (Fonvizin’s “Word for Pavel’s recovery”), etc. - everything is unshakable and does not require the author’s invention; his task in this direction is to communicate to Russian literature the best achievements of world literature; this task of enriching Russian culture was solved all the more successfully by Fonvizin because he understood and felt the specific features of Russian culture itself, which refracted in its own way what came from the West.
Seeing in a person not a personality, but a unit of the social or moral scheme of society, Fonvizin, in his classical manner, is antipsychological in the individual sense. He writes an obituary biography of his teacher and friend Nikita Panin; there is some hot stuff in this article political thought, the rise of political pathos; It also contains the hero’s track record, and there is also his civil glorification; but there is no person, personality, environment, and, in the end, no biography in it. This is a “life”, a diagram of an ideal life, not of a saint, of course, but of a political figure, as Fonvizin understood him. Fonvizin’s anti-psychological manner is even more noticeable in his memoirs. They are called “A sincere confession of my deeds and thoughts,” but there is almost no disclosure of inner life in these memoirs. Meanwhile, Fonvizin himself puts his memoirs in connection with Rousseau’s “Confession,” although he immediately characteristically contrasts his plan with the latter’s plan. In his memoirs, Fonvizin is a brilliant writer of everyday life and a satirist, first of all; individualistic self-revelation, brilliantly resolved by Rousseau's book, is alien to him. In his hands, the memoirs turn into a series of moralizing sketches, such as satirical letters-articles of journalism of the 1760-1780s. At the same time, they provide a picture of social life in its negative manifestations that is exceptional in its wealth of witty details, and this is their great merit. Fonvizin the classic's people are static. The Brigadier, the Advisor, Ivanushka, Julitta (in the early “Nedorosl”), etc. - they are all given from the very beginning and do not develop during the movement of the work. In the first act of "The Brigadier", in the exposition, the heroes themselves directly and unambiguously define all the features of their character schemes, and in the future we see only comic combinations and collisions of the same features, and these collisions do not affect the internal structure of each role. Then, characteristic of Fonvizin is the verbal definition of masks. The soldier's speech of the Brigadier, the clerical speech of the Adviser, the petimetric speech of Ivanushka, in essence, exhausts the description. After subtracting the speech characteristics, no other individual human traits remain. And they will all make jokes: fools and smart ones, evil and good ones, because the heroes of “The Brigadier” are still heroes classic comedy, and everything in it should be funny and “intricate,” and Boileau himself demanded from the author of the comedy “that his words should be abundant in witticisms everywhere” (“Poetic Art”). It was a strong, powerful system of artistic thinking, which gave a significant aesthetic effect in its specific forms and superbly realized not only in “The Brigadier”, but also in Fonvizin’s satirical articles.
Fonvizin remains a classic in the genre that flourished in a different, pre-romantic literary and ideological environment, in artistic memoirs. He adheres to the external canons of classicism in his comedies. They basically follow the rules of the school. Fonvizin most often has no interest in the plot side of the work.
In a number of Fonvizin’s works: in the early “Minor”, in “The Tutor’s Choice” and in “The Brigadier”, in the story “Kalisthenes” the plot is only a frame, more or less conventional. “The Brigadier,” for example, is structured as a series of comic scenes, and above all a series of declarations of love: Ivanushka and the Advisor, the Advisor and the Brigadier, the Brigadier and the Advisor, and all these couples are contrasted not so much in the movement of the plot, but in the plane of schematic contrast, a pair of exemplary lovers: Dobrolyubov and Sophia. There is almost no action in the comedy; "The Brigadier" is very reminiscent in terms of construction of Sumarokov's farces with a gallery of comic characters.
However, even the most convinced, most zealous classicist in Russian noble literature, Sumarokov, found it difficult, perhaps even impossible, not to see or depict specific features of reality at all, to remain only in the world created by reason and the laws of abstract art. To leave this world was obligated, first of all, by dissatisfaction with the real, real world. For the Russian noble classicist, the concrete individual reality of social reality, so different from the ideal norm, is evil; it invades, as a deviation from this norm, the world of the rationalistic ideal; it cannot be framed in reasonable, abstract forms. But it exists, both Sumarokov and Fonvizin know this. Society lives an abnormal, “unreasonable” life. We have to reckon with this and fight against it. Positive phenomena in public life for both Sumarokov and Fonvizin they are normal and reasonable. Negative ones fall out of the scheme and appear in all their painful individuality for the classicist. Hence, in the satirical genres of Sumarokov in Russian classicism, the desire to show concretely real features of reality is born. Thus, in Russian classicism, the reality of a specific fact of life arose as a satirical theme, with a sign of a certain, condemning author’s attitude.
Fonvizin’s position on this issue is more complicated. The tension of the political struggle pushed him to take more radical steps in relation to the perception and depiction of reality, hostile to him, surrounding him on all sides, threatening his entire worldview. The struggle activated his vigilance for life. He raises the question of the social activity of a citizen writer, of an impact on life that is more acute than noble writers could do before him. “At the court of a king, whose autocracy is not limited by anything... can the truth be freely expressed? “- writes Fonvizin in the story “Kalisthenes”. And now his task is to explain the truth. A new ideal of a writer-fighter is emerging, very reminiscent of the ideal of a leading figure in literature and journalism in the Western educational movement. Fonvizin draws closer to the bourgeois progressive thought of the West on the basis of his liberalism, rejection of tyranny and slavery, and the struggle for his social ideal.
Why is there almost no culture of eloquence in Russia, asks Fonvizin in “Friend” honest people" and answers that this does not happen "from a lack of national talent, which is capable of everything great, but from a lack Russian language, whose wealth and beauty are convenient for any expression,” but from the lack of freedom, lack of public life, and the exclusion of citizens from participating in the political life of the country. Art and political activity are closely related to each other. For Fonvizin, the writer is “a guardian of the common good,” “a useful adviser to the sovereign, and sometimes the savior of his fellow citizens and the fatherland.”
In the early 1760s, in his youth, Fonvizin was fascinated by the ideas of bourgeois radical thinkers in France. In 1764, he remade Gresset’s “Sidney” into Russian, not quite a comedy, but not a tragedy either, a play similar in type to the psychological dramas of bourgeois literature of the 18th century. in France. In 1769, an English story, “Sidney and Scilly or Beneficence and Gratitude,” translated by Fonvizin from Arno, was published. This is a sentimental work, virtuous, sublime, but built on new principles of individual analysis. Fonvizin is looking for rapprochement with the bourgeoisie French literature. The fight against reaction pushes him onto the path of interest in advanced Western thought. And in his literary work, Fonvizin could not be only a follower of classicism.
The history of the interpretation of the comedy “The Minor” over the past two centuries - from the first critical reviews of the 19th century. to the fundamental literary works of the 20th century. - strictly returns any researcher to the same observation of the poetics of Fonvizin’s masterpiece, a kind of aesthetic paradox of comedy, the essence of which the literary tradition sees in the different aesthetic dignity of ethically polar characters. The tradition considers the criterion of this dignity to be nothing more than life-likeness: a bright, reliable, plastic image of vice is recognized as more artistically valuable than pale, ideological virtue:
V. G. Belinsky:“In his [Fonvizin’s] comedy there is nothing ideal, and therefore nothing creative: the characters of fools in it are faithful and clever lists from caricatures of the reality of that time; the characters of the intelligent and virtuous are rhetorical maxims, images without faces.”
P. A. Vyazemsky: “All other [except Prostakova] persons are secondary; some of them are completely extraneous, others are only adjacent to the action. ‹…› Of the forty phenomena, including several quite long ones, there is hardly a third in the entire drama, and even then short ones, that are part of the action itself.”
The cited observations on the poetics of “The Minor” clearly reveal the aesthetic parameters of two antagonistic groups of comedy characters: on the one hand, verbal painting and “living life” in a plastically authentic everyday environment, on the other – oratory, rhetoric, reasoning, speaking. These two semantic centers very accurately determine the nature of artistic specificity different groups characters like different types artistic imagery, and the Russian literary tradition to which these types go back. Needless to say, the general principles of the construction of artistic images of “The Minor” are determined by the same value orientations and aesthetic attitudes of pictorial plastic satire (comedy) and ideologically ethereal ode (tragedy)!
The specificity of his dramatic word, which is initially and fundamentally two-valued and ambiguous, is brought to the center of the aesthetics and poetics of “Minor.”
The first property that the dramatic word comedy offers its researcher is its obvious punning nature. The speech element of “Nedoroslya” is a stream of voluntary and involuntary puns, among which the technique of destroying phraseological units is especially productive, pitting the traditionally conventional figurative against the direct literal meaning of a word or phrase:
Skotinin. ‹…› and in our neighborhood there are such large pigs that there is not a single one of them that, standing on its hind legs, would not be taller than each of us by a whole head (I, 5); Skotinin. ‹…› Yes, listen, I’ll do it so that everyone will blow the trumpet: in this little neighborhood there are only pigs to live (II, 3).
Playing with meanings is inaccessible to Skotinin: moreover, that the pigs are very tall, and the forehead of Uncle Vavila Falaleich is incredibly strong to break, he does not want and cannot say. In the same way, Mr. Prostakov, declaring that “Sofyushkino’s real estate estate cannot be moved to us” (1.5), means real movement through physical space, and Mitrofan, answering Pravdin’s question: “Is it far are you in history? very precise indication of a specific distance: “In another you will fly to distant lands, to a kingdom of thirty” (IV, 8), I do not intend to be funny at all, playing with the meanings of the words “history” ( academic discipline and the genre of popular literature) and “far” (the amount of knowledge and the extent of space).
Milon, Pravdin and Starodum are a different matter. In their mouths, the word “strong-browed” sounds like a condemnation of Skotinin’s mental abilities, and the question “How far are you in history?” suggests an answer that outlines the scope of knowledge. And this division of the meanings of a pun word between characters of different groups takes on a characterological meaning artistic technique. The level of meaning that a character uses begins to serve as his aesthetic characteristic:
Pravdin. When only your cattle can be happy, then your wife will have bad peace from them and from you. Skotinin. Thin peace? bah! bah! bah! Don't I have enough light rooms? For her alone I will give a coal stove with a stove-bed (II,3); Mrs. Prostakova. I cleaned the chambers for your dear uncle (II.5); Pravdin. ‹…› your guest has just arrived from Moscow and that he needs peace much more than your son’s praises. ‹…› Ms. Prostakova. Ah, my father! Everything is ready. I cleaned the room for you myself (III.5).
Compare with the speech of Pravdin and the dictionary of Starodum, Milon and Sophia, almost entirely consisting of similar abstract concepts, which, as a rule, relate to the sphere of spiritual life (education, teaching, heart, soul, mind, rules, respect, honor, position, virtue, happiness, sincerity, friendship, love, good behavior, calmness, courage and fearlessness), to make sure: synonymous relationships within this group of characters are also formed on the basis of the same level of mastery of the word and its meaning. This synonymy is supported by the idea of not so much blood, but rather spiritual and intellectual kinship, realized in the verbal motif of “way of thinking”, which connects the virtuous heroes of “The Minor” with each other: “Starodum” (reads). Take the trouble to find out his way of thinking” (IV, 4).
For the heroes of this series, the “way of thinking” becomes in the full sense of the word a way of action: since it is impossible to recognize the way of thinking except in the process of speaking (or written communication), the dialogues of Pravdin, Starodum, Milon and Sophia with each other turn into a full-fledged stage action in which the act of speaking acquires dramatic significance, since for these characters it is speaking and verbal operations at the level general concepts have characterological functions.
And just as the blood relatives of the Prostakovs-Skotinins absorb strangers into their circle based on the level of proficiency with words in its material, objective sense (Kuteikin), so the circle of spiritual like-minded people Starodum-Pravdin-Milon-Sofya willingly opens up to meet their ideological brother Tsyfirkin, who is guided in his actions by the same concepts of honor and position:
Tsyfirkin. I took money for service, I didn’t take it in vain, and I won’t take it. Starodum. Here's the direct one kind person! ‹…› Tsyfirkin. Why, your honor, are you complaining? Pravdin. Because you are not like Kuteikin (V,6).
The semantic centers of character nomination also work on this same hierarchy of meanings. Their meaningful names and the surnames elevate one group to the material series - the Prostakovs and Skotinins are simple and bestial, and Kuteikin, who joined them, traces his personal genesis from the ritual dish kutya; while the names and surnames of their antagonists go back to conceptual and intellectual categories: Pravdin - truth, Starodum - thought, Milon - dear, Sophia - wisdom. But after all, Tsyfirkin owes his surname not only to his profession, but also to abstraction - a number. Thus, people-objects and people-concepts, united within a group by a synonymous connection, enter into intergroup antonymic relations. So in comedy, it is precisely the punning word, which is itself a synonym and antonym, that forms two types of artistic imagery - everyday heroes and ideological heroes - going back to different literary traditions, equally one-sided and conceptual in the model of reality they create, but also equally to an artistic extent - the traditions of satirical and odic imagery.
Genre traditions of satire and ode in the comedy “Minor”
The doubling of the types of artistic imagery in "The Minor", due to the punningly doubling word, actualizes almost all the formative attitudes of the two older literary works. traditions of the XVIII V. (satires and odes) within the text of the comedy.
The very way of existence of antagonistic comedy characters on stage, which presupposes a certain type of connection between a person and the environment in its spatial-plastic and material incarnations, resurrects the traditional opposition of satirical and odic types of artistic imagery. The heroes of the comedy are clearly divided into satirical and everyday “homebodies” and odic “wanderers”.
The settledness of the Prostakov-Skotinins is emphasized by their constant attachment to the enclosed space of the house-estate, the image of which grows from the verbal background of their remarks in all its traditional components: a fortress village (“Mrs. Prostakova. ‹…› I was now looking for you throughout the village” - II,5), the manor's house with its living room, which is the stage area and the scene of action of "The Minor", outbuildings ("Mitrofan. Now let's run to the dovecote" - 1.4; "Skotinin. I was going for a walk in the barnyard "- 1.8) - all this surrounds the everyday characters of “The Minor” with a plastically authentic home environment.
The dynamism of Starodum’s image makes him a genuine human generator and the root cause of all the incidents of “The Minor.” And along this line, quite dramatic associations arise: in tragedy, the troublemaker also came from outside; in the pre-Fonvizin comedy, the function of external force was, on the contrary, the harmonization of a world that had deviated from the norm. The function of Starodum is both; he not only disturbs the tranquility of the simpleton’s monastery, but also contributes to the resolution of the conflict of the comedy, in which Pravdin also takes an active part.
It is curious that the satirical spatial statics of everyday life and the odic dynamics of the ideologized heroes of “The Minor” are complemented by a picture of the inheritance of odo-satirical figurative structures and, as far as their stage plasticity is concerned, only with a mirror exchange of the categories of dynamics and statics. In the camp of the denounced homebodies, intense physical action reigns, most evident in the external plastic drawing of the roles of Mitrofan and Mrs. Prostakova, who every now and then run somewhere and fight with someone (in this regard, it is appropriate to recall two stage fights, Mitrofan and Eremeevna with Skotinin and Prostakova with Skotinin):
Mitrofan. Now I’ll run to the dovecote (I,4); (Mitrofan, standing still, turns over.) Vralman. Utalets! He won’t stand still like a ticking horse! Go! Fort! (Mitrofan runs away.)(III.8); Mrs. Prostakova. From morning to evening, like someone hanged by the tongue, I don’t lay down my hands: I scold, I fight (I.5); Ms. Prostakova (running around the theater in anger and in thoughts)(IV,9).
Not at all the same - virtuous wanderers, of whom Milo shows the greatest plastic activity, twice intervening in the fight (“separates Ms. Prostakova from Skotinin” - III,3 and “pushing away from Sophia Eremeevna, who was clinging to her, she shouts to the people, having a naked sword in her hand” - V,2), and even Sophia, several times making explosive, impulsive movements on stage: “Sophia (throwing herself into his arms). Uncle! (II,2); “(Seeing Starodum, he runs up to him"(IV,1) and "rushes" to him with the words: “Oh, uncle! Protect me! (V.2). Otherwise, they are in a state of complete stage static: standing or sitting, they conduct a dialogue - just like “two jury speakers.” Apart from a few remarks marking entrances and exits, the performance of Pravdin and Starodum is practically not characterized in any way, and their actions on stage are reduced to speaking or reading aloud, accompanied by typically oratorical gestures:
Starodum (pointing to Sophia). Her uncle Starodum came to her (III, 3); Starodum (pointing to Ms. Prostakova). These are the fruits worthy of evil! (V, is the last one).
Thus, the general feature of the type of stage plasticity divides the characters of “The Minor” into different genre associations: Starodum, Pravdin, Milon and Sophia are stage statues, like images of a solemn ode or heroes of a tragedy; their plasticity is completely subordinated to the act of speaking, which has to be recognized as the only form of stage action characteristic of them. The Prostakov-Skotinin family is active and lively, like characters in satire and comedy; their stage performance is dynamic and has the character of a physical action, which is only accompanied by the word that names it.
The same complexity of genre associations, oscillation on the brink of types of odic and satirical imagery can be noted in the material attributes of “The Minor,” which completes the transition of different types of artistic imagery in their human incarnation to the world image of comedy as a whole. Food, clothes and money accompany every step of the Prostakov-Skotinins in the comedy:
Eremeevna. ‹…› I deigned to eat five buns. Mitrofan. What! Three slices of corned beef, but I don’t remember the hearth slices, five, I don’t remember, six (I,4); Ms. Prostakova (examining the caftan on Mitrofan). The caftan is all ruined (I,1); Prostakov. We ‹…› took her to our village and look after her estate as if it were our own (I.5); Skotinin and both Prostakovs. Ten thousand! (I,7); Mrs. Prostakova. This is three hundred rubles a year. We seat you at the table with us. Our women wash his linen. (I,6); Mrs. Prostakova. I'll knit a wallet for you, my friend! There would be somewhere to put Sophia’s money (III.6).
Food, clothing and money appear in their simple physical nature as objects; By absorbing simpleton’s soulless flesh into their circle, they aggravate the very property of the characters of this group, in which the literary tradition sees their “realism” and aesthetic advantage over ideological heroes - their extreme physical authenticity and, so to speak, material character. Another thing is whether this property looked so worthy, even if only from an aesthetic point of view, for the 18th century viewer, for whom such materiality was not only a secondary image, but also undoubtedly an undeniable reality.
As for the material halos of characters of another series, here the situation is more complicated. Letters pass through the hands of all the hero-ideologists, introducing them to the substantial, existential level of dramatic action. Their ability to read (i.e., engage in spiritual activity) is somehow actualized in stage action comedy with the help of books read on stage (Sofya reading Fenelon’s treatise “On the Education of Girls”) or behind the stage (“Sofyushka! My glasses are on the table, in the book” - IV, 3). So it turns out that it is precisely things - letters, glasses and books, mainly associated with the images of heroic ideologists, that take them out of the confines of everyday life into the existential realm of spiritual and intellectual life. The same applies to other objects that appear in their hands, which in this position strive to renounce their own as soon as possible. material nature and move into the allegorical, symbolic and moral spheres, as was characteristic of the few material attributes of tragic action before Fonvizin:
Pravdin. So, you left the yard empty-handed? (opens his snuff box). Starodum (takes tobacco from Pravdin). How about nothing? The snuff box costs five hundred rubles. Two people came to the merchant. One, having paid money, brought home a snuff box ‹…›. And you think that the other one came home with nothing? You're wrong. He brought his five hundred rubles intact. I left the court without villages, without a ribbon, without ranks, but I brought what was mine home intact: my soul, my honor, my rules (III, 1).
And if money for Prostakovs and Skotinin has the meaning of a goal and causes a purely physiological thirst for possession, then for Starodum it is a means of acquiring spiritual independence from the material conditions of life: “Starodum. I have gained so much that at your marriage the poverty of a worthy groom will not stop us (III, 2).”
If the members of the Prostakov family in their material world eat corned beef and hearth pies, drink kvass, try on caftans and chase pigeons, fight, count once on their fingers and move a pointer along the pages of an incomprehensible book, look after other people’s villages as if they were their own, knit wallets for strangers money and try to kidnap other people's brides; if this dense material environment, into which a person enters as a homogeneous element, rejects any spiritual act as alien, then the world of Pravdin, Starodum, Milon and Sophia is emphatically ideal, spiritual, immaterial. In this world, the way of communication between people is not family resemblance, as between Mitrofan, Skotinin and the pig, but like-mindedness, the fact of which is established in the dialogical act of communicating one’s opinions. This world is dominated by the admittedly tragic ideologies of virtue, honor and office, with ideal content which compares the way of thinking of each person:
Pravdin. You make one feel the true essence of the position of a nobleman (III.1); Sophia. I now vividly feel both the dignity of an honest man and his position (IV, 2); Starodum. I see in him the heart of an honest man (IV, 2); Starodum. I am a friend of honest people. This feeling is ingrained in my upbringing. In yours I see and honor virtue, adorned with enlightened reason (IV, 6); Pravdin. I will not step down from my position in any way (V,5).
Among the hero-ideologists, the spiritual improvement of people is constantly carried out: Pravdin gets rid of his political illusions, a well-bred girl, in front of the audience, reads a book about her upbringing, drawing the appropriate conclusions from it, and even Starodum - albeit in an off-stage act, which he only narrates , – is still represented in the process of spiritual growth:
Starodum. The experiences of my life have taught me this. Oh, if I had previously been able to control myself, I would have had the pleasure of serving my fatherland longer. ‹…› Then I saw that between casual people and respectable people there is sometimes an immeasurable difference ‹…› (III, 1).
The only action of the people inhabiting this world - reading and speaking, perceiving and communicating thoughts - replaces all possible actions of dramatic characters. Thus, the world of thought, concept, ideal is, as it were, humanized on the stage of “The Minor” in the figures of private people, whose bodily forms are completely optional, since they serve only as conductors of the act of thinking and its translation into the matter of the sounding word. So, following the dichotomy of words into objective and conceptual, systems of images into everyday heroes and the hero-ideologists are divided into the flesh and spirit of the world image of the comedy, but the comedy continues to remain the same. And this brings us to the problem of the structural originality of that general, holistic world image that takes shape in a single text of the dual imagery of “The Minor.”
A pun word is funny because of its vibration, combining incompatible meanings at one common point, the awareness of which gives rise to a grotesque picture of absurdity, nonsense and illogicality: when there is no definite, unambiguous meaning, ambiguity arises, leaving the reader inclined to accept one or the other of the meanings; but the point at which they meet is nonsense: if not yes and not no (and yes and no), then what? This relativity of meaning is one of the most universal verbal leitmotifs of “The Minor.” We can say that all comedy is located at this point of intersection of meanings and the absurd, but extremely life-like image of reality it generates, which is equally determined not by one, but by two, and, moreover, opposing world images. This grotesque flickering of the action of “The Minor” on the verge of reliable reality and absurd alogism finds itself in the comedy, at its very beginning, a peculiar embodiment in an object: the famous caftan of Mitrofan. In the comedy, it remains unclear what this caftan actually is: is it narrow (“Mrs. Prostakova. He, the thief, burdened him everywhere” - I,1), is it wide (“Prostakov (stammering out of timidity). Me... a little baggy..." - I, 3), or, finally, it fits Mitrofan (“Skotinin. Kaftan, brother, well sewn” - I, 4).
In this aspect, the name of comedy acquires fundamental significance. “The Minor” is a multi-figure composition, and Mitrofan is by no means its main character, therefore the text does not give any reason to attribute the title only and exclusively to him. Minor is another punning word that covers the entire world image of the comedy with its dual meaning: in relation to Mitrofan, the word “minor” appears in its objective terminological sense, since it actualizes a physiological quantitative characteristic - age. But in its conceptual meaning it qualitatively characterizes another version of the world image: the young shoots of the Russian “new people” are also undergrowth; flesh without soul and spirit without flesh are equally imperfect.
The confrontation and juxtaposition of two groups of characters in the comedy emphasizes one of their common properties: both of them are located, as it were, on the verge of being and existence: the physically existing Prostakov-Skotinins are spiritless - and, therefore, they do not exist from the point of view of the consciousness of the 18th century devoted to the existential idea .; the ideas of Starodum and Co. possessing the highest reality? deprived of flesh and life - and, therefore, in some sense they also do not exist: virtue, which does not live in the flesh, and vice, deprived of being, turn out to be equally a mirage life.
This paradoxical and absurd situation most accurately reproduces the general state of Russian reality of the 1760-1780s, when Russia seemed to have an enlightened monarchy (“Order of the Commission on the drafting of a New Code”, which exists as a text, but not as legislative life and legal space), but in reality it was not there; as if there were laws and freedom (the decree on guardianship, the decree on bribes, the decree on noble freedom), but in reality they did not exist either, since some decrees did not work in practice, and in the name of others the greatest lawlessness was committed.
Here - discovered for the first time by Fonvizin and embodied by purely artistic means deep root, to put it mildly, the “peculiarities” of Russian reality of modern times are a catastrophic split between word and deed, which, each in itself, give rise to different realities, in no way compatible and absolutely opposite: the ideal reality of right, law, reason and virtue, existing as a pure existential idea outside of everyday life, and the everyday, idealess reality of arbitrariness, lawlessness, stupidity and vice, existing as everyday everyday practice.
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The poster itself explains the characters.
P. A. Vyazemsky about the comedy “Minor”
A truly social comedy.
N. V. Gogop about the comedy “The Minor”
The first appearance of the comedy “The Minor” on the theater stage in 1872 caused, according to the recollections of contemporaries, “throwing wallets” - the audience threw wallets filled with ducats onto the stage, such was their admiration for what they saw.
Before D.I. Fonvizin, the public knew almost no Russian comedy. In the first public theater, organized by Peter I, Moliere's plays were staged, and the emergence of Russian comedy is associated with the name of A.P. Sumarokov. “The property of comedy is to rule the temper with mockery” - Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin embodied these words of A.P. Sumarokov in his plays.
What caused such a strong reaction from the viewer? The liveliness of the characters, especially the negative ones, their figurative speech, the author's humor, so close to the folk one, the theme of the play is a satire on the principles of life and education of the sons of landowners, denunciation of serfdom.
Fonvizin departs from one of the golden rules of classical comedy: while observing the unity of place and time, he omits the unity of action. There is virtually no plot development in the play; it consists of conversations between negative and positive characters. This is the influence contemporary author European comedy, here he goes further than Sumarokov. “French comedy is absolutely good... There are great actors in comedy... when you look at them, you, of course, forget that they are playing a comedy, but it seems that you are seeing a straight story,” Fonvizin writes to his sister while traveling around France. But Fonvizin can in no way be called an imitator. His plays are filled with a truly Russian spirit, written in a truly Russian language.
It was from “The Minor” that I. A. Krylov’s fable “Trishkin Kaftan” grew, it was from the speeches of the characters in the play that the aphorisms “mother’s son”, “I don’t want to study, I want to get married”, “fearing the abyss of wisdom” came out...
The main idea of the play is to show the fruits of bad upbringing or even the lack thereof, and it grows into a frightening picture of wild landowner evil. Contrasting “evil characters” taken from reality, presenting them in a funny way, Fonvizin puts the author’s comments into the mouths of positive heroes, unusually virtuous people. As if not hoping that the reader himself will figure out who is bad and why he is bad, the writer main role allocates to positive heroes.
“The truth is that Starodum, Milon, Pravdin, Sophia are not so much living faces as moralistic dummies; but their actual originals were no more alive than their dramatic photographs... They were walking, but still lifeless, schemes of a new good morality...
Time, intensification and experiments were needed to awaken organic life in these still dead cultural preparations,” historian V. O. Klyuchevsky wrote about the comedy.
Negative characters appear completely alive before the viewer. And this is the main artistic merit of the play, Fonvizin’s luck. Like the positive characters, the negative ones have telling names, and the surname “Skotinin” grows to a full name artistic image. In the very first act, Skotinin is naively surprised by his special love for pigs: “I love pigs, sister; and in our neighborhood we have such large pigs that there is not a single one of them that, standing on its hind legs, would not be taller than each of us by a whole head.” The author's ridicule is all the stronger because it is put into the mouth of the hero at whom we laugh. It turns out that love for pigs is a family trait.
“Prostakov. It’s a strange thing, brother, how family can resemble family! Our Mitrofanushka is just like our uncle - and he is as big a hunter as you are. When I was still three years old, when I saw a pig, I used to tremble with joy. .
Skotinin. This is truly a curiosity! Well, brother, let Mitrofan love pigs because he is my nephew. There is some similarity here: why am I so addicted to pigs?
Prostakov. And there is some similarity here. That’s how I reason.”
The author plays out the same motive in the remarks of other characters. In the fourth act, in response to Skotinin’s words that his family is “great and ancient,” Pravdin ironically remarks: “This way you will convince us that he is older than Adam.” Unsuspecting Skotinin falls into a trap, readily confirming this: “What do you think? At least a few...” and Starodum interrupts him: “That is, your ancestor was created even on the sixth day, but a little earlier than Adam.” Starodum directly refers to the Bible - on the sixth day, God created first animals, then humans. The comparison of caring for pigs with caring for a wife, coming from the same mouth of Skotinin, evokes Milon’s indignant remark: “What a bestial comparison!” Kuteikin, a cunning churchman, puts the author’s description into the mouth of Mitrofanushka himself, forcing him to read from the book of hours: “I am cattle, not man, a reproach of men.” The representatives of the Skotinin family themselves speak with comical simplicity about their “bestial” nature.
“Prostakova. After all, I am the Skotinins’ father. The deceased father married the deceased mother; she was nicknamed Priplodin. They had eighteen of us children...” Skotinin speaks about his sister in the same terms as about his “cute pigs”: “To be honest, there is only one litter; Yes, look how she squealed..." Prostakova herself likens her love for her son to the affection of a dog for her puppies, and says about herself: “I, brother, won’t bark with you,” “Oh, I’m a dog’s daughter! what have I done!” Another special feature of the play “The Minor” is that each of the characters speaks their own language. This was appreciated by Fonvizin’s contemporaries: “everyone differs in his own character with his sayings.”
The speech of the retired soldier Tsyfirkin is filled with military terms, the speech of Kuteikin is built on Church Slavonic phrases, the speech of Vralman, a Russian German, obsequious with his masters and arrogant with his servants, is filled with aptly captured pronunciation features.
The vivid typicality of the play's heroes - Prostakov, Mitrofanushka, Skotinin - goes far beyond its boundaries in time and space. And in A. S. Pushkin in “Eugene Onegin”, and in M. Yu. Lermontov in “Tambov Treasury”, and in M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in “The Tashkent Gentlemen” we find references to them, still alive and carrying within themselves the essence of serf-owners, so talentedly revealed by Fonvizin.
What is the composition of "Undergrowth"? First of all, it is worth saying that all the events of the comedy are grouped around one main intrigue: the struggle for Sophia by three contenders for her hand - Skotinin, Mitrofanushka and Milon.
Composition "Undergrowth"
The action of the comedy develops clearly and harmoniously. At the beginning of the play, in the scene with the fitting of a caftan, the author skillfully introduces the viewer to the everyday environment of a provincial estate. This episode immediately allows the author to introduce the viewer to most of the main characters of the play. This is the exposition of the play.
In the sixth and seventh scenes of the first act, around the scene with Starodum’s letter, a knot of comedy is tied. New characters appear: Sophia and Pravdin. This is the beginning of a comedy.
In the second and third acts, events develop and escalate. All the characters in the comedy are on stage. All three contenders enter the fight for Sophia. Characters are also revealed characters.
The highest moment of tension in the action falls at the end of the fourth act, when Prostakova decides to kidnap Sophia and forcefully marry Mitrofanushka.
In the fifth act, when the failure of Prostakova’s attempt is discovered, the action begins to decline. In the fourth scene, the denouement comes: Prostakova’s estate comes into trusteeship. The last phenomenon is the finale of the play. Starodum’s exclamation: “Here are the fruits of evil!” sums up Prostakova’s entire life and at the same time explains the idea of comedy. This is the composition “Undergrowth”. Let us now move on to consider the realism in this work.
Realism in "Minor"
Despite the presence in "Minor" of the features of the dominant literary style- classicism (unity of place, time, action, division of characters into positive and negative, “significant” names and surnames that reveal the main features of the heroes), “Minor” is a comedy of the new literary school, it contains obvious deviations from classicism. The rules of classicism did not allow the mixing of comic and tragic elements in drama.
Meanwhile, in Fonvizin’s comedy we see both funny scenes and sketches of the difficult, disgusting sides of serf life. Further, what attracts attention in the comedy is the breadth and versatility of the characters’ characteristics. Prostakova is both a cruel landowner, and an ignorant woman, and a person deceitful to the point of cynicism, and a loving mother; Mitrofanushka is a stupid person, a glutton, an ignorant person, a cunning person, and an ungrateful son. These are not abstract images of classicism, but real, living people. The principle of dividing heroes into “positive” and “negative” did not prevent Fonvizin from giving a realistic interpretation of the images. In the comedy "The Minor" even the reasoners turned into living people. The names of some of the characters in the work (Mitrofanushka, Prostakova, Skotinin) therefore became household names because the very images of the heroes are distinguished by their vitality and truthfulness. In these images, Fonvizin achieved remarkable artistic typification. And this speaks of the unconditional realism of the comedy images.
The language of "Minor" is also realistic. Brightness speech characteristics We have already noted the characters. The sharpness and accuracy of the language of comedy is evidenced by the fact that many of its expressions have entered Russian colloquial speech and turned into a kind of proverbs, for example: “I don’t want to study, I want to get married”, “What are cab drivers for?”, “Beasts are all hard-headed by birth”, “Wealth is no help to a stupid son”, “These are the fruits of evil ”, etc. Even the Gallicisms of the comedy (“I rejoice, having made your acquaintance”, “I did my duty”, etc.) reflect the true language of individual layers of Russian society of the Fonvizin era.
Finally, the ideological pathos of the play goes beyond the usual tasks of a classical comedy - just to make the audience laugh.
Thus, the comedy turned into the first realistic work of Russian literature. That is why Gorky called Fonvizin “the founder of realism” in Russian literature.
Let's look at the features of the comedy created by Fonvizin ("The Minor"). Analysis of this work is the topic of this article. This play is a masterpiece Russian literature 18th century. This work is included today in the collection of Russian classical literature. It affects a whole range of eternal problems". And the beauty of the high style still attracts many readers today. The name of this play is associated with the decree issued by Peter I, according to which “minors” (young nobles) are prohibited from entering the service and getting married without education.
History of the play
Back in 1778, the idea of this comedy arose from its author, who was Fonvizin. “The Minor,” the analysis of which interests us, was written in 1782 and presented to the public in the same year. We should briefly highlight the time of creation of the play that interests us.
During the reign of Catherine II, Fonvizin wrote "The Minor". The analysis of the heroes presented below proves that they were heroes of their time. The period in the development of our country is associated with the dominance of ideas. They were borrowed by the Russians from the French enlighteners. The dissemination of these ideas and their great popularity among the educated philistines and nobility was largely facilitated by the empress herself. She is known to have corresponded with Diderot, Voltaire, and d’Alembert. In addition, Catherine II opened libraries and schools, and supported the development of art and culture in Russia through various means.
Continuing to describe the comedy that D.I. Fonvizin created (“The Minor”), analyzing its features, it should be noted that, as a representative of his era, the author certainly shared the ideas that dominated at that time in noble society. He tried to reflect them in his work, exposing not only the positive aspects to readers and viewers, but also pointing out misconceptions and shortcomings.
"Minor" - an example of classicism
Analysis of the comedy "Minor" by Fonvizin requires considering this play as part of a cultural era and literary tradition. This work is considered one of the best examples of classicism. There is unity of action in the play (there are no secondary plot lines in it, only the struggle for Sophia’s hand and her property is described), place (the characters do not move long distances, all events take place either near the Prostakovs’ house or inside it), and time ( All events take no more than a day). In addition, he used “speaking” surnames, which are traditional for the classic play, Fonvizin (“The Minor”). Analysis shows that, following tradition, he divided his characters into positive and negative. The positive ones are Pravdin, Starodum, Milon, Sophia. They are contrasted with Prostakov, Mitrofan, Skotinin by D.I. Fonvizin (play "The Minor"). An analysis of their names shows that they make it clear to the reader which features in the image of a particular character are prevalent. For example, Pravdin is the personification of morality and truth in the work.
A new genre of comedy, its features
“Minor” at the time of its creation became an important step forward in the development of literature in our country, in particular drama. Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin created a new socio-political. It harmoniously combines a number of realistic scenes depicted with sarcasm, irony, and laughter from the life of some ordinary representatives of high society (nobility) with sermons about morality, virtue, and the need for education human qualities, which were characteristic of the Enlightenment. Instructive monologues do not burden the perception of the play. They complement this work, as a result of which it becomes deeper.
First action
The play, the author of which is Fonvizin (“Minor”), is divided into 5 acts. Analysis of a work involves a description of the organization of the text. In the first act we meet the Prostakovs, Pravdin, Sophia, Mitrofan, Skotinin. The characters' personalities emerge immediately, and the reader understands that Skotinin and the Prostakovs - and Sophia and Pravdin - are positive. In the first act there is an exposition and plot of this work. In the exhibition we get to know the characters, we learn that Sophia lives in the care of the Prostakovs, who is going to be married off to Skotinin. Reading the letter from Starodum is the beginning of the play. Sophia now turns out to be a rich heiress. Any day now, her uncle is returning to take the girl to his place.
Development of events in the play created by Fonvizin (“Minor”)
We will continue the analysis of the work with a description of how events developed. The 2nd, 3rd and 4th acts are their development. We meet Starodum and Milon. Prostakova and Skotinin are trying to please Starodum, but their flattery, falsity, lack of education and enormous thirst for profit only repels them. They look stupid and funny. The funniest scene of this work is the questioning of Mitrofan, during which the stupidity of not only this young man, but also his mother is revealed.
Climax and denouement
Act 5 - climax and denouement. It should be noted that researchers have different opinions about what moment should be considered the climax. There are 3 most popular versions. According to the first, this is the kidnapping of Sophia Prostakova, according to the second, Pravdin’s reading of a letter, which says that Prostakova’s estate is coming under his care, and, finally, the third version is Prostakova’s rage after she realizes her own powerlessness and tries to “get back "on his servants. Each of these versions is fair, since it examines the work of interest to us from different points of view. The first, for example, highlights storyline, dedicated to Sophia’s marriage. An analysis of the episode of Fonvizin’s comedy “The Minor,” connected with marriage, indeed allows us to consider it key in the work. The second version examines the play from a socio-political point of view, highlighting the moment when justice prevails on the estate. The third focuses on the historical one, according to which Prostakova is the personification of the weakened principles and ideals of the old nobility that have become a thing of the past, who, however, do not yet believe in their own defeat. This nobility, according to the author, is based on lack of enlightenment, lack of education, as well as low moral principles. During the denouement, everyone leaves Prostakova. She had nothing left. Pointing to it, Starodum says that these are “worthy fruits” of “evil morality.”
Negative characters
As we have already noted, the main characters are clearly divided into negative and positive. Mitrofan, Skotinin and Prostakovs - negative heroes. Prostakova is a woman seeking profit, uneducated, rude, and domineering. She knows how to flatter to gain benefits. However, Prostakova loves her son. Prostakov appears as the “shadow” of his wife. This is a weak-willed character. His word means little. Skotinin is the brother of Mrs. Prostakova. This is an equally uneducated and stupid person, quite cruel, like his sister, greedy for money. For him, going to the pigs in the barnyard is the best thing to do. Mitrofan is a typical son of his mother. This is a spoiled young man of 16 who inherited a love of pigs from his uncle.
Issues and heredity
In the play, it should be noted that Fonvizin (“The Minor”) devotes an important place to the issue of family ties and heredity. Analyzing this question, let's say, for example, that Prostakova is only married to her husband (a “simple” man who doesn’t want much). However, she is actually Skotinina, akin to her brother. Her son absorbed the qualities of both his parents - “animal” qualities and stupidity from his mother and weak-willedness from his father.
Similar family ties can be traced between Sophia and Starodum. Both of them are honest, virtuous, educated. The girl listens to her uncle attentively, respects him, and “absorbs” science. Pairs of opposites create negative and goodies. Children - spoiled, stupid Mitrofan and meek smart Sophia. Parents love children, but they approach their upbringing in different ways - Starodub talks about truth, honor, morality, and Prostakova only pampers Mitrofan and says that he will not need education. A pair of suitors - Milon, who sees an ideal and his friend in Sophia, who loves her, and Skotinin, who calculates the fortune that he will receive after marrying this girl. At the same time, he is not interested in Sophia as a person. Skotinin does not even try to provide his bride with comfortable housing. Prostakov and Pravdin are in fact the “voice of truth”, a kind of “auditors”. But in the person of the official we find active strength, help and real action, while Prostakov is a passive character. The only thing this hero could say was to reproach Mitrofan at the end of the play.
Issues raised by the author
Analyzing, it becomes clear that each of the above-described pairs of characters reflects a separate problem that is revealed in the work. This is a problem of education (which is complemented by the example of half-educated teachers like Kuteikin, as well as impostors such as Vralman), upbringing, fathers and children, family life, relationships between spouses, relations of nobles to servants. Each of these problems is examined through the prism of educational ideas. Fonvizin, sharpening his attention to the shortcomings of the era by using comic techniques, the emphasis is on the need to change outdated, traditional foundations that have become irrelevant. They drag people into the swamp of stupidity and evil, and liken people to animals.
As our analysis of Fonvizin’s play “The Minor” showed, the main idea and theme of the work is the need to educate the nobility in accordance with educational ideals, the foundations of which are still relevant today.
