VI.
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.