III.
In 1835, Nikolai Vasilievitch (Gogol) gave up his position in the University, and left the public service for good. “Now I am again a free Cossack!” he wrote at this time, which was the time of his greatest literary activity.
His novels now show him groping after realism, rather than indulging his fancy. Among the unequal productions of the transition period, “Le Manteau” is the most notable one. A late Russian politician and author once said to me: “Nous sommes tous sortis du manteau de Gogol.”
“Le Manteau” (as well as the “Revizor,” “Inspector-General”) was the outgrowth of his one year’s experience in the government offices; and the fulfilment of a desire to avenge his life of a galley slave while there. These works were his first blows aimed at the administrative power. Gogol had always had a desire to write for the stage; and produced several satirical comedies; but none of them, except the “Revizor,” had any success. The plot of the piece is quite simple. The functionaries of a provincial government office are expecting the arrival of an inspector, who was supposed to come incognito to examine their books and accounts. A traveller chances to alight at the inn, whom they all suppose to be the dreaded officer of justice. Their guilty consciences make them terribly anxious. Each one attacks the supposed judge, to plead his own cause, and denounce a colleague, slipping into the man’s hand a generous supply of propitiatory roubles. Amazed at first, the stranger is, however, astute enough to accept the situation and pocket the money. The confusion increases, until comes the crash of the final thunderbolt, when the real commissioner arrives upon the scene.
The intention of the piece is clearly marked. The venality and arbitrariness of the administration are exposed to view. Gogol says, in his “Confessions of an Author”: “In the ‘Revizor,’ I tried to present in a mass the results arising from the one crying evil of Russia, as I recognized it in that year; to expose every crime that is committed in those offices, where the strictest uprightness should be required and expected. I meant to satirize the great evil. The effect produced upon the public was a sort of terror; for they felt the force of my true sentiments, my real sadness and disgust, through the gay satire.”
In fact, the disagreeable effect predominated over the fun, especially in the opinion of a foreigner; for there is nothing of the French lightness and elegance of diction in the Russian style. I mean that quality which redeems Molière’s “Tartuffe” from being the blackest and most terrible of dramas.
When we study the Russian drama, we can see why this form of art is more backward in that country than in any other. Poetry and romance have made more rapid strides, because they are taken up only by the cultivated class. There is virtually no middle class; and theatrical literature, the only diversion for the people, has remained in its infancy.
There is an element of coarseness in the drollery of even the two masterpieces: the comedy by Griboyedof, “Le Mal de Trop d’Esprit,” and the “Revizor” by Gogol. In their satire there is no medium between broad fun and bitterness. The subtle wit of the French author ridicules without wounding; his keen witticism calls forth laughter; while the sharp, cutting satire of the Russian produces bitter reflection and regret. His drollery is purely national, and is exercised more upon external things and local peculiarities; while Molière rails at and satirizes humanity and its ways and weaknesses. I have often seen the “Revizor” performed. The amiable audience laugh immoderately at what a foreigner cannot find amusing, and which would be utterly incomprehensible to one not well acquainted with Russian life and customs. On the contrary, a stranger recognizes much more keenly than a Russian the undercurrent of pathos and censure. Administrative reform is yet too new in Russia for the public to be as much shocked as one would expect at the spectacle of a venal administration. The evil is so very old!
Whoever is well acquainted with the Oriental character knows that their ideas of morality are broader, or, rather, more lax, than ours, because their ideas of the rights of the government are different. The root of these notions may be traced to the ancient principle of tribute money; the old claim of the powerful over the weak, whom they protect and patronize.
What strikes us as the most astonishing thing in regard to this comedy is that it has been tolerated at all. We cannot understand, from what we know of the Emperor Nicholas, how he could have enjoyed such an audacious satire upon his government; but we learn that he himself laughed heartily, giving the signal for applause from his royal box. His relations with Gogol are very significant, showing the helplessness of the absolute power against the consequences of its own existence. No monarch ever did more to encourage talent, or in a more delicate way. Some one called his attention to the young author’s poverty.