The Inspector-General | Page 4

national institution. To place a purely
literary valuation upon it and call it the greatest of Russian comedies
would not convey the significance of its position either in Russian
literature or in Russian life itself. There is no other single work in the
modern literature of any language that carries with it the wealth of
associations which the Inspector-General does to the educated Russian.
The Germans have their Faust; but Faust is a tragedy with a cosmic
philosophic theme. In England it takes nearly all that is implied in the
comprehensive name of Shakespeare to give the same sense of bigness
that a Russian gets from the mention of the Revizor.
That is not to say that the Russian is so defective in the critical faculty
as to balance the combined creative output of the greatest English
dramatist against Gogol's one comedy, or even to attribute to it the
literary value of any of Shakespeare's better plays. What the Russian's
appreciation indicates is the pregnant role that literature plays in the life

of intellectual Russia. Here literature is not a luxury, not a diversion. It
is bone of the bone, flesh of the flesh, not only of the intelligentsia, but
also of a growing number of the common people, intimately woven into
their everyday existence, part and parcel of their thoughts, their
aspirations, their social, political and economic life. It expresses their
collective wrongs and sorrows, their collective hopes and strivings. Not
only does it serve to lead the movements of the masses, but it is an
integral component element of those movements. In a word, Russian
literature is completely bound up with the life of Russian society, and
its vitality is but the measure of the spiritual vitality of that society.
This unique character of Russian literature may be said to have had its
beginning with the Inspector-General. Before Gogol most Russian
writers, with few exceptions, were but weak imitators of foreign
models. The drama fashioned itself chiefly upon French patterns. The
Inspector-General and later Gogol's novel, Dead Souls, established that
tradition in Russian letters which was followed by all the great writers
from Dostoyevsky down to Gorky.
As with one blow, Gogol shattered the notions of the theatre-going
public of his day of what a comedy should be. The ordinary idea of a
play at that time in Russia seems to have been a little like our own tired
business man's. And the shock the Revizor gave those early
nineteenth-century Russian audiences is not unlike the shocks we
ourselves get when once in a while a theatrical manager is courageous
enough to produce a bold modern European play. Only the intensity of
the shock was much greater. For Gogol dared not only bid defiance to
the accepted method; he dared to introduce a subject-matter that under
the guise of humor audaciously attacked the very foundation of the
state, namely, the officialdom of the Russian bureaucracy. That is why
the Revizor marks such a revolution in the world of Russian letters. In
form it was realistic, in substance it was vital. It showed up the
rottenness and corruption of the instruments through which the Russian
government functioned. It held up to ridicule, directly, all the officials
of a typical Russian municipality, and, indirectly, pointed to the same
system of graft and corruption among the very highest servants of the
crown.
What wonder that the Inspector-General became a sort of comedy-epic
in the land of the Czars, the land where each petty town-governor is

almost an absolute despot, regulating his persecutions and extortions
according to the sage saying of the town-governor in the play, "That's
the way God made the world, and the Voltairean free-thinkers can talk
against it all they like, it won't do any good." Every subordinate in the
town administration, all the way down the line to the policemen,
follow--not always so scrupulously--the law laid down by the same
authority, "Graft no higher than your rank." As in city and town, so in
village and hamlet. It is the tragedy of Russian life, which has its roots
in that more comprehensive tragedy, Russian despotism, the despotism
that gives the sharp edge to official corruption. For there is no possible
redress from it except in violent revolutions.
That is the prime reason why the Inspector-General, a mere comedy,
has such a hold on the Russian people and occupies so important a
place in Russian literature. And that is why a Russian critic says,
"Russia possesses only one comedy, the Inspector-General."
The second reason is the brilliancy and originality with which this
national theme was executed. Gogol was above all else the artist. He
was not a radical, nor even a liberal. He was strictly conservative.
While hating the bureaucracy, yet he never found fault with the system
itself or with