The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

120 The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

the town officials, although for different reasons. The proper response of an audience to this devolving fiasco would be horror, released through a guffaw. Gogol was appalled at the stiffness of the 1836 premiere and insisted that the one positive character in the play had been overlooked: Laughter.

Pushkin’s and Gogol’s dramatic pretenders resemble each other in their restlessness, improvisatory skills, lightness, and ability to take on any number of verbal masks with no friction at the transitions. Khlestakov improvises, like Pushkin’s Dmitry, but with opposite valence: he is successful to the extent that he can take value away. The relevant “petitioning” scenes in The Government Inspector occur in Act IV.25 The officeholders of the town, in full dress uniform, haveturnedup to greet –and hopefullyto bribe – Khlestakov, who is sleeping off a sumptuous dinner at the Mayor’s house. At the end of Act III, in an intoxicated bravado, he had regaled the ladies of the house with a ballooning set of fibs about hislife in Petersburg: his dinners and balls, thedepartments that scramble to serve him, his casual visits to the imperial court, his intimacy with Pushkin, how he is begged by publishers to contribute stories and plays (various works attributed to others are all in fact his). Now, sensing no barriers and pursuing no aim, he pushes his identity in every possible direction. Khlestakov gets whatever he can get away with.

In Act IV, the Judge, Postmaster, School Inspector, Warden of Charities, and finally the landowners Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky (Tweedledum and Tweedledee) drop by to “pay their respects.” The judge bungles his bribe and Khlestakov, surprised, picks up the money from the floor and asks to “borrow” it. This success emboldens him. He hits up the postmaster for a loan outright, and with each visitor the requested sum rises. Finally Khlestakov barks in the first breath at Bobchinsky / Dobchinsky: “Got any money on you? A thousand rubles?” Getting away with pretense simply speeds up the scam; it never creates weight, shame, or a public face. Since all parties are equally nervous and guilty, all play the same game of hide-and-seek.

Againstthe advice ofhismanservantOsip (“getout while thegoingisgood!”), Khlestakov lingers, as Chichikov will linger in Dead Souls. The playful masks begin to unravel – and what began as visitors with bribes becomes visitors with denunciations. Our false inspector slips out of town barely in time, just before the postmaster unseals Khlestakov’s letter to a Petersburg friend describing the fools he has fleeced. At this point, a stretch of dialogue occurs that superficially resembles the final moments of the eighteenth-century “self-corrective” comedies by Fonvizin and Knyazhnin, where evil caves in and is exposed to public ridicule. The mayor admits to his gullibility, calling himself an imbecile and blockhead. But Gogol supplies no Pravdin or Starodum to receive sinners’ confessions. Everyone is implicated. “What are you laughing at?” the enraged