The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

Russian playwrights imitated two popular French models: the comedie de caractere (a “comedy of character” focusing on a single eponymous universal vice, as in Moliere’s satires on the Miser or Misanthrope) and comedie de moeurs (a “comedy of manners” satirically portraying contemporary society). The gallery of fixed types for such comedies includes an obedient heroine and a virtuous (often clueless) hero, an obstacle to their union (venal or dimwitted false suitors, parents or guardians), corrupt officials, foolish pedants, witty and resourceful servants, confidantes, and a raisonneur [a “person of good sense” who expresses the moral views of the author]. Virtue must triumph, usually in some sort of public showdown. En route, these types do not so much interact - few events actually occur on the neoclassical comedic stage - as “inter-talk,” that is, expose themselves, scene after scene, through words, either in monologues (often becoming tirades) or dialogues (often dysfunctional). These verbal masks rarely become more complex as a result of any unexpected plot events; if they do, the audience perceives such change as superficial or untrustworthy.

Some Russian “manners” were relatively safe to address simply by mocking an isolated targeted vice. Such was Catherine II’s strategy in her comedy O! The Times! (1769), which ridicules religious hypocrisy, gossip, greed, and faking a knowledge of foreign languages. The Empress followed the convention of giving characters “speaking names” to announce their essence: “Khanzhakina” [Hypocrite], “Vestnikova” [Tattler], “Nepustov” [Not-Empty, Not-Shallow]. Satire could be quite vicious as long as the vice or injustice in question was resolved harmlessly. Because satire and “reform from above” were so intimately interwoven in neoclassical comedy, the limits of the permissible can be tested through three dramatic works that go somewhat against the grain of royal

86 The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

patronage. Two are comedies. One (both blacker and more tuneful) is the libretto for a comic opera.

Denis Fonvizin (1745-92) was a translator, statesman, and liberal political philosopher as well as the author of Russia’s two best eighteenth-century comedies, The Brigadier (1769) and The Minor (1781).6 (The Russian title of the latter is Nedorosl', the technical term for an adolescent who had not yet passed the basic literacy examinations qualifying him for obligatory state service - an intensely unpopular Petrine reform, because a young man could not marry until the state exam was passed.) While writing The Brigadier, Fonvizin was working as secretary to Ivan Elagin, director of the Russian Imperial Theatres. By the time of his second play, however, Fonvizin was thoroughly disillusioned with Catherine’s rule. He had entered the employ of Count Nikita Panin, leader of the aristocratic opposition. Unusual for his era and station, Fonvizin advocated broadening the notion of state service to include not only the military but also commercial and mercantile activity undertaken by the noble class. He was certainly no radical, however, and The Minor is a rather obedient comedy. It broke new ground not in its politics but in its realistic portrayals: of an obsequious, ignorant German tutor and his two serf assistants (one an honest ex-soldier, the other a dishonest rogue), a provincial matriarch as violent as she is obtuse, and a setting immediately recognizable as Russia - however universal the vices exposed.