Wisely: Oh, how blessed is that land where such a rare political sense sits upon the throne!
Flatternot: And how happy those who are citizens of such a land! (To the Count.) Of what are you thinking, Count?
Count: I do not understand anything of what you both were talking about.
Wisely: And have you heard that there are now no counts in France?
Countess: That is almost incredible; I did hear something, but I could not believe it.
Wisely: Do you really not understand the French troubles?
Count: I believe that they are great if they put counts on the same level as other people.
Flatternot: When your son goes to France, he will not be a count.
Countess: Then I shall not send him there — not for anything!
Servant (enters): Countess Folliest has been pleased to come, with a stranger.
Countess: I go to meet the benefactress of our house. (Countess Folliest enters.)
Both Countesses: Your highness!
Countess Folliest: I present Mr. Pelican to you.
Pelican (grimacing): Votre altesse!
Countess Folliest : Here is a tutor for your son, dear Countess.
Pelican (grimacing): Votre altesse!
Wisely: I know that ugly face.
Pelican (sees Wisely and runs away, shrieking): I don’t want be here, I don’t!
Countess Folliest: What has happened to him?
Wisely: I will solve the riddle for you. That empty-headed Frenchman was a nurse’s assistant in an almshouse in France; he can draw teeth and cut corns — nothing else. He came to Russia, and I found him in another neighbourhood, where I have an estate, among the teachers of young noblemen. I considered it my duty to inform the Governor of this, and he, thinking such vagabonds harmful to the country, cleared him out n my representation, and therefore, when he saw me here, he ran away, fearing evidently that I shall clear him out by the neck again. However that may be, I shall see the Governor tomorrow and endeavour to remove him from our district in twenty-four hours.
Countess: Marshal, moderate your strictness at our request.
Wisely: Countess, you are free to follow or not follow my advice as to the education of your son by the person I have introduced to you; but I, as marshal of the nobility, cannot endure that such a rascal should be in our midst to corrupt the hearts and heads of young noblemen.
Countess (to herself): If I had thought, by sending for the marshal to find an instructor for our son, we would lose through him a competent tutor who would come into the room and give us our due at once by calling me and my husband, votre altesse!
Countess Folliest: Why is the marshal at your house?
Flatternot: I came here on the invitation of the marshal, who is zealous for the advantage of noblemen; but now I shall not consent for anything in the world to be the instructor of a boy whose parents are infected entirely by fancies about rank.
Wisely (to Count and Countess): Your humble servant! In advance, do not expect me again.
Count: As you wish.
Countess: Countess, let us go to our apartments. (Exeunt Count and Countesses.)
Flatternot: Queer people! Tell me, what guides their thoughts and deeds?
Wisely: What guides them? Silly pride.
(Curtain)
THE INSPECTOR GENERAL: A COMEDY IN FIVE ACTS
By Nicolay Gogol
Translated by Thomas Seltzer from the Russian
INTRODUCTION
The Inspector-General is a 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.